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Republicans Critical of Biden’s Stance During Meeting with Xi

Congressional Republicans mostly condemned President Joe Biden for saying that there “need not be a new Cold War” between the U.S. and China, following a three-hour summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Indonesia.

A few Republicans, however, joined members of Biden’s Democratic Party in cautiously welcoming signs that the meeting may have helped to head off misunderstandings that could lead to unnecessary conflict.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas tweeted, “Joe Biden has again failed to address or even acknowledge China’s Cold War against the United States. His naive return to a policy of appeasement will hurt the United States, endanger Taiwan, and further embolden Xi Jinping.”

Biden also said, “I don’t think there’s any imminent attempt by China to invade Taiwan,” despite escalating military moves by Beijing in the Taiwan Strait.

Before the meeting, Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told VOA that “if the senior leaders or the president, the vice president of the United States are able to speak with the Chinese leaders to address the concerns about the peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait or China’s violation of the status quo, I think it’s going to be very helpful to regional peace.”

Biden’s remarks drew a backlash from several Republican lawmakers.

Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, also a Republican, tweeted, “Xi Jinping is focused on global domination, not working with the Biden administration on climate change.”

Meetings described as ‘candid and constructive’

The leaders of the world’s two largest economies met this week on the eve of the G-20 summit in Bali. Each of the men had scored recent political victories at home — Xi starting an unprecedented third term and Biden riding on what is seen as a win for his Democratic Party after a strong showing in the U.S. midterm elections.

The two engaged in a frank conversation about their respective priorities and intentions on a range of issues, according to minutes of the meeting released by the White House.

Biden emphasized the necessity for the U.S. and China to work together on transnational challenges, including climate change, global macroeconomic stability including debt relief, health security, and global food security, according to the readout.

China’s Foreign Ministry said, “Both presidents viewed the meeting as in-depth, candid and constructive. They instructed their teams to promptly follow up and implement the important common understandings reached between them, and take concrete actions to put China-U.S. relations back on the track of steady development.”

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who is vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence and a senior member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, said the Bali meeting was not a turning point in U.S.-China relations.

Rubio told VOA Mandarin during an interview on Monday that “no meeting is going to solve the deep issues between the U.S. and China … which will remain the challenge of the centuries.”

In a written statement issued on Monday before Xi and Biden met, Rubio criticized Biden for “dangerously” misunderstanding “the CCP [Chinese Communist Party], which openly pushes for conflict with the United States and its allies.”

“This meeting should have held the CCP accountable for its rampant human rights abuses, ongoing theft of American intellectual property, and its refusal to investigate the origins of COVID-19,” Rubio said. “Instead, President Biden demonstrated that he is willing to sacrifice everything — including our national security and the security of our allies — for the sake of pursuing ill-fated climate talks with our nation’s greatest adversary.”

‘It’s good that we’re talking’

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, however, thinks the long meeting indicated a positive development.

“Three hours isn’t necessarily a good sign, but I think it’s positive, because there’re so many issues, and that tells me that both went into the meeting understanding how important U.S.-China communication is at a minimum,” he told VOA Mandarin on Monday. “So I was happy to hear that.”

Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota told VOA Mandarin on Monday that it’s important to maintain good relations with China.

“The Chinese Communist Party may have different points of view about how to get there,” he said. “We want to make clear our positions, but we also want them to understand that you would much rather have peace than to have conflict.

“I am always hopeful that communications and diplomacy can win out,” he added. “Time will tell whether or not we had a successful meeting. But it’s good that we’re talking.”

Democratic Representative Gregory Meeks of New York and Republican Representative Ami Bera of California said in a statement that “candid dialogue and sustained diplomacy are necessary to ensure that this competition is healthy, constructive, and does not devolve into conflict.”

But, they added, engagement with China “will continue to be based on the principle of strategic competition … as long as Beijing continues to ignore international rules and norms — whether it’s China’s aggression in the Taiwan Strait, its genocide in Xinjiang, its oppression in Hong Kong and Tibet, or its support for Russia’s and North Korea’s destabilizing actions.”

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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US Senate Advances Protection for Same-Sex, Interracial Marriages at Federal Level  

U.S. senators took a key step toward protecting same-sex and interracial marriages Wednesday as they advanced the Respect for Marriage Act, 62-37, to a final vote.

Twelve Republicans voted to advance the legislation, which will head to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law after final passage in the U.S. House.

The legislation would repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage as between a man and a woman under federal law. It would also require states to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages performed in other states, although it would not prevent states from passing laws banning those marriages.

“This legislation unites Americans,” Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin, one of the act’s co-sponsors and the first openly gay woman elected to the U.S. Senate, said Wednesday. “With the Respect for Marriage Act, we can ease the fear that millions of same-sex and interracial couples have – that their freedoms and their rights could be stripped away – by passing this bill. We are guaranteeing same-sex and interracial couples, regardless of where they live, that their marriage is legal, and that they will continue to enjoy the rights and responsibilities that all other marriages are afforded.”

Abortion ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage at the federal level in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. But the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision in June overturning a right to abortion at the federal level raised concerns about federal protections for other rights.

In his concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the court should reconsider other decisions based on the right to privacy, such as guarantees for the right to marry or the right to use birth control, arguing the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee those rights. Thomas’ opinion led to widespread concern the court would next move to overturn the right to same-sex marriage. A bipartisan group of senators worked on the Respect for Marriage Act to address this possibility.

A version of the legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this year with support from 47 Republicans.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who was reelected last week to represent the Southeastern state of Florida, told cable news network CNN earlier this year the bill was “a stupid waste of time.”

The Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit organization advancing religious freedom, said in a statement Tuesday that the Respect for Marriage Act was unconstitutional and did not provide “any protection for religious individuals or organizations, and the subsequent amendments to the bill exclude a large percentage of constitutionally and statutorily protected religious organizations.”

But Republican Senator Susan Collins, another co-sponsor of the legislation, said on the Senate floor Wednesday that concerns about religious liberty were a false argument.

“This legislation would make clear in federal law that nonprofit religious organizations and religious educational institutions cannot be compelled to participate in or support the solicitation or celebration of marriages that are contrary to their religious beliefs,” she said.

In a May 2022 Gallup poll, 71% of Americans said they supported same-sex marriage. Only 27% supported it when the poll was first taken in 1996.

 
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Republicans Win Slim Majority in US House of Representatives

Republicans won control of the U.S. House on Wednesday, returning the party to power in Washington and giving conservatives leverage to blunt President Joe Biden’s agenda and spur a flurry of investigations. But a threadbare majority will pose immediate challenges for Republican leaders and complicate the party’s ability to govern.

More than a week after Election Day, Republicans secured the 218th seat needed to flip the House from Democratic control. The full scope of the party’s majority may not be clear for several more days — or weeks — as votes in competitive races are still being counted.

But they are on track to cobble together what could be the party’s narrowest majority of the 21st century, rivaling 2001, when Republicans had just a nine-seat majority, 221-212 with two independents. That’s far short of the sweeping victory Republicans predicted going into this year’s midterm elections, when the party hoped to reset the agenda on Capitol Hill by capitalizing on economic challenges and Biden’s lagging popularity.

Instead, Democrats showed surprising resilience, holding on to moderate, suburban districts from Virginia to Minnesota to Kansas. The results could complicate House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s plans to become speaker as some conservative members have questioned whether to back him or have imposed conditions for their support.

Despite the Republicans’ underwhelming showing, the party will still have notable power. Republicans will take control of key committees, giving them the ability to shape legislation and launch investigations of Biden, his family and his administration. There’s particular interest in investigating the overseas business dealings of the president’s son, Hunter Biden. Some of the most conservative lawmakers have raised the prospect of impeaching Biden, though that will be much harder for the party to accomplish with a tight majority.

Any legislation that emerges from the House could face steep odds in the Senate, where Democrats won the barest of majorities Saturday. Both parties are looking to a December 6 Senate runoff in Georgia as a last chance to pad their ranks.

Potential for legislative chaos

With such a slim majority in the House, there’s also a potential for legislative chaos. The dynamic essentially gives an individual member enormous sway over shaping what happens in the chamber. That could lead to particularly tricky circumstances for Republican leaders as they try to win support for must-pass measures that keep the government funded or raise the debt ceiling.

The Republicans’ failure to notch more wins — they needed a net gain of five seats to take the majority — was especially surprising because the party went into the election benefiting from congressional maps that were redrawn by Republican legislatures. History was also on Republicans’ side: The party that holds the White House had lost congressional seats during virtually every new president’s first midterm of the modern era.

New leadership

The new majority will usher in a new group of leaders in Washington. If elected to succeed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the top post, McCarthy would lead what will likely be a rowdy conference of House Republicans, most of whom are aligned with former President Donald Trump’s bare-knuckle brand of politics. Many Republicans in the incoming Congress rejected the results of the 2020 presidential election, even though claims of widespread fraud were refuted by courts, elections officials and Trump’s own attorney general.

Republican candidates pledged on the campaign trail to cut taxes and tighten border security. Republican lawmakers also could withhold aid to Ukraine as it fights a war with Russia or use the threat of defaulting on the nation’s debt as leverage to extract cuts from social spending and entitlements — though all such pursuits will be tougher given how small the Republican majority may end up being.

As a senator and then vice president, Biden spent a career crafting legislative compromises with Republicans. But as president, he was clear about what he viewed as the threats posed by the current Republican Party.

Biden said the midterms showed voters want Democrats and Republicans to find ways to cooperate and govern in a bipartisan manner, but also noted that Republicans didn’t achieve the electoral surge they’d been betting on and vowed, “I’m not going to change anything in any fundamental way.”
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McConnell Reelected Senate GOP Leader; Scott’s Bid Rejected

Senator Mitch McConnell was reelected as Republican leader Wednesday, quashing a challenge from Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the Senate GOP campaign chief criticized over his party’s midterm election failures. 

Retreating to the Capitol’s Old Senate Chamber for the private vote, Republicans had faced public infighting following a disappointing performance in last week’s elections that kept Senate control with Democrats. 

McConnell, of Kentucky, easily swatted back the challenge from Scott in the first-ever attempt to oust him after many years as GOP leader. The vote was 37-10, senators said, with one other senator voting present. Senators first rejected an attempt by McConnell’s detractors to delay the leadership choice until after the Senate runoff election in Georgia next month. 

The unrest is similar to the uproar among House Republicans in the aftermath of the midterm elections that left the party split over former President Donald Trump’s hold on the party. House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy won the nomination from colleagues to run for House speaker, with Republicans on the cusp of seizing the House majority, but he faces stiff opposition from a core group of right-flank Republicans unconvinced of his leadership. 

On Wednesday, the senators first considered a motion by a Scott ally, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, to delay the leadership votes until after the December 6 runoff election in Georgia between Republican Herschel Walker and incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock that will determine the final makeup of the Senate. Walker was eligible to vote in the leadership election but wasn’t expected to be present. 

Cruz said it was a “cordial discussion, but a serious discussion” about how Republicans in the minority can work effectively. 

In all, 48 GOP senators voted. Retiring Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska missed the vote to be home after his office said his wife was recovering from a nonthreatening seizure. 

The 10 Republican senators joining in the revolt against McConnell and voting for Scott included some of the most conservative figures and those aligned with Trump. 

“Why do I think he won?” said Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., among McConnell’s detractors. “Because the conference didn’t want to change course.” 

Senators were also electing others in the Republican leadership. Democrats have postponed their internal elections until after Thanksgiving. 

McConnell’s top leadership ranks are expected to remain stable, with Senator John Thune, R-S.D., as GOP whip, and Senator John Barrasso, R-Wyo., in the No. 3 spot as chairman of the GOP conference. Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines was expected take over the campaign operation from Scott. 

The challenge by Scott, who was urged by Trump to confront McConnell, escalated a long-simmering feud between Scott, who led the Senate Republican’s campaign arm this year, and McConnell over the party’s approach to try to reclaim the Senate majority. 

“If you simply want to stick with the status quo, don’t vote for me,” Scott said in a letter to Senate Republicans offering himself as a protest vote against McConnell. 

Restive conservatives in the chamber have lashed out at McConnell’s handling of the election, as well as his iron grip over the Senate Republican caucus. 

Trump has been pushing for the party to dump McConnell ever since the Senate leader gave a scathing speech blaming then-President Trump for the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. 

Still, it represented an unusual direct challenge to McConnell’s authority. He would become the longest-serving Senate leader in history when the new Congress convenes next year. 

Scott and McConnell traded what colleagues said were “candid” and “lively” barbs during a lengthy private GOP senators lunch Tuesday that dragged for several hours. They sparred over the midterms, the quality of the GOP candidates who ran and their differences over fundraising. 

During the luncheon, some 20 senators made their individual cases for the two men. Some members directly challenged Scott in McConnell’s defense, including Maine Senator Susan Collins, who questioned the Florida senator’s management of the campaign arm, according to a person familiar with the meeting and granted anonymity to discuss it. 

Among the many reasons Scott listed for mounting a challenge is that Republicans had compromised too much with Democrats in the last Congress — producing bills that President Joe Biden has counted as successes and that Democrats ran on in the 2022 election. 

The feud between Scott and McConnell has been percolating for months and reached a boil as election results trickled in showing there would be no Republican Senate wave, as Scott predicted, according to senior Republican strategists who were not authorized to discuss internal issues by name and insisted on anonymity. 

The feuding started not long after Scott took over the party committee after the 2020 election. Many in the party viewed his ascension as an effort to build his national political profile and donor network ahead of a potential presidential bid in 2024. Some were irked by promotional materials from the committee that were heavy on Scott’s own biography, while focusing less on the candidates who are up for election. 

Then came Scott’s release of an 11-point plan early this year, which called for a modest tax increase for many of the lowest-paid Americans, while opening the door for cutting Social Security and Medicare, which McConnell swiftly repudiated even as he declined to offer an agenda of his own. 

The feud was driven in part by the fraying trust in Scott’s leadership, as well as poor finances of the committee, which was $20 million in debt, according to a senior Republican consultant. 

 
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Elections Put New Voting Laws to the Test

America has one Senate contest from the 2022 midterm elections that remains undecided, requiring a runoff election December 6 in the southern U.S. state of Georgia where turnout was heavy last week despite new balloting restrictions that some observers had feared would depress turnout of poorer and minority voters.

“It was just a very successful election day,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told a press conference the day after the November 8 midterm contests in his state. Raffensperger, a Republican, said the state’s new voting laws did not impact turnout and that major snags on election day were avoided because a record number of people took advantage of pre-election day voting, such as absentee-by-mail and early in-person voting.

“We saw processing times to vote that led to two-minute average wait times across the state,” said the secretary of state. Georgia election officials said more votes were cast in the state in 2022 than in any prior midterm election.

Runoff in Georgia

In just weeks, voter turnout in Georgia will again be put to the test as Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock faces his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker. With more than 3.8 million total votes cast November 8, neither candidate received more than 50% of the vote in the three-way contest with a third-party candidate, triggering next month’s runoff election between the top two vote-getters.

The race between the two African American candidates has been the focus of national attention. Before the midterms, it was thought to be one of a handful of races that would decide which party controls the Senate for the next two years. Now, it will determine whether Democrats can boost their bare majority.

Getting out the vote one more time

The nation’s largest civil rights organization has launched efforts to once again mobilize Georgia’s African American and other minority voters who proved crucial in President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory in the state as well as the 2021 runoff elections of two Democratic senators. It was a historic outcome in Georgia, which has been a reliably Republican state for decades.

“We still have work to do,” said Gerald Griggs, president of the NAACP Georgia state chapter. “Our folks made sure record numbers of African Americans got out and voted. But we have a runoff election and it is time for us to get back out there and mobilize.”

Suley Usman, from Smyrna, Georgia, cast his ballot 10 days before Election Day with no problems.

“I’m absolutely motivated to vote again in the runoff election,” he told VOA. “I want a say in who is elected.”

Amid a contentious political climate in which many prominent Republicans falsely alleged voter fraud gave President Biden his 2020 victory, Georgia was one of more than 20 Republican-led states that overhauled their election laws in 2021, in what officials promoted as an attempt to boost confidence in the integrity of balloting. The measures included strengthening identification requirements for mail-in voting, reducing the number of days for early voting and restricting access to ballot drop boxes.

Critics called the new laws unfair and thinly veiled attempts to discourage voting by the poor and minorities.

“These types of tactics aim to suppress votes,” said Andrea Hailey, CEO of Vote.org, in a statement quoted by The Associated Press on Monday. In response, the organization and other voter advocacy groups launched programs to educate voters and overcome any negative impact the new voting laws may have had on turnout.

“Georgians have shown they are ready and willing to navigate tough voting environments in order to make their voices heard,” Hailey said.

In the past, Georgia’s runoff contests were held nine weeks after Election Day, but this year the runoff campaign season has been shortened to four weeks, a time period that precludes new voter registrations.

Some voters have taken note.

“I absolutely believe there are actions being taken on the whole voting apparatus and process that don’t need to be taken,” said Usman. “I think being an educated voter is key.”

Turnout and voting

Across the country, tens of millions of American voters let their voices be heard last week — in record numbers for midterms in many states — despite predictions of possible political violence, voter intimidation and disenfranchisement. Overall, relatively few voting problems were reported.

“We in the voting rights community in Texas were fearing the worst,” said Anthony Gutierrez, director of Common Cause Texas. “For the most part, it didn’t happen.”

In Arizona, isolated issues with voting machines sparked baseless claims about fraud. State officials quickly denied the accusations and declared confidence in the integrity of the election.

In other parts of the country, many voters said they experienced few, if any, difficulties casting their ballots.

“I’m glad there were no complications,” said Bill Murphy, a voter in Prince George’s County, Maryland, who expected long lines at his polling location but completed the process in 10 minutes.

“It shows the people who run the elections here were prepared this time,” he added.
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Trump May Face Challenges in Organizing Republican Support

In the days leading up to former President Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday evening that he would seek the Republican Party’s nomination again in 2024, influential voices in conservative political circles expressed their opposition to the idea of handing the party’s reins back to him.

With Trump leading the party after his election in 2016, Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives in 2018. Then in 2020, despite his false claims to the contrary, Trump lost the presidential election to Joe Biden and watched as his party also lost control of the Senate.

Last week in elections they were expected to dominate, Republicans failed to take over the Senate, and as of Tuesday, appeared poised to win the House of Representatives by only a slim margin. One reason for the underwhelming GOP performance was that a number of Trump’s hand-picked candidates underperformed other, more mainstream Republican candidates.

Tuesday morning, Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of the Citadel hedge fund and a major donor to Republicans, voiced what many within the party have apparently been thinking.

“I’d like to think that the Republican Party is ready to move on from somebody who has been for this party a three-time loser,” Griffin said at an event sponsored by Bloomberg News in Singapore.

‘Sick and tired of losing’

Griffin is far from alone in his belief that Republicans need to distance themselves from the former president. Formerly friendly elected leaders and publications have also picked up the chorus.

Following the party’s worse-than-expected performance in the November 9 midterm elections, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorialized against Trump.

“Since his unlikely victory in 2016 against the widely disliked Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump has a perfect record of electoral defeat.”

The editorial added, “Now Mr. Trump has botched the 2022 elections, and it could hand Democrats the Senate for two more years. Mr. Trump had policy successes as President, including tax cuts and deregulation, but he has led Republicans into one political fiasco after another. ‘We’re going to win so much,’ Mr. Trump once said, ‘that you’re going to get sick and tired of winning.’ Maybe by now Republicans are sick and tired of losing.”

Many in the party are turning away from Trump and looking for someone to take his place, with the most likely candidate being Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who shares many of Trump’s attributes when it comes to antagonizing the political left, and who won reelection in his state last week by a margin of nearly 20 percentage points.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis said, “The question is: Who is the current leader of the Republican Party? Oh, I know who it is: Ron DeSantis. … Ron DeSantis is the leader of the Republican Party, whether he wants to be or not.”

Countering DeSantis

Some longtime observers of U.S. elections believe Trump’s decision to announce his candidacy now is aimed at clearing the field of potential competitors for the Republican nomination and blocking DeSantis, in particular.

“The conventional wisdom in politics for a long time has been that you can ward off your challengers by raising money early and moving early in the game,” Jennifer N. Victor, an associate professor of political science at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, told VOA. “And so, he’s clearly going for that kind of first-mover advantage.”

Further evidence of the former president’s concern about DeSantis is that he has recently attacked the governor in public remarks. Trump, who often bestows belittling nicknames on his rivals, has been referring to DeSantis as “Ron DeSanctimonious.”

In a lengthy statement after the midterm elections, Trump tried to minimize DeSantis’ reelection victory, noting that DeSantis won with fewer votes than Trump received in Florida in the 2020 race. The difference is likely attributable to the fact that turnout for U.S. elections in presidential years is much higher than in nonpresidential years, such as 2022.

‘Trumpism still healthy’

Some have speculated that Trump’s announcement, following so closely on the heels of the midterm elections, is meant to distract attention from the results, which are being used by some of the former president’s opponents as fodder for criticism of his decision to intervene in so many races.

However, Victor warned against reading too much into the results of last week’s voting. While Trumpian candidates may have fared poorly in some races, she said it is too soon to write off the power of the former president’s movement to shape the 2024 race.

“If Republicans had been trounced — really trounced — in this election, and Democrats had gained seats in the House, then I think the talk of Trumpism getting excised out of the party would be a lot stronger,” Victor said. “But since that didn’t happen, since it was more of a mixed result, I think there’s plenty of evidence that Trumpism is still fairly healthy and probably the largest, most robust coalition within the party.”

Looking for an alternative

Other experts, however, wondered whether a well-orchestrated challenge to Trump would have the opportunity to succeed.

Chris Stirewalt, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed that the former president retains the unwavering support of a portion of the Republican Party. But he said it is not clear that Trump’s core supporters make up a large enough share of primary voters to guarantee Trump’s nomination if an opposing candidate can consolidate the remainder.

“There are a lot of Republicans who would vote for Trump in 2024 but who hope they won’t have to,” Stirewalt, the former political editor for Fox News, told VOA.

However, he said, that doesn’t guarantee that, as in the 2016 primary, Trump won’t be able to play different factions within the party against one another until he is the last man standing.

“In 2020, the Democratic candidates took the right lesson from the 2016 election and dropped out rather than allow a fringe candidate to win the nomination,” Stirewalt said.

Looking at the Republican field in 2024, Stirewalt said, the big question is whether a coalition of Republicans who would prefer not to see Trump receive the nomination again, and those who would not vote for the former president under any circumstances, can coalesce behind a single candidate early enough to allow him or her a fighting chance against the former president.
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Trump Announces 2024 Election Run

Former President Trump on Tuesday evening formally declared he is seeking the Republican Party nomination for the 2024 election. Speaking for an hour to an invited crowd in a ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump criticized the administration of his successor, Joe Biden, telling supporters it has destroyed the U.S. economy and turned America’s cities into crime-filled “cesspools of blood.”

“In order to make America great and glorious again,” Trump said, “I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”

Unlike his last unsuccessful run in 2020 as the incumbent, Trump — who was impeached twice by the House of Representatives — is expected to face significant competition for his party’s nomination this time as he did in 2016. Possible contenders include Florida Governor Ron DeSantis; his former vice president, Mike Pence, and his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.

President Biden, who defeated Trump two years ago, has said he intends to run again but has not made an official announcement.

Only one American president has ever served nonconsecutive terms. That was Grover Cleveland, elected in 1885 and 1893.
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Through US Midterms, Europeans See Democracy Reaffirmed — But for How Long?

The U.S. midterm elections have been closely followed overseas — especially in Europe, where analysts say some of America’s closest and oldest allies are relieved that U.S. democracy held the course. But many are unsure for how long — and some are calling for a stronger and more independent Europe as a result.

In France and elsewhere in the European Union, the U.S. midterm elections have dominated the airwaves, including on Tuesday, as final results trickle in showing the Democrats retaining control of the Senate and the Republicans likely to narrowly win the House.

French analyst and historian Nicole Bacharan, who specializes in French-U.S. relations, said last week’s relatively smooth congressional vote eased fears within the European Union about the strength of America’s democracy — and their own sometimes fragile multiparty systems — that was shaken during the tumultuous aftermath of the 2020 U.S. presidential vote.

“The comforting thing about these midterms is obviously there is a majority of American citizens — Republicans and Democrats — who want to be heard through the vote,” said Bacharan. “They did vote — a lot. And they waited peacefully for the results.”

It may be a short-term reprieve. The next U.S. presidential election is only two years away.

“Well, 2024 is a big question mark everywhere — and in Europe especially,” said Bacharan. “Who is going to be the next president? What kind of international vision will he or she have? That’s all unknown.”

Warming relations

Frosty European Union-U.S. relations under former U.S. President Donald Trump have thawed considerably under pro-Europe President Joe Biden. Today, the two sides generally agree when it comes to key issues such as climate change and the war in Ukraine. But tensions still exist, for example, over last year’s hasty U.S. pullout in Afghanistan, or over a nuclear submarine deal with Australia that strained relations between Washington and Paris.

All of this bolsters calls for Europe to invest in its own security.

“We cannot be sure U.S. democracy sustains a medium-term, long-term commitment to underwriting European security in the [generous] way the U.S. has done over the past seven decades,” said Thorsten Benner, who heads the Global Public Policy Institute, a Berlin-based research group. He believes a Republican majority in the U.S. House, for instance, will push Europeans to invest more in Ukraine’s war against Russia. It’s a call he agrees with.

“It is primarily Europe’s problem,” said Benner. “This is a war in our neighborhood and not in Mexico or Canada. So we need to invest more.”

The call for a stronger European defense isn’t new. French President Emmanuel Macron has championed it for years. But progress has been slow.

“Europeans among themselves don’t agree on how to go about it. Just think of the French and the Germans, for instance,” said Bacharan. “And the capabilities of the United States — their military capabilities — [are] so much bigger, so much more enormous than anything going on in Europe. It’s not possible.”

Many said Europe may not have a choice. The next generation of U.S. leaders may be far less committed to the trans-Atlantic alliance than their predecessors. The earlier Europeans prepare for that possibility, they said, the better.
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Democrats Secure Control of US Senate, Republicans Near Control of House

The results of the 2022 midterm elections are firming up. Democrats held their majority in the U.S. Senate, while Republicans are poised to take control of the U.S House of Representatives despite a poorer than expected showing. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
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