PARIS (AP) — For years, Marine Le Pen stood at the gates of power — poised, relentless and rising. She stripped the French far right of its old symbols, sanded down its roughest edges and built in its place a sleek, disciplined machine with the single goal of winning the country's presidency.
In 2022, she came closer than anyone thought possible, winning more than 40% of the vote in the runoff against Emmanuel Macron. The Élysée Palace seemed within reach.
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French far-right leader Marine Le Pen leaves the National Rally headquarters after a French court convicted Marine Le Pen of embezzlement and barred her from seeking public office for five years, Monday, March 31, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen poses prior to an interview on the evening news broadcast of French TV channel TF1, after a French court convicted Marine Le Pen of embezzlement and barred her from seeking public office for five years, Monday, March 31, 2025, in Boulogne-Billancourt, outside Paris. (Thomas Samson, Pool via AP)
FILE - Leader of the French far right National Rally Marine Le Pen poses for a selfie with supporters during a meeting for the upcoming European elections in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, Friday, May 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)
FILE - French far-right leader and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen addresses supporters during an election campaign rally in Nice, southern France, Thursday April 27, 2017. (AP Photo/Claude Paris, File)
FILE - Far-right National Rally party leader Marine Le Pen answers reporters after the second round of the legislative election, July 7, 2024, at the party election night headquarters in Paris. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte, File)
FILE - Honorary President of far-right party National Front Jean-Marie Le Pen, left, and his daughter French far-right leader and National Front Party candidate for the 2012 French presidential elections, Marine Le Pen, react during a campaign meeting, in Marseille, southern France, March 4, 2012. (AP Photo/Claude Paris, File)
FILE - French far right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen attends a party meeting in Nanterre, France, Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon. File)
Now her political future may lay in ruins. On Monday, a French court convicted Le Pen of embezzling European Union funds and barred her from holding office for five years. The sentence may have done more than just potentially remove her from the next presidential race. It may have ended the most sustained far-right bid for power in Western Europe since World War II — surpassed only, in outcome, by Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
But the political earthquake Le Pen set in motion will rumble for years to come.
Le Pen was born in 1968 into a family already on the fringes of French politics. In 1972, her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded the National Front party rooted in racism, antisemitism and a yearning for France's lost empire.
She was just 8 years old when a bomb destroyed the family’s apartment in Paris in what was widely seen as an assassination attempt on her father. No one was seriously hurt, but the blast marked her for life. She has said it gave her a lasting sense that her family was hated, and that they would never be treated like other people.
As a young woman, she studied law, became a defense attorney and learned how to argue her way through hostile rooms. In politics, she didn’t wait her turn. In 2011, she wrested control of the party from her father. In 2015, she expelled him after one of his Holocaust-denying tirades.
She renamed the party the National Rally. She replaced leather-jacketed radicals with tailored blazers and talking points. She talked less about race, more about the French way of life. She warned of “civilizational threats,” called for bans on headscarves and promised to put French families first.
Her tone changed. Her message didn’t.
In one of her sharpest political maneuvers, she sought out a group long despised by her father: the LGBTQ community. Le Pen filled her inner circle with openly gay aides, skipped public protests against same-sex marriage and framed herself as a protector of sexual minorities against “Islamist danger.”
Critics called it “pinkwashing” — a cosmetic tolerance masking deeper hostility. But it worked. A surprising number of gay voters, especially younger ones, started backing her. Many saw strength, clarity and the promise of order in a world spinning too fast.
She ran for president three times: 2012, 2017 and 2022. Each time, she climbed higher. In her final campaign, she was confident, calm and media savvy. She leaned into her role as a single mother, posed with her cats and repeated her calls for “national priority.” She no longer shocked. She convinced.
Behind her stood a constellation of far-right leaders cheering her on: Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni in Italy, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders. They saw in her not only an ally, but a leader. Her mix of cultural nationalism, social media fluency and calculated restraint became a blueprint.
“Marine Le Pen posts pictures of her cat, talks about being a mother. But when it comes to policy, there’s no softening,” said Pierre Lefevre, a Paris-based consultant. “It makes extreme positions seem more palatable, even to people who might otherwise be put off.”
When Le Pen lost in 2022, she didn’t vanish. She regrouped, stayed present in parliament and prepared for 2027. Polls had her leading. Macron cannot run again.
Then came Monday's verdict.
The court found that Le Pen had siphoned off millions of euros in public funds while serving in the European Parliament, paying party staff with money intended for EU assistants. Prosecutors described it as deliberate and organized. The court agreed.
She was sentenced to two years of house arrest, fined €100,000 ($108,200) and banned from holding public office for five years. She said she would appeal. The house arrest sentence will be suspended during the appeal, but the ban on holding office takes effect immediately.
Her allies erupted in outrage. Orbán declared, “Je suis Marine” — I am Marine. Salvini called the ruling “a declaration of war by Brussels.” Meloni lamented it was “depriving millions of citizens of their representation.” U.S. President Donald Trump decried it as "a very big deal... it sounds like this country.” In Paris, her supporters called it political persecution. Her opponents fist-pumped in the streets.
Even in disgrace, Le Pen remains one of the most consequential political figures of her time. She took a name that once evoked hatred and transformed it into a serious vehicle for national leadership. She made the far right electable. She blurred the line between fringe and power.
Her party, the National Rally, became the largest last year in France’s lower house of parliament. Her handpicked successor, 29-year-old Jordan Bardella, now leads it. He is polished and popular, but he lacks broad political experience and name recognition.
Whether Le Pen returns after her ban, fades into silence or reinvents herself again, her mark is permanent. She forced mainstream rivals to adapt to her language. She turned fear into votes and redefined what was politically possible in a republic once seen as immune to extremism.
She never became president, but she changed the race and the rules.
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Associated Press journalist Colleen Barry in Milan contributed.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen leaves the National Rally headquarters after a French court convicted Marine Le Pen of embezzlement and barred her from seeking public office for five years, Monday, March 31, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen poses prior to an interview on the evening news broadcast of French TV channel TF1, after a French court convicted Marine Le Pen of embezzlement and barred her from seeking public office for five years, Monday, March 31, 2025, in Boulogne-Billancourt, outside Paris. (Thomas Samson, Pool via AP)
FILE - Leader of the French far right National Rally Marine Le Pen poses for a selfie with supporters during a meeting for the upcoming European elections in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, Friday, May 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)
FILE - French far-right leader and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen addresses supporters during an election campaign rally in Nice, southern France, Thursday April 27, 2017. (AP Photo/Claude Paris, File)
FILE - Far-right National Rally party leader Marine Le Pen answers reporters after the second round of the legislative election, July 7, 2024, at the party election night headquarters in Paris. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte, File)
FILE - Honorary President of far-right party National Front Jean-Marie Le Pen, left, and his daughter French far-right leader and National Front Party candidate for the 2012 French presidential elections, Marine Le Pen, react during a campaign meeting, in Marseille, southern France, March 4, 2012. (AP Photo/Claude Paris, File)
FILE - French far right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen attends a party meeting in Nanterre, France, Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon. File)
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powellsaid Sunday the Department of Justice has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in President Donald Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he's repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project Trump has criticized as excessive.
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London’s murder rate fell in 2025 to its lowest level in decades, officials said Monday. Mayor Sadiq Khan said the figures disprove claims spread by President Trump and others on the political right that crime is out of control in Britain’s capital.
Police recorded 97 homicides in London in 2025, down from 109 in 2024 and the fewest since 2014. The Metropolitan Police force says the rate by population is the lowest since comparable records began in 1997, at 1.1 homicides for every 100,000 people.
That compares to 1.6 per 100,000 in Paris, 2.8 in New York and 3.2 in Berlin, the force said.
“There are some politicians and commentators who’ve been spamming social media with an endless stream of distortions and untruths, painting an image of a dystopian London,” Khan told The Associated Press. “And nothing could be further from the truth.”
▶ Read more about crime in London
The Democratic Party regained the partisanship edge when independents were asked whether they lean more toward the Democratic or Republican Party in a new Gallup poll.
Nearly half, 47%, of U.S. adults now identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 42% are Republicans or lean Republican.
This is an indication of how Americans are feeling about their political affiliations, and it may not be reflected in voters’ actual registration.
Independents appear to be driven by their unhappiness with the party in power. That’s a dynamic that could be good for Democrats for now, but it doesn’t promise lasting loyalty. Attitudes toward the party haven’t gotten warmer, suggesting the Democrats’ gains are probably more related to independents’ sour views of President Trump.
That comes a day after President Trump threatened the Caribbean island in the wake of the U.S. attack on Venezuela.
Díaz-Canel posted a flurry of brief statements on X after Trump suggested Cuba “make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” He did not say what kind of deal.
Díaz-Canel wrote that for “relations between the U.S. and Cuba to progress, they must be based on international law rather than hostility, threats, and economic coercion.”
The island’s communist government has said U.S. sanctions cost the country more than $7.5 billion between March 2024 and February 2025.
Díaz-Canel added: “We have always been willing to hold a serious and responsible dialogue with the various US governments, including the current one, on the basis of sovereign equality, mutual respect, principles of International Law, and mutual benefit without interference in internal affairs and with full respect for our independence.”
Cuba’s president stressed on X that “there are no talks with the U.S. government, except for technical contacts in the area of migration.”
About 8 in 10 U.S. adults said the Federal Reserve Board should be independent of political control, according to Marquette/SSRS polling from September, while roughly 2 in 10 said the president should have more influence over setting interest rates and monetary policy. There was bipartisan consensus that the Fed should remain independent. About 9 in 10 Democrats and about two-thirds of Republicans said the Fed should not be subjected to political control.
That poll found about 3 in 10 Americans said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in The Federal Reserve Board. Nearly half — 45% — had some confidence, and roughly one-quarter had “very little” confidence or “none at all.”
Stocks are falling on Wall Street after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Department of Justice had served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony about the Fed’s building renovations.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3% in early trading Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 384 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.2%.
Powell characterized the threat of criminal charges as pretexts to undermine the Fed’s independence in setting interest rates, its main tool for fighting inflation. The threat is the latest escalation in President Trump’s feud with the Fed.
▶ Read more about the financial markets
She says she had “a very good conversation” with Trump on Monday morning about topics including “security with respect to our sovereignties.”
Last week, Sheinbaum had said she was seeking a conversation with Trump or U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the U.S. president made comments in an interview that he was ready to confront drug cartels on the ground and repeated the accusation that cartels were running Mexico.
Trump’s offers of using U.S. forces against Mexican cartels took on a new weight after the Trump administration deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Sheinbaum was expected to share more about their conversation later Monday.
A leader of the Canadian government is visiting China this week for the first time in nearly a decade, a bid to rebuild his country’s fractured relations with the world’s second-largest economy — and reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, its neighbor and until recently one of its most supportive and unswerving allies.
The push by Prime Minster Mark Carney, who arrives Wednesday, is part of a major rethink as ties sour with the United States — the world’s No. 1 economy and long the largest trading partner for Canada by far.
Carney aims to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports in the next decade in the face of President Trump’s tariffs and the American leader’s musing that Canada could become “the 51st state.”
▶ Read more about relations between Canada and China
The comment by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson came in response to a question at a regular daily briefing. President Trump has said he would like to make a deal to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous region of NATO ally Denmark, to prevent Russia or China from taking it over.
Tensions have grown between Washington, Denmark and Greenland this month as Trump and his administration push the issue and the White House considers a range of options, including military force, to acquire the vast Arctic island.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that an American takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO.
▶ Read more about the U.S. and Greenland
Trump said Sunday that he is “inclined” to keep ExxonMobil out of Venezuela after its top executive was skeptical about oil investment efforts in the country after the toppling of former President Nicolás Maduro.
“I didn’t like Exxon’s response,” Trump said to reporters on Air Force One as he departed West Palm Beach, Florida. “They’re playing too cute.”
During a meeting Friday with oil executives, Trump tried to assuage the concerns of the companies and said they would be dealing directly with the U.S., rather than the Venezuelan government.
Some, however, weren’t convinced.
“If we look at the commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it’s uninvestable,” said Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company.
An ExxonMobil spokesperson did not immediately respond Sunday to a request for comment.
▶ Read more about Trump’s comments on ExxonMobil
Trump’s motorcade took a different route than usual to the airport as he was departing Florida on Sunday due to a “suspicious object,” according to the White House.
The object, which the White House did not describe, was discovered during security sweeps in advance of Trump’s arrival at Palm Beach International Airport.
“A further investigation was warranted and the presidential motorcade route was adjusted accordingly,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Sunday.
The president, when asked about the package by reporters, said, “I know nothing about it.”
Anthony Guglielmi, the spokesman for U.S. Secret Service, said the secondary route was taken just as a precaution and that “that is standard protocol.”
▶ Read more about the “suspicious object”
Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.
Iran had no direct reaction to Trump’s comments, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking to foreign diplomats in Tehran, insisted “the situation has come under total control” in fiery remarks that blamed Israel and the U.S. for the violence, without offering evidence.
▶ Read more about the possible negotiations and follow live updates
Fed Chair Powell said Sunday the DOJ has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he has repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project that Trump has criticized as excessive.
Powell on Sunday cast off what has up to this point been a restrained approach to Trump’s criticisms and personal insults, which he has mostly ignored. Instead, Powell issued a video statement in which he bluntly characterized the threat of criminal charges as simple “pretexts” to undermine the Fed’s independence when it comes to setting interest rates.
▶ Read more about the subpoenas
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters while in flight on Air Force One to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
President Donald Trump waves after arriving on Air Force One from Florida, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
