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Romania’s ongoing political crisis is entering a more critical phase, with a collapsed government, an unresolved battle over the presidency and a growing conservative-nationalist challenge to the political order that has dominated the country for years.

At stake is not just who governs Bucharest, but whether Romania’s institutions can recover public legitimacy after the extraordinary cancellation of the 2024 presidential election.

The crisis dates back to November 2024, when independent nationalist candidate Călin Georgescu—to the surprise of many—finished first in the opening round of the presidential vote.

Citing alleged electoral irregularities and intelligence—evidence that still hasn’t been disclosed to the public—claiming Russian interference in favor of Călin Georgescu, Romania’s Constitutional Court subsequently annulled the election.

The court’s decision, therefore, erased an election result already delivered by Romanian voters and triggered one of the most serious democratic controversies in the European Union.

Romania’s democratic clampdown deepened even further in March 2025 when Georgescu was barred from taking part in the rerun presidential election. The Constitutional Court upheld his exclusion, leaving the person who had won the original first round unable to compete when Romanians were sent back to the polls for a second time.

The sequence of events became, for a broad cross-section of Romania’s population, undeniable proof of what many observers have begun to describe as “managed democracy”—meaning elections across the EU are “legitimate” only until voters choose someone “unacceptable” to the ruling establishment.
It didn’t take long for news of the crisis to reach across the Atlantic. Vice President JD Vance used his 2025 Munich Security Conference speech to accuse Romania of having “straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors.”

The U.S. State Department’s subsequent Report on Human Rights Practices also leveled criticism that the annulment represented political interference and an unusually severe restriction on disfavored political speech. Elon Musk, for his part, in several posts to social media attacked the Romanian state’s treatment of Georgescu and described one official connected with the process as a “tyrant.”

How can a judge end democracy in Romania? https://t.co/9MFhlq6YwQ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2025

This guy is a tyrant, not a judge https://t.co/ghE9X4W5G3

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2025

The episode resonated well beyond Romania because it touched a wider fault line running through European politics. Nationalist movements challenging Brussels on sovereignty, mass migration, security, green policy, cultural questions, and foreign affairs increasingly argue that institutional mechanisms are being weaponized to contain alternative political forces that can no longer be easily defeated—and may even be winning outright—at the ballot box.

Romania’s own long-established, ruling elite class has since begun to fracture. Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan’s Brussels-aligned government was brought down on May 5 after the Social Democratic Party (PSD) abandoned the coalition and joined nationalist AUR and other opposition forces in backing a no-confidence motion.

The result was overwhelming—281 lawmakers voted to remove the government, compared with only four against, well above the 233 votes required. The scale of the defeat exposed the government’s lack of legitimacy and revealed how quickly the firewall around Romania’s nationalist opposition had begun to crack.

Especially noteworthy was the decision by the PSD, long one of the pillars of Romania’s establishment, to cooperate with the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR). Whatever the parties’ differences, that cooperation showed that excluding AUR indefinitely from parliamentary influence was becoming increasingly difficult.

President Nicușor Dan, so far, has failed to find a legitimate replacement. His nominee Adrian Veștea went before Parliament in June but secured only 189 votes—44 short of the 233 needed to install a government.

The failure prolonged a political vacuum that has continued into August. Bolojan remains interim prime minister, while Dan has held repeated consultations with former coalition parties in an effort to maintain fiscal measures and secure Romania’s remaining EU recovery funds.

The government’s paralysis has placed greater scrutiny on Dan himself. The right-wing S.O.S. Romania party formally initiated a constitutional procedure seeking his suspension under Article 95, alleging serious violations involving the separation of powers, government formation, the judiciary and democratic oversight of the intelligence services.

S.O.S. leader Diana Șoșoacă said more than 400,000 Romanian living in the country and abroad had expressed support for Dan’s removal. She also claimed that 155 parliamentarians had indicated agreement with the suspension initiative, although the names of lawmakers outside her party were not publicly disclosed.

The accusations against Dan include claims that he has blurred the constitutional boundaries of the presidency by involving himself too directly in judicial affairs. Critics have also objected to his public comments concerning the Constitutional Court and his consultations with magistrates.

Another point of contention is Dan’s insistence on constructing what he has repeatedly called a pro-Western governing majority. His opponents argue that the Constitution requires the president to facilitate government formation rather than impose ideological tests on parties capable of assembling parliamentary support.

Dan, for his part, has defended his approach as an effort to maintain Romania’s strategic orientation and produce a workable government. His supporters say the country’s position on NATO’s eastern flank, next to Ukraine, makes political and foreign-policy continuity especially important.

The intelligence services have become another sensitive issue. Critics point to the absence of permanent civilian leadership at the Romanian Intelligence Service while proposals have circulated to expand the security apparatus into areas including corruption and tax enforcement.

Such controversies carry particular historical weight in Romania, where memories of communist-era surveillance and the political power of the security services remain deeply embedded. Measures that might be treated elsewhere as routine institutional disputes can therefore trigger much deeper fears of political control.

A separate 2026 rule-of-law report cited by critics has further intensified the argument over Romania’s Constitutional Court. The Civil Liberties Union for Europe report was cited as arguing that the court had effectively changed the law in its handling of electoral candidacies, raising questions about legal certainty and the scope of judicial power.

The same report raised concerns over procedural protections for excluded candidates and discussed structural reform of the Constitutional Court itself. It also highlighted problems involving media independence, opaque political financing, and poorly defined anti-disinformation measures that can potentially restrict legitimate speech.

Those findings have strengthened the case made by Georgescu’s and his supporters that the 2024 election annulment, described by many analysts as a constitutional coup, was never merely about one TikTok campaign. They see it as a confrontation over who ultimately sets the boundaries of acceptable politics—Romanian voters or institutions increasingly tied to a globalist, Brussels-centered political consensus.

Romania’s crisis has moved beyond constitutional theory, as its political breakdown now collides with an economy facing some of the heaviest fiscal pressures in the European Union.

Earlier predictions that Fitch could push Romanian sovereign debt into junk territory did not materialize this August. Fitch instead maintained Romania at BBB-, the lowest investment-grade level, while keeping a negative outlook and warning that prolonged political instability could undermine deficit reduction and jeopardize access to European recovery money.

The reprieve should not be confused with economic security. Fitch expects Romania’s economy to contract by roughly 0.6 percent in 2026 and projects a budget deficit of about 5.9 percent of GDP—an improvement from previous years, but still exceptionally high for a BBB-rated state.

S&P has likewise kept Romania at BBB- with a negative outlook. Both agencies have pointed to the ongoing political fragmentation, financing pressures, and the difficulty of sustaining fiscal consolidation while governments rise and fall in Bucharest.

For ordinary Romanians, warnings like these translate into something much more tangible than ratings-agency terminology. They mean higher borrowing costs, increased pressure on household incomes, weaker growth, and further uncertainty over the country’s economic future. That helps explain why anger at political elites has persisted even as officials insist Romania remains firmly anchored inside the EU and NATO.

The nationalist political revolt in Romania also forms part of a wider European trend. From the AfD in Germany and Marine Le Pen’s movement in France to populist forces in Italy, Austria and elsewhere, parties demanding national sovereignty, stricter immigration controls and, increasingly, remigration have forced issues once excluded from respectable debate into the political mainstream.

Romania’s version of that revolt has developed around Georgescu and AUR, whose supporters increasingly compare their struggle with the movement that formed around Donald Trump in the United States. They view sovereignty, national identity, demographic security, economic accountability, and a nationally oriented foreign policy not as threats to democracy, but as core issues that any genuine democracy must be free to decide for itself.

The Romanian establishment—and by extension its backers in Brussels—now faces an uncomfortable problem: attempts to isolate Romania’s traditional, nationalist, and patriotic electorate have not only failed to make it disappear, but have made it much stronger. The collapse of the governing coalition and the cooperation between PSD and AUR have shown that the old cordon sanitaire is becoming harder—if not impossible—to maintain.

The post Romania’s years-long crisis of democratic legitimacy deepens appeared first on Remix News.

Around 80.5 percent of asylum seekers from North African countries were accused of one or more offenses in Switzerland, underlining the massive amount of criminality present in this foreign population. The data comes from the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM).

For asylum seekers as a whole, the rate of criminality is much lower, with only 12.5 percent having been accused of one or more offenses. Nationals from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia are therefore extremely overrepresented compared to other asylum seeker groups.

North Africans also have little chance of having their asylum applications accepted by Swiss authorities, with 99 percent of all applications rejected, according to Swiss newspaper Blick.

‘He grabbed my ass, I told him to stop’ – 18-year-old African asylum seeker goes on a rampage at Swedish bathing area

In 2024, a “24-hour” rule was introduced for accelerated asylum procedures for North African countries, which enables Swiss authorities to process asylum claims with a low chance of success more quickly. Applicants can still appeal the decisions, which can significantly increase delay in reaching a final decision.

“Criminals must leave Switzerland quickly. This is a priority of the asylum strategy,” said SEM spokesperson Daniel Bach.

However, the process is often delayed by the actions of asylum seekers, including refusing to provide fingerprints and failing to show up for deportation appointments.

Switzerland: African migrant committed incredible 46 crimes in 13 months, showed his penis on trains, stole in multiple cities, and sexually assaulted a woman

Many applicants also obstruct the accelerated procedure: they refuse to provide their fingerprints, do not show up for appointments or quickly leave Switzerland. In these cases, their request can be filed without formalities.

Authorities are now working to implement new measures to quickly deport asylum seekers, including the “systematic use of coercive measures against the perpetrators of repeated offenses.” Authorities are also planning to introduce stricter rules for administrative detention.

Switzerland: African male on the run from police after dragging a 5-year-old girl into a playground toilet and sexually assaulting her, right after beating her 69-year-old caregiver

The SEM also wants to increase cooperation with North African countries and recently signed an agreement with Morocco to accelerate the of asylum seekers ordered to be deported and help facilitate their return.

‘Put a stop to immigration from Stone Age cultures’ – New data shows foreign women commit domestic violence at a higher rate than Swiss men

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Alejo Carpentier, profundo conocedor de los orígenes, esencias y comportamientos de la identidad del Nuevo Mundo, autor del concepto identitario que llamó “lo real maravilloso americano” —que además estilizó en su novelística—, afirmó que el “descubrimiento” de América, que se materializa en 1492, era el acontecimiento más trascendente de la

Fault Lines How I Became a Subaru Socialist By the time Bernie Sanders ran for President, in 2015, I was financially secure. But the previous decade had left a mark. August 18, 2026 Illustration by George Wylesol This is part of a series of columns about young people and the

Sign up for our newsletter about national security here. At the CIA, they’d started an office pool on when I’d be fired. President Trump would be sworn in for his second term at noon; the smart money had me gone by 12:15. But the smart money hadn’t counted on Trump’s

The case represents a new front in President Trump’s mass deportation drive: arrests at airports of people who have active immigration cases and no criminal history. Listen · 9:43 min Galina Bobreneva and her husband, Brent Jindra, at their home in Redwood City, Calif.Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times Published Aug.

“They assume that my ambition is positional. They assume that my ambition is a title or a seat. And my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country.” The words were delivered slowly, deliberately and with some steeliness by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her audience, crammed

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One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has filed an application with the High Court for leave to appeal a Full Federal Court ruling that upheld a finding she unlawfully racially discriminated against Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

The case stems from a September 2022 post on X, then Twitter, in which Hanson told Faruqi to “piss off back to Pakistan” after Faruqi criticised Queen Elizabeth II and the British Empire following the Queen’s death. The Full Federal Court dismissed Hanson’s appeal on 27 July 2026.

Hanson is now asking the High Court to consider whether Section 18C, as applied to political communication, is constitutionally valid and whether its operation impermissibly burdens the Constitution’s implied freedom of political communication.

The case matters because Section 18C does not require a statement to threaten violence or incite criminal conduct. It prohibits conduct reasonably likely to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” another person because of race, colour or national or ethnic origin.

The Full Federal Court confirmed in July that Section 18C is constitutionally valid and does not impermissibly burden the implied freedom of political communication. It also found that Hanson’s post was not protected by the Act’s Section 18D exemption for conduct done reasonably and in good faith.

The court found that the post fell within conduct prohibited by Section 18C, but Senator Hanson has vowed not to forfeit the fight.

“I’m taking this fight to the High Court for every Australian who feels they are being silenced and to keep their opinions to themselves,” Senator Hanson said on Saturday in a media release.

“Too many Australians are afraid to speak honestly about immigration, race, religion, Indigenous policy and other important issues because they worry they will be called racist, dragged through a complaints process or taken to court.

“That is not how a free country should work. Australians choose their government. The government should never get to choose what Australians are allowed to say.”

Justice Angus Stewart, who heard the original case, acknowledged that Australian political debate can involve deliberately offensive, exaggerated and angry speech, and that restrictions on such communication can burden political freedom.

Australia has no entrenched constitutional Bill of Rights guaranteeing broad freedom of speech. Instead, the Constitution protects political communication through an implied freedom that operates as a limitation on government power rather than as a personal right to free speech. That makes judicial scrutiny of laws such as Section 18C particularly important.

“I don’t mince my words,” Senator Hanson said. “I never have. People know exactly where I stand. But speaking plainly about political issues should not put you in court. The Full Federal Court accepted that my comments were close to the core of political communication protected by our Constitution.

“It also accepted section 18C casts a wide net, sets a relatively low bar and places a significant burden on political communication. Yet the law was still upheld. This is why I am asking the High Court to hear this case.”

Senator Hanson said she believes all Australians should be able to disagree, argue, and say things other people don’t like.

“Freedom of speech means nothing if it only protects words everyone agrees with.”

She said it’s not about giving politicians special rights, but rather, it’s about the right of everyday Australians to take part in the political debates that shape their own country without being frightened into silence.

A healthy “democracy” does not require citizens to agree with one another—or even to speak politely at all times. It requires sufficient freedom for citizens to argue, criticise, offend and challenge one another without the government becoming the final arbiter of permissible political expression.

“Millions of Australians feel like they have been told there are things they are simply not allowed to say anymore,” she added. “I hear from them all the time. I will not be silenced, and I will take this fight as far as I can for Australians who feel they no longer have a voice.”

A federal judge tried to halt the construction of this hideous addition to the White House, but that got in the way of Roberts letting the president do whatever the hell he wants.

© ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS

The Australian Senate passed new powers for ASIO 26-15 on Thursday.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill (No.2) 2025 adds to the 1979 ASIO Act, raising concerns about citizen protections vis-à-vis police questioning.

Such as the broadening of ASIO’s power to include “sabotage, promotion of communal violence, attacks on Australia’s defence system and any serious threat to Australia’s territorial and border integrity.”

Under current law, this is regardless of “whether these [words or actions] were directed from, or committed within, Australia or not.”

The biggest concerns centre on the “promotion of communal violence” and threats to national integrity.

Under existing laws on adult questioning, anyone who fails to comply with ASIO when they demand information can be imprisoned for five years.

Put simply, in these cases you do not have the right to remain silent.

Ramping up those concerns is the fact that neither inciting “communal violence” nor “threats to national integrity” are properly defined.

According to section 4 of the ASIO Act, foreign interference is defined as: “activities relating to Australia that are carried on by or on behalf of a foreign power.”

Activities included anything that is “detrimental to the interests of Australia “ or involves “a threat to any person.”

Promoting communal violence is defined as: “activities that are directed to promoting violence between different groups of persons in the Australian community.”

Added here is any activity that “endangers the peace, order or good government of the Commonwealth.”

In effect, publicly questioning COVID vaccines, lockdowns, mass immigration, and multiculturalism could be considered incitement and a threat to national stability (integrity).

As could critiquing Islam, or even criticising Albonomics that is currently edging Australia’s economy irreversibly towards’ Labor’s “we’re saving the world from climate change,” Net Zero Nanny State black hole.

By far one of the bill’s most prominent opponents, Senator Alex Antic, said on X that he’s disappointed it passed.

Antic also stated that he voted against the amendment because “extraordinary powers should never become ordinary.”

The South Australian Liberal Senator then declared the law an expansion of the surveillance state.

Antic told the Senate that the bill “doesn’t merely fine-tune existing arrangements.”

“It breaks in new powers and makes permanent extraordinary intrusions on the liberty of Australians.

“Compulsory questioning warrants,” Antic argued, “allow ASIO to compel a person who may never have been charged with an offence or may never be charged with an offence to appear and answer questions under threat of criminal penalty.”

Even telling anyone about being questioned or detained is now an offence.

“These are not ordinary investigative tools,” he stated. “They sit well outside the framework of the traditional criminal justice system.”

Since 9/11, the government has repeatedly extended what were meant to be temporary powers.

That’s because they were the exception, not a permanent rule.

“As it currently stands, the bill removes that sunset clause entirely.”

Making them permanent is a problem, Antic added.

“History shows that temporary emergency powers have a long and chequered history and habit of becoming permanent features.

“Worse still, the bill actually expands the reach of adult questioning warrants.

“The definition of an adult questioning matter will now be broadened under this bill to include sabotage and, most alarmingly, the promotion of communal violence.”

Criticising the loose language, Antic rightly pointed out that “Promotion of communal violence’ is particularly elastic.

“Vague drafting is the enemy of the rule of law.”

To this he added, “What does it actually mean? What does it capture?”

“Does it capture passionate political speech, advocacy that offends certain groups, legitimate protest or religious expression that crosses an often-ill-defined line?”

Antic then asserted, “In a free society, the state shouldn’t be handed an open-ended power to compel citizens to answer questions about speech or association that falls short of actual criminality.”

Blurring lines when it comes to criminality and rights, he further argued, removes certainty about where that line is drawn.

The even greater concern here is whether or not the law could be used to detain and question people against their will.

“The bill also retains the capacity to subject children as young as 14 to these processes. On its surface, that alone should give this chamber reason to pause.

“Security which is purchased at the price of permanent, expanded and coercive powers is a false bargain.”

Extraordinary laws require use-by dates.

“The rule of law requires that the state’s most intrusive rules remain exceptional, tightly confined, regularly scrutinised and subject to genuine sunset clauses.”

They should not, Antic protested, be “quietly normalised” and “quietly allowed to creep into the norm.”

Notably, Antic joined One Nation and The Greens in opposing the expansion of ASIO’s powers.

Europe is warming more than twice as fast as the global average—a terrifying statistic made all too apparent this summer as heat wave followed heat wave. European cities were never designed for these temperatures, and public health, infrastructure, and tourism are all under strain. Eric Klinenberg arrives in Milan just as “Europe’s third heat wave of the summer entered its fiercest stretch” and sweats his way across the continent to see how trees, shade, water, and other measures are being deployed to adapt urban centers. But with this crisis set to deepen can these experiments really keep pace?

Of all the problems that heat poses for Barcelona, losing some of the hundred and sixty thousand tourists who typically visit each day ranks low on the priority lists of most officials and residents. Some locals have staged protests, chanting “Tourists go home” while targeting visitors with water guns. But tourism employs more than a hundred and sixty thousand people in Barcelona and accounts for around thirteen per cent of its economic output, which explains why, despite concerns that the city gets too many visitors, more than seventy per cent of residents consider tourism beneficial. At midday, when I arrived on La Rambla, the city’s most heavily visited and photographed corridor, the street had little shade and surprisingly few people. At La Boqueria market, normally jam-packed at lunchtime, I found my way to a famously busy bar counter and took one of several open seats.

Former Florida state legislator Michael Caruso was arrested this week on charges that he sexually abused his own grandson — a crime that could expose him to the death penalty under a law he voted [...]

The post Florida Lawmaker Who Backed Death Penalty for Pedophiles Arrested for Molesting His Grandson appeared first on The People's Voice.

On Friday, Demand Progress Education Fund and a coalition of civil society advocates asked the FTC to investigate AI companies like Anthropic and Amazon for buying books in bulk, scanning them and then destroying the original work—including rare books. In a letter sent to the FTC, the organizations urge the agency to use its authority, including Section 6(b) of the FTC Act, to investigate whether this mass book-destroying practice unfairly prevents competing AI developers and the public from using these resources.

• Read the Letter

Convened by Demand Progress Education Fund, the letter was also signed by the Consumer Federation of America, the Center for Media & Digital Governance at Open Markets Institute, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and 14 other organizations.

“The secretive and reckless way that major AI companies like Anthropic and Amazon are acting shows that there is real smoke here that the FTC needs to investigate,” said Demand Progress Education Fund Special Advisor Kate Oh. “There is credible reporting that the AI industry is acquiring books on vast commercial scales to scan and destroy, all to keep that scanned text in a private database walled off from the world and subject to corporate censorship and manipulation.”

“When a small number of dominant tech companies become the sole custodians of millions of human-authored works in digital form, locked away inside proprietary corporate databases—including works they have caused to exist nowhere else—they convert a shared public resource into a private chokepoint,” stated the letter. “They make themselves the unaccountable gatekeepers of our shared historical and cultural record, with the ability to censor as they see fit. That outcome should concern the FTC because the antimonopoly laws exist not only to protect competition but to prevent any private actor from amassing control incompatible with a free and self-governing society.”

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