World
At 28, Jordan Bardella shakes up French politics: 'People across France have woken up'
FRANCE — Jordan Bardella is shaking things up in French politics. He’s young. He’s handsome like a male fashion model, and since 2022, he’s been president of the National Rally, the new name for the National Front party founded in 1972 by controversial far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. The party has moved on from its far-right roots, becoming more of a populist party under Le Pen’s daughter, Marine.
“Jordan Bardella, the right-wing 28-year-old without a college degree, could be the French prime minister in a few weeks,” says Thomas Corbett-Dillon, a former adviser to former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and adviser to other European politicians. “This is great news for the French people that have suffered relentless attacks on their culture by left-wing Macron and the millions of migrants he imported.”
Bardella was born into a family of Italian immigrants and excelled in school before attending the country’s top university, the Sorbonne. However, he dropped out before earning a degree to pursue a career in politics. His parents divorced at an early age, and he was largely brought up by his mother in a working-class neighborhood in the Paris suburbs.
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Rassemblement National President and electoral list leader Jordan Bardella poses for a selfie with supporters during a campaign rally for the upcoming European elections in Montbeliard, eastern France, March 22, 2024. (Patrick Hertzog/AFP via Getty Images)
The reason Bardella has a chance at being the next French prime minister is due to the country’s electorate swing to the populist right in the European Union elections at the beginning of the month. France led the way with the National Rally snagging 31.5% of the votes, making it the most popular French political block in the election.
That led President Emmanuel Macron to call a snap parliamentary election for the end of the month.
“[Macron] called an urgent election to try and surprise the National Rally party before they were ready,” Corbett-Dillon says. “The people across France have woken up and are sick of the left-wing policies.”
Still, there are other changes that might seem to make Bardella and National Rally more popular to the French. Specifically, Bardella and Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie, have a different way of doing things compared to Marine’s father, says French-born Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia.
Women pose in front of a poster of the head of the Rassemblement National far-right party, Jordan Bardella, during the launching event of the movement “Les Jeunes avec Bardella” (Youth with Bardella) in Paris, Jan. 27, 2024. (Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images)
“Jean-Marie’s demeanor was not fitting in with the French elite,” de Rugy says. “When I see Marine and Jordan, they fit very well.”
In addition, neither Bardella nor Madame Le Pen push antisemitic rhetoric as did Mr. Le Pen.
“They are not Jean-Marie,” de Rugy says. She also notes the usual “far right” description of the National Rally isn’t quite accurate. Yes, the party does have an anti-immigrant and protectionist stance on imported goods, which are both far right, she says. But on domestic issues, the party is quite different.
“These guys are more inclined to big government programs,” she says. Such things include the hefty cost of state-funded pensions and other social safety nets.
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Another thing drawing voters to the National Rally is the high unemployment of young people between 15 and 24. Recent data shows that the so-called youth unemployment rate was running at 17.8%, according to data from April. That’s up from 16.8% at the beginning of last year.
That high youth unemployment rate may be due to a lack of education or skills, says Ivo Pezzuto, a Paris-based professor of global economics and competitiveness at the ISM Business School.
“There are a lot of jobs but only for the people with the new skills,” Pezzuto says. “Those most likely to get jobs would include people with digital know-how.”
Marine Le Pen, center, and deputies, including Sebastien Chenu to her left and Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, to her right, participate in a march against antisemitism from the Esplanade des Invalides to the Senate Nov. 12, 2023, in Paris. (Antoine Gyori/Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
However, Bardella and the National Rally face some huge challenges. First, winning a majority in the French parliament isn’t the most likely outcome, says Mujtaba Rahman, Eurasia Group’s managing director for Europe. Instead, he says the likelihood of a victory is “non-negligible” with a 30% chance of the National Rally winning a majority of the parliamentary seats.
If Bardella beats the odds and gets a parliamentary majority, it still won’t be easy to pursue new policy programs, Rahman says. Part of that block will likely be President Macron, who some say leans a tad to the left. That means there will likely be a clash of policy goals between the president and the prime minister.
“Never have we had a co-habitation of such big ideological differences,” Rahman says.
There’s also the potential for problems with government spending. Notably, as a European Union member, France is obliged to stick to limits on how much of a fiscal deficit it runs as a percentage of GDP. The issue that Rahman sees popping up is Macron trying to constrain spending by Bardella.
“It’s not clear [Macron would] be able to do that,” Rahman says. “I think there would be a period of experimentation and uncertainty resulting in the constitution being tested.”
The result could put France’s finances in the spotlight, and that may already be beginning.
National Rally lead candidate Jordan Bardella delivers a speech at the party election night headquarters June 9, 2024, in Paris. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly)
Investors have shown their concerns over the past few days since Macron called the snap vote. The Paris CAC index (roughly the French equivalent of the Dow Jones index) had subsequently dropped 4% last week. And its finances are stretched. The country had a debt of 111% of its GDP at the end of last year.
And the same year, its deficit rose to 5.5% of GDP. The EU requires member states to run deficits no higher than 3%.
“The new government will have a severe fiscal constraint,” says Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at currency specialist Bannockburn Global Forex. In other words, whoever gets a majority in the French parliament, there won’t be much wiggle room.
Chandler also sees an increased risk of France leaving the EU.
“It’s a tail risk, but the tail has gotten a bit bigger,” he said.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right political party, launched her fourth bid for the presidency on Wednesday. Her campaign rally comes a day after a court upheld her embezzlement conviction and shortened a ban on her eligibility to run for public office.
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As Iran, Russia’s war with Ukraine and NATO’s defense spending dominate the organization’s summit in Ankara, one issue that has escaped the media glare is the increasingly antisemitic rhetoric coming from Turkish leaders.
As relations between Turkey and Israel continue to hit new lows, a war of words between the two nations has erupted.
In a July 2 interview with CNN Türk, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Israel has “become a burden that humanity can no longer bear,” The Jerusalem Post reported.
Fidan also said Israel is representative of “humanity’s common problems,” and asked other countries to apply pressure to the Jewish State, according to Israel National News.
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Anti-Israel protesters rally in Istanbul, Turkey, Feb. 17, 2024, over the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
In a press statement, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called Fidan’s words “a clear call for genocide. The Jewish people know very well what happens when such words are allowed to go unchallenged. The first step on the road to genocide is dehumanization.
“This is a sentence that sounds very familiar to sentences from about 100 years ago,” Sa’ar added. “To speak about a people as a ‘problem for humanity.’ What do you do with a ‘burden that you can no longer bear?’” he asked.
Sinan Ciddi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and director of FDD’s Turkey program, told Fox News Digital Fidan’s statement was “some of the vilest rhetoric to come out of any statesman since the Holocaust.”
Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan speaks during a rally in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Istanbul, Turkey, Oct. 28, 2023. (Dilara Senkaya/Reuters)
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Ciddi said escalated anti-Israel rhetoric in Turkey “goes all the way back to 2008,” when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “began the process of ripping apart the bilateral relationship between Israel and Turkey. But, after Oct. 7, it just went into overdrive,” he said. “I have never heard any Arab leader utter the words that Foreign Minister Fidan has said.”
Yet Erdoğan has condemned antisemitism; the Turkish Minute reported that he told Turkish religious minority representatives at an Ankara dinner in March that “just as Islamophobia is a crime against humanity, antisemitism is also a crime, an evil that cannot be considered reasonable or legitimate.”
Despite his recent condemnation, he and other ministers have continued with their rhetoric against the Jewish state.
In June, Turkish Interior Minister Mustafa Ҁiftҁi said the world would “witness the liberation of Jerusalem,” according to the Times of Israel.
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In May 2021, the Times of Israel reported that Erdoğan called Israelis “murderers,” claiming they were “only satisfied by sucking their [victims’] blood.” At the time, the State Department spokesperson issued a strong condemnation of Erdoğan’s “antisemitic comments regarding the Jewish people,” calling them “reprehensible.”
In May 2025, Erdoğan invoked similar language, accusing Israel of being “a terror state that feeds on the blood, lives and tears of the innocent,” Israel National News reported.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, right, and Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon speak to journalists ahead of a United Nations Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters on August 5, 2025 in New York (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
Anti-Israel sentiment in Turkey has infiltrated far beyond leadership. A Pew Research poll from June found that Turkey had the highest level of anti-Israel sentiment of any polled country, with 91% of the population holding “very unfavorable” views on Israel, 6% holding an “unfavorable” view, and just 1% expressing any favor of Israel.
In response to questions about whether the State Department plans to respond to antisemitic statements from Turkish leadership, a spokesperson told Fox News Digital that “Turkey is a longstanding and valued NATO ally, and we continue to engage on all aspects of our important and multi-faceted relationship.”
Ciddi said there are “numerous channels” for the State Department and Trump administration to reprimand Turkey for its unchecked hatred.
“The president could obviously pull aside a Turkish counterpart and demand an apology,” he explained, while the State Department could address the comments or place Turkey on a watchlist.
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NATO leaders participate in a summit in The Hague, Netherlands, June 25, 2025. (Handout/Latin America News Agency via Reuters Connect)
As the two-day NATO summit winds down in Ankara, Ciddi said Turkey “is going to try and overshadow anything else” and “promote itself as the sort of premiere NATO ally, so we need to watch out for Turkey’s whitewashing of its human rights record.
“We cannot safeguard our allies’ democratic norms, rights and practices if we don’t hold member states like Turkey accountable for the threats that it presents.”
The Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
The order comes three years after a jury found out Trump has sexually abused and defamed the writer.
Published On 8 Jul 2026
A federal judge has ruled that writer E Jean Carroll can collect the more than $5.8m that US President Donald Trump was ordered to pay after a jury found he sexually abused and defamed her, clearing the way for the money to be released after the US Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal.
Judge Lewis A Kaplan ruled on Wednesday that Carroll can be paid the original $5m award granted to her by the jury, along with interest that has accrued since the verdict in 2023. Carroll’s lawyers had asked for the funds to be released after the Supreme Court refused on June 29 to hear Trump’s appeal.
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“This is the end of the line,” Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan wrote in a court filing, adding, “It is time for him to pay Carroll.”
Less than an hour after the judge issued the order, Trump appealed it.
“The American People stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll Hoaxes,” a spokesperson for Trump’s lawyers said in a statement.
Carroll first accused Trump in 2019, writing in a memoir that he had sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1996. Trump denied the allegation, saying he had never met Carroll, accusing her of lying to sell books and for political reasons, and calling the claim a “hoax.”
Carroll sued him for defamation over those comments later that year, accusing him of damaging her reputation by suggesting she had lied for personal gain. She filed a second lawsuit in 2022, accusing Trump of battery/sexual abuse and defamation over another denial he posted on Truth Social in 2022, again calling the allegation a hoax.
In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and for defaming her through his 2022 statements. It did not determine that Trump was liable for rape.
A second jury awarded her $83.3m in 2024 for the defamatory statements Trump made in 2019 when he was president, after she first went public with the allegation.
Trump has continued to fight both verdicts.
After the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal, He called the lawsuit “a Fake Case” and pledged to continue fighting what he described as a “Weaponisation and Lawfare Case.”
On Wednesday, Trump’s lawyers filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision not to hear the appeal. They argued that Trump would suffer “irreparable harm” if the money is paid out, because Carroll has said she intends to donate it, which would make it difficult to recover the funds if the verdict is later overturned.
Trump is also still appealing the $83.3m judgment, arguing his 2019 comments were made while he was president and are therefore protected by presidential immunity. The Department of Justice has also launched a criminal investigation into Carroll over whether she committed perjury during her testimony.
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