The post-second world war taboo on acquiring territory through force or by the threat of force is being unravelled by a generation of political leaders, led by expansionist threats from Donald Trump that are unprecedented for a US president.

Experts are warning that a combination of the Russian aggression against Ukraine and Trump’s comments explicitly pushing for the US to acquire Greenland, Canada, the Panama canal and Gaza is fuelling a permissive environment that threatens long-recognised borders and the international rules-based order that has existed since the end of the war.

The norm, enshrined in article 2 of the UN charter of 1945, states that “all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.

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The headline of an essay in the current issue of Foreign Affairs puts it bluntly: “Conquest is back.”

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I had a conversation last week with a Canadian journalist about the culture war on American campuses. After we finished talking about that, she had one final question for me.

“What the hell is Trump thinking about Canada?”

. . .

So, how did I answer my new Canadian friend? “Canada is Donald Trump’s Ukraine.”

Apparently, Trump agrees. On Friday, he made the comparison explicit. While talking to the press in the Oval Office, he once again called for Canada to become the 51st state and then compared Canada’s bargaining position to Ukraine’s. “The expression I use is some people don’t have the cards,” he said. “I used the expression about a week and a half ago” — referring to his infamous exchange with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, when he told Zelensky: “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now.”

I did not mean that Trump is preparing to invade or use force against Canada. But he does intend to dominate Canada, to render it little more than a vassal of the United States, making it only nominally independent. In fact, you can’t fully understand Trump’s approach to Ukraine without understanding his view of Canada (or Mexico or Greenland or Panama) — and vice versa.

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An Israeli airstrike on a hospital in Gaza has killed five people, including a Hamas political leader and Palestinian medics, Hamas has said, in an attack that Israel said had targeted a key figure in the militant group.

The Gaza health ministry said the strike hit the surgery department at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. The Israeli military said its attack followed extensive intelligence and used precise munitions to minimise harm at the site.

Hamas said a member of its political office, Ismail Barhoum, had been killed.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, confirmed the target was Barhoum. The military did not name the target, which it described only as “a key terrorist” in Hamas.

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As a Canadian federal election approaches, Johnstone and other advocates are planning a feisty grassroots campaign to push back against misinformation and hate.

“Drag the Vote is a campaign created by our team here at Queer Momentum, supporting grassroots organizers, activists, parents and families to speak up in response to anti-2SLGBTQ+ hate and to encourage Canadians to speak up with us for freedom, equality, and human rights,” Johnstone said.

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Trans and queer people have faced a sharp rise in intolerance and hate over the past few years. There have been violent threats against drag performances and large protests that featured homophobic and transphobic language. Old tropes like claiming that queer people are a threat to children have once again become common.

When demonstrators gathered ­at Istanbul’s city hall last week in outrage at the arrest of mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, 26-year-old Azra said she was initially too scared to defy a ban on gatherings. As protests grew on university campuses and in cities and towns across Turkey, she could no longer resist joining.

“I saw the spark in people’s eyes and the excitement on their faces, and I decided I had to come down here,” she said with a grin, standing among tens of thousands that defied a ban on assembly to fill the streets around city hall on Friday night. Despite the crowds, Azra feared reprisals and declined to give her full name. Many demonstrators were masked in a bid to defy facial recognition ­technology and fearing the teargas or pepper spray sometimes deployed by the police. Others smiled and took ­selfies to celebrate as fireworks illuminated the night sky.

The arrest of the mayor of Turkey’s largest city in a dawn raid last week was a watershed moment in the country’s prolonged shift away from democracy. Opponents of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan fear it is a move to ­sideline the sole challenger capable of defeating him in upcoming elections, expected before 2028.

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In Gaza this weekend, the mood is darker than it has been at perhaps any time in this long, appalling war. Last Tuesday Israeli warplanes, tanks, artillery, drones and ships launched a wave of strikes, shattering the increasingly fragile pause in hostilities that had brought respite to the devastated territory for nearly two months. The ceasefire had also brought hope which, Palestinians in Gaza said, made the return to violence that much more unbearable.

In a video statement last Wednesday, Israel Katz, Israel’s defence minister, called on 2.3 million people in Gaza to “banish Hamas”, saying “the alternative is complete destruction and ruin”.

Two days later, as air strikes continued and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) seized a key strategic corridor that divides Gaza, Katz issued a new ultimatum, this time telling Hamas to give up the 59 hostages it is still holding or “lose more and more land that will be added to Israel”. He said that the IDF would use “all military and civilian pressure, including … implementing US President Trump’s voluntary migration plan for Gaza residents”.

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President Trump broadened his campaign of retaliation against lawyers he dislikes with a new memorandum that threatens to use government power to punish any law firms that, in his view, unfairly challenge his administration.

The memorandum directs the heads of the Justice and Homeland Security Departments to “seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States” or in matters that come before federal agencies.

Mr. Trump issued the order late Friday night, after a tumultuous week for the American legal community in which one of the country’s premier firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, struck a deal with the White House to spare the company from a punitive decree issued by Mr. Trump the previous week.

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When President Trump announced on Friday that the United States would move ahead with a long-debated project to build a stealthy next-generation fighter jet, the message to China was clear: The United States plans to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next decade, probably far longer, to contain Beijing’s ability to dominate the skies over the Pacific.

But here on earth, the reality has been very different.

As the Department of Government Efficiency roars through agencies across government, its targets have included some of the organizations that Beijing worried about most, or actively sought to subvert. And, as with much that Elon Musk’s DOGE has dismembered, there has been no published study of the costs and benefits of losing those capabilities — and no discussion of how the roles, arguably as important as a manned fighter, might be replaced.

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The US has blocked Canadian access to a library straddling the Canada-US border, drawing criticism from a Quebec town where people have long enjoyed easy entry to the space.

The Haskell Free Library and Opera House is located between Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont. It was built deliberately to straddle the frontier between the two countries – a symbol of cooperation and friendship between Canada and the US.

The library’s entrance is on the Vermont side. Previously, Canadian visitors were able to enter using the sidewalk and entrance on the American side but were encouraged to bring documentation, according to the library’s website.

Inside, a line of electrical tape demarcates the international boundary. About 60% of the building, including the books, is located in Canada. Upstairs, in the opera house, the audience sits in the US while the performers are in Canada.

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The US has blocked Canadian access to a library straddling the Canada-US border, drawing criticism from a Quebec town where people have long enjoyed easy entry to the space.

The Haskell Free Library and Opera House is located between Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont. It was built deliberately to straddle the frontier between the two countries – a symbol of cooperation and friendship between Canada and the US.

The library’s entrance is on the Vermont side. Previously, Canadian visitors were able to enter using the sidewalk and entrance on the American side but were encouraged to bring documentation, according to the library’s website.

Inside, a line of electrical tape demarcates the international boundary. About 60% of the building, including the books, is located in Canada. Upstairs, in the opera house, the audience sits in the US while the performers are in Canada.

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U.S. immigration agents wearing masks arrested a Georgetown University academic outside his home in Virginia. They detained two German tourists for weeks when they tried to enter the country legally through the southern border. They knocked on doors at Columbia University apartments, searching for pro-Palestinian protesters.

The Trump administration has opened a new phase in its immigration agenda, one that goes well beyond the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

U.S. border officials are using more aggressive tactics, which the administration calls “enhanced vetting,” at ports of entry to the United States, prompting American allies like Germany to update their travel advisories. At the same, the administration is targeting legal immigrants who have expressed views that the government believes threaten national security and undermine foreign policy.

The tactics have unnerved foreign tourists and sent a chill through immigrant communities in the United States, who say they are being targeted for speech — not for breaking any laws.

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Israel’s defence minister said on Friday he has instructed the military to “seize more ground” in Gaza and threatened to annex part of the territory unless Hamas releases the remaining hostages it holds.

Israel Katz’s warning came as the army stepped up the renewed assault it launched on Tuesday, shattering the truce that had facilitated the release of more than two dozen hostages and brought relative calm since late January.

After retaking part of the strategic Netzarim corridor that divides Gaza’s north from south, Israeli troops moved on Thursday towards the northern town of Beit Lahiya and the southern border city of Rafah. The military said it had resumed enforcing a blockade on northern Gaza, including Gaza City. An injured Palestinian boy waits to be treated at Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia, Gaza Israeli strikes on Gaza add to soaring child death toll Read more

“I ordered [the army] to seize more territory in Gaza,” Katz said. “The more Hamas refuses to free the hostages, the more territory it will lose, which will be annexed by Israel.”

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