Control of the US Congress hung in the balance on Thursday as ballot-counting dragged on and attention shifted to the next big election — the 2024 presidential race — and whether Americans could see a Joe Biden-Donald Trump re-match.
With 209 seats so far, Republicans appear poised to secure a slim majority in the 435-seat House of Representatives, but control of the Senate may come down to an early December runoff in the southern state of Georgia.
Biden celebrated on Thursday what he said was the success of his Democratic Party in fending off a predicted Republican landslide in a stormy economic climate.
“For months and months, all of you heard from the press and the pundits was Democrats are facing to disaster … a giant red wave,” he said. “Folks, that didn’t happen.”
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“The American public have made it clear — they expect Republicans to work with me,” he said.
Speaking a day earlier, Biden who turns 80 this month and is already America’s oldest president, insisted he intends to run for a second term in 2024 despite calls by some members of the party for him to hand the reins over to a new generation of leaders.
He promised a final decision “early next year.”
A drubbing would have surely raised questions about whether Biden should run again. But instead he did better than his two Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who both took a hammering in their first midterms.
The 76-year-old Trump has promised a “very big announcement” in Florida on Tuesday that is expected to be the launch of his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
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Trump’s early entry into the race would appear designed in part to fend off possible criminal charges over taking top secret documents from the White House, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters on January 6 last year.
It may also be intended to undercut his chief potential rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who emerged as one of the biggest winners from Tuesday’s midterms.
“(Trump’s) intention is to consolidate his support early and crowd out other potential candidates,” said Jon Rogowski, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago.
‘Ron De-Sanctimonious’
The 44-year-old DeSantis, a Harvard- and Yale-educated lawyer, notched up a nearly 20-point victory over his Democratic opponent in the Florida governor’s race and took credit for a host of Republican victories in other races in the Sunshine State.
“We not only won election, we have rewritten the political map,” DeSantis said. “We’ve got so much more to do and I have only begun to fight.”
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While DeSantis has emerged as Trump’s main rival for the nomination, the former president continues to dominate in the polls when Republicans are asked who they want to represent the party in the 2024 White House race.
But Trump may have lost the backing of a major ally — the powerful media empire of conservative billionaire Rupert Murdoch.
Pointing to the party’s disappointing midterms showing, The Wall Street Journal, the flagship of Murdoch’s News Corp, declared in an editorial on Thursday that “Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.”
The cover of the tabloid New York Post depicted Trump on a precarious wall as “Trumpty Dumpty” who “had a great fall” in the vote, blaming him for the failure of Republicans to sweep past Democratic rivals.
It celebrated DeSantis as “DeFUTURE.”
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Trump coined his own derogatory nickname for DeSantis, a one-time ally, referring to him as “Ron De-Sanctimonious” and belittling his election victory.
“Shouldn’t it be said that in 2020, I got 1.1 Million more votes in Florida than Ron D got this year, 5.7 Million to 4.6 Million?” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “Just asking?”
Biden was asked by reporters on Wednesday about a Trump-DeSantis showdown.
“It’ll be fun watching them take on each other,” he said.
In the Senate, Democrat John Fetterman defeated Trump-endorsed candidate Mehmet Oz, seizing the Pennsylvania seat after the most expensive Senate race in US history.
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The final makeup of the Senate now hangs on three seats: Arizona and Nevada, where the counting of votes could take several more days, and Georgia, where there will be a December 6 runoff between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and former American football star Herschel Walker.
Even with a slim majority in the House, Republicans could stymie Biden’s legislative agenda and launch investigations into the president and his allies.
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.
