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    German Court Convicts Five Over Plot to Kidnap Health Official and Spread Chaos

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    The defendants, part of a group known as “United Patriots,” aimed to reinstate a 19th-century Constitution by giving power to an all-powerful Kaiser.Five people have been sentenced to prison over what the authorities in Germany described as a plot to kidnap the country’s health minister on live television in 2022 in an attempt to destabilize the German state.After a nearly two-year trial, a court found on Thursday that the five, under a group billed as the “United Patriots,” had planned to create a widespread weekslong power outage and then use the chaos to reinstate a 19th-century Constitution ceding power to an all-powerful Kaiser.They were convicted of founding or joining a terrorist group, of treason and in some cases of owning illegal guns, rifles and explosives.Jörn Müller, a spokesman for the court, in Koblenz in western Germany, said the trial had “shown that a democratic constitutional state is capable of dealing with its alleged opponents on the basis of law and order in a fair and independent trial.”The court sentenced a 46-year-old man whom it had determined to be the group’s central figure to eight years in prison. A 77-year-old woman who holds a Ph.D. in theology and frequently interrupted the court hearings with antisemitic and conspiracy-theory-laced diatribes was handed a sentence of seven years and nine months. Three other men, all in their 50s, received sentences ranging from six and a half years to two years and 10 months.In accordance with German privacy laws, the court identified the defendants only by their initials.The five were part of the Reichsbürger scene, a loosely affiliated antisemitic far-right grouping that does not accept the legitimacy of the modern German state. Their planned overthrow was not directly related to a far more complex, and far more dangerous, plot surrounding a disgruntled prince that is currently being tried in three separate courts in Germany.After meeting and radicalizing on a Telegram chat group during the pandemic, members of the plot tried to buy and hoard weapons and other tools for their plans, according to the case brought by the prosecutors. Police searches after their arrest in 2022 yielded 52 packets of low-grade explosives, with which the authorities said the group hoped to use to disable large parts of the power grid.Members of the group were arrested while trying to buy AK-47 assault rifles, mines and bulletproof vests. The seller was an undercover police officer and the exchange was a setup.The five convicted on Thursday had focused their ire on Germany’s health minister, Karl Lauterbach, a medical doctor and former professor who has taught at the Harvard School of Public Health. During the pandemic, he was an outspoken proponent of vaccination rules, often appearing on television panel shows to explain the medical science behind the spread of the coronavirus.On Thursday, he thanked the German police for keeping him safe. “The state has shown that it can defend itself against violent conspiracy theorists,” he said on social media. More

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      Springfield, Ohio, Sues Neo-Nazi Group, Saying It Intimidated Haitians

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      In the lawsuit, the city states that people associated with the group made death threats last year against those who expressed support for Haitian residents.The city of Springfield, Ohio, which was singled out by Donald J. Trump and JD Vance during the presidential campaign with false and outrageous claims about Haitian immigrants, has sued a neo-Nazi group that helped draw national attention to the small city in the first place.The suit, filed in federal court on Thursday, was brought by the mayor, Rob Rue, along with several city commissioners and Springfield residents. It says that Blood Tribe, a four-year-old neo-Nazi group, began a campaign of intimidation focused on Haitian immigrants in the city. It culminated last summer in “a torrent of hateful conduct, including acts of harassment, bomb threats and death threats” against locals who spoke in support of the Haitian residents.The plaintiffs cite the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which makes it a crime to deny individuals their civil rights, and accuses Blood Tribe of ethnic intimidation and inciting violence. With the legal support of the Anti-Defamation League, the plaintiffs are seeking punitive damages and compensation for the thousands of dollars spent on extra security as Blood Tribe’s campaign unfolded.The suit does not mention Mr. Trump, who falsely claimed at a presidential debate in September that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating dogs and cats, nor Mr. Vance, who urged his “fellow patriots” to “keep the cat memes flowing.” But the suit says that Christopher Pohlhaus, the leader of Blood Tribe, “gleefully took credit for the growing notoriety” of the false claims about Haitians in the city, “bragging on social media that the Blood Tribe had ‘pushed Springfield into the public consciousness.’”The suit did not name a lawyer for Mr. Pohlhaus, who could not be reached for comment.In recent years, between 10,000 and 20,000 Haitians had come to Springfield, a city of about 60,000 in southwestern Ohio, attracted by the substantial labor needs of the warehouses and manufacturing businesses in the area. While “the vast majority” of the Haitians are in the country lawfully and were “welcomed” by the city, the suit says, the arrival of so many newcomers in such a short time brought a range of challenges, putting serious demand on local hospitals, schools and housing.In posts on its social media accounts last July, Blood Tribe called the arrival of large numbers of Haitians an “act of demographic warfare,” that had “caused a significant strain on the good White residents of the city.” The suit charges that Blood Tribe members, who were masked, armed and brandishing swastikas, gathered at a local jazz festival and later outside the mayor’s home. It adds that the group spread the personal information of people who supported the Haitian community, in some cases putting home addresses on websites that drew men looking for drugs or sex.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Man With Neo-Nazi Ties Sentenced to Life in Killing of Gay Ex-Classmate

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      Samuel Woodward, who espoused anti-gay rhetoric and had ties to Atomwaffen, a neo-Nazi group, stabbed his victim 28 times in a hate-fueled murder, prosecutors said.A California man who expressed allegiance to a neo-Nazi group and espoused anti-gay rhetoric was sentenced to life in prison on Friday after a jury found him guilty of brutally killing a former high school classmate who was gay in a hate-motivated murder, the Orange County District Attorney’s office said.The man, Samuel Lincoln Woodward, 26, of Newport Beach, Calif., had reconnected with his former classmate, Blaze Bernstein, then a 19-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania, on a dating app for men seeking men, the authorities said.On the evening of Jan. 2, 2018, Mr. Woodward drove Mr. Bernstein, who believed they were going on a romantic encounter, to a park in Lake Forest, Calif., where Mr. Woodward brutally stabbed Mr. Bernstein 28 times and buried his body in a shallow grave in the park, the district attorney’s office said.On Friday, more than four months after a jury found Mr. Woodward guilty of first-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement, a judge in the Superior Court of Orange County sentenced Mr. Woodward to life in prison without parole, according to court records.“With every hateful stab of his knife, Samuel Woodward stabbed at the very heart of our entire community,” Todd Spitzer, the district attorney for Orange County, said in a statement.He added that “those who commit acts of hate against others will be punished and those who are victimized by hate will be protected.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Has Put an End to an Era. The Future Is Up for Grabs.

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      Kamala Harris lost the presidential election, but one of her campaign slogans was vindicated in defeat. “We’re not going back!” the Democratic nominee insisted on the campaign trail, and she was unintentionally correct: Donald Trump’s return to power is proof that we have lived through a real turning point in history, an irrevocable shift from one era to the next.In Trump’s first term, he did not look like a historically transformative president. His victory was narrow, he lacked real majority support, he was swiftly unpopular and stymied and harassed.Even if his 2016 upset proved that discontent with the official consensus of the Western world ran unexpectedly deep, the way he governed made it easy to regard his presidency as accidental and aberrant — a break from a “normal” world of politics that some set of authority figures could successfully reimpose.Much of the opposition to his presidency was organized around this hope, and the election of Joe Biden seemed like vindication: Here was the restoration, the return of the grown-ups, normality restored.But somewhere in this drama, probably somewhere between the first reports of a deadly flu in Wuhan, China, and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, one of history’s wheels turned irrevocably, and the normal that Trump’s opponents aspired to recover slipped definitively into the past.A restoration? No: The post-Cold War era has ended, and we’re not going back.This may sound a bit like the most alarmist interpretations of the Trump era — that we are exiting the liberal democratic age and entering an autocratic, or at least authoritarian, American future.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Two Militia Founders Are Convicted of Plot to Kill Federal Agents

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      “We were going out huntin’,” one of the men said in a video before a planned trip to the Mexico border, where they intended to shoot at immigrants and officials who might stop them, prosecutors said.Two founders of a militia group who were plotting a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border to shoot at immigrants and the authorities who might try to stop them were convicted on Thursday by a federal jury in Missouri of attempting to murder federal agents, prosecutors said.A jury in Jefferson City, Mo., convicted the men, Jonathan S. O’Dell, 34, of Warsaw, Mo., and Bryan C. Perry, 39, of Clarksville, Tenn., of multiple felony counts.Most of the counts were linked to the men shooting at F.B.I. agents who arrived with a search warrant at Mr. O’Dell’s home. Among other charges, Mr. O’Dell and Mr. Perry were also convicted of conspiracy to murder officers and employees of the United States government, prosecutors said.They each face a minimum of 10 years in prison and up to a life sentence. Under federal statutes, neither would be eligible for parole. Lawyers for the men could not be immediately reached for comment on Saturday.Beginning in the summer of 2022, Mr. O’Dell and Mr. Perry tried to recruit others to join what they called the 2nd American Militia, prosecutors said.In September 2022, Mr. Perry posted a video on TikTok in which he said that the U.S. Border Patrol was committing treason by allowing illegal immigrants to enter the United States.In that same video, he said that the penalty for treason was death, court records show. In another video, he said that he was “ready to go to war against this government.”By late September, the two men stepped up their plans. They continued to recruit, acquired paramilitary gear and practiced shooting at targets, according to officials.Mr. Perry posted a video on TikTok in which he said “we’re out to shoot to kill,” and added that “our group is gonna go protect this country.” In early October, he posted another video. In that one he said that “we were going out huntin’,” and that his militia would go to the border on Oct. 8.But on Oct. 7, F.B.I. agents arrived at Mr. O’Dell’s home in an armored vehicle and identified themselves through a loudspeaker. The agents were met with gunfire, officials said, and several rounds hit the vehicle.The agents did not return fire and eventually Mr. O’Dell surrendered, officials said. Mr. Perry was also arrested at the home, but only after he brawled with agents and injured one, according to court documents.Agents found six guns and 23 magazines filled with ammunition inside Mr. O’Dell’s home, officials said. The F.B.I. recovered about 1,800 rounds of other ammunition, two sets of body armor, two gas masks, two ballistic helmets and zip ties. Agents also discovered multiple containers of liquids that would explode upon mixing. More

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      Republicans Who Led 2020 Election Denial Now Sowing Doubt in 2024 Votes

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      The efforts could help lay the groundwork for what could become another push to undermine the results if former President Donald J. Trump loses again.Starting in late 2020, Representative Scott Perry was one of the ringleaders of the Republican plot to use the House’s constitutional role in certifying the electoral count to delegitimize the results in a bid to help Donald J. Trump overturn the outcome.Now, Mr. Perry and a handful of his Republican colleagues are taking action to also call into question an aspect of this year’s election, helping to lay the groundwork for what could become another effort to undermine the results should Mr. Trump lose again.Mr. Perry and five other Republican members of Congress from Pennsylvania are plaintiffs in a lawsuit against their state’s government that seeks to set aside ballots from members of the military and Americans living overseas, charging that the system for verifying them is insufficient.Mr. Trump has encouraged the notion. He posted on Truth Social last month: “The Democrats are talking about how they’re working so hard to get millions of votes from Americans living overseas. Actually, they are getting ready to CHEAT!”Election officials and other experts say that the claims from Mr. Trump are meritless and that the overseas voting system is safe from fraud. Yet the case is one of about 100 filed this year by Republican allies of Mr. Trump — about 30 have been lodged so far in the two months before Election Day — many of which make unfounded claims about voter rolls and noncitizen voters.They coincide with widespread claims by Mr. Trump and others that the election will be rigged. Together they could help pave the way for yet another challenge to the results if the former president is defeated.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nigel Farage’s Anti-Immigration Party Has Big Plans. Can It See Them Through?

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      Nigel Farage, a Trump ally and Brexit champion, thinks his Reform U.K. party can become a major political force. At a conference on Friday, he will explain how.A week ago, he was the keynote speaker at a glitzy Chicago dinner for the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank with a history of denying climate science, where the top tables went for $50,000.On Friday, it was back to the day job for Nigel Farage, the veteran political disrupter, ally of Donald J. Trump and hard right, anti-immigrant activist whose ascent has alarmed both of Britain’s main political parties.In a cavernous exhibition center in Birmingham, in England’s West Midlands, Mr. Farage is set to address supporters of his upstart party, Reform U.K., at its first annual conference since its success in Britain’s July general election. He is expected to lay out a plan to professionalize the party and build support ahead of local elections next year.His ambitions are clear. But the jet-setting lifestyle of Mr. Farage, 60, whose visit to Chicago was his third recent trip to the United States, underscores the question hanging over Reform U.K.: Does its leader have the ability and appetite to build the fledgling party into a credible political force?Mr. Farage, a polarizing, pugnacious figure, is one of Britain’s most effective communicators and had an outsized impact on its politics for two decades before finally being elected to Britain’s Parliament in July. A ferocious critic of the European Union, he championed Brexit and helped pressure Prime Minister David Cameron to hold the 2016 referendum.“A fairly strong case can be made that Nigel Farage has been the most important political figure in all the elections of the last decade,” said Robert Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Solingen, Germany, Becomes Reluctant Symbol of Migration Battles

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      After a stabbing attack that prosecutors say was committed by a Syrian who was rejected for asylum, the city of Solingen finds itself at the center of a longstanding debate.Two days after a deadly knife attack in the German city of Solingen, the youth wing of the far-right AfD party put out a call for supporters to stage a protest demanding the government do more to deport migrants denied asylum.The authorities had identified the suspect in the stabbing spree that killed three people and wounded eight others as a Syrian man who was in the country despite having been denied asylum and who prosecutors suspected had joined the Islamic State. The attack tore at the fabric of the ethnically diverse, working-class city in the country’s west.But even before the right-wing protests had begun on Sunday, scores of counterprotesters had gathered in front of the group home that housed the suspect and other refugees. They carried banners that read, “Welcome to refugees” and “Fascism is not an opinion, but a crime,” and railed against those who would use the attack to further inflame an already fraught national debate over immigration and refugees.The dueling protests — not unlike those recently in Britain — are emblematic of Germany’s longstanding tug of war over how to deal with a large influx of asylum seekers in recent years. The country needs immigration to bolster its work force, but the government often finds itself on the defensive against an increasingly powerful AfD.The party and its supporters are attempting to use the stabbing attack to bolster their broader anti-immigrant message, with some blaming the assault on “uncontrolled migration” even before the nationality of the suspect was known.“They are trying to use this tragedy to foment fear,” said Matthias Marsch, 67, a Solingen resident who was at Sunday’s counterprotest and worries about a rightward drift in society. “I’m here to stand against that.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Telegram’s Top Executive Pavel Durov Reportedly Detained in France

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      The founder of Telegram, an app with more than 900 million users, was taken into custody by the authorities, French media reported.The French authorities on Saturday detained Pavel Durov, the top executive of the online communications platform Telegram, on charges related to the spread of illicit material on the service, according to French news reports.Mr. Durov, 39, a Russian-born entrepreneur, was reportedly arrested at Le Bourget Airport near Paris after landing from Azerbaijan. His detention could not immediately be confirmed.The Russian Embassy in France said in a statement on Sunday that it had asked the French authorities for clarification on news of the arrest.Representatives of the French police and Interior Ministry declined to comment and redirected questions to the Paris prosecutor’s office. The Paris prosecutor’s office, citing an open investigation, also declined to comment.Telegram did not respond to requests for comment.In an interview on Telegram, George Lobushkin, a former press secretary for Mr. Durov who remains close to him, wrote, “This is a monstrous attack on freedom of speech worldwide.”Telegram, with more than 900 million users, has long been on the radar of law enforcement agencies around the world because terrorist organizations, drug runners, weapons dealers and far-right extremist groups have used it for communicating, recruiting and organizing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More