The State Department signed $176.9m of its human rights fund over to 43 awards on 30 September, hours before the money lapsed, including $40m for an "anti-communism" consortium and $1m for groups opposing Brazil's supreme court four days before Brazilians vote. The awards came 20 months into an administration whose vice-president told European leaders in Munich there was "no room for firewalls" against parties such as the AfD, whose president endorsed Viktor Orbán two days before Hungary voted and wrote that Canada should become "our cherished Fifty First State" and whose ambassador to Greece told a dinner of officials, of toppling governments: "We can do that here."

The Trump Organization's income reached $864m in the first half of 2025, about $802m of it from cryptocurrency and much of that from foreign buyers, Reuters reported. A fund controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates' national security adviser, secretly bought 49 per cent of the family's crypto company four days before the inauguration, and the administration later cleared advanced US chips for a Tahnoon company. The president's son-in-law negotiates with Russia while raising money from Gulf governments, a $2m Trump donor leads the bid the White House favours for Lukoil's sanctioned foreign assets and Trump-branded towers, golf courses and resorts have been announced in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam during trade and security talks with each of them.

The fund

A source familiar with the negotiations told The Guardian that the department obligated the money despite congressional concerns and requests not to do so. The Guardian reported that the 43 awards, worth a combined $176.9m, would bolster rightwing and conservative causes abroad, out of the $205m Congress appropriated for the whole Human Rights and Democracy Fund. Unobligated money in the fund lapses at the end of the fiscal year.

Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, held 10 awards worth $22m focused on Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria and the promotion of rightwing ideology in the United Kingdom and Europe, a Democratic congressional aide told The Guardian. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, signed a memo to disregard the holds and obligate the funds, the aide said. "The Trump administration's proposals would use taxpayer funds to promote far-right organizations and programs in established democracies," Shaheen said. "This is a waste of resources and undermines United States values and relations with democratic partners, including allies in Europe."

A person familiar with the discussions told The Guardian: "These awards have been briefed at the highest levels of the department and have buy-in from the White House." Sources with knowledge of the grant process said Trump administration figures lobbied personally for the awards, and that they reflected JD Vance's warnings of the collapse of traditional western values in Europe and Stephen Miller's push against immigration and for white minorities in countries such as South Africa.

The State Department declined to say whether it had obligated the funds or overridden the holds. It described the programmes as in "active deliberation" and subject to vetting by grant professionals, a description the source familiar with the negotiations contradicted by saying the money had been obligated hours before it lapsed. The department said its European programmes defend allies' "sovereignty". Brazil's attorney general said the $1m award aimed at his country's supreme court was an attempt to "meddle in Brazilian institutions".

ProPublica reported in July that the budget of the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, which runs the fund, fell from more than $500m in 2024 to about $190m in 2026.

The largest award

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation leads the consortium given $40m, the biggest single award. A State Department vetting document seen by The Guardian records $96,997 in previous contracts between the foundation and the department over five years, all in the 2022 fiscal year, and names Andrew Bremberg, a former Trump domestic policy adviser and US ambassador to the UN offices in Geneva, as a senior leader. The foundation says Congress authorised it by unanimous vote in 1993.

Samuel Samson, 27, the deputy assistant secretary overseeing the new grants, was linked to senior members of the foundation through his studies in Hillsdale College's graduate programme, ProPublica reported in July. A State Department official told ProPublica the relationship had nothing to do with the grant. Samson was fundraising director of American Moment, a group that places staff in conservative government posts, before joining the bureau as a senior adviser in January 2025, and was promoted on 3 May 2026.

Samson published "The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe" on the State Department's Substack in May 2025, arguing that the promise of "global liberalism" lay "in tatters" because of digital censorship, mass migration and restrictions on religious freedom. He led a delegation to London in March 2025 that met Nigel Farage and toured Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia in December 2025. All four countries were floated for a $2m grant to counter migration weaponised by Russia and Belarus.

The awards abroad

"Countering Lawfare and Censorship in Brazil", worth $1m, would fund civil society groups opposing what the award document calls judicial overreach and censorship by Brazil's supreme court.

"Promoting Western Civilization Allies", worth $2m, is restricted to implementers who do not subscribe to "ideologically weaponized accounts of human rights, such as gender ideology", and names possible recipients in Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and the Balkans with "anti-communist" and "natural rights" approaches. ProPublica reported a separate $4.9m "civilizational self-confidence" programme for research, conferences and cultural work in Europe.

An award on "democratic backsliding" in Europe ties it to "mass and illegal migration" and to legislation by "supra-national entities". A $1m journalism consortium would push back against designations of "trusted" media outlets, and $2m would fund early-warning networks protecting Christians in Nigeria.

The Jobs Foundation, run by Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell, who as Matthew Elliott led the Vote Leave campaign, would receive $3m without competition under the title "Countering Overregulation to Advance American Investment". The grant would promote a "common good capitalism index" and pro-business policy, including the foundation's case for Brexit as a chance to cut British climate rules.

The Free Speech Union, founded by Toby Young, now a Conservative peer, is marked "withdrawn" from a proposed $5m no-bid grant to campaign against online safety and hate speech laws including Britain's Online Safety Act. Young said in July the union had never applied for or received US government money. A $7m no-bid award to 878, a thinktank founded by Jacob Rees-Mogg whose stated aims include restoring Judeo-Christian culture and "ending mass migration and deporting illegal immigrants", was dropped in July after pushback from Congress. The three British awards together would have sent $15m to groups run by two sitting Conservative peers and a former cabinet minister.

South Africa

ProPublica reported on 7 August that a $1m award to research crime against minorities in South Africa had first been written for Lex Libertas, a group founded by Ernst Roets that has called for "self-governance of the white ethnic minority within South Africa" and raised money to plant 3,000 white crosses on the National Mall. The State Department later opened the award to a wider pool of applicants. Research cited by ProPublica found that white South African farmers are not victims of crime at higher rates than other groups. "It's laughable to suggest that on the African continent, the prime issue of human rights concern is whites in South Africa," a former aid agency official told ProPublica.

Executive Order 14204, signed on 7 February 2025, directed the resettlement of Afrikaners as refugees. Trump set the refugee ceiling for the 2026 fiscal year at 7,500 on 30 October 2025, the lowest in the programme's history, with most places reserved for Afrikaners. The ceiling for the 2025 fiscal year had been 125,000.

The State Department's human rights report for 2024, released on 12 August 2025 and cut to about a third of its previous length, dropped sections on discrimination against women, LGBTQ people and racial minorities. It said South Africa "took a substantially worrying step towards land expropriation of Afrikaners and further abuses against racial minorities". Samson visited Cape Town in July 2025 to look at attacks on white farmers.

Trump played a video to Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa's president, in the Oval Office on 21 May 2025 that he said showed burial sites of more than a thousand white farmers. The crosses in the footage were a 2020 memorial to two murdered farmers, Glen and Vida Rafferty, PolitiFact found, and a printed article Trump held up used an image filmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Farm murders account for under one per cent of South Africa's roughly 27,000 annual murders. The first 59 Afrikaner refugees arrived in May 2025, and nearly 5,000 had been resettled by April 2026.

Brazil

Jorge Messias, Brazil's attorney general, asked the police on Thursday 1 October to investigate the $1m award. He wrote that it "raises a serious red flag regarding Brazilian sovereignty" and said efforts "to meddle in Brazilian institutions cannot be tolerated". His office called the report "particularly serious, given the ongoing Brazilian electoral process and recent episodes of external pressure". Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva faces Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who met Trump at the White House in May 2026, in the first round on 4 October.

Trump imposed tariffs of 50 per cent on Brazilian goods and the Treasury sanctioned Justice Alexandre de Moraes under the Global Magnitsky Act on 30 July 2025, after lobbying by Eduardo Bolsonaro. "Moraes has taken it upon himself to be judge and jury in an unlawful witch hunt against US and Brazilian citizens and companies," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. Moraes presided over the trial in which Jair Bolsonaro was convicted in September 2025 of plotting to overturn his 2022 defeat and sentenced to more than 27 years. The Treasury removed Moraes and his wife from the sanctions list on 12 December 2025, citing an amnesty bill passed by Brazil's lower house as evidence that "lawfare conditions in Brazil are improving".

Lula's approval rose from 47.3 per cent to 50.2 per cent between June and July 2025 as the tariffs landed, on AtlasIntel's figures. Flávio Bolsonaro met Trump in the Oval Office in May 2026, and Trump said: "We've got to help these guys." The US Trade Representative announced a further 25 per cent tariff on Brazilian goods under Section 301 on 15 July 2026, covering complaints over the Pix payment system, ethanol and illegal logging. Quaest's poll of 24 to 27 September put Lula on 39 per cent and Bolsonaro on 34 per cent in the first round, tied at 42 per cent each in a run-off due on 25 October.

In their own words: Europe

Trump told a cabinet meeting on 26 February 2025: "Look, let's be honest, the European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That's the purpose of it, and they've done a good job of it." He said on 12 May 2025 that the EU was "in many ways, nastier than China". He told Politico in an interview published on 9 December 2025 that most European nations were "decaying" and that their leaders were "weak". At the World Economic Forum in Davos on 21 January 2026 he said: "Certain places in Europe are not even recognizable anymore," and: "Without us, right now, you'd all be speaking German and a little Japanese."

JD Vance told the Munich Security Conference on 14 February 2025: "The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within." He wrote in a Signal group chat on 14 March 2025, published by The Atlantic: "I just hate bailing Europe out again." Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, replied: "I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It's PATHETIC." Vance told Fox News in March 2025 that Europe was "at risk of engaging in civilizational suicide". He wrote on X on 2 May 2025: "The AfD is the most popular party in Germany," and: "The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt, not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment."

Rubio wrote on X on 2 May 2025, after Germany's domestic intelligence agency classified the AfD as extremist: "Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That's not democracy, it's tyranny in disguise." He told the Munich Security Conference on 14 February 2026: "We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West's managed decline." Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state, wrote in December 2025 that when European countries "wear their EU hats, they pursue all sorts of agendas that are often utterly adverse to US interests and security".

Hegseth told NATO defence ministers in Brussels in June 2026 that allies' response to US strikes on Iran "was shameful" and that "too many of our allies said no, or tried to drown us in arcane legal debates". Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff, asked CNN on 5 January 2026: "What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark?" Trump announced tariffs in January 2026 on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland, payable until "a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland", and dropped the threat at Davos on 21 January after announcing an Arctic agreement with Mark Rutte, NATO's secretary general.

Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, said on 10 February 2026: "I want to promote free speech in Western allied democracies, and that's what my grant making is going to be doing." No record found shows Rubio pledging in so many words to back rightwing parties in Europe. The National Security Strategy he co-signed welcomes "patriotic European parties", and he told Viktor Orbán in Budapest on 16 February 2026, eight weeks before Hungary voted: "President Trump is deeply committed to your success because your success is our success."

In their own words: Canada

Trump wrote on Truth Social on 5 March 2025 that he had told "Governor Justin Trudeau of Canada that he largely caused the problems we have with them because of his Weak Border Policies". On 11 March 2025, doubling tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium to 50 per cent, he wrote: "The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State." He wrote on 23 October 2025, over an Ontario television advertisement quoting Ronald Reagan: "ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED."

Trump told Davos on 21 January 2026: "Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements." Three days later he wrote that if "Governor Carney" made a deal with China, "China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it" and Canada would "immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff".

Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser, told Fox News on 5 March 2025: "Canada has been taken over, Bret, by Mexican cartels." He told Canadian lobbyists on 29 September 2026 to "get the hell out of our country". Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said of Mark Carney's opening to China in April 2026: "That is like the worst strategy I've ever heard. They suck." Jamieson Greer, the US Trade Representative, told the House Ways and Means Committee on 22 April 2026: "I think we're kind of at the end of our rope." Pete Hoekstra, the US ambassador to Canada, told the Halifax Chamber of Commerce on 18 September 2025: "You ran a campaign where it was anti-American, elbows up, me too. That has continued. That's disappointing."

"We can do that here"

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the US ambassador to Greece, told a dinner of Greek and US officials in Athens in March 2026, speaking of the coming collapse of Romania's government: "We can do that to any country we want. We can do that here." The Wall Street Journal reported the remark on 25 September, citing one person who attended and others told about it. Stavros Papastavrou, Greece's energy minister, argued with her at the table and told her the United States could not replace a Greek government elected by Greeks. Jesse Binnall, her lawyer, disputed the account.

Ilie Bolojan's government in Romania fell to a no-confidence motion filed by the Social Democrats and the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians on 5 May 2026. Guilfoyle had dined with the Social Democrat leader Sorin Grindeanu and his energy minister in Bucharest on 31 March, after Romgaz, the state gas producer, rejected a 20-year contract to buy US liquefied natural gas from a venture controlled by Aktor, a Greek company whose lobbyist accompanied her to official meetings. The Social Democrats called the account of the dinner talk "pure fabrications". The Journal does not report that the United States organised the vote. Romania's foreign minister, Oana Țoiu, said on 28 September that the Bucharest visit was a private business event outside any mandate.

Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania

The National Security Strategy published in December 2025 said: "America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism." It listed "cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations" as a goal and said that "within a few decades" certain NATO members "will become majority non-European".

JD Vance told the Munich Security Conference on 14 February 2025: "There's no room for firewalls." He met Alice Weidel, co-leader of the Alternative für Deutschland, for about 30 minutes the same day, nine days before Germany's federal election. "This democracy was just called into question by the US vice president, not just the German democracy but that of Europe as a whole," Boris Pistorius, the German defence minister, said. Elon Musk, then serving Trump as a special government employee, addressed the AfD's campaign launch in Halle by video on 25 January 2025.

Trump posted a bar chart of the AfD's result in the Saxony-Anhalt state election on Truth Social on 6 September 2026 without comment. Richard Grenell, Trump's envoy for special missions, wrote on X the next morning: "A huge win and a new day in Germany."

Vance held a press conference and joined a rally with Orbán in Hungary on 7 April 2026. Trump wrote on 10 April that his administration "stands ready to use the full Economic Might of the United States to strengthen Hungary's Economy" under "Orbán's continued Leadership", and, two days before the vote: "Hungary: get out and vote for Viktor Orbán. He is a true friend, fighter, and winner, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election as Prime Minister of Hungary." Péter Magyar's Tisza party won 141 of 199 seats on a turnout of 79 per cent, and Orbán conceded on election night. "I wasn't that involved in this one," Trump said on 15 April. Trump had given Hungary a one-year exemption from US sanctions on Russian oil and gas on 7 November 2025, after meeting Orbán at the White House.

Karol Nawrocki, the nationalist candidate for the Polish presidency, visited Trump at the White House on 2 May 2025. Kristi Noem, then homeland security secretary, told the first CPAC Poland on 27 May: "If you elect a leader who will work with President Trump, the Polish people will have a strong ally. You will continue to have a US military presence here." She called Rafał Trzaskowski, his opponent, "an absolute train wreck of a leader". Nawrocki won the run-off on 1 June 2025. He issued his 37th veto by 12 June 2026, more than any Polish president before him, including bills on €44bn of EU defence loans and on the EU Digital Services Act. Fitch and Moody's moved Poland's credit outlook to negative, citing the deadlock between the president and the government.

Vance told the Munich conference in February 2025 that Romania had cancelled its 2024 presidential election on "the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors". George Simion, who calls himself "perfectly aligned ideologically with the MAGA movement", won the first round of the rerun on 4 May 2025 and lost the run-off to Nicușor Dan on 18 May.

Marine Le Pen was convicted in Paris on 31 March 2025 of embezzling European Parliament funds and barred from standing for office with immediate effect. Trump wrote on Truth Social on 3 April 2025: "FREE MARINE LE PEN!" He called the case "another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech".

Officials of Abin, Brazil's intelligence agency, told visiting French and German officials in September 2026 that they had "confirmed the existence of interference from the United States as well as Russia" ahead of Brazil's election, according to a meeting report reviewed by Reuters. The report described the US activity as ranging "from lawfare to interference that is openly acknowledged". Abin has made no public statement, and the US has denied interfering.

Speech laws and designations

The State Department barred five Europeans from the United States in December 2025 over what it called censorship of US viewpoints: Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner for the internal market; Imran Ahmed of the Center for Countering Digital Hate; Clare Melford of the Global Disinformation Index; and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of HateAid, a German group that supports victims of online abuse. "The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship," Rubio said. Emmanuel Macron called the bans "intimidation and coercion".

Rubio designated four European groups as Specially Designated Global Terrorists in November 2025, with Foreign Terrorist Organization status from 20 November: Antifa Ost in Germany, the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front in Italy and Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense in Greece. The State Department designated the Russian Imperial Movement, a white supremacist group, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in July 2026.

Britain

Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser in the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, hosted Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, at the department on 25 February 2026. "Honored to have free speech warrior @TRobinsonNewEra at Department of State today," Rittenhouse wrote on X. The department did not tell Reuters whom else he met or why. Yaxley-Lennon admitted contempt of court in October 2024 for breaching an injunction by repeating false claims about a Syrian schoolboy, and has earlier convictions for assault, mortgage fraud and entering the United States on a friend's passport.

Yaxley-Lennon told a London rally on 16 May 2026 that US donors had paid for much of it, naming $200,000 from the Tennessee Republican donor Andy Miller and $100,000 from the businessman Robert Shillman. Musk told Yaxley-Lennon's larger rally on 13 September 2025, by video link: "Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back, or you die."

Remigration

The State Department told Congress in May 2025 that it planned an "Office of Remigration" inside its Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, as a hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking. "Remigration" is the word European identitarians use for mass deportation of immigrants and their descendants.

Gregory Bovino, the former Border Patrol commander-at-large who left the Department of Homeland Security earlier in 2026, attended a Remigration Summit in Porto in late May 2026 and told organisers that their ideas and his "mirror each other", NPR and Correctiv reported. He told Kay Gottschalk, an AfD member of the Bundestag, that he was "only a phone call away". Daniel Tyrie, leader of the Dominion Society of Canada, met the Austrian identitarian Martin Sellner at the same summit. Canada refused Sellner an electronic travel authorisation before he was due to speak at a Dominion Society conference in Hamilton on 29 August 2026. Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, said Bovino was "irrelevant".

The Department of Homeland Security posted "Remigration now" on X on 28 November 2025. Trump wrote at Thanksgiving 2025 that "only reverse migration can fully cure this situation". The Southern Poverty Law Center documented a DHS post of 11 August 2025 reading "Which way, American man?", which echoes Which Way Western Man, a 1978 book from the publishing arm of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. The Intercept reported that DHS set a recruitment video in January 2026 to "We'll Have Our Home Again" by Pine Tree Riots, a song cited in the manifesto of the gunman who killed three Black people in Jacksonville in 2023.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued an early-warning decision on 12 March 2026 saying it was "deeply disturbed" by dehumanising language about migrants and that "racist hate speech" by US officials was fuelling grave human rights violations.

Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force on 5 February 2025. The State Department laid off its Office of Countering Violent Extremism staff on 11 July 2025 and cancelled a programme against online terrorist recruitment of young people the same month, Government Executive reported, and the Department of Homeland Security cut about 30 per cent of its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships in March 2025.

Canada

US State Department officials met the Alberta Prosperity Project, which campaigns for Alberta to leave Canada, at least three times from April 2025, the Financial Times reported in January 2026. Jeffrey Rath, a leader of the group, said it would seek a meeting with Treasury officials about "a 500 Billion USD line of credit to support the transition to a free and independent Alberta". Bessent said: "Alberta has a wealth of natural resources, but they won't let them build a pipeline to the Pacific," and: "There's a rumour they may have a referendum on whether they want to stay in Canada or not." The State Department said its officials "regularly meet with civil society groups" and conveyed "no support or commitments". "I expect the US administration to respect Canadian sovereignty," Mark Carney said.

Trump said on 19 March 2025 that he would rather deal with a Liberal and that Pierre Poilievre was "no friend of mine". Carney's Liberals won the federal election on 28 April 2025 and Poilievre lost his own seat. Peter Dutton, the Australian opposition leader, lost his seat of more than 20 years in Australia's election five days later.

Christine Fréchette's government in Quebec took to CSIS on 22 September 2026 an essay in which the Defense Analyses and Research Corporation, a little-known US defence think tank, urged financial support for the Parti Québécois, psychological operations promoting separatism and covert financing of Indigenous land lawsuits to "exploit the soon-to-arrive fragmentary moment in Canada". The essay, "The Centrifugal Strategy", was published under the pseudonym "Mukden" on 26 February 2026. No public record ties the think tank to the US government. The US embassy in Ottawa denied any attempt at interference.

Marcus Kolga and Jennie Phillips of DisinfoWatch published a study on 6 May 2026 that found a "MAGA-aligned influencer ecosystem" promoting Alberta independence and US annexation, alongside sustained Alberta coverage on channels that promote the Russian government line. David Eby, the premier of British Columbia, said of separatists seeking US help: "To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there's an old-fashioned word for that, and that word is treason." Peter Navarro said on 29 September 2026 that Canada would "pay even more dearly" if it interfered in US midterm elections in Maine or Michigan, and offered no evidence that it had.

No Human Rights and Democracy Fund award reported by The Guardian or ProPublica names a Canadian recipient.

Andrew Tate

Grenell raised Andrew and Tristan Tate's case with Emil Hurezeanu, then Romania's foreign minister, at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, the Financial Times reported. Hurezeanu said the mention "gave the impression of a continued interest" from Grenell in their situation and later said he had faced no pressure. Romanian prosecutors lifted the brothers' travel ban and they flew to Florida on 27 February 2025. They face charges in Romania of human trafficking, rape and forming an organised crime group, and charges in England and Wales including rape and human trafficking. Both deny all of them.

Russia

The US voted against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2025, alongside Russia, North Korea and Belarus. The resolution passed by 93 votes to 18 with 65 abstentions. Trump called Volodymyr Zelensky "a dictator without elections" on 19 February 2025 and told reporters of the war: "You should have never started it." He and Vance berated Zelensky in the Oval Office on 28 February, and the administration paused military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine the following week.

Rubio closed the State Department's Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office, the successor to the Global Engagement Center, on 16 April 2025, saying he was "keeping the president's promise to liberate American speech". Trump's executive order of 14 March 2025 gutted the agency that funds Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America. "Today is a holiday for my colleagues at RT and Sputnik," Margarita Simonyan, editor of the Russian state broadcaster RT, wrote.

Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy, told Tucker Carlson in March 2025: "I don't regard Putin as a bad guy." Trump greeted Putin on a red carpet at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska on 15 August 2025, and the summit ended without a ceasefire. Witkoff told Yuri Ushakov, Putin's foreign policy aide, on a call of 14 October 2025 leaked to Bloomberg: "I know what it's going to take to get a peace deal done," mentioning Donetsk "and maybe a land swap somewhere". The 28-point plan he drafted with Kirill Dmitriev followed, and Trump defended the call: "That's what a dealmaker does."

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, said the changes in the December 2025 National Security Strategy "largely correspond to our vision". The Treasury issued general licences for Russian oil at sea from 13 March 2026 and extended them into May. The Pentagon announced on 1 May 2026 that it would withdraw 5,000 of about 36,000 troops from Germany, and Trump said: "We're cutting a lot further than 5,000." Rubio announced on 23 September 2026 that Putin had been invited to the G20 summit in Miami in December.

The Treasury sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia's two largest oil companies, on 22 October 2025, and the administration resumed intelligence sharing and arms deliveries to Ukraine after the March 2025 pause.

The campaign operatives

Fernando Cerimedo, an Argentine digital strategist, worked on the right-wing side in Argentina, Brazil, Honduras and Bolivia, among them the three countries where Trump tied money, tariffs or threats to an election or a trial. His firm Numen ran Javier Milei's digital strategy in 2023 and Nasry Asfura's digital campaign in Honduras in 2025, with Brad Parscale, Trump's 2020 campaign manager, coaching the team on targeting voters, The New York Times reported. Cerimedo told The Economist that he had coordinated Trump's endorsement of Asfura and that it gave the campaign the boost it needed. He broadcast fraud claims for Jair Bolsonaro after the 2022 election and was indicted by Brazil's Federal Police with Bolsonaro in November 2024, though prosecutors left him out of the charges filed in February 2025.

Parscale "set up all the infrastructure" Cerimedo works with, Cerimedo said. Parscale's company Clock Tower X is registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as an agent of Israel, with contracts worth about $46.5m. Cerimedo is in prison in Bolivia charged with attempted femicide over the shooting of his former partner, Nadia Beller, on 17 August 2026.

The State Department revoked the US visa of Roger Mariaca, Bolivia's attorney general, on 28 September 2026, accusing him without published evidence of taking bribes to facilitate drug trafficking. His office was prosecuting Cerimedo. "Cooperation yes, interference no," Mariaca said. Bolivian police arrested him on 30 September, and Marco Antonio Oviedo, the government minister, thanked "the cooperation of the US government". No document shows the US acted because of Cerimedo, and no US official has commented on his case.

Allied governments and how they fared

The US Treasury formalised a $20bn currency swap with Argentina's central bank on 20 October 2025. "If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina," Trump said of Javier Milei when he hosted him at the White House that month. Milei's La Libertad Avanza took more than 40 per cent of the vote in the midterm elections on 26 October. Argentina drew $2.5bn of the swap and repaid it on 9 January 2026 with money from a multilateral lender, and Bessent said the US made "tens of millions" in profit. Poverty rose to 32.3 per cent in the first half of 2026 from 28.2 per cent in late 2025, and unemployment reached 7.9 per cent in the second quarter, the highest since 2021. Diego Spagnuolo, the former head of the national disability agency, and 18 others were charged in September 2026 in a bribery case in which recordings attributed to him name Karina Milei, the president's sister and chief of staff, who has not been charged.

Trump announced on 28 November 2025 that he would pardon Juan Orlando Hernández, the former Honduran president serving 45 years in a US prison for drug trafficking, and endorsed Nasry Asfura of Hernández's National Party days before the 30 November vote. "If he doesn't win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad," Trump wrote. Honduras's electoral council declared Asfura the winner by about 26,000 votes on 24 December 2025 after a month-long disputed count. Hernández returned to Honduras on 26 July 2026, where he still faces charges of fraud and money laundering.

Trump wrote to Isaac Herzog, Israel's president, on 12 November 2025: "I hereby call on you to fully pardon Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been a formidable and decisive War Time Prime Minister." Herzog's office said any pardon required a formal request under established procedures. Trump said on 29 April 2026 that Herzog would be "a national hero" if he pardoned Netanyahu. Herzog deferred the decision and pressed for a plea deal, and no pardon had been granted by 1 October. A Kan poll on 27 September put the two blocs level at 52 seats each before the Israeli election on 27 October.

The US government agreed in March 2025 to pay El Salvador about $6m to hold deportees in the CECOT prison. The State Department's August 2025 human rights report found "no credible reports of significant human rights abuses" in El Salvador. Human Rights Watch and Cristosal published an 81-page report on 12 November 2025, based on interviews with 40 Venezuelans the US had sent to CECOT, documenting constant beatings and sexual violence.

Kristi Noem toured the Manta and Salinas bases with Daniel Noboa, Ecuador's president, before a referendum on 16 November 2025 on allowing foreign military bases. About two thirds of voters said no. "We respect the will of the Ecuadorian people," Noboa said.

Trump gave Sanae Takaichi his "complete and total endorsement" on 6 February 2026, and her Liberal Democratic Party won a landslide in Japan's election two days later.

Who profits

Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, announced the $20bn Argentine swap and Treasury purchases of pesos in October 2025. Rob Citrone, whose Discovery Capital holds large Argentine positions and who worked with Bessent at Soros Fund Management, told Bloomberg: "It has helped tremendously that the US has come in to support Milei." Representative Jamie Raskin wrote to Citrone on 31 October 2025 alleging that he lobbied Bessent and stood to gain "hundreds of millions of dollars"; Discovery did not comment, and Raskin's claims have not been tested. Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote that the swap "could buy time for hedge fund investors to exit their positions". Argentina drew $2.5bn and repaid it, and Bessent said the US made "tens of millions" in profit.

Rubio's State Department instructed diplomats to press governments to approve Starlink, Elon Musk's satellite service, while those governments negotiated tariffs with the Trump administration, The Washington Post reported on 7 May 2025 from internal cables. A department memo on Lesotho said: "As the government of Lesotho negotiates a trade deal with the United States, it hopes that licensing Starlink demonstrates goodwill." Lesotho granted Starlink a 10-year licence less than two weeks after Trump announced a 50 per cent tariff on its goods. Hassan Jallow, Gambia's deputy communications minister, told ProPublica that when the US ambassador raised a $25m electricity project while Starlink's licence was pending, "the implication was that they were connected". The State Department called Starlink "a game changer", and the White House said Trump "will not tolerate any conflicts of interest".

Aryam Investment 1, backed by Sheikh Tahnoon, bought 49 per cent of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's crypto company, for $500m in a deal signed four days before the inauguration and never disclosed, The Wall Street Journal reported on 1 February 2026. Of $250m paid upfront, $187m went to Trump family entities and at least $31m to entities of the family of Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy. MGX, another fund Tahnoon chairs, used the company's USD1 stablecoin for a $2bn investment in Binance in May 2025, and the administration approved advanced chip sales to G42, a Tahnoon company, in November 2025. "My sons are handling that, my family is handling it," Trump said. World Liberty called claims of influence "100% false". Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, Binance's founder, on 23 October 2025. "I don't know who he is," Trump told 60 Minutes. Bloomberg reported that Binance helped write USD1's code.

Qatar's government gave Trump a Boeing 747 valued at about $400m in May 2025. Trump said it would be "stupid" to turn down a free plane. Qatari Diar, a Qatari state company, and Dar Global, a Saudi developer, announced a $5.5bn Trump-branded golf and villa project at Simaisma days before Trump's Gulf tour that month. Dar Global has since announced Trump projects in Jeddah, Riyadh, Dubai, Oman and the Maldives and paid $21.9m in licence fees in a year, according to Trump's financial disclosure. The New York Times reported that the Trump Organization was negotiating a deal with Saudi Arabia's state-owned Diriyah development around Mohammed bin Salman's White House visit of 18 November 2025, when the two governments also finalised a nuclear agreement. "There are no conflicts of interest," the White House said.

Eric Trump broke ground on a $1.5bn Trump golf resort in Hung Yen, Vietnam, on 21 May 2025, while Vietnam faced a 46 per cent US tariff. Approvals took about three months against the usual two years or more, The New York Times reported, and a Vietnamese government letter said the project was "receiving special attention from the Trump administration and President Donald Trump personally". Farmers were paid less than half pre-project land values. Vietnam's tariff was cut to 20 per cent on 2 July 2025. No document links the resort to the tariff deal.

Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners took $2bn from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund in 2021 and has taken money from Qatar and the UAE. Representative Robert Garcia and Senator Ron Wyden wrote on 19 March 2026 that Kushner was "being paid millions of dollars by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies while leading diplomatic negotiations with Iran and Russia". Affinity joined the Saudi fund and Silver Lake in a $55bn takeover of Electronic Arts announced on 29 September 2025. Affinity withdrew from a hotel project on the site of the former Yugoslav army headquarters in Belgrade on 16 December 2025 after Serbian prosecutors charged officials with forging documents to strip the site's heritage status.

Kirill Dmitriev, the sanctioned head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, pitched Witkoff and Kushner on using about $300bn in frozen Russian assets for joint US-Russian projects, including Arctic minerals, The Wall Street Journal reported on 29 November 2025. "If we do all that, and everybody's prospering, that's going to naturally be a bulwark," Witkoff said. Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, said: "This is not about peace. It's about business." Umar Kremlev, a Russian sports official whom Putin awarded the Order of Friendship in April 2026, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars towards Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding in May 2026, ProPublica reported; Trump Jr.'s spokesperson called Kremlev a personal friend with no business relationship to him.

Putin proposed the sale of Lukoil's international oil fields, refineries and petrol stations to Witkoff and Kushner at the Kremlin on 5 September 2026, The New York Times reported. Todd Boehly, who gave $1m to MAGA Inc. in December 2025, leads the bidding group now ahead, with the US International Development Finance Corporation, run by Trump appointee Ben Black, as a partner, alongside Abu Dhabi companies linked to Sheikh Tahnoon and Qatar's UCC Holding, whose owners are financing a resort in Albania with Kushner and Ivanka Trump. A senior official said Witkoff and Kushner negotiated the government's terms. Witkoff's spokeswoman said he "has no conflict of interest and no financial stake in this matter", and the Times found no indication either man would profit personally.

Ukraine signed a minerals deal with the US on 30 April 2025 that sends half of the revenue from new extraction projects into a joint fund. Ukraine awarded the Dobra lithium deposit in January 2026 to TechMet, whose largest shareholder is the US Development Finance Corporation and whose investors include Ronald Lauder, the cosmetics heir and Trump friend whom John Bolton credits with first putting the idea of buying Greenland into Trump's head. Politiken found Lauder invested in Greenland Development Partners and Greenland Water Bank. Global Witness reported on 15 June 2026 that Cantor Fitzgerald, linked to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, invested in Critical Metals Corp, owner of Greenland's Tanbreez rare-earth deposit.

US forces captured Nicolás Maduro in Caracas on 3 January 2026. The first $500m sale of Venezuelan oil under US control went to the traders Vitol and Trafigura, with proceeds held in an account in Qatar, Semafor reported on 14 January 2026. "We're the bankers here; we don't direct the funds," Bessent said. John Addison, a Vitol trader, had given about $6m to pro-Trump political committees; Vitol said the donations were made in a private capacity. Paul Singer's Elliott Management won Citgo, Venezuela's US refining arm, for $5.9bn in November 2025 against a court adviser's $13bn valuation; Singer gave $5m to MAGA Inc. Elliott declined to comment.

Hungary committed to buy about $600m of US liquefied natural gas, $114m of Westinghouse nuclear fuel and $700m of US weapons when Trump exempted it from sanctions on Russian oil and gas on 7 November 2025. Venture Global, which supplies the US gas Kimberly Guilfoyle promoted across south-east Europe through the Greek company Aktor, gave $1m to Trump's inaugural committee, and Aktor paid $160,000 to her associate Christos Marafatsos's lobbying firm through June 2026. Donald Trump Jr. told a business forum in Budapest in April 2025: "My job is to connect governments and the private sector."

The votes ahead

Brazilians vote in the first round of the presidential election on 4 October. Quaest's final poll of 24 to 27 September put Lula da Silva on 39 per cent and Flávio Bolsonaro on 34 per cent, level at 42 per cent each in a run-off due on 25 October.

Quebec votes on 5 October. Christine Fréchette's government took an essay to CSIS on 22 September in which the Defense Analyses and Research Corporation, a US think tank, urged funding for the Parti Québécois and support for separatism in Quebec and Alberta. No public record ties the think tank to the US government, and Anita Anand, Canada's foreign minister, said: "Right now I do not have proof."

Albertans vote on 19 October on whether their government should begin the legal process to hold a binding referendum on leaving Canada. Research Co. put the vote to remain at 74 per cent in late August.

Israelis vote on 27 October. Isaac Herzog had granted Benjamin Netanyahu no pardon by 1 October, almost 11 months after Trump wrote asking for one.

Putin is invited to the G20 summit at Trump's Doral golf club in Miami in December. "We think it's an opportunity for him to engage, not just with the president but with other world leaders," Rubio said on 23 September.