Renew Europe President Valérie Hayer has come under fire for her outspoken support of pro-European candidate Nicușor Dan in Romania’s presidential election, with opponents accusing her of foreign interference.
Independent candidate Dan faces anti-establishment populist George Simion, of the Alliance for the Reunion of Romanians (AUR), in the final round of the presidential ballot on May 18. The AUR hopeful was the clear frontrunner after the first round of votes and has lead in the polls.
Hayer, a close ally of French President Emmanuel Macron, told French TV station Franceinfo ahead of the crucial election that she would “do everything on the ground” to ensure that Romania’s next president was “pro-European”.
“We are going to conduct an active campaign to make Romanians aware that there is an important democratic issue for the future of the country and of Europe,” said Hayer, who headed Renew’s list in the 2024 European elections.
“In other words, a pro-European project, respectful of values and the rule of law. Not a project that undermines the rule of law, like Viktor Orbán’s in Hungary, or aligns itself with pro-Russian positions supporting Vladimir Putin,” she said
Hayer pledged to rally support from the Romanian diaspora in France and said: “I will support the pro-European centrist candidate by organising meetings across several countries – including France – especially to encourage the Romanian community here to vote and continue building the European project that belongs to them and gives them economic, social and cultural opportunities.”
The Renew leader’s efforts to collect votes for her preferred candidate face an uphill battle with opinion polls indicating that Romanians abroad support Simion and his platform based on changing the policies that drove them to leave their home country in the first place.
Renew, Hayer’s political group in the European Parliament, has fully endorsed Dan and urged the Socialists to do the same but her declaration faced pushback from Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) Party. Pierre Gentillet, a former candidate in the parliamentary election, wondered on X, “Is there no one to cry interference in a case like this? How strange that is“.
RN figurehead Le Pen took to X on May 11 to write, “In Romania, the presidential election was simply cancelled, with the blessing of the European Commission. I want to express here my full and complete support for George Simion, who came out on top in the first round last Sunday, with more than 40 per cent of the vote!”
Meanwhile, RN MEP Virginie Joron on the same medium said, “Interference: Hayer on the campaign trail in Romania. Who are these people kidding? As a reminder: it was the incumbent party that paid for a campaign on Tik Tok to boost the so-called ‘extreme’ parties to be sure of winning in the second round. All these false democrats are a danger to the voice of the people.”
While facing allegations of interference herself, Hayer has previously criticised others over foreign influence in European politics. In 2025, she accused Elon Musk of using X to interfere in the German elections through alleged algorithmic manipulation. She urged the EU to impose sanctions under the Digital Services Act, citing a need to combat disinformation and protect democratic values.
Both of Romania’s presidential candidates have drawn support from ideological allies across Europe. However, much of the international attention has shifted to the nationalist camp following the exclusion of former favourite Călin Georgescu, who was banned from running in a contentious decision by the Constitutional Court of Romania. Since then, fears about democratic backsliding in the country have intensified.
We live in strange times, when the Pulitzer Prize is awarded to the Palestinian Arab poet who attacks Israeli hostages and denies that the Bibas children were strangled and mutilated in Gaza.
Strange times, given that the “thoughtcrime” prophesied by George Orwell’s pen – those committed by those who dare to think things that the “Ministry of Truth” has decided should not be thought – is now a reality in the country of the author of “1984.” Orwell’s book was written in 1948 when the Soviets had swallowed up half of Europe and were eager for more.
And we remember that Jolly Old England is the country of liberalism, of the Magna Carta (the first constitutional document in history), of the first publishing house in the world (Cambridge University Press), of the first modern newspaper (The Daily Courant) and of the oldest democracy.
Until recently, a knock on the door by the police was very KGB, but now it is a feature of English national life.
A retired special agent has been arrested for a social media post warning about anti-Semitism. Hard to believe, right?
Julian Foulkes was handcuffed at home by six officers of the force he served with after responding to a pro-Palestinian activist on X, The Times reveals.
The 71-year-old was held for eight hours, questioned and finally “cautioned”. Foulkes accepted the “caution” from police after eight hours behind bars without having to go to court. He did so because, as officers discovered when they searched his home, one daughter died in a car crash in Ibiza and the other lives in Australia, and Foulkes feared he would be refused entry to visit her if convicted.
Perhaps the only unusual element in the story is that the police admitted they had gone too far and apologised. But the former officer has decided to sue the authorities.
Bodycam footage from the raid paints a disturbing picture of what police are considering “suspicious”. Officers searched Foulkes’s book collection, with one expressing concern about some of the “very Brexit stuff” on his shelf. Another leafed through a copy of Douglas Murray’s “War on the West”. No doubt, the politically correct police see this as evidence of a “potential extremist threat”.
The retired cop was responding to a “pro-Palestine” protester who had denied there was a “hate” streak in the marches in London.
His post on X, sent two days before police went to his home, was a reaction to reports of an anti-Semitic mob storming an airport in Dagestan, Russia, looking for Jewish passengers. It was a response to an activist threatening to sue Suella Braverman, the then Home Secretary, for calling the pro-Palestinian demonstrations in London “hate marches”.
*****
It was six o’clock on a Sunday morning when Allison Pearson found herself on her doorstep, in her dressing gown and slippers, facing two police officers.
The Telegraph journalist was facing a “Kafkaesque” police investigation for “inciting hatred” in a social media post last year. Pearson, an award-winning writer and excellent columnist for the English newspaper, had two police officers arrive at her home to tell her that she was under investigation for a post on X (formerly Twitter).
*****
In London, Niyak Ghorbani, an Iranian dissident, has been marching alongside the Jewish community for months with his “Hamas is terrorist” sign protesting pro-Hamas marches. Ghorbani was forcibly removed by the Metropolitan Police for holding the sign and arrested many times.
Do you find it normal that an Iranian exile would be arrested for protesting against terrorists? The organizers of the same marches from which Ghorbani is being chased by the police have ties to Hamas, have met with Hamas officials, or have publicly praised its terrorist atrocities. One group, the Muslim Association of Britain, was founded by Muhammad Kathem Sawalha, a former Hamas leader who now lives in London.
In this case, everything is “legal”: because the authorities are no longer liberals (the original definition), but submissive positivists.
*****
Christian preacher Hatun Tash was preparing to give a speech on the Koran at Speakers Corner in London when she was dragged away by police officers, as a crowd surrounded her and shouted “Allahu Akbar”. The police then paid £10,000 in damages to Tash.
*****
In February, 50-year-old Turkish citizen Hamit Coskun was charged with causing “anguish” to the Islamic faith after burning a Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London. If Coskun is convicted, it would mark another step in Europe’s continued capitulation to the jihadists’ veto, where fear of a violent backlash dictates the limits of free speech.
When a retired police officer, a Telegraph journalist, an Iranian exile, a disabled activist and a Turkish Christian are arrested, interrogated and taken away by the police for expressing their views, it means that democracies are being overwhelmed by the newbarbarians already inside the city walls.
A trans-identified male residing in Colorado has been charged with sexual assault, kidnapping, and false imprisonment after taking a woman hostage for three days. On November 30, Hannah Viramontes, 26, took the unidentified female victim captive to abuse as a “sex slave,” and told her he would kill her if she tried to escape. Viramontes, previously known as Cameron Mauldin, is accused of brutally beating and torturing the victim before she was able to escape and contact authorities.
Local news reports have referred to Viramontes simply as a “woman,” with no mention of his transgender status or biological sex.
According to an arrest affidavit, Viramontes, a trans-identified male, had been cited for shoplifting at a nearby mall. The female victim, Viramontes’ roommate and former romantic partner, questioned him about the crime while noting that he appeared to be undergoing a “mental health episode.” She and Viramontes had briefly dated in 2020, and though they ended the relationship, they had remained friends and lived together.
Hannah Viramontes
After she inquired about the ticket, Viramontes allegedly punched her in the face with enough force to knock her to the ground. The victim kept a concealed handgun at her waist, and aware of this, Viramontes disarmed her and held her at gunpoint, while threatening to shoot her if she resisted.
Viramontes then handcuffed her hands behind her back, and began punching and kicking her. He also cut her with a knife, before taking her to the bedroom and sexually assaulting her. Viramontes then handcuffed the victim to his own wrist and fell asleep.
The following day, December 1, Viramontes told the woman he intended to keep her as a “sex slave” and threatened to kill her if she called out for help. On December 2, Viramontes again beat the victim, strangled her, and shoved various objects into her mouth. When the victim coughed out the items, he removed a towel rack from the bathroom and proceeded to beat her with it.
The victim was able to make her escape on the third day, when Viramontes left the handgun on a coffee table and went outside. At that point the victim, realizing one of her handcuffs was loose, was able to free one hand and grab the gun. She then locked the door, ensuring that her attacker was prevented from entering the home.
When Viramontes realized what she’d done, he attempted to break through the sliding glass door.
Hannah Viramontes, the woman accused of an alleged three-day kidnapping and violent assault in Colorado Springs, faces a $250,000 bond to be released from custody. https://t.co/ctJVwmWESX
In self-defense, the victim then fired a shot at Viramontes. When he persisted in his attempt to break down the door, she fired again. Viramontes fled the scene, and the victim called the police.
When officers arrived on the scene, they discovered the victim had sustained multiple serious injuries, including “severe” bruising to her face. She was also riddled with puncture and bite marks, and was taken to a hospital for treatment, where a doctor determined she was at “a substantial risk of serious permanent disfigurement.”
Viramontes was also taken to a hospital to be treated for a gunshot wound and was subsequently arrested. He is being held in the El Paso County jail awaiting trial, and is listed as “male” in the detention center’s records. He is being held on a $250,000 bond due to what Judge Cynthia McKedy described as “extremely aggravated” accusations.
“You’re a danger to this community,” Judge McKedy told Viramontes.
Hannah Viramontes, 26, is facing a number of charges related to the incident, including sexual assault, kidnapping and false imprisonment. https://t.co/dGgvGfb2Fz
The victim has expressed feeling “terrified” of the possibility of Viramontes being released, saying she believes he will “hurt someone” if he is set free.
Reduxx has contacted the Colorado Springs Police Department several times for information on Viramontes’ status. A responding official stated that Viramontes is currently under an extended mental health hold at the local hospital and, as a result, he has not yet been photographed or fingerprinted. When asked about the delay in processing, the official suggested it could be due to Viramontes being non-compliant, adding that he would not be released from police custody until a mugshot and fingerprints were taken.
Viramontes’ first court hearing is scheduled for next month.
Reduxx has also learned that Viramontes had previously played American-style football on a local women’s team. According to a 2021 Facebook post, Viramontes played the contact sport against female opponents on the Rocky Mountain Thunderkatz as a linebacker.
The team, which is semi-professional and under the umbrella of the Women’s Football Alliance, has boasted of being “LGBTQ inclusive,” and has previously made posts using the progress pride flag filter on Facebook.
The more diverse the UK becomes, the more mysterious life becomes. Especially anything that involves naming the peaceful religion that must not be named lest terrible violence occur for inexplicable reasons having nothing to do with it.
Here’s another one of those mysteries that will probably never be solved.
An “authoritarian” father accused of murdering his daughter-in-law six months after she flew to the UK to marry his son has been found guilty.
Mashal Ilyas, 24, was found unconscious at the bottom of the stairs of the family home on 9 October 2024, Manchester Crown Court heard.
Nadeem Mohammed Begum, 53, from Atherton, Wigan, told police and paramedics he had been asleep and had not seen or heard anything before he found his daughter-in-law collapsed.
However, Begum was found guilty of her murder at Manchester Crown Court earlier after forensic testing, CCTV and phone evidence linked him to the scene.
The court heard that Mashal Ilyas came to the UK following arrangements made by the two families but there were tensions in the family.
Senior Crown Prosecutor for CPS North West Katie Marsden said: “Mashal Ilyas’s life was cruelly cut short by Nadeem Begum.
“It is difficult to understand what drove Begum to take his daughter-in-law’s life in such a brutal way.
“We may never fully understand the circumstances which led to her tragic death.”
It’s a mystery. Especially when you keep using roundabout terms instead of saying that this was an arranged marriage that the father, named a Pakistan Muslim named Mohammed, didn’t take to because his daughter-in-law was not abiding by Muslim codes of conduct and he responded with the traditional Islamic response of an honor killing.
Jurors heard that Ms Ilyas came from a ‘liberal’ family in Pakistan and went on to marry Gulrez in January last year in Pakistan. After moving to the UK, she lived with the rest of the family in a three-bedroom semi-detached house on Oxford Road.
However, there were ‘tensions’ between Ms Ilyas and Begum around her role in the household, with expectation that she was meant to cook and clean for the whole family, rather than just her husband.
No one mentions the “I” word. Of course. Better that it remains a mystery than we mention the record rates of honor-killings in Pakistan or that to most Pakistani Muslims, Mohammed did nothing wrong. And as the UK makes further concessions toward Sharia law, this will become even more of the norm.
If we don’t understand that soon, we’ll be forced to understand it even in terms Kate Marsden can comprehend.
The Stanhope Hotel, which has been vandalized twice recently for hosting MCC Brussels. Photo: Vigilance Cordon Sanitaire on Facebook, 9 April 2025
Far-left activists in Brussels have continued their intimidation campaign against the conservative think tank MCC Brussels. The campaign aims to force conference venues around the European capital to close their doors to one of the very few right-wing organizations that speak out on behalf of the already limited freedom of speech and plurality in the EU.
This time, the Antifa activists targeted the Stanhope Hotel, the venue of MCC Brussels’ upcoming event about how President Trump has been reshaping the global order. The event is planned for Wednesday, May 14th, and includes as speakers an associate professor from Cambridge and the chair of the Edmund Burke foundation, as well as a former undersecretary in the Italian foreign ministry.
Typical Nazis, right? Well, the Antifa certainly thinks so, as the vandals covered the hotel’s entrance with eggs and graffiti on Tuesday morning, just one day before the event, in what they regard as protesting the ‘extreme right.’
But as MCC Brussels made it clear, this “pathetic act of cowardice” was not a protest, but a threat. “A warning shot to anyone—left, right, or center—who dares to challenge the militant orthodoxy of these self-appointed arbiters of acceptable thought,” whose actions “reek of the very fascism they claim to oppose.”
Nonetheless, the think tank vows to never give in to these “authoritarian tactics,” and announced that the conference will go on as planned at an alternative venue that hasn’t been made public yet.
🚨 Attempted cancellation of our event
🚨MCC Brussels condemns cowardly attack on free speech
🚨We will not be silenced by these fake anti-fascists
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the Stanhope Hotel in Brussels was vandalized with eggs thrown by a group styling… pic.twitter.com/rv0jwuux3f
It’s worth noting that this incident is not an isolated case. MCC Brussels has been targeted by Antifa countless times in the past few years, as the far-left attempted to shut down the think tank’s panel discussions, book launches, and even NatCon Brussels, Europe’s largest and most prestigious conservative conference.
Last month, a Belgian Antifa group took the intimidation up a notch and vandalized every single conference venue that ever hosted the think tank with the same message plastered across its walls: “Here we welcome the far-right #MCC.” As a result, several of the venues signaled that they will have to increase their prices going forward, as an ‘insurance’ against future damages.
According to MCC Brussels, the growing number of incidents shows that Europe is entering a dangerous era “where reasoned debate is drowned out by shrieks of intolerance and intimidation.” If this remains unchallenged—as it seems to be in Brussels, where the authorities wouldn’t move a finger to deter the extreme left and protect the freedom of expression—“tomorrow they will come for anyone who deviates even slightly from their rigid worldview.”
MCC Brussels set up shop in the city less than three years ago, yet it has already grown into one of the primary hubs of open dialogue, dissenting ideas, and democratic debate. It’s also one of the few platforms for conservatives, who are often silenced and sidelined by EU institutions despite representing the biggest parties in the respective countries.
As the think tank grows increasingly popular in the Brussels bubble—with a record number of people attending their events and reading their bombshell reports exposing the EU’s corruption and anti-democratic practices—so does the target on its back.
“And that is precisely why we will not retreat,” MCC Brussels’ statement reads, calling on EU institutions and all those who regard themselves as “defenders of democracy” across the political spectrum to condemn these acts of political violence and intimidation.
“Free societies are not built by silencing dissent—they are built by debating it, confronting it, and allowing the people to decide,” MCC Brussels added.
Germany’s Jan Böhmermann, well known for his far-left comedy late night show, is more or less the Stephen Colbert of Germany, except he is perhaps even more aggressively and nakedly a political activist. During his taxpayer-funded show Neo Magazin Royal on ZDF, he doxxed the right-wing YouTuber “Clownwelt” last week, who had attempted to remain anonymous.
There are a lot of reasons to believe this doxxing was not the work of research performed by Bohnermann’s staff and Zeit, as Bohnermann claims, but outright intelligence agency information fed to his team, or at least someone on his team.
The method Böhmermann claimed for unmasking the identity of “Clownwelt” is a stretch to say the least. First, he claims they obtained a photo from the Telegram channel of Clownwelt, which showcased him wearing a metal band T-shirt and a guitar pick necklace. From there, he claims the following:
“If you now search all available photos of all German metal bands in Germany for a guitarist, you will end up with this hit. A metal guitarist from NRW. There it is, the golden guitar pick on the chain around his neck. But that’s not enough, of course. So we scrutinized his former band, spoke to his friends and relatives, visited his university, checked everything with other sources, double and triple crossed. We even had his voice scientifically analyzed, and then we were very, very sure.
In real life, one of the most important right-wing extremist internet propagandists and AfD stirrup holders is a 29-year-old metal guitarist from a small town in North Rhine-Westphalia called Marc Philipp. He did his A-levels and then, because he simply has a penchant for telling people things, studied to become a teacher at a university in a small town in Lower Saxony.
He dropped out of university at some point, he never handed in his bachelor’s thesis, and from summer 2021 he really took off as a right-wing extremist on YouTube. And his private environment didn’t know anything about it. They may have been surprised. They were completely surprised when we spoke to them.”
Based on this one photo, Bohnermann claims to have “searched all the metal bands” in Germany. This sounds, to put it light, highly questionable. Clownwelt was not in a popular band, in fact, most metal bands are not particularly popular, even the more well-known ones. It was more or less a local band, of which there are tens of thousands in Germany. Even if we narrow this down to only metal bands, we are still looking at thousands of people — many of whom were “underground,” including from defunct bands. There are also plenty of metal fans, some whom would sport a guitar pick necklace, who are not in any active metal bands.
If we factor in that each band has dozens, sometimes hundreds, if not thousands of photos, going through all of these photos across Germany sounds ludicrous. Furthermore, if we consider that many band photos are private or contained in social media canals that are not searchable or difficult to search, it begins to sound like Bohnermann’s team would be dedicating an incredible amount of time for what seems like such a pointless task that would fail to turn up anything.
For argument’s sake, let’s just assume this is exactly what happened. Well, even then, if they found these two matching photos with a person wearing the same guitar pick necklace, it still would not prove anything, as Bohnermann says himself.
Let’s then think about what Bohnermann claims they did next. He said they call all this guy’s family and friends. First, it is unclear how he obtained this information, including the names of all these families and friends, but even more questionable is how he obtained all of their contact numbers. It is not so easy to just obtain private phone numbers in Europe, especially in Germany, known for its strict privacy laws. Many people no longer have home phone numbers, and private cell phone numbers are not listed in the telephone book.
Bohnermann then claims that he called all of these people one by one, and all of them claim they have no idea that the person they know is involved with any right-wing activities on social media.
So, what is Bohnermann’s actual confirmation here? There is none. None of this adds up. None of these people confirm that they know Clownwelt because Bohnermann himself says that Clownwelt kept his life secret.
Instead, Bohnermann calls them and tells them who Clownwelt is, because the truth is that Bohnermann already knew who he was.
The idiot-proof explanation of all of this is that Bohnermann was fed intelligence info through someone at an intelligence agency through the backdoor. There is also the possibility that Bohnermann himself did not know anything himself, but someone on his team did.
Either way, armed with this information, they have to work backwards to concoct a believable story about the doxxing, however, these stories are never all that believable. Charles Cornish-Dale, known as Raw Egg Nationalist, who was doxxed last year, wrote about how intelligence agencies are colluding with third parties to doxx those on the right. It’s known as “parallel construction,” as he also discusses here:
And so this piece basically is about the fact that I think Hope Not Hate doxxed me with the help of the government in some way. It’s about this thing called parallel construction, which is a journalistic technique. It’s a technique used by the intelligence services, by law enforcement as well, when they get information in a dirty way, basically. You know, when they get information from sources, when they break in and steal something, when they hack a computer, they invent a credible story to explain how they got the information legally.
And that’s basically what Hope Not Hate did. So they said in this expose, oh yes, we found some old posts, we found an old text message that Raw Egg Nationalist posted, and we managed to decipher his name from it. And they said some other stuff as well. They said that I posted some pictures of my garden and somehow that contributed to their… I mean, I posted a picture of my squat rack on my patio with no sky, nothing, no identifiable features, just a squat rack on a patio. And they’re saying that that was how they found me.
So, the piece really is just about the fact that actually Western governments, intelligence services are trying to disrupt the right, they’re trying to disrupt the popular right. And I think what they’re probably doing is colluding with activist organizations like Hope Not Hate to doxx people.
In the case of Germany, the tip-off went to Bohnermann instead of an organization like Hope Not Hate, as Bohnermann has a national audience and a public doxxing on his show would, at least in their view, deliver maximum damage.
In this case, the intelligence agency or agencies, very possibly someone in the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), first discovered who Clownwelt was. This could have been organized within a group or someone simply one person going rogue in the office, but no matter which intelligence entity leaked this, the leak never “officially” happened. This information was then fed to someone they trust on Bohnermann’s team, knowing what Bohnermann is capable of doing with it.
Either Bohnermann or the intelligence leakers had to create a “parallel construction” technique based on the two photos with a guitar pick, which may have been all they had to work with, so they may have had to go with that. They know their audience does not particularly care how they got this information, but they have to maintain their distance from Germany’s increasingly authoritarian spy system, which, of course, would look quite bad if it were leaking private information to a state-funded millionaire Antifa comedian.
This is all theory, but it sounds a lot more plausible than Bohnermann’s so-called guitar pick story. In fact, this is a good case of Occam’s Razor in practice.
It is safe to say that Bohnermann’s leak has been met with outrage. Here is an excerpt from Welt editor Ulf Poschardt:
Time and again, Jan Böhmermann uses his show to intimidate and denounce dissidents as a disciplinarian of the ruling class – using an ideological sledgehammer to do so. No one provides better material for criticizing public broadcasters than he does.
The bourgeoisie, as the left-wing theorist Antonio Gramsci knew, rules not only through the police and capital, “but through cultural hegemony – that is, by possessing the sovereignty of interpretation over values, language, education, religion, and the media.”
Böhmermann uses his show to intimidate and denounce those who think differently, as a kind of disciplinarian and whip of the ruling society. He is malicious, thin-skinned, and sadistic. He did this again on Friday, when he publicly unmasked – or “doxxed” – the right-wing YouTuber Clownswelt by name, revealing his identity and place of residence.
Interestingly, the backlash on social media began immediately and was enormous. The result was that the “state artist’s” place of residence and his children’s daycare center were made public. An unfortunate development, but in the self-image of the circles attacked by Böhmermann, a form of self-defense. Another milestone in the decline of morals on all sides.
Poschardt describes how he himself has been the target of Böhmermann, such as when Böhmermann placed his face on a “wanted” poster and gave him a Hitler mustache. Böhmermann, who is lavishly funded by taxpayers, has become a focal point for those calling for reform to the state broadcasters, which take in hundreds of millions of euros per year.
“The public broadcaster must be smaller, more focused, and completely restructured. Böhmermann makes mistakes in his research; his tone of hate and incitement is celebrated by precisely those who want to defend ‘our democracy’ against ‘hate and incitement,”‘ writes Poschardt.
How Bohnermann actually obtained this information will likely never be revealed, but expect that German and other European agencies, with their enormous surveillance powers, will use them in any manner they can to ensure the increasingly discredited establishment maintains its grip on power, especially as parties like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) slide into first place in the polls.
As for Clownwelt, he has remained defiant, and his follower count on YouTube has nearly doubled, now approaching 400,000. His latest video has earned him nearly a million views in just two days.
Germany’s Christian Democrats (CDU) have split over the question of cooperating politically with the hard-left party Die Linke.
While the CDU has maintained a longstanding ban on any political cooperation with Die Linke, some within the party have begun to question this stance.
Die Linke was the direct successor of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the Marxist-Leninist party which governed East Germany before the end of the Cold War.
Due to this contentious legacy, the CDU had previously adopted an ‘incompatibility resolution’ explicitly ruling out any form of cooperation with the party.
However, the CDU currently commands only a narrow majority alongside its coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD). Between the two parties, the coalition controlled 328 seats in the 630-member Bundestag.
With an occasional need for a two-thirds majority in parliament — for key decisions and certain political appointments — a growing number of Christian Democrats have begun to suggest more political collaboration with Die Linke, which had 64 seats.
It was only with Die Linke’s support earlier this month that Friedrich Merz was able to assume the office of Chancellor, after unexpectedly losing an initial parliamentary vote when 18 unnamed coalition members rebelled.
Thanks to Die Linke’s backing, his parliamentary managers were swiftly able to garner a two-thirds majority for organise a second round of voting, salvaging what remained of Merz’s embattled public image after the historic Bundestag fumble.
Some Christian Democrats have suggested if the party cooperated more with Die Linke, then the same should also be possible with the AfD, especially in the Länder (or states) of the former East Germany.
Karin Prien, Family and Education Minister and the CDU’s deputy leader, has advocated for more flexibility and warned against dogmatism in the debate.
“Our time demands more tolerance of ambiguity and less dogmatism from all democratic forces in Germany,” Prien told German newsweekly Stern.
The Union parties must “weigh up pragmatically” each possible cooperation, and keep an eye on “the stability of democratic institutions”, she added.
For her part, Prien argued there was a fundamental difference between Die Linke and the AfD.
“The AfD is the party of right-wing extremism, it is a danger to our liberal democracy,” she claimed, while she believed Die Linke was not.
She echoed her party colleague Mario Voigt, Thuringia’s prime minister (or Ministerpräsident), who said his party needed to be more “pragmatic”.
“With a party that does not work towards overthrowing the system like the AfD, the CDU can make parliamentary agreements out of state political responsibility beyond all fundamental differences,” said Prien.
Voigt did not have a majority behind him in his own state and has needed the cooperation of Die Linke to keep his job. It was AfD that came out on top in Thuringia’s recent elections.
Thorsten Frei, a close ally of Merz and head of the Federal Chancellery, indicated earlier there was a need to “re-evaluate” their handling of Die Linke, but U-turned on his comments a day later.
The CDU’s general secretary Carsten Linnemann, though, told Stern he supported the policy not to cooperate with Die Linke.
“For me, there can be no political cooperation with the Left Party as long as extremist groups participate there,” he said.
Linnemann went on to accuse them of trivialising anti-Semitism at their party congress, saying this “has distanced Die Linke even more from the CDU than it already has.”
Christoph Ploß, a CDU MP, called Die Linke the “renamed party of the Wall and Shoot Order” and clearly ruled out cooperation because of the party’s alleged anti-Semitism.
At its federal party congress in May 2025, Die Linke adopted a new stance on the definition of anti-Semitism, moving away from the widely used definition by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
The party congress also featured contentious debates over Israel and the Middle East. Delegates passed a resolution accusing Israel of deliberately starving Palestinian civilians.
Bracknell Forest Council is welcoming 300 Afghan refugees as part of the Government’s Afghan Resettlement Programme Bracknell Forest Council – Google Maps
A councillor who was reported to the police by a fellow Labour councillor for saying local residents should have the same access to support as Afghans has revealed he has been inundated with “heartbreaking” messages from locals.
Bracknell Forest Council backed a Lib Dem motion to support Afghan nationals who served alongside British troops, as part of the Government’s Afghan Resettlement Programme – offering relocation to 300 nationals who are considered “vulnerable” or “in danger from the Taliban”.
Edwards supported the plan in principle, but made clear that Bracknell residents and UK veterans should get the “same support, not less” – which was reported to police by a fellow Labour councillor.
Discussing the incident on GB News, Councillor John Edwards said he has been “inundated with heartbreaking messages” from locals struggling with inadequate housing and support.
Edwards detailed the support package provided to Afghan refugees in Bracknell: “They’ve been given a four-star hotel, all their food catered for, all their bills obviously paid for.”
He added: “They get private-delivered healthcare – it’s not Bupa, but it’s outside the NHS, and avoids waiting times, and there’s wraparound care and move on support. I thought, this surely isn’t the type of support of Bracknell residents and veterans get?”
This prompted Edwards to seek out stories from local residents struggling with housing and support issues, and found several residents living with mould – with some being hospitalised because of it.
Edwards revealed: “I put out a post for people on the housing waiting list or waiting for support, and found single mothers in one bed flats with four kids where the mould is so bad it put their kids in hospital. She feels like she’s failed.
“A veteran, he’s got two young kids in a single bed flat with mould so bad that his kids have been hospital with respiratory conditions.
“He served in Afghanistan. He said, I know what these guys did, I want them to be safe. I want us to help, but where’s my help?”
These testimonies formed the basis of Edwards’ call for equal treatment between refugees and local residents.
The councillor made clear his intention was to bring “transparency” to what he described as an “unfair” scheme.
“This isn’t about being divisive. The people who have arrived need to be treated with respect and dignity,” he stated.
However, he accused Bracknell Forest Council of “whitewashing” information about the refugee support scheme.
Discussing the reports made by the Labour Councillor, Edwards claimed that he “simply wanted parity” for Bracknell residents.
He told GB News: “I haven’t just been reported to the police by a resident, I’ve been reported to the police by Labour councillor at Bracknell Forest for bringing transparency to this. I wanted parity for Bracknell residents and veterans and I wanted transparency.
“It should have been totally uncontroversial, but I’ve been reported to the police. I’ve had complaints put into me.”
Despite his efforts, Edwards revealed that the Liberal Democrats had put forward a motion to welcome the Afghans.
“I put in an amendment which said that we also recognise that Bracknell residents should be at the same level of support, and veterans as well, and they voted that down,” he concluded.
GB News contacted Sandhurst Town Council for comment and they declined.
The Lissen Institute in Colombes in the Hauts-de-Seine department, which specialises in language teaching, was closed by the prefecture on Wednesday May 7. The faculty was suspected of having ‘Islamic tendencies’. A preventive closure. An establishment specialising in language teaching in Colombes in the Hauts-de-Seine department was closed by the prefecture on Wednesday May 7. The reason for this? According to the information provided by Europe 1, it was suspected that it was in fact a Koranic school. The prefecture cited the dilapidation of the building, the lack of fire extinguishers and the blocking of emergency exits to speed up the closure of the site. According to Europe 1, a recent inspection revealed at least 16 defects, including the obsolescence of the building. Following this inspection, it was decided that the establishment, which was open to the public, no longer guaranteed the safety of visitors, particularly minors. These shortcomings concealed a much larger problem, namely that of an Islamic extremist project in the facility. According to information from Europe 1, inspectors detected symbols associated with fundamentalist Islam in the school during their inspections.
The prefecture revealed that it had observed ‘several notices with adults and children without faces’ during inspections, which according to some specialists corresponds to a Salafi or Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, the radio station said.
In a statement published on its website, the Lissen Institute confirms that the premises have been closed since May 7. It does not deny the shortcomings in terms of fire safety regulations, but it ‘strongly denies the accusations of Islamism that the prefect has spread in the media, without any evidence other than mere suspicion and slander’.
Danish PM Mette Frederiksen and Italian PM Giorgia Meloni Photo: European Council, 2024
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has gone “too far” in interpreting asylum laws on behalf of illegal migrants, which is hindering member states’ sovereignty and ability to protect their borders, Denmark and Italy argue in a letter that will soon be sent to the Strasbourg-based court.
According to the draft letter, seen by Euractiv, the Court has been stretching the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) beyond its original intent when it comes to asylum seekers, which limits the 46 member states’ ability to “make political decisions in our own democracies.”
The goal is to gather more allies who would sign the document and then lobby together for reinterpreting the Convention in a way that better reflects “the challenges of modern irregular migration,” because “what was once right might not be the answer of tomorrow.”
The full letter is not yet public, but is expected to be released in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, it’s open for co-signatories, who could also include Czechia, Finland, Poland, and the Netherlands—a group of countries that had been pushing for comprehensive asylum reforms at the EU level, including the establishment of off-shore migrant reception centers following the model of Italy’s Albania protocol.
Germany, France, Greece, Sweden, Hungary, and Slovakia are also likely to join, as the ECtHR has ruled against them in several separate asylum-related cases in recent years.
These cases ranged from refusing family reunification requests to ‘pushbacks’—returning illegal migrants to the other side of the borders without letting them apply for asylum, which is considered illegal by the Court, even if the migrants are caught right after entering the country.
In the case of Denmark, the ECtHR forced it to scrap its three-year compulsory waiting period for asylum seekers before they can request family reunification; while Italy has been repeatedly ruled against by the court for the alleged “mistreatment” of migrants and for returning them to Libya after picking them up in the Mediterranean Sea.
Also, many of these countries, such as Germany, Poland, and Sweden, are looking to significantly toughen their asylum laws in the near future, including by fast-tracking deportations and closing down the borders, which would make ‘pushbacks’ the de facto official policy.
This is also the direction of the EPP, the largest political group in all three EU institutions, which recently set out to advocate for the same asylum rules that got Hungary ruled against and fined by both the ECtHR and the EU Court of Justice.
The EU is also responding to the growing pressure by seemingly being on board with most of these changes, but if EU countries want to avoid legal and legislative deadlocks, they also need to make sure the ECtHR—established by the Council of Europe, not the EU—would also step aside.
