Republicans and Democrats traded final blows Monday ahead of midterm elections that could upend Joe Biden’s presidency, weaken Western support for Ukraine and even open the door to a comeback bid by Donald Trump.
More than 40 million ballots have been cast through early voting options, meaning the outcome was already taking shape with hours to go before polls open nationwide Tuesday.
In a typically attention-grabbing move, Elon Musk used his newly purchased Twitter social media site to endorse a Republican takeover of Congress.
“Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties,” the world’s richest person tweeted to his 114 million followers. “Therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic.”
Advertisement
20250407_mh_renta_728x90
20250301_vacunacion_vph-728x90
20231124_etesal_728x90_1
20230601_agenda_primera_infancia_728X90
domfuturo_netview-728x90
20240604_dom_728x90
CEL
Adding to tensions — and a reminder of Moscow’s murky role throughout Trump-era US politics — Kremlin-connected oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin boasted that Russia was trying to tilt the outcome.
“We interfered, we are interfering and we will interfere… carefully, precisely, surgically and the way we do it, the way we can,” said Prigozhin, a pivotal figure in the Ukraine invasion where his Wagner military contractor group is on the front lines.
Biden, who has framed his closing argument as a warning that American democracy is on the line, was set to close out days of frantic campaigning for Democratic candidates at a rally Monday evening near Baltimore.
Trump — using the midterms to repeatedly tease a possible 2024 White House run, even as he faces criminal probes over taking secret documents and trying to overturn the 2020 election — was holding a rally in Ohio.
With polls showing Republicans in line to seize the House of Representatives, the increasingly far-right party eyed snarling the rest of Biden’s first term in aggressive investigations and opposition to spending plans.
Advertisement
20250407_mh_renta_728x90
20250301_vacunacion_vph-728x90
20231124_etesal_728x90_1
20230601_agenda_primera_infancia_728X90
domfuturo_netview-728x90
20240604_dom_728x90
CEL
Kevin McCarthy, who would likely become speaker of the House — placing him second in line to the president — also refused to rule out impeachment proceedings.
“We will never use impeachment for political purposes,” McCarthy told CNN. “That doesn’t mean if something rises to the occasion, it would not be used at any other time.”
One key question remained whether the US Senate would also flip, leaving Biden as little more than a lame duck.
With Congress out of Democrats’ hands, Biden would see his legislative agenda collapse.
That would raise questions over everything from climate crisis policies, which the president will be laying out at the COP27 conference in Egypt this week, to Ukraine, where Republicans are reluctant to maintain the current rate of US financial and military support.
Advertisement
20250407_mh_renta_728x90
20250301_vacunacion_vph-728x90
20231124_etesal_728x90_1
20230601_agenda_primera_infancia_728X90
domfuturo_netview-728x90
20240604_dom_728x90
CEL
While insisting he supports Ukraine’s struggle, McCarthy told CNN there could be no “blank check” — a nod to the isolationist, far-right Trump wing of his party and a signal likely sending shivers through Kyiv.
Just how bad Tuesday goes will also likely determine whether Biden, who turns 80 this month and is the oldest president ever, will seek a second term or step aside, plunging his party into fresh uncertainty.
‘Wake-up call’
Up for grabs are all 435 House seats, a third of the 100 Senate seats, and a slew of state-level posts.
Popular former president Barack Obama and other Democratic stars have been racing from campaign to campaign in hopes of seeing off the predicted Republican “red wave.”
But the political landscape has been tilting away from Democrats since the summer, as Republican messaging about high inflation, crime and illegal immigration overwhelmed the incumbents.
Advertisement
20250407_mh_renta_728x90
20250301_vacunacion_vph-728x90
20231124_etesal_728x90_1
20230601_agenda_primera_infancia_728X90
domfuturo_netview-728x90
20240604_dom_728x90
CEL
“This is going to be a wake-up call to President Biden,” was the bullish weekend prediction of Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s Republican governor and a rising star being touted as a possible party alternative to Trump in 2024.
The Senate is more of a toss-up but Democratic hopes of keeping the upper chamber, which they currently only barely control thanks to the tiebreaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris, hang in the balance.
Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report told MSNBC there could be a Republican gain of 15-25 House seats, while “Republicans might gain the one seat they need to win control of the Senate.”
Races in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Ohio have narrowed to projected photo finishes, and any one of them could swing the balance of power.
Democrats have focused their closing arguments on voting rights, protecting abortion access and welfare — and on the threat posed by growing support among Trump Republicans for political conspiracy theories.
Advertisement
20250407_mh_renta_728x90
20250301_vacunacion_vph-728x90
20231124_etesal_728x90_1
20230601_agenda_primera_infancia_728X90
domfuturo_netview-728x90
20240604_dom_728x90
CEL
Republicans counter that a vote for Democrats means more soaring inflation and crime.
The Pope’s funeral procession through the center of Rome worries the Italian authorities
The complexity of the transfer of Pope Francis’ coffin through the center of Rome, from St. Peter’s Vatican to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he will be buried, is the main concern for the Italian authorities, the head of Civil Protection, Fabio Ciciliano, acknowledged on Thursday.
That part of the device, which will take place on Saturday after the funeral, presents important logistical, infrastructure and security challenges, the official admitted at a press conference, in which he also said that the number of faithful who will pass through the burning chapel before, about 61,000, will increase in the coming hours.
On Saturday, after the funeral, his body will be taken in a vehicle in a solemn passage to the Roman basilica of Santa María La Mayor, to be buried in a chapel, as the Argentine pontiff arranged in life, which will collapse the center of the Italian capital.
“I remember that the burial ceremony will be a private ceremony, while immediately after the faithful will be given the opportunity to reach the side of their holiness, and obviously the sustained concentration of faithful must be taken into great consideration,” said Ciciliano.
The route of this funeral procession, which will extend over six kilometers, will be analyzed today in a meeting by those responsible for the organization, who are carrying out a “complete evaluation”.
Ciciliano focused on the exceptional fact that Francisco’s death has coincided with the Jubilee year, and that this is also a time when Rome is usually full of tourists, so it is difficult to estimate the number of people who will attend to follow the funeral.
Despite warning that parallels cannot be established with the death of John Paul II in 2005, Ciciliano reiterated that “we are estimating around 200,000 people, although we do not know if they will be deployed in St. Peter’s Square or along the funeral procession” to Santa María la Mayor.
Meanwhile, the number of faithful who will pass through the burning chapel of Pope Francis, which until 1:00 p.m. this Thursday already amounted to 61,000, will rise significantly in the next few hours, until Friday it closes at 19.00 (17.00 GMT) for the ceremony of closing the coffin before the funeral on Saturday, he anticipated.
The person in charge drew attention to the significant drop in temperatures at night, so he called on the faithful to dress like “an onion” to be able to add or remove layers as needed.
Regarding the arrival of new faithful in Rome, he said that there are 260,000 seats available to travel by train, and that on the day of the funeral about 500 buses to the Italian capital are expected to arrive.
“There will be state, commercial and private flights that will arrive at Fiumicino and Ciampino airports. We have also maintained Pratica di Mare as an airfield,” he added.
He also referred to the reception of the hundreds of world leaders and authorities who will be in Rome to attend the funeral, including the president of the United States or the kings of Spain, which he considered “very complex.”
The preparations “are being developed in close collaboration with the Prefecture of Rome for those aspects related to security, since there are elements that overlap,” he said.
This difficulty grows due to the fact that after the funerals most of these leaders will return immediately, but others prefer to stay in the city.
After the funeral, the second phase of the Civil Protection deployment will be activated, which includes the conclave to elect the new pope, when the forecasts point to an even greater number of faithful, which will also coincide with other massive events such as the final of the Soccer Cup on May 14.
A group of the poor and a delegation of migrants will participate in the funeral and burial of the pope on Saturday
A group of poor and needy and a delegation of migrants and rescuers will be present at the funeral and burial of Pope Francis this Saturday, April 26, as a last tribute to the pontiff, who was always close to the most disadvantaged and homeless people.
“A group of poor and needy people will be present on the steps that lead to the Papal Basilica of Santa María la Mayor to pay the last tribute to Pope Francis before the burial of the coffin,” the Vatican reported in a statement on Thursday.
The Arab League supports Hamas handing over control of Gaza and weapons to the Palestinian Authority
The Arab League expressed on Thursday its support for the Hamas Islamist group handing over control of the Gaza Strip to the Government of the Palestinian National Authority (ANPA), of President Mahmud Abbas, who assured that he must be the only one who controls weapons and represents the Palestinians before the international community.
The pan-Arab organization expressed its position on Thursday in a statement issued after the Arab ministerial meeting held on Wednesday at the headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, coinciding with a claim by Abbas that the ANP assumes political control of Gaza, and that Hamas releases the 59 Israeli hostages it still holds and lay down their arms.
“The Council of the Arab League affirmed its support for President Mahmoud Abbas’ vision regarding the importance of achieving national (Palestinian) unity based on the commitment to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),” the main member of the ANP that governs in small areas of the occupied West Bank, said the statement of the organization composed of 22 states.
In the note, the agency avoided mentioning Hamas by name, although it stressed that the PLO is the “only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”, and invited all Palestinian factions to “comply with the political program and international obligations” of the ANP.
He also insisted that the different Palestinian factions “comply with the principle of a (only) system (of government), a law and a legitimate weapon, and allow the Government (of the ANP) to assume the responsibilities of governance in Gaza within the framework of the political and geographical unity of the Palestinian territory occupied (by Israel) in 1967”.
On the other hand, the statement “categorically rejected any form of displacement of the Palestinian people from their land, under any name, circumstance or justification, considering this part of the crime of genocide” against the inhabitants of the strip, where more than 51,000 people died in Israeli attacks since October 2023.
The Arab Foreign Ministers expressed, on the other hand, their support for the conference that France and Saudi Arabia plan to hold next June under the auspices of the UN to support the “two-state solution”, one Palestinian next to the Israeli.
They also showed their support for the Egyptian plan, supported last March by Arab and Islamic countries, for the reconstruction of Gaza, and “urging countries and financial institutions to quickly provide the financial support necessary for its implementation.”
Hamas has controlled Gaza since its militiamen expelled the forces of the ANP Government from the Strip in 2007, controlled by the secular group Fatah, also from Abbas and majority within the PLO.
The enmity between Hamas and Fatah resides, in addition to ideological differences, in the discrepancies that when facing the defense of a Palestinian State, since while Islamists advocate armed struggle and “resistance” against the Israeli occupation, the ANP opts for politics and negotiations.
