U.S. President Donald Trump weighed in Monday on who might lead the Republican Party after he leaves office, naming Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance as top contenders for the 2028 presidential nomination. But he kept the door open to … himself. Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Japan, Trump responded to suggestions that he should seek an unconstitutional third term, an idea recently floated by former White House strategist Steve Bannon. “I would love to do it — I have the best numbers ever,” Trump said when asked about Bannon’s comments. Trump, however, went on to add that he “hasn’t really thought about” running again. “We have some really good people,” he said. When pressed to name names, Trump gestured toward Rubio, who had walked back to the press cabin to speak with reporters. “We have great people — I don’t need to get into that. One of them is standing right here,” Trump said. He went on to praise his vice president, Vance, who has taken a prominent role in the administration on a range of domestic and national security issues. “Obviously JD is great. The vice president is great,” Trump said. “I’m not sure anyone would run against those two.” Bannon has been among the most vocal of those pushing for Trump to try for a third term. “There is a plan,” he said in a recent podcast, suggesting that Trump could make another run despite constitutional limits preventing him.

LONDON — It was March when Gretchen Whitmer bumped into Morgan McSweeney in London while on a trade visit to the U.K. Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan and potential hopeful in the 2028 U.S. presidential election, and McSweeney, the chief of staff to embattled British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, discussed Labour’s landslide victory in its 2024 general election campaign, said a person who recalled the encounter. There, Starmer’s chief of staff accepted an eye-catching gift from Whitmer — a £90 “Michigan Wood” pen. The encounter was a small glimpse of the ties that remain between the U.K. prime minister’s aides and the U.S. Democratic Party, still licking its wounds after a resounding election defeat by Donald Trump and the Republicans. It was also indicative of something else: McSweeney’s personal desire to build a coalition and playbook for center-left parties to win and govern worldwide, with Starmer at its heart, including and going beyond just the U.S. Democrats. That desire was undimmed in recent months, according to four people with knowledge of the conversations, despite Starmer and McSweeney firefighting crises (and falling poll ratings) in office. Labour’s engagement with the Democrats has faded to the background since Trump’s reelection last November, not least because of Starmer’s efforts to charm the president — Trump’s gilded state visit to Britain starts on Sept. 16 — and the fact the Democrats have no candidate to charm. But that may change soon. The Starmer-friendly think tanks IPPR and Labour Together and U.S.-based Center for American Progress (CAP) will take a “Global Progress Action Summit” — previously held in Canada — to London for the first time on Sept. 26. Events planned so far include the newly minted justice secretary and deputy prime minister, formerly the foreign secretary, David Lammy — a friend of Barack Obama — in conversation with past (and perhaps future) Democratic hopeful, Pete Buttigieg. High-profile further speakers are expected to follow. McSweeney has been a key figure behind the scenes in recent months shaping thinking around the conference, said the four people referenced above, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. That’s despite him battling political turmoil at home — which in the past fortnight has included the departures in disgrace of Starmer’s deputy, Angela Rayner, and his ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson, and a reshuffle of both his Cabinet and No. 10 staff. A second, private day at the conference is planned for staff, where Labour government aides can swap notes with counterparts from nations such as Australia and Spain, whose socialist government’s proposals to tackle a housing crisis are being watched closely in No. 10. One of the four people said: “Morgan sees Keir as being a leader among global progressives.” Another said: “We’re trying to write kind of a blueprint or playbook of what it means to be a center-left government in the era that we’re now in” — one where neither left-wing populism, nor a return to the shared “Third Way” politics of former leaders Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, are the answer. In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has a huge poll lead and is promising to deport hundreds of thousands of people. Public disillusionment with establishment parties — and Starmer, the process-driven former lawyer — is high. No. 10 aides are looking at artificial intelligence and social media’s impact on society, an aging population, a public sector in need of reform, growing Chinese might and public unease at mass migration — problems plaguing governments everywhere — and believe “deliverism” is the way forward. It might not work. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer speaks during the 69th Annual Fight For Freedom Fund Dinner on May 19, 2024. | Monica Morgan/Getty Images So how close really can Labour and the Democrats get right now — and can they teach each other more than just how to lose ground? POLITICO talked to more than a dozen politicians and strategists, several on condition of anonymity, in a bid to find the answer. THERE IS NO DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE The first difficulty with meeting the Democrats is obvious. Who are you supposed to meet? The party structure is different to Labour, which almost always has a leader. A senior figure in a U.K. think tank said: “It’s not like you can speak to the equivalent of Keir Starmer in opposition and start to build relationships.” Labour MP Emily Thornberry, the chair of Britain’s cross-party foreign affairs committee of MPs which went to Capitol Hill over the summer, said: “I wasn’t, for example, being taken to see Democrats and being told, ‘Oh, this is a rising star, we think that this guy or this woman is worth cultivating, because we think that they are future leaders.’ “No, it was all about who we think are the movers and shakers on the Hill. Or who we think might be — we haven’t even worked it out yet.” Enter, then, an army of center-left think tanks to fill the void. The CAP, Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and Third Way all have regular contact with U.K. counterparts about Democratic renewal. “Britain has proven a useful place for them to have those conversations that they can’t have easily in the U.S.,” argued the senior think tank figure quoted above. Others involved in this transatlantic dialogue include the U.S.-based Open Markets Institute, the former home of Biden antitrust guru Lina Khan, and the Sunrise Movement, as well as the U.K.-based Future Governance Forum, backed by a roster of Starmer donors, and the Labour Climate and Environment Forum. Claire Ainsley, a former aide to Starmer who is now the director of the PPI’s project on center-left renewal, said: “Looking at who’s going to be the next candidate is actually only one part of the equation. The other part of it is which faction, if you like, is going to get their candidate to emerge?” With Bill Clinton in the 1990s, she argued, “you build the platform and the candidate emerges. It wasn’t as if Clinton came with all these ideas — you had to build a platform.” But this becomes a battle of competing ideologies too, with different think tanks lobbying for the kind of center left they want to see. BUILDING A NETWORK Third Way, the D.C.-based Democrat-friendly think tank, talks to people “both in and adjacent to No. 10” and “a variety of folks in government,” said Senior Vice President Josh Freed — though most conversations are informal and not at the level of elected officials. Likewise, Labour’s recent former General Secretary David Evans, now an adviser to PPI, has been to the U.S. with Ainsley to speak to Democratic strategists, including at a Denver summit in April. The pair are due to attend a similar behind-closed-doors “retreat” in Las Vegas on Sept. 13, where speakers will include Obama’s former chief of staff (and potential presidential hopeful) Rahm Emanuel. In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has a huge poll lead and is promising to deport hundreds of thousands of people. Public disillusionment with establishment parties — and Starmer, the process-driven former lawyer — is high. | Lia Toby/Getty Images The PPI has its eye on talented governors such as Whitmer, Colorado’s Jared Polis, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, newcomers such as North Carolina’s Josh Stein and former governors such as Rhode Island’s Gina Raimondo, who also served in Joe Biden’s cabinet as a commerce secretary. Shapiro and Whitmer in particular, argued PPI President Will Marshall, embody an “impatience with government bureausclerosis” — a battle occupying Labour in the U.K. Friendly think tanks like to hail Shapiro for fixing a key interstate in just 12 days after it collapsed. In the U.K., PPI is interested in center-left ministers such as Lammy, Wes Streeting, Bridget Phillipson, John Healey, Ellie Reeves, Alison McGovern, Torsten Bell, Kirsty McNeill and Lucy Rigby, along with new junior ministers such as Kanishka Narayan and Mike Tapp. Democratic former Congressman Tim Ryan — who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2020 as well as against the now-Vice President JD Vance in a 2022 Ohio Senate race — came to the U.K. in July, facilitated by the PPI, and held briefings with Labour MPs and peers. Ainsley and Deborah Mattinson, a pollster and former Starmer adviser who works with the PPI, presented research on swing voters who are becoming disillusioned with center-left parties. Ryan also met Starmer at a pre-arranged encounter during an event in parliament and the two spoke about politics, said one person who was there. Marshall said the PPI-Labour relationship “withered” in the years the hard-left Jeremy Corbyn led Labour, but the history goes back to 1989, when he met Patricia Hewitt, a center-left think tanker in the political wilderness, who would become a Cabinet minister under Tony Blair. THE GOVERNMENT CAN HELP Labour isn’t in the wilderness this time — at least not yet — and has the levers of government to help. The U.K. Embassy and consuls general will play a role in building links between the government — in a non-party-political way — and potential Democratic runners and riders. Diplomats will keep tabs on rising stars and gather contact details for their teams, and this will likely kick up a gear when the picture becomes clearer after the U.S. midterm elections in November 2026. This, of course, is true of Republican rising stars too. “We do have the advantage of the machinery of the Foreign Office network to deal with that,” said one former Labour adviser. There are always two tracks, the adviser added — cross-party, pragmatic relationships with U.S. administration figures come first, “but clearly, you also have your political family that you are part of, and the alliances that you have as fellow progressive political leaders.” Such fellow leaders could include California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose pugilistic and Trump-mimicking social media style has made waves with Democrats, or JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor whose deep pockets as the heir of a hotel fortune could allow him to self-fund a presidential candidacy. These tracks can sometimes appear to overlap. Starmer gave the job of ambassador to Washington D.C. — usually reserved for a civil servant — to Peter Mandelson, a close ally of McSweeney and long-time operator on the center left (although he was also quick to cultivate relationships with Trump’s MAGA right). Mandelson was due to be briefed on this month’s summit before he was sacked on Thursday over revelations about his friendship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Likewise, Emily Thornberry’s choice of meetings in Washington this summer was guided by diplomatic officials, and the embassy would sometimes have someone taking notes in the room. But Trump and the Republicans are by far the priority, at least for now. Labour officials are still scarred by a row during the 2024 U.S. election, in which Trump’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” after activists went to volunteer for Kamala Harris’ campaign. | Jeff Kowalsky/AFP Thornberry recalled of her visit: “The impression I got was that reengaging with however the Democrats emerge is on the back burner, waiting for things to happen — because the pressing issue is trying to understand what the hell is going on under the Trump regime. So that’s the priority.” Thornberry recalled a surprising bond between MPs and some Republicans, because many of them had links to the U.S. military. “For these guys who’ve actually been under fire with Brits, they have a very different relationship with Britain than Democrats, who see us as, you know, their liberal friends from across the pond — but they have lots of liberal friends across the pond,” she said. DON’T WAKE THE BEAST Bonding too closely with Democrats is fraught with danger. Labour officials are still scarred by a row during the 2024 U.S. election, in which Trump’s campaign accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” after activists went to volunteer for Kamala Harris’ campaign. Many Labour activists privately saw it as the weaponization of the sort of routine campaigning that would usually pass without comment. The row erupted after Labour’s Head of Operations Sofia Patel told would-be volunteers: “We will sort your housing.” One Labour volunteer who went to the U.S. said: “It was a foolish, ill-advised LinkedIn post, and it wasn’t even properly true, because many of us were just organizing ourselves into groups — former staffers, current staffers, who were warm and interested — it wasn’t all organized by the party. Lots of us had just got ourselves into a group, booked ourselves into an Airbnb and a hotel and booked the same flights.” People paid their own way and many avoided posting on social media, the volunteer said. The danger hasn’t passed. While Starmer is seeking to define himself as a friend of Trump, many Democrats define themselves by resisting him. Formal contacts with Democratic politicians are rare for Starmer and his aides these days, though the PM met with House and Senate Minority Leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer at the NATO summit in July. Mike Williams, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said Starmer’s government is focused on making sure the “U.K. is in a decent place with regards to Trump.” JUST KEEP TALKING The conversations continue regardless. Organizers behind this month’s London summit are hoping for representatives from most center-left governments in Europe and others from further afield. McSweeney has relationships with people in progressive think tanks in the U.S. and other countries, is close to former Biden and Obama officials and attended the Democratic National Convention last year alongside Matthew Doyle, Starmer’s then-director of communications. One former Labour staffer argued, however, that party HQ actually cultivated stronger links with the Australian Labor Party (ALP) than it did with the Democrats before Britain’s 2024 election. Labour hired Aussie strategist David Nelson to help run its general election campaign last year, alongside a second, more junior former Australian Labor staffer. Evans and Ainsley of the Progressive Policy Institute went to Australia to meet the ALP this past June. “Politically, we’re more similar to Australia than anywhere else in Europe,” the former Labour staffer added. “Their electorate behaves more like ours.” Despite all his domestic woes, Starmer’s allies believe he can still lead the pack. “There is a method and a recipe that worked for the center left, and it worked to get Labour into power … It is having a clear leader, vision and program to change the lives of working people for the better,” Ainsley said. She added: “Where center-left governments drift from that as their priority, it’s where they come unstuck.” But Keir Starmer is now drifting in the polls, and his critics have also accused him of a lack of vision. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images At the Denver summit in April, PPI’s Marshall said Democrats were asking Evans “ ‘How did you all win? What did you do? How did you win back those Red Wall constituencies in the July election last year?’ ” But Starmer is now drifting in the polls, and his critics have also accused him of a lack of vision. The conversations now are not just about how to win — but how to rebuild. “Conceivably, we learn the most from failure,” said Williams of CAP. “I think there’s a lot to learn.” Some failures unite most center-left strategists — like needing to focus on voters’ wallets rather than distant economic indicators. Marshall said part of his conversations with British MPs in early 2024 were “reality therapy about the Biden administration and Bidenomics.” Until Biden’s crushing defeat, he said, many center-left politicians including in Britain were looking to his strategy as the answer. Other issues, such as migration and gender politics, are thornier. Williams argued: “Do I think that we’re learning the right lessons yet? No. The folks [in the U.S.] who are pushing this whiplash back to the center and saying that we need to be tough on immigration, we need to push back on transgender rights — I think they’re dead wrong.” And for Freed of Third Way, Starmer would benefit from pushing the bureaucratic part of his personality aside. “Far be it for me to give advice to someone who successfully won an election and is leading a government,” he said. “But I think the thing that we’re seeing in general is that this is not a moment for buttoned-up, cautious, precise leaders. That this is not the moment to only go on controlled interviews where you know the questions and it’s only going to be 15 minutes. It’s not the moment where you’re unwilling to share insights and glimpses of yourself, of who you are, of the passions you care about.” Freed then put it more directly: “The blunt challenge of the moment is, this is like two owners of football clubs talking to each other. The Democrats just got relegated. The other [party, Labour], let’s be blunt, looks like [it] might be relegated — they’re in a relegation battle at the very least.” For football fan Keir Starmer, it’s a battle that may define his legacy. Shia Kapos contributed reporting.

BERLIN — It was a beating hot summer day and Gregor was dressed in the formal uniform of the German army: a sky-blue shirt and navy trousers, which he had received that week, the fabric still stiff. The 39-year-old office manager had never been patriotic, and like many liberal-leaning Germans his feelings toward the military for most of his life had been ambivalent at best. When he was 18 he’d even turned down the option of doing a year of military service, believing it was a waste of time. Now, two decades later, life had taken an unexpected turn. As a steel band played, he marched in time alongside 17 others dressed in the same freshly pressed outfits into an open square at Germany’s Ministry of Defense, a towering grey neoclassical building in western Berlin, following the commands they had learned just a few days earlier. They were all there to do the same thing: take the oath required of all new recruits to the German armed forces. Afterward, they would begin their official training as reserve officers, learning the basic skills needed to defend against a military invasion. Everything had changed for Gregor on Feb. 24, 2022, when news broke that Russia had invaded Ukraine. Suddenly, the peace he had always taken for granted in Europe didn’t seem so guaranteed. “I was watching videos of Ukrainian civilians joining soldiers to fight off Russian tanks as they rolled toward their towns,” he said. “I thought to myself: ‘If something like that happened here, I wouldn’t have any practical skills to help.’” It was a fitting day to take the oath: July 20, 2024, the 80th anniversary of the so-called Operation Valkyrie, when a group of German soldiers plotted, and failed, to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Usually oath ceremonies are low-key affairs, carried out at barracks with a few family members present — the close associations between the military and Germany’s dark history means servicemen are not celebrated with the pomp and pageantry they are in other countries. But in honor of the special date, around 400 other recruits from various divisions from all over Germany were gathered in the same square, ready to take their pledge. The country’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius from the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), gave a short speech, telling the recruits that the prospect of defending Germany’s democracy had “become more real after Putin’s attack on Ukraine.” Then a lieutenant colonel shouted out the words of the oath, as the group repeated them back: “I pledge to loyally serve the Federal Republic of Germany and to courageously defend the right and liberty of the German people.” As he repeated the words of the oath, Gregor felt an unexpected swell of emotion. “I realized this is going to be a big part of my life now,” he said. “I’m going to be dedicating a lot of my time to it, and I’m going to have to explain to people why I’m doing it.” His mother remarked afterward that she also experienced surprising feelings while watching from the benches. “That was the first time I ever heard the national anthem being sung and felt like I actually wanted to join in,” she told him. Across Germany, both politicians and members of the public have been going through a similar transformation. The country’s army, officially named the Bundeswehr — which translates as “federal defense” — was established by the United States during the Cold War. It was designed to support NATO rather than ever lead a conflict, for fear that a German military could be misused as it was during World War II. This supporting role suited Germany’s leaders: Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, the country’s politicians carefully shaped an image of a peaceful nation that prefers influencing global politics through trade and diplomacy. After the end of the Cold War the Bundeswehr began scaling down, with military spending falling from a high of 4.9 percent of GDP in 1963 to just 1.1 percent in 2005. But in the months following the Russian invasion, then-chancellor Olaf Scholz surprised the world by announcing a radical change in German foreign policy, including a €100 billion ($116 billion) plan to beef up its army. Then in early 2025, five days after the February election of new chancellor Friedrich Merz of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), Donald Trump invited Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky into the Oval Office for a browbeating broadcast around the world that signaled his lack of interest in standing up to Russia. A shocked Merz, who had campaigned on a platform of low taxes and low spending, immediately agreed with Scholz to work together to reform the country’s strict borrowing laws — which were embedded in the constitution — and build up its defense capabilities as quickly as possible with a €1 trillion loan, which amounts to about 25 percent of the country’s GDP. According to Lorenzo Scarazzato, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), this type of defense spending was previously unheard of during peacetime. “Countries that spend this much are usually those at war, or autocratic states that don’t have democratic oversight,” he said. The following month, Germany’s lawmakers voted to back the plan, setting the country’s military on track to be the best-funded in Europe and the fourth-biggest in the world. In Merz’s view, Europe didn’t just need to arm itself against Russian aggression, but also “achieve independence from the USA.” Later in the year, NATO members would agree to raise their defense spending to 5 percent of GDP, at Trump’s behest. It marks a huge shift not just from how Germany manages its finances but how it perceives both itself and its place in the world. “After World War II, the allies did a tremendous job of re-educating the German population,” said Carsten Breuer, the Bundeswehr’s highest serving general. “This led to a society which I would say is peace-minded, and of course there’s nothing wrong with that. But it is also non-military.” So far, committing resources to the military has been fairly easy for the German government. But now it needs to convince thousands of people to do the same as Gregor and dedicate themselves to military service. After the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the government began scaling down the Bundeswehr from 500,000 soldiers to the current 180,000. The country’s national service, in which young men had to choose between serving in the army or undertaking another type of civil service, was scrapped in 2011. Now, General Breuer estimates the total personnel needs to rise to 460,000, including both full-time staff and reservists. Bundeswehr applications are up 20 percent this year, though not everyone will make it through the physical and security tests. Even then, that still isn’t enough to plug the gaps, and it is likely that conscription of some kind will return. Breuer believes the German public is softening up to the military after decades of standoffishness. The war on Ukraine, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic and the disaster response to devastating floods, have put many people in closer touch with the Bundeswehr, he says. “When I was talking to my soldiers in the early 2000s, they would always ask, ‘Why isn’t it like the U.S. here, where people thank you for your service?’” he said. “Nowadays, we’re starting to see this in Germany.” He recounted a recent moment when he was waiting for a flight in the city of Dusseldorf and an elderly man tapped him on the shoulder to offer his thanks. However, for many people, any glorification of the German military will always have uncomfortable associations with the country’s dark history: Neo-Nazi groups still use German military symbols and history as part of their recruitment propaganda, and the Bundeswehr has been plagued by far-right scandals in recent years. For some, the government’s push to embrace the army is one more sign of a dangerous transformation in the country’s political sentiments: The far-right AfD is currently second in the polls, and the ruling CDU has shed former leader Angela Merkel’s liberal image in favor of a harsh anti-immigration stance. And as welfare, social services and climate protection face possible cuts to support military spending, Germany’s politicians face a challenge in seeing how long they can keep the newfound support going. “When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, and you forget the rest of the toolkit, which includes diplomacy and cooperation,” said Scarazzato from SIPRI. “Military gives some level of deterrence, but engaging with the other side is perhaps what prevents escalation.” He warns that a beefed-up army “is not necessarily a panacea for whatever issue you are facing.” The Heuberg training ground in Baden-Württemberg has a long and dark history. Nestled in the southwestern part of Germany near the Swiss border, it was originally built as a base for the German Imperial Army, which existed from 1871 to 1919 and fought in World War I. Some timber-framed buildings and stables from this time still exist, many crumbling and disused. In early 1933 it became one of the country’s first concentration camps, housing 2,000 political opponents, before it was used as a base for the SS, the Nazis’ violent paramilitary group. Now, it is where the next generation of German military reserves come to train. This past June, I watched 18 people struggling through the same type of training Gregor undertook a year earlier. Heuberg serves as the anchor for recruits hailing from Baden-Württemberg, with each region of the country playing host to its own reserves trainings. The one I observed at Heuberg takes 17 days in total, spread out over long weekends throughout the summer. None of the recruits, including Gregor, can share their surnames for security reasons — the Bundeswehr says its soldiers have been targeted by foreign intelligence and been subject to identify theft. The lieutenant colonel leading the training, Stefan, told me that the sessions cover the most basic skills, meaning these recruits will know how to defend a barracks if Germany were attacked by a foreign power. They can then continue regular training as part of local defense units, learning how to secure critical infrastructure. The recruits range in age from their 20s to 60s, with most in their 30s and 40s, and work a variety of jobs. There’s a forester, a teacher, a chemical engineer and even an ex-journalist, although only three of them are women. Everyone mentioned the war on Ukraine as the catalyst that got them interested in the military. A German army spokesperson said a total of 3,000 untrained citizens have expressed interest in joining the reserve over the past five years, with a major peak just after the invasion of Ukraine and another in early 2025 following the U.S. election. The training is not for the faint-hearted. Recruits must learn to fire an 11-pound rifle, hike around the base in the soaring heat while carrying their 33-pound backpacks, and practice running and doing push-ups in their gas masks and protective clothing, which restricts their breathing. They will also learn orienteering and radio communication, with the 17 days eventually culminating in a simulation of a Russian attack, during which recruits will be fed information through their radios and organize themselves to defend the barracks. Stefan, who served in NATO missions in the former Yugoslavia, Mali and Afghanistan, explained that several people had dropped out already. “That’s normal, it’s not for everyone,” he said. As well as the physical strain, recruits often struggle with the emotional aspect of learning to fire guns. “I tell them, at the end of the day, you’re a soldier — it’s part of your job.” Kevin, 29, works as a banker. “In school, my best friend wanted to join the army, and I remember telling him he would be wasting his life,” he said. His father also had to do compulsory military service, “and he told me no one wanted to be there, it was so uncomfortable because you were reminded of history the whole time.” After the invasion of Ukraine, he remembers sitting in his office watching the price of commodities skyrocket. “We all watched Biden’s speech about the start of the war, and it really felt like a turning point in history,” he said. After many hours of running, shooting and hastily learning new commands, the recruits — many slightly red-faced — finish the day by learning to clean their guns, pushing strings down the barrel and out the other end. Some get stuck, prompting some awkward tugging. The commando deputy, Col. Markus Vollmann, looked on admiringly. “They are all quite extraordinary, how motivated they are,” he said. “They’re only a minority though.” So far, 45 percent of Germans say they are in favor of the country’s new 5 percent defense spending target, with 37 percent against and 18 percent undecided. It’s a marked difference from the days of the Afghan war, when two-thirds of the country wanted German troops to be withdrawn. Military sociologist Timo Graf says this fits with how most Germans have consistently viewed the Bundeswehr: The majority say its main role should be defense of the country rather than interventionist missions abroad. At Heuberg, Vollmann is nervous about how long support for military spending will be maintained once people see other services being cut around them. Germany is able to borrow much more than its European neighbors due to its low debt levels, but Merz is sticking to his low-tax-low-spend ideology with planned cuts to welfare spending. “We need to communicate better with the public about what we are doing and why it is necessary, but without scaring them,” he said, adding that debt-averse Germany needs better investment in all industry and infrastructure. “There’s no point having the most expensive tanks if, once you drive them out of the barracks, the roads are all potholed and the bridges are crumbling.” Stefan, the training manager, believes the many years of peace have left Germany ill-prepared to potentially face Russian aggression head-on. “We have too many soldiers who have never seen war,” he said. “If you have never smelt burning flesh or seen spilled blood everywhere, then you cannot understand how to make decisions in that environment. You can’t train adequately.” Just one week after the NATO conference sparked headlines around the world in July, I arrived at Germany’s Ministry of Defense to speak to Breuer, the highest serving general in the Bundeswehr. The building in western Berlin, also known as the Bendlerblock, was the home of the Nazi’s supreme military command and their intelligence agency, as well as the headquarters of the resistance soldiers who carried out the failed July 20 coup attempt. Breuer became a familiar face to Germans during the pandemic, as the head of the military’s Covid-19 task force. When we met, he was warm and jovial in his everyday combat uniform, rather than the formal jacket adorned with medals that he sports in his TV appearances. He is beaming about the budget increases, which he believes are long overdue. Following Germany’s post-Cold War disarmament, spending on everything from clothing to ammunition to helicopters was reduced — some argue by too much, leaving soldiers with out-of-date helmets and 30-year-old radio equipment. Breuer is particularly critical of how German troops were sent to support NATO missions abroad — most notably in Afghanistan — without adequate equipment. “It was clear to me that if you are sending soldiers on operations, risking their life and their health, then you have to give them everything they need,” he said. A total of 59 German soldiers were killed in the conflict. “We are now moving from a war of choice to a war of necessity,” he explained. From security analysis he believes Russia will be capable of attacking NATO territory by 2029, with the caveat that this depends on the outcome in Ukraine and whether the war exhausts the Kremlin. “Russia is producing around 1,500 battle tanks every year,” he said. In comparison, Germany currently produces 300. “And it is also building up its military structures facing West.” He says his main priorities are ramping up air defense, procuring battle tanks and drones, expanding homeland security, and beefing up the personnel that enables combat missions, such as engineers and logisticians. But tanks and drones don’t amount to much if the country can’t enlist and train to its goal of 460,000 personnel. German media is currently full of near-daily headlines about how this personnel target might be reached. Defense Minister Pistorius has proposed a hybrid voluntary draft, inspired by Sweden’s new model, in which all 18-year-old men will be sent a questionnaire. Only the most physically able will then be invited for service. However, if that fails to get the numbers needed, he has warned some kind of compulsory draft will be created. The country is already facing a massive skilled labor shortage and the Bundeswehr struggles to offer competitive salaries in fields such as IT. Business leaders such as Steffen Kampeter of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations have claimed the German economy cannot cope with young people delaying their careers through serving in the army. One solution would be for service to be combined with vocational training, and Pistorius also wants to increase Bundeswehr salaries to make them more attractive. Breuer says he has no opinion on what system would be preferable for meeting the recruitment goals, explaining this is an issue for politicians to decide. “My military advice is: This is the number we need,” he said. At the same time as equipment and staff need to be beefed up, Breuer says administration and bureaucracy must be scaled down. Germany’s procurement offices have become so bloated over the past 30 years that multiple reports of their comical inefficiency can be found, such as parachutists having to wait over a decade for new, safer helmets that U.S. soldiers have already worn for years. Germany is also entering its third consecutive year of recession, and its heavy industries that are struggling to stay competitive are now hoping the defense spending will give them a boost: Shares in the steel sector have shot up since the announcements. However, the years of restricted budgets mean the country is starting the sudden ramp-up on the back foot. It is unlikely that industry can meet the targets in such a short space of time, meaning a large amount of equipment is likely to be purchased from U.S. companies, perhaps undermining the goal of European independence. “The fact is, once you buy the more complex weapons from the U.S., you become somewhat dependent on their systems,” said Scarazzato, the SIPRI researcher. “It would make more sense to be very deliberate in how the money is spent in order to avoid finding ourselves in the same position in 10 years’ time.” “For me it’s not about companies, it’s about capabilities,” confirmed Breuer. “This means that in a lot of cases we will have to buy off the shelf. We can’t afford the time you need to develop new items, new systems and new platforms.” With the rush across Europe to procure weapons and soldiers, Scarazzato warns that leaders should be careful not to “put all their eggs in one basket, which is the military.” Arms races also lead to issues such as price gouging and oversight processes potentially being circumvented. “You risk a race to the bottom,” he said. I asked Breuer if he had anything to say to people who are still skeptical about the need for rearmament. “I would like to take them with me on one of my visits to Ukraine.” How powerful the Bundeswehr should be, and even whether it should exist at all, has been fiercely debated ever since it was founded. As an institution, it has only existed since 1955 and was preceded by the Nazi-era Wehrmacht (1935 to 1945), the Weimar Republic’s Reichswehr (1919 to 1935) and, before that, the Imperial German Army. When the United States and its allies took control of Germany after the end of World War II, they dissolved the Wehrmacht and banned German military uniforms and symbols. As part of a larger “denazification” process, the country was prohibited from having an army in case it could be misused in the same way as the Wehrmacht. This changed as the Cold War intensified. After the 1950 North Korea invasion of South Korea, the United States urged its NATO partners to rearm Germany and admit it to the alliance. The country’s first Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, believed it could be an opportunity for the young democracy to regain its sovereignty and establish itself as an equal partner amongst allies, and on Nov. 12, 1955, the first 100 volunteers joined the Bundeswehr. “The country had to answer the question of how to create an army that could integrate into a democracy and could follow the constitution,” said Thorsten Loch, a Bundeswehr officer and military historian. The founding officers decided to construct the new army around a concept known as “Innere Führung,” or “inner leadership,” meaning soldiers must think for themselves and not follow orders blindly. They decided soldiers should be “citizens in uniform,” with national conscription designed to keep the forces rooted within society. Parliament wields huge powers over the army, and its stated mission is supporting other NATO forces rather than leading battles itself. Germany’s constitution has strict rules about how and when the military can be deployed — for example, reserves can only be called up if another nation declares war on Germany. When it came to staffing the new army, however, making a complete break from the Wehrmacht was more complicated. As Loch points out, any army that needed to pose a serious threat to the Soviet Union couldn’t be staffed by 12-year-olds. Chancellor Adenauer declared in 1952 that anyone who had fought “honorably” in the Wehrmacht — that is, those who had not committed any war crimes — would be welcome in the new army. “The officers ‘cleaned’ themselves,” explained Loch. “I believe they knew amongst themselves who had committed crimes.” They are likely to have also had input from the British, French and American intelligence services. In comparison, communist East Germany opted to staff its Volksarmee (people’s army) with younger, inexperienced soldiers in order to avoid former Nazis. Whether this “self-cleaning” was effective is a point of contention. Only a tiny number of Wehrmacht officers were ever tried for war crimes, and the concept of “honorable” soldiers has led to what many perceive as a whitewashing of the Nazi-era army, often referred to as “the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.” “The narrative was born that it was the Nazi Party who committed the atrocities, not the Wehrmacht soldiers,” said Loch. “And of course this isn’t true, as things are more complicated in reality.” Some of those early Bundeswehr officers still have questions over their heads as to what they did in World War II. The first director of operations was Lt. Col. Karl-Theodor Molinari, who resigned in 1970 after it became public that he might have been involved in the shooting of 105 French resistance soldiers, although the allegations were never proven. And while care was taken to strip away the most obvious signs, symbols and rituals of the Wehrmacht, some remain, such as military music, which also pre-dates the Nazi era. Barracks were renamed after resistance figures but were not demolished. This is one of the reasons that German rearmament was unpopular with the public at the time, and the purpose — and even existence — of an army remains a divisive topic. There continues to be a push-pull between those who say the Bundeswehr must do more to fully break with its past, and those who argue the Wehrmacht is a part of military history that cannot just be ignored. On Sunday, June 15, around 1,000 people had decided to forgo summer picnics in the park to gather outside Germany’s Reichstag for the country’s first-ever Veterans’ Day celebration. After many years of campaigning by the Association of German Deployment Veterans the government finally decided to make the celebration official in 2025, symbolizing a major shift in how politicians seek to position the Bundeswehr in society. A German language EDM band blared loudly over speakers next to stalls selling beers and bratwursts, while children petted a military donkey. The turn-out was not huge: There was no line to enter, and the dancefloor in front of the stage was largely empty. All attendees I spoke to were from military families, rather than curious civilians. “We would like to build up a veterans’ culture like they have in the USA,” said Ralph Bartsch, who runs a veterans’ motorcycle club. “It’s an absolutely overdue event,” agreed another soldier, who was dressed in civilian clothes and did not want to give his name. “It makes the Bundeswehr stronger in our society.” Not everyone is so eager to see societal norms change. The day before, in the Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg, I watched as Kai Krieger, 40, and his companion demonstrated how they switch out bus stop posters for those of their own design. After unscrewing the case at the bottom, rolling up the existing poster and tucking it behind the frame — essential for ensuring they are not committing any crimes — they then unrolled a doctored Bundeswehr recruitment advertisement in its place. “German mix: Nazis, cartridges, isolated cases” it reads, alongside a banner, “No to veterans’ day.” It’s a reference to a series of scandals from recent years. In 2022, Franco Albrecht, a 33-year-old first lieutenant with far-right views, was found guilty of plotting terror attacks that he hoped would be blamed on refugees. Several members of the elite KSK — Germany’s equivalent of the Navy SEALs — were found to have been stockpiling weapons and Nazi memorabilia, and members were reported to have made Hitler salutes and played extremist music at gatherings. This led a parliamentary panel to determine in 2020 that “networks” of far-right extremists had established themselves in the Bundeswehr. Ex-military personnel were also involved in a bizarre 2022 foiled plot to overthrow the German state and replace it with a far-right monarchy. “I do think it’s possible for armies to not be fascist or far-right influenced, but the German army is so toxic to the country’s history that I don’t see how that can happen here,” Kai said. He would go as far as saying that Germany should not have an army at all, because “the history is just too heavy. … They say all these nice-sounding things about defending democracy, but then the nasty things always seem to come to the surface.” Despite the Bundeswehr’s efforts to emphasize its historical connections to resistance fighters and position itself as a defender of liberal values, Germany’s far-right groups continue to view the country’s military as their own. In 2019, the German office for the protection of the constitution reported that neo-Nazi groups were organizing lectures with former Wehrmacht soldiers around the country, in which speakers would praise the SS and deny or trivialize the Holocaust. Kai’s group posted around 100 of their posters across the city that weekend, but anti-military activism doesn’t currently have much momentum behind it. Outside the Veteran’s Day celebrations, only a mere cluster of protesters were holding signs and singing anti-war songs. It’s a far cry from the 1980s when the German peace movement was a major civic force, with four million people signing a petition that the West German government withdraw its promise to allow medium-range ballistic missiles to be stationed in the country. Kai doesn’t hold back on the reasons for the movement’s unpopularity. “Our organizations talk a lot of bullshit,” he said. According to him, many of his fellow peace activists “don’t agree that Vladimir Putin is conducting an illegal war in Ukraine. … They’ll say it’s NATO’s fault,” he added, rolling his eyes. While pacifism was long associated with the left, this has shifted in recent years as various far-right movements aligned themselves with Russia. The AfD opposed military aid for Ukraine and expanding the Bundeswehr, and peace marches have become associated with cranks and conspiracy theorists. The Bundeswehr’s recent far-right scandals give potential reserve volunteers pause for thought. Burak, 38, opted out of military service back when he was 18, but in February 2025 he withdrew his conscientious-objector status. “It took me two whole years to decide if I really wanted to do that,” he said. As someone of Turkish heritage, he is still worried about whether it will be “a safe environment” for him. Burak has been involved with the country’s Green Party for many years, and during the Covid-19 pandemic he began looking into the possibility of training in disaster relief. Then when the invasion of Ukraine happened, he considered the military for the first time in two decades. “I feel like this is going to be another burden on younger people, along with things like climate change,” he said. “My generation had the privilege to say that we didn’t want to do this.” Michael, who is 50, spent his youth in Berlin’s left-wing punk scene, putting on anti-fascist gigs in abandoned buildings, and still sports the tattoos and gauged ear piercings. The invasion of Ukraine “shocked me to my core,” he said. “I am an anti-fascist, and to me, the biggest fascist project in Europe right now is Russia,” he explained. “The whole symbol of Europe is under attack.” He added that he also wants “to know where I stand” if tanks ever did roll into Germany one day. “I don’t want to be sitting there thinking, ‘Do I flee or not?’” he said. “I don’t think we should allow the Bundeswehr to just be staffed by nationalists,” he continued, when I ask how it fits with his leftist politics. “We need to think: What brought the Third Reich down? What brought liberty to Europe? It wasn’t talking with Hitler for 10 years.” A year after Gregor completed his basic training, his life looks quite different. At home, he has three huge boxes of uniforms, gas masks and helmets that his girlfriend begrudgingly agreed could be stored in their apartment, as long as he kept them tidy. Other hobbies have had to make way for his continued service, which he now dedicates around 50 days a year to. With his defense unit he practices handling weapons and understanding the logistics of how to protect Berlin’s critical infrastructure and clear paths for military transport. “We learn about the motorways and railway network, and how troops can move through them without the risk of sabotage,” he said. As a major urban center, his Berlin unit would probably be one of the first to be called up if an invasion ever happened. His company, a Berlin-based tech startup, has been understanding of his time off: “My bosses said a war would be bad for business, so they’re happy I’m doing this.” Some of his closest friends are now those he went through training with. “You’re paired with everyone in the platoon for exercises at some point,” he said, which enables deep bonds. Whenever people struggled, the others rallied around them, invested in getting the whole team past the finish line. If someone got nervous learning how to handle rifles, the others were there to calm them down. Even when he’s not training, he’ll often spend his evenings mentoring others who want to join the reserves, talking them through the process. He wears his military uniform travelling to and from training, sometimes encountering people who thank him, other times being pestered by kids who want to try on his backpack. He often has conversations with friends who don’t understand why he is doing this, or who are politically opposed to the idea of a German military. “I have realized since I joined that people in the German military do tend to be more on the conservative side,” he said. “I would like to see more left-leaning people, to balance it out and make it more reflective of society.” He thinks some form of conscription would be a good idea, to help people understand what the army involves, and that there’s much more to it than frontline conflict. “But you need to make it meaningful to their lives. There’s no point in people feeling like they’ve been forced, or that they’ve wasted a year.” The idea of serving his country still makes him feel uncomfortable. “I don’t really like the term patriotism as it’s too closely associated with nationalism for me,” he said. “But I think about the things in my country that I like, such as free education and affordable health care, and how I want kids in the future to enjoy those, too. And I think that is worth defending.”

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has called for a former Trump-appointed banking regulator to be dismissed from the global financial watchdog, warning he is putting the world’s economic stability at risk. Randal Quarles, who was vice chair of supervision at the U.S. Federal Reserve from 2017 to 2021 where he oversaw a wave of deregulation, was last month chosen to lead a worldwide review of post-2008 financial crisis reforms for the Financial Stability Board. In a letter addressed to FSB Chair Andrew Bailey, obtained by POLITICO, Warren blamed Quarles’ deregulatory measures for the collapse of three U.S. banks including Silicon Valley Bank in 2023 and warned he would bring the same mindset to global standards. “Mr. Quarles spent his tenure as a top financial regulator in the United States weakening safeguards for megabanks at the expense of financial stability and the American public,” said Warren, a former U.S. presidential hopeful who is the most senior Democrat on the Senate banking committee. “It would be deeply troubling if this FSB review became a mechanism to coordinate the easing of post-2008 rules across the globe.” She said Quarles’ background “demonstrates that he is the wrong person to lead such a review.” She called on Bailey to “consider terminating the appointment and conduct your own search for a suitable replacement.” Bailey, who is governor of the Bank of England, became FSB chair after Quarles’ appointment. The warning came as the FSB, a global body that monitors and coordinates national financial regulations, issued new guidance on the regulation of nonbank financial groups, such as hedge funds. The guidance recommended capping the amount of borrowing these groups can do, but left up to national regulators to determine the details. ROLLING BACK SAFEGUARDS In the years following the 2008 global financial crisis, countries clubbed together and tasked the FSB with coordinating national regulators to prevent a similar crisis happening again. But in 2017, with momentum shifting back to deregulation, newly-elected U.S. president Donald Trump nominated Quarles to head up the Fed’s banking supervision arm. Warren’s main criticism of Quarles relates to his implementation of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which gave the Fed discretion to apply tougher regulatory standards to large banks with assets of between $100 billion and $250 billion. “Under the law, Mr. Quarles had discretion to apply these rules … [but] he and other Trump-installed regulators refused to do so,” she said. She said Quarles also led the rollback of rules prohibiting banks from making “risky proprietary bets with customer deposits and from investing in or sponsoring hedge funds or private equity funds.” Both of these contributed to the collapse in 2023 of Silicon Valley Bank, she said. As well as calling for Quarles’ termination, the letter asks whether his appointment is an indication that the FSB sees “this review as an opportunity to coordinate the easing of post-2008 financial safeguards.” Neither Quarles nor the FSB immediately responded to a request for comment.

Elon Musk’s pledge to step back from campaign spending — if he means it — is rippling across the United States’ political landscape. Some Republicans are worried that they might be losing their whale. Some Democrats fear they are losing their foil. It matters because Musk injected an unprecedented level of spending into the presidential race and could do the same in November’s Virginia governor’s race and around the country in the midterms. That was suddenly put in doubt Tuesday, when the Tesla CEO told an interviewer that he’s backing away from political spending after shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars to help Donald Trump win the presidency last year. “Taking his toys and going home,” said Steve Bannon, a Trump ally who has verbally sparred with Musk. Musk, the world’s richest man with a net worth estimated at more than $420 billion, announcement that he will “do a lot less” political spending, a surprise reversal of his promise to continue to play a major role influencing U.S. elections. It’s a significant turnaround from the days after Trump’s win in November, when Musk posted on social media that he would “keep grinding” away at election funding and “play a significant role in primaries.” Musk’s group, America PAC, spent nearly $20 million aiming to boost Republicans in swing House districts. He also joined Trump regularly on the campaign trail last year and offered cash giveaways — including $1 million prizes to a few voters. He eventually spent more than $260 million on the 2024 election cycle and even contributed to two Florida special elections this year. But Musk’s political capital seems to have faded after he and groups he backed — America PAC and Building America’s Future — contributed more than $19 million to support Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel, a Republican who lost by 10 percentage points. The public face of the Department of Government Efficiency’s massive overhaul of the federal workforce, Musk earned the ire of many Americans. His car company Tesla faced financial headwinds, and Musk said he’d refocus his efforts on the flailing company along with his other businesses. In Virginia, Republicans were expecting Musk would want to make his mark, given that’s where the most competitive statewide races are taking place this year. Some are still holding out hope that will happen: GOP gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears faces a major cash disadvantage against Democrat Abigail Spanberger. Whether or not Musk actually stops contributing is still an open question. Asked about Musk’s decision to withdraw as a GOP donor, one Virginia Republican, granted anonymity to speak freely, said: “Eh, we’ll see.” In Pennsylvania this year, Republicans and Democrats are gearing up for Supreme Court races, where three justices are up for retention in November. It could bring a repeat of the Wisconsin election: Democrats and Republicans started discussing whether Musk would play a role in the races, with the Philadelphia Inquirer reporting that one Democratic candidate, Justices Kevin Dougherty, warned that “Elon Musk has already invested $1 million,” though that couldn’t be verified yet through campaign reports. Democrats especially don’t expect the tech billionaire to fully withdraw from political spending, and they expect him to funnel contributions legally through non-public, dark money means. “I believe he will start moving his money in the background, through nonprofits,” said Pat Dennis, president of American Bridge, a major Democratic super PAC. “It’ll be a lot more of that now.” Dennis also argued that Musk stepping away publicly may help Democrats narrow their focus back on congressional Republicans for cutting federal programs and that Musk had initially served as a “shield” for them when he was the de facto head of DOGE. A spokesperson for America PAC declined to comment on what Musk’s announcement meant for the group. Even some Republicans are unsure exactly what Musk’s announcement will mean for the future. “I believe he means it right now. But every election is unique,” said Republican consultant Josh Novotney. “So he may be motivated to be active again in the future.” Even if Musk greatly reduces his amount of campaign spending, several lawmakers on Wednesday said they appreciated what Musk had done for the party. Sen. Ted Cruz said Musk made “an extraordinary difference in the 2024 race.” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said he texted Musk Tuesday to say how thankful he was for what he’d done. “He’s worked hard. He wasn’t involved in politics and he jumped all in because he saw an opportunity to make a change,” Mullin said. “Now he’s going back to his life. I don’t blame him. In fact, I commend him.” Elena Schneider and Jessica Piper contributed to this story.

The U.S. president’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr. said Wednesday that he wouldn’t rule out a future run for the White House. “Maybe one day … that calling is there,” Trump Jr. said at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha. “I think my father has truly changed the Republican Party.” Trump Jr. is considered one of the most prominent figures in the MAGA movement and is seen as a potential successor to his father’s political legacy, if not the top job. He currently serves as executive vice president of the Trump Organization, but also helps shape his father’s second administration, ensuring that loyalists and ideological true believers populate the executive branch, while serving as a key Trumpian attack dog on social media. Speaking at the Doha forum, Trump Jr. defended the administration’s approach — particularly on trade — arguing that it poses no threat to the strength of the U.S. economy. “Changes take time,” he said, adding that fears among U.S. citizens about Trump’s trade policies were largely fueled by “hysteria” in the media. In March, Trump Jr. denied reports that he was considering running for president in 2028, pointing out that he was a key figure in getting his father to pick JD Vance as vice president, who he described as “an instant power player” in the Republican Party. Trump the elder, despite being constitutionally barred from serving a third term as president, has himself stoked the idea that he could run again in 2028.

BRUSSELS — Europe’s centrist political forces have an uneasy feeling that the European People’s Party is abandoning them for the far right. The center-right group — Europe’s largest political family and part of the centrist coalition that has dominated EU politics since the bloc’s inception — has been leading a political campaign against nongovernmental organizations using EU grant money to influence policymaking. By targeting civil society organizations, critics say the EPP has embraced a cause associated with the right-wing fringes of politics, in a move that is reshaping EU politics as far-right parties make significant ground across EU countries. The EPP dismisses such claims. It says it is simply demanding more transparency in how nonprofits use EU taxpayer money, having accused the European Commission of paying NGOs to lobby other EU institutions on its behalf to promote environmental laws. But others disagree, including the two other biggest centrist groups in the European Parliament — the liberal Renew Europe group and the center-left Socialists and Democrats — who believe the campaign is an attempt to restrict NGOs’ influence in EU policymaking, a cause of the far right. It’s driving a wedge between the EPP and its long-standing coalition partners — a shaky partnership that has nevertheless endured till now, keeping EU politics on the center ground. “[T]he EPP is embracing an agenda of the extreme right,” Valérie Hayer, who leads Renew, said of the group’s campaign against NGOs, which she described as “deeply worrying” and “obviously meant to shrink political and democratic space for NGO work.” Iratxe García, group chair of the S&D, said that “the right-wing forces which are currently targeting the NGOs have a clear and broader political intention that goes far beyond” and aims to “undermine the Green Deal, transparency, gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, and fundamental freedoms, all while delegitimizing civil society’s role in democracy.” The EPP’s probe comes amid a never-slowing surge of autocratic forces making headway in EU countries including Hungary and Slovakia, but also the Netherlands, Germany and France. Emboldened by Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. election last November, populist forces are increasingly legitimized, in EU capitals and in Brussels. And that’s putting civil society organizations — whose role in the democratic policymaking process is enshrined in the Treaty on the European Union — at risk, according to a dozen lawmakers, policy experts and activists that POLITICO spoke to.  The Greens, who are further to the left than the S&D on many issues and were a significant force in the last Parliament, draw comparisons with the U.S. under President Trump, who has slashed billions of dollars of government funding for NGOs since he came to office in January. German EPP member Peter Liese said he recognizes “the very important role of NGOs” in the EU decision-making process. | Ronald Wittek/EPA “There is a certain Trumpification of the EPP, not just at the European level, but we see it at national level as well,” said German Green lawmaker Daniel Freund. “Them going after civil society is one aspect of that,” he added. Other aspects include more collaboration with the far-right by, for example, “vot[ing] for their amendments.” Conservative MEPs reject the idea that the group is collaborating with the far right.  “The EPP is absolutely out of these games of the Patriots or other extremists from the right side,” said Tomáš Zdechovský, a Czech MEP and coordinator for the EPP group in the budgetary control committee.  But according to another Parliament official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, “⁠the whole initiative started with the Patriots and … a big part, a worryingly big part of the EPP fancies the idea.” The Patriots for Europe group did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment. A DANGEROUS DANCE Scrutinizing NGOs is the latest in a series of political fights in which the EPP has been courting parties much further to the right to serve its own interest — breaking the so-called cordon sanitaire, which historically prevented centrist groups from making alliances with the far right.   Right-wing gains in last year’s European election mean the EPP can now pass legislation in coalition with groups to its right, without the support of Renew or the S&D. It’s “the most dangerous dance in European politics,” said Daniel Kelemen, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University and an expert in EU law. Anti-democratic forces “can only really prevail … when they find centrist parties who are willing to … do deals with them and are willing to sell out their democratic values for power,” he said. Increasingly however, this dance to assert its power within Parliament has come at the expense of the very European values that the EPP itself once championed. “There is a double discourse from the EPP, saying it is seeking transparency on NGOs’ funding but actually using this narrative to attack them,” said Faustine Bas-Defossez, director at the European Environmental Bureau, an NGO.  The EPP has been “radicalizing” its narrative to try to win back far-right votes in the EU election, she added, and flirted with the idea of collaborating with far-right groups in Parliament since. “It is a dangerous game where the EPP risks undermining the democratic fabric it claims to defend.” That report had a limited impact, and its publication was derailed which came just as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán pitched a controversial law in Hungary aimed at cracking down against civil society. | Pool Photo by Nicolas Tucat via EPA The EPP rejects that it’s going after NGOs, but rather “demand[s] greater transparency in the relationship between nongovernmental organizations and EU institutions,” said the EPP’s Zdechovský. “We firmly believe that if the EU is to remain trustworthy, it must uphold impartiality and resilience against any form of pressure — whether from the business sector or so-called civil society,” he added.  German EPP member Peter Liese said he recognizes “the very important role of NGOs” in the EU decision-making process. “However, there have been clear instances of misconduct by some individual Commission officials and some NGOs,” he said, adding “it is encouraging that steps have already been taken to prevent such incidents in the future.”  An EPP group spokesperson also told POLITICO that any claims that their probe into NGO funding echoes other political groups’ agendas is “utter nonsense.”  OLD GRIEVANCES It’s not the first time the EPP has voiced its concerns about how Brussels funds NGOs. Back in 2017, German conservative MEP Markus Pieper authored a report calling for increasing the traceability of EU funds and for NGOs to disclose other sources of funding. Pieper also suggested that some Commission departments were “exploit[ing] the distribution of EU grants for their own political agenda.” Ultimately that report had a limited impact, and its publication was derailed because of timing — which came just as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán pitched a controversial law in Hungary aimed at cracking down against civil society. That prompted the EPP to try and distance itself from anti-NGO discourse championed by Orbán’s Fidesz party.  But what really changed things was a fight over new EU rules to boost nature protection across the bloc, during which the EPP suffered a crushing political defeat when it failed to block the adoption of the new rules. “The Nature Restoration Law was a turning point,” recalled the EEB’s Bas-Defossez. “It created some frustration within the group, not just over the outcome, but over the visible public mobilization around it. Since then, we’ve seen the EPP shift its political agenda in a worrying way: targeting civil society actors who advocate for environmental ambition.” NGOs and scientists spent months pushing back against misleading claims — promoted by the EPP on social media — that the rules would hurt farmers and threaten the EU’s long-term food security.  The legislation was narrowly adopted in plenary after few EPP members broke ranks. It was a significant political victory for former Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans, the headline defender of the legislation; and an equally significant defeat for EPP leader Manfred Weber as he was trying to conquer the farmers’ vote and win back voters from the far right just a few months ahead of the EU election. The fight left the EPP feeling wounded and bitter — but the group eventually came back swinging.  Germany’s incoming conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz was criticized for his inquiry targeting NGOs. | Clemens Bilan/EPA Now, similar demands and accusations to Pieper’s are being reiterated by German EPP members including Monika Hohlmeier. As a close ally of Weber, she has been spearheading a push in the Parliament’s budgetary control committee to investigate EU funding contracts, flagged alleged irregularities and accused the Commission of paying NGOs to lobby other EU decision-makers on its behalf. Hohlmeier did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for an interview.  Since then, POLITICO revealed that NGOs had been told by the Commission to change their grant applications to comply with new guidelines — or risk losing their funding. “They were very strict about the [2025] annual grant, removed any mention of talking to MEPs,” said a senior policy officer at an NGO, granted anonymity to speak freely about the confidential contract. MEPs from other right-wing groups were quick to chime in on the topic. EU-funded NGOs are “a network of political activists who want to implement the Commission’s policies and left-wing ideologies,” the far-right Patriots for Europe group said in a statement, after the European Court of Auditors slammed the Commission for not properly monitoring how funds are distributed to NGOs, especially if they are used for lobbying activities. Changes to the EU’s transparency rules in 2021 allowing self-declared noncommercial organizations not to disclose how much money they spend on lobbying have indeed made it harder to track the extent of some NGOs’ advocacy activities. Collectively, NGOs declare spending €159 million on EU lobbying efforts according to EU data compiled by LobbyFacts. However, more than 70 percent of nongovernmental organizations in the EU Transparency Register are registered as noncommercial, and therefore don’t disclose any spending. NGOs fear that these political grievances will yield further cutbacks in the upcoming EU budget negotiations. “It is a very legitimate fear and I carry personally that worry too,” the Parliament official quoted earlier added.  THE NEW BOOGEYMAN In Europe, autocratic governments and far-right political forces have been targeting civil society groups and their donors for years. That strategy has seeped into EU politics.  “Attempts to discredit funding for civil society organizations [are] not new,” said Carlotta Besozzi, director at Civil Society Europe, but “the current attacks take place in a much more difficult climate” in which “much stronger far-right political groups” are operating in the European Parliament.  Earlier this month, Slovakia’s parliament passed a controversial law targeting NGOs’ funding structures, after its populist Prime Minister Robert Fico vowed to end “NGO supremacy” in the country after his reelection in 2023.   In Hungary, Orbán’s government has often cracked down on NGOs and other groups critical of his government with legislation aimed at slashing their funding and liberties.  Orbán famously has an axe to grind with Hungarian-born U.S. billionaire and philanthropist Geroge Soros, who founded the Open Society Foundations and supports civil society groups and grassroots movements. During the first Trump administration, anti-Soros sentiment in Eastern European countries grew.  Back in February, Germany’s incoming conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz was criticized for his inquiry targeting NGOs. And increasingly, the discourse against NGO funding is seeping into politics in Brussels, where far-right parties are targeting the EU itself as one of the biggest donors to NGOs. For Georgetown University’s Kelemen, “What we’re seeing is, in a sense, a translation of that script to the EU level, where instead of Soros being the boogeyman, it’s the EU.”

LONDON — Britain’s Labour government is taking inspiration from an unlikely political figure to push forward its law and order agenda. Long before he become a controversial ride-or-die Donald Trump ally, Rudy Giuliani was lauded as the man who cleaned up New York City after decades of urban decay and soaring crime rates. As the city’s mayor, Giuliani mandated that officers clamp down on comparatively small crimes — things like graffiti, shoplifting or antisocial behavior — to make people feel safer in their local communities. He argued that this policy, along with economic regeneration, would stop larger crimes from happening and increase a feeling of safety among the general public. His use of this “broken windows theory” was a key pillar in his efforts to drastically reduce crime rates in New York, previously one of America’s most dangerous cities. Now this approach, popularized by Giuliani in 1990s New York, is being embraced by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in 2020s Britain. The prime minister named “safer streets” as one of his six policy “milestones” last month, making it one of the government’s top priorities until the next election (due by mid-2029 at the latest). This is perhaps because crime consistently ranks as a top-four issue for Brits, according to YouGov polling. Starmer is set to give a major speech on the theme in the coming months, where he will set out a clear narrative for how he wants to cut crime and increase community safety. For his government, it all starts with cleaning up Britain’s high streets — many of which have become hubs of decay and abandonment. One Cabinet minister, granted anonymity like others in this piece to discuss internal government thinking, told POLITICO that “creating more secure streets is a lot about making town centers feel nicer. “Not having graffiti on the walls and boarded-up shops and things like that. People want to feel safe walking down the street at night,” they added. TAKING IT TO THE STREETS In an apparent lesson from Kamala Harris’ defeat by Trump in the Nov. 5 U.S. election, Starmer decided in December to shift his core economic messaging away from GDP growth and to focus instead on living standards. Labour strategists argue voters will not appreciate headline economic growth if their wages don’t keep pace with, or surpass, inflation. As New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani mandated that officers must clamp down on comparatively small crimes — things like graffiti, shoplifting or antisocial behavior — to make people feel safer in their local communities. | Adam Gray/AFP via Getty Images Ministers are now taking a similar approach to criminal justice. Government figures believe voters are more likely to measure the success of the U.K.’s law-and-order policies if they actually feel safer in their communities when going to the shops or for a walk — not if headline crime statistics go down by a few percentage points. This doesn’t mean, however, that crime stats will entirely be ignored. The government has set targets to halve crime over the next decade in two very specific and high-profile areas — knife crime and violence against women. Yet the overarching priority is to ensure that people can walk down their local high streets without feeling the unease that rampant shoplifting, boarded-up stores and graffiti can create. This is seen as especially politically salient in light of recent surges in petty crimes like shoplifting. Nearly half of Britons say “crime and antisocial behavior” is the worst thing about where they live, according to 2023 government polling. Labour’s approach so far includes harsher penalties for shoplifting and antisocial behavior, along with plans to boost police numbers. There will be further measures from Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to clamp down on different kinds of low-level crimes in the government’s upcoming crime bill, according to two government officials. “People want to know there are tools and levers to pull in order to make them feel safer at a very local level,” a government official said. Officials also acknowledge confidence in the police must be restored for any of this to work, particularly after high-profile scandals in London saw the Metropolitan Police force put into special measures for more than two years. “We want to make sure people can have confidence in policing and in the criminal justice system,” a No. 10 Downing Street official said. “Giving [each community] a named police officer and increasing police numbers by 13,000 are key to that.” ELECTORAL GAINS Allies of Cooper say the driving force behind the plan is her experience of watching the town centers in her own Yorkshire constituency fall into disrepair. However, the parallels with the Giuliani experiment are easily drawn for a government that is already struggling with low poll ratings. Allies of Yvette Cooper say the driving force behind the plan is her experience in seeing the town centers in her own Yorkshire constituency falling into disrepair. | Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Bernard Kerik, a former NYC police commissioner, said the Republican Giuliani was able to use law and order as a potent electoral tool in a traditionally liberal city. “When Giuliani came into office, he looked at it from this perspective — no one wants to live, visit, work [or] go to school in a place that’s not safe. You’ll lose those elements of society,” Kerik said. “People get fed up, they get tired, they get frustrated, they get scared.” Recalling his experiences working as commissioner, Kerik added: “Police were locking people up for the lowest-level stuff. No one bothered anyone if they jumped a turnstile at a subway station, but what we realized quickly is … during the course of that arrest you would find out they were wanted for murder or gun possession.” Boris Johnson’s theory of law and order was in a similar mold while he was mayor of London and then prime minister. Johnson said in his 2021 Tory Party conference speech that “you have a Conservative government that understands the broken windows theory of crime.” “I read a learned article by some lawyer saying we should not bother about pet theft,” he added. “Well I say to Cruella de Vil QC — if you can steal a dog or a cat, then there is frankly no limit to your depravity.” There was a more serious and politically adroit point to this typically Johnsonian anecdote. Conservative peer Eddie Lister, who was Johnson’s chief of staff at City Hall and then Downing Street, said the current government could press home a political advantage if it can restore confidence in policing. “The man on the street really does get very angry when they see shoplifting and other small crimes not being answered,” he told POLITICO. “The government should get more positive stories about the police out there. Every time there is a story about police reporting woke behavior these things have a terrible effect, electorally we made the most of it, but all those sorts of things do sap confidence in the police.” BEYOND THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION Critics of Labour’s approach say there are inconsistencies between the government’s plans to prosecute hordes of town-center reprobates and the realities of Britain’s creaking court system. The court backlog ballooned to a record 73,000 trials in December, double the pre-Covid level, with some rape cases not heard for four years. Richard Garside, director at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said the government’s push to go after low-level crime will only make this worse — despite plans to bring down the backlog. “What they’re trying to do is reverse changes brought in to free up the courts that were dealing with routine petty shoplifting offenses,” he said. “It will put the youth justice system on steroids.” Garside is instead calling for a greater focus on the underlying causes of crime. Kerik, the former NYC police commissioner, agreed Labour’s plan won’t work without a surge in funding for the Ministry of Justice — a tall order with a tight government spending review looming. “If you’re going to address these crime reductions how we did in New York City, they also have to deal with the courts and the prosecutors. You have to put money into the district attorney, into the prosecutions and the jail system,” he said. There is also the arguably more difficult problem that Britain’s high streets are in part declining due to global economic forces — think the rise of online retail — beyond the reach of ministers sitting in Whitehall. On that one, 1990s solutions may not cut it in the 2020s.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House has Germany’s diplomatic corps bracing for what it sees as a deliberate dismantling of United States democratic norms. A confidential memorandum written by Andreas Michaelis, Germany’s ambassador to the U.S., warns of an agenda of “maximum disruption” that could redefine the American constitutional order. The document, obtained by Reuters and addressed to German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, outlines stark concerns about the erosion of democratic norms under Trump’s second administration. Michaelis describes Trump’s vision as one focused on the “maximum concentration of power with the president at the expense of Congress and the [U.S.] states.” According to the document, key democratic institutions, including the legislature, law enforcement and the media, risk an erosion of their independence and could be “misused as a political arm.”  The memo also highlights the involvement of Big Tech companies, which Michaelis claims could be granted “co-governing power.” Publicly, Germany’s foreign ministry has taken a cautious tone, acknowledging the democratic choice of U.S. voters and expressing a willingness to work with the Trump government. The ministry hasn’t responded to a request from POLITICO for comment on the leaked memorandum. “We will work closely with the new U.S. administration in the interests of Germany and Europe,” the ministry said in a statement to Reuters. The ambassador’s internal assessment is far more critical. A lingering unease within Berlin about the broader implications of Trump’s domestic policies could signal a turbulent beginning for U.S.-German relations under the interim government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats and Baerbock’s Green Party. This unease is not new — Trump’s first term saw contentious disputes over trade tariffs and Germany’s failure to meet NATO targets for defense spending. The warning from Michaelis suggests the stakes are now even higher. The briefing memo underscores Trump’s reliance on the judiciary to advance his goals. Michaelis notes that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions to expand presidential powers could enable Trump to bypass traditional checks and balances. However, the ambassador offers a glimmer of reassurance, stating that “even the biggest critics assume that [the Supreme Court] will prevent the worst from happening.” The document further raises concerns about Trump’s ability to exploit legal loopholes for political ends. These include potentially using the military domestically in cases of “insurrection” or “invasion,” an act that could test the boundaries of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which generally bars military involvement in law enforcement. Michaelis also highlights Trump’s apparent alignment with tech billionaire Elon Musk as a potential risk to media independence. Trump has employed tactics like “lawsuits, threatening criminal prosecution, and license revocation” against critics, according to the report. Meanwhile, Musk is accused of manipulating algorithms and blocking accounts critical of his platform. The ambassador warns of a “redefinition of the First Amendment,” suggesting a troubling merger of political and technological influence. Musk’s behavior has already caused unease in Berlin. His public endorsements of the far-right Alternative for Germany party ahead of Germany’s election next month have raised fears of foreign interference. While individual agencies — like the ministry of defense — have left Musk’s platform, the German government remains active on X.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will attend U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington on Monday, her office confirmed on Saturday. Meloni will be one of the highest-profile European politicians to attend the event. Trump conspicuously snubbed the continent’s centrist mainstream, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in his invitations. Instead, he has invited many of the foreign leaders he’s spoken to by phone or welcomed in person at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, such as Argentinian President Javier Milei — who will also be in attendance — and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xi is sending Vice President Han Zheng in his stead. Prominent representatives of Europe’s populist far right, from Britain’s Nigel Farage to France’s Eric Zemmour, also scored an invite. Meloni, who earlier this month paid a surprise visit to Trump at Mar-a-Lago, was dubbed “a fantastic woman” who “had taken Europe by storm” by the president-elect. The visit was part of a sustained effort to build a reputation as Trump’s main interlocutor in Europe. Meloni also has a good relationship with Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who is a close ally of Trump.