New York Times: “The relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin has for years been scrutinized by American government inquiries, assessments by foreign intelligence services and news media investigations. Taken together, they have unearthed evidence to support an array of theories addressing Mr. Trump’s affinity for a Russian strongman who has spent a career trying to undermine American interests.”

“As yet, there is no single, tidy explanation. But based solely on Mr. Trump’s public actions during his first six weeks back in office, the simple fact is that he has made few decisions on national security or foreign policy that have not been cheered by the Kremlin, making his stance toward Mr. Putin more consequential than ever.”

“A day after offering Canada a one-month reprieve on punishing, virtually across-the-board 25% tariffs, President Donald Trump has threatened new tariffs as soon as Friday on Canadian lumber and dairy products,” CNN reports.

“It’s yet another twist in a serpentine trade policy that seems to shift on an hourly basis.”

Warning that a “profound change of American geopolitics” had put Poland, as well as Ukraine, in an “objectively more difficult situation,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland on Friday said his country must drastically increase the size of its military and even “reach for opportunities related to nuclear weapons,” the New York Times reports.

“For decades a core objective of the Soviet Union was to “decouple” the United States from Europe. Decoupling, as it was called, would break the Western alliance that kept Soviet tanks from rolling across the Prussian plains,” the New York Times reports.

“Now, in weeks, President Trump has handed Moscow the gift that eluded it during the Cold War and since.”

“Europe, jilted, is in shock. The United States, a nation whose core idea is liberty and whose core calling has been the defense of democracy against tyranny, has turned on its ally and instead embraced a brutal autocrat, President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Gripped by a sense of abandonment, alarmed at the colossal rearmament task before it, astonished by the upending of American ideology, Europe finds itself adrift.”

“Russian and North Korean forces have made significant battlefield advances in recent days in the Kursk region of Russia, threatening Ukraine’s supply lines and its hold on a patch of land it hopes to use as a bargaining chip in future negotiations,“ the New York Times reports.

“Working together, a new influx of North Korean soldiers and well-trained Russian drone units, advancing under the cover of ferocious artillery fire and aerial bombardment, have been able to overwhelm important Ukrainian positions, Ukrainian soldiers said.”

“Marco Rubio blew up at Elon Musk at a closed-door Cabinet meeting after the DOGE head accused the secretary of state of failing to slash his staff,” the Daily Beast reports.

“Musk, the world’s richest man, told the secretary of state, who was seated next to Donald Trump at the meeting on Thursday, that he had fired ‘nobody.’ He sarcastically added that the one person Rubio had perhaps fired was an employee of Musk’s DOGE.”

“Rubio has been privately livid at Musk since he tore apart an agency supposedly under the secretary’s control: the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Musk has effectively eliminated in his bid to take a chainsaw to federal spending.”

New York Times: “Simmering anger at the billionaire’s unchecked power spilled out in a remarkable Cabinet Room meeting. The president quickly moved to rein in Mr. Musk.”

New York Magazine: Trump keeps everyone guessing about Elon Musk’s power.

“President Volodymyr Zelensky’s approval rating has risen by 10 percentage points since his White House spat with U.S. President Donald Trump, a poll by a leading Ukrainian pollster showed on Friday,” Reuters reports.