AFP

The surprise vote in Republican-heavy Kansas to repudiate a push for abortion bans fired shockwaves through the US political landscape ahead of November’s midterm elections, with President Joe Biden’s Democrats now seeing a glimmer of hope that they may avoid their predicted drubbing.

Ever since the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to terminate a pregnancy in June, US conservatives have been nervously asking whether their triumphant push to severely restrict access to the procedure — a decades-long dream — has gone too far in the run-up to the midterms.

In Kansas, they got an answer.

The state is a Republican stronghold, but in Tuesday’s referendum, a bid to remove abortion rights from the Kansas constitution was rejected by 59 to 41 percent, with unusually heavy turnout.

Given this was the first time Americans had an opportunity to vote on the issue since the conservative-dominated Supreme Court ruled to overturn the half-century-old Roe v. Wade decision enshrining abortion rights, Democrats are rejoicing — and say the backlash is only beginning.

“Tonight’s overwhelming defeat of the ballot referendum in Kansas shows the massive support for abortion rights among voters, and serves as a clear warning to anti-abortion politicians across the country: their time is up,” said Planned Parenthood, which lobbies for abortion access.

“As the first state to vote on abortion rights following the fall of Roe v. Wade, Kansas is a model for a path to restoring reproductive rights across the country through direct democracy,” said the group’s president Alexis McGill Johnson, who also leads the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. 

“We have the opportunity to protect abortion access at the ballot box in November. We know that Kansas will not be our last fight or our last victory.”

Or, as former Democratic senator Claire McCaskill told MSNBC after the vote: “This should be a big flashing signal to every Democratic candidate out there.”

– Trump card –

The November midterms, which will decide which party controls Congress for the last two years of Biden’s first term, is shaping up as rough for Democrats who even now only control the legislature by a few votes.

Blamed by voters for soaring inflation — at a four-decade high — and widespread pessimism in the messy aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, Democrats are forecast to lose at least the House of Representatives and maybe the Senate. 

This would likely make Biden a lame duck, turning Washington into an even uglier political battlefield than it is today.

And abortion is not the only reason the midterms campaign will bring ideological tensions to a boil.

Donald Trump is pushing hardline right-wing candidates to boost his brand and possibly set the stage for his own attempted White House comeback in 2024.

Several candidates endorsed by Trump won primary votes held around the United States on Tuesday at the same time as the Kansas referendum, signaling that the disgraced ex-president remains a force.

In Michigan, one of the handful of House Republicans who dared join Democrats in impeaching Trump as president was tossed out, replaced by a former Trump administration official.

Trump’s candidate for the Senate, Blake Masters, won the Republican primary in the swing state of Arizona.

And Trump’s candidate for the sensitive post of Arizona secretary of state, a key figure in running elections, also won. Mark Finchem, a supporter of Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, has ties to a far-right militia.

Increasingly, Democrats are seeking to link that Trump surge and the abortion dispute, arguing that the midterms will be a battle not just between two parties but generally between political moderates and growing extremism.

Across the country, Democrats have even gone so far as to pay for advertising boosting Trump’s primary candidates — the theory being that they will be easier to beat in November than more moderate Republicans.

For example, according to The New York Times, the Democratic side spent about $627,000 on advertising in Maryland to help Trump-endorsed candidate Dan Cox — another 2020 election lie supporter — win his Republican gubernatorial primary.

The first shipment of grain from Ukraine since the Kremlin’s invasion five months ago sailed through Istanbul on Wednesday under a landmark deal designed to help alleviate a global food crisis sparked by the war.

The Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni’s voyage from the Black Sea port of Odessa to Lebanon is being watched closely for signs of how the first agreement signed by Moscow and Kyiv since Russia invaded its pro-Western neighbour holds.

A deal brokered by Turkey and the United Nations last month lifted a Russian naval blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea cities and set terms for millions of tonnes of wheat and other grain to start flowing from filled silos and ports.

Ukraine exports roughly half of the sunflower oil used on the world market and is one of the world’s main suppliers of grain.

An almost complete halt to its exports helped push up global food prices and make imports prohibitively expensive in some of the poorest countries in the world.

The Razoni took 26,000 tonnes of maize through a specially designated corridor in the mine-infested waters of the Black Sea before reaching the northern edge of the Bosphorus Strait on Tuesday.

A team of 20 inspectors from the two warring parties and the UN and Turkey strapped on orange helmets and boarded the ship early Wednesday for a mandated inspection that officials said lasted less than 90 minutes.

– More ships –

The ship’s passage is being overseen by an international team that includes Russian and Ukrainian officials in Istanbul.

“This marks the conclusion of an initial ‘proof of concept’ operation to execute the agreement between the Russian Federation, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Nations,” the team said after the ship was cleared to pass through Istanbul.

The 186-metre (610-foot) long vessel now moves on to the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean before it is set to reach the coast of Lebanon in the coming days.

Kyiv says at least 16 more grain ships are waiting to depart.

But it also accuses Russia of stealing Ukrainian grain in territories seized by Kremlin forces, then shipping it to allied countries such as Syria.

Turkish hopes that the deal could help build trust and lead to ceasefire talks have so far been disappointed.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to push for direct ceasefire negotiations when he meets Vladimir Putin at the Russian leader’s Black Sea retreat in Sochi on Friday.

“We discussed if the grain agreement can be an occasion for a sustainable ceasefire,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said after meeting Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Cambodia on Wednesday.

Yet Russia continues to pound southern Ukrainian cities near the Black Sea with missiles and press on with its grinding ground assault across the east.

Moscow said on Wednesday that it had also destroyed a foreign arms depot in a region near Poland that is the further removed from the war.

The attack coincided with a visit to Kyiv by Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau.

– Counter-offensive –

Kyiv has launched mandatory evacuations from the eastern Donetsk region — now bearing the brunt of Russia’s offensive — because the government does not expect to be able to provide it with heat in the cold winter months.

Ukrainian forces have been pressing a counter-offensive to drive out the Russians from the southern Kherson region that they seized in the first days of war, near the Kremlin-annexed peninsula of Crimea.

The Ukrainian presidency said it had “liberated” seven more villages in the southern region while 53 remained under Russian control.

Ukraine has been bolstered by more supplies of Western weapons — particularly long-range rockets — ahead of the planned push to retake Kherson city.

The United States announced a new tranche of weapons worth $550 million for Ukraine’s forces.

These include longer-range ammunition for increasingly important HIMARS rocket launchers and artillery pieces.

Ukraine is using the HIMARS and similar Western systems to smash Russian arms depots and break down its lines of ground communication across the war zone.

– Energy wars –

The Russians have been unable to seize any major village or city since gaining full control of the Donbas war zone’s smaller Lugansk region in early July.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told US President Joe Biden in a message that “the word ‘HIMARS’ has become almost synonymous with the word ‘justice’ for our country”.

Russia has responded by sharply reducing natural gas supplies to Europe and stepping up its propaganda battle against the West and Kyiv.

The latest Russian reduction along the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany has forced Berlin to reassess its plans to wean itself off nuclear energy in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday said extending the lifetime of Germany’s three remaining nuclear power plants “can make sense”.

Moscow’s propaganda campaign has included a decision to label Ukraine’s Azov regiment, which fought the Russians in devastated Mariupol, a “terrorist” organisation.

Its members were among 50 Ukrainian servicemen killed last week in an attack on a jail holding prisoners of war in Russian-occupied territory.

Ukraine accuses Moscow of deliberately executing the detainees.

bur-zak/lcm

Taiwan struck a defiant tone Wednesday as it hosted US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with a furious China gearing up for military exercises dangerously close to the island’s shores in retaliation for the visit.

Pelosi landed in Taiwan late Tuesday despite a series of increasingly stark threats from Beijing, which views the island as its territory and warned it would consider the visit a major provocation.

China responded swiftly, announcing what it said were “necessary and just” military drills in the seas just off Taiwan’s coast — some of the world’s busiest waterways.

“In the current struggle surrounding Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, the United States are the provocateurs, China is the victim,” Beijing’s foreign ministry said.

But Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said the island of 23 million would not be cowed. 

“Facing deliberately heightened military threats, Taiwan will not back down. We will… continue to hold the line of defence for democracy,” Tsai said at an event with Pelosi in Taipei.

She also thanked the 82-year-old US lawmaker for “taking concrete actions to show your staunch support for Taiwan at this critical moment”.

China tries to keep Taiwan isolated on the world stage and opposes countries having official exchanges with Taipei.

Pelosi, second in line to the presidency, is the highest-profile elected US official to visit Taiwan in 25 years.

“Today, our delegation… came to Taiwan to make unequivocally clear we will not abandon our commitment to Taiwan,” she said at the event with Tsai.

She added her group had come “in peace to the region”.

Before leaving Taiwan, Pelosi also met with several dissidents who have previously been in the crosshairs of China’s wrath — including Tiananmen protest student leader Wu’er Kaixi. 

“We are in high agreement that Taiwan is in the frontline (of democracy),” Wu’er said. 

“Both the United States and Taiwan governments need to… conduct more in defending human rights.”

Pelosi’s delegation left Taiwan on Wednesday evening en route to South Korea, her next stop in an Asia tour that has included stops in Singapore and Malaysia. She will wrap up her trip in Japan.

– Crossing the median line –

After her departure, Taiwan’s defence ministry announced late Wednesday that 27 Chinese warplanes had entered the island’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ).

Over the last two years, Beijing has ramped up military incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ — which is not the same as the island’s territorial airspace, but includes a far greater area. 

The ministry published a map that showed 16 Su-30s and 6 J-11s had crossed the so-called “median line” of the Taiwan Strait — an unofficial boundary in the narrow waterway, which separates the island from the mainland and straddles vital shipping lanes.

Chinese jets also crossed over the so-called “median line” during two high-level visits by US officials in 2020 during Donald Trump’s presidency.

Nevertheless, that is still a relatively rare occurrence. 

– ‘High alert’ –

President Joe Biden’s administration said in the run-up to Pelosi’s visit that US policy towards Taiwan remained unchanged.

This means support for its government while diplomatically recognising Beijing over Taipei, and opposing a formal independence declaration by Taiwan or a forceful takeover by China.

Beijing summoned US Ambassador Nicholas Burns over Pelosi’s visit, while the Chinese military declared it was on “high alert” and would “launch a series of targeted military actions in response” to the visit.

The drills will include “long-range live ammunition shooting” in the Taiwan Strait.

The zone of Chinese exercises will be within 20 kilometres (12 miles) of Taiwan’s shoreline at some points, according to coordinates released by the Chinese military.

Taiwan’s defence ministry spokesman Sun Li-fang said Wednesday that some of the areas of China’s drills “breach into… (Taiwan’s) territorial waters”. 

“This is an irrational move to challenge the international order.”

But a source with the Chinese military told AFP that the exercises would be staged “in preparation for actual combat”. 

“If the Taiwanese forces come into contact with the PLA on purpose and accidentally fires a gun, the PLA will take stern countermeasures, and all the consequences will be borne by the Taiwanese side,” the source warned. 

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which sets the government’s China policies, accused Beijing of “vicious intimidation” and called for democratic countries to “unite and take a solemn stand to punish and deter” Beijing.

– ‘We shouldn’t be too worried’ –

Beijing has long used diplomatic, military and economic pressure on Taiwan.

China has announced curbs on the import of fruit and fish from Taiwan — citing the detection of pesticide residue and the coronavirus. It also halted shipments of sand to the island.

Outside the Taiwanese parliament, 31-year-old computer programmer Frank Chen shrugged off the Chinese warnings over Pelosi’s visit.

“I think China will take more threatening actions and ban more Taiwanese products, but we shouldn’t be too worried,” he told AFP.

There was a small group of pro-China demonstrators outside parliament as well.

“The United States uses Taiwan as a pawn in its confrontation with China, to try to drag China down,” Lee Kai-dee, a 71-year-old retired researcher, told AFP.

“If the United States continues to act this way, Taiwan will end up like Ukraine.”

China has vowed to annex self-ruled, democratic Taiwan one day, by force if necessary.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February heightened fears in Taiwan that China may similarly follow through on its threats to annex the island.