US politics newsletter - Home and away

By James Oliphant

Feb 20 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump and his administration took their populist show on the road last week while continuing to make waves on the home front, moves that made many Americans uneasy.

One month into Trump’s second term as president, there doesn’t seem to be apple cart in sight that Trump and his allies can’t tip over and then toss down a hill.

A few days after Vice President JD Vance alarmed and upset the U.S.’ European allies with some blunt criticism at a security conference in Germany, Trump himself took the leading role in redefining the nation’s relationship with long-time adversary Russia.

Trump agreed to talks with Russia over the fate of Ukraine while freezing out the Ukrainian government and NATO from the meeting in Saudi Arabia. He slammed Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for being a “dictator” and blamed him for starting the war with Russia three years ago.

(Note: Russia invaded Ukraine, not the other way around, in February 2022.)

None of this should have come as a surprise to anyone who was listening to Trump during the 2024 campaign, but the week proved that some of Europe’s worst fears about its place in the new administration’s firmament were likely justified.

Trump appears intent on forging a new dynamic with Russia that at least gives the outside impression that he views President Vladimir Putin as a potential partner for divvying up the world’s resource s.

Democrats in Washington were outraged that the U.S. was turning its back on Ukraine. And U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican like Trump, was not pleased, saying Putin could not be trusted.

"Putin is a war criminal," Wicker told CNN.

While Trump tended to foreign affairs, his top adviser, Elon Musk, was continuing to run a chainsaw through federal agencies, pushing out tens of thousands of government workers and gaining access to a trove of sensitive data.

Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency survived an effort by 14 states to stop them from their push to shrink the federal footprint after a federal judge decline d to issue an emergency injunction.

Among other targets, Trump and Musk seem to be zeroing in on the Department of Education, a long time Republican punching bag. Meanwhile, Musk’s team sought to assure nervous fliers that it would try to upgrade technology at the nation’s airports even as it fired 300 workers at the Federal Aviation Administration, weeks after a fatal plane crash in the nation’s capital.

In response to Musk, thousands of protesters marched in cities across the country over the weekend in protest of the DOGE cuts, and a new Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week found some deep ambivalence about Musk’s cuts along with concerns they could impact government services.

Whether those scattered protests evolve into a more cohesive political pushback ahead of next year’s midterms remains to be seen but for the moment, Trump and his team aren’t making many new friends.

FACT CHECK OF THE WEEK:

Viral misinformation about the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) dramatized anger around the Trump administration’s wide-ranging immigration and deportation crackdown.

  Posts with a video of an ICE van in flames in Philadelphia accused “left-wing” actors or “Democrats” of committing arson, but the city’s fire department said the blaze was an accident ( Read more ). Another image of an ICE officer taking hold of a screaming child was AI-generated but shared as genuine with the caption, “#AmericanShame” ( Read more ). Find more fact checks from around the world here .

THE VIEW FROM ... LONDON, GENEVA AND BERLIN:

The U.S. is refusing to co-sponsor a draft UN resolution condemning Russian aggression three years after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, that backs Kyiv's territorial integrity. The step is a major political crisis for Ukraine, which has relied on tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military aid as it fights off invasion.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR:

February 22: Trump addresses the Conservative Political Action Committee in Washington

February 24: U.S. House of Representatives returns, Republicans try to agree on path forward on Trump's tax cut plans

March 4: Trump addresses a joint session of Congress for the first time this term.

THE WHO, WHAT AND WHEN:

• Who is Dale Ho, the judge deciding whether to drop Eric Adams' case?

• Why Trump wants to shut down the US Department of Education

• All of Donald Trump’s tariffs and threatened trade actions