Connect with us

News

Rassemblement National’s Jordan Bardella threatens to bring down French government

Published

on

Rassemblement National’s Jordan Bardella threatens to bring down French government

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Jordan Bardella, the party chief of France’s Rassemblement National, warned on Monday that it would not hesitate to topple Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government over his belt-tightening budget, weighing on French stocks, bonds and the euro.

Only hours before the crunch vote was expected in the National Assembly, Barnier gave in to another one of far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s “red lines” by abandoning a plan to lower the reimbursement of medicines that was supposed to save €900mn. It was his second concession after scrapping a planned increase to electricity taxes last week.

The budget’s fate and that of Barnier’s administration remain largely in the hands of Le Pen’s RN, the biggest single party and a key voting bloc in the National Assembly.

Advertisement

“The RN will trigger the mechanism to vote the censure unless there is a last-minute miracle and Barnier changes his draft law between now and 3pm,” Bardella told RTL radio on Monday morning before Barnier’s latest concession.

“I don’t have much hope he will do so given how he has ignored and scorned us [and our proposals] in recent months.”

Le Pen has insisted all the RN’s red line demands must be met if the government wants to avoid a no-confidence vote. The only remaining demand is a temporary freeze on inflation-adjusted increases to pensions. The measure was initially supposed to save €3.6bn.

Barnier’s allies have said the energy tax concession was made on request from all opposition parties, not just the RN. But this time the prime minister appeared to grudgingly concede the medicines point to Le Pen by citing her by name and saying she had made the ask during a phone call between them on Monday.

Investors have grown increasingly concerned that Barnier will fail to pass a €60bn fiscal package for 2025, including significant tax increases, aimed at reducing a deficit that stands at roughly 6 per cent of national output.

Advertisement

French stocks initially fell on Monday before stabilising by midday, but were underperforming other European bourses. The euro dropped 0.5 per cent to $1.052, with Joe Tuckey, head of foreign exchange analysis at Argentex, saying the impasse “continues to undermine confidence in [the] euro in general”.

French 10-year borrowing costs were down 0.02 percentage points to 2.87 per cent as the bonds regained some ground, though other Eurozone debt did better. The gap, or spread, above German bond yields — a key measure of the riskiness of French bonds — rose to 0.83 percentage points, having hit a 12-year high of 0.9 points last week.

“It seems hard to see how this plays out favourably for the market as either the [government] survives, which implies compromises which are only likely to result in wider deficits, or Barnier sticks to his guns thereby resulting in a spike in political uncertainty,” Rabobank analysts noted.

Pierre Moscovici, the head of France’s independent state auditor, warned that the country needed political stability if it was to fix its public finances.

“We need to give a sign that we are regaining control [over deficits] and it’s true that with a vote of no confidence we’re entering a phase of uncertainty,” he said on France 2 television on Monday. “Our financial situation is dangerous, worrying.”

Advertisement

Without a majority in parliament, crafting a budget has proved tortuous for Barnier, forcing him to make concessions not only to the RN but also to his own MPs. Those tweaks have cut about €10bn of planned savings out of the social security budget and will probably put Barnier’s goal of bringing the deficit down to 5 per cent by the end of 2025 out of reach.

The leftist bloc, the Nouveau Front Populaire, has also pushed back against Barnier’s budget, and on Sunday confirmed that all four of the parties that make it up, including the more moderate Socialists, would vote for a censure motion.

If Barnier’s government was voted down this week, it would be only the second time French lawmakers have taken such a step since the Fifth Republic was established in 1958. It would also make Barnier the shortest-serving prime minister during the same period.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

News

Trump Says Israel and Lebanon Agree to Extend Cease-Fire by Three Weeks

Published

on

Trump Says Israel and Lebanon Agree to Extend Cease-Fire by Three Weeks

President Trump announced a three-week extension of a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon that had been set to expire in a few days, after hosting a meeting between Israeli and Lebanese diplomats at the White House on Thursday.

Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group that has been attacking Israel from southern Lebanon, did not have representatives at the meeting and did not immediately comment on the announcement. The prime minister of Israel and the president of Lebanon also did not comment.

A successful peace agreement would hinge upon Hezbollah halting attacks, which Lebanon’s government has little power to enforce because it does not control the militia. Lebanon’s military has mostly stayed out of the fighting and is not at war with Israel.

The cease-fire, which was scheduled to end on April 26, would last until May 17 if it takes effect as Mr. Trump described it. Before the cease-fire was brokered last week, nearly 2,300 people were killed in Lebanon and 13 in Israel. Since then, the number of Israeli airstrikes and Hezbollah attacks have been dramatically reduced, though the two sides have continued exchanging fire.

The Lebanese Ambassador to the United States, Nada Hamadeh, credited Mr. Trump for extending the cease-fire, saying that “with your help and support, we can make Lebanon great again.” Mr. Trump replied, “I like that phrase, it’s a good phrase.”

Advertisement

Asked about the potential of a lasting peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon, Mr. Trump said that “I think there’s a great chance. They are friends about the same things and they are enemies on the same things.”

But Lebanon and Israel have periodically been at war since Israel’s founding in 1948. Israel has invaded Lebanon for the fifth time since 1978, incursions that have destabilized the country and the delicate balance of power between Muslim, Christian and Druze communities.

In the hours before the president’s announcement on social media, Israel and Hezbollah were trading attacks in southern Lebanon, testing the existing cease-fire.

Mr. Trump said the meeting at the White House had been attended by high-ranking U.S. officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the U.S. ambassadors to Israel and Lebanon.

Earlier on Thursday, an Israeli strike near the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh killed three people, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Hezbollah claimed three separate attacks on Israeli troops who are occupying southern Lebanon, though none were wounded or killed.

Advertisement

Hezbollah set off the latest round of fighting last month by attacking Israel soon after the start of the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran. Israel responded to Hezbollah’s attacks by launching airstrikes across Lebanon and widening a ground invasion of the country’s south.

Continue Reading

News

U.S. soldier charged with suspected Polymarket insider trading over Maduro raid

Published

on

U.S. soldier charged with suspected Polymarket insider trading over Maduro raid

Smoke rises from Port of La Guaira in Venezuela on Jan. 3, 2026 after U.S. forces seized the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro and his wife.

Jesus Vargas/Getty Images


hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Jesus Vargas/Getty Images

Federal prosecutors on Thursday unsealed an indictment against a U.S. Army soldier, accusing him of using his insider knowledge of the clandestine military operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January to reap more than $400,000 in profits on the popular prediction market site Polymarket.

The Justice Department says Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, who was stationed at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, was part of the team that planned and carried out the predawn raid in Caracas earlier this year that resulted in the apprehension of Maduro.

The Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed the actions against Van Dyke, the first time U.S. officials have leveled criminal charges against someone over prediction market wagers.

Advertisement

According to the indictment, Van Dyke now faces counts of wire fraud, commodities fraud, misusing non-public government information and other charges.

Trading under numerous usernames including “Burdensome-Mix,” Van Dyke allegedly traded about $32,000 on the arrest of Maduro, resulting in profits exceeding $400,000.

“Prediction markets are not a haven for using misappropriated confidential or classified information for personal gain,” said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York. “Those entrusted to safeguard our nation’s secrets have a duty to protect them and our armed service members, and not to use that information for personal financial gain.”

Van Dyke’s defense lawyer is not yet publicly known. Polymarket did not return a request for comment.

The charges against Van Dyke come at a sensitive time for the prediction market industry, which has been growing exponentially, despite calls in Washington and among state leaders for the sites to be reined in.

Advertisement

Van Dyke is the first to be charged in the U.S. for suspected Polymarket insider trading, but Israeli authorities in February arrested several people and charged two on suspicion of using classified information to place bets about military operations in Iran on Polymarket.

Continue Reading

News

Senate Adopts GOP Budget, Laying the Groundwork to Fund ICE and Reopen DHS

Published

on

Senate Adopts GOP Budget, Laying the Groundwork to Fund ICE and Reopen DHS

The Senate early Thursday morning adopted a Republican budget blueprint that would pave the way for a $70 billion increase for immigration enforcement and the eventual reopening of the Department of Homeland Security.

Republicans pushed through the plan on a nearly party-line vote of 50 to 48. It came after an overnight marathon of rapid-fire votes, known as a vote-a-rama, in which the G.O.P. beat back a series of Democratic proposals aimed at addressing the high cost of health care, housing, food and energy. The debate put the two parties’ dueling messages on vivid display six months before the midterm elections.

Republicans, who are using the budget plan to lay the groundwork to eventually push through a filibuster-proof bill providing a multiyear funding stream for President Trump’s immigration crackdown, used the all-night session to highlight their hard-line stance on border security, seeking to portray Democrats as unwilling to safeguard the country.

Democrats tried and failed to add a series of changes aimed at addressing cost-of-living issues, seizing the opportunity to hammer Republicans as out of touch with and unwilling to act on the concerns of everyday Americans.

Here’s what to know about the budget plan and the nocturnal ritual senators engaged in before adopting it.

Advertisement

The budget blueprint is a crucial piece of Republicans’ plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security and end a shutdown that has lasted for more than two months. After Democrats refused to fund immigration enforcement without new restrictions on agents’ tactics and conduct, the G.O.P. struck a deal with them to pass a spending bill that would fund everything but ICE and the Border Patrol. Republicans said they would fund those agencies through a special budget bill that Democrats could not block.

“We can fix this with Republican votes, and we will,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and the Budget Committee chairman. “Every Democrat has opposed money for the Border Patrol and ICE at a time of great peril.”

In resorting to a new budget blueprint, Republicans laid the groundwork to deny Democrats a chance to stop the immigration enforcement funding. But they also submitted themselves to a vote-a-rama, in which any senator can propose unlimited changes to such a measure before it is adopted.

The budget measure now goes to the House, which must adopt it before lawmakers in both chambers can draft the legislation funding immigration enforcement. That bill will provide yet another opportunity for a vote-a-rama even closer to the November election.

Democrats took to the floor to criticize Republicans for supercharging funding for federal immigration enforcement rather than moving legislation that would address Americans’ concerns over affordability.

Advertisement

“This is what Republicans are fighting for,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the Democratic leader. “To maintain two unchecked rogue agencies that are dreaded in all corners of this country instead of reducing your health care costs, your housing costs, your grocery costs, your gas costs.”

Democrats offered a host of amendments along those lines, all of which were defeated by Republicans — and that was the point. The proposals were meant to put the G.O.P. in a tough political spot, showcasing their opposition to helping Americans afford high living costs. Fewer than a handful of G.O.P. senators crossed party lines to support them.

The G.O.P. thwarted an effort by Mr. Schumer to require that the budget measure lower out-of-pocket health care costs for Americans. Two Republicans who are up for re-election this year, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, voted with Democrats, but the proposal was still defeated.

Republicans also squelched a move by Senator Ben Ray Lujan, Democrat of New Mexico, to create a fund that would lower grocery costs and reverse cuts to food aid programs that Republicans enacted last year. Ms. Collins and Mr. Sullivan again joined Democrats.

Also defeated by the G.O.P.: a proposal by Senator John Hickenlooper, Democrat of Colorado, to address rising consumer prices brought on by Mr. Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran; one by Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, to require the budget measure to address rising electricity prices, and another by Mr. Markey to create a fund to bring down housing costs.

Advertisement

Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat who is up for re-election in Georgia, also sought to add language requiring the budget plan to address health insurance companies denying or delaying access to care, but that, too was blocked by Republicans.

While Republicans had fewer proposals for changes to their own budget plan, they also sought to offer measures that would underscore their aggressive stance on immigration enforcement and dare Democrats to vote against them.

Mr. Graham offered an amendment to allocate funds toward a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to the apprehension and deportation of adult immigrants convicted of rape, murder, or sexual abuse of a minor after illegally entering the United States. It passed unanimously.

Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, sought to bar Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion and other services, and criticized the organization for providing transgender care to minors. Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, also attempted to tack on the G.O.P. voter identification bill, known as the SAVE America Act. Both proposals were blocked when Democrats, joined by a few Republicans, voted to strike them as unrelated to the budget plan.

The Republicans who crossed party lines to oppose their own party’s proposals for new voting requirements were Ms. Collins along with Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Advertisement

Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski also opposed the effort to block payments to Planned Parenthood.

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending