What about Kamala?

The vice president has taken on an expanded role in the last few months. Now Biden needs her more than ever.


by Christian Paz

Jun 28, 2024,


Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks on reproductive rights at Ritchie Coliseum on the campus of the University of Maryland on June 24, 2024 in College Park, Maryland, on the two-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision. 

Kevin Dietsch/Getty

If President Joe Biden decides to drop out of the presidential race, it appears likely that his replacement at the top of the ticket would be his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Until this week, that possibility wasn’t really worth pondering too much. But after Biden’s disastrous performance during Thursday night’s debate, Harris becoming the Democratic nominee is suddenly a more serious hypothetical.

Before considering what that would actually look like, it’s helpful to take stock of her vice presidency — and vice presidential candidacy — so far. Despite frequent criticisms and confusion surrounding what exactly her job is, she is now emerging as an indispensable surrogate and defender, and maybe even successor. She hasn’t been a particularly groundbreaking vice president, but she has had moments on the campaign trail, albeit overlooked by the public and the press, when she is able to showcase her value. It’s a preview of how her role could change in the coming months and even years, whether or not Biden steps aside.

Thursday night was one of those times. As shocked and panicked reactions from Democratic operatives and the political press began to pour in post-debate, Harris was dispatched to defend Biden on CNN and MSNBC. She admitted that Biden had a “slow start,” but rounded that answer off by playing up a “strong finish” by the president. She went on offense: attacking Trump for his many lies during the debate and emphasizing Trump’s statements in defense of the January 6 insurrection and refusal to accept the results of the election.

In the process, she surprised a host of pundits who wondered why the White House has “kept her under wraps for three years.”

The answer is complicated.

Harris’s vice presidency has been muted by design

Unlike Biden’s tenure under former President Barack Obama, Harris’s role as vice president has been low-key. For most of her term, she’s been relegated to warm-up speaker and occasional Biden stand-in, delivering remarks at White House events with the president, attending summits and visiting foreign leaders when Biden is needed in DC or on another trip, or, like Thursday night, brought in to do clean-up.

Many of those back-seat responsibilities have been due to the nature of the vice presidency: a constitutional office without any clear authorities beyond being a spare body in the event the president can’t do his job and being an extra vote when the US Senate is evenly tied.

But some of it appears to have been intentional. Vice presidents have exerted influence and power before. Vice President Dick Cheney essentially ran foreign policy for a few years during George W. Bush’s first term. Biden himself was given a large mandate by Obama during the government’s response to the Great Recession, administering hundreds of billions of dollars in federal stimulus spending.

Harris got no such assignments, despite Biden suggesting that he wanted his second-in-command to be a governing “partner” during the 2020 campaign season. Questions about this have dogged Harris. Just nine months into Biden’s term, after waves of negative media coverage, public absence, staff departures, and rhetorical missteps (which have now become a genre of meme), the White House issued a statement assuring the public that the president did rely on Harris.

By that point, the idea that Harris served a superfluous role was already baking into public and media perception. Instead of working on issues like criminal-justice reform and policing — her areas of expertise — she took on voting rights, an issue that was doomed to fail in an evenly divided Senate. Her portfolio was then filled with another cursed assignment: dealing with the root causes of migration from Latin America. Mainstream press coverage of that task, and Republican framing of it online and in right-wing media, made it seem like her job would be dealing with immigration and the southern border, however. That fog made her an easier target for Republicans.

Still, something changed in 2022: When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade that summer and eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, Harris suddenly had a clear lane in which to operate, and she has taken it: being the Biden administration’s point person on conservative threats to reproductive rights.

Campaign-trail Harris has shown how much of an asset she could be

Post-Dobbs and since the generally successful midterms that followed later that same year, Harris’s official role has shifted. She’s been on more foreign visits and to gatherings of NATO and allied leaders, headlined a national college tour, and embarked on two other nationwide tours: one this winter dedicated to raising awareness of threats to reproductive freedom (it kicked off on the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade) and another this spring focused on “economic opportunity.”

The tours, though events run out of the White House, served a campaign function as well. The stops were concentrated in swing states, and meant to reach a swath of core Democratic constituencies that Harris may be better positioned to speak to like young voters and college students, women, Black and Latino Americans, and working-class communities. Unlike Biden, who has been struggling with voters from all of these backgrounds, Harris is a natural communicator in these settings.

The change in these official duties has also resulted in a shift in her campaign role, especially as the primary season wrapped up this spring and the general election began. She made history, the White House said, when she visited and toured an abortion clinic in Minneapolis in March, and has since delivered campaign speeches in states that have taken measures to restrict abortion access, like Florida and Arizona, both when the state’s top court allowed a century-old abortion ban go into effect and again on the second anniversary of Dobbs.

She’s also been zeroing in on other progressive priorities like gun safety, student loan forgiveness, and the war in Gaza. She’s been engaging media and giving many more interviews than Biden, appearing as a guest on popular podcasts, TV shows like The Drew Barrymore Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and online talk shows to discuss the White House and the Biden campaign’s priorities.

She’s filling the void that Biden has created intentionally (because of his age) or not (because he is also president, governing the country). Thursday night’s interviews, and whatever appearances she will have to make to defend Biden, show us what is likely to come: an expanded role for the veep in this term and a theoretical next.

Biden will need it and Democrats should want it, in the event that Harris has to step up to win the election, govern the nation, or just be a solid backup — precisely as the vice presidency is supposed to work.

Christian Paz is a senior politics reporter at Vox, where he covers the Democratic Party. He joined Vox in 2022 after reporting on national and international politics for the Atlantic’s politics, global, and ideas teams, including the role of Latino voters in the 2020 election.

After disastrous debate, Joe Biden can’t beat Donald Trump but there is a woman who can

Columnists
By Susan Dalgety
Published 28th Jun 2024,

THE SCOTSMAN

After a stumbling performance by a deathly white Joe Biden reduces Susan Dalgety to tears, she turns to the formidable Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, for hope

In the late autumn of 2008, just days before Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, I spent an early Friday evening as a steward at a Joe Biden gig. The school hall in rural Pennsylvania was filled with excited Obama supporters, clutching Hope and Change placards, and chanting the campaign’s slogan “Fired Up”.

So far, so predictable. I had witnessed Obama-fever every day during the six weeks I had been volunteering in the campaign’s Bethlehem field office, and as election day approached, the excitement was reaching fever pitch, but this was first time I had seen Biden fans up close.

Clustered round the low-rise stage were scores of young, blue-collar men. Mostly white, all union men, and all very excited that they were soon going to be in the presence of Biden. I was surprised at their fervour. The campaign team I worked on was run by young middle-class liberals, many from out of state. To them, Biden was a relic of America’s industrial past – similar to the giant steel plant in south Bethlehem. It once produced the steel that built 20th century America, and was now a casino and arts complex.

Biden was an avuncular figure, a Washington insider, but he was already yesterday’s man. Obama was the future. But not to the young men waiting for Uncle Joe. Biden was their hero. A man of the people. And he did not let them down. He gave a tub-thumping, old-fashioned stump speech, evoking a mythical United States of America where working class men and women were the bedrock of the world’s greatest economy. And would be again, under an Obama-Biden administration. The crowd loved it. I loved it. We were fired up, ready to go.

A much more dangerous world

In the early hours of this morning, I watched with tears in my eyes as a confused old man stumbled his way through the most important public appearance of his life. Perhaps the most important public appearance of all our lives, because if Donald Trump, a self-confessed fan of Vladimir Putin, wins the presidential election on November 5, the world will immediately become a much more dangerous place.

The spectacle of a deathly white Biden, his voice so hoarse as to be almost inaudible at times, stumbling to craft a coherent sentence will remain with me forever. It was like spending an hour or so with a much-loved grandparent, someone who was once the vital heart of the family, but now sits dazed and confused in the corner of every family gathering while life goes on around about them. Trump may be only three years younger than his rival, but at 78, he is a young-old man. Biden is just too old.

Will he stand down in time to allow the Democrats to choose another presidential candidate? He should. Even if he was to win in November – and the polls suggest he will struggle to beat Trump – he is clearly not fit to be President for another four years. He will be 82 only two weeks after the election. His body, if not his mind, is clearly worn out. He is simply not fit to be leader of the free world. But who is?

Harris would struggle

Kamala Harris, his vice president, is the obvious choice, and if she won she would be America’s first female President, but she has failed to shine as Joe’s number two. A staunch advocate for a woman’s right to choose, she has led the campaign against the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, which, according to most commentators, is the issue that has galvanised more voters, particularly women, in states run by Republicans.

Speaking in Wisconsin at the start of a national tour to mark the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade, she stood next to a banner that screamed “TRUST WOMEN”. “These extremists want to roll back the clock to a time before women were treated as full citizens,” she said. But the polls consistently show that America, even Democrat America, does not trust this particular woman.

There is another female politician, however, who is arguably a more suitable heir to Biden, and given enough time could be a formidable challenger to Trump.

During a six-month road trip across America in 2018, when I ended up back in Bethlehem for a third election campaign – this time the mid-terms during Trump’s first administration – we drove the length of Michigan. The state is the ancestral home of America’s car industry. It also had the worst roads of any of the 35 states we spent time in.

Fix the country, save the world

One woman had had enough. Democrat Gretchen Whitmer stood for state governor on the slogan of “fix the damn roads” and stormed to victory. She was comfortably re-elected in 2022, and at 52, with six years’ experience of running a big, post-industrial state, she is surely a major contender for the top job. And Trump fears her so much that he can barely bring himself to use her name, referring to her as “that woman from Michigan”.

In a recent New York Times interview, Whitmer, who is co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign, argued that the 2028 presidential election will be when the keys to the White House are passed to the next generation. She said: “…I’m hopeful that in 2028, we see Gen Xers running for the White House and that someone from my generation is ready to take the mantle.”

After Thursday night’s heart-breaking performance by Biden, the Democrats, America, indeed the world, must be hoping that someone from Whitmer’s generation is ready to take the mantle now, because in four years’ time. it might well be too late. Surely it is time for Gretchen Whitmer to “fix the damn country”, and save the world.

Polish FM appears to link Biden’s disastrous debate with decline of Roman empire

“It’s important to manage one’s ride into the sunset,” Radosław Sikorski said.


Joe Biden’s debate performance in the early hours of Friday was at times unintelligible. | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

JUNE 28, 2024 
BY SEB STARCEVIC

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski took what appeared to be a shot at U.S. President Joe Biden by drawing a parallel between his widely panned debate performance against Donald Trump and the decline of the Roman empire.

Sikorski posted Friday morning on X: “It’s important to manage one’s ride into the sunset,” just hours after Biden’s stumbling debate display led to growing calls for him to pull out of the race for a second White House term.

Sikorski drew a cryptic parallel with Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, calling him “a great emperor” who “screwed up his succession” by passing the mantle to his son, Commodus, whose “disastrous rule started Rome’s decline.”

The popular idea that Marcus Aurelius’ reign marked the end of the glory days of Rome goes back to the ancient historian Cassius Dio, who said the end of his rule marked the transition “from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust.”

Biden’s debate performance in the early hours of Friday was at times unintelligible with a raspy voice, wandering eyes, pallid complexion and a halting delivery, sparking horror among Democratic operatives and the European media.

For Sikorski, the latest comments aren’t the first time he has courted controversy on social media.

He tweeted a photo in September 2022 of the damaged Nord Stream pipeline and captioned it “Thank You, USA,” seemingly accusing the U.S. of being involved in the sabotage of the Russia-to-Europe pipeline and earning a rebuke from his own party. He later deleted that tweet.

Sikorski’s enigmatic Marcus Aurelius tweet is still up — for now.

A Nobel Prize-winning economist breaks down exactly how Trump's proposed policies could make inflation worse

Madison Hoff

Jun 28, 2024




Joseph Stiglitz and other Nobel Prize-winning economists are worried about another Trump administration.

They explained why in a recent letter, and Stiglitz further explained in a Business Insider interview.

Inflation is one concern, which has cooled from its peak in 2022.


Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz told Business Insider the US economy is "remarkably strong."

However, Stiglitz and others foresee a potential resurgence of inflation and other woes depending on who wins the next presidential election.

"I think general consensus, not just my view, but almost anybody modeling what is going on would say the Trump administration would be more inflationary," Stiglitz told BI. "How much more depends on how radical they are. And that depends on where Congress is. If they have a Democratic Congress, they won't have the ability to do what they would do with a Republican Congress."

Stiglitz recently spearheaded a letter signed by over a dozen Nobel Prize-winning economists. The letter, which was first obtained by Axios, stated the economists were "deeply concerned about the risks of a second Trump administration for the U.S. economy."

The economists predicted dire results from a Trump victory this fall. "The outcome of this election will have economic repercussions for years, and possibly decades, to come," the letter stated. "We believe that a second Trump term would have a negative impact on the U.S.'s economic standing in the world and a destabilizing effect on the U.S.'s domestic economy."

President Joe Biden and Trump had their first presidential debate of 2024 on Thursday. There are still a little over four months until the election, and FiveThirtyEight reports as of June 25 its forecast finds it's a "pure toss-up" who will win.


RENT INCREASES ARE INFLATION

Here's how inflation has ratcheted up the cost of basics like housing and food for families across the US



Business Insider talked to Stiglitz about the economy if Trump is once again president. Stiglitz said the widely shared view is this could result in higher inflation, worse inequality, and a potential broader economic slowdown. Massive progress has already been made in cooling off inflation.


Stiglitz pointed out how remarkably the inflation rate had cooled down without leading to high unemployment. The US unemployment rate has been at or under 4% since the end of 2021, a historically long stretch of low joblessness.
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Stiglitz noted Trump's promise of large increases in tariffs as one of the things that could make inflation worse.

"Those tariffs overwhelmingly get passed on to consumers and increasing their prices and get fed down the supply chain — again, increasing prices to consumers," Stiglitz said.

Another could be the large decrease in taxes Trump proposed "that are not paid for and increasing the budgetary deficit from the level that it is today," Stiglitz said.

"And given where we are, I think the broad assessment is that that would be inflationary," he said. "And the broad assessment of the consequences of that is that the Fed would be forced to raise interest rates, and all that combined would still serve to increase inflation even as unemployment increased and GDP slowed."
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A third factor that could juice inflation would be the "drastic reductions in immigration" that Trump has proposed, Stiglitz said.

There are different sectors of the US economy that rely on immigration, and Stiglitz said that the tight labor market could become even tighter with this drop in immigration.

Stiglitz also pointed to the possibility of a partial or full repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act, which included a Medicare prescription drug provision, among other things. "​​Without that, which Republicans had talked about repealing, drug prices will go up."

Outside of the risks to inflation, Stiglitz said a Trump presidency could also mean a slowing GDP. Another problem that could get worse is the inequality crisis.
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Stiglitz pointed to Trump's tax policy as one that could boost inequality.

"The tax cut is a tax cut for the corporations and the billionaires," Stiglitz said. "If you look at the share of the tax cuts that go to the bottom, very small. In fact, in some of my analysis I suggested that it's even possible that some parts of the bottom would see a tax increase."

CNN and others noted statements from the Trump campaign disagreeing with the letter that the 16 economists signed.

"The American people don't need worthless out of touch Nobel prize winners to tell them which president put more money in their pockets," Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign's national press secretary, told CNN in a statement. "Americans know we cannot afford four more years of Bidenomics, and when President Trump is back in the White House, he will reimplement his pro-growth, pro-energy, pro-jobs agenda to bring down the cost of living and uplift all Americans."

OPINION - First Trump-Biden TV debate: Looks speak louder than words

Long-awaited debate fell short of being platform where policies could properly compete, leaving more questions than answers

Bekir İlhan |28.06.2024 - AA

President of the United States Joe Biden and Former President Donald Trump's first Presidential Debate is displayed on a TV screen in Los Angeles, California, United States in June 27, 2024.

The author is a PhD candidate at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Cincinnati in the US state of Ohio.In such settings, what matters most is who suffers the least damage. At the end of the day, voters witnessed a stumbling Biden alongside a sharp Trump.

ISTANBUL

On June 27, former President Donald Trump and incumbent Joe Biden faced off in a TV debate. Both candidates were asked questions on a wide range of policy issues, ranging from the economy to immigration. However, the long-awaited debate fell short of being a platform where policies could properly compete, leaving more questions than answers for many American voters. While each side tried to claim the better result, many Americans questioned if this was the best their country could offer.

Given the ages of both candidates, the TV debate almost turned into a health check showdown in the eyes of voters. How the candidates stood on stage emerged as a more important signal than their words. Thus the delivery, rather than the content, of their messages resonated more with voters. Biden's health issues were evident from the moment he took the floor. It was not surprising that many wondered if Biden would be able to make it through another four years in office. Yet the consequences of Trump's unpredictable character are another matter of concern for many voters.

While televised debates are a common practice in American politics, the recent debate was unusual given its timing. Held in June, months before the presidential election, the first debate lacked substantial policy discussions for voters. However, having the TV debate take place so early could benefit the candidates throughout the rest of their campaigns. In a way, the debate will surely provide an early opportunity for damage control for both candidates. Lessons learned at this stage will be instructive for shaping the future direction of their campaign strategies.

Such TV debates often shift into a showcase for candidates to prove how their personality is suitable for the presidency, rather than convincing voters of their policies. In a politically polarized society, it is already difficult to convince large audiences through just a few television debates. And in the age of multiple channels of mass communication, there are many tools and mediums available for candidates to reach voters. In this sense, TV debates turn into a mental battle where the candidates' stances and judgments are tested. American voters saw this firsthand during last night's debate, and the results were not promising.

Role of negative campaigning

Negative campaigning methods aimed at demobilizing the opponent’s voter base seems to be at the very center of campaign strategies during this US campaign season. The primary objective is not winning over voters from the opposite side, but rather wearing down their political stamina and enthusiasm, discouraging them from going to the polls. The first TV debate was yet another example of this trend, as neither candidate seemed to convince voters to change their minds or preferences in favor of the opposite camp.

The Trump campaign has long pursued a strategy targeting Biden's physical and mental health while claiming Trump is in quite good health. And Trump was not hesitant to exploit this on the stage. The Biden campaign, on the other hand, focused on Trump's legal issues, highlighting his status as a convicted felon. In May, in a New York court, Trump was found guilty of all 34 criminal counts in a hush money trial. Despite claims of politicization of the legal process, after the verdict both candidates pointed to the ballots. Trump said, “The real verdict is going to be on Nov. 5, by the people,” while Biden said, “The only way to keep Trump out of the Oval Office is through the ballot box.”

It is still too early to predict the election's outcome, though Trump appears to lead by a slight margin in most polls. And such public debates are risky, with ample room for self-destruction. In such settings, what matters most is who suffers the least damage. At the end of the day, voters witnessed a stumbling Biden alongside a sharp Trump on the debate stage.

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu.Anadolu Agency website contains only a portion of the news stories offered to subscribers in the AA News Broadcasting System (HAS)

Illegal migration, tax and abortion - fact checking Trump-Biden debate

BBC
16 hours ago

Donald Trump and Joe Biden have fielded questions on a wide range of election issues in a televised CNN presidential debate in Atlanta, Georgia.

They traded claims on issues such as the economy, abortion and taxation.


BBC Verify has been examining some of the assertions made on stage.

Is Biden planning to quadruple taxes?

CLAIM: Trump said that Biden “wants to raise your taxes by four times... He wants the Trump tax cuts to expire".

VERDICT: President Biden’s most recent US budget makes no reference to the quadrupling of taxes for ordinary households. In fact, it proposes tax cuts for families earning less than $400,000 a year, along with increases for higher earners.

Trump introduced sweeping tax cuts in 2017, and many of these are due to expire in 2025.

Even if these aren’t extended, that wouldn’t amount to anything like a four-fold increase in household taxation.

An analysis carried out by the Tax Policy Center based on the 2024 Budget concluded that the top 1% of earners would see an increase in taxation of 9.7%.

Are there 40% fewer illegal border crossings?


CLAIM: Joe Biden said: "I've changed it in a way that now you're in a situation where there are 40% fewer people coming across the border illegally, it's better than when he left office."

VERDICT: Since Biden introduced regulations in early June restricting the right for those crossing the border to claim asylum, daily illegal border crossings have averaged roughly 2,000, according to internal Department of Homeland Security data obtained by the BBC’s news partner CBS News.

That’s a 47% drop from the 3,800 daily average in May.

In 2019, during the Trump administration, illegal border crossings peaked at 4,300. But there were months during the Covid pandemic when illegal border crossings averaged fewer than 2,000.

Since February 2021, the US Customs and Border Protection agency says there have been 9.6m encounters by enforcement officers with those having crossed the southern border.

This doesn’t mean that number entered the US, as some of these will have been the same person multiple times. Others will have been turned back or deported.



What is Biden's position on late abortions?




On the subject of abortion, Biden said he would restore Roe v Wade if elected to another term.

When asked if he supports legal limits on how late a woman should be able to terminate a pregnancy, the president pointed to his support for the framework in the Roe decision.

CLAIM: Trump responded: "So that means he can take the life of the baby in the ninth month and even after birth" and added "he's willing to, as we say, rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month and kill the baby."

VERDICT: Roe v Wade's framework states during the second trimester, the state may regulate abortion only to protect the health of the woman. During the third trimester, the state may regulate or prohibit abortion to promote the interest of the fetus, except when it is necessary to preserve the woman's life or health.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump promised to overturn Roe v Wade, a landmark Supreme Court decision that guaranteed the right to an abortion nationwide until the foetus becomes viable outside of the womb (after about 24 weeks).

This ruling was repealed in 2022 by the court, which included three Trump-appointed justices.

Killing a newborn is illegal in every US state, and no state is attempting to pass a law which would change that.

Less than 1% of abortions in the US happen from 21 weeks onwards, according to data from the CDC.

And 93.5% of abortions happen in the first trimester, so before 13 weeks.


Have US troops died during Biden's presidency?

CLAIM: Biden said he is the only president in the last decade that doesn’t have "any troops dying anywhere in the world like he [Trump] did".

VERDICT: Three US service members were killed in a drone attack in Jordan in January this year.

And during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, 13 US service members were killed in a suicide attack at Kabul airport by IS-K, the Afghan branch of the Islamic State group.

According to figures by the Defense Casualty Analysis System, 65 US service members were killed in combat during the Trump presidency from 2017-20.

Did Biden have 'largest deficit in history'?


CLAIM: "He's got the largest deficit in the history of our country," said Trump about Biden.

VERDICT: According to data from the US Treasury, the deficit peaked while Trump was in the White House at $3.13tn (£2.48tn).

By 2023, with Biden in office, it had declined to $1.7tn but the 2024 estimate is that it rises again to $1.9tn.


Is black unemployment at its lowest?

CLAIM: At one point during the debate, Biden said black unemployment "is the lowest it's been in a long, long time”.

VERDICT: While it is true that the unemployment rate for African Americans reached a record low during one month of the Biden administration, the claim lacks context.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for black Americans was 4.8% in April 2023 under Biden, a record low at the time.

Since then, it's gone back up, standing at 6.1% in May.

However, the jobless rate for African Americans during the Trump presidency fell to 5.3% in August and September 2019, also a record low at that point.

Did Biden play any part in Trump's conviction?


CLAIM: Biden was behind the prosecution of Trump that led to his recent hush money conviction in New York.

"He basically went after his political opponent because he thought it was going to damage me," said Trump.

VERDICT: The case was brought by New York prosecutors rather than any federal authority. The Department of Justice does not approve the charging decisions of the Manhattan district attorney's office.


What happened to inflation?


CLAIM: Trump said in the debate that Biden inherited "almost no inflation" when he came into office and that now "inflation is killing us".

VERDICT: When Biden came to office in January 2021, inflation stood at 1.4% using the most widely used measure of inflation, the Consumer Price Index, based on the average spending in urban areas.

It rose significantly during the first two years of his administration, hitting a peak of 9.1% in the year to June 2022.

This was comparable with many other Western countries, which experienced high inflation rates in 2021 and 2022, the main contributing factors being global supply chain issues as a consequence of the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Since then, US inflation has steadily fallen, with the latest monthly figure 3.3% in May.

Since Biden took office in January 2021, prices have risen by a total of about 20%.

Global Nuclear Stockpiles on the Rise: SIPRI

Story by Express Defence • 1d • 


Credit: SIPRI© Provided by The Financial Express

The global landscape of nuclear arsenals has seen notable changes in 2024, as revealed by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The latest data indicates a significant increase in nuclear warheads, with China and India making substantial additions to their stockpiles. This development marks a pivotal moment in the global nuclear arms race, highlighting shifts in strategic postures and nuclear deterrence reliance.

China’s Rising Nuclear Readiness

For the first time, China has placed some of its nuclear warheads on high operational alert, pairing them with long-range missiles capable of short-notice strikes. This move represents a major shift in China’s nuclear strategy, signalling an enhanced readiness to respond swiftly to potential threats.

According to the latest report from the arms tracker SIPRI as of January 2024, China’s total nuclear stockpile is estimated at approximately 500 warheads, an increase of around 90 from the previous year. This development underscores China’s ongoing efforts to modernize and expand its nuclear capabilities, aiming to strengthen its position on the global stage.

India’s Growing Arsenal

India has also made strides in expanding its nuclear arsenal. SIPRI’s report reveals that India now possesses 172 nuclear warheads, surpassing Pakistan’s estimated stockpile of 170 for the first time in 25 years. This small yet significant increase highlights India’s commitment to bolstering its nuclear deterrence in a region marked by long-standing rivalries. The report also notes that India, along with Pakistan and North Korea, is advancing its capabilities to deploy multiple warheads on ballistic missiles—a technology already mastered by the US, Russia, UK, France, and now China.

Global Nuclear Arsenal Overview

As of early 2024, nine countries—the United States, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel—collectively possess around 12,121 nuclear weapons. Out of these, an estimated 3,904 warheads are deployed with operational forces, including about 2,100 kept on high operational alert. The bulk of these alert-ready warheads belong to Russia and the United States, but China’s recent actions mark a notable addition to this category.

Despite an overall stability in the size of their respective military stockpiles, both the US and Russia are deeply invested in modernizing their nuclear arsenals. Russia, in particular, has increased its deployed operational warheads by approximately 36 since January 2023. This expansion occurs amid a backdrop of reduced transparency regarding nuclear forces, a trend that has been particularly pronounced since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Regional and Global Implications

The expansion of nuclear capabilities by China and India has significant implications for regional and global security dynamics. In India, the growing nuclear stockpile is seen as a necessary measure in response to regional security challenges and the evolving nuclear landscape.

Earlier this week, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan underlined the renewed importance of nuclear weapons in contemporary geopolitics during a recent seminar, reflecting on the strategic necessity of maintaining a robust nuclear deterrent.

China’s increased nuclear readiness is likely to influence the strategic calculations of other nuclear-armed states, particularly in the context of US-China relations and regional security in East Asia. The ability to deploy warheads on high operational alert enhances China’s deterrence capabilities, potentially altering the strategic balance in the region.


The 2024 SIPRI report indicates that nuclear arsenals are not only growing but also becoming more operationally ready. This trend raises important questions about the future of global nuclear stability and the potential for arms control agreements to address the evolving landscape.

In France’s rebranded far right, flashes of antisemitism and racism persist

Ahead of French elections, vitriol and innuendo from National Rally candidates amplify doubts about how much the party of Marine Le Pen has truly evolved.


By Anthony Faiola and Annabelle Timsit
June 28, 2024 

PARIS — French nationalist Marine Le Pen has executed one of the most extraordinary political rebrandings in the Western world. She has transformed the fringe neofascist party founded by her father into a mainstream political force with a shot at winning a majority and naming the next prime minister.

But as she and her deputy, Jordan Bardella, stand on the brink of what could be their greatest electoral triumph, innuendo, conspiracies and vitriol from National Rally candidates and supporters are amplifying doubts about how much a movement originally rooted in antisemitism and racism has truly evolved.

One candidate competing in the first round of the legislative assembly elections on Sunday suggested that a rival party was financed by Jews. Another claimed that some civilizations remain “below bestiality in the chain of evolution.” Yet another blamed a bedbug infestation in France on “the massive arrival from all the countries of Africa.” One more regularly pays tribute to the man who led the Nazi collaborators in World War II-era Vichy France.

France is rushing into a snap election with the far right ahead in the polls, followed by a left-wing bloc that some French Jews say harbors antisemites. (Video: Reuters)

French newspaper Libération has been compiling an “endless list” of National Rally candidates who have made or relayed “reprehensible remarks” online. Investigative outlet Mediapart counted 45 problematic profiles identified so far. Under the glare of media scrutiny, some candidates have deleted social media posts. Others appear content to let the record stand

Party leaders did not respond to requests for comment. In only a couple cases has the party taken disciplinary steps.

That may be because, like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Le Pen’s ability to expand her party’s reach requires a delicate balancing act. While they portray themselves as reformers and reject descriptions of their parties as extreme, they can cater to their hard-line base by giving space and oxygen to the unrepentant extremists in their ranks.

“If you take a look at who votes for them, I wouldn’t say all of them are racist or homophobic, but many of those who are vote for the National Rally,” said Vincent Martigny, a political scientist at the University of Nice.

The limits of Le Pen’s de-demonization project

Marine Le Pen is kissed by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, after she was reelected as National Front Party president on Nov. 30, 2014. Within a year, she booted him out. (Jeff Pachoud/AFP/Getty Images)

Le Pen, 55, is widely credited with “de-demonizing” the movement launched in 1972 by her father, Jean Marie Le Pen, a serial polemicist who called the Nazi gas chambers a “detail” of history, suggested that somebody with AIDS should be treated “like a leper” and warned of a Muslim takeover of France.

Marine Le Pen purged Vichy remnants and Nazi apologists from the party, including booting out her father in 2015. She changed the name from National Front to National Rally in 2018 and set out to convince voters that it was a respectable party, ready to govern.

She has positioned herself as a defender of Israel, especially since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks — while accusing the left of using the Israel-Gaza war as an opportunity to stigmatize Jews. She has stopped talking about leaving the European Union, muffled her admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and dropped a pledge to repeal same-sex marriage.

All the while, she has cultivated her protégé, Bardella, as the new youthful and broadly appealing face of the party.

But shifts in tone and optics have been more dramatic than any shifts in ideology.


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“They have new suits, very nice ties, but it’s still the same ideas in a more proper, more acceptable manner,” Martigny said.

Still at the core of the party’s platform is the notion of “national priority” — that “foreigners should have fewer rights than citizens even when they have equal qualifications,” said Jean-Yves Camus, director of the Observatory of Political Radicalism at the Jean Jaurès Institute. In practice, that means French nationals could have preferential access to public housing and other benefits.

National Rally has sought to woo voters by pledging to reduce fuel taxes and energy bills and protect French farmers. But its populist promises are targeted toward French citizens — in some cases even excluding dual nationals and “French people of foreign origin.”

The party continues to frame immigration as a security threat. Its leaders talk of “drastically reducing legal and illegal immigration and expelling foreign delinquents” as part of an effort to “put France in order.”

“Contrary to the caricature that is given of us, we have no problem with the fact that there may be foreigners in France, the only thing is that we demand that they behave correctly,” Le Pen said to French reporters during a recent campaign stop.

Anti-globalism, too, remains central to the National Rally program. Party leaders have backed off a pledge to pull France out of NATO’s strategic command, but called for limiting the kinds of weapons France sends to Ukraine. Conspiracy theories about Ukraine are regularly shared by National Rally candidates.

The party has benefited from a general shift to the right in Europe, especially on immigration. Positions that were once extreme are now in line with the thinking of a substantial portion of the electorate.

At the same time, in many parts of Europe, taboos have been falling away. Austria’s resurgent Freedom Party flirted with the center before once again committing itself to overt dog whistles and political references that hark back to the 1930s. Its chairman, Herbert Kickl, has repeatedly campaigned as the nation’s future “Volkskanzler,” or people’s chancellor — a former title of Adolf Hitler’s considered a loaded word in German.

Few people fear a return of warmongering dictators in the heart of Europe. But there is concern about the spread of illiberal states like Viktor Orban’s Hungary, where the rule of law, political opposition, freedom of expression and foreign nonprofits have come under fire, while ties with Russia and China have been cultivated.

“I don’t trust [National Rally] to be democratic in the traditional, classic sense of the term,” said Dominique Moïsi, a noted French political scientist.

The unrepentant voices in the movement

Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella have said little about cases of apparent antisemitism and racism among their party's candidates and supporters. (Francois Lo Presti/AFP/Getty Images)

Glimmers of racism and antisemitism from National Rally candidates and supporters can bolster the impression that the movement has changed less than its leaders say.

There are more extreme voices in France than Le Pen’s. Yet, like Trumpism, LePénisme remains a safe harbor for anti-vaccine advocates, climate-change skeptics and Putin admirers. And as seen through social media posts and telling asides — as well as through homophobic attacks and racist tirades allegedly committed by Le Pen supporters — National Rally still provides a welcome home for vitriolic thought.

Marie-Christine Sorin, a National Rally candidate in southwestern France, posted on X in January that “not all civilizations are equal” and that some “have remained below bestiality in the chain of evolution.” She deleted the post after French newspaper Libération inquired about it, but defended the sentiment in a radio interview, saying she had been critiquing the treatment of women in Iran.

Sophie Dumont, a National Rally candidate in northeastern France, was spotlighted by Libération for a post implying that Jewish financing was behind Reconquest, a rival far-right party led by Eric Zemmour, who is Jewish. Zemmour’s adviser had said that the ritual slaughter of animals to make kosher and halal meat should not be banned in France. “The small gesture that betrays the origin of the funds that fuel Reconquest,” Dumont wrote in a now deleted comment.

Agnès Pageard, a National Rally candidate in Paris, has advocated for abolishing a law that makes it illegal to question the Holocaust and another that bans “incitement to hatred” against religious or racial groups. She responded to a social media post that alleged “collusion” among prominent Jewish people in France by recommending “reread Coston and Ratier” — two authors known for their antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Asked about seemingly antisemitic comments from candidates running in this election, National Rally frontman Bardella told French media that the process of selecting candidates for the surprise elections had necessarily been rushed, with “dozens, even hundreds of investitures … made in a few hours.” Never mind that some of the same candidates had run under the National Rally banner in past elections, too.

The notion that historically extreme parties have expelled their radical elements has helped their leaders gain global acceptance. Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party boasts a tricolor flame in its logo evoking a now-defunct movement made up of the political remnants of Benito Mussolini’s fascists. But Meloni has fiercely rejected the fascist label. At this month’s Group of Seven summit in southern Italy, where she was warmly greeted by world leaders including President Biden, she bristled at suggestions that her government and party were anything other than traditional conservatives.

While that summit was ongoing, Italy was rocked by the emergence of secret footage taken by a journalist who had infiltrated a Rome branch of the youth wing of Meloni’s party. “We’re Mussolini’s legionaries, and we’re not scared of death,” the group was filmed chanting. The footage contained other fascist songs and slogans, with members at one point shown giving the Roman salute while yelling “Sieg Heil!”

In a response to lawmakers, Meloni’s minister for parliamentary relations, Luca Ciriani, did not deny the acts occurred, nor did he condemn them. Rather, he described the footage as “decontextualized” images of “minors” that had been unfairly published without prior consent. It wasn’t until further revelations this week that senior party officials condemned the acts and called for swift punishment. Several involved youth league members also resigned.

After weeks of silence and mounting pressure, Meloni finally responded to the controversy late Thursday, calling racism and antisemitism “incompatible” with her party, while also criticizing the journalists involved in the secret report.

“We’re talking about an ongoing and deliberate apology of fascism,” said Matteo Orfini, an outraged lawmaker from the opposition Democratic Party.

In France, a different video sparked a scandal last week. A public broadcaster documented insults hurled at a Black woman, Divine Kinkela, by National Rally supporter neighbors in a town south of Paris. In released footage, one of the neighbors is heard saying that Kinkela should go to the “doghouse” and that they had left public housing “because of people like you.”

When asked about the report by news outlet La Voix du Nord, Le Pen said the neighbor’s invective was not racist.

Kate Brady in Berlin and Stefano Pitrelli in Rome contributed to this report.


By Anthony FaiolaAnthony Faiola is Rome Bureau Chief for The Washington Post. Since joining the paper in 1994, he has served as bureau chief in Miami, Berlin, London, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and New York and additionally worked as roving correspondent at large. Twitter

By Annabelle TimsitAnnabelle Timsit is a breaking news reporter for The Washington Post's London hub, covering news as it unfolds in the United States and around the world during the early morning hours in Washington. Twitter

France’s far right is on the brink of power. Blame its centrist president.

How Emmanuel Macron accidentally helped the far right normalize itself.


by Zack Beauchamp

Jun 28, 2024

Campaign posters featuring Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron on display in Montpellier during the 2022 presidential election. Pascal Guyot/AFP

This Sunday, French voters will cast their ballots in the first round of the country’s parliamentary election — one that President Emmanuel Macron called as a surprise after the far-right National Rally (RN) won big in the European parliamentary elections earlier this month. The French polls suggest that the RN will also win big on Sunday and in the second round of voting that follows a week later — gaining either a plurality of seats or perhaps even an outright majority.

While the final results may not be known for more than a week, the stakes are quite clear and quite high. In the French system, presidents depend on parliamentary majorities for major domestic policy-making; without a majority, Macron will be fairly impotent at home. If the RN has an outright majority, it can start passing parts of its far-right agenda, and Macron will have only limited tools to stop them.

On one level, this isn’t surprising. The RN’s long-time leader, Marine Le Pen, has been Macron’s chief rival in the past two presidential elections. It’s clear that her party has emerged as the leading alternative to Macron’s centrism; few observers are surprised that his decision to call this parliamentary election early is likely to lead to RN gains. A deeply unpopular president causing voters to turn to the opposition: In some ways this is just democracy as usual.

But on another level, the RN’s rise should be truly shocking.

Not so long ago, the party’s extremism made it anathema to nearly everyone in France. When Le Pen’s father and the party’s founder Jean-Marie made it to the second round of the presidential election in 2002, nearly the entire country rallied against him and his party (then called the National Front, or FN). He lost in a landslide 82–18 defeat, the worst showing of any presidential candidate since 1958.

Even after years of Marine Le Pen softening the RN’s image, its policy agenda remains nearly as radical as it was then. The RN’s signature policy is to enact a “national priority” law formally discriminating against immigrants in housing, hiring, and public benefits.

The real story of the 2024 election is not that voters are turning against Macron, but how the far right came to be seen as a palatable alternative.

It’s a rise fueled in large part by the RN’s canny political strategy, an extreme party doing a brilliant job of making itself seem reasonable to voters outside its base. But it’s also been fueled by the hubris and missteps of Macron, who seems motivated by a false sense that the RN was so toxic that he would inevitably triumph in a forced binary choice, just as his predecessor did in 2002.

These two forces have worked in tandem to turn the RN into the de facto leader of the opposition to an unpopular president. And now, France — like other democracies around the world — is reaping the whirlwind.

How France’s extreme right mainstreamed itself

The rise of the RN can best be understood as a kind of double normalization, with each generation of Le Pens playing a distinct but crucial role.

After World War II, the European far right appeared to be a spent force. No political movement could hope to win national elections promising a Third Reich redux; those that tried found no success.

French politics immediately after the war — the Fourth Republic period — was tumultuous. After a military revolt in 1958, World War II hero Charles de Gaulle took power and ushered in a new constitution. The Fifth Republic remains the system under which France operates today. After De Gaulle left power in 1969, French elections evolved into relatively stable contests between center-right and center-left blocs.

Jean-Marie Le Pen was the first to develop a credible far-right alternative.

Recognizing that the Nazis had rendered dictatorship and race hatred beyond the pale, Le Pen refocused the far right on contesting elections by attacking immigration. The argument wasn’t (primarily) that minorities were biologically inferior, just that France is under no obligation to admit culturally distinct foreigners and treat them as equals. After he founded the National Front for French Unity (FN) in 1972, the party adopted the slogan “France is for the French.”

Le Pen paired this xenophobia with extreme nationalism. He was a veteran of France’s failed wars to keep colonies in Vietnam and Algeria; in one contemporary interview, he seemingly confessed to personally torturing Algerian detainees (a charge he later denied). As a politician, Le Pen defended French imperialism and railed against its diminished glory in a post-colonial era. Immigration, for Le Pen, was a kind of “reverse colonization” in which France’s former subjects were destroying its identity from within.

Because the FN was never an outright fascist party, it could put itself forward as something distinct from Europe’s discredited Hitlerite past. This “reputational shield,” as scholars term it, helped it make inroads into French politics in ways that neo-Nazis never could. In 1984, just 12 years after its founding, the FN managed to win 11 percent of the national vote in a European Parliament election. It soon became a model for far-right parties across the continent, which rapidly began outperforming neo-Nazi rivals.

Nonetheless, the FN had a clear ceiling, and Le Pen himself was a big part of the problem. The party’s founder has always had a habit of rhetorical bomb-throwing that kept it from making further inroads with the broader public.

He has repeatedly engaged in Nazi apologia, calling the Holocaust a “detail” of history and saying that “in France, at least, the German occupation was not particularly inhuman.” In a 2006 interview, he said that “you can’t dispute the inequality of the races” because “blacks are much better than whites at running, but whites are better at swimming.” In his 2018 memoir, he defended French citizens who volunteered for the German SS during World War II.

“I — like millions of other French people — grew up with the image of Le Pen as a snarling bigot with an underbite, a political bogeyman who tidily gathered up all the ugliness of France’s recent history,” journalist Nick Vinocur writes in Politico.

When Jean-Marie’s daughter Marine took over the FN in 2011, she was initially perceived in much the same way. But the younger Le Pen proved a cannier operator, not only realizing that her party needed an image makeover but successfully delivering on it.

France's far-right political party Front National founder and honorary president Jean-Marie Le Pen gestures onstage as FN's president Marine Le Pen looks on, in Paris France, May 1, 2015. Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images

Much of this was about language. As Vinocur reports, she shifted the party’s demagoguery away from direct attacks on Muslims and Arabs and toward dog-whistles about cultural change and terrorism.

She would occasionally discipline party members who crossed her lines — including, most notably, her father. In 2015, when Jean-Marie once again got into trouble over comments about Jews and the Holocaust, Le Pen did the unthinkable: She expelled her father from the party he founded. He should “no longer be able to speak in the name of the National Front,” she said at the time.

In 2018, following a decisive presidential defeat, she changed the party’s name from National Front to National Rally. While seemingly minor, the move helped distance the party from her father’s relatively toxic brand and establish Le Pen’s independence as a political figure.

In the current election, she has tried to elevate candidates — most notably, 28-year-old party leader and proposed prime minister Jordan Bardella — who come across as normal, suit-wearing politicians rather than bombastic confessed torturers.

Don’t be fooled. Experts on French politics say that Le Pen’s moderation is primarily symbolic. While she has sanded off the RN’s rough edges, she also has maintained the far-right policy core — most notably, the “national priority” system mandating discrimination against immigrants in public goods — that helped make her father’s party so toxic in the first place. During the current campaign, Bardella vowed to ban dual nationals from holding government jobs.

“From [a policy lens], there’s very little difference between what Marine Le Pen is running with and what Jean-Marie was defending,” says Marta Lorimer, a Cardiff University expert on French politics.

Together, in short, the Le Pens accomplished one of the most successful political rebrandings in modern history. They created a party rooted in thinly veiled bigotry and, without significant policy compromise, turned it into something that the median French voter might actually consider supporting.

Macron’s (implicit) deal with the devil

The RN’s recent success is not merely a story of Marine Le Pen’s political skills. Like most European far-right parties, it benefited hugely from the 2015 refugee crisis, which turned its signature issue of immigration into the issue across the continent.

Le Pen also benefited from the rise of Emmanuel Macron, a self-proclaimed “radical centrist” who shattered the foundations of France’s party system. In doing so, he created the perfect conditions for Le Pen’s rebranding to succeed.

The traditionally dominant factions of the center right and center left, today called the Republican and Socialist parties, saw themselves as rivals with a shared responsibility: guarding the republic from extremist forces that would harm it. They agreed never to share power with the FN/RN, an agreement referred to as “the republican front” or “cordon sanitaire.”

Macron broke the two-party system. In 2016, he quit his position as finance minister under a Socialist president to run for president at the head of a party he just founded, now called Renaissance. At the time, this may have seemed like an act of extreme hubris. But Macron proved far more popular than either of his mainstream rivals, and he won the most voters in the first round of France’s 2017 election. He faced Marine Le Pen in the head-to-head second round and crushed her.

After winning power, Macron made two moves that would serve his short-term political interests but end up paving the way for the RN’s rise in the long run.

First, Macron built his new party as a kind of centrist empire, one designed to occupy the entirety of the territory between radical right and extreme left. Containing both former Socialists and Republicans, its rise sapped the vitality from the already-weakened established parties.

Their decline should, in theory, have left Macron and Renaissance the only serious choice for most French voters. Certainly that was Macron’s theory.

No politician, even one as “Jupiterian” as Macron, can maintain a personal majority forever. Macron has become deeply unpopular, with a mere 26 percent of French voters approving of his current performance. It’s easy to blame specific policies, like his pension reform and failed gas tax, but it also might be plain old exhaustion. Around the world, incumbents are unpopular, and Macron has been in office for seven years.

So if French voters want to vote against Macron, who should they turn to? The center right is a shadow of itself. The center left has been forced into an unwieldy “new popular front” alliance with the polarizing and unstable extreme left, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. There’s a smaller extreme-right party, led by comedian Eric Zemmour, but he’s even more radical than Le Pen.

That leaves only one non-Macron option with a proven electoral track record: the RN.

“There’s only two options for voters,” says Florence Faucher, a professor of political science at France’s Sciences Po research center. “At some point, people are going to want change from the majority of Macron.”

But Macron didn’t just demolish the other centrist parties. He actually aided Le Pen’s strategy of normalizing her party by tacking to the right on immigration. “It’s not so much that the National Rally has moderated [on immigration] than that the entire political system has radicalized,” says Lorimer.

French President Emmanuel Macron at a press conference after the end of the two-day European Council and Euro Summit in Brussels, Belgium, on October 27, 2023. Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Macron has, for example, said that “Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world” and banned some traditional Muslim clothing in schools. (Roughly 6 million people in France practice Islam or come from a Muslim background.) Last year, he had Parliament pass an immigration bill so draconian that Le Pen hailed it as “an ideological victory” for her party.

She was more correct than it seems. Some research on European politics suggests that when parties in the center take right-wing positions, they don’t actually win over that party’s supporters. Instead, they end up normalizing far-right discourse on the topic: helping people on the fence think it must not be so weird to rail against Islam if self-proclaimed centrists are doing it and that maybe they can consider voting for the far right without being a bad person.

That appears to be how Macron’s strategy has worked out in France. His attempt to take out Le Pen’s signature issue has only made her seem more reasonable, all without persuading her base to defect to the center.

“All the attempts to co-opt the far right have aided the process of normalization,” says Art Goldhammer, an expert on France at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies. “The slogan in France is that people prefer the original to the copy.”

It wasn’t Macron’s intent to usher in an RN-led Parliament. His actions betray a belief that the RN would always have a ceiling; that, when push comes to shove, the French people would always choose his moderation over Le Pen’s extremism when presented with a binary choice.

This strategy has long worked in modern France, but Macron appears to have finally found its limits. The same arrogance that powered Macron’s 2017 presidential bid has now brought France to the brink of a Parliament dominated by radicals.

Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. His book on democracy, The Reactionary Spirit, will publish in July and is currently available for pre-order.

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In break with its past, French far-right now supports Israel

FASCIST SOLIDARITY

From founder who described Gaza as 'concentration camp' to current leader, who blasts Palestine recognition, National Rally over the years changed rhetoric

Esra Taskin |28.06.2024

TRT/ AA

French far right leader Marine Le Pen holds a press conference in Paris


ANKARA

In a break with its past, and with fresh legislative elections set for this weekend, France’s far right is now supporting Israel rather than being critical of it.

After being anti-Israel in its early years, the far-right party National Rally (RN), now under Marine Le Pen, who took the party helm in 2011, has changed its position radically.

The party won more than 30% of the vote in the June 9 European Parliament elections, a blow that led French President Emmanuel Macron to acknowledge his centrist bloc’s defeat, dissolve parliament, and announce snap elections, set to begin on Sunday and conclude a week later.

The announcement jolted France across the political spectrum.

The Israeli offensive on Gaza, which has claimed over 37,000 lives since last October, and the recognition of Palestinian statehood were among the top issues for the parties in this context.

Since its founding in 1972, the National Rally has been accused of using antisemitic language, and Marine Le Pen’s father, the party’s founding leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, was known for his criticism of Israeli attacks on Palestinians.

The elder politician went so far as to describe the Gaza Strip as a “concentration camp where people are deprived the chance to defend themselves” – an assessment many modern critics of Israel would tend to agree with.

In contrast, however, Marine Le Pen, argues that the National Rally has been in favor of the creation of a Jewish state throughout its history, calling it a longtime Zionist party.

Last November, weeks into what would become Israel’s months-long attack on the Gaza Strip, Marine Le Pen and current National Rally President Jordan Bardella joined pro-Israeli protests despite criticism.

Presenting his party’s government plan ahead of the snap polls, Bardella on June 24 said: “Recognizing Palestine now would be recognizing terrorism.”

Macron, for his part, previously said several times that recognizing Palestine was not a “taboo,” but it should be done at the right time.

In contrast, the New Popular Front, the alliance of France’s left-wing parties, vowed, in its government plan, to recognize Palestine immediately after taking office.

France's far-right surge risks muddling Paris Olympics message

Agence France-Presse
June 28, 2024 

Marine Le Pen (AFP Photo/Martin Bureau)

When the Olympics roll into Paris next month, the country could have a far-right government, risking seriously muddling the message around openness and diversity that organizers have been pushing for years.

France goes to the polls this Sunday for the first of two rounds of voting for a new National Assembly in snap elections called by President Emmanuel Macron earlier this month.

Polls show the far-right National Rally leading, although experts say it is too early to know how many seats they will win in the 577-member lower house and whether they will be enough to form a government.

But the prospect of the far-right taking power, once considered near-impossible, is being taken seriously by almost everyone -- with huge potential consequences for the image of the 2024 Paris Games.

"This event wants to be open, wants to be a stage for the whole world, to show Paris as a welcoming place," said sports historian Yves Gastaut, a co-curator of the "Olympism, a history of the world" exhibition on display in Paris.

"How does it work with an ideology in power that is an ideology based on the idea of rejection and the idea of fear of others?" he added.

The National Rally led by Marine Le Pen has expanded its popularity with an agenda that calls for massive curbs on immigration, French-first policies for public services, and a ban on Muslim headscarves in public.

- Diversity -

The marketing of the Paris Games has echoed the ideals of the Olympic movement, which was founded to promote peace and international cooperation -- in opposition to the surging nationalism of late 19th-century Europe.


Celebrating multi-cultural "diversity" is a more modern addition, which was underlined last weekend by International Olympic Committee head Thomas Bach as he inaugurated the official Paris 2024 Olympics sculpture.

Placed close to the Champs-Elysees avenue, the artwork is a larger-than-life bronze of a seated black woman, surrounded by chairs from across the world.

The official Paris Olympics sculpture by American artist Alison Sarr celebrates 'diversity' 

© JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP/File


The work by American sculptor Alison Saar was "an invitation to take a seat and reflect on the beauty of the diversity of humankind," Bach said, while refusing to comment directly on French politics.

The official Paris Games slogan is "Games Wide Open", while the spectacular opening ceremony being planned on the river Seine on July 26 is set to showcase traditional French culture alongside modern influences rooted in immigration.

When rumors began circulating in March that Mali-born and Paris-raised R&B superstar Aya Nakamura was going to perform, Le Pen was one of the most virulent critics.


An appearance by Nakamura, who mixes French with Arabic and Malian slang, would "humiliate" the country, Le Pen suggested, taking aim at her supposed "vulgarity" and "the fact that she doesn't sing in French."

- Spoiled party? -

Organizers of the Paris Games were blindsided like the rest of country by Macron's early election call so close to the start of the sport.

The head of the Paris organizing committee, Tony Estanguet, has been careful to avoid being drawn into the campaign.

"We aren't completely naive, we know what's happening in our country and in the world," he told French radio on Thursday. "We see the tensions, situations that are a bit worrying. Let's fight to make the Olympics a space for peace, sharing, emotions and a party."

Paris' Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo has sounded more pessimistic.

Macron has risked "spoiling the party", she said this week, adding that she would refuse to stand in any photographs with Le Pen's prime ministerial candidate, Jordan Bardella, if he took power.

Bardella has sought to reassure observers by saying he would not interfere with the organization of the Games.

"This event must be a triumph for the nation," he write on X, formerly Twitter, on June 14.

Gastaut, the historian, said the Olympics often ended up being defined by the events of their time, with the last edition in Tokyo held during the Covid pandemic, for instance.

"Every Olympiad starts with its pre-conceived ideas, you might say its foundational values, and then things happen during it, which give it another image that was not expected beforehand," he told AFP.