Democratic mayors and governors are crying foul and filing lawsuits after president Donald Trump deployed the National Guard into Chicago and Portland. Regional leaders insist that their cities are doing fine and that the presence of guardsmen will not make their communities any safer.
In turn, these local officials urge citizens not to take the bait and feed into the president’s asinine perception that, say, Portland is “war-ravaged”. But of course, protesters can’t resist the chance to, well, resist, creating cover for hot-headed radicals to gear up for clashes with federal agents. The whole drama has become so predictable that it hardly seems worth our attention.
So why not call the White House’s bluff and welcome guardsmen into blue cities? After all, there is ample evidence that judicious use of reservists can help struggling local governments reduce crime.
New York’s Democratic governor Kathy Hochul called the guard into the city’s subway system last year and touted a near 10 per cent reduction in crime aboard transit. In 2023, California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom crowed that the state’s national guardsmen had seized a record 28,224kg of fentanyl at the US-Mexico border, stating that it was “enough to potentially kill the global population – nearly twice over.” This year, another Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, authorised the deployment of National Guard personnel in Albuquerque due to a rise in fentanyl-related crime.
The National Guard operates more like a state militia rather than a federal army. However, under a 19th-century law known as the Posse Comitatus Act, military troops cannot be used for domestic law enforcement unless authorised by Congress. That distinction is what makes these recent cases different from the White House’s imperious approach that takes soldiers away from their families and civilian jobs merely to score political points. And to make matters worse, in the midst of a government shutdown, National Guard members could be required to work without pay.
Trump often has a reverse Midas touch, promising policies turn to poison rather than gold. In that vein, the idea of deploying federal troops on US soil has become yet another political football, with Republican governors from Louisiana to Tennessee calling for guardsmen in New Orleans and Memphis – both cities with Democratic mayors – as a way of tarring their political opponents for poor governance on crime.
The truth is, the number of urban crimes has continued to fall nationwide since it spiked at the beginning of this decade. But reverting to 2019 crime rates should not be viewed as an acceptable status quo. US cities are still more dangerous and disorderly than their Asian or European counterparts (a significant reason why they continue not to earn high marks on Monocle’s annual Quality of Life Survey) and insufficient police presence is one factor. The French might stage protests to raise the retirement age or to condemn the cancellation of public holidays but they do not dispute the legitimacy of the Gendarmerie nationale to police their cities.
I urge mayors to treat National Guard deployment as an opportunity to temporarily bolster depleted police ranks on state and federal dimes. With municipal governments facing budget crunches nationwide, scorning public servants who come at no cost is like looking a gift horse in the mouth. If there truly isn’t any enforcement to be done by the troops, then put reservists to work picking up trash and cleaning up graffiti, just as we saw in Washington. A little clean-up never hurt anyone.
A good few hours’ hike from the sprawling Marines Corps Base Quantico in rural Virginia, US president Donald Trump and his secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, addressed the military’s top brass on Tuesday. It was a highly unusual gathering of US generals, who had flown in from command posts all over the world to be told by Hegseth that their troops should shave properly – “no more beardos” – and endure training that is “scary, tough and disciplined.”
None of this would be news to the recruits being put through their paces at The Basic School, a gruelling 29-week program at Quantico that gives the men and women selected as Marine Corps officers the fundamental grounding to lead troops into battle. “If they’re not tough, they’re going to get tough after being out here, that’s for sure,” said Captain Oliver McKellips just before three companies of Marines launched their deafening assault on Mout Town, a series of eerily empty structures deep in the Virginia woods built to replicate a small urban settlement.
The commander-in-chief’s Virginia visit came as the Marines are undergoing a 10-year modernisation drive that’s aimed at getting up to speed with adversaries such as China. However, with Trump finding new threats on both foreign and domestic soil, the elite force is not just having to contend with a changing world but also with shifting political sands at home.
Monocle was among a group of foreign journalists invited to visit Quantico’s almost 24,000-hectare base to observe tactical training. A company of Marines crept through the woods before smoke grenades flew, gunfire cracked and the soldiers stormed the windowless concrete structures, clearing rooms with enthusiastic cries.
The mocked-up city is a curious place, reflecting the Marines’ changing priorities. It was built during the Cold War and its structures roughly resemble a European town. But the signs above the doors are in Dari, the language of Afghanistan, a key 21st-century battleground for this elite military branch known as the tip of the spear in foreign operations.
This moniker makes some of their recent deployments rather unusual. In June the Pentagon deployed 700 Marines to Los Angeles to assist in quelling protests – the first such domestic deployment of Marines in 33 years. On Saturday, Trump declared that he would be deploying soldiers to “war ravaged” Portland, Oregon, where they were authorised to use “full force”. Speaking at Quantico, Trump made clear that the military would have a greater role in the domestic theatre. “What they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places and we’re going to straighten them out, one by one,” he said. “That’s a war. It’s a war from within.” What is more, Trump has also deployed Marines to the Caribbean, where they’re supposedly targeting alleged drug-running cartels from Venezuela and the US-Mexico border.
What exactly will change at The Basic School remains unclear. As is to be expected from serving military officers, the trainers declined to be drawn into a political discussion. “We’re focused on giving the Marines, the leaders, the skills to succeed and then trust that our leadership will point us in the right direction,” said Lt Col Michael Breslin, the school’s war-fighting director.
But the edicts from the top will have an inevitable effect. If the Marines continue to deploy domestically, there needs to be training in law enforcement, crowd control and an understanding of the legal limits and rules of engagement on home terrain, where they can’t in most circumstances make arrests or search individuals.
The Marines are primarily trained in lethal force, rather than quelling civil unrest, and clear parameters would need to be set about their role in US cities. Working with different law-enforcement agencies presents other challenges, with different codes of conduct and communications standards. Hegseth might obsess about sending clean shaven “war fighters” into combat zones but most Americans probably didn’t expect the next war on their doorstep.
Charlotte McDonald-Gibson is a frequent Monocle contributor.
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It is said that today’s leaders – whether in a boardroom or bunker – usually fall into two stylistic categories. Transactional ones concentrate on management, bargaining and calibrated rewards or punishments, often prioritising short-term gains and measurable outputs. Transformational leaders, by contrast, anchor their authority in a broad vision and moral purpose, and seek to inspire followers to accept a shared, higher goal.
These styles shape foreign and security policy in different ways. Transformational leaders can redefine national identity and doctrines – think of Ronald Reagan’s role in reframing Cold War rhetoric or Nelson Mandela’s in conceiving post-apartheid South Africa – by mobilising public purpose and long-term commitment. Transactional leaders – perhaps most famously exemplified by Donald Trump – typically pursue tactical bargains, incremental reforms and contingent alliances: they negotiate, trade and calculate advantage rather than seek wholesale reordering of the international system.
Many believe that what Europe needs is a standout transformational leader – a singular figure capable of, for example, leading the negotiations over Ukraine’s future or bringing peace to the Middle East. By contrast, the US president, who is widely perceived as being wholly transactional, seems to be setting the global agenda. But it is misguided to present Trump as representing one clear leadership style. Instead, he is a paradoxical embodiment of both transactional and transformational. On the one hand, he treats foreign relations as a series of zero-sum exchanges, underscoring a deal-making philosophy that fits the transactional definition. Yet he also, particularly during his election campaign, exhibited transformational traits such as calling for a complete reordering of US foreign policy and global trade.
Perhaps herein lies the effectiveness of Trump’s sometimes difficult-to-articulate style. The late Joseph S Nye Jr conducted a thorough stylistic survey of US presidents in his 2013 book, Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era. He concluded that while long-term economic and military shifts have accounted for much of the rise and fall of US power, crucial historical turning points have also been shaped by key leadership decisions. Indeed, Nye’s striking finding was that highly effective transactional leaders, such as Dwight D Eisenhower and George H W Bush, often proved just as consequential as their more transformational counterparts. By portraying transformational leadership as the sole engine of historical change, opponents of Trump, at home and in Europe, might be looking for the wrong style. The multinational challenges of the 21st century demand hybrid leaders: managers who can negotiate and execute, and visionaries who can build trust and long-lasting coalitions.
Speaking to Georgina Godwin on Monocle Radio’s Meet The Writers, Wolff discussed his latest book, All or Nothing, and the extraordinary endurance of Donald Trump. The author has now written four volumes on Trump – a saga that he admits he never wanted to continue but one that has pulled him along “kicking and screaming” into each new chapter.
Below is an extract (edited for length and clarity) of Godwin’s interview with Wolff.
Do you think that the Trump who took office in 2024 differs from the Trump you explored previously? Your approach was that he didn’t have premeditated malice but was simply incompetent.
No, no, totally, incredibly incompetent. I don’t think it has changed. But the overriding reveal of All or Nothing is in the title. There was something in him that let this be an absolutely existential affair. He was willing to die, to give up his freedom, to go to jail. If he did not win the presidency, he would probably go to jail for the rest of his life. It was all or nothing.
Most people facing four criminal indictments would have said, “I’m finished; let me negotiate the best deal.” He didn’t do that. He went into each courtroom and did absolutely what you were not supposed to do – antagonise everyone. Every day, every move, every statement made it worse for him unless he won the presidency.
Across these four volumes, you’ve drawn a complete arc. It’s chaos, siege, collapse, resurgence. Do you see them as a single, collective portrait of Trump or four different channels?
The story goes on and I haven’t wanted it to go on. His relationship with the truth has profoundly changed the nature of the times we live in. My hopeful side says that Donald Trump is a unique and utterly sui generis figure. But the other side is this: the basic proposition in the 2024 campaign was that the system would destroy him or he would destroy the system. And we are now seeing, every day, that the system is being destroyed.
In your work, have you identified an ideology other than America First?
He does not have any policy goals. There are no beliefs that he is pursuing. It is just about Donald Trump at the centre of the universe. On Russia, yes – there might be long relationships and money changing hands – or perhaps he simply doesn’t care. In any case, it’s truly outside of his competence. It demands a level of attention and detail that he’s just not up to.
Is Donald Trump an intelligent man?
No. He’s a fucking moron. It’s extraordinary. He clearly has some street savvy but in terms of information and thinking about things in any coherent way, zippo. Steve Bannon once said that Trump’s whole life was a battle against information. He didn’t want to know things because that meant people would tell him things and he instinctively rebelled against that. So nobody tells him anything – not least because he never stops talking.
Your books are full of explosive claims, yet you have never been successfully sued. Why is that?
When he tried to sue me for Fire and Fury, my publisher said, “Bring it on.” There were no successful suits throughout the first administration. Coming into the second, I think that people have been genuinely scared. His threats are different. ABC News settled a preposterous case for $15m [€12m] – money that went straight into Donald Trump’s pocket. CBS folded during a merger process. Now he’s suing Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal. And why would he not sue? He gets a lot out of it. Various organisations are trying to do the forensic accounting of just how much he’s made out of the presidency. It’s extraordinary.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the full conversation on ‘Meet The Writers’ on Monocle Radio.
The helicopters have flown, the red carpets have rolled up and the tiaras have been put back in their safes. Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK was a rare honour and the security surrounding it unprecedented. Windsor Castle’s ancient stone walls were ringed with metal security fences. Anyone hoping for one of London’s best views over Windsor Great Park on the descent into Heathrow Airport would have been disappointed as the airspace overhead was closed. The killing of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk and the attempt on Trump’s life last year led to an extreme state of alert.
Where the president goes, helicopters and a motorcade follow, usually comprising more than 20 vehicles. Even though Trump hardly touched the ground on wheels, Cadillac One was flown in. His personal car, known as The Beast, features eight-inch-thick military armour, five-inch-thick windows, supplies of oxygen and the president’s blood type. There were contingency plans in the event of biohazards and IEDs. The true costs of such trips are rarely published but it’s estimated that Air Force One costs up to $200,000 (€170,000) an hour to fly. That’s before you add in the whole entourage, often hundreds strong, that comes along for the ride. Even back in 1998, Bill Clinton’s six-country, 12-day trip to Africa cost $43m (€37m).
Trump was greeted with flypasts and military parades. But what’s the publicity value of a state visit if you have to be kept away from the disgruntled citizens of the country that is supposed to welcome you? Trump’s second-term trips have mostly been to summits where he hasn’t been anywhere near the public. At Windsor his carriage procession – unlike Emmanuel Macron’s in the summer – kept him inside the castle’s grounds. Long gone are the days when Jimmy Carter could walk about in a crowd of 80,000 people in Newcastle. It’s even more astonishing that Bill Clinton could shake hands with well-wishers in Belfast in 1995, the violence of the Troubles not yet ended. Attempts on the lives of US presidents are sadly nothing new but what seems to have changed is the level of anger and polarisation that Trump in particular arouses.
On his last state visit, the president was greeted by the baby blimp, a six-metre-high balloon of an orange Trump in a nappy, which floated over London as many residents protested. It was not only embarrassing for the guest and his hosts but also expensive, costing millions in policing. Many countries have been asking whether they can justify the extravagance of such state occasions while telling their citizens that there’s little money to spare for public services. When Emmanuel Macron hosted King Charles III at Versailles, the banquet in the Hall of Mirrors for 160 dignitaries cost some €475,000. The Elysée was criticised for wasteful spending over the dinner of lobster, rose macaroons and Château Mouton Rothschild. The wine alone cost €40,000. Trump’s hosts might be relieved that he doesn’t drink.
In Saudi Arabia and the Gulf this year, 21-gun salutes were sounded, camels were present and sword dances were performed for the president. What’s at stake is not only diplomacy but also big business. Tech-company bosses dine at the banqueting tables alongside more ornamental celebrities. They could all afford their own champagne and shellfish dinners. But that’s why these visits continue – governments believe that the costs are tiny compared to the deals that could emerge. The figures are often scarcely believable: the US government claimed $2trn (€1.7trn) of investment would come from Trump’s Gulf trip. UK prime minister Keir Starmer boasted of £250bn (€287bn) “flowing both ways across the Atlantic”. Those billions make dusting off the white tie and putting the horses on parade seem well worth it.
It will be a very different LGBTQ Pride month this year in the US – the first since the return of Donald Trump to the White House and the implementation of his anti-diversity initiatives across every element of government and society. There’s no blueprint for celebrating a month acknowledging a minority group when diversity initiatives have essentially been outlawed. Grave consequences potentially await companies and institutions that support diversity, equity and inclusion programmes. But while the American public is still ready to fete the queer community throughout June, the private sector has become far less sanguine.
According to Heritage of Pride, the organiser of New York’s annual pride parade, 25 per cent of corporate donors have cancelled or reduced sponsorship this year, which can run from $7,500 to $175,000 (€6,600 to €154,000). Long-time supporters such as PepsiCo, Nissan, Citi, Mastercard and PricewaterhouseCoopers are not returning to this year’s festivities. Other brands are trading marquee sponsorship deals for lower-profile parade booths and product placements.
Brewing company Anheuser-Busch has ended its PrideFest sponsorship in St Louis, and the same goes for spirits giant Diageo in San Francisco. Such moves not only threaten to reduce the size of Pride events in June but also broader outreach efforts by festival organisers throughout the year. Perhaps most worrisome, nearly 40 per cent of companies plan to reduce internal Pride programming over fears of White House retribution. As Fabrice Houdart, executive director of the Association of LGBTQ+ Corporate Directors, recently told The New York Times, “there are a lot of companies saying ‘I won’t engage on anything LGBT-related because I don’t want to find myself being a target.’”
While this year’s corporate retreat may feel regressive – if not foreboding – the shift does offer a much-needed reset for a Pride industry that many LGBTQ activists felt had become more concerned with celebrating capitalism than sexual liberation. Grassroots groups such as the Dyke March and Reclaim Pride Coalition have long held alternative, “protest” Pride events – the latter under the banner: “NO COPS, NO CORPS, NO BS”.
Even if it’s possible, ending Pride’s reliance on private sector largesse won’t be simple. Nor will it be easy for Trump to ignore the millions of LGBTQ people and allies that are expected to pour into Washington as it holds the biannual WorldPride event over the next two weeks. Hilton, Delta and Amazon are all listed as sponsors, though the extent of their contributions remains unclear. Even skittish companies such as home-goods retailer Target – which faced a backlash over its Pride fashion collection in 2024 – are finding ways to support LGBTQ causes while still avoiding White House ire: Target will reduce its visible brand presence at New York’s Pride march while still contributing cash to the event. Ultimately, of course, the show will go on. And for all the backroom corporate tussling, there remain few shows with the scale and spectacle of Pride.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer and US president Donald Trump have announced a “breakthrough” trade deal, the first since the latter leader triggered a global trade war.
To the extent that US president Donald Trump’s decision to launch a tariff war with the world made any sense – and the consensus among economists is that it did not – it was as a massive standover: to bully the world’s nations into seeking individual arrangements on terms more favourable to the US. This was certainly what Trump insinuated, repeatedly and coarsely boasting of grovelling entreaties from other countries. At one point he even claimed to have struck 200 trade deals. This would have been a remarkable accomplishment, given that the United Nations recognises a mere 195 countries, though perhaps Trump believed himself to be negotiating furiously with Ruritania, Freedonia, Lilliput, Legoland and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.
We now know that at least one of Trump’s deals has been done – with the United Kingdom. Trump declared the agreement as “full and comprehensive” and “big and exciting”, though such claims do need to be adjusted for the president’s lifelong tendency towards the oversell. The agreement might prove little more than yet another iteration of a recurring motif of Trump’s life in politics: create problem, cease creating problem, claim credit as a problem solver.
For this is not really a trade deal, at least certainly not a “full and comprehensive” one. It is a reduction for some items of the 10 per cent tariff that was slapped on most UK imports on “Liberation Day” – and scales back the 25 per cent tariffs imposed on UK car and steel manufacturers. Possibly grasping for a British brand of which Americans will have heard, US secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick beamed that Rolls-Royce aeroplane engines will now be tariff-free. Somewhat ominously, Trump, who has a formidable record for changing his mind and/or abnegating agreements, stressed that the final details of the deal are as yet unwritten.
This being said, the optics are significant for the UK. Trump could have chosen any country or leader to be the first recipient of his munificent generosity and abundant reasonableness: president Xi Jinping of China, prime minister Shigeru Ishiba of Japan and the chief penguin of the Heard and MacDonald Islands are still languishing beneath a 10 per cent tariff. That Trump chose the UK is, at the very least, a solid diplomatic result; a reinforcement of the UK’s cherished idea that its relationship with the US is the “special” one.
For UK prime minister Keir Starmer, it is the second big trade-related deal in a week, after an agreement was concluded with India. Tariffs on certain goods were lowered in both directions. It’s excellent news for Indian enthusiasts of Scotch whisky, UK wearers of Indian textiles and, hopefully, for the companies that supply both. The UK government’s line is that the deal will eventually increase UK GDP by £4.8bn (€5.6bn). Whether or not this proves accurate, it seems mildly preposterous that India and the UK, respectively Earth’s fourth and sixth-biggest economies, with deep historical, cultural and familial ties, were doing such a small amount of business: India presently accounts for less than two per cent of the UK’s exports and imports.
The UK-India deal could be added to Trump’s list of inadvertent triumphs, along with his recent crucial contributions in helping to re-elect the Liberal Party in Canada and the Labor Party in Australia. The UK-India deal had been sputtering for three years: they would not be the only two countries who have recently been figuring out ways to help each other compensate for the US’s possible retreat into protectionist autarky. Starmer is also looking forward to signing a new “strategic partnership” with the EU in London on 19 May, with commitments to defence and trade. The diplomatic narrowing of an English Channel widened by Brexit has been another unintended consequence of Trump’s caprices.
Defining yourself in opposition to Donald Trump has only so much rope – as Canada’s newly elected prime minister Mark Carney is about to find out (writes Tomos Lewis). Carney’s election campaign was dominated by matters beyond his country’s borders, specifically the economic upheaval caused by US tariffs and threats to Canadian sovereignty. Today, however, the campaigning stops and the job of leading begins.
Monday’s election result was a remarkable turnaround for Canada’s governing Liberal Party and represents one of the biggest swings in the history of the nation’s polling. A record 7.3 million early ballots were cast. Carney successfully framed Canada’s numerous internal challenges – high inflation, an urban-housing crisis and a paucity of defence spending – as reasons to loosen the country’s economic dependence on the US. Voters liked what they heard. But that combative talk now needs to turn into solid, actionable policy.
After campaigning as a political outsider who can freshen up governance for the future, Carney will now need to make good on his vow to move quickly and bring profound change. By Canada Day on 1 July, he has promised to pivot the nation’s trading and defence relationships towards new overseas alliances, streamline internal trade among Canada’s provinces and start building more homes. But before then he has another crucial milestone in chairing the G7 in June. It’s an opportunity for Carney to lead on a few global issues, not least whether he will help Western governments seize $300bn (€264bn) in frozen Russian assets to pay for the protection of Ukraine, which includes CA$22bn (€14bn).
The momentum that has driven the Liberal Party’s historic electoral comeback should not be allowed to ebb now that the campaign is over. A good hockey metaphor, employed prodigiously on the campaign trail, doesn’t land as well when you’re in power. Carney is no longer an outsider – it’s time for political point-scoring to make way for nation-building.
