First Thing: Rift in Trump’s inner circle over 2024 campaign announcement
Good morning.
Donald Trump’s top political staffers at Mar-a-Lago are pressing him to move forward with his planned 2024 presidential campaign announcement next week, but a chorus of allies are suggesting he delay until after the Senate runoff in Georgia in December, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The former US president has been forced to reckon with Republican blame for underwhelming performances by rightwing candidates he endorsed in the midterm elections, with the defeat of the Republican candidate Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania contributing to uncertainty over which party will control the Senate.
Trump has suggested publicly that he intends to announce his 2024 presidential campaign next week as planned. Behind the scenes at Mar-a-Lago, in a sign of concern about his standing after the midterm results, he remains undecided on how to proceed. However, some initial invitations for the “special announcement” event have been sent.
Trump’s top staffers have firmly pressed him to announce his latest White House campaign as planned on Tuesday, the sources said, suggesting he would appear weak and wounded by the results were he to cave to demands that he hold off until the Senate runoff.
Is there an upside to waiting until next month? His handpicked Republican candidate, Herschel Walker, trails Democratic incumbent, Raphael Warnock. His staffers are said to have told him: if Walker wins, you can take credit, and if Walker loses, your position will be no different to now.
Nothing final in House or Senate as midterm elections count continues
All eyes in the political world were trained on Arizona and Nevada on Friday, where hundreds of thousands of uncounted votes held the key to control of the US Senate, three days after Americans cast their final ballots in midterm elections.
Democrats or Republicans can capture a Senate majority by sweeping the contests in both states. A split, however, would transform a 6 December Senate runoff election in Georgia into a proxy battle for the chamber, which, among other powers, holds sway over President Joe Biden’s judicial appointments.
Meanwhile, Republicans were slowly inching closer to wresting control of the House of Representatives from Biden’s Democrats, which would in effect give them veto power over his legislative agenda and allow them to launch investigations into his administration.
Republicans had secured at least 211 of the 218 House seats they need for a majority, Edison Research projected late on Thursday, while Democrats had won 197. That left 27 races yet to be determined, including a number of close contests.
Why is the midterm vote count taking so long in some US states? Because elections are devolved to each of the 50 states, the method and speed of the count varies slightly between each state. The big picture here is that counts are taking extra time in races that are very close.
‘More than 50 poor countries in danger of bankruptcy,’ says UN official
More than 50 of the poorest developing countries are in danger of defaulting on their debt and becoming in effect bankrupt unless the rich world offers urgent assistance, the head of the UN Development Programme has said.
Inflation, the energy crisis and rising interest rates are creating conditions where an increasing number of countries are in danger of default, with potentially disastrous effects on their people, according to Achim Steiner, the UN’s global development chief.
“There are currently 54 countries on our list [of those likely to default] and if we have more shocks – interest rates go up further, borrowing becomes more expensive, energy prices, food prices – it becomes almost inevitable that we will see a number of these economies unable to pay,” he said at the Cop27 UN climate summit.
“And that creates a catastrophic scenario. Look at Sri Lanka [which has descended into civil strife] with all the social and economic and political implications this carries with it.”
What else is happening at Cop27? Joe Biden is visiting the conference and is due to speak this afternoon. The theme of the day is decarbonisation. The full UN schedule can be found here, and we’ll bring you the most interesting and important developments as the day unfolds on our live blog.
Exodus continues at Twitter as Elon Musk hints at possible bankruptcy
As Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter entered its third week, the billionaire laid bare a delicate financial future for the social media platform, amid an exodus of top privacy and security executives.
Yoel Roth, the head of safety and integrity who had been deputized to publicly address concerns advertisers and users had about the platform, is reportedly the latest to leave the company.
The departures began on the same day Musk addressed employees for the first time, saying that “bankruptcy isn’t out of the question”, according to multiple reports.
The day began with the resignation of three top security officials – the chief information security officer, Lea Kissner, the chief privacy officer, Damien Kieran, and the chief compliance officer, Marianne Fogarty – prompting warnings from the Federal Trade Commission. (Twitter reached a settlement over privacy issues with the FTC in May.) Following those departures, Roth and Twitter’s head of client solutions, Robin Wheeler, also left.
What else is happening on Twitter? George W Bush “misses killing Iraqis”, and Tony Blair agrees. OJ Simpson says he did it. At least, that’s what these famous people appear to be saying on Twitter – and it must all be true, because they have a blue checkmark next to their names. In reality, though, these parody accounts are simply taking advantage of Musk’s Twitter Blue service. For $8 a month, users are granted the blue check that once indicated an account genuinely belonged to a public figure. The result, for internet jokesters, is an account that purports to belong to a celebrity and looks very real.
Ukraine says its forces have reclaimed dozens of landmine-littered towns and villages abandoned by Russian troops in southern Ukraine as they close in on the outskirts of the strategic city of Kherson. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said: “Dozens of Ukrainian flags have already returned to their rightful place.”
Joe Biden will meet his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on Monday on the sidelines of the G20 summit, the White House has said. In their first faceto-face talks since Biden became president, the US leader hopes to build a “floor” for relations between the two countries.
KFC has apologised for a push notification sent out via its app inviting German customers to celebrate the anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews by ordering fried chicken and cheese. The company contacted customers to suggest they “commemorate” the Nazi atrocity by eating its food.
A powerful rightwing pressure group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), is pushing states to adopt a law shielding all US businesses from “political boycotts”. It comes amid rising consumer pressure on firms over who they do business with.
A northern Californian city with one of the highest rates of fatal police shootings in the state has agreed to pay nearly $3m to the mother of a 21-yearold who was killed by an officer inside his family home in 2017. The family of Angel Ramos has settled its lawsuit with the city of Vallejo and the Vallejo police officer Zach Jacobsen.
Stat of the day: More than 600 fossil fuel lobbyists at Cop27 climate summit, a rise of more than 25% from last year
The number of fossil fuel lobbyists at the Cop27 climate conference has risen by more than 25% since last year, outnumbering any one frontline community affected by the climate crisis. There are 636 lobbyists from the oil and gas industries registered to attend the UN event in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. At Glasgow, the figure was 503, which outnumbered the delegation of any single country. This year the only country with a larger delegation is the United Arab Emirates, which will host Cop28 next year and has 1,070 registered delegates.
Don’t miss this: ‘Feminine hygiene’ products are full of toxic chemicals. Why have they been pushed on Black women?
As someone who suffers from chronic hives and has a hormonally driven health condition, I have been on a mission to remove risky chemicals from my hygiene regimen, writes Paige Curtis. Phasing out toxic chemicals from my hair and beauty routine was fairly straightforward. But another category of products left me with more questions than answers: the world of “feminine hygiene”. I found that Black women use vaginal cleansers at higher rates than other groups. The legacy of racist advertising and cultural norms passed down through generations may be the cause.
Climate check: Pelosi accuses Republicans of treating climate crisis like ‘it’s all a hoax’
Nancy Pelosi has accused Republicans of treating the climate crisis like “it’s all a hoax” while speaking at the Cop27 climate talks in Egypt, where the US delegation is trying to remain upbeat about continued progress on dealing with global heating despite uncertainty over the midterm election results. Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, made a surprise appearance at the climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh yesterday. Her appearance comes at a critical point for the future of democracy in the US and the future of the planet.
Last Thing: Has ‘Trumpty Dumpty’ taken a great fall from Rupert Murdoch’s grace?
“Trumpty Dumpty” blared the front page of Thursday’s New York Post, the tabloid newspaper Rupert Murdoch has owned since 1976 and reportedly Trump’s own favourite newspaper. Next to the picture of the former president as an egg perching precariously on a brick wall, the text goaded: “Don (who couldn’t build a wall) had a great fall – can all the GOP’s men put the party back together again?” The Post cover offered the most visceral insight into Murdoch’s thinking, and its contempt was far from an outlier in the mogul’s news empire.
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