Bavaria set to be home to new German gas power plants
Germany's new government is set to build gas plant plants in the southern state of Bavaria, Economy Minister Ketherina Reiche said on Monday.
Attending a meeting of the Bavarian Cabinet in the lakeside resort of Gmund am Tegernsee, Reiche said "two-thirds" of the new capacity would be built in southern Germany as part of a "southern bonus."
Bavaria will be prioritized in "the tender for the first 20 gigawatts that we have planned in Germany," she added.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative-led administration, which took office last month, is promising to bring down electricity prices for energy-intensive industries by constructing new gas-run plants.
The Cabinet is expected to decide on the first measures to relieve businesses by the summer, with a reduction of levies on electricity, grid charges and gas storage.
Reiche said high energy costs are leading companies to make new investments in countries where prices are more favourable.
"Security of supply, climate protection and affordability must come together again in a balanced triangle," said the minister.
Reiche said consultations with the European Commission over the plans are already under way.
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CBS News
12 hours ago
- CBS News
Hungary's LGTBQ community defies government ban to march in Budapest Pride
With rainbow flags flying high, tens of thousands of LGBTQ Hungarians and their supporters took to the streets of Budapest for a Pride parade, defying a government ban and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's legal threats against activists. Organizers for the 30th edition of the Pride march in the Hungarian capital said they expect a record turnout of more than 35,000 people. A person attends the Budapest Pride March in Budapest, Hungary, June 28, 2025. Lisa Leutner / REUTERS "This is about much more, not just about homosexuality, .... This is the last moment to stand up for our rights," Eszter Rein Bodi, one of the marchers, told Reuters. "None of us are free until everyone is free," one sign read. Orbán's populist party in March fast-tracked a law through parliament that made it an offense to hold or attend events that "depict or promote" homosexuality to minors aged under 18. Orbán earlier made clear that Budapest Pride was the explicit target of the law. People carry a Rainbow flag as they take part in the Budapest Pride parade in downtown Budapest on June 28, 2025. ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP via Getty Images Hungary's recent law allows authorities to use facial recognition tools to identify individuals who attend a prohibited event. Being caught could result in fines of up to 200,000 Hungarian forints ($586). Organizers face up to one year in prison. But on Friday, Pride organizers, along with Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony, European Commissioner Hadja Lahbib and Vice President of the European Parliament Nicolae Stefanuta, said the march will take place Saturday despite official threats of heavy fines for participants and even jail time for the liberal mayor. "The government is always fighting against an enemy against which they have to protect Hungarian people ... This time, it is sexual minorities that are the target," Karácsony told a news conference. "We believe there should be no first and second class citizens, so we decided to stand by this event." Participants on Saturday remained defiant. "I am proud to be gay... and I am very scared that the government wants to bring us down. I am very surprised that there are so many people, I want to cry," a 66-year-old participant, who gave only his first name, Zoltan, told AFP. People pose for a photographer as they take part in the Budapest Pride parade in downtown Budapest on June 28, 2025. PETER KOHALMI/AFP via Getty Images One woman told CBS News partner BBC she was attending because she wants a country of "diversity" for her children. "We have a law that bans people who are different from others to gather. This is why we are here. Because it's hurting our rights. That's why we came," Luca, 34, said. She told the BBC she is worried about her 4-year-old daughter's future living "in a country where she can't love anyone she wants to." Critics of the Pride ban and other Hungarian legislation targeting LGBTQ+ communities say the policies are reminiscent of similar restrictions against sexual minorities in Russia. Orbán, seen as Russian President Vladimir Putin's closest ally in the European Union, has in recent years prohibited same-sex adoption and banned any LGBTQ+ content, including in television, films, advertisements and literature that is available to minors. His government argues that exposure to such content negatively affects children's development. But opponents say the moves are part of a broader effort to scapegoat sexual minorities and consolidate his conservative base. People attend The Budapest Pride March in Budapest, Hungary, June 28, 2025. Lisa Leutner / REUTERS Speaking to state radio on Friday, Orbán downplayed the possibility of violent clashes between police and participants, but warned that attending Pride "will have legal consequences." "Of course, the police could break up such events, because they have the authority to do so, but Hungary is a civilized country, a civic society. We don't hurt each other," he said. More than 70 members of the European Parliament, as well as other officials from countries around Europe, are expected to participate in Saturday's march. Lahbib, the European Commissioner, said Friday that "all eyes are on Budapest" as Pride marchers defy the government's ban. "The EU is not neutral on hate," she said. "We cannot stay passive. We cannot tolerate what is intolerable." Counter demonstrations On Thursday, radical right-wing party Our Homeland Movement announced it had requested police approval to hold assemblies at numerous locations across the city, many of them on the same route as the Pride march. A neo-Nazi group said it too would gather Saturday at Budapest City Hall, from which the Pride march is set to depart. The group declared that only "white, Christian, heterosexual men and women" were welcome to attend its demonstration. A spokesman of a far-right Hungarian organization speaks to journalists at their protest in the same place as the 30th Budapest Pride March in Budapest, Hungary, on July 28. Balint Szentgallay/NurPhoto via Getty Images A woman, who only gave her first name as Katalin, told AFP on Saturday she agreed with the ban though she hoped there would be no clashes. "Disgusting... it's become a fad to show off ourselves," she said.
Newsweek
14 hours ago
- Newsweek
Thousands Attend Banned Budapest Pride in Defiance of Viktor Orban
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets for Budapest Pride on Saturday in defiance of attempts by the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to ban the event. Dozens of members of the European Parliament joined the procession in support of the event in the Hungarian capital as the 30th annual event went ahead despite moves by the government to push back against LGBTQ+ rights. Renáta Uitz, a leading constitutional law expert at the CEU Democracy Institute, told Newsweek on Saturday from the middle of the event that it was a "mass demonstration for freedom and against the government." Newsweek has contacted the Hungarian government for comment. A participant poses with a placard reading 'Many colours are a class' during the Budapest Pride march, on June 28, 2025 in Budapest, despite a governmental ban of the event. A participant poses with a placard reading 'Many colours are a class' during the Budapest Pride march, on June 28, 2025 in Budapest, despite a governmental ban of the It Matters Orbán's government has amended laws and the constitution this year to prohibit the annual celebration as part of a clampdown on LGBTQ+ rights on "child protection" grounds. The government also said it would use facial recognition software to identify people attending any banned events which has been condemned internationally as showing its intent for weakening democratic institutions at the heart of the EU. Saturday's protest is a rallying cry against Orbán's policies and will likely deal a political blow to the leader of the Fidesz party who faces re-election next year. What To Know Crowds gathered in Budapest for the city's 30th annual Pride march in which demonstrators carried signs reading "Solidarity with Budapest Pride" and waved placards bearing crossed-out illustrations of Orbán. Saturday's procession started a 3 p.m. local time and grew bigger as it wended through the city's historic center to its riverside roads, CNN reported, proceeding in defiance of a police ban imposed this year under sweeping new legislation that prohibits LGBTQ+ events nationwide. Ursula von der Leyen, EU Commission president, posted her support on X and EU lawmakers attended the event. I call on the Hungarian authorities to allow the Budapest Pride to go ahead. Without fear of any criminal or administrative sanctions against the organisers or participants. To the LGBTIQ+ community in Hungary and beyond: I will always be your ally. — Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) June 25, 2025 In response, Orbán posted on X for the European Commission "to refrain from interfering in the law enforcement affairs of member states." Dear Madam President, I urge the European Commission to refrain from interfering in the law enforcement affairs of Member States, where it has no role to play. I also call on the Commission to focus its efforts on the pressing challenges facing the European Union—areas where it… — Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) June 25, 2025 Uitz, from the CEU Democracy Institute, said it was no ordinary Pride event but a demonstration for freedom and opposition to Orban's government. Uitz said the best that Orban can do is to save face and present it as a street party rather than a demonstration against the government. "The political and moral credit goes to Mayor (Gergely) Karácsony and his support for a brave civil society initiative," Uitz said. On April 15, the Hungarian Parliament adopted its 15th constitutional amendment which mandated binary gender recognition in the Constitution and empowered authorities to restrict LGBTQ+ events, citing "child protection." Uitz told Newsweek in April that this was a move by the ruling Fidesz party for a new social contract but raised questions about Hungary's direction, especially as the country positions itself between Western alliances and illiberal role models. What People Are Saying Renáta Uitz, a leading constitutional law expert at the CEU Democracy Institute, to Newsweek: "This not an ordinary Pride. It is a mass demonstration for freedom and against the government. "The best Orbán can so to save face is to make sure that it is peaceful and remembered as a street party—not as a protest against the regime." Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, on X: "Thousands of people are marching for pride in repression we stand and rise. We resist. This is trans-national civil disobedience." Ursula von der Leyen, EU Commission president, on X: "To the LGBTIQ+ community in Hungary and beyond: I will always be your ally." What Happens Next Orbán has said that police would not break up the Pride march but warned those who took part should be aware of "legal consequence." There will be anticipation over whether under legal changes, those attending may face fines of up to 500 euros ($590), with tougher sentences possible for organizers, which could prompt more condemnation from the EU.
Atlantic
19 hours ago
- Atlantic
The Red State Where Republicans Aren't Afraid of Trump
Donald Trump's least favorite House Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, likes to do an exaggerated impression of the president. As he recounted a long-ago phone call from Trump before a crowd of supporters in his district, Massie dropped the register of his voice to an octave resembling Yogi Bear's. 'It started out with: I'm more libertarian than you are,' Massie said. 'And it ended with: Well, you're going to get a primary if you vote for this.' The eruption that followed created a scene that you're unlikely to see anywhere else in America these days: a roomful of Republicans laughing at Trump's expense. The 54-year-old has been frustrating Trump since the beginning of the president's first term. The two are now fighting over the extent of Trump's war powers—Massie called the air strikes on Iran unconstitutional—and the president's 'big, beautiful bill,' which the seventh-term lawmaker opposed, one of just two House Republicans to do so. Massie is frequently a lone critic of the president in the 220-member House GOP caucus. But he's not such a solitary voice in the Kentucky delegation. The Bluegrass State backed Trump by 30.5 percentage points last year—one of his largest margins in the country. Nationwide, Republicans are more united around Trump than they've ever been. Yet Kentucky has become a rare hotbed of GOP resistance to the president's agenda. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, an early Trump presidential rival in 2016, is an ideological ally of Massie's; he's criticized the president's tariffs, his expansion of executive authority, and the deficit-busting legislation that contains the bulk of Trump's economic agenda. Then there's the state's senior senator, Mitch McConnell. Liberated from his commitments as Republican leader, the soon-to-retire McConnell has denounced Trump's Ukraine policy and his tariffs. He voted against more of the president's Cabinet nominees—Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary; Robert Kennedy Jr., the health secretary; and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence—than any other GOP senator. McConnell, Paul, and Massie occasionally oppose Trump from different sides. But together they form a powerful bloc among the seven Republicans in Kentucky's eight-man congressional delegation, and their stands against the president are angering many of Trump's diehard supporters in the state, who feel oddly unrepresented by the lawmakers they've sent to Washington. 'We voted for Trump to straighten some things out,' Devon Cain, a 77-year-old retiree, told me outside a farm-supply store in Winchester, a small town outside of Lexington. 'Why a Republican would want to buck him, I don't know.' Mark Wallingford, a physician in rural Mason County, is even more livid. 'I will not vote for Thomas Massie. And if he is unopposed, I just wouldn't vote,' he told me after a local GOP meeting. The clashes between Trump and the Kentucky trio are a sensitive topic among state GOP officials, many of whom are hesitant to take sides against either the popular president or their influential local leaders. 'I'm MAGA all the way, and I'm Massie all the way,' Ken Moellman Sr., a retiree and one of Massie's constituents in northern Kentucky, told me. He compared the Trump-Massie relationship to a marriage. 'Sometimes you disagree, but when you disagree, that doesn't mean you get divorced.' The twice-divorced president seems to be pining for a breakup, however. He has repeatedly called for Massie's defeat in a primary—'GET THIS 'BUM' OUT OF OFFICE, ASAP!!!' Trump posted on Monday—and two of his top allies have formed a Kentucky political action committee to recruit a GOP challenger in Massie's district. The group began running a 30-second ad last week urging voters to 'fire Thomas Massie.' Although Massie has aggressively raised money off the president's attacks, he professes to not care about the threat to his seat. Trump, Massie likes to boast, earned fewer votes in Kentucky's Fourth Congressional District than he did. 'I'm not worried about losing,' he told me last month in the Capitol. To outsiders, Kentucky's politics can be hard to grasp. In some respects, the state is no different than any other Republican stronghold. Outside of the urban centers of Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky is largely rural and conservative. The state has not backed a Democrat for president or for the U.S. Senate since the 1990s. All but one of Kentucky's six House members are Republican, as are the majorities in both chambers of its legislature. But even as the state has gone decisively for Trump the past three elections, it has twice elected a Democratic governor, Andy Beshear. And the pair of Republicans that voters have sent to the Senate, McConnell and Paul, are as different from one another as any two senators from the same party in the country. McConnell is the institutionalist: a Reaganite and a Kentucky power broker who is now one of the last members of the GOP's old guard still serving in Congress. Paul arrived in Washington as part of the Tea Party wave of 2010, having upset a McConnell-backed front-runner in the primary by campaigning as a spending hawk. Massie won election to the House two years later on the Tea Party banner. 'We've always been a bit all over the place in the candidates that we support,' Rick VanMeter, a strategist from Kentucky who has worked for several Republicans in the state, told me. Although McConnell and Paul vote with Trump more often than they cross him, the president lacks a loyalist in the state's most powerful offices. That will probably change after next year's election to fill McConnell's seat, which Republicans will be heavily favored to win. The two leading candidates, Representative Andy Barr and Kentucky's former attorney general Daniel Cameron, are each stressing their support for Trump's agenda. Another contender, Nate Morris—who has ties to Vice President J. D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr.—joined the race this week. None of them is likely to highlight their connection to McConnell, whose popularity among Kentucky Republicans has plummeted in the years since he steered Trump's tax cuts and the president's three Supreme Court nominees through the Senate. (In fact, McConnell has been America's least popular senator for more than four years, according to one metric.) McConnell blamed Trump for the Capitol riot on January 6 (although he voted to acquit him in the Senate's impeachment trial), and he endorsed Trump only reluctantly last year. Multiple falls and freezing spells have slowed the 83-year-old, contributing to his decision not to seek an eighth Senate term in 2026. As I traveled around Kentucky last week, a few Republicans hailed McConnell's past leadership and the billions in funding that he's secured for the state. But hardly anyone I spoke with was sad to see him go. 'I can't stand him. He's a traitor,' Don Reilly, a Trump backer and former president of the Boone County Business Association in northern Kentucky, told me. The conflict among Republicans has put Kentucky Democrats in the awkward position of rooting for Paul, Massie, and McConnell to hold the line against Trump, with the hope that their opposition could force him to retreat on tariffs or sink the president's megabill. Last week I found a group of Democrats demonstrating outside of McConnell's office, urging him to reject the GOP legislation that would slash Medicaid while extending Trump's first-term tax cuts and boosting spending on immigration enforcement and the Pentagon. They were unimpressed by McConnell's more recent criticism of Trump. 'He gets credit for that, but it's too little, too late,' Leah Netherland, a 69-year-old retiree, told me. 'He is in large part responsible for Trump.' Beshear, whose success in a deep-red state has attracted national notice, seems to be watching the GOP infighting with some bemusement. 'If Senator Paul, Senator McConnell, and I all say that tariffs are a bad idea, it's because they're a really bad idea,' the governor told me after a Juneteenth event in Lexington. Yet Beshear can only cheer them on so much. None of the Republicans battling Trump are centrists; Paul and Massie are opposing the president's bill because it doesn't cut spending deeply enough. 'The bill needs to die, but not for the reasons they're talking about,' Beshear said. The louder voices of discontent in Kentucky, however, are coming from Trump's base, which is heeding the president's call to ramp up pressure on his Republican critics. With McConnell retiring and Paul not up for reelection until 2028, the immediate target is Massie. Trump's backers in Washington and Kentucky are casting about for a serious challenger in Massie's district, and a few state legislators are considering the race, Republicans in the state told me. (One conservative, Niki Lee Ethington, a nurse and former parole officer, has launched a campaign, but she is not well known throughout the district.) Massie's base in northern Kentucky has a large libertarian contingent, and since his first reelection in 2014, he's never won fewer than 75 percent of votes in a primary. But a well-funded, Trump-backed campaign, should one emerge, would be something else entirely. In addition to motivating the president's frustrated base, a challenger could activate local Republicans who believe Massie's refusal to fight for the district's share of federal spending has hurt its bid for needed infrastructure projects. 'They're kind of over Massie's schtick,' VanMeter, the GOP strategist, told me. Gallatin County, which sits along the Ohio River about an hour's drive south of Cincinnati, is the second-smallest of Kentucky's 120 counties. It's one of 21 counties in Massie's congressional district, which stretches nearly 200 miles from the outskirts of Louisville to the state's eastern border. Last week, the quarterly meeting of Gallatin's Republican Party drew just eight attendees, who sat around folding tables at the public library in Warsaw, the county seat. The main order of business was a vote on whether to spend some of the roughly $1,800 that the committee had in its campaign account—a number nearly equivalent to Warsaw's population—on new signage for the party to display at festivals, county fairs, and other events. The bickering between Trump and Kentucky's GOP rebels did not come up, and perhaps that was for the best. Like many party organizations in the district, Gallatin's Republicans are divided over the Trump-Massie feud. The committee's vice chair, Wayne Rassman, told me he had grown frustrated with Massie's opposition to the president. 'He's not listening to the people in his district,' Rassman told me. 'I don't know what made him go off the deep end.' The party treasurer, Donna Terry, said that she used to be for Massie but no longer is. 'I'm a little fed up,' she told me. Both of them said they would probably back a primary challenger next year. The chair of Gallatin's GOP is Jim Kinman, a 51-year-old delivery specialist. He accepted the post reluctantly, explaining to me that the state party had told the county committee that it would be disbanded if it didn't elect a slate of officers. When I caught up with Kinman after the meeting, he lowered his voice before wading into the Trump-Massie fracas. He said that he had never gotten into the 'cultish' dynamic surrounding Trump, whom he did not support in 2016. 'Generally, he's done a good job,' Kinman said of the president. But, he added, 'when the rubber meets the road, I'm going to be with Thomas.' Kinman told me that his loyalty to Massie has caused consternation among his fellow Republicans in the area, but he wasn't budging. 'Thomas legitimately is the only person I trust more than myself,' Kinman said. Whereas many Kentucky Republicans want their representatives to back Trump unconditionally, Kinman said he admired Massie's adherence to his longtime principles. He compared him favorably to Paul, who is often aligned with Massie but has been a bit more open to compromise during the Trump era. (Kinman had nothing nice to say about McConnell, referring to him both as 'a snake' and 'the turtle.') 'We got plenty of people that are for rent,' Kinman said of politicians who too easily trade away their values. 'I'm glad that Thomas is not.' Massie was about to go bowling last weekend when Trump bombed Iran. With the House on recess, he was back in his district for an event with the Northern Kentucky Young Republicans, a group filled with his acolytes. The gathering was a relaxed affair—Massie nursed a Michelob Ultra and wore an untucked turquoise polo shirt—and represented a small show of force for his standing in the area. The organization has hosted other prominent Kentucky Republicans, including each of the major potential GOP contenders to replace McConnell in the Senate. But its president, T. J. Roberts, told me that Massie's event was the best attended. At 27, Roberts is the second-youngest state legislator in Kentucky history and one of several conservatives known as 'Massie's Nasties' for their loyalty to the seven-term representative—and for their occasional hardball campaign tactics. Like many at the bowling alley on Saturday night, Roberts said that he admires Massie and Trump with equal fervor. He told me that he didn't take the president's demand for a primary challenge seriously. 'President Trump is using this as a pressure technique against other members who may sway,' Roberts told me. 'It's a smart move. If I were in his shoes, I'd do the same thing.' As for Massie, Roberts said: 'He's inoculated from primaries.' Yet without impugning Trump, Roberts made sure to remind the crowd of around 80 people of Massie's MAGA credentials. 'There is no one who represents MAGA in Congress better than Thomas Massie,' Roberts said. 'He was MAGA before MAGA was a thing.' Massie began his speech by reminding the crowd of his overall support for Trump, but he tackled their disagreements head on, starting with the impending confrontation with Iran. Touting the resolution that he had introduced to block the president from ordering a unilateral military attack, Massie said, 'I have his respect, and he has mine, but he cannot engage us in a war without a vote of Congress.' The crowd applauded his stance. But unbeknownst to Massie, his argument was all but moot: Soon after he left the stage, Trump announced that U.S. warplanes had already struck Iran's nuclear sites. Like Trump, Massie is a storyteller who revels in sharing behind-the-scenes anecdotes that many politicians prefer either to keep private or to divulge without their names attached. Sass is a core part of his image, both in person and on social media, where he frequently uses the tagline #sassywithmassie. (Earlier this week when Vance wondered whether other vice presidents experienced 'as much excitement' as he has, Massie responded on X: 'Ask Mike Pence about his last month,' referring to January 6.) Read: Republicans still can't say no to Trump During his speech, Massie argued that Trump respected him 'because he knows I'm not a yes man' while also slyly mocking the president in ways that few Republicans dare to do in public. Massie described a House Republican conference meeting last month during which Trump droned on about him for so long that he had assumed the president was talking about someone else. At one point, Trump compared Massie with Paul. 'They're both from Kentucky, you can never get them to vote for anything, and they basically have the same hair,' Trump explained, according to Massie. 'Actually,' the president quickly added, 'I like Massie's hair better.' As the crowd at the bowling alley laughed, Massie quipped, 'Take the wins where you can get them!' Despite Massie's outward confidence about the prospect of a Trump-backed primary challenge, he has made some small moves that suggest a desire to declare a truce. He agreed to withdraw his war-powers resolution after Trump announced a cease-fire between Israel and Iran, at least temporarily abandoning the Democrats who planned to push it forward anyway. And although Massie voted against Trump's megabill when it passed the House last month, he insisted that he was open to supporting its final passage if the Senate makes changes to his liking. 'I'm a gettable vote!' he told me after his speech. (He explained his thinking this way to his supporters: 'I'll vote for a crap sandwich. I just want a pickle and two slices of bread.') I posed to Massie the question that had brought me to Kentucky in the first place: Why does a state that voted so strongly for Trump have such a disproportionate share of the president's GOP critics in high office? He replied by invoking Kentucky's divided status in the Civil War. 'We were a border state,' Massie said. 'We are independent in Kentucky, and I don't think you can take our vote for granted, whether it's representatives or constituents.' The coming months will test if that long-ago legacy still applies. Kentucky has clearly picked a side in the modern political wars, and its Republican voters must decide whether to force their remaining elected holdouts to join them.
