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
With November 5 looming and some three million ballots already cast, the election is set to dominate the news once again next week as the federal and state responses to Hurricanes Helene and Milton are subsumed by the hyper-politicized environment.
On Monday (October 14), Kamala Harris begins her week with a Columbus Day rally in Erie in the crucial state of Pennsylvania, where former President Barack Obama made his campaign trail debut yesterday. Obama will hold further events in battleground states in the runup to the election, including in Arizona on Friday (October 18) and Nevada on Saturday (October 19), while another former president, Bill Clinton, will campaign for Harris in Georgia on Sunday (October 13) and Monday. Harris will then be in Detroit on Tuesday (October 15) for a live radio town hall with Charlamagne Tha God as part of her outreach to the Black community.
With both campaigns also targeting Latino voters, Donald Trump’s Univision town hall from Miami takes place on Wednesday (October 16) after it was rescheduled ahead of Milton’s passage over Florida, giving the Republican nominee a chance to respond to Harris’s Las Vegas town hall broadcast last night. Trump will be in New York on Thursday (October 17) to speak at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, which Harris has elected to skip to campaign in an as-yet-unspecified battleground state. Earlier this week, Trump announced plans to return to New York for an event at Madison Square Garden on October 27, with one local Democrat calling for the event to be canceled, comparing it to the Nazi rally held at the same venue in 1939.
While there are a handful of interesting debates next week in House races, the bigger focus will be on the head-to-heads in Senate seats that could decide control of the chamber and have major implications for whichever candidate wins the presidency.
In Michigan on Monday (October 14), Democrat Elissa Slotkin and Republican Mike Rogers meet for the second and final debate in the race to succeed retiring Democrat Debbie Stabenow following a feisty first round earlier this week.
Three big debates are up Tuesday (October 15), including the only scheduled debate in Texas between Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and Democrat Collin Allred, in what’s shaping up to be a surprisingly close race. In Pennsylvania, Democratic incumbent Bob Casey – who was onstage at last night’s Obama rally in Pittsburgh – and his Republican challenger Dave McCormick will meet for their second and final debate in another key race for Democrats. And in New Jersey’s open Senate race, Democrat Andy Kim and his Republican rival Curtis Bashaw are scheduled to meet again after Bashaw froze onstage during their last encounter, resulting in the debate being briefly suspended.
On Thursday (October 17), Nevada Senator Jacky Rosen and Republican Sam Brown meet for their only debate of the campaign followed on Friday (October 18) by the sole debate in Wisconsin’s increasingly tight race between Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin and her Republican rival Eric Hovde.
Looking abroad
EU foreign ministers meet in Luxembourg on Monday (October 14) with the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine at the top of the agenda. Ukraine’s new foreign minister Andrii Sybiha will participate virtually in the meeting, while new UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy will attend in-person for a working lunch with his counterparts, part of a much-vaunted reset of UK-EU relations. On Wednesday (October 16), Brussels hosts the first-ever EU-Gulf Cooperation Council summit, which will see leaders from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE join European counterparts for talks likely to be overshadowed by Israeli military action in the Middle East, including its anticipated response to Iran’s decision to fire a barrage of missiles over Israel on October 1. A two-day EU summit then follows on Thursday and Friday (October 17-18).
New NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte will oversee his first ministerial meeting of alliance counterparts when defense ministers gather in Brussels on Thursday and Friday (October 17-18) joined, for the first time, by counterparts from South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The meeting will likely also include a meeting of the US-chaired Ukraine Contact Group after the leaders’ meeting planned for this weekend was canceled when President Joe Biden opted to stay home to deal with Hurricane Milton. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is then scheduled to head to Naples where, on Saturday (October 19), Italy is hosting the first-ever G7 defense ministers’ meeting with the agenda – you guessed it – likely to be dominated by the situation in the Middle East and conflict in Ukraine.
Britain’s King Charles undertakes his most significant trip since beginning treatment for cancer when he travels to Australia on Friday (October 18) for a tour that runs through to October 23 and is followed by a state visit to Samoa and a first Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting as monarch. The King is reportedly due to pause his treatment for the duration of the visit, which begins in Canberra with a welcome from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at Parliament House and features a busy schedule including solo engagements and high-profile joint events with Queen Camilla. Highlights of the trip include a wreath-laying at the Australian War Memorial, a visit to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander memorial and a review of Royal Australian Navy in Sydney Harbour. The King will also get to engage with issues close to his heart with climate and sustainability-related visits, but the most significant part of the trip may be a meeting with Australian cancer experts Professor Georgina Long and Professor Richard Scolyer to hear about the pair’s work on melanoma treatment.