segunda-feira, 30 de junho de 2025
US Senate Republicans make final push to pass Trump’s ‘one big beautiful bill’
US Senate
Republicans make final push to pass Trump’s ‘one big beautiful bill’
Senators
convene for ‘vote-a-rama’ in which they will propose amendments, probably over
many hours
Chris Stein
Mon 30 Jun
2025 17.13 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/30/republicans-senators-trump-one-big-beautiful-bill
US Senate
Republicans will on Monday make a final push for passage of Donald Trump’s “one
big, beautiful bill”, a massive tax-and-spending bill that the president has
demanded be ready for his signature by Friday.
Senators
convened at the Capitol for a process known as “vote-a-rama”, in which
lawmakers will propose amendments to the legislation over what is expected to
be many hours. Democrats, who universally oppose the bill, are expected to use
the process to force the GOP into politically tricky votes that they will seek
to wield against them in elections to come.
But all eyes
will be on Republicans, who will use the process to make last-minute changes to
the text ahead of a vote for passage that could come on Tuesday, after which it
will return to the House of Representatives for their final say-so. On
Saturday, Senate Republicans agreed to begin debate on the act, but not without
substantial drama. After the North Carolina moderate Thom Tillis declined to
vote for the bill, Trump attacked him and the senator announced he would not
stand for re-election next year, potentially improving Democrats’ chances of
picking up the purple state’s seat.
As the
marathon session kicked off on Monday morning, John Thune sounded optimistic
that the measure would soon clear his chamber.
“Let’s vote.
This is good for America, this is good for the American people, it is good for
working families,” the Senate majority leader said.
Democrats
managed to slow down the bill’s progress temporarily on Saturday night, by
demanding the clerk read its entire 940-page text before amendments could be
considered – a process that took until Sunday afternoon.
On the
Senate floor on Monday morning, Chuck Schumer said the bill “steals people’s
healthcare, jacks up their electricity bill, take away their jobs – all to pay
for tax breaks for billionaires”.
Democrats,
the Senate minority leader said, would offer amendments to “see once and for
all if Republicans really meant all those nice things they’ve been saying about
‘strengthening Medicaid’ and ‘protecting middle-class families’, or if they
were just lying”.
It remains
unclear if enough Republican votes exist for passage of the bill through the
Senate. The GOP can only afford three defections, and Tillis and Kentucky’s
Rand Paul have both said they will vote against it.
The bill is
Trump’s top legislative priority, and focused exclusively on tax and spending
matters so it can be passed through the Senate without being subject to the
filibuster’s 60-vote threshold. The measure would extend tax cuts created
during Trump’s first term in 2017, and create new exemptions for tips, overtime
and car loan interest that were part of the president’s re-election pitch.
It would
also provide tens of billions of dollars to hire new immigration agents, build
fortifications along US frontiers, including a wall along the southern border
with Mexico, and expand the government’s capacity to deport people.
To offset
its costs, Republicans have proposed cuts to Medicaid, which provides
healthcare to low-income and disabled Americans, and the supplementary
nutritional assistance program, also known as food stamps. They have also
proposed sunsetting some of the green energy tax credits created under Joe
Biden.
Moderate
Republican lawmakers fear the benefit cuts will harm programs their
constituents rely on and put rural hospitals out of business, and are expected
to propose amendments designed to cushion the blow. Others object to rapidly
sunsetting the green energy incentives because it will set back projects under
way in their states or create uncertainty for investors.
Republican
leaders are also seeking to appease fiscal conservatives in the House and
Senate who are demanding the bill reduce the United States’s large federal
budget deficit. As written, the bill does not appear to do that – on Sunday,
the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated it would add $3.3tn to
the deficit through 2034.
Spain records highs of 46C and France under alert as Europe swelters in heatwave
Spain
records highs of 46C and France under alert as Europe swelters in heatwave
Extreme heat
‘the new normal’, says UN chief, as authorities across the continent issue
health warnings
Ajit
Niranjan, European environment correspondent, and Sam Jones in Seville
Mon 30 Jun
2025 16.16 BST
A vicious
heatwave has engulfed southern Europe, with punishing temperatures that have
reached highs of 46C (114.8F) in Spain and placed almost the entirety of
mainland France under alert.
Extreme
heat, made stronger by fossil fuel pollution, has for several days scorched
Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece as southern Europe endures its first
major heatwave of the summer.
The high
temperatures have prompted the authorities in several countries to issue new
health warnings and scramble firefighters to prevent wildfires from breaking
out. More than 50,000 people in Turkey have been evacuated from their homes due
to forest fires, according to the interior ministry’s disaster and emergency
management authority.
António
Guterres, the UN secretary general, said at a development conference in Seville
on Monday: “Extreme heat is no longer a rare event – it has become the new
normal.”
In Portugal
— his home country — a reading of 46.6 C (115.9F) was registered in Mora, about
60 miles east of Lisbon. Weather officials were working to confirm whether that
marked a new record for June.
The southern
Spanish city is forecast to roast in more than 40C heat for the next three days
and face night-time temperatures of at least 25C until Thursday morning.
Doctors have expressed alarm at the combination of hot days and uncomfortably
warm nights, which can place a lethal stress on the human body.
In Italy,
where 21 out of 27 cities were placed on the highest heat alert on Sunday,
hospital admissions in some of the hottest regions – such as Tuscany – are up
20%. People have been advised not to venture outside between 11am and 6pm.
In France,
heat warnings covered nearly the entire mainland for the first time in history.
Météo-France has placed 88% of administrative areas under the second-highest
orange heat alerts. “This is unprecedented,” said the ecology minister, Agnès
Pannier-Runacher.
The French
government asked businesses to adapt staff hours to protect workers from the
heat, and 200 public schools are to be partly or totally closed on Monday and
Tuesday. The first fire of the summer broke out in France in the south-west of
the country at the weekend, burning 400 hectares and leading to the
precautionary evacuation of more than 100 people from their homes.
In Spain,
which has had the worst of the weather, a June temperature record of 46C was
set on Saturday afternoon in El Granado, in the Andalucían province of Huelva.
The highest temperature previously recorded for June was 45.2C logged in
Seville in 1965.
Sunday was
the hottest 29 June in Spain on record, according to records from Aemet, the
Spanish meteorological agency, that stretch back to 1950. The heat is expected
to last till Thursday.
In Portugal,
where seven of 18 regions are under red warnings of “extreme risk”,
meteorologists expect the weather to cool down on Wednesday night.
Countries
farther north are also in danger. The German weather service has said heat and
dry weather are stoking the risk of forest fires, with some cities imposing
limits on water extraction as temperatures in parts of the country approach 40C
by Wednesday.
In
Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, the government has urged employers
to take the danger to their staff into account. “Companies are bound by heat
protection rules at the workplace,” the regional health minister Britta Müller
said, including maintaining an acceptable temperature indoors and guarding
against excessive sun exposure.
The UK is
projected to have temperatures of 34C in London and the south-east of England,
with the Met Office warning that high temperatures and humid conditions will be
“quite uncomfortable” for those working outside, as well as people leaving
Glastonbury and attending the start of Wimbledon.
Radhika
Khosla, an urban climatologist at the University of Oxford, said: “Populations
in urban areas like London are particularly susceptible to extreme heat as the
concrete and asphalt absorb and re-emit the sun’s radiation, amplifying its
impact on our bodies. For this reason, outdoor workers are particularly at risk
and should take regular breaks to hydrate in the shade.”
The
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said its teams
were supporting responders who were battling fires in Turkey, Greece and
Norway. In other countries such as Spain, Italy and the UK, its volunteers were
handing out water and checking in on vulnerable people.
Heat kills
an estimated half a million people globally each year, with older people and
those with chronic illness particularly vulnerable.
The extreme
temperatures across Europe are a result of a heat dome that is trapping an area
of high pressure and hot air – a phenomenon that is also currently scorching
the US. It comes amid an ongoing marine heatwave that has left the
Mediterranean 5C hotter than normal, according to data from the University of
Maine’s climate change institute.
Dr Michael
Byrne, a climate scientist at the University of St Andrews, said heat domes
were nothing new but the temperatures they delivered were. “Europe is more than
2C warmer than in preindustrial times, so when a heat dome occurs it drives a
hotter heatwave,” he said.
Doctors
across the continent warned people to take extra care in the hot weather,
encouraging them to stay out of the heat, drink lots of water, wear loose
clothing and check in on vulnerable neighbours.
Researchers
estimate that dangerous temperatures in Europe will kill 8,000 to 80,000 more
people by the end of the century, as the lives lost to stronger heat outpace
those saved from milder cold.
“The planet
is getting hotter and more dangerous,” said Guterres, who called for more
action to stop climate change. “No country is immune.”
Additional
reporting from Angelique Chrisafis in Paris, Angela Giuffrida in Rome and
Deborah Cole in Berlin
‘He’s going to do everything to damage the president’: Former Musk friend on the Trump fallout
‘He’s
going to do everything to damage the president’: Former Musk friend on the
Trump fallout
In a rare
interview after the Musk-Trump row, Silicon Valley founder Philip Low predicts
his former friend will seek retaliation against the president.
By Christine
Mui
06/29/2025
02:00 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/29/silicon-valley-elon-musk-donald-trump-00415544
SAN
FRANCISCO — A former longtime friend of Elon Musk has a word of caution for
President Donald Trump about the tech mogul: He doesn’t really move on.
Philip Low,
an award-winning neuroscientist who partnered with the late, legendary
cosmologist Stephen Hawking as a test subject, learned that the hard way in
2021 when he fired Musk, one of his early investors, from the advisory board of
the Silicon Valley startup he founded.
Over an
hour-long interview, Low weaved something of a psychological portrait of his
former adviser, casting him as obsessive, prone to seeking revenge, power
hungry and in constant search of dominance. He suggested Musk aims to explore
every available avenue to establish competition with and ultimately overshadow
bitter rivals. Low has known him for 14 years but doesn’t believe Musk has
matured over time, and he’s convinced he never will.
Though the
two continued to speak for years after Low fired him, Low felt that Musk
carried a grudge and their bond was permanently altered. It finally snapped in
January when Low joined other critics in accusing the billionaire on social
media of performing Nazi salutes at Trump’s inaugural rally. Musk brushed off
the public backlash as “sooo” tired.
“I’ve had my
share of blowouts with Elon over the years,” Low told POLITICO in a rare
interview since Musk’s ugly spat with Trump. “Knowing Elon the way I know him,
I do think he’s going to do everything to damage the president.”
Musk did not
respond to multiple requests for comment directed to him and his businesses X,
Tesla and SpaceX. A spokesperson for his super PAC, America PAC, declined to
comment.
Musk and
Trump’s made-for-TV breakup erupted earlier this month over the president’s
megabill that is still moving through Congress. Complete with threats, nonstop
X posts and conspiracy-laced insults, their feud hit a peak after Trump mused
about canceling the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s government contracts.
In response,
Musk unloaded on the social media platform he owns by trashing the president’s
megabill, floating support of a third party, chiding him for “ingratitude,”
taking credit for his election win and even insinuating in a now-deleted post
that records of the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein
“have not been made public” because Trump is in them.
(While it
has long been public that Trump and other prominent figures are referenced in
documents released in cases surrounding Epstein, Trump is not accused of any
wrongdoing linked to Epstein.)
Both sides
now say tensions have cooled. The White House is eager to move on, with Trump
telling reporters he’ll keep Starlink internet and wishing Musk well. Musk, for
his part, admitted some of his posts got out of hand and offered an apology a
week later.
White House
spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement, “Politico’s fixation on
another palace intrigue non-story is laughable and fundamentally unserious. The
President is focused on Making America Great Again by securing our border,
turning the economy around, and pursuing peace around the globe.”
But Low, who
considers himself a political independent, said that Trump and the American
public shouldn’t be fooled. Simply put: Any reconciliation with Musk will be
“purely cosmetic” and transactional.
“He has been
humiliated,” Low, 45, said of his old friend. “The whole idea that Elon is
going to be on his side and help woo Congress and invest in election campaigns
for right-wing judges — Elon might do all of that, but deep down, it’s over.”
Low has
observed that Trump, on the other hand, “tends to make up with his former
sparring partners like [Steve] Bannon a bit more easily than Elon does,” though
the president is known for returning to his grievances as well.
As he tells
it, Musk and Low became fast friends after first meeting in 2011 at a social
occasion in Paris. Their relationship deepened over late nights in Los Angeles
— where Musk lived at the time — spent hanging out, attending each other’s
parties, texting frequently and trading stories about personal struggles.
Musk asked
to invest in the company Low built around a non-invasive brain monitoring
device used to detect conditions like sleep apnea and neurological disorders.
He participated in NeuroVigil’s 2015 funding round and joined its advisory
board. Low had already gained attention as a young innovator, launched a NASA
satellite lab and demoed how his technology could translate Hawking’s brain
waves into speech.
Musk gave
Low some pointers as the neuroscientist was preparing to visit the White House
for the first time, as a guest of former President Barack Obama. “He said ‘he’s
a human being like anybody else,’” Low recounted. “He views Trump sort of the
same way, just a human being.”
During
Trump’s first term, as Musk was also grappling with how to balance Tesla’s
business interests against policy disagreements with the administration, Low
returned the advice and recommended he step away from White House advisory
councils he served on to protect the automaker’s brand. Musk ultimately did in
2017 after Trump ordered the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
A few years
later, in 2021, Musk was looking to pull out of another business arrangement.
He wanted off NeuroVigil’s advisory board. Instead of letting him resign, Low
said he fired Musk, which prevented him from exercising his stock options to
hurt NeuroVigil.
“Let’s cut
ties here,” Low wrote in an email message to Musk at the time, viewed by
POLITICO. Musk by then had launched his brain implant company Neuralink and had
long been dreaming of colonizing Mars. “Good luck with your implants, all of
them, and with building Pottersville on Mars. Seriously, don’t fuck with me,”
Low wrote.
Musk, of
course, went on to donate $288 million during the 2024 election, which cemented
his place in MAGA politics and status as the largest and most prominent
individual political donor in the country. His America PAC once vowed to “keep
grinding” at an even more audacious political playbook ahead of the midterms.
But Musk scaled back his 2026 ambitions, promising to do “a lot less” campaign
spending in the future, shortly before his public clash with Trump.
With Musk’s
allegiance to MAGA called into question, Low predicted he could seek revenge
behind the scenes — “it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when” — a
possibility Trump has openly pondered.
The
president warned of “serious consequences” if Musk funds Democratic challengers
against Republicans who back his “big, beautiful bill”— the legislation that
would enact Trump’s domestic policy agenda, but that Musk has scorned as
wasteful pork-barrel spending.
However, if
there was any lingering notion that Musk would completely retreat from
politics, he dispelled it on Saturday by renewing his attacks on the bill ahead
of a critical vote.
The takedown
Unlike his
old pal, Low prefers to keep a lower profile. The Canadian neuroscientist wore
aviator sunglasses indoors throughout the interview. When POLITICO first
reached out, an automated reply from Low’s email robot came back, noting that
he was “completely off the grid” and providing a math puzzle to solve to get on
his calendar. POLITICO didn’t solve the problem, perhaps because it’s not
solvable, but he replied anyway.
Low spoke to
the press infrequently between the early 2010s, when his company partnered with
Hawking, and when he posted the takedown that ended any remaining friendship
with Musk earlier this year. One of the rare exceptions was a 2013 fireside
chat where Low, in an “Occupy Mars” shirt, spoke next to Musk at the Canadian
Consul General’s Residence in Los Angeles.
Low sees
little daylight between the Elon he knew before and the one who fractured his
relationship with the president.
“A lot of
people close to him will say that he changed. I don’t believe that to be true,”
he said. “I’ve seen this side of Elon over the years, but I just think that
over time, he got cozy with the idea of showing more of that, and now it seems
to have affected him.”
When Musk
came under fire for his salutes at Trump’s post-inauguration rally, Low, the
son of a Holocaust survivor, said he first confronted his former friend with a
private message. He said in the email viewed by POLITICO: “I am so glad I fired
your dumb ass” and warned him to learn from the fate of Rodion Raskolnikov, the
central character in “Crime and Punishment,” who convinces himself that
extraordinary men are justified in committing crimes if they serve a higher
goal.
Four days
passed without a reply, and Low proceeded to cut contact before letting it rip
in a nearly 2,000-word open letter that went viral on Facebook and LinkedIn.
“I made my
displeasure known to him as one of his closest former friends at that point,
and I blocked him,” he said.
That’s a
diplomatic description. Low in his letter delivered a blistering portrait of
Musk as a narcissist whose “lust for power” keeps driving him to undermine the
very organizations that challenge his hold on it. Musk didn’t respond publicly.
According to
Low, those tendencies put Musk “in a league of his own” in Silicon Valley —
where he locked into power struggles with many a co-founder, from PayPal’s
Peter Thiel to Tesla’s Martin Eberhard to OpenAI’s Sam Altman. And the
predictable playbook followed him to Trump’s side as first buddy, a role Low
dubbed his former friend’s greatest investment.
“Elon has
his own pattern of trying to destabilize companies. He wants to take over, and
if he can’t take them over, then he tries to create a rival entity to compete,”
Low said. “They were absolutely on a collision course, and I think that Trump
tried to gloss over it by making it look as if he wanted Elon to be as
aggressive as he was.”
‘Playing
defense’
Musk is back
in industry mode, for now. Earlier this month, he addressed an artificial
intelligence boot camp hosted by the startup accelerator Y Combinator in San
Francisco, downplaying the importance of the Department of Government
Efficiency by comparing his work on the commission to cleaning up beaches.
“Imagine
you’re cleaning a beach, which has a few needles, trash and is dirty. And
there’s a 1,000-foot tsunami, which is AI, that’s about to hit. You’re not
going to focus on cleaning the beach,” Musk told the crowd of students and
recent graduates of why he ultimately left.
His
attention has since shifted to Austin, Texas, where Tesla heavily promoted and
launched its long-hyped robotaxi service last weekend. Of companies within
Musk’s business empire, the automaker took the hardest hit from his political
entanglements, battered by consumer protests, tariffs, declining sales and dips
in its stock price that allowed SpaceX to overtake it as his most valuable
asset.
Low looks
back at the Tesla Takedown protests that sprung up in the months following his
letter with satisfaction. It was proof, in his mind, that the message struck a
chord: “The audience was the world, and it worked.”
While few
peers in Silicon Valley have called out Musk to the same degree, Low added that
several reacted positively to him in private for taking those criticisms
public.
“Many of
these people happen to have investors on their boards, who made money with
Elon, so they felt that they were putting themselves at risk if they spoke
out,” he said. “A number of people did reach out and thank me, and they were in
violent agreement.”
Low said he
had “an armada” of lawyers at the ready in case Musk went after him. That
possibility hasn’t yet panned out.
Although
they no longer speak, Low still follows Musk’s activities. He said he was busy
during the Trump feud and had to catch up later. But during the interview with
POLITICO, he would reference the occasional X post from Musk, including a
recent one where he shared negative drug test results to dispute reports of his
alleged ketamine use.
To Low, the
post was a sign the rift hasn’t been fully smoothed over and that Musk is
“playing defense.” Bannon has called for a federal investigation into New York
Times reporting that claimed Musk took large amounts of ketamine and other
drugs while campaigning for Trump. POLITICO has not independently verified the
allegations.
“The way I
read that is that he is concerned that some government contracts could be
canceled and that the drug use could be used against him, so he’s trying to
already build a moat,” Low said.
As for
Trump, Low has some advice for handling a potentially resentful Musk: “Abide by
the constitution,” and perhaps, listen to some of the tech titan’s policy
preferences.
Low was
especially outspoken against the administration’s ICE raids and efforts to
limit immigration, arguing they will cost America its advantage in technologies
like AI by sapping Silicon Valley of the global talent that allows it to
compete. Many in tech circles had hoped Musk’s seat at the table would help the
industry loosen barriers for high-skilled workers, a cause he once vowed to “go
to war” with MAGA Republicans over.
That’s
something that Low, given his experience with Musk, thinks Trump should take
seriously.
“Elon has
wooed enough of Trump’s supporters to be an actual threat politically,” Low
said, arguing that Trump would better insulate himself by moderating his
agenda. “He doesn’t realize the battle that he has on his hands, and one way to
cut the support away from Elon is to actually adopt some of the things he is
for.”
Idaho shooting: two dead after firefighters ambushed by gunman while responding to fire
Idaho
shooting: two dead after firefighters ambushed by gunman while responding to
fire
Shelter-in-place
alert sent to Coeur d’Alene residents after multiple people were shot at while
controlling fire
Robert
Mackey
Mon 30 Jun
2025 01.14 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/29/firefighters-idaho-gunman
Two
firefighters were killed after they were ambushed by sniper fire while
responding to a blaze in a northern Idaho mountain community, as crews endured
a barrage of gunfire over several hours that the governor called a “heinous”
assault.
A
shelter-in-place order was lifted on Sunday night after a tactical response
team discovered the body of a man with a firearm nearby, the Kootenai County
sheriff’s office said.
Sheriff Bob
Norris said officials didn’t know if anyone else was shot.
The sheriff
said the shooter had used high-powered sporting rifles to fire rapidly at first
responders, with law enforcement initially unsure of the number of perpetrators
involved. Law enforcement was investigating whether the fire could have been
intentionally set in order to lure first responders to the scene.
The
Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, has been briefed on the
Idaho shooting, ABC News reported.
The state’s
governor, Brad Little, said “multiple heroic firefighters” were attacked while
responding to the fire.
“This is a
heinous direct assault on our brave firefighters,” he wrote on Facebook. “I ask
all Idahoans to pray for them and their families as we wait to learn more.”
A large
number of law enforcement vehicles flooded the area, including US marshals,
according to a photograph posted on social media by the news director of the
local broadcaster KXLY.
The same
outlet reported that hundreds of law enforcement and fire personnel had
established a command post in Cherry Hill dog park.
The
sheriff’s office in neighbouring Soshone County said on Facebook that
authorities were “dealing with an active shooter situation where the shooter is
still at large”.
The fire was
still active, Norris said. “It’s going to keep burning. Can’t put any resources
on it right now.”
The FBI
responded to the scene with technical teams and tactical support, deputy
director Dan Bongino said.
“It remains
an active, and very dangerous scene,” he wrote in a post on X.
Coeur
d’Alene is a city of 55,000 residents near the border with Washington. Canfield
Mountain is a popular hiking and biking area on the outskirts of the northern
Idaho city, covered with trees and heavy brush and crisscrossed with trails.
Le Pen ally working to clean up French far right’s image embroiled in racism scandal
Le Pen
ally working to clean up French far right’s image embroiled in racism scandal
But the
revelations about Caroline Parmentier’s past writings don’t seem to be hurting
the National Rally’s popularity.
June 30,
2025 4:00 am CET
By Clea
Caulcutt
https://www.politico.eu/article/caroline-parmentier-le-pen-france-far-right-racism-scandal/
PARIS — You’d think the National Rally would be in
turmoil after a key architect of the far-right party’s “de-demonization”
campaign was found to have written homophobic, racist and antisemitic comments
in a magazine and supported a Belgian Nazi until 2020.
But the
response to the news regarding Caroline Parmentier, a National Rally
parliamentarian and longtime close ally of Marine Le Pen, as well as
revelations that the party’s lawmakers were found to have joined Facebook
groups that contained offensive content, was a collective shrug.
Parmentier —
who said her quotes had been taken out of context and denied the accusations of
homophobia, xenophobia and antisemitism — does not appear to be in any danger
of losing her job. And the National Rally as a whole does not appear to have
taken a popularity hit.
Given the
party’s sordid history of antisemitism and xenophobia under its founder
Jean-Marie Le Pen, such scandals aren’t exactly a surprise. The French are
probably even a bit desensitized to them after all that has emerged over the
years.
The National
Rally’s response has been to downplay the affair as ancient history that
doesn’t interest most of the public.
Le Pen said
the French are “miles away from stories like that.” Sébastien Chenu, a National
Rally vice president, called the allegations “an old thing pulled out a
dustbin.” And a far-right lawmaker who was granted anonymity to speak about the
issue was even more candid.
“Nobody
gives a damn,” the lawmaker said.
That public
relations strategy includes a fair mount of political spin. Every little
scandal threatens Le Pen’s relentless quest to make her party squeaky clean as
she sets her sights on taking power in France.
“When they
say that the electorate doesn’t give a damn, they are somewhat lying,” said
Sylvain Crépon, a specialist on the far right at Tours University.
The National
Rally appears increasingly immune from scandal, but Le Pen isn’t exactly an
unstoppable juggernaut hurtling toward the Elysée Palace.
Going
mainstream
Le Pen has
for years doggedly worked on detoxifying the image of the National Rally,
ruthlessly sidelining officials with extremist views or unsavory pasts. In a
denouement worthy of a Greek tragedy, Le Pen kicked her own father out of the
party in 2015 after he repeated his claim that the Nazi gas chambers used to
commit genocide against millions of Jews had been a mere “point of detail” in
the history of World War II.
While Le Pen
ended up losing both the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections to Emmanuel
Macron, her party’s support grew between the contests.
Caroline
Parmentier — who said her quotes had been taken out of context and denied the
accusations of homophobia, xenophobia and antisemitism — does not appear to be
in any danger of losing her job. |
A study of
the 2022 election by the Paris-based Jean Jaurès Foundation published last year
showed that Le Pen has successfully erased the far right’s toxic image for a
large chunk of the population.
Polls show
that Le Pen is a frontrunner ahead of the next presidential vote in 2027,
despite an embezzlement conviction earlier this year that threatens to keep her
off the ballot.
But not
everyone is convinced her politics are popular enough to win.
Bruno
Jeanbart, head pollster at OpinionWay, said Le Pen has noticeable weaknesses
with “older voters, more traditional conservative voters who haven’t joined the
National Rally, and upper-middle class voters who still doubt [the party’s]
economic agenda and are sensitive to discourse that is too extreme.”
“She is
doing better, but not enough to break the glass ceiling,” Jeanbart said.
Weeding out
the undesirables
The National
Rally knows it needs to do a better job of vetting prospective leaders,
especially considering how some of its candidates embarrassed themselves in the
final days of campaigning during last year’s snap election.
Party
President Jordan Bardella dismissed those problematic politicians — including
one revealed to have been photographed wearing a Nazi Luftwaffe cap and another
sentenced for taking someone hostage — as a “few black sheep.”
But
internally the issue is being thoroughly addressed, a senior National Rally
official said. The party is now using questionnaires and social media checks to
thoroughly screen potential candidates in case Macron calls a snap election
before his term ends.
“There is
absolutely no tolerance for racism or xenophobia,” the official said.
But there’s
also a limit to how normal the party can become. The National Rally must walk
“a fine line between radicalism and becoming normal,” said Crépon, the
academic.
“If it
becomes too normal, it will lose its uniqueness and its appeal,” he said. “But
if it stays too radical it will remain a marginal player.”
Italy’s grand plan to meet NATO target: A €13.5B bridge to Sicily
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Italy’s
grand plan to meet NATO target: A €13.5B bridge to Sicily
Meloni’s
deputy prime ministers are keen to class the bridge as a NATO-related project.
But does it really mesh with Europe’s military goals?
June 30,
2025 4:17 am CET
By Tommaso
Lecca, Ben Munster and Martina Sapio
Faced with a
daunting new NATO spending target, Italian politicians are proposing that a
long-discussed €13.5 billion bridge to Sicily should be defined as military
expenditure.
Rome is one
of NATO's lowest military spenders — only targeting 1.49 percent of gross
domestic product on its military last year. That makes the new goal of 5
percent by 2035 seem out of reach.
And that's
where the bridge could help.
The
government of Giorgia Meloni is keen to advance with the pharaonic scheme to
span the Strait of Messina with what would be world's longest suspension bridge
— a project that has been the dream of the Romans, dictator Benito Mussolini
and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Both Foreign
Minister Antonio Tajani and Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini, Meloni's
deputy prime ministers, are playing up the notion that the bridge has a
strategic value to NATO rather than a purely economic role — a point that was
also stressed in a government report in April.
A government
official stressed no formal decision had been made on the classification of the
bridge as a security project, but said further talks would likely be held soon
to “see how feasible this feels.” The idea could be politically useful for
Meloni as she struggles to convince a war-wary public of the need for major
defense outlays at a time when Italy is already inching toward austerity.
There are
some clear grounds on which Italy might be able to build a case for the bridge.
Of the 5 percent of GDP NATO target, only 3.5 percent needs to be core defense
spending, while 1.5 percent can be steered to broader strategic resilience such
as infrastructure.
An Italian
Treasury official also suggested that branding the bridge as a military project
would help the government overcome some of the economic and technical barriers
that have stopped it being built in the past.
For decades,
efforts to build the bridge — with a estimated central span of 3.3 kilometers —
have repeatedly run into problems of costs, the difficulties of operating in a
seismic zone and the challenge of displacing people.
The new
designation would “override bureaucratic obstacles, litigation with local
authorities that could challenge the government in court claiming that the
bridge will damage disproportionately their land,” the Treasury official said.
It would also “facilitate raising money, especially in the next year, for the
bridge.”
Imperative
or ridiculous?
In April,
the Italian government adopted a document declaring the bridge should be built
for “imperative reasons of overriding public interest.”
In addition
to its civilian use, “the bridge over the Strait of Messina also has strategic
importance for national and international security, so much so that it will
play a key role in defense and security, facilitating the movement of Italian
armed forces and NATO allies,” the document added.
Italy also
requested that the project should be included in the EU’s financing plan for
the mobility of military personnel, materiel and assets, as it “would fit
perfectly into this strategy, providing key infrastructure for the transfer of
NATO forces from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean,” the government report
said.
The bridge
“represents an advantage for military mobility, enabling the rapid transport of
heavy vehicles, troops, and resources both by road and rail,” the government
added.
Whether NATO
— and more importantly U.S. President Donald Trump, who loves a big building
project — will buy into that logic is another matter.
Officially,
the Strait of Messina lies outside Italy’s only designated NATO military
mobility corridor — which begins at ports in the Puglia region on the heel of
the Italian boot, crosses the Adriatic to Albania, and continues on to North
Macedonia and Bulgaria. It is also unclear whether the strait features in the
EU’s own military mobility network, whose corridors, according to people
familiar with the discussions, are expected to align with NATO’s routes.
The
Americans aren't showing their hand for now. When asked about the bridge at the
NATO summit in The Hague in late June, U.S. aides chuckled, but offered no
immediate response.
Berlusconi
bridge
Foreign
Minister Tajani is a vocal advocate of the bridge. “We will make Italians
understand that security is a broader concept than just tanks,” he said in a
recent interview with business daily Milano Finanza.
“To achieve
this, we will focus on infrastructure that also has civilian uses, such as the
bridge over the Strait [of Messina], which falls within the concept of defense
given that Sicily is a NATO platform,” he added.
Infrastructure
Minister Salvini, Meloni's other deputy, sees the bridge as something that
could transform his far-right League party — originally the secessionist
Northern League — into a successful nationwide political movement that also
commits to a big project in the south.
“Of course,”
he recently responded when asked by a reporter whether the bridge could help
Italy reach its new NATO goal.“Infrastructure is also strategic from a security
perspective in many ways, so if we invest more in security, some strategic
infrastructure will also become part of this security plan.”
Salvini has
been pressing for the process to speed up, according to the Treasury official
and a lawmaker familiar with internal government dynamics.
"Matteo
is pushing a lot to obtain some form of 'approval' of the project at technical
and political level in order to show to the public opinion that something is
moving," the Treasury official said.
Opposition
parties disagree with both the need to build the bridge and its classification
as military spending.
“This is a
mockery of the citizens and of the commitments made at NATO. I doubt that this
bluff by the government will be accepted,” said Giuseppe Antoci, a member of
the European Parliament from the left-populist 5Star Movement.
“The
government should stop and avoid making an international fool of itself, which
would cover Italy in ridicule,” he added.
Another
argument against the project is that it would connect two of Italy's poorest
regions, neither of which has an efficient transport system. Many believe that
investing in local streets and railways is more urgent.
“The
population of Sicily and Calabria suffers from inadequate water infrastructure,
snail-paced transport, potholed roads, and third-world hospitals. The bridge
over the strait, therefore, cannot be a priority,” Antoci said.
But the
governing coalition is determined to move forward. On Tuesday, Salvini said the
project's final authorization is expected in July.
In a
somewhat inauspicious sign, Tajani has proposed naming the bridge after
Berlusconi, a prime minister famed for his bunga bunga parties and interminable
legal battles.
Ursula von der Leyen amputates the Green Deal to save its life
Ursula
von der Leyen amputates the Green Deal to save its life
Last year’s
European election reshaped EU politics. The Commission president must
acknowledge a new alternative right-wing majority even as she fights to
preserve her signature political achievement.
June 25,
2025 8:28 pm CET
By Karl
Mathiesen
https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-green-deal-eu-politics-economy-policy/
Dr. Ursula
von der Leyen has never had a patient quite like the Green Deal — and the
treatment she’s prescribing for the viral politics infecting her landmark
policy is amputation.
Europe’s
green agenda is under attack from a motley coalition of corporate lobbyists,
far-right rabble rousers and von der Leyen’s own political family, the
center-right European People’s Party (EPP).
Von der
Leyen, the top EU executive and a medical doctor before she entered politics,
is adamant she wants to save the patient, even if that means removing some of
its minor limbs.
After all,
von der Leyen considers the Green Deal one of her signal political
achievements.
“We’re
standing firm by the European Green Deal. Climate change won’t go away,"
said European Commission Chief Spokesperson Paula Pinho.
Launched at
the beginning of her first term as European Commission president in 2019, the
Green Deal promised to completely overhaul the EU economy — slashing
climate-warming pollution to zero, reshaping agriculture, transport and energy,
and bringing industry, corporations and citizens into harmony with nature.
But last
year’s EU election delivered an alternative right-wing majority in the European
Parliament — in addition to the centrist one that backed von der Leyen’s second
term. EPP President Manfred Weber has since been using that right-leaning
majority to target green legislation.
In response,
von der Leyen has supported looser rules on car emissions, stripped-down
corporate regulations and redirected green funds — to name a few items.
But thus
far, the Green Deal’s core — a net-zero drive for 2050 and the laws to deliver
it — has not changed. And that’s von der Leyen’s strategy.
“We’re
standing firm by the European Green Deal. Climate change won’t go away,"
said European Commission Chief Spokesperson Paula Pinho. |
“We're in a
very different place than we were at the beginning of the first mandate” in
2019, said a Commission official who is familiar with von der Leyen’s thinking
and was granted anonymity to protect their relationship. “[The president]
remains committed to the Green Deal, it just now has to incorporate some of
these changed realities.”
Slimming
down
In 2020, von
der Leyen said the Green Deal was about “much more than cutting emissions.” Yet
EU officials and von der Leyen's advisers now say her vision has shifted away
from an all-encompassing drive for sustainability on every level.
While some
of those broader goals remain, the emphasis is now on preserving what von der
Leyen views as the core of the Green Deal: its climate change laws and the EU’s
efforts to stamp out its greenhouse gas pollution by 2050.
This is
closer to what Weber is prepared to accept as well.
That shift
has guided von der Leyen in making compromises on a flock of environmental
rules — often under the guise of easing the bureaucratic burden on companies.
"Simplification
is in the interest of the European Green Deal. If it gets too complex, it won’t
be done,” Pinho said.
The
Commission has binned requirements for companies to report on their
environmental impacts and exposure to climate risks. It has watered down a ban
on the sale of combustion engine vehicles by 2035. It has killed a law
controlling pesticides. The list could go on.
Meanwhile,
the prospect of an attempt to regulate carbon pollution from agriculture — a
major emitter — has faded.
Frustration
has been mounting among those political groups that want to preserve a
full-bodied vision of the Green Deal. They argue that the climate, nature and
corporate responsibility drives are all interlinked, and that companies and
citizens need to be given a clear sense of direction.
Meanwhile,
the impacts of spiraling declines in biodiversity, natural habitats and the
stability of the climate grow worse by the day.
It has
watered down a ban on the sale of combustion engine vehicles by 2035.
“All this
demonization of the climate policies … creates a lot of uncertainty,” said Vula
Tsetsi, co-chair of the European Green Party. It is von der Leyen’s role, she
said, “to defend what for her has been so important in the previous
legislation, meaning the Green Deal. And she should not give up.”
Last Friday,
von der Leyen seemed to make her most dramatic concession yet to Weber’s
demands. After the EPP and far-right groups pushed the Commission to ditch an
anti-greenwashing measure, the EU executive seemed to indicate it would
withdraw the bill.
An enormous
row ensued. Centrist and center-left parties accused von der Leyen of being
subservient to Weber and the far right’s anti-green agenda.
“VDL needs
to get EPP in line," said Socialist European Parliament member Tiemo
Wölken, who worked on the law, using the Brussels nickname for von der Leyen.
The European Parliament's biggest group is trying to "kill everything
related to the sustainability agenda,” he added.
But in a
twist, it turned out the Commission hadn’t meant it, or misspoke — it wasn't
clear.
And von der
Leyen’s position, as POLITICO reported on Tuesday, is that she stands by the
proposal, as long as the greenwashing rules don’t apply to the smallest
companies.
But even as
that conflict rumbles on, a new, direct attack on the Green Deal’s core climate
mission is gathering steam.
Next week
the Commission is to present its 2040 climate target, but a coalition of
countries is pushing to stop the goal from affecting more near-term climate
efforts. That could further delay EU attempts to establish a critical
milestone, which is already far behind schedule — and weaken other climate
efforts in the process.
The EPP also
has its grumbles about the 2040 target, seeking more flexibility on how
countries can reach their goals.
The
Commission is listening. According to a draft of the EU executive's 2040
proposal, countries will be allowed to outsource some emissions cuts to poorer
nations. Notably, however, von der Leyen's preferred 90 percent emissions-cut
target remains — another concession made to save the overall goal.
What will
von der Leyen do if the virus enters the body? Leeches? Or euthanasia?
Louise
Guillot contributed reporting from Brussels.
