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
It’s a huge week on Capitol Hill as lawmakers face the September 30 cutoff to pass spending legislation and avert a government shutdown. Next week’s funding deadline follows a dramatic week in the House amid increasingly bitter infighting among Republicans, which saw their leadership pull a planned rules vote on a doomed short-term continuing resolution before losing votes on Tuesday and then again on Thursday to move forward with a defense spending bill.
With both the House and Senate now not due to reconvene until Tuesday (September 26), the prospect of a shutdown is looking increasingly likely. On the Senate side, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has scheduled a procedural vote for Tuesday on legislation that would serve as vehicle for a short-term CR. But the House is where the matter will ultimately be determined. For McCarthy and his leadership team, the choice looks increasingly to be between siding with hardliners in his party and provoking a shutdown, or relying on Democratic votes to pass a short-term package that would likely end his speakership.
Republican presidential hopefuls, meanwhile, hold their second debate on Wednesday (September 27) in California, with candidates facing a Monday (September 25) deadline to meet the criteria to qualify. Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott and Chris Christie are all expected at the debate, but once again Donald Trump is slated to skip the event and is instead expected in Detroit for an event with union workers amid the ongoing UAW strike. The debate, hosted by Fox Business and the Reagan Foundation, is likely to focus on business issues and the economy. Several candidates are rolling out economic policies in anticipation, including Haley, who presents her ‘economic freedom’ plan in a speech in New Hampshire today.
Looking abroad
A debate begins in the Spanish parliament on Tuesday (September 26) ahead of a vote on Wednesday (September 27) on a potential government led by the right-leaning Partido Popular following July’s snap elections. Even with the support of the far-right Vox party, it looks unlikely that PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo will be able to cobble together enough votes to win either the vote on Wednesday or a subsequent vote expected on Friday (September 29). Though PSOE leader and caretaker prime minister Pedro Sánchez is likely to be given an opportunity to try to form a government, he too looks like he will struggle, making fresh elections in January an increasingly likely outcome.
Sanchez, as it happens, will be among leaders attending a Med9 summit hosted by Malta on Friday (September 29). Leaders from the grouping – whose members also include Italy, France, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, Croatia and Slovenia – are likely to discuss migration challenges as huge numbers of people continue to make dangerous journeys to Europe by boat, with nearly 130,000 arriving this year in Italy alone.
While European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen outlined a 10-point plan for a ‘European answer’ to migration on a visit to Lampedusa last week, leaders are far from united on how to tackle the problem – Germany has gone back and forth on accepting arrivals from Italy, while hosts Malta have been accused of ignoring boats in distress and taking in tiny numbers of asylum seekers. The summit may also feature a tense encounter between Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and French President Emmanuel Macron after France said it wouldn’t accept any arrivals from Lampedusa.