Free Republic

The war in Ukraine has escalated, with Russia issuing increasing dire threats against Kyiv and its supporters. President-elect Donald J. Trump is set to take office in the United States, raising new questions over Europeans’ trade relations and military defense. The government of France — Germany’s partner in leading Europe — fell earlier this month.And now, Europe’s largest economy will be in the hands of a caretaker government, ahead of elections early next year.On Monday, German lawmakers voted to dissolve the existing government by a vote of 394 to 207, with 116 abstaining.Coming just nine months before parliamentary elections had...

For months, die-hard environmental activists have camped in the fields and occupied the trees in this tiny farming village in western Germany, hoping that like-minded people from across the country would arrive and help stop the expansion of a nearby open-pit coal mine that threatened to swallow the village and its farms. But the hoped-for surge in protesters never materialized. And last week, the government effectively sealed Lützerath’s fate by announcing that RWE, Germany’s largest energy company, needed the coal under the village — to make up for gas that had stopped flowing in from Russia. The war in Ukraine,...