Macron lauds Europe's 'predictability' in seeming contrast to Trump

(The Center Square) – In a historic move, President Donald Trump will attend oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court today, when justices will consider a challenge to his executive order aiming to end automatic citizenship for those born in the U.S.

At stake in today's hearing is the future of birthright citizenship in the United States, a constitutional principle enshrined in the 14th Amendment for more than 150 years. Trump’s unprecedented executive order seeks to end automatic citizenship for certain children born on American soil, setting up a landmark legal showdown that could redefine who is entitled to be called an American.

Trump will be the first sitting president to attend oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump's decision to attend in person comes after he publicly ridiculed some justices who invalidated the bulk of his tariffs. Trump had floated the idea of watching the tariff case, but did not attend.

Amid these legal battles, Trump has voiced concerns that the Supreme Court might rule against him, highlighting the high stakes of the outcome.

The birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara, challenges Trump's first-day executive order denying birthright citizenship to children born in the U.S. after Feb. 19, 2025, whose parents are either illegally in the U.S. or temporary residents.

The challenge focuses on the 14th Amendment, which conferred citizenship and voting rights to freed African Americans after the Civil War.

The 14th Amendment reads: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The case could hinge on the meaning of five words: "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

The case will test the limits of presidential executive power and could have far-reaching consequences for immigration policy, the definition of citizenship, and the broader U.S. economy.

As arguments approach, the president again made his case in a social media post Sunday.

"We are the only Country in the World that dignifies this subject with even discussion ... The World is getting rich selling citizenships to our Country, while at the same time laughing at how STUPID our U.S. Court System has become (TARIFFS!). Dumb Judges and Justices will not a great Country make!," Trump wrote.

While lower courts ruled Trump's executive order was unconstitutional, the administration maintains that those rulings are based on a misunderstanding of the Constitution. The administration argues that children of noncitizens are not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" of the U.S. and not entitled to citizenship.

Courts have blocked the executive order from going into effect.

On the other side of the debate, challengers argue that Trump is trying to reinterpret the definition of citizenship unilaterally through an executive order as part of a broader crackdown on immigration.

"The government is now petitioning the Supreme Court in hopes of getting a different answer. But the Constitution is clear, and we will keep fighting this lawless order until it is struck down once and for all," said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the matter before the end of its term this summer.

Three more people were arrested Wednesday in connection with an arson attack on four volunteer ambulances run by a Jewish organisation in London, the police said.

Two British men, aged 19 and 20, and a 17-year-old dual British-Pakistani national were arrested at separate addresses in east London, the capital's Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

They were detained on suspicion "of conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life", the force added.

Two men in their 40s were released on bail last week over the March 23 fire.

The ambulances were parked next to a synagogue in the Golders Green area of northwest London, which has a large Jewish population, when they were set alight.

The ambulances were run by the Hatzola volunteer organisation, which provides free medical transportation and emergency response to those living in north London.

Nobody was physically hurt, but the police said they are treating the incident as "an antisemitic hate crime".

While it has not been declared a terror offence, counter-terrorism officers are leading the investigation.

A little-known Islamist group with possible links to Iran has claimed responsibility.

The Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (HAYI) group, meaning The Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand, has also claimed responsibility for similar attacks in Belgium and the Netherlands.

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French President Emmanuel Macron praised Europe's "predictability" during a visit to Japan on Wednesday, contrasting it with countries that "could hurt you without even informing you" in an apparent swipe at Donald Trump.

The US president lashed out at France on Tuesday, writing on social media that Paris had been "very unhelpful" during the war with Iran, which has since spread across the Middle East.

"I'm well aware that sometimes Europe can be seen as a continent that is slower than others," Macron told an audience of Japanese business leaders and investors in Tokyo.

"But predictability has value, and we have demonstrated that over all these past years and, dare I say, even these past weeks: we are where you know we will go," he added. 

"That's not bad, in times like these, believe me."

Macron criticised countries that said they were "going much faster" than their allies, but "you don't know whether the day after tomorrow they will still be in that position, and whether tomorrow they won't make a decision that could hurt you without even informing you".

The remark was a reference to the month-long US-Israeli war on Iran, which has responded by virtually closing the vital Strait of Hormuz, through which a large share of the oil imported by Japan normally transits.

- Energy crisis -

Following a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Tokyo Wednesday, Macron spoke of their cooperation in the face of the "current energy crisis".

"We share a belief in international law and in the international order based on the United Nations Charter, and we also believe in the democratic values that we defend. This is why... we both advocate the return to peace, to a ceasefire, to calm, and to the free movement of people and goods through the Strait of Hormuz," he said.

Takaichi echoed his words, saying the two leaders had agreed "on the importance of ensuring the safety of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, maintaining a stable supply of essential materials, and calming the situation as soon as possible".

Japan depends on the Middle East for 95 percent of its oil imports and has had to dip into strategic stockpiles to temper the impact of rising fuel prices since the start of the war.

The two countries signed a roadmap on access to critical minerals and another on defence cooperation, while joint projects are being showcased during the visit, including initiatives to tackle space debris.

But they also shared a lighthearted moment during a news conference, turning to each other and cupping their hands in a gesture known as a kamehameha, taken from globally beloved Japanese manga, anime and video game franchise "Dragon Ball".

Macron's visit, his fourth to the country, comes as China-Japan ties worsen following Takaichi's suggestion in November that Tokyo might intervene militarily in any Chinese attempt to take Taiwan.

Macron visited China in December. 

Macron and his wife Brigitte are due to have lunch with Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako on Thursday but a hoped-for outside viewing of Japan's famous cherry trees in full bloom was cancelled due to heavy rain.

He will fly to South Korea later Thursday.

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In the security crackdown ordered by Iranian authorities since the start of the war, an unsettling new sight on the streets of Tehran has put residents on edge: teenagers armed with machine guns.

During the first weeks of the war against the United States and Israel, checkpoints sprang up around the capital, often comprising police or military vehicles, with traffic cones and barriers blocking the roads.

In recent days, following highly publicised airstrikes on their positions, some of the most visible barriers have been removed, but security forces remain a noticeable presence on the streets.

Iranian authorities have confirmed they are recruiting children as young as 12 for paramilitary group patrols, traffic checks and other duties. 

"Around 9 pm, I was feeling suffocated and nostalgic, so I got in the car to drive around town," a 28-year-old woman told AFP on Monday on condition that her identity be protected.

"I came across two checkpoints in the north of Tehran, with teenagers aged 13 or 14, weapons in their hands, who were stopping vehicles," she added in a message sent to an AFP correspondent abroad.

One of the boys opened the passenger door and sat down next to her.

"He asked for my mobile phone and checked everything, even my photographs. It was extremely intrusive," she added.

Hundreds of Iranian authorities have been arresting people for connecting to the international internet, which remains banned and largely inaccessible, while those caught sending information overseas have been accused of spying.

Another Tehran resident told AFP last week he had been through a checkpoint of military vehicles, then "just 100 metres (330 feet) ahead, there are several private cars with teenagers stopping vehicles".

"They open car doors without permission, open dashboards and check phones," he added.

- 'Do not abandon' -

Iranian authorities say minors as young as 12 are being allowed to join the country's much-feared Basij volunteer paramilitary force, reviving memories of the 1980s when thousands of children fought during the Iran-Iraq war.

Basij units, part of the ideological army of the Revolutionary Guards, are believed to have played a role alongside other security forces in the violence against anti-government protesters in January which left thousands dead.

Rahim Nadali, an official with the Revolutionary Guards in Tehran, said on state television last week that Basij units had been inundated with volunteers. 

"Considering the ages of those requesting to join, we have now lowered the minimum age to 12 years old, because children aged 12–13 want to be involved," he said.

Analysts have varying interpretations of the move, with some seeing it as a sign of desperation, or a lack of volunteers. 

Others said the move was evidence of a more radical turn by authorities.

In a statement at the weekend, the powerful speaker of parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf urged supporters to "not abandon the streets, because missiles, streets and straits have squeezed the enemy's throat".

The reference to "straits" was to the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic shipping route off Iran's coast that Tehran has all but closed.

- 'Hardline support base' -

The crackdown is designed to suppress any chances of a popular uprising, which was encouraged by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the start of the war, analysts said.

As well as manning checkpoints, pro-government supporters form street patrols at night.

"They take cars fitted with speakerphones and they give them flags and they march with lots of noise and shout slogans in the streets," another resident in a Tehran suburb told AFP recently.

Hamidreza Azizi, an academic and author on Iran, said the idea was "to prevent any opposition calls for people to come onto the streets".  

Azizi, a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said that Iran's government was leaning on its most devout supporters. 

"The legitimacy deficit in the Islamic republic has led it to rely on its minority hardline support base which has proved to be effective in supporting the regime in the middle of the war," he told a discussion organised by the International Crisis Group, a think-tank, on Monday.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch campaign group said the recruitment of children for military purposes was "a war crime when the children are under 15" and would put them at risk of US-Israeli attacks.

"What this boils down to is that Iranian authorities are apparently willing to risk children's lives for some extra manpower," Bill Van Esveld, associate children's rights director at the group said in a statement.

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Pakistan and Afghanistan are holding talks in China to try to find a way to end months of conflict sparked by cross-border attacks, two officials from Islamabad told AFP on Wednesday.

The meeting in the northwestern city of Urumqi comes after Pakistan's Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar travelled to Beijing on Tuesday to meet his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi.

The pair discussed Islamabad's role in trying to get the United States and Iran to the negotiating table, and set out a joint five-point plan for an end to the conflict.

Dar returned to Islamabad on Wednesday with Chinese backing for Pakistan's diplomatic efforts, which saw foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey meet in the Pakistani capital last weekend.

China has sought to mediate in the escalating conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It has sent a special envoy and pledged to play a "constructive role in de-escalating tensions".

Pakistan says it is targeting extremists who have carried out cross-border attacks, but authorities in Kabul deny harbouring militants.

There was no immediate comment about the talks from Pakistan's foreign ministry and military when contacted by AFP, or from the Afghan government.

However, a senior Pakistani security official said: "A delegation led by an official from Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is in Urumqi to hold talks with the Afghan Taliban.

"The meeting is taking place at the request of our Chinese friends."

A second senior government official also confirmed the talks, adding: "The meeting is to set a base for full-scale dialogue."

The first official said Pakistan's demands from Afghanistan "remain unchanged", urging Kabul to "take verifiable action" against extremists and "end any support for the group".

It also wants to "ensure that Afghan territory is not used as a base for launching attacks against Pakistan". 

- 'Calm and restraint' -

Pakistan is one of China's closest partners in the region and Beijing has called for "calm and restraint" in Islamabad's conflict with Afghanistan.

The meeting is the first significant engagement after earlier mediation efforts facilitated by Qatar and Turkey failed to achieve a lasting ceasefire, prompting Islamabad to launch a major military operation that included airstrikes deep inside Afghanistan.

The conflict intensified on February 26, a few days after Pakistani airstrikes, followed by a ground offensive by Afghan forces.

Both sides announced a truce for the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of Ramadan.

Islamabad said the truce has since ended but no major attacks have been reported.

The truce came two days after a Pakistani strike on a drug rehabilitation centre in the Afghan capital, which the Afghan authorities said killed more than 400 people.

Islamabad maintains that its bombing was a precision strike against "military installations and terrorist support infrastructure".

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Amsterdam on Wednesday celebrated 25 years since same-sex weddings were legalised, with Rob Jetten, the first openly gay Dutch prime minister, as guest of honour. 

The Netherlands made history on April 1, 2001, when it became the world's first country to legalise gay marriage.  

Nearly 36,000 same-sex couples have tied the knot in the quarter-century since, according to the Dutch statistics bureau. Three more made their solemn matrimonial vows shortly after midnight at a ceremony marking the milestone. 

"I was 14 years old when, 25 years ago, the first marriages took place here in Amsterdam," Jetten, a 39-year-old centrist who is engaged to Argentine hockey player Nicolas Keenan, told AFP. 

"For me, it was one of the first moments that I saw on television that it is possible, even as a young, back then, gay boy, to be yourself and to love whoever you want to love," Jetten, who was elected last October, said. 

Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema, who officiated the three marriages, hailed Jetten's presence at the ceremony.

"You know, we had a conservative government for a couple of years and there was no good news for gay rights," said Halsema, who is from the Green party.

"And now we have a gay prime minister who is very self-aware and proud. And I think for young gay people it's a great example."

Eelke de Jong, 45, and Elton Dos Santos Fiame, 39, were among the three couples wedded by Halsema. 

"It's the milestone to celebrate a big accomplishment from 25 years ago of what happened. And we were just too excited to be a part of it," Dos Santos Fiame told AFP.

Twenty-five years on, several dozen countries have followed the Dutch in recognising gay marriage. 

While a step forward, more progress needs to be made, Halsema argued. 

"So we're celebrating and we're also protesting a little bit today," the mayor added.

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The head of France's Dassault Aviation said on Wednesday he was giving his company "two to three weeks" to see if the multibillion-euro warplane programme with Germany could work as the government tries to salvage the project.

He spoke after French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz voiced determination to rescue the programme. Merz said last week that two mediators had been tasked with making a proposal by the end of April.

The Future Combat Air System (FCAS) programme is a flagship joint effort to build a next-generation combat aircraft between France, Germany and Spain.

But it has faltered as disagreements persist between Dassault and Airbus, which represents Germany and Spain.

On Wednesday, Eric Trappier said he was "not a man for co-management".

"We're giving ourselves a little more time -- two to three weeks –- to try to reach an agreement between the French and Germans, between Dassault and Airbus," he said at a forum in Paris.

"I am not in favour of an ambitious industrial project that will serve our armed forces being co-managed. We need a leader."

The FCAS programme was launched in 2017 to replace the Rafale jet and the Eurofighter planes used by Germany and Spain.

It is often seen as a bellwether of defence and security cooperation between France and Germany as the two EU powerhouses seek to put up a united front in the face of a hostile Russia and wavering US security commitment.

Trappier once again stressed that his company was capable of going it alone.

"We are going to build an aircraft to succeed the Rafale. It must be capable of carrying out missions and operating from an aircraft carrier," he said.

"We built the Rafale on our own. We know how to do it on our own, whereas the Eurofighter was built by four countries," he said, referring to Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain.

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Pakistan and Afghanistan are holding talks in China to end months of conflict, two officials from Islamabad told AFP on Wednesday.

The meeting in the northwestern city of Urumqi comes after Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Ishaq Dar, travelled to Beijing on Tuesday to meet his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi.

The pair discussed Islamabad's role in trying to get the United States and Iran to the negotiating table, and set out a joint five-point plan for an end to the conflict.

Dar had been due to return to Islamabad on Wednesday.

China has sought to mediate in the escalating conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Pakistan says it is targeting extremists who have carried out cross-border attacks, but authorities in Kabul deny harbouring militants.

There was no immediate comment from Pakistan's foreign ministry and military when contacted by AFP, or from the Afghan government.

But a senior Pakistani security official said: "A delegation led by an official from Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is in Urumqi to hold talks with the Afghan Taliban

"The meeting is taking place at the request of our Chinese friends."

A second senior government official also confirmed the talks, adding: "The meeting is to set a base for full-scale dialogue."

The first official said Pakistan's demands from Afghanistan "remain unchanged", urging Kabul to "take verifiable action" against extremists and "end any support for the group".

It also wants to "ensure that Afghan territory is not used as a base for launching attacks against Pakistan". 

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Leading economic institutes more than halved their growth forecasts for Germany on Wednesday, warning that the energy shock caused by the Middle East war would hit Europe's top economy hard.

A group of leading institutes slashed their joint growth forecast for 2026 to 0.6 percent, down from a September prediction of 1.3 percent.

Inflation is now forecast to rise to 2.8 percent, up from 2.0 percent, "weighing on household purchasing power".

"The energy price shock triggered by the Iran war is hitting the recovery hard," said economist Timo Wollmershaeuser of the Ifo institute, adding that increased government spending was nevertheless "preventing a stronger slide".

Oil and natural gas prices have surged since the end of February, when the United States and Israel attacked Iran, killed its supreme leader and plunged the Middle East into war. 

Iran has since closed the Strait of Hormuz to ships of countries it considers allied with the US and Israel, effectively blocking a sea lane that normally transports about a fifth of the world's oil and gas trade.

Higher inflation in Germany would hit consumer spending, the institutes said, weighing on an already weak economy that has barely grown since a burst of pent-up demand after the Covid pandemic in 2022.

- 'Zero growth' -

Germany's economy, struggling with fierce Chinese competition in sectors from cars to chemicals, was in the doldrums even before US President Donald Trump last year imposed sweeping new tariffs before starting the Mideast war in late February.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who took office last May, vowed to borrow and spend hundreds of billions for a special infrastructure fund over coming years in what was dubbed a spending "bazooka" aimed at getting Europe's top economy back on its feet.

But the economists said that much of the money was simply paying for day-to-day spending.

"Government expenditure on consumption is rising much more sharply than investment," economist Oliver Holtemoeller of the Halle Institute for Economic Research said. "That was not the idea behind changing the financing rules."

The outlook for the longer term was also dire.

Citing low productivity, industrial decline and an ageing population, the institutes warned that Germany's economy would soon be unable to grow sustainably. 

"We have also reassessed the structural changes in the German economy and, in particular, revised our forecast for industrial growth downwards," Wollmershaeuser said.

In an era when "demographic change is hitting with full force", he said, "potential growth will come to a standstill by the end of the decade, and we will have to get used to average GDP growth rates of zero percent".

In this phase of "multiple transformations," the institutes recommend the German government "increase incentives for employment" and ease regulations to "improve conditions for investment and innovation".

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