Mr. Trump’s additional 25% tariffs on India went into effect Wednesday, bringing the total levy on U.S.-bound Indian goods to a whopping 50% as punishment for New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil during the years since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The development could mark an inflection point in Mr. Trump’s reliance on tariffs as a strategic instrument to influence global great power dynamics in ways that suit his wider national security goals — most notably achieving leverage over Mr. Putin in ongoing talks over the Ukraine war. Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy, is slated to meet Ukrainian officials in New York later this week and says his team has been holding back-channel talks with “the Russians every day.”

It remains to be seen whether Mr. Putin will submit to Mr. Trump’s call for a direct meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. With regard to India, meanwhile, the U.S. bought far more from the Indo-Pacific nation than it sold to the country in 2024, resulting in a trade deficit of $45.8 billion. India, the world’s largest democracy by population and a partner of Washington, seemed poised for a trade deal with Mr. Trump earlier this year, but one never materialized.

Denmark’s foreign minister has summoned the chief U.S. diplomat in Copenhagen over reports that several American citizens with ties to Mr. Trump have been conducting influence operations in Greenland.

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen made headlines by highlighting the allegation. “We live in transparent democracies,” he said. “If someone thinks that they can influence it with methods where they try to induce fifth column activities or that kind of activity, then it is contrary to the way in which states cooperate with each other, and this must of course be denounced.”

Danish public broadcaster DR reported Wednesday what it called an American covert operation aimed at infiltrating and influencing Greenland society to promote secession from Denmark. Since the U.S. currently has no ambassador in Copenhagen, Mr. Rasmussen summoned charge d’affaires Mark Stroh, who has been in Denmark since June. The State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen have not responded to a request by Threat Status for comment.

More than a dozen senior generals and admirals have been fired since Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January, including the first women to lead the Navy and the Coast Guard and the second Black man to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The administration has offered few explanations. Pentagon Correspondent Mike Glenn offers a deep dive as speculation, informed and otherwise, runs the gamut from a straightforward downsizing of bloated leadership ranks to a more politically motivated purge of leaders seen as not sufficiently loyal to the White House or as diversity hires promoted under previous administrations.

The most recent high-level sacking involved Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency who was fired Friday, weeks after a classified DIA assessment of the U.S. strikes on Iran got leaked. The assessment contradicted Mr. Trump’s contention that the bombing demolished Tehran’s nuclear program.

The truth about Israel’s strike this week on Nasser Hospital in Gaza is that “the place is a known terrorist operations center,” according to Anath Hartmann, the deputy commentary editor of The Washington Times.

“Are the deaths of these people at Nasser Hospital sad? Certainly,” Ms. Hartmann writes in a column. “Yet unlike Hamas, which has every intention of killing Israelis and Jews wherever and whenever it can, Israel didn’t intend to kill them, and it wouldn’t have targeted the hospital in the first place if terrorists hadn’t been using it to advance the ‘global jihad’ against the Jewish state.

“In fact, Israel’s armed forces could probably be much further along in their quest to stamp out Hamas if they weren’t so totally committed to avoiding civilian injury and death at every turn,” she writes. “That’s remarkable, especially considering that the vast majority of the people they are trying to keep from killing voted for Hamas to ‘govern’ them and agree with the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a “blatant crime of aggression under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and Vladimir Putin is a war criminal and murderer,” Sen. Roger Marshall, Kansas Republican, writes in an op-ed for The Times. 

“Despite this grim reality, my long-standing goals for Ukraine remain clear: to stop the killing and reunite those stolen children with their families,” the senator writes. 

“President Trump’s efforts to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war through direct engagement, pragmatic compromises and deadlines offer a realistic path forward,” he writes. “We all hoped for a 24-hour miracle, but now we must adapt yet again. By leveraging America’s influence without endless blank-check spending on foreign arms or aid, Mr. Trump has prioritized ending the war over ideological posturing.”

• Aug. 27 — Advancing America’s Quantum Leadership with Next-Generation Sensors, Center for a New American Security

• Aug. 28 — AI Safety Governance in Southeast Asia, Brookings Institution

• Sept. 2 — Strategic Vision or Strategic Challenge: China’s Leadership in a Multipolar World, Chatham House

• Sept. 2 — Envisioning the Threat to Taiwan: A Cross-strait and Beyond Seminar, Atlantic Council

• Sept. 4 — The Digital Front Line: Building a Cyber-Resilient Taiwan, Hudson Institute

• Sept. 9 — From Monroe to The Golden Age: Charting America’s Path in Latin America, Alexander Hamilton Society