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Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the fallout from the collapse of Germany’s ruling coalition, new deportation measures for Palestinians in Israel, and the planet exceeding the Paris Agreement’s climate benchmark.
A Broken Traffic Light
Germany’s government is in a political tailspin as Chancellor Olaf Scholz pushes against calls for an immediate confidence vote, which experts believe he would lose.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the fallout from the collapse of Germany’s ruling coalition, new deportation measures for Palestinians in Israel, and the planet exceeding the Paris Agreement’s climate benchmark.
A Broken Traffic Light
Germany’s government is in a political tailspin as Chancellor Olaf Scholz pushes against calls for an immediate confidence vote, which experts believe he would lose.
On Thursday, Scholz delayed his departure to the European Union’s summit in Budapest to address the recent collapse of his ruling “traffic light” coalition. Scholz wants to schedule a vote of confidence for Jan. 15, 2025—which would trigger snap elections as soon as March. However, Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said such a motion should occur “by the beginning of next week at the latest.”
“We simply cannot afford to have a government without a majority in Germany for several months now, followed by an election campaign for several more months and then possibly several weeks of coalition negotiation,” Merz said. The next German election was initially set for September 2025.
Germany’s ruling coalition—consisting of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SDP), the Free Democratic Party (FDP), and the Greens—has been at loggerheads since Scholz took office in 2021. The chancellor’s political woes peaked on Wednesday, though, when Finance Minister Christian Lindner, the head of the Free Democrats, opposed the coalition’s 2025 budget proposal. Instead of boosting government spending, Lindner argued for slashing welfare funding, cutting taxes, and postponing the country’s carbon-neutral target by five years.
In response, Scholz fired Lindner, and the FDP left the coalition. “We need a government that is ready to negotiate … to make the necessary decisions for our country,” Scholz said, lambasting Lindner’s “egotism.” He linked his decision to Donald Trump winning the U.S. presidential election, saying Berlin must prepare to spend more on its own defense and economy ahead of Washington likely turning toward an “America First” agenda.
Economists predict that Germany is heading for a second year of contraction at a time when German manufacturers are suffering from high energy and labor costs, as well as fierce competition with China. German industry heads also urged Scholz on Thursday to hold a confidence vote as soon as possible to address growing fiscal concerns. Scholz named close SDP ally Jörg Kukies as the country’s new finance minister.
Not everyone has jumped ship, though. Transport Minister Volker Wissing from the Free Democrats unexpectedly reversed his resignation early Thursday to stay on as minister, announcing that he would leave the FDP instead. However, with the CDU being the country’s most popular party and the far-right Alternative for Germany gaining traction, analysts believe that new elections would likely shift power to the conservatives.
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What We’re Following
Deporting Palestinians. The Israeli Knesset passed a law on Thursday allowing officials to deport the family members of Palestinian attackers, including Israel’s own citizens. According to the legislation, Palestinian Israeli citizens and residents of East Jerusalem who either knew about such attacks beforehand or who “express support or identification with the act of terrorism” would be sent to Gaza or other locations for seven to 20 years, depending on their legal status. It is unclear if the law would extend to those living in the West Bank.
Legal experts believe any attempt to implement the law would likely get struck down in court. Some suggest that attempting to deport Israeli citizens from their own country could violate their constitutional rights, as well as breach international law. Others point to the deportation of people in East Jerusalem, which the international community considers an occupied territory, as a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Palestinians make up around 20 percent of Israel’s population.
Nonetheless, the legislation’s passage with a 61-41 vote symbolizes a major win for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right supporters. The Knesset also approved a temporary five-year order on Thursday that allows children under the age of 14 to be sentenced to prison for murder or attempted murder under terrorism laws, meaning that they can be held in a secure facility before being transferred to a prison at age 14.
Skyrocketing temperatures. Scientists warned on Wednesday that 2024 is set to become the warmest year on record. According to new data by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, this year will be the first time that Earth is more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than pre-industrial levels. Experts point to carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, oil, and gas as the main cause.
In December 2015, 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement to try to prevent global warming from surpassing the benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius, which experts say is needed to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis. However, Wednesday’s research shows that the planet will likely exceed this goal around 2030—meaning significant ecological damage could be less than a decade away.
The report comes less than one week before Azerbaijan hosts the United Nations climate change conference (known as COP29). And it follows significant weather crises around the world, such as Pakistan’s Lahore recording the worst air quality of any city in the world on Thursday and Cuba’s electric grid collapsing on Wednesday after Hurricane Rafael made landfall.
Message of hope. U.S. President Joe Biden sought to console supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris’s failed election bid on Thursday. “Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable,” he said during a national address at the White House. He vowed a peaceful transition of power and extolled the integrity of the electoral process in a stark contrast to how Trump responded to his election loss in 2020.
Both Biden and Harris have called Trump to congratulate him on his victory, and Biden’s administration said he is working with Trump’s team to execute a smooth transition come January. “Now we have 74 days to finish the term—our term. Let’s make every day count,” Biden said. Historically, lame-duck presidents have had mixed success, historian Julian E. Zelizer wrote for Foreign Policy, and Biden is expected to have similar frustrations now that Trump’s win has soured his legacy.
Odds and Ends
Hackers are demanding that France’s Schneider Electric pay a $125,000 ransom in baguettes or risk 40 gigabytes of stolen data. In a social media post on Sunday, the hackers claimed to have stolen sensitive corporate information, including on company projects, staff, and user data. The hackers promised that if Schneider Electric publicly admits to the cyberattack, then they will lower the ransom by 50 percent to $62,500 worth of baguettes. It is unclear whether the company will bend to these demands and give up the dough or force the hackers to go hungry.