Staging the Olympics is more than enough of a summer project for most countries, but the stakes are even higher for French President Emmanuel Macron, who is risking political chaos with his call for snap parliamentary elections before the world gathers in Paris next month.

Special Correspondent Jonathan Wijayaratne writes from the French capital that no one is sure of the outcome ahead of the parliamentary vote that begins June 30. The far-right National Rally (NR) party headed by Marine Le Pen is leading the polls after dominating European elections earlier this month against Mr. Macron’s liberal-centrist Renaissance party. The NR rejects many of Mr. Macron’s signature policies to make France a leading player in the European Union and on the global stage.

The NR’s success follows Ms. Le Pen’s moves in recent years to cleanse the party of its most extremist elements, including her father, and exploit incumbent fatigue with Mr. Macron to make the NR more palatable to a growing slice of the French electorate. Threat Status will be tracking the upcoming vote.

The Biden administration has filed formal diplomatic protests with Beijing in response to aggressive Chinese coast guard actions targeting the Philippines, a U.S. ally in the South China Sea.

The Philippine government has adopted a cautious approach toward Beijing’s sovereignty claims in the strategic waterway. The latest incident saw several Chinese coast guard vessels stop and board Philippine boats attempting to resupply a marine detachment aboard a grounded Philippine naval ship at Second Thomas Shoal. Manila claims control of the grounded ship as part of its territory. Video showed Chinese personnel seizing weapons and smashing equipment on the boats. 

Kurt Campbell, deputy secretary of state and the Biden administration’s senior policymaker on China, said in public remarks Monday that U.S. officials have “significantly demarched the Chinese interlocutors.” A demarche is a formal diplomatic protest note. 

On a separate front, Mr. Campbell, who spoke at an event in Washington kicking off the Council on Foreign Relations’ new China Strategy Initiative, said Biden administration officials believe China does not fully support the warming alliance between Russia and North Korea, underscored by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Pyongyang last week.

A senior White House official has disclosed that China’s government does not accept a Biden administration policy that restricts the use of artificial intelligence for using nuclear weapons.

Tarun Chhabra, director of technology at the White House National Security Council, said Monday that the “long-stated U.S. policy” has been that “we don’t think that autonomous systems should be getting near any decision to launch a nuclear weapon.”

China, however, does not agree, Mr. Chhabra said at an event in Washington kicking off the Council on Foreign Relations’ new China Strategy Initiative. He indicated that Beijing made its rejection clear during recent talks in Geneva between U.S. and Chinese officials.

The House Homeland Security Committee is demanding to know the names of the border crossings where the government says it’s too busy to check the identities of all the people coming across in vehicles.

Chairman Mark Green, Tennessee Republican, has asked the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general to turn over a full copy of its report from earlier this month detailing the holes in America’s border defenses. The inspector general released a version of the report on June 7 that redacted key information about the border crossings that can’t screen everyone.

Wireless routers with security vulnerabilities, especially those developed by Chinese companies, threaten the safety of every American, according to Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Rep. Bob Latta, the lawmakers who have spearheaded a bipartisan push behind the Removing Our Unsecure Technologies to Ensure Reliability and Security Act, known as the ROUTERS Act.

“Tens of millions of families and small businesses across the country use wireless routers as their primary access point to the internet. Many of these routers are susceptible to infiltration by foreign actors, including China, jeopardizing our national security and exposing our country to serious danger,” the two Republicans write.

The ROUTERS Act, which was recently passed unanimously by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, would “require the Commerce Department to review the national security threat posed by any router that is designed, developed, manufactured or supplied by a company under the jurisdiction of China, as well as U.S. adversaries Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela,” Ms. Blackburn and Mr. Latta write.

In recent weeks, environmental activists have started to admit in public what has been known all along: The only way to decarbonize the American economy quickly — or perhaps at all — is to rely almost entirely on China to supply the minerals — cobalt, nickel, copper, rare earths, etc. — necessary for the energy transition they claim they want, writes opinion columnist Michael McKenna.

With the International Energy Agency saying there are no plans to fund and build the necessary mines and refineries elsewhere, Mr. McKenna writes that Biden administration officials are left with the following options: “Abandon the energy transition to which it claims to be committed, anger their environmentalist donors and activists and permit American mines that will take decades to come to fruition, or continue to rely on the adversarial regime in China.”

• June 26 — The Geopolitics of New Technologies in the Wider Mediterranean, Wilson Center

• June 26 — Mexico’s New Political Landscape: A Conversation with Luis Rubio, Hudson Institute

• June 26 — Assessing North Korea’s Rural Development Initiative, Stimson Center.

• June 26 — Looking Back, Looking Forward: Assessing the US-Pakistan Relationship, Wilson Center.

• June 27 — Swarms over the Strait: Drone Warfare in a Future Fight to Defend Taiwan, Center for a New American Security

• July 2 — Force Design: A conversation with Gen. Eric Smith, 39th commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, Brookings Institution