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As midterm count drags on, focus shifts to 2024 White House race

Photo: Gregg Newton / AFP

| 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.

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“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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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International

Bolsonaro is transferred to São Paulo to continue the treatment for an erysypela

Former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro moved this Monday from the Amazon city of Manaus, where he was hospitalized with an erysipelas, to a hospital in São Paulo, where the treatment against that skin infection will continue.

The lawyer of the leader of the far right, Fabio Wajngarten, said on his social networks that Bolsonaro will also be examined for a possible intestinal obstruction, although he did not give more details on the matter.

Bolsonaro, 69, arrived last Friday in Manaus for some political commitments and on Saturday he was hospitalized once it was found that he suffered from erysipelas, a bacterial infection that affects the skin and subcutaneous tissue.

The Santa Julia hospital, where he was treated, reported that the former president, from 2019 to 2022, had a “table of dehydration and infectious skin process.”

The doctors did not mention the possible intestinal obstruction cited by Wajngarten, but it is a problem that Bolsonaro suffers repeatedly since, in the campaign for the 2018 elections, he was stabbed in the abdomen in the middle of a rally.

Since then, they underwent four surgeries to correct stomach problems resulting from that attack.

The former president faces serious difficulties in Justice, which investigates him in various cases, one of them linked to alleged plans to prevent the inauguration of the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated him in the 2022 elections.

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International

The number of deaths in a passenger bus accident in southern Peru rises to eleven

The number of deaths in Peru when a passenger bus crashed from the southern department of Puno to Cuzco, when it was traveling through the province of Melgar, rose to 11, official sources reported on Monday.

The head of the road police of the Puno department, David Sota Paredes, told the RPP station that the number of deaths from the accident increased to eleven, including a five-month-old baby, who have already been identified, and that in addition, 11 other injured people were transferred to the Ayaviri hospital.

The Universal company bus overturned at kilometer 1,170 of the Longitudinal road, in the district of Santa Rosa, in the province of Melgar in Puneña, in the early hours of Monday morning, confirmed the Superintent of Land Transport of People, Cargo and Goods (Sutran).

This official entity reported that it activated all its immediate attention protocols and initiated coordination with its inspectors in the region, the National Police of Peru (PNP) and the Health Emergency Operations Center of Puno to “help with the investigations that allow the causes of the accident to be determined.”

Likewise, Sutran indicated that the vehicle, with B2R959 plate, had authorization from the General Directorate of Transport Authorizations of the Ministry of Transport and Communications for the regular passenger transport service, with accident insurance and technical review in force.

“The Sutran expresses its condolences to the relatives and relatives of the victims of the unfortunate accident and vows for the speedy recovery of the injured,” he said in a statement shared on his social networks.

Last week, the roads in northern Peru recorded another accident of a passenger bus that left 27 people dead from the fall of the vehicle into a chasm in the department of Cajamarca, while another public transport unit rushed into a river, in the jungle of Amazonas, and caused the death of a policeman and 10 people injured.

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International

Israel says it will continue to negotiate a ceasefire while bombing the east of Rafah

The Israeli War Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, agreed on Monday to continue “the operation” in Rafah, south of Gaza, but agreed to send a delegation to Cairo to continue negotiating a possible ceasefire.

“Despite the fact that Hamas’ proposal is far from meeting Israel’s fundamental demands, Israel will send a high-ranking delegation to Egypt in an effort to exhaust the possibility of reaching an agreement on acceptable terms,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.

Benny Gantz, also a member of the War Cabinet, agreed with Netanyahu. “The military operation in Rafah is an inseparable part of our continuous efforts and our commitment to return our kidnapped,” he said tonight in a statement quoted by Israeli media.

Gantz confirmed that Israel will send a delegation to Cairo although, he said, the proposal agreed by Hamas “does not correspond to the dialogue that has taken place so far with the mediators and contains important gaps.”

Both messages come after the announcement of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the political bureau in Hamas, that the Islamist group accepted a proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza, a few hours after the Israeli Army issued an “immediate” evacuation order from the east of Rafah.

In a final statement released tonight, Hamas confirmed that both Haniyeh and the secretary general of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziad al Nakhala – a faction also present in the Gaza Strip – discussed on Monday whether or not to approve a ceasefire, and said that the decision was made as a result of “the evolution of the current situation” in Gaza.

“It was also emphasized that the resistance factions will not back down on their demands included in the proposal they agreed, in particular a (comprehensive) ceasefire, an integral withdrawal (from Israeli troops), an honorable exchange (of hostages for prisoners), reconstruction and the end of the (Israeli) siege,” Hamas recalled.

The Israeli Army confirmed that it is currently bombing the southern city of Rafah, where more than one million Gazans take refuge after the start of the ground offensive on October 27, which forced the northern population to leave their homes, many of which are now destroyed.

Despite the heavy bombings and firing of flares, according to EFE on the ground, Israeli troops and tanks have not crossed the fence that separates Israel from southern Gaza.

The Army “is currently carrying out targeted attacks against Hamas terrorist targets in the east of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip,” a military statement confirmed tonight, announcing that there would be more details shortly.

For its part, the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, confirmed Israeli attacks in the city of Rafah against “roads, agricultural land, residential houses and farms” in the eastern neighborhoods of Al Salam and Al Jinaina, among others, which coincide with some of the places included this morning in the evacuation letter.

In a press conference in Hebrew tonight, the Army spokesman, Daniel Hagari, recalled that the troops are prepared for a land incursion into Rafah after this morning’s evacuation order, which only affects about 100,000 Gazans among more than a million people who are overcrowded in Rafah.

Hamas warned Israel on Monday that any military takeover of Rafah will not be something simple and that his armed wing, the Qasam Brigades, are ready to defend his people.

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