Angela Merkel Appears To Tap Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer As Christian Democratic Union Successor

Angela Merkel Appears To Tap Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer As Christian Democratic Union Successor

The woman basking in the limelight, standing before an adoring crowd having won nearly 99% of the vote for a top post in the most powerful political party in Germany was not Angela Merkel. It was Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, writes The New York Times, who was elected secretary general of Germany's Christian Democratic Union. Dubbed “mini-Merkel” by the German news media, Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer assumes a post once held by the Chancellor. " In tapping Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer, she found a candidate widely seen as having the mix of liberalism and conservatism to unite a restive party base," writes The Times.

Severely weakened by a national election held five months ago, Merkel has struggled to cobble together a governing coalition. One of A.K.K.'s first challenges as general secretary will be to restore calm and discipline in a party divided between those who support Merkel's centirst course and those who want to move right.

Kramp-Karrenbauer supported Merkel's decision to open Germany's border in 2015, but took a stronger stance on handling the roughly 7,000 refugees who arrived in her small western state of Saarland, where she has been the governor. The Times writes:

"She had unaccompanied minors arriving without documents undergo medical screenings to help determine their age, and lobbied for Berlin to deport anyone whose application for asylum had been rejected. Male Muslim refugees who refused to accept food from female volunteers should go hungry, she said."

Merkel & Macron Called King & Queen of Europe

Merkel & Macron Called King & Queen of Europe

Euro News calls German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron the king and queen of Europe. 

Choreographed or not, the moment epitomised the unity and common purpose that the two leaders want to present, now that a British Prime Minister is no longer able to build alliances to challenge their countries' positions as the pre-eminent forces of the European Union.

It appears that Brexit has only driven them closer together. Not only do they finish each other's sentences, but they broke with tradition at the EU Summit, giving a joint press conference.

The German Chancellor has heaps of problems on her plate, including forming a government in limbo after the September elections. Leaders of Germany's center-left Social Democrats (SPD) agreed on Friday to enter talks on a new government led by Merkel conservative Union bloc (CDU). Merkel's earlier attempts to form a coalition with two smaller parties collapsed in November. What seems clear is that SPD is seeking an arrangement that will keep Merkel as Chancellor and thwart any possibilities that the German government will collapse. 

In France, Emmanuel Macron's popularity has recovered in what Politico Europe calls an 'unprecedented' bounceback. Fifty-two percent of respondents in a new poll are now satisfied with Macron's presidency, an increase of six points.

Angela Merkel's CDU Party Wins German Election But Must Form Govt With Greens & Free Liberals

FABRIZIO BENSCH / REUTERS

Angela Merkel's CDU Party Wins German Election But Must Form Govt With Greens & Free Liberals

Politico Europe shares news of Angela Merkel's victory as the Germany chancellor's Conservative party posts its worst score in national elections since 1949.  Likewise, the second-place Social Democrats (SPD) lost votes to the third-place, far-right finishers. 

“We don’t need to beat about the bush, we had hoped for a better result. But we should not forget that we had a very challenging parliamentary term behind us,” Merkel told supporters at the headquarters of her CDU party.

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“We have the task of forming a government.”

With the Social Democrats saying they will now become an opposition party, Merkel will be trying to form a governing coalition with the liberal Free Democrats (estimated 10.5 percent) and the Greens (9.1 percent). Such a coalition has never been attempted in Germany -- although if anyone can thread that needle, it's Angela Merkel. 

Alexander Gauland, one of the leaders of the anti-immigrant AfD, vowed to “hunt” Merkel’s government from its new base in parliament.

Angela Merkel Shares Sober View Of American-German Relationship Under Trump

Angela Merkel Shares Sober View Of American-German Relationship Under Trump

French President Emmanuel Macron swerved to avoid President Trump — so that Macron could be first to greet German Chancellor Angela Merkel instead, as the leaders met in Brussels last week. The American president constantly sought to put himself in the center of every action, or simply refused to be part of the photo op. 

Over the weekend, German Chancellor Merkel painted a sober vision of German-American relations. 

German chancellor Angela Merkel gave a more sobering view of Trump's trip to Europe, arguing yesterday at an election rally in Munich that "The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I've experienced that in the last few days."

Polls show, writes The Atlantic, that German confidence in the United States, already lowered under Obama, has collapsed under Trump to a level barely better than Putin’s Russia. Facing elections in the fall—and reassured that she has gained a congenial partner in France’s President Macron—Merkel has served formal notice that she will lead the German wandering away from the American alliance. 

"We must really take our destiny into our own hands,” she continued, in comments perceived as a rebuke of the presidential visit. Merkel assured Germans that they would remain friends with America, Great Britain, and Russia, but “we must fight for our own future and our fate ourselves as Europeans.”  Read on. 

Angela Merkel Meets With Vladimir Putin, Armed With Her 5-Point Plan For Dealing With Autocratic Strongmen

Angela Merkel Meets With Vladimir Putin, Armed With Her 5-Point Plan For Dealing With Autocratic Strongmen

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is at Russian President Vladimir Putin's summer residence in Sochi for talks on a variety of complex issues. No one is expecting any major breakthroughs in Sochi, writes the BBC. 

In January 2017, Foreign Policy wrote a fascinating piece on how Angela Merkel deals with bullies, noting that Vladimir Putin considers her to be a "dangerous person," according to Russian dissident and former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The chancellor’s astounding record in outfoxing, outlasting, and outmaneuvering full-of-themselves male rivals, however, began before Putin appeared on the scene. Her track record offers the outlines of a go-to plan for dealing with bullies — and, not coincidentally, it dovetails tightly with her top foreign-policy advisor’s five-point plan for taking on Trump.

World's Leading Women Look At Ivanka With Incredulous Silence As She Extols Dad's Support For Women

World's Leading Women Look At Ivanka With Incredulous Silence! A Few Booed!

One unplanned development from the meeting was Chancellor Merkel's accidental revelation of a new global investment  fund for female entrepreneurs that is connected to the Trump administration and the World Bank. 

Dina Powell, President Trump's deputy national security adviser for strategy and senior counselor for economic initiatives, who was in attendance, said that the announcement was unplanned. 

Speaking at a Thursday evening dinner in Washington, DC, welcoming the 2017 class of the Fortune US State Department Global Women's Mentoring Parntership, Powell explained that the announcement was premature, and the details will be forthcoming.  

One wonders if Powell mentioned that the Trump administration's intention is not only to cut off all global funds for contraception and other forms of health assistance for poor women and families, but also to abolish the State Department's  Global Women's Issues Office, a State Department office that fights for the rights of women all over the world and was created by Hillary Clinton in the earliest days of her tenure as Secretary of State. The Trump administration is on the record saying they have no interest in soft power. Note that many Republicans in the Senate support the office as a deterrent to terrorism, and it may well have its defenders.

Will The Berlin Girls Club Confront Ivanka Trump About Her Father's Anti-Contraception Drive In Poor Countries?

Will The Berlin Girls Club Confront Ivanka Trump About Her Father's Anti-Contraception Drive In Poor Countries?

The coverage of Ivanka Trump in the German press in the days leading up to her speech was similar to that at home, where she has been criticized on late night programs like “Saturday Night Live” for being “complicit” in her father’s agenda. The front page of one daily newspaper, Berliner Zeitung, featured a photograph of Ivanka Trump under the headline “First Flusterin,” or “the first whisperer.” 

Ivanka can read the headlines, and anticipating not being taken seriously, having no policy chops, the Trump daughter co-authored an op-ed in The Financial Times, with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, arguing that the estimated 170-year timeline to close the gender pay gap "is unacceptable."

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It's ironic to read Ivanka Trump's commentary about empowering women in developing countries, after her father has decimated family-planning budgets in place under the Obama Administration and instituted when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. 

Angela Merkel: The Last Great Hope Comes To Washington

Angela Merkel: The Last Great Hope Comes To Washington

Cologne Attacks Raise Major Questions About Arab Men & Women's Safety In Western Countries

Cologne Attacks Raise Major Questions About Arab Men & Women's Safety In Western Countries

Over the New Years holiday, Germany experienced significant attacks of a wide-ranging nature on women living there. Writing for The New Yorker, Amy Davidson describes the scene -- NPR estimates that 1000 men gathered by Cologne's famous cathedral and central hub train station -- on New Year's Eve in Cologne as reported in Der Spiegel:

That night, as revellers filled the station platforms and—following a dubious German tradition—tossed firecrackers, they were pushed out into already crowded streets. There, groups of men who, according to eye-witness accounts and subsequent police investigations, were primarily foreigners from nations in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans, targeted women and surrounded them. Some of the men groped and taunted them, while others stole their wallets and their cell phones. Women, accompanied or not, literally ran a ‘gauntlet’ through masses of heavily intoxicated men that words cannot describe.” The atmosphere was “chaotic and shameless.” Women reported men grabbing at their breasts and between their legs, among other violent and sexual assaults. With the press of the crowd, there was nowhere for the women to go and, although they screamed for help, the police had no effective response; the report described them as overwhelmed, and some witnesses said that they seemed to stand by in confusion. The police report expressed relief that no one was killed, but that appears to have been a matter of luck, not the result of any actions on the part of law enforcement. The chief of police has already been pushed into early retirement.

"A lot happened on New Year's Eve in Cologne, much of it contradictory, much of it real, much of it imagined," wrote the staff of Der Spiegel, who obtained an internal police document about the night's events. "Some was happenstance, some was exaggerated and much of it was horrifying."

Israeli Newspapers Photoshop Out Women Leaders From Paris March

Israeli Newspapers Photoshop Out Women Leaders From Paris March

The actual photo from Sunday that included German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and EU foreign affairs, security chief Frederica Mogherini and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt.