From Lisbon to Tallinn, Europeans are overwhelmed by soaring home prices. This week, Brussels intends to do something about it. “This is a real crisis,” said European Commissioner for Housing Dan Jørgensen in an interview with POLITICO, ahead of the approval of the bloc’s first-ever Affordable Housing Plan. “And it’s not just enough to talk about it.” To that end, the package will seek to free up public cash for the construction of new homes, track speculation in the housing market, and give regional and local governments tools to rein in the short-term rentals contributing to the housing shortage. “The plan will be a mix of concrete actions at the EU level and recommendations that member states can apply,” Jørgensen said, adding that the European Commission wants to give national, regional and local governments ways to make real changes on the ground — while not overstepping its role in an area over which it has no official competence. “This is a real problem affecting millions of people, and the inaction is playing right into the playbook of right-wing populists,” Jørgensen noted, citing the ultranationalist parties that have stoked discontent over sky-high home prices to score major victories in countries like the Netherlands and Portugal. “Normally the EU has not played a big role here,” he added. “That needs to change.” CASH, TOOLS AND TRANSPARENCY The most concrete action set to be announced this week is a revision of state aid rules to make it easier for national governments to build affordable housing. Member countries have long complained they can only use public cash to provide homes for low-income families. Reflecting the fact that even middle-class earners are now struggling to pay for shelter, the new regulations will allow funds to be used for all groups priced out of the housing market. The package will also give national, regional and local authorities tools to target the tourist flats exacerbating the housing shortage in cities like Barcelona, Florence and Prague. “I’m not on the side of the people who call for banning short-term rentals,” Jørgensen clarified, adding that such platforms have offered travelers the ability to experience Europe differently, and provided some families with a needed source of income. But the model has grown at a rate “no one could have imagined, with short-term rentals accounting for 20 percent of homes in some very stressed areas,” he noted. It has turned into a “money machine instead of what it was intended to.” The commissioner stressed that national, regional and local leaders would ultimately be the ones deciding whether to use the tools to rein in short-term rentals. “We’re not going to force people to do anything,” he said. “If you think the status quo is fine, you can keep things as they are.” In another first, a more abstract section of the package will also aim to address speculation in the housing market. “This is a real crisis,” said European Commissioner for Housing Dan Jørgensen in an interview with POLITICO. | Lilli Förter/Getty Images While insisting he’s “not against people making money,” Jørgensen said Europe’s housing stock was being treated like “gold or Bitcoin and other investments made for the sole purpose of making money” — an approach that ignores the vital role of shelter for society at large. “Having a roof over your head, a decent house … is a human right,” he argued. As an initial step, this week’s package will propose the EU track speculation and determine the scope of the problem. However, Jørgensen acknowledged that using the resulting data for concrete action to tackle the market’s financialization might prove difficult. “While no one is really arguing this problem doesn’t exist, there’s a political conflict over whether it’s a good or a bad thing.” But regulation is essential for the proper functioning of the internal market, he added. THE COMPETENCE QUESTION The Commission’s housing package will also include a new construction strategy to cut red tape and create common standards, so that building materials manufactured at competitive prices in one member country can be easily used for housing projects in another. Additionally, there will be a bid to address the needs of the over a million homeless Europeans, many of whom aren’t citizens of the countries in which they are sleeping rough. “We want to look at what rights they have and how these are respected,” Jørgensen said. “We’re talking about humans with needs, people who deserve our help and compassion.” The commissioner explained the complexity of the housing crisis had required a “holistic” approach that led him to work in tandem with Executive Vice Presidents Teresa Ribera and Roxana Mînzatu, as well as internal market boss Stéphane Séjourné and tech chief Henna Virkkunen, among others. He also stressed the package didn’t constitute a power grab on the Commission’s part, and that national, regional and local governments are still best positioned to address many aspects of the crisis. “But,” he said, “there are areas where we haven’t done anything in which we can do something.” While much of the plan will consist of recommendations member countries won’t be required to implement, Jørgensen warned against ignoring them. The Commission is providing solutions, he said, and “policymakers need to answer to their populations if they don’t do something that’s pretty obvious they could do.” “Normal citizens will use every opportunity to make their demands known, be it in local, national or European elections,” Jørgensen explained. “I’m respectfully telling decision-makers all over Europe that either they take this problem seriously, or they accept that they’ll have to hand over power to the populists.”

This article is also available in French and German. President Donald Trump denounced Europe as a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people in an interview with POLITICO, belittling the traditional U.S. allies for failing to control migration and end the Russia-Ukraine war, and signaling that he would endorse European political candidates aligned with his own vision for the continent. The broadside attack against European political leadership represents the president’s most virulent denunciation to date of these Western democracies, threatening a decisive rupture with countries like France and Germany that already have deeply strained relations with the Trump administration. “I think they’re weak,” Trump said of Europe’s political leaders. “But I also think that they want to be so politically correct.” “I think they don’t know what to do,” he added. “Europe doesn’t know what to do.” Trump matched that blunt, even abrasive, candor on European affairs with a sequence of stark pronouncements on matters closer to home: He said he would make support for immediately slashing interest rates a litmus test in his choice of a new Federal Reserve chair. He said he could extend anti-drug military operations to Mexico and Colombia. And Trump urged conservative Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, both in their 70s, to stay on the bench. Trump’s comments about Europe come at an especially precarious moment in the negotiations to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, as European leaders express intensifying alarm that Trump may abandon Ukraine and its continental allies to Russian aggression. In the interview, Trump offered no reassurance to Europeans on that score and declared that Russia was obviously in a stronger position than Ukraine. Trump spoke on Monday at the White House with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns for a special episode of The Conversation. POLITICO on Tuesday named Trump the most influential figure shaping European politics in the year ahead, a recognition previously conferred on leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Trump’s confident commentary on Europe presented a sharp contrast with some of his remarks on domestic matters in the interview. The president and his party have faced a series of electoral setbacks and spiraling dysfunction in Congress this fall as voters rebel against the high cost of living. Trump has struggled to deliver a message to meet that new reality: In the interview, he graded the economy’s performance as an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus,” insisted that prices were falling across the board and declined to outline a specific remedy for imminent spikes in health care premiums. Even amid growing turbulence at home, however, Trump remains a singular figure in international politics. In recent days, European capitals have shuddered with dismay at the release of Trump’s new National Security Strategy document, a highly provocative manifesto that cast the Trump administration in opposition to the mainstream European political establishment and vowed to “cultivate resistance” to the European status quo on immigration and other politically volatile issues. In the interview, Trump amplified that worldview, describing cities like London and Paris as creaking under the burden of migration from the Middle East and Africa. Without a change in border policy, Trump said, some European states “will not be viable countries any longer.” Using highly incendiary language, Trump singled out London’s left-wing mayor, Sadiq Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants and the city’s first Muslim mayor, as a “disaster” and blamed his election on immigration: “He gets elected because so many people have come in. They vote for him now.” The president of the European Council, António Costa, on Monday rebuked the Trump administration for the national security document and urged the White House to respect Europe’s sovereignty and right to self-government. “Allies do not threaten to interfere in the democratic life or the domestic political choices of these allies,” Costa said. “They respect them.” Speaking with POLITICO, Trump flouted those boundaries and said he would continue to back favorite candidates in European elections, even at the risk of offending local sensitivities. “I’d endorse,” Trump said. “I’ve endorsed people, but I’ve endorsed people that a lot of Europeans don’t like. I’ve endorsed Viktor Orbán,” the hard-right Hungarian prime minister Trump said he admired for his border-control policies. It was the Russia-Ukraine war, rather than electoral politics, that Trump appeared most immediately focused on. He claimed on Monday that he had offered a new draft of a peace plan that some Ukrainian officials liked, but that Zelenskyy himself had not reviewed yet. “It would be nice if he would read it,” Trump said. Zelenskyy met with leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom on Monday and continued to voice opposition to ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of a peace deal. The president said he put little stock in the role of European leaders in seeking to end the war: “They talk, but they don’t produce, and the war just keeps going on and on.” In a fresh challenge to Zelenskyy, who appears politically weakened in Ukraine due to a corruption scandal, Trump renewed his call for Ukraine to hold new elections. “They haven’t had an election in a long time,” Trump said. “You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore.” Latin America Even as he said he is pursuing a peace agenda overseas, Trump said he might further broaden the military actions his administration has taken in Latin America against targets it claims are linked to the drug trade. Trump has deployed a massive military force to the Caribbean to strike alleged drug runners and pressure the authoritarian regime in Venezuela. In the interview, Trump repeatedly declined to rule out putting American troops into Venezuela as part of an effort to bring down the strongman ruler Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump blames for exporting drugs and dangerous people to the United States. Some leaders on the American right have warned Trump that a ground invasion of Venezuela would be a red line for conservatives who voted for him in part to end foreign wars. “I don’t want to rule in or out. I don’t talk about it,” Trump said of deploying ground troops, adding: “I don’t want to talk to you about military strategy.” But the president said he would consider using force against targets in other countries where the drug trade is highly active, including Mexico and Colombia. “Sure, I would,” he said. Trump scarcely defended some of his most controversial actions in Latin America, including his recent pardon of the former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a decades-long sentence in an American prison after being convicted in a massive drug-trafficking conspiracy. Trump said he knew “very little” about Hernández except that he’d been told by “very good people” that the former Honduran president had been targeted unfairly by political opponents. “They asked me to do it and I said, I’ll do it,” Trump acknowledged, without naming the people who sought the pardon for Hernández. HEALTH CARE AND THE ECONOMY Asked to grade the economy under his watch, Trump rated it an overwhelming success: “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.” To the extent voters are frustrated about prices, Trump said the Biden administration was at fault: “I inherited a mess. I inherited a total mess.” The president is facing a forbidding political environment because of voters’ struggles with affordability, with about half of voters overall and nearly 4 in 10 people who voted for Trump in 2024 saying in a recent POLITICO Poll that the cost of living was as bad as it had ever been in their lives. Trump said he could make additional changes to tariff policy to help lower the price of some goods, as he has already done, but he insisted overall that the trend on costs was in the right direction. “Prices are all coming down,” Trump said, adding: “Everything is coming down.” Prices rose 3 percent over the 12 months ending in September, according to the most recent Consumer Price Index. Trump’s political struggles are shadowing his upcoming decision on a nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, a post that will shape the economic environment for the balance of Trump’s term. Asked if he was making support for slashing interest rates a litmus test for his Fed nominee, Trump answered with a quick “yes.” The most immediate threat to the cost of living for many Americans is the expiration of enhanced health insurance subsidies for Obamacare exchange plans that were enacted by Democrats under former President Joe Biden and are set to expire at the end of this year. Health insurance premiums are expected to spike in 2026, and medical charities are already experiencing a marked rise in requests for aid even before subsidies expire. Trump has been largely absent from health policy negotiations in Washington, while Democrats and some Republicans supportive of a compromise on subsidies have run into a wall of opposition on the right. Reaching a deal — and marshaling support from enough Republicans to pass it — would likely require direct intervention from the president. Yet asked if he would support a temporary extension of Obamacare subsidies while he works out a large-scale plan with lawmakers, Trump was noncommittal. “I don’t know. I’m gonna have to see,” he said, pivoting to an attack on Democrats for being too generous with insurance companies in the Affordable Care Act. A cloud of uncertainty surrounds the administration’s intentions on health care policy. In late November, the White House planned to unveil a proposal to temporarily extend Obamacare subsidies only to postpone the announcement. Trump has promised on and off for years to unveil a comprehensive plan for replacing Obamacare but has never done so. That did not change in the interview. “I want to give the people better health insurance for less money,” Trump said. “The people will get the money, and they’re going to buy the health insurance that they want.” Reminded that Americans are currently buying holiday gifts and drawing up household budgets for 2026 amid uncertainty around premiums, Trump shot back: “Don’t be dramatic. Don’t be dramatic.” SUPREME COURT Large swaths of Trump’s domestic agenda currently sit before the Supreme Court, with a generally sympathetic 6-3 conservative majority that has nevertheless thrown up some obstacles to the most brazen versions of executive power Trump has attempted to wield. Trump spoke with POLITICO several days after the high court agreed to hear arguments concerning the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, the automatic conferral of citizenship on people born in the United States. Trump is attempting to roll back that right and said it would be “devastating” if the court blocked him from doing so. If the court rules in his favor, Trump said, he had not yet considered whether he would try to strip citizenship from people who were born as citizens under current law. Trump broke with some members of his party who have been hoping that the court’s two oldest conservatives, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, might consider retiring before the midterm elections so that Trump can nominate another conservative while Republicans are guaranteed to control the Senate. The president said he’d rather Alito, 75, and Thomas, 77, the court’s most reliable conservative jurists, remain in place: “I hope they stay,” he said, “’cause I think they’re fantastic.”

Soccer may be the world’s most popular pastime, but much about Friday’s lottery draw setting the match schedule for next summer’s World Cup has been programmed with just one fan in mind. Never before has the sports governing body given out a peace prize to a politician eager for one, or booked the Village People and Andrea Bocelli to play alongside. President Donald Trump’s appearance on the Kennedy Center stage will be at least his seventh encounter this year with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who has logged more face time with Trump this year than any world leader. Infantino’s savvy navigation of the American political scene has helped FIFA build institutional support for a tournament facing unprecedented logistical complications. But that success is beginning to weaken Infantino, as the third-term FIFA president faces newfound internal opposition for his over-the-top courtship of Trump. Our interviews with six international soccer officials across three continents reveal widespread frustration with Infantino’s decision to side with Trump even as White House policies cause chaos for World Cup-bound teams, fans and local organizers, clashing with Infantino’s promise to have a tournament that welcomes the world. “[FIFA] has always promoted a very cozy, close relationship with politicians and political actors in a variety of ways, including by having them in their bodies or running the National Football Associations, for example,” said Miguel Maduro, the chairman of FIFA’s governance and review committee between 2016 and 2017. “This said, the extent of this cozy relationship that we’ve seen and and the public character that has been assumed between Mr. Infantino and Mr. Trump is different even from what we saw in the past,” said Maduro. “It’s not that things like that didn’t happen in the past, but it didn’t happen so obviously and so emphatically as they do now.” Our reporting found that Infantino did not inform his 37-member FIFA Council before creating the FIFA Peace Prize this year, three people familiar with the matter told POLITICO. Over the past year, at least three of FIFA’s eight vice presidents have publicly or privately expressed their concerns about the lengths Infantino is willing to go to please Trump. While Infantino has won his last two terms unopposed, when he stands next for reelection in 2027 he will likely have to answer to FIFA’s 211 member federations for his willing entanglement in the controversies of American politics. Infantino’s allies say that those opposed to many of his soccer-related initiatives — focused on growing the game in emerging markets and expanding FIFA’s flagship tournaments — are using his Trump ties to exploit differences on unrelated issues. “If a challenger to Gianni for the 2027 election emerges, it will be in the next six to eight months and the World Cup will be a litmus test,” said a person involved with World Cup planning granted anonymity to characterize private conversations with top soccer officials. “If something goes off the rails or somebody decides they want to make a run against him, they’re going to use his relationship with Trump to exploit the cracks.” THE MAKING OF THE PRESIDENTS Infantino launched his first campaign for FIFA’s presidency as an underdog. A corruption scandal had toppled much of FIFA’s leadership in 2015, forcing a so-called “extraordinary congress” the next year in which members would vote to decide who would complete the unfinished term vacated by the newly suspended president Sepp Blatter. FIFA, comprised of national soccer federations, picks its president through a secret ballot of those members — one nation, one vote. To win in a multi-candidate field, one must capture two-thirds of the total ballots cast, with rounds of voting until a single candidate locks in a two-way majority. The favorite to succeed Blatter was Sheik Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, a Bahraini royal who headed the Asian Football Confederation and appeared to have stitched together a coalition of Asian and African nations. Infantino, a polyglot Swiss-Italian lawyer who had spent seven years as secretary general of European confederation UEFA, pitched himself as someone who could disperse the organization’s wealth back to member countries. “The money of FIFA is your money,” Infantino said in a speech shortly before the vote. “It is not the money of the FIFA president. It’s your money.” Infantino and Al Khalifa ran neck-in-neck in the first round. With a clear two-person race, the United States — which had been supporting Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein of Jordan, who finished a distant third — switched its vote to Infantino in the second round, triggering a rush of support from the Western Hemisphere that gave Infantino a conclusive 115-vote total. A fourth candidate, former French diplomat Jérome Champagne, credited Infantino’s victory to “a strong alliance between Europe and North America and the Anglo-Saxon world.” “Prepare yourself well but be vigilant,” Blatter warned Infantino upon his election in a public letter. “While everyone supports you and tells you nice words, know that once you are the president, friends become rare.” Once in office, Infantino’s initiatives were focused on expanding FIFA’s most valuable properties. He converted a ten-day, exhibition-like competition among seven regional club champions into the month-long FIFA Club World Cup. He also pushed, with mixed success, to grow the size and scope of the World Cup and increase its frequency. In 2017, Infantino announced that the first World Cup under an expanded format — up from 32 countries participating to 48, adding a week of matches to the schedule — would take place in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Facing the first tournament in which hosting responsibilities would be shared by three countries, Infantino visited Trump to secure assurances of government support. Infantino went on to win subsequent terms in 2019 and 2023, and when Trump returned to the White House for his second, in 2025, their political trajectories became permanently intertwined. Infantino set out to raise his profile in American life and his relationships with the country’s political class, including through a campaign-style tour through many of the American cities hosting matches for the inaugural Club World Cup in 2025 and the World Cup the following summer. Infantino sat next to Trump at the tournament’s final, held at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium in July, dragging him onto the winners’ platform as Infantino went to award a trophy and medals to champions Chelsea. Trump lingered awkwardly on stage to the befuddlement of Chelsea’s players, who had not expected they would share the moment with an American politician. Other appearances with Trump placed Infantino squarely between a president intent on solving overseas conflicts and punishing foes, while closing American borders to visitors and trade, and FIFA member nations who may hold starkly different views, or worse. Infantino stood quietly in the Oval Office as he said he would not rule out strikes against fellow World Cup co-host Mexico to target drug cartels, and joined Trump’s entourage on a trip designed to cultivate investment opportunities in the Persian Gulf. When FIFA had to delay the opening of its annual congress in Asuncion, Paraguay, to accommodate Infantino’s travel from a Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum in Riyadh, two FIFA vice presidents were among those who joined English Football Association chairwoman Debbie Hewitt and other federation heads exiting in protest. European confederation UEFA — with 55 member nations, FIFA’s largest — attacked him with unusually pointed language. “To have the timetable changed at the last minute for what appears to be simply to accommodate private political interests,” UEFA wrote in its statement, “does the game no service and appears to put its interests second.” GIANNI ON THE SPOT In September, Trump said he would try to move scheduled World Cup matches out of Democratic-run jurisdictions that are “even a little bit dangerous.” Infantino, whose organization had spent years vetting and preparing those cities for the tournament, said nothing. But a potential rival to Infantino’s leadership took issue with both the American president’s threat — since repeated but not acted upon — and the FIFA president’s silence. “It’s FIFA’s tournament, FIFA’s jurisdiction, FIFA makes those decisions,” FIFA vice president Victor Montagliani, the organization’s leading figure from North America, said at a sports-business conference in London six days later. While president of the Canadian Soccer Association, Montagliani helped to secure his country’s participation in the three-way so-called “United Bid” for next summer’s World Cup. (The Vancouver insurance executive also helped bring the Women’s World Cup to Canada in 2015.) He now serves as president of CONCACAF, the 41-member regional federation encompassing the 41 nations of North America, Central America and the Caribbean. Close to Prime Minister Mark Carney, Montagliani has come to believe Infantino has catered too much to Trump for a tournament realized through the cooperation of three nations, according to three of the people familiar with the dynamics of FIFA’s leadership. (Montagliani declined an interview request.) The leaders of the United States, Mexico and Canada will all participate in a ceremonial ball draw in today’s draw. “With all due respect to current world leaders, football is bigger than them and football will survive their regime and their government and their slogans,” Montagliani told an interviewer at the London conference in late September. “That’s the beauty of our game, is that it is bigger than any individual and bigger than any country.” Montagliani’s “FIFA’s jurisdiction” remarks did not land well with Infantino’s inner sanctum. “It is ultimately the government’s responsibility to decide what’s in the best interest of public safety,” FIFA said in a statement to POLITICO in October after Trump’s next round of threats to relocate matches. The relationship between Infantino and Montagliani has further soured in recent months as Trump reignited tensions between Washington and Ottawa over an anti-tariff ad taking aim at U.S. trade policy, according to a person close to Montagliani granted anonymity to candidly characterize his thinking. Montagliani has his own thoughts on how far relationships with government figures should go but respects Infantino’s perspective, that person said, maintaining the two men had a good relationship despite occasional differences. Others around FIFA have their own parochial concerns with Trump. Despite being among the first teams to qualify for the tournament, Iran threatened to boycott Friday’s draw because some members of its delegation were denied visas for travel to Washington. According to a FIFA official, Iran ultimately reversed course and sent Iranian head coach Ardeshir Ghalenoy after FIFA worked closely with the U.S. government and Iran’s soccer federation. Another qualifying team, Haiti, is also covered by the 19-country travel ban that Trump signed in June. The State Department said that while the policy has a specific carveout for World Cup competitors and their families, the exception will not be applied to fans or spectators. The president of the Japanese Football Association, Tsuneyasu Miyamoto, told POLITICO in an interview last month that he was worried that Trump’s immigration policies could subject Japanese travelers to “deportations happening unnecessarily.” Infantino has stopped short of pressuring Trump to make exceptions to immigration policy for the sake of soccer. FIFA officials have said that when it chooses a tournament location it does not expect that country to significantly alter its immigration laws or vetting standards for the tournament, although many past hosts have chosen to relax visa requirements for World Cup ticketholders. Many European countries’ soccer federations, led by Ireland and Norway, have pushed to ban Israel from international soccer due to its military invasion of Gaza. The movement received an apparent boost from UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin, who supported unfurling a banner that read “Stop Killing Children; Stop Killing Civilians” on the field before a UEFA Super Cup match in August. “If such a big thing is going on, such a terrible thing that doesn’t allow me to sleep — not me, all my colleagues,” — nobody in this organization said we shouldn’t do it. No one,” Čeferin told POLITICO in August. “Then you have to do what is the right thing to do.” European countries were set on a collision with Trump, whose State Department indicated it would work to “fully stop any effort to attempt to ban Israel’s national soccer team from the World Cup.” UEFA pulled back on a planned vote over Israel’s place as a Trump-negotiated peace agreement took hold. Infantino joined Trump and other heads of state in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, for a summit to implement the agreement’s first phase. Nothing threatens to awaken opposition to Infantino as much as his decision to invent a FIFA Peace Prize just as Trump began to complain in October about being passed over for one from the Norwegian Nobel Committee. According to a draft run-of-show for Friday’s draw, Trump is scheduled to speak for two minutes today after receiving the Peace Prize. “He is just implementing what he said he would do,” Infantino said at an American Business Forum in Miami, also attended by Trump, on the day news of the prize was made public. “So I think we should all support what he’s doing because I think it’s looking pretty good.” According to FIFA rules, the organization’s president needs sign-off from the 37-member FIFA council on certain items like the international match calendar, host designations for upcoming FIFA tournaments, and financial matters. FIFA’s charter does not contemplate the creation of a new prize specifically to award a world leader, but those familiar with the organization’s governance say it may violate an ethics policy that requires officers “remain politically neutral.” (In 2019, FIFA honored Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri, who previously led venerable club Boca Juniors, with its first-ever Living Football Award.) “Giving this award to someone that is an active political actor, by itself, is, at least in my opinion, likely a violation of the principle of political neutrality,” said Maduro, a Portuguese legal scholar appointed to oversee FIFA’s governance in the wake of the corruption scandal that helped bring Infantino to office. “We need to know two things: how the award was created and who then took the decision to whom the award was to be given. Both of these decisions should not be taken by the president himself.” Infantino fully bypassed the FIFA Council in deciding to create and award the prize to Trump, according to three people familiar with conversations between Infantino and the council’s members. Even the vice presidents who were given a heads-up ahead of time say they were simply being told after the decision was made. FOUR MORE YEARS? Infantino, a quintessential European first elected with support from his home continent, now sees his strongest base of support in Asia, Africa, and the Gulf countries. He won his last two terms by acclamation, after delivering on his promises to disperse the $11 billion FIFA takes in each World Cup cycle. The FIFA Forward program, launched in 2016, sent $2.8 billion back to member federations and regional confederations in its first six years, funding everything from the development of Papua New Guinea’s women’s squad to an air dome for winter training in Mongolia. But Infantino’s political choices may be costing him in Europe, where the sport is more established and national federations are less dependent on FIFA’s largesse. Infantino’s defenders say that European soccer officials, including Čeferin, have turned against him because they see his attempts to expand the World Cup and institute the Club World Cup as a threat to the primacy of their regional competitions. Many in international soccer see Montagliani as the most viable potential challenger, although a person close to him says he has no intention of seeking FIFA’s presidency in 2027 and instead plans to seek reelection that year to what would have to be his final term as CONCACAF’s president. But he fits the profile of someone best positioned to dethrone the incumbent, ironically by stitching together the type of trans-Atlantic alliance that lifted Infantino to his first victory. “Mexico is not happy. Canada is not happy, and that’s because they’re politically not happy with Trump,” said a senior national-federation official, granted anonymity to candidly discuss dynamics within CONCACAF. “There’s that direct tension.”

Europe’s security does not depend solely on our physical borders and their defense. It rests on something far less visible, and far more sensitive: the digital networks that keep our societies, economies and democracies functioning every second of the day. > Without resilient networks, the daily workings of Europe would grind to a > halt, and so too would any attempt to build meaningful defense readiness. A recent study by Copenhagen Economics confirms that telecom operators have become the first line of defense in Europe’s security architecture. Their networks power essential services ranging from emergency communications and cross-border healthcare to energy systems, financial markets, transport and, increasingly, Europe’s defense capabilities. Without resilient networks, the daily workings of Europe would grind to a halt, and so too would any attempt to build meaningful defense readiness. This reality forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: Europe cannot build credible defense capabilities on top of an economically strained, structurally fragmented telecom sector. Yet this is precisely the risk today. A threat landscape outpacing Europe’s defenses The challenges facing Europe are evolving faster than our political and regulatory systems can respond. In 2023 alone, ENISA recorded 188 major incidents, causing 1.7 billion lost user-hours, the equivalent of taking entire cities offline. While operators have strengthened their systems and outage times fell by more than half in 2024 compared with the previous year, despite a growing number of incidents, the direction of travel remains clear: cyberattacks are more sophisticated, supply chains more vulnerable and climate-related physical disruptions more frequent. Hybrid threats increasingly target civilian digital infrastructure as a way to weaken states. Telecom networks, once considered as technical utilities, have become a strategic asset essential to Europe’s stability. > Europe cannot deploy cross-border defense capabilities without resilient, > pan-European digital infrastructure. Nor can it guarantee NATO > interoperability with 27 national markets, divergent rules and dozens of > sub-scale operators unable to invest at continental scale. Our allies recognize this. NATO recently encouraged members to spend up to 1.5 percent of their GDP on protecting critical infrastructure. Secretary General Mark Rutte also urged investment in cyber defense, AI, and cloud technologies, highlighting the military benefits of cloud scalability and edge computing – all of which rely on high-quality, resilient networks. This is a clear political signal that telecom security is not merely an operational matter but a geopolitical priority. The link between telecoms and defense is deeper than many realize. As also explained in the recent Arel report, Much More than a Network, modern defense capabilities rely largely on civilian telecom networks. Strong fiber backbones, advanced 5G and future 6G systems, resilient cloud and edge computing, satellite connectivity, and data centers form the nervous system of military logistics, intelligence and surveillance. Europe cannot deploy cross-border defense capabilities without resilient, pan-European digital infrastructure. Nor can it guarantee NATO interoperability with 27 national markets, divergent rules and dozens of sub-scale operators unable to invest at continental scale. Fragmentation has become one of Europe’s greatest strategic vulnerabilities. The reform Europe needs: An investment boost for digital networks At the same time, Europe expects networks to become more resilient, more redundant, less dependent on foreign technology and more capable of supporting defense-grade applications. Security and resilience are not side tasks for telecom operators, they are baked into everything they do. From procurement and infrastructure design to daily operations, operators treat these efforts as core principles shaping how networks are built, run and protected. Therefore, as the Copenhagen Economics study shows, the level of protection Europe now requires will demand substantial additional capital. > It is unrealistic to expect world-class, defense-ready infrastructure to > emerge from a model that has become structurally unsustainable. This is the right ambition, but the economic model underpinning the sector does not match these expectations. Due to fragmentation and over-regulation, Europe’s telecom market invests less per capita than global peers, generates roughly half the return on capital of operators in the United States and faces rising costs linked to expanding security obligations. It is unrealistic to expect world-class, defense-ready infrastructure to emerge from a model that has become structurally unsustainable. A shift in policy priorities is therefore essential. Europe must place investment in security and resilience at the center of its political agenda. Policy must allow this reality to be reflected in merger assessments, reduce overlapping security rules and provide public support where the public interest exceeds commercial considerations. This is not state aid; it is strategic social responsibility. Completing the single market for telecommunications is central to this agenda. A fragmented market cannot produce the secure, interoperable, large-scale solutions required for modern defense. The Digital Networks Act must simplify and harmonize rules across the EU, supported by a streamlined governance that distinguishes between domestic matters and cross-border strategic issues. Spectrum policy must also move beyond national silos, allowing Europe to avoid conflicts with NATO over key bands and enabling coherent next-generation deployments. Telecom policy nowadays is also defense policy. When we measure investment gaps in digital network deployment, we still tend to measure simple access to 5G and fiber. However, we should start considering that — if security, resilience and defense-readiness are to be taken into account — the investment gap is much higher that the €200 billion already estimated by the European Commission. Europe’s strategic choice The momentum for stronger European defense is real — but momentum fades if it is not seized. If Europe fails to modernize and secure its telecom infrastructure now, it risks entering the next decade with a weakened industrial base, chronic underinvestment, dependence on non-EU technologies and networks unable to support advanced defense applications. In that scenario, Europe’s democratic resilience would erode in parallel with its economic competitiveness, leaving the continent more exposed to geopolitical pressure and technological dependency. > If Europe fails to modernize and secure its telecom infrastructure now, it > risks entering the next decade with a weakened industrial base, chronic > underinvestment, dependence on non-EU technologies and networks unable to > support advanced defense applications. Europe still has time to change course and put telecoms at the center of its agenda — not as a technical afterthought, but as a core pillar of its defense strategy. The time for incremental steps has passed. Europe must choose to build the network foundations of its security now or accept that its strategic ambitions will remain permanently out of reach. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT * The sponsor is Connect Europe AISBL * The ultimate controlling entity is Connect Europe AISBL * The political advertisement is linked to advocacy on EU digital, telecom and industrial policy, including initiatives such as the Digital Networks Act, Digital Omnibus, and connectivity, cybersecurity, and defence frameworks aimed at strengthening Europe’s digital competitiveness. More information here.

LOS ANGELES — The 2028 Olympic games is adding Team Trump to its roster. LA28, the organizing committee for the upcoming Summer Games and Paralympics in Los Angeles, posted new members of the board of directors to its website Thursday. The common thread among nearly all of the new additions is ties to President Donald Trump. The slate includes well-known political figures like Reince Priebus, the onetime Republican National Committee chair who served as Trump’s first chief of staff in his first term, and Kevin McCarthy, the former House Speaker and Trump ally who is also close with Los Angeles’ Democratic mayor, Karen Bass. Others with Trump connections are Wisconsin Trump mega-donor Diane Hendricks, Patrick Dumont, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and son-in-law of major Trump benefactor Miriam Adelson, and investment banker Ken Moelis, who was a banker for Trump in the 1990s. The influx of new additions means that access to Trump’s White House is now just one phone call away for the commission, an asset at a time when Trump has no hesitation threatening the Democratic-led cities hosting major events. Los Angeles has been a particular target of the president’s ire, including his extraordinary mobilization of the Marines this summer in response to protests against his immigration crackdown. Prior to Thursday’s new members, the board was dominated by former Olympians, Hollywood power players and sports and corporate executives, with little overt partisan branding. Elaine Chao, the former Transportation secretary during Trump’s first term who broke with the president after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, joined the board in January. With the Olympics, America’s 250th anniversary and the World Cup all taking place during Trump’s second term, international sports bodies appear to be moving in sync in their swing toward Trump. FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who has scored more Oval Office visits with Trump this year than any world leader, came to one of his meetings bearing a 24-carat gold trophy that Infantino allowed Trump to keep. FIFA went back to Tiffany & Co. to have a replica made for the team that actually won. Beyond sitting through awkward moments in the Oval Office as Trump threatens tournament co-host Mexico over cartels while taking questions from the press, Infantino has gone out of his way to create a new award, the FIFA Peace Prize, that is widely expected to be given to Trump at the World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center in early December. Casey Wasserman, the chairman of the 2028 LA Olympics organizing committee, has also been solicitous of Trump. He gifted the president medals from the 1984 games in Los Angeles during an August signing ceremony establishing a federal task force for the mega-event. Trump is chair of the task force, which is meant to ensure the games are “safe, seamless and historically successful.” Also joining the LA28 board is Los Angeles business consultant Denita Willoughby and philanthropist Maria Hummer-Tuttle, while Muffy Davis, a seven-time Paralympic medalist, is leaving the board. “We are thrilled to welcome this accomplished group to the LA28 Board who will help create an unforgettable Games for athletes and fans alike,” Wasserman said in a statement.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats suffered heavy losses in Tuesday’s nationwide local elections, losing key cities including Copenhagen for the first time since 1903. “We had expected losses, but the decline appears to be greater than we had expected,” Frederiksen told supporters at a party event in the Danish capital. “That is, of course, not satisfactory.” Although the Social Democrats remain Denmark’s most popular political group, securing around 23 percent of all votes, support for the party declined in 87 of the country’s 98 municipalities. The prime minister said she took “responsibility” for the electoral debacle, and said that she would “carefully consider what is behind it.” With Denmark required to hold general elections within the next year, the losses in Copenhagen and other Danish cities are likely to put pressure on Frederiksen to change course on some of her signature policies during the coming months. The liberal Venstre group now controlling the largest number of mayoralties in Denmark underscores the political disaster suffered by Frederiksen’s party, whose electoral base is supposed to be made up of urban voters. The high cost of housing dominated the campaign in Denmark’s largest municipalities, with voters exasperated by the national government’s response. In Copenhagen, where home prices have risen by 20 percent over the past year, just 12.7 percent of electors backed the prime minister’s party. After 122 years of Social Democrat rule in Copenhagen, the party’s candidate, Pernille Rosenkrantz–Theill, was not even invited to attend negotiations to form the capital’s next government. Sisse Marie Welling — whose Socialists made the largest gains in the election — will be Copenhagen’s new lord mayor, leading a “green and progressive majority.” Welling has tapped Line Barfod, whose Red-Green Alliance secured 1 out of every 5 votes cast in the capital, to be Copenhagen’s environment czar. That poses a major threat to the government’s controversial Lynetteholm artificial island project, which is meant to protect the city from flooding and create space for new housing. Barfod is a longtime opponent of the €2.7 billion scheme and she’s likely to make much of a new report showing the project is leaking cyanide into Copenhagen’s waters. Beyond the capital, the Social Democrats suffered dramatic reversals in traditional bastions like Frederikshavn, where support for the party fell by half. The far-right Danish Democrats performed well in rural municipalities in Jutland, and won more seats than the number of candidates they had running for office in places such as Lolland. While the prime minister — whose birthday is Wednesday — said that local factors had contributed to the defeat, she acknowledged that there were “also trends that transcend local conditions.” Beyond debates over classic urban issues like mobility policies and access to green spaces, the local elections were seen as a referendum on the rightward turn the Social Democrats have taken at the national level. Based on the results, voters in major cities appear to be souring on Frederiksen’s tough stance on migration and her willingness to ally with economic liberal parties.

COPENHAGEN — Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats are staring down a potential political earthquake in Tuesday’s nationwide local elections. Polls predict a drubbing in the very cities that once anchored the party’s power. But the biggest humiliation may come in Copenhagen, where the Social Democrats are poised to lose control of city hall for the first time in 122 years. The revolt is driven by a familiar urban grievance: The skyrocketing cost of housing. After decades of turning Copenhagen from a gritty port into one of Europe’s most livable — and expensive — capitals, the party is now paying for the prosperity it helped create. But housing isn’t the whole story. The election has also become a referendum on Frederiksen’s centrist makeover — a strategy that’s seen the party ally with economic liberal parties and take one of Europe’s toughest stances on migration. Those moves may have shored up support in small towns, but in Copenhagen, they’ve cost the party its soul. Frederiksen’s ability to remain in power since 2019 has been a success story for Europe’s beleaguered Party of European Socialists. But the crumbling of the Social Democrats’ dominance in Copenhagen is set to bolster those arguing the center-left needs to return to its working-class origins and focus on issues such as affordable housing and economic equity. A CITY TRANSFORMED, A VOTING BASE LOST The Social Democrats have been in power in Copenhagen for so long that when they first took control of the city in 1903, the current city hall building — a neo-renaissance palace “guarded” by stone bears and bronze dragons — was still under construction. During the 20th century, the Social Democrats represented the blue-collar workers of the bustling port city. But anticipating the decline of industrial activity in Copenhagen, in the late 1990s the party began to focus on turning the Danish capital into a polished magnet for global companies, urban professionals and international students. “The Social Democrats can take credit for transforming Copenhagen from a city without investments into a global model city with efficient infrastructure, strong educational institutions, green spaces, swimming in the harbor, an impressive gastronomic scene, and a high level of safety,” said sociologist and political analyst Carsten Mai. But that metamorphosis has come with soaring real estate prices that have pushed many working-class families out of the city entirely and strained those who remain. “The price of an average 80 square meter, owner-occupied apartment has increased by 20 percent over the past year and by 29 percent over the past four years,” said Lise Nytoft Bergmann, chief housing economist at Nordea Credit. “The sharp price increases have made it significantly harder for young people, singles, and low-income households to find housing in Copenhagen.” “The price of an average 80 square meter, owner-occupied apartment has increased by 20 percent over the past year and by 29 percent over the past four years,” said Lise Nytoft Bergmann, chief housing economist at Nordea Credit. | Michael Nguyen/NurPhoto via Getty Images Bent Winther, political commentator at the media company Berlingske, pointed out the housing crisis had been particularly detrimental for the Social Democrats’ voting base in the capital. “The overall number of unionized, blue-collar and public sector workers who have historically voted for the party has declined over the last decades,” he said. “Those that are left — people who work in hospitals, kindergartens, etc — can’t really afford to live here anymore.” LEADERSHIP BLUNDERS The Social Democrats’ hold on Copenhagen has been weakening for years, partly as a result of problems with its leaders at the local level. In 2020, Mayor Frank Jensen resigned after sexual harassment allegations came to light, and his successor, Sophie Hæstorp Andersen, was moved to a ministerial position in a 2023 maneuver widely believed to have been motivated by the party’s lack of confidence in her chances for reelection. Seasoned national politician Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil was brought in to revive the Social Democrats’ fortunes in the capital, but her stint as lead candidate has inadvertently accentuated the party’s disconnection with the electorate. As Denmark’s minister for housing between 2022 and 2024, the Social Democrats’ candidate has struggled to disassociate herself from her own failure to address the escalating housing crisis. After calling for the construction of more affordable housing in Copenhagen during an electoral debate, Line Barfod, head of the far-left Red-Green Alliance, accused Rosenkrantz-Theil of ignoring the issue during her time in the national government and rushing to address it “in the final sprint of the campaign.” The candidate also angered green-minded voters who had previously backed the Social Democrats by reversing the party’s support for measures to limit car access to the city, and abruptly promising to reintroduce parking spots to make life easier for drivers. Elisabet Svane, political analyst for Danish newspaper Politiken, said that Rosenkrantz-Theil’s campaign had ambitiously incorporated policy changes calculated to make the Social Democrats stand apart from far-left parties that are able to take more hardline positions on green topics like parking. “She took ownership of what was a traditionally conservative position, and argued that it’s a Social Democrat value to have the right to a car, to drive around,” Svane said. But the strategy doesn’t appear to have paid off. Polls project that the left-wing groups pushing green policies and affordability issues will outperform the Social Democrats on Tuesday. Barfod’s Red-Green Alliance is expected to secure nearly one in four votes, while the Socialist People’s Party is projected to double its support to 22 percent. Denmark’s Social Democrats, Prime Minister Frederiksen, and Rosenkrantz-Theil did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment. FREDERIKSEN’S CENTRISM MEETS LEFT-LEANING CAPITAL Beyond local missteps, the Social Democrats’ decline in Copenhagen is tied to urban voters’ broader dissatisfaction with the measures adopted by Frederiksen’s right-leaning coalition government. While Frederiksen’s hawkish defense policies and support for Ukraine have proved broadly popular, her hardline stance on immigration has been far more controversial. The policies have played well in rural Denmark, but are alienating voters in the urban areas that have traditionally been the Social Democrats’ base — among them, Copenhagen, where non-natives make up 20 percent of the electorate. “Everybody agrees we have to have an orderly policy on migration and fight Islamism, but what’s at issue is the government’s tone,” said Svane, who relayed the complaints of Social Democratic mayors in surrounding communities who said the party’s harsh rhetoric against foreigners was undermining its position at the local level. Beyond the migration issue, political analyst Mai said the party was increasingly out of step with Denmark’s ever-more progressive urban electorate. “Many of them are focused on value-based issues such as social justice and the war in Gaza,” he said. “The Social Democrats have failed to adjust their policies to align with these voters.” A WARNING FOR EUROPE’S CENTER-LEFT Denmark and Spain are the only two major EU countries still governed by members of the Party of European Socialists, and the approaches taken by their leaders are frequently contrasted. While Frederiksen has embraced centrism, bolstered defense spending, and cracked down on migration, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has taken the opposite tack, forging a “progressive coalition” with left-wing parties, prioritizing social spending over military budgets, and adopting a more welcoming posture toward migrants. Political commentator Winther said Frederiksen’s approach had been successful in clamping down on the far-right in Denmark, “because she sucked the oxygen out of their argument by taking such a hard line on the key issue of migration.” But, he added, the party’s rightward drift under her leadership had “created confusion about what it actually stands for.” That’s a challenge in a city like Copenhagen, which is “now composed of a lot of young people attracted by our big universities, and some quite rich people who can afford to both stay in the city and have more left-wing values.” Denmark must hold a general election within the next year, and losses in Copenhagen and other Danish cities could put pressure on Frederiksen to change course. The dominant narrative in Europe is that far-right forces are steadily advancing by campaigning on cost-of-living issues that establishment parties appear to be incapable of addressing. But Tuesday’s election in Copenhagen is notable because the likely winners are unabashedly left-wing forces that have embraced topics such as the housing crisis. The development mirrors Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani’s recent, headline-grabbing victory in New York City, which was keenly watched by Europe’s leftists. Nicoline Kristine Ryde, a 27-year-old actress who lives in Copenhagen, summed up the mood by saying the Social Democrats simply aren’t “cool” anymore. “I respect how Frederiksen handled the corona crisis, and the Social Democrats are still good on stuff like elder care, but for the rest, it just feels like they moved away from the social politics that have made this country great,” she said. “They just don’t feel like a socialist party anymore.”

The Trump administration is creating a new system intended to help expedite visas for fans traveling to the United States for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, an unprecedented move aimed at managing an expected influx of millions attending the tournament. The new system, which President Donald Trump announced on Monday during an event at the White House, will give World Cup ticket holders priority access to U.S. visa interviews beginning in early 2026. “I’ve directed my administration to do everything within their power to make the 2026 World Cup an unprecedented success,” Trump said from the Oval Office, where he was flanked by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and White House World Cup Task Force director Andrew Giuliani. Under the “FIFA Priority Appointment Scheduling System” — or FIFA PASS — program, people who purchase tickets directly through FIFA will be able to schedule expedited interviews at U.S. consulates around the world. However, Rubio emphasized that holding a ticket does not guarantee visa approval. “It guarantees you an expedited appointment. You’ll still go through the same vetting process as anyone else. The only difference here is that we’re moving you up in line,” Rubio said. Rubio said the State Department has deployed more than 400 additional consular officers worldwide to meet demand, in some countries doubling the size of existing embassy staff. He cited Brazil and Argentina, both soccer powerhouses, where visa appointment wait times have dropped from over a year to less than two months. “In about 80 percent of the world now, you can get an appointment in under 60 days,” Rubio said. According to FIFA’s press release, FIFA PASS is part of a larger collaboration between the organization and the White House’s World Cup Task Force, on which Infantino’s senior adviser Carlos Cordeiro also serves. The administration is dedicating significant resources to ensuring the tournament’s success, and has been intensely focused on security for fans attending matches in the United States, which will host 78 of the tournament’s 104 games. Eleven American cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Miami, will welcome visitors alongside venues in Mexico and Canada. Infantino said between six and seven million tickets are expected to be sold for the expanded, 48-team tournament. “America welcomes the world,” Infantino said. “We have always said that this will be the greatest and most inclusive FIFA World Cup in history — and the FIFA PASS service is a very concrete example of that.”

BELÉM, Brazil — Gavin Newsom can’t get out of a meeting or a talk at the international climate talks here without being swarmed by reporters and diplomats eager for a quote, a handshake, a photo. On a tour Tuesday of a cultural center with Gov. Helder Barbalho, the leader of the Brazilian state hosting the talks, a passerby recognized them both. “There’s the governor,” he exclaimed. “And there’s the California governor.” Later in the day, as Newsom rode up an escalator packed with reporters and international officials on his way to deliver a speech, a bystander shouted: “The escalator’s not broken for you!” — a dig at President Donald Trump, who once had an escalator malfunction on him at the United Nations. Newsom grinned wide: “Oh, I like that.” The adulation was gold for a governor with presidential aspirations as he steps into a power vacuum. The Trump administration is trying to dismantle climate policies both at home and abroad, and other likely Democratic presidential contenders are absent from the United Nations climate talks. Seeing a chance to plant his green flag on an international stage, Newsom is embracing the role of climate champion as his own party backs away at home and the politics of the issue shift rightward. It’s a role fitting Newsom’s instincts: anti-Trump, pro-environment and pro-technology, and with a political antenna for the upside of picking fights, finding opportunity in defiance. “We’re at peak influence because of the flatness of the surrounding terrain with the Trump administration and all the anxiety,” he told POLITICO from the sidelines of a green investor conference in Brazil on Monday. Newsom’s profile has never been higher. Just days before traveling to Brazil, he celebrated a decisive win in his redistricting campaign to boost Democrats in the midterms. He is polling at or near the top of presidential primary shortlists, and is amassing an army of small-dollar donors across the states. The governor couldn’t walk down the hallway at the conference without getting swarmed, undeniably the star of the talks on their second formal day. At one point, security officials had to physically shove away one man repeatedly. Conference attendees yelled out “Keep up the social media!” and “Go Gavin!” (and the occasional “Who is that?”). The first question by the Brazilian press: Are you running for president? And from business people: Are you coming back? Yet in touching down here — and in emphasizing his climate advocacy more broadly — Newsom is assuming a significant risk to his post-gubernatorial ambitions. The rest of the world may wish America were more like California, but the country itself — even Democrats who will decide the 2028 primary — are far more skeptical. What looks like courage abroad can read as out-of-touch back home, in a country where voters, including Democrats, routinely rank any number of issues, including the economy, health care, and cost-of-living, as more pressing than global warming. THE STAGE IS SET Other blue states were already backing away from Newsom’s gas-powered vehicle phase-out even before Congress and Trump ended it this summer, and another possible Democratic contender for president, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, may pull his state out of a regional emissions trading market as part of a budget deal, a move seen as tempering attacks from the right on climate. Even in California, where a new Carnegie Endowment for International Peace poll finds that Californians increasingly want their state government to play a bigger role on the international stage, trade trumped climate change as voters’ top priority for international talks for the first time this year. “There’s not a poll or a pundit that suggests that Democrats should be talking about this,” Newsom acknowledged in an interview. “I’m not naive to that either, but I think it’s the way we talk about it that’s the bigger issue, and I think all of us, including myself, need to improve on that and that’s what I aim to do.” In his 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden prevailed not after embracing — but rather, distancing himself from — the “Green New Deal,” which Newsom acknowledged this month had become a “pejorative” on the right. Four years later, Trump pilloried Kamala Harris in the general election for her past positions on climate change. Newsom is already facing relentless attacks from the right on energy: two years ago, in what was seen at the time as a shadow presidential debate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was skewering Newsom for his phase-out of gas-powered vehicles: “He is walking his people into a big-time disaster,” DeSantis said. And that was before Republicans began combing Newsom’s social media posts for material to weaponize in future ads. Even Newsom’s predecessor, former Gov. Jerry Brown, who made climate change his signature issue, acknowledged “climate is not the big issue in South Carolina or in Maine or in Iowa.” “Climate is important,” Brown said in an interview. “But it’s not like immigration, it’s not like homelessness, it’s not like taxes, it’s not like inflation, not like the price of a house.” Still, Brown cast climate as an existential issue. “It’s way beyond presidential politics. It is about our survival and your well being for the rest of your life,” he said. “I think he’s doing it because he thinks it’s profoundly important, and certainly politics is not divorced entirely from reality.” Newsom’s inner circle senses a political upside, too. His first-ever visit to the climate talks comes not just from his own or California’s ambitions, but from the vacuum left by Trump. “The more that Trump recedes, like a tide going out, the more coral is exposed. And that’s where Newsom can really flourish,” said Jason Elliott, a former deputy chief of staff and an adviser since Newsom’s early days in elected office. Newsom is “going against the grain,” he continued. “It’s easier to be some of these purple or red state governors in other places in the United States that just wash their hands of EVs the minute that the going gets tough. But that’s just not Newsom.” On climate, Newsom’s attempts to stand alone sit well within the California tradition. Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger — the Democrat and the Republican who preceded him — both made international climate diplomacy central to their legacies. “We have been at this for decades and decades, through Republican and Democratic administrations,” Newsom said. “That’s an important message at this time as well, because we’re so unreliable as a nation, and we’re destroying alliances and relationships.” Also in Brazil for part of the talks were Govs. Tony Evers of Wisconsin and Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, both Democrats, and mayors of several major U.S. cities, like Kate Gallego of Phoenix. But their pitch didn’t land with quite the same heft as California’s, a state filled with billion-dollar tech companies that, as Newsom frequently boasts, recently overtook Japan as the world’s fourth-largest economy. He attributed his environmental streak to his family, citing his father, William Newsom, a judge and longtime conservationist. As mayor of San Francisco, Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation composting mandate and plastic bag ban. As lieutenant governor to Brown, Newsom called himself “a solution in search of a problem” because Brown had embraced climate so prominently. But Brown said Newsom has made the issue his own. “I think Newsom comes to this naturally,” he said. Newsom pulls from a wide range of influences; prolific texting buddies include former Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who ran for president largely on a climate platform, and former Secretary of State John Kerry. He frequently cites the example of President Ronald Reagan, the Republican — and former California governor — who embraced an environmental agenda. “I talk to everybody,” Newsom said. He spoke in almost spiritual terms about his upcoming trip deeper into the Amazon, where he’s scheduled to meet with community stewards and walk through the forest. “When we were all opening up those first books, learning geography, one of the first places we all learn about is the Amazon,” he said. “It’s so iconic, so evocative, so it informs so much of what inspires us as children to care about the Earth and Mother Nature. It connects us to our creator.” THE MID-TRANSITION HURT As governor, Newsom hasn’t had the luxury his predecessors enjoyed of setting ambitious emissions targets, but instead is working in a period beset by natural disasters and tensions with both the left and moderate wings of his party. His aides have dubbed it the remarkably un-sexy “mid-transition”: The deadlines to show results are here, they’re out of reach — and in the interim, voters are mad about energy prices. As a result, he’s pushed to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 and directed billions toward wildfire prevention and clean-energy manufacturing — but also reversed past positions against nuclear and Big Oil, including extending the life of California’s last nuclear power plant, pausing a profit cap on refineries and expanding oil drilling in Kern County. Inside the administration, those moves are seen as not a tempering of environmental ambition but a pragmatic recalibration. “We’re transitioning to the other side, and there’s a lot of white water in that. And that’s reality. You’ve got to deal with cards that are dealt,” Newsom said in an interview in São Paulo. But it also exposes him to criticism from both the left and moderate wings of his own party. Newsom’s 2023 speech excoriating oil companies to the United Nations in New York City was one of his proudest moments of his career. This year, he faced banners attacking him: “If you can’t take on Big Oil, can you take on Trump?” At the same time, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, has seized on high gas prices in his campaign to succeed Newsom as governor in 2026 — and is partly blaming past governors’ climate policies. Adding to the crunch are the record-setting wildfires that have beset Newsom’s tenure as governor. They’ve not only devastated communities from Paradise in Northern California to Altadena in Los Angeles County but buoyed both electricity prices as utilities spend billions on fire-proofing their grid and property insurance prices as insurers flee the state. It’s this duality that informs Newsom’s approach. “We’ve got to address costs or we’ll lose the debate,” Newsom said. “This is the hard part.” A business moderate known to hand out personal phones programmed with his number to tech CEOs, Newsom is now pitching his climate fight as one focused on economic competitiveness and jobs. Lauren Sanchez, the chair of the state’s powerful air and climate agency, the California Air Resources Board, called the state’s international leadership the governor’s “north star” on climate change. “He is in the business of ensuring that California is relevant in the future economy,” she said. In Brazil, Newsom made the time to stop by a global investors summit in São Paulo, where he held an hour-long roundtable with green bankers, philanthropists and energy execs. They told him they wanted his climate pacts with Brazilian governments to do more on economic ties. So, Newsom said, he started drafting a new agreement there and then, throwing a paper napkin on the table in reference to the cocktail napkin deal that formed Southwest. “Let’s get this done before I leave,” Newsom said he told his Brazilian counterparts. “We move quickly.” If the moment reflected California’s swagger, it also laid bare its limitations. The Constitution limits states from contributing money to international funds, like the tropical rainforest preservation fund that is the Brazilians’ signature proposal at the talks. And even at home, Trump is still making Newsom’s balancing act hard: Newsom floated backfilling the Trump administration’s removal of electric vehicle incentives with state rebates, then backtracked, conceding the state doesn’t have enough funds. And on Tuesday, reports came out that the Trump administration was planning to offer offshore oil and gas leases for the first time in decades off the coast of California — putting Newsom on the defensive. Newsom called those plans “dead on arrival.” “I also think it remarkable that he didn’t promote it in his backyard at Mar-a-Lago; he didn’t promote it off the coast of Florida,” Newsom added.

The spirit of mutirão — communities joining forces to get something done — runs deep in Brazil’s culture. Here at COP30 it is inescapable. The phrase is on the lips of negotiators from nearly 200 countries and it has become the defining ethos of this conference: global climate cooperation built on shared effort and mutual accountability.  National governments and cities, campaigners and businesses must now come together in that same spirit to move from the age of negotiation to the decade of delivery. Here in Belém it is impossible to forget why this matters. Every country has its story of floods, heatwaves, wildfires or supercharged storms that strike hardest in the places least able to cope. At both the Brazilian Ministry of Cities and C40 Cities we see every day that adapting to current challenges and turning the tide on the climate crisis are not separate challenges but part of one mission: to protect the people and places we love now and for generations to come. We are becoming a planet of urbanites, even here in the Amazon rainforest there are nearly 22 million people living in cities like Belém, so it’s crucial to combine preservation with sustainable and inclusive development for those communities. Across Brazil and around the world, cities are already facing up to this challenge. They are greening streets, serving sustainable and nutritious lunches to school children, keeping the most vulnerable safe from heat and floods, designing urban areas that meet the needs of people — not cars — and creating good green jobs for all.  > Every country has its story of floods, heatwaves, wildfires or supercharged > storms that strike hardest in the places least able to cope. Last week we both joined mayors, governors and regional leaders representing more than 14,000 cities, towns, states and provinces at the Bloomberg COP30 Local Leaders Forum in Rio de Janeiro. It was the largest and most diverse gathering of subnational climate leaders in history, and it sent an unmistakable message to national governments: local leadership is already delivering and it is ready to go further.  Via C40/Caroline Teo – GLA Following this historic moment and boosted by the COP30 presidency’s willingness to put urban climate action to the fore, cities came to COP30 with three clear offers: 1. Partner with us to implement national climate plans and turn strategies into results that improve lives. 2. Invest in the local project pipeline. More than 2,500 projects seek support and thousands more can follow if the political will is forthcoming. 3. Make COP a place of action and accountability where progress is measured not in pledges but in cleaner air, reduced health risks and green jobs created.  If countries accept these offers the COP process itself can evolve from negotiation to delivery, from promises to proof that the Paris Agreement goals can be not just agreed but also delivered.  This is not just a theory. It is already happening here. Under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s leadership Brazil has embedded ‘climate federalism’ into national policy, linking the federal government, states and municipalities in coordinated delivery for the good of all Brazilians and the planet.   Research shows that, in countries that are part of the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships for Climate Action (CHAMP), collaboration between national and subnational governments could close 37 percent of the global emissions gap needed to stay on a Paris-aligned pathway. Launched at COP28, CHAMP already includes 77 nations and continues to grow. Brazil is showing what this looks like in practice and is inspiring more countries to take action.  Via 10 Billion Solutions, Mariana Castaño Cano On the city side of the equation the evidence is unequivocal. Per-capita emissions in C40 Cities are falling five times faster than the global average and more than 70 percent of C40 cities have already peaked emissions and are now delivering significant emissions reductions. Many C40 cities are also committing to a Yearly Offer of Action, demonstrating how to translate global ambition into measurable progress by announcing every year what they will do in the next 12 months to accelerate climate action.  To unlock that progress the financial system must evolve too. The world’s development and climate finance architecture was designed for national ministries not city halls. Yet cities control or influence most of the decisions that shape emissions from transport, waste, buildings and land use. This means they can enhance and accelerate the implementation of National Climate Plans. Much more could be achieved if urban climate finance is increased and local governments have direct access to the capital they need. The Baku to Belém Roadmap is calling for $1.3 trillion of annual climate investment to support developing countries. This could help scale-up finance and make it more reliable and accessible while prioritizing a just and resilient transition. Cities have the projects, partners and are the closest level of government to people’s daily needs — enhanced collaboration, preparation and direct access to finance can help bring their ambitious visions to life.     > To unlock that progress the financial system must evolve too. The world’s > development and climate finance architecture was designed for national > ministries not city halls. We have both witnessed here in Brazil how quickly change accelerates when local and national leaders come together. When buses run on clean power, when families in flood-prone neighborhoods move into resilient homes, when air is cleaner and streets are safer, climate policy stops being abstract. It becomes tangible progress that citizens can see and support.  If COP30 becomes the moment the world embraces climate federalism and genuine national and sub-national collaboration, then Brazil will have set a new global standard for collective climate delivery and a real just transition.  The decade of delivery begins here in Belém. Let us build it together, in mutirão.