European Leaders Line Up to Support Ukraine After Blowup With Trump (2025)

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Mr. Zelensky arrived in London on Saturday and was greeted by Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain at 10 Downing Street. Mr. Starmer expressed his country’s “absolute determination” to stand with Mr. Zelensky and achieve “a lasting peace for Ukraine based on sovereignty and security for Ukraine.”

“As you heard from the cheers on the street outside, you have full backing across the United Kingdom, and we stand with you and Ukraine for as long as it takes,” Mr. Starmer said.

Mr. Zelensky said he was “very happy” that King Charles III had agreed to meet him on Sunday. He was also expected to attend a summit on Sunday with other European leaders that Mr. Starmer had organized. The event had been planned as an opportunity to debrief allies on Mr. Starmer’s trip to meet Mr. Trump on Thursday in Washington, but it will now take on new importance.

Since the Oval Office meeting’s abrupt end on Friday, leaders in Europe have lined up behind Ukraine and lauded its embattled president. “Ukraine is fighting not only for her independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, but also for European security, freedom and the rules-based world order,” Alexander Stubb, Finland’s president, wrote on social media on Saturday.

The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said on Saturday that Europe must prevent Ukraine “from having to accept subjugation.”

“The scene at the White House yesterday took my breath away,” Mr. Steinmeier told D.P.A., a German newswire. “I would never have believed that we would ever have to defend Ukraine from the United States.”

In a series of posts on Saturday morning, Mr. Zelensky sought to reassure his citizens that they were not alone in their fight against Russia, even as he tried to appeal to the United States and its leaders with statements of gratitude.

Here’s what else to know:

• British loan: Britain on Saturday announced a nearly $3 billion loan to Ukraine aimed at bolstering the war-torn country’s military capability. It will be paid back using profits generated on sanctioned Russian sovereign assets, and the first tranche of funding is expected to be disbursed to Ukraine next week, Britain’s Treasury said.

• A resignation at the N.I.H.: Dr. Francis S. Collins, a renowned geneticist who ran the National Institutes of Health for 12 years, announced on Saturday that he had retired from the agency and the federal government, offering a pointed, if somewhat veiled, message to the Trump administration, which has fired hundreds of N.I.H. employees. Read more ›

• More troops on the border: The Pentagon is sending about 3,000 additional troops to the southwestern border, rushing to comply with Mr. Trump’s order to increase the military’s role in stemming the flow of migrants into the United States. The reinforcements announced on Saturday would bring the total number of active-duty troops on the border to about 9,000, Defense Department officials said. Read more ›

• Trans youth health care: A federal judge in Seattle issued a preliminary injunction late Friday blocking the government from withholding federal funds from hospitals in four states that offer gender-transition treatment for people under 19. The decision dealt a setback to a key part of the Trump administration’s broad effort to limit the official recognition of transgender identity. Read more ›

Europe is left with hard choices as Trump sours on Ukraine.

Following the heated exchange, a visibly annoyed Mr. Trump canceled a news conference with the Ukrainian leader and posted on social media that Mr. Zelensky was “not ready for peace” so long as he has American backing.

His anger — and his threat that the United States could stop supporting Ukraine if it did not accept any U.S.-brokered peace deal — was just the latest sign that Mr. Trump was pivoting American foreign policy away from traditional allies in Europe and toward Russia.

The stark shift in American strategy has left the continent’s leaders reeling. Many worry that if the war ends with a weak deal for Ukraine, it would embolden Russia, making it a greater threat to the rest of Europe. And the change in tone makes achieving greater self-reliance more urgent than ever, even if the European leaders face the same daunting challenges as before.

It would take years to build the weapons systems and capabilities that Europe would need to be truly independent militarily. And supporting Ukraine while building homegrown defenses could take the type of rapid action and united political will that the European Union often struggles to achieve.

“Everything relies on Europe today: The question is, how do they step up?” said Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, acting president of the German Marshall Fund. “They have no alternative.”

European leaders had already been debating how they could help guarantee security in Ukraine if a peace deal were struck, what terms they would find acceptable, and what they might give Ukraine in their next aid package.

In fact, top officials are poised to meet this week to discuss defense, first in London on Sunday at a gathering organized by Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, then in Brussels on Thursday at a special summit of the European Council, which brings together E.U. leaders.

Representatives from the bloc’s 27 member countries met on Friday afternoon to come up with a draft of ideas for the meeting in Brussels. The plan included calls to beef up E.U. defenses faster than previously expected, and to more clearly define possible security guarantees for Ukraine, according to an E.U. official briefed on the matter.

And that was before Friday’s exchange between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky.

The flare-up spurred an immediate outpouring of outrage and public support for Ukraine from many European officials.

“The scene at the White House yesterday took my breath away,” Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, told D.P.A., a German news agency, on Saturday. “I would never have believed that we would ever have to defend Ukraine from the United States.”

It also prompted calls for fast action, with some European diplomats and leaders hoping that even countries that have been reluctant to increase spending on defense and support for Ukraine will now get on board with a more ambitious approach.

“A powerful Europe, we need it more than ever,” President Emmanuel Macron of France posted on social media. “The surge is now.”

Kaja Kallas, the E.U.’s top diplomat, was even more emphatic.

“We will step up our support to Ukraine,” she wrote on social media on Friday night. “Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.”

Yet for all of the bracing pronouncements, speeding up Europe’s transition to greater autonomy on defense will be no easy task.

For starters, shouldering a greater part of the financial burden for aiding Ukraine is likely to be expensive. The United States alone has spent about $114 billion on military, financial and humanitarian aid for Ukraine over the past three years, according to one frequently used tracker, compared to Europe’s $132 billion.

Plus, when it comes to European defense more broadly, America provides critical weapons systems and other military equipment that would be near impossible to replace quickly.

“We still do need the U.S.,” said Jeromin Zettelmeyer, director of the Brussels-based research group Bruegel.

E.U. nations have been increasing their military spending in recent years — spending 30 percent more last year than in 2021. But some NATO countries are still short of the goal of members’ spending 2 percent or more of their gross domestic product on defense.

Part of the problem is that spending more on defense typically means spending less on other priorities, like health care and social services. And given economic challenges and budgetary limitations in Germany, France and smaller economies like Belgium, finding the political will to rapidly ramp up outlays has sometimes been a challenge.

Still, European leaders are trying to find ways to make bloc-wide deficit rules more flexible to enable more military investments.

“Decisions on massive investments are needed with regard to our common European defense capabilities,” Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, said on Saturday, calling for such action this week.

When it comes to finding more money to support Ukraine, Europeans are not speaking with one voice.

European officials had already been discussing a future aid package for Ukraine, one that could total tens of billions of euros. By Friday night, countries that have been pushing for more ambitious sums were hoping that Mr. Trump’s tone during the Zelensky meeting would help to prod European laggards to open their pocketbooks, according to one diplomat familiar with discussions.

But Hungary is expected to oppose the new aid package for Ukraine, which could force the E.U. to cobble together contributions from member states, rather than passing a package at the level of the bloc, since the latter would require unanimity.

In a clear sign of the disunity, Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, stood apart from many other European leaders, thanking Mr. Trump for his exchange with Mr. Zelensky. He wrote on social media that the American leader “stood bravely for peace” even if “it was difficult for many to digest.”

European officials have also been considering whether, when and how to put European peacekeeping forces on the ground in Ukraine if a deal is reached to stop the war. Britain has expressed a willingness to send troops to Ukraine, as has France. Discussions on that are expected to continue this week.

But in light of Friday’s exchange, some say the time for slow-moving deliberation may be over. While officials had just begun to talk about what security guarantees for Ukraine might look like, they may need to begin to quickly think about how to implement them, said Ms. de Hoop Scheffer at the German Marshall Fund.

“This is a time for Europe to very, very seriously step up,” she said.

She added that the Oval Office blowup had underscored that European officials will need to put forward their best mediators to try to keep the United States on board, to the extent possible.

Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, is seen as one of the closest leaders to Mr. Trump in Europe. She said in a statement on Friday night that she would try to push for a meeting among all of the allies.

“It is necessary to have an immediate summit between the United States, European states and allies to talk frankly about how we intend to face today’s great challenges,” she said. “Starting with Ukraine.”

And earlier last week, both Mr. Starmer and Mr. Macron traveled to Washington to meet with Mr. Trump, gatherings that seemed to go considerably better than the meeting with Mr. Zelensky — even if they failed to achieve major goals like getting a U.S. security “backstop” for peacekeeping troops.

In fact, Mr. Starmer’s plans to debrief European leaders on his trip during the Sunday summit highlighted one side effect of the shift in America’s tone: European Union countries and Britain are coming closer together as they draw up defense plans.

That puts Mr. Starmer in a position to play more of a leadership role in dealings with the United States, as Germany works to put together a new government and the French struggle with domestic political challenges.

Given how necessary U.S. support remains, European leaders are likely to strategize about how to keep Mr. Trump engaged as they talk this week. Already, Mr. Zelensky posted messages thankful for American support on social media.

On Sunday, before his trip to London, Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, said officials were talking about the need to have the “closest possible alliance with the United States.”

But as Europe increasingly recognizes that the United States is “super unreliable,” as Mr. Zettelmeyer at Bruegel put it, the time for simply hoping for continuity in relations may be past.

“We’ve had several of these shocking moments — every time there’s a shocking moment, there’s a lot of hand wringing,” he said. “The really interesting question is: Is this time going to be different?”

Emma Bubola contributed reporting.

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At national parks across the U.S., hundreds protest job cuts and threats to public lands.

Protests were held in popular spots like Yosemite in Northern California, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Acadia in Maine, Yellowstone in the Northwest, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and Great Falls Park in Virginia, as well as lesser-known places like Effigy Mounds National Monument in northeastern Iowa. Tensions have been particularly high at Yosemite, where employees have unfurled upside-down American flags in protest across iconic sites like Yosemite Falls and El Capitan.

Mr. Graver said his group was concerned not only about the firings but also about resource extraction on public lands and possible threats to national monuments, such as a proposal to remove the president’s power to designate national monuments.

The National Park Service said it was working with protest organizers to allow people to “safely exercise their First Amendment rights,” while protecting its resources.

At Joshua Tree, about 400 people gathered to protest. Six rangers at the park were among those dismissed last month, part of a wave of cuts targeting federal employees who had started work within the last year, in what the Trump administration said was an effort to reduce government spending.

Deborah Anderson, who lived in the area for decades, protested with a sign that said “Protect Our Parks.”

“What’s happening right now is wrong,” said Ms. Anderson, 52. “I get if people want to make the government more efficient, but how they’re doing it — these are illegal firings.”

Up north, at Yellowstone, dozens demonstrated near the Roosevelt Arch in Gardiner, Mont., chanting “Public lands are not for sale” and “Down with DOGE,” referring to the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s outfit overseeing the job cuts.

David Uberuaga, who worked for the National Park Service for more than 30 years, including as superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, before retiring in 2016, urged people to take action, including by protesting and calling their representatives and senators.

“We can’t continue to just let things happen,” said Mr. Uberuaga, 74. “We have to really push back very hard, and that is effective over time. And we just can’t get disillusioned.”

About 100 people protested at the Grand Canyon. Sean Adams, a 29-year-old seasonal worker who electrofishes invasive trout and conducts conservation studies on native fish, said visitors have been surprised by the park workers’ firings.

“They didn’t realize that it was affecting people like us, people who work 10-plus-hour days consistently for way too little money,” he said. “The money that they are saving by cutting people like us is a drop in the bucket.”

Halfway across the country, at Effigy Mounds, about 150 people gathered, some with signs depicting the Lorax, the Dr. Seuss character who “speaks for the trees,” and Smokey Bear, the symbol of the U.S. Forest Service’s wildfire prevention efforts. Among the demonstrators was Brian Gibbs, 41, who was fired from his job as education technician at the monument.

For Mr. Gibbs, the forested landscape along the Mississippi River that is home to the monument holds a lot of sentimental value. He said his father took him camping there when he was a child. Later in life, Mr. Gibbs told his wife he loved her for the first time in the area. And this is where they took their 4-year-old son on his first hiking trip.

After all of his experiences at the monument, Mr. Gibbs said, it was striking to see it become a protest site.

“It was just a volcanic moment to me,” Mr. Gibbs said. Regarding the parks, he added that “it never crossed my mind that they would become a target” of a presidential administration.

Mimi Dwyer contributed reporting from Yosemite National Park and Los Angeles, and Jennifer Brown from the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

‘Why don’t you wear a suit?’ A right-wing news outlet with coveted access questions Zelensky.

The questions came from Brian Glenn, a correspondent for Real America’s Voice, a right-wing cable channel that has spread conspiracy theories about noncitizen voting and helped distribute Stephen K. Bannon’s “War Room” podcast after Mr. Bannon was barred from YouTube, Spotify and other mainstream platforms.

Mr. Glenn’s outlet was selected to take a “secondary TV” role in the White House press pool alongside CNN on Friday — a position that did not exist before this week. That access was granted as the White House continued to block reporters from The Associated Press from attending, according to a schedule sent out by the White House, and as it began this week to handpick the pool reporters who cover the president in small settings, such as the Oval Office meeting with Mr. Zelensky.

Pool reporters attend the events in a rotation traditionally organized by the White House Correspondents’ Association and share their observations with other outlets not present.

Mr. Glenn’s comments about Mr. Zelensky’s appearance echoed Mr. Trump’s on Friday as the Ukrainian leader stepped out of his car at the White House. “He’s all dressed up today,” Mr. Trump told reporters, indicating Mr. Zelensky’s attire.

Since the start of the war, Mr. Zelensky has regularly donned standard-issue field uniforms as a display of solidarity with his country’s armed forces. The criticism that he didn’t wear a suit drew immediate outcry online.

Mr. Zelensky received an outpouring of support internationally after the meeting, which had become adversarial long before Mr. Glenn’s questions.

Lawmakers and media critics were quick to point out that just this week, Elon Musk had appeared at a cabinet meeting wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “tech support” under an overcoat. And when Mr. Musk spoke alongside Mr. Trump in the Oval Office last month, he appeared to be wearing a shirt that read “Occupy Mars.”

Responding to the backlash, Mr. Glenn posted a lengthy personal statement on Saturday morning expressing “extreme empathy for the people of Ukraine” but continuing to berate Mr. Zelensky.

He suggested in the post that the olive-green military fatigues that Mr. Zelensky often wears in meetings with other world leaders signaled respect, but that the black tactical sweater bearing his country’s coat of arms did not.

“For him, once again, to enter the highest office in the most powerful nation in the world, dressed as he did, reflects his inner disrespect for not only our country, the President and the US citizens that have made it possible for Ukraine to survive as long as they have to this point,” Mr. Glenn wrote.

On Friday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who is dating Mr. Glenn, applauded the exchange on social media.

“I’m so proud of @brianglenntv for pointing out that Zelensky has so much disrespect for America that he can’t even wear a suit in the Oval Office when he comes to beg for money from our President,” she wrote.

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As Dr. Francis Collins retires from the N.I.H., he made an appeal for ‘the utmost respect’ for his colleagues.

Dr. Collins, 74, served under three presidents: Barack Obama, Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. He became one of the nation’s most recognizable doctors during the coronavirus pandemic, when he helped steer the development of new tests, therapeutics and vaccines.

He did not give a reason for his retirement, and he said in a text message that he “was not doing any interviews.”

His announcement comes just days before the Senate confirmation hearing, scheduled for this Wednesday, for President Trump’s nominee to be the next director of the N.I.H.: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, who has expressed disdain for Dr. Collins.

Dr. Bhattacharya is one of three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, an anti-lockdown treatise that was signed in October 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Emails that later became public showed that Dr. Collins had called Dr. Bhattacharya and his co-authors “fringe epidemiologists.”

In an interview with Fox News at the time, Dr. Collins said he stood by his statement, adding, “Hundreds of thousands of people would have died if we had followed that strategy.” Dr. Bhattacharya later assailed Dr. Collins as one of a number of scientists who “abused their power to conduct devastating takedowns of scientists who disagreed with them.”

Dr. Collins joined the institutes in 1993, during the administration of President Bill Clinton, and gained acclaim for leading the Human Genome Project, a federal effort to map the human genome, the set of genetic instructions that defines the human organism.

He also became known for his religious views: Dr. Collins is an evangelical Christian who has publicly sought to bridge the divide between science and Christianity, including in a 2006 book, “The Language of God.” Amid the political fallout over the coronavirus pandemic, he joined a group called “Braver Angels” that sought to bridge the partisan divide, and later publicly acknowledged some Covid mistakes.

His carefully crafted statement offered a forceful defense of the N.I.H. and a lament for the days when biomedical research had strong bipartisan support.

Dr. Collins noted that when he was recruited to the institutes and through many of the years that followed, “investment in medical research was seen as a high priority and a nonpolitical bipartisan effort — saving countless lives, relieving human suffering and contributing substantially to the U.S. economy.”

“N.I.H. is the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world,” he wrote. “It is the main piston of a biomedical discovery engine that is the envy of the globe. Yet it is not a household name. It should be.”

He went on: “When you hear about patients surviving stage 4 cancer because of immunotherapy, that was based on N.I.H. research over many decades. When you hear about sickle-cell disease being cured because of CRISPR gene editing, that was built on many years of research supported by N.I.H.”

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a longtime colleague of Dr. Collins’s who retired at the end of 2022 as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, praised Dr. Collins on Saturday, saying he has had an ”extraordinarily positive impact” on biomedical research.

But allies of Mr. Trump and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cheered Dr. Collins’s departure. Among them is Katie Miller, who served as Mr. Kennedy’s spokeswoman before Mr. Trump appointed her to the Department of Government Efficiency, the Elon Musk-led effort to overhaul the federal government.

“Francis Collins was an ineffectual leader who bent at the knee to Tony Fauci and openly mocked President Trump,” Ms. Miller wrote on social media. “@DrJBhattacharya is the right leader to move @NIH forward.”

Dr. Collins’s retirement, which took effect on Friday, comes on the heels of the departure of other high-ranking N.I.H. officials, including Dr. Lawrence A. Tabak, the longtime No. 2 official at the institutes. Dr. Tabak left last month, according to a person familiar with his decision, after being confronted with a reassignment that he viewed as unacceptable.

Dr. Collins was appointed to lead the N.I.H. by Mr. Obama, and he stepped down as director in late 2021, the first year of the Biden administration, to return to his lab. “Millions of people will never know Dr. Collins saved their lives,” Mr. Biden said at the time. “Countless researchers will aspire to follow in his footsteps.”

The Pentagon is sending combat forces to the southern border, in line with a directive by President Trump.

Combined with 1,100 support troops from the military’s Northern Command announced on Friday, and the recently arrived headquarters personnel from the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., the reinforcements announced on Saturday would bring the total number of active-duty troops on the border to about 9,000, Defense Department officials said. The Washington Post reported the additional troop mobilization earlier.

“These forces will arrive in the coming weeks, and their deployment underscores the department’s unwavering dedication to working alongside the Department of Homeland Security to secure our southern border and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of the United States under President Trump’s leadership,” the Pentagon said in a statement on Saturday.

This will be the second major wave of active-duty troops sent to secure the border since Mr. Trump took office on Jan. 20. About 1,600 Marines and Army soldiers arrived soon after the inauguration, joining 2,500 Army reservists called to active duty who were already there.

Dispatching large numbers of frontline combat forces indicates that Mr. Trump is breaking with past presidents’ recent practice of mostly limiting deployments along the U.S.-Mexico border to small numbers of active-duty soldiers and reservists.

So far, the active-duty troops have been helping to build barriers and support law-enforcement agencies, as have active-duty and reservist forces sent to the border in past years, including during Mr. Trump’s first term.

But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on his first full official day on the job in January that “whatever is needed at the border will be provided.” He did not rule out Mr. Trump’s invoking the Insurrection Act, a more than 200-year-old law, to allow the use of armed forces for law enforcement duty.

Taking such an action would plunge the military into politically charged territory that has given congressional Democrats deep concerns.

“Our military are not trained as law enforcement officers,” Senator Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan and a former Pentagon official, said recently on ABC’s “This Week.” “But you’re coming right up to that line of logistics and support, and law enforcement.”

The deployments come even as the state of the border is fairly calm, with crossings having fallen sharply in recent months after the Biden administration took steps to limit migration.

The 4th Infantry Division is among the Pentagon’s most combat-ready units, reflecting Mr. Trump’s directive that it “prioritize the protection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the United States along our national borders.”

The Army in January alerted brigades from the 4th Infantry and the 82nd Airborne to prepare to deploy to the border. Each brigade has more than 3,000 soldiers, although it is unclear how many troops may actually be tapped for duty, Army officials said.

The headquarters personnel of the 10th Mountain Division, including its two-star commanding general, recently arrived in Fort Huachuca in Arizona to oversee the border operation.

Defense Department officials have left open the possibility that as many as 10,000 troops could deploy in the coming days. Marine Corps planners said they could be asked to supply 2,500 or more additional Marines.

“We are dead serious about 100% OPERATIONAL CONTROL of the southern border,” Mr. Hegseth said in a post on X on Saturday.

Along with infantry, support troops specializing in supply, logistics, security and communications have already been sent to the border, the military’s Northern Command said in January.

The first two waves of active-duty troops were selected in part because they were ready to deploy on short notice. The first 500 Marines, for instance, were on standby at their base at Camp Pendleton in California to help support the firefighting efforts in Los Angeles.

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Judge blocks Trump’s plan to end funds for trans youth health providers in 4 states.

Judge King said that Mr. Trump’s order likely violates the separation of powers between the executive branch and Congress, and the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantees to youth seeking gender-related treatments. But she denied the states’ challenge of a section of the order directing the Justice Department to investigate providers under a law that bans female genital mutilation, stating that “no credible threat of prosecution exists” in such cases.

“The court’s holding here is not about the policy goals that President Trump seeks to advance; rather, it is about reaffirming the structural integrity of the Constitution by ensuring that executive action respects congressional authority,’’ Judge King wrote. “This outcome preserves an enduring system of checks and balances that the founders considered to be ‘essential to the preservation of liberty.’”

The injunction by Judge King, an appointee of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., applies only to medical providers in Washington, Oregon, Minnesota and Colorado, the states that brought the suit along with three doctors affiliated with the University of Washington School of Medicine.

In a separate lawsuit, a judge in Maryland has temporarily instructed the Trump administration to keep federal funding in place for all providers in the country who offer youth gender medicine. A more considered ruling is expected in that case before its emergency order expires next week.

The ruling is the second preliminary injunction in a string of legal challenges to Mr. Trump’s effort to block government agencies and taxpayer-funded institutions from supporting gender transition, or from recognizing people based on their gender identities. Last month, another federal judge blocked Mr. Trump’s directive to withhold gender-transition medical treatment for federal prisoners and to house transgender women inmates with men.

The administration has sought to bar transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports, to bar openly transgender people from serving in the military, to no longer reflect the gender identities of transgender people on passports, and to bar references to gender identity in executive departments and agencies.

The order on medical treatments, titled “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” states that the goal is to protect young people from long-term effects that may cause them to regret undergoing the treatments. It directs agencies to withhold funds from medical providers that offer puberty blockers, hormone therapies and surgeries to people under 19 for the purpose of gender transition.

After it was issued, several hospitals stopped providing the treatments, and the lawsuit says that others may begin doing the same. A White House news release from early February stated that the order was “already having its intended effect,” and cited several announcements from hospitals.

Judge King’s injunction also blocks the government from carrying out parts of an earlier order Mr. Trump issued directing that grant funding for research or education does not support “gender ideology,’’ which it defines as the “false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.”

Young people seeking transition treatments in most Republican-led states have already had to travel elsewhere to receive them. Since 2021, amid an intensifying fight over when medical transition is appropriate for young people, 24 states have banned the treatments for minors. In December, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case involving a Tennessee law that prohibits transition treatments for minors, and the justices appeared to lean toward upholding that state’s law.

In recent years, several European countries have limited the treatments after scientific reviews, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has said that it was conducting its own review of the evidence. But the academy and most major medical groups in the United States continue to endorse youth gender medicine as effective in relieving the psychological distress that many young trans people say they experience when their bodies do not reflect their internal sense of gender.

Mr. Trump’s order is an effort to place financial pressure on clinics, largely in Democrat-led states, that continue to provide the treatments.

In her order, Judge King wrote that the states had shown that they would lose hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, as well as “devastating consequences for all manner of medical research and treatment,” in the absence of an injunction. She also said that transgender youth deprived of the treatments would experience “dire harms.’’

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Shocked by Trump, Zelensky and Ukraine try to forge a path forward.

In one jaw-dropping meeting, the once unthinkable fear that Ukraine would be forced to engage in a long war against a stronger opponent without U.S. support appeared to move exponentially closer to reality.

“For Ukraine, it is clarifying, though not in a great way,” Phillips O’Brien, an international relations professor at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said in an interview. “Ukraine can now only count on European states for the support it needs to fight.”

The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said on Saturday that Europe must stand with Ukraine, and prevent the country “from having to accept subjugation.”

“The scene at the White House yesterday took my breath away,” he told the German press agency onboard a plane. “I would never have believed that we would ever have to defend Ukraine from the United States.”

An immediate result was that Ukrainians, including opposition politicians, were generally supportive of Mr. Zelensky on Saturday for not bending to Mr. Trump despite tremendous pressure.

Maryna Schomak, a civilian whose son’s cancer diagnosis has been complicated by the destruction of Ukraine’s largest children’s cancer hospital by a Russian missile strike, said that Mr. Zelensky had conducted himself with dignity.

“They gathered with one goal — to pressure us and undermine our authority on the global political stage,” she said of Mr. Trump and his team.

Mr. Zelensky signaled on Saturday that he had not completely given up hope of repairing the relationship with Mr. Trump. Posting on social media, he went out of his way to thank the United States, perhaps trying to address Mr. Trump’s complaint on Friday that he was ungrateful.

“I’m thankful to President Trump, Congress for their bipartisan support, and American people,” he wrote. “Ukrainians have always appreciated this support, especially during these three years of full-scale invasion.”

At the same time, Mr. Zelensky began laying the groundwork for moving ahead with the European countries that have stood by Kyiv’s side. Ukraine announced plans on Saturday for a joint weapons venture with France that would be financed by the interest earned from frozen Russian assets.

Later in the day, Mr. Zelensky met with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, who has been a supporter of the Ukrainian president in the face of Mr. Trump’s harsh rebukes.

In a stark contrast to Friday’s meeting in Washington, the visit to 10 Downing Street began with a warm handshake and a short embrace. It included a promise from Mr. Starmer to the Ukrainian president that “you have full backing across the United Kingdom, and we stand with you and Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

On Sunday, Mr. Zelensky will attend a summit of European leaders hosted by Mr. Starmer.

While much of the focus was on the shocking tone and theatrics of the dressing-down delivered by the American president to a putative ally, Professor O’Brien, the St. Andrew’s scholar, said that Mr. Trump’s comments suggested that the root of the public rupture ran deeper.

“He was trying to pressure Zelensky into agreeing to a cease-fire along Putin’s lines, and Zelensky refused,” Professor O’Brien said, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “Trump comes out and says that explicitly at the end.”

Mr. Trump had shouted at the Ukrainian leader, “You’re buried there,” and said, “Your people are dying. You’re running low on soldiers.”

As Mr. Zelensky tried to defend himself, Mr. Trump talked over him.

“No, listen,” he continued. “And then you tell us, ‘I don’t want a cease-fire. I don’t want a cease-fire.’”

The exchange, Professor O’Brien said, reflects Mr. Trump’s belief that “Ukraine should shut up and take Trump’s and Putin’s terms.”

The real affront that prompted the spectacle, many Ukrainians and analysts believe, is that Mr. Zelensky pushed back against some of Mr. Trump’s terms.

Along the front lines, some soldiers said that the realization was sinking in that Mr. Trump would probably not help Ukraine. “Trump chose his side in this war,” said Pvt. Serhiy Hnezdilov in a telephone interview from the front on Saturday.

Private Hnezdilov said that he supported Mr. Zelensky’s stance, adding that he thought the attempt to humiliate the Ukrainian leader was probably the goal of the invitation to the White House.

“The scandal we witnessed was essentially the only purpose of that meeting,” the private said. “It looked utterly absurd, considering that we, Ukrainians, have always regarded America as an example of democracy and, most importantly, of values.”

Ukrainians may have been naïve, he added.

Still, many Ukrainians were shaken by the public falling-out in Washington, and Mr. Zelensky sought to reassure his war-weary nation on Saturday.

“People in Ukraine need to know they are not alone, that their interests are represented in every country and every corner of the world,” he said in a statement.

Leaders across Europe took to social media to voice support of Ukraine, and Mr. Zelensky offered his personal thanks for every statement while reposting them.

But Mr. Zelensky did acknowledge that losing U.S. military support would be a devastating blow.

“It will be difficult for us,” he told Fox News after the White House meeting. “That’s why I’m here.”

Mr. Zelensky’s domestic standing appeared to be holding steady in the immediate aftermath of the meeting, despite a statement by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, calling for Mr. Zelensky to resign or be dismissed. “I don’t know if we can ever do business,” Mr. Graham said, only days after praising the Ukrainian leader as an ideal ally.

Mr. Zelensky received a public signal of support from the speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, who would assume the presidency if Mr. Zelensky resigned. “Full support for the President of Ukraine!” Mr. Stefanchuk wrote in a social media post.

Opposition figures also backed Mr. Zelensky.

“Though I do not fully agree with President Zelensky’s policies, I must say that I am genuinely grateful to him for withstanding this pressure,” Natalia Pipa, a member of Parliament for the Holos party, said in an interview.

“Trump behaved disgustingly and condescendingly,” she added.

The path ahead for Ukraine, politicians and analysts said, is to try to repair relations with the United States, where defense contractors are one constituency with an interest in continuing American support, while trying to shore up European backing. Mr. Zelensky will also be trying to get a role in the negotiations for a peace settlement, though Mr. Trump seems intent on dealing directly with Mr. Putin.

But the anger directed at Mr. Zelensky in the Oval Office came against a tense backdrop in which Mr. Trump has increasingly aligned himself with the Kremlin in both words and actions.

Since Mr. Trump picked up the phone on Feb. 12 for a 90-minute chat with Mr. Putin, he has called Mr. Zelensky “a dictator”; falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war; and pressed the Ukrainian leader to accede to his administration’s demands, posting that he “better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”

Last week, the State Department terminated an initiative that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to help restore Ukraine’s energy grid after attacks by the Russian military.

While pressuring Kyiv, Mr. Trump has said that he would “love” to see Russia back in the Group of 7 — a gathering of the world’s wealthiest large democracies — and that “it was a mistake to throw them out.”

He offered Mr. Putin generous concessions on NATO and Ukrainian territory even before the talks started, and repeated the Kremlin’s calls for elections in Ukraine.

The White House has also cut funding for pro-democracy programs as part of its efforts to dismantle U.S.A.I.D., a move celebrated by the Kremlin.

The Trump administration has also offered public support for far-right parties in Europe known for their support of Moscow, including the AfD in Germany.

The U.S. attorney general, Pam Bondi, has also disbanded an F.B.I. task force focused on investigating foreign influence operations, and the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has ordered that Russia be removed as a target of U.S. cybersecurity planning.

Washington also sided with Moscow in a vote at the United Nations that would have condemned Russian aggression on the third anniversary of the Ukraine invasion — breaking with allies to join a small group of nations including North Korea and Belarus.

Having endured years of loss and suffering, Ukrainians would like nothing more than to see an end to the war, but not if the price is their freedom, Mr. Zelensky has been insisting.

Natalka Sosnytska, a program coordinator at the Behind Blue Eyes project, a Ukrainian organization that helps children with war trauma, echoed that sentiment. “Of course, we want peace, but only after our victory,” she said. “By standing his ground, Zelensky preserved our dignity as a nation.”

Liubov Sholudko and Yurii Shyvala contributed reporting.

Trump’s dressing down of Zelensky plays into Putin’s war aims.

The extraordinary scene in Washington — in which Mr. Trump lambasted President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — was broadcast as the top story on state television in Russia on Saturday morning. It played into three years of Kremlin propaganda casting Mr. Zelensky as a foolhardy ruler who would sooner or later exhaust the patience of his Western backers.

For the Kremlin, perhaps the most important message came in later remarks by Mr. Trump, who suggested that if Ukraine did not agree to a “cease-fire now,” the war-torn country would have to “fight it out” without American help.

That could set up an outcome that Mr. Putin has long sought, at the cost of tens of thousands of Russian lives: a dominant position over Ukraine and wide-ranging concessions from the West.

In fact, Mr. Trump’s professed attempts to end the war quickly could intensify and prolong it, experts warned. If the United States is really ready to abandon Ukraine, Mr. Putin could try to seize more Ukrainian territory and end up with more leverage if and when peace talks ultimately take place.

“Russia will be willing to keep fighting for longer, and more bitterly,” said Konstantin Remchukov, a Moscow newspaper editor with Kremlin ties, describing the consequences of Mr. Trump’s public break with Mr. Zelensky. “If Zelensky says the Ukrainian people are ready to keep on fighting, Moscow will say, ‘Sure, let’s keep fighting.’”

If Friday’s angry encounter in Washington leads to a further drop in U.S. military support for Ukraine, Mr. Remchukov said in a phone interview, the consequences could be profound, possibly even encouraging Mr. Putin to return to the broader territorial aims he pursued when he began his invasion in 2022.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Moscow decided to go further, to Odesa or Mykolaiv,” Mr. Remchukov said, referring to key Black Sea ports that remain under Ukrainian control. “It could change the strategic direction of the offensive.”

Despite the striking alignment that has emerged between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin in recent weeks, many analysts have spotted a key difference in their views. While the American president says he wants to “stop the death” in Ukraine as soon as possible, the Russian leader says he wants to resolve the “root causes” of the war first.

For Mr. Putin, that terminology is code for his desire for a wider deal that would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, limit the size of its military and grant Russia influence over its domestic politics — along with a broader pullback of the NATO alliance across Eastern and Central Europe.

Such a deal, of course, would take months to negotiate, which is why Mr. Putin has appeared resistant to the idea of a quick cease-fire. The spat in the White House on Friday appeared to play into the Kremlin’s hands because it may convince Mr. Trump that Mr. Zelensky, rather than Mr. Putin, is the more recalcitrant of the two leaders.

“You tell us, ‘I don’t want a cease-fire,’” Mr. Trump told Mr. Zelensky in the Oval Office. “I want a cease-fire because you’ll get a cease-fire faster than an agreement.”

Mr. Zelensky on Saturday reiterated his opposition to a quick cease-fire with Mr. Putin, saying that the Russian leader could not be trusted to uphold one. Instead, he said, Ukraine needed security guarantees from the West to deter future Russian attacks.

But Mr. Zelensky also signaled that he had not completely given up hope on repairing the relationship with Mr. Trump. And since the Friday meeting, he has publicly expressed thanks for American support, after Vice President JD Vance accused him of not being grateful enough.

A Moscow foreign-policy analyst who is close to the Kremlin said on Saturday that any delay to peace talks was likely to benefit Russia because there was no deal in sight at present that would satisfy Mr. Putin. The analyst insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivities in Moscow of speaking to Western journalists.

Dmitry Suslov, an international relations specialist at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, said in comments published by the Kommersant newspaper that Mr. Trump would become “even more favorable to Russia’s position on a settlement” after “the fiasco of Zelensky’s negotiations with Trump.”

Mr. Suslov also raised the possibility of Russia’s being able to grab far more than the roughly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory in the country’s south and east that Moscow now holds.

If the United States stops providing weapons and intelligence to the Ukrainian military, Mr. Suslov wrote, “the pace of Kyiv’s defeat on the battlefield will accelerate, with the prospect of a complete collapse of the front within months.”

Friday’s scene was a boon for Moscow in other ways, too. It may have helped advance, in just a matter of minutes, one of Mr. Putin’s longtime goals: the removal of Mr. Zelensky from power in Ukraine.

Immediately after the White House meeting, Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has been one of his party’s staunchest backers of Ukraine, said, “I don’t know if we can ever do business with Zelensky again.” He called the Ukrainian leader’s behavior in the Oval Office “disrespectful.”

The public dressing-down of Mr. Zelensky also accomplished another longtime goal of Mr. Putin’s: cleaving the Western military alliance led by Washington that united behind Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion. European leaders immediately came out in support of Ukraine after the meeting, setting up a possible split with the United States, their longtime security backer.

Russian officials could hardly control their glee.

Dmitri A. Medvedev, the former Russian president who is deputy chairman of the country’s security council, cheered Mr. Trump on with a post on X, piling on to denounce Mr. Zelensky as an “insolent pig.”

And Konstantin Kosachev, a senior Russian lawmaker, wrote on the Telegram social network, “Zelensky lost this round in a resounding crash,” adding, “He will have to crawl on his knees to the next one.”

Pro-Kremlin commentators who for years have been hurling invective against the United States could barely believe their change in fortune.

Igor Korotchenko, a military analyst who is a regular on Russian talk shows, wrote that he never thought he would be applauding the president of the United States.

“But tonight I applaud the 47th President of the United States Donald Trump — Zelensky was thrown out of the White House like a garbage alley cat,” Mr. Korotchenko wrote in a post on X.

Yet for all the schadenfreude in Russia, Friday’s bitter meeting in Washington did little to illuminate a pathway toward a settlement. And while Mr. Putin may want to extend the war, he could also suffer if it goes on much longer, given the country’s economic problems and steep battlefield casualties.

“The Russian leadership would like to end the war on its own terms, not just restore ties with the U.S.,” Grigorii Golosov, a professor of political science at the European University in St. Petersburg, said in a phone interview. “The prospects for that are not clearer at all despite what happened yesterday.”

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Zelensky thanks the U.S. and tells Ukrainians they aren’t alone.

“American people helped save our people,” he wrote. “Humans and human rights come first. We’re truly thankful.”

In the Oval Office meeting, Vice President JD Vance accused Mr. Zelensky of disrespecting Mr. Trump by not offering thanks for U.S. assistance.

Despite the tough dialogue and the clear rupture in relations between Kyiv and Washington, Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine wants “only strong relations with America, and I really hope we will have them.”

Since the abrupt end of his White House visit, Mr. Zelensky’s account on X has been reposting dozens of statements from leaders around the world offering words of support.

“It is crucial for us that Ukraine’s voice continues to be heard and that no one forgets about it — both during the war and after,” he wrote. “People in Ukraine must know that they are not alone, and that their interests are represented in every country, in every corner of the world.”

In an interview with Fox News on Friday evening, Mr. Zelensky did not apologize to Mr. Trump, but expressed regret about the meeting and appreciation to the United States for its support. “We are thankful and sorry for this,” he said.

Musk and Republican lawmakers pressure judges with impeachment threats.

Judicial impeachments are rare and notoriously time-consuming. The mounting calls for removing federal judges, who already face increasing security threats, have so far not gained much traction with congressional leaders. Any such move would be all but certain to fail in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority would be needed for a conviction.

But even the suggestion represents another extraordinary attempt by Republicans to breach the foundational separation of powers barrier as Trump allies seek to exert iron-fisted control over the full apparatus of government. And Democrats charge that it is designed to intimidate federal judges from issuing rulings that may go against Mr. Trump’s wishes.

“The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,” Mr. Musk wrote this week on X, his social media platform, in one of multiple posts demanding that uncooperative federal judges be ousted from their lifetime seats on the bench.

“We must impeach to save democracy,” Mr. Musk said in another entry on X after a series of rulings slowed the Trump administration’s moves to halt congressionally approved spending and conduct mass firings of federal workers. He pointed to a purge of judges by the right-wing government in El Salvador as part of the successful effort to assert control over the government there.

The push comes as arch-conservative House Republicans have filed articles of impeachment against federal judges whom they portrayed as impediments to Mr. Trump, accusing them of acting corruptly in thwarting the administration.

“If these partisan judges want to be politicians, they should resign and run for office,” said Representative Eli Crane, Republican of Arizona, in filing articles of impeachment against Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The judge, who was placed on the bench by President Barack Obama in 2011, had temporarily barred those working for Mr. Musk’s government review team from accessing sensitive Treasury Department records.

Impeachments of federal judges, which historically result strictly from serious criminal behavior rather than the content of rulings, are extremely unusual. They also consume copious amounts of time: Lawmakers must conduct a House investigation and a Senate trial, as they do in the case of presidential impeachments.

Those seeking to remove federal judges must meet a high threshold of securing 67 votes in the Senate. Just eight federal judges have been impeached, convicted and removed in the history of the country, most for egregious criminal and personal behavior. Others have been investigated and acquitted or resigned before they could be removed.

Given the slim chance of successful impeachments for rulings rather than criminal misconduct, Democrats say the impeachment drumbeat is an obvious effort to cow judges and discourage them from making what Mr. Trump would consider adverse rulings. They say it follows a longstanding pattern of Mr. Trump and his allies attacking judges when the courts don’t go their way.

“It’s clear they’re trying to create an environment of intimidation to the judiciary to try to make certain that they don’t rule against President Trump and his policies,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

“It is all about raw politics,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and a senior member of the panel. “It may seem absurd and hypothetical to us here, but to judges, it is extremely threatening. It is plainly a device to bully and intimidate judges to think twice about issuing orders.”

Political pressure on federal judges has reached a level that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. noted it in his year-end report issued in January. He scolded those who would try to browbeat the judiciary, saying that “attempts to intimidate judges for their rulings in cases are inappropriate and should be vigorously opposed.”

The American College of Trial Lawyers has pushed back on the impeachment calls by Mr. Musk and others, saying in a statement that “threats of impeachment for such judicial acts have no constitutional grounding and are patently inconsistent with the rule of law upon which our nation was founded.”

Criticism of the judges has spread beyond Mr. Musk and hardright elements of the House and has been picked up by Senate Republicans and other officials. Mr. Trump, who has a long record of excoriating judges, warned last month that his administration would have to “look at” judges as they stepped in to block the Musk effort. Vice President JD Vance has also sharply questioned the reach of judicial authority.

Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said in a social media post that “corrupt judges should be impeached and removed” after earlier suggesting that rulings against the administration smacked of a ‘judicial coup.”

In an interview, Mr. Lee, a constitutional law expert with extensive legal experience, said it would be up to the House to determine if federal judges who blocked Trump administration proposals should be turned out.

“The question of whether anybody has committed an impeachable offense here first and foremost is a decision for the House,” Mr. Lee said. “We can’t do anything unless or until the House acts.” He noted that the Constitution provides that judges have lifetime tenure during “good behavior.”

“It is not good behavior if you are corrupt, either legally or criminally corrupt, or if you abuse your power,” he said.

Other senior Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voiced caution on lowering the bar for impeaching federal judges in a fit of pique over decisions against the Trump White House.

“The Rolling Stones said it best: You can’t always get what you want,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has led the panel. “I’m not a big fan of impeaching somebody because you don’t like their decision. They have to actually do something unethical.”

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a veteran of the Judiciary Committee, called impeachment “an extraordinary remedy for unique cases.”

“Impeachment is a very serious matter and certainly should be handled on a case-by-case basis in a rational, calm way,” he said. “The best recourse for somebody who is unhappy with what a judge decides is to appeal what that judge decides.”

With rulings much of the time going against the Trump administration in its aggressive campaign to reshape the government and with Mr. Musk and others trying to rally opinion against judges handing down the decisions, it is unlikely that calls for impeachment will die down.

But given the lack of leadership support so far and the scant chance the Senate could muster the votes to oust a judge, lawmakers say the fight to watch is how the administration responds to court directives it doesn’t like.

“Ultimately, this is going to be resolved in the courts,” Mr. Durbin said. “The question is whether Trump feels he has to follow court orders.”