Europe will mark V-E Day's 80th anniversary as once-unbreakable bonds with the US are under pressure

THIMISTER-CLERMONT, Belgium (AP) — The memory of blood dripping from trucks loaded with the mangled bodies of U.S. soldiers arriving at a nearby war cemetery straight from the battlefield in 1945 still gives 91-year-old Marcel Schmetz nightmares.

It also instilled a lifelong sense of gratitude for the young soldiers from the United States and around the world who gave their lives battling the armies of Adolf Hitler to end World War II in Europe.

Schmetz even built a museum at his home in the Belgian Ardennes to honor their sacrifice.

“If the Americans hadn’t come, we wouldn’t be here,” the Belgian retiree said.

That same spirit also pervades Normandy in northern France, where the allied forces landed on June 6, 1944, a day that became the tipping point of the war.

In Normandy, Marie-Pascale Legrand is still taking care of the ailing Charles Shay, a 100-year-old American who stormed the bloodied beaches on that fateful D-Day as a teenager and fought to help liberate Europe for many more months.

“Gratitude for me means that I am eternally indebted, because I can live free today,” Legrand said.

After D-Day, it would take almost another year of fierce fighting before Germany would finally surrender on May 8, 1945. Commemorations and festivities are planned for the 80th anniversary across much of the continent for what has become known as Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day, one of the most momentous days on the continent in recent centuries.

Ever since, for generation upon generation in the nations west of the Iron Curtain that sliced Europe in two, it became a day to confirm and reconfirm what were long seen as the unbreakable bonds with the United States as both stood united against Soviet Eastern Europe.

No more.

Over the past several months, the rhetoric from Washington has become increasingly feisty.

The Trump administration has questioned the vestiges of the decades-old alliance and slapped trade sanctions on the 27-nation European Union and the United Kingdom. Trump has insisted that the EU trade bloc was there to “screw” the United States from the start.

The wartime allies are now involved in a trade war.

“After all that has happened, it is bound to leave scars,” said Hendrik Vos, European studies professor at Ghent University.

Yet deep in the green hills and Ardennes woods where the Battle of the Bulge was fought and Schmetz lives, just as along the windswept bluffs of Legrand's Normandy, the ties endure — isolated from the tremors of geopolitics.

“For all those that criticize the Americans, we can only say that for us, they were all good,” Schmetz said. “We should never forget that.”

After watching the horrors of the dead soldiers at the nearby Henri-Chapelle cemetery as an 11-year-old, Schmetz vowed he would do something in their honor and gathered war memorabilia.

A car mechanic with a big warehouse, he immediately started to turn it into the Remember Museum 39-45 once he retired more than three decades ago.

“I had to do something for those who died,” he said.

And for the treasure trove of military artifacts, what truly stands out is a long bench in the kitchen where U.S. veterans, their children, and even their grandchildren come and sit and talk about what happened, and the bonds uniting continent, memories all meticulously kept by his wife Mathilde, to pass on to new visitors and new generations of schoolkids.

In the coming weeks, she will be going out to put 696 roses on the graves of soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division — nicknamed “The Big Red One,” or “BRO” — who lie buried among 7,987 headstones at Henri Chapelle.

Charles Shay, who is now bedridden in Normandy, was also part of the 1st Infantry Division and came through the Ardennes region too before heading to Germany. He survived the Korean War too and started making visits to the D-Day beaches around two decades ago. Over the years, he became increasingly sick and Legrand, who has helped veterans in one way or another for more than 40 years, took him in to her home in 2018.

He has been living there ever since.

The moment everything changed for Legrand was listening to then U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1984 speaking on a Normandy bluff of the sacrifice and heroism of American soldiers.

Barely in her 20s, she realized that “their blood is in our soil and we have to show gratitude. We have to do something. I didn't know what at the time, but I knew I would do something to show it.”

She had long volunteered to help Allied veterans before she met Shay. He was lonely, sick and frail when she took him in and began caring for him at her Normandy home.

“It is a strong symbol, which takes on a new dimension in this day and age,” she said, referring to the tumultuous trans-Atlantic relations that have put the bonds between allies that Trump called “unbreakable” only six years ago, under extreme pressure.

Central in Trump's criticism of European NATO allies is that they have happily hunkered far too long under U.S. military supremacy since World War II and should start paying much more of their own way in the alliance. He has done so in such terms that many Europeans sincerely fear the breakup of the trans-Atlantic bonds that were a core of global politics for almost a century.

“The naive belief that the Americans will, by definition, always be an ally — once and for all, that is gone,” said Vos. It also raises a moral question for Europeans now.

“Are we doomed to be eternally grateful?” Vos asked.

FILE - Looking north from 44th Street, New York's Times Square is packed Monday, May 7, 1945, with crowds celebrating the news of Germany's unconditional surrender in World War II. (AP Photo/Tom Fitzsimmons, File)

World War II D-Day veteran and Penobscot Elder from Maine, Charles Norman Shay, center, and Marie Pacale Legrand during a D-Day 76th anniversary ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, June 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

FILE - An American soldier, identified as Patsy Caliendo, is laid to rest in the largest Allied military cemetery on the Western Front March 14, 1945, in Henri-Chapelle, Belgium. (AP Photo/William C. Allen, File)

Director of the WWII Remember Museum 1939-1945, Marcel Schmetz, stands near vintage WWII vehicles inside his museum in Thimister-Clermont, Belgium, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

Gravestones of American WWII soldiers at the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery in Henri Chapelle, Belgium, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

U.S. forces have boarded another oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea. The announcement was made Friday by the U.S. military. The Trump administration has been targeting sanctioned tankers traveling to and from Venezuela.

The pre-dawn action was carried out by U.S. Marines and Navy, taking part in the monthslong buildup of forces in the Caribbean, according to U.S. Southern Command, which declared “there is no safe haven for criminals” as it announced the seizure of the vessel called the Olina.

Navy officials couldn’t immediately provide details about whether the Coast Guard was part of the force that took control of the vessel as has been the case in the previous seizures. A spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard said there was no immediate comment on the seizure.

The Olina is the fifth tanker that has been seized by U.S. forces as part of a broader effort by Trump’s administration to control the distribution of Venezuela’s oil products globally following the U.S. ouster of President Nicolás Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid.

The latest:

Richard Grenell, president of the Kennedy Center, says a documentary film about first lady Melania Trump will make its premiere later this month, posting a trailer on X.

As the Trumps prepared to return to the White House last year, Amazon Prime Video announced a year ago that it had obtained exclusive licensing rights for a streaming and theatrical release directed by Brett Ratner.

Melania Trump also released a self-titled memoir in late 2024.

Some artists have canceled scheduled Kennedy Center performances after a newly installed board voted to add President Donald Trump’s to the facility, prompting Grenell to accuse the performers of making their decisions because of politics.

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum says that she has asked her foreign affairs secretary to reach out directly to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio or Trump regarding comments by the American leader that the U.S. cold begin ground attacks against drug cartels.

In a wide-ranging interview with Fox News aired Thursday night, Trump said, “We’ve knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by water and we are going to start now hitting land, with regard to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico. It’s very sad to watch.”

As she has on previous occasions, Sheinbaum downplayed the remarks, saying “it is part of his way of communicating.” She said she asked her Foreign Affairs Secretary Juan Ramón de la Fuente to strengthen coordination with the U.S.

Sheinbaum has repeatedly rebuffed Trump’s offer to send U.S. troops after Mexican drug cartels. She emphasizes that there will be no violation of Mexico’s sovereignty, but the two governments will continue to collaborate closely.

Analysts do not see a U.S. incursion in Mexico as a real possibility, in part because Sheinbaum’s administration has been doing nearly everything Trump has asked and Mexico is a critical trade partner.

Trump says he wants to secure $100 billion to remake Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, a lofty goal going into a 2:30 meeting on Friday with executives from leading oil companies. His plan rides on oil producers being comfortable in making commitments in a country plagued by instability, inflation and uncertainty.

The president has said that the U.S. will control distribution worldwide of Venezuela’s oil and will share some of the proceeds with the country’s population from accounts that it controls.

“At least 100 Billion Dollars will be invested by BIG OIL, all of whom I will be meeting with today at The White House,” Trump said Friday in a pre-dawn social media post.

Trump is banking on the idea that he can tap more of Venezuela’s petroleum reserves to keep oil prices and gasoline costs low.

At a time when many Americans are concerned about affordability, the incursion in Venezuela melds Trump’s assertive use of presidential powers with an optical spectacle meant to convince Americans that he can bring down energy prices.

Trump is expected to meet with oil executives at the White House on Friday.

He hopes to secure $100 billion in investments to revive Venezuela’s oil industry. The goal rides on the executives’ comfort with investing in a country facing instability and inflation.

Since a U.S. military raid captured former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, Trump has said there’s a new opportunity to use the country’s oil to keep gasoline prices low.

The full list of executives invited to the meeting has not been disclosed, but Chevron, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips are expected to attend.

Attorneys general in five Democratic-led states have filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s administration after it said it would freeze money for several public benefit programs.

The Trump administration has cited concerns about fraud in the programs designed to help low-income families and their children. California, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois and New York states filed the lawsuit Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The lawsuit asks the courts to order the administration to release the funds. The attorneys general have called the funding freeze an unconstitutional abuse of power.

Iran’s judiciary chief has vowed decisive punishment for protesters, signaling a coming crackdown against demonstrations.

Iranian state television reported the comments from Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei on Friday. They came after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei criticized Trump’s support for the protesters, calling Trump’s hands “stained with the blood of Iranians.”

The government has shut down the internet and is blocking international calls. State media has labeled the demonstrators as “terrorists.”

The protests began over Iran’s struggling economy and have become a significant challenge to the government. Violence has killed at least 50 people, and more than 2,270 have been detained.

Trump questions why a president’s party often loses in midterm elections and suggests voters “want, maybe a check or something”

Trump suggested voters want to check a president’s power and that’s why they often deliver wins for an opposing party in midterm elections, which he’s facing this year.

“There’s something down, deep psychologically with the voters that they want, maybe a check or something. I don’t know what it is, exactly,” he said.

He said that one would expect that after winning an election and having “a great, successful presidency, it would be an automatic win, but it’s never been a win.”

Hiring likely remained subdued last month as many companies have sought to avoid expanding their workforces, though the job gains may be enough to bring down the unemployment rate.

December’s jobs report, to be released Friday, is likely to show that employers added a modest 55,000 jobs, economists forecast. That figure would be below November’s 64,000 but an improvement after the economy lost jobs in October. The unemployment rate is expected to slip to 4.5%, according to data provider FactSet, from a four-year high of 4.6% in November.

The figures will be closely watched on Wall Street and in Washington because they will be the first clean readings on the labor market in three months. The government didn’t issue a report in October because of the six-week government shutdown, and November’s data was distorted by the closure, which lasted until Nov. 12.

FILE - President Donald Trump dances as he walks off stage after speaking to House Republican lawmakers during their annual policy retreat, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)