Politics
Europe Tries a Trumpian Tactic With Trump: No Apologies
In the days after he infuriated President Trump by criticizing America’s war in Iran, Friedrich Merz, the chancellor of Germany, professed affection for the United States. When the Pentagon abruptly said it would pull 5,000 troops from Germany, Mr. Merz and his aides projected calm.
What Mr. Merz did not do was apologize.
In refusing to back down, Mr. Merz was adopting what has by now become a widespread tactic among European leaders who have provoked Mr. Trump’s wrath during the war.
European leaders are struggling to influence the course of the conflict and to manage its economic and security consequences. They are venting those frustrations, with little remorse.
If that move seems familiar to Mr. Trump, it should be. It is one of his favorites.
The president has built and sustained a political brand, in part, on a don’t-back-down approach. The list of comments and actions he has been asked to apologize for, but has not, is lengthy and ever-growing.
It includes calling Senator John McCain, who spent five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, “not a war hero”; a wide range of comments disparaging people from other countries, like Haiti and Somalia; and, most recently and still ongoing, a feud with Pope Leo XIV.
The pope has repeatedly criticized the war the United States and Israel are waging against Iran, without apology. Mr. Trump has sought to equate that criticism with a desire for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon — a charge he also leveled at Mr. Merz after his remarks this month that the United States had “no strategy” in Iran.
The Vatican has long opposed nuclear weapons, Pope Leo noted last week. “If someone wants to criticize me for proclaiming the Gospel, let him do so truthfully,” the pope told reporters.
Leaders across Europe similarly brushed off Mr. Trump when he reacted angrily to their criticisms of the war, their refusal to allow the United States full use of European military bases to launch attacks on Iran, and their unwillingness to meet his demands to send military force to open shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz.
Keir Starmer, the domestically embattled British prime minister, told an interviewer last month that he was “fed up” with pressure from Mr. Trump over the war.
Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, was once seen as a key European ally of the president but increasingly finds Mr. Trump to be a weight on her political fortunes at home. She called his criticism of Pope Leo “unacceptable.”
After a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week, which appeared intended to smooth relations between the countries, Ms. Meloni did not back off the comment. She said she and Mr. Rubio had shared a “frank dialogue, between allies who defend their own national interests but who both know how precious Western unity is.”
Mr. Merz used similar language after his comments to a group of German high school students this month, in which he said Iranian negotiators had “humiliated” the United States. The comments appeared to spur the surprise Pentagon announcement that it would relocate 5,000 of the about 35,000 U.S. troops in Germany.
Pressed by an interviewer, Caren Miosga, on the German public television network ARD, soon after the troop withdrawal announcement, Mr. Merz acknowledged a rift with Mr. Trump over the comments but did not apologize for them.
“We have a different view of this war, that is no secret,” Mr. Merz said, when asked if he would make the same comments again about Mr. Trump and the war. “I am not alone in that.”
Domestically, Mr. Merz has faced almost no pressure to back off his criticism of Mr. Trump. The war remains unpopular in Germany and across Europe. It has pushed up gas prices. Its rising economic toll appears to have helped Germany’s three opposition parties in Parliament gain in the polls — the far-left Die Linke, the center-left Greens and the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
Still, some analysts say the chancellor could have chosen his words more carefully.
“You cannot humiliate this president or be seen to be doing that,” said Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, a political analyst in Berlin, who wrote a German book about Mr. Trump, “The American Wake-Up Call.”
Mr. Merz, she noted, criticized Mr. Trump with a German-language expression that is akin to saying that the Iranians played the president for a fool. “There is no other way that the White House would have read that,” she said.
In his television interview, Mr. Merz did not answer directly when asked if he would still phrase his criticism in the same way. He also suggested he could mend fences with the president.
“I am not giving up work on the trans-Atlantic relationship,” Mr. Merz said, “and I am not giving up cooperation with Donald Trump, either.”
Motoko Rich contributed reporting from Rome, and Michael D. Shear from London.
Politics
Biden special counsel’s ‘runaway train’ scooped up sensitive lawmaker info: ‘Abuse of power’
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Former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump swept up text messages from nearly 50 members of Congress, bypassing a required review process in what one victim alleged is a direct constitutional violation.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the situation is more proof Smith’s probe was a “runaway train” of abuses of power, and the elder statesman and Senate Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., jointly released their filings Tuesday evening.
Grassley and Johnson’s findings were from a full-scale probe of Operation Arctic Frost, the code name for Smith’s endeavor to investigate Trump for alleged corruption and election malfeasance, an operation top Senate Republicans call “worse than Watergate.”
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Jack Smith, former U.S. special counsel, arrives for a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., Dec. 17, 2025. (Getty Images)
Forty-four members of Congress had the contents of their text messages obtained and reviewed by Smith’s team in a way that bypassed protocol. A “filter team” was tasked with reviewing millions of documents in the case and should have had first crack at determining whether such messages were relevant or potentially violated statute or ethics.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., one of the lawmakers whose texts were swept up in this way, said Tuesday such reviews amounted to clear violations of the Constitution’s speech and debate clause that protects lawmakers from being questioned in “any other place” than the Capitol for legislative acts.
Internal communications have been historically included in that clause in the courts as technology has advanced.
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Stefanik said in a statement that the new records prove Smith’s team “unlawfully and unconstitutionally accessed my private text messages, along with 43 other Members of Congress, in clear violation of the Constitution.”
She said she long suspected there had been “unconstitutional spy[ing] on members of Congress.”
The records were provided by the Trump Justice Department to Grassley and Johnson, which the chairmen said indicated Smith’s team had “circumvented its own filter review process.” The process is additionally meant to protect attorney-client privilege, they said in a statement.
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Former special counsel Jack Smith says the Pledge of Allegiance before he prepares to testify during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill Jan. 22, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
The news also complicated some of Smith’s prior depositions under oath, including an excerpt in which he answered “no” to a question from a congressional counsel whether records he requested from congresspeople included text messages.
Johnson called the situation a “grotesque example” of Biden-era “weaponization” of the executive branch.
“Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes,” Grassley added Tuesday.
“Based on the information that’s been produced to me and Senator Johnson, Biden DOJ and FBI investigators apparently ignored their own routine investigative protocols to obtain and review work-related messages from me and dozens of my Republican and Democrat colleagues who were outside the scope of the government’s investigation.”
Grassley added that he hopes Democrats caught up in the otherwise bipartisan text tranche will finally discard their partisanship and recognize the severity of the alleged violations by Smith.
He also indicated he planned to recall Smith before Congress to “hold him accountable.”
Of the 44 members swept up in the text reviews, several were Democrats, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington.
Grassley, Johnson and Stefanik were also swept up in the situation, along with top figures like senators Mike Lee, R-Utah; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska; Rand Paul, R-Ky., former Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; and the late Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
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Former House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was one of the victims, along with current House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as well as House Freedom Caucus member Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin of New York, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins of Georgi, and prominent Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
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Several lawmakers sounded off on the news soon after Grassley announced his findings, including Hawley, who called for “everyone involved [to] be prosecuted.”
“Joe Biden’s DOJ not only tapped my phone; I just learned they illegally obtained my texts with members of President Trump’s administration,” the Missourian fumed.
Paul called the allegations a “blatant abuse of power and exactly what our Founders warned about,” while citing Smith’s past denial under oath.
Fox News Digital reached out to a representative for Smith for comment.
The federal government agreed to temporarily hold off on construction of a planned Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Northern California.
The voluntary pause until Sept. 9 comes after the California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Santa Clara County officials sued the Trump administration last month to block the facility from being developed near Gilroy. The lawsuit remains ongoing.
“This pause in the construction, demolition, and development at the site of the challenged ICE facility is a significant step towards protecting our people, our communities, and our environment while the case remains ongoing,” Bonta said in a statement Monday night.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
State and local officials believe the facility will be used for short-term detention of up to 150 people at a time, though ICE denied that it would be a detention center.
Community members and advocates for immigrants swiftly opposed the project. ICE has consistently looked to increase its detention capacity in California, where eight detention centers can now hold a combined 9,000 people, though the state has long been a thorn in the agency’s side.
The halt is part of a compromise between both sides involved in the legal action. After the state and county submitted a request for the court to temporarily halt the project, a hearing was set for Oct. 7.
Now, state and federal officials jointly requested that the court move up the hearing by at least a month. The agreement also extends how much time the federal government has to respond.
A federal judge signed off on the agreement Monday night.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San José, alleges that the leased land is zoned exclusively for agricultural use and that the federal government violated laws requiring state and county notification, as well as procedural steps before beginning construction.
Supreme Court justices are asking lawmakers on Capitol Hill to increase their 2027 budget, with most of the additional funding earmarked for security. Ann E. Marimow, a New York Times reporter, explains why the justices say these measures are necessary to protect them from rising threats.
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