US President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies were off to a rocky election-year start on Wednesday, with high-profile retirements endangering their fragile Senate majority — and his agenda.
Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the powerful Senate Banking Committee, announced he would not seek re-election in November, depriving Obama of a steadfast, powerful ally and 35-year veteran of Washington.
“This is my moment to step aside,” Dodd told reporters outside his Connecticut home, acknowledging a series of troubles had left him in “the toughest political shape of my career.”
Democrats, their Senate and House of Representatives majorities up for grabs in the November vote, hoped the embattled lawmaker’s departure would help them keep his seat in a state where Obama won easily in 2008.
The announcement came a day after Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota said he would not seek another term, boosting Republican chances of seizing his spot, which would strengthen their ability to block Obama’s agenda.
The Senate’s 58 Democrats, when joined by two independents who are often their allies, now have the bare minimum 60-vote majority needed in the 100-seat Senate to overrun any Republican delaying tactics.
Dodd, hurt by a controversial home loan and a failed 2008 White House bid, has been a key author of legislation to enact Obama’s top domestic priority — remaking US healthcare — and a central player in efforts to revamp rules for Wall Street, battle climate change, and pressure Iran over its nuclear program.
Dorgan and Dodd’s departures leave Democrats defending four open Senate seats and three highly vulnerable ones, including the spot held by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
Republicans will defend six open Senate seats, and Democrats hope to wage competitive races in five of those.
Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele has already said his party would not retake the House even though mid-term elections usually result in losses for the president’s camp.
Dodd’s term ends in January next year.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion