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Guilty! Election Ban for Far-Right Marine Le Pen in France
The xenophobic nationalist leader, expected to run for president once again in 2027, was sentenced to 4 years in prison for misuse of party funds over many years.
Mar 31, 2025
The far-right French politician Marine Le Pen was convicted on embezzlement charges by a national court on Monday, sentenced to four years in prison and barred from seeking elected office for at least five years—a development that progressives warn could backfire if too many people see the ruling as an attempt to preemptively subvert democracy.
Le Pen's "electoral ineligibility is effective immediately," the New York Timesreports and derails her presidential aspirations even as other right-wing politicians, including President Donald Trump in the United States and Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban, seek to consolidate their grip on power.
"Je suis Marine!" Orban declared on social media shortly after the verdict was handed down, which resulted in a visibly angry Le Pen storming out of the court room before the proceedings concluded.
"This is nuts. Lawfare is wrong whomever it targets. And it is stupid to boot. France's neofascists will only benefit from this, just as the MAGA lot did." —Yanis Varoufakis
The court suspended two years of Le Pen's sentence, but the other two will be served under a form of house arrest with ankle bracelet monitoring.
While Jordan Bardella, president of the anti-immigrant National Rally (RN) party which Le Pen leads, said "French democracy was killed" by the verdict, the conviction followed a robust investigation and trial into to the RN's payment scheme which siphoned millions of Euros out of taxpayer funds over many years.
According to the Guardian:
Le Pen and 24 party members, including nine former members of the European parliament and their 12 parliamentary assistants, were found guilty of a vast scheme over many years to embezzle European parliament funds, by using money earmarked for European parliament assistants to instead pay party workers in France.
The so-called fake jobs system covered parliamentary assistant contracts between 2004 and 2016, and was unprecedented in scale and duration, causing losses of €4.5m to European taxpayer funds. Assistants paid by the European parliament must work directly on Strasbourg parliamentary matters, which the judges found had not been the case.
Despite the immediate ban imposed on his political enemy, DiEm25 leader Yanis Varoufakis, the leftist former finance minister of Greece who also co-founded Progressive International, warned that barring politicians from running for office via court rulings that have not completed a full appeals process puts democracy on a dangerous road.
"This is nuts," said Varoufakis in response to the conviction and sentencing.
The idea of lawfare, in which politicians or elected officials are targeted with frivolous or manufactured criminal charges in order to thwart their political careers is a well-known tactic that has often been used against left-leaning leaders as well.
"Lawfare is wrong whomever it targets," he continued. "And it is stupid to boot. France's neofascists will only benefit from this, just as the MAGA lot did. A panicking illiberal establishment across the West is diving headlong into a totalitarian pit."
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French Scientist Denied Entry to US Over Anti-Trump Messages
"The purpose is to create fear and self-censorship everywhere," said one pro-democracy advocate.
Mar 20, 2025
France's minister of higher education and research spoke out Thursday over reports that a French scientist was refused entry to the U.S. after customs agents found messages on his cellphone that were critical of President Donald Trump—yet another incident that has raised alarm over the Trump administration's views of First Amendment rights.
The unnamed space researcher works for the French government's National Center for Scientific Research and was traveling on March 9 to a conference in the Houston area when he was reportedly randomly selected by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents for a search.
The officers searched his electronic devices—something that happened to fewer than 0.01% of the international travelers who arrived in the U.S. in 2024, according to the CBP—and found messages that "conveyed hatred of Trump and could be qualified as terrorism," the agency said.
The messages reportedly criticized Trump's treatment of scientists and his views on academic freedom, and prompted an FBI investigation that was quickly dropped.
With the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which billionaire Tesla CEO and Trump megadonor Elon Musk was named to lead, the president has introduced massive cuts to the National Institutes of Health, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Environmental Protection Agency, and other agencies—slashing jobs and tens of billions of dollars in grants that fund crucial work that has helped the U.S. become a leader in scientific and biomedical research.
"It's no secret that Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency effort has resulted in millions of dollars in cuts to scientific research," wrote Hafiz Rashid at The New Republic on Wednesday. "The idea that criticism of this would rise to the level of terrorism and result in someone being barred from the U.S. is absurd."
The researcher's apparent expression of disapproval regarding Trump's policies led officers to confiscate his phone and computer before sending him back to France the next day.
"It's no secret that Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency effort has resulted in millions of dollars in cuts to scientific research. The idea that criticism of this would rise to the level of terrorism and result in someone being barred from the U.S. is absurd."
"Freedom of opinion, free research, and academic freedom are values we will continue to proudly uphold," Philippe Baptiste, the French research minister, said in a statement. "I will defend the possibility for all French researchers to be faithful to them, in compliance with the law, wherever they may be in the world."
Baptiste said CBP officers only found that the scientist's "phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friendly relations in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration's research policy."
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has detained and pushed to deport a recent Columbia University graduate and a Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow for statements they and their family members have made in support of Palestinian rights and criticizing U.S. and Israeli policy in the occupied Palestine territories, accusing them without evidence of providing aid and support to Hamas.
The president also said last week that critical coverage of his administration by media companies such as CNN and MSNBC "has to be illegal."
National security researcher and analyst Olga Lautman said the CBP's decision to refuse entry to the French scientist serves as "more proof that we are now an authoritarian state."
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the pro-democracy group DAWN, said that "searching people's cellphones and punishing them for having critical comments is exactly what the dictators in Egypt and Syria have done," and pointed to a recent Amnesty International report about a British national, Ahmed al-Doush, who was arrested by Saudi authorities after finding a social media post by him that they objected to.
"The purpose" of the CBP's recent actions, said Whitson, "is to create fear and self-censorship everywhere."
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'Toasts Not Tariffs': Critics Slam Trump's Threat of 200% Levy on EU Alcohol Products
"This is how trade wars escalate," said one observer. "Eventually you forget who fired the first shot, but the losers are consumers on both sides."
Mar 13, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to slap a 200% tariff on many alcohol products made in the European Union in retaliation for a 50% levy on American whiskey and bourbon recently announced by the 27-nation bloc's executive commission.
"The European Union, one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the World, which was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States, has just put a nasty 50% Tariff on Whisky," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. "If this tariff is not removed immediately, the U.S. will shortly place a 200% tariff on all wines, champagnes, and alcoholic products coming out of France and other E.U.-represented countries."
"This will be great for the wine and champagne businesses in the U.S.," added Trump, who owns a Virginia winery. Only sparkling wine from grapes grown in France's Champagne region can be called champagne under a law protecting the product origin designation.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Thursday that "we deeply regret this measure."
"Tariffs are taxes, they are bad for business and worse for consumers," she added. "They are disrupting supply chains. They bring uncertainty for the economy."
The European Commission's move to reimpose a 50% tariffs on U.S.-made whiskey and bourbon starting April 1 was itself part of the bloc's response to Trump's 25% levy on steel and aluminum imported from the E.U., which took effect on Wednesday. Trump has also unleashed a barrage of tariffs on some of the U.S.' main trading partners including Canada, China, and Mexico, and is threatening even broader tariffs if countries don't lower trade barriers by April 2.
French Foreign Trade Minister Laurent Saint-Martin struck a defiant tone Thursday, accusing Trump of "escalating the trade war he chose to unleash."
"We will not give in to threats and will always protect our sectors," he added.
The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, an alcohol industry lobby, urged Trump "to secure a spirits agreement with the E.U. to get us back to zero-for-zero tariffs, which will create U.S. jobs and increase manufacturing and exports for the American hospitality sector."
"We want toasts not tariffs," the lobby added.
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