Friedrich Merz was elected chancellor of Germany after facing a historic loss in the Bundestag. In the second round, 325 lawmakers voted for Merz, bringing him past the 316-vote threshold. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has already demanded that Merz step down and call for new elections following his loss in the first round.

Merz’s initial loss marked a historic moment, as it was the first of its kind in post-war Germany.

The result came as a major upset, as Merz was widely expected to win, thanks to a coalition deal involving his party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU); its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU); and the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

In February, Merz led his party to a federal election victory and later signed the deal that many assumed would secure him the votes needed to become chancellor. However, on Tuesday, Merz received 310 votes—falling short by six—as at least 18 Members of the German Parliament in the coalition did not back him, according to Reuters.

To secure the position of chancellor, Merz would have needed to win 316 out of 630 in the Bundestag. The coalition of CSU/CDU and SPD has 328 seats, more than enough to secure a majority victory. However, Merz received 310 votes, while 307 members voted against him and nine others abstained.

Despite his unexpected loss, Merz is not out of luck. The Bundestag now has 14 days to elect the next chancellor, and Merz still has a chance of winning the position. Germany’s socialist Left Party, however, is pushing to hold another round of chancellor elections as soon as Wednesday, according to Germany-based news outlet DW.

Merz had already lined up victory trips to France and Poland on Wednesday, Reuters reported, though it is unclear whether he will proceed with the visits as planned following the defeat.

The governors of six northeastern U.S. states have invited the premiers of six Canadian provinces to meet in Boston as both sides face the impacts of tariffs.

President Donald Trump’s policy of imposing tariffs on products imported from America’s northern neighbor and other nations has sparked controversy both in the U.S. and abroad.

The group of governors includes five Democrats — Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, and Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee — and one Republican — Vermont Gov. Phil Scott.

The governors are inviting the premiers of the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Québec, Healey and Mills press releases indicate.

‘While the international uproar over tariffs threatens to upend the economies of our respective communities, we write to reaffirm our friendship and unique interdependence. Ours is a cherished relationship that is founded not only on mutual financial advantages but also on centuries-old familial and cultural bonds that supersede politics,’  the U.S. politicians said in their invitation.

‘As Governors of the Northeast, we want to keep open lines of communication and cooperation and identify avenues to overcome the hardship of these uninvited tariffs and help our economies endure. As we continue to navigate this period of great uncertainty, we are committed to preserving cross border travel, encouraging tourism in our respective jurisdictions, and promoting each other’s advantages and amenities,’ they noted.

Trump, who has repeatedly indicated that he would like Canada to become America’s 51st state, is meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday.

‘Meet the Press’ moderator Kristen Welker asked Trump if he would speak to Carney about making the country the 51st state. 

‘I’ll always talk about that. You know why? We subsidize Canada to the tune of $200 billion dollars a year. We don’t need their cars, in fact we don’t want their cars. We don’t need their energy, we don’t even want their energy, we have more than they do. We don’t want their lumber, we have great lumber, all I have to do is free it up from the environmental lunatics. We don’t need anything that they have,’ Trump declared.

Mills said that the economic and cultural relationships between the U.S. and Canada have been ‘strained by the president’s haphazard tariffs and harmful rhetoric targeting our northern neighbors,’ according to the press releases.

Tensions on the Supreme Court have flared this term as justices have clashed with each other and with lawyers at oral arguments amid a wave of Trump-era emergency appeals. 

These exchanges at any other forum would hardly even raise an eyebrow. But at the Supreme Court, where decorum and respect are bedrock principles and underpin even the most casual cross-talk between justices, these recent clashes are significant. 

After one particularly acrimonious exchange, several longtime Supreme Court watchers noted that the behavior displayed was unlike anything they’d seen in ‘decades’ of covering the high court.

Here are two high-profile Supreme Court spats that have made headlines in recent weeks.

Mahmoud v. Taylor

Last month, Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor quarreled briefly during oral arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case focused on LGBTQ-related books in elementary schools and whether parents with religious objections can ‘opt out’ children being read such material. 

The exhange occurred when Sotomayor asked Mahmoud attorney Eric Baxter about a book titled ‘Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,’ a story that invoked a same-sex relationship. Sotomayor asked Baxter whether exposure to same-sex relationships in children’s books like the one in question should be considered ‘coercion.’

Baxter began responding when Alito chimed in.

‘I’ve read that book as well as a lot of these other books,’ Alito said. ‘Do you think it’s fair to say that all that is done in ‘Uncle Bobby’s Wedding’ is to expose children to the fact that there are men who marry other men?’

After Baxter objected, Alito noted that the book in question ‘has a clear message’ but one that some individuals with ‘traditional religious beliefs don’t agree with.’

Sotomayor jumped in partway through Alito’s objection, ‘What a minute, the reservation is – ‘

‘Can I finish?’ Alito said to Sotomayor in a rare moment of frustration. 

He continued, ‘It has a clear moral message, and it may be a good message. It’s just a message that a lot of religious people disagree with.’

‘There is a growing heat to the exchanges between the justices,’ Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley observed on social media after the exchange. 

A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools

The Sotomayor-Alito spat made some court-watchers uncomfortable. But it paled in comparison to the heated, tense exchange that played out just one week later between Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and Lisa Blatt, a litigator from the firm Williams & Connolly.

The exchange took place during oral arguments in A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools, a case about whether school districts can be held liable for discriminating against students with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. 

Gorsuch scolded Blatt, an experienced Supreme Court litigator who was representing the public schools in the case, after she accused the other side of ‘lying.’ 

What played out was a remarkably heated exchange, if only by Supreme Court standards. Several court observers noted that they had never seen Gorsuch so angry, and others remarked they had never seen counsel accuse the other side of ‘lying.’

‘You believe that Mr. Martinez and the Solicitor General are lying? Is that your accusation?’ Gorsuch asked Blatt, who fired back, ‘Yes, absolutely.’

 Counsel ‘should be more careful with their words,’ Gorsuch told Blatt in an early tone of warning.

‘OK, well, they should be more careful in mischaracterizing a position by an experienced advocate of the Supreme Court, with all due respect,’ Blatt responded.

Several minutes later, Gorsuch referenced the lying accusation again, ‘Ms. Blatt, I confess I’m still troubled by your suggestion that your friends on the other side have lied.’

‘I’d ask you to reconsider that phrase,’ he said. ‘You can accuse people of being incorrect, but lying, lying is another matter.’

He then began to read through quotations that she had entered before the court, before she interrupted again. 

‘I’m not finished,’ Gorsuch told Blatt, raising his voice.

‘Fine,’ she responded.

Shortly after, Gorsuch asked Blatt to withdraw her earlier remarks that accused the other side of lying.

‘Withdraw your accusation, Ms. Blatt,’ Gorsuch said.

‘Fine, I withdraw,’ she shot back.

Plaintiffs said in rebuttal that they would not dignify the name-calling.

The exchange sparked some buzz online, including from an experienced appeals court litigator, Raffi Melkonian, who wrote on social media, ‘I’ve never heard Justice Gorsuch so angry.’

‘Both of those moments literally stopped me in my tracks,’ said Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. ‘You might want to listen somewhere where you can cringe in peace.’

‪Mark Joseph Stern‬, a court reporter for Slate, described the exchange as ‘extremely tense’ and described Blatt’s behavior as ‘indignant and unrepentant.’

A new study exposing a significant number of ‘serious adverse events’ occurring among women who have taken mifepristone, also known as the ‘abortion pill,’ has sparked an outcry from the pro-life community, including experts who spoke to Fox News Digital about what the study means for women in the United States. 

‘The biggest thing that will shock most readers of this report is just how different the findings in this study are from what the FDA claims on the abortion drug label,’ Katie Glenn Daniel, SBA Pro Life America director of legal affairs, told Fox News Digital about the recently released study. 

‘What they found is that more than one in ten women will go to the emergency room seeking follow-up care after taking the abortion drugs. The FDA claims that’s more like one in 20 women, which is still concerning, right? If you’ve got a one in twenty chance of something happening, you might take that seriously, but one in 10. It is shocking,’ she continued. ‘This means hundreds of thousands of American women have gone to the hospital for complications from abortions through these abortion drugs and the FDA was not collecting information about those situations. So this study shines a light on what has been happening, what ER doctors certainly know is happening. But what our public health institutions have turned a blind eye to.’

Mifepristone is a ‘pregnancy blocker’ that is used in combination with another medication, misoprostol, to terminate pregnancies, according to Mayo Clinic. It is also used to manage early miscarriages, as it helps prepare the body to empty the uterus.

Research by the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., has revealed that the rate of serious side effects is 22 times higher than what is indicated on the FDA-approved drug label.

After going through an abortion assisted by mifepristone, nearly 11% of women — more than one in 10 — reported experiencing ‘infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious or life-threatening adverse event,’ according to the study summary.

‘These reports, which analyzed the largest known data set of real-world mifepristone use, confirm what physicians like me and our members are seeing in our clinical practice: that abortion drugs pose significant dangers to women,’ Dr. Christina Francis, a board-certified OB/GYN, told Fox News Digital. 

‘I have had patients face life-threatening hemorrhage, infection, and more after taking these drugs, which are now available to order online without an in-person physician visit to confirm the age of the pregnancy and rule out risk factors. The fact that these data show a serious complication rate that is 22 times higher than what the FDA states reveals the urgent need for further investigation into complications of drug-induced abortions and for policymakers and agencies to reprioritize women’s safety over the interests of the abortion industry. Women and their children deserve better care than these dangerous drugs.’

Mifepristone, which the Biden administration took steps to ensure was made available to women through the mail, is the most well-known abortion pill in the United States, and approximately 63% of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023 were medication abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute. 

This was an increase from 53% in 2020.

We knew that the Biden administration’s changes to the abortion drug prescribing, which included allowing these drugs to be sent through to mail. We knew that that was harmful for women and girls because there is no medical oversight,’ Daniel told Fox News Digital. ‘You don’t even know if a pregnant woman’s getting these drugs. There have been cases where men order these drugs, to slip them to somebody. The state of Louisiana has a case right now where a mother ordered them and forced her daughter to take them, even though the pregnancy was wanted. So you really lose a lot of the safeguards that are in place when somebody actually physically goes to a doctor’s office.’

Daniel told Fox News Digital she hopes this report will encourage the Trump administration’s FDA to take action to ensure that women and unborn children are protected. 

A drug that puts one in ten women in the hospital is certainly not a drug that is quote unquote good for women or caring for women and I think we need to be realistic about that,’ Daniel said. 

Daniel also explained that the true harm from the pill is likely even worse than the study only includes certain years and only women who used insurance.

‘So there are tons of women, including those who are the most vulnerable, who are left out of this data,’ Daniel pointed out. 

‘There is a lot more to look out here,’ Daniel continued. ‘We see this as the starting point of what the FDA, the CDC, our public health institutions, and our physicians need to be looking at. And we need to have an honest conversation about the fact that 20 years of data shows that these drugs are deadly for children, but they’re also very dangerous for in girls.’

Fox News Digital’s Melissa Rudy contributed to this report

Friedrich Merz, the conservative leader who was poised to become Germany’s next chancellor, failed to win enough votes to secure the country’s top position.

This leaves German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in power even though he had already delivered a farewell address. Merz’s loss marks a historic moment, as it is the first of its kind in post-war Germany.

The result came as a major upset, as Merz was widely expected to win, thanks to a coalition deal involving his party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU); its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU); and the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

In February, Merz led his party to a federal election victory and later signed the deal that many assumed would secure him the votes needed to become chancellor. However, on Tuesday, Merz received 310 votes—falling short by six—as at least 18 Members of the German Parliament in the coalition did not back him, according to Reuters.

To secure the position of chancellor, Merz would have needed to win 316 out of 630 in the Bundestag. The coalition of CSU/CDU and SPD has 328 seats, more than enough to secure a majority victory. However, Merz received 310 votes, while 307 members voted against him and nine others abstained.

Despite his unexpected loss, Merz is not out of luck. The Bundestag now has 14 days to elect the next chancellor, and Merz still has a chance of winning the position. Germany’s socialist Left Party, however, is pushing to hold another round of chancellor elections as soon as Wednesday, according to Germany-based news outlet DW.

Merz had already lined up victory trips to France and Poland on Wednesday, Reuters reported, though it is unclear whether he will proceed with the visits as planned following the defeat.

A resurfaced clip of Dem. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a member of the progressive ‘Squad’ in Congress, sparked a frenzy on social media this week with conservatives blasting the congresswoman over her comments regarding the ‘radicalization of White men.’

‘I would say our country should be more fearful of White men across our country, because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country,’ Omar said in a 2018 interview with Al-Jazeera while discussing the domestic terrorism threats in the United States and responding to a question on how much concern ‘jihadism’ poses to the United States. 

 ‘And so if fear was the driving force of policies to keep America safe, Americans safe inside of this country, we should be profiling, monitoring, and creating policies to fight the radicalization of White men.’

The clip, posted by conservative influencer accounts including Laura Loomer and LibsofTikTok with millions of impressions, sparked outrage from conservatives on social media, including from inside the White House. 

‘This isn’t just sick; it’s actually genocidal language,’ Vice President JD Vance posted on X. ‘What a disgrace this person is.’

‘This is blatant racism,’ GOP Sen. Mike Lee posted on X. ‘Who condemns it?’

‘@ilhanMN never ceases to be an embarrassment for Minnesota,’ GOP Majority Whip Rep. Tom Emmer, who represents Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, posted on X. 

‘There’s never been a more anti-American member of Congress than Ilhan Omar,’ conservative influencer Paul Szypula posted on X. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Omar’s office for comment. 

The social media firestorm comes shortly after Omar sparked controversy for telling Daily Caller News Foundation reporter Myles Morell to ‘f— off’ after he asked her a question about fellow Democratic Party figures traveling to El Salvador to defend illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported to the country by the Trump administration.

Omar later responded to the clip being shared on X, stating, ‘I said what I said. You and all your miserable trolls can f— off.’