Sunday Special.
Political items from all over.
1. Australian voters have delivered Anthony Albanese “a win for the ages” that should see Labor with more seats than at any point in its history. More even than Kevin Rudd or Bob Hawke after their most famous victories. Albanese outperformed the polls and the pundits’ expectations on a historic night that will leave the Coalition interrogating where it all went so very wrong, with Peter Dutton “fired into the Sun” and many other senior figures and potential future leaders wiped out. The Labor landslide has also overshadowed the ongoing rise and rise of independents in Australian politics. The Australian Broadcasting Company’s breakdown of the vote is terrific. (Sources: abc.net.au, bloomberg.com)
2. The landslide win by Singapore's ruling party in Saturday's general election reflected voters' preference for stability and continuity, analysts said, giving Prime Minister Lawrence Wong a strong mandate to lead the country through growing global uncertainty. The People's Action Party (PAP), which has governed Singapore since its independence in 1965, won 87 out of 97 seats in parliament, including five uncontested seats. Its overall vote share rose to 65.6% from 61.2% in the last 2020 election, marking an endorsement of Wong in his first electoral test since succeeding Lee Hsien Loong last year. "Wong's position has been strengthened by this result, and if he wants to, he could use it to start [asserting] his own authority -- move out of Lee Hsien Loong's shadow," said Michael Barr, associate professor of international relations at Australia's Flinders University. The leader now clearly holds the position of a strong prime minister, he added, "if he wants to assert it." (Source: asia.nikkei.com)
3. Romanians are voting in a presidential election rerun that could propel to power an ultranationalist who opposes military aid to Ukraine, has fiercely criticised the EU’s leadership and describes himself as a “natural ally” of Donald Trump. George Simion, 38, is comfortably ahead in the opinion polls before the first-round vote in the EU and Nato member state, nearly six months after the original ballot was cancelled amid evidence of an alleged “massive” Russian influence campaign. The election is being closely watched: a far-right victory could lead to Romania, which shares a border with Ukraine, veering from its pro-western path and becoming another disruptive force within the bloc and the transatlantic defense alliance. (Source: theguardian.com)
4. Germany’s foreign ministry has hit back at the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, following his criticism of Germany’s decision to label the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party as a “confirmed rightwing extremist group”. On Thursday, Rubio took to X and wrote: “Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That’s not democracy – it’s tyranny in disguise. What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD – which took second in the recent election – but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes.” Rubio went on to say: “Germany should reverse course.” In a response on X, the German foreign ministry pushed back against the US secretary of state, saying: “This is democracy. This decision is the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law. It is independent courts that will have the final say. We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped.” Germany’s response to Rubio comes after its domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), designated the AfD as a “confirmed rightwing extremist” force on Friday. (Source: theguardian.com)
5. Sahra Wagenknecht, leader of her self-titled populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), expressed outrage following the Friday judgment that classified the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) as a right-wing extremist organization. "The fact is that the parties of the self-appointed 'democratic center' have for years pushed an authoritarian restructuring of our society that restricts freedom of speech, combats inconvenient political forces with undemocratic means and exerts massive pressure to conform," Wagenknecht said on Saturday. Wagenknecht launched the party last year in January, after she grew disaffected with the Left Party that she was part of, arguing that the party focused far too much on identity politics and abandoned issues important to working-class voters. The BSW, with its anti-immigration and pro-Russia policies, attempted to tap into voter frustration in a manner similar to the AfD. (Source: dw.com)
6. Sam Freedman on Thursday’s local elections in England:
There’s a reason my preview post was subtitled “Tory cataclysm edition”. These results were bad for Labour, but they were existential for the Conservatives, who lost all 19 of their councils and finished in fourth place in the BBC’s projected national vote share, just four points ahead of the Greens.
Since this Substack began I’ve argued that the Tories are at risk of terminal collapse, but yesterday was the first time I really believed it was going to happen. They’ve lost control of heartland counties like Kent and Lincolnshire before, during the Major years, but this time they were almost entirely obliterated, and by another right-wing party, not a coalition of angry Labour and Lib Dem voters.
Reform, who significantly outperformed their national polling, have given themselves a real shot of becoming the main right-wing party, as National Rally and Brothers of Italy have done in their countries. Farage has done well before and then fallen back – UKIP got 22.5% of the projected vote share in the 2013 locals, the Brexit Party got 30.5% in the 2019 European elections. But this is different because Reform won a significant number of seats, two mayoralties and control of ten councils. That’s a base. (Sources: samf.substack.com, instituteforgovernment.org.uk, italics mine)
7. Reuters:
When U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled in April that Trump administration officials could face criminal contempt charges for deporting migrants in defiance of a court order, the blowback was immediate.
The president’s supporters unleashed a wave of threats and menacing posts. And they didn’t just target the judge. Some attacked Boasberg’s brother. Others blasted his daughter. Some demanded the family’s arrest – or execution.
U.S. District Judge John McConnell’s family endured similar threats after he ruled that President Donald Trump overstepped his authority in freezing grants for education and other services. Far-right provocateur Laura Loomer tweeted a photo of the judge’s daughter, who had worked at the U.S. Education Department as a policy advisor, and accused McConnell of protecting her paycheck. Billionaire Elon Musk amplified the post to his 219 million X followers. Neither mentioned the daughter had left her job before Trump’s inauguration.
Loomer continued her attacks with nine more posts in the ensuing days – and more than 600 calls and emails flooded McConnell’s Rhode Island courthouse, including death threats and menacing messages taunting his family, according to a court clerk and another person familiar with the communications.
Boasberg and McConnell are among at least 11 federal judges whose families have faced threats of violence or harassment after they ruled against the new Trump administration, a Reuters investigation found. (Source: reuters.com)
8. A federal judge on Friday permanently blocked an executive order from President Trump targeting the law firm Perkins Coie, declaring it unconstitutional, in the most decisive blow yet against Trump’s campaign to rein in some of the legal world’s most prominent firms. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., is likely to serve as a model for judges weighing cases brought by other firms fighting back against similar orders. The sharply worded 102-page opinion rebuked the administration’s order and its motivations, saying the case presented an “unprecedented attack” on foundational principles to ensure lawyers have “crucial independence” from any group that wields power. (Source: wsj.com)
9. Trump administration officials are exploring ways of challenging the tax-exempt status of nonprofits, according to people familiar with the matter, in a move that some IRS staffers fear could damage the agency’s apolitical approach. In hourslong meetings that continued over a recent weekend, Internal Revenue Service lawyers explored whether they could alter the rules governing how nonprofit groups can be denied tax-exempt status, the people said. The meetings started taking place shortly after the Trump administration appointed a new top interim lawyer at the agency, Andrew De Mello, whom Trump had nominated for a different post in his first term. De Mello privately discussed the nonprofit rules with agency officials, including those at the tax-exempt division, according to people familiar with the matter. (Source: wsj.com)
10. Harvard University President Alan Garber fought back against President Trump’s renewed threat to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status, saying in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the move would be “highly illegal” and “destructive to Harvard.” “The message that it sends to the educational community would be a very dire one, which suggests that political disagreements could be used as a basis to pose what might be an existential threat to so many educational institutions,” Garber said. Garber’s comments came after Trump doubled down on his campaign against the Ivy league university. “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Friday. (Source: wsj.com)
11. George Will:
America’s research universities are sources of U.S. economic dynamism and vital to technology-dependent national security. It is folly (and unlawful) to punish entire institutions for the foolishness of a few departments. When English departments are “decolonized” — dead White men purged from the curriculum — the only victims are students deprived of Shakespeare. Ideological indoctrination is rarer in engineering departments, where knowing the right facts rather than having the right feelings matters, otherwise bridges crumble and skyscrapers tumble. Leave all departments alone, some because their silliness does not matter much, others because their excellence matters greatly. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
12. The White House border czar warned Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers over his guidance to state workers who encounter federal immigration officials on the job, suggesting the Democratic governor could face felony charges if the Trump administration believes its immigration efforts are impeded. The comments came after Evers said his administration would not stop U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from carrying out their deportation orders. (Source: jsonline.com)
13. Elon Musk’s wish to create his own city just came true. On Saturday, voters living around SpaceX’s rocket testing and launch facility in South Texas approved a measure to incorporate the area as a new city. Soon after polls closed at 7 p.m., Cameron County election officials confirmed that overwhelming support among early voters clinched the election in favor of creating the City of Starbase. (Source: texastribune.org)
14. In August of 2023, roughly 80% of the electorate thought President Biden was “incapable of serving effectively as president” in a second term.And then there’s this from today’s New York Times:
Months before President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was forced to abandon his re-election campaign, his top White House aides debated having him undergo a cognitive test to prove his fitness for a second term but ultimately decided against the move, according to a forthcoming book.
Mr. Biden’s aides were confident that he would pass a cognitive test, according to the book, but they worried that the mere fact of his taking one would raise new questions about his mental abilities. At the same time, Mr. Biden’s longtime doctor, Kevin O’Connor, had told aides he would not take the 81-year-old president’s political standing into consideration when treating him. (Italics mine)
There couldn’t possibly be “new questions” about Biden’s mental abilities, since ~80% of the electorate had already decided, in the summer of 2023, that he lacked the ability to “serve effectively as president in a second term.” The Biden campaign’s narrative of this “story” continues to amaze. Everyone knew. They knew. The press knew. It wasn’t a secret. It was a fact. (Source: apnews.com, nytimes.com, italics mine)
Quick Links: JD Vance: What President Trump achieved in his first 100 days. Inside Waltz’s ouster: Before Signalgate, talks with Israel angered Trump. Stephen Miller, President Trump's top policy adviser, is in the running to be his next national security adviser. White House posts AI image of Trump as pope. Trump wants $1 trillion for Pentagon. Happy Birthday! Trump to mark Army’s birthday, and his, with parade of 6,600 soldiers. Sheinbaum rejects Trump offer of US military role in Mexico. Bolivia’s Senate President Andronico Rodriguez said he will run for president in the August election, emerging as perhaps the most likely candidate to rally left-wing voters. More than 15,000 USDA employees take Trump’s offer to resign. The U.S. Forest Service took one of the biggest hits, with more than 4,000 employees accepting the deferred resignation option. Virginia GOP roiled by controversy over sexually explicit photos.