Evening Brief, Monday 21 September

Friedrich Merz's CDU endured a double blow in state elections that felt less local than structural. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the AfD won 38.2% and pushed the CDU below the 5% threshold, leaving the party without seats in a state parliament for the first time in postwar German history. In Berlin, Die Linke led with 25.7%, while the CDU trailed at 18.8% and the AfD reached 16.3%.

The numbers show a centre-right party squeezed from both ends, with the AfD harvesting rural and working-class anger in the east while Die Linke turned Berlin's housing and cost-of-living politics into votes.

Friedrich Merz rejected calls to resign and argued that the turbulence now exceeds one leader's fortunes.

Markets treated the result as noise for now, with the DAX rising 1.2%, partly because Germany's largest listed firms sell far beyond Germany. But the federal coalition controls 328 of 630 Bundestag seats, leaving only a modest cushion if conservative dissent hardens. The next test is not whether Friedrich Merz can explain the vote, but whether he can pass tax, pension and growth reforms while his party's regional base cracks beneath him.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed a joint lawsuit after the Trump administration barred their reporters from the White House grounds over the weekend. The outlets asked the federal district court in Washington for an emergency injunction, arguing that the government punished them for their coverage and stripped access without notice or process. The dispute landed while CNN was due to serve as the White House television pool organization, giving the ban an immediate operational bite.

The exclusions played out at the gates. Betsy Klein of CNN and Akayla Gardner of MS NOW found their electronic credentials deactivated, while Politico's Cheyenne Haslett was refused entry and had her badge confiscated. Donald Trump had announced the bans on Truth Social one day earlier and later cast the move as a strike against fabricated reporting, not against the press.

Presidents have sparred with hostile reporters before, but whole-outlet exclusions from the White House remain rare because access carries both practical and constitutional weight. The suit now asks judges to draw a line between managing a secure workplace and punishing disfavoured speech. The case will define how far a president can turn press access from an administrative credential into a loyalty pass.

American and Chinese negotiators used New York trade talks to sketch an early-warning channel for artificial intelligence incidents before Xi Jinping's Washington visit on 24 September. Scott Bessent, Jamieson Greer and He Lifeng discussed a US-China AI dialogue that would notify the other side when model behaviour or capability crosses national-security thresholds. The same meetings advanced a proposed bilateral trade board, though neither side has yet extended the tariff truce that expires on 10 November.

Scott Bessent sold the idea as a transparency device between the two biggest AI powers.

The diplomacy sits awkwardly beside hard technology competition. Washington restricts advanced semiconductor exports, Beijing controls rare earths and critical minerals, and Donald Trump has resisted slowing American AI development for fear of aiding China. Tech executives including Satya Nadella, Tim Cook, Jensen Huang and Sam Altman are expected around the summit's state dinner, a neat reminder that private companies now sit close to the command table.

A hotline will not settle the contest for chips, data or standards. It may, however, reduce the odds that a model failure, cyber incident or military alarm becomes the first crisis neither capital understands fast enough.

An ICE officer shot and wounded Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan DoorDash driver, after a vehicle collision in North Austin on Sunday. City officials said the federal agent was in an unmarked pickup truck, while local police said they arrived after the driver had already been shot. The Department of Homeland Security described Garces Perez as subject to a final removal order, while his lawyer said he entered the United States through legal channels.

Austin's leaders demanded that outside agencies join the investigation rather than leave ICE to review itself.

The shooting fed a broader story about how far the Trump administration has pushed immigration enforcement. A Forbidden Stories investigation reported that the United States has deported at least 25,447 people to 28 third-party countries under secret or little-known bilateral deals, backed by agreements with 35 nations and at least $410 million in funding. Around 20,000 people were sent to Mexico, with others moved across Latin America, Africa and the Pacific.

Those transfers target people who cannot be returned to their countries of origin, often leaving them in murky legal status abroad. Add street-level force at home, and immigration policy starts to look less like border administration and more like a test of accountability across several jurisdictions at once.

More than 100,000 German auto workers rallied across more than 200 locations after carmakers pushed job cuts, plant relocations and a 40-hour week without extra pay. Around 20,000 workers gathered at Mercedes-Benz in Sindelfingen, while protests also hit sites linked to BMW, Audi, Porsche, Bosch and Daimler Truck. The union IG Metall blamed managers for falling behind on electric vehicles, digital systems and batteries.

Horst Ott put the charge bluntly.

Management argues that Germany's factories have become too expensive. Oliver Wyman put labour costs at $3,307 per vehicle in Germany, compared with $769 in Japan and $597 in China, a gap that explains why executives keep circling the 35-hour week won by unions in earlier decades.

The pressure is no longer theoretical. Volkswagen cut its 2026 profit-margin target to at most 1%, shares in Volkswagen and Porsche fell, and industry employment has already dropped from about 830,000 in 2018 to under 700,000. Formal talks start in October, and warning strikes could follow in November if the peace obligation expires without a deal. Germany's car model once joined high wages to export dominance; now each side fears it is being asked to preserve only half of that bargain.

Typhoon Dujuan tracked along Japan's Pacific coast with sustained winds of 130 kilometres per hour and gusts reaching 194 kilometres per hour. Authorities placed 1,674,084 residents across Tokyo, Chiba, Kanagawa, Shizuoka and Ibaraki under evacuation advisories, while level-five alerts covered 40,000 people in Sodegaura and 3,020 on Oshima and the Izu Islands. Forecasters warned that 24-hour rainfall could reach 250 millimetres in Kanto and 350 millimetres in Tokai, more than a typical September month in some places.

Takuya Hosomi said the storm strengthened after slowing over warm seas near the Izu Islands.

The storm turned mobility into the day's first casualty. Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways grounded at least 275 commercial flights between them, while broader tracking showed nearly 500 cancellations at Narita and Haneda. Rail operators halted regional services, suspended parts of the Tokaido Shinkansen toward Osaka, and watched floodwater cover roads near Kamakura station. Power failures left more than 9,000 households without electricity, and organizers cancelled the final Monday schedule of the Tokyo Game Show in Chiba.

Japan knows how to live with typhoons, but familiarity does not make warm seas, urban sprawl and ageing infrastructure any kinder. Dujuan is a weather event today; it is also a reminder that disaster planning now has to assume heavier rain on tighter margins.