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US moves to shield Saudi crown prince in journalist killing
The Biden administration declared Thursday that the high office held by Saudi Arabia's crown prince should shield him from lawsuits for his role in the killing of a U.S.-based journalist, a turnaround from Joe Biden's passionate campaign trail denunciations of Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the brutal slaying.
The administration said the prince’s official standing should give him immunity in the lawsuit filed by the fiancée of slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and by the rights group he founded, Democracy for the Arab World Now.
The request is non-binding and a judge will ultimately decide whether to grant immunity. But it is bound to anger human rights activists and many U.S. lawmakers, coming as Saudi Arabia has stepped up imprisonment and other retaliation against peaceful critics at home and abroad and has cut oil production, a move seen as undercutting efforts by the U.S. and its allies to punish Russia for its war against Ukraine.
The State Department on Thursday called the administration's decision to try to protect the Saudi crown prince from U.S. courts in Khashoggi's killing “purely a legal determination."
Saudi officials killed Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. They are believed to have dismembered him, although his remains have never been found. The U.S. intelligence community concluded Saudi Arabia’s crown prince had approved the killing of the widely known and respected journalist, who had written critically of Prince Mohammed’s harsh ways of silencing of those he considered rivals or critics.
The Biden administration statement Thursday noted visa restrictions and other penalties that it had meted out to lower-ranking Saudi officials in the death.
“From the earliest days of this Administration,the United States Government has expressed its grave concerns regarding Saudi agents’ responsibility for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder,” the State Department said. Its statement did not mention the crown prince's own alleged role.
Biden as a candidate vowed to make a “pariah” out of Saudi rulers over the 2018 killing of Khashoggi.
Read more: US implicates Saudi crown prince in journalist Jamal Khashoggi's killing
“I think it was a flat-out murder,” Biden said in a 2019 CNN town hall, as a candidate. “And I think we should have nailed it as that. I publicly said at the time we should treat it that way and there should be consequences relating to how we deal with those — that power.”
But Biden as president has sought to ease tensions with the kingdom, including bumping fists with Prince Mohammed on a July trip to the kingdom, as the U.S. works to persuade Saudi Arabia to undo a series of cuts in oil production.
Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, and DAWN sued the crown prince, his top aides and others in Washington federal court over their alleged roles in Khashoggi's killing. Saudi Arabia says the prince had no direct role in the slaying.
“It’s beyond ironic that President Biden has singlehandedly assured MBS can escape accountability when it was President Biden who promised the American people he would do everything to hold him accountable," the head of DAWN, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in a statement, using the prince's acronym.
Biden in February 2021 had ruled out the U.S. government imposing punishment on Prince Mohammed himself in the killing of Khashoggi, a resident of the Washington area. Biden, speaking after he authorized release of a declassified version of the intelligence community's findings on Prince Mohammed's role in the killing, argued at the time there was no precedent for the U.S. to move against the leader of a strategic partner.
The U.S. military long has safeguarded Saudi Arabia from external enemies, in exchange for Saudi Arabia keeping global oil markets afloat.
“It’s impossible to read the Biden administration’s move today as anything more than a capitulation to Saudi pressure tactics, including slashing oil output to twist our arms to recognize MBS’s fake immunity ploy,” Whitson said.
A federal judge in Washington had given the U.S. government until midnight Thursday to express an opinion on the claim by the crown prince's lawyers that Prince Mohammed's high official standing renders him legally immune in the case.
The Biden administration also had the option of not stating an opinion either way.
Sovereign immunity, a concept rooted in international law, holds that states and their officials are protected from some legal proceedings in other foreign states’ domestic courts.
Upholding the concept of “sovereign immunity” helps ensure that American leaders in turn don’t have to worry about being hauled into foreign courts to face lawsuits in other countries, the State Department said.
Read more: Washington Post: Turkish officials say Saudi writer killed
Human rights advocates had argued that the Biden administration would embolden Prince Mohammed and other authoritarian leaders around the world in more rights abuses if it supported the crown prince's claim that his high office shielded him from prosecution.
Prince Mohammed serves as Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler in the stead of his aged father, King Salman. The Saudi king in September also temporarily transferred his title of prime minister — a title normally held by the Saudi monarch — to Prince Mohammed. Critics called it a bid to strengthen Mohammed’s immunity claim.
Trump looking to defy history with 3rd run for president
Former President Donald Trump is preparing to launch his third campaign for the White House on Tuesday, looking to move on from disappointing midterm defeats and defy history amid signs that his grip on the Republican Party is waning.
Trump had hoped to use the GOP's expected gains in last week's elections as a springboard to vault himself to his party's nomination by locking in early support to keep potential challengers at bay. Instead, he now finds himself being blamed for backing a series of losing candidates after disappointing results in which Democrats retained control of the Senate and House control remains too early to call.
“Hopefully, tomorrow will turn out to be one of the most important days in the history of our Country!” Trump wrote on his social media network on Monday. An announcement was expected at 9 p.m. EST Tuesday from his club in Palm Beach.
Read more: US midterm election: Democrats repel Republicans backed by Trump in several left-leaning states
Another campaign is a remarkable turn for any former president, much less one who made history as the first to be impeached twice and whose term ended with his supporters violently storming the U.S. Capitol in a deadly bid to halt the peaceful transition of power on Jan. 6, 2021. Just one president in U.S. history has been elected to two nonconsecutive terms: Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892.
Trump is also facing a series of intensifying criminal investigations, including a Justice Department probe into the hundreds of documents with classified markings that were discovered in boxes and drawers at his Mar-a-Lago club.
Aides and allies had urged Trump to wait until after the midterms were over — and then until after a Dec. 6 Senate runoff election in Georgia — to announce his plans. But Trump, eager to return to the spotlight, is also hoping to stave off a long list of potential challengers, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who cruised to reelection last week and is now being urged by many in his party to run for president a well.
Trump has tried to blame Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for the GOP’s performance — and McConnell allies have criticized Rick Scott, the Florida senator who heads the Senate Republicans’ campaign committee.
However, Trump has received the brunt of criticism for elevating candidates in states like Pennsylvania and Arizona who were unappealing to general election voters because they embraced his lies about 2020 election or held hard-line views on issues like abortion that were out of step with the mainstream.
While Trump has the backing of the No. 3 House Republican, Rep. Elise Stefanik, others were already moving on.
Read more: Biden, Trump to make final appeals ahead of crucial midterms
Asked whether she would endorse Trump in 2024, Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming told reporters Monday: “I don’t think that’s the right question. I think the question is, who is the current leader of the Republican Party?”
Asked who that was, she replied: “Ron DeSantis.”
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, a longtime Trump critic, compared Trump to a pitcher who keeps losing after GOP disappointments in 2018, 2020 and now 2022.
“He’s been on the mound and lost three straight games. If we want to start winning, we need someone else on the mound. And we’ve got a very strong bench that can come out," Romney said. "I know, there’s some fans that love him. Just like, you know, an aging pitcher, they’re always fans that want to keep them there forever. But if you keep losing games, try to put some new players on the field.”
Others expressed concern that Trump’s announcement would be a distraction from the Georgia race and urged potential candidates to focus there.
“What’s really important for anybody who wants to be a 2024 candidate is to help us right now in 2022 to finish the cycle by winning the state of Georgia," said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.
“We obviously had higher expectation in the Senate, which didn’t pan out. I think there are a lot of different things that contribute to that," Thune added. “But I do think that, you know, folks who were unduly focused on the 2020 election, that’s not a winning strategy with independent voices.”
Even the former president’s right-flank allies in the House Freedom Caucus kept their distance ahead of Trump's announcement.
“I am focused on what’s happening here,” said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., the Freedom Caucus chairman, as lawmakers returned to Capitol Hill on Monday. “I’m just not paying attention to any of those things, so I don’t want to comment on that.”
Meanwhile, in Utah, 86 Republican lawmakers on Monday sent out a news release urging DeSantis to run, reflecting dissatisfaction with having Trump as their party’s standard-bearer. The state’s Mormon majority has long been skeptical of Trump’s isolationism and foul language.
And in Michigan, Paul Cordes, chief of staff of the Michigan Republican Party, penned a four-page internal memo that criticized Trump-backed candidates for “statewide sweeps” that will give Democrats full control of the state's government for the first time in 40 years. That includes Tudor Dixon, who lost the governor’s race to Democratic incumbent Gretchen Whitmer by double digits.
Trump, Cordes wrote, was “popular amongst our grassroots and a motivating factor for his supporters, but provided challenges on a statewide ballot, especially with independents and women in the midterm election.”
Democrats keep Senate control with Cortez Masto's victory in Nevada
Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto won election to a second term representing Nevada on Saturday, defeating Republican Adam Laxalt to clinch the party’s control of the chamber for the next two years of Joe Biden’s presidency.
With Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly’s victory in Arizona on Friday, Democrats now hold a 50-49 edge in the Senate. The party will retain control of the chamber, no matter how next month’s Georgia runoff plays out, by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote.
Democrats’ hold on the Senate is a blow to Republicans’ high hopes of wresting away control of Congress in a midterm election that typically favors the party out of power. It was still unclear which party would control the House of Representatives as counting continued in razor-tight races in California and a smattering of other states.
Cortez Masto, the first Latina in the Senate, was considered the most vulnerable Democratic senator in the midterm elections, and the Republican Party had high hopes of flipping the seat. But despite an influx of spending on attack ads from national GOP groups, Cortez Masto managed to secure her reelection bid.
Read more: Senate control may come down to Nevada as count nears end
Nevada’s vote count took several days partly because of the mail voting system created by the state Legislature in 2020 that requires counties to accept ballots postmarked by Election Day if they arrive up to four days later. Laxalt had an early lead that dwindled after late-counted ballots came in from the state’s population centers in Las Vegas and Reno.
Cortez Masto, the state’s former two-term attorney general, focused her Senate campaign on the increasing threat to abortion access nationwide and worked to court the state’s Spanish-speaking residents and hourly wage earners, pointing out her support of a permanent pathway to citizenship for “Dreamers” and regularly visiting union halls and workers’ groups.
Her fundraising far outpaced Laxalt’s. She spent nearly $47 million and had more than $6 million in cash on hand through mid-October, according to OpenSecrets. Laxalt spent nearly $13 million and had about $3 million remaining during the same time.
Laxalt, a former Nevada attorney general himself who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2018, focused on rising inflation and a struggling economy for much of his campaign, attempting to tie voters’ financial woes to policies advanced by Democrats in Congress and Biden.
Former President Donald Trump, who twice lost Nevada in his White House runs, came to the state twice to rally for Laxalt and other Republican candidates.
Democrats had an uphill battle given the nation’s turbulent economy, and Nevada exemplified the party’s challenges. The state is one of the most diverse in the nation, and its largely working class population often lives paycheck to paycheck and has struggled with both inflation and the aftershocks of the shutdown of Las Vegas’ tourist-based economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Roughly three-fourths of Nevada voters said the country is headed in the wrong direction, and about 5 in 10 called the economy the most important issue facing the country, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of 2,100 of the state’s voters.
Read more: Democrats hold small but shrinking lead in key Arizona races
Voters viewed the economy negatively, with VoteCast finding nearly 8 in 10 saying economic conditions are either not so good or poor. Only about 2 in 10 called the economy excellent or good. And about a third of voters said their families are falling behind financially.
But that didn’t necessarily translate into anger at President Joe Biden or his party. About half considered inflation the most important issue facing the U.S., but they were evenly split over whether they think higher prices are due to Biden’s policies or factors outside his control.
Nevada is also a famously live-and-let-live state, and Cortez Masto’s message on preserving abortion rights resonated. According to VoteCast, 7 in 10 wanted the procedure kept legal in all or most cases.
Senate control may come down to Nevada as count nears end
Control of the U.S. Senate may come down to Nevada, where a slow ballot count entered its final act Saturday in the nail-biter contest between Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt.
Saturday is the last day that mail ballots can arrive and be counted under the state's new voting law. Election officials were hustling to get through a backlog of tens of thousands of ballots to determine the race's winner, with the state's largest county saying it hoped to be effectively done by the evening.
The Nevada race took on added importance after Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly was declared the winner of his reelection campaign in Arizona on Friday night, giving his party 49 seats in the chamber. Republicans also have 49.
If Cortez Masto wins, Democrats would maintain their control of the Senate given Vice President Kamala Harris' tiebreaking vote. If Laxalt wins, the Georgia Senate runoff next month would determine which party has the single-vote Senate edge.
Cortez Masto was only a few hundred votes behind Laxalt, with most of the remaining uncounted ballots in heavily Democratic Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. Democrats were confident those ballots would vault their candidate into the lead.
Laxalt has said he expects to maintain his advantage and be declared the victor. But on Saturday he acknowledged in a tweet that the calculus has changed because Cortez Masto had performed better than Republicans expected in Clark County ballots counted over the past few days.
Read more: Democrats hold small but shrinking lead in key Arizona races
“This has narrowed our victory window,” he tweeted, acknowledging the race comes down to the final Clark County ballots.
“If they are GOP precincts or slightly DEM leaning then we can still win,” Laxalt tweeted. “If they continue to trend heavy DEM then she will overtake us.”
If a winner isn't clear by the end of the day on Saturday, attention would shift to a few thousand more ballots that could be added to the totals early next week. Mail ballots with clerical errors can be “cured” by voters until the end of the day Monday, and then added to the totals. And a few thousand provisional ballots also remain, votes that election officials must double-check are legally countable by Tuesday before they can be tallied.
“We know that this is a serious count. There are people nationwide who are looking to these results,” Joe Gloria, the registrar in Clark County, said at a press conference Saturday. “We know that people need to see that count. We're not going to delay it any further.”
Gloria said all 22,000-plus remaining ballots would be tabulated by Saturday evening. “They’re all being counted,” Gloria said. “My vaults are empty.”
Still, state law requires a relative handful of ballots to linger. In Clark County, there are also 7,100 ballots being “cured” and 5,555 provisional ballots. The county accounts for three-quarters of Nevada's population.
Gloria noted that it takes a couple of cycles to adjust ballot-counting to the all-mail system that Nevada switched to during the 2020 pandemic. He also noted that state law requires him to accept ballots until Saturday. “We couldn't be done any earlier, even if we wanted to,” Gloria said.
In another key race, Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak lost his reelection bid to his Republican challenger, sheriff Joe Lombardo, on Friday night.
Nevada, a closely divided swing state, is one of the most racially diverse in the nation, a working class state whose residents have been especially hard hit by inflation and other economic turmoil.
Roughly three-fourths of Nevada voters said the country is headed in the wrong direction, and about 5 in 10 called the economy the most important issue facing the country, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of 2,100 of the state’s voters.
Read more: GOP moves closer to winning the House; the Senate's fate may depend on a runoff
Voters viewed the economy negatively, with VoteCast finding nearly 8 in 10 saying economic conditions are either not so good or poor. Only about 2 in 10 called the economy excellent or good. And about a third of voters said their families are falling behind financially.
But that didn’t necessarily translate into anger at President Joe Biden or his party. About half considered inflation the most important issue facing the U.S., but they were evenly split over whether they think higher prices are due to Biden’s policies or factors outside his control.
According to VoteCast, 7 in 10 voters in Nevada wanted abortion kept legal in all or most cases, and Cortez Masto and other Democrats made preserving the right a centerpiece of their campaigns.
Republicans, however, relentlessly hammered the economic argument, contending it was time for a leadership change. They also sought to capitalize on lingering frustrations about pandemic shutdowns that devastated Las Vegas’ tourist-centric economy in 2020.
On Thursday morning, The Associated Press declared Republican Stavros Anthony the winner in the lieutenant governor race, while Republican Andy Mathews was elected state controller.
The state’s lone Republican congressman, Mark Amodei, easily won reelection in his mostly rural district in northern Nevada. The state’s three Las Vegas-area Democratic members of the House were also reelected.
6 killed after vintage aircraft collide at Dallas air show
Six people were killed after two historic military planes collided and crashed to the ground Saturday afternoon during a Dallas air show, officials said.
“According to our Dallas County Medical Examiner, there are a total of 6 fatalities from yesterday’s Wings over Dallas air show incident,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins tweeted Sunday. He said authorities are continuing to work to identify the victims.
Emergency crews raced to the crash scene at the Dallas Executive Airport, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the city’s downtown. News footage from the scene showed crumpled wreckage of the planes in a grassy area inside the airport perimeter. Dallas Fire-Rescue told The Dallas Morning News that there were no reported injuries among people on the ground.
Anthony Montoya saw the two planes collide.
“I just stood there. I was in complete shock and disbelief,” said Montoya, 27, who attended the air show with a friend. “Everybody around was gasping. Everybody was bursting into tears. Everybody was in shock.”
Officials did not specify how many people were inside each plane, but Hank Coates, president of the company that put on the airshow, said one of the planes, a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, typically has a crew of four to five people. The other, a P-63 Kingcobra fighter plane, has a single pilot.
No paying customers were on the aircraft, said Coates, of Commemorative Air Force, which also owned the planes. Their aircraft are flown by highly trained volunteers, often retired pilots, he said.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said the National Transportation Safety Board had taken control of the crash scene, with local police and fire providing support.
“The videos are heartbreaking,” Johnson said on Twitter.
The planes collided and crashed around 1:20 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The collision occurred during the Commemorative Air Force Wings Over Dallas show.
Victoria Yeager, the widow of famed Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager and herself a pilot, was also at the show. She didn’t see the collision, but did see the burning wreckage.
“It was pulverized,” said Yeager, 64, who lives in Fort Worth.
“We were just hoping they had all gotten out, but we knew they didn’t,” she said of those on board.
The B-17, a cornerstone of U.S. air power during World War II, is an immense four-engine bomber used in daylight raids against Germany. The Kingcobra, a U.S. fighter plane, was used mostly by Soviet forces during the war. Most B-17s were scrapped at the end of World War II and only a handful remain today, largely featured at museums and air shows, according to Boeing.
Several videos posted on social media showed the fighter plane appearing to fly into the bomber, causing them to quickly crash to the ground and setting off a large ball of fire and smoke.
“It was really horrific to see,” Aubrey Anne Young, 37, of Leander. Texas, who saw the crash. Her children were inside the hangar with their father when it occurred. “I’m still trying to make sense of it.”
A woman next to Young can be heard crying and screaming hysterically on a video that Young uploaded to her Facebook page.
Air show safety — particularly with older military aircraft — has been a concern for years. In 2011, 11 people were killed in Reno, Nevada, when a P-51 Mustang crashed into spectators. In 2019, a bomber crashed in Hartford, Connecticut, killing seven people. The NTSB said then that it had investigated 21 accidents since 1982 involving World War II-era bombers, resulting in 23 deaths.
Wings Over Dallas bills itself as “America’s Premier World War II Airshow,” according to a website advertising the event. The show was scheduled for Nov. 11-13, Veterans Day weekend, and guests were to see more than 40 World War II-era aircraft. Its Saturday afternoon schedule of flying demonstrations included the “bomber parade” and “fighter escorts” that featured the B-17 and P-63.
Arthur Alan Wolk is a Philadelphia aviation attorney who flew in air shows for 12 years. After watching the air show video and hearing the maneuvers described as “bombers on parade,” Wolk told The Associated Press Sunday that the P-63 pilot violated the basic rule of formation flying.
“He went belly up to the leader,” Wolk said. “That prevents him from gauging distance and position. The risk of collision is very high when you cannot see who you are supposed to be in formation with and that kind of join up is not permitted.”
He added, “I am not blaming anyone and to the greatest extent possible air shows, the pilots and the aircraft that fly in them are safe. Air shows are one of the largest spectator events in America and it is rare that a tragedy like this occurs.”
Wolk said it takes extensive training and discipline to fly in an air show setting. The air show qualifications of the P-63 pilot are not known.
The FAA was also launching an investigation, officials said.
Biden to meet China's Xi on Monday for Taiwan, Russia talks
President Joe Biden will meet Monday with President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of next week’s Group of 20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, a face-to-face meeting that comes amid increasingly strained U.S.-China relations, the White House announced Thursday.
It will be the first in-person meeting between the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies since Biden became president in January 2021 and comes weeks after Xi was awarded a norm-breaking third, five-year term as the Chinese Communist Party leader during the party’s national congress.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement the leaders will meet to “discuss efforts to maintain and deepen lines of communication between” the two countries and to "responsibly manage competition and work together where our interests align, especially on transnational challenges that affect the international community.”
The White House has been working with Chinese officials over the last several weeks to arrange the meeting. Biden on Wednesday told reporters that he intended to discuss with Xi growing tensions between Washington and Beijing over the self-ruled island of Taiwan, trade policies, Beijing’s relationship with Russia and more.
“What I want to do with him when we talk is lay out what each of our red lines are and understand what he believes to be in the critical national interests of China, what I know to be the critical interests of the United States,” Biden said. “And determine whether or not they conflict with one another.”
Read more: Biden, Trump to make final appeals ahead of crucial midterms
The White House sought to downplay expectations for the meeting, telling reporters there was no joint communique or deliverables anticipated from the sit-down.
“I don’t think you should look at this meeting as one in which there’s going to be specific deliverables announced," White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said. "Rather the two leaders are going to give direction to their teams to work on a number of areas, both areas where we have differences and areas where we can work together.”
Biden and Xi traveled together in the U.S. and China in 2011 and 2012 when both leaders were serving as their respective countries' vice presidents, and they have held five phone or video calls since Biden became president in January 2021. But the U.S.-China relationship has become far more complicated since those getting-to-know-you talks in Washington and on the Tibetan plateau a decade ago.
As president, Biden has repeatedly taken China to task for human rights abuses against the Uyghur people and other ethnic minorities, Beijing’s crackdowns on democracy activists in Hong Kong, coercive trade practices, military provocations against self-ruled Taiwan and differences over Russia’s prosecution of its war against Ukraine.
Weeks before Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, the Russian president met with Xi in Beijing and the two issued a memorandum expressing hopes of a “no limits” relationship for their nations.
China has largely refrained from criticizing Russia’s war but thus far has held off on supplying Moscow with arms.
Read more: Amidst recession fears, Biden has to convince Americans job gains mean better days ahead
“I don’t think there’s a lot of respect that China has for Russia or Putin,” Biden said Wednesday. “And in fact, they’ve been sort of keeping the distance a little bit.”
The leaders were also expected to address U.S. frustrations that Beijing has not used its influence to press North Korea to pull back from conducting provocative missile tests and to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Biden was set to discuss threats from North Korea with the leaders of South Korea and Japan a day before sitting down with Xi.
Sullivan said Biden would meet with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Seok Yeol on Sunday on the margins of the East Asia Summit in Cambodia, where North Korea's saber rattling is expected to be the focus of talks.
Xi’s government has criticized the Biden administration’s posture toward Taiwan — which Beijing looks eventually to unify with the communist mainland — as undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Chinese president also has suggested that Washington wants to stifle Beijing’s growing clout as it tries to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy.
Tensions over Taiwan have grown since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August.
Biden said that he’s “not willing to make any fundamental concessions” about the United States’ Taiwan doctrine.
Under its “One China” policy, the United States recognizes the government in Beijing while allowing for informal relations and defense ties with Taipei. It takes a stance of “strategic ambiguity” toward the defense of Taiwan — leaving open the question of whether it would respond militarily were the island attacked.
Asked about the anticipated meeting, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a Thursday news briefing that China was looking for “win-win cooperation with the U.S.” while reiterating Beijing’s concerns about the U.S. stance on Taiwan.
“The U.S. needs to stop obscuring, hollowing out and distorting the One China principle, abide by the basic norms in international relations, including respecting other countries’ sovereignty, territorial integrity and noninterference in other countries’ internal affairs,” he said.
Biden caused a stir in Asia in May when at a news conference in Tokyo, said “yes” when asked if he was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if China invaded. The White House and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were quick to clarify that there was no change in U.S. policy.
Beijing sees official American contact with Taiwan as encouragement to make the island’s decades-old de facto independence permanent, a step U.S. leaders say they don’t support. Pelosi is the highest-ranking elected American official to visit since then-Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1997.
Xi has stayed close to home throughout the global COVID-19 pandemic, where he has enforced a “zero-COVID” policy that has resulted in mass lockdowns that have roiled the global supply chains.
He made his first trip outside China since start of the pandemic in September with a stop in Kazakhstan and then onto Uzbekistan to take part in the eight-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization with Putin and other leaders of the Central Asian security group.
U.S. officials were eager to see how Xi approaches the meeting after being newly empowered with a third term and consolidating his position as the unquestioned leader of the state, saying they would wait to assess whether that made him more or less likely to seek out areas of cooperation with the U.S.
They emphasized that party congress results reinforced the importance of direct engagement with Xi, rather than lower level officials whom they’ve found unable or unwilling to speak for the Chinese leader.
Sullivan says it “remains to be seen” what impact Xi's cementing another five years as Communist Party leader will have on his approach to the U.S.-China relationship.
Democrats hold small but shrinking lead in key Arizona races
Arizona Democrats maintained small but dwindling leads over their Republican rivals in the races for U.S. Senate and governor, contests that could determine control of the Senate and the rules for the 2024 election in a crucial battleground state.
The races remained too early to call two days after the election, with some 600,000 ballots left to count, about a quarter of the total cast.
Protracted vote counts have for years been a staple of elections in Arizona, where the overwhelming majority of votes are cast by mail and many people wait until the last minute to return them. But as Arizona has morphed from a GOP stronghold to a competitive battleground, the delays have increasingly become a source of national anxiety for partisans on both sides.
Read more: GOP moves closer to winning the House; the Senate's fate may depend on a runoff
After opening big leads early on election night, when only mail ballots returned early were reported, Democrats have seen their leads dwindled as more Republican ballots have been counted. On Thursday morning, Democrats led in the races of Senate, governor and secretary of state, while the race for attorney general was essentially tied. It could take several days before it's clear who won some of the closer contests.
With Republicans still in the hunt, it remained unclear whether the stronger-than-expected showing for Democrats in much of the U.S. would extend to Arizona, a longtime Republican stronghold that became a battleground during Donald Trump's presidency.
The GOP nominated a slate of candidates who earned Trump's endorsement after falsely claiming his loss to President Joe Biden was tainted.
Among them former television news anchor Kari Lake was about half a point behind Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in the race for governor, a contest that centered heavily on Lake's baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election. The Republican candidate for attorney general also trailed narrowly.
Democrats had more comfortable 5-point margins in the races for U.S. Senate and secretary of state, but with so many ballots outstanding, the races were too early to call.
In the race for attorney general, Republican Abraham Hamadeh took the lead from Democrat Kris Mayes.
Officials in Maricopa County, the state's most populous, said about 17,000 ballots were affected by a printing mishap that prevented vote-counters from reading some ballots, a problem that slowed voting in some locations and infuriated Republicans who were counting on strong Election Day turnout. County officials said all ballots will be counted but gave no timeline for doing so.
The cause remains a mystery. The two top officials on the county board of supervisors, both Republicans, said in a statement Wednesday night that they used the same printers, settings and paper thickness during the August primary and pre-election testing, when there were no widespread issues.
Read more: Election takeaways: No sweep for the Republicans after all
“There is no perfect election. Yesterday was not a perfect election,” said Bill Gates, chairman of the board of supervisors, told reporters earlier in the day. “We will learn from it and do better.”
Lake repeated her pledge to immediately call lawmakers into special session upon being sworn in to make massive changes to Arizona election laws. She wants to significantly reduce early and mail voting, options chosen by at least 8 in 10 Arizona voters, and to count all ballots by hand, which election administrators say would be extremely time consuming.
Ballots can have dozens of races on them. Maricopa County has more than 50 judges on the ballot, on top of state and local races and 10 ballot measures.
“We’re going to go back to small precincts where it’s easier to detect problems and easier to fix them and it’ll be easier to hand count votes as well,” Lake told Fox News host Tucker Carlson Wednesday night. “These are some of the things I’d like to see happen. I’ll work with the Legislature.”
A political urban-rural divide was evident among Arizona voters.
Democrats Katie Hobbs and Sen. Mark Kelly each drew support from nearly two-thirds of urban voters, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 3,200 voters in Arizona.
Suburban voters split about evenly between the two Democratic candidates and their GOP rivals, Kari Lake and Blake Masters. Small town and rural voters were more likely to favor Lake and Masters.
In the Senate race, suburban men and women were divided in their candidate preferences. Suburban men clearly favored Masters, suburban women Kelly.
In the race for governor, suburban men overwhelmingly backed Lake, while suburban women slightly favored Hobbs.
Meanwhile, Republicans who control the three-member board of supervisors in southeastern Arizona’s GOP-heavy Cochise County voted Wednesday to appeal a judge’s decision that blocked them from hand-counting all the ballots, which are also being tabulated by machines.
The efforts to hand-count ballots in the county and elsewhere across the nation are driven by unfounded concerns among some Republicans that problems with vote-counting machines or voter fraud led to Trump’s 2020 defeat.
A judge said the plan ran afoul of state election law that limits hand counts to a small sample of ballots, a process meant to confirm the machine count was accurate.
GOP moves closer to winning the House; the Senate's fate may depend on a runoff
Republicans inched closer to a narrow House majority Wednesday, while control of the Senate hinged on a few tight races in a midterm election that defied expectations of sweeping conservative victories driven by frustration over inflation and President Joe Biden’s leadership.
Either party could secure a Senate majority with wins in both Nevada and Arizona — where the races were too early to call. But there was a strong possibility that, for the second time in two years, the Senate majority could come down to a runoff in Georgia next month, with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker failing to earn enough votes to win outright.
In the House, Republicans on Wednesday night were within a dozen seats of the 218 needed to take control, while Democrats kept seats in districts from Virginia to Pennsylvania to Kansas and many West Coast contests were still too early to call. In a particularly symbolic victory for the GOP, Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the House Democratic campaign chief, lost his bid for a sixth term.
Control of Congress will decide how the next two years of Biden’s term play out, and whether he is able to achieve more of his agenda or will see it blocked by a new GOP majority. Republicans are likely to launch a spate of investigations into Biden, his family and his administration if they take power, while a GOP takeover of the Senate would hobble the president’s ability to appoint judges.
“Regardless of what the final tally of these elections show, and there’s still some counting going on, I’m prepared to work with my Republican colleagues,” Biden said Wednesday in his first public remarks since the polls closed. “The American people have made clear, I think, that they expect Republicans to be prepared to work with me as well.”
Also read: GOP, Democrats notch victories in competitive midterm races
Democrats did better than history suggested they would. The party in power almost always suffers losses in the president’s first midterm elections, though even if the GOP ultimately wins the House, it won’t be by a margin as large as during other midterm cycles. Democrats gained a net of 41 House seats under then-President Donald Trump in 2018, President Barack Obama saw the GOP gain 63 in 2010 and Republicans gained 54 seats during President Bill Clinton’s first midterm.
A small majority in the House would pose a great challenge for the GOP and especially California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who is in line to be House speaker and would have little room for error in navigating a chamber of members eager to leverage their votes to advance their own agenda.
In the fight for Senate control, Pennsylvania was a bright spot for Democrats. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke five months ago, flipped a Republican-controlled Senate seat, topping Trump-endorsed Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Georgia, meanwhile, was set for yet another runoff on Dec. 6. In 2021, Warnock used a runoff to win his seat, as did Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff — which gave Democrats control of the Senate. Both Warnock and Walker were already fundraising off the race stretching into a second round.
Also read: US midterm election: Democrats repel Republicans backed by Trump in several left-leaning states
Both Republican and Democratic incumbents maintained key Senate seats. In Wisconsin, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson prevailed over Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, while in New Hampshire, Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan beat Don Bolduc, a retired Army general who had initially promoted Trump’s lies about the 2020 election but tried to shift away those views closer to Election Day.
AP VoteCast, a broad survey of the national electorate, showed that high inflation and concerns about the fragility of democracy were heavily influencing voters. Half of voters said inflation factored significantly, with groceries, gasoline, housing and other costs that have shot up in the past year. Slightly fewer — 44% — said the future of democracy was their primary consideration.
Biden didn’t entirely shoulder the blame for inflation, with close to half of voters saying the higher-than-usual prices were more because of factors outside of his control. And despite the president bearing criticism from a pessimistic electorate, some of those voters backed Democratic candidates.
Democrats counted on a midterm boost from the Supreme Court’s decision to gut abortion rights, which they thought might energize their voters, and the bet paid off. In four states where the issue was on the ballot, voters backed abortion rights. VoteCast showed that 7 in 10 national voters said overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision was an important factor in their midterm decisions. It also showed the reversal was broadly unpopular. And roughly 6 in 10 said they favor a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.
In the first national election since the Jan. 6 insurrection, some who participated in or were in the vicinity of the attack on the U.S. Capitol were poised to win elected office. One of those Republican candidates, Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin — who was outside the Capitol during the deadly riot — won a House seat. Another, J.R. Majewski, lost to Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur.
Republicans had sought to make inroads in liberal New England but were shut out of House contests, with one Maine race still set to be determined by ranked choice voting.
Governors’ races took on outsized significance this year, particularly in battleground states that could help decide the results of the 2024 presidential election. Democrats held on to governors’ mansions in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, defeating Republicans who promoted Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election. Republicans held on to governors’ mansions in Florida, Texas and Georgia, another battleground state Biden narrowly won two years ago.
Trump found some success as well. He lifted Republican Senate candidates to victory in Ohio and North Carolina. JD Vance, the bestselling author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” defeated 10-term congressman Tim Ryan, while Rep. Ted Budd beat Cheri Beasley, the former chief justice of the state Supreme Court.
Trump had endorsed more than 300 candidates across the country, hoping the night would end in a red wave he could ride to the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. After summoning reporters and his most loyal supporters to a watch party at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Tuesday, he ended the night without a triumphant speech.
Still, the former president insisted on social media that he’d had “A GREAT EVENING.” Hours later, Palm Beach County issued an evacuation order for an area that included Trump’s club with Hurricane Nicole approaching.
Election takeaways: No sweep for the Republicans after all
For weeks, Republicans predicted a “red wave” would carry them to power in Congress, as voters repudiated majority Democrats for failing to tame skyrocketing inflation and address worries about rising crime.
The reality appeared far different early Wednesday.
Rather than a wholesale rejection of President Joe Biden and his party, the results were far more mixed as returns from Tuesday’s midterms trickled in .
Many Democratic incumbents proved surprisingly resilient, outperforming their party’s own expectations. Meanwhile, Democrat John Fetterman won an open Senate seat currently held by the GOP, while other key races that will determine control of the chamber remain too early to call.
“When you wake up tomorrow, we will be in the majority and Nancy Pelosi will be in the minority,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy predicted early Wednesday.
He may be right. But it appeared that likely Republican gains would come on far less favorable terms than anticipated.
Here are some takeaways from this year’s election:
Republicans hoped for a wipeout. They didn’t get it. After Democrats racked up several hard-fought wins in swing districts, like Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s Virginia seat, the sweeping wins many Republicans predicted had yet to materialize early Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the fate of Democrats narrow hold on the Senate was unclear.
Fetterman defeated Dr. Mehmet Oz for a crucial Pennsylvania Senate seat vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and former NFL star Herschel Walker, a Republican, were locked in a close contest in Georgia. The Wisconsin race between Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and Democrat Mandela Barnes was too close to call.
And the outcome of the two remaining two seats that will determine which party will hold a Senate majority — Arizona and Nevada — may not be known for days because both states conduct elections in part by mail ballots, which take a long time to count.
HISTORY LESSON
It’s called history for a reason. The party that celebrates winning the White House is usually mourning a loss in the midterms two years later.
Add to that historical pattern an economy battered by inflation and teetering on recession, throw in fears about crime, and the outcome is close to certain.
For Biden and House Democrats, the likelihood of keeping power in the lower chamber of Congress was always slight. Republicans have expected to gain enough seats to retake the majority. If successful, which was not immediately clear Wednesday morning, they also have plans to neuter Biden’s agenda for the next two years.
Since 1906, there have been only three midterms in which the party of the president in power gained House seats: 1934, when the country was struggling with a Depression, 1998 when the U.S. was buoyed by a soaring economy, and 2002, when President George W. Bush had a sky-high approval rating amid the national feeling of unity after the Sept. 11 attacks.
IS FLORIDA STILL A SWING STATE?
Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio, both Republicans, offer the latest evidence that Florida is becoming increasingly red. The two soared to early reelection victories Tuesday, both winning Miami-Dade County, which Democrat Hillary Clinton carried by 29 percentage points in 2016.
Florida has been a classic battleground. It twice helped propel Barack Obama to the White House. But the state, where the number of registered Democrats exceeded Republicans in 2020, has shifted increasingly to the right. That’s thanks to GOP inroads with Hispanic voters, as well as an influx of new residents, including many retirees, drawn to its lack of an income tax as well as its sunny weather.
“Democrats really have to think about how they are going to rebuild there. The Obama coalition no longer exists,” said Carlos Curbelo, a Republican former member of Congress, who called Florida ”off the map for the foreseeable future” to Democrats.
DeSantis won the governor’s office in 2018 by only about 30,000 votes. On Tuesday, he flipped at least six counties that he lost that year. Those same counties were carried by Biden just two years ago.
Some Democrats blame some of Tuesday’s blowout losses to a lack of investment by their party.
“This is what happens when national Democrats decide to not spend money in the state,” said Greg Goddard, a Democratic fundraising consultant from Florida who raised money for Rep. Val Demings’ losing challenge of Rubio. “The pathway to Democrats winning future presidential elections is very thin if you do not plan to spend in Florida
WAS IT A ‘RED WAVE’ OR A RIPPLE?
Whether a red ripple will carry Republicans won’t likely be known for days or weeks as states that conduct their elections largely by mail, such a California, continue counting votes.
One thing is certain: It’s unlikely to match 2010′s tea party wave, which netted 63 seats, or the Newt Gingrich-led House takeover of 1994, which ousted 54 Democrats and flipped the chamber to GOP control for the first time since the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower.
One reason that won’t happen? There just aren’t that many competitive seats.
The end result? Far less interest in compromise and more gridlock in the halls of Congress.
Gingrich’s “Contract with America” was celebrated as a cornerstone of the Republicans’ 1994 House takeover for offering a concrete list of policies the GOP would pursue if put in power.
Now Republicans are far more circumspect about their aims.
“That’s a very good question. And I’ll let you know when we take it back,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell he told reporters in January.
McCarthy has offered up a “Commitment to America,” a list of priorities that fits on a pocket-sized card he carries with him that is heavy on slogans and light on detail.
Both may be attempting to avoid the plight of Gingrich whose “Contract with America” became a liability when Republicans failed to enact it.
House Republicans have said they intend to investigate Biden and his administration. They have also called for a renewed focus on fiscal restraint, a crackdown on illegal immigration at the southern border and increased domestic energy production.
Much of it may not matter. Biden, after all, has a veto pen
MOST EXPENSIVE MIDTERMS
The 2022 elections are on track to cost $16.7 billion at the state and federal level, making them the most expensive midterms ever, according to the nonpartisan OpenSecrets.
For perspective: The contests will nearly double the cost of the 2010 midterm elections, more than double the 2014 midterms and are on pace to roughly equal the 2022 gross domestic product of Mongolia.
At least $1.1 billion given at the federal level so far this election season has come from a small coterie of donors, many of whom have favored conservative causes.
“When you look at the top 25 individual donors, conservativedonors heavily outweigh liberal donors by $200 million,” said Brendan Glavin, a senior data analyst for OpenSecrets. “There’s a big skew.”
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel ($32.6 million), shipping goods magnate Richard Uihlein ($80.7 million), hedge fund manager Ken Griffin (68.5 million) and Timothy Mellon, an heir to to a Gilded Age Fortune who gave $40 million, are among the top conservative donors.
On the liberal side, hedge fund founder George Soros gave the most ($128 million), though much of it has yet to be spent. Sam Bankman Fried, a liberal 30-year-old cryptocurrency billionaire, gave $39.8 million.
US midterm election: No sweep for Republicans after all
For weeks, Republicans predicted a “red wave” would carry them to power in Congress, as voters repudiated majority Democrats for failing to tame skyrocketing inflation and address worries about rising crime.
The reality appeared far different early Wednesday.
Rather than a wholesale rejection of President Joe Biden and his party, the results were far more mixed as returns from Tuesday’s midterms trickled in .
Many Democratic incumbents proved surprisingly resilient, outperforming their party’s own expectations. Meanwhile, Democrat John Fetterman won an open Senate seat currently held by the GOP, while other key races that will determine control of the chamber remain too early to call.
“When you wake up tomorrow, we will be in the majority and Nancy Pelosi will be in the minority,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy predicted early Wednesday.
He may be right. But it appeared that likely Republican gains would come on far less favorable terms than anticipated.
Here are some takeaways from this year’s election:
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Republicans hoped for a wipeout. They didn’t get it. After Democrats racked up several hard-fought wins in swing districts, like Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s Virginia seat, the sweeping wins many Republicans predicted had yet to materialize early Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the fate of Democrats narrow hold on the Senate was unclear.
Also read: GOP, Democrats notch victories in competitive midterm races
Fetterman defeated Dr. Mehmet Oz for a crucial Pennsylvania Senate seat vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and former NFL star Herschel Walker, a Republican, were locked in a close contest in Georgia. The Wisconsin race between Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and Democrat Mandela Barnes was too close to call.
And the outcome of the two remaining two seats that will determine which party will hold a Senate majority — Arizona and Nevada — may not be known for days because both states conduct elections in part by mail ballots, which take a long time to count.
Stay tuned.
HISTORY LESSONIt’s called history for a reason. The party that celebrates winning the White House is usually mourning a loss in the midterms two years later.
Add to that historical pattern an economy battered by inflation and teetering on recession, throw in fears about crime, and the outcome is close to certain.
Also read: US midterm election: Democrats repel Republicans backed by Trump in several left-leaning states
For Biden and House Democrats, the likelihood of keeping power in the lower chamber of Congress was always slight. Republicans have expected to gain enough seats to retake the majority. If successful, which was not immediately clear Wednesday morning, they also have plans to neuter Biden’s agenda for the next two years.
Since 1906, there have been only three midterms in which the party of the president in power gained House seats: 1934, when the country was struggling with a Depression, 1998 when the U.S. was buoyed by a soaring economy, and 2002, when President George W. Bush had a sky-high approval rating amid the national feeling of unity after the Sept. 11 attacks.
IS FLORIDA STILL A SWING STATE?
Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio, both Republicans, offer the latest evidence that Florida is becoming increasingly red. The two soared to early reelection victories Tuesday, both winning Miami-Dade County, which Democrat Hillary Clinton carried by 29 percentage points in 2016.
Florida has been a classic battleground. It twice helped propel Barack Obama to the White House. But the state, where the number of registered Democrats exceeded Republicans in 2020, has shifted increasingly to the right. That’s thanks to GOP inroads with Hispanic voters, as well as an influx of new residents, including many retirees, drawn to its lack of an income tax as well as its sunny weather.
“Democrats really have to think about how they are going to rebuild there. The Obama coalition no longer exists,” said Carlos Curbelo, a Republican former member of Congress, who called Florida ”off the map for the foreseeable future” to Democrats.
DeSantis won the governor’s office in 2018 by only about 30,000 votes. On Tuesday, he flipped at least six counties that he lost that year. Those same counties were carried by Biden just two years ago.
Some Democrats blame some of Tuesday’s blowout losses to a lack of investment by their party.
“This is what happens when national Democrats decide to not spend money in the state,” said Greg Goddard, a Democratic fundraising consultant from Florida who raised money for Rep. Val Demings’ losing challenge of Rubio. “The pathway to Democrats winning future presidential elections is very thin if you do not plan to spend in Florida
WAS IT A ‘RED WAVE’ OR A RIPPLE?Whether a red ripple will carry Republicans won’t likely be known for days or weeks as states that conduct their elections largely by mail, such a California, continue counting votes.
One thing is certain: It’s unlikely to match 2010′s tea party wave, which netted 63 seats, or the Newt Gingrich-led House takeover of 1994, which ousted 54 Democrats and flipped the chamber to GOP control for the first time since the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower.
One reason that won’t happen? There just aren’t that many competitive seats.
The end result? Far less interest in compromise and more gridlock in the halls of Congress.
WHAT DO REPUBLICANS WANT?
Gingrich’s “Contract with America” was celebrated as a cornerstone of the Republicans’ 1994 House takeover for offering a concrete list of policies the GOP would pursue if put in power.
Now Republicans are far more circumspect about their aims.
“That’s a very good question. And I’ll let you know when we take it back,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell he told reporters in January.
McCarthy has offered up a “Commitment to America,” a list of priorities that fits on a pocket-sized card he carries with him that is heavy on slogans and light on detail.
Both may be attempting to avoid the plight of Gingrich whose “Contract with America” became a liability when Republicans failed to enact it.
House Republicans have said they intend to investigate Biden and his administration. They have also called for a renewed focus on fiscal restraint, a crackdown on illegal immigration at the southern border and increased domestic energy production.
Much of it may not matter. Biden, after all, has a veto pen.
MOST EXPENSIVE MIDTERMS
The 2022 elections are on track to cost $16.7 billion at the state and federal level, making them the most expensive midterms ever, according to the nonpartisan OpenSecrets.
For perspective: The contests will nearly double the cost of the 2010 midterm elections, more than double the 2014 midterms and are on pace to roughly equal the 2022 gross domestic product of Mongolia.
At least $1.1 billion given at the federal level so far this election season has come from a small coterie of donors, many of whom have favored conservative causes.