After the midterm elections in November 2022, the Republicans officially assumed control of the House of Representatives in early January, while the Senate passed into the hands of the Democrats, with the additional vote if necessary. the vice president, Kamala Harris.
This division of powers could largely stop Democrats from unilaterally approving laws and projects in the Lower House, backed by “emergency legislation” approved with the left-wing vote due to the COVID-19 pandemic. .
“Americans are prepared for change after two calamitous years under the leadership of the Democratic Party and the extreme left,” conservative representatives stated in a statement at the time, who also promised corruption investigations against the Biden family; take action against the chaos on the country’s southern border and against the failed economic management of the tenant of the White House.
Republican control in the Lower House
Although the so-called Red Tide did not occur in the 2022 legislative elections, Trump consolidated his Republican leadership with more than 89% of the victories of conservative representatives, senators and governors that he supported.
After 14 rounds of voting, Kevin McCarthy achieved the 218 votes he needed to be elected president of the Lower House, under the promise of not making substantial concessions to the extreme left, including key demands to solve the national security crisis in the border between Mexico and the United States, in addition to containing the open check of funds for Ukraine, among other matters of high interest.
McCarthy ordered the House Oversight Commission to begin a formal corruption investigation against the Biden family, which included the President himself, his brother, and the president’s son, Hunter Biden.
At the end of September, McCarthy reached an agreement with the Democrats and Biden with a proposed budget extension until November 17 that avoided the shutdown of the federal government.
Despite excluding new requested funds for Ukraine in its war against Russia, one of the Democrats’ important demands, the pact inflamed some conservatives; among them, Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, who immediately presented a motion to dismiss McCarthy supported by more than a dozen colleagues.
For three weeks, federal congressmen Jim Jordan (Ohio), Steve Scalise (Louisiana) and Tom Emmer (Minnesota) tried without success to become the new speaker of the Lower House.
Finally, Mike Johnson achieved it at the end of October in the middle of Israel’s war against the terrorist group Hamas, which on October 7 launched a brutal missile and ground attack in which some 1,400 Israeli civilians died and unleashed the forceful response from Tel Aviv called Iron Swords.
The Israeli government declared days before the end of 2023 that the war would continue in 2024 until the total elimination of Hamas.
Biden’s $106 billion funding request is currently stalled in Congress. Of that figure, more than 60 billion would go to Ukraine, the rest includes aid to Israel and Taiwan, in addition to other issues.
Chronic chaos at the border
Conservatives conditioned this last tranche of aid requested by Biden to radical measures of the administration to stop the chaos on the southern border. In recent weeks, between 10,000 and 12,000 migrants have arrived daily in the border area.
The cost of federal and state funds, directly and indirectly due to the White House’s “Open Door” policy, is estimated at more than $600 billion in the three years since it was implemented.
So far, the government in Washington does not seem determined to contain the uncontrolled illegal immigration for 36 months; He has even asked the United States Supreme Court to order Texas Governor Greg Abbott to remove barbed wire over border barriers.
In his recent meeting with the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, days before the end of 2023, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, agreed to keep the border open under new measures.
One of the big setbacks now for Republican leader Johnson – in addition to the immigration issue – is to once again avoid the closure of the federal government at the end of January, when the previously agreed budget extension expires.
China’s espionage and the danger of Iran
Another of the great events of the year was the appearance of a china spy balloon which, after crossing much of the national airspace, was shot down on its way out off the coast of South Carolina, but generated strong criticism of the Biden administration and the Department of Defense; and in particular many doubts about the deliberate actions of the Asian giant and regarding the national security of the United States.
The event raised tensions between Washington and Beijing to the point of an abrupt break by China in military communication with the Pentagon, which was normalized days before Xi Jinping’s visit to San Francisco, California, on November 15.
Despite the tension, the federal Congress approved in a bipartisan manner the largest military budget in the nation’s history: $886 billion.
Republicans and Democrats united on the issue of national defense in the face of the challenges and actions imposed by the consolidation of a dangerous military alliance between China, Russia and Iran, which currently processes uranium enriched above 60% behind the warnings of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the White House.
In his three years in office, Biden continues to fail to fulfill his other promises to sign a new agreement with Tehran to try to stop it on its apparent path toward manufacturing a missile or nuclear bomb.
Trump contra Biden
2023, prior to the presidential elections of November 2024, emerged as a fairly active political period within the United States, especially related to the Department of Justice and the judicial accusations – unprecedented in the country’s history – against a former North American president: Donald J. Trump, who faces three trials at the same time.
But on the other side there are also the accusations and trial against Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and the current President’s alleged links in shady businesses in Ukraine and China, which Republican representatives and experts are now officially investigating in search of a “impeachment” of the tenant of the White House.
Biden is emerging as the Democratic candidate for re-election, while Trump continues as the great favorite to win his right to run again for the Presidency at the polls. However, in another unusual event, the Colorado Supreme Court decided by 4 votes to 3 that the former Republican president does not appear on the primary ballot in that state, under a clause of the 14th amendment of the US Constitution used for the first time. time against a former North American president.
The judges, without a prior judicial ruling against Trump for his alleged participation in the so-called “January 6 insurrection” around and inside the Capitol in Washington, ordered to exempt the nation’s 45th president from the possibility of aspiring to the Office Oval. Then, the same thing happened in the state of Maine, while in Michigan the state’s Supreme Court rejected a similar petition.
The sentences are in the appeal process and Trump’s defense asked the United States Supreme Court to rule on both decisions.
In April, Ketanji Brown Jackson was approved by Congress to serve on the Supreme Court in Washington. Brown thus became the first black judge in the highest judicial instance of the nation.
The accusations against Trump have not prevented him from leading all surveys on voting intentions for the Republican primary elections and as a potential candidate against Biden in the November 2024 presidential elections.
Trump leads his closest primary opponent, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, by more than 50 points, and between 6 and 8 points over Joe Biden in the 2024 general elections.
Violence and artificial intelligence
Gun violence did not stop in 2023.
The most recent mass shooting in the US occurred in late November in Lewiston, Maine, when a man opened fire at a bowling alley and a restaurant, killing at least 18 people. Another 13 people were injured.
The event became the 36th mass crime in the country in 2023, with a balance of almost 200 deaths due to this type of homicide.
Since 2006, according to a database from The Associated Press and USA Today, more than 560 mass murders have occurred in the nation, in which some 2,900 people have lost their lives.
For these reasons, legislators from both parties approved this year new federal regulations for the sale and purchase of firearms, particularly high-caliber firearms.
Among the topics of debate between federal representatives and senators in 2023, the dilemma of Artificial Intelligence continued, which on the one hand some see as the necessary development and others demand a brake in the face of the serious dangers it entails for human development.
Congressmen from both parties decided to prepare with advice from scientists and experts to possibly put to the vote in 2024 a Bill that brings together general and specific regulations in response to the accumulation of concerns about the advance of this new technology and its consequences.
Foreign policy
In foreign policy, the Biden administration’s priorities in 2023 continued to be the war in Ukraine and open challenges from China, North Korea and Iran; But the attack by Hamas terrorists against Israel opened a new destabilizing chapter in the Middle East that threatens to extend beyond the limits of the Gaza Strip and Israel, with the recent bombing of offices of the radical Palestinian group in Beirut, Lebanon.
Hezbollah, a Lebanese terrorist movement with much more power and military organization than Hamas, has shown its intentions to confront Israel.
It seems that Washington’s warnings have had an effect and have stopped, for now, Hezbollah’s incursion.
The Biden government declared that the entry of this extremist group into the war between Israel and Hamas would lead to a direct US offensive in Lebanon and immediately moved its largest aircraft carrier with frigates into the Mediterranean Sea, near the coast of Israel. Egypt and Lebanon as a preventive measure.
If 2023 was a turbulent year in political events in the US, it also recorded record natural disasters due to the impact of 23 large-scale climate phenomena, with a balance of 250 deaths and an average estimated cost of more than 1 billion dollars each.
In this way, the US gave way to 2024 with forecasts of being another year full of events and great political activity as traditionally occurs during the period close to presidential elections.
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