A look ahead at the key events leading the news agenda next week, from the team at Foresight News. Delivered to your inbox on Fridays.
Leading the week
On Monday (8 April), the nation’s gaze will turn upwards as a total solar eclipse passes through the skies above parts of North America, creating night-like darkness in localized areas for a few minutes as the Moon travels between the Sun and Earth at just the right plane. The moon will become a black sphere ringed by the sun’s corona, and stargazers may be able to see Venus and Jupiter as well as the 12P/Pons-Brooks ‘devil’ comet in the dark sky. Those looking at the ground while they prep their solar glasses or homemade eclipse viewer may see eerie shadow bands form and animals and plants act abnormally.
Although the last total solar eclipse in the US was in 2017, this year’s is especially rare due to its 115 mile-wide coverage. The Great North American Eclipse will begin on Mexico’s Pacific coast just after 11am PDT, and continue across 13 US states from Texas to Maine before entering southeastern Canada. Around 31 million people live within the path of totality, with another four million people estimated to be travelling from across the nation. Anyone who misses out this time – which no longer includes at least six locked-down prisoners in New York following a settlement yesterday – will have to wait until 2044 for another opportunity, sparking the current tourism boom that’s set to generate upward of $1 billion in revenue. Despite the frenzied anticipation, though, it is probably worth noting that current forecasts are predicting cloud cover for most of the eclipse’s passage until it reaches upstate New York.
While President Joe Biden is on the road next week, he looks set to miss the eclipse as he travels to Wisconsin and Illinois on Monday (April 8). In Madison, Biden is scheduled to deliver a speech on ‘lowering costs for Americans’ ahead of the latest inflation data release on Wednesday (April 10), before heading to Chicago for a campaign reception.
Later in the week, his focus will turn to the international arena when he hosts Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for a state visit to the White House on Wednesday before hosting a trilateral summit with Kishida and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Thursday (April 11), when Kishida is also scheduled to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress. China is likely to be the subject of discussions during both meetings following Biden’s ‘candid’ phone call earlier this week with President Xi Jinping, their first talks since November. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen travelled to China after the call, and is scheduled to hold a press conference in Beijing on Monday (April 8) before returning to the US.
It’s also shaping up to be a busy week on Capitol Hill following the Easter recess, starting on Tuesday (April 9) when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he will likely face questions on the conflict in Ukraine and the situation in the Middle East amid the conflict in Gaza and fears over Iran’s response to the strike on its consulate in Syria. On Wednesday (April 10), DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is scheduled to attend back-to-back House and Senate hearings on the same day House Republican impeachment managers are set to formally send the two articles of impeachment against him to the Senate for trial. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is expected to move quickly to end proceedings after Senators are sworn is as jurors on Thursday (April 11). With hearings on the Administration’s latest budget request now in full swing, there are also appearances next week from USAID Administrator (and author of a book criticizing US inaction on genocide) Samantha Power, FBI Director Christopher Wray and CBO Director Phillip Swagel.
Next week will also see a host of developments in high-profile criminal proceedings. Opening statements are expected in the trial of Chad Daybell, husband of convicted ‘cult mom’ Lori Vallow, following jury selection this week, while actor Jonathan Majors is sentenced on Monday (April 8) for assaulting and harassing his ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari. The parents of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley are sentenced on Tuesday (April 9) after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter for failing to uphold their responsibilities as gun owners; former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and LA socialite Rebecca Grossman both face sentencing on Wednesday (April 10); and Friday (April 12) sees sentencing for career diplomat and Cuba spy Manuel Rocha, a case described by Attorney General Merrick Garland as ‘one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent’. Meanwhile, Missouri plans to go ahead with the execution of ‘model inmate’ Brian Dorsey on Tuesday (April 9) despite pleas for clemency from prison guards, Republican representatives, and the appeals court judge who upheld Dorsey’s death sentence in 2009.
Looking abroad
The conflict in Gaza is back before the International Court of Justice in the Hague next week, where arguments are scheduled on Monday and Tuesday (April 8-9) in a case brought by Nicaragua against Germany. Nicaragua claims Germany’s military aid to Israel and decision to stop funding UNRWA following Israeli accusations that a handful of workers at the organization had been involved in the Hamas attack last October amount to participation in ‘the ongoing plausible genocide and serious breaches of international humanitarian law’ in Gaza. Like in South Africa’s case against Israel, next week’s proceedings don’t concern the actual merits of the claim, but Nicaragua’s request for provisional measures, in this case the immediate suspension of military assistance to Israel and resumption of UNRWA funding.
South Koreans head to the polls on Wednesday (April 10) to vote in parliamentary elections that many see as a mid-term referendum on President Yoon Suk Yeol and his conservative People Power Party, which does not currently control the National Assembly. Barring a significant shift in polls, the PPP appears set to lose out again to the main opposition Democratic Party (DP). Voter dissatisfaction with mainstream politics appears to be behind a surge in support for the newly-created Rebuilding Korea party led by Cho Kuk, a minister under former president Moon Jae-in (DP) who is currently appealing a two-year prison sentence over a 2019 scandal investigated by Yoon back when he was a prosecutor. For Yoon, Wednesday’s elections may well define the last three years of his presidency, especially if opposition parties achieve a super majority allowing them to override his vetoes or even impeach him.
Following Leo Varadkar’s surprise resignation announcement last month, Irish lawmakers are due to make Varadkar’s successor as leader of the Fine Gael party, Simon Harris, Taoiseach on Tuesday (April 9) when they reconvene following their Easter recess. Varadkar’s last official engagement is expected to be the North-South Ministerial Council in Northern Ireland on Monday (April 8), a meeting of ministers from Belfast and Dublin aimed at fostering cooperation across the island. The Council hasn’t sat met since July 2021, when the DUP began a boycott in protest at the Northern Ireland Protocol, but is back up and running after the restoration of the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland earlier this year. Preparations for the gathering have been overshadowed somewhat by the arrest of former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson, though participants on all sides have been quick to stress the stability of the recently-returned institutions.