Follow reactions to President Trump’s Gaza proposal.

President Trump declared on Tuesday that the United States should seize control of Gaza and permanently displace the entire Palestinian population of the devastated seaside enclave, one of the most brazen ideas that any American leader has advanced in years.

Hosting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House, Mr. Trump said that all two million Palestinians from Gaza should be moved to countries like Egypt and Jordan because of the devastation wrought by Israel’s campaign against Hamas after the terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2023.

“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference Tuesday evening. “We’ll own it and be responsible” for disposing of unexploded munitions and rebuilding Gaza into a mecca for jobs and tourism. Sounding like the real estate developer he once was, Mr. Trump vowed to turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

While the president framed the matter as a humanitarian imperative and an economic development opportunity, he effectively reopened a geopolitical Pandora’s box with far-reaching implications for the Middle East. Control over Gaza has been one of the major flash points of the Arab-Israeli conflict for decades, and the idea of relocating its Palestinian residents recalls an era when great Western powers redrew the maps of the region and moved around populations without regard to local autonomy.

The notion of the United States taking over territory in the Middle East would be a dramatic reversal for Mr. Trump, who first ran for office in 2016 vowing to extract America from the region after the Iraq war and decried the nation-building of his predecessors. In unveiling the plan, Mr. Trump did not cite any legal authority giving him the right to take over the territory, nor did he address the fact that forcible removal of a population violates international law and decades of American foreign policy consensus in both parties.

He made the proposal even as the United States was seeking to secure the Israel-Hamas cease-fire’s second phase, which is designed to free the remaining hostages in Gaza and bring a permanent end to the fighting. Negotiators had described their task as exceptionally difficult even before Mr. Trump announced his idea of ousting Palestinians from their homes.

Hamas, which has ruled in Gaza for most of the past two decades and is re-establishing control there now, immediately rejected mass relocation on Tuesday, and Egypt and Jordan have rejected the idea of taking in a large influx of Palestinians, given the fraught history, burden and destabilizing potential.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, said that Mr. Trump’s proposed relocation was “a recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region.”

“Our people in Gaza will not allow for these plans to come to pass,” he said in a statement distributed by Hamas. “What is needed is the end of the occupation and the aggression against our people, not expelling them from their land.”

Mr. Trump waved aside the opposition from Arab countries like Egypt and Jordan, suggesting that his powers of persuasion would convince them.

“They say they’re not going to accept,” Mr. Trump said during an earlier meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in the Oval Office. “I say they will.”

Mr. Netanyahu, sitting at Mr. Trump’s side, smiled with satisfaction as the president first outlined his ideas. Later, during the joint news conference, the Israeli prime minister heaped praise on Mr. Trump.

“You cut to the chase,” Mr. Netanyahu told Mr. Trump. “You see things others refuse to see. You say things others refuse to say, and after the jaws dropped, people scratch their heads and they say, ‘you know, he’s right.’”

“This is the kind of thinking that will reshape the Middle East and bring peace,” he added.

In his remarks, Mr. Trump insisted that Palestinians would quickly warm to his idea.

“I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” Mr. Trump said. “I heard that Gaza has been very unlucky for them. They live like hell. They live like they’re living in hell. Gaza is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative.”

He suggested that nations in the region could finance the resettlement of Gazans to new places — perhaps “a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land” — that would provide better living conditions, either as a single territory or as many as a dozen. “It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn’t want to return,” he said without offering details of what that would entail.

Asked how many Palestinians he had in mind, he said, “all of them,” adding, “I would think that they would be thrilled.” Pressed repeatedly on whether he would force them to go even if they did not want to, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t think they’re going to tell me no.”

Gaza has a long and tortured history of conflict and crisis. Many Gazans are descendants of Palestinians who were forced out of their homes during the 1948 war after Israel’s independence, an event known around the Arab world as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Now Mr. Trump is suggesting that they be displaced again, even though the Geneva Conventions — international agreements that the United States and Israel both ratified — bar forcible relocation of populations.

Egypt captured Gaza during the 1948 war and controlled it until Israel seized it, along with other Palestinian territory, in a 1967 war against a coalition of Arab nations seeking to destroy the Jewish state. Palestinians in Gaza waged violent resistance for years afterward, and Israel eventually withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

But within two years, Hamas, an avowed enemy of Israel that the United States and other nations have designated a terrorist group, took control of the enclave and used it as a base for war against Israel.

For years, Israel blockaded Gaza while Hamas fired rockets and staged terrorist attacks, culminating in the October 2023 operation that killed 1,200 people and led to the capture of 250 more. Israel retaliated with an unrelenting military operation that killed more than 47,000 people, according to Gazan health officials, whose count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

In the weeks since a cease-fire that President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration negotiated and that Mr. Trump pushed came into effect, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were repeatedly displaced throughout the war have returned to their homes in Gaza to find them and their communities demolished. Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, visited Gaza last week and said it would take 10 to 15 years to reconstruct.

“If you had damage that was one-hundredth of what I saw in Gaza, nobody would be allowed to go back to their homes,” Mr. Witkoff told reporters on Tuesday. “That’s how dangerous it is. There’s 30,000 unexploded munitions. It is buildings that could tip over at any moment. There’s no utilities.”

Picking up on the theme later in the day, Mr. Trump said it was not realistic to have Palestinians return to Gaza. “They have no alternative right now” but to leave, Mr. Trump told reporters before Mr. Netanyahu’s arrival.

“I mean, they’re there because they have no alternative,” he said. “What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now.” He added: “I don’t know how they could want to stay. It’s a demolition site. It’s a pure demolition site.”

Mr. Trump suggested the resettlement of Palestinians would be akin to the New York real estate projects he built his career on. “If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places with plenty of money in the area, that’s for sure,” he said. “I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza.”

“I do see a long-term ownership position” for the United States, Mr. Trump said, adding that “everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent.”

Mr. Trump’s summit with Mr. Netanyahu was his first in-person meeting with another world leader since his return to power two weeks ago. It was part of a multiday visit to Washington by Mr. Netanyahu that was meant to demonstrate the close ties between the two leaders.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu forged a close partnership during the president’s first term but fell out toward its end over a number of issues, including the Israeli leader’s willingness to congratulate Mr. Biden on his victory in the 2020 election, which Mr. Trump insists he won. Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu have since sought to smooth over their rift.

But Mr. Netanyahu went into his meeting at odds with Mr. Trump on several important issues, according to analysts, likely including how to confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions and how quickly to end the war in Gaza.

The Trump administration has made clear that it wants to see all of the hostages held by Hamas returned and then move on to a grand bargain involving Saudi Arabia that formalizes relations with Israel.

Saudi Arabia reiterated support for an independent Palestinian state on Tuesday and said forging ties with Israel would depend on the creation of such a state.

Advisers to Mr. Trump told reporters on Tuesday morning that the president and Mr. Netanyahu were united behind the idea that Hamas should not be allowed to remain in power.

With Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government in jeopardy if the war ends with Hamas still in control in Gaza, and with no other plan for the area in place, analysts expect the Israeli prime minister to try to delay moving toward a permanent cease-fire.

“Netanyahu made this salami deal,” said Shira Efron, the senior director of policy research at the Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based research group, referring to the three-phased agreement with Hamas. “He’s always playing for time and kicking the can down the road.”

Adding to the anxiety in the region were reports on Monday that U.S. intelligence officials believe Iran is seeking to build a cruder atomic weapon that could be developed quickly if the leadership in Tehran decided to do so.

It remains unclear whether that decision has been made, and Iran’s new president has indicated that he would like to begin a negotiation with Mr. Trump’s administration even as the country’s nuclear scientists push ahead with their efforts.

Mr. Trump on Tuesday signed an order directing a return to the policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran through sanctions, but avoided hostile language and refused to say whether he would support an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, an indication of his interest in reaching an agreement. “This is one I’m torn about,” he said as he signed the order. “Hopefully, we’re not going to have to use it very much.”

Edward Wong contributed reporting from Washington, and Adam Rasgon from Jerusalem. Ephrat Livni contributed research.

When Elon Musk set about “feeding U.S.A.I.D. into the wood chipper,” as he put it, it wasn’t only supporters of President Trump’s “America First” agenda who were cheering the dismantlement of the foreign aid agency.

The Kremlin was, too.

“Smart move,” Dmitri A. Medvedev, a former Russian president who is currently the deputy chairman of the country’s security council, chimed in from Moscow, which for years had chafed at the U.S. Agency for International Development’s actions before forcing it out of the country in 2012.

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is closely aligned with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, celebrated what he called an end to the funding of “globalist” organizations in a Facebook post on Tuesday. Mr. Orban’s political director said he “couldn’t be happier” with what Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump were doing. (Mr. Musk reposted the comment on Tuesday.)

Nayib Bukele, the leader of El Salvador, who has embraced strongman tactics to crack down on gang violence, also struck out at the aid programs, saying in a post that funds had been “funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas and destabilizing movements.”

As protesters in Washington gathered on Monday in front of the U.S.A.I.D. headquarters to support the agency, leaders intolerant of dissent rejoiced. Mr. Trump’s administration was dismantling an agency they long have seen as a threat, often for pointing up their governments’ transgressions.

Agency grants to promote democracy, human rights and good governance have gone to support election monitoring groups, anti-corruption watchdogs, independent media outlets and human rights organizations — exactly the kind of oversight that leaders like Mr. Putin detest.

Democracy initiatives amounted to $1.58 billion of U.S.A.I.D. funding in 2023, a sliver of the agency’s annual budget. But they can attract outsize attention. Grant recipients often cross swords with the world’s authoritarian leaders, who view the activities as a threat to their power.

Mr. Orban — who met in December with Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk — and other foreign officials have persisted in asking the U.S. government to end such programs over the years.

“News of U.S.A.I.D.’s dismantlement will be celebrated by dictators around the world and lamented by democrats around the world,” said Thomas Carothers, a former State Department official who leads the democracy, conflict and government program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Discontinuation of the democracy and human rights funding, he said, would have a significant impact on small organizations, which often find themselves waging David vs. Goliath battles.

“It means that anti-corruption activists trying to expose government theft are unable to do that,” Mr. Carothers said. “It means that independent news outlets that are struggling to stay free of government control don’t have the resources to do that. It means that lots of people fighting against repressive power will be less able to do that.”

U.S.A.I.D. has come under fire for wasteful spending in the past, particularly during the war in Afghanistan, when hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on botched projects, such as an incomplete road and a minimally used power plant. But Mr. Musk has said the entire agency needs to “die,” not just wasteful programs.

Much of U.S.A.I.D.’s work focuses on health and humanitarian assistance. In 2023, the agency provided more than $1.9 billion in food aid. The agency also delivers vaccines, H.I.V. treatment and childbirth care, and combats malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases.

The drive by Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk to unravel the agency is part of a wider campaign against almost all American foreign aid. Mr. Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20 ordering a halt to the aid so that the government could review programs.

On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was taking over as acting administrator of U.S.A.I.D. That was followed on Tuesday night by an official memo posted online that said the entire global work force of the agency would be put on leave by the end of Friday.

Earlier, officials at a different aid agency, the State Department’s bureau for democracy, human rights and labor, issued stop-work orders to contractors.

Authoritarian leaders have criticized the bureau’s work, which includes significant democracy promotion programs, and they would welcome any erosion of its authority.

U.S.A.I.D. funding for those same kinds of initiatives has had significant impact abroad.

In Russia, for example, the election monitoring group Golos, which received the American grants, documented extensive voting irregularities during the 2011 parliamentary elections. Anger about those violations led to the biggest protests to date against Mr. Putin’s rule and galvanized a broader opposition movement led by the late Aleksei A. Navalny.

At the time, Mr. Putin likened foreign grant recipients to Judas. The following year, as he pushed Russia deeper into authoritarianism, he terminated all of the agency’s programs in the country.

In 2023, after Mr. Putin ordered a Russian invasion of Ukraine and led a broad crackdown at home, the co-founder of Golos, Grigory Melkonyants, was jailed. He is being tried for carrying out the activities of an “undesirable” organization, and has pleaded not guilty.

In nations once in Moscow’s orbit, including Ukraine, the top recipient of U.S.A.I.D. funds, a withdrawal of U.S. aid would benefit the Kremlin, some analysts say. Elsewhere in the world, particularly in nations where Washington and Beijing have been competing, China could fill the void.

“Trump’s administration and Musk’s actions have created significant opportunities for China and other authoritarian regimes,” said Li Qiang, the founder of China Labor Watch, which seeks to end the forced labor and trafficking of Chinese workers. The group’s State Department funding has been frozen.

“The U.S. reduction in foreign aid and focus on economic development is essentially mimicking China’s successful model: prioritizing economic growth while neglecting human rights, environmental protection, and labor rights,” Mr. Li said.

The Trump administration has portrayed U.S.A.I.D. programs as an example of liberal culture run amok, and of government waste.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Monday accused the agency of wasting taxpayer money to promote diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in Serbia and Ireland, a “transgender comic book” in Peru and a “transgender opera” in Colombia.

Three of the four grants she cited were not in fact U.S.A.I.D. programs, according to a review of government records by The New York Times. They were initiatives funded directly by the State Department. The Biden administration expanded support for L.G.B.T. rights abroad and diversity initiatives, but the bulk of U.S.A.I.D.’s work is focused elsewhere.

Iran’s criticism of the agency has been more conspiratorial. It has accused the U.S. government of plotting covert operations aimed at overthrowing the Iranian leadership through funding Persian media outlets and human rights organizations focused on Iran. Iranian state media routinely have labeled these funds and groups as “C.I.A. operatives,” to discredit them.

Mr. Musk is using some of the same rhetoric, denouncing the agency as a “criminal organization” and amplifying conspiratorial posts.

Some of Mr. Musk’s comments were indistinguishable from those that Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the lower house of the Russian Parliament, made on Telegram on Wednesday, when he, too, called U.S.A.I.D. a “criminal organization.”

Humanitarian initiatives can enhance American “soft power,” supporters say, which can buy the United States good will and leverage in countries across the world for a comparatively small fraction of federal spending. In 2023, U.S.A.I.D. funding represented approximately 0.7 percent of the U.S. federal budget. In 2021, before the war in Ukraine, it accounted for 0.4 percent.

The broadside against the agency in Washington has led some to wonder if European governments or private donors will step in to pay for the threatened initiatives.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled Russian oil tycoon and Putin opponent, said in a message on Telegram on Monday that he and a fellow Russian businessman, Boris Zimin, would step in to fund “Russian-language media, human rights and analytical projects, as well as humanitarian projects operating in Ukraine.” But he cautioned they wouldn’t be able to help all grant recipients in full.

Zselyke Csaky, a senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform, calculated that the United States spends about $2 billion a year on direct democracy promotion programs, including both direct State Department funds and U.S.A.I.D. grants. Europe, she said, spends about $4 billion, and would need to spend about 50 percent more to make up the difference.

“I find that honestly quite unlikely,” Ms. Csaky said.

The immediate problem, she said, is the speed of the dismantling. “This is happening right now, and I know many organizations that will need to shut down,” she said.

“By the time European countries respond,” she said, “there may not be much of the ecosystem to save.”

Edward Wong contributed reporting from Bangkok, Farnaz Fassihi from New York and Linda Qiu from Washington.

A U.S. military plane with at least 100 migrants aboard landed in India on Wednesday, officials said, the longest such deportation flight since President Trump took office and a sign that countries whose leaders he favors will not be spared his immigration crackdown.

It appeared to be the first use of an American military aircraft to deport people to India, which is one of the top sources of unauthorized immigration to the United States. More than 1,000 Indians were sent back to the country last year on commercial flights.

Officials in the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who enjoys a close relationship with President Trump, have expressed confidence that India is better positioned than most countries to deal with the Trump administration, and they have publicly expressed a willingness to accept deportees.

But Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, a minister in the state government of Punjab, where the plane landed on Wednesday, criticized Mr. Trump’s tough stance on illegal immigration and suggested that Mr. Modi’s government should do more to resist him.

“The Indian federal government must take this very seriously — after all, there are people from many Indian states who have been deported,” he said in an interview on Tuesday. “And what is their crime? They may have gone illegally, but it was for their livelihoods. I am greatly disheartened. President Trump must give these people another chance and, on humanitarian grounds, do a rethink of his decision.”

Mr. Dhaliwal said that he would be at the airport to receive the deportees and ensure that they were not treated as criminals.

The Pew Research Center estimated in 2022 that more than 700,000 undocumented Indian immigrants were living in the United States, more than from any country but Mexico and El Salvador. Recent reports in Indian news media said that just under 20,000 migrants were scheduled for imminent deportation.

Indians are among the migrants from around the world who have illegally entered the United States through Mexico in growing numbers in recent years. Last year, more than 25,000 Indians were arrested while trying to cross the southern border illegally, according to U.S. government data. Indian migrants also contributed to rising numbers of arrests at the northern border with Canada last year.

Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting from Washington.

Sweden was reeling and the authorities were searching for answers on Wednesday after what the government called the worst mass shooting in the country’s history.

The attack unfolded on Tuesday at an adult education center in the city of Orebro, west of Stockholm, the capital. The police said that at least 11 people were killed — with the suspect believed to be among the dead.

With Sweden in mourning, the authorities had yet to establish a motive or identify who was involved. Here’s a look at what we know.

What happened?

Gunfire erupted at about 12:30 p.m. at the Risbergska educational center, which offers classes to about 2,000 adults. Cellphone footage broadcast on local television showed students cowering under desks and chairs.

The authorities responded with a “major operation,” sending police cars and armed officers swarming onto the campus. Nearby schools were briefly put on lockdown.

Early reports said that at least five people had been shot. On Wednesday morning, the police said in a statement that 11 people had been killed and that “the person who the police believe is the suspect is among the deceased.”

At least six adults were wounded, the police added, saying that they were working to identify the victims and notify their families. The authorities also said that six officers had been treated for smoke inhalation after responding to the scene.

Who is the suspect?

The police have not identified the suspect or speculated about a motive. They said in their statement only that the suspect was “previously unknown to police.”

“We will return to the motive behind the shooting later,” they added.

The authorities initially said that “everything indicates that the perpetrator acted alone without an ideological motive.” But on Wednesday, they said they were still working to understand the circumstances and “whether more people are involved” — urging any witnesses to come forward.

“If you have videos, we want to see them,” Roberto Eid Forest, the head of the local police, said. “If you were there, we want to talk to you.”

Is gun ownership common in Sweden?

The attack sent shock waves through Sweden. Before Tuesday’s shooting, the country had experienced at least two school attacks in the last decade, but neither was carried out with a gun.

Sweden has long been known for low crime rates and high living standards, but statistics show that it has been grappling with one of the highest per capita rates of gun violence in the European Union.

Sweden has strict gun laws. Licenses require hefty application fees and are normally granted for hunters or members of sports shooting clubs, according said Sven Granath, a criminologist at Stockholm University.

“Legal guns, guns licensed to an owner, were seldom used in violent crimes in Sweden,” Mr. Granath said.

Still, gun violence has been on the rise, with 2022 seeing a record number of 391 episodes according to police figures. Mr. Granath said most of those crimes were linked to the drug trade and gangs, which control stockpiles of firearms smuggled in from postwar Balkan countries, Eastern Europe and Turkey. However, he said what happened on Tuesday was different.

The shooting in Orebro, he said, appeared to more closely resemble school shootings in the United States because police said it appeared that the perpetrator acted alone.

How is Sweden responding?

Families of the dead and wounded were gathering outside the educational center in Orebro, which remained shuttered and cordoned off with blue and white police tape on Wednesday. Police officers stood guard around the yellow-brick building as people placed flowers and candles outside the center, which offers classes to adults studying for a high school diploma.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who had ordered flags flown at half-staff in response to what he called a “horrific act of violence,” visited the makeshift memorial. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and Queen Silvia, his wife, also came to lay flowers.

“We are very shocked,” the king said, according to Agence France-Presse.

Peter Larsson, the municipal director of Orebro, said the educational center would remain closed for at least the rest of the week.

“I’m devastated,” Mr. Larsson said. “It’s really, very heavy.”

On a typical day, the Risbergska educational center in the Swedish city of Orebro would be thrumming with students gathering to attend classes in subjects like construction, child care and Swedish for immigrants.

On Wednesday, a day after a mass shooting left at least 11 people dead and sent shock waves throughout Sweden, the school was empty as the community came to terms with the violence and some waited for news of their loved ones’ fate.

“These people who were killed here yesterday, they had dreams to become doctors, nurses, engineers, plumbers or something else,” said Shams Ulqamar Andesh, standing outside the campus where he had spent four years learning Swedish.

Mr. Andesh, 42, moved to Sweden from Afghanistan in 2012. His time at the educational center had helped him land a job as a truck driver for the national postal service, and his wife became a nurses’ aide after attending classes there.

“It was my school,” he said.

Mr. Andesh was among the handful of residents and former students who gathered near the school, placing flowers and candles on the sidewalk or staring at the building that is now the center of what Sweden’s leaders have described as the worst mass shooting in the country’s history.

The police had cordoned off the campus with blue and white tape to keep the public away from what is now a crime scene under investigation, and several officers were standing guard around the yellow brick building.

Mr. Andesh said a close family friend had been rushed to a nearby hospital after being shot in the attack. “We’re waiting to hear from her doctor what happens next,” he said.

A university town with a 13th-century castle, Orebro is 120 miles west of Stockholm and about 180 miles from Oslo, the capital of neighboring Norway. In recent years, Orebro, with a population of 160,000, has become home to immigrants from 165 countries, according to the municipality’s website.

The Risbergska educational center, which caters to about 2,000 students and offers vocational classes and lessons for adults studying for a high school diploma, had become foundational for newly arrived immigrants, those gathered there on Wednesday said.

Kathryn and Lars Banck’s younger son, who has Down syndrome, takes special education classes at the school and was scheduled to attend an English class at the campus on Tuesday, but it was canceled before the attack. Their older son had attended the school when it was a high school.

“It’s tragic,” Ms. Banck, 72, a Boston native, said as she laid candle outside the school. “It’s just like the U.S.A.”

As Sweden faces one of the European Union’s highest per capita rates of gun violence, Orebro has seen an increase in it, too — along with the public debate it has prompted in Sweden.

“We have had lots of incidents,” Mr. Banck said. “But nothing of this magnitude.”

Rolf Lidskog, who teaches sociology at Orebro University, said in a telephone interview that in his more than 40 years living there, he has seen the city grow to become wealthier and more diverse, but also more unequal and segregated.

Mr. Lidskog said the city’s residents had also become more open to tougher policing and security measures.

The authorities have not determined the attacker’s motive, but Mr. Lidskog said he had felt some relief after police reports suggested that the attacker was likely a lone wolf rather than part of a gang — a sign that the deadly violence might be an isolated episode.

“Maybe it could be just a very, very sad memory,” he said.

It was a hectic Monday morning for Peter Mandelson, who was packing up his home before heading to Buckingham Palace for an audience with King Charles III, on the eve of becoming Britain’s ambassador to the United States.

But the stress of leaving London may not compare to what awaits Mr. Mandelson when he lands in Washington on Wednesday. Few British diplomats have taken on a job as fraught with political risk as Mr. Mandelson’s. His first day at the embassy will coincide with President Trump’s 18th day in the Oval Office — and already, some of America’s sturdiest alliances are teetering.

As he packed boxes, Mr. Mandelson was keeping an eye on Mr. Trump’s latest exchanges with Canada and Mexico, after he had imposed — then paused — sweeping tariffs. The European Union looked to be next in his cross hairs. Mr. Trump was gentler about Britain, suggesting to reporters that a deal “could be worked out,” though he claimed its trade balance with the United States was “way out of line.”

“I’m not going to tell the president his business when it comes to trade,” Mr. Mandelson said in an interview, striking a scrupulously diplomatic tone. But he insisted, “We have a balanced trade relationship with the U.S. It’s balanced in goods; it’s balanced in services.”

For Mr. Mandelson, the trick will be to keep Britain out of Mr. Trump’s line of fire — and to do it at a time when Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s left-of-center government is trying to reset its relationship with the E.U., to which Mr. Trump has long been hostile.

Mr. Mandelson has already been denounced by a faction of Trump loyalists, who failed to scuttle his nomination but may have played into his decision to apologize on Fox News last week for deriding Mr. Trump during his first term as a “white nationalist” and a “danger to the world.”

Mr. Mandelson knows the ins and outs of trade flows: He served as the European Union’s trade commissioner from 2004 to 2008, and then headed Britain’s Board of Trade until 2010. He said he hoped his experience would help him make a persuasive case on behalf of Britain, which runs either an $89 billion trade surplus or a $14.5 billion deficit with the United States, depending on whether one cites British or American statistics. (The difference rests in part on how the two sides treat offshore financial centers like Jersey and Guernsey, which are crown dependencies.)

“If I can use that knowledge to advance some mutual understanding, I will do so,” he said. Still, he was quick to add, “I’m not going to be front-of-house in making arguments against the president’s policies. My job is to act behind the scenes to explain our countries’ policies to each other.”

Such a low profile makes sense in Mr. Trump’s Washington, given the president’s history of clashing with big personalities. But it is out of character for Mr. Mandelson. In a four-decade political career, he thrust himself repeatedly into the spotlight. As a young strategist for the Labour Party, he was known for his ruthless tactics, earning the nickname the Prince of Darkness.

Since then, Mr. Mandelson, 71, has fallen in and out of favor with successive Labour leaders, from Tony Blair, for whom he was once a trusted adviser, to Mr. Starmer, to whom he became close before his election victory last July.

Mr. Starmer’s decision to appoint Mr. Mandelson to a post as sensitive as ambassador to the United States surprised some in London, given the prime minister’s reputation for caution and Mr. Mandelson’s reputation for swagger and sharp elbows.

A few of those elbows were thrown at Mr. Trump. In addition to his comments in a 2019 interview with an Italian journalist, Mr. Mandelson wrote a column in 2018 for a London paper, The Evening Standard, in which he took Mr. Trump to task for imposing tariffs on China. The president, he wrote, was a “bully and a mercantilist.”

Mr. Mandelson said, “I completely stand by the intellectual argument” about the negative effect of tariffs. But he said he regretted his choice of words about Mr. Trump. He chalked it up to the inflamed atmosphere in Britain, which was then negotiating its exit from the European Union.

“In 2019, I was a bit irate,” he said. “But nonetheless, the words I used about the president were childish and wrong.”

Mr. Mandelson is also under pressure because he is replacing Karen Pierce, a popular envoy known for having built bridges to people in Mr. Trump’s orbit. When his appointment was announced in December, Chris LaCivita, a Republican strategist who comanaged Mr. Trump’s campaign, posted, “replace a professional universally respected Ambo with an absolute moron — he should stay home!”

Among his other critics were Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, and Raheem Kassam, the British-born former editor of Breitbart News in London. Mr. Bannon said he had objected to Mr. Mandelson’s business dealings in China, while Mr. Kassam said he was “Tony Blair’s most effective operator,” which he did not mean as a compliment.

“Whether it’s a rejection of his credentials, or bringing him to heel, it’s a victory,” Mr. Kassam said of the campaign against him.

Still, Mr. Mandelson drew no public opposition from other powerful Trump allies, like the technology billionaire Elon Musk, or hawkish Republicans like Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He would hardly be the first person who once denigrated Trump to win forgiveness.

Mr. Mandelson emphasized his ties to Silicon Valley, which he visited as a minister in 1998 to draw up a white paper on Britain’s competitiveness. He said his experience in China, which deepened during years of running a consulting firm, Global Counsel, would help him nurture joint British and American competition with China.

“Our chief goal must be to win the advanced technology race,” he said. “We can only win that race together, not divided.”

Mr. Mandelson’s defenders say his heavyweight credentials and cosmopolitan manner could appeal to Mr. Trump, who may recognize in him a fellow player. While they do not know each other, they have moved in similar social circles. Mr. Mandelson sits in the House of Lords, the kind of sinecure that Mr. Trump might also appreciate.

“London will be hoping that assigning a political figure of Mandelson’s stature and intellect will be seen as a compliment, and his experience of trade policy in Brussels not an impediment but an asset,” said Peter Westmacott, who was ambassador during the Obama administration.

Kim Darroch, who served as ambassador during Mr. Trump’s first term, said, “I suspect he’s taken this job because he’s addicted to the political game, and this is a way back on to the field. He’s relentlessly engaged in it, relentlessly curious about it, and exceptionally good at it.”

Mr. Darroch, however, offers a lesson in the perils of diplomacy during a Trump presidency. He was forced to resign in 2019 after a London paper published confidential cables in which he offered an unfiltered, unflattering take on the president.

Mr. Mandelson will try to avoid those traps, in part by playing to Mr. Trump as a deal maker. He rejected suggestions that Britain needed to choose between the United States and Europe. Britain, he said, was merely trying to “tidy up” a flawed trade deal negotiated by Mr. Starmer’s Conservative predecessors.

“What we want with the E.U. is complementary to the U.S.,” he said.

“We got a bad deal with the E.U.,” he added. “The president understands what a bad deal looks like.”

Vice President Sara Duterte of the Philippines was impeached by lawmakers on Wednesday, further escalating political tensions in a strategically important American ally in Asia.

Ms. Duterte faced four complaints over her alleged misuse of millions in public funds and her pronouncements that she had made plans to assassinate Mr. Marcos, his wife and the speaker of the House of Representatives, who is Mr. Marcos’s cousin.

A little over three years ago, Ms. Duterte and Mr. Marcos, both scions of notorious political dynasties, joined forces to run together in a national election. They promised national unity and were elected in a landslide victory in 2022. But their partnership was widely seen as a marriage of convenience and ruptured soon after.

Ms. Duterte has denied the accusations of corruption and cast the impeachment as politically motivated, a view shared by many Filipinos. Mr. Marcos has denied involvement in the impeachment proceedings, which threaten to end her political career.

“This is dragging the whole country to political chaos,” said Aries Arugay, chairman of the political science department at the University of the Philippines.

“Unlike in the U.S., she has no critical function here as vice president,” Mr. Arugay added. “So, why? The political motivation here is to stop the eventuality of a Sara Duterte presidency.”

Ms. Duterte has publicly spoken about running for president after Mr. Marcos’s single, six-year term ends in 2028.

The Dutertes and Marcoses are split over the Philippines’ relationships with the United States and China. Ms. Duterte’s father, the former President Rodrigo Duterte, pivoted toward Beijing when he was in office, while Mr. Marcos favors closer ties with Washington.

The impeachment move now risks escalating the feud between the two clans in the Philippines and their supporters. Paolo Duterte, a congressman and the younger brother of Ms. Duterte, said he was “appalled and enraged by the desperate and politically motivated efforts” to impeach his sister.

“If the Marcos administration thinks it can push this sham impeachment without consequence, they are gravely mistaken,” Mr. Duterte said in a statement. “Mark my words: This reckless abuse of power will not end in their favor.”

On Wednesday afternoon, 215 out of the 306 members of the House voted for the impeachment of Ms. Duterte. Applause broke out in the plenary hall after the official announcement of the results.

She will face a trial in the Philippine Senate when Congress reconvenes in June. A two-thirds vote is needed for conviction, and analysts say it’s unlikely the Senate, which is made up of pro-Duterte officials, will convict her.

Still, if she is found guilty, Ms. Duterte will be removed from office and disqualified from holding any public post. She can also face criminal and civil charges in court.

Many members of the public are fed up with the Marcoses and the Dutertes, and believe that the political drama is distracting the leaders from the main problems afflicting the country such as poverty and unemployment. Approval ratings for Mr. Marcos and Ms. Duterte have dipped significantly in recent months.

Movies like Fellini’s 1960 film “La Dolce Vita” created an image of Italy as a smokers’ paradise. Cigarettes were the ubiquitous props of glamorous socialites, jaded reporters and just about anyone seated at a cafe.

Those days are long gone. A series of laws gradually banned smoking at shared indoor spaces like movie theaters and restaurants.

Now, the city of Milan’s center-left government has taken the crackdown one step further, becoming the first major Italian city to ban smoking outside unless the smoker is pretty far from other people. No more huddling around the doors of office buildings. And no more grabbing an after-dinner smoke at the outdoor tables at restaurants.

Under the new rules, which went into effect Jan. 1, smoking is banned everywhere except for “isolated areas where it’s possible to respect a distance of at least 33 feet from other people.”

“People will smoke a little less, which is good for their health and everybody’s health, and those who don’t smoke will be less exposed to secondhand smoke,” Milan’s deputy mayor, Anna Scavuzzo, said in a recent interview. “We will get used to the fact that smokers have to pay more attention to what they are doing, not nonsmokers.”

Milan is Italy’s fashion and design capital, known to attract chic — and often black clad — visitors for taste-setting events throughout the year. Those arriving for the fashion week this month will no longer find ashtrays on cafe tables, and the visitors who frequent the trendy Navigli district will be hard pressed to find someplace to light up.

For detractors, the new rules are an assault on more than just smoking, but on a cherished way of life.

“The real problem is not the cigarette, but the loss of freedom of choice,” Vittorio Feltri, one of the editors in chief of Il Giornale, a conservative Milan newspaper, bristled in an editorial. “In a world where we try to control every aspect of our lives, where we are afraid of everything and everyone, smoking outdoors, among friends, is not just a gesture of the convivial power of tobacco, but an act of rebellion against conformity.”

Smoking in public indoor spaces has been forbidden in Italy since 2005, when the national government enacted what was then one of the toughest laws in Europe. At the time, many questioned how effective the ban would be in Italy, where cigarettes after meals were as common as coffee. But Italians complied, if grudgingly, and the number of smokers has dropped from 22 percent to 19 percent of the population over 14 years of age, according to the national statistics agency ISTAT and health ministry data.

Milanese officials defend the new rules as possibly providing a further benefit. Milan is one of Italy’s most polluted cities and there are hopes that the outdoor restrictions will improve air quality by reducing some particulate matter. According to a regional health agency, cigarette smoke is responsible for 7 percent of the city’s particulate matter emissions.

Ms. Scavuzzo also said the new rules were fair partly because a vast majority of Italians do not smoke, so it was their right “to not have to breathe other people’s smoke.”

Roberto Carlo Rossi, the president of Milan’s medical guild, acknowledged the risk posed by secondhand smoke is less outdoors than indoors, adding that when people are 33 feet apart, “it’s difficult for smoke to create problems.” But he also said that it was never pleasant to smell smoke during a meal.

“It’s a question of good manners,” he said.

During a stroll through Milan’s city center last month, Anna Romano and Giorgia Cappello, pack-a-day smokers, sounded less upset than resigned. They said that when cravings struck, they sought isolated spots, and kept running into other smokers stealthily puffing in back streets.

“We were all maintaining our distance,” said Ms. Romano, suggesting that people were being respectful. “Or maybe they were afraid of getting fined,” chimed in Ms. Cappello. Fines range from 40 to 240 euro, or about $42 to $249.

Local police have been holding back on fines for outdoor smoking, with only 16 issued in the first three weeks of the new rules going into effect. But Ms. Scavuzzo said that such a soft approach might not last forever.

“If a measure isn’t accompanied by a fine,” she said, “Italians are not so Scandinavian that they’ll respect the law regardless.”

There are a few public critiques, like the doctored photo of Giuseppe Sala, the city’s mayor smoking with the tagline, “You’re not our father. Let us smoke” or a statue at the Milan Polytechnic university of Milan being fitted with a giant cigarette. But so far, griping has been subdued, if only because recent inclement weather has kept most people away from outdoor restaurant tables.

One person who is fuming nonetheless is Marco Barbieri, secretary general for the Milan branch of the Italian retailers’ association Confcommercio, which includes bars and restaurants. He is certain that members of his association will be singled out for fines because it’s easy to spot errant smokers dining or drinking outdoors.

“We all know smoking is bad for you,” he said, but the restrictions do “not have the noble objective to educate against smoking. It’s the usual measure which aims to inconvenience and create harm for businesses using the alibi that smoking is bad.”

He added that if city hall had really been concerned about health and pollution, it would have included electronic cigarettes in the ban. City officials have defended their actions, saying that those devices did not burn tobacco and, they believe, were unlikely to have much of an environmental impact. They added that users of e-cigarettes might eventually be held to the same standards as those who smoke regular cigarettes.

But the decision to limit the new rules to cigarettes has perplexed both health workers and researchers.

“This is a major flaw in the ban, because today young people start with electronic cigarettes,” and then move on to traditional cigarettes, which are relatively affordable in Italy, said Silvano Gallus, a researcher at the Mario Negri Institute in Milan. Studies show that more than half of Italian youths between 13 and 15 have tried electronic cigarettes at least once, a trend he called “an emergency.”

“It’s a pity that e-cigarettes were not banned,” said Anna Mondino, the scientific director of the AIRC Foundation for cancer research. “But we’re going to get there.”

Any restriction “is absolutely welcome,” she added, since such measures, along with advertising warnings on cigarette packages, had led to a drop in deaths from lung cancer and related diseases both in smokers and those exposed to secondhand smoke. That is no small thing, she said, “at a time when social medicine in Italy and elsewhere in the world is becoming essentially unaffordable.”

For now, some people are withholding judgment.

“It’s too soon to tell” whether the new rules will hurt business, said Edoardo Isella, the owner of the downtown Rubin Bar. “We’ll have to wait a few months, to see what happens.”

Nicolas Serra, a waiter at Biffi, a historic restaurant inside Milan’s downtown Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, said the 33 feet rule would be difficult to maintain: “Prohibition is not the way to get people to stop smoking; the more you ban, the more people want to do it.”

But Ms. Mondino of the cancer research foundation has high hopes.

“Milan is a good test city, because it is used to changes,” she said. “If Milan implements it, maybe the rest of Italy will listen.”