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US President Joe Biden on Wednesday hailed a “good day for democracy” after a surprisingly strong performance in midterm elections, with Republicans inching toward a slim majority in only one chamber of Congress.

Biden, while acknowledging voters’ frustration, said that an “overwhelming majority” of Americans supported his economic agenda and indicated he was leaning toward seeking a second term in 2024, although he said he would make a decision early next year.

The incumbent party historically loses in midterm elections and Republicans had hoped for a major sweep after hammering Biden over stubbornly high inflation, with many also backing unfounded claims over the legitimacy of his defeat of Donald Trump two years ago.

“It was a good day I think for democracy. And I think it was a good day for America,” Biden told a White House news conference.

“While the press and the pundits were predicting a giant red wave, it didn’t happen.”

It was also an underwhelming night for Donald Trump, who was counting on a big Republican showing to boost another White House run.

“While in certain ways yesterday’s election was somewhat disappointing, from my personal standpoint it was a very big victory — 219 WINS and 16 Losses,” Trump said in a reference to candidates he personally endorsed.

In addition to seeing several of his high-profile candidates lose, Trump also saw his main rival for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, Ron DeSantis, notch up a thumping victory to remain governor of Florida.

Republicans appear to be on track to reclaim the 435-member House for the first time since 2018, but by a mere handful of seats.

“It is clear that we are going to take the House back,” said top Republican Kevin McCarthy, who hopes to be the chamber’s next speaker and who put on a brave face after his party fell short of picking up the 60 seats he once predicted.

For his part, Biden pointed out in a tweet that — while the count in some places was still ongoing — his party “lost fewer seats in the House of Representatives than any Democratic president’s first midterm election in at least 40 years.”

– ‘Clear and unmistakable message’ –

An election drubbing would have surely raised questions on whether Biden should run again in 2024. But instead he did better than his two Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, who both took a hammering in their first midterms.

Asked about his plans at Wednesday’s press conference, Biden said it was still his “intention to run again” — but that he would decide for sure “early next year.”

America’s oldest-ever president, who turns 80 this month, Biden hailed the “historic numbers” of young people who voted and pointed to support for the right to abortion, which was rescinded in June by a Supreme Court transformed by Trump appointees.

“Voters spoke clearly about their concerns,” Biden said. “There’s still a lot of people hurting.”

“They sent a clear and unmistakable message that they want to preserve our democracy and protect the right to choose in this country.”

Biden, who served for 36 years in the Senate, also struck a more conciliatory tone with the Republicans, saying he would work with them and that the “vast majority” were “decent, honorable people.”

With three key races yet to be called after Tuesday’s vote, the Senate remained in play but it was leaning Democratic and control may hinge on a runoff election in the southern state of Georgia in December.

While the night saw wins by more than 100 Republicans embracing Trump’s “Big Lie” that Biden stole the 2020 election, several hand-picked acolytes of the former president came up short.

“Many of the candidates he endorsed underperformed and cost their party a chance at picking up seats that should have been winnable,” said Jon Rogowski, a political science professor at the University of Chicago.

“Not only did voters reject many of Trump’s candidates, but they also rejected his policies,” Rogowski said, citing abortion as an example.

In ballot initiatives in five states, voters supported abortion rights in a rejection of the conservative-dominated Supreme Court’s ruling in June that overturned a constitutional right to the procedure.

Republicans needed just one extra seat to wrest control of the evenly divided Senate.

But by Wednesday the only seat to change hands went to the Democrats, with John Fetterman, a champion of progressive economic policies, triumphing in Pennsylvania over Trump-endorsed celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz.

A Republican-held House could still derail Biden’s agenda, launching investigations, scuttling his ambitions on climate change and scrutinizing the billions of US dollars to help Ukraine fight Russia.

Wisconsin’s incumbent Republican Senator Ron Johnson was declared the winner on Wednesday, but counting the remaining votes in Senate races in Arizona and Nevada could take days.

Georgia is to hold a runoff on December 6 after neither candidate crossed the 50 percent threshold needed for victory in the Senate race there.

Russia ordered its troops to withdraw from the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine on Wednesday in a further major blow to its campaign amid a Ukrainian counter-offensive.

Officials in Kyiv reacted with caution, saying the Russian army was unlikely to leave the strategic city without a fight, while US President Joe Biden suggested the retreat was evidence Moscow has “real problems” on the battlefield.

“Begin to pull out troops,” Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said at a televised meeting with Russia’s commander in Ukraine, Sergei Surovikin.

The commander had proposed the “difficult decision” of pulling back from the city and setting up defences on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River.

Kherson city was the first urban hub captured by Russia during its “special military operation” and the only regional capital controlled by Moscow’s forces since the offensive began on February 24.

Ukraine’s troops have for weeks been capturing villages en route to the city near the Black Sea, and Kremlin-installed leaders in Kherson have been pulling out civilians.

In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his army was “moving very carefully, without emotions, without unnecessary risk, in the interests of liberating all our land and so that the losses are as small as possible.”

“The enemy does not give us gifts, does not make ‘goodwill gestures’, we win it all,” Zelensky said in his daily address to the nation, adding any gains by Ukraine come at the expense of “lives lost by our heroes.”

Presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said some Russian troops remained in the city.

“We see no signs that Russia is leaving Kherson without a fight,” he said on Twitter.

And some Ukrainian civilians, too, were sceptical.

Andriy Orikhovskyi, a 46-year-old financier, told AFP in Kyiv: “The Russian leadership is playing something, you shouldn’t trust them… I think they are up to something. We have to wait for what our official sources say.”

– 115,000 civilians removed –

In Moscow, Kremlin supporters rushed to justify the decision.

The head of Russian state media group RT, Margarita Simonyan, said the retreat was necessary in order not to leave Russian troops exposed on the west bank of the Dnipro River and “open the way to Crimea”.

Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov said the decision was “difficult but fair”.

Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is the founder of the Wagner mercenary group and has been critical of Russia’s military strategy in the campaign, was more ambiguous.

“It is important not to agonise, not to beat around in paranoia, but to draw conclusions and work on mistakes,” his press service wrote on social media.

Russia losing the Kherson region would return Ukraine important access to the Sea of Azov and leave President Vladimir Putin with little to show from a campaign that has turned him into a pariah in Western eyes.

The retreat will put pressure on Russian control of the rest of the Kherson region, which forms a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, the peninsula which Moscow annexed in 2014.

Kherson was one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia declared it had annexed in September, shortly after being forced to withdraw from swathes of territory in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

The announcement of the retreat came just hours after officials said the Moscow-installed deputy head of the Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, a key supporter of annexation, had died in a car crash.

As Ukrainian troops have gradually advanced in the south, Surovikin told Shoigu on Wednesday that some 115,000 people had been removed from the western bank of the Dnipro, which includes Kherson city.

Ukraine has defined these population movements towards Russia or Russian-occupied territory as “deportations”.

– ‘Strong bipartisan support’ –

In Washington, where election officials were still counting votes after Tuesday’s crucial midterms, Biden said the retreat from Kherson demonstrated Moscow military weaknesses.

“It’s evidence of the fact that they have some real problems, Russia, the Russian military,” Biden told reporters in Washington.

Biden’s Democratic Party looked set to narrowly lose control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans, some of whom have vowed to review US military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. But Biden vowed that Washington’s support of Kyiv will remain unchanged.

“In the area of foreign policy I hope we’ll continue this bipartisan approach of confronting Russia’s aggression in Ukraine,” Biden added.

Earlier in the day NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg spoke along the same lines. “It’s absolutely clear that there’s strong bipartisan support in the United States for a continued support for Ukraine, and that’s not changed,” Stoltenberg said after talks with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

With the Russian offensive now in its ninth month, Western powers have stepped up military and financial support for Kyiv.

In the latest announcement, the European Commission on Wednesday proposed an 18-billion-euro ($18-billion) aid package for Ukraine in 2023 in the form of loans.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed the aid as “true solidarity”.

The Kremlin said that relations between Moscow and Washington would remain “bad” after the US midterm elections.

“Our existing ties are bad, and they will remain bad,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

Abortion advocates claimed victory Wednesday after US voters sided with protecting access to the procedure in several ballot initiatives, in a rebuke of the Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn constitutional abortion rights.

Voters in California, Vermont and Michigan strongly endorsed proposed state charter amendments guaranteeing the right to have an abortion.

In Republican stronghold Kentucky — where abortion has been outlawed since the Supreme Court ruling — voters rejected an amendment to the state charter that would have in effect made it impossible to challenge the state’s ban.

In Montana, the fifth state with an abortion measure on the ballot, a preliminary count indicated voters there also opposed proposed legislation hostile to the procedure.

– Key election issue –

The results came after a long national midterm election battle in which President Joe Biden and his Democratic Party sought to make a key issue out of the conservative-majority Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that established abortion as a constitutional right.

The court’s decision pushed the issue to states to decide. 

And as anti-abortion groups mounted strong campaigns to outlaw or severely restrict the practice, some 15 states instituted full-scale bans.

Analysts suggest progressive voters were motivated to turn out in larger numbers by the issue, and one result was the votes on the abortion-related ballot initiatives.

Edison Research said its exit polls showed that abortion was the top issue for 27 percent of voters, just below inflation, cited by 31 percent.

“Across the country last night, we saw an unmistakable repudiation of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

“From Kentucky to Michigan to Vermont to California, Americans want their right to abortion protected,” she said.

Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said it was clear that the issue of abortion rights “redefined this election.”

“Abortion was on the ballot and abortion won,” she told reporters.

– Kentucky court challenge –

The votes in California, Michigan and Vermont for constitutional amendments to protect abortion rights were not surprising: all three are firmly Democratic states, and the electoral verdict was clear.

In conservative Kentucky, however, the ballot measure supported by anti-abortion groups was rejected by a relatively narrow 52 percent to 48 percent margin.

If it had passed, it would have inserted into the state’s constitution a clause saying that there is no right to abortion.

The Kentucky supreme court is scheduled to hear a challenge to the state ban on abortion next week, noted Elisabeth Smith of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The court will find it hard to ignore the outcome of the rejection of the ballot initiative, she told AFP.

Anti-abortion activists played down the ballot initiatives, noting that many candidates sharing their views were elected or reelected on Tuesday.

“Perhaps the most important lesson from the 2022 midterm elections is that pro-life candidates’ success lies in clearly and consistently leading with their position on protections for the unborn,” said the March for Life group.

“This was even more true this cycle when pro-life candidates were outspent 10 to 1 on the issue,” they said.

– Biden backs ‘right to choose’ –

With Republicans poised to capture one and possibly both houses of Congress when the full results of the Tuesday vote are known, some anti-abortion activists want them to pass a federal law outlawing the procedure across the country.

But, commenting on election outcome Wednesday, Biden said he would not accept that.

The voters “sent a clear and unmistakable message that they want to preserve our democracy and protect the right to choose in this country,” Biden said.

“I will veto any attempt to pass a national ban on abortion,” he said.

US President Joe Biden said Wednesday he would ask  Chinese President Xi Jinping about his “red lines” to reduce the potential for conflict after soaring tensions on Taiwan when they gather next week in Bali.

A day before flying to Asia, Biden indirectly confirmed plans to meet Xi on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in what would be their first encounter since they became presidents of the world’s two largest economies.

“What I want to do with him when we talk is lay out what kind of — what each of our red lines are,” Biden told a news conference following US midterm elections.

Biden said he sought to know “what he believes to be in the critical national interests of China, what I know to be the critical interests of the United States, and to determine whether or not they conflict with one another.”

If there are conflicts, Biden said he hoped to work together on “how to work it out.”

Biden and Xi have spoken virtually as presidents but have not met in person, with the Chinese leader until recently putting off international travel due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Xi heads to the Indonesian resort island fresh from securing a historic third term from his Communist Party, while Biden is flying out following a surprisingly strong showing by his Democrats in midterm elections.

The two leaders know each other unusually well for two presidents, with Biden in 2011 traveling to China to spend time with Xi when they were both vice presidents.

Eleven years later, tension has risen sharply over Taiwan with the Biden administration warning that China has stepped up its timeline to seize the self-governing democracy that it claims as part of its territory.

– Biden support on Taiwan – 

Biden on three occasions has indicated that he is ready to commit the US military to defend Taiwan, a break with longstanding policy that was walked back each time by the White House.

Biden insisted Wednesday there was no change in the historic US stance of strategic ambiguity on whether Washington would use force in the event of a Chinese invasion.

“The Taiwan doctrine has not changed at all from the very beginning,” Biden said, adding that he would discuss Taiwan but also trade and China’s relationship with other countries.

US concerns about Taiwan have been thrown into stark relief by Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, an operation that had until recently been seen as a remote possibility.

Biden bluntly repeated US assessments that China has hesitated at supporting Russia materially, despite President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing to meet Xi before the invasion.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of respect that China has for Russia or for Putin,” Biden said.

“I don’t think they look at that as a particular alliance. Matter of fact, they’ve been sort of keeping their distance a little bit.”

Biden, like his predecessor Donald Trump, has identified China as the premier global competitor of the United States and promised to reorient US policy around the challenge.

But the Biden administration has also promised to work with China on common interests such as climate change.

US climate envoy John Kerry briefly met his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt, marking a further thaw in tensions.

China said it would suspend climate dialogue, a key focus of Biden, in anger after an August visit to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat who is second in line to the presidency.

A US Navy nuclear engineer and his wife were sentenced to long prison terms on Wednesday for plotting to sell submarine secrets to a foreign country.

Jonathan Toebbe, 44, and his wife, Diana Toebbe, 46, pleaded guilty in February to conspiring to sell information related to naval nuclear propulsion systems.

Jonathan Toebbe was sentenced to 19 years and three months in prison while his wife, Diana Toebbe, 46, received a prison term of 21 years and eight months, the Justice Department said.

According to court documents, Diana Toebbe acted as a lookout while her husband delivered highly classified information on nuclear submarine technology to the foreign buyer in a series of “dead drops” in the region around their Annapolis, Maryland, home.

The foreign buyer was not identified by the US authorities but The New York Times, citing people briefed on the investigation, said the country was Brazil.

A teacher at a private school, Diana Toebbe initially pleaded innocent to the charge of conspiracy to communicate restricted data.

But she changed her plea after her husband pleaded guilty and in doing so admitted that his wife took part in the plot.

Jonathan Toebbe was a nuclear engineer for the US Navy dealing with nuclear submarine propulsion systems when the two were arrested on October 9, 2021 after he hid a small SD card carrying US secrets at a dead drop location in West Virginia.

Court documents described a tantalizing, spy-novel-like plot in which they traveled hundreds of miles to secretly hand over information, took payments in cryptocurrency, and followed signals made from an embassy building in Washington.

In one message, Toebbe indicated that he had been considering his actions for several years and was happy to work with “a reliable professional partner.”

He also wrote that he had divided all the data he had collected into 51 “packages” of information, and sought $100,000 for each.

But the FBI was following the plot, after having been alerted to it by the target nation in December 2020, though that was nearly nine months after the Toebbes first mailed their offer to the country’s military intelligence.

“The Toebbes betrayed the American people and put our national security at significant risk when they selfishly attempted to sell highly sensitive information related to nuclear-powered warships for their own financial benefit,” Brice Miller, a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said in a statement.

Planet-heating emissions from oil and gas production could be three times higher than reported, according to a satellite monitoring project launched Wednesday that the UN chief said made it harder to “cheat”.

The new tool — unveiled at United Nations COP27 climate talks in Egypt — has pinpointed more than 70,000 sites spewing emissions into the atmosphere.

The project, run by a group of research institutions, charities and companies, monitors sites including heavy industry, energy production, agriculture, transport, waste and mining.

Using artificial intelligence to analyse data from more than 300 satellites, as well as thousands of sensors on land and in the sea, the Climate TRACE monitor found that the top 14 largest emitters are all oil and gas extraction sites.

Of those, the biggest emitter on the planet is the Permian Basin in Texas — one of the largest oilfields in the world — said former US vice president Al Gore, a project founder.

“With new data on methane and flaring, we now estimate that the actual emissions are three times higher than what they have reported,” Gore said.

Flaring is the burning off of unwanted natural gas from oil and gas wells.

Methane, emitted by leaks from fossil fuel installations as well as from other human-caused sources like livestock and landfills, is responsible for roughly 30 percent of the global rise in temperatures to date. 

Dozens of countries last year pledged to act to cut pollution from the potent greenhouse gas.

– ‘Wake-up call’ –

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres praised the initiative for shining a light on actual emissions using direct observations. 

“You are making it more difficult to greenwash or — to be more clear — to cheat,” he said.

“This should be a wake-up call to governments and the financial sector, especially those that continue to invest in and underwrite fossil fuel pollution,” he said. 

Climate TRACE first determined what industrial activity was at a given site and therefore what type of emissions to look for, said Gavin McCormick, another co-founder and director of the US environmental technology nonprofit WattTime.

Every time a satellite passes over, they can then interpret “what are we seeing”.

Gore, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his climate advocacy, said the top 500 sources identified emit more per year than the United States — and half of the pollution is from power plants. 

All the data from the project is available free online at climatetrace.org to increase “transparency, collaboration and accountability for climate action”, Gore added.

The International Energy Agency has decried the enormous amount of methane that leaks from fossil fuel operations, estimating the amount lost last year globally was broadly similar to all the gas used in Europe’s power sector.

In October, NASA said a methane plume about two miles (3.3 kilometres) long was detected southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the Permian Basin.

Republicans appeared poised Wednesday to eke out a slim majority in the US House of Representatives but their hopes of a “red wave” in midterm elections were dashed as President Joe Biden’s Democrats outperformed expectations.

It was a disappointing night for Donald Trump, who was counting on a powerful Republican showing to boost his expected 2024 run to return to White House.

He also saw his main rival for the party’s presidential nomination, Ron DeSantis, record a thumping victory to remain governor of Florida.

With three key races yet to be called after Tuesday’s vote, the Senate remained in play but it was leaning Democratic and control may hinge on a runoff election in the southern state of Georgia in December.

Republicans seemed on track to reclaim the 435-member House for the first time since 2018, but by a handful of seats, a far cry from their predictions.

Top Republican Kevin McCarthy, who had forecast a pickup of as many as 60 House seats, put on a brave face after the underwhelming showing.

“It is clear that we are going to take the House back,” said McCarthy, who hopes to be the lower chamber’s next speaker. 

While the night saw wins by more than 100 Republicans embracing Trump’s “Big Lie” that Biden stole the 2020 election, several high-profile acolytes of the former president came up short.

“Many of the candidates he endorsed underperformed and cost their party a chance at picking up seats that should have been winnable,” said Jon Rogowski, a political science professor at the University of Chicago.

“Not only did voters reject many of Trump’s candidates, but they also rejected his policies,” Rogowski said, citing abortion as an example.

In ballot initiatives in five states, voters supported abortion rights in a rejection of the conservative-dominated Supreme Court’s ruling in June that overturned a constitutional right to the procedure.

Aiming to deliver a rebuke to Biden against a backdrop of sky-high inflation and bitter culture wars, Republicans needed just one extra seat to wrest control of the evenly divided Senate.

But by Wednesday the only seat to change hands went to the Democrats, with John Fetterman, a burly champion of progressive economic policies, triumphing in Pennsylvania over Trump-endorsed celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a top Trump ally, bluntly conceded to NBC that the election is “definitely not a Republican wave, that’s for darn sure.”

– ‘Never underestimate’ –

“Never underestimate how much Team Biden is underestimated,” White House chief of staff Ronald Klain tweeted.

A Republican-held House could still derail Biden’s agenda, launching investigations, scuttling his ambitions on climate change and scrutinizing the billions of US dollars to help Ukraine fight Russia.

The president’s party has traditionally lost seats in midterm elections, and with Biden’s ratings stuck in the low 40s and Republicans pounding him over inflation and crime, pundits had predicted a drubbing.

That would have raised tough questions on whether America’s oldest-ever commander in chief, who turns 80 this month, should run again.

Instead Biden stands to emerge in much better shape than either of his Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, who both took a hammering at the midterms.

Democrats need two more wins to hold the Senate, while Republicans need two to flip it.

Wisconsin’s incumbent Republican Senator Ron Johnson was declared the winner on Wednesday, but counting the remaining votes in Senate races in Arizona and Nevada could take days.

Georgia is to hold a runoff on December 6 after neither candidate crossed the 50 percent threshold needed for victory in the Senate race there.

– DeSantis romps to victory –

On a night of close contests, one of the most decisive wins was for DeSantis, who won the gubernatorial race overwhelmingly in Florida.

DeSantis, who has railed against Covid-19 mitigation measures and transgender rights, won by nearly 20 points in what used to be a swing state.

“I have only begun to fight,” the 44-year-old DeSantis told a noisy victory party.

Trump, who faces criminal probes over taking top secret documents from the White House and trying to overturn the 2020 election, has not yet formally entered the 2024 presidential fray but has announced plans to make a major announcement on November 15.

On Tuesday, the 76-year-old former president returned to his playbook of airing unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

In Arizona, Trump and his chosen candidate for governor, Kari Lake, alleged irregularities after problems with voting machines.

Officials in the most populous county of Maricopa said about 20 percent of the 223 polling stations experienced difficulties related to scanners but that no one was denied the right to vote.

Ahead of polling day, Biden had warned that Republicans pose a dire threat to democracy, calling out their growing embrace of voter conspiracy theories that fueled last year’s storming of the Capitol.