For decades, sub-Saharan Africa was a singular focus of American foreign aid. The continent received over $8 billion a year, money that was used to feed starving children, supply lifesaving drugs and provide wartime humanitarian assistance.

In a few short weeks, President Trump and the South African-born billionaire Elon Musk have burned much of that work to the ground, vowing to completely gut the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“CLOSE IT DOWN!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Friday, accusing the agency of unspecified corruption and fraud.

A federal judge on Friday halted, for now, some elements of Mr. Trump’s attempt to shutter the agency. But the speed and shock of the administration’s actions have already led to confusion, fear and even paranoia at U.S.A.I.D. offices across Africa, a top recipient of agency funding. Workers were being fired or furloughed en masse.

As the true scale of the fallout comes into view, African governments are wondering how to fill gaping holes left in vital services, like health care and education, that until recent weeks were funded by the United States. Aid groups and United Nations bodies that feed the starving or house refugees have seen their budgets slashed in half, or worse.

By far the greatest price is being paid by ordinary Africans, millions of whom rely on American aid for their survival. But the consequences are also reverberating across an aid sector that, for better or worse, has been a pillar of Western engagement with Africa for over six decades. With the collapse of U.S.A.I.D., that entire model is badly shaken.

“This is dramatic and consequential, and it’s hard to imagine rowing it back,” said Murithi Mutiga, Africa program director at the International Crisis Group. Mr. Mutiga described the collapse of the agency as “part of the unraveling of the post Cold War order.”

“Once, the primacy of the West was assumed” in Africa, he said. “No more.”

Experts say the agency’s abrupt undoing will cost many lives by creating huge gaps in public services, especially in health care, where U.S.A.I.D. has poured much of its resources.

In Kenya alone, at least 40,000 health care workers will lose their jobs, U.S.A.I.D. officials say. On Friday, several U.N. agencies that depend on American funding began to furlough part of their staff. The United States also provides most of the funding for two large refugee camps in northern Kenya that house 700,000 people from at least 19 countries.

Ethiopia’s health ministry has fired 5,000 health care professionals who had been recruited under American funding, according to an official notification obtained by The New York Times.

“We are in disbelief,” said Medhanye Alem of the Center for Victims of Torture, which treats survivors of conflict-related trauma at nine centers in northern Ethiopia, all now closed.

Of over 10,000 U.S.A.I.D. employees worldwide, barely 300 will remain under changes conveyed to staff on Thursday night. Only 12 will remain in Africa.

The most pressing challenge for many governments is not to replace the American staff members or money, but to save American-built health systems that are rapidly crumbling to the ground, said Ken O. Opalo, a Kenyan political scientist at Georgetown University in Washington.

Kenya, for instance, has enough drugs to treat people with H.I.V. for over a year, Mr. Opalo said. “But the nurses and doctors to treat them are being let go, and the clinics are closing.”

Broader economic shocks are also likely in some of the world’s most fragile countries.

American aid accounts for 15 percent of economic output in South Sudan, 6 percent in Somalia and 4 percent in the Central African Republic, said Charlie Robertson, an economist who specializes in Africa. “We could see governance effectively cease in a few countries, unless others step up to replace the hole left by the U.S.,” he said.

Whether U.S.A.I.D. is truly dead may yet be determined by Congress and the U.S. courts, where supporters have filed a raft of legal challenges. But the Trump administration seems determined to move faster than its challengers.

As Mr. Musk and his team have commandeered the agency’s operations in Washington, shuttering its headquarters and sacking or suspending 94 percent of its staff, its vast aid machinery in Africa has shuddered to a halt.

In major hubs in Kenya, South Africa and Senegal, American aid officials were shocked to find themselves labeled “criminals” by Mr. Musk, then ordered to return to the United States, according to eight U.S.A.I.D. employees or contractors who all spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

On Friday, the Trump administration gave all U.S.A.I.D. staff members 30 days to pack their bags and come home, causing turmoil among families now faced with the prospect of pulling children out of school on short notice. If the federal court that is now reviewing that directive does not overturn it, few will have jobs to return to.

Several U.S.A.I.D. officials noted that Google’s artificial intelligence system, Gemini, had been activated on their internal communications systems recently, and that internal video calls conducted on the Google platform were suddenly set to automatically record.

Officials said they worried that Mr. Musk’s team could use A.I. to monitor their conversations to ferret out dissenters, or to excerpt snippets of conversations that might be weaponized to discredit the agency.

Colleagues at the agency have turned to Signal, an encrypted messaging app, this week to share information unofficially. People are being driven by fear, one of them said.

In private, even senior U.S.A.I.D. officials agree that the agency needs an overhaul. In interviews, several recognized the need to streamline its bureaucracy, and even questioned an aid system that relies so heavily on American contractors and fosters a damaging culture of dependency among African governments.

Announcements by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and acting head of U.S.A.I.D., that emergency food and lifesaving aid would be exempted from the administration’s cuts were initially welcomed by employees. But, officials said, it turned out to be largely a mirage. Despite the promise of waivers, many have found it impossible to obtain one.

Worst of all, many said, were the broadsides delivered by Mr. Musk and the White House portraying the agency as a rogue, criminal agency run by spendthrift officials pursuing their personal agendas. Such attacks were false and deeply hurtful to Americans who sought to relieve human suffering around the world, several people said.

In Nairobi, where U.S.A.I.D. has about 250 Kenyan and 50 American staff members, several Kenyans spoke at a tense town hall this week.

They worried that talk at the White House of widespread corruption inside the agency might cause other Kenyans to believe that they, too, had benefited from fraud, said an official who attended the meeting.

Like the Americans present at the town hall, the Kenyans worried they were about to be fired. But there was one major difference between the two groups, the official noted: While the Kenyans were anxious for their livelihoods, the Americans were worried about their country.

Since taking office, President Trump has threatened European countries’ security and economies, angled to take control of Greenland, and promised to “definitely” slap the nations with tariffs. Even parties that would seem to be his natural allies are nervous. Some have quietly tiptoed back from the American president.

But Saturday was not the day for disputes. Leaders of far-right parties in Europe came to Madrid for what, on the surface at least, amounted to a boldface names booster rally for a new Trump era.

There was Marine Le Pen of France’s far-right National Rally; the Netherland’s populist, Geert Wilders; the leader of Italy’s League party, Matteo Salvini. All made clear that they shared Mr. Trump’s charge against what they see as “wokeism,” “gender theory,” and overweening environmentalism.

For them, the American president had blown through the last barriers that had confined their parties to the political margins. The taboos had been toppled.

“Trump’s tornado has changed the world in just a couple of weeks,” Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary told his allies from the stage of the summit whose slogan was, “Make Europe Great Again.”

“Yesterday we were the heretics,” he said. “Now we are the mainstream.”

In addition to the recurring themes of the European far right — labeling the media “parasites,” bashing liberal elites, and decrying an “invasion” of Muslim immigrants — the attendees quickly turned their sights on Mr. Trump’s most recent targets.

For example, Mr. Salvini criticized the World Health Organization and the International Criminal Court; Mr. Trump moved to withdraw the United States from the W.H.O., and issued an executive order imposing sanctions on the I.C.C.

Mr. Wilders seemed to mimic Mr. Trump’s language as he said voters were asking them to “expel illegal aliens and criminals.”

Mr. Trump’s election represents “the Western world’s final opportunity,” said Afroditi Latinopoulou, a lawmaker with the Greek far-right party Voice of Reason.

Ms. Latinopoulou’s party has no representation in the Greek Parliament, but some leaders at the rally, including Mr. Salvini’s League and Mr. Wilders’ Freedom Party in the Netherlands, are already governing as part of coalitions.

Other parties, like Ms. Le Pen’s National Party and the Spanish Vox party, which hosted the event, have risen in recent years, but were still out of power, often kept out by an alliance of mainstream parties.

Many of these parties are still considered pariahs in the European Parliament in Brussels, and right-wing leaders like Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy did not join the event organized by the group, which calls itself the Patriots for Europe in that legislative body.

In elections last summer for the European Parliament, what many had anticipated would be a wave of support for far-right parties did not fully materialize. But many of these parties are popular among young voters, and stand a chance to enter governments in coming elections. They think Mr. Trump’s victory has put wind in their sails.

Mr. Trump’s victory “brought a political earthquake to the world,” Mr. Wilders said. “He brings a message of hope.”

They skewered the “liberal fascists” who they said had replaced Christian civilization with “a sick Satanic utopia,” the “creeps” who “want to turn our children into trans-freaks,” and the supposed ethnic replacement of native-born Europeans by immigrants. They borrowed liberally from conspiracy theories.

And along with Mr. Trump they shared a distaste for the European Union — even though many of their countries benefit from E.U. funds and nearly all the parties have disavowed cries to leave the bloc since Brexit has proved to be a drag on Britain’s economy.

Nonetheless it was clear that their idea of making “Europe Great Again” was to tear down the European Union as it now stands. “Less Europe, more freedom,” Mr. Salvini said.

Some of those attending questioned the very slogan of the event. “They say they want to make Europe great but what do I care about defending Europe?” said Jesus Castañón, 79, a retired architect who sat in the crowd. “It does not deserve it.”

At the gathering, the European Union was uniformly loathed as a group of unelected bureaucrats sealed in glass palaces and intent on infringing upon nations with excessive regulation and sabotaging their economies with climate policies.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, most of Europe’s mainstream parties have come to accept the need to spend more money on defense, and they talk of unity to confront potential trade disputes with Mr. Trump.

But few at the rally spoke of needing to increase cooperation among E.U. countries. “The European Union is a pump that works in reverse,” Ms. Le Pen said. “It sucks up the sovereignty from our states to institutionalize powerlessness.”

When people at the event talked of making Europe great again, most talked about making Europe a beacon for Christianity, elevating individual nations and restoring their pride and identity.

Instead of supporting the European Union, one member of the crowd said he preferred the re-establishment of the Spanish colonial empire encompassing Spain and Latin America.

“I have little in common with a Belgian or a northern Italian,” said Gonzalo Ruiz, 64, a retired meteorologist. “Reunification with South America is the dream.”

Some divisions could not be disguised. Some leaders praised free-market economics, while others supported protectionism.

Mr. Orban, who has long stood out even among the far right for his closeness to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, has criticized support for Ukraine. “Because of Brussels we are giving our money to Ukraine in a hopeless war,” he said on Saturday.

Hamas released three Israeli hostages on Saturday in exchange for 183 Palestinians jailed by Israel, in a staged handover where rifle-toting Hamas fighters prodded their gaunt captives to give short speeches, effectively at gunpoint, thanking the militants who had held them captive for 16 months.

The events made an already tenuous cease-fire more fragile, possibly endangering the next steps in the truce agreement. Israel is scheduled to pull back from part of Gaza on Sunday to allow Palestinians there to move more freely, but has threatened to take unspecified action in response to what it says are Hamas violations of the cease-fire.

And talks on the second phase of the truce deal are supposed to be advancing now, amid deep consternation in the Arab world over President Trump’s proposal to move the more than two million Gazans out of the enclave and have the United States take over the territory.

For Hamas, the heavily choreographed hostage handover reinforced the group’s message that, despite a devastating war in the Gaza Strip that killed thousands of its members and much of its leadership, the group remains in power there, defying Israeli leaders’ vow to wipe it out.

In a statement on the hostage release, Hamas said, “This confirms that our people and their resistance have the upper hand.”

Hamas claims it has treated its captives benevolently, but many Israelis saw the images as almost unbearable evidence to the contrary. Three frail, painfully thin hostages were paraded on a stage before a crowd in the city of Deir al-Balah, each holding a Hamas-issued “release certificate,” and made to mouth words written for them.

Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, invoked the defining Jewish trauma of the last century, writing on social media, “The Israeli hostages look like Holocaust survivors.”

The spectacle on Saturday was sure to reinforce pressure from some Israelis for the government to find a way to recover all of the remaining hostages in Gaza. For others, it will bolster the view that Israel should resume the war after the first six-week phase of the cease-fire expires on March 2, rather than negotiate a long-term peace.

What happens next is far from certain.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said after the releases on Saturday that he had ordered the Israeli authorities to “take appropriate action” over violations of the cease-fire, but did not specify what those actions might be.

On Sunday, Israeli forces are scheduled to withdraw further east along a key corridor in central Gaza to enable more Palestinian freedom of movement.

The three Israelis released on Saturday by Hamas — Eli Sharabi, 52; Or Levy, 34; and Ohad Ben Ami, 56 — were among about 250 people abducted during the Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that touched off the war. About 75 have not been returned, and roughly half of those are believed to be dead.

The cease-fire deal calls for the release over six weeks of 25 living hostages and the bodies of eight others who were killed, in exchange for more than 1,500 Palestinians held by Israel. The Palestinian prisoners include people detained in Gaza during the war but never charged with a crime and others serving life prison sentences for violent crimes.

So far, 16 living hostages and about 550 Palestinian prisoners have been released.

Hamas and Israel are supposed to be negotiating terms for the second phase of the truce, which would end the war and free the remaining hostages. But it is not clear that the two sides can come to an agreement.

Israel has vowed not to end the war if Hamas, which took control of Gaza in 2007, is still in charge there. Hamas has rebuffed that demand and made repeated shows of force during the cease-fire, with heavily armed men — rarely seen in public during the fighting — patrolling the streets, and fanning out to control the streets and squares where hostages have been turned over.

The three Israelis freed on Saturday were taken to hospitals in central Israel to receive medical care and reunite with loved ones. For Mr. Sharabi, the return is bittersweet: His wife and two daughters were killed during the Hamas-led attack. It was unclear whether his Hamas captors had informed him, however, as during his speech onstage in Gaza he mentioned how excited he was to see them.

Dr. Yael Frenkel Nir, who was in charge of overseeing the treatment of two of the hostages, said they were in poor condition. The third was in a “severe nutritional state,” according to an official at the hospital where he was being treated.

The freed Palestinians were taken to Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as well as Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, and in both locations, some were taken to hospitals.

Several were also slated to be expelled abroad, and it was not immediately clear where they will end up.

In Ramallah, a huge crowd greeted the arrival of a Red Cross bus carrying freed prisoners, who are seen by many Palestinians as valiant fighters against an occupying enemy. At least some were convicted of involvement in deadly attacks against Israelis, who view them as terrorists.

Many of the released Palestinian prisoners were in visibly poor condition, appearing frail and thin. A few were limping and required assistance. Palestinian prisoners have recounted serious allegations of abuse in Israeli jails, particularly during the war in Gaza. The Israeli prison service has said it treats them in accordance with the law.

Israeli forces raided the West Bank family homes of at least four of men before their release, warning their relatives not to celebrate their freedom. Israel has been particularly assertive in suppressing celebrations for detainees released under the current cease-fire, fearing that they may bolster the popularity of Hamas.

One of the prisoners whose family home was raided was Jamal Tawil, a senior Hamas leader in the West Bank, who had been imprisoned multiple times on accusations that included planning bombings against Israel. He was taken directly to a hospital in Ramallah after his release.

“He is struggling to breathe and is very weak,” said his daughter, Bushra Tawil, a journalist and activist who was released in an earlier exchange last month. “I was shocked when I saw him — he had been beaten on the head and other parts of his body until the very last moments before his release.”

She said her family had been threatened with arrest if they publicly celebrated his return. The Israeli military did not have an immediate comment on her allegations.

Another Palestinian whose home on the West Bank was raided, Shadi Barghouti, was serving a 27-year sentence for being an accomplice to murder, amid other charges, according to the Israeli Justice Ministry. Family members said his father, Fakhri Barghouti, 70, was beaten during the raid.

The Barghoutis, father and son, had overlapped in prison. The elder was convicted in the 1978 killing of an Israeli bus driver, but released in a 2011 prisoner deal with Hamas. Fakhri Barghouti was waiting at the Ramallah Cultural Palace when his son arrived on Saturday — the first time they had met outside of prison since 1978. They were both tearful, but smiling, as Shadi Barghouti knelt upon seeing his father.

Another released Hamas militant, Iyad Abu Shkhaydem, now 50, had been serving 18 life sentences, in part for planning the 2004 bombings of two buses in Beersheba, in central Israel, that killed 16 people.

In the Israeli town of Be’eri, where Mr. Ben Ami and Mr. Sharabi were both abducted, residents gathered in the local pub to watch the release live on television, said Haim Jelin, a resident and former Israeli lawmaker.

“People were joyous and shouting as they were coming out of the car. But as soon as we saw them, there was total silence. People started to cry,” Mr. Jelin said in an interview. “It was gut-wrenching.”

The Hostage Families Forum, which represents relatives of the captives, issued a swift statement condemning the “distressing images” from the handover, and called for the immediate release of the remaining captives.

“Everyone must be brought home, down to the last hostage,” the forum said.

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Lara Jakes and Richard Pérez-Peña contributed reporting.

Booing during “The Star-Spangled Banner” at sports games in Canada.

“Buy Canadian” signs multiplying at grocery stores amid a brewing boycott of U.S. goods.

Cross-party calls to find new friends and customers on the global stage.

President Trump may have paused his plans to impose crushing tariffs on Canada, pulling the two countries back from the brink of a trade war. But evidence abounds of the damage Mr. Trump has inflicted on the relations between the two nations.

After threatening levies on Canada, and Canada threatening to retaliate, Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday came to an agreement for a 30-day reprieve in the brewing trade war in exchange for new measures to tackle the flow of fentanyl across the northern border.

But the standoff has left many Canadians livid.

And Mr. Trump’s menacing rhetoric, especially his repeated statements that he wants the United States to annex Canada and make it the 51st state, seems to have fractured the fraternal trust that has, for more than a century, been the core of the relationship.

“This has damaged the relationship quite significantly, and there will be a period of sorting out,” said Jon Parmenter, professor of North American history at Cornell. “It has triggered really significant and striking emotional responses. It’s very raw for people.”

Mr. Parmenter noted that being America’s far less populous neighbor has not always been comfortable for Canadians, who are deeply aware of their dependence on trading with the United States and know that so many things emanating from their superpower neighbor — from pop culture to economic downturns — influence their lives.

In the words of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the former Canadian prime minister and father of the current one: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

But, Mr. Parmenter added, rubbing in that dependence the way Mr. Trump has done with his invocation of annexation and repeated complaints about Canada providing little in return to the United States, has touched off a visceral response in Canadian society.

History Matters

While Canada has been described as the United States’ closest friend for over a century, until World War II it was actually closer economically and politically with Britain. The Atlantic province of Newfoundland and Labrador was a British colony until it joined Canada, which it did only in 1949.

Events like the war in Vietnam, the brutal crackdown in the South of protests during the civil rights movement and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which Canada strongly opposed, tested that friendship at times.

But it has generally been marked by moments like the Canadian response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States.

As flights to the United States were grounded, about 7,000 air travelers aboard dozens of diverted flights, mostly Americans, were taken in by the residents of Gander, Newfoundland, a community of just 11,000 people. The scenes of heartfelt hospitality in one of America’s worst moments were recounted in the Broadway musical “Come From Away.”

In his emotional address to the nation on Saturday, Mr. Trudeau, who made sure to direct his comments to Canadians and American, did not forget those bonds.

He quoted President John F. Kennedy, who said about Canada: “Geography has made us neighbors, history has made us friends, economics has made us partners and necessity has made us allies.”

And he added: “From the beaches of Normandy to the mountains of the Korean Peninsula, from the fields of Flanders to the streets of Kandahar, we have fought and died alongside you during your darkest hours.”

Team Canada

Mr. Trump’s targeting of Canada has forged a rare consensus among Canadians and among politicians who, until last week, were feuding amid one of the country’s most fraught political periods in recent history.

But for Mr. Trudeau, the opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, and other senior politicians, there is only one game in Canadian politics right now: Team Canada.

“We need a Canada First plan that’s good for this country,” Mr. Poilievre, the Conservative opposition leader, said in reaction to the tariff fight. And while Mr. Poilievre has built a big advantage in polls over Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party by highlighting what he describes as the prime minister’s failures, he has momentarily toned down those attacks in recent days to focus on a unifying message.

Mr. Trudeau has leaped at this rally-round-the-flag moment. “In this moment, we must pull together because we love this country,” he said on Saturday evening, when tariffs were supposed to begin in just more than 48 hours. “We don’t pretend to be perfect, but Canada is the best country on earth,” he added.

Chrystia Freeland, the former finance minister, who is running to replace Mr. Trudeau as Liberal Party leader, tried to capture the nation’s mood during an interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN over the weekend.

“We’re hurt, for sure, because we’re your friends and neighbors, but most of all, we’re angry, and we are united and resolute,” she said, adding “Canada is the true north, strong and free,” an echo of Canada’s national anthem.

Public opinion surveys suggest these politicians are aligned with the public mood: 91 percent of those asked said they wanted a reduction in the country’s reliance on the United States, according to a poll conducted on Sunday and Monday by Angus Reid.

The poll also found a 10 percentage point jump since December in the number of people declaring themselves to be “very proud” to be Canadian, and a similar jump in the percentage of Canadians saying they feel “a deep emotional attachment to Canada.”

Speaking at a campaign event in Windsor, Ontario, Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, who is also running to replace Mr. Trudeau, said he had been traveling around the country seeking support for his campaign and finding the mood of Canadians toward the United States to be “initially confusion and bewilderment.”

But, increasingly, he added, there is “a real enthusiasm and energy to get on with things on our terms, because we don’t want to wake up every morning and check through social media to find out how our country is being affected.”

‘I Feel Really Betrayed’

The prospect of thousands of auto workers being laid off if Mr. Trump’s threatened 25 percent tariff is ultimately put in place has brought fear to many people in Windsor, which is the heart of Canada’s automotive industry and sits just across from Detroit.

And it has even shaken Canadians who once supported Mr. Trump — a minority of the population, according to surveys.

Joe Butler, a trucker who carries new cars and trucks every day from a factory owned by the automaker Stellantis, Windsor’s largest employer, up and down the highway corridor to Toronto, is one of many Canadians with family ties to the United States.

His great-grandparents moved from the United States to Alberta, in Western Canada, where some of his distant relatives still ranch, before his grandfather moved east to Ontario.

During summer school breaks, Mr. Butler joined his father, a long-haul trucker, in the cab during his runs to the United States. “Growing up, I loved the culture of America: the people, the lifestyle, the landscape,” said Mr. Butler, whose cargo usually consists of vehicles assembled in Stellantis factories in Mexico and the United States.

Mr. Trump’s promise to rebuild America, Mr. Butler said, resonated with him. “I was 100 percent behind him as a Canadian,” Mr. Butler said.

“Now I just shake my head and say: Where are you going?” he said. “You just went and completely kicked us in the nuts. It’s scary.”

If the auto industry comes to a halt, Mr. Butler said, he has a small beer, wine and liquor delivery service that he can fall back on for income. But, he added, most of his friends and family members lack such options.

Mr. Butler, who buys the groceries for his family, now boycotts American-made products. And he wants Canada to find a way to cut out the United States as much as possible.

“I don’t care if they close the border, we can live on our own,” he said. “I still love America, and my job depends on the American economy. But now I feel really betrayed.”

President Trump on Friday ordered that all foreign assistance to South Africa be halted and said his administration would prioritize the resettling of white, “Afrikaner refugees” into the United States because of what he called actions by the country’s government that “racially disfavored landowners.”

In the order, Mr. Trump said that “the United States shall not provide aid or assistance to South Africa” and that American officials should do everything possible to help “Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.”

It follows Mr. Trump’s accusation on his social media site on Sunday that the South African government was engaged in a “massive Human Rights VIOLATION, at a minimum.” He vowed a full investigation and promised to cut off aid.

“South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY,” the president wrote in the post. “It is a bad situation that the Radical Left Media doesn’t want to so much as mention.”

The order was stunning in providing official American backing to long-held conspiracy theories about the mistreatment of white South Africans in the post-apartheid era.

Mr. Trump has made repeated claims without evidence that echoed those conspiracy theories. In 2018, he ordered his secretary of state to look into “the large scale killing of farmers” — a claim disputed by official figures and the country’s biggest farmers’ group.

Mr. Trump’s recent comments were in reference to a policy that President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa signed into law last month.

The law, known as the Expropriation Act, repeals an apartheid-era law and allows the government in certain instances to acquire privately held land in the public interest without paying compensation — something that can be done only after a justification process subject to judicial review.

The order from Mr. Trump came a day after Mr. Ramaphosa delivered his State of the Nation address with a defiance that appeared to be a reference to the American president’s accusations.

“We will not be bullied,” he said. The South African leader vowed to stand united in the face of what he called “the rise of nationalism and protectionism.”

“We will speak with one voice in defense of our national interest, our sovereignty and our constitutional democracy,” he said.

In addition to the halt in foreign aid, Mr. Trump ordered officials to provide “humanitarian” assistance to Afrikaners and to allow members of the white South African minority to seek refuge in the United States through the American refugee program.

Since the transition to democracy in 1994, the South African government has taken a willing-seller approach to try to transfer the ownership of more land to the country’s Black majority. The new law, with limited exceptions to that approach, came as many Black South Africans have argued that Nelson Mandela and other leaders did not do enough to force the white minority to give up wealth that had been accrued during apartheid.

South Africa’s colonial regimes were particularly brutal in dispossessing Black people of their land and forcefully removing them. Despite the efforts of postcolonial governments, the result remains clear to this day: White South Africans, who make up 7 percent of the population, own farmland that covers the majority of the country’s territory.

In an earlier executive order, Mr. Trump had demanded a three-month pause in the United States’ refugee program, blocking the admission of desperate people fleeing war, economic strife, natural disasters or political persecution. Friday’s order appeared to make white South Africans an exception to the broader halt.

While it is not clear whether he had an influence on the president’s order, Elon Musk, the billionaire who has become a close adviser to the president, is from South Africa. In 2023, Mr. Musk posted similar far-right conspiracy claims about South Africa on X, the social media platform he owns.

“They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa,” Mr. Musk wrote.

Mr. Ramaphosa and Mr. Musk spoke by phone after that social media post, with the South African president trying to clarify what his administration has called “misinformation” peddled by Mr. Trump.

In much of South Africa, Mr. Trump’s attacks in recent days inspired a rare bit of political unity, with leftist, centrist and even some far-right activists all saying that the American president’s characterization of the land transfer law was wrong.

His comments amplified a long-held grievance among some white South Africans who claim they have been discriminated against by the Black-led government after apartheid. But Mr. Trump’s comments also angered many South Africans, who saw the law as a necessary means of redressing historical injustice.

Since 1994, when South Africa became a democracy, the country has enjoyed a close relationship with the United States. Barack Obama visited there several times during his presidency, including when he attended the memorial service for Mr. Mandela, who had been imprisoned for 27 years before becoming the country’s president.

But Mr. Trump’s actions on Friday made it clear that he does not view the relationship in the same way.

South Africa received more than $400 million in aid from the United States in 2023, almost all of which went to funding efforts to fight H.I.V. and AIDS. The government has said that American funding makes up about 17 percent of its budget for battling H.I.V.

Far-right white Afrikaners applauded Mr. Trump’s attacks on South Africa’s government in recent days.

Ernst Roets, the executive director of the Afrikaner Foundation, which lobbies for international support of the interests of Afrikaners, said that while the government was not seizing land, it was trying to create a legal and policy framework to be able to do so.

The expropriation law opens the door to abuse, Mr. Roets said, because the government “can justify a lot of things under the banner of public interest.” But even Mr. Roets and his group had not called on Mr. Trump to broadly cut aid to South Africa, instead seeking targeted actions against government leaders.

After Mr. Trump first commented about land confiscation, the South African government tried to broker a conversation between its foreign minister and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, according to Ebrahim Rasool, South Africa’s ambassador to the United States. But the Trump administration did not respond, he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s national governing party has swept to victory in an important regional election in India’s capital, where voters previously rejected Mr. Modi’s Hindu-first platform for nearly three decades even as it expanded its footprint elsewhere across the vast country.

By late afternoon on Saturday, the counting of most of the votes in elections for New Delhi’s regional assembly showed that the Bharatiya Janata Party was comfortably forming the government with over 40 seats.

The incumbent Aam Aadmi party, which has governed the capital area for the past decade but has increasingly struggled against Mr. Modi’s efforts to crush it, was trailing with about 20 seats.

A party needs 36 seats in the 70-seat assembly to form the government.

“Development wins, good governance triumphs,” Mr. Modi said in a celebratory message on X.

Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, conceded the election in a video message, saying: “Whatever the people’s mandate, we accept it most humbly.”

The political fight over who governs the capital region has come to epitomize the cutthroat nature of Indian politics.

Mudslinging rival parties have been competing for votes with handouts and with pressure tactics that include A.I.-heavy disinformation campaigns and outright jailings of politicians.

Meanwhile, delivery of basic government services for a region of more than 20 million people appears increasingly paralyzed. Residents in large stretches of the capital region lack drinking water on tap, instead relying on tankers sent into poor neighborhoods. The river that cuts through Delhi is deeply contaminated, and the air grows severely polluted every winter.

The Aam Aadmi Party, which was born out of an anticorruption movement that indirectly helped Mr. Modi reach national power in 2014, had hoped to win a third term.

But in recent years, much of the party’s top leadership was jailed by central investigating agencies that report to Mr. Modi in connection with accusations of an excise scam. Before last year’s parliamentary elections, Mr. Kejriwal, the A.A.P.’s leader and the chief minister of Delhi, was arrested on accusations of corruption involving the city’s liquor policy, in a case that is still pending.

Mr. Kejriwal continued to govern the capital from his cell. Once released on bail, he stepped aside from leading Delhi. He elevated a lieutenant as chief minister while trying to appeal to his support base, contending that Mr. Modi’s central government was deliberately denying Delhi residents the delivery of basic services to portray the A.A.P. as a failure and open the way for the B.J.P.

Mr. Modi’s strategy centered on challenging A.A.P.’s image as an anticorruption party of the common person. And he has said that if his party came to power in the capital, it would not make “any excuses or blame others for the problems related to Delhi’s health, traffic, electricity, water, transport.”

Opposition parties have accused the election commission, which regulates campaigning and oversees the vote, of creating an uneven playing field that favors Mr. Modi’s party.

A day before the Delhi results, several leaders of an opposition coalition raised questions about another important election in the state of Mahrashtra, where the B.J.P. won handsomely after strong-arm tactics had reshaped the political landscape. The opposition contended that the number of registered voters in the election had exceeded the state’s adult population.

The election commission did not immediately address the discrepancy, but said it “would respond in writing with full factual & procedural matrix.”

One result of the daily bickering in the capital region has been a paralysis of routine governance, affecting vital issues like controlling pollution and providing access to water, garbage pickup and health care.

That was clear during a visit to Kusumpur Pahari, a slum on the edge of one of the poshest areas of Delhi, in the days ahead of the vote. The arrival of a water tanker resulted in commotion as women and children jostled to the front, large containers in hand. Nearby, trash was piled outside the public toilet complex as residents complained about the lack of municipal services.

While Mr. Kejriwal still enjoys support in such working-class neighborhoods whose voters have long been the core of his party, the B.J.P.’s efforts also appeared to be finding traction.

“I have never seen anything but a struggle to get in queues for water,” said Vijay Prakash, 25. “At least Kejriwal has got toilets constructed and ensures we get water tankers.”

Others, like 68-year-old Lalita Devi, were doubtful. “Who knows, if someone new comes, maybe they will make better arrangements for us?”

Much of the campaign between the rival parties has been an effort to outdo each other in generosity to various sectors of the voting public.

The A.A.P. has highlighted its improvement of Delhi’s schools and promised financial assistance to women, free health care to older people and transportation subsidies to students.

The B.J.P.’s promises have included even handsomer handouts. It has vowed monthly financial help to women about 20 percent higher than what the A.A.P. is offering, a subsidy on gas cylinders, and a monthly pension for older people. It has also promised life and accident insurance for taxi drivers, in the past a core group of Mr. Kejriwal’s supporters.

The campaign has also included colorful ways of getting at each other.

The B.J.P. sent a truck around the city bearing a replica model of what it said was the “palace of mirrors” that Mr. Kejriwal has built for himself, highlighting in particular an outsized “toilet made of gold” — an effort to undercut the A.A.P. chief’s image as a common man and an anticorruption crusader.

Mr. Kejriwal’s party, on the other hand, showed Mr. Modi’s party as a vulture in its campaign ads, out to stop the facilities offered by him to Delhi residents.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi.

The students meet a day a week for lessons in a tiny underground classroom that teachers call the beehive, for the buzzing of all the children packed inside.

Holding classes above ground in this part of Ukraine, in the city of Balakliya near the front line, is considered too dangerous because of the ever-present threat of Russian missiles and drones. Children spend most of their time in online classes and take turns going to school underground.

“When they come, they often ask me, ‘Can we see our former classroom?’” said Inna Mandryka, a deputy principal. The teachers, she said, never imagined children longing for school so much.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was intended to undermine the country’s future in many ways, stamping out language and culture, destroying infrastructure and leveling whole cities with bombs in the country’s east.

Disruption to the education of Ukraine’s 3.7 million schoolchildren is one of the most serious challenges for the country. Classes have been repeatedly interrupted, leaving many students far behind academically, experts say. Children are also losing their soft skills, such as communication and conflict resolution, from being unable to interact enough with other students.

Providing classes of any kind has been a huge obstacle for the country since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022.

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