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
The first debate of the Republican presidential primary takes place next Wednesday (August 23) in Milwaukee as Donald Trump’s rivals for the GOP nomination seek to make a dent in the now four-times-indicted former president’s commanding lead in the polls. The final line-up will be confirmed on Monday (August 21), though Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Doug Burgum, Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie all appear to have qualified. Of course, the big question is whether Trump himself will take part, having suggested he might not while leaving the door open for a dramatic last-minute appearance.
Trump, along with the 18 others facing RICO charges in Georgia over their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential results, has a Friday (August 25) deadline to surrender to authorities in Atlanta after charges were confirmed on Monday by Fulton County DA Fanni Willis. Ahead of that, Willis has her own deadline on Wednesday (August 23) to file her initial response to a bid from Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows to have his case moved to federal court ahead of an initial hearing on the matter on August 28.
President Biden, meanwhile, is scheduled to visit Maui on Monday (August 21) having faced criticism from some quarters over his handling of the response to the devastating wildfires that are known to have taken the lives of over 100 people, though many more are feared dead. The visit is likely to punctuate an otherwise quiet week for the president, who’s scheduled to be in Lake Tahoe before returning to DC at the end of the week, hosting last year’s WNBA champions the Las Vegas Aces at the White House on Friday (August 25).
Looking abroad
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa hosts this year’s BRICS summit in Johannesburg from Tuesday to Thursday (August 22-24). Russia’s Vladimir Putin won’t be attending in person, saving South African authorities the headache of having to decide whether to arrest Putin or ignore their obligations to act on the ICC warrant issued in March against Putin. But China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are all due to attend the summit, with Xi paying a rare state visit to Pretoria on Tuesday (August 22) ahead of the gathering before he and Ramaphosa join Modi and Lula in Johannesburg for a BRICS business forum discussion followed by a private retreat.
On the agenda for the summit is the contentious topic of expanding the grouping, with some 20 countries – including Argentina, Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Venezuela – having expressed formal interest in joining. But Brazil and India are thought to be wary of expansion, which is backed by China and Russia, fearing it would morph the grouping into an explicitly anti-Western bloc hindering constructive engagement on global issues.
The conflict in Ukraine, inevitably, will loom large over the gathering. The country marks its independence on Thursday (August 24), exactly 18 months since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, and in New York the US has scheduled a UN Security Council meeting that day on the impact of Russia’s invasion.