What will Deep State do to upset the boat this time?
Do you think they will try something fishy again?
Far-right candidate George Simion wins first round of Romanian election
A run-off election will be held May 18 because Simion only polled 40.96% of the vote -- short of the 50% needed for an outright win. He is expected to prevail as his liberal rival, Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan and runner-up in Sunday's ballot, received half as many votes.
"With yesterday's historic vote, the Romanian people have spoken. It's time to be heard! It was more than a choice -- it was an act of courage, trust, and unity. It is the victory of those who truly believe in Romania -- a free, respected, sovereign country!" Simion, leader of the nationalist Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, wrote in a post on X.
"This is the dawn of a great era. Sovereign nations, freedom and common sense, not tyranny, sick ideology and endless abuses," he added in a reference to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's accusing Germany's government of "tyranny in disguise" after it designated the far-right Alternative for Germany party a far-right extremist organization.
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Dan beat the candidate of the Social Democratic Party-led coalition government, Crin Antonescu, into third place with the Adevarul newspaper reporting that Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu had told close party colleagues that he is willing to resign from both the leadership of the Government and the PSD in a move that is seen as a boost for Dan's chances as the candidate of the center.
Alexandru Muraru, leader of the National Liberal Party, Romania's third-largest party, also threw his support behind Dan on Monday.
A run-off election between the pro-Russian nationalist Calin Georgescu and centrist Elena Lasconi was canceled days before it was due to take place Dec. 8. The Constitutional Court in Bucharest ruled the annulment of "the entire electoral process regarding the election of the president of Romania," citing a Russian propaganda campaign to influence the outcome in Georgescu's favor as the reason.
Declassified Romanian intelligence documents detailed a security services warning that the electoral system had been targeted by Russia in an "aggressive hybrid action" to boost the fortunes of Georgescu, a previously unknown candidate.
The intelligence concluded that Georgescu's first round victory in the ninth presidential election since the 1989 Romanian revolution, with just under 23% of the vote, was "not a natural outcome" and that a "state actor" catapulted him over Lasconi and Ciolacu with an artificially coordinated social media campaign.
That led to him being dubbed the TikTok candidate due to the blanket promotion he received on the platform from 25,000 TikTok accounts activated two weeks before the election.
The then-U.S. administration of President Joe Biden condemned the alleged Russian interference, saying Romanians must have confidence that their elections reflect the democratic will of the Romanian people "free of foreign malign influence aimed at undermining the fairness of their elections."
Simion and Georgescu were seen voting together on Sunday, with many of the latter's supporters believed to have transferred their vote to Simion.
As in November's poll, hundreds of thousands of people in Romania's global diaspora cast their votes from overseas at almost 1,000 polling stations set up in Italy, Malta, Spain, Britain, Germany, France, Belgium the Netherlands and the United States.
The BBC said Simion won the votes of more than 70% of Romanians voting in Italy, Spain and Germany.
U.K. Reform Party leader: Two-party system
is 'dead'
The Reform Party is viewed as a "right-wing" organization and now is the "opposition party to this Labour government," Farage said Friday, Fox News reported.
Farage said 100 years of two-party rule over U.K. politics is "now dead" after Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour Party lost what many considered to be a safe seat.
The Reform Party added a fifth member of Parliament following the election, plus control of 10 local councils and two mayoral seats, the BBC reported.
There was only one parliamentary seat up for election.
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The Runcorn & Helsby district was considered a safe seat for the Labour Party, but Reform Party candidate Sarah Pochin won the election to become the Reform Party's fifth member of Parliament.
Starmer explained the loss as evidence that voters aren't yet seeing the benefits of his Labour Party-led government.
I didn't know Starmer had such a sense of humour.
Starmer's Labour Party won the general election in July after securing 412 seats and handing the Conservative Party its first election loss in 14 years, the BBC reported in July.
The Conservative and Labour parties still hold commanding numbers in the U.K. Parliament.
The Labour Party holds 403 seats in Parliament to the Conservative Party's 121. Liberal Democrats control 72 seats and Independents 14.
The Reform Party is one of 11 other political entities that hold the remaining 40 seats in Parliament.
While the numbers show the Labour Party with a large majority in Parliament and well ahead of the Conservative Party, the two long-established political parties lost seats in Thursday's election.
These seats, I believe, are county council and Mayoral seats, not parliamentary. Correct me if I'm wrong.
The election results mean "now is the time to crank up the pace on giving people the country they are crying out for," Starmer said in an opinion piece published Friday in The Times.
What they are crying out for depends on who you are listening to. Muslim lobbies make the most noise and are heard the loudest by Labour.
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Germany’s Merz becomes chancellor on 2nd ballot after initial defeat
The conservative leader had been expected to smoothly win the vote to become Germany’s 10th chancellor since World War II. No other postwar candidate for chancellor has failed to win on the first ballot.
Merz received 325 votes in the second ballot.
He needed a majority of 316 out of 630 votes but only received 310 in the first round — well short of the 328 seats held by his coalition.
Because the votes were secret ballots, it was not immediately clear — and might never be known — who had defected from Merz’s camp.
Merz’s coalition is led by his center-right Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. They are joined by the center-left Social Democrats led by outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who lost the national election in February.
Upon announcing the second vote, the head of the Union bloc in parliament, Jens Spahn, said, “The whole of Europe, perhaps even the whole world, is watching this second round of elections.”
Germany, the most populous member state of the 27-nation European Union, has the continent’s biggest economy and serves as a diplomatic heavyweight. The new chancellor’s in-tray would include the war in Ukraine and the Trump administration’s confrontational trade policy on top of domestic issues, such as the rise of a far-right, anti-immigrant party.
If Merz had lost again
If Merz had failed to win election in the second round, the lower house of parliament — the Bundestag — would have had 14 days to elect a candidate with an absolute majority. Merz could have run repeatedly but other lawmakers could also have thrown their hat in the ring. There is no limit to the number of votes that can be held within the two-week period.
If Merz or any other candidate had failed to secure a majority within those 14 days, the constitution allows for the president to appoint the candidate who wins the most votes as chancellor, or to dissolve the Bundestag and hold a new national election.
Merz’s biographer, Volker Resing, said that if Merz won in the second round, everything will be fine and people may soon forget about the first-round hiccup.
Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, slammed Merz’s failure as proof that his coalition has a “weak foundation” and called for fresh elections.
AfD is the biggest opposition party in Germany’s new parliament after it placed second in February’s elections. Despite its historic gains, it was shut out of coalition talks due to the so-called “firewall” that mainstream German political parties have upheld against cooperating with far-right parties since the end of the war.
This is for fear of history repeating itself with a Hitler-like autocrat. However, history will prove to be much worse than most Germans would believe, as Islam will rapidly become a powerhouse in German politics in the next 30 years, and nothing short of a civil war will keep little frauleins from wearing burkas in the second half of this century.
80th anniversary of World War II
Tuesday’s voting came on the eve of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender in World War II. The ballots are cast in the restored Reichstag building, where graffiti left by victorious Soviet troops has been preserved at several locations.
The shadow of the war in Ukraine also loomed over Tuesday’s vote. Germany is the second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine, after the United States.
Overall, Germany is the fourth largest defense spender in the world, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which studies trends in global military expenditures. Only the U.S., China and Russia are ahead.
Germany rose to that rank thanks to an investment of 100 billion euros ($107 billion) for its armed forces, a measure passed by lawmakers in 2022.
Defense spending rose again earlier this year, when parliament loosened the nation’s strict debt rules. It’s a move that’s been closely watched by the rest of Europe as the Trump administration has threatened to pull back from its security support on the continent.
Besides ramping up defense spending, Merz’s coalition has pledged to spur economic growth, take a tougher approach to migration and catch up on long-neglected modernization..
Germany and the Trump administration
The U.S. administration has bashed Germany repeatedly since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January. Trump, who has German roots, often expressed his dislike of former Chancellor Angela Merkel during his first term in office.
This time around, Trump’s lieutenants are at the forefront — tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk has supported AfD for months. He hosted a chat with Weidel that he livestreamed on X earlier this year to amplify her party’s message.
Vice President JD Vance, during the Munich Security Conference in February, assailed the “firewall” and later met with Weidel, a move that German officials heavily criticized.
Last week, the German domestic intelligence service said it has classified AfD as a “right-wing extremist” organization, making it subject to greater and broader surveillance.
The decision by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution prompted blowback from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vance over the weekend. Germany’s Foreign Ministry hit back at Rubio after he called on the country to drop the classification.
The domestic intelligence service’s measure does not amount to a ban of the party, which can only take place through a request by either of parliament’s two chambers or the federal government through the Federal Constitutional Court.
Merz has not commented publicly on the intelligence service’s decision.
Germany's economy
—Associated Press videojournalist Fanny Brodersen in Berlin and writer David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed to this report.
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