American allies start imagining a European NATO should President Trump exit the alliance.

Plus, Maine becomes the first state to block construction of large AI data centers in a largely

party-line vote opposed by many Republicans.

This is all about jobs for me. It should be for all of us.

And we'll look at why more Americans are preparing to cheat on their taxes

after the Trump administration cut IRS enforcement staff.

It's Wednesday, April 15th.

I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal.

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The top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

NATO is accelerating a fallback plan to defend its member nations without the U.S.

As tensions over the Iran War fuel anxiety over American reliability.

That says President Trump has restarted criticism of NATO

since the war began, calling for alliance members to help secure the Strait of Hormuz.

Though with Europe reticent to join the war, our chief European political correspondent,

Bojan Ponchevsky, says that leaders are now reluctantly planning for a future without

U.S. security guarantees.

America is the core of NATO's deterrence because the American nuclear umbrella is protecting most of Europe from basically Russia.

And so they will never do anything to alienate Trump further.

But what they're trying to do is make contingency plans of how to kind of take over

NATO institutions within Europe, how to staff the top jobs with European officers, with

generals and so on, how to move European assets and troops in the place of American assets

...