Yum! Brands agreed to sell its iconic Pizza Hut chain for $2.7 billion following a strategic review, separating the struggling pizza brand from its broader restaurant portfolio, which includes KFC, Taco Bell, and The Habit Burger Grill.

LongRange Capital will acquire Pizza Hut’s business outside China for $1.5 billion, while Yum China will buy the China business for $1.2 billion. Both transactions are expected to close in the third quarter.

The Stamford, Connecticut-based private equity firm typically invests in middle-market businesses, usually with a longer-term, operationally focused approach.

Its current portfolio includes 24 Hour Fitness, Alpin Unlimited, Bakkavor, Batesville, and US Synthetic.

“These transactions enable Yum! to be a more focused company that continues to leverage scale, technology, and talent to accelerate our raising the B.A.R. priorities and deliver sustained value for our stakeholders,” said Chris Turner, Chief Executive Officer, Yum! Brands.

Turner added, “Under LongRange and Yum China, Pizza Hut will be well-positioned for future growth with ownership that brings deep expertise in the restaurant industry. Pizza Hut is one of the most iconic restaurant brands in the world, and we are proud of the important role it has played in Yum! ‘s history.” 

Bloomberg noted, “Yum has owned Pizza Hut since the restaurant company spun off from PepsiCo Inc. in 1997. PepsiCo bought Pizza Hut in 1977 and snapped up Taco Bell the following year.” 

At the end of 2025, Pizza Hut had about 6,300 U.S. locations, and Yum planned to close 250 additional underperforming U.S. stores in the first half of 2026. 

The deal follows years of weak performance across Pizza Hut stores, hurt by competition across the space, outdated branding, and delivery competition.

The question for LongRange Capital is what the turnaround strategy will look like and whether it will target value-seeking families, nostalgic millennials…

…and digital-first Gen-Z who have shifted to Domino’s, local pizza, fast-casual, and delivery apps.

China’s consumer spending and investment slumped in May to levels unseen since the pandemic, exposing risks for an increasingly two-speed economy, as Bloomberg’s Chang Shu and Eric Zhu noted:

“The supply side remains robust, driven by faster-than-expected expansion in exports and AI tech sectors.

The demand side has faltered, with consumption and private non-tech investment plummeting.”

Here’s the details:

Industrial Production

Industrial production (IP) growth rose modestly to 4.5% yoy from 4.1% yoy thanks to stronger-than-expected exports, although automobile output growth remained weak and the ongoing global energy shock continued to weigh on chemical-related manufacturing output. In sequential terms, IP gained 0.2% mom non-annualized in May based on our estimates (vs. -1.1% mom non-annualized in April).

By industry, the April-to-May acceleration in year-on-year IP growth was led by faster output growth in computer & other equipment, electronic machinery, and utilities industries, more than offsetting slower output growth in chemicals and non-ferrous metal smelting industries.

Among major industrial products (different from by-industry breakdown), year-on-year growth in industrial robot output, metal cutting machine output and power generation rose to +27.9%, +10.7% and +4.2%, respectively, in May from +15.1%, +7.5% and +2.6% in April, while automobile, computer and smartphone output growth in year-on-year terms slowed to -3.2%, -19.4% and -8.8%, respectively, from -2.6%, -9.3% and +4.7%. 

Retail Sales

Nominal retail sales growth continued to slow in May, to -0.6% yoy from +0.2% yoy in April, the lowest since December 2022 (during the COVID exit wave), with year-on-year growth in goods sales and restaurant sales revenue both weakening. 

Under retail sales, big-ticket items led the decline. Car purchases, which make up about 8% of the overall figure, plunged 16% in May from a year ago. Excluding autos, retail sales grew 1.1% in May.

Sales of home appliances as well as construction and decoration materials also contracted at a double-digit pace.

Property

Property activity data remained under pressure in May despite recent green shoots in large cities.

Year-on-year growth in property sales registered -13.1% in volume (floor space) terms and -9.5% in value terms in May (vs. -9.5%/-7.7% in April). New home under construction and completions growth slowed to -12.3% yoy and -19.9% yoy, respectively in May from -12.1% yoy and -18.8% yoy in April. New home starts growth remained depressed at -24.6% yoy in May, despite a modest improvement from -26.6% yoy in April. NBS and private sector data both showed continued downward pressure on home prices in May, mainly in lower-tier cities.

FAI

Fixed asset investment (FAI) growth fell further -10.6% yoy in May from -8.2% yoy in April on a single-month basis (Exhibit 3), reflecting both adverse weather conditions (e.g., heavy rainfall in southern and central China and a heatwave in northern China) and a still-slow pace of government bond issuance. This takes year-to-date FAI growth to -4.1% yoy in May (vs. -1.6% yoy in April).

By sector, year-on-year growth in infrastructure, property and other investment (i.e., services and agriculture-related) fell to -11.2%, -24.3% and -13.2%, respectively, in May from -5.6%, -20.1% and -10.6% in April, while manufacturing investment growth improved slightly to -4.1% yoy from -4.8% yoy. That said, we caution that the occasional NBS “statistical correction” of previously over-reported data may have exaggerated the volatility of reported FAI growth in recent quarters, as the year-on-year contraction in crude steel and cement output narrowed modestly in May.

Further evidence emerged indicating a growing divergence in the economy. Investment in high-tech industries expanded 4.5%, with capital expenditure of semiconductor and lithium battery makers up 11% and 25%, respectively.

Labor Market

Regarding the labor market, both the nationwide and 31-city unemployment rates (not seasonally adjusted) edged down to 5.1% for May from 5.2% for April.

After seasonal adjustment, we estimate the nationwide unemployment rate inched down to 5.2% in May from 5.3% in April, and the 31-city metric remained flat at 5.2%.

*  *  *

NBS spokesman Fu Linghui attributed the slump in investment and retail sales to factors including heavy rainfall.

Fu also pointed to last year’s high level of spending driven by subsidies as well as the economy’s transition to new growth drivers.

“Since the second quarter, certain economic indicators slowed because of complex changes in the global environment as well as structural adjustment in the domestic economy,” said Fu in a briefing in Beijing.

“Some companies are facing difficulties. But looking at the overall trend, the momentum of the economy remains overall stable.”

Interestingly, Bloomberg notes that the worse-than-expected slump in retail sales and investment also reignited questions around their accuracy in gauging broader economic health.

The services production index, which inched up to 4.4% on year in May, has a stronger correlation with the pattern of growth in gross domestic product than retail sales, which comprised mostly goods, according to Yu Song, chief China economist at UBS Securities. Inconsistency in the fixed-asset investment data that became apparent last year also mean it might exaggerate the weakness, he said.

“Second-quarter GDP data looks to be weak, but not quite as weak as one would expect from April data,” Song told Bloomberg Television.

Some analysts estimated growth at near 4% in April, tracking below the government’s official full-year target of 4.5% to 5%.

The result of all this was initial yuan weakness (a day after reaching its strongest level since early 2023) and decline in Chinese stocks, but as the session wore on, those initial dips recovered (except for Hang Seng China Enterprises)…

…as the weakness reflexively raises market-watchers hopes for supportive stimulus:

“While there are pockets of strength in tech and export-related industries, the broader economy is still struggling,” said Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at ING Bank NV.

“This could eventually add pressure on policymakers to ease policy.”

But without stronger demand at home, the economy is at risk of a deeper slowdown even as the US-Iran deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz holds out the promise of stabilizing global shipping and energy prices.

Finally, Goldman sees downside risk to their Q2 real GDP growth forecast (4.0% qoq sa annualized and 4.7% yoy currently).

However, the latest development in the Middle East and recent policy communications bode well for a sequential growth improvement in Q3, especially given the significant unused government bond quota left for the remainder of this year.

Goldman sees July as an important window to monitor potential policy fine-tuning: if Q2 GDP disappoints meaningfully, there is a decent chance for policymakers to step up their easing rhetoric in the July Politburo meeting and draw on remaining fiscal buffers quickly to stabilize investment and growth.

With housing inventories at recent highs, the US housing market just suffered another sentiment setback as Housing Starts crashed by 15.4% MoM in May (far worse than 2% drop expected and worse since March 2024)), following a revised 8.5% MoM drop in April. Building Permits slipped 0.7% MoM (in line with expectations)…

Source: Bloomberg

That pulls the Housing Starts SAAR to its lowest since COVID (after reaching the highest since 2024 in April)…

Source: Bloomberg

Under the hood, it was multi-family (rental) starts that collapsed:

• Housing Starts single-family drop from 899K (revised lower from 930K) to 882K

• Housing Starts multi-family drop from 486K (revised lower from 529K) to 284K

Source: Bloomberg

Did ‘renter nation’ just die?

Multifamily permits also fell…

• Housing Permits single-family rise from 881K (revised higher from 872K) to 886K

• Housing Permits multi-family drop from 491K (revised lower from 514K) to 474K

Is homebuilder sentiment about to slump even further…

Source: Bloomberg

It seems recent rises in the mortgage rate (and inventories already at over-stuffed levels, given the slowness of sales) has finally dented the homebuilders’ self-satisfying confidence.

Residential solar in the US is actively cratering after President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill resulted in the sunsetting of a key tax credit for homeowners last year – which will result in a prolonged slump in installations, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

“The market is not expected to recover to the record levels of 2023 anytime in the next decade,” according to the report. 

The downturn is widespread – with installers nationwide reporting steep drops in new rooftop projects. Higher interest rates, the winding down of certain federal incentives, and shifting state policies are cited as primary drivers behind the slowdown. Many homeowners are now facing longer payback periods and higher upfront costs, making the economics less attractive than in previous years.

Two notable exceptions stand out amid the broader decline. California and Florida continue to see relatively stronger demand, supported by state-level incentives, high electricity prices, and established installer networks. Even in these states, however, growth has moderated compared with the boom years, and analysts expect the national picture to remain challenged for the foreseeable future.

Impact on Major Players and Supply Chain

Companies such as Sunrun, Enphase Energy, and SunPower have already felt the effects through softer order books and margin pressure. The residential segment, once a bright spot in the clean energy transition, is now forcing these firms to adjust forecasts and focus more on commercial and utility-scale projects where demand remains steadier.

The stall comes at a time when broader energy policy debates are intensifying. With changing federal priorities and questions around long-term subsidy structures, the residential solar sector is confronting the reality that rapid adoption was heavily dependent on favorable financing and generous tax credits that are now fading.

This development underscores the challenges of scaling residential renewables without sustained policy tailwinds. While utility-scale solar and battery storage continue to expand in many regions, the rooftop market’s slowdown highlights how sensitive consumer adoption remains to interest rates, payback periods, and regulatory certainty. BloombergNEF’s outlook suggests the industry may need several years to stabilize before any meaningful recovery takes hold.

That said, Californa and Florida are bucking the trend…

California, a longtime solar leader, and Florida, which passed a new pro-solar law last year. BloombergNEF projects Florida’s residential solar additions will hit 710 megawatts in 2026, a 62% increase over last year. California’s installations are also forecast to grow 17% in 2026. Both states are also leading on solar permit applications. -Bloomberg

The national crunch is also affecting the market for solar batteries – from which only about 1.4 gigawatts of home storage is expected to go online this year, down 26% from 2025. That said, some 40% of new residential solar systems in the first three months of 2026 had batteries, BloombergNEF found, up from an average 35% last year. 

“Battery storage is the future of home solar,” said BloombergNEF analyst, Cosmo van Steenis. “Batteries can lay up stores of solar power in the daytime and release them at night.”

Via Remix News,

A demonstration of several thousand people took place in Rome on Saturday to advocate for remigration and stricter controls on immigration.

Coming from various regions across Italy, a crowd of roughly 3,000 individuals paraded through the nation’s capital behind a prominent sign declaring “Remigration and Recapture,“ a slogan used to call for the mandatory deportation of migrants back to their countries of origin.

🇮🇹Thousands demonstrate for remigration in Rome.

Protesters are increasingly hitting the streets across Europe demanding mass deportations.pic.twitter.com/X9zFjOkXeH

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) June 14, 2026

The march drew participation from various right-wing organizations, including Casapound.

According to Luca Marsella, a spokesman for Casapound, their objective is clear. “We want to throw out the illegal immigrants because they shouldn’t be here.”

He further noted that their demands extend beyond those without legal status, adding, “And because we are not politically correct, we also say that we want to send home the legal immigrants who have obviously not adapted or integrated.”

🇮🇹Huge turnout for Remigration in Rome, Italy.

Thousands marched with Italian flags in support of secure borders and mass deportations.pic.twitter.com/YxsvERdZMw

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) June 14, 2026

Concurrently, Rome hosted the inaugural party congress for Futuro Nazionale (National Future), a newly established right-wing political group organized by Roberto Vannacci, a former general who now serves as an MEP.

Speaking to reporters at a press conference, Vannacci expressed an uncompromising stance on border control, asserting, “If it were up to me, no one should be allowed to enter Italy.”

Vannacci previously aligned with the anti-immigration League Party party led by Vice Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. His political emergence means that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of the right-wing Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia), alongside her coalition allies, will contend with fresh rivals on the right.

Public opinion polls suggest that Futuro Nazionale could capture 4.5 percent of the electorate, drawing its strongest support from citizens who previously voted for League. Vannacci’s movement already possesses a foothold in the legislature, as eight sitting parliamentarians have already defected to join his ranks.

The issue of migration is a contentious one, with migrants responsible for 43 percent of sexual crimes and 60 percent of robberies and thefts.

Just days ago, two Pakistani men were arrested for allegedly burning alive four Pakistani nationals after the men demanded better wages for agricultural work.

Read more here…

The countries carrying the world’s largest refugee burden are often not the ones most people expect.

Using data from the UNHCR via Our World in Data, this graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, ranks countries by the number of refugees hosted per 1,000 residents in 2024.

The results reveal how proximity to conflict frequently matters more than economic size. Many of the countries at the top of the ranking border active war zones and have absorbed large refugee populations relative to their own populations.

Which Countries Carry the Largest Refugee Burden?

Roughly two-thirds of the world’s refugees remain in neighboring countries, helping explain why several relatively small nations rank ahead of much larger economies.

Rather than being distributed across the world’s wealthiest countries, refugee populations are often concentrated in states that share borders with major conflicts. The ranking below shows which countries carry the largest refugee burden relative to their population.

Why Does Lebanon Rank So High?

Lebanon tops the ranking by a wide margin, hosting 130.7 refugees per 1,000 residents. Put differently, about one out of every eight people living in the country is a refugee, the highest ratio in the world.

Its position reflects the country’s proximity to Syria, which has produced one of the world’s largest refugee crises since civil war broke out in 2011. Over the past decade, millions of Syrians have sought refuge in neighboring countries, with Lebanon absorbing one of the largest shares relative to its population.

The country has also faced mounting economic and political challenges of its own. More recently, fighting between Israel and Hezbollah displaced more than one million people within Lebanon, adding further strain to public services and infrastructure.

Taken together, these pressures help explain why Lebanon remains one of the countries most affected by displacement anywhere in the world.

Geography Matters More Than Wealth

Many of the countries hosting the largest refugee populations are located near active conflicts or regions experiencing prolonged instability.

Jordan and Lebanon border Syria. Moldova shares a border with Ukraine. Chad hosts refugees from neighboring Sudan, while Uganda has long received people fleeing violence in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The pattern helps explain why many smaller countries appear near the top of the ranking despite having far fewer economic resources than larger developed nations.

For refugees, crossing a nearby border is often the fastest and safest option. As a result, neighboring countries frequently absorb the largest influxes long before refugees are resettled elsewhere.

Why the U.S. Ranks 82nd

At first glance, America’s ranking may seem surprisingly low.

The United States hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees and remains the world’s 18th-largest refugee destination in absolute terms.

However, its population of more than 340 million significantly changes the picture.

When refugee numbers are adjusted for population size, the U.S. hosts roughly 1.3 refugees per 1,000 residents, placing it 82nd globally.

The gap highlights why per-capita measures can reveal a different reality than headline totals. While large countries often host more refugees overall, smaller nations can experience a much greater impact relative to their population size.

Refugee Pressures Are Reaching Record Levels

The number of forcibly displaced people worldwide has surpassed 120 million, nearly double the level seen a decade ago. Conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, Syria, and other regions continue to drive displacement across borders.

For host countries, the impact extends beyond humanitarian assistance. Large refugee populations can increase demand for housing, healthcare, education, infrastructure, and public services, particularly in smaller countries with limited resources.

The ranking highlights a reality often overlooked in global migration debates: the countries carrying the largest refugee burden are frequently those located closest to conflict, not necessarily those with the largest economies.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on the world’s largest migration corridors.

In a verdict that has rocked Norway’s monarchy, Marius Borg Høiby, the 29-year-old son of Crown Princess Mette-Marit, was found guilty of two counts of rape and sentenced to four years in prison.

The Oslo District Court convicted him on 34 of 40 charges, spanning rape, assault, abuse in close relationships, drug offenses, and restraining order violations. He was acquitted on the other two rape counts. Prosecutors had demanded over seven years; the defense sought 18 months. He must also pay victims around $61,000 in compensation.

Key Facts from the Verdict

• Guilty on two counts of rape
• Sentenced to four years in prison
• Acquitted on two other rape charges
• Convicted on 34 out of 40 total charges
• Ordered to pay approximately $61,000 to victims
• Defense plans to appeal rape and domestic violence convictions

The seven-week trial detailed Høiby’s struggles with drug addiction and a lifestyle of excess. Evidence included self-made videos of sexual encounters and more than 800 electronic messages. In court, he described an “extreme need for recognition” from his unique position in the royal family.

“I’m mostly known as my mother’s son, not anything else. So I’ve had an extreme need for recognition my whole life,” he told the court. “And that manifested itself in a lot of sex, a lot of drugs, and a lot of alcohol.”

The incidents took place between 2018 and 2024 after nights of partying. Prosecutors argued that what began as consensual sex became non-consensual when the women were asleep or incapacitated. Høiby insisted he was “not in the habit of having sex with women who are asleep.”

His lawyers have said he will appeal and have pushed for his release so he can support his ailing mother.

Princess Mette-Marit’s Health and Royal Family Pressure

Crown Princess Mette-Marit, 52, is battling pulmonary fibrosis and is on a lung-transplant waiting list. Doctors have indicated she may have only about a year left without a successful transplant.

The scandal comes amid other challenges for the royals, including criticism over the princess’s past contact with Jeffrey Epstein after his 2008 conviction. Polls showed support for the monarchy falling to a record low of 60% during the trial, with a slight recovery later.

The Royal House has stated it has no comment on the court outcome.

This case underscores the contrast between the public image of the Norwegian royal family and the private difficulties faced by its members.

Authored by ‘eugyppius’ via American Greatmess,

In 2024, the Austrian Identitarian activist Martin Sellner began serious efforts to push his concept of remigration into the political mainstream, and since then the German state and its civil society collaborators have extended him every assistance.

Gregory Bovino, ex-Customs and Border Patrol Chief, appears with (from left) Eva Vlaardingerbroek, Martin Sellner, and Alfonso Gonçalves at the second Remigration Summit in Portugal last week.

Domestic intelligence agents and activist journalists at Correctiv collaborated to convict Sellner and Alternative für Deutschland of planning the mass deportation of naturalized Germans in a late 2023 meeting in Potsdam. They called this small private meeting a “Secret Plan against Germany” and drew not-so-subtle comparisons to the notorious Wannsee Conference. Ensuing anti-AfD protests lasted months, even as litigation succeeded in deconstructing much of the slander Correctiv had propagated. The hysteria cost AfD some support ahead of the European elections, but it also succeeded in making “remigration” a household word throughout the Federal Republic—something that Sellner and his Identitarians could never have achieved on their own. Unbelievably, the Correctiv reporting was turned into a theater piece, and the actual Wannsee Villa where Nazi government officials and SS leaders met to plan the Final Solution in 1942 received a sign advising visitors of Sellner’s Potsdam meeting and “the . . . obvious . . . link between today’s ethno-nationalist fantasies of deportation and the historic Wannsee Conference.”

For their next act, authorities toyed with legally doubtful schemes to ban Sellner from Germany, while police devised pretenses to disrupt the speaking events Sellner had scheduled in the Federal Republic to present his book on Remigration. All this meant more press and more eyeballs for Sellner’s cause. When Sellner co-organized the inaugural “Remigration Summit” last spring in Italy, authorities tried to prevent the attendance of several German Identitarian activists by temporarily banning them from leaving the country, and they did the same again when the second “Remigration Summit” convened in Portugal last week. In each case, their restrictions ensured that small conferences held in other countries and attended by no more than a few hundred people could remain the subject of reporting and controversy here at home.

I don’t know to what degree the German approach to Sellner’s remigration program reflects a calculated strategy, and to what degree it’s just all the pinched head girls in the state bureaucratic apparatus having a collective aneurysm over the latest politically naughty thing to come across their desks. Either way, the unique German system of “defensive democracy” requires an enemy against which to array its defenses, and in the decades since the Berlin Wall fell this enemy has become “the extreme Right”—concentrated like the old Communist foe in the eastern states of the former DDR, embodied by Alternative für Deutschland rather than the SED, and constructed as an equal if not greater threat to Our Democracy. Because, unlike the Communists, this enemy does not really exist, it requires regime propagandists to engage in heavy revisionism—for example, by casting as an NSDAP successor a populist-Right party with politics broadly equivalent to the 1980s-era CDU, and by building up and deploring particular villains like Sellner.

Now, political dissidents and activists of all stripes have a curious relationship with establishment discourse. The one is like oil and the other is like water; they cannot occupy the same space. In the past years, the myth that Diversity Is Our Strength and that mass migration might fix our pension plans, alleviate our cultural ennui, and improve our culinary offerings has collapsed. Anti-migrationism has gone mainstream in many circles, driving right-populists to seize upon remigration as the new cause. I would imagine that a similar process unfolded from the establishment perspective; as major politicians and journalists decided the time had come to put the brakes on the steady stream of younger males streaming into our country from the Global South, they needed to draw a new line in the sand to differentiate themselves from the populist rabble-rousers.

Thus, with the help of literally everybody from Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s benighted traffic light government to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution to Alternative für Deutschland to Martin Sellner and his Identitarians, remigration became the new anti-migration. Which is fine, as far as it goes; people should support the causes they want, and nobody would dispute that, particularly in the last ten years, a great many people have forced their way into Europe, where they have proceeded to abuse our social welfare systems, violate the law at disproportionate rates, and substantially degrade the quality of life. If I could push a button and make these people leave, I would.

Unfortunately, this problem does not come packaged with any easy solutions, and I am less and less certain (1) how remigration is supposed to work and (2) whether the newly ascendant and highly dogmatic remigrationists on the Right have any path toward realizing their vision. While remigrationists preach the manifold benefits of putting migrants on airplanes back to the Global South, the migrants’ native countries in many cases refuse to accept them, mass migration continues, if at a somewhat slower pace, the AfD remains firewalled out of German politics, our elaborate NGO machinery continues to push migrationist humanitarianism, a broad elite consensus resists even efforts to deport many of those who are here illegally, and primary EU law confounds remigrationist proposals at numerous points. Remigration would prove a tall order if 85 percent of Germans reversed their stance on the idea tomorrow. Sellner’s full, heavily technocratic vision, meanwhile, would require broad institutional buy-in and support from all major parties, including large parts of the Left, over a period of decades. We are talking about a new social consensus to compel or encourage the mass resettlement of entire populations, as deep and broad as the consensus that until recently existed behind climatism. That probably can’t happen without serious generational turnover or some kind of serious political upheaval.

I do not write this as a condemnatory political ninny or an incurable contrarian. I consider Sellner a friend, and I am even his translator. Yet personal considerations like these aren’t enough to blunt my skepticism.

The most recent initiative in remigration land is something called the Save Europe Act, rolled out by Sellner and Dutch political activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek at the Remigration Summit 2026 in Portugal. Basically, there’s an EU procedural mechanism known as the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), whereby ordinary people can bring a legal proposal for consideration directly before the European Commission. To do this, they need only gather a million signatures in support and meet a few other requirements. Among other things, the Save Europe Act demands “legislative and policy measures” to impose a “moratorium” on non-European migration, to deport “illegally staying migrants, rejected asylum seekers,” and criminals, to “establish a harmonized EU-wide framework for broader remigration” and to “remove social welfare incentives and benefits that function as pull factors for migration.”

All of that sounds great, as does the fact that Sellner and Vlaardingerbroek claim to have gathered well over 200,000 “signatures” so far. Unfortunately, reality tends generally to be less great. To begin with, Sellner and Vlaardingerbroek have yet to register the Save Europe Act with the European Commission at all. The signatures they are collecting—really, just email addresses—are part of an internet publicity campaign and have no wider significance. According to me, chances that the Commission agrees to register the Save Europe Act as a formal ECI are quite low, for the Commission may reject any proposal that “is . . . manifestly contrary to the values of the Union.” If Sellner and Vlaardingerbroek do manage to squeeze their initiative through registration and the Save Europe Act becomes more than a buggy website, then they’ll still need to collect a million signatures—not from random internet people, but from verified citizens of EU member states. And if they meet that hurdle, they’ll compel a response from the Commission and a hearing in the European Parliament. Even in this best-case scenario, there is no chance that the Save Europe Act becomes law, inspires any laws, or changes anything at the EU level at all.

Defenders of the Save Europe Act who have bothered to read the fine print accept that they are not on the path to making Remigration official EU policy. They argue instead that publicity surrounding the Save Europe Act will “move the Overton Window” and normalize remigration as a concept. These arguments neglect the fact that remigration has already been normalized; as I wrote above, since 2024, it has become almost a household word in Germany, if one denoting a very bad and fascistic concept approximately on par with outright genocidal fascism. Otherwise, I have learned to be wary of intangible, immeasurable ends in the world of political activism. Western politics abounds with activists who are changing perceptions, challenging conventions, deconstructing myths, complicating assumptions, correcting prejudices, deepening understandings, and now moving Overton Windows, and the only thing these projects and their goals have in common is that nobody can work out what any of them mean in concrete terms.

Mass migration has been an absolute curse. People want the migrants to stop coming, and they want the ones who are already here to go back home. They feel impotent to change the situation, and it’s natural that they should support social media campaigns promising at the very least to give them a voice. That’s fine, and most of this is probably harmless, but the truth is that we’re not going to petition the migrants away. I’ve read so many appeals to the Overton Window at this point that the concept has become quite threadbare for me, but if anything has shifted mass media discourse these past years, it is not activist campaigns but the manifold and quite serious problems caused by mass migration itself. As in so many other areas—from COVID to climatism—retarded elite policies are failing and unwinding themselves, but we’re not yet winning.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.