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    How Germany’s Green Party Lost Its Luster

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    The party was riding high when it entered the government two years ago. Now it is stumbling, blamed for driving voters to the far right.Germany’s Green Party entered the government in 2021 with the best election showing of its history, establishing itself for the first time as a true mainstream party with the potential of one day even yielding a chancellor.It won five cabinet positions in the three-party coalition, including the powerful economy and foreign ministries. It seemed to have a strong mandate to advance the country’s economic transition toward a greener future.What a difference two years make. And a Russian invasion of Ukraine. And rising energy costs. And a host of missteps that some even within the party concede has stalled the Greens’ momentum.Today the Greens are widely viewed as a drag on the government of the Social Democratic chancellor, Olaf Scholz, which one poll gave a mere 19 percent approval rating. The Greens have drawn withering attacks from even their own coalition partners. To their opponents, the Greens have overreached on their agenda and become the face of an out-of-touch environmental elitism that has alienated many voters, sending droves to the far right.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Germany’s Far-Left Wagenknecht Forms New Populist Party

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      Sahra Wagenknecht has announced a new party, which could become another populist force scrambling German politics.Germany’s political landscape has been fracturing for a decade or more as traditional parties lose ground to populist elements, forcing the establishment of a three-way coalition government for the first time in the country’s modern history.A significant new fissure opened on Monday, when one of the country’s most prominent leftist politicians, Sahra Wagenknecht, announced that she would form her own party, throwing up yet another wild card and challenging the political mainstream.Few Germans do not know Ms. Wagenknecht. A gifted orator, she has made something of a brand for herself with her biting criticism of the government and over-the-top political rhetoric. She is a frequent presence on television debate shows and at signings for her new best-selling book; on weekly YouTube clips, which are watched hundreds of thousands of times; and on the floor of the parliament, where she is a member of the Left party, or Die Linke.True to form, the association she founded with four others to build the party is named after herself: the Sahra Wagenknecht Coalition, or BSW in the German acronym, making it the first party in postwar Germany built entirely around one figurehead. Ms. Wagenknecht said the party would be a home for those who feel abandoned by mainstream politics, and stand for “reason and fairness.”“We decided to establish a new party because we are convinced that things cannot go on as they are at present,” Ms. Wagenknecht told Berlin’s press corps on Monday, adding: “Otherwise, in ten years’ time, our country will be unrecognizable.”For decades after World War II, Germany was governed by just two major parties — the conservative Christian Democrats and the progressive Social Democrats. As that consensus breaks down, Ms. Wagenknecht’s new populist party may present another hurdle to finding parliamentary consensus in what has long been a consensus-minded country.The new party threatens not only to break up the far left, who are the political heirs to Communist East Germany, but to further erode the political mainstream. It may also compete for the disaffected voters who have flocked to the country’s leading populist party on the far right, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which is now polling at 22 percent support.Ms. Wagenknecht argues that progressives are too focused on diet, personal pronouns and the perception of racism, and are not worried enough about poverty.Steffi Loos/Getty ImagesA poll taken over the weekend by Bild found that 27 percent of voters would consider voting for Ms. Wagenknecht’s party, even if little concrete information about her actual platform is available. In a country where more than one in five say they would vote for the far-right AfD, Ms. Wagenknecht’s new party has the potential to act as a spoiler, effectively loosening the AfD’s grip on protest voters.Marcel Lewandowsky, a political scientist who studies populism at the Federal Armed Forces university in Hamburg, says the new party could attract voters who are on the political right when it comes to migration, but believe in the importance of the welfare state.“The thinking is that there are AfD voters who on things like migration are very far to the right of the spectrum, but at the same time maybe fear for their own social status, and also have economic fears,” he said. “There’s no guarantee, but there is potential that it could work.”As long as Ms. Wagenknecht sticks to her vow not to collaborate with the far-right AfD, her party could help buffer a takeover from the right, especially in the East, where Ms. Wagenknecht has her roots and is especially popular.Ms. Wagenknecht is one of the very few federal politicians still active who started their political career in the former East Germany. Months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, she joined the Communist Party.She made her name after reunification in the party’s successor, which is now called the Left, and was voted into the European Parliament in 2004 and Germany’s national parliament in 2009. Since then she has held almost every post in the Left party, including acting as head of its parliamentary group.Ms. Wagenknecht loves to attack what she calls the “lifestyle left.” She argues that progressives are too focused on diet, pronouns, and the perception of racism, and are not worried enough about poverty and an ever-growing gap between rich and poor.She says immigration by people who do not have a chance for asylum has gotten out of control. “It definitely has to be stopped because it is completely overwhelming our country,” she said on Monday.Though details are still scant, Ms. Wagenknecht and her allies have outlined four major planks for the party platform. Perhaps surprisingly for a left-wing politician, the economy is the first and most important.Ms. Wagenknecht announcing the formation of the new party on Monday.John MacDougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“If the economy goes under, you don’t even have to worry about pensions and wages and social benefits,” Ms. Wagenknecht said during an interview in her office last month. “All those things will go under too.”During the interview, Ms. Wagenknecht was especially critical of the environmentalist Green party, part of the governing coalition, for focusing on things like rules governing the heating of public buildings.“People think this government is haphazard, shortsighted, plain, incompetent and ideologically driven,” she said, adding, “And that — in fact — is the case.”She has long criticized Germany’s support for Ukraine, especially the 7.4 billion euros worth of weaponry Germany has sent to help in its defense. On Monday, she proposed buying Russian energy directly from Russia again, and decried the billions spent trying to replace Russian gas.It’s a message that could play well among voters for the AfD, who tend to be less supportive of Ukraine than others.Manfred Güllner, whose polling firm, the Forsa Institute, conducted a poll gauging Ms. Wagenknecht’s viability as a political brand, says the new party has as much a chance of attracting voters from traditional parties as it does of attracting those who vote on the right.Noting that the far right was at a high point after successes in state elections in Bavaria and Hesse earlier this month, he said: “All those who have migrated to the AfD, they see now that the AfD is successful — why should they suddenly vote for the Wagenknecht party?”After hinting at the move for months, Ms. Wagenknecht said on Monday that she would form the party. Nine other parliamentarians joined her in leaving the Left. It could represent a death blow to her old party, which will lose not only its most recognizable member, but also its status as a parliamentary group, which is linked to funding and provides hundreds of jobs.The timing of Ms. Wagenknecht’s announcement will allow her and her team to field candidates for the European Parliament’s election in June, where no minimum hurdle is required to win seats. And if that goes well, they could then field candidates for state elections taking place in three eastern Germany states in the second half of 2024.“Now she will actually have to give concrete answers instead of just criticizing the woke left-wing lifestyle,” said Frank Decker, a political scientist at the University of Bonn, who has studied the AfD.At a recent book signing in her native city of Jena, in the eastern state of Thuringia, Ms. Wagenknecht was treated like a celebrity by the roughly 1,000 people who gathered to watch her read from her best-selling book, “Die Selbstgerechten” or “The Self-Righteous.”Many in the audience were disappointed in mainstream politics, they said afterward. Thomas Hultsch, 52, had brought his two daughters to the reading. Mr. Hultsch said that while he would never vote for the AfD, he does not like the traditional parties either.“I would give her a chance,” he said. More

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      Bavarian Election Results Signal Trouble for Scholz’s Government

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      The election served as a midterm report card for Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and the grades were not good.German voters handed a victory on Sunday to mainstream conservatives in a state election in Bavaria — as well as in the smaller central state of Hesse — while punishing the three parties running the country.While all three of the governing parties lost votes, symbolically at least, the far-right Alternative for Germany and another populist party were the evening’s clear victors, notching record results in both states when compared with other western states.The results were considered an important midterm report card for the national coalition government of the Social Democratic chancellor, Olaf Scholz, which received some tough grades. They were also seen as a bellwether of the larger political trends building in the country, not least the fracturing of the political landscape as populist and far-right parties make inroads.Here’s what happened and what it means.The mainstream is eroding.In Bavaria, the conservative Christian Social Union, which has governed the southern region for nearly seven decades, received its lowest level of support in more than a half-century, garnering less than 37 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results.That will allow the incumbent governor, Markus Söder, to serve another term, but only in coalition with the populist Free Voters, who came in at well over 15 percent of the vote, despite a last-minute antisemitism scandal involving the party’s firebrand leader, Hubert Aiwanger.In Hesse, which has fewer than half the voters of Bavaria, the incumbent governor for the conservative Christian Democratic Union, or C.D.U., won a decisive victory after an ineffective campaign by the federal interior minister, who ran for the Social Democrats and came in third, behind the far-right AfD.Bavaria’s governor, Markus Söder, left, and Hubert Aiwanger, the leader of the Bavarian Free Voters party, in 2018 after signing the coalition contract in Munich.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut it was the vote in Bavaria that was the most closely watched, and the outcome was taken as further evidence of the erosion of Germany’s traditional mainstream political parties, left and right. It is a phenomenon that has been witnessed across Europe — in Spain, Italy and France, as well as in Scandinavian countries.Less than a generation ago, the Christian Social Union could depend on the support of large masses of German voters, earning it the name Volkspartei, or people’s party.No more.“The crisis of the mainstream parties has also reached Bavaria and is hitting the CSU with increasing force,” said Thomas Schlemmer, a historian of Bavarian politics. “Today, you vote based on your individual lifestyle, not because of tradition.”Even before Sunday’s vote, Mr. Söder and his Christian Social Union were having to govern in coalition with the populist Free Voters. Now, they will be even more dependent on the Free Voters, underscoring the Christian Social Union’s increasing vulnerability.Much the same has happened nationally to its sister party, the much larger C.D.U., the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, as center-right support has been eaten into by populist and extremist parties, like AfD.Virtually the only reason the AfD, which came in second at just under 16 percent, did not do better in Bavaria was the presence of Free Voters, a homegrown Bavarian party with populist tendencies, which split the right-wing vote.Populists are rising.The Free Voters, a party that was founded by independent municipal and district politicians in 2009, is playing an ever-larger role in Bavarian state politics, where it is once again expected to be the junior partner in the state coalition.Its outsize role has underscored the rise of populist forces nationwide.Mr. Aiwanger, a fiery beer-tent speaker, has become the face of the party, bringing it further toward populism by criticizing immigration and environmental legislation.Mr. Aiwanger speaking at a campaign event on Thursday in Mainburg, Germany.Matthias Schrader/Associated PressAt an event this summer, Mr. Aiwanger called for the “silent majority” to “take back democracy” from the government in Berlin, in language that for many Germans evoked the country’s Nazi past. Although he was criticized by other politicians and the mainstream news media, the speech did nothing to quell his popularity among voters.“The success of the Free Voters is due to Hubert Aiwanger’s populist impulses and not to the constructive policies they have pursued in the municipalities for many decades,” said Roman Deininger, a reporter with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a daily newspaper based in Munich, who has followed Bavarian politics for decades.Mr. Aiwanger and his party managed to succeed despite a campaign marred by scandal in August, when Mr. Aiwanger was discovered to have had a homemade antisemitic handbill in his possession while he was in high school in the 1980s.Mr. Aiwanger quickly turned the scandal into an advantage, claiming that the newspaper that broke the story had waited until the heat of the campaign to discredit him. Voters apparently believed the narrative: Mr. Aiwanger and his party saw a bump in polling numbers.The Greens are despised.Throughout the campaign, conservative and populist parties made the left-leaning environmentalist Green party a stand-in for the governing coalition of Mr. Scholz.Though the Greens are just one of three parties in the coalition, along with the center-left Social Democrats and the pro-business Free Democrats, they were singled out for special antipathy.“The Greens are the new enemy,” said Andrea Römmele, a political analyst at the Hertie School, a university in Berlin. “It’s a framing that the Greens are somehow the party of bans and the opponent in a culture war.”Election posters in Unterempfenbach, Germany, near Mainburg.Matthias Schrader/Associated PressThe verbal attacks seemed to have had an effect. During one campaign appearance in Neu-Ulm, in the west of the state, Katharina Schulze and Ludwig Hartmann, the co-chairs of the Bavarian Greens, were onstage when a man in the crowd threw a stone at them.“That really was a shock,” Ms. Schulze, who campaigns with a police security detail, said in an interview.There were no confrontations during a majority of her campaign stops, she said, but added, “Of course our political competitors like to pour oil on the fire.”Despite that, the Greens in Bavaria came in at well over 14 percent.Mr. Söder, the governor, himself vowed he would not form a coalition with the Greens — even though Sunday’s election returns gave him the numbers to do so — and instead said he would continue in coalition with the populist Free Voters.“With their worldview, the Greens do not fit Bavaria, and that is why there will be no Greens in the Bavarian state government,” Mr. Söder said during a campaign stop in September. “No way!”Mr. Scholz’s coalition is in trouble.Although the results in Bavaria have no direct consequence on the government in Berlin, all three parties in the national coalition lost significant voter share in the election.The liberal Free Democratic Party, which occupies the important post of finance minister, is predicted to fail entry into the state house because of its bad showing.That portends badly for Mr. Scholz, who is about two years into a four-year term, especially because parties in Bavaria ran against his coalition in Berlin as much as against each other.In their stump speeches, both Mr. Söder and Mr. Aiwanger made dissatisfaction with the Berlin government their theme, railing against perceived dictums on gender-neutral speech, vegetarianism and rules for heating private homes — a Green party push that has engendered special animus.Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany last month in Berlin.Clemens Bilan/EPA, via ShutterstockThey also pushed back against the unpopular decision to close the three remaining nuclear power plants this past April.“The coalition is the worst government Germany has ever had,” Mr. Söder said during a speech last month.While such statements are typical of over-the-top campaigning, a recent opinion poll shows that 79 percent of Germans are unhappy with the coalition. Only 19 percent are satisfied with its work.Those are the government’s lowest approval ratings since it was formed in December 2021. More

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      AfD Candidate Loses Race for Mayor in Nordhausen, Germany

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      Voters on Sunday rejected the candidate for the hard-line Alternative for Germany Party, which is rattling German national politics, in the race for mayor in the city of Nordhausen.With a colorless and reputedly prickly small-city mayor being challenged by a far-right candidate known for his charisma and business success, many Germans feared that the hard-line Alternative for Germany party was about to win its first City Hall.But when the ballots were counted Sunday evening, voters in the city of Nordhausen had decisively returned their mayor to office, dealing a setback to a party that has drawn on nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiment to secure a firm hold in German politics.“I thought it would be much, much closer,” said an early-round mayoral candidate, Andreas Trump, who ran for the conservative Christian Democrats and did not endorse a candidate for fear of driving voters into the arms of the rightists.The election came as Alternative for Germany, which has a nationalist, anti-migrant platform, is on the rise across the country. The party, known as the AfD, won only 10 percent of the votes in the 2021 general election, but since then, it has benefited from frustration with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party government, the rising cost of living, worries about the war in Ukraine and a surge in immigration.Now, the AfD is regularly above 20 percent in national opinion polls, well ahead of Mr. Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats. In the five states that were once part of East Germany, nearly a third of voters say they back it.A question-and-answer session for AfD supporters and residents in Gera, in eastern Thuringia, in June.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesBefore the vote in Nordhausen, in which the incumbent, Mayor Kai Buchmann, was challenged by the AfD candidate, Jörg Prophet, many thought the rightists might make a significant inroad into German governance.“Nordhausen is simply swept up in the blue wave,” Thomas Müller, a former local journalist, said, referring the party’s campaign color.Still, it was unclear if Nordhausen, despite its history as an East German municipality, would topple. A quaint city of 42,000 known for its schnapps distillery, it is an exemplar of Germany’s investment in its east, with modern trams and an impeccably maintained medieval quarter.“It’s not an especially right-leaning place,” Mr. Müller said.On Sunday, 55 percent voted for Mr. Buchmann, with 45 percent voting for Mr. Prophet.Benjamin Höhne, a political scientist who studies Alternative for Germany, said that winning the mayor’s office would have represented “another important step in the AfD’s normalization strategy.”“By showing they can take on communal executive responsibility, the hard-right-wing extremist core, which is increasingly crystallizing, appears to recede into the background,” he said,Nordhausen, a city with modern trams and a well-maintained medieval quarter, is home to about 42,000 people.Ronny Hartmann/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThis summer, AfD candidates won runoffs to lead a district in southern Thuringia and a small town in another eastern state, Saxony-Anhalt. The party has also gained ground at the state level. In Thuringia, Christian Democrats recently pushed through a property tax measure with AfD votes, three years after an outcry when mainstream parties allied with the far right to briefly oust the state’s leftist governor.None of this, however, means that the AfD is abandoning its extremes.That may have proved Mr. Prophet’s undoing.In the days after the first mayoral vote in Nordhausen, he turned away from city issues and solicited the help of two prominent AfD party figures who came to give speeches. He also refused to distance himself from Björn Höcke, the party’s most famous far-right extremist.“If he had really limited himself to just the municipal issues — there’s no telling how it would have turned out,” said Mr. Trump.The AfD leader Björn Höcke, speaking at a rally in Dresden in 2020, is viewed as one of the party’s most extreme figures.Gordon Welters for The New York Times More

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      A Former French President Gives a Voice to Obstinate Russian Sympathies

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      Remarks by Nicolas Sarkozy have raised fears that Europe’s pro-Putin chorus may grow louder as Ukraine’s plodding counteroffensive puts pressure on Western resolve.PARIS — Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, was once known as “Sarko the American” for his love of free markets, freewheeling debate and Elvis. Of late, however, he has appeared more like “Sarko the Russian,” even as President Vladimir V. Putin’s ruthlessness appears more evident than ever.In interviews coinciding with the publication of a memoir, Mr. Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, said that reversing Russia’s annexation of Crimea was “illusory,” ruled out Ukraine joining the European Union or NATO because it must remain “neutral,” and insisted that Russia and France “need each other.”“People tell me Vladimir Putin isn’t the same man that I met. I don’t find that convincing. I’ve had tens of conversations with him. He is not irrational,” he told Le Figaro. “European interests aren’t aligned with American interests this time,” he added.His statements, to the newspaper as well as the TF1 television network, were unusual for a former president in that they are profoundly at odds with official French policy. They provoked outrage from the Ukrainian ambassador to France and condemnation from several French politicians, including President Emmanuel Macron.The remarks also underscored the strength of the lingering pockets of pro-Putin sympathy that persist in Europe. Those voices have been muffled since Europe forged a unified stand against Russia, through successive rounds of economic sanctions against Moscow and military aid to Kyiv.The possibility they may grow louder appears to have risen as Ukraine’s counteroffensive has proved underwhelming so far. “The fact the counteroffensive has not worked up to now means a very long war of uncertain outcome,” said Nicole Bacharan, a political scientist at Sciences Po, a university in Paris. “There is the risk of political and financial weariness among Western powers that would weaken Ukraine.”A destroyed bridge in Bohorodychne, Ukraine. It is now used as a foot crossing for residents.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesIn France, Germany, Italy and elsewhere, not even the evident atrocities of the Russian onslaught against Ukraine have stripped away the affinity for Russia traditionally found on the far right and far left. This also extends at times to establishment politicians like Mr. Sarkozy, who feel some ideological kinship with Moscow, blame NATO expansion eastward for the war, or eye monetary gain.From Germany, where former Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is the most prominent Putin supporter, to Italy where a former prime minister, Giuseppe Conte of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement has spoken out against arms shipments to Ukraine, some politicians seem unswerving in their support for Mr. Putin.France, like Germany, has always had a significant number of Russophiles and admirers of Mr. Putin, whatever his amply illustrated readiness to eliminate opponents — most recently, it seems, his sometime sidekick turned upstart rival, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who led a brief mutiny two months ago.The sympathizers range from Mr. Sarkozy’s Gaullist center right, with its simmering resentment of American power in Europe and admiration for strong leaders, to Marine Le Pen’s far right, enamored of Mr. Putin’s stand for family, faith and fatherland against a supposedly decadent West. The extreme left, in a hangover from Soviet times, also has a lingering sympathy for Russia that the 18-month-long war has not eradicated.Still Mr. Sarkozy’s outspokenness was striking, as was his unequivocal pro-Russian tone and provocative timing.“Gaullist equidistance between the United States and Russia is an old story, but what Sarkozy said was shocking,” Ms. Bacharan said. “We are at war and democracies stand with Ukraine, while the autocracies of the world are with Mr. Putin.”The obstinacy of the French right’s emotional bond with Russia owes much to a recurrent Gallic great-power itch and to the resentment of the extent of American postwar dominance, evident in the current French-led quest for European “strategic autonomy.” Even President Macron, a centrist, said as recently as 2019 that “Russia is European, very profoundly so, and we believe in this Europe that stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok.”President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, left, during a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France in Moscow in February 2022.Sputnik, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWith Mr. Putin, Russian rapprochement has also been about money. Ms. Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party took a Russian loan; former Prime Minister François Fillon joined the boards of two Russian firms (before quitting last year in protest at the war); and Mr. Sarkozy himself has been under investigation since 2021 over a €3 million, or about $3.2 million, contract with a Russian insurance company.This financial connection with Moscow has undermined Mr. Sarkozy’s credibility, but not made him less vocal.He urged Mr. Macron, with whom he regularly confers, to “renew dialogue” with Mr. Putin, called for the “ratification” of Crimea’s annexation through an internationally supervised referendum, and said referendums should also be organized in the eastern Donbas region to settle how land there is divided between Ukraine and Russia.Rather than occupied territory, the Donbas is clearly negotiable territory to Mr. Sarkozy; as for Crimea, it’s part of Russia. Dmitri Medvedev, the former Russian president and now virulent assailant of the West, hailed Mr. Sarkozy’s “good sense” in opposing those who provide missiles “to the Nazis of Kyiv.”Commenting on Mr. Sarkozy in the daily Libération, the journalist Serge July wrote: “Realism suggests that the meager results of the Ukrainian counteroffensive have suddenly redrawn the Russia map. Supporters who had remained discreet are finding their way back to the microphones. One recalls the words of Edgar Faure, a star of the Fourth Republic: ‘It’s not the weather vane that turns but the wind.’”If the West’s goal was to leverage major military gains through the Ukrainian counteroffensive into a favorable Ukrainian negotiating position with Moscow — as suggested earlier this year by senior officials in Washington and Europe — then that scenario looks distant for the moment.A member of the Ukrainian Marine Brigade getting into position on the southern front this month.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesThis, in turn, may place greater pressure over time on Western unity and resolve as the U.S. presidential election looms next year.Mr. Putin, having apparently shored up his 23-year-old rule through the killing of Mr. Prigozhin, may be playing for time. It was not for nothing that Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who clashed with Donald J. Trump over the former president’s demands that Mr. Raffensperger change the results of the 2020 election, was bizarrely included in a list of people banned from Russia that was published in May.As nods and winks to Mr. Trump go, this was pretty conspicuous.Mr. Macron responded to Mr. Sarkozy by saying their positions were different and that France “recognizes neither the annexation by Russian of Ukrainian territory, nor the results of parodies of elections that were organized.” Several French politicians expressed outrage at Mr. Sarkozy’s views.Over the course of the war, Mr. Macron’s position itself has evolved from outreach to Putin, in the form of numerous phone calls with him and a statement that Russia should not be “humiliated,” toward strong support of the Ukrainian cause and of President Volodymyr Zelensky.There have been echoes of Mr. Sarkozy’s stance elsewhere in Europe, even if Western resolve in standing with Ukraine does not appear to have fundamentally shifted.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, left, and former President Nicolas Sarkozy of France in 2007 in Moscow.ReutersMr. Schröder, Germany’s former chancellor and, in retirement, a Russian gas lobbyist close to Mr. Putin, attended a Victory Day celebration at the Russian embassy in Berlin in May. Tino Chrupalla, the co-chairman of the far-right Alternative for Deutschland, or AfD, as it is known in Germany, was also present.A significant minority in Germany’s Social Democratic party retains some sympathy for Moscow. In June, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has overseen military aid to Ukraine worth billions of dollars and views the Russian invasion a historical “turning point” that obliges German to wean itself of its post-Nazi hesitation over the use of force, faced heckles of “warmonger” as he gave a speech to the party.This month, in a reversal, Mr. Scholz’s government retreated from making a legal commitment to spending two percent of GDP on defense annually, a NATO target it had previously embraced, Reuters reported. Disquiet over military rather than social spending is rising in Europe as the war in Ukraine grinds on.Many people in what was formerly East Germany, part of the Soviet imperium until shortly before German unification in 1990, look favorably on Moscow. A poll conducted in May found that 73 percent of West Germans backed sanctions against Russia, compared with 56 percent of those living in the East. The AfD has successfully exploited this division by calling itself the peace party.“I could not have imagined that German tanks would once again head in the direction of Russia,” said Karsten Hilse, one of the more voluble Russia sympathizers within the AfD, alluding to tanks provided to Ukraine.In Italy, the most vocal supporter of Mr. Putin was Silvio Berlusconi, the four-time prime minister who died a few months ago. Giorgia Meloni, who as prime minister leads a far-right government, has held to a pro-Ukrainian line, despite the sympathies of far-right movements throughout Europe for Mr. Putin.Mr. Conte, the former Italian prime minister, declared recently that “the military strategy is not working,” even as it takes a devastating financial toll.In France, Ségolène Royal, a prominent former socialist candidate for the presidency who has denounced Ukrainian claims of Russian atrocities as “propaganda,” announced this week that she intended to lead a united left-wing group in European Parliament elections next year. It was another small sign of a potential resurgence of pro-Russian sentiment.Mr. Putin has used frozen conflicts to his advantage in Georgia and elsewhere. If there is no victory for either side in Ukraine before the U.S. election in November 2024, “the outcome of the war will be decided in the United States,” Ms. Bacharan said.Reporting was contributed by Christopher F. Schuetze in Berlin, Juliette Guéron-Gabrielle in Paris and Gaia Pianigiani in Rome. More

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      How European Officials View a Possible Second Trump Term

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      The prospect of a second presidential term for Donald J. Trump has many officials worried about alliance cohesion, NATO and the war in Ukraine.For most European governments, it is almost too upsetting to think about, let alone debate in public. But the prospect that Donald J. Trump could win the Republican nomination for the presidency and return to the White House is a prime topic of private discussion.“It’s slightly terrifying, it’s fair to say,” said Steven Everts, a European Union diplomat who is soon to become the director of the European Union Institute for Security Studies. “We were relieved by President Biden and his response to Ukraine,” Mr. Everts said, “but now we’re forced to confront the Trump question again.”Given the enormous role the United States plays in European security,” he added, “we now have to think again about what this means for our own politics, for European defense and for Ukraine itself.”The talk is intensifying as Mr. Trump, despite the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his various indictments, is running well ahead of his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination and is neck-and-neck with President Biden in early opinion polls.In general, Central Europeans are more convinced that they can manage a second Trump presidency, but Western Europeans are dreading the prospect, especially in Germany, about which Mr. Trump seems to feel significant antipathy.During his presidency, Mr. Trump threatened to pull out of NATO and withheld aid to Ukraine as it struggled with a Russian-backed insurgency, the subject of his first impeachment. He ordered the withdrawal of thousands of American troops from Germany, a move later overturned by Mr. Biden, and spoke with admiration of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.Mr. Trump with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Osaka, Japan, in 2019. Mr. Trump, who has praised the Russian leader, said he would end the war in Ukraine in a day.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesToday, with Europe and Russia locked in conflict over Ukraine, and Mr. Putin making veiled threats about nuclear weapons and a wider war, the question of American commitment takes on even greater importance. Mr. Trump recently said that he would end the war in a day, presumably by forcing Ukraine to make territorial concessions.A second Trump term “would be different from the first, and much worse,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a former German government official who is now with the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. “Trump has experience now and knows what levers to pull, and he’s angry,” he said.Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff said he remembered talking with then-Chancellor Angela Merkel the night she returned from her first meeting with Mr. Trump as president. As usual, she was “all about managing the man as she had managed dozens of powerful men,” he said. “But no one will think” they can manage “Trump Two.”Several European officials declined to talk on the record about the prospect of another Trump presidency. They do not want to engage in American domestic politics, but they also may need to deal with Mr. Trump if he is elected, and some say they remember him as vindictive about criticism.Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany engaging with Mr. Trump during a Group of 7 summit in Canada in 2018. Many of their exchanges were notoriously frosty.Jesco Denzel/German Federal Government, via Associated PressFor many European officials, Mr. Biden restored the continuity of the United States’ commitment to Europe since World War II: a dependable, even indispensable, ally whose presence eased frictions among former European rivals and allowed the continent to cohere, while providing an ironclad security guarantee.In the view of Mr. Trump and his supporters, that relationship allowed Europe to shirk spending on its own defense, a resentment that fueled Mr. Trump’s threats to reduce or withdraw American commitments.“The NATO alliance is not a treaty commitment so much as a trust commitment,” said Ivo Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO. Given the doubts Mr. Trump raised in his first term, his return as president “could mean the end of the alliance, legally or not.”In conversations with Europeans, Mr. Daalder said, “they are deeply, deeply concerned about the 2024 election and how it will impact the alliance. No matter the topic, Ukraine or NATO cohesion, it’s the only question asked.”Jan Techau, a former German defense official now with Eurasia Group, said that in the worst case, a United States that turned its back would set off “an existential problem” for Europe at a moment when both China and Russia are working avidly to divide Europeans.President Biden delivering a speech in Lithuania during meetings with NATO leaders in July. In remarks, he affirmed his support for Ukraine in the war.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAbsent American engagement, “there would be a destructive scramble for influence,” he said.For Germany, Mr. Techau said, there would be the difficult question: Should Berlin be the backbone of a collective European defense without the Americans, or would it try to make its own deal with Russia and Mr. Putin?France would most likely try to step in, having long advocated European strategic autonomy, but few believe it can provide the same kind of nuclear and security guarantee for the continent, even together with Britain, that Washington does.President Emmanuel Macron of France has made it clear that he believes a politically polarized United States, more focused on China, will inevitably reduce its commitments to Europe. He has been pushing Europeans to do more for their own defense and interests, which are not perfectly aligned with Washington’s.So far he has largely failed in that ambition and, given the war in Ukraine, has instead embraced a stronger European pillar within NATO. But even Mr. Macron would not welcome an American withdrawal from the alliance.“It’s absolutely clear that Putin intends to continue the war, at least until the American elections, and hopes for Trump,” as does China’s leader, Xi Jinping, said Thomas Gomart, the director of the French Institute of International Relations. “It could be a big shock for Europeans.”A Trump victory, Mr. Gomart said, would most likely mean less American support for Ukraine, more pressure on Kyiv to settle, and more pressure on the Europeans to deal with Mr. Putin themselves, “which we are not ready to do militarily.”Ukrainian soldiers with an American tactical vehicle during training near Kyiv, Ukraine, in March. A Trump victory could mean less U.S. support for Ukraine.Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesThere is also concern that a Trump victory could breathe new life into anti-democratic forces in Europe.Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016 gave a major boost to European populist politics, and another victory would almost surely do the same, a major worry in France, where Marine Le Pen, a far-right leader, could succeed Mr. Macron.Even in Mr. Trump’s absence, the far-right Alternative for Germany, which Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has under surveillance as a threat to the Constitution, is for the moment the country’s second-most popular party.Dominique Moïsi, a French analyst with Institut Montaigne, a research organization, said a second Trump term would be “catastrophic” for Europe’s resistance to populism.Mr. Trump is a prince of chaos, Mr. Moïsi said, and with a war raging in Europe, and China open about its ambitions, “the prospect of an America yielding to its isolationist instinct” and embracing populism “is simply scary.”Not everyone in Europe would be unwelcoming, to be sure.Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has long celebrated ties to Mr. Trump and his wing of the Republican Party. Mr. Orban and his self-styled “illiberal democracy” is considered a sort of model by the hard right, especially his defense of what he considers traditional gender roles and of religion and his antipathy toward uncontrolled migration.Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary speaking at a Conservative Political Action Conference gathering last year in Texas. He is revered by a wing of the American political right.Emil Lippe for The New York TimesIn Poland, too, the governing Law and Justice party shares many of the same views and criticisms of established elites. It had excellent relations with Mr. Trump and succeeded in getting American troops sent to Poland.“The view in the government and in a large part of the strategic community here was that the worst didn’t happen — he didn’t sell us out to the Russians,” said Michal Baranowski of the German Marshall Fund in Warsaw. “There was a feeling that the West Europeans were freaking out a bit too much,” he said.The big question for Poland, which has been fiercely pro-Ukrainian, is what Mr. Trump and the Republicans would do about Ukraine.Mr. Baranowski said that recent discussions in Washington with officials from the conservative Heritage Foundation had given him the impression that there would be significant continuity on Ukraine.“But Trump is unpredictable to an uncomfortable degree for everyone,” he said. More

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      Rise of Far Right Leaves Germany’s Conservatives at a Crossroads

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      The surge of the Alternative for Germany party has shaken the country’s political establishment. But for mainstream conservatives, it has also prompted an acute identity crisis.Mario Voigt, a leader of Germany’s mainstream conservative party, has watched with concern the slow but steady string of victories notched by the far-right Alternative for Germany, known as the AfD.In his home state of Thuringia, in eastern Germany, the AfD just last month won the district administrator’s seat, giving the far right bureaucratic authority over an area for the first time.Since the spring, the AfD has only gathered momentum. The party has gained at least four points in polls since May, rising to 20 percent support and overtaking the country’s governing center-left Social Democrats to become Germany’s second-strongest party. A more recent poll, released on Sunday, put the AfD at a record high of 22 percent support.The AfD is now nipping at the heels of Mr. Voight’s own Christian Democratic Union, or C.D.U., the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, which remains the country’s most popular but now sits in opposition.“Now is the critical juncture,” Mr. Voigt said in an interview. “We have to understand, if we are not showing or portraying ourselves as the real opposition in Germany, people will defect to the Alternative for Germany.”The ascent of the AfD, a party widely viewed as a threat to Germany’s democratic fabric, has posed a crisis for the country’s entire political establishment, but an especially acute one for the Christian Democrats, who are struggling openly with how to deal with the challenge.Should they pivot further right themselves and risk their centrist identity? Should they continue to try to isolate the AfD? Or, as that becomes increasingly difficult, should they break longstanding norms and work with the AfD instead?Those questions have bedeviled not only the Christian Democrats in Germany but also other mainstream conservative parties around Europe as nationalist and hard-right parties have made strides. Most recently, in Spain, the conservative Popular Party began partnering with the far-right Vox party at a local level. It even seemed prepared to do so nationally, until Spanish voters rebuked Vox in elections on Sunday.As state parliament elections approach in eastern Germany, including in Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony, finding answers is urgent for the country’s Christian Democrats. Eyeing potential victories in the former East Germany, the AfD has vowed to foment a “political earthquake” in the months ahead.For now, the AfD has the political winds at its back. Germany’s support for Ukraine as it fends off Russia’s invasion — and the energy and refugee crises the war has provoked — has fueled German anxiety and, along with it, support for the AfD.As the current government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, tries to reorient Germany’s economic and security policies, critics say it has not made its case convincingly enough for many Germans.But neither, perhaps, has the C.D.U. in opposition.Chancellor Olaf Scholz, center, during a visit to a Siemens plant in Erlangen, Germany, this month.Pool photo by Ronald Wittek“The C.D.U., its more moderate worldview and its moderate position is not really equipped for the situation of this time, when we are having a war, when we have in the energy crisis, with high costs and now with a government which tries to ideologically influence people’s lives,” Mr. Voigt, the leader of the C.D.U. in Thuringia’s state parliament, said.“This together, in my opinion, forces the C.D.U. to answer the question: What is your DNA? What is your different perspective?”It is a remarkable round of public soul-searching from a party that as recently as 2021 had a lock on political power in Berlin for nearly two decades under Ms. Merkel. But now the party is engaged in a sometimes messy public debate over how to meet an angrier, more uncertain time.Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democrats, in a television interview on Sunday night appeared to open the door to working with the far-right AfD in local governments. The party had previously vowed never to cooperate at any level with the AfD, which Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has classified as a “suspected” extremist organization.“At the municipal level, party politics have advanced a bit too far anyway,” he said. “There has now been elected a district administrator in Thuringia. And, of course, this is a democratic election. In Saxony-Anhalt, in a small community, a mayor has been elected who belongs to the AfD. And, of course, this is a democratic election. We also have to accept that.”After members of his own party bristled at his comments, Mr. Merz walked them back. One of his deputies, Carsten Linneman, said that Mr. Merz was merely pointing out the policy’s “difficult implementation on the ground.”“If it’s about a new day care center in the local Parliament, for example, we can’t vote against it just because the #AfD is voting along,” Mr. Linneman said in a statement. “We do not make ourselves dependent on right-wing radicals.”The leader of the Christian Democratic Union in Thuringia’s state parliament, Mario Voigt, voting in Erfurt, Germany, in 2020.Filip Singer/EPA, via ShutterstockNorbert Röttgen, a C.D.U. lawmaker in Parliament, called recent polling showing the AfD’s ascent “a disaster” and “an alarm signal” for “all parties of the center.”His party, he said, needed to “ask itself self-critically why we are not benefiting in practice from such great dissatisfaction with the government.”Some political experts view the resurgence of the AfD as a rejection of Ms. Merkel’s policies — particularly her immigration and climate-friendly stances. That has created a particularly awkward situation for current members of the party.To win back voters, “it will be necessary to reject some of the policies of Merkel,” said Torsten Oppelland, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Jena in Thuringia. But, he added, doing so ran the risk of alienating others.The Christian Democrats, he said, “will go on being an important party. But for winning governing majorities, it’s a huge problem.”Many in the party have declared that they will never resort to pushing the kind of far-right, populist rhetoric that the AfD traffics in. Markus Söder, the head of the state in Bavaria, has warned that the party cannot campaign on a message of “anger and frustration.”“Repeating and chasing after populists does not bring any positive results; on the contrary, it strengthens the right-wing original and not the copy,” Mr. Söder told a local newspaper. “I will not risk Bavaria’s political decency for a fleeting percent of approval in the populist area.”Yet some in the party have begun tilting further right. Mr. Merz this month replaced a top party aide responsible for day-to-day political strategy with a more conservative member.Much of the party’s angst has been channeled into pummeling the climate-friendly Greens, a part of Chancellor Scholz’s governing coalition. Conservatives blame the Greens for stoking anti-Berlin sentiment in the more rural, economically depressed areas where the AfD enjoys strong support.And whereas Ms. Merkel famously declared “We can do it!” at the peak of Europe’s immigration crisis in 2015, Mr. Merz has adopted a more hawkish tone.An asylum seeker taking a selfie with then-Chancellor Angela Merkel after her visit to registration center in Berlin in 2015.Bernd Von Jutrczenka/DPA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“The refugee crisis is present again, combined with the uneasy feeling that there is always enough money for refugees, but less and less for kindergartens, schools and hospitals,” he wrote in a recent edition of his newsletter, explaining the rise of the AfD.Mr. Voight believes the Christian Democrats can still find electoral success with the party’s “pragmatism” and “moderate worldview.” But its message, he said, must be “understood at people’s tables.”“You have to tear down this wall in a way,” Mr. Voigt said, to bring AfD-friendly voters “over to the good side of politics, the democratic side. They have frustration, they have anger, you have to address it. And you have to talk to them in a language that they understand.”Jan Redmann, the party leader in Brandenburg, said in an interview that he believed that C.D.U. members had inadvertently allowed the AfD to define their positions on crucial issues like immigration, because they “tried not to be mixed up with” the far-right party.“People want a government that secures the borders — people are against illegal trafficking, against illegal migration,” Mr. Redmann said. “And if no party in the democratic field is giving them this position, it makes the AfD stronger.”An Alternative for Germany campaign poster in Saxony-Anhalt this month.Filip Singer/EPA, via ShutterstockEkaterina Bodyagina More

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      Far-Right Party Gaining in Spain

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      As Spain prepares for elections, some liberal European politicians fear that the hard-right Vox party could become the first right-wing party since the Franco era to enter Spain’s national government.Last month, after Spain’s conservative and hard-right parties crushed the left in local elections, the winners in Elche, a small southeastern town known for an ancient sculpture and shoe exports, signed an agreement with consequences for the future of Spain — and the rest of Europe.The candidate from the conservative Popular Party had a chance to govern, but he needed the hard-right Vox party, which, in return for its support during council votes, received the deputy mayor position and a new administrative body to defend the traditional family. They inked their deal under the cross of the local church.“This coalition model could be a good model for the whole of Spain,” said Pablo Ruz Villanueva, Elche’s new mayor, referring to upcoming national elections on July 23, which most polls suggest will oust the liberal prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party. The new deputy mayor from Vox, Aurora Rodil Martínez, went further: “My party will do everything that’s necessary to make that happen.”If Ms. Rodil’s wish comes true, with Vox joining a coalition with more moderate conservatives, it would become the first right-wing party since the dictatorship of Francisco Franco to enter the national government.The rise of Vox is part of an increasing trend of hard-right parties surging in popularity and, in some cases, gaining power by entering governments as junior partners.People walking through the old part of Elche, Spain.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesThe parties have differences but generally fear the economic ramifications of globalization, and say that their countries will lose their national identities to migration, often from non-Christian or nonwhite-majority countries, but also to an empowered European Union that they believe looks after only the elites. Their steady advances have added urgency to a now pressing debate among liberals over how to outflank a suddenly more influential right.Some argue that the hard right needs to be marginalized, as was the case for more than a half-century after World War II. Others fear that the hard right has grown too large to be ignored and that the only choice is to bring them into governing in the hopes of normalizing them.In Sweden, the government now depends on the parliamentary votes of a party with neo-Nazi roots, and has given it some sway in policymaking. In Finland, where the right has ascended into the governing coalition, the nationalist Finns party has risked destabilizing it, with a key minister from that far-right party resigning last month after it emerged that he had made “Heil Hitler” jokes.On Friday, the Dutch government led by Mark Rutte, a conservative and the Netherlands’ longest serving prime minister, collapsed because more centrist parties in his coalition considered his efforts to curb migration too harsh. Mr. Rutte has had to guard his right flank against surging populists and a longstanding hard-right party.In Italy, the far right has taken power on its own. But so far, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, politically reared in parties born from the ashes of Fascism and a close ally of Spain’s Vox, has governed more moderately than many in Europe expected — bolstering some analysts’ argument that the reality of governing can be a moderating force.Elsewhere, hard-right parties are breaking through in countries where they had recently seemed contained.Elche’s new mayor, Pablo Ruz Villanueva, left, and deputy mayor, Aurora Rodil Martínez, in their office last month in Elche, Spain.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesIn France, the once fringe party of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen has become an established force as entrenched anger against President Emmanuel Macron has newly exploded over issues like pension changes and the integration and policing of the country’s minority communities. He is not running again and the election is years away, but liberals across Europe shuddered when she passed him in some recent polls.And in Germany, where the right has long been taboo, economic uncertainty and a new surge in arrivals by asylum seekers has helped resurrect the far-right Alternative for Germany party. It is now the leading party in the formerly Communist eastern states, according to polls, and is even gaining popularity in the wealthier and more liberal west.While the parties in different countries do not have identical proposals, they generally want to close the doors to and cut benefits off for migrants; hit the pause, or reverse, button when it comes to L.G.B.T.Q. rights; and stake out more protectionist trade policies. Some are suspicious of NATO and dubious about climate change and sending arms to Ukraine.Supporters of the hard-right Italian politician Giorgia Meloni in Rome before the general elections that she won in 2022.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesIn a seeming recognition that the continent’s political complexion is changing, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said in Spain this past week that the European Union needed to deliver tangible results in order to counter “extremist” forces.In Spain, where the conservative Popular Party has a good chance of finishing first in the coming election, Esteban González Pons, a leading party official, said that bringing hard-right parties, like Vox, into government was a way to neutralize them. But he acknowledged that strategy carried risks.“First, the bad scenario: We can legitimize Vox,” he said.“Then, there is a second chance: We can normalize Vox,” he said, adding that if they governed well, “Vox will be another party, a conservative party inside of the system.”For now, the situation is fluid and there are indications that Mr. Sánchez and his leftist allies are gaining support. Vox also appears to be losing ground as the Sánchez campaign and well-known artists and liberals throughout Spain have focused on the threat of conservatives bringing Vox into the government.A Pride flag hanging on a house in Náquera, Spain.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesSpain seemed in recent years to be a bright spot for liberals. Under Mr. Sánchez, Spain has kept inflation low, reduced tensions with separatists in Catalonia, and increased the growth rate, pensions and the minimum wage. He is also generally popular in the European Union.But the alliance between Mr. Sánchez and deeply polarizing separatists and far-left forces has fed resentment among many voters.Mr. González Pons, a leading official of the Popular Party, does not think that worries about Vox possibly joining forces with his conservatives are entirely off base. “We are pro-European and Vox is not,” he said, adding that Vox “would prefer something like a general Brexit, for all the countries to recover their own sovereignty.” He said Vox had views on gay rights and violence against women that “are red lines for us.”Those lines started to show as the new leaders of Elche sat on leather armchairs in the mayor’s office last week and sought to put up a united front. Mr. Ruz, the mayor from the conservative Popular Party, and his deputy from Vox, Ms. Rodil, took turns bashing the prime minister. But when pressed, the mayor acknowledged that his party recognized gay marriage, and that he was queasier about hard-right parties like Alternative for Germany than his “partner.” Still, he said, the Popular Party and Vox had similar voters, just different approaches to “implementation.”Far-right supporters of Spain’s Vox party during a recent rally in Barcelona.Samuel Aranda for The New York Times“Can I say something regarding that?” Ms. Rodil said with a coy smile. “We have a stance that is maybe a little firmer.” Vox, she said, believes in the “sovereignty of nations” and would like to make it more difficult for women to have abortions, positions that she said some people in the mayor’s party “do not defend.” She said the “ambiguous” stances of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Popular Party’s leader, were “worrying.”Many, instead, are worried about Vox.“We have seen populism, supported by the center-right, grow in small towns,” said Carlos González Serna, the former socialist mayor of Elche, who lost the election. He said that instead of cordoning off the extreme right, mainstream conservatives had given it an “umbilical cord” of legitimacy.The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, split from the Popular Party amid a slush-fund scandal in 2013. The party’s popularity grew in 2018 as more migrants arrived by sea to Spain than to any other European country. The nationalist Vox was also well positioned to exploit a backlash to the Catalonian independence movement.But Vox has also found support among Spaniards unhappy with their country’s progressive shift on climate change and social issues, including gay rights and feminism. Their campaign billboards have included candidates throwing L.G.B.T.Q., feminist and other symbols in the trash. In the town of Náquera, near Elche, the newly elected mayor from the Vox party has ordered the removal of Pride flags from municipal buildings.Migrants having breakfast on a rooftop in 2018 in Barcelona. That year, more migrants arrived by sea to Spain than to any other European country.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesOne resident, a 45-year-old truck driver named Maximo Ibañez, said he voted for Vox because the party spoke clearly, but also because he feels that Spain’s pioneering laws to explicitly protect women against gender-based violence — complete with special courts and tougher sentences — discriminate against men.“It’s women who have the right to presumption of innocence here,” he said.One of Vox’s regional leaders has joked that some women were too unattractive to be gang raped, and another said that “women are more belligerent because they don’t have penises.”Ms. Rodil, the new deputy mayor of Elche with Vox, said that her party had no quarrel with women, just with the notion that domestic violence should be seen through gender-based ideology, and that a man, “just for being a man, is bad, that he has a gene that makes him violent.”She argued that Mr. Sánchez’s government had endangered women with botched legislation that had the potential to let sex offenders out of jail. Mr. Sánchez has apologized for the inadvertent effects of the so-called yes-is-yes law, which was intended to categorize all non-consensual sex as rape, but which, through changes to sentencing requirements, has risked reducing jail time or setting free potentially hundreds of sex offenders.As many in Europe say the time has come to start taking right-wing parties more seriously, some voters in Elche regretted not having taken Vox seriously enough.“I didn’t think that they were going to form a government and the fact that they have has surprised me,” Isabel Chinchilla, 67, said in a plaza that features three statues of the Virgin Mary. “I will vote in the national elections so that this doesn’t happen again, because they are very reactionary in their vision of society.”Maximo Ibañez, right, a truck driver who said he voted for Vox, at a bar in Náquera, Spain.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesRachel Chaundler More

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      The Supreme Court’s Rejection of a Disputed Legal Theory on Elections

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      More from our inbox:Race and ClassDemand Tax Relief‘Make Reading Fun Again’The German Far Right Should Worry Us AllThe case will have no practical impact in the dispute that gave rise to it, involving North Carolina’s congressional voting map. The state has waged many battles over redistricting.Gerry Broome/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Court Rules State Control of U.S. Voting Has Limits” (front page, June 28):Several high-profile cases were decided by the Supreme Court this month, but only one, Moore v. Harper, had the potential to affect the very lifeblood of our democracy — voting. This election law case considered, in part, a controversial constitutional theory known as the “independent state legislature” doctrine.At issue was whether or not state legislatures had absolute power with no electoral oversight authority by state courts to regulate federal elections. With unchecked power, state legislators in key swing states could have rejected the voters’ slate of electors and appointed their handpicked substitutes.The Supreme Court has an obligation to protect our democracy. By rejecting the dangerous independent state legislature theory, the court safeguarded state-level judiciaries, shielding the will of the voters in the process.Jim PaladinoTampa, Fla.To the Editor:In the 6-to-3 Supreme Court ruling Tuesday in Moore v. Harper, the fact that a supermajority including both Democratic and Republican appointees reaffirmed the American constitutional order is the latest example that the Republican-appointed justices are not in the hip pocket of Donald Trump and the extreme right of the Republican Party.This should provide comfort for those who believe in the separation of powers as prescribed in our Constitution.John A. ViterittiLaurel, N.Y.To the Editor:Adam Liptak writes about the Supreme Court’s ruling that soundly dismissed the “independent state legislature” theory.The article quotes Richard L. Hasen, a U.C.L.A. law professor and leading election law scholar, who said the ruling giving the Supreme Court the ultimate say in federal election disputes was “a bad, but not awful, result.”It seems globally accepted that legal disputes, including election disputes, should be decided by courts, and that in federal democracies, the highest national courts are best suited to have the last word in federal election cases.While it is common for politicians and lawyers worldwide to dismiss international best practices based on the uniqueness of their legal systems, in the U.S., too, only the Supreme Court can ensure consistency across all states and thus protect the integrity of federal elections.Jurij ToplakNew YorkThe writer is a visiting professor at Fordham University School of Law.To the Editor:In your article the Supreme Court justices whose opinions pose a threat to voting rights and democracy are referred to as “conservative.” The justices’ positions are not “conservative,” if conservative refers to those who are committed to preserve traditional institutions, practices and values.I would ask that The Times consider a better word to describe these justices, whose positions on legal issues are heavily influenced by considerations of preserving Republican rule, class structures and Christian ideological dominance.Cindy WeinbaumAtlantaRace and Class Pablo DelcanTo the Editor:Re “Reparations Should Be an End, Not a Beginning,” by John McWhorter (Opinion, June 26):Providing support for those who have been hurt by past discrimination is an important step in alleviating the harm caused by America’s long history of racism.However, including all who are economically disadvantaged in any initiatives, as Professor McWhorter suggests, will broaden support for affirmative action programs while assisting more people who need a hand up.Ignoring this slice of the populace is what has led to simmering resentment in many communities and to the election of Donald Trump in 2016.Rather than pitting groups against one another, we should strive to lift up the fallen, regardless of the origin of people’s suffering.Edwin AndrewsMalden, Mass.Demand Tax ReliefHomeowners 65 or older with income of less than $500,000 could qualify for a property tax cut of as much as $6,500 a year.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Property Taxes Could Be Cut in Half for Older New Jersey Homeowners” (news article, June 22):As a suburban homeowner in Nassau County in New York, I find it reassuring to see neighboring New Jersey working hard to address the problem of high property taxes. It just approved a property tax reduction program for homeowners 65-plus called StayNJ, designed to offset some of the highest property taxes in the country.The people of New York State must demand that their elected officials pass similar relief for their constituents, who also live in a state with high property taxes. We are still suffering from a $10,000 state and local taxes deduction cap on our federal income tax that was passed under former President Donald Trump.Congressional Democrats promised to repeal this as one of their legislative priorities and have failed to keep their promise so far. So it is up to us to demand action from the New York State Legislature.Philip A. Paoli Jr.Seaford, N.Y.‘Make Reading Fun Again’To the Editor:Re “13-Year-Olds in U.S. Record Lowest Test Scores in Decades” (news article, June 22):The latest data is out on reading scores for 13-year-olds in the U.S., and it’s not good. Children’s reading levels are at their lowest in decades.In your article, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics states, “This is a huge-scale challenge that faces the nation.”Indeed, we see this challenge every day in the faces of children in our homes, schools and communities. We are responding by bolstering instruction, tutoring and summer learning, all of which offer reason to hope.But what stood out to me most in this story was that fewer kids report reading for fun, with 31 percent saying they “never or hardly ever” read for fun, compared with 22 percent in 2012.Could reigniting a love for reading and the joy of books be an answer we’re missing to this problem? Imagine every child with an abundant home library, cuddled up with a parent or under the covers reading a book, starting from birth.At a time when our education system is struggling, and life is hard for so many children, let’s make reading fun again!Mary MathewDurham, N.C.The writer is director of advocacy for Book Harvest, which provides books and literacy support to children and families.The German Far Right Should Worry Us AllAn AfD demonstration on energy security and inflation, outside of the Reichstag in Berlin in October.Christoph Soeder/DPA, via Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “As German Worries About Future Rise, Far-Right Party Surges” (news article, June 21):The expanding and emboldened far-right element in Germany is not solely a concern for Germans; it is also troubling for the international community in general and Jews in particular.Extremism fueled by xenophobia and a deep sense of nationalism in a country that carried out the systematic murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust is foreboding and a grave threat to democracy.With global antisemitism increasing at an alarming rate and Nazism experiencing an unsettling resurgence, the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany and the political gains that it has made are a proverbial red flag.When extremism becomes normalized and gains a foothold in the mainstream political arena and people flagrantly fan the flames of fanaticism, we have a societal and moral obligation to sound the alarm.N. Aaron TroodlerBala Cynwyd, Pa. More