You're an American in another land? Prepare to talk about the why and how of Trump 2.0

LONDON (AP) — The urgent care doctor cocked an eyebrow at Mari Santos and her American accent.

It was four days after President Donald Trump's inauguration, and Santos was a student with a stomach bug in the first weeks of an overseas semester in Glasgow, Scotland. A doctor arrived to see her after a six-hour wait. But before asking what ailed her, he said this: “Interesting time to be an American, I suppose."

Until then, Santos, 20, had not been thinking about Trump — just her 104-degree fever and concern about being sick while abroad. But the president and his triumphant return to the White House, she says, were on her physician's mind, giving the American University student an instant education in geopolitics. The lesson, as she sees it: “There's a kind of chilling in the air.”

“I knew that maybe that Europe is not in general big fan of American politics,” Santos said, “but I didn't expect it to be such like a personal thing.”

The United States and its center of gravity occupy a unique space in the international conversation. People the world over talk about America — its policies, its proclivities, its place in the world. They have for generations. They did it during the Iraq War. They did it during the first Trump administration.

And two months into Trump 2.0, at least in many European and English-speaking countries, it's happening again — sometimes even more intensely.

Answering for America under the new Trump administration is becoming a delicate experience for some of the estimated 5 million U.S. citizens living in other countries.

From Santos in Scotland to others in New Zealand, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada, Republican and Democratic expats alike told The Associated Press in recent weeks that the moment they are revealed to be American changes virtually every conversation to, in essence, “What about Trump?”

At its root, this change is about whom to trust among those thought until now to be allies, in world politics and in life. Trump, known for insisting the truth is what he says it is, is now the voice of America — not VOA, the independent news service that told the nation's story for eight decades until he silenced it March 16. The president himself has set an example in which trust is almost beside the point.

“Who do I trust? I mean, who do you trust? Do you trust anybody?” he said during an interview last month with The Spectator, when asked how much he trusts people like Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post.

What comes after the revelation that someone is American, U.S. citizens overseas say, are awkward questions, pauses and euphemisms — but almost always a reference to America under Trump in 2025.

“Before this year, the typical follow-up would be asking where exactly I’m from and what brought me to France,” said Anthony Mucia, 31, a Nebraska native who lives in Toulouse, France and has been overseas for six years. “Twice now, the first thing someone asked me was, ‘Are you glad to be in France now?’” He also gets looks that he interprets as “a bit of ‘shock’ or ‘uneasiness.’ Almost like it automatically turned into an embarrassing topic.”

What's bending these interactions, expats say, is Trump’s flurry of orders and statements that have upended 80 years of international order and spooked markets.

He’s talked about how the U.S. will “one way or the other” capture Greenland from Denmark, “take back” Panama and make Canada the 51st U.S. state. He wants to empty and develop war-battered Gaza, and has cut off U.S. aid to the world’s neediest people. He’s falsely blamed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for starting the Russian invasion and ended a White House meeting with Zelenskyy after berating the Ukrainian leader. Trump has let Europe’s leaders know that the U.S. is not a staunch ally in facing the Russian threat. And he’s set off tariff wars with China, Canada and Mexico.

Not smoothing the American experience overseas is the backlash developing against Trump’s association with Elon Musk and Tesla, which has fueled growing boycott movements. People are joining Facebook groups to exchange ideas about how to avoid U.S. products. Feelings are especially strong across the Nordic region — particularly Denmark, where Trump’s moves have set “the Danish Viking blood boiling,” one man told The Associated Press.

So far, the interactions are less hostile than wary, Americans overseas say. But anti-U.S. sentiment is emerging as a concern on the cusp of what's expected to be a record-setting international travel season for Americans.

Jake Lamb, 32, moved from Colorado to Auckland, New Zealand in 2023. He said says he's “noticed a significant shift in the types and frequency of questions I’m asked” over the past year. Kiwis remain friendly about it, but they've been saying they might have to “hide” Lamb or vouch that he's “one of the good ones” if Trump escalates conflicts with former allies. He thinks that the good humor belies wariness.

“I am concerned that it may become difficult for some not to hold individual Americans responsible,” Lamb, a volunteer coordinator for a charity and who voted for Democrat Kamala Harris, said in an email.

Elizabeth Van Horne, 33, has lived in France since 2013. For years, she said, people would ask “why on Earth I'd come to live in France if I could live in the U.S: 'It's so beautiful, there's so much potential, so much opportunity, like living in a TV show.'”

“Now, that romanticized image has completely changed,” Van Horne, a Democrat, said in an email. Early in March, a postal worker told her it's sad to watch.

“For me,” she said, “that conversation summed it up: ‘Je suis desole pour vous’ — ‘I’m sorry for you.'”

Georganne Burke, a Syracuse, N.Y., native living in Ottawa, supported Trump in all three elections and is the chairwoman of Republicans Overseas in Canada. She's a dual citizen, which makes her something like the Peace Bridge that links the two nations in Buffalo, N.Y.

Trump's tariff war, his manner and his provocative talk about how Canada “only works” as the 51st U.S. state “has everybody's hair on fire," she said in an interview. Burke, 77, says she's received threats and had a tense talk with an anti-Trump co-worker. People ask her, “How could anyone vote for him?"

An invitation to speak about trade near the end of March, she says, came with the organizer saying that he was “pretty sure that most of the people will be polite.” Burke accepted the invitation.

She says anti-American sentiment was bad during the Iraq war under President George W. Bush in 2003. But now it's different.

“Then, it was kind of more on the politicians,” as the targets of public ire, Burke said in a recent interview. “Now, it's much more personal.”

Burke's counterpart in London, Greg Swenson of Republicans Overseas UK, says walking around as an American in another country remains more positive than negative. In interviews with media outlets, he readily acknowledges Trump can be “obnoxious.” But Swenson, 62, is an investment banker, and he says the president and America remain good for business.

“In the private capital world, which is not affected by day-to-day (market) volatility, there is just a huge amount of optimism,” Swenson said. That means, he says, that investors want to work with U.S. vendors and customers, seeking American “credibility” through “an affiliation with the president.”

As for what people overseas think of Americans right now: A survey of social media, neighbors and others shows plenty are curious and concerned. When an American dad posted on Reddit his worry that his family won't be welcomed in Ireland, an Irish dad who asked the AP to identify him by his Reddit handle responded this way:

“A lot of people like me are really, really alienated and angry at the US and Americans,” wrote MDMB13. "But the good news is we’re Irish so you’ll never know because (we) bury our feelings in a far-off place and let them fester over decades.” He ended his comment with a smile emoji.

Greg Swenson of Republicans Overseas UK, poses for a photograph in London, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Greg Swenson of Republicans Overseas UK, poses for a photograph in London, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Greg Swenson of Republicans Overseas UK, poses for a photograph in London, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Greg Swenson of Republicans Overseas UK, poses for a photograph in London, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Catholic Church in Oklahoma wants taxpayers to fund an online charter school that “is faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ.” The Supreme Court could well approve.

St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School would be the nation's first religious charter school. A ruling from the high court allowing public money to flow directly to a religious school almost certainly would lead to others.

Opponents warn it would blur the separation between church and state, sap money from public schools and possibly upend the rules governing charter schools in almost every state.

The court hears arguments Wednesday in one of the term's most closely watched cases.

The case comes to the court amid efforts, mainly in conservative-led states, to insert religion into public schools. Those include a challenged Louisiana requirement that the Ten Commandments be posted in classrooms and a mandate from Oklahoma’s state schools superintendent that the Bible be placed in public school classrooms.

Conservative justices in recent years have delivered a series of decisions allowing public money to be spent at religious institutions, leading liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor to lament that the court “continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build.”

The justices are reviewing an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision last year in which a lopsided majority invalidated a state board’s approval of an application filed jointly by two Catholic dioceses in Oklahoma.

The K-12 online school had planned to start classes for its first 200 enrollees last fall, with part of its mission to evangelize its students in the Catholic faith.

Oklahoma’s high court determined the board’s approval violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”

The state board and the school, backed by an array of Republican-led states and religious and conservative groups, argue that the court decision violates a different part of the First Amendment that protects religious freedom. The Free Exercise Clause has been the basis of the recent Supreme Court decisions.

“A State need not subsidize private education,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in one of those decisions in 2020. “But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”

The case has divided some of the state’s Republican leaders, with Gov. Kevin Stitt and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters supporting the concept of using public funds for religious schools, while Attorney General Gentner Drummond has opposed the idea and sued to overturn the virtual charter school board’s approval of St. Isidore.

A key issue in the case is whether the school is public or private. Charter schools are deemed public in Oklahoma and the other 45 states and the District of Columbia where they operate.

They are free and open to all. Just under 4 million American schoolchildren, about 8%, are enrolled in charter schools.

“Charter schools no doubt offer important educational innovations, but they bear all the classic indicia of public schools,” lawyers for Drummond wrote in a Supreme Court filing.

Those include that they receive state funding, must abide by antidiscrimination laws and must submit to oversight of curriculum and testing. But the schools also are run by independent boards that are not part of local public school systems.

“Charter schools are called public schools, but they’re totally different entities,” said Nicole Garnett, a University of Notre Dame law professor who is a leading proponent of publicly funded religious charter schools. Other Notre Dame professors are part of the St. Isidore legal team.

If the court finds the school is public, or a “state actor,” it could lead to a ruling against St. Isidore. If instead it determines that the school is private, the court is more likely to see this case as it did the earlier ones in which it found discrimination against religious institutions.

That the court even agreed to take on the issue now might suggest that a majority is inclined to side with St. Isidore.

The Oklahoma court is the only one that has ruled on religious charter schools and only eight justices are hearing the case. Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself without explanation. Barrett previously taught law at Notre Dame and is close friends with Garnett.

The current court is very familiar with private and, especially, religious education. Six justices attended Catholic schools as children and almost all the children of the justices go or went to private schools, including some religious ones.

Walters, the state schools superintendent, sees the St. Isidore case as “the next frontier” in school choice for parents. He has been an unabashed critic of the separation of church and state and sought to infuse more religion into public schools.

“I see it very clearly, that there’s been a war on Christianity and our schools have been at the epicenter of that,” said Walters, a former high school history teacher elected in 2022 on a platform of fighting “woke ideology” in public schools and banning certain books from school libraries.

“We’re going to give parents more rights in education than anywhere in the country, and that means a free ability to choose the school of your choice, whether it’s a religious education, whether it’s a charter school, public school, home school, all of the above.”

The idea of using public money to fund religious schools is antithetical to the Constitution, said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“This is religious public education, fully and directly funded by taxpayers. It’s as abject a violation of religious freedom as they come, because it forces taxpayers to fund the heart of religion, religious education for religion that’s not their own,” Laser said.

A group of Oklahoma parents, faith leaders and a public education nonprofit that also sued to block the school argue that religious charter schools in their state would lead to a drop in funding for rural public schools.

St. Isidore would lead to other religious charter schools, said Erika Wright, a mother whose two school-age children attend a rural school district in Cleveland County. "And all of those schools would be pulling from the same limited pot of money that we have for our current brick-and-mortar schools across the state.”

A decision is expected by early summer.

Murphy reported from Oklahoma City.

Erika Wright, a mother whose two school-age children attend a rural school district in Cleveland County waters her garden at her home in Noble, Okla., on Tuesday, April 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Nick Oxford)

The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City is seen on Thursday, April 17, 2025 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (AP Photo/Nick Oxford)

Erika Wright, a mother whose two school-age children attend a rural school district in Cleveland County poses for a portrait at her home in Noble, Okla., on Tuesday, April 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Nick Oxford)

A cross sits atop the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City on Thursday, April 17, 2025 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (AP Photo/Nick Oxford)

The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City is seen on Thursday, April 17, 2025 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (AP Photo/Nick Oxford)

FILE - The Supreme Court is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)