Germany is being hit by hybrid warfare attacks from foreign powers on a “daily” basis, the country’s interior minister has warned, after a drone packed with explosives was found at Leipzig Airport earlier this week.
Espionage, sabotage, cyber attacks and covert actions “with the aim of destabilizing Germany or directly harming it” are a “constant reality,” German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told BILD in an interview on Sunday.
Dobrindt suggested on Thursday that a drone incident at Leipzig Airport may have been an attack by a state actor. The minister has stopped short of specifying which foreign powers are behind the hybrid attacks.
Leipzig Airport serves as a strategic hub for NATO, including for military transports to Ukraine. The airport is also the international courier service DHL’s largest European air hub and serves as a temporary home for some Ukrainian Antonov aircraft, protecting them from Russian attacks. An armed drone was found just meters away from such a plane, German officials said Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Germany’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that Russia is behind daily attempts to “exert influence here in Germany in a manner that seeks to undermine our democracy and erode trust in politics and politicians.”
The Kremlin has been accused of seeking to sway September’s elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, states in the former communist East Germany where pro-Russian sentiment remains strong and where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party could take power for the first time at the state level.
Owner of X and world’s first trillionaire Elon Musk attacked French presidential candidate Marine Tondelier on Thursday, after the Greens party leader said French authorities should be able to suspend the platform during electoral campaigns in case of foreign interference.
“I demand that she be shut down for treason against France!” Musk wrote on X, prompting a strong reaction from Tondelier.
“France does not need lessons in patriotism from a foreign billionaire who thinks he gets to decide which European political leaders should be silenced. Democracy is not for sale. Not even to the richest man in the world,” she responded.
“I’d rather be accused of defending democracy than of trying to buy it.”
Musk, who is a former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, has regularly weighed in on European politics and thrown his support behind far-right candidates and parties — and France is no exception.
In July, Musk said far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was “France’s last hope,” but her National Rally party was quick to downplay his backing to avoid being associated with the controversial owner of Tesla and SpaceX.
Hard-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon also slammed Musk’s attacks against Tondelier on Thursday, before accusing the French government of not doing enough to fight foreign interference.
“The French presidential election is an open bar for all the manipulators in the world,” he wrote — a criticism Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot promptly rejected.
Earlier this week, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the government was boosting efforts to detect and punish foreign interference in the upcoming 2027 election, while presidential candidates Gabriel Attal and Édouard Philippe, as well as likely candidate Raphaël Glucksmann shared they had been victims of Russian disinformation campaigns.
It’s August in Brussels, which means it’s vacation time.
Whether you’re heading off to the beach or holding down the fort in town, this episode is brimming with book recommendations from our newsroom and from you, our listeners. Whatever your genre preference, from true crime thrillers to deep political dives, we’ve got your summer holiday covered.
But this installment is not just a book chat.
We’re also tackling the rise of populism and the crises facing liberal democracies around the world. That’s the topic of “Defeating Trumpism,” a new book by former Belgian Prime Minister and European Parliament Member Guy Verhofstadt. The book is a self-diagnosis from one of Europe’s most passionate centrists about the failures of his movement. And his prescription? A new political paradigm he calls “Citizenism.”
We’re on a break for two weeks, so expect us to pop back up on your feed with the daily Brussels Playbook Podcast on Aug. 24 and the Week Ender podcast on Aug. 28.
Questions? Comments? Get in touch! You can message us or send a voice message to our WhatsApp here or at +32 491 05 06 29.
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A Kalshi billboard displaying New York City mayoral election odds in New York on Monday, October 27, 2025. | Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty
Could you accidentally gamble away your right to vote?
If you live in Wisconsin, and you bought contracts on a prediction market like Kalshi about who would win elections there, you’ve done just that, according to state election officials. And they think that if you vote anyway, you could be prosecuted.
“We want voters to understand that they cannot legally make a bet on an election and cast a ballot in that same election,” Meagan Wolfe, administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said in a statement Tuesday, ahead of the state’s August 11 primaries.
The reason wasn’t a new law about online markets but a very old statute dating back to the year 1849 — just after Wisconsin became a state.
“No person shall be allowed to vote in any election in which the person has made or become interested, directly or indirectly, in any bet or wager depending upon the result of the election,” the statute reads.
The bipartisan commission also said those voters could be on the hook for felony exposure, if they know about the prohibition and vote anyway. Intentionally voting while not being qualified to do so is a felony, per state law. “It’s important for voters to understand the consequences if they bet on an election outcome,” Wolfe said.
Many other states have laws on the books against gambling on elections. Wisconsin is the first where officials are saying people are banned from voting if they do it through prediction markets.
And it may not be the last, since New York has a very similar provision in both its constitution and state law.
“In New York State, voting in an election in which an individual has placed any bet or wager on the result is prohibited,” Kathleen McGrath, director of public information for the New York State Board of Elections, told me.
The New York attorney general’s office has not yet issued a formal opinion on whether Kalshi and Polymarket election bettors are barred from voting in elections they’ve wagered on. But they’re currently locked in a court battle to try and get Kalshi regulated under state gambling laws.
All this makes for a potentially explosive situation in the upcoming midterms, given the rapid growth of the industry, which has rolled out massive advertising campaigns and sponsorship deals to attract customers this election cycle.
Prediction market companies have responded with fury. Benjamin Freeman of Kalshi posted on X that this was “insane,” blatantly unconstitutional,” “illegal,” “dishonest,” and “dystopian.” In an emailed statement, Kalshi said this was “incredibly dangerous to democracy.”
Bettors may be less perturbed. “The reaction I am party to is almost amused by how idiotic it is — how unenforceable, and backwards, and emblematic of government regulators,” said Alex Keeney, who founded Eventual, a prediction market podcast he co-hosts with traders.
But Wisconsin Elections Commission member Ann Jacobs, who flagged the issue earlier this year and helped create the new guidance, told me in an interview that the decision was not taken lightly.
“This has been the law for a long time,” she said. “And if you don’t like the law, go talk to your legislator.”
So, where did this old law come from? Could it actually be enforced? And would it hold up against court challenges?
America’s hidden history of degenerate election gambling
It may seem surprising that a state would have such an old law of this nature on the books.
But, it turns out, many early 19th century Americans were degenerate election gamblers — so many that this became a topic of national conversation and condemnation.
In a 2012 paper, economic historian Paul Rhode and economist Koleman Strumpf wrote that betting on elections was “commonplace” since the US’s earliest years as a nation, but that it became “especially intense during the partisan conflicts of the Jacksonian era.” Newspapers, which in those days were mainly partisan, championed the practice.
Concerns eventually rose that election betting encouraged election rigging, just as people complain today that prop bets are corrupting sports. After the 1844 election, Rhode and Strumpf wrote, Whig Party members complained that “gamblers favoring Polk had committed voting fraud using the winnings from election bets to defray their expenses.”
Then, in 1845, the governor of New York, Silas Wright, urged his state legislature to make “the extensive and rapidly increasing practice of betting on elections” illegal, due to the “corrupting tendencies which it exerts upon the election itself.” And, Rhode and Strumpf continue, evangelicals “preached long and hard against election betting” as part of the second Great Awakening movement.
The craze eventually faded, but it was peaking just around the time Wisconsin became a state in 1848. So its new state constitution specifically addressed the issue, saying “laws may be passed” excluding election bettors “from the right of suffrage.” Hence the 1849 law.
Why attention returned to this law in 2026
In recent years, in the rare occasions when the law has been noticed at all, it’s been treated as an amusing, antiquated curiosity.
But the rise of prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket — and the corresponding surge in election betting — made it relevant again.
In March, after Jacobs of the Wisconsin Elections Commission heard a radio story about Polymarket, she posted on X: “WI friends – I know it’s all the rage to bet on everything, but you cannot bet on an election in Wisconsin! If you do, your ballot can be challenged & thrown out.”
Kalshi has long taken the position that it doesn’t allow election “gambling,” but rather “financial products” called “event contracts.” But the commission’s legal staff studied the issue, and concluded earlier this month that it was “relatively clear” that a Wisconsinite “cannot, even indirectly” make a bet or wager on an election and then vote in that election.
The press release warning voters — and the backlash from Kalshi and Polymarket — soon followed.
How the law might (but probably wouldn’t) be enforced
So, what would happen, then, if an avid “event contract” trader decided to vote anyway?
Realistically, the answer is: probably nothing.
But if someone else had knowledge that this person was making election bets and voting, they could show up to try to get them disqualified.
“You would have to be there at the moment they showed up to vote — or when their absentee ballot is pulled out to be counted — and you’d say, ‘I’m challenging that voter,‘” Jeff Mandell, a Wisconsin election lawyer, told me. “But the chances that somebody is around with the right knowledge to block someone on one of these bases strikes me as pretty slender.”
The other theoretical risk is felony prosecution. Law enforcement officials could obtain information that people voted on elections they’d wagered on and, then, criminally charge them for voting illegally.
But Mandell pointed out that “that seems like a lot of work” for a prosecutor, adding, “I think that fears about enforcement, either civil or criminal, are probably overstated.”
Still, Jacobs argued, it’s possible. “This is the law,” Jacobs said. “It is a situation where, if people have placed a bet, they should consult with their own attorney and decide what to do.”
Would the law stand up to court challenge?
Since Wisconsin’s original state constitution specifically said the state could restrict election bettors from voting, the law would seem to be on firm ground.
There’s just one catch: That section of the constitution was repealed forty years ago.
That repeal was made as part of a broader overhaul of the document and doesn’t appear to have been specifically targeted at the election betting issue. But it does mean that the statute doesn’t necessarily have the firm state constitutional footing it once did.
“The current constitutional language only authorizes the legislature to disenfranchise voters on two grounds — a felony conviction or incompetency — which does suggest that disenfranchisement on other grounds is impermissible,” Robert Yablon, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor, said in an email.
The law could also be challenged in federal court. As written, the law appears to prohibit even someone making a $1 bet with their friend on an election outcome from voting. Challengers could argue that law isn’t narrowly tailored enough to justify depriving qualified citizens of their voting rights.
For now, though, the law is on the books, and it says what it says.
“As a policy, it makes sense,” Jacobs told Vox. “You want people to make their voting decisions based on who they think is best for the job — not who’s going to make them the most money.”
The New York question
Though the Wisconsin situation has made national headlines this week, it has largely escaped notice that New York has very similar provisions in both its constitution and in state law.
New York’s constitution says that no person who “shall make or become directly or indirectly interested in any bet or wager depending upon the result of any election, shall vote at such election.”
In fact, state law says that if a voter’s eligibility is challenged on these grounds, they must swear what is known as the “Bribery Oath,” swearing that they haven’t been paid to vote a certain way — and that they “have not made, or become directly or indirectly interested in any bet or wager depending upon the result of this election.”
When I inquired with New York state officials about whether these provisions about bets and wagers applied to Kalshi and Polymarket election event contracts, they declined to comment specifically on that.
But the New York attorney general’s office has repeatedly taken the position, both in their public rhetoric and in court, that prediction markets are “gambling platforms” that should be regulated by state gambling law. (Earlier this month, a judge gave the state a favorable ruling in a suit brought by Kalshi over this, though Kalshi is appealing.)
If New York reaches a similar interpretation as Wisconsin, Kalshi or Polymarket bettors on elections would not be legally permitted to vote in those elections. Of course, doing that comes with a risk of voter disenfranchisement, especially if this guidance isn’t well-publicized or is only belatedly clarified.
So, in both states, these very old laws have collided with a modern trend — and the result is a big mess.
I wanted to direct your attention to this podcast episode from Slate. It’s actually the first episode of a series Slate is doing on popular constitutionalism. (The page linked above is paywalled. But, I’m told, the ‘By the People’ pod series itself is not. So you should be able to find it on podcast platforms.) It brings together in a engaging and coherent way a number of themes we’ve been discussing over the last couple years about the problem of and the corruption of the U.S. Supreme Court. And it frames the question around a 20-year-old book on popular constitutionalism by Larry Kramer (The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review).
The casket for state Rep. Melissa Hortman arrives at the Basilica of St. Mary for her funeral on June 28, 2025, in Minneapolis. | Joshua Lott/Washington Post via Getty Images
It’s been just over a year since a shooter in Minnesota attacked two Democratic state lawmakers and their families in their homes — killing state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, while injuring state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. This “night of terror” stunned the political world: the shooter had a hit list and intended to carry out more assassinations of state elected officials, according to federal prosecutors.
Only a couple of months later, Charlie Kirk, the conservative founder of the Turning Point USA student political organization, was fatally shot at a campus event. As young and politically engaged Americans watched footage of his killing travel across social media, many worried that civic life would never be the same — and whether it was even safe for them to participate.
“It was terrifying and it was horrible and I will never forget where I was when I heard the news of Charlie Kirk,” Katie Fire Thunder, a 26-year-old Democratic member of the Montana House of Representatives, told me recently.
At the time of Kirk’s death, the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe member was preparing to enter public service herself — she’d go on to be appointed in December 2025 to replace a retiring state representative after years of political organizing and activist work — and was suddenly pondering if it would be worth it.
It was not the first time she’d had the thought. Growing up, she was well aware that public officials faced violence — whether at a community event, or a baseball practice, or at their home — even as she was drawn to the idea of service.
“Strangely, I always had a fear when I was little of being assassinated — I don’t know what it was, but I remember telling my mom, ‘I think I want to be a judge or an attorney, but I’m too scared that someone would get upset at me and try and come after me and shoot me’,” she told me.
Yet the calling to pass policy and engage communities won out. She’s now running for a full term in office — and wrestling with what the future will hold for her as polarization and political violence seem to be reaching new heights in tandem.
“Now being an elected official, I’m really like, ‘Okay, what was little Katie thinking?’ And I’m really trying to process that,” she said.
In conversations with young politicians and public servants, people in both parties described going through a similar journey. They feel a calling to change the status quo, an imperative to serve their neighbors and help the marginalized, and a drive to replace the aging establishment. But in addition to all the other challenges of politics — poor pay, demanding work schedules, nonstop fundraising — they’re increasingly grappling with the risk of violent retribution.
These fears are already shaping the next era of politics — changing how leaders behave, how they engage with constituents, and whether they run at all. In ways subtle and loud, the costs will be borne by all of us.
Young legislators are balancing two clashing priorities
Security challenges — in the shadow of the Hortman and Kirk killings — dominated discussions at a gathering of Gen Z and millennial state lawmakers last week on Capitol Hill.
The four-day event was organized by Future Caucus, a bipartisanpolitical organization that supports rising young lawmakers. Speakers and panelists discussed ways elected officials can modernize legislatures, craft policy, and exchange tips on being young and in office.
But a recurring question hung over the room: Who even wants to run for public office these days? And what’s preventing a new generation of leadership from sticking with the job once they’re in?
Security was tight this year, just like last year’s Future Summit, which took place just days after Hortman’s killing. Attendees weren’t advertised before the event, guards buzzed around elevators and conference room entrances, and scheduling and programming was not released in advance, including to news media.
These preventive measures, combined with panel conversations about the trade-offs of public service, emphasized the struggles these young politicians from both parties are facing: balancing openness, accessibility, and idealism with the reality that the very efforts they make to organize and participate in their communities may put their digital and physical safety and security at risk.
“Most electeds have to use social media in order to be successful and it also opens us up to critical attacks from people whose identities we can’t often verify,” Tiara Mack, a 32-year-old Democratic state senator from Rhode Island, told me. “We have to be able to reach a broad audience, which also means a broad audience can reach us.”
Since first being elected to the state legislature, she has received countless death threats, bigoted verbal abuse, and a terrifying episode of doxxing a couple of years ago: after a video of herself twerking in support of reproductive rights went viral, her home address and the floor plans of her apartment were posted online.
“When I had my floor plans leaked and when I had bomb squad dogs come to my home, circle my building to make sure that there were no bombs — very few people know what that experience is like,” she told me.
The incident caused her to reconsider whether her political career was worth continuing. Instead of leaving public service, though, she and her colleagues looked together for ways to feel safer and more in control. But these measures often come with sacrifices, including keeping constituents at a distance at a time when young voters frequently want more engagement, more access, and more authenticity from their leaders.
Though she uses Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, and Facebook actively, Mack draws a line at indulging in parasocial relationships with followers who she doesn’t know offline. She and her colleagues employ a “post-and-ghost” policy online now: publishing content online and then deliberately not reading or replying to the comments. She doesn’t advertise event locations in advance, only sending out addresses after RSVPs are submitted. She doesn’t post her location online until after she has left a place, and she tries to keep a polite and politically neutral tone online now.
Most shocking to herself — and particularly the version of herself who first ran for office in the pre-pandemic era — is her rethinking her stance on carrying a firearm.
“That’s now a conversation I’ve had with some of my colleagues, who are grappling with what it would mean for me as someone who sponsored gun safety legislation to pursue a concealed weapons permit,” Mack told me. “And it’s a hard conversation, but I think it’s become more necessary and more and more people and women of color that I know personally are having that conversation, including myself.”
On the policy front, state lawmakers have discussed new security rules, some relevant campaign finance reforms, and mutual assurances to tone down rhetoric.
Speaking during a Future Summit panel, 35-year-old Minnesota state Rep. Isaac Schultz, a Republican, shared some of the hard lessons learned from last year’s killings. The state capitol used to have an open-door policy — “we’re a state that believes in high-contact politics,” he said — but weapons screenings now happen at the two building entrances. The Minnesota state patrol and local law enforcement now have a dedicated communications system with the sergeants-at-arms of each legislative chamber — a “massive change” from before the killings, which revealed the poor channels of communication that existed.
“We had colleagues on a hit list who didn’t have local law enforcement at their homes for over 24 hours,” Schultz said. “They were in their homes hiding. … That’s a trauma that remains.”
Minnesota and 24 other states have now passed laws to allow campaign funds to be used to reimburse or cover the cost of camera and home security systems, most of them after the Minnesota shootings. Future Caucus itself offers a discounted membership to home and digital security services, as well as some in-person security services for special events.
“State lawmakers do not have the tools that Congress has in order to keep themselves safe, but it’s just as important,” Mack said. “Cameras only do so much to keep individuals safe. They’re oftentimes a way to check after the fact. … There still need to be more robust conversations about how we keep our physical statehouses protected.”
But hearing from these lawmakers themselves, it’s hard to shake the sense that these measures are all, to an extent, stopgaps when polarization and radical thinking, including around political violence, are growing more popular, acceptable, and widespread. The reaction to the last year of killings only underscored the threat: Charlie Kirk’s death inspired conspiracy theories on the right and cruel mockery on the left, while a US senator made light of the Minnesota shootings on social media and blithely stoked rumors about the motive.
The threat of violence is changing how politics operates
According to Future Caucus’s own research, political violence egged on by hyperpartisan rhetoric is now a defining obstacle for both state legislators and those aspiring to hold public office.
“Combined with structural and cultural barriers, they threaten lawmakers’ ability to effectively serve their communities,” Reed Howard, Future Caucus’s chief strategy and public affairs officer, wrote in a 2025 report detailing reasons young legislators end up leaving public service altogether. “Even as many Future Caucus members view public office as temporary service rather than a long-term career, it is essential that they have a fair opportunity to be productive and impactful.”
They aren’t alone in these experiences. Some four in 10 state legislators, and one in five local officeholders, reported experiencing threats or attacks since 2020, according to a series of surveys completed in 2023 by the Brennan Center for Justice. Significant shares of state legislators reported then that the seriousness and rate of abuse and harassment they have received has increased in the time they’ve been in office.
But the common thread is that lawmakers themselves are worried that more aggressive forms of rhetoric and politicking will become accepted as the new baseline even as more violent incidents occur. Particularly for younger legislators, who may lack a steady financial base, may be trying to start families, and may be trying to juggle other full-time jobs, these security concerns compound the challenge of public service.
“Especially with young people, they are seeing it way more firsthand than any other generation,” Fire Thunder said. “And that is having impacts in ways that we may not be seeing yet. It’s a fear tactic of: If you are running and you are standing up and being vocal on these issues, we are going to come after you.”
Fire Thunder’s most recent run-in with a serious potential threat happened not too long ago: A disgruntled citizen showed up at a public comment session her interim legislative committee was hosting, went on a conspiracy-laden rant, and threatened a trans legislator on the committee.
“We did not have security because it was not the actual committee hearing, but in a moment, I realized that this person could have had a weapon, could have had a gun, and just point-blank shot one of us in that room,” she told me.
As she embarks on her first full-term campaign this year, Fire Thunder told me her campaign is preparing not just to engage and rally her community, but also for inevitable threats to her life. Her campaign manager frequently reminds her, “What is our plan? What is our safety plan?” between events. She’s learning to live with that cloud, but she also worries what the country will lose if others decide it’s all too much to justify getting involved.
“The biggest negative impact of it isn’t even on me,” she said. “I don’t want other young people seeing the threats and things that I’m getting to discourage them.”
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