PARIS — Newly appointed Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu will have to hit the ground running, taking the reins of government just as protesters seek to bring France to a grinding halt. Authorities are bracing for demonstrations and blockades on highways, train stations, airports and refineries as part of an online movement called “Block Everything.” Paris Police Chief Laurent Nuñez said an “exceptional” deployment of close to 80,000 security forces across the country is planned for Wednesday and that authorities will “intervene systematically” to remove any blockades. The shutdown campaign began gaining steam after outgoing Prime Minister François Bayrou unveiled his plans to squeeze the 2026 French budget by €43.8 billion in July. Lawmakers on Monday torpedoed Bayrou’s government over those spending plans, which the longtime centrist argued were necessary to rein in excessive public spending. The French president appointed Lecornu a day after Bayrou’s downfall, responding to calls quickly replace the outgoing prime minister at a time of deep political tension. Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau himself called on the president to fill “the power vacuum.” The scale of the unrest will be a major test for Lecornu, one of Macron’s closest allies since he came to power, and the former armed forces minister will see his authority and popularity tested on his first day on the job. A discreet political operator, Lecornu has earned plaudits for shepherding France’s rearmament in the wake of the war in Ukraine, but will be thrust in the limelight like never before. In addition to responding to any violence during Wednesday’s protests, Lecornu will have to jumpstart budget talks through a paralyzed parliament without a majority. And even more widespread strikes are planned for next week. ‘NO ORGANIZERS, NO ONE WE CAN TALK TO’ In addition to its big security rollout on Wednesday, the French government is also investigating whether foreign agitators attempted to amplify the movement, though one official said the effect had so far been “marginal.” While comparisons have been drawn between “Block Everything” and the Yellow Jackets, an analysis by the Jean Jaurès Foundation concluded that the two movements are “profoundly different,” with Wednesday’s plans driven in large part by the radical left. Wednesday’s campaign, however, is supported by 46 percent of the French, according to a recent survey by pollster Ipsos. The shutdown campaign began gaining steam after outgoing Prime Minister François Bayrou unveiled his plans to squeeze the 2026 French budget by €43.8 billion in July. | Remon Haazen/Getty Images Unlike the Yellow Jackets, which began online in opposition to a fuel tax hike before entering the mainstream and bringing the country to a standstill, the “Block Everything” crusade’s goal is much more nebulous. Online accounts claiming to belong to the Sept. 10 movement are calling for a range of things, from an end to political parties to a boycott of the banking system and Macron’s resignation. Nuñez said that the leaderless nature of the movement has fueled concerns about its unpredictability. “It’s not like a demonstration, there are no organizers, no one we can talk to, just calls to block everything,” said Nuñez. “And more worryingly, the calls have been relayed by radical extreme-left [groups] who are calling for hardcore, sometimes violent acts.” Authorities also fear that whatever happens on Wednesday will inflame protests next week, which are organized by French trade unions.

A Cabinet member in a council run by Reform UK accused colleagues of sacking him in an “ambush” hours after national leader Nigel Farage came to visit. Bill Barrett lasted less than two months overseeing transport on Kent County Council, where Farage’s right-wing populist party won 57 out of 81 seats at May’s local elections. Farage visited the council on Monday and gave an interview saying Kent’s £98 million-a-year budget for home-to-school transport was “beyond belief.” Later that day, council leader Linden Kemkaran issued a statement saying she had “made changes to my Cabinet team” and Barrett had left his role.  Her chief whip Maxwell Harrison told KentOnline on Monday: “Bill wasn’t sacked. He agreed to leave — it was an agreement. Bill was doing a good job and there was no bad blood.” Speaking to POLITICO Wednesday, however, Barrett said that story was “completely false.” He added: “It’s a complete lie. There was no mutual arrangement that we left. I walked into an office basically to an ambush, where they basically spent 50 minutes saying how shit I was.”  ‘I WALKED IN TO AN AMBUSH’ Farage met members of Kent’s Cabinet on Monday morning, a meeting in which Barrett spoke at length about transport and potholes on the county’s roads. “He walked over to me, shook my hand, and he smiled, and he said, well done,” said Barrett of Farage. Barrett said after lunch he went to a meeting with Kemkaran to find her deputy Brian Collins and Harrison also in the room. He said Collins questioned him about why he was not visiting highways inspectors in person to examine their work. Barrett also said that Kemkaran gave him one month to find cuts from a dossier on the highways department which officials had drawn up in recent weeks. Barrett, who accused his senior colleagues of being “conniving” and running a “toxic environment,” said he eventually walked out of the meeting after being warned that if he left, he would be gone. Barrett added: “My opinion is 100 percent that I’ve been sacked. I did not resign in paper, email or any other form. I walked out of her office. They were abusing me and bullying me.” He made no suggestion that Farage was responsible for his sacking. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage attends a meeting alongside the Head of Kent County Council, Linden Kemkaran, during his visit to the Reform UK group at Kent at Kent County Council at County Hall, Maidstone. | Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images ‘DISAPPOINTING’ Kemkaran pushed back at Barrett’s criticism, saying in a statement Wednesday evening: “Naturally it’s always slightly disappointing when a colleague who’s been given every chance to step up and improve their performance declines the opportunity and instead walks out of a meeting, knowing that it would mean they’d lose their position.” The council leader added: “We have a new cabinet member for highways and transport firmly in place and as far as we are concerned it’s business as usual, serving the people of Kent. “What I’m not going to do is give a running commentary on the Members’ positions here at KCC. We’re simply getting on with the job.” The incident shines a spotlight on Reform’s push to cut home-to-school transport costs, many of which are spent on children with special educational needs. More broadly, it comes as Reform gets to grips with running 10 councils in England where it gained overall control in the May local elections. Farage’s nascent party has only four MPs — a fifth, James McMurdock, gave up the whip this week after seeking legal advice about business loans during the COVID pandemic — but is leading U.K. national opinion polls. Barrett said he has filed a formal complaint to Reform’s National Chairman David Bull and to Kent County Council Chief Executive Amanda Beer.

BJOERN SEIBERT, THE POWER BEHIND QUEEN URSULA’S THRONE Von der Leyen’s chief of staff is the man to call to get things done in Brussels. But for a growing number of critics, he has too much control. By NICHOLAS VINOCUR, MAX GRIERA and NETTE NÖSTLINGER Photo-illustration by Daniel Benneworth-Gray for POLITICO He’s known as the man to call to get things done in Brussels. He leans on party bosses to exert his sway over the European Parliament. And he manages the European Commission, an institution of 32,000 employees, like an extension of his brain, watching over everything from social media posts to mid-level staff appointments. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s right-hand man, Bjoern Seibert, is the ultimate behind-the-scenes Brussels power broker. Never heard of him? That’s exactly how he likes it. At von der Leyen’s side for about a decade, the soft-spoken 45-year-old has built up a reputation as a tireless worker, astute political strategist and ruthlessly efficient operator who delivers on promises. Advertisement For top officials in Paris, Berlin and Washington, it’s a dream come true. Finally, they have someone who can pick up the phone and deliver, a huge asset at a time when Europe was being buffeted by crises. “He is incredibly influential,” said Phil Gordon, former national security adviser to Kamala Harris when she was U.S. vice president. “No one was seen as better understanding the EU and how to get things done.” Others agree, praising Seibert as “very clever” and a “strategic thinker.” “He is the most powerful official in Brussels by some distance,” said Mujtaba Rahman, head of Europe at the Eurasia Group, a think tank. OVERMIGHTY ADJUTANT More comfortable behind the scenes than in the limelight, Seibert is intensely private. Publicly known facts about him include that he is married with two children and works incredibly long hours. That’s about it. But as he embarks on his second five-year term as von der Leyen’s head of Cabinet, Seibert — at times referred to as the Commission’s unofficial “co-president” — faces increasing criticism from those who think his power has grown too large. In an interview with POLITICO in early June, the EU’s former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier lamented what he called an “authoritarian drift” in Brussels under von der Leyen and her “powerful chief of staff.” That chimes with what six current and former Commission staffers told POLITICO, namely that Seibert’s insistence on signing off on everything from the public speaking points of his commissioners to the the names of individual Cabinet picks leads to bottlenecks, delays and demoralization. In person, Seibert is a discreet if physically imposing figure — tall, a speaker of perfect English with traces of dry humor. | Olivier Hoslet/EFE via EPA Another effect is fear. Out of the 25 EU officials, diplomats, lawmakers and experts in total we spoke to for this article, just three agreed to speak on the record and only one of those voiced any criticism. Several people cited fear of professional reprisals as their reason for wanting to remain anonymous. Others say his German conservative leanings are overbearing in a town that is already preponderantly German and conservative. They point to when Seibert insisted on backing a German conservative for a top EU business envoy post, only to see the appointment lead to a major political backlash. Still others point to his close working relationship with the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden, which they say became a liability after Donald Trump’s election. “He derived a lot of his power from his direct line to the White House,” said a former Commission official. “That’s not the case anymore with Trump. Everything needs to be rebuilt.” Advertisement A Commission official pushed back on this characterization, underscoring regular continuing contacts with the White House. A spokesperson for the Commission declined to comment for this piece. Seibert himself declined to be interviewed. Other Commission officials pushed back against criticism saying he has generous time for debate — amounting to hundreds of hours, according to a tally shared with POLITICO — and that centralization has made the EU far more efficient. Bottlenecks and delays, Seibert’s defenders argue, are partly due to staffers seeking input on files where more senior direction is not necessarily warranted. But this account is disputed by others who say that only Seibert and von der Leyen can be held responsible for a system they have created. “This Commission is very hierarchical with nothing passing Bjoern without his consent,” said Bas Eickhout, co-chair of the Greens group in the European Parliament. Seibert, wearing New Balance sneakers, looks at papers while von der Leyen talks to the media at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images Indeed, Seibert isn’t the first EU civil servant to prompt fear and fascination in Brussels. Before him, there was Martin Selmayr, another German who held sway under ex-President Jean-Claude Juncker and was known as the “Monster of the Berlaymont.” But most people agreed Seibert is now the more formidable figure — a merciless T-1000 liquid metal Terminator versus the laconic, clunkier older generation T-800 model played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. “He’s far more powerful today than Selmayr ever was,” said a former French government official. I DON’T REMEMBER ANYTHING Anyone seeking insight into Seibert from his personal history is in for disappointment: Little from his youth has filtered into the public domain, and a Wikipedia entry offers as many clues as a broken Babylonian tablet. In person, Seibert is a discreet if physically imposing figure — tall, a speaker of perfect English with traces of dry humor, he can be spotted in the vicinity of his boss, wearing New Balance sneakers and clutching a packet of files. He’s quieter than Selmayr, but also wields a bigger stick: One Commission official described him as a “quiet killer.” Seibert graduated with a degree in social science from Erfurt University in the eastern German state of Thuringia in 2005, per the university, then went on to pursue a string of research fellowships at U.S. academic institutions including MIT focusing mostly on defense and security. Advertisement Upon his return to Germany, he moved to the German defense ministry where he initially worked at the politics department, according to a former colleague, who also said he impressed colleagues by going against Bundeswehr orthodoxy. At the time, his ability to work seemingly inhumane hours made an impression — and helped win him promotion to the office of von der Leyen, who was then defense minister. That was the beginning of the “Bjoern and Ursula” double act that would come to rule over Brussels. An episode from 2019, after von der Leyen had been picked by EU leaders to be the next head of the Commission, reveals a key ingredient in their partnership. Seibert had been called upon to testify in front of an investigative committee of the German parliament looking into how lucrative contracts from the defense ministry while von der Leyen was in charge were awarded to outside consultants without proper oversight, and whether a network of informal personal connections facilitated those deals. At the center of the committee’s investigations was Katrin Suder, a former McKinsey consultant who became von der Leyen’s deputy in charge of the defense ministry’s arms department. In 2014, she brought Seibert into her department, quickly promoted him to be her chief of staff and later recommended him to do the same job for their common boss, von der Leyen. His performance before the investigative committee would have pleased the most demanding of mafia bosses. “Seibert declared in an endless loop that he could not remember anything, absolutely nothing,” according to a German media account of his performance from the time. ‘HIS RESPONSIBILITY’ Seibert’s loyalty would soon be tested again. After von der Leyen won the nod from EU leaders to become Commission president, she needed a two-thirds majority in the European Parliament to be confirmed in the role. Normally, the task of cobbling together a majority would fall to Manfred Weber, a powerful German conservative who oversees the umbrella group of center-right European parties. But Weber was licking his wounds from having been passed up for the top EU job in favor of von der Leyen. So the task fell to Seibert who, despite having no experience as a political operator, managed to pull off a nine-vote majority for von der Leyen by reaching outside the normal circle of so-called governing parties to the right-wing populists. It was thanks to Seibert’s “significant contribution” that von der Leyen was confirmed, a German colleague said at the time. Seibert isn’t the first EU civil servant to prompt fear and fascination in Brussels. | Olivier Hoslet/EFE via EPA Once installed at the Commission, the pair faced a wall of skepticism. “When the Commission started there was lots of skepticism about whether von der Leyen and Bjoern would be able to control the institution, as they didn’t know how it worked,” a former French official said. “They disproved this within days.” Seibert, in particular, impressed counterparts. “He was exceptionally well-prepared,” the same official said. “He would always show he knew exactly what was going on in French politics. It was clear that this was someone you could trust, but who is also about control, about power.” Working in a tight unit with a small cadre of mainly German-speaking advisers, von der Leyen and Seibert used the Covid-19 pandemic to consolidate power. When the time came to negotiate vaccine contracts, they split the work among several sections of the Commission, giving Single Market Commissioner Thierry Breton oversight of vaccine supply chains. Advertisement But the negotiation of contracts itself was given to Sandra Gallina, a senior health official in the Commission. In reality, according to two former Commission officials, it was Seibert and von der Leyen who steered negotiations, culminating in the president’s December 2020 announcement of a deal to buy millions of doses of vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech and a subsequent New York Times interview in which she said she’d agreed on the deal via text message exchange with Pfizer’s chief executive. In the ensuing “Pfizergate” scandal, von der Leyen faced criticism — and a judgment from the Court of Justice of the European Union — for having failed to conserve the messages. But some of that criticism should have been directed at Seibert, the former officials said. “It was his responsibility,” said one of the two ex-officials. “He is the reason for monumental mistakes committed by his president.” A spokesperson for the Commission declined to comment. LOYAL TO A FAULT Loyalty would once again come into play in the final months of von der Leyen and Seibert’s first Commission term. As von der Leyen prepared for a reelection bid (with Seibert as her campaign manager), their decision to nominate a German conservative loyalist to the role of EU envoy for small and medium businesses sparked a revolt. Four commissioners, including Breton, questioned the decision to nominate Markus Pieper over two women who had reportedly scored higher in the selection process. Advertisement Two former officials recall that Seibert had defended the nomination internally, saying he had “no flexibility” in the matter. That argument didn’t go down well. The leadership duo would end up having to retract Pieper’s nomination. Critics argued that the episode underscored a lack of political sensitivity, as Seibert had failed to anticipate the blowback which came primarily from Breton along with then-top diplomat Josep Borrell; Luxembourgish Socialist ex-Commissioner Nicolas Schmit and Italian Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni. “The problem is a lack of management experience,” the same former official said. “It leads to a tendency to do things in an authoritarian way.” EVERYTHING GOES THROUGH BJOERN Von der Leyen and Seibert had learned their lesson. When it was time to choose commissioners after von der Leyen was reelected in 2024, they forced out the rebellious Breton and stocked the College with less-experienced candidates. Here again, Seibert was on the front line, negotiating with political bosses in the European Parliament who needed to sign off on nominations during hearings. One senior Parliament official described Seibert as someone who is “very professional” but also quick to use pressure when things aren’t going his way. “I’m noticing more and more that he doesn’t deal well with contradiction … He is not used to be contradicted in this sense.” Once the hearings were over, Seibert got to work name-checking nominations of individual Cabinet members based on criteria of gender and nationality. Each commissioner had to send their list of Cabinet picks to the 13th floor, where the president’s chief of staff would personally approve or reject the names. Seibert, behind the table, listens to von der Leyen speak to commissioners-designate in September 2024. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images “This is a taste of the Seibert style,” said a current senior Commission official who pointed out that Seibert was the first head of Cabinet to have his name posted on a panel, right below the president’s name, in front of the elevator on the Berlaymont’s 13th floor. “He is not leaving anything to chance.” Since then, Seibert’s grip on power in the Commission has only tightened further. A case in point: the recent restructuring of the Commission’s Secretary General office, planned and submitted for approval in January. A green light came three months later not due to any problem but because Seibert hadn’t been able to look at it yet. A Cabinet member of a European prime minister quipped: “I know that he is a guy who does not know how to delegate, and that this inability to delegate and obsession to co-govern the commission with Ursula has caused bottlenecks and frustrations in the cabinets.” MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY In other cases, critics chafed at Seibert’s tendency to steamroll opposition. A senior Parliament official echoed the concern about Seibert’s power: “He’s in such a stage of full power that he speaks directly with the commissioners. He speaks directly with politicians. He is forgetting a little bit what his place is.” Even as he wields his power in Brussels, Seibert now has to rebuild his relationship with Washington. Identified as “Biden’s man” due to his relationship with ex-national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Seibert played a key role in building the tightest transatlantic relationship in decades. Advertisement He and Sullivan would issue joint communiqués and worked in lockstep on rolling out sanctions against Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. When Biden’s announcement of the Inflation Reduction Act threatened to fray ties between Brussels and Washington, it was Seibert’s behind-the-scenes diplomacy with the White House that led to a rare Rose Garden joint press conference by von der Leyen and Biden, according to a former high-ranking Commission official. But this closeness hasn’t helped Seibert under Trump, who refused to speak to von der Leyen or any other EU official for months after his election. Seibert has recently accompanied top trade negotiator Maroš Šefčovič on negotiation trips to Washington D.C., but any hint of the old special relationship appears to be gone as Europe faces sky-high tariffs. The Commission’s approach has been to tread carefully to avoid irking Trump, avoiding action — such as imposing a fine on Elon Musk’s X for violating the Digital Services Act — that might prompt a furious tweet or sudden retaliation. Seibert’s reputation reflects the town he lives in: bureaucratic, power-mad, largely opaque. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images But this approach, which now includes potential far-reaching concessions on Europe’s digital rulebook to clinch a trade deal, is undermining European sovereignty, according to critics who say the EU should defend its rules no matter the cost. “This is all due to fear: fear of offending the Americans,” the former official said. A Commission official who declined to be named underscored what they called regular contacts between Seibert and members of the Trump administration as well as in-person engagement, including Seibert’s trips to Washington. FEAR OF THE BEAR All in all, Seibert’s reputation reflects the town he lives in: bureaucratic, power-mad, largely opaque. It generates myths around powerful civil servants who operate in the shadows, first Selmayr, now Seibert. Few people interviewed for this piece voiced serious alarm about Seibert’s influence. But it’s telling that only one person out of 25 — a Dutch lawmaker no less — was willing to share a critical thought on record.

LONDON — Beijing’s answer to the World Bank plans to set up its first European office in London this year as the Trump administration takes a tough stance on China. The Beijing-headquartered Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) — established in 2013 alongside China’s Belt and Road Initiative — aims to use the new London office to draw in funding to support the bank’s global development projects, two people familiar with the plans told POLITICO. The move could be highly controversial. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has worked to reset relations with Chinese President Xi Jinping since coming to power a year ago. A trade deal struck with the U.S. last month, however, has provisions that could pressure London to curb its trade with Beijing, amid Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war with the global power. “I doubt the Trump administration will take kindly to the establishment of an AIIB hub in London given the pressure it has already put on the U.K. to align with the U.S. against China on trade issues,” said William Matthews, a senior research fellow at Chatham House specializing in China. AIIB firmly disputes characterizations that it is a vehicle for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s state-run global infrastructure and investment scheme. BRI is modeled on the old “Silk Road” as part of a push to establish trade routes between Asia, Europe and Africa, but critics see it as a tool to advance Beijing’s foreign policy objectives. A spokesperson for the bank acknowledged “some of [its] projects may happen to be identified by our clients as projects related to BRI — but first and foremost those projects were presented to us for financing by our clients, not by the Chinese government.”  WHY LONDON?  The AIIB’s London hub is expected to open before the end of the year, staffed up with five to 10 employees as the bank hunts for private investors to support its global lending projects, the two people granted anonymity to discuss the project said. London’s banking and asset management credentials, deep pools of capital, and time zone between North America and Asia makes it a bridge between investors in the West and the East, both people said. London won out against other contender cities in Europe like Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Paris because it is “closer tied into financial markets” and other key time zones, the second person said. “We are exploring options for potentially opening a small number of additional hub offices in Asia and elsewhere — including Europe — but have not yet made any final decisions,” said an AIIB spokesperson. New offices are also expected to be set up in Singapore and Hong Kong. Speaking at a U.K.-China investor forum in London in December, the bank’s president and chairman, Jin Liqun, said there was “no indication whatsoever” that London’s standing as a global financial center has been eroded in light of Brexit. While the City’s “comparative advantage” in financial services hasn’t waned, Jin said, setting up a European office “depends on the negotiation with the competing candidate cities.” The bank’s president and chairman, Jin Liqun, said there was “no indication whatsoever” that London’s standing as a global financial center has been eroded in light of Brexit. | Sacha Steinbach/EPA-EFE Weeks earlier, Jin met with U.K. Chancellor Rachel Reeves at No. 11 Downing Street to discuss the plans. A photo of Reeves standing with Jin, flanked by senior Treasury officials and AIIB staff, was shared on social media. The Treasury later rejected a freedom of information request from POLITICO seeking minutes from the meeting, citing potential damage to Britain’s international relations. “It is extremely important that HM Treasury, and the United Kingdom, maintain a positive relationship with the AIIB and release of information linked to the meeting would be likely to prejudice this good relationship,” the Treasury said. The U.K. was one of the multilateral bank’s founding members under Prime Minister David Cameron during the “Golden Era” of U.K-China relations. “The U.K. uses its position as a founding member of the AIIB to support high-quality infrastructure investment that promotes secure economic growth,” a Treasury spokesperson said. Britain has “expressed interest in hosting a hub office,” the AIIB spokesperson said. BEIJING’S INFLUENCE Jin, an Anglophile who studied Shakespeare before pursuing economics at Boston University — and whose daughter now teaches at the London School of Economics — is overseeing the London expansion as he prepares to step down, with AIIB set to mark its first decade in operation. The bank’s members are due to vote on a new president at their annual conference in Beijing on June 24. China, the bank’s largest shareholder with 27 percent of voting rights, has nominated China’s former Vice Finance Minister, Zou Jiayi, as Jin’s successor. She recently served as deputy secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party’s top political advisory body, which decides major policy positions. The U.K. has a nearly three percent vote share. India, Russia, Germany, South Korea and Australia are larger shareholders among the 110 member states that make up what experts bill as China’s answer to the Washington-dominated World Bank. Zou’s nomination has reignited long-running concerns about Beijing’s influence over the bank’s governance. “I believe AIIB is a PRC influence operation in terms of the impact of the bank and its lending practices,” Bob Pickard, the AIIB’s former Director of Communications, told POLITICO. Pickard abruptly resigned in June 2023 after 15 months at the bank, publicly alleging that “CCP members wield power in many key positions” inside the institution. Canada suspended its participation in AIIB days later, and its investigation into Pickard’s claims remains ongoing two years later. China, the bank’s largest shareholder with 27 percent of voting rights, has nominated China’s former Vice Finance Minister, Zou Jiayi, as Jin’s successor. | Pool Photo by Jason Lee via EPA The AIIB denied Pickard’s allegations with an internal review quickly finding “no evidence of undue influence on decisions taken by the Board of Directors or Management.” “President Jin has consistently and firmly stated that AIIB is an independent, multilateral institution — governed by its members and not beholden to any one shareholder, including China,” said AIIB’s spokesperson. “Alignment with any single country’s national policies, including China’s, would be inconsistent with the Bank’s multilateral nature and founding principles,” they said.  “The bank’s decision-making — on everything from project approvals to leadership appointments — requires broad consensus, including a 75% supermajority for critical matters. That is sometimes thought of as a Chinese veto — but it is also the case the OECD countries collectively hold a de facto veto,” the spokesperson added. Others dispute the narrative of creeping CCP control. “Until a couple of years ago, there was not a single Belt and Road Initiative project approved. Not one. The Chinese companies were very livid about it,” said Joerg Wuttke, the former president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China and now a partner at consultancy firm DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group. Allegations of CPP involvement have been “completely blown out of perspective,” he said. AIIB President Jin has managed “to keep it away from politicizing projects” and also “kept AIIB out of the reach of [China’s] State Owned Enterprises.” BELT AND ROAD LINKS However, AIIB’s funding for infrastructure projects globally “buttresses the overall impact of the [Belt and Road Initiative] by lending multilateral respectability to the adjacent lending in countries of priority interest to China,” Pickard said. He points to the bank’s $5 billion pledge for infrastructure projects in Vietnam as being “almost like a blank check” last year. “This is at a critical moment where Vietnam is trying to figure out, should we lean to Washington, or should we lean to Beijing?” he said.  AIIB’s recent lending record also shows projects linked to the BRI. At the global climate conference in Azerbaijan last year, the bank signed a $160 million agreement to finance two solar plants. In April, Azerbaijan and China signed a Strategic Partnership declaration with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who touted the benefits of the BRI.  Belt and Road beneficiary Turkey, received a $150 million loan from AIIB last year to support a major highway, while Kazakhstan — where Xi first launched BRI in 2013 — received a $47 million loan for a major wind farm in 2019. Belt and Road beneficiary Turkey, received a $150 million loan from AIIB last year to support a major highway. | Erdem Sahin/EPA “China, although precluded from using the AIIB directly as a tool to fulfill its ambitious BRI agenda, is using the bank as leverage in pushing forward the BRI,” writes Yu Hong, a senior research fellow at the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore in a 2024 book on the BRI. It is “not an exaggeration,” Yu writes, “to claim that the AIIB is intended to project China’s influence in Asia and beyond, and thereby to facilitate the BRI’s implementation.” ARE YOU JUST LIVING IN TRUMP’S WORLD? “There’s quite a lot of infrastructure financing that goes through London,” said a senior British business representative with a background in finance who knows AIIB’s president. “The benefit for the AIIB is that they would probably see more international deal flow.” The White House’s “concern will be more about the U.K. picking sides and exposure to CCP influence,” said Chatham House’s senior China research fellow Matthews. As China continues to grow in power, he adds, the U.K. “should be making decisions based on its own long-term national interest even if that causes friction with the U.S.” Britain’s ongoing membership in the AIIB “at least allows it some influence over how the bank develops,” Matthews said. “An essential part of this is clear-eyed awareness of the nature of the Chinese Communist Party and how it projects influence, including within the AIIB, and pushing back on this where necessary.” “The real big picture question for the U.K. is not the short-term political impact on the Labour government’s China policy versus relations with the Trump administration,” Matthews explains, “but the long-term strategic challenge of maintaining economic and geopolitical relevance in a world where China is increasingly influential.”

Trump administration border czar Tom Homan said Monday that California Gov. Gavin Newsom has “failed that state” and is “late to the game” in addressing protests that culminated with demonstrators clashing with authorities over the weekend, furthering the finger-pointing between state officials and the White House. Homan, who appeared Monday on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends,” said there had been “no discussion of arresting Newsom” within the Trump administration but warned that “no one is above the law.” Newsom, for his part, had dared Homan over the weekend to arrest him: “Come after me. Arrest me,” the California governor told NBC News. “Let’s just get it over with, tough guy.” At the heart of the back-and-forth between Newsom and Homan is the unrest in Los Angeles sparked on Friday by series of immigration raids in which federal authorities arrested more than 40 people. Angry protesters swarmed LA’s streets, blocking a major highway and setting vehicles on fire while law enforcement fired tear gas, rubber bullets and detonated flash bangs. President Donald Trump responded by federalizing the California National Guard — a step not taken Lyndon Johnson did it in Alabama in 1965 — and deploying 2,000 troops to Los Angeles. Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass both blamed Trump’s decision to federalize and deploy the California National Guard for fueling the clashes. The California governor called the move “unlawful” and urged the president to rescind it. But Homan said it was Newsom who had failed to address the violence, promising a quick and forceful federal response. “He’s failed that state. He waited two days of that city burning, officers being assaulted, before he made a declaration of unlawful assembly,” Homan told Fox News. “He’s late to the game. President Trump isn’t late to the game.” The chaotic situation comes as the Trump administration’s push to deport migrants in the U.S. illegally hit record highs last week — including 2,300 arrests last Thursday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the most ever in a single day for that agency. The White House has vowed to increase the number of deportations each day, with White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller allegedly calling for the deportation of at least 3,000 migrants a day. Democrats, including former Vice President Kamala Harris and California Rep. Maxine Waters, have rallied around Newsom and argued the administration’s actions over the weekend were intended to “stoke fear.” Newsom himself said Monday in a post to the social media platform X that “local law enforcement didn’t need help” but that “Trump sent troops anyway — to manufacture chaos and violence.” He said Monday that he’s planning to sue the Trump administration. “Now things are destabilized and we need to send in more law enforcement just to clean up Trump’s mess,” the governor said.

BERLIN — Alexander Dobrindt, a veteran conservative from Bavaria with a reputation for tough talk on migration and law enforcement, is set to become Germany’s next interior minister in Friedrich Merz’s new grand coalition government. The appointment is a sign that Merz — who campaigned on pledges of boosting “order and security” — plans to toughen up Germany’s domestic policy, especially regarding migration and internal security. Dobrindt, 54, is a longtime member of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Merz’s center-right Christian Democrats, and one of the Union parties’ most outspoken voices in favor of stricter migration and border-control measures. Dobrindt, who was first elected to the Bundestag in 2002, rose to national prominence as transport minister under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, where he made headlines with his push for a highway toll that critics said unfairly targeted foreign drivers. More recently, as head of the CSU’s parliamentary group in Berlin, he has built his brand around calls for stricter asylum policies, faster deportation of rejected applicants and cuts to welfare benefits for migrants. Taking over the interior ministry — a powerful post overseeing Germany’s federal police, border security and migration system — hands Dobrindt key levers to reshape the country’s approach from the inside. He’s expected to push for tighter border checks, limit benefits for asylum-seekers and press for more aggressive deportation policy. His appointment could also complicate Germany’s position in broader migration talks in the European Union, where Berlin has often played a moderate role. The timing is significant, as migration is again high on the political agenda across Europe, fueling the rise of right-wing parties from Paris to Vienna. Dobrindt’s elevation will likely resonate far beyond Germany’s borders — while inside the country, it sets up a collision course with more liberal forces who warn that a crackdown on migration risks undermining Germany’s global image as an open, humanitarian country.

SOLANO COUNTY, California — It doesn’t take long, driving north from San Francisco past bay and sea, to remember just how new, in the scheme of things, this place is. Towns become infrequent and then disappear altogether, replaced by hills, fields and farms. The land opens up in green and yellow, a reminder of a time when California was defined in the national consciousness by verdant pastures and gold-flecked creeks, rather than by crime or unaffordability. In the mind of Jan Sramek, 38, a 6’7″-ish, Czech, new-urbanism evangelist, change comes quickly. Not so long ago, San Francisco, too, was a collection of camps and houses on an improbable spit of land at the end of the continent; Oakland, a swampy peninsula surrounded by orchards. As we built great bridges and towers, the hilly port city became the world’s center of technology and innovation. It would have seemed impossible, but then it happened. Working from a generic office park 40 miles north of San Francisco, Sramek believes it can happen again. As a child growing up in the post-Soviet Eastern bloc, Sramek became enchanted with the sparkling promise of California. And now, as an adult real estate entrepreneur, he envisions a future in which the hayfields and sleepy towns that surround him transform into a new glittering city — one divorced from the problems facing the Golden State’s older models. The name of the metropolis, California Forever, is itself an ode to what the state has achieved and could still. “The modern world was basically made in California over the last 100 years, and that meant it was built with Californian values,” Sramek said. “I think we have a responsibility to keep it going.” It is here, in an unheralded, 27 square mile swath of semi-rural Solano County, smack-dab between Sacramento and San Francisco, that Sramek intends to prove that California can still be bold. It is here, he says, where he will cut through the state’s red tape, build a model 400,000-person sustainable community, and triumphantly reestablish a tradition of dense and walkable cities dating back to the dawn of human civilization. If, at least, California lets him. The path has not been easy since Sramek announced his plans for a new city backed by tech luminaries, including Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, and Laurene Powell Jobs. If 2023 was the year in which Sramek unveiled California Forever to the world, 2024 was a forced humbling from a wary — and often downright hostile — public skeptical of billionaire outsiders. 2025 will now determine whether Sramek’s sweeping, transformational, and some argue self-serving, visions for the future are compatible with the slow-moving gears of local government. Just last year, he failed to get approval for his new city via referendum, pitching an updated urban center that was affordable and devoid of sprawl. But polling showed voters weren’t convinced of the merits, and he pulled the referendum from the ballot before it could be shot down. Now, Sramek is working with the county government to hash out the details of the plan in hopes of quelling concerns, gritting his teeth while enduring the county’s rolling demands for detailed paperwork. By year’s end, he will have to decide whether to go back to voters in 2026 on the whole grand vision. This is the new stage of Sramek’s quest, as he’s forced to build a new city by collaborating with the systems he seems to resent most. While Elon Musk and David Sacks, Trump’s crypto czar, test their ability to control Washington’s machinery, Sramek faces a choice: work methodically to win over a skeptical public — or bulldoze his way through local government, public opinion be damned. Long before Sramek pulled his initiative from the 2024 ballot, there were signs that things might not go according to plan. At a town hall in late November 2023, Sramek stood at a lectern wearing a casual button-down shirt and a bewildered look as he was dressed down by Solano County residents. The event in Vallejo, a working-class city of 124,000, was the first of eight such townhalls California Forever planned over the year — an early attempt at voter outreach as California Forever organizers began campaigning for a ballot measure that would allow them to rezone thousands of acres from agricultural to “new development” and begin building their city. Backed only by renderings of colorful neighborhood scenes, California Forever’s CEO seemed somewhat wrongfooted by the level of hostility of the crowd. “I’m sick and tired of developers coming in and we don’t know nothing,” a woman shouted at Sramek, as he looked on, mouth agape, during a recording of the meeting produced by ABC7 News Bay Area. “Honestly, I’m probably more skeptical now than I was when I walked in,” a man said just before walking out. It was far from a friendly reception, and a harsh reality check for Sramek and his tech billionaire-funded team, who projected a sense of exceptionalism from the time they arrived in Solano County. After moving to California in the 2010s, Sramek became fixated on the idea of solving the state’s housing crisis. Growth in existing cities wouldn’t be enough — he needed to do something big. After spending years researching the idea, he began quietly pitching big name funders to invest in the project, which he called California Forever. Then in 2018, he set his sights on Solano County, a region with the highest unemployment and child poverty rates in the Bay Area region. There, he thought, it was possible California Forever might find a receptive audience. The land, too, was appealing — a stretch of grazing properties that had once been identified by the Army Corps of Engineers as a future location for development. Sramek and California Forever started quietly buying up tens of thousands of acres of land, suing residents who chose not to sell — accusing them of price fixing — and becoming, almost overnight, the largest landowner in the county. Then, in August 2023, following a New York Times exposé outing their efforts, Sramek and California Forever announced themselves to the world in a burst of near-messianic fervor. Within the next five years, company officials declared, they would build a new city, right there in Solano County. They promised to bring jobs and cheap homes for the financially struggling region. They pledged to build hospitals and schools and water parks and sports complexes. And they would be taking the project straight to voters. A ballot initiative would allow them to eschew traditional county planning procedures, build outside of existing jurisdictions, and rewrite the zoning code to reclassify 17,500 acres of agricultural land for a community of 400,000 residents — roughly the population of Tampa, Florida. The plan was funded by the co-founder of LinkedIn, run by the one-time chief strategist for John McCain, and featured leaders of Kamala Harris’s presidential super PAC. “They just walked in and said, ‘Here’s the plan,’” said former Solano County supervisor Duane Kromm. Soon, California Forever embarked on a months-long, $10-million charm offensive with Sramek serving as its lead pitchman, cajoling residents of Solano County to back a ballot measure allowing him to bypass a decades-old orderly growth ordinance restricting development outside of existing cities. The initiative was written in a way that would give the county and the public minimal oversight over the future city. “This would solve the housing situation in Solano County and regionally,” Sramek argued at the time. “This would fix the lack of good-paying local jobs that we have been trying to fix in Solano County for 40 years.” By June 2024, they’d gathered enough signatures to place the initiative on the local November 2024 ballot. But by then, voters had already made up their minds. Many residents were disturbed by the lawsuits against their neighbors. Others were concerned about what the new development would mean for traffic and congestion; still others about the financial impact it would have on existing cities as well as its effect on threatened species and seasonal wetland habitat. Broadly, opposition rose from the perception that wealthy outsiders were trying to manufacture a hostile takeover of their county. In late July 2024, sensing imminent defeat, Sramek and his team pulled their measure from the ballot, an unceremonious end to what they’d seen as a can’t-fail campaign. In a joint statement with the county board of supervisors, Sramek said he would instead do what the county had originally asked: study the project, come to an agreement with administrators on a detailed development plan — and then return to voters to change the zoning code. But even that did little to mollify critics. The enemies of California Forever grew to be vast and varied, from farmers to climate advocates to the county Republican Party. (Sramek himself is not publicly affiliated with either party.) The quasi-utopian renderings of California Forever, ultimately, only aggravated voters. Those onlookers argue Sramek should’ve seen this coming — as evidenced by that Vallejo town hall in November 2023, long before the ballot measure campaign screeched to a halt. But back then, although maybe taken aback by the level of vitriol from locals, Sramek quickly shrugged off residents’ concerns. “Certain people just hate development,” Sramek told reporters after that meeting. According to two people who have worked with Sramek, he has always been guided by extreme self-confidence bordering on hubris. Sramek frequently left meetings with local elected officials positive that everything went swimmingly, according to those two people who have worked with him. He told reporters that most people in the county did, in fact, support the project. Polling indicated otherwise. For months, during the ballot measure campaign, his team advised him to keep a lower profile, according to former staff who were granted anonymity to speak candidly. The various perks, like water parks and hospitals, that he promised to the county were doing more harm than good, they argued. As one former employee put it, it looked like “you are just making shit up.” Sramek’s team disputes that narrative. In an emailed statement, a California Forever spokesperson said, “This was clearly going to be a controversial project in the beginning, and while there’s always room for improvement, by the end of July 2024, a poll of likely voters in Solano County conducted by Impact Research found that 65 percent supported development in east Solano County. “This, and the continued progress since then, is a testament to the community work and relationship-building that Jan and the California Forever team have been doing,” the spokesperson said. Catherine Moy, the mayor of a nearby town called Fairfield, framed things differently. “They couldn’t have done a worse job with PR to start their campaign,” Moy said. “Suing farmers that a lot of us grew up with for a half billion dollars? And it just got worse and worse from there.” The time between the town hall in November 2023 and the ballot measure’s failure seven months later seemed to be Silicon Valley’s education in local California politics, a fascinating case study in what happens when visionaries and deep-pocketed investors run up against the realities of regional land-use debates. That tension, of civil servants versus disruptors, is currently defining national politics. Elon Musk is trying to dismantle American bureaucracy from the inside out. Silicon Valley tech billionaires, some of whom are also funding California Forever, are flexing their muscles in Washington in an effort to see how deregulation can benefit them and their companies. Many of those same instincts animate Sramek’s quest, and he has earned comparisons to Musk in the county and from observers. He wants to move quickly, and he’s frustrated that California’s regulatory structure does not allow it. Although he submitted to the hard work of environmental impact reports, traffic studies, and emissions analyses after the referendum failed, he’s still not willing to accept the decade-long horizon that has become the norm for California projects. “If we can build a bridge spanning the Golden Gate, a 400-acre island in the middle of the Bay, and a brand-new jet that will revolutionizes aviation, all in under four years, then surely we can plan a new community in less than six,” Sramek wrote to county administrators in a heated letter in late October. “It should be entirely reasonable to get local approvals done by 2026, and shovels in the ground in 2028.” Except, of course, it’s never that easy in California. Last summer, on a now well-traveled tour of the future city, Sramek sipped a can of flavored carbonated water while driving a Rivian truck through the vast fields and farms of his future kingdom. It was August 2024, a challenging time for California Forever. The ballot measure had been pulled a month earlier. There was no clear path to success before voters. It seemed like the whole project could be teetering on the precipice. During the drive, as he wound through the Solano County exurbs into open space, Sramek vacillated between acceptance and being downright perplexed by the challenges posed to his masterplan. On one hand, land use debates in California, as he put it, are “a bloodsport.” The secretive land purchases, the intense local vitriol, the dramatic, nationally televised courtship with the county — in his view, that’s just the cost of doing business in California. On the other hand, the state has a housing crisis recognized by all levels of government. As Sramek sees things, his project would build that housing in one of the best places to do so in the state. It sits at the center of the San Francisco Bay mega-region, connecting both San Francisco and Sacramento. He said the thousands of acres his company owns in the rolling hayfields near the Sacramento River Delta is a rare Western location with no risk of fires, earthquakes or floods (although some of the land now does fall within the state’s newly updated wildfire hazard zones). For almost every criticism leveled at the project, Sramek believes he has an answer — a product of good planning and a solid year under the microscope. Water supply? The development will use what is currently going to a somewhat unproductive almond orchard to meet the needs of initial residents. Environmental concerns? Sensitive habitats, like seasonal pools where certain rare species breed, will be protected and preserved. Congestion getting into and out of the city? We’ve never had a problem building highways — we’ll just build more. “If you look at every state bill that has passed in California in the last 10 years, they call for a simple zoning code, walkable neighborhoods, affordability by design, sustainability and low emissions,” Sramek said. “Everything they are calling for is in our proposal. And the bottleneck to building it is widening seven miles of highway?” Sramek approaches his dream city with an almost fanatical intensity. In his view, California Forever is a chance to revive the type of city that has been lost to time in America. For hundreds of years, we created vibrant metropolises that were based around human movement: Athens, Madrid, London, and New York. Then, during World War II, the American wartime government issued a moratorium on new development. In the United States at least, the chain was broken, and post-war housing was built to serve the automobile. Today, many of the most desirable, dense, walkable cities are also the most expensive — and they were all built before the war. (Arguably one exception: Los Angeles, which is reasonably dense but built entirely around the car.) That pitch of the walkable city, underscored by the odd dynamic of Sramek selling his idea while driving a $60,000 electric truck down ranch roads, is what has attracted some of the richest people in the world to Sramek’s project. And however unfeasible it sounds, it is true that California Forever is not the first time that someone has conceived of a master-planned community. Celebration, Florida, the Disney-built resort community drafted in the model of quaint small-town America, sprang into being from the longleaf pines south of Orlando nearly 30 years ago. Even before that, Irvine, California was developed to escape pollution and crime in Los Angeles’ urban core. Perhaps the closest analogue to California Forever is Columbia, Maryland, a community built by a man named James Rouse in the 1960s who touted the city as a “garden for growing people,” where residents would live, work and respect the land. Like California Forever, the land was secretly bought up through dummy corporations, leading to local rumors that it was going to be turned into a sprawling municipal dump. Like California Forever, it was announced with salvational overtones, with plans to eliminate religious, racial and class discrimination. Like California Forever, it faced initial zoning concerns. Later, it became an extremely desirable place to live. Beyond Sramek’s obvious financial stake in the city (he’s put a significant sum into the project personally, although he has declined to say how much, and would make a lot of money if the city comes to fruition), he is also deeply invested in the project emotionally. Raised by working-class parents in a small town in the Czech Republic, he ultimately went on to study at the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Soon after graduating, he worked as an investor at Goldman Sachs before moving to the United States to pursue a series of start-up ventures. During his apprenticeship in Silicon Valley, he began to think about how to solve California’s housing crisis. Although he first considered infill (the process of building new developments within existing cities), he quickly decided that the scale of these projects was infeasible to meet the moment. Then, slowly, the idea of California Forever began to form. That was nearly 10 years ago. “I spent eight years of my life buying this property without knowing that this would ever work,” Sramek said. “There are so many easier ways to make money than trying to build a new city.” The project, officially launched in 2017, is as much a real estate play as it is a chance to prove to himself that the California he imagined as a child still exists. As Sramek put it, the culture of post-communist Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall became enamored with all things American. California, with all its glamor and ambition and opportunity, was the outward projection of that. “There’s a really unique combination of people, natural beauty, climate, diversity, and openness to innovation that just happened in California,” Sramek said. “It’s extremely sad that we are destroying it, basically by an entirely unforced error.” As we whizzed past orchards and a small ranch house, he emphasized that the experts who support his development “weigh more heavily than a couple of angry voters who don’t know the details of the project.” He lashed out at public meetings with fuming residents as “undemocratic”; called the economic policy of California “self-inflicted suicide”; and the state’s environmental and planning regulations a “layer cake of bad ideas.” “Hollywood happened here, they found gold here in the hills, then Silicon Valley happened here, and then the countercultural revolution happened here,” Sramek said. “And then we screw it up because we can’t build enough housing?” In Sramek’s view, the state is at risk of becoming something like Florence, the ancient Italian city that was once Europe’s center of art and innovation and is now essentially a large, open-air museum. The decades of regulation and development roadblocks erected by California, in his view, could easily tumble the state in the same direction. You could build California Forever, with its commitments to advanced manufacturing and $30-billion private investment, or you could watch all those opportunities go elsewhere — essentially because of regulations. “When you take 50 good ideas and you lay them on top of each other, you don’t get an idea that’s 50 times as good as the 50 good ideas,” Sramek said. “You might actually get a really, really, terrible system.” And yet, it is that system that Sramek has pledged to work within, at least for the foreseeable future. He says working with the county doesn’t bother him (although his angry letters about the county’s pace indicate otherwise), and that pulling the ballot measure allowed his team of engineers and city planners to work out the details without the political pressure of a looming ballot measure. California Forever leaders have insisted that the decision to pull their measure was never an admission of defeat but rather a simple reorganization of steps. Voters, they said, rightfully had questions about the project. They promised to answer all of them over the next two years. Then they would return to the ballot. Last December, the grand, world-historic ideas behind California Forever landed on the desk of Solano County administrator Bill Emlen, a longtime county staffer who has been tasked with coordinating how to build America’s next great city. Emlen, who has lived in the county and worked in local government for over 30 years, epitomizes the kind of roadblock that seems to most infuriate Sramek. “Let’s face it, it’s not your average development proposal,” Emlen said. “And I don’t get the sense that governmental processes are something they particularly embrace.” According to Emlen, California Forever’s initiative never gave specific timelines for when development would occur, or how it would provide services to the community. Although he sympathized with the challenges to building new housing, he said there were always few details about how the highly touted affordable city would actually be created — no clear analysis of greenhouse gas emissions, no measurement system for tracking job creation, no nothing. After California Forever pledged to work with the county, Emlen wanted to know the answer to all those questions. And he had others, too. What about the impact on the nearby Air Force base? How would stormwater, sewage and transportation be provided? What about the loss of agricultural lands? In an October letter to Sramek, Emlen laid out the county’s needs: Submit a general plan, a rezoning plan, an environmental impact report and a development agreement. If the county and California Forever can come to an agreement, the project would still have to go before voters (presumably after having addressed their concerns). Developers usually have reams of material as they move through the permitting process. While California Forever blamed the county for its lack of motivation to move the project forward, Emlen said that even by the beginning of 2025, he had yet to receive those materials. “We’re kind of just waiting for them to file an application,” Emlen said in January. “They still haven’t done that yet.” It was an exponential demand on information for a team that leaned heavily on sweeping promises. Although Emlen recently announced he would be retiring at the end of March, the next county administrator will likely have similar questions. Sramek, meanwhile, says his team is in the process of submitting all the necessary paperwork to the county, and that he welcomes questions from elected officials and the community. He argues that he has no problem doing the regulatory work that makes a city better, safer, and more sustainable. But he refuses to accept delays that he believes will entrap his project in a bureaucratic death spiral that he argues is commonplace in California development. Edwin Okamura, the mayor of Rio Vista, a quaint river town adjacent to the California Forever property, said his conversations with Sramek have always been civil, and that it’s not so different from working with “any other businesspeople.” “You sit across from someone you may like or dislike, and when you leave the table you say, ‘OK, he’s really trying to push this project,’” Okamura said. “But you’re either at the table or you’re being cooked in the kitchen.” Okamura tries to avoid the emotional aspects of the California Forever debates, and he said that if Solano County rejected all investors simply because they were rich, no development would happen at all. That being said, there’s no part of him that believes Sramek’s city, as currently presented, is the best way forward for the county. California Forever’s success, quite likely, could come at the expense of existing cities like Rio Vista. And like Emlen, Okamura has only ever seen a vague outline of a plan, always extremely light on details. “I think many of the ideas that they have are great, better farming methods, better ranching methods, a sustainable community,” Okamura said. “But nothing has been proven.” At the end of January, after a month without rain, Northern California seemed to be held in a state of suspended animation. The familiar downpours were replaced by bluebird skies and warm days. California Forever, too, appeared to be on pause. The media attention and public developments surrounding the plan slowed to a crawl. Opponents of the project were still meeting relatively regularly, but without the intensity as during the ballot measure campaign. Sramek seemed to be getting nowhere with the county. To detractors, it appeared like David had defeated Goliath. Then, on Jan. 30, the leaders of Suisun City, a small, 28,000-person underdog city along the train tracks, dropped a bombshell in an agenda item during an otherwise routine city council meeting: They would be working with “regional partners” to explore expanding their city, and annexing the land around them. Notably, the only direction the city could expand was east, directly into the land owned by California Forever. Although Suisun City council voted only to explore the possibility of annexing the land, it shocked Solano County residents who for months viewed the project as dead in the water. Suddenly, Sramek’s plan was revived. “At only four square miles, we are Solano County’s smallest city,” Suisun City manager Bret Prebula said in a statement following the council meeting. “Now is the time to consider what more we can do to creatively grow our community and deliver more economic opportunity.” Even when they were failing to convince voters, California Forever was always trying to woo local leadership — with little to no success. For months on end, almost no elected officials had come out in support of the project. At an event for a local elected official in 2023, Suisun City Councilmember Princess Washington said she was lobbied by a representative for California Forever who demanded to know if she would support the project. (She didn’t.) Meanwhile, Moy, the mayor of the nearby town of Fairfield, said that California Forever would likely try to get their supporters into office if local officials didn’t get on board. But now, it seemed like all the California Forever team’s efforts had finally paid dividends with financially struggling Suisun City. It was also a potential end-run around voters. They would no longer have to work with the county. A countywide ballot initiative would no longer be necessary. Instead, the process would resemble a traditional municipal land-use project, and the annexation would only need the approval of a regional planning agency to proceed. The land they’ve already bought up would be incorporated into Suisun City, and California Forever could start building. It would just have a different name. “The project would stop being California Forever and it would start being the city of Suisun. That’s what was a total mind trip,” said Washington, who is the only council member who voted against exploring the annexation. “To do this was very cunning. It’s diabolical.” Sramek and California Forever, for their part, declined to confirm any agreement with the city, saying only they would be “open to discussion.” The power dynamic, again, appears to have shifted. Earlier this month, Rio Vista City Council announced that they too would be exploring a potential partnership with California Forever — formally claiming their seat at the dinner table. After Suisun City’s decision, even Moy, the mayor and a frequent critic, reached out to Sramek and California Forever to discuss ways in which her city, Fairfield, could collaborate with the project. In return, she received a letter from the company, shared with POLITICO Magazine, outlining the negative comments Moy had made in the press about Sramek and the team, accusing her of “brand damage” and a “persistent campaign of slander.” “Ms. Moy has proven herself either unable or unwilling to deal with any facts or reality,” the letter read. “Could you please let us know how the city plans to address the brand problems Ms. Moy has created?” The letter was nameless, signed, simply, California Forever. It is that spirit of vindictiveness, perhaps a natural counterpoint to Sramek’s fervent belief that this project must come to fruition, that has now cast a shadow over elected leaders in Solano County. At one point, it seemed that California Forever’s endless resources alone were not enough. Today, it seems that they are. “They’ve forced our hand,” Okamura said. “We need to be at the table, and we need to start being more forward thinking.” On the tour of Sramek’s hayfields, it’s not impossible to see the outlines of his vision. The city limits would begin here, the advanced manufacturing district there, the ring of parks and open space now here. With a little imagination, you can picture the rolling golden hills as scenic backstops for a bustling community, trails leading to a lookout point for weekend hikers glancing back down at their neighborhood, kids biking around leafy streets like all those renderings presented at town hall meetings. After all, things can change quickly out here. It’s harder to imagine, if California Forever is ultimately built, that the people of Solano County will feel like it was their decision. Should the Suisun City annexation play out as some expect, they will have watched wealthy outsiders come in and remake their county as they see fit, without ever getting to vote on it. As in Washington, Silicon Valley does not seem to be in the mood to take “no” for an answer. In conversations with Sramek, he seems little concerned with that eventuality — that Solano County residents will always oppose this plan, regardless of how good of an idea he believes it is. In February 2024, Sramek said he had a conversation with an elected official privately supportive of the project who described opposition in the county as something akin to stages of grief. First, people were angry. Then there was disappointment, then bargaining. Eventually, he said, there will come acceptance. “I pitched what I wanted to build. That’s what I pitched. I talked about what I thought California could become. I talked about what I thought Solano County could become,” Sramek said, driving the car out of the fields and back toward civilization. “The process was controversial. But I think it ended in the right spot.”

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order directing the Treasury and Commerce departments to take steps to form a sovereign wealth fund that could be used to fund new government projects and investments — including a possible acquisition of TikTok. “Other countries have sovereign wealth funds. They’re much smaller countries. They’re not the United States,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “We’re going to be doing something perhaps with TikTok. Perhaps not. if we make the right deal we’ll do it … Or if we make a partnership with very wealthy people.” The new wealth fund, which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters could be formed in the next 12 months, could be used to finance major government projects and fund strategic investments in critical areas like supply chains. Sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Europe are among the largest institutional investors in the world, providing massive pools of capital for Wall Street firms and the U.S. tech industry. Text of the order was not immediately available. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. During the campaign, Trump said a U.S. fund could be used to fund highways, airports and other transportation infrastructure. He also said in an Economic Club of New York speech that the vehicle could be invested in “state-of-the-art manufacturing hubs, advanced defense capabilities, cutting edge medical research and help save billions of dollars in preventing disease in the first place.” Trump’s nominee for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters at the signing that the sovereign wealth fund could be used to hold securities in companies that have large contracts with the U.S. — citing the mass purchases of Covid-19 vaccines as an example. “Maybe we should have some warrants and some equity in these companies,” Lutnick said. Democrats have also floated the creation of a sovereign wealth fund in the past as well. Biden administration officials were reportedly exploring the creation of a vehicle last year. Trump’s idea of using the fund to buy TikTok built off his earlier mention of a joint venture that gives the U.S. a 50 percent stake in the app. That proposal left lawmakers baffled and worried about its legality. Bessent’s 12-month timeline raised questions about how it would fit with Trump’s executive order giving TikTok a 75-day reprieve while he tries to broker a deal for the app’s sale. Trump has said he’d like billionaire allies including Elon Musk and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison to purchase TikTok, and he has told reporters that Microsoft is in talks about an acquisition.

BORITI, Georgia — Two neighbors, Murman and Natela, sit together sipping coffee as the early autumn sun sets over the village of Boriti, in Georgia. Just a few kilometers away, the newly built East-West Highway roars with traffic. The question — whether the new highway is European or Chinese — is met with confusion. “The road is built by those who pay, so it’s European,” argues Murman, 47, who has been working on the construction of the road since day one. “But it’s built by the Chinese, so it’s Chinese,” replies Natela, 52. The debate may be a local one, but it has international implications.  As Brussels gears up to challenge Beijing in the funding and construction of global infrastructure, it’s running up against an uncomfortable truth: Not only do its efforts sometimes overlap with its rival’s; many of the projects it is funding are being built by Chinese state-owned companies. Since the beginning of 2019, Chinese companies have been awarded more than €1 billion worth of contracts for EIB-funded projects in countries outside the EU, such as Georgia, Senegal, and Tunisia. This represents roughly 13.1 percent of the total value of third-country contracts attributed to the EIB on the EU’s Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) portal. By comparison, companies from the EU have won 15.7 percent of the total value of contracts, including tenders won by consortiums that involve EU companies.  In some years, such as 2019 and 2024, Chinese firms won a greater share of EIB-funded contract value than EU companies. Chinese firms win around a third as many contracts as EU companies, but these contracts are typically high-value. Take the road outside Boriti, part of the E60 European Transit Road which links Europe with Asia. The stretch near the village, known as the Rikoti Road, navigates steep, mountainous terrain and is one of the most challenging sections of the highway.  Funding for its construction came from the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and the EIB, which contributed €399 million. But the contracts went to five construction firms — all of them Chinese state-owned enterprises. In 2018, for example, the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) signed a €300 million contract to build the Ubisa-Shorapani section near Boriti, which is almost entirely funded by an EIB loan. The numbers above do not reflect the full scope of EIB-funded contracts. For instance, a €154 million contract secured by CRBC earlier this year for an EIB-funded rail bypass in Serbia is listed on the TED portal, but not included in TED’s aggregated data for EIB-funded contracts.  “There’s a tension between the rhetoric that this is a European offer and the fact that Chinese companies are building some of these projects,” said Chloe Teevan, the head of digital economy and governance at the European Centre for Development Policy Management, a think tank. The CRBC did not respond to a request for comment. GLOBAL GATEWAY VS. BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE When European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled Global Gateway in September 2021, it was a direct response to China’s international infrastructure ambitions. Beijing’s effort, the Belt and Road Initiative, had set off alarm bells in the West, where it was seen as locking in Chinese strategic interests and creating debt dependence in the countries where the infrastructure was being built. “We want to create links and not dependencies!” von der Leyen announced during her 2021 State of the Union address. “We are good at financing roads,” she added. “But it does not make sense for Europe to build a perfect road between a Chinese-owned copper mine and a Chinese-owned harbor.” Today, the bigger challenge is that it’s very often Chinese firms that are building the roads the EU is paying for. In addition to the EIB, the EU funds infrastructure through the bloc’s national governments, as well as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). While the EBRD isn’t technically a part of the EU, 54 percent of its shares are held by the EU, the EIB and EU national governments. The rest is divided among 44 other countries. The U.S., the U.K., Japan, and Switzerland combined hold 33 percent. Russia holds 4 percent, and China less than 0.1 percent. Over the last five years, however, Chinese firms have won 13 percent of the total value of public-sector projects funded by the EBRD. EU contractors were awarded 35 percent of total value across the 38 countries in which the EBRD operates, 13 of which are EU member states.  In addition to this, Chinese firms have been awarded contracts for private-sector development projects funded by the EBRD.  In Uzbekistan, for example, the EBRD is providing at least €500 million in financing for seven wind and solar projects being developed by Saudi ACWA Power or Emirati firm Masdar, but which have been contracted to Chinese state-owned enterprises. Though the majority of EBRD’s operations are geared toward the private sector, the development bank does not publish the results for these tenders. “The EBRD permits participants from all countries to provide on equal terms goods, works, services or consultancy services for an EBRD-financed public sector project regardless of whether such country is a member,” the EBRD’s Balkan office said in a statement to POLITICO.  UNLEVEL PLAYING FIELD  China’s involvement in EU-funded projects hasn’t gone unnoticed by the European construction industry.  In 2020, the European Chamber of Commerce in China highlighted a “profound lack of European involvement” in Chinese-financed Belt and Road projects, which are often contracted to Chinese firms without tender. The EIB, on the other hand, requires its promoters to award contracts through a competitive procurement process.  “We are not afraid of competition on a level playing field,” said Frank Kehlenbach, director of European International Contractors, an industry group. “But we will never be able to compete with these huge state-owned enterprises that work under the control and with the funds of the Chinese Communist government.” In a statement, the EIB said “all companies, irrespective of their geography and without discrimination, are eligible and free to participate in EIB-led tender processes, which award contracts on the basis of a number of criteria, such as price offer and quality for end users.” The EU has developed several instruments to address unfair competition in procurement. One of these is the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR), which empowers the European Commission to investigate public procurement bids by foreign companies suspected of benefiting from state aid. Since the regulation entered into force at the beginning of 2023, it has been used four times, all but one targeting Chinese companies. One of the major catalysts for the development of the FSR was the awarding of a contract in 2018 to CRBC for the construction of the EU-funded Pelješac bridge in Croatia. “The Pelješac Bridge scenario was one of the key moments for evolving the EU’s thinking about its competitiveness and economic security vis-à-vis China,” says Matej Šimalčík, executive director of the Central European Institute of Asian Studies. The Austrian firm Strabag, which also bid for the contract, accused CRBC of price dumping and filed a complaint, but courts found no proof of illegal subsidies.  However, experts argue that state-owned firms like CRBC benefit from indirect state subsidies. CRBC, for example, has established a large portfolio of projects in Europe that are tied to loans from the Export-Import Bank of China. The introduction of the FSR makes a repeat of the Pelješac case unlikely within the EU, but the regulation does not extend to EU-funded projects outside of the EU, including those that might be built as part of the Global Gateway. A Commission spokesperson said there was a recognition of the issue. “The EU is a firm supporter of equal opportunities and open competition,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “However there is a need to ensure a level playing field.” “The European Commission is discussing these issues with the EIB and is working actively — also in the context of the Global Gateway initiative — to increase the engagement of European companies,” the spokesperson said. They added that the Commission was “exploring” options that would “ensure best price/quality ratio instead of a lowest price as an award criterion.” However, Teevan cautioned that simply raising the bar may not be enough to deter Chinese companies. “There’s an effort to make it more complicated for Chinese companies to comply, but Chinese companies are getting better and they are investing a lot in ESG,” she said.  Meanwhile, said Teevan, the visible involvement of Chinese companies in the construction of its infrastructure project is undermining the bloc’s ability to take credit for the project it funds. The Pelješac Bridge is once again a good example. While Brussels saw the bridge as an EU-driven development, Beijing advertised it as a “key strategic project” of the Belt and Road Initiative.  Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, attended the project’s opening ceremony virtually to describe it as “a new bridge to promote friendship between [China and Croatia].” The confusion, as to whether the bridge was built thanks to Brussels or Beijing, would be instantly recognizable to villagers of Boriti in Georgia.  “How is this road European?” asks Omar, 67, who is being paid €11 per day to control traffic on the soon-to-be-finished East-West highway.  “Everything here is Chinese,” he adds. “The Europeans are paying, but the Chinese are building it.” Reporting for this article was supported by a grant from Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU).

For decades, Belgian French-speaking activists sought to sabotage their Dutch-speaking countrymen riding bicycles during the Gordel, a race on the green belt around Brussels, by tossing out nails and thumbtacks to puncture their tires. But in 2024, the feeling at the Gordel was much more folk fest than fight. On a hot September Sunday in the town of Dilbeek, just outside of Brussels, scattered groups of people milled around the race finish line, drinking beer and listening to live music in the central crossroads shut to traffic. Children bounced gleefully in an inflated jumping castle. As Brussels becomes ever more multicultural, due largely to it being the capital of the European Union, proponents of the Dutch language in Belgium face a new nemesis: expats. The spread of non-Belgians out of Brussels is pushing some Flemish people into the arms of right-wing political parties making identity — and promoting the Dutch language — a core part of their manifestos. “The language conflict is no longer between Dutch and French,” said Mathis Saeys, a researcher at the Dutch-speaking Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). “The conflict is between monolingualism and multilingualism.” NEW LANGUAGE POLITICS Belgium is divided into the Dutch-speaking northern region of Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia in the south. The capital city Brussels — surrounded by Flanders and originally majority Dutch-speaking — gradually became Francophone over the past century or so. This dynamic has been at the root of Belgium’s traditional language conflict, which has played out in political and cultural clashes for decades. But according to the most recent survey of languages in the Belgian capital, released in May of this year, French has lost ground while the use of English and Dutch has ramped up as Brussels becomes ever more cosmopolitan. Migration has made the Belgian capital among the most linguistically diverse cities in Europe. As ever more foreigners continue to arrive in Brussels, more of that population is moving to the Flemish territories around the capital city, and indeed deeper into Flanders. That’s changing society — and affecting politics. The Gordel, which means “belt” in Dutch, began in the 1980s as a protest to preserve the Flemish character of the green ring around Brussels — against the spread of Francophones from Brussels. At the race in Dilbeek, local bike rider Theo van den Broeck, 58, lamented the changes. “The Flemish character here on the periphery of Brussels has gotten somewhat lost,” the resident said. “It’s not good what’s happening here … Brussels keeps getting bigger and bigger,” he continued. “We need to preserve the Flemish culture.” Speaking Dutch is central to this, van den Broeck believes. “Dutch is part of our DNA” as Flemish people, he said. MIGRATION DRIVES SHIFTS “Brussels has always been a multilingual city because it’s centered at the border between the Roman- and the German-speaking territories,” explained VUB researcher Saeys. Waves of migration after World War II contributed to making Belgium — and Brussels in particular — more multicultural. The first two were when Belgium brought in migrant workers,  from the Mediterranean and then the Maghreb, to work in the mines. The third and most recent happened when Brussels became the capital of the European Union. This not only drew migrants from Eastern Europe, especially after the EU’s eastward expansions, but also other expats. They sought work in the EU institutions and associated nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, consultancies — in other words, the so-called Brussels bubble. The survey of languages in the Belgian capital, which polled 2,500 households in Brussels, also reflects growing linguistic diversity: The overall number of languages spoken has gone up from 72 in 2001, to 104 in 2024. “Brussels grows primarily due to internationalization,” Saeys said. “At this point, 75 percent of the people who live in Brussels have a foreign origin.” That internationalization is increasingly spreading outside of Brussels. Many who arrive in the capital start families, then move out of the city in search of cheaper housing, more space and a higher quality of life. “And they bring their home languages with them,” Saeys said. Flanders has proved more popular with expats than Wallonia: Almost twice as many people have moved from Brussels to the former than the latter over the past decade. That’s due to the Dutch-speaking territory’s better infrastructure, more job opportunities — and abutment to Brussels. Though the population in the capital region is expected to plateau around 2035, and in Wallonia a decade later, it’s projected Flanders will see population growth from migration until 2070. In Flemish politics, Brussels is often described as an “oil stain” that is growing ever larger. Most people in Flanders have not yet felt the international shift that has happened in the areas directly around Brussels, Saeys said. But based on the data, “The oil stain is expanding.” RIGHT WING REAPS SUCCESS OFF IDENTITY POLITICS Travel beyond the highway that rings Brussels into Flanders, and you experience a different Belgium. Small, quiet towns are set apart by patches of woods and agricultural fields — making the traffic fumes, piles of garbage and rat race of Brussels seem far away. Steenokkerzeel is one such community, located just a dozen kilometers northeast of Brussels Central Station. The placid town square, anchored by an old church and lined with local shops and restaurants, fills with life during the Sunday market. From the Steenokkerzeel administrative building down the road, Mayor Kurt Ryon leads the community’s population of 6,000. Ryon described the spreading “oil stain” of Brussels as the biggest issue in the local election, held Oct. 13. “Our schools are full, our streets are full,” Ryon said. Preventing green spaces from turning into high-rise apartments was a major campaign issue, he added. “And not all the new people are … how do I say, respectful.” He means respectful of the Flemish way of life and Flemish traditions — as well as learning Dutch. “Language is the most important thing to integrate and to live together,” Ryon said, describing it as the key bond between people — regardless of where they’re from or their socioeconomic status. “When you live here, you are welcome — but the language is Dutch, and it is important to learn Dutch.” Reelected in October with direct mandate of 61 percent, Ryon belongs to the right-wing New Flemish Alliance party, or N-VA. It held onto or gained ground in many cities and smaller communities across Flanders in the local vote. Far-right, anti-immigrant party Vlaams Belang also saw success in the local elections in October, making slight gains outside of cities across Flanders. It won an outright majority in the town of Ninove just outside Brussels for the first time; and has also formed a governing coalition in Ranst, in the suburbs of Antwerp — breaking the cordon sanitaire or barrier against working with far-right parties, a practice in Belgian politics that stretches back decades. In Belgium’s national election this past June, N-VA held onto its 24 percent of the vote in Flanders, while the far-right Vlaams Belang got 23 percent. Vlaams Belang in particular gained ground, up from 19 percent. Brussels voters demonstrated a lack of interest in French- and Dutch-identity politics in the October local vote. | Hatim Kaghat/Getty Images N-VA is at the center of the newly formed Flemish government and is also poised to lead a center-right coalition for the country, with its own Bart De Wever as Belgium’s front-runner for next prime minister. The party emphasizes integration and learning Dutch. “We expect all who settle in the Flemish periphery to be prepared to learn and speak Dutch,” the Flanders governing agreement states (it offers financial support for Dutch courses). Incentives to learn Dutch only go so far, Ryon pointed out — especially as migrant communities grow and their ability for insular living increases. N-VA’s approach is that when the carrot no longer works, it’s time for the stick: The recently released Flanders governing agreement includes revoking a school bonus for families if children and parents do not pass Dutch language proficiency tests. TAMING THE TOWER OF BABEL While N-VA takes a hard line on language— only Dutch is allowed to be spoken in schools and other public institutions in Flanders, and all official administration must also conducted in Dutch — Brussels has been experimenting with multilingual approaches for some time now. Sven Gatz, the finance minister for the Brussels capital region (and its minister of multilingualism), sees Brussels as a blueprint for how Flanders might manage the inevitable change headed its way. “We have accepted in Brussels that we have a fluid identity, and that we have to do something about this multilingualism,” Gatz said. Though tensions around speaking French versus Dutch ran high in decades past, “We now see the people being more relaxed about talking more languages.” Indeed, Brussels voters demonstrated a lack of interest in French- and Dutch-identity politics in the October local vote. This was evident in the collapse of DéFI, a pro-French-speaking party; and how none of the seven N-VA representatives were reelected for the capital region. Expanding multilingualism is contributing to the rise of the right in Flanders, thinks Gatz, who hails from the centrist Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats party. “Multilingualism is perceived as a threat to identity,” Gatz said. Himself a Dutch-speaking Brusseler, he does not fear for the survival of his mother tongue in the capital city. “The success of the Dutch-speaking schools is very big — it’s because of Dutch being the bridge to multilingualism” and to the powerful economy of Flanders. “When you want to have a good job in Brussels, you have to be multilingual. Politics did not decide that,” Gatz pointed out. “Multilingualism is actually good for economy, for jobs, for prosperity.” This market motivation informs a nascent three-pronged policy proposal that promotes multilingualism in education, culture and the economy. “Education is the first line — so we tried to motivate the schools to open up their vision on multilingualism,” he said, describing how pilot projects in schools could lead the way. Sven Gatz, the finance minister for the Brussels capital region (and its minister of multilingualism), sees Brussels as a blueprint for how Flanders might manage the inevitable language changes headed its way. | James Arthur Gekiere/Getty Images In addition to reforming language laws from 1966, public administration is another field ripe for trying things out, Gatz believes. “You should give the liberty to the communes in Brussels and to the Brussels capital region to be more proactive with, for instance, English.” He pointed to the Brussels community of Schaarbeek, where anyone who goes to city hall may speak a language other than French or Dutch. Ryon, the Steenokkerzeel mayor, agrees that it’s important to learn a lot of languages. He also acknowledges that demographic change can’t be stopped. But he’s wary of softening the hard line around using Dutch. “That’s the first thing, to talk,” Ryon said. Recently, the growing Indian community in Steenokkerzeel asked for a meeting with him. “And they say, ‘Oh, each year, we have a light festival. Can we do it also in Steenokkerzeel?’ “We can do it. Why not! So the Flemish people can see, here’s a tradition from the Indian people,” he said. So Steenokkerzeel sponsored a Diwali party for the first time this year. The language spoken in their joint meeting was Dutch.