Populist, far-right, anti-immigration AfD wins vote in eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. Plus, 50 years since The Muppet Show first hit our screens<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up here<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Good morning. A far-right leader who has won an important state election in Germany has thanked Elon Musk for his support<\/a>, as voices in Europe warn the result is a serious moment for the continent. No far-right party has led or formed a government in Germany since the defeat of nazism at the end of the second world war.<\/p>\n Ulrich Siegmund, the Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland\u2019s lead candidate, thanked Musk on X after the tech billionaire said \u201cWell done!\u201d in German to the AfD co-founder Alice Weidel. The populist, far-right, anti-immigration party won the vote in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.<\/p>\n Will the AfD be able to form a state government?<\/strong> Despite its resounding victory, the party fell just short of a majority. It was seeking an absolute majority in the state legislature to govern alone and overcome the so-called \u201cfirewall\u201d of the mainstream parties, which refuse to work with it. The final results showed the AfD falling three seats short, with 39 lawmakers in an 83-member legislature.<\/p>\n What has been the reaction in Washington and Moscow?<\/strong> Donald Trump posted a screenshot of the election projection without comment on his Truth Social site. The Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev took a screengrab of Trump\u2019s post and praised a \u201chistoric win for the pragmatic AfD\u201d. The AfD is pro-Kremlin, urging a stop to support for Ukraine and pushing for Ukrainians in Germany to no longer receive refugee status.<\/p>\n Who else has been saying Trump\u2019s war may not achieve its aims?<\/strong> The US energy secretary, Chris Wright, said on Sunday morning Washington might not be able to reach an agreement with Tehran<\/a> that would prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. \u201cWe are strangling their economy to try to bring either a change in policy from the existing regime or a new regime,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Populist, far-right, anti-immigration AfD wins vote in eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. Plus, 50 years since The Muppet Show first hit our screens Don\u2019t already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up here Good morning. A far-right leader who has won an important state election in Germany has thanked Elon Musk for his support, as … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}