The New York Times

NICHOLAS KRISTOF: If there are Martian scholars examining the United States right now, they might be puzzling over the great Trump paradox.

Donald Trump has long dealt in distortions and lies, including in his first term. Now, as he executes a much more aggressive agenda, his contradictions have become more brazen and his plan may be working.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: European leaders find themselves plunged into a hostile new era of less cooperation from the United States, a greater threat from Russia, and an increasingly uncertain outlook for Ukraine.

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN: Whenever President Donald Trump talks about Ukraine there is always something off, something missing, that makes you wonder what he is really up to.

Donald Trump’s rancorous threat to abandon Ukraine is stoking support for a long-debated proposal to use billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets to buy weapons for Ukraine and finance its reconstruction.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: President Donald Trump is doing damage to America that could take a generation or more to repair. The next election cannot fix what Trump is breaking. Neither can the one after that.

OPINION: What happened in the Oval Office between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky was something that has never happened in the nearly 250-year history of this country.

Demi Moore is up for her first Academy Award for one of the goriest, most audacious films ever nominated. Here’s why it required wrestling with her own insecurity and ego.

JAMELLE BOUIE: If Elon Musk were a Cabinet official, he would be among the most powerful and influential Cabinet officials in American history. But Musk is not a Cabinet official. He’s a kind of co-president.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Some officials and analysts see the Trump administration as merely indifferent to Europe; others see open hostility. But there is a common view that the fundamental relationship has changed.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: It’s an exquisitely Trumpian formulation — tying the mayhem of an insurgent movement to the intuitive wisdom of ordinary people.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Volodymyr Zelensky’s approach to the Trump administration has fallen flat with the White House, engendering not empathy but hostility from the US president.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Europeans are debating additional funding and contemplating troops in Ukraine as American support appears ever more at risk.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Volodymyr Zelensky says his country will work ‘swiftly and very sensibly’ on an agreement granting the US access to its natural resources, in an apparent overture to tamp down tensions.

NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Donald Trump’s siding with an alleged war criminal, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and poisoning relations with longtime US allies. The trans-Atlantic alliance is unravelling.