The situation in the morning - Do the Greens no longer like Annalena Baerbock?

Highlights: SPIEGEL editor-in-chief Dirk Kurbjuweit advocates using all instruments of defensive democracy against the AfD, including the legal ones. Annalena Baerbock was once the favorite of the Greens, it had a lot to do with her roots in the party and parliamentary group. Today love has grown cold. The Chancellery currently seems out of reach for the Greens - and perhaps that is precisely the reason that Baerbocks is showing less and less consideration for her party.

The green love for Annalena Baerbock is growing cold. The US launches retaliatory strikes in Iraq and Syria. And Germany's most popular politician is unpopular among his employees. This is the situation on Saturday morning.

Weekend of demonstrations

For a good three weeks, people all over Germany have been taking to the streets against right-wing extremism - and they are not getting tired. Numerous demonstrations are planned again for the weekend; the dpa news agency lists more than three dozen rallies for today alone. The largest is likely to take place in Berlin: 100,000 participants are registered for the protest in front of the Reichstag building.

There is no question that these demonstrations are important, they are a good sign. People are standing up against right-wing extremist fantasies of expulsion; they have understood what would happen to our country if the AfD came to power.

But the protests alone will probably not be enough to defend democracy, to weaken the AfD to the point where it can no longer dream of governing. So what to do? As the saying goes, you have to fight the party politically. But the current strength of the AfD shows how little this has worked so far.

In his essay, SPIEGEL editor-in-chief Dirk Kurbjuweit advocates using all instruments of defensive democracy against the AfD, including the legal ones. Deprivation of basic rights against Björn Höcke, ban on parties, nothing should be left unturned - even if you run the risk of failure.

It would be even worse to walk towards the abyss with your eyes open.

Read the essay here: Why it would be wrong to spare the AfD a ban procedure

Baerbock's unreasonable demands

Annalena Baerbock was once the favorite of the Greens. When she became candidate for chancellor in 2021, it had a lot to do with her roots in the party and parliamentary group. She cultivated her networks and caressed her green soul – unlike Robert Habeck.

Today love has grown cold. Baerbock has been Foreign Minister for more than two years, she travels a lot, that's what the job entails. The world's crises demand your full attention. There isn't much time left for green landscaping at home.

And then these foreign policy impositions: Baerbock's yes to the EU asylum reform, to arms exports to Saudi Arabia - many Greens no longer recognize the Annalena Baerbock from before.

The estrangement between the minister and her party is continuing, write my colleagues from the SPIEGEL capital office. The question arises what this means for the candidate for chancellor in 2025. Although: The Chancellery currently seems out of reach for the Greens - and perhaps that is precisely the reason that Baerbock is showing less and less consideration for her party.

Read more here: How Annalena Baerbock alienates herself from her party

Mutiny against the maker

Boris Pistorius, the polls say, is the most popular politician in the republic. On the other hand, the Defense Minister is currently not making friends with his employees.

The SPD man, who has been in office for about a year, wants to convert the cumbersome apparatus of his house - into an "agile and effective ministry that is able to lead and act in any situation," as Pistorius describes it in a letter to the staff.

The restructuring is by no means radical, but the staff council is now mutinous, as my colleague Marina Kormbaki and my colleague Matthias Gebauer found out. The head of the staff council writes that they are not supporting the reorganization; there is “considerable unrest and dissatisfaction” among the employees.

The reputation of a doer that Pistorius has earned is well received by people outside. In his authority, which has two offices (Berlin and Bonn) and around 3,000 employees, people prefer not to have too much energy.

More background here: Staff council mutinies against Pistorius

The retaliatory strikes

It was Friday afternoon on the US East Coast and late evening in the Middle East when America struck back: 85 targets in seven locations, four of them in Syria, three in Iraq - bombs and rockets were shot down at weapons depots, command and intelligence centers of pro-Iranian militias, among other things of Type B1 long-range strategic bombers that had flown in from the USA.

It had been clear for five days

that

the counterattack would come. On Sunday, two reservists were killed in a drone attack by one of these militias on a US base on the Syrian-Jordanian border. “The only question was when the counterattack would take place,” reports my colleague Bernhard Zand. Operationally and tactically, the flying weather in the Middle East seems to have been the deciding factor. "But also politically, the visibility obviously had to be clarified before the (probably only) first salvo of this counterattack could be fired."

The attack on the US base last Sunday hit Biden's government at an extremely sensitive time: Washington is currently in the process of defusing a number of problems in the Middle East at the same time, each more pressing than the other.

Read more here: America's First Salvo

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Today's starting question: Where are the ABC Islands?

Loser of the week...

... is the town of Meckenheim near Bonn. On a municipal property, 1,200 trees that the German Children's Direct Aid Foundation had planted there in 2020 were cut down unnecessarily. Children sponsored the trees, gave them name tags and watered them.

Now the trees are gone. According to WDR, the city administration speaks of a “terrible oversight”. Accordingly, a company was actually commissioned to prepare an adjacent property for planting additional trees. The areas were clearly marked.

The latest reports from the night

Milei's reform package clears the first hurdle in Argentina's parliament:
It is a success for Argentina's new head of state: Parliament has basically voted for his controversial reform plans. Starting next week, the individual legislative plans will be voted on in detail.
Trump's trial for attempted election fraud should start later:
Donald Trump was actually supposed to stand trial for attempted election fraud in a federal court in Washington from March 4th. The date has now been postponed due to outstanding legal issues.
Erdoğan appoints new head of the central bank:
Hafize Gaye Erkan's term as governor of the Turkish central bank lasted less than eight months. After her resignation following corruption allegations, her previous deputy, Fathi Karahan, is moving up.

The SPIEGEL+ recommendations for today

"Their aim is to divide our society":
16,500 cases of disinformation uncovered, and almost all of them came from Russia: Lutz Güllner, head of the EU Department for Strategic Communications, reports on the fight against such campaigns - and the pitfalls of his work .
Europe was caught off guard:
it cost Germany a lot to free itself from its dependence on Russian natural gas. But the new partner USA may not be quite as reliable as hoped, as a recent decision by Joe Biden shows.
Should Germany return the bust to Egypt, Mr. Conrad?
In 1924, Nefertiti's head was shown for the first time in Berlin. Today she is world famous. The historian Sebastian Conrad explains why Egypt now not only wants the bust back, but also the authority to interpret the queen.

I wish you a wonderful weekend.

Heartfelt,

Yours, Philipp Wittrock, head of duty in Los Angeles