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French parliament votes to oust Michel Barnier’s government

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French parliament votes to oust Michel Barnier’s government

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The French parliament on Wednesday voted to oust Prime Minister Michel Barnier over his proposed deficit-cutting budget, plunging the country into deeper political turmoil.

A motion of no confidence was approved by 331 votes in the 577 member national assembly, as Marine Le Pen’s far-right party teamed up with a leftist bloc to bring down Barnier’s minority government.

Barnier’s administration has collapsed without adopting his contentious 2025 budget that included €60bn in tax increases and spending cuts to reduce France’s deficit, which will reach 6 per cent of GDP this year.

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President Emmanuel Macron will now have to select another prime minister, a task made difficult by a raucous parliament divided into three blocs, none of which is close to having a governing majority.

Barnier’s three-month term as prime minister was the shortest of any premier since France’s Fifth Republic was founded in 1958. It is only the second time a government has been voted down since then. 

The political tumult gripping France comes just weeks after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition collapsed, leaving the EU’s two most powerful states in limbo.

Barnier defended his record as prime minister during a national assembly debate before the confidence vote, telling lawmakers: “I have been and am proud to act to build rather than to destroy.”

He said it was “not for pleasure” that he had presented a difficult budget. France’s fiscal “reality will not disappear by the enchantment of a motion of censure”, he added.

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Macron will have to contend with an emboldened Le Pen and her Rassemblement National party, which was decisive in removing Barnier after spurning his last-ditch attempts at a compromise on his budget.

Le Pen said her decision to censure Barnier was prompted by the “necessity to put an end to the chaos, to spare the French people from a dangerous, unfair and punitive budget”.

Macron “is largely responsible for the current situation”, Le Pen told TF1 television shortly after the vote.

When the president appoints a new prime minister, that person would work on a new budget which Rassemblement National “will construct with other forces in the national assembly”, she added.

Mathilde Panot, a leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, slammed Barnier for seeking deals with the Rassemblement National to try to stay in power.

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“Barnier tried to escape censure by choosing dishonour, he has gotten dishonour and censure,” she said.

Marie Lebec, a lawmaker from Macron’s centrist alliance and former minister, said her fellow parliamentarians should put aside party squabbling to find a way forward.

The political crisis risks further spooking financial markets. Barnier had previously warned of a financial and economic “storm” should his government fall without adopting the 2025 budget, saying borrowing costs were on track to exceed €60bn next year, more than the French defence budget.

French borrowing costs on its 10-year sovereign bond hit a 12-year high against Germany’s last week, as investors fretted about the likely failure of Barnier’s government.

After the confidence vote on Wednesday, the euro was flat against the dollar at $1.052, reflecting how the result was widely expected.

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Barnier may stay on as a caretaker premier for a short time, but it will fall to his successor to craft another 2025 budget, ahead of a year-end deadline.

In the meantime, Macron and parliament have several options to pass emergency measures that would avoid a government shutdown and keep public services funded temporarily.

But unlike previously when he procrastinated on picking premiers, Macron aimed to move quickly this time, said a person familiar with his thinking, and he has drawn up a list of potential candidates to succeed Barnier.

The Elysée said Macron would address the nation on Thursday evening in a televised speech.

Barnier was appointed by Macron in September after the president’s centrist alliance lost snap parliamentary elections, which increased the ranks of the far right and leftist parties.

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His departure is a sign of how gridlocked French institutions have become since the elections.

“It feels like a series of impasses in a parliament where no one has a workable majority,” said Bruno Cautrès, political scientist at Sciences Po. “There is a risk that a new government would fall quickly, just as Barnier has done.”

Additional reporting by Ian Smith in London

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TikTok fails to halt law that could lead to US ban

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TikTok fails to halt law that could lead to US ban

A US appeals court on Friday upheld a law requiring TikTok’s owner ByteDance to sell the platform or face a ban next year, dealing a major blow to the Chinese company behind the video app.

The law, signed by President Joe Biden this year, orders TikTok to be banned in the country if the app does not divest from its parent by January 19 2025 — the day before Donald Trump is inaugurated as president.

The unanimous ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the law — which hits at the core of a hot-button national security issue involving China and received strong bipartisan support in Congress — was constitutional and did not violate First Amendment protections for free speech, as TikTok had claimed.

The “government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States,” the panel wrote.

The decision puts TikTok in a precarious position in one of its biggest markets, although the law’s political future is uncertain. On the campaign trail before his re-election, Trump said he opposed the platform’s ban and promised to “save” the app.

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In an email to staff, TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew wrote that the next step would be to “seek an injunction of the ban, pending review by the US Supreme Court”, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

The law requires Apple and Google to remove the social media app, which is wildly popular among younger Generation Z users, from their app stores if a divestiture does not take place before the January deadline. It also bans the app from web-hosting services.

TikTok said after the ruling: “The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue.

“Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people.”

US attorney-general Merrick Garland called the ruling “an important step in blocking the Chinese government from weaponising TikTok to collect sensitive information about millions of Americans, to covertly manipulate the content delivered to American audiences, and to undermine our national security”.

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The Chinese embassy in Washington said the law would have “a serious impact on the online social platform used by half of Americans” and was a “blatant act of commercial robbery”.

The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment. But Mike Waltz, the Florida lawmaker and incoming US national security adviser, told Fox Business Network that Trump “wants to save TikTok”.

“We absolutely need to allow the American people to have access to that app, but we have to protect our data as well,” said Waltz, who has in the past called for TikTok to be banned.

Waltz added that Trump’s stance was to “allow the American people to have full access to what is a great product, but at the same time protect their data”. Marco Rubio, the Florida senator and China hawk who Trump has nominated as his secretary of state, has also supported banning TikTok.

In May, TikTok and ByteDance sued the US government to block the bill, claiming it was unconstitutional and violated First Amendment protections for free speech. TikTok has denied China’s government has any control over the app or that it has handed over any data to Beijing. Its lawyers also argued concerns about propaganda on the app should be handled by requiring disclosures, rather than a blanket divest-or-ban law.

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US officials have argued ByteDance could be compelled to share the personal information of the 170mn US TikTok users with officials in Beijing under Chinese law, and wield the app’s algorithms and moderation to spread propaganda and misinformation. The DoJ earlier this year alleged some of TikTok’s US user data had been stored in China.

The court on Friday said the government’s national security “justifications” for the law were “compelling”. China “poses a particularly significant hybrid commercial threat” because of the statutes governing Chinese companies, the judges said, adding Beijing also “uses its cyber capabilities to support its influence campaigns around the world”.

China has “positioned itself to manipulate public discourse on TikTok in order to serve its own ends”, the judges wrote. Its “ability to do so is at odds with free speech fundamentals”.

The judges recognised their ruling “has significant implications” for the app and its users. But they argued that “burden is attributable to [China’s] hybrid commercial threat to US national security”, rather than the US government, which “engaged with TikTok through a multiyear process in an effort to find an alternative solution”.

TikTok has complained that much of the US government’s evidence is classified, meaning it has not had the opportunity to rebuff the claims about it, and argued a sale would be “unfeasible”.

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Beijing has publicly said it would not allow the divestiture of the platform’s recommendations algorithm by ByteDance, and has export control laws that would block such a spin-off. Biden could also extend the ban-or-sale deadline by 90 days.

Before his re-election, Trump said he would not ban TikTok upon his return to the White House, in an attempt to preserve “competition” in a market dominated by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which the president-elect has described as an “enemy of the people”.

It is unclear exactly how he could save the app. Experts suggested he could tell Congress to repeal the law, or press the DoJ not to enforce it.

Any move would represent a U-turn from 2020, when then-president Trump issued an executive order to block the app in the US and gave ByteDance 90 days to divest from its American assets and any data that TikTok had collected in the US. That order was blocked by the courts and ultimately revoked by Biden.

Shares in TikTok rivals Meta and Snap, whose revenues have been threatened by the app’s rapid rise in recent years, both rose about 2 per cent on the news.

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Trump confident in Hegseth confirmation chances: ‘Pete is doing well now’

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Trump confident in Hegseth confirmation chances: ‘Pete is doing well now’


President-elect Trump affirmed his support for Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth in an exclusive sit-down interview with NBC News that will air Sunday.

“It looks like Pete is doing well now,” Trump told “Meet the Press” Moderator Kristen Welker.

“I mean, people were a little bit concerned. He’s a young guy, with a tremendous track record actually,” the former president added.

His comments come after weeks of scrutiny from coworkers, lawmakers and former Pentagon officials alike. However, Trump said that Hegseth is qualified to take the reins of the country’s top security agency. 

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“He went to Princeton and went to Harvard. He was a good student at both. But he loves the military and I think people are starting to see it so we’ll be working on his nomination along with a lot of others,” Trump said in the interview.

He seemed confident that Hegseth would earn the votes of 51 senators to take over the Department of Defense. 

Trump told Welker “a lot of senators call me up saying he’s fantastic.”

However, NBC News reported that six GOP senators are currently questioning the pick citing reports of sexual assault allegations and an alleged drinking problem as a basis for uncertainty. Trump pushed back on those claims.

“But I’ve spoken to people that know him very well and they say he does not have a drinking problem,” Trump asserted.

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Despite potential hesitation from fellow Republicans, Trump persists that the former Fox News host is ethically equipped to handle the role. Vice President-elect JD Vance has also backed the effort to get Hegseth confirmed by scheduling meetings with elected officials to give the nominee one-on-one time with the Hill’s top lawmakers.

Hegseth has also said he will not back down. 

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Romania scraps presidential election after alleged Russian meddling

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Romania scraps presidential election after alleged Russian meddling

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Romania’s constitutional court has cancelled a presidential election scheduled for Sunday after allegations that Russia used TikTok to promote the leading candidate.

The decision to scrap Sunday’s run-off and annul the first-round victory of Călin Georgescu, who has praised Vladimir Putin, came after Romanian authorities published documents this week that indicated Moscow had sought to undermine the vote.

But the move was criticised by some politicians and analysts as anti-democratic. Opinion polls had given the far-right Georgescu a comfortable lead over Elena Lasconi, the second-placed liberal presidential candidate, ahead of the now cancelled vote.

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“The electoral process for the election of the president of Romania will be repeated in its entirety,” the court said on Friday.

The date of the new vote will be set by Romania’s government, but only after a new coalition is formed following parliamentary elections last Sunday.

Costin Ciobanu, an analyst at Aarhus University in Denmark, said the annulment “deepens uncertainty and polarisation within Romanian society, raising serious concerns about the strength of Romania’s institutions and democracy”.

Thousands have taken to the streets of Bucharest and other cities to protest against Georgescu in recent days, while a few hundred have held demonstrations backing him.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis sought in a televised address on Friday evening to reassure investors and western allies, promising to stay in office until a successor is sworn in. “Romania is a stable and secure country,” he said.

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Friday’s ruling is the first time a western court has intervened to overturn an election because of an alleged Russian attempt to sway the result. But it comes after a series of bids by Moscow to influence votes in countries well beyond its traditional sphere of influence.

Maia Sandu, president of neighbouring Moldova, narrowly secured re-election last month after what the country’s officials said was an attempt at vote-buying by Moscow-aligned politicians.

The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has also warned that Russia may try to interfere in his country’s parliamentary election next year.

Georgescu’s rise in recent weeks has stunned Romania and its western allies.

His first-round victory came even though he had no party behind him and claimed to have spent “zero” on his campaign, which was run mainly on social media.

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The Romanian National Security Council declassified several documents on Wednesday that alleged that Russia attempted to promote Georgescu on social media platforms and hack into the country’s electoral infrastructure.

The documents also noted that the far-right candidate, who was polling in single digits before last month’s vote, “benefited from preferential treatment” on TikTok because the Chinese social media platform did not label his videos as political ads. Over 100 paid influencers with more than 8mn followers had promoted Georgescu’s videos, according to the documents.

TikTok said earlier this week that it had taken down a “cluster” of pro-Georgescu accounts.

Romanian authorities have asked the European Commission to open a probe into TikTok, which could result in fines. The company, which is owned by ByteDance, has denied the accusations and said it acted in compliance with Romanian and EU law.

The court’s decision to annul the vote comes despite it validating a recount on Monday that confirmed Georgescu’s first-round victory, in which he won 23 per cent of the vote.

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Friday’s ruling was welcomed as “the only correct decision” by Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who had led polls before the first round. “The Romanian vote was blatantly undermined following the Russian intervention,” he said.

But Lasconi, who had been expecting to face Georgescu in the run-off that had been scheduled for Sunday, labelled the court’s decision as “illegal, immoral”, adding that the ruling “crushes the essence of democracy — the vote”.

She vowed to stand again and win the presidency.

In a video statement on Friday, Georgescu said: “The Romanian state took democracy and trampled on it.” He said the court’s decision was “more than a legal controversy. It is, practically, a coup d’état.”

He pledged to fight on and said that his only “pact” was with the Romanian people and god.

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Prosecutors have started multiple probes following the evidence presented by the intelligence services.

The US state department also warned this week about “foreign actors seeking to shift Romania’s foreign policy away from its western alliances”, which it said would have “serious negative impacts on US security co-operation”.

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