United States

It is becoming increasingly clear that the only thing standing between Trump and unfettered power is the American judicial system.

His spineless acolytes in the Republican Party control both houses of Congress and the geriatric Democratic Party appears to be sinking under a sea of Executive Orders.

The courts, however, have acted. So far they have ordered the administration to lift its funding freeze on USAID and the salaries of thousands of federal employees.

The question now is: What will Trump do? Legally, he should abide by the court’s ruling and—if he is determined to get his way—appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, where, he hopes, the 6-3 conservative majority will rule in his favour.

But that is not Trump’s way, and Supreme Court support is not a given.

The signs are that Trump will simply ignore the court rulings and either carry on and appeal or—even more likely—carry on and not bother to appeal. If he takes either approach Donald Trump will have created a major constitutional crisis.

The power of the judicial system relies on the two other branches of government respecting and accepting the court’s  judgements. It is called checks and balances and THE RULE OF LAW.

There is nothing in the US constitution which gives enforcement powers to the judiciary—except the legal principle of contempt of court.  If Donald Trump ignores court rulings then he can be held in contempt and detained or fined until such time as he “purges the contempt.”

This is not a criminal law. It is not a civil law. It is the only weapon that the courts have to enforce their judgements. It was used against Trump in 2022 when he was fined $10,000 a day for failing to provide subpoenaed documents in his fraud trial.

The same law could also be applied to Elon Musk and his DOGE team.

A person cannot be pardoned for contempt of court. The Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity does not apply to contempt of court. So, where is the brave judge willing to take on Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the MAGA  crowd?

Germany

As Germany’s federal election approaches the two front runners—the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Alternativ fur Deutschland (AfD) are battling for the young men’s vote.

Increasingly it is the 18-30-year-old men who are playing the kingmaker’s role in Western democracies. And they are swinging further and further to the right.

In the 2024 British general election, young men played a vital role in winning five parliamentary seats for Reform. 12.9 percent of men aged 18 to 30 voted Reform compared to just 5.9 percent of the women.

In the States it was disgruntled young men who dunnit for Trump. Sixty percent of the young male vote opted for Donald Trump, according to an Associated Press survey. Trump attracted only 20 percent of the women in the same age group.

Trump was especially popular with poorly educated young white men, but he also won half of the young male Latino vote and a third of the African-American young men.

In Germany the young male vote played a major role in the AfD winning 16 percent of the vote in the European elections and 31 percent of the vote in elections in Saxony and Brandenburg.

Why? The reasons are many, varied and overlapping, but at the top of the list is the fear that wokeism—both gender and ethnically-based—is marginalising men in today’s world.

Other factors are globalism and the decline in manufacturing which was the traditional main employer of poorly educated young men. Add to that a housing crisis which has raised prices to the unaffordable level across the Western world and a fear of cultural erosion through immigration.

Finally—in Germany– the passage of time means that that country’s Nazi past is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the current generation.

Mainstream parties are perceived as having done more to exacerbate the problems for young men with their support for diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programmes than to listen to their problems. The gap has opened. The populist far right is filling it.

Austria

Austrian coalition talks have collapsed. It is now likely that a fresh election will be called and, if it is, Western Europe could see the creation of its first far-right government.

It was inevitable that the coalition talks between the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) of Herbert Kickl and the centre-right Conservative People’s Party (OVP) of Karl Nehammer would end in tears.

For a start, the two party leaders hate each other. Then there is the fact that Kickl wanted the talks to fail. Failure meant another round of elections and opinion polls show that the FPO is expected to increase its share of the vote.

In weeks of talks, Kickl showed up for only seven hours. And in those few hours made demands that he knew were completely unacceptable. He began by demanding the FPO control of the finance and interior ministries as well as the chancellorship for himself.

Then he insisted that Austria lift sanctions against Russia and start deporting asylum seekers. The real crunch, however, was his demand that if the European court, commission or parliament ever ruled against the Austrian government, the ruling would be ignored.

The OVP’s red lines, meanwhile, were “the absence of Russian influence” and the insistence that Austria remain a “reliable partner to the European Union.”

President Alexander Van der Bellen does not want Kickl and the FPO. He tried to persuade the OVP, social democrats and liberals to form an anti-Kickl government but that failed. It looks like he has no alternative to calling fresh elections with Kickl and the FPO in pole position.

Turkey

Turkey has joined the elite—and increasingly overcrowded – club of 21st century space racers. Last month it sent its first astronaut to the International Space Station and this week the minister for industry and technology announced that Turkey plans to send a rocket to the moon within ten years.

Turkey is not alone in its lunar ambitions. India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Europe, Russia and, of course, China and America have all unveiled plans to fly to the moon and beyond.

So far five countries have landed on the moon: India, Japan, Russia, China and the United States. America is the only country to put a man on the moon.

Israel’s space programme is run by a private company and uses Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets to carry their satellites and lunar modules. Its first attempt at an unmanned moon landing—in 2017—ended in failure but they plan to try again in 2027.

India has had two successful unmanned moon landings—in 2019 and 2023 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi says India wants to land a man on the moon by 2040.

Last month Japan enjoyed a major success by landing a rover vehicle on the moon within a 100 metre target area. It is collaborating with the US on a moon orbiting station which will serve as a launch pad for missions to Mars.

The European Space Agency is collaborating with NASA to construct a lunar cargo vessel which will be used to ferry cargo, scientific equipment and minerals between Earth and the moon. The ESA has plans to start mining the moon’s minerals as early as next year.  It is also contributing to the Gateway space station which is the name of the staging post to Mars.

Russia and China have a joint programme to build an international lunar research station by 2035. China wants is planning their first manned trip to the moon in 2030. Russia has suffered several recent setbacks and the Ukraine War is hitting space programme budgets. However, Moscow, is now saying that 2035 is likely to be the year that the first Russian Cosmonaut stands on the moon’s surface.

The next person to step onto the surface of the moon is expected to be an American woman. She may be on the moon as early as next year. NASA wants to set up a manned base on the moon—The Artemis Project—by 2030.

But the most ambitious space explorer is billionaire Elon Musk. So far he has tried and failed to reach the moon. But his real space target is the red planet. Musk says he will fly to Mars by 2030 and envisions that by 2054 he will have established a self-sustaining Martian city of 1 million earthlings.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain".