Romania ended five months of political paralysis Tuesday with its parliament voting in Luca Niculescu as prime minister after three failed attempts to form a government — but the deal comes with a six-month deadline for the parties to strike a more lasting agreement.
The threat of snap elections, which would likely see the populist right-wing Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) party surge, helped push the center-right National Liberal Party (PNL) and the center-left Social Democrats (PSD) to agree on a government led by independent Niculescu, a former journalist and diplomat who was nominated as prime minister by moderate President Nicușor Dan earlier this month. The socialists will join the cabinet, but the liberals will stay out.
Romania has the sixth-largest population in the EU and plays a critical role in NATO’s defense of southeastern Europe as home to a major military base and a U.S. missile shield site. The country has been plagued by political instability and a mushrooming budget deficit in recent years, fueling a surge in support for hard-right nationalist politics.
The new deal keeping the government afloat expires in six months, and parties will need to renegotiate the pact with no agreement yet on what comes next.
During this period, the Social Democrats will try to pass an investment-focused 2027 budget by the end of November, steering Bucharest away from austerity, party leader Sorin Grindeanu told POLITICO Playbook Capitals in an interview.
“Romania needs an economic recovery plan, not austerity,” he said. “Our priorities are protecting purchasing power and supporting business, restarting public investment, and improving essential public services.” Grindeanu added that he aims to revise the 2026 budget by the end of October and to fast-track implementation of EU projects to unblock funds.
The Social Democrats in May teamed up with AUR to topple the coalition government led by centrists and centre-right liberals, as unpopular debt-cutting reforms drove Social Democrat voters toward the populist right. PNL and USR have refused to govern with the Social Democrats again.
The formation of the new government makes snap elections harder to trigger once the six-month deal expires, as Romania’s constitution requires two failed attempts to install a government before Parliament can be dissolved.
Grindeanu hopes to persuade his former coalition partners to reunite in six months, but with a different economic program. Fearing an uptick in support for the far right, he wants to avoid further cuts.
But the pivot away from austerity puts him at odds with the PNL, which has defended fiscal restraint. The PNL refused to sign a detailed coalition program, Grindeanu said, forcing the administration to cobble together support vote by vote over the next six months.
Grindeanu distinguished between parliamentary votes and lasting alliances, and said he won’t seek a pact with AUR, citing deep disagreements over Europe and national security. He said he rejected an offer from AUR to back a €300 million social spending package during negotiations over the 2026 budget, after the far-right party demanded PSD’s support on another, unspecified issue in return. Instead, he waited to find a compromise with PNL.
“Until I will stay in this position, PSD will not have any agreement with AUR,” he vowed.
Bernadette Greene-Placentia would like you to know the story of her rape is not an “October Surprise.”
She did not conspire with the media to publish the graphic details of her sexual assault on the same day early voting ballots were sent out to voters in Arizona. Her harrowing account of being bludgeoned and violated by two men in the middle of the night in a suburban parking lot is not a “hoax” she concocted to win over voters’ sympathies. Her fragmented memories of the attack, and her initial reluctance to go to authorities, are not evidence of an elaborate lie, nor of a nefarious Democratic plot to wrest control of Congress, as some right-wing influencers have suggested. It was hard enough coming forward to say she was raped, she told TPM. Now she has to contend with all these men, with millions of followers online, loudly asserting that maybe she wasn’t. She can’t help but remember that these men publicly trying to poke holes in her story have mothers. “Is this really how you were raised?” she wants to ask them.
Remember when billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump were supposedly enemies? At the start of Trump’s second term, the world’s richest man, was busy ripping through nearly every level of the U.S. government with the Trump-approved Department of Government Efficiency. But by June 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported the pair had “torched” their relationship, which amounted to a lot of social media slapfights and accusations about who was in the Epstein files. But the truth is, the two men have a storied on-off relationship that seems to fluctuate based on who’s grabbing the check.
Lately, Musk and Trump are back to acting like close pals. It was hard not to cringe watching the president award Musk the National Medal of Science on Oct. 8, the highest honor the U.S. can bestow on a scientist or engineer. I was probably reading too much into it, but I sensed some awareness on Musk’s part that it was an empty gesture, unless inflating stock prices is a scientific achievement. But maybe the pageantry is meant to distract from how many government grants Musk has been awarded. According to multiple reports, Tesla and SpaceX basically would not exist without the government giving Musk’s companies wads of cash.
At any rate, Musk is now stepping in to try to save Trump’s allies in the midterms, dumping hundreds of millions into races, with Axios reporting he is “single-handedly keeping the Republican Party afloat in some of its most vital races.” So far, he’s spent some $366 million in pro-GOP midterm TV spots and other campaign efforts, with $276 million donated since July alone. No other known donor comes close to dishing out more funding. But for Musk that’s a relatively trivial amount, even though his fluctuating trillionaire status is currently hovering below the threshold for designation.
Some of Musk’s money went to his own super PAC, but a good chunk also to the Senate Leadership Fund and the Lone Star Liberty PAC, both of which are backing Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton’s endangered campaign for the U.S. Senate against state Rep. James Talarico. Right now polling indicates that statewide election results in the Lone Star State are going to be extremely tight, with new data from the University of Texas/Texas Politics Project released Wednesday indicating Democrats are statistically tied in key races. It’s not just Talarico, who leads Paxton 50% to 47%, but Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa holds a one-point lead over Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, which is effectively a tie. Trump is reportedly already searching for someone to blame if Democrats pick up their first Senate seat in Texas since 1988.
Across the country, other races indicate a high likelihood that Democrats will retake the House, while the Senate still looking like a tossup. With these numbers, Musk is likely to dump even more cash into the election before Nov. 3, but it increasingly smells like desperation. As Alex Gibney, director of the new documentary “Musk,” recently told Salon’s Melanie McFarland, Musk is “literally paying for political advantage.”
“He’s spending way more now than he did for the presidential campaign in 2024, and in part that’s to get more money for himself in the form of military contracts,” Gibney said. “But also, he knows that a reckoning is coming for him if the Democrats take over the House and the Senate, and there’s going to be a lot of investigations into him for corruption and abuse of power, taking our information, particularly possibly relating to DOGE, and doing God knows what with it.”
It remains to be seen if this midterm meddling will pay off for Musk. He got what he wanted out of the 2024 presidential election by propping up Trump’s campaign, but his attempts to financially sway results in other races haven’t worked. In 2025, Musk dumped more than $18 million into a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, hoping to suborn the state’s redistricting efforts and regulations of car manufacturers and dealers. His influence made it the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, but that still didn’t get him the outcome he wanted.
Last Thursday, Musk settled a class action lawsuit alleging that his PAC had engaged in fraud in the 2024 presidential election by falsely telling voters they had a chance to randomly win $1 million when the winners were actually predetermined. He also dodged bribery charges in August for trying the same stunt in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
In the end, the results will all come down to voter appetites, and there are increasing indicators that the majority of Americans are fed up with the ultra-rich meddling in government. A recent Fox News poll indicates that corruption is the top concern among both Democratic and Republican voters, with 60% extremely concerned, a figure that outpaces inflation (58%), gas prices (50%), government leadership (49%) and healthcare (48%). Data from a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Sunday found roughly two in three Americans believe Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself, with most of the increase over the past year coming from people who lean Republican.
These numbers may indicate that people are starting to see through Musk’s ruse. He could probably pour even more money into politics, and probably will anyway, but there’s a glimmer of hope that it won’t accomplish much.
With Election Day 2026 just weeks away and control of Congress hanging in the balance, the results will almost certainly hinge on voter turnout, just as they did in 2024.
As a scholar of U.S. politics, I see this as a high-risk strategy for Republican candidates and American democracy. That’s because reduced trust in election integrity can reduce motivation to vote – even if based on flawed information. But it’s not at all clear which Americans are most likely to stay home in November.
Nonetheless, rhetoric from the Trump administration about voter fraud has been pervasive. Consider the recent claim by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin that Nevada had nearly 16,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls – a number reduced to 185 when state authorities pressed for details, and reduced to zero when the state investigated the names provided.
There is comparable behavior from Congress. My own research on political communication has shown that a substantial number of members of Congress, strongly skewing Republican, make frequent use of rhetoric that undermines democratic norms and delegitimizes political institutions.
How does this uncertain political environment influence voters?
There is clear data showing that voter confidence in elections has fallen across party lines: Only 65% of Republicans, 64% of Democrats and 57% of independent voters are very or somewhat confident that the 2026 vote count will be reliable. Conventional wisdom suggests such discouraging numbers would depress turnout.
Any campaign’s quest to mobilize additional voters, therefore, must find them among citizens without a strong sense of civic duty. But among these people, diminished trust in democratic processes can play out in counterintuitive ways.
Recent research on German voters is relevant to the U.S.: It shows that among more passive voters – those following cues from political elites – reduced trust in elections can depress motivation to vote. That’s because there’s no trustworthy result that voters are seeking to affirm.
Conversely, among voters with greater skepticism about elite messaging, reduced trust can motivate increased turnout as an attempted corrective for a flawed system.
What does this mean for potential voters in the U.S.? Among Republicans, it appears that the party’s strategy carries a strong risk of backlash.
Findings from MIT’s Election Lab confirm that cues from political elites are a powerful factor in voter behavior. Specifically, cues setting expectations of a disappointing or untrustworthy result will reduce motivation. Why vote if you don’t expect it to help achieve the desired result?
The same study finds Republican voters broadly inclined to believe GOP leaders’ cues about voter fraud and to frame their expectations accordingly. And once they’ve made that shift, they cling firmly to the belief, even in the face of contrary empirical evidence or messaging from within the party.
In the current election cycle, 50% of Republicans surveyed distrust mail-in voting, and 51% fear voting by noncitizens. They expect election results to be fraudulent. This likely won’t mobilize them, as there’s no positive result they can expect to affirm. The Republican Party’s messaging has painted its voters into a corner.
Democrats, meanwhile, are less inclined to believe claims of voter fraud. But they are more inclined to be concerned about attempts to undermine the midterms by political elites making such claims. Examples include the Trump administration’s efforts to sow doubt about voting by mail and about alleged noncitizen voting.
These efforts increase motivation to vote among Democrats. Unlike GOP voters, they see the capacity to correct for the system’s vulnerabilities – the potential and urgency to overwhelm attempts at voter suppression through higher turnout.
An election integrity officer, in red, trains poll watchers at the Orange County Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana, Calif., on Nov. 1, 2022. Television monitors display what each employee is looking at on their desk for observers to watch. Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images
Truth and trust
Opponents of Trump and the GOP may find these diverging effects encouraging. No matter the results this November, however, we’re left with a precarious dynamic. Increasing numbers of voters lack trust in elections and make their decisions to vote – or not – based on limited or flawed information.
Fortunately, there are signs of hope.
Although voters in general are poorly informed about how elections are conducted, they can and do respond to clear information familiarizing them with election processes.
I’ve seen this myself over the years, working with nonpartisan efforts to register young adults and train them as poll watchers. And in the current election cycle, there have already been widespread efforts to broaden public awareness about the fact that state officials, not federal ones, have authority over voter rolls and election security.
Looking beyond November, what Americans can hope for is a cycle in which clear election outcomes provide an opportunity to inform voters of how and why the system works. That’s the way to motivate more political engagement and voter turnout in the future.
The leader of Spain’s conservative People’s Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, confirmed Tuesday that he is negotiating with the far right ahead of the Nov. 29 snap election to secure a majority in the Senate.
“Vox knows how far we can go; they know we have a sense of state,” Feijóo said Tuesday morning in an interview on Spanish radio station COPE, alluding to an alliance with the far-right party. “It would be a mistake to hand control over to Sanchismo,” he added, in reference to Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist government.
Feijóo, who is eyeing the premiership, said he was negotiating with Vox to coordinate Senate lists and counter a potential coalition between the governing socialists and other left-wing parties.
“We are going to continue talking to Vox with discretion and respect. If Vox is up to the task, the PP will also be up to the task,” he said, adding that the two parties were working on a deal to not compete with each other in key areas to ensure a conservative majority in the upper house of the Spanish parliament.
Feijóo’s comments echo those of Vox leader Santiago Abascal the day before: He said in a statement Monday he would negotiate with the People’s Party to prevent Sánchez from “stealing the elections,” accusing him of sowing “coercion and violence” to influence the vote.
“Sánchez’s alliance with the far left demands sacrifices from the opposition parties, and we remain willing to reach some kind of agreement that protects the Senate from the deals Sánchez has struck with the far left,” he said.
In a blow to the Socialist prime minister, the left wing has failed to unite ahead of November’s election, with prominent party Podemos opting out of a broad, joint ticket except in the Canary Islands and the Valencia region.
PARIS — Looting and rioting across France over the weekend are threatening to reshape the contours of the French presidential race.
Far-right front-runner Marine Le Pen is seizing on the crisis to cast herself as the candidate of law and order, but there are risks for her too. Many voters see her as a highly divisive leader whose 2027 victory would only deepen the societal fault lines exposed by the riots.
Far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, widely tipped to challenge Le Pen in the second round next year, is also treading carefully as rivals accuse him of encouraging the rage on the streets that has morphed into pillaging and arson.
For the flailing centrists, there is now an opportunity to finally make an impression in the contest — but only if they can distance themselves from President Emmanuel Macron, who is seen as fluffing his response to the nationwide wave of vandalism.
Overall, it’s pushing the election into uncharted waters.
“If there’s a real crisis, you don’t know where it could lead,” said one conservative who holds regular talks with officials from the far-right National Rally and was granted anonymity to discuss the subject.
Where does that leave the candidates? POLITICO takes a look at the strategic calculus for the leading runners across the political spectrum.
Marine Le Pen, on the up
Le Pen is receiving an immediate boost. Even her rivals admit it.
This Saturday’s unrest “benefits the far right,” said center-right European Member of Parliament Nathalie Loiseau. “They are circling around the violence like vultures,” she said in an interview.
Le Pen has already cast herself as the alternative president, delivering a sober address to the nation Sunday and pitching herself as the candidate of a “pacified France.”
Jordan Bardella, president of her National Rally party, upped the ante on the protests and pitched his party as the only one able to restore order, dialing up fears about the pillaging. The rioters “will soon be breaking into people’s homes,” he said at a press conference in Paris. “The authorities are collapsing.”
But excessive, prolonged chaos could backfire on a party long seen as instigating civil unrest. And the topic is already becoming a talking point inside the National Rally.
Marine Le Pen holds a press conference on the sidelines of a meeting of the Patriots for Europe in Brussels on Oct. 14, 2026. | Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images
“Some say that this shows that there will be riots if the National Rally comes to power,” said Charles-Henri Gallois, one of Bardella’s advisers. “But I don’t believe it.”
According to the conservative quoted above, periods of instability can lead the French to turn their backs on anti-establishment figures and prefer traditional veterans.
“You could end up with [Charles] De Gaulle on the Champs-Elysées,” the official said, referring to how the first president of the Fifth Republic emerged with extra powers after the 1958 crisis that roiled the nation.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on the defensive
Far-left leader Mélenchon is in a bind as he walks a tightrope between supporting protesters and distancing himself from violence.
The France Unbowed party supported the school protests in the run-up to last weekend’s riots, and far-left elected officials have played a prominent role in the blockades, either in decrying alleged police violence or in support of the protesters.
In the battle for leadership between Mélenchon and center-left MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, the former grabbed the limelight.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon is pictured during a demonstration in Paris on Oct. 17, 2026. | Augustin Pasquini/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
But the violence this weekend could end up marginalizing the far left, especially with the government and political rivals accusing them of fueling the unrest. “They tried to aggravate the situation,” Loiseau said.
On Monday, Mélenchon tried to turn the tables, firing back at the government, saying the prime minister was fomenting “disorder” with his accusations that ultra-left groups were trying to disrupt the election.
Edouard Philippe, looking for a reset
For the center-right presidential hopeful Philippe, the riots aren’t good news either. He has to work hard to distance himself from his old boss, President Emmanuel Macron, who is seen as failing to respond sufficiently to the crisis. (Philippe was Macron’s first prime minister.)
But the protests could also be his opportunity to show some character, and rebut critics who think his campaign lacks energy and panache. Philippe, the best-placed centrist candidate to beat the far-right, has seen his poll ratings stall in recent months and has struggled to cut through the campaign noise.
Edouard Philippe gives a speech in Paris on Oct. 14, 2026. | Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images
A break with Macron might just be what he needs.
Philippe came out hard against the president after he failed to announce any measures during his primetime television address Sunday. “I would have preferred… decisions and initiatives to restore order,” he wrote online. “This country needs someone in command.”
But the former PM will need to stick his neck out more if he’s going to make an impact.
“He’s very presidential, and it’s a posture that suits him,” said one of Macron’s ministers, who, like others cited here, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
“But he’s not saying anything. What’s his measure? Why doesn’t he say we need to call a state of emergency? “
Raphaël Glucksmann, on the offensive
For the MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, the protests are a trial by fire after he won the Socialist Party primary contest earlier this month and became the center-left’s presidential candidate.
On Monday, Glucksmann tried to strike a very different note from Mélenchon, telling reporters that “it’s unbearable … that hordes of looters should attack symbols of the state.”
Raphaël Glucksmann speaks in Paris on Oct. 11, 2026. | Benjamin Vodant/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
Sensing a chink in the far-left leader’s armor, he accused the leader of France Unbowed of being “a springboard” for Le Pen, who would be “the beneficiary of the chaos.”
Glucksmann has seen his poll ratings go up since he won the Socialist Party primary outright, reaching 15% to 16.5% according to a recent Elabe poll — in a similar territory to Mélenchon and Philippe.
But the minister quoted above expected Glucksmann to peak soon.
“He can only take voters away from Mélenchon,” the minister said. “A left-wing voter may vote for the right, but a right-wing voter won’t vote for the left anytime soon,” the person said.
Emmanuel Macron, on the skids
Macron is being roasted for going on television to address the nation and announce … absolutely nothing.
On Sunday, Macron promised that rioters who “destroyed” things would have to pay the price and called for “clear answers” on why the protests turned violent.
“Fucking hell, it’s rubbish,” said one former senior government official.
Macron has cultivated an image of being above the fray and went on a trip to the Middle East on Monday. But his failure to respond to the violence risks damaging his final months in power. “It’s out of touch,” a regional official said.
According to the minister quoted above, Macron should have let his prime minister do the talking but instead was encouraged to make “a speech to calm” the situation.
On Monday, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu tried to get a grip on the situation, announcing localized curfews, movement restrictions, and bans on public demonstrations.
But another day of demonstrations has already been announced for next Saturday, sparking fears the protests will snowball into sustained protests similar to the Yellow Vests movement in 2018 and 2019.
If so, this chaos will be a defining element of the 2027 campaign.
The Trump administration is ramping up its efforts to flush out noncitizen voters with next month’s midterm elections approximately two weeks away. On Monday, the Department of Justice filed criminal charges against more than two dozen green card holders in California, accusing them of illegally registering to vote or casting fraudulent ballots. The 28 defendants are lawful permanent residents with legal status in the country but are not citizens permitted to vote.
Noncitizen voting is incredibly uncommon, according to data on the issue, and has not been shown to influence the results of races. Not only does the practice create a paper trail, it carries steep penalties. “Federal law prohibits non-U.S. citizens from registering and voting in Federal elections; violators are removable and face up to five years in prison,” Citizenship and Immigration Services acknowledged in an October 2024 letter. “The evidence is clear that these laws are working as intended — it is extremely uncommon for noncitizens to vote in Federal elections.”
That hasn’t stopped members of the Trump administration from upholding the recent DOJ arrests, dubbed Operation Protect the Vote, as evidence of cheating in the midterms. “This causes real damage to real elections and real damage to American citizens,” Trent McCotter, the acting deputy attorney general at the DOJ, said during a Los Angeles news conference.
The arrests come less than a week after the DOJ sued California and sent officials a list on an USB drive and a handwritten password, demanding to know who on the list was a citizen or not with only a 48-hour window to respond. Dean Logan, the Los Angeles county clerk and recorder, told The Guardian his office refused to review the list, in part because they didn’t consider the USB drive to be secure. “The Department of Justice has not provided the underlying evidence, source, or methodology supporting its assertions that individuals identified in its records are ineligible to vote,” Logan said in a statement.
“If the regime truly believed California had an illegal voting problem — no such problem exists — they would have taken this action a long time ago, not as Californians are literally casting votes,” State Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat, posted on X. “This is all a political stunt to trick people into voting for Prop 39 (which will make it harder for citizens to vote) and to lay groundwork for a coup on January 3 by refusing to seat House Democrats based on bogus “voter fraud” claims.”
Prop 39, also known as the “Voter Identification, Citizenship Verification, and Registered Voter List Administration Initiative,” is basically a voter ID law. If passed, it would, among other things, require voters to present a government-issued ID for in-person voting or provide the last four digits of a government-issued ID designated during voter registration for mail-in voting.
Claims of voter fraud and noncitizen voting are not new to the Trump administration. It was a strategy that Donald Trump explored in his 2024 presidential campaign, but it was largely dropped once he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris and it became unnecessary to use. David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “You can absolutely bet if Trump loses, he will claim there was widespread noncitizen voting without any evidence whatsoever,” Becker told NPR in September 2024. “And that is going to incite anger and potentially violence.”
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.
Lyon, Nice and Lille issued curfews on Monday evening, while Paris instituted a partial curfew and a ban on protests, both of which affected only some neighborhoods. Coulaine issued a curfew affecting only minors.
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. He challenged Lecornu to provide proof of his accusations, “otherwise, let him apologize, shut up, and stop stoking disorder as he is doing.”
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.
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