Marine Le Pen announced she's running for French president on Tuesday — just hours before a court upheld her conviction for stealing money from the European Parliament. She is the leader of the far-right Rassemblement National party and has run for president twice before, losing to Emmanuel Macron both times. The next day, she campaigned in a market town in her political base. Protesters interrupted, shouting insults, and she left early The Guardian.

The timing tells the story. Last April, a court found Le Pen guilty of organizing a fake-jobs scheme. She used the European Parliament's budget to pay people for work they didn't do. The court said no one had done this before at this scale. That verdict included a ban on running for office — which would have meant she couldn't be president Reuters.

But an appeals court just changed that. The judges confirmed she's guilty of taking the money, but they shortened how long she's banned from office. Now she can run in 2027. Instead of a complete ban, the court sentenced her to one year of house arrest with electronic monitoring — basically, she'd have to stay home The Guardian. She appealed again to France's top court, and that appeal automatically pauses the house arrest while the court decides. That decision could take months — and won't be finished before people vote.

Le Pen is 57 years old and has lost two previous elections to Macron, in 2017 and 2022 Reuters. She leads the Rassemblement National, a far-right party. She's expected to campaign with Jordan Bardella, a 30-year-old party leader who would likely become prime minister if she wins. The party will hold a major meeting in October 2026 where they'll formally announce the two as a team Rassemblement National.

People reacted along expected lines. Gabriel Attal, who works with President Macron, compared Le Pen to Donald Trump, saying she's fighting the courts aggressively rather than accepting their decisions The Guardian. Polls of her own party's voters show most support her running anyway, even with the conviction. But her opponents on the left are energized against her.

Something is changing in democracies: politicians with convictions sometimes keep running. A trial court's ban used to stop candidates outright. Now, appeals let some convicted people stay in races. Here, the court said she's guilty, punished her with house arrest, but still let her run. The embezzlement case will hang over the campaign until April 2027, but it won't stop her from competing.

The choice of where she campaigned was no accident — a stronghold of her family's political power. Yet even there, protesters shouted her down. Her supporters see proof she's being attacked unfairly by courts and angry crowds. Her opponents see a convicted criminal trying to look like a victim. Both sides will push these ideas for the next ten months.