An unlikely coalition
The New Popular Front was an 11th-hour alliance, born out of perceived necessity, bringing together two moderate left-wing parties - the center-left Socialist Party and the Green Party — and two far-left movements — Jean-Luc Mélenchon's France Unbowed and the Communist Party.
The alliance wants to lower the retirement age, which Macron raised last year, and vastly expand government spending on social welfare, environmental protection and health care.
Macron called snap elections last month after his coalition was trounced by National Rally in European parliamentary elections, gambling that the possibility of a far-right government would push French voters to reaffirm his mandate.
While he appeared Sunday to have been correct about how the public would respond to the threat of the country's first far-right government since World War II, he seemingly underestimated the appeal of the left.
In the first round, the New Popular Front came in second with 28 percent of the vote, behind the 33 percent of votes cast for National Rally. Macron's centrist alliance secured only 21 percent.
French elections are decided at the district level, so while National Rally and the New Popular Front had more than 30 candidates each who won more than 50 percent of the vote and were elected to Parliament outright, other districts went to a runoff between the top two or three candidates.
In districts where Le Pen's candidates won a narrow victory, the leftist alliance and Macron's centrist coalition combined efforts, encouraging weaker candidates to drop off the ballot. It was primarily candidates from the left, including Mélenchon's France Unbowed, who renounced their second-round participation, according to France's Le Monde newspaper.
Can the center (left) hold?
While the New Popular Front has come out on top, they are nowhere close to securing a
parliamentary majority. Unless moderate members of the alliance are able to form a government with Macron's centrist allies, France could be headed for political gridlock with just weeks until Paris is set to host the Olympics.
After the first projections Sunday, Mélenchon, the most widely known figure in the alliance, called on Macron to invite the bloc to form a government.
"The president must bow and admit this defeat without trying to circumvent it," Mélenchon said.
"No subterfuge, arrangement or combination would be acceptable" to keep his coalition from power, he added.
BEER BASED VACCINES — They will stop at nothing...
Pushing biotechnology pharmakeia into the masses via any Trojan horse imaginable.
"He has just consumed what may be the world’s first vaccine delivered in a beer. It could be the first small sip toward making vaccines more palatable and accessible to people around the world."
A virologist brewed beer with engineered yeast producing virus-like particles. He drank a pint daily for five days (plus "boosters" ), his family joined in, and indeed, their bodies produced antibodies.
Now he's eyeing "vaccine beers" for COVID, bird flu, HPV cancers... and even non-alcoholic yeast snacks.
I usually say "Grow Your Own," but hey — if it's your thing — Brew Your Own too...
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/vaccine-beer-polyomavirus-chris-buck
⚖️ 🇺🇸 🏛 He Who Decides the Exception: Trump Should Disregard the Supreme Court’s National Guard Ruling
⬛️ Judicial overreach mustn’t be permitted to trample the public necessity.
🔶️ The Supreme Court has again reminded the country that, in the American system, the judiciary can halt executive action with the stroke of a pen—this time keeping in place a lower-court order blocking President Trump’s attempt to federalize and deploy National Guard forces to protect besieged immigration enforcement operations in and around Chicago.
🔶️ The point was that a republic cannot outsource its highest political judgments to a tribunal without hollowing out self-government. Put those threads together—Cicero’s salus populi, Aquinas’ equity, Locke’s prerogative, Hamilton’s executive energy, Jefferson’s coordinate construction, Jackson’s independence, Lincoln’s warning—and you get a tradition that modern progressives and libertarians alike often deny ...