The Free Press
It’s Monday, February 24. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Coming up: The cost of abandoning Ukraine. The Gulf of. . . Florida? Elon asks government workers what they did last week. Podcaster named as deputy head of the FBI. And more.
But first: It’s not a guten morgen for Germany’s center-left.
The polls predicted an electoral earthquake in Germany’s elections—and that is exactly what voters in Europe’s largest economy delivered on Sunday.
Turnout was at its highest since reunification. The right-wing populist party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), doubled its vote share and finished second. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SDP) slumped to an all-time low. And the center-right CDU/CSU bloc came top, with their leader, Friedrich Merz, poised to take over as chancellor.
Never before in Germany’s postwar history has a party other than the CDU and the SDP finished in the top two in the Bundestag election. The message from the result is stark, writes Christopher Caldwell in The Free Press today: “German voters have decided that stopping mass immigration, legal and illegal, is a national emergency.”
Germany is far from the only Western democracy in which voters’ anger at high rates of immigration—and an elite refusal to grapple with the issue—has driven its politics. But, for obvious historical reasons, the rise of a right-wing, populist party brings with it added apprehension in Germany.
That’s part of the reason why the German electorate isn’t quite ready to give up on its establishment parties. The math in the Bundestag means Merz will likely end up in a grand coalition with the SDP—the same governing arrangement that kept Angela Merkel in power for so long. The question, though, is whether the next chancellor can use that power to fix the issue that has voters so angry.
As Caldwell puts it in his piece for us: “A majority of Germans want him to carry out the AfD’s policies—but without the AfD.” That will not be straightforward, he argues.
To find out why, read on: “The German Establishment’s Last Chance.”
ICYMI: The German election has garnered plenty of American attention—some of it from better-informed sources than others. A particularly dumb take on German democracy—and history—came from Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan, who recently described the rise of the Nazis as an example of “where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.” That is—obviously—not exactly what happened. But for the avoidance of doubt, we asked historian and Winston Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts to set the record straight.
Read Roberts: “The Nazis Did Not ‘Weaponize’ Free Speech. They Crushed It.”
The Cost of Abandoning Ukraine
Over the past month, the Trump administration has rapidly overturned U.S. policy toward Ukraine. Trump has called the Ukrainian president a dictator, demanded Ukraine pay back U.S. aid by handing over the country’s vast rare earth mineral resources, and left the country’s leaders out of direct negotiations with Russia. Just yesterday, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said that Russia should not necessarily be blamed for starting the war, a position in sync with the president’s online tirade against Volodymyr Zelensky last week.
Free Press senior editor Peter Savodnik knows a little something about Ukraine. His ancestors fled the country, and he’s spent two decades covering America’s impact on the country, from the Orange Revolution in 2004 to the government’s campaign to rehabilitate alcoholic bears (like real ones, not the big, hairy, gay guys you might catch stumbling around Provincetown).
Today, on the third anniversary of the war, Peter writes that Trump’s approach to Ukraine isn’t just a shift—it’s a betrayal, and not just of Ukraine, but of America, too.
Read “My Ancestors Fled Ukraine. It Was America That Allowed Me to Return.”
New Yorkers Hold Memorial for Terrorist Leader They Can’t Name
On September 27, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air strike. Yesterday afternoon, as tens of thousands gathered in Beirut for his funeral, a few dozen New Yorkers gathered to commemorate the terrorist in Manhattan. Free Pressers Maya Sulkin and Josh Code were there to report on it.
“The strangest thing about this vigil was not its lack of ceremony or prayer, but that very few of the 100 or so in attendance knew who Nasrallah was.”
Read their report: “New York’s Vigil for That Terrorist—What’s His Name?”
“Maybe They Should Call It the Gulf of Florida”
On Inauguration Day, Trump signed an executive order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Many people aren’t happy. But what do people living on the Gulf Coast actually think about the change? Last weekend, I drove down to Pensacola Beach to ask. Do Floridians prefer Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of America? And is there a secret third option we haven’t yet considered?
Watch the video below.
An email with the subject line “What did you do last week?” was sent to all federal employees on Saturday. It was DOGE’s latest move—with Musk posting to X that all government workers had to respond to the email listing five things they accomplished the week prior. Musk noted, “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” Three agencies—the State Department, the FBI, and the Department of Defense—told workers to ignore the email, sowing greater tension between Musk and federal employees and raising questions over DOGE’s power to follow through on its demands.
Trump ousted his top military officer, General Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and five other senior Pentagon officials in a long-anticipated Friday night purge. His firings were especially controversial given the nonpartisan role the top military brass has traditionally played. Trump replaced General Brown with Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Caine, a retired, lower-ranking officer who Trump views as a loyalist who will fight against DEI within the department. Hegseth said, “Under President Trump, we are putting in place new leadership that will focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting, and winning wars.”
British prime minister Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron plan to visit Trump this week to discuss the Ukraine war and to try and repair a bruised transatlantic alliance. The two face an uphill battle in aligning with Trump on the war, as he recently said the two “haven’t done anything” about Ukraine. Macron plans to tell Trump that “You can’t be weak against President Putin. It’s not you, it’s not your trademark, it’s not in your interest.” Zelensky, for his part, announced that he would resign as president if it brought peace to his country in what is a clear response to Trump.
Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff announced plans to travel to Israel as the country halted its planned release of 600 Palestinian prisoners. Israel cited the way the hostages have been released by Hamas for the delayed release, calling them a “cynical exploitation. . . for propaganda purposes.” Witkoff will make stops in Egypt, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE as he tries to salvage last month’s ceasefire deal that led to a weekly exchange of prisoners for hostages. Meanwhile, Netanyahu announced that he was seeking a “complete demilitarization” of southern Syria, signaling that the IDF has formalized a plan to remain there indefinitely.
RFK Jr., newly sworn in as secretary of Health and Human Services, was given a mandate to investigate the use of antidepressants and weight-loss drugs over the weekend. Trump moved to form a “Make America Healthy Again” commission, empowering RFK to study SSRIs, chronic disease, and lifestyle alternatives to drugs like Ozempic in treating obesity, which he has said can be cured with “good food.” Fair enough, just don’t let him get his paws on the Diet Coke, please.
Pope Francis remains in critical condition as of Sunday evening. The pontiff was hospitalized for a severe respiratory illness, which now is compounded by mild kidney failure. The Vatican said Francis was “alert and well oriented” as the pope told his doctors that he was aware of his own fragility. Catholics around the world prayed for his health, with Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York saying in a Sunday sermon that “As our Holy Father, Pope Francis is in very, very fragile health and probably close to death.”
Trump has nominated conservative podcaster Dan Bongino as deputy director of the FBI. A one-time Secret Service agent, Bongino once quipped “My life is all about owning the libs,” and is currently engaged in a long-running feud with horror author Stephen King on X. Never a dull day in this crazy country.
It's so interesting to me that federal employees think they can't be let go or fired from their jobs. Where do they get that idea? How many people work for the federal government? Around 3 million. Think about that. 43% of people in Washington D.C. work for the federal government.Average federal employee salaries exceed 80,000 in all states. The pay raise for civilian federal employees increased by an average of 4.6% in 2023. Civilian federal employees saw their pay increase by 5.2% in 2024. Are all these folks necessary for our government to do what it's tasked with doing? Between 2005 and 2023 the lowest number of layoffs per year in any sector was the Federal government at 183K All these figures can be found in USA FACTS at usafats.org.
No Coke. Pepsi.