Romania’s top court has upheld a decision to ban presidential election frontrunner Călin Georgescu from standing in a rerun of the vote in May, sparking protest in Bucharest and leaving the country’s far-right parties four days to find a candidate.

Georgescu, an anti-EU, Moscow-friendly populist, surged from almost nowhere to win the first round of the country’s presidential election last year, but the result was annulled by Romania’s top court because of suspected Russian interference.

Romania’s Central Electoral Committee has suspended the application by ultranationalist presidential candidate Calin Georgescu to run in the upcoming elections on Sunday, sparking condemnation and unrest.

The country's electoral committee, BEC, examined the documents filed by Georgescu but decided not to approve the one related to his campaign funding as it did not have the required signature, Euronews Romania reports.

Is Romania the canary in the 'death of democracy' coalmine?

After today's news, that canary - along with 'democracy' - is well and truly dead.

In a stunning turn of events - that we have a feeling could backfire disastrously on the elite establishment - Romania has barred far-right frontrunner Calin Georgescu from running in May’s presidential election, in a move that could worsen the country’s political turmoil.

The Bucharest-based electoral bureau invalidated Georgescu’s candidacy, a spokesman from the bureau said on Sunday. 

Steve Bannon argued that the “oligarchs” close to President Trump will abandon Republicans the same way they did to Democrats.

Bannon was briefly interviewed by CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan on Wednesday, when he continued his case against tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

“You can tell President Trump doesn’t totally trust the oligarchs,” Bannon said.

Belgium has a new government. All it took was seven months of negotiation — which by Belgian standards is breakneck speed. New Prime Minister Bart De Wever had previously served as mayor of Antwerp from 2013, besides leading his N-VA party for the last two decades. An experienced and formidable politician, it’s surprising it’s taken him this long to lead his country.

Croatia's "pro-Russian" president, Zoran Milanović, overwhelmingly won reelection for another five-year term on Sunday.

Milanović, 58, defeated a candidate from the ruling conservative party in a runoff vote, official results showed.

Why It Matters

Milanović is a critic of the European Union and NATO, and has also spoken out against Western military support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenković has labeled Milanović "pro-Russian" and a threat to Croatia's international standing.

A little-known, far-right populist took the lead in Romania’s presidential election Sunday, electoral data showed, and will likely face leftist Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu in a runoff in two weeks, an outcome that rocked the country’s political landscape.

When J.D. Vance addressed the Republican National Convention Wednesday night, he wasn’t just introducing himself to the nation. He was selling a political ideology. To that end, Vance chronicled his hardscrabble upbringing to champion the core tenets of Trumpism.

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On the menu today: J. D. Vance knocked it out of the park in his convention address last night; too bad he was knocking it out of the park in the name of protectionism, populism, nationalism, industrial policy, and quasi-isolationism. But let’s pause to recognize Vance’s amazingly wide range of life experience, and note that if Vance were a Democrat, his life story is all we would be hearing about him.

Great Speech, Masterfully Delivered! I Hated It