A large cross-faction initiative group in the German Bundestag has submitted a motion calling for a ban on the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a major opposition party with more than 80 seats in the national parliament.

The initiators of the motion claim that the right-wing group is at odds with what they call the “central basic principles” of the democratic order and poses a danger to the state, according to local media.

Established in 2013 as an Euroskeptic party, the AfD became known for its anti-immigration rhetoric amid the refugee crisis of 2015. Current and former members have also been involved in various controversies over statements related to Germany’s Nazi past.

Following the start of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, the party criticized Berlin’s aid to Ukraine and called for the restoration of economic ties with Russia, which were effectively severed as a result of Berlin’s sanctions on Moscow.

AfD co-chair Tino Chrupalla rejected the continued costly support for Ukraine provided by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government, and urged the return of Russian natural gas to support the struggling German economy.

Other major German parties have mostly shunned the AfD, accusing it of having ties to right-wing extremists and refusing to enter into political coalitions with its members. The party has nevertheless enjoyed growing support from the public over the years, which has been particularly strong in eastern German states.

In September, the AfD won regional parliamentary elections in the state of Thuringia and came in second in two other eastern states – Brandenburg and Saxony.

“We must subject this powerful right-wing extremist party to the review by the Federal Constitutional Court,” the initiative group’s leader, Marco Wanderwitz, told TAZ newspaper on Wednesday. “This is about nothing less than our free democracy,” the MP, who represents the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said.

The motion was mostly supported by the Greens, which accounted for around half of the 113-strong group, 31 of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party MPs, and 18 out of 28 Left Party lawmakers. Only six other CDU members joined Wanderwitz in the initiative, however.

The motion submitted by the MPs accuses the AfD of questioning the human dignity of migrants and the LGBTQ+ community, and trivializing Nazi crimes as well as serving as an “extended arm of authoritarian foreign regimes.”

One Left Party MP, Martina Renner, who is among the initiators of the motion, openly called the AfD a “Nazi Party,” adding that “more and more colleagues see it as their responsibility to protect democracy” from the danger supposedly posed by the AfD.

The party has not yet commented on the developments. The German domestic security service (BfV) was expected to present a report on the AfD, in which it could potentially change the party’s status to “proven right-wing extremist” organization. The report, however, was postponed due to potential early parliamentary elections that could be held in February.

The BfV already declared it a “suspected” extremist group in 2021. Its regional branches were also designated “right-wing extremist” groups by the authorities in three German states, including Saxony.

The motion submitted on Wednesday would need a simple majority in the 733-member parliament for the Constitutional Court to launch a case against the AfD – the first step towards a potential ban.

According to German media, the future of the initiative is unclear as most CDU MPs, including the party’s leader, Friedrich Merz, as well as the Free Democrats and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), oppose it. The CDU has the biggest opposition faction in the parliament, with over 150 MPs. The Free Democrats hold 90 seats and the BSW has ten.

https://www.rt.com/news/607600-german-call-opposition-party-ban/

 

French prosecutors have asked a judge to slap former National Rally party leader Marine Le Pen with a five-year prison term and a ban from running for public office in an embezzlement case.

Le Pen and 24 other current and former members of the right-wing National Rally are accused of using €3 million ($3.3 million) in European Parliament money intended for payments to parliamentary assistants to fund work on internal party business from 2004 to 2016, in violation of EU law. All of the defendants have denied any wrongdoing.

During the proceedings in Paris on Wednesday, the prosecutors argued that Le Pen should receive the harshest punishment as she was a member of the European Parliament and the leader of the National Rally when some of the alleged violations took place. She led the party, which was previously called the National Front, from 2011 to 2021 and still remains a member.

Three years of Le Pen’s sentence would be suspended, and the other two could be served with an electronic bracelet, the prosecutors said. They also asked for her to be fined €300,000 ($316,000).

The prosecutors said the five-year ban on running for office should be implemented immediately, before the defense can appeal the ruling. This means that if found guilty, Le Pen would be disqualified from the presidential election in 2027. During the trial, which began in late September, she announced plans to run for president for the third time.

"It is clear that the only thing the public prosecutors wanted was Marine Le Pen’s exclusion from political life,” Le Pen told reporters after the hearings.

National Rally leader Jordan Bardella, who is not a defendant in the case, took to X to accuse the prosecutors of an “assault on democracy,” saying they are “seeking to persecute and take revenge on Marine Le Pen.”

The prosecutors also requested that the National Rally be fined €2 million, and that all of the others who are accused receive bans from running for public office from one to five years.

The defense will now present its arguments to the judge until the trial concludes on November 27. A verdict is expected in early 2025.

READ MORE: UK and France to push Biden to escalate Ukraine conflict – Telegraph

In the 2022 election, Le Pen lost to President Emmanuel Macron in the second round 58.55% to 41.45%

https://www.rt.com/news/607617-france-le-pen-embezzlement/

 

The FBI has raided the home of the chief executive and founder of the betting platform Polymarket, Shayne Coplan, seizing his electronic devices, media have reported. The company claims the raid was carried out in retaliation for its users overwhelmingly betting on a Donald Trump victory in the US presidential election.

Federal law enforcement agents reportedly seized the 26-year-old CEO’s phone and computers from his home in New York in an early-morning raid on Wednesday as part of an investigation into the crypto betting platform. Coplan himself was not arrested, Polymarket said.

While no reason for the raid has been declared publicly, some observers suggested the US authorities may be investigating Polymarket for market manipulation or an attempt to influence political polls in favor of Trump.

Polymarket, however, claims the search was “obvious political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election,” a source close to the matter told the New York Post.

It comes after Polymarket saw $3.7 billion worth of bets placed on the 2024 US presidential election. The offshore crypto gambling website offered odds on Trump that were significantly shorter than those on Vice President Kamala Harris, reflecting a projection that differed sharply from most mainstream polls.

In a post on X, Coplan accused the outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden of seeking a “last-ditch effort to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents.”

“We are deeply committed to being non-partisan, and today is no different, but the incumbents should do some self-reflecting and recognize that taking a more pro-business, pro-startup approach may be what would have changed their fate this election,” Coplan wrote on Thursday.

According to media reports, the Department of Justice is investigating Polymarket for allegedly allowing US-based traders to bet on the site. The company is required to block US-based users from making transactions on its platform as part of a 2022 agreement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

“Polymarket is a fully transparent prediction market that helps everyday people better understand the events that matter most to them, including elections,” the company said.

The platform surged in popularity in the run-up to the election and attracted additional scrutiny after a French trader reportedly made $85 million on massive bets on Trump winning the election.

https://www.rt.com/business/607641-polymarket-ceo-home-fbi-raid/

 

FROM THE ONSET, THE POLLS WHICH EITHER FAVOURED KAMALA (HARRIS) OR SUGGESTED A TIGHT RACE WERE OFF THE TRACK... BUT WATCHING PUNDITS LIKE GEORGE GALLOWAY SHOULD HAVE GIVEN ANY BETTING PERSON A CLUE ON WHO TO BACK TO MAKE SOME CASH. TRUMP WAS GOING TO WIN TWO TO ONE AND KAMALA (HARRIS) WAS 100 TO ONE....

 

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The People Carving Up Healthy ‘Trans’ Kids Have Literal ‘Blood On Their Hands’

BY: CASEY CHALK

 

One of the most insidious assertions of the pro-trans left is that those who oppose puberty blockers, wrong-sex hormones, and other pseudo-scientific medical interventions for trans-identifying youth have “blood on their hands.” This is because, such ideologues claim, children deprived of this purported “medical care” are more likely to kill themselves. 

The fallaciousness of such declarations, however, is becoming more evident in light of acknowledgments from some unlikely sources in the media and medical establishment.

 The Inflammatory Ideological Charge Regarding Trans Youth…

The “blood on the hands” slander of the pro-trans left has become predictably commonplace in recent years. NBC earlier this month covered pro-trans activists protesting outside the Supreme Court who alleged our nation’s highest court would have “blood on its hands” if it didn’t determine a Tennessee law limiting access to such interventions was discriminatory. A Missouri LGBT public policy and advocacy organization in November accused Circuit Judge Craig Carter of having “blood on his hands” for upholding a law that restricted transgender medical interventions on kids.

In one of the most inflammatory examples of this rhetoric, transgender-identifying Montana state legislator Zooey Zephyr in April 2023 described state restrictions on such experiments as “tantamount to torture.” Zephyr provocatively warned: “I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.”

These charges were always based on flawed reasoning, even absent any reference to data related to youth suicide incidence rates. How would restricting medical professionals from giving irreversible drugs and surgeries to an otherwise healthy kid be responsible for the latter’s suicide, especially given that as recently as a couple of decades ago, these pharmaceutical interventions were unheard of? And why would large numbers of gender dysphoric youths, supposedly hiding in the shadows until the last decade, suddenly feel the need to kill themselves rather than simply wait until they are old enough to make medical decisions for themselves? 

Obviously there must be a social component to the dramatic rise in children identifying as trans and an attendant social explanation for why they would think suicide is an appropriate antidote to their anxiety.

 … Collides with the Reality of Terrible Harms Performed on Kids

Then again, it’s also nice when the scientific establishment exhibits proficiency in professionalism and common sense. On Dec. 11, the British government, heeding the cautions of medical experts across its country, extended its ban on the prescription of puberty blockers for children under 18, citing an “unacceptable safety risk.” This decision followed the April release of the Cass Review, in which pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass determined that chemical interventions for children were based on “remarkably weak evidence” and that puberty blockers are “powerful drugs with unproven benefits and significant risks.”

The Brits are not alone in exercising caution in such “medical care” given both the lack of credible research on the long-term effects of puberty blockers and the demonstrable medical negligence in failing to pursue less invasive and less permanent treatment for gender dysphoria, such as counseling. 

After a 1,500 percent increase in the number of female teenagers identifying as transgender in a 10-year-period, the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare assessed that the risks of puberty blockers and so-called gender-affirming treatment were likely to outweigh the expected benefits. Denmark, seeing an 8,700 percent increase in the number of documented pediatric cases requesting transgender surgery in less than a decade, also decided to sharply reduce transitions. Norway and Finland have also implemented measures to limit access to interventions for gender dysphoric youth.

Perhaps most amazingly, even The Washington Post’s editorial board on Dec. 15 censured “scientists’ failure to study these treatments slowly and systematically as they developed them.” The state of Tennessee, the Post admitted, had a “colorable claim” before the nation’s highest court in United States v. Skrmetti, a case involving the state’s attempts to limit youth access to these highly suspect interventions. The editors even noted, “In the absence of clear data — and with the possibility of significant publication bias or researchers massaging their results — parents might not have adequate information.”

 But Who’s Really to Blame Here?

As much as it’s nice to see some legacy media and members of the medical and scientific establishment expressing concern with the radical transformation of protocols for psychologically unstable youth over the last decade, it’s worth remembering who promoted this revolution. For years, The Washington Post has been championingmedical interventions for “gender”-confused youth and simultaneously castigating state-level attempts to restrict such treatments. So has MSNBC, CNN, NPR, and the rest of Democrat legacy media.

The same goes for ideologically driven scientists and medical professionals. Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, director of America’s largest child “gender clinic” at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, in October told The New York Times that she was withholding the results of her taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health study because she didn’t want its outcomes to be “weaponized” to argue puberty blockers are a bad way of treating transgender-identifying children. Court documents from a youth “gender medicine” case in Alabama also revealed the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) had attempted to interfere with a systematic review commissioned from Johns Hopkins University.

What Americans are discovering, and what unfairly malignedjournalist Abigail Shrier warned about years ago, is that an alliance of media, scientists, medical professionals, and pharmaceutical companies pushed a pro-trans narrative on a generation of American youth. Some were driven by ideology. Others had a profit motive (the trans “medical” industry is worth more than $4.4 billion). All of them demonstrated condemnable irresponsibility regarding the health and well-being of children. 

Then in an incredible act of hypocrisy, they sought to emotionally blackmail the nation with their “blood on your hands” rhetoric. But in the wake of a national epidemic of physically mutilated and psychologically distraught youth that should have been addressed with counseling and social media prohibitions, it’s obvious whose hands are dirty.

 Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelor’s in history and master’s in teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s in theology from Christendom College. He is the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands. https://thefederalist.com/2025/01/01/the-people-carving-up-healthy-trans-kids-have-literal-blood-on-their-hands/ 

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It’s the genocide, stupid

The DNC finally released its long-awaited autopsy of Kamala Harris’s failed presidential campaign, and it doesn’t mention Gaza.

The Democratic leadership’s refusal to acknowledge the party’s shift on Israel could spell another defeat in 2028.

 

BY MICHAEL ARRIA

 

 

On Thursday, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) finally released its long-awaited autopsy of Kamala Harris’s failed presidential campaign.

The rollout was highly on-brand for the Democratic establishment. The 192-page document seems slapped together, is full of typos, and was released only because CNN obtained a copy. In an accompanying note, DNC Chair Ken Martin said the report didn’t meet his standards, but that it was being released “because people need to be able to trust the Democratic Party and trust our word.”

In fact, the report has further eroded that trust by omitting some big, obvious reasons why Harris lost. Concerns about Biden’s age and his inexplicable decision to run for reelection are barely mentioned, and there’s virtually no analysis of the Democratic policies that might have helped propel Trump to another victory.

If one were compiling such a list, support for the Gaza genocide would presumably be near the top, but the issue is not mentioned once in the massive report.

You’ll recall that Harris never distanced herself from Biden on this question. In her first interview after becoming the nominee, she maintained the party line on Israel, reciting the usual claptrap about the country’s right to “defend itself.” Asked point-blank whether her foreign policy would differ from Biden’s at all, she said it would remain the same. That is to say, the United States would continue to send weapons to Israel while the country carried out a genocide.

A couple of months later, she reiterated her position on The View, telling the hosts that she couldn’t think of anything she would do differently. Although later in the interview she said that, unlike Biden, she would put Republicans in her cabinet.

Throughout the Harris campaign, Palestine advocates called on the former Senator to shift her position and take a firm stance against Israel’s actions.

“By taking a strong stand against Netanyahu’s authoritarian policies, the Biden-Harris administration can unify the Democratic Party and regain the trust of key voter bases, including young people, Arabs, and Muslims,” read an open letter to Harris from the Not Another Bomb coalition to Harris at the time. “This decisive action will reinforce the administration’s commitment to democracy and human rights, contrasting sharply with the far-right extremism embodied by Trump and his supporters. It sends a clear message that the Democratic Party stands for peace, justice, and the protection of all people, thereby strengthening the coalition needed to secure victory in the 2024 elections and beyond.”

She wouldn’t budge.

At the Democratic National Convention that August, the Uncommitted Movement pushed for a Palestinian speaker to be included. “The difficulty in approving even a single Palestinian American speaker among the dozens of speakers on the convention stage sends a troubling message to our anti-war voters, suggesting they aren’t truly included in this party,” explained a statement from the organization’s founders.

The request was denied.

It’s inaccurate to say the campaign simply ignored these issues. On the contrary, they leaned in from the opposite direction, embracing hawkish former House member Liz Cheney and sending Rep. Ritchie Torres to Michigan, the state with the highest percentage of Arab Americans, to tell voters that Harris would stand with Israel.

There’s a certain kind of centrist pundit who likes to wax sarcastic about the 2024 election and point out that Trump is also an ardent supporter of Israel. The inference is that people concerned about Gaza accomplished nothing by voting against Harris.

However, this brand of snark often presupposes that people fed up with the genocide actually voted. Yes, some people backed Trump because they irrationally believed that the guy currently bombing Iran was antiwar, but the actual number of people that foolish is presumably negligible. Much hay is also made over the Green Party, but Jill Stein got fewer than 900,000 votes and thus had no discernible impact on the ultimate result.

One of the biggest stories of the 2024 race is how many people stayed home.

“The most telling fact in this race is the drop in voter turnout,” wrote Mitchell Plitnick days after the election, pointing out that Harris netted millions less votes than Biden did in 2020.

“Theories will emerge, but the cause of Harris’ disastrous failure will forever be debated,” he wrote. “Still, there are good reasons to believe the Middle East in general and Gaza in particular played a significant role.”

“Nobody is going to get excited about the ‘politics of joy’ and ‘endless brat summer’ when they’re watching a kid raising his hands while he’s being burned to death attached to an IV,” political consultant Peter Feld told me at the time. “It pretty much puts an end to any of the vibes that they were trying to run on.”

“I don’t think you can explain this election without explaining the non-voters, and I think some of the post-election polling that’s come out and attempts to explain it by talking to voters is going to miss this story,” he continued. “If you haven’t spoken to non-voters, you haven’t explained the election.”

Insofar as polling exists on this issue, it backs up the assertions of Plitnick and Feld. A January 2025 YouGov survey found that 2020 Biden voters who stayed home in 2024 cited Gaza as the top reason.

If you need further proof that Gaza hurt Harris at the polls, just look at what’s happened since November 2024. Israel critics are prevailing in Democratic primaries, and groups like AIPAC have become entirely toxic, and support for Israel has plummeted to historic lows amid the war on Iran. A recent NBC News poll found that just 32% of U.S. voters view Israel positively, which is down from 47% in 2023.

It’s difficult to overstate the incompetence of the DNC, but leaving this kind of stuff out of the “autopsy” report certainly feels like much more than oversight. Officials formerly connected to Biden and Harris are openly admitting as much.

“What’s important is what’s missing, what they’re not releasing,” Harris’s former communications director, Ashley Etienne, told Politico. “It feels like what the DNC is doing is cherry-picking the parts of it that it wants to actually release, that [are] less problematic for the party going forward.”

It’s an oversimplification to say Gaza is what cost the Democrats the election. There are multiple factors in every presidential race, and many of them have nothing to do with foreign policy. However, ignoring the genocide’s obvious impact on voters is malpractice and suggests that Democratic leadership could be poised to repeat the same mistakes in 2028.

https://mondoweiss.net/2026/05/its-the-genocide-stupid/

 

 

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