100 Days To Upend The Blob

Trump's impact has been felt everywhere, but particularly on foreign policy

Apr 30, 2025

One hundred days into the second Donald Trump presidency, his presence in the Oval Office represents the largest sea change in US foreign relations since the end of the Cold War.

Within the space of fewer than four months, Trump has forced Ukraine to deal with reality, by delivering hard truths about what ending the war will require. He has deployed J.D. Vance to shock the international system, with tough messages to our allies in Europe and Asia. Trump’s declaration of a litany of cartels as foreign terror organizations has kicked off a redirection of our relationship with Mexico, Panama and the Western hemisphere. His close relationship with Israel, a clear break with Joe Biden’s approach, has shifted expectations for the Middle East. The possibility of strikes on Iran’s nuclear program are higher than ever – so, too, is the potential for armed conflict between India and Pakistan. And just last night, Trump’s boisterous challenge to Canada – and repeated invitations for them to become the 51st state – has led, unfortunately for their once rising conservatives, to a once unthinkable Liberal party hold.

One notable shift since retaking office has been the President’s rhetoric regarding Russia. He seems increasingly frustrated with Vladimir Putin’s behavior, and while the president’s statements tend to run to the priority of peace, he seems to be irritated at Russian intransigence. His social media post on Putin, “maybe he just doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along,” is a rare public admission that he may have misjudged another world leader whose moves he has, in the past, defended as logical. If the Kremlin proves to be the major block to ending the war, Trump may be willing to get tougher on Russia than once thought.

Above all, though, the conversation at this moment is dominated by a new Cold War with China. Here, the chaotic nature of the President’s trade war is already having the most impact, with the falling port traffic indicative of what’s to come. The best we can hope for is that this war can stay cold. As Walter Russell Mead writes:

World tensions are rising, not falling. The danger that escalating tensions between the two superpowers and their associates could trigger a war that nobody wants is more prevalent than ever. Neither China nor the US at this point wants to turn their Cold War hot. Even so, their rivalry increases the escalatory potential of crises wherever their interests collide.

What all this means for the future depends a great deal on how Trump and his team prioritize American interests over the demands of the decaying international order. They have bitten off quite a lot all at once, and additional events could set off dominoes as yet unseen. The next hundred days could bring resolutions in a number of these policy areas, but tensions can only build for so long – and given that the old decrepit international order ignored so many fundamental problems while growing fat and happy with the way things were, those tensions are coming from everywhere.

Trump ran on a promise to restore American strength and reorient the country for the future. After 100 days, it’s clear achieving that goal may be even harder than his supporters imagined.

More on what Zelensky told Trump at the Vatican in Axios.

How Qatar and China Are Buying Our Universities

The Free Press reports:

Foreign donors have given as much to U.S. universities in the last four years as they did in the previous 40, according to a new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute shared exclusively with The Free Press. The study shows an explosion in overseas funding for American schools between 2021 and 2024, with nearly $29 billion in foreign money donated during that period.
Qatar and China are among the largest sources of funding.
That $29 billion figure is more than double the total for the preceding four years, and accounts for half of the estimated $57.97 billion in foreign funding since 1986, when the federal government began tracking the data.
“The floodgates opened during the Biden era,” said NCRI’s co-founder Joel Finkelstein. “This isn’t just a financial issue—it’s a national security crisis. Hostile powers are buying influence on American campuses at an industrial scale.”
Here’s what the NCRI study found:
Qatar is the largest source of foreign donations to U.S. universities since reporting began in 1986, with $6.3 billion coming from the gas-rich Gulf state.
Germany ($3.3 billion) was the largest source of foreign funding over the last four years, followed by China ($2.3 billion), Qatar ($2 billion), and Saudi Arabia ($1.9 billion). Almost two-thirds of the money from Germany ($1.9 billion) went to the University of Pennsylvania, including $467 million in a settlement last fall after the university accused a German pharmaceutical firm of improperly licensing their vaccine technology.
Qatari donations have ramped up significantly over the last four years. Nearly a third of donations from Qatar—over $2 billion—were given between 2021 and 2024.
The second-largest source of foreign funding is China. Chinese funding accounts for $5.6 billion and, as with Qatar, Chinese donations have increased sharply in the past four years, with $2.3 billion in donations from 2021 to 2024. China is the single largest source of overseas donations to some of America’s most prestigious universities, including Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford.
Harvard has historically received the most funding from foreign donors ($3.2 billion), followed by Cornell and Carnegie Mellon (which have each received $2.8 billion).
The findings come amid increased political scrutiny of foreign donations to American universities. Just last week, Donald Trump signed an executive order cracking down on universities who don’t properly disclose how much money they’re receiving from foreign sources. Trump’s order threatened to scrap federal grants to universities if schools failed to accurately disclose overseas sources of funding. A 2024 study published by the National Association of Scholars found that universities failed to disclose at least $1 billion in foreign funding since Biden took office, the majority of which came from authoritarian countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
This latest move is not Trump’s first attempt to scrutinize foreign funding in higher education. In 2019, during his first term, the Department of Education investigated a dozen elite universities and uncovered $6.5 billion in previously unreported foreign funds to U.S. colleges and universities from authoritarian countries such as China and Saudi Arabia.
While Qatar holds the designation of a major non-NATO ally of the United States, the country is also known for harboring the leaders of Hamas and exporting political Islamism, including by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, across the Middle East.
In some cases, Qatari donations to U.S. schools have been used to build campuses in Doha. The Qatari capital is home to “Education City,” which hosts an outpost of Northwestern’s journalism school and Georgetown’s foreign policy school, each of which has received hundreds of millions from the wealthy Gulf state. Cornell, which built a medical school campus in Doha, has received $2.1 billion from Qatar.
The true amount of foreign donations could be even bigger than the reported figures. The NCRI analysis includes only donations disclosed to the federal government, as required by law for donations over $250,000. As The Free Press has previously reported, at least 200 American colleges and universities illegally withheld information on billions in undisclosed contributions from foreign regimes.

Could Canada Get Kicked Out of Five Eyes?

Politico on the Natsec challenges ahead for Carney.

One major early challenge for Carney is Canada’s laggard defense spending rates in NATO. Trump has forcibly pushed NATO allies to spend more and Republicans have pointed to Canada as the poster child of a penny-pinching ally riding off American military coattails; last year, House Speaker MIKE JOHNSON singled out Canada’s 1.37 percent of GDP spending on defense as “shameful.”
Carney has pledged to accelerate the country’s timeline of meeting the 2 percent spending threshold NATO set for its allies by 2027. But by then, NATO may up the benchmark from 2 percent to north of 3 percent, leaving Canada struggling to catch up yet again.
Another big headache is Canada’s uncertain future in the “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing pact. Five Eyes is the cornerstone of U.S. intelligence cooperation with its most trusted allies — Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Amid tariff tensions and Trump’s repeated statements on annexing Canada as the 51st state, White House officials have questioned whether to kick Canada out of Five Eyes.
ANDREA CHARRON, director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba, said this would be a self-inflicted wound on the United States’ part. She cited Canada’s strength in signals intelligence collection and space-based surveillance. “There have been many times where it has been allies who have had that piece of information that really benefited the U.S. I don’t see how it benefits the U.S. to cut that off.”
But the Five Eyes factor is still a threat the Carney government might grapple with if Trump launches a new round of hardball negotiations with Canada over tariffs or other points of tension.
Then there’s the defense cooperation. Trump’s repeated bashing of Canada has sparked new debates in Ottawa over how reliable the United States is as a partner on major military undertakings, from the procurement of major military platforms to cooperation on joint aerospace defense.
In a tense February phone call between Trump and Carney’s predecessor, JUSTIN TRUDEAU, the U.S. president was reportedly dismissive of Canada’s contribution to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD — the world’s only fully integrated bilateral defense command that provides joint defense and surveillance to both countries. Now, Carney has to navigate that political minefield over a key pillar of Canadian defense. Earlier this month, Gen. GREGORY GUILLOT, head of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD chief, warned that any dismantling of U.S.-Canada cooperation on NORAD would mean losing “a significant amount of domain awareness and response in the northern approaches, which is the fastest and the easiest approach for adversaries to take to North America.”
Trump’s decision to slap major tariffs on Canada could gum up joint defense production and the trade of critical minerals key to building submarines, fighter jets and munitions in both countries. It’s also cast doubt on the future of an ambitious joint project by Finland, Canada and the United States to produce a new fleet of modern ice breakers to better patrol a warming Arctic region.

DOGE Runs Through Washington

Politico: Trump’s 100 Day Spending Sprint

Nearly a quarter of a million workers have or are expected to leave their federal jobs. That includes more than 112,000 federal workers who have opted into the deferred resignation program, according to a POLITICO analysis of previous reporting and conversations with administration officials. It also includes some 121,000 workers across agencies who have been fired, according to a CNN analysis.
DOGE has hollowed out or shut down 11 federal agencies and says it has terminated more than 8,500 contracts and 10,000 grants. It has wiped out foreign aid and volunteerism in the U.S., slashed education spending and made sweeping changes to the way the government makes procurements, hires contractors and shares data.
“In terms of downsizing, it’s unprecedented for sure,” said Richard Stern, a federal budget expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He noted that other government makeovers, like the New Deal and Great Society, had been larger — but that DOGE was unique because it is subtractive, not additive.
DOGE, after promising $2 trillion in savings, now says it has saved the government $160 billion. But even these reported savings, so far, have not led to any meaningful decline in total government spending this year, according to the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model, which tracks weekly Treasury data.

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“Let us admit the case of the conservative. If we once start thinking, no one can guarantee what will be the outcome, except that many objects, ends, and institutions will be surely doomed. Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril, and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place.”

— John Dewey

The Transom

100 Days To Upend The Blob

Trump's impact has been felt everywhere, but particularly on foreign policy

How Qatar and China Are Buying Our Universities

Could Canada Get Kicked Out of Five Eyes?

DOGE Runs Through Washington

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