Trump Warns Europe About “Civilizational Erasure”

The Trump administration is invoking racist tropes in a policy document, claiming that Europe is facing “civilizational erasure.” 

The White House’s new National Security Strategy, posted Thursday night, called the European Union antidemocratic and seemed to make an openly bigoted jab at the demographics of European NATO states, saying, “Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European.” 

“As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter,” the document states. 

The paper went on to say the U.S. should “help Europe correct its current trajectory,” including by supporting “patriotic” parties. “We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation,” the document reads.

The administration also accused governments of “the subversion of democratic processes” to thwart public opinion to end the war in Ukraine. The document praises Europe’s far-right political parties, saying that “the growing influence of patriotic European parties” gives “cause for great optimism.” 

While sitting European leaders haven’t commented, former leaders have reacted with alarm, comparing the document to rhetoric from Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government. 

“It’s language that one otherwise only finds coming out of some bizarre minds of the Kremlin,” said Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, on X. He pointed out the only part of the world where the document saw a threat to democracy was Europe. Bildt also described the document as “to the right of the extreme right in Europe” and “JD Vance on steroids.” 

An anonymous European diplomat also mentioned the vice president, saying the document’s “tone was not promising. Even worse than Vance’s speech in February,” referring to Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference where he extolled nativism and far-right politics while downplaying the threat from Russia. 

Latvia’s former Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins told Reuters that “the happiest country reading this is Russia,” adding that “Moscow has been trying to break the transatlantic bond for years, and now it seems the greatest disruptor of this bond is the U.S. itself, which is unfortunate.”

Much of the document seems to echo the racist rhetoric coming from other parts of the Trump administration, whether it’s the dog whistles coming out of the Department of Homeland Security or the underpinnings of the administration’s immigration policies. It appears that the White House is more concerned about racial and cultural homogeneity than the real external threats.   

The Trump administration removed free national park access on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, while adding it for President Trump’s birthday. 

Now two federal holidays that celebrate Black American history will be ticketed—from around $3 to $30—while Trump’s birthday on June 14 is free entry. 

This change, first reported by SFGATE, is emblematic of the small-scale, antagonistic ways in which Trump wages his MAGA culture war on any federal mention of Black history in America, or any minority group, for that matter. 

The NPS has been a battleground for much of that war. Since taking office for the second time, Trump has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits documenting American slavery, including an iconic 1863 portrait of an ex-slave, often referred to as either Peter or Gordon, and the brutal whipping scars on his “scourged back.” 

He signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to erase any information that could be misconstrued as a “corrosive ideology,” which of course included anything relating to race relations, LGBTQ rights, and sexism. He also removed a picture of Harriet Tubman from the National Park Service page on the Underground Railroad, and changed the words “enslaved African Americans” to “enslaved workers” while removing a section that discussed Benjamin Franklin being a slave owner.

This move is spiteful and self-centered, and a perfect opportunity for the president to center himself while punching down on MLK Day and Juneteenth in the name of MAGA.  

The U.S. president on Friday became the inaugural recipient of FIFA’s newly minted peace prize.

The prize was the invention of Gianni Infantino, the boss of the international soccer league, who shocked his own top officials by cooking up the concept after Donald Trump begged, pleaded, and failed to win the Nobel Peace Prize in October.

“This is truly one of the great honors of my life, and beyond awards, Gianni and I were discussing this, we’ve saved millions and millions of lives,” Trump said after the medal—a sculpture of hands holding a soccer ball—had been draped around his neck. “So many different wars that we were able to end.”

But whether a soccer prize will scratch Trump’s itch for global recognition remains to be seen. Trump has coveted the Nobel Peace Prize for years, going so far as to lie about solving nonexistent international conflicts and phoning Norwegian officials this past summer in lame efforts to snag the title (Norway’s government has no influence on decisions made by the committee).

Part of the president’s obsession could stem from the fact that four other U.S. presidents have received the award, perhaps most notably Trump’s political nemesis, former President Barack Obama.

Infantino had publicly lobbied for Trump to win the award. But his failure to launch that process offered Infantino a new opening to flatter the president: inventing an entirely new award to satisfy Trump’s ego.

Trump was announced as the winner during the 2026 FIFA World Cup final draw.

This story has been updated.

A federal vaccine advisory panel handpicked by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted Friday to recommend delaying the hepatitis B vaccine for most newborns.

The 8–3 vote by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices reverses the government’s longtime stance that all babies be vaccinated at birth against the liver infection. Now the panel is recommending the vaccine—which has been credited with preventing thousands of illnesses—be given only to those infants whose mothers test positive or haven’t been tested.

If parents or guardians decide not to get the vaccination at the time of birth, the committee’s vote recommends that the baby should get the dose at two months. One committee member, Dr. Cody Meissner, expressed misgivings, saying, “We are doing harm by changing this wording, and I vote no.”

When asked Thursday by the Associated Press why the committee chose to reexamine this vaccine, committee member Vicky Pebsworth said it was because of “pressure from stakeholder groups wanting the policy to be revisited,” but did not elaborate. A spokesperson for Kennedy did not respond to a question on the subject. Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor and liver specialist, called the committee “totally discredited” on Thursday.

In 2022, longtime vaccine skeptic Kennedy said the hepatitis B vaccine “was made for prostitutes and for promiscuous gay men.” The virus isn’t just spread through sexual contact, though: Even contact with small amounts of infected blood can put someone at risk.

Now the decision on whether to accept the recommendation goes to the acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Jim O’Neill. But the American Academy of Pediatrics plans to keep promoting the existing CDC guidance for babies to get the first dose of the vaccine at birth, followed by a second at one or two months with the third dose coming between six and 18 months.

At least one state will also continue recommending the hepatitis B vaccine at birth: Governor Maura Healey of Massachusetts said on CNN Thursday that “D.C., the Trump administration, RFK, that panel, they are not doing their jobs. And in the face of that, as governor, I’m going to do mine.”

An appeals court judge tore into her colleagues’ decision Friday to “pave the way for autocracy” by allowing President Donald Trump to summarily fire the Democratic members of independent federal agencies.

In a 2–1 ruling, Trump-appointed D.C. Circuit Court Judges Gregory Katsas and Justin Walker greenlit the president’s efforts to remove Democratic members of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board.

“Congress may not restrict the President’s ability to remove principal officers who wield substantial executive power,” Katsas wrote in the majority opinion. “As explained below, the NLRB and MSPB wield substantial powers that are both executive in nature and different from the powers that Humphrey’s Executor deemed to be merely quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial. So, Congress cannot restrict the President’s ability to remove NLRB or MSPB members.”

Humphrey’s Executor v. United States is a 1935 Supreme Court case that established Congress can pass laws limiting the president’s ability to fire executive officials of independent federal agencies.

In a scathing dissenting opinion, Judge Florence Pan warned that the decision was a disastrous consolidation of executive power behind the president. “Adoption of the government’s maximalist theory of executive power (implicitly or explicitly) threatens to fundamentally change the character of our government,” she wrote.

“Taken to its logical end, the government’s theory will eliminate removal protections for all employees of the Executive Branch and place every hiring decision and agency action under the political direction of the President. But such a radical upending of the constitutional order is not supported by the text or structure of the Constitution and is inconsistent with the intent of the Framers. And while the government claims to uphold the separation of powers, its theory instead concentrates excessive power in the President and thus paves the way to autocracy.”

The Supreme Court previously allowed Trump to oust Gwynne Wilcox at the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris at the Merit Systems Protection Board—whose terms weren’t due to expire until 2029—as well as three Democratic appointees on the Consumer Product Safety Commission and Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission.