Overview
- AfD foreign policy lead Markus Frohnmaier travels to Washington and New York this week and is slated as an honored guest at the New York Young Republican Club gala at Cipriani Wall Street, with an invitation stating he would speak and receive the club’s Allen W. Dulles prize.
- Frohnmaier and Bundestag colleague Anna Rathert plan meetings with Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna and with representatives of the U.S. State Department, according to the reports.
- A larger AfD delegation — including Rathert, Jan Wenzel Schmidt, Udo Hemmelgarn, Alexander Wolf, Diana Zimmer, Micha Fehre, Martin Reichardt and Jan Nolte — is expected at the gala.
- Tickets for the event range from $799 to $30,000 and must be paid by the lawmakers, while hotels and flights are covered by the AfD parliamentary group using public funds, with members submitting separate travel requests that list additional meetings.
- German intelligence officials and governing parties register growing concern over the party’s closer links to Trump-aligned networks, a development underscored by the new U.S. national security strategy and recent AfD outreach that included a Washington appearance by Joachim Paul and Beatrix von Storch.