🇩🇪 Merz and Weidel erupt into a heated clash in the Bundestag AfD leader Alice Weidel repeatedly heckled Chancellor Friedrich Merz from her seat as he compared her anti-immigration agenda to ethnic cleansing and warned it could effectively paralyze Germany — with one in six skilled workers in the country being foreign-born. “Not a single nursing home would stay open, not a single hospital in Germany would be able to function, not a single restaurant,” Merz said. Weidel fired back: “Mr. Merz, Germans are not too lazy to work. They simply see that hard work doesn’t pay because an unfair tax system takes everything away from them.” Merz was speaking after his party’s bruising defeat to the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, where the far-right party scored a sweeping victory on an anti-immigration platform.