Trudeau’s comments, first reported by the Toronto Star, were picked up on an open microphone when Trudeau believed the media had been escorted out.

“Mr. Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing. In my conversations with him on…,” Trudeau said, according to audio from the Canada-US Economic Summit in Toronto shared by CBC News, before the microphone cut out.

Trudeau made the comments after delivering an opening address at the summit, and after journalists had left the room, CBC reported.

He added that Canada becoming another US state was “not going to happen.”

Trump followed through with his threats to impose tariffs on Canada last week, announcing a new 25% duty on most Canadian goods imported into the US. However, after Trudeau made commitments to bolster security at Canada’s border, Trump announced Monday a pause on the proposed tariffs for at least a month.

After a call with Trump, Trudeau said Canada would be implementing its previously announced $1.3 billion border plan, as well as committing to appointing a “fentanyl czar” and listing cartels as terrorists.

For two weeks, America’s friends held their tongues. Since his inauguration President Donald Trump had enjoyed a steady stream of warm words — and very little criticism — from leaders in Europe and the Anglosphere who, privately, might bristle at the noise and bombast he brings to the White House.

But that accord was never bound to last, and it shattered this week after Trump unleashed perhaps his most provocative foreign policy idea yet: taking Gaza under American control, relocating its Palestinian population, and redeveloping the enclave into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

The suggestion seemed to shred in an instant decades of Western policy-making, darting away from a “two-state solution” model that had been long-established, if glaringly elusive in terms of progress.

Nations rushed to reject it. America’s allies in the region reacted with disbelief and concern about the impact the call would have on live diplomatic efforts, particularly the ongoing ceasefire and hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas. Palestinians have expressed dismay at the prospect of leaving their homeland.

In Europe, where the United States usually enjoys less complicated relationships, leaders varied in tone but were clear in their stance: They do not support this.

Still, Trump has left America’s partners in a difficult spot. Criticizing the US is a last resort for many leaders – doing it so early in a presidential term is fraught with downsides.

“My read is that they’re all gobsmacked. They didn’t see it coming,” Jon B. Alterman said of America’s allies. Alterman, a former US State Department official, is now the director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

There are wider, more diffuse reverberations too. Trump’s history of haphazard geopolitical interventions has already threatened to ideologically isolate the United States, bit by bit, among its global allies. His remarks on Gaza – whether they represent an idea, a plan, or something inbetween – may accelerate that process.

“This administration has not only an instinct but an appetite to be disruptive,” Alterman said. He predicted “a much deeper soul-searching in Europe, about how it wants to engage with a United States that is much more self-absorbed, and much less committed to supporting a multilateral system.”

Trump vs. Europe

Most Western nations are cautious of the unpredictability Trump brings to the White House, but they were more prepared for his second election win than his first.

They expected a test like this. And their responses to Trump’s Gaza plan highlighted how they might more broadly tackle Trump 2.0.

The United Nations was robust, its secretary-general warning Trump against “ethnic cleansing.” France said the proposal would constitute “a serious violation of international law.” (The forced removal of a population is prohibited by the Geneva Convention.) Spain’s foreign minister told radio station RNE that “Gazans’ land is Gaza.” In Western Europe, only Dutch far-right figurehead Geert Wilders broke ranks to endorse the plan. “Let Palestinians move to Jordan. Gaza-problem solved!” he wrote on X.

German President Walter Steinmeier said the suggestion was “unacceptable,” and the country’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said it would “lead to new suffering and new hatred.”

“In Germany, the government reaction is as expected: they’re very dismissive,” he noted. An upcoming federal election has increased the incentive for the beleaguered German government to condemn Trump, who is widely unpopular in the country and across Western Europe.

It is a dynamic Trump’s team will be relaxed about. “They’re not going to expect Western capitals to break out in a chorus of ‘me too, sign us up!’,” said Nathan Sales, Trump’s former Coordinator for Counterterrorism. “We don’t have to agree with our friends 100% of the time.”

Besides, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his government have little incentive to hold back: they likely won’t be in power next month to clear up the mess.

But criticizing the US president is not easy for everyone.

Take Britain. America’s steadfast ally is desperate for a productive relationship with Trump, and early signs indicate that a charm offensive from Prime Minister Keir Starmer is paying off. Trump said this week that Starmer had been “very nice,” and hinted the United Kingdom could avoid the tariffs he has threatened for the European Union. That is a monumental carrot for a British leader looking everywhere for a kickstart to economic growth.

Yet those bridges are built on sand. London is acutely aware that an ill-judged remark could upend months of work to appease Trump. At the same time, Starmer knows the pitfalls of appearing subservient to an American president; it’s exactly what he once launched barbs at Conservative prime ministers for.

That conundrum forces some delicate wordcraft. “On the issue of Gaza, Donald Trump is right,” Starmer’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy told reporters in Ukraine this week, reciting the part of his answer intended for an audience of one. “Looking at those scenes, Palestinians who have been horrendously displaced over so many months of war, it is clear that Gaza is lying in rubble.” The rest was meant for everyone else: “We have always been clear in our view that we must see two states and we must see Palestinians able to live and prosper in their homelands in Gaza.”

“Hard-balling allies is certainly an odd foreign policy approach,” the lawmaker added of Trump. “Will he do it with enemies?”

The next fight

As with most of Trump’s more provocative comments, his Gaza proposal was simultaneously derided and analyzed at home and abroad for hints of strategy.

Those familiar with his thinking suggested that tossing out an unpalatable benchmark could – whether by design or not – create an urgency among America’s allies to come up with something better. “He enjoys keeping people in reactive mode,” Nelson said.

“We’ve seen this play from President Trump many times before … this is the art of the deal,” Sales added. “Most Western allies of the US are stuck in a rut when it comes to thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict… in the first term, the Trump administration recognized that that path was a dead end.”

But if unlocking an intractable diplomatic stalemate was the plan, it comes with risks that America’s allies will not welcome. “Sometimes when you unfreeze things, you can unleash forces that are much more negative than you can even begin to contemplate,” Alterman said.

Among them is an American isolation on global issues that would create a vacuum of international leadership. “A number of countries are going to feel that they need a different relationship with Russia and China,” Alterman warned. “Partly so that they don’t rely on the United States, (and) partly because they don’t see the moral benefits of having a close relationship with the United States.”

That danger is heightened in the context of Trump’s moves to sanction, exit or criticize international agencies, and to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

“People are confusing USAID with a charity,” Nelson said. “Americans are among the most charitable people in the world. But making strategic investments is an important way for us to support our friends and expand our influence.”

This won’t be the last geopolitical rupture between Trump and Europe. Many are already eyeing possible negotiations to end Russia’s war in Ukraine with interest; Trump has previously suggested ceding Ukrainian land to Moscow, and officials in NATO countries have long feared he may go public with a proposed arrangement that leaves Kyiv and European capitals scrambling.

They will seek to diffuse those fears next week, when several members of Trump’s inner circle – including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance and Ukraine-Russia envoy Keith Kellogg – are expected to travel to the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

“I would hope that the administration would pursue a more balanced and calculated approach to Ukraine,” Nelson said. “One hopes that Trump would be very much relying on expert advice” on that conflict, he added.

On more issues than one, Trump’s global honeymoon appears to be over. And if Western countries needed a reminder of the tumult he can inject into global affairs, they have it.

“The Biden administration tried very hard to be reliable and predictable” on the world stage, Alterman said. “The Trump administration has exactly the opposite instinct.”

The gift was an allusion to a deadly September operation carried out by Israel in Lebanon, which targeted pagers used by members of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

On September 17, thousands of explosions struck Hezbollah members, targeting their pagers and then walkie-talkies a day later.

The blasts killed at least 37 people, including some children, and injured nearly 3,000, many of them civilian bystanders, according to Lebanese health authorities.

In return, on Tuesday, Trump gave Netanyahu a signed photograph of the two of them. He signed the photograph, “To Bibi, A great leader!,” according to a photo on Instagram posted by his son, Yair Netanyahu.

Shattered glass and a broken door covered with police tape mark the entrance to the apartment where the reported suspect in Sweden’s worst mass shooting is believed to have lived as a recluse.

Rickard Andersson, 35, has been named by the Swedish national broadcaster and multiple media outlets, including Reuters, citing police sources, as the man who opened fire, killing 10 people and himself, at an adult education center in Örebro, Sweden.

Police said that the attacker was not known to them, that he was not connected to any gangs and that he was not believed to be acting based on ideological motives.

PJ Samuelsson has lived next door to Andersson since May last year but says he has never seen or even heard his neighbor.

He says he was in a state of shock after returning home on Tuesday and finding his quiet apartment block surrounded by heavily armed police.

He said he knows “nothing at all” about his neighbor Andersson. “I’ve only seen his name on the door, that’s the only thing,” describing it as “very unusual” because he says hello daily to his other neighbors in the small block.

He said he doesn’t know why his neighbor acted like a recluse but knowing he is the suspect is “terrible.” He said it’s a “disgusting” thought that he had weapons next door.

Andersson’s name and social security number matched the same address that was held on record by the Swedish tax agency.

Bergqvist told a news conference Thursday: “We have a perpetrator who was found inside the school and he was not known to us from before.

“He has a gun license for four guns and all these four guns have been confiscated. Three of those weapons were next to him when police secured him inside the building.”

Bergqvist added that “there is information that he is somehow connected to the school, that he may have attended this school before. But that is also something that we need to look deeper into to be able to fully confirm.”

She said the 10 victims of the killing have “different nationalities, different ages and different sex” and that no motive has been confirmed yet.

On Wednesday night, grief and shock were heavy in the air as a steady stream of mourners came to pay their respects at a candlelight vigil Wednesday night by the side of a busy road, next to a small housing estate and opposite the school where Tuesday’s events unfolded.

A dozen firefighters were among the crowd, standing in silence, their heads bowed.

“They came here to learn, not to die,” said Jenny Samuelsson, whose sister-in-law died in the shooting. She said she only learned the news of her family’s loss this afternoon, 24 hours after her sister-in-law, Camille, was killed.

Camille had been studying to become a nurse, according to Jenny. “They were here to help others, to learn. I have no words,” she said, choking on her emotion. “I can’t explain the hole I have in my heart. And why? There is no answer, so what question can I even ask?”

Hundreds of candles flickered in the cold night air. The young and the old arrived clutching white candles, ready to light them, along with flowers, and handwritten notes paying tribute to those killed in Tuesday’s massacre.

“You are in our hearts, rest in peace,” said one, written in Swedish. On another note, in English, read John Donne’s poem ‘No Man Is An Island.’

Two 17-year-old boys, who had been friends from primary school, stood arm in arm after bumping into each other at the vigil. They spoke of their shock over what happened, how they were forced to lock down in their high schools as the events played out. They came to show their support, they said.

The emotion was palpable. School shootings are rare in Sweden and there is real shock that the peace of this small Swedish city has been so violently shattered.

King Charles and Queen Camilla will travel to Italy and the Vatican in April to meet with Pope Francis, as the Catholic Church celebrates a special Jubilee year, which takes place every quarter of a century.

The British monarch will join the expected 32 million people set to make the pilgrimage to the “Eternal City” this year. The Catholic Jubilee Year – or Holy Year – was established in the 14th century by Pope Boniface VIII and is 12 months focused on forgiveness and reconciliation.

Pilgrims are encouraged to pass through one of the “Holy Doors” located in Rome’s four major basilicas, while Francis has called for this jubilee to be centered on “hope,” which he underlined by opening the first “Holy Door” in a prison.

“Their Majesties The King and Queen will undertake State Visits to the Holy See and the Republic of Italy in early April 2025,” Buckingham Palace said on Thursday. “During Their Majesties’ State visit to the Holy See, The King and Queen will join His Holiness Pope Francis in celebrating the 2025 Jubilee Year.”

While in the country, Charles and Camilla are also set to shore up the bonds between Italy and the United Kingdom, carrying out engagements in Rome and Ravenna in the northern Emilia-Romagna region.

King Charles – who as the supreme governor of the Church of England is known to be deeply faithful and regularly attends services – has met Francis on several occasions. In fact, the upcoming trip will be their third encounter – though their first since Charles acceded the throne.

It will also be the second time that Francis has met a British monarch, with the pontiff having hosted Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh in the Vatican in 2014.

Despite the turbulent past of the Reformation and King Henry VIII’s break with Rome almost 500 years ago, relations between the Vatican and the British monarchy are today marked by warmth and mutual respect. The UK and the Holy See have had full diplomatic relations since 1982.

King Charles and Francis are both passionate defenders of the environment and champion the importance of interfaith dialogue – topics that are likely to come up during their meeting. The King has also expressed support for persecuted Christians in the Middle East through his collaboration with a Catholic charity.

Relations have also been boosted by the King’s interest in religious faith and respect for the Catholic Church, while the Pope gifted relics of the True Cross, two wooden splinters from what is believed to be the cross on which Christ was crucified, for Charles’ coronation. The fragments were incorporated into a new processional cross that was specially made for the lavish religious ceremony in 2023 and was then gifted to the Church in Wales. Charles’ coronation was attended by two cardinals, one of whom was a personal representative of the Pope. It marked the first time in almost half a century that Catholic prelates were involved in a British coronation.

As Prince of Wales, Charles visited Vatican City on five occasions. He was present in St. Peter’s Square for the 2019 canonization ceremony of Saint John Henry Newman, an influential theologian who converted to Catholicism after years as an Anglican priest. At that time, the King wrote an article praising Newman and thanked the Pope for his environmental efforts.

Francis, who regularly meets world leaders when they visit Italy, will see the meeting as a chance to deepen relations with the King. In 2017, the Pope encouraged Charles to be a “man of peace,” to which the future King replied: “I’ll do my best.”

But it hasn’t always been plain sailing for the King when it comes to the Vatican.

In 2005, the then-Prince of Wales had to postpone his wedding to Camilla Parker-Bowles as it clashed with the funeral of Pope John Paul II. The prince himself attended the papal funeral but, awkwardly, during the service he shook hands with Zimbabwe’s brutal then-president Robert Mugabe while performing the sign of peace.

While the exact dates of the King and Queen’s forthcoming Italy trip have not yet been revealed, speculation is mounting that the visit could coincide with their 20th wedding anniversary on April 9.

Charles’ other two visits were in 2009 and 1985.

At the end of their meeting, Francis and Charles are expected to exchange gifts. When the Pope met Queen Elizabeth II, Francis gave her a gift for Prince George (then 8 months old). It was a Lapis Lazuli orb, decorated with a silver cross of the 11th century monarch Edward the Confessor, and on the base was engraved: “Pope Francis, to His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge.” The Queen in return gifted the Pope a hamper of produce from the royal estates.

And in 2017, the Pope gave Charles a copy of his encyclical on climate change, other papal writings, and a bronze olive branch signifying peace. Charles, who was accompanied on that trip by Camilla then as well, hadn’t come empty handed. He gave the Pope a hamper of produce from Highgrove, telling Francis: “It may come in handy.”

Nuclear engineer and former Miss America Grace Stanke has entered the fierce debate in Australia over its future energy policy with a 10-day national tour extolling the benefits of nuclear power in a country where it’s been banned for almost 30 years.

The speaking tour is familiar territory for the 22-year-old former beauty queen, who said she studied nuclear engineering as a “flex,” but now works for US energy giant Constellation as a spokesperson and as an engineer on its nuclear team.

Her recent arrival comes at a delicate time in Australia, months before a national election that could put the opposition Liberal Party in power, along with its promises to build seven nuclear power stations – upending the current Labor government’s plan to rely on renewable energy and gas.

For several days, Stanke has been speaking to hundreds of Australians, in events organized by Nuclear for Australia (NFA), a charity founded by 18-year-old Will Shackel, who has received backing from a wealthy Australian pro-nuclear entrepreneur.

Most talks were well-attended by attentive crowds, but not all audience members were impressed by Stanke’s message.

As she started to speak in Brisbane last Friday, a woman in the audience began shouting, becoming the first of several people to be ejected from the room as other attendees booed and jeered. One woman who was physically pushed from the premises by a security guard has since filed a formal complaint.

Stanke reflected on the rowdy Brisbane crowd with the poise of a seasoned pageant entrant. “You know what? I respect people because they’re using their voices,” she said, describing the heckling as “probably the most vocal experience I’ve had.”

Those against nuclear power say it’s too expensive, too unsafe and too slow to replace Australia’s coal-fired power stations that would need to keep burning for several more years until nuclear plants came online.

The fact that people are even talking about the proposal shows how much public discourse has changed in the three years since voters last went to the polls, then electing climate friendly candidates and Labor’s pro-renewables policy.

Now, for the first time in decades, nuclear power is back on the election agenda, at the same time a backlash is building in rural areas against renewable energy projects that some say are erasing farmland, razing forests, and dividing communities.

A numbers game

Australia banned nuclear energy in 1998 as part of a political deal to win approval for the country’s first and only nuclear research facility that’s still operating in southern Sydney.

A change in government in an election, to be held before mid-May, would see seven nuclear reactors built in five states to provide power alongside renewable energy – a bold shift in direction that would not only require changes to federal law, but amendments to laws in states where premiers oppose nuclear power.

According to the plan proposed by Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton, the nuclear reactors would be funded by 331 billion Australian dollars ($206 billion) in public money and the first could be working by 2035.

Both forecasts are disputed as underestimates by the government acting on the advice of the country’s independent science agency – the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) – which says renewables are still the cheapest and the most efficient way for Australia to reach net zero by 2050.

Shackel, NFA’s founder, wants the nuclear ban lifted, pointing to a petition he started two years ago that has quietly accrued more than 80,000 signatures.

“I think we need to move away from fossil fuels. Gas is a fossil fuel. So, I think that if we want to be able to move away from those sources, nuclear energy is something that’s going to be increasingly important,” he said.

Shackel met Stanke at the COP 28 climate talks in the United Arab Emirates in 2023, an event she attended as Miss America while finishing her degree in nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She says Australia is “already kind of late” to nuclear energy, “so, you might as well start now.”

“I do believe that a strong grid requires both renewables and nuclear energy combined,” she said, referring to the argument for a “baseload” energy source that doesn’t rely on unpredictable weather.

That argument is challenged by experts worldwide, who say the need for “baseload” energy is an outdated concept, and that stability can be achieved by other means, including batteries.

Rural opposition to renewables

While nuclear has dominated recent discussion about Australia’s future energy mix, a steady rumble of discontent is growing louder from rural areas over the rapid rollout of renewable energy projects.

According to the Clean Energy Council, 85 renewable power generation projects are underway in Australia, along with 44 storage projects.

In the past two years, the number of petitions on Change.org opposing renewable energy projects has almost tripled, from 14 in 2023 to 37 in 2024 – alongside Facebook groups where communities are gathering to share stories and updates on protests.

Advance, a conservative campaign group that says it works to counter “woke politicians and elitist activist groups” is promoting a 48-minute documentary it claims tells the “untold stories” of farmers whose “lives have been upended by the rapid rollout of wind and solar projects.”

Murrough Benson lives near the proposed site of a massive battery storage plant in Hazeldean, rural Queensland, that’s currently moving through the council approvals process. He’s in favor of renewables. They “have their place,” he said, but “you could argue that some of them are misplaced.”

He and his wife Joy moved from Sydney to the area five years ago and hoped to enjoy a peaceful retirement. But now they’re considering selling their house, fearing the constant hum and potential contamination of the air, land, and water from the battery system, in the event of fire or flood. “We don’t want to live with something like that across the road,” said Benson.

Michelle Hunt has more immediate issues with the construction of a solar farm next to the “piece of paradise” she bought almost 20 years ago in the town of Gin Gin, also in rural Queensland.

She says a renewable energy company destroyed her fence without permission and replaced it with a wire “prison fence,” contravening a previous agreement to hide panels at the neighboring solar farm behind trees. Now they’re in full view of the house she planned to build. “Let’s face it, we are living beside an industrial electrical installation,” she said.

Rural areas where opposition is building to renewable projects are fertile ground for Shackel and his nuclear campaign. He’s already visited some areas earmarked for power stations under the Liberal proposal. And while he says NFA isn’t politically aligned with either of the major parties, he accepts he’s doing some of the groundwork to bring the community on side.

“I think nuclear energy positions itself as a solution to some of those communities because of its low land use,” he said. “And for those communities who are desperate for jobs but don’t see renewables providing that completely for them, having a nuclear plant there could be a good solution.”

Nuclear ‘foolishness’

Bringing a former Miss America to Australia was part of a plan to raise support for nuclear power among Australian women, who according to one survey are far less enthusiastic than men about the proposal.

According to several people who attended sessions in various states, the audience was dominated by older men, many of whom didn’t seem to need convincing.

“It’s just a way of spinning the fossil fuel industry out for a bit longer, and we cannot afford to do that,” she said. “You can see how the climate is collapsing around us. Look at Los Angeles. Those poor people over there lost everything.”

Others said the panel – which included local nuclear experts – made generalizations and didn’t get to the nub of issues specific to their area, like the potential strain they say a nuclear power station could have on resources in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley.

“There is literally no water for a nuclear power station. The existing allocation is already committed to mine repair,” said Adrian Cosgriff, a member of community advocacy group Voices of the Valley, who attended the Melbourne talk.

“Australians know nuclear power exists. That’s fine. It’s just not suitable for here. That’s kind of the argument,” he said.

David Hood, a civil and environmental engineer who attended the Brisbane talk, said: “Renewables are working right now. We can’t wait 10 to 20 years for higher cost and risky nuclear energy.”

Stanke and Shackel delivered a parliamentary briefing in Parliament House, Canberra on Wednesday, to politicians and aides across the political spectrum.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was unsurprisingly not in attendance, having already labelled his political rival’s nuclear proposal as “madness” and a “fantasy, dreamed-up to delay real action on climate change.”

Stanke says success at the end of the tour this week will be “knowing that I’ve made an impact in not just one person’s lives, but many.”

Albanese will be hoping that not too many Australians are convinced by her argument, which could lead to a change of leadership at a fork in the road that some say could lead to an even warmer planet.