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Germany’s foreign ministry has pushed back after Marco Rubio criticised the country’s decision to designate the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party a “confirmed rightwing extremist” force incompatible with its constitution.
“This is democracy,” the ministry said in a post on X, adding that the courts would have the final say and that “we have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped”. The US secretary of state had called the move “tyranny in disguise”.
The spat unfolded as the US continued its crackdown on pro-Palestinian free speech, with nine activists arrested at an encampment at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.
Here are the key stories at a glance:
Germany pushes back after Rubio defends AfD
Germany’s foreign ministry has hit back at the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, after he called on Berlin to reverse course over a decision to label the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party a “confirmed rightwing extremist group”.
On Thursday, Rubio took to X and wrote: “Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That’s not democracy – it’s tyranny in disguise.”
The German foreign ministry pushed back in its own statement, saying: “This is democracy. This decision is the result of a thorough and independent investigation to protect our constitution and the rule of law.”
Nine arrested as police disband pro-Palestinian encampment at Swarthmore
The Swarthmore borough police department disbanded a four-day pro-Palestinian encampment on Swarthmore College’s campus and arrested nine activists.
The demonstration calling on the Pennsylvania college to divest from the tech company Cisco due to its ties to the Israeli government was a rare uprising in an academic year where higher-education institutions have been quick to quash them.
Court backs Trump administration over VoA employees
A federal appeals court has foiled a plan to return more than 1,000 Voice of America (VoA) workers to their desks after an earlier court ruling granted a temporary stay on Donald Trump’s executive order dismantling the US taxpayer-funded news service for overseas listeners.
Mass resignations at labor department threaten US workers, staff warn
A “catastrophic” exodus of thousands of employees from the US Department of Labor threatens “all of the core aspects of working life”, insiders have warned, amid fears that the Trump administration will further slash the agency’s operations.
SpaceX employees vote to create own town called ‘Starbase’
Voters in a small patch of south Texas voted on Saturday to give Elon Musk a town to call his own, officially creating a new city called Starbase in the area where Musk’s SpaceX holds rocket launches.
What else happened today:
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The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, signed a law on Saturday making more than 5 million students eligible to use state funds for private schools, a watershed moment in the conservative campaign to remake public education in the US.
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A Guatemalan immigrant who crossed the US border eight months pregnant and gave birth in Arizona has avoided fast-track deportation after intervention by the state’s governor.
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Donald Trump posted an AI-generated photo showing himself as the pope ahead of this week’s gathering of cardinals to choose a new leader, drawing instant outrage on X.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 2 May 2025.
