Middleboro Review 2: 04/11/22

Monday, April 11, 2022

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Supporters of presidential candidate Marine La Pen stand in front of one of a fleet of coaches that are used to convey her campaign, in Reims, France. | Sam Tarling/Getty Images

FRENCH TWIST — If Marine Le Pen becomes the next president of France, the European Union won’t collapse. Neither will the euro. There isn’t going to be a Frexit.

But the far-right politician is a genuine threat to the liberal Western order. Here’s why you should worry she could win France’s presidential run-off on April 24.

Let’s start with the numbers. In POLITICO’s Poll of Polls , Le Pen is averaging 47 percent to Emmanuel Macron’s 53 percent in head-to-head polling match-ups, and rising. She’s been as high as 49 percent over the past week. The Economist’s forecasting model gives her around a 20 percent chance of victory. People who remember the 2016 presidential election in the United States will recall that a 20 percent chance of something happening is decidedly not a zero percent chance.

The far-right bloc of Le Pen and her even Trumpier rival, Eric Zemmour, is around a third of French voters, as big as the combined votes that are certain to go for Macron.

The race is on to win the votes of the final third of the electorate: some 10 million voters. Left-winger Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who nearly outflanked Le Pen in Sunday’s vote, urged his supporters not to vote for her. But he also left the way open for them to stay home. The Green Party will back Macron.

Le Pen has normalized her movement. While she triggered alarm by stating her desire to pull the EU’s only nuclear power out of the alliance’s integrated command structure, Le Pen has strategically softened her views on Europe’s other hot-button issues. National Rally — Le Pen’s party — no longer proposes to leave the EU, the euro currency and the bloc’s visa-free travel zone. These are important policy changes that get lost in knee-jerk coverage of the French election.

She has been a canny campaigner, turning a weak issue — Russia, thanks to her coziness with the Kremlin — into a strength. Le Pen made the necessary statements in support of Ukraine, and swiftly turned her attention to campaigning on cost-of-living issues at home. As Macron tried and failed to show his worth as peacemaker in chief, Le Pen went to bat for the people being hit by higher fuel prices and wider inflation sparked by the war.

These policy shifts give Le Pen a better chance of winning. They make her more palatable and harder to attack. Yet should Le Pen win, she would struggle to form her government, and then would struggle to legislate.

National Rally has never been a factor in the French National Assembly. It would have three weeks to change that: the gap between the presidential run-off and parliamentary elections.

Macron’s En Marche was in the same position in 2017. He was swept into power with the support of 66 percent of voters. That will never happen for Le Pen. A backlash would begin on the first day of a Le Pen presidency. Centrist and left-wing voters that may have sat out the presidential vote would be heavily pressured to turn out to block Le Pen from assuming full control of government.

The first 100 days of a Le Pen presidency: The EU would be attacked and starved through attrition, and eventually might be frozen on key decisions. She would likely be in alliance-building mode with the governments of Poland and Hungary. The current high level of coordination on Russia sanctions, for example, would have been nearly impossible to achieve under Le Pen. But don’t expect a dramatic Frexit-type vote, or sweeping executive orders.

Why might Le Pen lose? “She’s a Putin stooge,” says Eurasia Group’s Mujtaba Rahman, suggesting more scrutiny needs to be applied to the $11 million loan her party took in 2014 from an obscure Russian bank with Kremlin connections. It would be surprising if Macron did not use this to accuse Le Pen of not just being politically cozy with Moscow, but also of being in Russia’s pocket.

Either way, the morning after is the problem. Whoever wins, the next president of France will take office with around 48 percent of the country being dead set against them. Expect American-style polarization and lack of trust coming to Europe.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at rheath@politico.com, or on Twitter at @PoliticoRyan.

A message from ACT|The App Association:

Open and fair competition in the digital marketplace drives our members’ success, but the proposals in the Open App Markets Act will hinder our small business members’ opportunity for continued prosperity. https://actonline.org/2022/04/04/give-small-developers-a-chance-not-higher-barriers-to-entry/

WHAT'D I MISS?

Mourners prepare to walk to the cemetery during the funeral for a Ukrainian soldier in Kamianka-Buzka, Ukraine. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

— Russians readying for new offensive in eastern Ukraine, U.S. official warns: Russia has begun an effort to “resupply and reinforce” its forces in eastern Ukraine before mounting a new offensive in the Donbas region, a senior Defense Department official said today. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, pointed to open-source images showing a line of Russian military vehicles heading toward the Ukrainian city of Izyum — just outside the Donbas, to its northwest.

— Pelosi tests negative: Speaker Nancy Pelosi, second in line to the presidency after the vice president, said today she tested negative for Covid after contracting the virus late last week. Pelosi’s positive test rattled Washington last week, coming as reporters were gathered to hear her weekly press conference, which was canceled at the last second. It forced the cancellation of a planned congressional delegation to Asia, as well.

— Lawmakers demand answers from FDA after investigation on food failures: The chairs of two powerful committees in the House and Senate that oversee FDA are demanding answers in response to a POLITICO investigation into the agency’s failure to act on a slew of pressing food safety and nutrition issues . Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who leads the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, sent a strongly-worded letter to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf this afternoon seeking “immediate action to ensure the FDA is doing all it can to fulfill all aspects of its mission to protect the health and safety of the American people.

INTRODUCING DIGITAL FUTURE DAILY - OUR TECHNOLOGY NEWSLETTER, RE-IMAGINED: Technology is always evolving, and our new tech-obsessed newsletter is too! Digital Future Daily unlocks the most important stories determining the future of technology, from Washington to Silicon Valley and innovation power centers around the world. Readers get an in-depth look at how the next wave of tech will reshape civic and political life, including activism, fundraising, lobbying and legislating. Go inside the minds of the biggest tech players, policymakers and regulators to learn how their decisions affect our lives. Don't miss out, subscribe today.

— Former officer convicted of storming Capitol to disrupt Congress: A federal jury convicted a former Virginia police officer of storming the U.S. Capitol with another off-duty officer to obstruct Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. Jurors convicted former Rocky Mount police officer Thomas Robertson of all six counts he faced stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, including charges that he interfered with police officers at the Capitol and that he entered a restricted area with a dangerous weapon, a large wooden stick.

— Philadelphia moves to reinstate indoor mask mandate: Philadelphia announced it will reimpose its indoor mask mandate in an attempt to beat back yet another pandemic surge in hospitalizations and deaths . It’s the first major U.S. city to bring back a mask requirement as the BA.2 Omicron subvariant fuels a rise in cases in Philadelphia and across the Northeast. The mandate goes into effect on April 18.

— New York Democrats pare back nation-leading bail reform amid crime wave: Election defeats in suburban Nassau County, along with the victory of crime-fighting New York City Mayor Eric Adams, proved a wake-up call for state Democrats. Now they’ve agreed to a deal that will to scale back some of those 2019 bail reforms as a national surge in crime stokes fears of further state and federal election losses in the November midterms. Across the nation, Democrats are feeling pushback on bold criminal justice reforms enacted just a few years ago — with New York’s the latest and most striking change in direction.

A message from ACT|The App Association:

NIGHTLY NUMBER

More than 22,000

The number of unionized workers at nearly 30 ports along the West Coast who are set to begin renegotiating their contract next month. A whirlwind of economic and political factors has significantly upped the stakes for the talks, which take place every six years and have in the past stalled traffic at the busiest ports in the U.S. The Biden administration plans to keep close tabs on the talks — and intervene immediately should a breakdown appear imminent.

DON'T MISS ANYTHING FROM THE 2022 MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE: POLITICO is excited to partner with the Milken Institute to produce a special edition "Global Insider" newsletter featuring exclusive coverage and insights from the 25th annual Global Conference. This year's event, May 1-4, brings together more than 3,000 of the world’s most influential leaders, including 700+ speakers representing more than 80 countries. "Celebrating the Power of Connection" is this year's theme, setting the stage to connect influencers with the resources to change the world with leading experts and thinkers whose insight and creativity can implement that change. Whether you're attending in person or following along from somewhere else in the world, keep up with this year's conference with POLITICO’s special edition “Global Insider” so you don't miss a beat. Subscribe today.

PARTING WORDS

A worker sweeps outside of the Food and Drug Administration headquarters in White Oak, Md. | Andrew Kelly/Reuters/Alamy

OF MICE AND MEDICINE — The Food and Drug Administration is grappling with field mice at its headquarters, an infestation exacerbated by food left behind in offices that have been largely unoccupied during the Covid-19 pandemic, the agency confirmed to POLITICO.

Pest-control problems in Washington-area buildings were not unusual prior to the pandemic; mouse traps are frequently spotted inside the Capitol. And two former FDA officials told POLITICO that mice have long taken refuge inside the agency’s sprawling Silver Spring, Md., campus, known as White Oak, David Lim and Lauren Gardner write.

But the rodent problem worsened during the pandemic, forcing the agency to assign some employees returning to the campus after two years to temporary desks and ask others to continue to telework.

“It is accurate that food products left behind in offices when maximum telework was implemented is a contributing factor to offices with pest control issues,” FDA spokesperson Stephanie Caccomo said.

Maintenance staff cannot enter individual offices on campus due to the agency’s work on “sensitive and national security information,” Caccomo added.

A message from ACT|The App Association:

When the largest sellers on the app stores, with multi-billion-dollar valuations, come to Congress with proposals to reshape the mobile marketplace to suit their needs, policymakers should be rather skeptical. We urge Congress not to sacrifice consumers’ most important privacy and security protections–and with them, the competitive prospects of small app companies–in order to further advantage the app stores’ biggest winners. https://actonline.org/2022/04/04/give-small-developers-a-chance-not-higher-barriers-to-entry/

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