International
As midterm count drags on, focus shifts to 2024 White House race
| By AFP | Chris Lefkow |
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.”
“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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
International
Seven bodies found with signs of torture in Sinaloa
Mexican authorities discovered seven lifeless bodies on Wednesday, showing clear signs of torture, in the rural area of Culiacán, Sinaloa, just one day after the same number of bodies was found in several municipalities in the western state of Mexico.
Six of these seven victims were found along the side of the highway that connects Culiacán to Mazatlán, near Laguna de Canachi, according to local media reports, which also noted that messages addressed to a criminal group were found near the bodies.
This brings the total number of violent deaths in the region to seven within just 24 hours. On Tuesday, authorities reported more victims found in the municipalities of Culiacán, Elota, and Mazatlán.
Among the victims identified was a local cattle rancher named Ramón Velázquez Ontiveros, as well as a police officer from Mazatlán, who was killed by a motorcyclist outside his home in San Marcos.
International
Málaga paralyzed by new storm as torrential rains hit Spain
Thousands of people were evacuated and trains were suspended as torrential rains once again struck Spain on Wednesday, following the devastating floods that killed at least 223 people two weeks ago, most of them in the Valencia region.
The national meteorological agency (Aemet) issued a maximum, red-level alert for the Andalusian province of Málaga in the south, and for Tarragona in the northeast, due to the new DANA (isolated depression at high levels), also known as a cold drop.
The city of Málaga appeared to be the hardest hit by the rains, with more than 3,000 people evacuated from 1,000 homes near rivers, flooded streets, and the suspension of urban transport and train services to Madrid.
“Today Málaga is paralyzed,” said Andalusia’s regional president, Juan Manuel Moreno, to reporters. “I know it is a problem for citizens not being able to take their children to school or go to work, but after what we saw in Valencia, we need to ‘prevent’ and minimize the impact in terms of loss of life,” he added.
The storm also led to the postponement of a match between Spain and Poland in the Billie Jean King Cup women’s tennis competition, which was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon in Málaga.
International
Hezbollah launches explosive drone strike on Israel’s defense headquarters
The Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah claimed on Wednesday that it launched an attack with explosive drones against the Israeli army’s headquarters in Tel Aviv.
The Iran-backed organization reported in a statement that it had carried out “an aerial attack with a squadron of explosive drones” targeting the site that houses Israel’s main defense institutions.
Hezbollah later stated that it also fired a barrage of rockets at the Glilot military intelligence base in the suburbs of Tel Aviv.
The Israeli military indicated that “sirens sounded in several areas of northern and central Israel following the launch of projectiles from Lebanon.”
It later clarified that “five projectiles were identified over the territory, and some were intercepted.”
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