WASHINGTON: Cheering Democrats returned Nancy Pelosi to the House speaker’s post Thursday as the 116th Congress took office and ushered in a historically diverse class of freshmen ready to confront President Donald Trump in a new era of divided government.
Trump congratulated Pelosi during a rare appearance in the White House briefing room.
The president, who has tangled with Pelosi and is sure to do so again, called her election by House colleagues “a tremendous, tremendous achievement.”
Pelosi, elected speaker 220-192, took the gavel saying US voters “demanded a new dawn” in the November election and are looking to “the beauty of our Constitution” to provide checks and balances on power. She invited scores of lawmakers’ kids to join her on the dais as she was sworn in, calling the House to order “on behalf of all of America’s children.” She faced 15 dissenting votes from fellow Democrats.
The new Congress is like none other. There are more women than ever before, and a new generation of Muslims, Latinos, Native Americans and African-Americans in the House is creating what academics call a reflective democracy, more aligned with the population of the United States. The Republican side in the House is still made up mostly of white men, and in the Senate Republicans bolstered their ranks in the majority.
In a nod to the moment, Pelosi, the first female speaker, was broadly pledging to make Congress work for all Americans — addressing kitchen table issues at a time of deep economic churn — even as her party is ready to challenge Trump with investigations and subpoena powers that threaten the White House agenda. It’s the first new Congress to convene amid a partial government shutdown, now in its 13th day over Trump’s demands for money for a wall along the U.S-Mexico border.
The House will be “for the people,” Pelosi said. She promised to “restore integrity to government” and outlined an agenda “to lower health costs and prescription drugs prices, and protect people with pre-existing medical conditions; to increase paychecks by rebuilding America with green and modern infrastructure from sea to shining sea.”
The day was unfolding as one of both celebration and impatience. Newly elected lawmakers arrived, often with friends and families in tow, to take the oath of office and pose for ceremonial photos. The Democrats promised quick passage of legislation to re-open the government, but without the funding Trump is demanding for his promised border wall.
Vice President Mike Pence swore in newly-elected senators, but Senate Republicans under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had no plans to consider the House bills to fund the government unless Trump agrees to sign them into law. That ensures the shutdown will continue, clouding the first days of the new session.
McConnell said that Republicans have shown the Senate is “fertile soil for big, bipartisan accomplishments,” but that the question is whether House Democrats will engage in “good governance or political performance art.”
It’s a time of stark national political division that some analysts say is on par with the Civil War era. Battle lines are drawn not just between Democrats and Republicans but within the parties themselves, splintered by their left and right flanks.
Pelosi defied history in returning to the speaker’s office after eight years in the minority, overcoming internal opposition from Democrats demanding a new generation of leaders. She will be the first to regain the gavel since legendary Sam Rayburn of Texas in 1955.
Putting Pelosi’s name forward for nomination, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the incoming Democratic caucus chair, recounted her previous accomplishments — passing the Affordable Care Act, helping the country out of the Great Recession — as preludes to her next ones. He called her leadership “unparalleled in modern American history.”
One Democrat, Rep. Brenda Lawrence of Michigan, cast her vote for Pelosi “on the shoulders of women who marched 100 years ago” for women’s suffrage. Newly elected Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia, an anti-gun violence advocate, dedicated hers to her slain teenage son, Jordan Davis.
As speaker, Pelosi will face an early challenge from the party’s robust wing of liberal newcomers, including 29-year-old New Yorker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has risen to such prominence she is already known around the Capitol — and on her prolific social media accounts — by the nickname “AOC.” She said she’d cast a no vote on a new package of rules to govern the House.
Ocasio-Cortez and other liberals oppose the pay-as-you-go budget provisions in the rules package that would allow restrictive objections to any legislation that would add to federal deficits. They say such restraints would hamstring Democratic efforts to invest in health care, education and develop a Green New Deal of renewable energy infrastructure projects to fight climate change.
Republicans face their own internal battles beyond just the conservative House Freedom Caucus, but as they decide how closely to tie their political fortunes to Trump. GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s name was put into nomination by his party’s caucus chair, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the daughter of the former vice president. He faced six “no” votes from his now-shrunken GOP minority.
McCarthy told the lawmakers that voters often wonder if Congress is “still capable” of solving problems, and as he passed the gavel to Pelosi he said this period of divided government is “no excuse for gridlock.”
One office remains disputed as the House refused to seat Republican Mark Harris of North Carolina amid an investigation by state election officials of irregularities in absentee ballots from the November election.
Many GOP senators are up for re-election in 2020 in states, including Colorado and Maine, where voters have mixed views of Trump’s performance in the White House.
Trump, whose own bid for 2020 already is underway, faces potential challenges from the ranks of Senate Democrats under Chuck Schumer. Trump had little to say early Thursday as the new Congress was convening, but he did tweet an attack on one of his likely presidential challengers, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, mocking her claim to Native American ancestry.
The halls of the Capitol were bustling with arrivals, children in the arms of many new lawmakers. Visitor galleries included crooner Tony Bennett and rock legend Mickey Hart, both guests of Pelosi. Incoming White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman, sat with Republican leaders.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Missouri, opened the House prayer asking at “a time fraught with tribalism at home and turbulence abroad” that lawmakers “become the architects of a kindlier nation.”
Overnight, Democratic Rep-elect Ilhan Omar of Minnesota tweeted a picture with her family at the airport. The House rules were being changed to allow her to wear a head scarf on the chamber floor. She wrote, “23 years ago, from a refugee camp in Kenya, my father and I arrived at an airport in Washington DC. Today, we return to that same airport on the eve of my swearing in as the first Somali-American in Congress.”
Pelosi sees ‘new dawn’ as diverse 116th Congress begins
Pelosi sees ‘new dawn’ as diverse 116th Congress begins
- Pelosi, elected speaker 220-192, took the gavel saying US voters “demanded a new dawn”
China’s robotic spacecraft headed for moon to carry payload from Pakistan
- China will send a robotic spacecraft in coming days on round trip to moon’s far side in first of three missions
- Chang’e-6 spacecraft will carry payloads from countries such as France, Italy, Sweden and Pakistan
BEIJING: China will send a robotic spacecraft in coming days on a round trip to the moon’s far side in the first of three technically demanding missions that will pave the way for an inaugural Chinese crewed landing and a base on the lunar south pole.
Since the first Chang’e mission in 2007, named after the mythical Chinese moon goddess, China has made leaps forward in its lunar exploration, narrowing the technological chasm with the United States and Russia.
In 2020, China brought back samples from the moon’s near side in the first sample retrieval in more than four decades, confirming for the first time it could safely return an uncrewed spacecraft to Earth from the lunar surface.
This week, China is expected to launch Chang’e-6 using the backup spacecraft from the 2020 mission, and collect soil and rocks from the side of the moon that permanently faces away from Earth.
With no direct line of sight with the Earth, Chang’e-6 must rely on a recently deployed relay satellite orbiting the moon during its 53-day mission, including a never-before attempted ascent from the moon’s “hidden” side on its return journey home.
The same relay satellite will support the uncrewed Chang’e-7 and 8 missions in 2026 and 2028, respectively, when China starts to explore the south pole for water and build a rudimentary outpost with Russia. China aims to put its astronauts on the moon by 2030.
Beijing’s polar plans have worried NASA, whose administrator, Bill Nelson, has repeatedly warned that China would claim any water resources as its own. Beijing says it remains committed to cooperation with all nations on building a “shared” future.
On Chang’e-6, China will carry payloads from France, Italy, Sweden and Pakistan, and on Chang’e-7, payloads from Russia, Switzerland and Thailand.
NASA is banned by US law from any collaboration, direct or indirect, with China.
Under the separate NASA-led Artemis program, US astronauts will land near the south pole in 2026, the first humans on the moon since 1972.
“International cooperation is key (to lunar exploration),” Clive Neal, professor of planetary geology at the University of Notre Dame, told Reuters. “It’s just that China and the US aren’t cooperating right now. I hope that will happen.”
SOUTH POLE AMBITIONS
Chang’e 6 will attempt to land on the northeastern side of the vast South Pole-Aitkin Basin, the oldest known impact crater in the solar system.
The southernmost landing ever was carried out in February by IM-1, a joint mission between NASA and the Texas-based private firm Intuitive Machines.
After touchdown at Malapert A, a site near the south pole that was believed to be relatively flat, the spacecraft tilted sharply to one side amid a host of technical problems, reflecting the high-risk nature of lunar landings.
The south pole has been described by scientists as the “golden belt” for lunar exploration.
Polar ice could sustain long-term research bases without relying on expensive resources transported from Earth. India’s Chandrayaan-1 launched in 2008 confirmed the existence of ice inside polar craters.
Chang’e-6’s sample return could also shed more light on the early evolution of the moon and the inner solar system.
The lack of volcanic activity on the moon’s far side means there are more craters not covered by ancient lava flows, preserving materials from the moon’s early formation.
So far, all lunar samples taken by the United States and the former Soviet Union in the 1970s and China in 2020 were from the moon’s near side, where volcanism had been far more active.
Chang’e-6, after a successful landing, will collect about 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of samples with a mechanical scoop and a drill.
“If successful, China’s Chang’e-6 mission would be a milestone-making event,” Leonard David, author of “Moon Rush: The New Space Race,” told Reuters. “The robotic reach to the Moon’s far side, and bringing specimens back to Earth, helps fill in the blanks about the still-murky origin of our Moon.”
China firms go ‘underground’ on Russia payments as banks pull back
- The US has imposed an array of sanctions on Russia and Russian entities since the country invaded Ukraine in 2022
- Now the threat of extending these to banks in China is chilling the finance that lubricates trade from China to Russia
- Nearly all major Chinese banks have suspended settlements from Russia since the beginning of March, said a manager at a listed electronics company in Guangdong
An appliance maker in southern China is finding it hard to ship its products to Russia, not because of any problems with the gadgets but because China’s big banks are throttling payments for such transactions out of concern over US sanctions.
To settle payments for its electrical goods, the Guangdong-based company is considering using currency brokers active along China’s border with Russia, said the company’s founder, Wang, who asked to be identified only by his family name.
The US has imposed an array of sanctions on Russia and Russian entities since the country invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Now the threat of extending these to banks in China — a country Washington blames for “powering” Moscow’s war effort — is chilling the finance that lubricates even non-military trade from China to Russia.
This is posing a growing problem for small Chinese exporters, said seven trading and banking sources familiar with the situation.
As China’s big banks pull back from financing Russia-related transactions, some Chinese companies are turning to small banks on the border and underground financing channels such as money brokers — even banned cryptocurrency — the sources told Reuters.
Others have retreated entirely from the Russian market, the sources said.
“You simply cannot do business properly using the official channels,” Wang said, as big banks now take months rather than days to clear payments from Russia, forcing him to tap unorthodox payment channels or shrink his business.
Going ‘underground’
A manager at a large state-owned bank he previously used told Wang the lender was worried about possible US sanctions in dealing with Russian transactions, Wang said.
A banker at one of China’s Big Four state banks said it had tightened scrutiny of Russia-related businesses to avert sanctions risk. “The main reason is to avoid unnecessary troubles,” said the banker, who asked not to be named.
Since last month, Chinese banks have intensified their scrutiny of Russia-related transactions or halted business altogether to avoid being targeted by US sanctions, the sources said.
“Transactions between China and Russia will increasingly go through underground channels,” said the head of a trade body in a southeastern province that represents Chinese businesses with Russian interests. “But these methods carry significant risks.”
Making payments in crypto, banned in China since 2021, might be the only option, said a Moscow-based Russian banker, as “it’s impossible to pass through KYC (know-your-customer) at Chinese banks, big or small.”
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the topic. Reuters could not determine the extent of transactions that had shifted from major banks to more obscure routes.
China’s foreign ministry is not aware of the practices described by the businesspeople to arrange payments or troubles in settling payments through major Chinese banks, a spokesperson said, referring questions to “the relevant authorities.”
The People’s Bank of China and the National Financial Regulatory Administration, the country’s banking sector regulator, did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Sanctions warning
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, after meeting China’s top diplomat Wang Yi for five and a half hours in Beijing on Friday, said he had expressed “serious concern” that Beijing was “powering Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine.”
Still, his visit, which included meeting President Xi Jinping, was the latest in a series of steps that have tempered the public acrimony that drove relations between the world’s biggest economies to historic lows last year.
While officials have warned that the United States was ready to take action against Chinese financial institutions facilitating trade in goods with dual civilian and military applications and the US preliminarily has discussed sanctions on some Chinese banks, a US official told Reuters last week Washington does not yet have a plan to implement such measures.
The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said, “China does not accept any illegal, unilateral sanctions. Normal trade cooperation between China and Russia is not subject to disruption by any third party.”
A State Department spokesperson, asked about Reuters findings that Chinese banks were curbing payments from Russia and the impact on some Chinese companies, said, “Fuelling Russia’s defense industrial base not only threatens Ukrainian security, it threatens European security.
“Beijing cannot achieve better relations with Europe while supporting the greatest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” the spokesperson said.
Blinken made clear to Chinese officials “that ensuring transatlantic security is a core US interest,” the spokesperson said. “If China does not address this problem, the United States will.”
Nearly all major Chinese banks have suspended settlements from Russia since the beginning of March, said a manager at a listed electronics company in Guangdong.
Some of the biggest state-owned lenders have reported drops in Russia-related business, reversing a surge in assets after Russia’s invasion.
Among the Big Four, China Construction Bank posted a drop of 14 percent in its Russian subsidiary’s assets last year and Agricultural Bank of China a 7 percent decline, according to their latest filings.
By contrast, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China , the country’s biggest lender, reported a 43 percent jump in assets of its Russian unit. Bank of China (BOC), the fourth-largest, did not give the breakdown.
‘Channel can be shut’
The four banks did not respond to requests for comment on their Russian businesses or the impact on Chinese companies.
Some rural banks in northeast China along the Russian border can still collect payments, but this has led to a bottleneck, with some businesspeople saying they have been lining up for months to open accounts.
A chemical and machinery company in Jiangsu province has been waiting for three months to open an account at Jilin Hunchun Rural Commercial Bank in the northeastern province of Jilin, said Liu, who works at the firm and also asked to be identified by family name.
Calls to the bank seeking comment went unanswered.
BOC has blocked a payment from Liu’s Russian clients since February, and a bank loan officer said firms exporting heavy equipment face more stringent reviews in receiving payments, Liu said.
The manager at the listed Guangdong company said their firm had opened accounts at seven banks since last month but none agreed to accept payments from Russia.
“We gave up on the Russian market,” the manager said. “We eventually didn’t receive more than 10 million yuan ($1.4 million) in payments from the Russian side, and we just gave up. The process of collecting payments is extremely annoying.”
Wang is also having second thoughts about his Russian business.
“I may gradually shrink my business in Russia as the slow process of collecting money is not good for the company’s liquidity management,” he said.
“What’s more, you don’t know what will happen in the future. The channel can be shut completely one day.”
Pedro Sanchez, a risk-taker with a flair for survival
- Sanchez said on Wednesday that he was considering stepping down
MADRID: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who will on Monday announce whether he remains in his post, is an expert in political survival who has built a career on taking political gambles.
“I have learned to push myself until the referee blows the final whistle,” the head of Spain’s Socialist party and a former basketball player wrote in his 2019 autobiography, “Resistance Manual.”
On Wednesday, he said that he was considering stepping down after a Madrid court announced an investigation into his wife Begona Gomez for alleged influence-peddling and corruption.
“I need to stop and think,” he wrote in a four-page letter posted on X.
With a charming smile and affable personality, the 52-year-old — often referred to as Mr.Handsome early in his career — has been written off politically on several occasions, only to bounce back.
He “has never had it easy,” said Paloma Roman, a political scientist at Madrid’s Complutense University, noting his “political flair” for getting out of complicated situations.
Sanchez emerged from obscurity in 2014 as a little-known MP to seize the reins of Spain’s oldest political party.
A leap-year baby born in Madrid on February 29, 1972, he grew up in a well-off family, the son of an entrepreneur father and civil servant mother.
He studied economics before obtaining a master’s degree in political economy at the Free University of Brussels and a doctorate from a private Spanish university.
Elected to the Socialist Party leadership in 2014, Sanchez’s future was quickly put in doubt after he led the party to its worst-ever electoral defeats in 2015 and 2016.
Ejected from the leadership, he unexpectedly won his job back in a primary in May 2017 after a cross-country campaign in his 2005 Peugeot to rally support.
Within barely a year, the father of two teenage girls took over as premier in June 2018 after an ambitious gamble that saw him topple conservative Popular Party leader Mariano Rajoy in a no-confidence vote.
Always immaculately dressed, the telegenic politician — who likes running and looms over his rivals at 1.90 meters (6 foot 2 inches) tall — has earned a reputation as being tenacious to the point of stubbornness.
Over the past six years, he has had to play a delicate balancing act to stay in power.
In February 2019, the fragile alliance of left-wing factions and pro-independence Basque and Catalan parties that had catapulted him to the premiership cracked, prompting him to call early elections.
Although his Socialists won, they fell short of an absolute majority, and Sanchez was unable to secure support to stay in power, so he called a repeat election later that year.
He was then forced into a marriage of convenience with the hard-left Podemos, despite much gnashing of teeth inside his own party.
Deemed politically dead after his party again suffered a drubbing in local and regional elections in 2023, Sanchez surprised the country by calling an early general election for July.
While his Socialists finished second in the general election, behind the conservative Popular Party (PP), Sanchez cobbled together a majority in parliament with the support of the far-left party Sumar and smaller regional parties, including Catalan separatists.
In exchange for their support, Catalonia’s two main separatist parties demanded a controversial amnesty for hundreds of people facing legal action over their roles in the northeastern region’s failed push for independence in 2017.
Sanchez had previously opposed such a move but he now agreed to it to remain in power, sparking several mass protests staged by the right.
On the international stage, Sanchez, Spain’s first premier fluent in English, has made a name for himself by criticizing the operation Israel launched in Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas attack on October 7, and by promising Spain’s swift recognition of a Palestinian state.
South Korea’s Yoon to meet opposition leader amid bid to reset presidency
SEOUL: South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol will meet opposition leader Lee Jae-myung for talks on Monday after a crushing election defeat for the president’s ruling party led to widespread calls for him to change his style of leadership.
Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) failed to make inroads into the opposition’s grip on parliament in the April 10 election, which was widely seen as a referendum on the conservative leader’s first two years in power.
The meeting is the first Yoon has held with Lee since taking office and comes as analysts have said he may have slipped into lame duck status after his combative political stance appeared to have alienated many voters.
Both the opposition and his own PPP urged Yoon to change course, especially after he initially appeared to shrug off the election result which in turn sent his support ratings in opinion polls plunging to their lowest point of around 20 percent.
At stake was whether he could try to regain the initiative for his pledges to cut taxes, ease business regulations and expand family support in the world’s fastest-aging society while safeguarding fiscal responsibility.
Yoon also faces a tough dilemma in his push for health care reforms. Young doctors walked off the job more than two months ago in protest over the centerpiece plan of increasing the number of doctors, and more are threatening to join the protest.
There are, however, questions over whether Monday’s meeting will be able to make any breakthroughs to unlock the stalemate in government. Lee’s Democratic Party (DP) is firmly in control of parliament, hamstringing Yoon’s ability to pass legislation.
In a sign of the political wrangling to get an upper hand, aides to Yoon and Lee struggled to agree on the time and agenda for their meeting for more than a week before Lee proposed to sit down with no preconditions or set agenda.
Lee has called for a one-time allowance of 250,000 won ($182) for all South Koreans to help cope with inflation, but PPP has called it the kind of populist policy that would make the situation worse and cost 13 trillion won for the government budget.
Blinken speaks to Azeri, Armenian leaders about peace talks
- Blinken reaffirmed Washington’s support for a peace treaty between the South Caucasus neighbors in separate calls with their leaders
- Azeri President Ilham Aliyev's press service later said Azerbaijan's FM will soon meet with his Armenian counterpart to continue negotiations
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has spoken to the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan and reaffirmed Washington’s support for a peace treaty between the South Caucasus neighbors, the State Department said on Sunday.
Yerevan suffered a major defeat last September when Baku’s forces retook the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which while part of Azerbaijan had a predominantly Armenian population.
Peace talks have become bogged down in issues including demarcation of the two countries’ 1,000-km (620-mile) border, which remains closed and heavily militarized.
Blinken spoke to Azeri President Ilham Aliyev on Sunday and urged him “to keep up the momentum with his Armenian counterpart, reiterating US willingness to support those efforts,” the State Department said in a statement.
Aliyev’s press service said on Sunday that foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia will soon hold a meeting in Almaty in Kazakhstan to continue negotiations.
“The president considers an important step that ... Azerbaijan and Armenia have begun the process of border demarcation,” Russia’s Interfax news agency cited the press service as saying.
In a separate call with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Blinken reaffirmed US support for progress on a durable and dignified peace agreement, the department said, but did not specify when the call took place.
In his call with Aliyev, Blinken also welcomed the transfer to house arrest last week of a prominent Azerbaijani economist and opposition politician who has been imprisoned since last July while awaiting trial.
Azerbaijan has also detained a string of independent reporters since late last year. Several are now facing trial on charges unrelated to journalistic activity, such as smuggling.
“Secretary Blinken again urged Azerbaijan to adhere to its international human rights obligations and commitments and release those unjustly detained in Azerbaijan,” the State Department said.
