PARIS — French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said he has instructed local authorities to enact “partial curfews” Monday evening to prevent scenes of rioting and looting like those seen on the sidelines of mass protests over the weekend.
The measure is intended to “protect people, as well as property and businesses,” Lecornu said. The curfews should be “partial” and “localized,” he added, since the destruction is taking place in specific areas and not at a nationwide scale.
Junior minister Jean-Didier Berger told French broadcaster BFM that this could mean restricting nighttime access to specific streets or areas with a high concentration of businesses. A “special support fund” will be set up to provide financial assistance to the estimated 3,000 local businesses affected by the weekend’s unrest, according to France’s minister for small business, Serge Papin.
Those announcements came after an emergency meeting at the French interior ministry following scenes of widespread chaos that played out across France on Saturday. While President Emmanuel Macron attempted to reassure a worried public with a primetime address Sunday night, the speech was widely panned across the political spectrum as insufficient. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez submitted his resignation in the aftermath of the weekend’s unrest, but Macron refused to accept it.
The government is now scrambling to bat down allegations that it has mismanaged the affair and stop it from snowballing into a sustained movement like the Yellow Jackets of 2018 ahead of the spring presidential election, which far-right leader Marine Le Pen is favored to win.
Saturday’s demonstrations saw teachers and students, who have been blockading schools for weeks demanding more funding for schools, join forces with those upset about the rapidly rising cost of living — and while hundreds of thousands of people marched peacefully, violent incidents were observed in some of France’s largest cities, including Paris.
A website claiming to represent the Yellow Jacket movement launched calls for more protests this coming Saturday, and the country’s main unions are organizing strikes and protests on Nov. 5 in opposition to the government’s proposed budget, which includes €43 billion in savings.
While high schools are currently closed for holidays, some students are still protesting. The Louvre museum was closed due to a strike movement from students at an art history university located inside the palace.
Exactly who was responsible for the weekend’s destruction remains a point of debate. While foreign leaders like U.S. President Donald Trump and Hungary’s Péter Magyar have, without evidence, pinned the rioting on immigrants, Lecornu and the government have pointed the finger at so-called “ultra-left” movements, citing analysis by French intelligence services. Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told TF1 on Monday that she “absolutely [could] not confirm” the government’s analysis based on the profiles of those arrested and placed under investigation in the French capital so far.
Lecornu and right-wing politicians have also accused far-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is popular with young voters and vying for second place behind Le Pen in the polls, of playing an “important role” within a “far-left network” driving the unrest.
Mélenchon has repeatedly supported student protesters and denied allegations of responsibility for violence, blaming the government for the current situation and accusing the security services of deploying disproportionate force against minors. He and representatives of other left-wing parties participated in Saturday’s peaceful protests and condemned the widespread looting.
Lecornu also said he will convene a meeting with party leaders and presidential candidates to discuss how to ensure campaign activities, such as rallies and visits across the country, can take place safely — and also hear their proposals for reforming French policing tactics, which have come under increased scrutiny.
A Serbian prosecutor investigating alleged corruption surrounding a Trump real estate project in Belgrade was targeted with Israeli-made Pegasus spyware after speaking out about political interference and abuses of power, according to research made public Monday.
Rade Bajić, a member of Serbia’s Public Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime, is reported to be the latest target identified in a growing spyware scandal that has engulfed the country’s political opposition, civil society and institutions.
The research is the latest by Toronto University’s Citizen Lab in collaboration with Serbian digital rights organization, SHARE Foundation, including the discovery that Bajić received an Apple Threat Notification iMessage on Aug. 13.
The spyware revelation comes amid mounting controversy over plans to redevelop the former Yugoslav military headquarters in Belgrade into a luxury Trump Tower skyscraper. The project, associated with Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has faced allegations of political interference and irregularities surrounding the removal of the site’s protected heritage status.
Bajić’s targeting follows revelations in September that at least 14 people in Serbia, including student activists and opposition figures, had received warnings indicating they may have been targeted with sophisticated spyware. Researchers at Toronto University’s Citizen Lab confirmed a Pegasus infection in at least one case.
“In Serbia, spyware surveillance has steadily expanded from civil society and journalists to student activists, politicians and now university and judicial representatives,” said Andrijana Ristić, a policy advisor at SHARE Foundation. “This escalation is fueled by perceived impunity and state inaction, even in cases where criminal complaints have been filed.”
Another prominent figure caught up in the surveillance scandal is Vladan Đokić, rector of the University of Belgrade, whose phone was infected with Pegasus, according to the same report.
Đokić has emerged as a prominent figure in Serbia’s protest movement after refusing to facilitate a government crackdown on student demonstrators. He has faced sustained pressure from authorities, including a police raid on his university offices on March 31, during which computers and servers were reportedly seized.
Until September, Đokić was also frequently mentioned as a potential leader of the student-backed electoral list ahead of Serbia’s planned Oct. 25 parliamentary snap elections.
The identity of those responsible for deploying Pegasus against Bajić and Đokić has not been established.
“NSO has spent a decade claiming to turn over a new leaf each time an abuse surfaces. But there is no hiding the truth: Pegasus is a technology for repression,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab. “It’s no accident that people standing up for freedom in the face of corruption keep getting hacked with NSO’s products.”
BRUSSELS — Preparations are underway to hold a March 2027 meeting of EU leaders in Rome, before Italian elections due next year.
“Preparations in view of holding the March 2027 EUCO in Rome are ongoing,” an EU official, granted anonymity to speak about the plan, confirmed on Monday.
The plan, first reported by Italian newspaper La Stampa, would see EU leaders gather in the Italian capital to mark the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Treaties of Rome in 1957.
The plan was put forward by European Council President António Costa, two EU officials said.
Hosting EU leaders in Rome would put Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in the international spotlight in an election year, although no date has been set for the ballot.
The Italian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move would be exceptional, as formal European Councils are held in Brussels. Under the European Council’s rules, relocating a summit requires unanimous agreement among member states at ministerial or ambassadorial level, meaning a single country could block the move. No final decision has yet been announced.
EU leaders gathered in Rome in March 2017 to mark the 60th anniversary of the treaties, but that was a commemorative meeting rather than a formal European Council summit. A regular summit that month took place in Brussels.
Donald Trump’s latest moves on Russia and Ukraine have alarmed Kyiv and European capitals alike. But rather than scrambling to contain the fallout, EU leaders are keeping their cool. Zoya Sheftalovich and Nick Vinocur explore Europe’s strategy for weathering Trump’s midterm storm — and what it means for Ukraine.
Then, France reels from a weekend of violent protests, with more than 1,800 arrests and widespread destruction. As political leaders trade accusations, we look at how the unrest is shaping the battle ahead of the 2027 presidential election from Paris.
Plus, hackers turn supermarket fridges into heaters, exposing some surprisingly basic cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
If you have a question or comment, don’t hesitate! Message us on our WhatsApp here or at +32 491 05 06 29.
Last week’s summit gave Brussels a taste of how hard it’s going to be to get a deal on the budget — or anything else.
By SEBASTIAN STARCEVIC in Brussels
Illustration by Natália Delgado/POLITICO
The EU is already struggling with how to get its largest-ever budget agreed, plug a massive financial hole for Ukraine and navigate geopolitical pressure from the U.S. and China. Now, it also faces being paralyzed by domestic political strife in the countries that collectively make up around 60% of its GDP and population.
“Everybody used to understand that we need to finish … a political agreement by the end of the year,” Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides told POLITICO in an interview on the sidelines of last week’s European Council, referring to the bloc’s fraught budget negotiations.
But the Spanish election means that will no longer be possible, he said. And next year, “it’s going to be France, Italy” and others going to the polls, Christodoulides added, predicting even more complications for the bloc.
The EU is facing an unprecedented dilemma: Its four biggest economies are all heading into elections or political upheaval, potentially hamstringing the bloc’s ability to get anything done.
Spain will go to the polls next month, with the center right and far right on track to take power. France is changing presidents in April, with polls favoring far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen. The Alternative for Germany is ascendant, putting Friedrich Merz’s chancellorship in doubt. And Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s unusually long-serving government is also heading to an election in 2027.
The consequences are already becoming clear.
António Costa, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ursula von der Leyen arrive to attend an EU summit in Brussels on Oct. 16, 2026. | Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images
The bloc’s latest summit offered an early taste of what lies ahead: After two days of talks, leaders failed to make headway on the €2 trillion budget and instead became embroiled in an unexpectedly bitter row on energy policy. The summit’s conclusions notably omitted any mention of finding consensus on the budget before the end of the year, with member countries resisting a push by European Council President Antonio Costa for an end-2026 deadline, although there are summits scheduled for November and December.
If those meetings fail to produce a deal, then the already fractious talks will spill over into 2027, when electoral battles are likely to loom even larger over negotiations — and governments may be increasingly reluctant to make the compromises needed to reach agreement.
Triple assault
The paralysis Brussels fears as Europe’s election cycle gathers pace is already beginning to take hold, with last week’s summit exposing how difficult it is becoming to forge the compromises the bloc needs.
Rather than strike any big deals (a Franco-German accord on cars was the one exception), the leaders used the gathering to dig in on entrenched positions and seek tactical advantages over rival camps.
The pessimism was palpable, according to six diplomats and officials POLITICO spoke to, with several warning the EU faces sharp headwinds in the coming months. All were granted anonymity to speak freely.
“Next year, it will be worse,” said one senior EU diplomat.
“It’s true, because of this calendar for the elections … in the next year it’ll be much more difficult in the member states and inside the [European] Parliament,” said Carla Tavares, a senior MEP with the Socialists and Democrats and co-lead on budget negotiations.
The bloc’s internal malaise could hardly come at a worse time.
From U.S. President Donald Trump’s undermining of the transatlantic alliance to an ever-widening trade imbalance with China, the EU is facing mounting geopolitical and economic pressures on multiple fronts.
Costa, Bart De Wever, Emmanuel Macron and Rob Jetten speak during a European Council summit in Brussels on Oct. 15, 2026. | Nicolas Maeterlinck/AFP via Getty Images
“They seek our division. They want our division,” Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever told reporters at a late-night briefing during the summit, not mentioning names but referring to countries to the east and west of Brussels. “And they have, of course, points where they can hurt us.”
Former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, now a visiting fellow at Stanford University, was less circumspect. “Now we are under assault from three sides: from the U.S., Russia and China,” he said.
Washington is questioning the old alliances that have underpinned European security for generations. Moscow is waging a shadow war across Europe, from cyberattacks and sabotage to an attempted drone attack at Leipzig airport that Berlin blamed on the Kremlin. Beijing is tightening its grip on critical supply chains and flooding European markets with cheap exports.
Then there’s the Ukraine problem. The country is facing a budget shortfall of $30 billion to $35 billion next year, according to the IMF, with Russia battering its energy infrastructure ahead of a brutal winter. That’s despite the €90 billion the EU already agreed to stump up last year.
Landsbergis said the coming months are looking “extremely dire” for Kyiv. “Everything falls on European shoulders,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sounded a grim note at last week’s summit, telling reporters that if Ukraine falls, 20 million Ukrainians will flood into the EU. “Russia is killing us,” he said. “They don’t want to stop.”
One solution to Ukraine’s funding woes could be the €200 billion in Russian assets that have been immobilized indefinitely in Brussels-based financial depository Euroclear. But there is no sign of the EU finding common ground on that front either, with Belgium, which vetoed previous efforts to use the assets to help Ukraine, still refusing to budge.
“Nothing has changed,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said as he exited last week’s summit early.
Other potential solutions, such as issuing more joint debt, will require messy compromises — just as Brussels finds itself with even less room to maneuver.
Who you gonna call?
The EU’s problems go beyond its budget or individual policy files. With the political futures of several of Europe’s most powerful leaders in question, Brussels risks losing the stable alliances and long-serving national heavyweights needed to broker compromises.
“We now have Europe with no obvious leader,” another EU diplomat argued. Commission President Ursula “von der Leyen is powerful. But we do not have a Merkel or Mitterrand.”
French President Emmanuel Macron cannot constitutionally serve a third consecutive term and will have to find new digs in Paris after leaving the Élysée Palace in April. During a closed-door discussion at last week’s summit, Macron admitted he wouldn’t have a political mandate to sign a deal on the budget in his final months in power, four European diplomats said.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is on track for defeat after eight years in power, according to polls. Spaniards will vote on Nov. 29, meaning Sanchez will be in full election mode during EU leaders’ meetings on Nov. 13 and Nov. 26.
Costa, who has stressed the need to reach an agreement on the EU’s budget by the end of 2026 to make sure it’s ready to go by 2028, waved off fears that the bloc’s next spate of elections could get in the way.
“We are living in 27 democracies,” he said on Friday. “More or less every month we have one election. If it’s about elections, we never could approve a new budget.”
Regardless of the result, Madrid is not expected to form a government until January, which could derail the budget talks, according to two EU diplomats.
Photo-Illustration by POLITICO/source via Getty Images
It’s anyone’s guess how long German Chancellor Merz has left in office. While the next federal election is not scheduled until 2029, the AfD’s growing strength and his own nosediving popularity complicate how much Merz might be willing to compromise.
Italy, too, is set for elections in October 2027. Another EU diplomat said they did not expect Meloni to wait that long, arguing she could call a vote much earlier.
There could be a sweet spot in January to get the budget over the line, a senior EU official suggested. It may be the last chance to strike a deal before Europe’s political upheaval makes compromise even harder to come by.
So far, the EU’s leaders have simply been “too slow,” said Siegfried Mureșan, the European People’s Party’s co-lead on the budget. “Time is running out.”
BRUSSELS — Europe’s three mainstream political groups must strike a deal to keep out the far right ahead of an election year that could reshape the EU, the head of the liberal Renew Europe group in the European Parliament told POLITICO.
“I’m truly convinced that nobody can afford to let the coalition erode from a very practical point of view because this is the only way to deliver an ambitious and a stronger Europe for our citizens,” said Valérie Hayer, a close ally of French President Emmanuel Macron, adding that there’s “no other way.”
Since the 2024 EU election shifted the Parliament to the right, the conservative European People’s Party — the largest in the assembly — has passed legislation with right-wing and far-right groups, angering its traditional liberal and social democratic allies. Hayer said Renew’s priority ahead of the next EU election, in 2029, is to rebuild the centrist alliance.
Speaking by phone after a gathering of EU liberals ahead of a leaders’ summit on Thursday, Hayer said “we need a strong European platform from the center to deliver for Europeans” on issues such as competitiveness, defense, climate change and decarbonization, especially with major EU countries facing national elections, including Spain in November and Italy, France and Poland in 2027. “We should be prepared for this new cycle of elections.”
To lock in the centrist majority, Hayer wants the three groups to strike a detailed coalition agreement. The EPP has largely voted with its centrist allies during the first half of the current term, but has occasionally turned to the right to pass legislation when disagreements with its traditional partners proved too difficult to bridge.
Hayer said Renew would not back any candidate for Parliament president without first agreeing on a detailed coalition deal. “A majority needs a program before it needs a president, so we need a coalition agreement before any leadership agreement, and no coalition agreement would mean no leadership deal.”
That could force the EPP to the negotiating table, as the conservatives want to get Roberta Metsola reelected for a third term in January. However, the EPP has in the past been reluctant to sign a detailed coalition agreement.
Hayer and the leaders of the EPP (Manfred Weber) and Socialists and Democrats (Iratxe García) already signed a two-page agreement to work with each other after the 2024 EU election, but the EPP has nonetheless voted on laws with far-right groups.
To prevent this, Hayer wants not only leaders but all “key members” of the groups, including vice-chairs, whips and coordinators, to negotiate and endorse the agreement.
“I want us to be very concrete, I want a midterm agreement that binds us to delivery on the budget, on the IAA, for example, on EU Inc.” — referring to the Industrial Accelerator Act (a proposal to steer public procurement and subsidies toward European manufacturers) and a plan to give startups a single set of rules.
She also wants the far right excluded from powerful posts in the Parliament, including vice-presidencies.
Hayer said the centrist leaders had “already discussed” the agreement and expressed confidence it could advance. García has said she is ready to negotiate with the EPP to reach an agreement, although Weber hasn’t publicly commented on the idea.
Hayer wants any candidate for Parliament president to be hands-on to ensure the center holds, because “you can’t say I’ve been elected and then I don’t care about the majority and the people who elected me.” Metsola says she needs to represent the entire hemicycle, but has voiced a preference for majorities built “from the center out.”
Hayer also wants commissioners to “bring the groups together” before proposing new laws, in order that they have “a first discussion and first kind of agreement.”
Asked if she trusted Weber to comply with any deal, Hayer said“we are working together every day” and that any deal “should be done in a fair way and sincere way.”
As for the socialists, she urged them to be “constructive in the negotiations.”
PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron promised that rioters who “destroyed” things will face consequences as he addressed the nation on Sunday after a weekend of massive unrest across France.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets nationwide on Saturday, with students joining trade unions and members of the public to protest the cost of living. While thousands protested peacefully, footage of mayhem including public buildings being set on fire, stores being looted and clashes with riot police drew widespread condemnation in France and abroad.
“Those who destroyed must pay; those who looted must reimburse,” Macron said.
The French government has been accused of mismanaging and underestimating the protests, with calls for Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez to resign emerging both on the left and the far right.
According to the latest figures from the French interior ministry, some 2,000 people were arrested during the turmoil. Police, firefighters and demonstrators suffered injuries as the situation unraveled.
Serge Papin, France’s minister for small business, will meet with company reps at the Ministry of Economy tomorrow to assess the damage and suggest assistance for businesses that were affected.
Macron said he was awaiting “clear answers” on why the protests turned violent. The French president accused “troublemakers from far-left splinter groups, joined by numerous delinquents” of engaging in “unbridled violence.”
With six months to go before next year’s presidential election in France, the events of Saturday quickly took on a political dimension.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu also accused the “ultra-left” of fomenting the violence, alleging that the France Unbowed movement and its presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon had played an “important role” within a “far-left network” driving the unrest.
Mélenchon, along with left-wing representatives from several other parties, joined Saturday’s protests and encouraged his supporters to attend, although condemning looting and violence. He said accusations that he was responsible for the mayhem were aimed at weakening his presidential bid, and accused Macron of “letting the situation deteriorate” without offering solutions to appease the anger.
Mélenchon is currently in a close race with center-left candidate Raphaël Glucksmann and center-right candidate Edouard Philippe to clinch second place behind far-right frontrunner Marine Le Pen in next year’s election. The top two candidates in the election move to a runoff if no candidate wins a majority of votes in the first round.
“At stake, too, are France’s image, its credibility, and its influence around the world,” Philippe said ahead of Macron’s statement. “These images of violence have consequences that extend far beyond our borders.”
Le Pen and her far-right National Rally have brandished the violent footage to pitch herself as the candidate of an “appeased France.” The National Rally accused Macron and his government of being the “party of chaos,” and Mélenchon’s France Unbowed of “legitimizing violence.”
The protesters had “legitimate social demands,” Le Pen said. “The French people are fed up with being caught between the government’s austerity measures and heavy-handed taxation, and the insurrection activists.”
With the U.S. midterms around the corner on Nov. 3, President Donald Trump seized on the violence to blame migration. “France is burning! The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Sunday afternoon.
French President Emmanuel Macron will “solemnly” address the French people Sunday evening following violent scenes across the country that resulted in hundreds of arrests and millions of euros in damage.
Clashes broke out Saturday in France on the latest day of demonstrations that emerged from last month’s student protests, which had featured school blockades and calls for better study conditions. The movement has since grown into nationwide protests against rising living costs — and has become a political issue as the campaign for next year’s presidential election heats up.
Footage showed widespread looting, burned-out cars and smashed store windows. Rioters set fire to the town hall in Limoges, a city in central France, causing the roof to partially collapse. One demonstrator died after suffering a heart attack.
“More than 2,000 people have been taken into custody,” Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez wrote on X Sunday afternoon. “More than 600 police officers, gendarmes, and firefighters have been injured amid these scenes of violence.”
Before addressing the nation at 8 p.m., Macron will meet Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu and the ministers responsible for handling the crisis.
U.S. President Donald Trump seized on the violence to blame migration. “France is burning! The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Sunday afternoon.
“Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!” he added.
Earlier in the day, U.S. Vice President JD Vance had called out European leaders: “Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion” but “ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility.”
He called on Americans to pay attention, as “this is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.” The U.S. faces crucial midterm elections to both houses of Congress on Nov. 3.
The French government has struggled to deal with the crisis in recent weeks — Lecornu described it as “urban violence” — and is now hoping the student movement will fade due to a two-week school holiday that started Friday.
Guillaume Guérin, the mayor of Limoges, criticized the government’s handling of the demonstrations, saying the national police “simply had no more ammunition left.”
Republicans running for governor across the country are backing away from abortion bans they once endorsed.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin, calls his state’s 20-week abortion limit “settled law.” Just three years ago, he co-sponsored a bill that would have banned abortion six weeks into pregnancy.
Stacy Garrity, the GOP’s candidate in Pennsylvania, has said during her campaign that she would “respect” the state’s current law, which allows abortion until 24 weeks of pregnancy. Four years ago, she called on abortion opponents “to engage and make a difference” in state laws after the fall of Roe v. Wade.
In Kansas, where abortion is legal until 22 weeks, Republican Ty Masterson has demurred when asked if, as governor, he would support a statewide referendum to eliminate the Kansas constitution’s abortion protections. Masterson had previously spoken at protests in opposition to reproductive rights and won the backing of state and national anti-abortion groups.
The candidates’ retreat suggests that, even as reproductive rights fade from the national spotlight and polls show voters are far more likely to prioritize cost-of-living concerns, the political ramifications of pushing for new abortion restrictions remain substantial. The rhetorical distancing also moves political conversations away from an issue that overwhelmingly energizes Democrats.
“That might be their strategy there, to try to demotivate Democratic turnout in the state to take abortion off the table as a voting issue,” said Ashley Kirzinger, a pollster at KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research, polling and journalism organization. That’s especially true in tighter races such as those in Wisconsin and Kansas, she said.
Tiffany’s, Garrity’s and Masterson’s campaigns did not reply to requests for comment. The 19th contacted multiple Republican-aligned pollsters who also did not immediately respond.
About 60 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, including about two-thirds of independents, according to a poll from The 19th and YouGov.
That said, pushing for abortion restrictions has never been broadly popular. Even before Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Republicans seeking general election typically would not campaign overtly on abortion bans, said Molly Murphy, a pollster and president of Impact Research, a Democratically-aligned polling firm.
“It would get discussed in donor meeting hot mics, endorsement questionnaires, etc, but candidates wouldn’t run on the fact that they’d ban abortion,” she wrote in an email.
Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany is now calling his state’s 20-week abortion limit “settled law”, when only three years ago he co-sponsored a bill that would have banned abortion six weeks into pregnancy.
(Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Voters largely don’t consider abortion to be “settled law,” said Celinda Lake, a longtime Democratic pollster, noting that the share of voters opposing abortion bans has increased since the fall of Roe. “They feel like, ‘Wait a minute, it can be taken away again.’”
In some races, Democrats and their allies are trying to push abortion rights back under the microscope — a strategy geared toward energizing liberal voters, Kirzinger said.
Wisconsin’s Democratic nominee for governor, David Crowley, has said that, if elected, he would work with the state legislature to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution — though it’s not clear how expansive that protection would be or whether it might supplant the state’s 20-week cutoff.
Pine Tree State Prosperity, a political action committee associated with the national Democratic Governors Association, is running advertising in Maine that highlights anti-abortion remarks made by Bobby Charles, the state’s Republican pick for governor. The Democratic nominee, Hannah Pingree, has led by double digits in recent polls. Charles’ campaign did not reply to a request for comment.
Planned Parenthood’s super PAC, called Planned Parenthood Votes, has focused its resources in states such as Michigan, where the Republican candidate, U.S. Rep. John James, has said that abortion is “decided.” Four years ago, James said he opposed abortion in all cases, and he has compared the practice to genocide. His campaign did not reply to a request for comment.
James’ running mate, Jay DeBoyer, recently suggested leveraging a state constitutional convention to enact a 12-week abortion ban in Michigan, according to recordings of the remarks reported by The Detroit News and Michigan Advance. DeBoyer has since said publicly that abortion is a “settled” issue in Michigan, where voters in 2022 amended the state constitution to protect abortion before fetal viability.
Some gubernatorial candidates are still pushing for abortion restrictions, albeit far less ambitious ones.
In New Mexico, where Democrats are expected to keep control of the governor’s mansion and already control both legislative chambers, Republican candidate Gregg Hull said he was “fully committed” to working with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to reduce the number of Texans coming to the neighboring state for abortions.
Hull has repeatedly called himself “pro-life” but also said that he would not change the state’s abortion law, which imposes no time limits on the procedure, without legislative support. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Abortion opponents are trying to revive the issue in a handful of states. SBA Pro-Life America, one of the nation’s leading anti-abortion groups, is pushing ads that characterize Democratic candidates for governor as well as the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives as extreme on the issue, including in Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan.
But generally, voters are less likely to trust conservatives on abortion, Lake said. And talking about abortion, she added, is more likely to generate enthusiasm among key Democratic voting blocs, particularly young women and college-educated women, who typically support reproductive rights.
“We have in our research people who say, ‘I used to be pro-life, I didn’t support abortion, I would never get one, but I think this is a decision that needs to be made by a woman and her doctor,’” Lake said. “People now feel this is just way too dangerous. This has gone way too far.”
In 2024, Elon Musk promised to give away $1 million a day to a randomly selected registered voter in a swing state. That prompted legal challenges, raised questions about its legality, and drew lawsuits from two Arizona residents claiming the lottery was a fraud. Musk has now agreed to settle the two lawsuits filed in Austin, Texas, though the details of the settlement have not been made public.
The plaintiffs claim that when Musk announced the sweepstakes, he falsely claimed the prizes would be awarded randomly. Philadelphia's District Attorney sued to stop the giveaway, claiming that Musk was running an illegal lottery. During a hearing, …
PARIS — A wave of mass protests swept across France Saturday, with dozens of peaceful marches taking place alongside scenes of violent clashes between demonstrators and police forces.
The demonstrations were also a battleground for candidates ahead of next year’s high-stakes presidential election: The far-right’s Marine Le Pen sided with law enforcement while the far-left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon backed protesters.
Throughout the day, media reported incidents in the country’s largest cities including Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille and Paris. Dozens of rioters clashed with law enforcement on the capital’s Place de la République, next to a much larger number of demonstrators gathered for an authorized march that started from Paris’s central square.
Media also reported looting across multiple cities later in the day.
French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu posted a message on X backing police forces and slamming violent rioters. He accused “ultra-left groups” of “organizing violence” and said looters would be brought to justice. Lecornu is overseeing a crisis meeting on Saturday evening, AFP reported.
French President Emmanuel Macron echoed Lecornu’s comments on Saturday evening, although he didn’t mention “ultra-left groups.”
“No place for violence in our Republic,” he said. “We will stand together against those who seed chaos, who only seek to tear down our institutions and who prevent those who peacefully express their demands from doing it.”
Students, farmers and members of the Yellow Jacket movement, among others, took to the streets on Saturday in a “convergence of struggles” to protest rising living costs, sluggish wages and deep disagreements with the government.
About 800,000 protestors took to the streets across the country, according to organizers. France’s interior ministry said 550,000 people took part in the protests.
“A very large majority of people are protesting without violence,” Paris’s police prefecture said on Saturday afternoon.
Students involved demonstrate against the cost of living in Pau, France on Oct. 17, 2026. | Jean-Christophe Chartre/AFP via Getty Images
Saturday’s demonstrations grew out of the student protests that began last month with school blockades and calls for better study conditions, more teachers and more funding. The movement has since spread nationwide — and become a political issue as the campaign for next year’s presidential election heats up.
In recent weeks, the government has struggled to deal with the crisis — which Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu described as “urban violence” — and is hoping the student movement will now fade because of a two-week school holiday that started Friday evening.
“The mobilization is marked by a very strong involvement of the ultra-left movement, which is only looking to cause disorder,” Nuñez’s office said Saturday, adding that the minister reiterated his “instructions of utmost firmness” to local prefects and police forces.
Footage showed Lyon’s tourist board office engulfed in flames on the city’s Place Bellecour. A police station was vandalized in Marseille, where a group of “rioters” also entered city hall, Mayor Benoît Payan said. He toldBFMTV that “damage was objectively fairly limited,” although the act of vandalism was “unacceptable.” The headquarters of right-wing TV channel CNews in Paris was also targeted, authorities said.
The government has defended the law enforcement response to the student protests despite numerous allegations of police brutality, including incidents that left one teenager with a severed hand and another blind in one eye. Nuñez said the use of “stun grenades” was authorized on Saturday, after a temporary ban on their use against students.
About 163 people had already been arrested in Paris by mid-afternoon, authorities said.
The far-left France Unbowed slammed the police response to the protests.
The party’s presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon participated in the demonstrations in Paris and backed protesters — he also criticized the media for only showing violent clashes while “everything is proceeding peacefully, with tens of thousands of people calmly taking part.”
On the other side of the political spectrum, far-right leaders Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen pledged support for the police. “Legitimate social demands have once again been hijacked by the far left,” Le Pen said, as an increasing number of polls show she could end up in the second round against Mélenchon.
Bardella said on Saturday that protests were made up entirely of “chaos professionals,” adding: “As we said, working France, which is taking the full brunt of inflation and cost-of-living struggles, did not take to the streets today.”
The police and protesters clashed in other European countries on Saturday, too. A student-led protest against corruption and unemployment in Albania’s capital Tirana reportedly turned violent, asdid another one in Brussels.
This story was updated. Victor Goury-Laffont contributed reporting.
WASHINGTON — After months of being outspent by Democrat James Talarico on the airwaves, Republicans launched a massive rescue mission for Ken Paxton in September, dropping over $200 million to boost their U.S. Senate candidate in Texas.
New campaign finance filings revealed that much of the advertising flurry was funded by one highly motivated donor: Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man.
Musk, who lives near the SpaceX Starbase facility in South Texas, appears to have poured nearly $190 million into the U.S. Senate race in his adopted home state. His role in financing Paxton’s air support was disclosed in reports filed Thursday to the Federal Election Commission by Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate GOP’s main super PAC and the biggest spender in Texas’ Senate contest.
On Sept. 9, the first day of the GOP midterm convention in Dallas, Musk gave $75 million to SLF. The next day, SLF put $75 million into a new entity called Texas PAC. By the weekend after the convention, the new super PAC was up on the air with a positive spot about Paxton’s work on sex trafficking and a negative ad attacking Talarico as being for “they/them, not you.”
Two weeks after cutting his first check, Musk gave an additional $83 million to SLF, according to the group’s filing. Sure enough, SLF deposited $83 million into Texas PAC’s coffers the following day.
Musk’s donations armed Senate Republicans to take over the airwaves in Texas. Using Texas PAC as the vessel to book airtime, SLF has thus far spent over $159 million on TV, radio and digital advertising, double the outlay from Talarico’s campaign, according to media tracking firm AdImpact.
SLF backed Sen. John Cornyn in the primary, estimating that a Paxton candidacy would require $150 million to $200 million to retain the seat — money that could come at the expense of other states. While the prediction proved prescient, Musk’s investment has changed the calculus.
“Thanks to some generous investors who have dedicated money to an affiliate, Texas PAC, we’ve been able to go in and support Ken Paxton,” SLF executive director Alex Latcham told Bloomberg TV Wednesday. “We’ll spend nearly $200 million in that race. But again, thanks to Leader John Thune and the Republican caucus and our fundraising, we haven’t had to subtract resources from other states to do so.”
The Tesla and SpaceX founder got involved in the race after his political team reached out to Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate GOP’s main outside campaign group, to voice Musk’s concerns about Paxton’s standing in the race, according to a person familiar with the conversations. That led to an agreement between Musk’s orbit and SLF — Musk would provide $10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, the main outside group boosting Paxton, if SLF gave $5 million and the PAC raised an additional $5 million. The details of the conversation were first reported by Axios.
That windfall was badly needed. Lone Star Liberty PAC had only $35,000 in the bank at the end of June, having drained its coffers on Paxton’s hard-fought primary win over Cornyn. Talarico, meanwhile, was continuing his torrid fundraising pace and was poised to keep dominating the political ad spending battle if help did not arrive for Paxton.
Talarico posted another record quarter amid Paxton’s SLF-powered ad surge, hauling in $64 million between July and September — a third-quarter record among all U.S. Senate candidates. The Austin Democrat has maintained a polling lead for months in averages of nonpartisan public surveys, an alarming sight for a Republican Party whose unbeaten streak in Texas statewide races spans more than three decades.
With Musk’s donation and the matching funds, Lone Star Liberty PAC spent $17.5 million on broadcast TV advertising in early September, by far the most significant pro-Paxton ad buy of the general election. By the end of the month, a handful of outside groups led by SLF had dropped over $217 million on ads in the Texas Senate race.
X not a part of Paxton’s Big Tech crusade
Paxton has not commented publicly about Musk’s support.
In the past, the attorney general has praised Musk for backing Republicans in 2024. He spent hours at Musk’s home two days before that year’s election hearing Musk recount all his efforts to boost GOP candidates, Paxton said at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in 2024.
“Aren’t you all glad he’s on our side?” Paxton said to cheers. “I am convinced that whatever he did, whatever rocket science thing he did, made a huge difference in this election.”
Paxton has also aligned himself with Musk through his role as Texas attorney general — and largely skirted scrutinizing Musk’s companies as his office has increasingly taken on Big Tech.
In 2022, as Musk sought to buy Twitter, Paxton opened an investigation into the social media company for how it reported the number of accounts on the platform that were fake or bots — inspecting whether the service was inflating the number of its actual users to boost its value for revenue. At the time, Musk was raising similar questions. He ultimately bought Twitter and renamed it X.
In 2024, Paxton opened an investigation into World Federation of Advertisers, an organization that represents marketers, to assess whether its members were conspiring to boycott specific social media services. TechCrunch reported Musk’s X, which had filed an antitrust suit against the group, was likely among the social media platforms.
Meanwhile, Paxton has taken on tech giants including Netflix, WhatsApp, Discord, and Meta — probes he has touted on the campaign trail.
“As attorney general, I’ve sued some of the largest companies in the world … for taking advantage of our kids by exposing them to dangerous, addictive material,” Paxton said after defeating Cornyn in May. “In Washington, I will not stop fighting to protect Texas children from Big Tech.”
But Paxton has taken arrows from critics who’ve accused him of turning a blind eye to X and Musk. In January, a group of Democratic state representatives demanded the attorney general investigate the platform’s artificial intelligence agent, Grok, and its creation of exploitative content about children and women. Paxton did not respond to the letter publicly.
The same month, a group of attorneys general from across the country sent Musk’s company a letter demanding that it address its AI agent’s creation of child sex abuse content. Paxton was not among the signatories.
Funding the GOP ground game
Musk’s political operation is also deeply involved in the Republican ground game in Texas, from canvassing to mailers, across several key races. America PAC, which he seeded with nearly $90 million last quarter, had pumped $18.8 million into the Senate race through Tuesday, per FEC filings, which capture efforts like text messaging, mailers and ads but not in-person canvassing such as block-walking and phone-banking. Over 80% of that money has gone to anti-Talarico messaging.
The tech mogul has significant business interests in the Lone Star State. Musk has moved the state of incorporation for many of his companies to Texas in recent years. Boring Company and X are headquartered in Bastrop, SpaceX is near Brownsville and Tesla’s corporate headquarters is now in Austin.
And it’s not just the Senate race. Musk’s PAC has spent about $800,000 boosting Republican candidates in the five most competitive U.S. House races in Texas. The biggest share has gone to the 35th Congressional District, a San Antonio-area seat Republicans redrew last summer with the intention of flipping, but which has proven highly competitive.
Musk spent hundreds of millions in 2024 to boost Republicans, including Donald Trump’s presidential bid. Trump rewarded Musk by tapping him to lead the controversial Department of Government Efficiency initiative. The two had a public falling out later that year, when Musk disparaged the president’s signature legislative effort and alleged Trump was in the Jeffrey Epstein files.
The dustup did not appear to sap Musk’s appetite for bankrolling Republicans’ political spending. The world’s wealthiest man has already surpassed his 2024 political spending this cycle, with Texas the largest focus of his operation.
Other GOP groups are fundraising off of Musk’s Texas spending bonanza as well.
“Elon Musk understands what it’s like to live under far left Democrats,” reads one National Republican Senatorial Committee fundraising email, which notes that Musk has spent $276 million in the midterms and directs readers to a WinRed fundraising page. “He fled an oppressive regime in California that crippled the state with a radical agenda before finding a new home in Texas. But now, the same Far Left Democrats that ran California into the ground are coming to SEIZE Elon’s new home!”
While far from reaching Musk’s investment levels, some prominent Texas GOP donors also came off the sidelines for Paxton in recent months, new filings show.
West Texas oil billionaire Farris Wilks, who has supported Paxton in his state campaigns and directed millions to hardline Republicans, donated $250,000 to one of Paxton’s joint fundraising committees in mid-August, his first federal expenditure of the cycle.
Amarillo billionaire Alex Fairly, meanwhile, had maxed out to Paxton’s direct campaign account with a $7,000 donation in the spring; in late August, he gave $274,300 to Paxton’s joint fundraising committee.
Paxton also received large sums this quarter from the Dallas Cowboys brass. Team president Stephen Jones and chief sales and marketing officer Jerry Jones Jr. gave $122,000 and $100,000, respectively. Their father, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, donated a six-figure sum in the second quarter.
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MADRID — Parties on Spain’s far left have failed to reach an agreement to run on a joint ticket in the November 29 election, in a setback to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who would need their support to form a new governing majority.
The Frente Amplio (or Broad Front), an alliance of several parties to the left of Sánchez’s Socialist Party, had hoped to recruit Podemos, which was a junior partner in government from 2020 to 2023. But with the deadline for electoral coalitions falling at midnight on Friday, the parties were unable to reach a nationwide accord.
Instead, the Broad Front and Podemos will run together only in the Canary Islands and the Valencia region.
The Broad Front is made up of Sumar, the current junior partner in the Socialist-led government, the Catalan Comuns, the Communist-led United Left and Más Madrid. Some smaller local parties have also joined the ticket. The lead candidate for prime minister will be Ada Colau, the former mayor of Barcelona.
Sumar, the dominant force in the alliance, has seen its vote share more than halve since 2023, to 5%, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls.
Although Podemos has only been polling at 3%, its full involvement in the Broad Front would have meant a greater overall share of seats for the far left, according to analysts.
The PSOE has been trailing the conservative People’s Party and would need a strong performance by parties to its left in order to keep Sánchez in office. The more likely scenario, polls show, is that the PP will be able to form a majority with the far-right Vox, whose support has been rising.
“The Spanish left is caught up in a game of thrones that demobilizes [voters],” said Irene de Miguel, coordinator of Podemos in the western region of Extremadura, as the deadline loomed.
BRUSSELS — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Friday that as many as 20 million Ukrainians could be forced to flee to Europe if his country falls to Russia.
“Russia is killing us,” Zelenskyy told reporters at a press conference on Friday during a summit of European Union leaders, adding Ukrainians were being “pushed” out of their country. “They [Russia] don’t want to stop.”
In the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, millions of Ukrainians fled their homes in Europe’s fastest and largest refugee crisis since World War II. Today, over 4 million Ukrainians live in EU countries under temporary protection status, with the largest populations in Germany, Poland and Czechia, according to Eurostat.
Zelenskyy’s stark warning comes as Ukraine heads into a brutal fifth wartime winter under Russian bombardment. Kyiv faces a budget shortfall of $30 to $35 million next year, according to projections from the International Monetary Fund — even accounting for a €90 billion loan Brussels agreed to provide last year.
The Ukrainian president traveled to Brussels to meet with European leaders and shore up financial support for his embattled country. While the EU is Ukraine’s staunchest backer, the bloc’s list of priorities is stacked with rising energy costs, looming elections, geopolitical crises and an impasse over its €2 trillion budget.
Donald Trump’s new White House “pep secretary,” Katie Zacharia, introduced herself to America in the Brady Briefing Room this week, to anticipated criticism from Democrats and some unexpected criticism from Republicans.
At first, the press pool acted like that was just business as usual. It didn’t last long. As of Friday afternoon, multiple news reports indicate that Trump has already seen enough, and has asked Zacharia to step down from her role at the White House after just five days on the job.
According to a post on X by reporter Aaron Rupar, Trump told the press corps he had said to Zacharia that “she was treated very, very unfairly by the news. Let’s call it the fake news. I said, ‘Katie, do you need this? I don’t think you need this.’ We’re talking about doing something. I want her to have a good life. She’s being brutalized by the media.”
In all likelihood, that will end one of the shortest tenures of any Trump White House official, only about half the length of the notorious Anthony Scaramucci during Trump’s first term.
Maybe Zacharia was just unlucky. After all, she made her debut on Oct. 13. She showed up 15 minutes late. She spent the next eight minutes telling us how great Trump was. She took questions from just three people. She was gone 15 minutes later. In her praise of Trump, Zacharia sounded like former press secretary Sean Spicer talking about Trump’s inaugural crowds nearly a decade ago as she made dubious claims about the number of attendees at the president’s recent campaign rallies in high school gymnasiums and small arenas.
“Attendance is at record highs as enthusiastic, hard-working Americans are lining up and packing arenas to support President Trump,” she said with a straight face. Yep. The lies have already begun. Don’t act surprised.
When she finally took questions, only Breitbart (which lavished her with praise for allowing them in the building), Fox News and the Daily Mail got to ask questions. She dropped one legitimate piece of news: The president had asked for Kimberly Guilfoyle’s resignation as U.S. ambassador to Greece, based on her evident corruption and widely reported misbehavior, which even Trump didn’t try to defend. The punchline to that incident came a short time later as Trump was departing the White House, when he barely acknowledged Guilfoyle’s existence: Kimberly? Kimberly who?
A handful of defenders noted that the new press secretary had only a day to get ready for her debut. “Katie Zacharia had less than 24 hours to prepare for her inaugural briefing, as she juggled a cross-country move, and only received briefing materials this morning,” the Wall Street Journal reported. OK, so who forced her to go on stage, and why?
She could have taken all the time she needed. It’s not like we were getting press briefings every day anyway, and Trump always says he’s his own best press secretary. So there was no pressure from the press, although more reporters than usual showed up to be part of Zacharia’s inaugural standup routine.
Zacharia didn’t take the time to get to know us, and as a result we once again got a low-grade sideshow at the White House. Don’t expect anything more, and don’t expect the press to push back.
I’ve worked with incoming press secretaries at all levels, from City Hall to the White House. The best of them took the time to study policy briefings, meet department heads and the most active beat reporters before holding their first briefing. By doing that, they avoided being criticized for a lack of preparation and having to look for names on an index card. They also got a feel for the issues and questions they needed to address. Getting to know someone is the key to any long-term relationship, whether professional or personal.
That sort of protocol has long since been forgotten and abandoned, at least at the White House. Today we can’t get into the upper press area of the West Wing to talk with the press secretary. She didn’t take the time to get to know us, and as a result we once again got a low-grade sideshow. Don’t expect anything more, and don’t expect the press to push back. The White House Correspondents’ Association is in “go along to get along” mode. It’s cringeworthy to watch and heartbreaking to endure.
There was no reason to expect much of Zacharia’s first staged appearance, and that’s why no one should be surprised to see her draw as much criticism for her attire and demeanor as for the content of the information she provided. She appeared nervous, at one point calling her husband “my president.” She giggled at herself for that: “That’s a good one.” That was self-deprecating, which I appreciate. As for her attire, it was professional, but not something I would wear. As for being nervous, that’s to be expected. But again, why did she feel the need to brief us on her first day in the office?
She called on Trump-friendly media exclusively, and then excused herself, saying she had to travel to Alaska with the president, who’s hoping to shore up support for incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan, one of many struggling Republicans this fall.
Mind you, if Zacharia had arrived on time, she could have doubled her time with us. Why start late and then cut it short? If she knew she was going to leave with Trump, there was no reason to soil her laundry doing a shortened briefing. Either show up on time or do it upon your return, after you get settled. Nobody would have said anything about that — and nobody would care if they did. That might have given the president another excuse to belittle the press.
I know some Republican lawmakers and even some reporters who believe that Trump set up Zacharia for failure by ordering her first appearance. That certainly isn’t beyond Trump. He’s the best when it comes to lowering expectations.
Those expectations at the moment are so low as to defy measurement.
Just this week Trump has announced his pleasure with a DHS investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar’s immigration papers, a deal to import diesel fuel from Russia, and possible new air strikes on Iran, while Vice President JD Vance made a weird homophobic joke about Texas Senate candidate James Talarico and Speaker Mike Johnson claimed to have no idea why gas prices are spiking. Meanwhile, Trump blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not ending a war that began with Russia’s invasion of his country.
Of course, none of these issues were brought up in the new pep secretary’s very short briefing, the strangest of those issues being the bizarre deal made with Russia. In an attempt to lower prices at the pump, which have spiked because of the war Trump started, the president now says he’s ready to buy diesel from Vladimir Putin’s government.
In essence, Trump has agreed to pay an enemy government that is helping those trying to kill Americans in a war that’s entirely his doing. All to eradicate a supposed threat that he claimed he had “obliterated” a year earlier.
Just to refresh everyone’s memory, Russia is backing Iran in its war with the U.S., reportedly providing intelligence on U.S. bases to the Iranian military. In essence, Trump agreed to pay an enemy government that is helping those trying to kill Americans in a war that’s entirely his doing. And all this to eradicate a supposed threat that Trump had claimed didn’t exist at all because he “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year earlier.
Come to think of it, a two-hour briefing on just that subject wouldn’t have been enough to explain that insanity. How do you tell the press that we’re paying our enemies to attack us?
Even so, that wasn’t the peak of insanity this week.
A few days earlier, a judge in Virginia ruled that the Trump administration had misled the public with a long list of false accusations about Mary Comans, the former chief financial officer of FEMA.
“Armed only with false statements, high-ranking government officials undertook a premeditated campaign to impugn the personal and professional integrity of Ms. Comans, a non-partisan, career public servant,” U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick said. “Their intent was to disseminate false and derogatory information about Ms. Comans as widely as possible.”
Comans was accused of money laundering, willfully violating a presidential executive order, undermining public safety and misspending federal funds. As the judge found, none of that was ultimately true. He added that “high-ranking” government officials accused her of such things while “knowing they were false.”
Dealing with that insanity might also require a two-hour press briefing.
Finally, there’s the matter of the lawsuit filed by CNN, MSNOW and Politico against the Trump administration. Judge Timothy Kelly ruled Tuesday night that the temporary restraining order preventing Trump from banning those outlets from the White House would remain in force while their lawsuit proceeded.
Trump had also engaged in “unlawful viewpoint discrimination” by banning those reporters, Kelly said. The president also apparently never gave those news organizations any meaningful list of standards they had to comply with or risk losing their press passes. Trump’s actions, the judge said, “likely did not … come close to satisfying Karem.”
Yes, that’s me. He was referring to the Karem v. Trump case in 2019, when I beat the administration in court on three occasions and got my press credentials back. And the judge is right, by the way: Trump’s actions don’t satisfy me. But unpacking my own victory over Trump would be a tough task for the best press secretary. So would dealing with any of this week’s issues, let alone dealing with a president who seems to have reached peak insanity, especially for a brand new press secretary who just moved to town with questionable credentials.
To be completely fair, Trump threw Zacharia to the dogs with no prep time, no knowledge of the issues she would have to handle and no readiness to handle even the straightforward questions about her own legal background. (She graduated from law school but is not a licensed attorney in any state.)
Zacharia read a bunch of lies off a written statement, smiled at us and got out of there. It now seems possible that her first day briefing the White House press will also be her best day, as well as her last day. The aforementioned Anthony Scaramucci publicly mused that she may not last as long as he did at the White House (which was 11 days). I’ve heard some reporters saying they won’t even bother to learn how to spell her name.
But what we saw in the briefing room this week was far more troubling than one woman falling on her face. It was a panicky president approaching peak insanity throwing a scapegoat on stage in an effort to deflect attention from his ruthless and corrupt conduct. True to form, the press corps took the bait, and seemed more interested in what Zacharia was wearing and whether she’d exaggerated her qualifications than in the important issues facing this country as a result of the president’s insanity.
I have plenty of empathy for anyone working in the Trump White House, but no sympathy for anyone who willingly joins the lunacy, particularly at this late date.
The midterm elections are at hand. Trump is criminally negligent and mentally unwell. Anyone who goes to work for him now is just asking for trouble.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.
Clarification, Oct. 14: This story has been updated to clarify what Cleta Mitchell wants the Commerce Department to do and her role in Trump’s 2020 call to the Georgia secretary of state.
Since being released early from prison in June, former Colorado election clerk Tina Peters has been granted extraordinary access to the halls of power in Washington.
Peters said she has traveled to Washington seven times, visited the White House at least twice, and met with senior officials at the Justice and Commerce departments — remarkable access for someone on parole after a 2024 felony conviction for tampering with voting machines in an attempt to show that the 2020 election was rigged against President Donald Trump.
She’s a high-profile example of a group of Trump supporters and conservative activists trying to lay out a roadmap for the president to follow. They are urging him to take more extreme steps to try and influence the outcome of an election that many polls suggest could end Republican control of Congress. But as the election closes in, the activists are now voicing increasing concerns that the president and his administration aren’t going to act on their ideas.
Peters isn’t shy about what she wants. The 71-year-old activist is pushing the Trump administration to use emergency powers before the November election to scrutinize voting machines across America, though that’s something most experts and lawyers say it can’t legally do.
“A lot of people would say that we just need to go rogue and declare this radical emergency and we need to shut everything down,” Peters said last week on an election activist livestream on Rumble. “The encouraging part is that there are already orders and laws in place that allow them to do what they need to do.”
Other conservative activists pushing for changes to election administration include:
Cleta Mitchell, head of the Election Integrity Network and a Trump ally, who is pushing the Commerce Department to require a partial hand count of the election results because of potential national security risks with voting machines.
Mike Lindell, a longtime Trump ally who has spent years promoting claims that voting machines were used to manipulate U.S. elections, who wants Trump to declare a national emergency and prevent the use of electronic voting machines in November.
Peter Ticktin, a Florida attorney representing Peters and longtime Trump friend, who said Trump might have to declare martial law if the election results are in question.
Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump ally and former White House chief strategist who hosts the influential right-wing podcast War Room, who has repeatedly urged Trump to use emergency powers to require voter identification at the polls and send ICE agents to polling places.
James Mills, head of the Georgia State Election Board, who sent a letter last week urging the Trump administration to compel his state to make election software updates before the November election.
A wide array of lawyers, voting rights groups, civil rights leaders, and Democrats have denounced the ideas as an unconstitutional attack on the nation’s electoral process. But such criticisms haven’t deterred Trump from trying to advance a variety of proposals to impose more federal control over elections.
Federal courts have blocked Trump from advancing key pillars of two executive orders that would have transformed the U.S. Postal Service into a ballot regulation agency, eliminated grace periods for ballots arriving after Election Day, and required all people to provide documented proof of citizenship to register to vote.
With most of his efforts at election oversight blocked, Trump has left open the possibility he might heed the calls of supporters urging him to take drastic action before November.
“Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK?” Trump said in an August interview with Wayne Allyn Root on Real America’s Voice, responding to a question about declaring a national security emergency as a way to assert more authority over elections. “I’ll leave it at that.”
‘Sowing confusion, chaos and distrust’
The Trump administration has laid out an Election Day plan that includes dispatching 1,000 election monitors to look for any problems in key states, establishing FBI command posts across the nation, and military monitoring of potential cyber attacks from hostile nations. Pentagon officials have said they have no plans to send armed forces to polling places on Election Day. But the Trump administration has stopped short of foreclosing the possibility that ICE or armed federal agents could operate near or in polling places, a move that could cross legal lines.
Sean Morales-Doyle, senior director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, said federal laws and precedent make it extremely unlikely that Trump would be able to take any meaningful steps to seize voting machines before the election. And that may not be the ultimate goal, he said.
“The point of this concerted campaign to undermine our elections from this administration is really not about changing the rules, because even they know the president lacks the authority,” said Morales-Doyle. “It is about sowing confusion, chaos and distrust and undermining public trust in our elections.”
Peters appears to be the person who has had the greatest access to Trump administration officials in recent months. Trump had lunch at the White House with Peters and Ticktin in late June, just four weeks after Peters was released from state prison. Peters returned for a second visit last week, Ticktin told Votebeat.
Mitchell and Peters have focused part of their efforts on persuading the Commerce Department to use what they said is existing authority over voting machines, which a letter from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said introduces a national security risk because they contain parts from other nations, including China.
Mitchell argues that a national emergency declaration that Trump declared in 2019 gives the Commerce Department the power to compel election officials to conduct a partial hand count before certification. Earlier this year, Justice Department official Keith Olsen reportedly tried to get the Commerce Department to classify voting machine components as national security threats, which could lead to them being banned from use in the U.S. But investigators found no evidence to support the claims, Reuters reported, and the idea was scrapped.
Mitchell, in an interview with Votebeat, expressed frustration that the Trump administration has not placed enough importance on the concerns and blamed people working for the president for not doing enough to address election issues.
“I can call the president anytime I want to — and I have,” said Mitchell, who declined to say when she last spoke to Trump. “I told the president this: I wish that the people in your administration knew or cared as much about election integrity as you do.”
Neither the Commerce Department nor the White House responded to requests for comment.
Mitchell said she signs every message to administration officials with the same sign-off: Tick-tock.
That’s the same message Ticktin said he has been trying to convey.
“We are running out of time,” said Ticktin, who characterized the threat from Chinese-made parts in voting machines as akin to an act of war.
“This is getting serious enough and critical enough that it might even require, at some point, martial law,” said Ticktin. “People say: ‘Ticktin’s crazy.’ If I’m not crazy and what I am saying is true that China is attacking us in some way, well then we’re really in a state of belligerence with China and, sooner or later, it’s going to be too late to change things in a peaceful way.”
Ticktin suggested that federal forces could help seize voting machines in places where the count is in question, and potentially hand-count ballots.
Ticktin’s call represents the most extreme — and most unlikely — idea being pushed by election skeptics.
Mitchell, Peters, and others have been urging the administration to take more strategic steps to address their concerns.
The letter asked the Justice Department to force state and county officials to install software updates before the November election. It also asked the Justice Department to prevent QR-code-based tabulation in Georgia and require Georgia to end its use of the codes in six months. But installing new software would require time, money and resources — all of which are in short supply for Georgia in the weeks leading up to the election.
Trump has long focused his ire on Georgia, where he lost the 2020 presidential election by fewer than 12,000 votes — less than 1% of the ballots cast. Mitchell joined Trump on a call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after the election where the president pressed him to “find” him more than 11,000 votes, enough to change the outcome. Earlier this year, the FBI searched Fulton County’s election hub and seized more than 650 boxes, including ballots, from the 2020 election. The results in Georgia this fall will be pivotal to partisan control of the U.S. Senate.
Beyond Georgia, others like Bannon and Lindell keep pressing the president to issue a new national security declaration to prevent the use of electronic voting machines to tally votes at all.
“The president needs to completely declare a national emergency,” Lindell said. “The president can just make a national argument and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to go paper ballots, hand counting.’”
But making such a declaration wouldn’t allow Trump to ban voting machines or require states to count all ballots by hand. The Constitution grants the president limited control over elections, which are usually handled by state and local officials with direction from Congress.
At the end of the day, said Morales-Doyle, the most important thing voters can do is make plans to cast their ballots in ways they feel safe and secure.
“At this moment, when democracy has come under such unprecedented and pointed attacks, it is more important than ever that people invest in democracy and that do so in defiance of all this,” he said.
Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.
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LONDON — The Liberal Democrats used to watch their rivals indulge in messy factional squabbles with glee. Now they are scrambling to project an image of unity.
Britain’s third-largest Westminster group could hold significant power after the next election if no party wins a majority of MPs and Prime Minister Andy Burnham is casting around for a deal.
But for now, the focus is on weathering an internal storm in the centrist outfit. MPs rallied around their leader Ed Davey this week at a marathon four-hour meeting — held days after one of his frontbenchers resigned in an ill-fated attempt to oust the party chief.
The botched coup comes as the Liberal Democrats try to answer a more existential question: what are they actually for and how do they make an impact in Britain’s fragmented political landscape?
POLITICO’s Poll of Polls shows the Lib Dems coasting along. After getting 12.2% in the 2024 general election — and bagging a record 72 members of parliament as a result — the party has slipped down, polling between 9% and 11% since Andy Burnham became prime minister.
POLITICO explains why Lib Dems are now openly discussing Davey’s future; how much danger he is in; and exactly how the man known for a cheery demeanor and eye-catching paddle-board stunts could be capsized.
1) Why is Davey’s future in the headlines?
The surprise resignation of the Lib Dems’ Treasury spokesperson Charlie Maynard a week ago triggered the latest round of soul-searching about the leader’s future — but the grumbling goes back a bit further.
Maynard’s resignation followed costly tax-cutting pledges from Davey at the party’s conference in September and came hot on the heels of sharp responses — including from 2024-intake Lib Dem MPs Tom Gordon and Vikki Slade — to the way Davey defended an existing guarantee on state pensions. Some MPs believe the party isn’t adequately representing younger voters by opposing changes to the so-called triple lock, now targeted for reform by Burnham.
The immediate threat looks to have receded. Maynard’s resignation has gone down badly among a host of colleagues.
One Lib Dem frontbencher — granted anonymity to speak about internal matters like others in this piece — said the “vast majority of us think it’s beyond ridiculous and are really angry.” A second frontbencher said it was “bang out of order” for colleagues to brief internal policy discussions to the press.
2) So he’s safe?
Not quite — fizzled plots like this have a habit of still bringing grumbling to the surface (just ask Theresa May)
There remains frustration among some MPs over Davey’s perceived failure to exploit a gap in British politics opened up by voters’ deep dislike of Keir Starmer’s Labour government after the 2024 general election.
YouGov’s Anthony Wells explains that the party was stagnant “during a period where the Starmer government came in, became extremely unpopular [and] lost a huge amount of support” that “didn’t go to them.”
He contrasted this with how the Lib Dems gained traction in the 2000s when the Labour government was in big trouble. The Lib Dems are normally good at grabbing “the low-hanging fruit of unpopular left-of-center governments.”
“They haven’t nailed their colors really firmly to any mast,” says Wells. “They have been something to all men — and it means they may have suffered in comparison to people like the Greens under [leader] Zack Polanski, who’ve been much clearer about what they stand for.”
Removing a Lib Dem leader remains reasonably easy — though a crunch meeting of the parliamentary party on Tuesday suggests there currently aren’t enough MPs to actually trigger a ballot of no confidence, let alone win one.
Eighteen MPs (25% of the parliamentary party) would need to push for a vote of no confidence to be held. An absolute majority — 36 MPs — would then have to vote no confidence in Davey for a leadership election to be triggered.
Davey could stand in that leadership election if he could secure nominations from 10% of Lib Dem MPs and 200 members from at least 20 different local parties.
Unlike in the Conservatives, where a leader cannot be challenged again for a year after they win a no-confidence vote, Davey would be given no such grace period if he survived — meaning another ballot could take place just months after he saw off a coup attempt.
3) What’s the view from Davey world?
The arguments in the leader’s favor appear to have won out — for now.
For one, he has a record of winning. Davey can point to having taken the party to its largest number of constituencies in its modern form by focusing on a fight-by-fight, seats-first strategy. The 2024 campaign prioritized targeted campaigning in specific areas, rather than seeking a higher national vote share that doesn’t translate to a high number of MPs.
Loyal allies have come out to bat for their embattled boss this week. Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper, seen as a possible future leadership contender, said there’s a “real sense that we need to come together as a group” to stop the Tories and Reform UK “from forming the most right-wing government in our history.”
Subtext: let’s not mess around and let our real enemies in.
A third frontbencher told POLITICO Davey doesn’t “just have the support of the parliamentary party — there clearly aren’t anything like enough MPs to trigger a vote of no confidence.” They said Davey changing his top team earlier this year by appointing James Holt as director of political strategy and Ruth Younger as chief of staff “just needs time to percolate.”
4) So can Davey just keep calm and carry on?
Maybe.
Wells believes the party doesn’t “necessarily need to do much” to hold its current crop of seats at the next election — and that a middle-of-the-road approach against flashier, potentially more divisive opponents — might actually work in its favor.
While “their brand may be less distinctive, it also means they’re more coalition-able,” Wells says. He points out that there’s already much less objection from Labour about working with the Lib Dems compared to the Greens, who Burnham this week threatened to can local power-sharing agreements with amid a row over anti-semitism.
“There is a strategic advantage to them in terms of not offending people, but there’s also a strategic weakness in not defining yourself very clearly,” he says.
BRUSSELS — EU leaders will go back to the drawing board in November as they race to finalize a deal on the bloc’s next seven-year budget by the end of the year.
During the first day of a two-day summit in Brussels on Thursday, European Council President António Costa announced he was convening an additional gathering on Nov. 26 in a bid to overcome disagreements and lay the ground for a final deal in December. To bring the sides closer to an agreement, he will present new budget figures before the meeting, according to an EU official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the confidential planning.
Costa is pressing leaders to finalize negotiations by the end of the year — before elections in France, Italy and Poland in 2027 threaten to derail the talks.
In a speech to the leaders, Costa warned that going past the end-of-year deadline will delay EU payments to farmers and researchers past Jan. 1, 2028, when the new budget is scheduled to come into force.
If leaders fail to reach a deal in December, the electoral calendar might push an agreement to May or even October 2027, Costa warned leaders in his concluding remarks, according to two EU diplomats briefed on the discussions.
Pressure on governments
Costa’s plan received a major boost on Thursday from French President Emmanuel Macron, who told fellow leaders that he won’t have a political mandate to sign a deal close to the French presidential elections in April 2027.
European Council President António Costa, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever and French President Emmanuel Macron pictured at the European Council Summit on Oct. 15, 2026. | Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga/AFP via Getty Images
This is a major reversal for France, which has previously been unwilling to commit to the end-of-year deadline.
Macron’s words put more pressure on governments to advance the talks over the coming weeks — although some cast doubt on his good intentions.
“There are so many elections next year. [French far-right leader Marine] Le Pen herself [said] it’s undemocratic if we were now to agree,” said one EU diplomat.
Just hours before the leaders’ gathering, Le Pen renewed calls to halve France’s contributions to the EU budget if she wins the presidential elections next year.
She said that rushing the budget agreement before the French elections would be “a democratic scandal.”
The new frugal
Costa is stuck between messy domestic politics across Europe and hardening stances among the EU’s 27 leaders.
The so-called frugal EU countries pushing for major budget cuts — Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Finland — have publicly said that an Irish proposal envisioning €159 billion cuts doesn’t go far enough.
On Thursday, the six hardliners were joined by Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, who joked in a press conference after the summit that “I’m married to a Dutch person so I’m very frugal also in my personal life.”
However, behind closed doors the budget hardliners employed a more conciliatory tone.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz — the unofficial leader of the frugal camp — said that the Irish proposal has achieved progress despite reductions still being needed, said two EU diplomats briefed on the discussions.
He pointed to EU payouts to poorer regions, as opposed to farmer’s subsidies, as an avenue for cuts.
On the other side of the spectrum, Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez — who will try to cling on to power in an election on Nov. 29 — insisted that the budget is way too small.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez addresses journalists upon arriving at the European Council Summit on Oct. 15, 2026. | Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images
“It is a distribution of misery,” he told fellow leaders during the discussions, according to the diplomats. He was joined by Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — an ideological foe on most issues, but an ally of sorts in the budget battle. She insisted that no further cuts to the budget will be accepted.
To bring sides together closer to a deal, Costa promised to advance progress on EU-wide taxes, or own resources, to finance the next seven-year budget and reduce national contributions.
He will explore the European Parliament’s proposed taxes on crypto firms, online gambling and tech giants as well as a Greek idea to funnel future national sales of 6G mobile spectrum to the EU budget.
But given the level of opposition, getting EU countries to agree to any of these options will no be no mean feat.
“It is time to be realistic and work on what is plausible and reasonable, instead of wishful thinking,” said another EU diplomat.
BRUSSELS — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will make a direct pitch to European leaders for more help on Friday, amid a crisis of faith among allies over Donald Trump’s latest steps favoring Russia.
At the second day of an EU summit in Brussels, Zelenskyy joins European prime ministers and presidents as they discuss Ukraine’s need for more weapons and cash, with concern growing that Kyiv faces a shortfall of billions of euros next year.
The reality of the threat to European security from the four-year-long war penetrated the summit bubble after air drones hit two ships in or near Romanian waters, prompting emergency talks with NATO.
“We all in Europe want this war to end,” Zelenskyy said on social media as he arrived in the Belgian capital on Thursday. “And for that, signals of strength are needed — more real pressure on Russia and more defense support for Ukraine.”
It is especially important, Zelenskyy said, to “act together to protect lives.” But unity among European leaders is in short supply at a meeting already riddled with tensions.
EU governments are pitted against each other in their own fraught negotiations over how much money to commit to the 27-country bloc’s budget. With populists surging, discontent raging and elections scheduled in major power centers across the continent, under-pressure leaders are a long way from approaching a deal.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the EU summit in Brussels on October 15, 2026. | Nicolas Tucat/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
That’s the combustible mix of financial discussions the U.S. president waded into.
Trump’s decision to open up American markets to previously banned Russian diesel — intended to ease price pressures in the U.S. — risks tilting the balance of an expensive war in Russia’s favor, three European officials warned. Putin’s war chest can now swell from additional fossil fuel exports, while Ukraine struggles for cash.
As they arrived for the first day of the marathon two-day gathering on Thursday, EU national leaders began informally discussing options for how to help redress the balance. That discussion should to be picked up again around the summit table on Friday.
Russian assets
One idea rapidly rising back up the agenda is the fraught question of whether, or how, to make use of some hundreds of billions of euros of frozen Russian financial assets held in European banks.
The bulk of these rest with the Euroclear depository in Brussels. A previous attempt to grab the funds and send them directly to Kyiv was blocked by the Belgian government ― and other countries less prominently ― over concerns it would be exposed to legal action.
But Sweden, Finland and Germany want to take another look at the assets. The European Commission is to come up with a new detailed assessment of Ukraine’s funding needs and an options paper on how to help, including the use of assets, according to officials from these countries.
As the summit began, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he had been urging his counterparts to “do everything we can to help Ukraine get through the winter and continue to support it next year as well.”
“We will also have to increase funding once again in order to provide Ukraine with truly long-term assistance,” he said. “I remain firmly convinced that we are not only defending Ukraine’s territorial integrity, but also the political order of Europe, which is truly under pressure from Russia in every respect.”
A German official earlier suggested that of the available options to help Ukraine, including a loan and direct grants from national governments, using the assets was the most viable way forward and should be “discussed.”
A U.S. proposal to unfreeze some of the Russian assets and transfer them to a U.S.-controlled entity so Washington could use them as leverage in peace talks with Moscow also attracted strong criticism.
Merz told reporters that the assets had been frozen in Europe and “should remain frozen in Europe … That is our business, and we will decide on it.”
‘Try again’
Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo told POLITICO as the summit began: “The best solution would be that we will have a solution on how to use frozen assets … We have to try again.”
Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo speaks to journalists at the European Arctic Summit in Rovaniemi, Finland, on Sept. 14, 2026. | Jouni Porsanger/AFP via Getty Images
Sweden is also backing the move to re-examine options on using the assets to help Ukraine’s future funding needs. “Doing nothing is not an option,” Swedish EU Affairs Minister Jessica Rosencrantz told POLITICO. “The Commission is looking into different financial options, and we need to get them on the table quite soon,” she said.
Leaders at this week’s summit should “be really honest that Ukraine needs increased financing” and that the EU “must really step up,” she added.
Zelenskyy met Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, the main opponent to a deal on assets, for talks on Thursday and thanked him for his country’s support so far.
Speaking to reporters after the first day of the summit, De Wever said the assets should be looked at as part of a future peace agreement. “Are there people on this planet who maybe dream of doing it differently this time and operationalizing those assets earlier for certain purposes? The answer to that question is: Yes there are,” he said. “Are they in this building? They are. Are there outside this building? Yes there are. Do I want to talk about it? No, I don’t.”
For Finland’s Orpo, Trump’s “terrible deal” with Putin on diesel, and the apparent U.S.-imposed limits on Starlink technology to help Ukraine counter Russian attacks, are hard to understand.
“My message to [Trump] is that we are allies,” Orpo said in an interview. “We are in NATO. And what is the biggest threat against NATO? It’s Russia — and that is why there is no logic. I don’t have answers. I have many questions.” He said Trump may be focusing on winning votes ahead of next month’s midterm elections in the U.S. but he should remember that his real allies lie in Europe and he should not “trust” Putin.
Election anxiety
Finland holds its election next year at the same time as what could be a seismic contest in France. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen is leading the polls for the French presidency and wants to cut aid to Ukraine and slash the EU’s budget.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who is constitutionally barred from standing next year, warned EU leaders that they must get a deal on the bloc’s next budget by December, otherwise it will be too late.
But the 27 leaders remain split and show no signs of bridging the gap between “frugal” countries like Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands, who want to limit the settlement, and others such as Italy and Romania, who are on the side of bigger pots of cash for regional development and farming.
European Council President António Costa also sees the urgency. He believes a deal before the end of the year is not only necessary but achievable, according to two EU officials.
Costa, who is taking over the negotiations from Ireland in its role at the helm of the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, believes failing to secure a deal by December would push the entire budget negotiating process beyond the electoral cycle. That would potentially delay a deal until October next year — perilously close to the new EU budget taking effect in January 2028.
In an effort to make progress on the budget talks, EU leaders will return to Brussels for an extra summit next month.
Camille Gijs, Hanne Cokelaere and Gregorio Sorgi contributed reporting.
BRUSSELS ― The EU should consider approving a three or four-year budget instead of trying to plan the bloc’s financial needs for seven years, the president of Cyprus told POLITICO.
“We’re discussing the budget in 2034 and now we’re in 2026,” Nikos Christodoulides said in an interview on the sidelines of Thursday’s summit of EU leaders in Brussels.
A three or four-year budget might be “easier” for some member countries to swallow, he suggested. “Why not open the political discussion?”
“You don’t know what’s going to be the situation in 2030, 2031,” he added. “I mean, look what happened with Covid, with the Ukrainian war … It’s not possible to declare all your priorities today.”
The EU’s seven-year, roughly €2 trillion budget has to be agreed by all 27 member countries but has two deeply entrenched camps on either side: The so-called frugals, comprised of Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and others who want a smaller budget, and the friends of cohesion, a loose grouping of 17 countries that do not want major cuts to agriculture and regional funds.
An EU official close to the budget negotiations said the idea of a shorter timeframe was weird.
EU law allows a budget of “at least five years,” though every budget has been seven years since 1993.
The odds of the budget being approved by the end of the year are increasingly slim, with an election in Spain in November, which polls indicate Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will lose to the center-right and far-right, potentially blowing out the timeline for consensus to 2027.
“Everybody used to understand that we need to finish … a political agreement by the end of the year,” Christodoulides said. “Now, with the situation in Spain, elections there,” that is less likely to happen.
Christodoulides also said he expected the budget to be cut by around a 10th compared to the budget proposed by the European Commission. Last week, the Irish government proposed an 8% cut compared to the Commission’s proposal.
“I think we may end up on 10% or 11%,” he said. “Double digits.”
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