Conservatives Clinch the German Election

From the The Morning Dispatch on The Dispatch

Happy Tuesday! First Waffle House, now America’s Diner. Denny’s recently announced plans to implement egg surcharges as the bird flu drives nationwide poultry shortages. Who knew humble IHOP would be the last bastion of affordable chain restaurant breakfast fare?

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• The United Nations General Assembly on Monday adopted a Ukrainian- and European-backed resolution condemning Russia’s invasion on the third anniversary of the war’s start. The United States—along with North Korea, Hungary, Haiti, Israel, and 12 other countries—joined Russia in voting against the measure, while China, Iran, and Argentina were among the 65 that abstained. Later on Monday, the U.S. once again aligned with Russia in support of a U.N. Security Council resolution that called for an immediate peace agreement but refrained from calling Moscow the aggressor or acknowledging Ukraine’s territorial integrity. The resolution passed the 15-member body by a vote of 10-0, with the United Kingdom, France, Denmark, Greece, and Slovenia abstaining.

• President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron met at the White House on Monday to discuss the future of the war in Ukraine. In a joint press conference following the meeting, Trump said the conflict could end “within weeks” and alluded to a possible trip to Russia, while Macron insisted on referring to Moscow as the aggressor and stressed the importance of security commitments to Ukraine in the event of an eventual peace agreement. “Peace must not mean a surrender of Ukraine, it must not mean a ceasefire without guarantees,” the French president told reporters.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday offered American companies the opportunity to do business deals with Moscow to develop mineral deposits in Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine. During an appearance on Russian state television, the Russian leader said his country had an “order of magnitude” more rare earth metals than Ukraine. The remarks came as Washington and Kyiv are reportedly nearing an agreement in which Ukraine would give the U.S. a cut of its revenues from natural resources and the U.S. would declare its desire to keep the embattled country “free, sovereign and secure.”

• The Treasury Department on Monday imposed sanctions on an international network—including more than 30 vessels, entities, and individuals from China, India, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates—that it accused of facilitating illicit Iranian oil sales. According to U.S. officials, proceeds from the oil sales are used to fund Iran’s regional proxy groups and military, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force. The penalties are part of Trump’s effort to reinstate a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign against Tehran in response to its sponsorship of terrorism and nuclear advances.

• A federal judge in D.C. on Monday declined to grant the Associated Press’ emergency motion requesting that the Trump administration immediately restore its access to presidential events. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, encouraged the White House to reconsider its position but said the wire service’s circumstances were not a “dire situation” that would warrant the court’s intervention. The AP, which accused the administration of violating its First Amendment rights, was barred from press events after refusing to change its style guide to comport with President Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.” Another hearing to consider the case is set for March 20.

• Vivek Ramaswamy—who ran for president in the 2024 Republican primary and was later tapped by President-elect Trump to lead the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk—announced Monday that he is running for governor of Ohio in 2026. The 39-year-old Ohio native departed the commission in late January in preparation for his bid to replace Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who is term limited. President Trump endorsed his run in a Truth Social post hours after the announcement, writing that Ramaswamy is “a very good person, who truly loves our Country.”

A Far-Right Resurgence in Germany?

After more than three years with Chancellor Olaf Scholz at Germany’s helm, Sunday’s election cemented the country’s lurch to the right.

Germany held the early election after its three-party governing coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP), and the Greens collapsed late last year, ending with Scholz of the center-left SPD losing a vote of no confidence in December. But after this week’s election the balance of power has shifted, inviting praise from the Trump administration and raising questions about the nation’s future.

A center-right alliance between the Christian Democrats and the Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) carried the largest share of the vote at 28.5 percent, setting up the CDU’s Friedrich Merz to become the next chancellor. But the biggest story of the night was the runner-up. In line with polling in the leadup to the election, the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) doubled its support from the last election in 2021 with 20.8 percent of the vote, making it the second-largest party in the parliament.

After the historic showing, AfD leader Alice Weidel spoke in front of a crowd that chanted “Alice für Deutschland”—a play on the Nazi secret police slogan “Alles für Deutschland,” or “Everything for Germany.” Along with flirtations with Nazi rhetoric, the anti-migration and anti-Ukraine AfD has been accused of ties to Russia and China. German intelligence labeled the party a “suspected extremist” organization last year. Germany’s political parties have a longstanding “firewall” against far-right groups, wherein they pledge non-cooperation with AfD in an effort to effectively lock it out of governance.

Surprisingly, some of the AfD’s most vocal supporters came from outside Germany—within the ranks of the Trump administration. Vice President J.D. Vance criticized the firewall policy after meeting with Weidel just nine days before the election. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency, praised the party and decried Germany’s focus on “past guilt” at an AfD campaign rally in January. But with AfD’s vote share holding steady with polling leading up to the election, it’s unlikely that the pair’s input had much effect.

Scholz’s SPD, on the other hand, had its worst showing in the party’s history, dropping to 16.4 percent—nearly 10 points below its 2021 vote share. As the third-highest vote-getter, it will still be the most likely candidate for a governing coalition with the CDU/CSU, and Merz has confirmed coalition negotiations are underway. Still, SPD’s decline in support signaled widespread dissatisfaction with the country’s current leadership as two key issues came to the fore: immigration and the economy.

Migration has been a particularly salient issue for voters after a string of violent attacks perpetrated by non-citizens. A Syrian refugee allegedly stabbed a man at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin just days before the election, and an asylum-seeker from Afghanistan drove his car into a crowd in Munich the week before, killing a mother and her baby. An Afghan man who reportedly was denied asylum status fatally stabbed two people—including a baby—in late January, and in December, a Saudi Arabian national allegedly barrelled his car through a Christmas market, killing six and injuring hundreds.

More than two-thirds of Germans now oppose accepting more refugees. This growing frustration with existing migration policies has been a “key issue,” Jörn Fleck, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, told TMD, adding that voters are concerned not just with the policies themselves but also the enforcement of the laws already on the books.

AfD has leveraged Germans’ concerns to corral support for the party’s staunchly anti-migration policies, including “remigration,” a term for mass deportations. But other politicians have toughened their rhetoric as well, albeit while distancing themselves from AfD’s more extreme views. Merz has been outspoken in his support for tightening migration policies, saying he would order the Interior Ministry to turn away all migrants trying to enter the country illegally. In January, he also pushed a nonbinding motion through the parliament that called for stricter migration policies, but he relied on the AfD’s votes. The move invited criticism from Scholz and even former Chancellor Angela Merkel, and led to a public backlash against Merz for working with the far-right party.

“That sparked a huge debate in Germany over whether [Merz] was breaking the firewall,” Fleck said. Exit polls suggest that it led to a countermobilization effort from young voters that benefited Germany’s far-left party Die Linke, which received 8.8 percent of the vote on Sunday after failing in 2021 to reach the 5 percent threshold necessary to enter parliament.

But the economy was an equally important factor in Sunday’s results. “You’re talking about Europe’s largest economy that’s in the second year of a recession,” Fleck said. It’s also under competitive pressure from China in key sectors like the automobile and chemical industries that have underpinned Germany’s economy in recent decades, he explained. Voters are dissatisfied with cost of living increases, and the country’s GDP growth has stagnated.

The three-party governing coalition failed last year in its attempt to loosen the country’s “debt brake,” a legal limit on government deficits, preventing it from using increased spending to jumpstart the German economy. “Money was short,” particularly after Germany’s highest court blocked the government’s use of $65 billion in money set aside to combat the COVID pandemic in 2023, Joachim Behnke, a political science professor at Germany’s Zeppelin University, told TMD. Infighting over the distribution of money followed, marching the coalition toward its eventual demise. And with the debt brake still intact, the incoming coalition’s ability to revitalize the economy and increase defense spending could be just as limited.

It takes two-thirds of the parliament to pass a constitutional amendment—which would be required to lift the debt brake—and Merz’s probable coalition with SPD wouldn’t have the votes, with AfD and Die Linke opposed to the change. But Merz is currently exploring the option of getting an amendment to loosen the debt brake through the outgoing parliament, which can convene until late March. The Greens have already called on Merz and Scholz’s three-party coalition to come up with a solution before that deadline.

But it remains to be seen whether Merz can deliver the economic change Germans want, with or without debt brake changes. And recent moves by the United States are doing little to assuage economic fears. “You also have a U.S. administration that’s driving some pretty significant challenges on the trade policy front,” Fleck said. Approximately 10 percent of Germany’s exports go to the U.S., and the threat of significant tariffs looms over the economy.

And Washington’s shifting attitude toward Europe goes beyond just economics. Vance recently said Europe’s free speech and immigration policies pose the greatest danger to the continent, and President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his skepticism toward NATO. His turn away from support for Ukraine has catalyzed European leaders to make preparations for the possibility of U.S. disengagement from the continent.

“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” Merz said as the election results rolled in on Sunday. “After Donald Trump’s statements last week at the latest, it is clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.” The latest developments add additional pressure to raise the debt brake, as Germany plans to step up its own military aid to Ukraine if Washington pulls back its support.

But warm ties between Germany’s new leadership and the Trump administration are still possible. Trump cheered the strong conservative showing in a Truth Social post on Sunday: “LOOKS LIKE THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY IN GERMANY HAS WON…THIS IS A GREAT DAY FOR GERMANY.”

Fleck, meanwhile, had an optimistic prognosis for the future of U.S.-German relations. “Even if transatlantic relations at the moment are definitely in a bad state of affairs,” he said, “I do think the strategic view of that partnership will prevail.”

Worth Your Time

• Writing for Quillette, Ronald W. Dworkin mapped out the spectrum from imperialism to expansionism—and considered where Trumpism fits in. “When President Trump and his supporters criticise USAID and other American agencies for failing to put America first, they do so from an expansionist perspective. Their complaints are nothing new in the arena of international relations. After all, most countries have traditionally put themselves first. When Trump complains that Europe is not paying its ‘fair share,’ he is being expansionist. When he seeks to negotiate bilateral trade treaties and circumvent the multilateral world economic system, he is being expansionist. When he threatens allies with tariffs to further American interests, he is expansionist. When he says he wants to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal, he is being expansionist. The whole premise of his ‘America First’ campaign is expansionist by definition,” he wrote. “Does America’s conversion from imperialism back to expansionism herald danger? History suggests it might. War and darkness usually descend upon the world when empires decline. The decline of the Roman Empire led to the Dark Ages. The decline of the Holy Roman Empire led to the Napoleonic Wars. The decline of the British Empire led to the two World Wars. We tend to think of empires as violent enterprises plagued by constant warfare, but the opposite seems to be true once the empire has been established. They bring stability. … And yet, while American imperialism may be waning, American power and influence are not, which is something of an historical anomaly.”

Presented Without Comment

New York Times: [Former White House Press Secretary] Jen Psaki Gets Nightly Prime-Time Show at MSNBC

Also Presented Without Comment

The Hill: Trump Administration Backtracks From Latest Musk Storm

The Trump administration on Monday appeared to be quickly retreating from Elon Musk’s demand that all federal workers send an email by the end of the day highlighting their achievements or resign. The missive from Musk, which echoed a tactic he used during his 2022 takeover of the social platform X, then known as Twitter, led to a chaotic weekend for thousands of federal workers

…

By Monday afternoon, responding to the email was voluntary, according to guidance from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), a clear signal that even within the administration, some saw Musk as having gone too far.

Also Also Presented Without Comment

President Donald Trump and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, had the following exchange during a joint press conference on Monday:

Trump: Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine, they’re getting their money back.

Macron: No, in fact, to be frank, we paid. We paid 60 percent of the total effort.

In the Zeitgeist

More than two years after Andor first aired, a second season of the Star Wars spinoff series is finally on its way. Disney+ just released its first teaser for the new season, which is set to premiere on April 22, and it looks like the wait may have been worth it.

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Kevin Williamson argued that Elon Musk’s DOGE team has “a professional and patriotic obligation” to be more competent and Nick Catoggio contemplated the repercussions of our current rule by trolls.

• On the site: Charles Hilu reports on the House and Senate’s competing budget bills, Grayson Logue explains the Federal Communications Commission’s targeting of broadcasters, and Mike Warren writes about Vice President J.D. Vance’s social media use. Plus, Garry Kasparov and Uriel Epshtein argue that helping Ukraine defeat Russia would advance the Trump administration’s goal of containing Iran.

Let Us Know

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