AFP

Former US president Donald Trump is expected to officially launch another White House bid on Tuesday, refusing calls from within his own Republican party to fade away after his loyalists underperformed in this year’s midterm elections.

The 76-year-old billionaire, whose 2016 win shocked America and the world, has summoned the press to his Florida mansion for a “very big announcement” at 9:00 pm Tuesday (0200 GMT Wednesday).

“President Trump is going to announce on Tuesday that he’s running for president,” said one of his advisors, Jason Miller, who predicts the speech will be “very professional, very buttoned up.”

Known for his unpredictability, Trump could still change his mind at the last minute, but for months he has barely hidden his desire to vie for the presidency again in 2024.

And delaying the announcement now, as some of his advisors have reportedly suggested to him, would be highly awkward considering Trump’s boast that it would “perhaps be the most important speech given in the history of the USA.”

– ‘Red wave’ crashes –

A 2024 White House bid would be Trump’s third presidential campaign and — if he wins his party’s nomination — the fifth national election with him as the Republican Party standard-bearer.

In 2016, Trump and the Republicans swept into power, taking control of the White House and maintaining their majorities in both chambers of Congress.

But Democrats won back the House of Representatives in a 2018 landslide after campaigning largely against Trump’s caustic style.

Trump then lost reelection in 2020 to Democrat Joe Biden — Trump still refuses to accept defeat — while Democrats won control of the 100-seat Senate with a de-facto majority due to Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote in the chamber split 50-50.

After leaving Washington in chaos shortly after his partisans stormed the US Capitol, Trump chose to remain in the political arena, continuing to fundraise and hold rallies around the country.

Leading up to the 2022 midterm vote, in which Biden’s Democrats had been expected to lose handily, Trump made denial of the 2020 election results a key litmus test for candidates to win his influential political endorsement.

But the predicted Republican “red wave” failed to materialize, and Democrats will maintain their control of the Senate. In the still-undecided House, Republicans seem likely to eke out only a razor-thin majority.

The results have emboldened Trump’s Republican detractors and sapped most of his political momentum heading into the Tuesday campaign launch.

– ‘Three strikes’ –

“It’s basically the third election in a row that Donald Trump has cost us the race, and it’s like, three strikes and you’re out,” said Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a vocal Trump critic, Sunday on CNN.

Trump’s response has been to double down on unfounded claims of ballot rigging in the midterms, posting on his Truth Social platform that the results were a “scam” — and pointing a finger of blame at Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

“It’s Mitch McConnell’s fault,” he posted, saying the Kentuckian had badly allocated campaign funds and pursued a flawed legislative agenda. 

“He blew the Midterms, and everyone despises him,” said Trump, who has long been at loggerheads with McConnell.

Tuesday’s announcement is widely seen as a way to take the wind out of the sails of potential Republican rivals, namely Ron DeSantis, the freshly-reelected Florida governor and rising star who has also won the backing of Rupert Murdoch’s conservative media empire.

The speech is also set for the day that another possible 2024 rival — former vice president Mike Pence — publishes his memoirs recounting the pressure Trump laid on him to overturn the last election. 

Trump’s new White House pursuit will be hampered by the multiple investigations into his conduct before, during and after the presidency — which could result in his disqualification.

Those include allegations of fraud by his family business, his role in last year’s January 6 attack on the US Capitol and his handling of classified documents at his private Florida home, which was raided by the FBI in August.

But the former president is no stranger to scandal and has even survived two impeachments due to his continued Republican support in Congress.

The 2024 election could yet prove to be a repeat of 2020, with Biden reaffirming on Wednesday that he intends to stand for reelection.

But despite the strong midterm results, some in Biden’s own camp would clearly prefer him to sit out, due to his age and unpopularity. Biden, 80, said he will make a final decision next year.

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Seven university students were dead and at least one gunman was on the run Monday following weekend violence that struck two US campuses in the states of Idaho and Virginia, authorities said.

Police were hunting for the student suspect in a shooting that left three people dead and two others wounded at the University of Virginia about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of the nation’s capital Washington.

The campus in Charlottesville, Virginia was locked down early Monday while helicopters and police searched for a man considered to be “armed and dangerous,” the UVA Office of Emergency Management tweeted.

A student at the university identified as Christopher Darnell Jones Jr was suspected to have carried out the shooting on campus Sunday night, UVA president Jim Ryan said in a statement.

“This is a traumatic incident for everyone in our community, and we have cancelled classes for today,” Ryan said.

Counseling and psychological support would be made available to students and faculty, he said.

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin said state officers were coordinating with the campus police department and local authorities.

“Please shelter in place while the authorities work to locate the suspect,” he wrote on Twitter.

More than 2,000 miles to the west in the Rocky Mountain state of Idaho, police were investigating a separate incident in which four students were found dead Sunday in a home near the University of Idaho campus, believed to be the “victims of homicide.”

Officers responded to a call in the town of Moscow, near the University of Idaho, about an unconscious individual.

“Upon arrival, officers discovered four individuals who were deceased,” police said in a statement.

“It is with deep sadness that I share with you that the university was notified today of the death of four University of Idaho students living off-campus believed to be victims of homicide,” University of Idaho president Scott Green said in a statement.

Meanwhile near Michigan’s largest city Detroit, police were scouring Oakland University early Monday “to pursue two armed suspects on campus,” the school said in a Twitter statement as they urged students and faculty to stay away.

School shootings are alarmingly common as part of a broader wave of gun violence in the United States, where the proliferation of firearms has skyrocketed in recent years.

In May an 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde, Texas burst into Robb Elementary School and killed 19 students and two teachers, in an attack that shocked the nation and renewed calls for gun reform.

In 2007, Virginia Tech became the scene of the worst school shooting on record in the United States when a 23-year-old student killed 32 students and faculty members before committing suicide.

After Sunday’s UVA shooting, US Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said he was “heartbroken to hear of another Virginia community devastated by gun violence.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday visited the newly liberated city of Kherson in southern Ukraine after Russian forces retreated from the strategic hub near the Black Sea.

The Ukrainian presidency distributed images of him singing the national anthem, holding his hand over his chest as the country’s blue and yellow flag was hoisted next to the city’s main administrative building.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman denied, however, that the Ukrainian leader’s visit had any impact on the status of the Kherson region, which Moscow formally annexed into Russia at a ceremony last month.

“It’s important to be here,” Zelensky told reporters in the city as his office released images of him meeting Kherson residents and military officials.

“We should speak here… support the people so that they feel that we are not just talking, not just making promises but really returning and really raising our flag,” he added.

Late Sunday, Zelensky said Ukrainian forces found evidence of hundreds of new “war crimes” carried out by Russian occupiers in Kherson.

His subsequent visit came just days after Ukrainian troops entered the city — the Kherson region’s administrative centre — after Russia pulled back its forces on Friday.

– Kremlin dismissive –

The takeover by Ukrainian troops is the latest in a string of setbacks for the Kremlin, which invaded Ukraine on February 24 hoping for a lightning takeover and to topple the government in days.

But Russian troops failed to capture the capital Kyiv and have since been pushed back from large portions of territory in the south and east.

Ukrainians in the liberated city expressed relief at the end of months of occupation.

“I am extremely happy we’re finally free,” Andriy, 33, a philosophy student, told AFP.

“We have no electricity in the city, no water, no central heating, no mobile signal, no internet connection — but we have no Russians,” he said.

The city of Kherson was the first major urban hub to fall to Russian forces and the only regional capital Moscow’s troops gained control over.

Its recapture opens a gateway for Ukraine to the entire Kherson region, with access to both the Black Sea in the west and the Sea of Azov in the east.

The region was one of four that the Kremlin announced in September were annexed and part of Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to use all available means to defend them from Ukrainian forces. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday he would not comment on Zelensky’s visit to Kherson but added: “this territory is part of the Russian Federation.”

– ‘Very scared’ –

A self-described partisan in Kherson told AFP after the Russian withdrawal that he and his friends had spent months walking the streets observing the Russians’ every move.

“You watch closely and then come home and write it all down. And then you send the information and hide absolutely everything — phones, papers, clothes, everything,” 19-year-old aspiring musician named Volodymyr Timor said.

“We reported everything — where their equipment and ammunition sites were, where they slept and where they went out drinking,” Timor said.

Ukraine’s forces could then use the coordinates to target strikes during a counteroffensive that has seen Russia cede roughly half the land it seized in the first weeks of war.

“I was scared,” the imposing but soft-spoken guitarist said of the prospect of being caught and possibly killed.

“Believe me, I was very scared.”

Elsewhere, Ukraine’s forces were posting gains in the eastern region of Lugansk, the military and local officials said Monday.

The eastern industrial region has been held by Russian-supported separatists since 2014 but Kyiv’s forces have slowly been clawing back territory there.

“Twelve towns and villages have been liberated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the occupiers in the Lugansk region,” the regional governor announced on social media without specifying when the towns had been captured.

Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping voiced hope Monday that the United States and China can manage growing differences and avoid conflict as they met for the first time in more than three years.

Xi and Biden shook hands in front of the two nations’ flags before starting a long-awaited sit down on the Indonesian resort of Bali ahead of a Group of 20 summit, following months of tension over Taiwan and other issues.

Biden, sitting across from Xi at facing tables, said that Beijing and Washington “share responsibility” to show the world that they can “manage our differences, prevent competition from becoming conflict.”

Xi, China’s most powerful leader in decades who is fresh from securing a norm-breaking third term, told Biden that the world has “come to a crossroads”.

“The world expects that China and the United States will properly handle the relationship,” Xi told him.

Despite the upbeat public statements, both nations are increasingly suspicious of each other, with the United States fearing that China has stepped up a timeline for seizing Taiwan.

US officials said ahead of the meeting that Biden hoped to set up “guardrails” in the relationship with China and to assess how to avoid “red lines” that could push the world’s two largest economies into conflict. 

The most sensitive issue is Taiwan, the self-governing democracy claimed by China.

The United States has been stepping up support for Taiwan, while China has ramped up its threats to seize control of the island. After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in August, China reacted by staging unprecedented military drills.

On the eve of his talks with Xi, Biden met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on the sidelines of a Southeast Asian summit in Cambodia, with the three leaders jointly calling for “peace and stability” on the Taiwan Strait. 

Biden is also expected to push China to rein in ally North Korea after a record-breaking spate of missile tests has raised fears that Pyongyang will soon carry out its seventh nuclear test.

– First in-person exchange –

Xi is paying only his second overseas visit since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and will meet a number of key leaders.

He will hold the first formal sitdown with an Australian leader since 2017, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced, following a concerted pressure campaign by Beijing against the close US ally. 

Xi’s last in-person meeting with a US president was in 2019 with Donald Trump, who along with Biden identified China as a top international concern and the only potential challenger to US primacy on the world stage. 

And though the meeting is the first time Xi and Biden have met as presidents, the pair have an unusually long history together. 

By Biden’s estimation, he spent 67 hours as vice president in person with Xi including on a 2011 trip to China aimed at better understanding China’s then-leader-in-waiting, and a 2017 meeting in the final days of Barack Obama’s administration.

Since entering the White House, Biden has spoken virtually five times with Xi but told him Monday there was “no substitute” for face-to-face discussions.

– Absent Putin –

Though he is engaging Xi, Biden has refused since the invasion of Ukraine to deal directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is conspicuously absent from the Bali summit.

The Kremlin cited scheduling issues and has instead sent longtime foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who arrived Sunday evening.

Lavrov, 72, denied reports that he was receiving treatment at a Bali hospital, telling Tass news agency that he was in his hotel preparing for the summit. The top diplomat underwent brief health checks on Sunday and Monday, according to an Indonesian health ministry official.

Lavrov’s presence has thrown into question a customary G20 group photo and joint statement, with Russia sure to reject any explicit calls to end its invasion of Ukraine.

Western leaders hope the G20 summit will step up pressure on Russia to renew a UN-backed deal expiring Saturday to allow grain shipments from Ukraine, a major food exporter to the developing world.

China, despite rhetorical support for Russia, has not supplied weapons for the war in Ukraine, with Moscow obliged to rely on Iran and North Korea, according to US officials.

“I think there is undeniably some discomfort in Beijing about what we’ve seen in terms of reckless rhetoric and activity on the part of Russia,” a US official said hours before the Xi-Biden talks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — invited as a compromise with host Indonesia — will address the summit by videoconference, a day after a triumphant visit to Kherson, a key city taken back from Russian forces.