The West is in trouble.
One of the reasons is that the West has fundamentally failed to distinguish between tolerance of one another&#8217;s traditions and lifestyles on the one hand, and the bizarre bend-over-backward celebration that accompanies the undermining of traditions unique to the West.
A perfect example is what&#8217;s happening in Germany now. It seems like a small story, but it is indicative of a broader mindset that has been setting in throughout the West for generations.
In Germany, McDonald&#8217;s decided on an ad campaign. The German population is roughly 6.5% Muslim at this point. Muslims celebrate Ramadan around this time of year, which means they are fasting from sunup to sundown.
Fine. That is the Muslim tradition. There are a lot of Muslims who live in the West who are perfectly fine Western citizens.
McDonald’s is not halal, meaning food that religious Muslims can eat. If you are a Muslim who is celebrating Ramadan or commemorating Ramadan, chances are that you are eating halal in your non-Ramadan hours and in your non-fasting hours, because if you&#8217;re religious enough to actually not eat all day, you probably don&#8217;t go at sunset and find a rasher of bacon and eat it.
But McDonald&#8217;s decided to put up an ad campaign in Germany. The ad campaign removes the food from the billboards during Ramadan hours out of respect for Islam. The food appears on the billboard after sunset, but it disappears during the day, presumably so as not to tempt Muslims to feel hunger pangs.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2376-wth-mc-donald-s-celebrates-ramadan"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
That is Bizarro World. It’s weird and self-defeating, and it bespeaks of something that lies at the heart of the cowardice of a lot of both corporations and people in the West.
It&#8217;s Bizarro World because McDonald&#8217;s is not halal. The people who are presumably going to be very moved by these billboards are not going to head over to McDonald&#8217;s after dusk and start chomping down on their cheeseburgers.
So what is McDonald&#8217;s doing? According to <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/mcdonalds-new-ad-campaign-empty-boxes-no-food-ramadan-germany-11578866?utm_source=chatgpt.com">Newsweek</a>: 
<blockquote>The campaign was created by the German agency Scholz &amp; Friends, whose concept centers on removing McDonald’s most recognizable visual element—its food—as a gesture of respect for those observing Ramadan.</blockquote>
This is strange. The reality is McDonald’s is a food company that sells food, and the vast majority of the food that you sell is not to the people to whom they’re trying to appeal.
Who exactly is McDonald&#8217;s appealing to? Who&#8217;s the target audience?
The answer is: The dullards in the West who believe that it is a mark of virtue to subsume your own values beneath the values of other cultures.
That is the problematic part. It is a strange form of cultural reparation that somehow the West owes it to other cultures to participate in their religious activities while subsuming its own interests.
I don&#8217;t think McDonald&#8217;s cares all that much in Germany about whether or not Muslims like McDonald&#8217;s. I think what German McDonald&#8217;s cares about is that there are a lot of people in Germany who see this as a form of left-wing social virtue signaling, in the same way that in the United States, you have major corporations that every year decide they&#8217;re going to signal for Black History Month or Gay Pride month.
But the basic idea is not that you are going to earn vast oodles of cash from doing that. The idea is you&#8217;re appealing to left-wing people in the United States who will give you more money because they believe that you share their values.
The reason that you see all these companies doing DEI in the United States is absolutely not because they think it&#8217;s going to be good for their balance sheet. Hiring on the basis of non-merit is always bad for the balance sheet.
The reason these companies do it is because they believe they can appeal to an entire group of consumers who have warm feelings toward them if they take their own corporate business interests, throw those aside, and start signaling their politics.
This is a major problem. It&#8217;s not unique to Germany and is a widespread symptom of a disease that is spread across the West, where you are supposed to be overtly apologetic about not celebrating Ramadan.
This is not a sign of cultural respect.
It&#8217;s a sign of cultural disintegration.
It would be the same thing as if companies in the UK decided that they were suddenly going to take female models and suddenly cover up their faces out of respect for radical Islam.
It&#8217;s saying something, but it&#8217;s not the thing they think they&#8217;re saying.
There is an assumption that in the Trump era, DEI is basically dead, that we&#8217;re never going back to a time when corporations were virtue signaling like this, when policy did not reflect this idea that the dominant American culture ought to be put under the foot of splinter cultures.
But the reality is that it can very easily come back.
It doesn&#8217;t take a lot for it to come back. All it takes is a group of people who see it as a mark of virtue to yell at their own culture and pretend that it is somehow inferior and owes it to other cultures to demonstrate its own inferiority.
There&#8217;s a piece from Time magazine titled “<a href="https://time.com/7377439/donald-trump-cant-kill-dei/">Why Donald Trump Can&#8217;t Kill DEI</a>.” The point the piece makes is that the anti-DEI era, which is a backlash to the Barack Obama/Joe Biden era, will be followed by a backlash to the backlash, and that all this stuff will come back with a vengeance.
The piece states:
<blockquote>Ideas of inclusion and diversity also permeate everyday institutions, including schools, universities, foundations, nonprofits, and corporations. &#8230; Many companies have retreated from DEI under legal and political pressure. What makes fewer headlines is that most companies that have sidled away from the acronym continue to affirm the values of DEI under a different name. &#8230; 
Boeing stated that it maintains “procedures aimed at encouraging an equality of opportunity.” Lowe’s has proclaimed that it remained “committed to fostering an environment where individuals are treated fairly, valued, respected, safe, and inspired to serve customers and the communities where we live and work.” These statements sure sound like diversity, equity, and inclusion to us. &#8230; The education sector is equally if not more committed: a 2025 review of 262 colleges and universities found that 245 of them still maintained DEI offices and programs.</blockquote>
This is only going to continue. What does it mean?
It means this will come back if Republicans lose the forward momentum.
I know that we&#8217;re also riding high on the horse right now because Donald Trump won and because Republicans are in charge of the legislative branches of the government.
But if you think this stuff can&#8217;t come back, you’re wrong.

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Germany&#8217;s ruling conservatives on Saturday passed a motion to ban social media use for under 14s and introduce more stringent digital verification checks for teenagers, building momentum for such limits in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
At a party conference in the city of Stuttgart, Chancellor Friedrich Merz&#8217;s Christian Democratic Union also called for fines for online platforms that failed to enforce such limits, and European Union-wide harmonisation of age standards.
A growing number of countries, including Spain, Greece, France and Britain, are looking at similar social media bans or restrictions on accessing platforms like TikTok or Instagram.
It follows the example of Australia, which last year became the first country to force platforms to cut off access for children.
European nations are more broadly ratcheting up pressure on social media companies, risking a backlash from the United States. President Donald Trump has threatened tariffs and sanctions if EU countries impose new tech taxes or online regulations that hit U.S. firms.
&#8220;We call on the federal government to introduce a legal age limit of 14 for the use of social networks and to address the special need for protection in the digital sphere up to the age of 16,&#8221; said the motion that passed on Saturday.
Merz&#8217;s coalition partners the Social Democrats have also backed social media curbs for children. Pressure from both parties in the coalition makes it increasingly likely that the federal government will push for restrictions.
However, under Germany&#8217;s federal system, media regulation is a state‑level responsibility and states must negotiate with each other to agree consistent nationwide rules.
The ban could affect children like those at the Cardinal Frings Gymnasium in the city of Bonn, several of whom a day earlier were scrolling on their phones in the school grounds.
&#8220;I think it&#8217;s fair, but I think it should be up to the parents to decide whether to forbid it, not the state,&#8221; said 13-year-old Moritz, who says he only watches YouTube.
&#8220;For children under 12 it should be forbidden, but from age 12 onwards I think children can already distinguish between what is fake news and what is not.&#8221;
His classmate Emma, 13, almost exclusively uses Snapchat, but has a time limit on her phone.
A ban would be &#8220;kind of unusual, because you get used to sending your snap in the morning before school, or what my friends do, like just scrolling through Instagram or TikTok for a bit,&#8221; she said.
Ella, 12, scrolls through social media several times a day.
&#8220;So I have TikTok and Instagram myself, but I understand that it&#8217;s all addictive, and the more you scroll, the more you want to see.&#8221;
Teacher Till Franke said that for many of the children, &#8220;it would be a shock at first, because of this daily use of social media.&#8221;
But eventually, the students would get used to it, he said, &#8220;because they would find other niches where they could communicate with each other.&#8221;
(Andreas Rinke, Stephane Nitschke and Petra Wischgoll; Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Jan Harvey)

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This article originally appeared in <a href="https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com/p/why-more-weimar">The New Jerusalem</a> on Substack.
* * *
In the minds of most journalists, all human history can be summed up with the words, “Rome fell, then Hitler came.” A few more accomplished scholars among the chattering classes might be able to distinguish between the fall of Rome’s republic, followed by the empire, and the fall of the empire, followed by a thousand years of hideously faith-infused darkness. But basically, to journalists, all signs of political or cultural decadence — whether it’s a Republican being elected or some other Republican being elected — are omens that American Rome is about to collapse followed by the rise of American Hitler.
“A Confessing Church for America’s Weimar Moment,” reads a headline in The Dispatch. “We must not let the shooting of Charlie Kirk become Trump’s Reichstag fire,” writes a genius at The Guardian. “Welcome to Weimar 2.0,” headlines a book excerpt by the catastrophist Robert D. Kaplan in Foreign Policy. And that’s not even counting the continual Hitler forecasts on cable TV. One could almost feel sorry for der old Führer, his psycho ass getting dragged out of hell every ten minutes to serve as a warning to us all.
And look, yes, it’s true, the United States is in one of those periods of dissolution and transition that come upon every nation from time to time. So too was Weimar, the unstable republic that rose up in the wake of Germany’s crushing defeat in World War I. Such periods are often marked by polarized politics, destructive sexual profligacy wrongly celebrated as liberation, and art forms informed by and infused with the general cultural decay. So with America. So with Weimar.
Beyond that, however, the comparison is a shallow one. For one thing, the image of Weimar among our clerisy is skewed with bias. Watch any movie set in the era — the musical Cabaret is a good one — or any television series — Babylon Berlin is my favorite — or read histories like Peter Gay’s famous Weimar Culture. You’ll get the sense that you’re learning about a time of delightful but doomed sexual and artistic creativity, with benign but hapless socialists slowly falling beneath the darkening Nazi shadow.
But no. The undisciplined sex lives, the anti-freedom politics of both the left and the right, and the shocking but ultimately ephemeral cultural productions were all one thing, all part of the same process of decay. Weimar — and the world wars that preceded and followed it — marked the end of a civilization — the greatest civilization that has yet existed on planet Earth — the civilization that was Europe from around 1345 to 1914. It was this, in fact, that gave Hitler his rhetorical super power: he diagnosed the decadence correctly. He just didn’t realize he was its ultimate manifestation. Ah well. Even a mass murdering racist lunatic can’t be right all the time.
<div id="attachment_1044519" style="width: 745px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1044519" class="size-large wp-image-1044519" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264-735x576.jpg" alt="Charles Chaplin movie art for the film 'The Great Dictator', 1940. (Photo by United Artists/Getty Images)" width="735" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264-735x576.jpg 735w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264-300x235.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264-768x602.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 735px) 100vw, 735px" />Charles Chaplin movie art for the film &#8216;The Great Dictator&#8217;, 1940. (Photo by United Artists/Getty Images)</div>
So the United States is in a decadent state and so was Weimar, and decadence anywhere looks like decadence everywhere. History does repeat itself.
But it repeats itself for a reason. It’s the same reason a person’s life tends to repeat itself. The human race, like each of its individual members, has a nature, a character. Like everything that exists, character is bounded by its defining limits. Those limits cause it to express itself in a finite number of patterns. Over time, those patterns are certain to reassert themselves in recognizable forms.
The patterns of a healthy society or person will be shaped something like a rising spiral. Certain arcs of activity will recur over and over, but they will recur in increasingly wise, creative and productive ways. There will be periods of dissolution but they will be what is sometimes referred to as “chaos leading to a higher plane.” You can trace such a pattern in the plays of William Shakespeare. You can find it in the history of England between Elizabeth and the end of World War II.
The history of a rotten society or person will form a descending spiral, the repeated arcs of foolishness and evil growing ever darker and more self-destructive. The life of every tyranny is like this. The life of every addict too.
Then there’s the history of an ignorant or neurotic society or person. This will simply look like a circle. The subject goes round and round on a level track while uttering occasional gasps of wonder at having found themselves at a place they’ve passed a hundred times before but have a hundred times forgotten. You know people like this. Every now and then, they announce they’ve had some smack-the-forehead revelation that will change their lives forever. Then they return to the exact same ideas and behaviors they’ve had before. Perpetually primitive tribes are also like this, no matter how we want to romanticize them.
In short, times of dissolution will indeed be followed by a transition. But Hitler — get ready for it — is not the only possible outcome. The time surrounding the French Revolution in Great Britain showed many of the usual signs of decadence, but the Victorian era that followed was arguably Britain’s greatest age. So with the United States in the 1920’s and 30’s. Those decadent days led to the mighty 1950’s and a new American half century. As with each individual, what follows a nation’s dissolution all depends on the essential health of the nation’s character.
Where then are we?
It seems obvious to me that the primary cause of our current decline is the falling away of the Baby Boomers. My age cohort has dominated the political and cultural landscape for seventy years. Now, we’re played out and heading for the exits. Our accomplishments were many. We made hypocritical virtue signaling an art, introduced self-destructive drug use to the general population, slowed the rise of black Americans by burying them under the smothering dependencies of the Great Society, and wasted all the money accumulated by every generation before us along with some money that will be accumulated by the generations to come. We also popularized the personal computer so, like, yay for us.
What the United States will become when we are gone is, of course, not yet clear, but it’s a good bet it will be defined by the way we use the new forms of communication that have been and are still being generated by technology. Who or what will dominate those engines of culture is largely what all the current division, panic, bullying and violence is intended to decide.
Periods like this are often resolved by the rise of a powerful personality. Will this person shape the coming Zeitgeist or merely ride its wave? Your answer will depend on whether you agree with Thomas Carlyle that “the History of the world is but the Biography of great men,” or with Tolstoy who said, “great men—so called—are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event.” Like the question of nurture or nature, this question is impossible to resolve, probably because, like the question of nature and nurture, the binary itself is an illusion. But as I say, contra the journalists, Hitler is not the only model for such era-defining personalities. George Washington and Queen Victoria are far more benign examples of the breed. Luther and Napoleon were mixed blessings. History is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
When we scan the horizon for the coming definitive personality, it’s pretty hard to see the horizon with the gigantic Donald Trump standing in the way. So yeah, maybe he’s the guy. He has no coherent ideology so his effect may not be a lasting one. But he does bear all the marks of a Tolstoyan Godzilla. Like that monster created by nuclear blasts, Trump is the product of our generation’s eruption of materialist vulgarity. But he is also the avatar of the American everyman in our time. Like that character — much maligned by the elites who feed off his bounty — he is blunt, common sensical, creative, independent and bold. If he uses these traits to blast away such fatal nonsense as open borders, transgenderism and socialism — if he restores our simple patriotism and can-do spirit — the imprint of his nature may well be Trump’s legacy to the new age.
But this is still America. Perhaps the great figure that will shape our 21st Century is not Trump or any other individual, but we, the people. In that case, Weimar, with its sexual libertinism, its artistic Dadaism and its polarized politics, actually does serve as a guide — a guide to what each and every one of us should not do.
Let we, the people, then, like healthy men with healthy minds, eschew the habits of decadence.
Get your sex life in order. Give up porn and feminism and other such perversions, and yoke your desires to their natural purposes: the creation of families, the solidifying of marriages and the maintenance of self-governing homes.
In politics, murder your isms. Follow the facts instead. Do what works, what keeps people free, what makes free people happy, what encourages the wealthy but protects the poor. Our founding principles are still the best guides ever invented to achieving those ends. Use them. Make our leaders use them too.
And in the culture, forget the overrated shock of the new. In the arts as in life, follow one rule: Make something beautiful. Whether it’s a movie or an invention, a business or a family, a community at peace or simply a life lived lovingly and well. Turn your back on every ugliness and cruelty. Head down the path of beauty and, like the prodigal son, you will see your Father running to greet you from afar.
And that’s another thing — one last thing — love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind. In general, they neglected to do that in Weimar and ended up worshipping the devil instead. No matter what anyone tells you, those are the only two choices. Choose right, and I guarantee you, Hitler will stay in hell — or on cable TV, which amounts to the same thing — where he belongs.
* * *
This article originally appeared in <a href="https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com/p/why-more-weimar">The New Jerusalem</a> on Substack.
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fifth installment, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/After-That-Cameron-Winter-Mysteries/dp/1613166869/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3EGZUC370LG46&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Y_NI0mDOKeowShheDQTVx5NH-fAeimJoCD56_T0Acpl8C0mup7uJf-nGGSRLEItaaekoDnvS2vWLMa4Zd2UBXQ8Y-g-P502jOWz-Y8IX3ZQsdlO7WMLrg1xIhNoKmjCorSWUR4C2l_RbiZ7apJ1MfPzGOrrEf7AdAXX6xwnJRVP_XqUfWuMuVthTWscaU3P4vgmS86-96n-721enHfX12CFQWTajqFbVnrsDkexfUf4.6_gTH6h1Bb9Pn375QdF_VAVZSayDvjQBBKGXE-MTiFo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=klavan&amp;qid=1754049918&amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C80&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">After That, The Dark,</a> is NOW AVAILABLE. Follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/andrewklavan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@andrewklavan</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio used his first appearance at the Munich Security Conference to deliver a call for a renewed “Western century” grounded in sovereignty, industrial power, borders, and civilizational confidence.
“The euphoria of this triumph led us to a dangerous delusion,” Rubio said, describing the post-Cold War belief that history had ended and that liberal democracy would inevitably spread. “That every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood; that the rules-based global order would replace the national interest.”
“This was a foolish idea that ignored both human nature and the lessons of over 5,000 years of recorded human history,&#8221; he added. &#8220;And it has cost us dearly.”
Rubio contrasted that worldview with what he described as the lived consequences of Western policy choices: deindustrialization, weakened defense capacity, and economic dependence on adversaries who never shared the West’s assumptions.
“In this delusion, we embraced a dogmatic vision of free and unfettered trade,” Rubio said, “even as some nations protected their economies and subsidized their companies to systematically undercut ours—shuttering our plants, deindustrializing large parts of our societies, shipping millions of working- and middle-class jobs overseas, and handing control of our critical supply chains to both adversaries and rivals.”
Rubio argued that energy policy in particular had become an exercise in self-harm “to appease a climate cult.” He added, “We have imposed energy policies on ourselves that are impoverishing our people, even as our competitors exploit oil and coal and natural gas—not just to power their economies, but to use as leverage against our own.”
Rubio also rejected the framing common in recent Munich conferences that mass migration is primarily a humanitarian challenge rather than a civilizational one.
“In a pursuit of a world without borders,” he warned, “we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people.”
“Controlling who and how many people enter our countries,” Rubio continued, “is not an expression of xenophobia. It is not hate. It is a fundamental act of national sovereignty.”
On national security, Rubio explicitly rejected modern abstractionist framing. “The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending?” he said. “Because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people. Armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life.” That way of life, Rubio argued, is not interchangeable with other systems, nor should it be treated as morally neutral among equals.
“We are part of one civilization—Western civilization,” he said. “Bound by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and sacrifice.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
It is time to unshackle our ingenuity and build a new Western century. <a href="https://t.co/KJjGQ24bCd">pic.twitter.com/KJjGQ24bCd</a>
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) <a href="https://twitter.com/SecRubio/status/2022644331878793376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 14, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Rubio’s speech also departed sharply from Biden-era deference to multinational institutions. While stopping short of calling for their abandonment, he argued that they have repeatedly failed on the most pressing security challenges of the age.
“The United Nations could not solve the war in Gaza. It did not solve the war in Ukraine. It was powerless to constrain the nuclear program of radical Shia clerics in Tehran,” Rubio said, crediting American military and diplomatic leadership with producing results.
“In a perfect world, these problems would be solved by diplomats and strongly-worded resolutions,” he added. “But we do not live in a perfect world.”
Rubio said plainly that the United States under President Trump intends to pursue renewal, and invites Europe to do the same. The future, Rubio concluded, depends on whether Western nations choose pride over guilt, sovereignty over submission, and renewal over retreat.
“We have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline,” Rubio said. “What we want is a reinvigorated alliance—one that is not paralyzed by fear, but bold enough to race into the future.”

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There has been a clamor among some on the American Right for the United States to pull out of NATO, given Europe’s reflexively adversarial response to Trump’s Greenland saber-rattling. Whether we should remain in an alliance formed in a very different world back in 1949 is a question President Trump first raised during his initial term. The question actually has more merit than one might think at first blush.
One must ask what exactly NATO’s raison d’être was to begin with. It is difficult, eighty years on, to recall just how much of a mess Europe was at the time. Much of the continent had been razed by the most lethal of its many internecine conflicts. Europe was no longer at war, but it was not exactly at peace either. Stalin — a dictator with as much, if not more, innocent blood on his hands than Hitler — had advanced his Red Army all the way through Poland, then-Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and half of Germany. That Soviet presence was massive: nearly ten million infantry backed by tens of thousands of tanks and aircraft. By 1945, the Red Army had become a military colossus that had just annihilated the most professional army in the world.
Given this looming threat just over the horizon, by 1949 Western Europe needed to band together to offer a deterrent to Stalin’s hegemony. And given the circumstances, the only military body capable of giving this new North Atlantic Treaty Organization its muscle was, of course, the U.S. Armed Forces. While Western Europe was rebuilt under the auspices of the Marshall Plan, American troops, armor, and aircraft kept the Soviets at bay. This mission was performed successfully all the way to 1991, when the Soviet Union — the very threat NATO was created to contain — abruptly collapsed.
That was 35 years ago. And yet NATO did not ride off into the sunset with its mission accomplished. Instead, it continued to expand, adding 16 new nations — each creeping closer and closer to an increasingly alarmed Russia (a country that suffered roughly 25 million dead repelling the last Western invaders from its soil).
But why the steady eastward expansion? Some NATO supporters argue that Putin’s resurgence and his aggression in Ukraine are answer enough.
But Ukraine and Russia share a convoluted history. Ukraine has long been contested land, where its story and Russia’s overlap in a region that has seen over seven hundred conflicts since the fall of Rome. This is not the first time war has raged from Crimea to the Donbas. Nor will it be the last. There is no reason for a non-Ukrainian to die fighting for that territory.
In fact, the only credible reason to continue our involvement in NATO is if Putin’s Russia poses the same danger as Stalin’s USSR once did. But today’s Russian military is not the Red Army of 1945 in which anywhere from 30 to 35% of its personnel were non-Russians (including 20% Ukrainians). And today Russia is demographically dying. Between 1990 and now—owing to the breakup of the Soviet Union, low birth rates, emigration, and early mortality often linked to alcoholism—Russia’s population has shrunk by roughly three to five million; that is a around a 2 to 4% decline. Over that same period, the U.S. population grew by more than 95 million, or roughly 38%. Even without the United States, the EU today has roughly four times Russia’s population. History shows that in modern war, population is often the best predictor of who prevails in a protracted struggle.
Russia’s economy is both small and oil-dependent. It has been called the world’s largest gas station for a reason. Anywhere from 20 to 30% of its economy depends on crude oil sales, depending on the year and market conditions — making it extremely vulnerable to sanctions or blockades. As it stands, Russia’s entire economy is smaller than that of three American states.
Speaking of economies, since NATO’s establishment, the GDP of EU nations has grown from barely $2.5 trillion to as high as $23 trillion today, an increase of more than 800%. This prompts the obvious question: if these nations have grown so rich, why do they still need us as if they were clearing rubble out of Cologne?
In other words, whether one agrees with leaving NATO or not, Trump’s re-evaluation of an alliance nearing the end of its eighth decade is not grounded in anti-EU whimsy, but in a classic cost-benefit analysis of its service to American interests.
Polls show that while only about 15% of Americans favor leaving NATO, as many as 30% of European residents believe the United States should reduce or end its role in Europe’s defense. This is ironic. If the same Europeans who love to hold up their model social-welfare systems — especially their “free” health care — understood how much of those systems are underwritten by the American taxpayer, they might take a less belligerent view toward one of their primary health care providers.
<div id="attachment_1030021" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1030021" class="size-large wp-image-1030021" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2246537136-864x576.jpg" alt="GEILENKIRCHEN, GERMANY - NOVEMBER 13: NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and North Rhine-Westphalia Premier Hendrik Wuest, dressed with flight jackets, stand in front of an E-3A AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) airplane while visiting the NATO Geilenkirchen Air Base on November 13, 2025 in Geilenkirchen, Germany. The base is the headquarters of the NATO Airborne Early Warning &amp; Control Force (NAEW&amp;CF). (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2246537136-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2246537136-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2246537136-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2246537136.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Andreas Rentz/Getty Images</div>
What do I mean by this?
Take a look at the wealthiest EU nation — and the one with the most violent history with Russia — Germany. Germany currently spends roughly 2% of its €5 trillion GDP on defense, or about €100 billion annually. At the same time, it spends roughly ten to 12% of GDP on health care — around €500 billion per year. Estimates suggest that if American soldiers and airmen withdrew and Germany were left to fend for itself, Berlin would need to raise defense spending to as much as 4% of GDP. That means an additional €90–100 billion every year. That money has to come from somewhere. And since health care is the largest pool of discretionary spending (unless Berlin plans on raiding pensions), that is where it would most likely be found. A full American withdrawal would require cutting Germany’s health care system by at least 20%.
The consequences would be catastrophic. Growth spending would slow, wait times would balloon into rationing, co-pays and supplemental costs would rise, hospital consolidations would reduce access to emergency and specialized care, benefits would shrink, staffing shortages would worsen, and zero-cost access would disappear. Setting aside health outcomes, the social upheaval in a country accustomed to expansive care at minimal personal cost would be acute — and politically devastating for any party responsible.
And Germany is only one nation. If the entire EU had to raise defense spending to 4% to fill the void left by an American departure, it would require roughly €340 billion more per year — again, about 20% of total EU health care spending. Even partial offsets would place ten to 20% pressure on health budgets — unless already sky-high taxes rose further. Suddenly, the EU’s vaunted “free” health care system would be anything but.
Put more bluntly, NATO is not merely a security alliance — it is a massive American taxpayer-funded subsidy for Europe’s welfare state. That is the dirty little secret no one in Brussels wants to discuss. Every time a German walks into a “free” clinic or a Frenchman is wheeled into an operating room, roughly one euro in five is effectively paid by you and me. NATO — at least for its original Western democracies — needs the United States not to defend borders it could fund itself, but to prop up welfare systems already straining under their own weight.
There is a famous story in business lore about accounting wunderkind Harry Sonneborn, who told McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc that the real value of his restaurants was not the thin margins on hamburgers, but the land beneath them. “You’re not in the hamburger business,” he said. “You’re in the real estate business.”
In the same way, American contributions to NATO are not primarily about Europe’s defense. They allow European capital to be freed from defense spending — a burden borne by American taxpayers — and redirected toward social welfare. So when your taxes go to NATO, an alliance originally created to defend Europeans from other Europeans, you are not in the continental defense business. You are in the health care business. Just not for yourself. You are providing it for wealthy Germans, French, Brits, and Scandinavians who understand exactly how fragile their welfare systems are — and how quickly they would collapse if America walked away. After all, it is easy to pay for both guns and butter when someone else largely pays for the guns. It is quite another thing to foot the bill for both.
More the suckers us.
* * *
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, The Daily Wire, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">books</a>. You can also follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener">X</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Leaders Gather For ‘Coalition Of The Willing’ Meeting In France

NATO’s Dirty Little Secret

Donald Trump

Greenland

Health Care

NATO

Russia

Ukraine

Several European countries will expand their military presence around Greenland, the Danish Armed Forces announced Wednesday.
“The geopolitical tensions have spread to the Arctic,” the Danish Ministry of Defence said. “From today, there will be an expanded military presence in and around Greenland – in close cooperation with NATO allies.”
The countries involved in the expanded military deployment include Germany, France, Sweden, and Norway, which are all members of NATO. According to the Danish Armed Forces, the increase will include aircraft, vessels, and soldiers, with contributions from other NATO allies.
The announcement follows statements by President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly said that the United States should take control of Greenland for national security reasons. Trump said Russian and Chinese vessels are threatening the Danish-controlled island.
Greenland is a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, with control over most domestic affairs, while Denmark retains authority over foreign policy and defense. Denmark has consistently maintained that Greenland is not for sale, despite U.S. discussions about options, including the purchase of the territory and financial incentives for residents.
On Wednesday, Danish and Greenlandic leaders met with American officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance, at the White House. 
The Danish leaders attending the meeting are expected to hold a press conference later on Wednesday afternoon.
On Wednesday morning, Trump reiterated his view that Greenland is “vital” for the U.S. missile defense system, the so-called “Golden Dome,” and urged NATO to take the lead. “The United States needs Greenland for the purpose of National Security… If we don’t, Russia or China will, and that is not going to happen!” he wrote.
Trump added that NATO’s effectiveness depends on American strength and that Greenland under U.S. control would make the alliance “far more formidable.”

Greenland Conflict – Nuuk

European NATO Allies Expand Military Presence Around Greenland

France

Norway

Sweeden

“Gay” sheep made their fashion debut on the runway in NYC as the “I Wool Survive” collection premiered, featuring pieces made from the wool of alleged male sexually-oriented sheep.
The event aims to promote a German farmer and his plight to rescue “homosexual” sheep. Michael Stücke, who is gay, oversees a flock of these rescued rams at an organization he dubbed Rainbow Wool. The rescue’s website claims that as many as 8% of rams are sexually oriented toward other males, which leads to them being slaughtered for being non-procreative.
“Sadly, gay rams are often sent to slaughter because they can’t fulfill a farm’s ‘breeding role.’ We rescue them before that happens, giving them a safe home where they can live and love freely,” the Rainbow Wool <a href="https://rainbow-wool.com/">website</a> says, touting their inhabitants as “the world’s first gay flock of sheep.”
The “I Wool Survive” fashion collection was created to advance this cause and bring more attention to the issue. Celebrity designer Michael Schmidt teamed up with the gay dating app, Grindr, to create the collection and host a fashion show at the Altman Building in Manhattan on November 13. 
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Rainbow Wool | Launch EN" width="500" height="375" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0doFeaBRtZo?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Stücke said in a press release that the 36-piece collection “proves that being gay is part of nature itself.”
“The wool from these rams isn’t just material — it’s a message spun from animals who live freely and are loved,” he added. 
Grindr’s senior vice president of brand marketing, Tristan Pineiro, explained why the company was interested in attaching its name to the collection.
“It’s a great, feel-good story, but there’s also a message at the heart of it,” the marketing exec said, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/fashion/2025/11/20/grindr-fashion-show-gay-sheep-wool/">per</a> The Washington Post. “It’s not just a fluffy story.”
“The sheep are a kind of metaphor for all of us,” Pineiro went on. “Because they’re gay, they get discarded. They get thrown aside because they don’t conform to what they’re supposed to.”

Gay sheep

‘I Wool Survive’: Garments Spun From ‘Gay Sheep’ Receive An NYC Fashion Debut

'I Wool Survive': Garments Spun From 'Gay Sheep' Get An NYC Fashion Debut

Animals

Fashion

Homosexuality

LGBT

New York City

Twin sisters Alice and Ellen Kessler, known in the entertainment world as the Kessler twins, both died by assisted suicide at the age of 89.
The sisters rose to fame in the 1950s and performed with some of the biggest stars of the day, including Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, Rock Hudson, and Sammy Davis Jr., per <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/18/entertainment/kessler-twins-die-assisted-suicide-intl-scli">CNN</a>. They enlisted the help of the German Society for Humane Dying to commit suicide. 
“The decisive factor is likely to have been the desire to die together on a specific date,” society spokesperson Wega Wetzel told the outlet about their planned deaths. “Their desire to die was well-considered, long-standing, and free from any psychiatric crisis.”
Assisted suicide in certain circumstances has been legal in Germany since 2020.
During an <a href="https://www.corriere.it/spettacoli/25_novembre_17/intervista-gemelle-kessler-morire-stesso-giorno-1a477229-e2ed-4a5a-b161-f3aae3d3exlk.shtml">interview</a> last year with the Italian outlet Corriere della Sera, the twin sisters <a href="https://www.corriere.it/spettacoli/25_novembre_17/intervista-gemelle-kessler-morire-stesso-giorno-1a477229-e2ed-4a5a-b161-f3aae3d3exlk.shtml">said</a> they were choosing assisted suicide because of their &#8220;desire is to go away together, on the same day. The idea of ​​one of us going first is very hard to bear.”
“They had been considering this option for some time. They had been members of the organization for over a year. A lawyer and a doctor conducted preliminary discussions with them,” the German Society for Humane Dying said in a statement, per <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/news/kessler-twins-die-together-rcna244638">Today</a>. “People who choose this option in Germany must be absolutely clear-headed, meaning free and responsible. The decision must be thoughtful and consistent, meaning made over a long period of time and not impulsive.”
The Kessler sisters were born in Nazi Germany and escaped with their family from East Germany to West Germany in 1952. They launched their careers by performing at Lido in Paris, which was a popular place for cabaret performances. The twins went on to achieve international fame and also appeared on popular American television programs, including “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “The Dean Martin Show.”
The official Instagram account for “The Ed Sullivan Show” paid tribute to the sisters following their deaths, writing, “Honoring the extraordinary lives of the Kessler Twins. Alice &amp; Ellen were dazzling stars, true legends, and sisters whose grace, charm, and magic will shine forever.”
Assisted suicide is becoming increasingly more common around the world, with Canada leading the charge as the world leader in euthanasia. As The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/canada-lost-over-15000-citizens-to-assisted-suicide-in-2023-now-britain-wants-in-on-the-action?author=Ashley+McGuire+and+Leigh+Fitzpatrick+Snead&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Canada+Lost+Over+15%2C000+Citizens+To+Assisted+Suicide+In+2023.+Now+Britain+Wants+In+On+The+Action.">reported</a>, assisted suicide accounts for one in 20 deaths in Canada. The country is also planning to start offering euthanasia to the mentally ill and to minors.

Alice and Ellen Kessler

Kessler Twins, Who Performed With Frank Sinatra, Die By Assisted Suicide On The Same Day

Celebrities

Death

Entertainment

Euthanasia

Munich airport said on Saturday it was gradually resuming flights from 7 a.m. (0500 GMT), with delays expected through the day, hours after both runways were closed for the second time in less than 24 hours due to a drone sighting.
The airport advised travelers to check with their airlines as it prepared for the restart, two hours later than originally scheduled, after the Friday evening closure.
Dozens of flights had been diverted or cancelled, stranding some 6,500 passengers, authorities said.
European aviation has repeatedly been thrown into chaos in recent weeks by drone sightings that some authorities have blamed on Russia. The Kremlin has denied any involvement.
Authorities have yet to attribute Thursday&#8217;s or Friday&#8217;s drone sightings to a specific actor.
&#8220;German air traffic control restricted flight operations at Munich Airport as a precautionary measure due to unconfirmed drone sightings and suspended them until further notice,&#8221; a statement on the airport website read.
In a later update, the airport said 23 flights were diverted, 12 flights to Munich and 48 departures cancelled or postponed.
&#8220;As on the previous night, the airport and airlines took care of the passengers,&#8221; it added. &#8220;Camp beds, blankets, drinks and snacks were handed out.&#8221;
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The previous evening, the captain on a London-bound aircraft whose departure was cancelled told passengers that runways had been closed &#8220;because of drone sightings near the take-off and landing runways&#8221; and that police helicopters were aloft.
The airport website showed due arrivals had been diverted starting at 8:35 p.m. (1835 GMT).
Munich airport was closed for several hours late on Thursday and in the small hours after unconfirmed drone sightings that disrupted dozens of flights.
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt promised earlier on Friday to bring forward legislation making it easier for the police to ask the military to shoot drones down.
(Reporting by Karin Strohecker and Mrinmay Dey, additional reporting by Kirsti Knolle; Writing by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Chris Reese, Rosalba O&#8217;Brien and William Mallard)

Drone

German Airport Had To Shut Down After Drone Activity Interrupted Flights, Raising Russia Concerns

Air Travel

Drones

General

Munich

The U.S. military destroys a drug boat from Venezuela as a federal judge tries to block President Trump from using the National Guard for law enforcement in Los Angeles. A massive populist backlash against mass migration is fueling a historic political shift to the Right across Europe. The FDA restricts access to COVID vaccines for healthy Americans as President Trump demands Big Pharma release its data and questions his own Operation Warp Speed.
It’s Wednesday, September 3, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.
Morning Wire is available on video! You can watch today’s episode here:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Marines Sink Narcos &amp; Europe’s Rising Right" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cA9OMlMGwbc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
<iframe style="width: 100%; max-width: 660px; overflow: hidden; border-radius: 10px;" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marines-sink-narcos-europes-rising-right-9-3-25/id1576594336?i=1000724708177" height="175" frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation"></iframe>
<h2>U.S. Military Sinks Drug Boat, Judge Blocks Trump in L.A.</h2>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-968047" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MRN-9.3.25-Wed-SH1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MRN-9.3.25-Wed-SH1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MRN-9.3.25-Wed-SH1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MRN-9.3.25-Wed-SH1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MRN-9.3.25-Wed-SH1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MRN-9.3.25-Wed-SH1.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
Topline: The U.S. military destroyed a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela on Tuesday, the most dramatic move yet in the Trump administration&#8217;s war on cartels, as a federal judge in California ruled against the president&#8217;s use of the National Guard for domestic law enforcement. 
As part of an &#8220;enhanced counter narcotics operation,&#8221; the U.S. military has deployed at least eight warships to the Caribbean. &#8220;We just, over the last few minutes, shot out a drug-carrying boat,&#8221; President Trump announced Tuesday. &#8220;These came out of Venezuela.&#8221; The action follows the president&#8217;s designation of several large drug cartels as terror organizations, allowing for a more aggressive military approach. 
Meanwhile, a district judge in San Francisco ruled Tuesday that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles to protect federal property and aid immigration enforcement was illegal. The judge, Charles Breyer, barred guardsmen from engaging in law enforcement activities. The Trump administration will appeal the ruling, which has been put on hold for ten days. A federal appeals court previously reversed a similar ruling from Breyer in June. 
In other administration news, the Pentagon will send up to 600 of its lawyers to the Justice Department to serve as temporary immigration judges, a move intended to clear a 3-million-person backlog and speed up deportations. President Trump also announced that the U.S. Space Command Headquarters will be relocated to Huntsville, Alabama, a move the White House says will save nearly half a billion dollars.
&nbsp;
<h2>Europe Sees Historic Shift to the Right Amid Migrant Backlash</h2>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-968045" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MRN-9.3.25-Wed-SH2-1024x576.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MRN-9.3.25-Wed-SH2-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MRN-9.3.25-Wed-SH2-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MRN-9.3.25-Wed-SH2-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MRN-9.3.25-Wed-SH2-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MRN-9.3.25-Wed-SH2.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
Topline: For the first time in modern history, right-wing populist parties are leading the polls in Europe&#8217;s three largest economies — France, Germany, and the United Kingdom — driven by a massive public backlash against mass migration. 
&#8220;Immigration is the number one factor driving all of these movements,&#8221; Alvino-Mario Fantini, editor-in-chief of the European Conservative, told Morning Wire. Since 2015, an estimated 25 to 30 million immigrants, primarily from Muslim countries, have entered Europe, leading to a culture clash and widespread anger over the high costs of housing and welfare for migrants. 
As a result, nationalist parties like Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, France’s National Rally, and Germany’s Alternative for Germany are now topping the polls in their respective countries. 
The establishment parties have responded with what many conservative analysts call &#8220;lawfare,&#8221; similar to tactics used against the MAGA movement in the U.S. In France, National Rally leader Marine Le Pen was convicted of misusing E.U. funds and banned from running for office for five years. In Germany, the country’s intelligence agency has classified the Alternative for Germany party as an “extremist” group, which could be used to ban its members from public office.
&nbsp;
<h2>FDA Restricts COVID Vax as Trump Questions Warp Speed</h2>
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Topline: The FDA has removed the emergency use authorization for COVID vaccines, restricting their availability for healthy Americans, as President Trump is now publicly questioning his own Operation Warp Speed and demanding that pharmaceutical companies release their data on the shots. 
The FDA has removed the &#8220;emergency use authorization&#8221; that allowed widespread access to COVID vaccines during the pandemic. While high-risk individuals can still get the vaccine, healthy people will now need a recommendation from a physician. FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said the agency doesn&#8217;t &#8220;have data [on] healthy Americans, so we’re not recommending it for healthy Americans,&#8221; adding that the change makes future vaccine mandates &#8220;legally impossible.&#8221; 
The move comes as President Trump has taken a more critical tone on the vaccines. In a post on Truth Social, he demanded that companies like Pfizer &#8220;justify&#8221; the success of the drugs and release their data to the public. In a notable shift, he also questioned his own signature program, writing, “I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as ‘BRILLIANT’ as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why???” 
The policy changes follow a major shakeup at the CDC, where HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently fired the director, prompting several other top officials to resign and nine former directors to write an op-ed condemning Kennedy. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya responded by noting that the former directors criticizing Kennedy were the same ones who &#8220;embraced politicized school closures and covid vaccine mandates.”

MRN 9.03.25 Thumbnail V1

Morning Brief: US Military Strikes Drug Boat, Rise Of European Populism & COVID Vax Pullback

COVID

COVID-19 Vaccine

Drug Cartels

Operation Warp Speed

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

U.K.

Venezuela

Right-wing parties are simultaneously leading polls across Europe’s biggest economies in a first for the continent’s nationalist and populist movements.
In France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, known together as Europe’s “Big Three,” right-wing parties have surged in popularity on angst over lax immigration policies and high inflation, according to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/right-wing-europe-dd4f1156?mod=hp_lead_pos10">The Wall Street Journal</a>.
The National Rally has led polls in France consistently for the past year, and National Rally’s presidential candidate would likely win the first round of voting. National Rally is led by Jordan Bardella, who took over the party after Marine Le Pen.
National Rally is already the largest single party in France’s National Assembly.
Reform UK, the newly founded British party led by Nigel Farage, has overtaken the ruling Labour Party in polls within the last six months. Farage founded the party partly out of frustration with the Conservative Party, which has dueled the Labour Party for control of government over the past century. Farage launched Reform after accusing Conservatives of abandoning their voters.
In Germany, Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has edged ahead of the ruling centrist Christian Democratic Union.
France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, like the rest of Europe, have experienced a period of high inflation after pandemic-era spending binges led to aggressively rising prices, which have left many goods at significantly higher price points than they were five years ago. Europe has also lagged behind the United States in economic growth, which could offset the impact of those higher prices.
The governments of the Big Three have also faced increasing grassroots pressure over permissive immigration policies.
In France, citizens have reacted against the country’s growing Muslim population which many see as a threat to French values. The slogan “Let’s block everything” has <a href="https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/block-everything-france-braces-for-a-september-in-flames/">grown</a> popular on social media in France in reaction to unsustainable spending, in part on immigration that has little direct benefit for French citizens, that has led to austerity measures.
In Germany and the United Kingdom, both countries have experienced record waves of immigration in recent years. Germany’s foreign-born population has surged from 15% of its total population in 2017 to 22% last year.
The United Kingdom has seen raw immigration numbers comparable to the surge that swamped the United States immigration system under Biden within the same time frame. Unlike the United States, however, the United Kingdom’s population is about a fifth the size of the United States’.
Europe’s immigration policies have received attention and criticism from the United States, from high-profile figures such as Elon Musk to top officials in the White House.
“[G]overnment that puts foreigners above their own people is, by definition, TREASONOUS and ILLEGITIMATE!” Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1962212945233895500">posted</a> on X on Sunday. “The people of Britain deserve a government that represents their interests, not those of shadowy foreign organizations!”
Musk has also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/musk-backs-right-wing-german-party-after-christmas-terror-attack-the-only-hope-for-germany">voiced</a> support for AfD in Germany, while the Trump administration has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/european-nations-grapple-with-growing-free-speech-problem-under-trumps-gaze">criticized</a> European officials for restricting free speech across the continent, often to avoid upsetting foreign populations that have swelled within its borders, such as in Germany and the U.K.

Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage

Right-Wing Parties Are Surging In Popularity Across Europe’s Biggest Players

Marine Le Pen

Nigel Farage

United Kingdom

Britain, France, and Germany — the E3 — plan to hit Iran with reimposed United Nations sanctions as early as Thursday.
Following high-level talks with Iranian officials on Tuesday, multiple European and Western diplomats <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/europeans-likely-initiate-un-sanctions-process-iran-thursday-sources-say-2025-08-27/">told Reuters</a> the E3 will trigger a “snapback” of sanctions this week, signaling a significant setback for Tehran amid ongoing nuclear and security concerns.
“The U.N. process takes 30 days before sanctions that would cover Iran&#8217;s financial, banking, hydrocarbons and defence sectors were restored,” Reuters noted, adding, “The E3 have offered to delay the snapback for as much as six months to enable serious negotiations if Iran resumes full U.N. inspections.”
“In a letter dated August 8, the E3 warned Iran it would proceed with ‘snapback’ if Tehran didn&#8217;t reach a ‘satisfactory solution’ to the nuclear issues. A deadline was set for August 31,” <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20250822-iran-european-powers-to-resume-nuclear-talks-as-snapback-sanctions-loom">France 24</a> noted, adding, “Under ‘snapback,’ any party to the deal can find Iran in noncompliance, reimposing the sanctions. After it expires, any sanctions effort could face a veto from UN Security Council members China and Russia, two nations that have provided some support to Iran in the past but stayed out of the June war.”
In July, a <a href="https://isc.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Intelligence-and-Security-Committee-of-Parliament-Iran.pdf">report</a> from Great Britain’s Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament stated clearly that they saw Iran as a “significant threat to the UK.”
“The Iran threat should not be underestimated: it is persistent and  — crucially  — unpredictable,” the report — which was completed before the October 7 Hamas massacre of Israelis and subsequent events occurred — declared. “Iran has a high appetite for risk when conducting offensive activity, which means it poses a dynamic and erratic threat. &#8230; it can escalate action sharply with little warning. This was seen following the 2022 protests in Iran, when there was a significant increase in the threat of a physical attack to individuals in the UK and the Middle East whom Iran perceives to be a threat to the regime.”
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In June, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog, found that Iran had breached its non-proliferation obligations. It was the first time in almost two decades that the IAEA had taken that stance. The <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/west-plans-push-iaea-board-find-iran-breach-duties-diplomats-say-2025-05-30/">last time</a> the IAEA adopted that position was in September 2005, when clandestine nuclear activities in Iran were discovered.
“The Board of Governors&#8230; finds that Iran&#8217;s many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019 to provide the Agency with full and timely cooperation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple undeclared locations in Iran &#8230; constitutes non-compliance with its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement with the Agency,” the resolution stated.

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