PARIS — Polls have opened in a French presidential election runoff that’s being carefully adopted across the globe for its potential to redefine France’s place within the Western world, the nation’s strategy to immigration and Europe’s relationship with Russia.
Washington
Le Pen challenges Macron in French presidential runoff watched around the world
![Le Pen challenges Macron in French presidential runoff watched around the world Le Pen challenges Macron in French presidential runoff watched around the world](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/6PJHJRGDVAI6ZDH7GOYFT5GBW4.jpg&w=1440)
Among the many sources of uncertainty: A Macron victory would mark a uncommon reelection for an incumbent in a rustic the place voters are identified to be unforgiving of their leaders. There’s not almost the identical degree of enthusiasm for him as when he first ran in 2017, launching his personal centrist political motion and changing into France’s youngest president.
Furthermore, the ultimate polls missed the end result margin by almost 9 proportion factors in 2017. This time, turnout may very well be crucial. And, for the reason that shock success of the Brexit referendum in 2016, few in Europe are prepared to depend out the sudden.
This election has already introduced the far proper nearer to the French presidency than ever earlier than. Within the first-round vote on April 10, Macron acquired 28 p.c of the vote share, and Le Pen 23 p.c.
A runoff win by Le Pen, 53, would put an anti-immigrant populist in control of the European Union’s second-biggest financial system and its solely nuclear energy. It will substitute a fervent defender of the E.U. with a longtime critic of the bloc. Le Pen’s previous admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and her latest requires reconciliation between NATO and Russia have additionally prompted issues {that a} far-right victory would empower a frontrunner who shares Putin’s worldview, and who might grow to be a key impediment to Western assist for Ukraine.
A lot of the candidates who didn’t qualify for the second spherical beseeched their supporters to not vote for Le Pen. Her hopes now largely relaxation on the potential for prime abstention charges amongst voters who lean towards Macron.
By midday, turnout stood at 26 p.c — virtually two proportion factors decrease than on the identical time 5 years in the past, however one proportion level larger than in the course of the first spherical two weeks in the past.
Le Pen solid her poll within the far-right stronghold of Hénin-Beaumont in northern France on Sunday morning, utilizing the chance to mingle with crowds that had waited for her outdoors the polling station and taking selfies with supporters. Macron was anticipated to vote in Le Touquet, a seaside city the place he has typically stayed throughout election weekends.
All through his first time period, Macron, 44, repeatedly staked his future on dangerous political gambles with combined outcomes — pushing by means of tax cuts for the rich that offended lots of his left-leaning supporters, but in addition managing to efficiently introduce a vaccine cross in one among Europe’s most vaccine-skeptical nations.
His reelection technique seemed to be one other a type of gambles. He barely did any campaigning earlier than the primary spherical, as a substitute specializing in the pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine. It’s not unusual for French incumbents to keep away from the marketing campaign path, however his choice enabled Le Pen to say, as she crisscrossed the nation, that she was extra attuned to the financial issues on the minds of French voters.
If Macron’s last-minute marketing campaign ends with him being comfortably reelected, it will enhance a president who has at occasions been underestimated.
However relying on the margin of his victory, Macron might additionally face an onerous second time period — marked by resistance on the streets and in parliament — which will additional polarize the nation and embolden the fringes of French politics.
Nearly 60 p.c of voters solid their ballots for far-right or far-left candidates within the first spherical.
“There may be going to be little or no enthusiasm,” if he’s reelected, stated Vincent Martigny, a political scientist on the College of Good. “The legitimacy of his mandate will rely upon how broad the margin is — and likewise how he reacts to the victory.”
“The query is, will he hear the sensation of malaise that exists within the French voters?” Martigny stated. “Will he have the ability to change?”
When Macron confronted off in opposition to Le Pen 5 years in the past, he beat her by a margin of extra 30 proportion factors. That the hole has been within the single digits at sure factors this cycle means that Le Pen has succeeded at normalizing her celebration and moderating her picture.
Supporting the far proper was unthinkable for a lot of in France on the time Le Pen took the celebration over from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was identified for xenophobia and for calling Nazi gasoline chambers only a “element” of World Struggle II.
Le Pen renamed the celebration from Nationwide Entrance to Nationwide Rally in 2018. She downplayed her household hyperlinks, with marketing campaign posters referring to her as “Marine” or simply “M.”
However a lot of the celebration’s DNA has remained intact. Le Pen on this marketing campaign advocated for a referendum to finish immigration to France, for girls to be fined for sporting headscarves in public, and for a French-first strategy to insurance policies that might put her in direct confrontation with European Union legal guidelines and values.
Whereas terrorism was a dominant election matter 5 years in the past, it has performed much less of a job on this marketing campaign, partially as a result of the chance of assaults seems to have light. However the matter continues to loom massive in France — TV networks’ election protection was briefly interrupted on Sunday, after a person allegedly assaulted a priest with a knife within the metropolis of Good. Authorities later stated the suspect, who was arrested, had been present process psychological remedy and that they weren’t treating the incident as terrorism.
As an alternative of safety points, Le Pen’s marketing campaign largely targeted on capturing public frustration with Macron’s financial and social insurance policies. She additional inspired a sentiment that Macron, a former funding banker, has been a “president of the wealthy,” who might be aloof and boastful.
In Hénin-Beaumont, the place Le Pen solid her poll on Sunday, Joel Viville stated Saturday that he’ll vote for Le Pen “to have change.”
“5 years of robust occasions below Macron — sufficient is sufficient,” stated Viville, 57 who’s unemployed.
However Jean-Philippe Dahene, 56, stated he was unconvinced by Le Pen’s proposals. “I wish to let [Macron] have another time period to proceed what he has put in place,” he stated, citing the collection of disaster that disrupted Macron’s presidency, together with the coronavirus pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine.
Macron is hoping that for all of the voters who dislike him, extra folks strongly oppose Le Pen.
“April 24 is a referendum on the way forward for France,” Macron informed BFM tv in a last interview on Friday night, evaluating the stakes — and potential dangers of abstentionism — to the 2016 U.S. election and the Brexit vote. “It’s a alternative between leaving or not leaving Europe … a alternative between turning the again on ecology or not, a alternative between abandoning or not abandoning the secular republic,” he stated.
Macron’s approval score has hovered round 45 p.c over the previous months. His two most up-to-date predecessors, leftist François Hollande and center-right Nicolas Sarkozy, each had decrease rankings towards the tip of their one-term presidencies, with Hollande at round 20 p.c and Sarkozy round 35 p.c. Sarkozy was not reelected, whereas Hollande didn’t search a second time period.
Birnbaum reported from Riga and Petit reported from Hénin-Beaumont, France.
![](https://newspub.live/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/np-logo.png)
Washington
Creating a memorial to the horrors of World War I
![Creating a memorial to the horrors of World War I Creating a memorial to the horrors of World War I](https://assets3.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2024/08/31/77fcc007-c455-40d9-bbc1-0162e5e6a821/thumbnail/1200x630g2/72c4c83255ec34b4612d034acce8c5a4/wwi-memorial-a-soldiers-journey-detail-a-1280.jpg?v=25685eaa472b1a5dbb5bd46ae506d232)
Over the past 40 years, memorials to America’s 20th century wars have sprung up across Washington, D.C., with one conspicuous omission: There was no national memorial to veterans of World War I in our nation’s capital.
“If you ask anybody on the streets where the World War I memorial is in D.C., most of them will point you to the D.C. Veterans Memorial,” said Joe Weishaar. “For a long time people assumed that it was the national memorial. But the little rotunda that’s there is only to district residents.”
In 2015, Weishaar was a 25-year-old intern at a Chicago architecture firm when he heard about an open design competition for D.C.’s first national World War I memorial. “I set up a shelf in my closet, I set my computer on the shelf, and that was my office,” he said. “I was doing this, like, in nights and weekends after work.”
He sent off his design and then forgot about it, until … “I got a very strange phone call and they’re like, ‘You’re one of five finalists. We need you in Washington, like, tomorrow,’” he said.
Weishaar had never even been to Washington. “No, I had never been. Didn’t own a suit!”
Weishaar’s design beat out more than 360 applicants from over 20 countries.
When the memorial opened to the public in 2021, only one thing was missing: an intricate, 60-foot-long bronze relief, the memorial’s centerpiece, created by classical sculptor Sabin Howard, a firebrand and self-appointed bulwark against the scourge of modern art. “Artists like de Kooning or Jackson Pollock, I’m in opposition to them,” said Howard. “It’s a scam, what’s happened in the last 100 years. I’m here to rectify that scam.”
For his tableau depicting World War I, he said, “I threw out the last hundred years of history in the art world, and I went back to what preceded that period of time.”
Shepherding Howard through the byzantine approvals process was his client, the Congressionally-created World War I Centennial Commission.
“You go to these meetings, and none of the people in the room are artists; they’re all lawyers and, you know, Washington bureaucrats,” Howard said. “The commission asked me, ‘We need to see more – a dying soldier, perhaps, and more suffering.’ I started posing the models. You had madness, you had amputations, death. So, I went pretty deep.”
When he brought that iteration into the commission office, he said chairs were literally thrown in the room.
“I was treated as, ‘You’re working for us.’ And I took that for a long time. But then we got to a moment in the relationship, I stood up and I said, ‘I will not compromise this design. And if you don’t like it, you sculpt it, and I’ll send you some webinars.’”
The World War I Centennial Commission said they are “proud of the magnificent Memorial that Joe Weishaar and Sabin Howard have created,” and that it “provides a model of how a complex and collaborative process can work.”
Howard may lack tact, but he doesn’t lack confidence. His sculpture charts a soldier’s wartime journey, from his ambivalent departure, to his wordless homecoming, to the animal savagery of combat in-between. Pointing to one soldier, he said, “If you look at this figure, I don’t think in the history of art that there’s ever been a figure with this much explosive energy.”
Howard’s “movie in bronze,” consisting of 38 figures weighing 25 tons, ends with a soldier, home from war, lowering a helmet to a young girl.
For World War I historian Jennifer Keene, the sculpture’s final tableau illustrates the heavy toll the war exacted on its veterans: “They were not prepared for what they were going to find – the quagmire, the terror of artillery shells, rats and lice and trench feet. No, they are completely unprepared.”
Keene said, “I think that idea at the end, that it’s just a gesture, right? ‘Here’s the helmet.’ There’s no words there, because maybe there aren’t words that can really describe what that soldier has been through.”
The sculpture, which will be unveiled at a ceremony later this month, took nine years of Sabin Howard’s life. “Yeah, but that’s not a lot, when you think about it,” he said.
Asked what he hopes visitors to the memorial a century from now would experience, Howard replied, “I want the visitor 100 years from now to have the same feeling that I had when I went to go see the David when I was 25. We are made in God’s image. That sculpture is made in God’s image. So is mine. It’s a simple thing, but very deep.”
For more info:
Story produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Joseph Frandino.
See also:
Washington
Washington vs. Weber State Game Thread
![Washington vs. Weber State Game Thread Washington vs. Weber State Game Thread](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/p9jeJnZ_MpoLYwW0fWV-ik94qTA=/0x0:8640x4524/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25595680/1915746483.jpg)
In roughly 30 minutes, a new era of Husky football kicks off on the Big Ten Network. As noted in the open thread posted earlier, this is your spot to comment on the game and follow along during all of the action with your fellow Husky fans.
We will be extremely loose with the definition of trolling and any offenders will be banned. Also, any comments directed at other posters will be deleted and the offenders may be placed on pre-moderate mode.
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Make sure you didn’t miss our week of scouting the Wildcats.
Weber State Offensive Preview
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Weber State defensive Preview
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The Prediction
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Go Dawgs!
Washington
Tim Walz has 'gilded his record for political gain,' Washington Post columnist says
![Tim Walz has 'gilded his record for political gain,' Washington Post columnist says Tim Walz has 'gilded his record for political gain,' Washington Post columnist says](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/walztim.jpg)
Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker criticized Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for exaggerating elements of his career for “political gain” in an op-ed published on Friday.
“I’m not saying that Walz lies, precisely,” Parker wrote in an op-ed headlined, “Tim Walz isn’t exactly what he seems.” “But he tends to gild his résumé for political gain.”
Walz has been forced to defend a number of controversies that have emerged following Vice President Harris’ announcement that he would be her running mate. In particular, Walz has had to explain his record in the National Guard and his 2006 congressional campaign’s statements on his 1995 drunk driving incident.
‘MASTERFUL SHAPESHIFTER’ WALZ GETS POINTED MESSAGE FROM MINNESOTA VOTERS AT STATE FAIR BOOTH
Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker criticized Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for exaggerating elements of his career for “political gain” in an op-ed published on Friday. (Scott Eisen)
Parker called out Walz’s statements about his 1995 arrest for drunk driving.
“Walz, then a 31-year-old high school teacher, was clocked at 96 mph in a 55-mph zone in Nebraska,” Parker wrote. “He was pulled over by a state trooper, who, upon smelling alcohol, asked Walz to take a field sobriety test, which he failed. Walz then submitted to a hospital for a blood test, which revealed his blood alcohol level to be 0.128, well above the state’s legal limit.”
While that info is verifiable by police records, Walz’s 2006 congressional campaign staff told the press that the candidate was not drinking and actually failed to understand the police officer’s directions because of hearing loss, blaming an injury relating to his time in the National Guard.
Parker also responded to Walz’s interview alongside Harris with CNN.
WALZ ON ABORTION, RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS ‘ON PAR WITH CHINA AND NORTH KOREA,’ SAYS PARENTAL RIGHTS ADVOCATE
![Tim Walz speakimg](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/08/1200/675/403ad5f5-tim-walz.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Veterans who served alongside Walz in the same battalion when he was in the National Guard have spoken out against his honesty about his service record. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“Morning show softballs may give comfort to the ill-prepared, but they deny viewers the content they need to be better-informed voters,” Parker wrote. “Nothing about the pair’s first (taped) interview Thursday night, with CNN’s Dana Bash, satisfied that imperative. Although Harris handled the interview relatively well, Walz seemed to be a mixed-up mess.”
“He answered none of the four questions he was asked, including whether he had misspoken when he said he had carried a gun ‘in war’ when he never was deployed to a combat zone,” Parker wrote. “A simple ‘yes’ might have sufficed, but instead he sputtered evasive nonsense and, to be rhetorically accurate, gobbledygook.”
Veterans who served alongside Walz in the same battalion when he was in the National Guard have spoken out against his honesty about his service record.
The Harris-Walz campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
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