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 September 30 deadline for lawmakers in Washington to avert an election year shutdown will loom large over Congress next week after 14 Republicans broke ranks and voted with Democrats on Wednesday to defeat House Speaker Mike Johnson’s doomed-to-fail-anyway six-month continuing resolution.
Johnson’s defeat has prompted fresh fears of a shutdown weeks ahead of November’s election, something Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said would be ‘politically beyond stupid’ given Republicans would ‘certainly’ be blamed. In the wake of the vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer filed cloture on his own legislative vehicle to prevent a shutdown, blasting Johnson for wasting two weeks ‘listening to Donald Trump’s ridiculous claims on the campaign trail.’
While Washington waits to see what Johnson’s next steps might be – there are rumors of a House vote early next week on a ‘clean’ CR funding government through mid-December – there will be no shortage of partisanship elsewhere on Capitol Hill in the hyper-political environment created by the upcoming election.
Despite the Trump administration having signed the agreement with the Taliban to pull all American forces from Afghanistan in 2020, House Republicans have exploited the disastrous withdrawal the following year to critique Joe Biden’s foreign policy record. In the latest salvo, House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans have issued a subpoena requiring Secretary of State Antony Blinken appear before a hearing on the withdrawal on Tuesday (September 24), promising to proceed with holding him in contempt of Congress if he fails to appear, a likely outcome given Blinken’s packed diary in New York next week (more on that below).
In the Democrat-controlled Senate, expect partisanship to be on full display when the Judiciary Committee meets on Tuesday (September 24) to discuss the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump’s immunity case. Chair Dick Durbin has described it as a ‘dangerous’ ruling from ‘far-right justices’ while decrying the ‘disgraceful’ decision of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito not to recuse themselves from the case. Also Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing on Trump’s ‘criminalization’ of women’s health care, featuring testimony from Kaitlyn Joshua, the Louisiana woman who addressed the Democratic National Convention last month on her experience of being refused treatment for a miscarriage because doctors feared the consequences of the state’s strict abortion ban.
The controversial use of the death penalty in the US will be back in the headlines next week with four executions scheduled over the course of three days, including that of Marcellus Williams, who made news earlier this month when a judge rejected a motion filed by prosecutors to vacate his conviction. Williams, who is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday (September 24), has always maintained his innocence over the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle, and is supported by the St Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which argues new DNA evidence suggests his conviction is unjust.
Emmanuel Littlejohn, who’s due to be executed in Oklahoma, also insists he’s not guilty of the 1992 murder of convenience store owner Kenneth Meers, saying he didn’t fire the fatal shot. The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended Littlejohn’s sentence be commuted to life in prison without parole, but his lethal injection remains scheduled for Thursday (September 26). In contrast, Texas inmate Travis Mullis, who is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday for the murder of his three-year old son, has said he wants his death sentence ‘carried out ASAP’.
Alabama inmate Alan Eugene Miller, meanwhile, would become only the second person in the US to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia if his death goes ahead as planned on Thursday (September 26). The first execution using this method, a development prompted by a nationwide shortage of the chemicals used in lethal injections, raised concerns after reports that the inmate thrashed about for 22 minutes before dying. In the run up to Miller’s execution, a legal battle has been playing out between lawyers representing another inmate due to be executed via the same method later this year and the state of Alabama, to decide whether Miller’s execution can be filmed to evaluate whether using nitrogen hypoxia is a humane way to kill a person.
Looking abroad
World leaders descend on New York next week for the UN General Assembly’s high-level week, sometimes referred to as the Super Bowl of diplomacy. While the conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan are likely to dominate this year’s gathering, a host of other issues of global concern are also set to be discussed.
The centerpiece as ever is the General Debate, which opens on Tuesday (September 24), when world leaders and ministers deliver what are supposed to be 15-minute interventions, though they frequently overrun. In keeping with tradition, Secretary-General António Guterres delivers the first address, followed by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and President Joe Biden, in what will be his final address before the November election. Other speakers on Tuesday include Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Argentina’s Javier Milei and, in what is likely to be another closely-watched address, Iran’s new president Masoud Pezeshkian.
On Wednesday (September 25) all eyes will be on Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is likely to once again make the case that his country’s fight against Russia is central to upholding the rules-based international order. Then on Thursday (September 26) we’ll get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech, his first since the Hamas attack last October that sparked the ongoing war that threatens to engulf the region. New British Prime Minister Keir Starmer follows on Friday (September 27). Neither Chinese President Xi Jinping nor Russian President Vladimir Putin are attending, but their respective foreign ministers will speak on the Saturday (September 28).
Beyond the General Debate, the UN Security Council meets on Tuesday (September 24) for a high-level briefing on Ukraine that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will take part in, followed by an open debate on ‘leadership for peace’ on Wednesday (September 25), chaired by Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob and likely to feature interventions from a variety of world leaders. On Thursday (September 26), the Council holds an informal session on the threat of regional escalation in the Middle East that is likely to garner attention after Israel’s interventions in Lebanon this week.
Other highlights to look out for – notwithstanding last-minute bilateral and multilateral encounters – include the second day of the UN Summit of the Future on Monday, when both Zelenskyy and Pezeshkian are due to speak, a summit Biden’s hosting on synthetic drug threats, and a leaders’ event on defending democracy hosted by Lula, both on Tuesday. On Wednesday, G20 foreign ministers hold their first-ever meeting on the margins of UNGA, and the US, EU and Saudi Arabia co-host a high-level ministerial meeting on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. And as things begin to wind down in New York, Biden will host Zelenskyy at the White House on Thursday. Watch out, too, for celebrities – Prince Harry, Matt Damon and Meryl Streep are among those in town to support the charities and NGOs they work with.
Editor’s note: The events listed above represent a small snapshot of what we’re covering on Foresight News; our subscribers’ calendar will be updated constantly throughout the week.