Monday Briefing

Merz appears set to be Germany’s next chancellor

Voters in Germany yesterday threw their support behind centrist conservatives with the far right in second place, a sharp rebuke to the nation’s left-leaning government amid unhappiness about immigration and the economy.

The next chancellor will almost certainly be Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democrats. Returns posted early this morning indicated that he had a path to governing Germany with a single coalition partner, the center-left Social Democrats — the relatively stable scenario his party had hoped for. Merz has ruled out allying with the far right.

The election, which was held seven months ahead of schedule, drew the highest voter turnout in decades. The new government will be an essential part of Europe’s response to President Trump’s new world order. Merz has promised to crack down on migrants and to slash taxes and business regulations in a bid to kick-start economic growth.

Alternative for Germany: The far-right party, which routinely flirts with Nazi slogans, took around 21 percent of the vote, evidence of its growing strength in German politics. Members of the party have downplayed the Holocaust and have been linked to plots to overthrow the government.

Quotable: “We have won it,” Merz told supporters in Berlin last night.

Israel sent tanks to the West Bank

Israel said yesterday that it was expanding operations against armed Palestinian groups in the occupied West Bank, deploying tanks in the territory’s north for the first time in two decades.

Defense Minister Israel Katz said tens of thousands of Palestinian residents displaced by Israeli military actions in several West Bank cities would not be allowed to return to their homes. The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it considered Katz’s statements and Israel’s actions to be “a dangerous escalation.”

Context: The tank deployment came after bombs exploded on three buses in Tel Aviv last week. The police said the devices resembled ones made in the West Bank. No one was killed or injured in the blasts.

Cease-fire: Israel delayed the release of 620 Palestinian prisoners after Hamas freed six hostages on Saturday. Each side has accused the other of violating their truce.

Lebanon: Hezbollah put on a show of strength yesterday with an elaborate funeral for its assassinated leader. The militant group hoped the event would revive its battered image.

Zelensky offered to step down if NATO accepted Ukraine

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said yesterday that he was willing to step down for peace, offering an unlikely trade: his departure for Ukraine’s entry into NATO. It was not immediately clear whether he’d seriously considered resigning or was merely responding to the latest jabs from President Trump and Moscow.

Zelensky has continued to push back against Trump’s insistence that he sign a deal granting the U.S. billions’ worth of Ukraine’s minerals.

More than 30 countries will participate in meetings today as a kind of coalition backing Ukraine’s war effort, according to Zelensky, who said the talks would focus on military aid and security guarantees to enforce any potential cease-fire.

Kneeling in the snow: For two neighboring Ukrainian villages with just 400 people between them, a single battlefield casualty is a loss for everyone.

More on the Trump administration

• Trump appointees in charge of U.S.A.I.D. said they were firing 2,000 workers and putting many others overseas on paid leave.

• Misinformation propagated by Trump — that Americans pay for condoms for Hamas, or that Ukraine started the war with Russia — is laying the groundwork for radical change.

• The F.B.I. director, the director of national intelligence and other top leaders told staff to ignore Elon Musk’s demand that federal employees summarize their accomplishments.

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended Trump’s firing of the nation’s top military officer, arguing that he was “not the right man for the moment.”

• Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has accused security agencies of eroding privacy and civil liberties.

• At town halls in their home states, Republican lawmakers are confronting constituents angry over Trump’s agenda.

• She risked her life when she converted to Christianity in Iran. When she fled the country, she ran right into Trump’s deportation policy.

• Track Trump’s actions since he took office.

MORE TOP NEWS

• Entertainment: See the best red carpet looks from the Screen Actors Guild Awards, including Timothée Chalamet’s.

• Sudan: The Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group fighting Sudan’s military, signed a charter with its allies meant to establish a parallel government.

• France: A doctor was accused of raping or sexually assaulting 299 people, mostly patients and mostly children, in the country’s largest-ever pedophilia case.

• Germany: The suspect in the stabbing of a tourist at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial on Friday may have planned for weeks to kill Jewish people, according to the authorities.

• Vatican: Pope Francis is suffering from “initial, mild kidney failure” in addition to the serious respiratory illness that has left him in critical condition, church officials said.

• Disease: Outbreaks of measles in parts of Texas and New Mexico have sickened nearly 100 people, a number expected to rise, according to state health officials.

• New York City: At least three people died and one was still missing after a boat capsized near Staten Island.

• Film: The Norwegian drama “Dreams (Sex Love)” won the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.

• Space: A decade after the dream of mining asteroids in deep space crashed and burned, the private company AstroForge is about to try again.

SPORTS NEWS

• Soccer: Liverpool extended their lead atop the Premier League table to 11 points with a comfortable 2-0 win over Manchester City.

• Formula 1: Fans’ booing of Max Verstappen and Christian Horner has been condemned by the sport’s governing body.

• Basketball: Why watching Kevin Durant’s pregame ritual is like watching prime Tiger Woods on the driving range.

• Skiing: Mikaela Shiffrin yesterday won the 100th World Cup race of her storied career, topping the podium in a slalom in Sestriere, Italy.

MORNING READ

When a gunman killed two of her students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Ivy Schamis was the only adult in the room.

In the months that followed, students called and texted her with their grief, their panic attacks, their drug use, their suicidal thoughts. What their own parents could not fully understand — the worst moment of their lives — their teacher could.

Lives lived: Carlos Diegues, a director who celebrated Brazil and helped to forge a new path for cinema in his country, died at 84.

CONVERSATION STARTERS

• Beyond labels: The Tate Modern in London is paying homage to the performer Boy George once described as “modern art on legs.”

• It takes a village: A writer bought a house looking for a refuge. What she really needed was a community.

• Unwitting doppelgänger: Meghan Markle’s new brand is called As Ever. A Brooklyn businessman’s been using that name for a decade.

• Work friend: Is it fair for management to dock someone’s bonus because she had a baby?

ARTS AND IDEAS

A pharoah’s resting place

Archaeologists say they have found the tomb of Thutmose II, who is believed to have reigned around 1480 B.C.

The burial chamber is thought to have been built by Thutmose’s wife, Hatshepsut, who reigned after his death. Though the tomb was not filled with riches as Tutankhamen’s was, it contained clues — like alabaster jars and fragments of the royal netherworld book — that could offer insights into Egypt’s cosmopolitan 18th dynasty. Read more here.

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