Donald Trump announced on Wednesday he was appointing David Warrington to serve as the White House counsel, abruptly changing his mind about who will be the top lawyer in the incoming administration as he moves his original pick to the new department of government efficiency.

The move means Warrington, a longtime Trump lawyer who was also the Trump campaign’s general counsel, will effectively be the most prominent legal adviser to Trump in the day-to-day running of the West Wing.

“Dave will lead the office of the White House counsel, and serve as the top attorney in the White House. Dave has represented me well as my personal attorney, and as general counsel for my presidential campaign,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Warrington has been a low-profile but consistent fixture in Trump’s legal orbit for years, leading the campaign’s pre-election litigation with the federal election commission and civil cases, including efforts to ban Trump from the ballot over the January 6 Capitol attack.

Warrington had been in contention to be White House counsel in the days after the election – it is typical for the general counsel on the presidential campaign to get the White House counsel job – until Trump decided he wanted the Republican lawyer Bill McGinley instead.

The precise details about why Trump changed his mind are unclear. But the decision reflects the shifting power dynamics inside Trump’s orbit in the weeks before he takes office.

The Trump transition team’s “War Room” account said in a post on X that McGinley was moved to the department of government efficiency because the agency, which is expected to be part of the Office of Management and Budget, needed its own lawyer to oversee efforts to cut millions in government spending.

“President Trump knows reforming the federal government won’t be easy – and that’s why he needs a solid, experienced pro like Bill McGinley at DOGE,” the post said, using the acronym for the efficiency department.

But the decision also comes after Warrington, in the lead-up to the Thanksgiving holiday last week, attempted what was widely seen as an effort to force the exile of top Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn over an alleged pay-to-play scheme for potential cabinet nominees.

The apparent ouster attempt failed and Epshteyn has remained inside Trump’s orbit. Several Trump aides suggested Warrington might have been offered the White House counsel job as part of a detente inside the Trump legal teams, so that Warrington got what he wanted and Epshteyn retained his influence.

“Bill will play a crucial role in liberating our economy from burdensome regulations, excess spending, and government waste. He will partner with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget to provide advice and guidance to end the bloated federal bureaucracy,” Trump said.

The White House counsel role is not a Senate-confirmed position. Warrington would be part of a West Wing senior staff led by the White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, the co-chair of the Trump campaign with whom he has worked closely.

Climate justice campaigners have condemned the US after the world’s largest historic greenhouse gas emitter argued against countries being legally obliged to combat the climate crisis.

The US intervention came on Wednesday as part of the historic climate hearing at the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague, where island nations and other climate-vulnerable countries are calling for wealthy polluting nations most responsible for climate breakdown to be held legally responsible.

Climate disasters are wreaking havoc across the planet, with dwindling hope of the current climate pledges curtailing global temperatures as the US and other fossil fuel nations continue to expand production.

Yet according to the US, the United Nations framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) and 2015 Paris agreement and other existing non-binding treaties should be preserved and are the best way forward.

The current UN climate change regime “embodies the clearest, most specific, and the most current expression of states’ consent to be bound by international law in respect of climate change”, Margaret Taylor, legal adviser at the state department, told the ICJ judges on Wednesday.

“Any other legal obligations relating to climate change mitigation identified by the court should be interpreted consistently with the obligations states have under this treaty regime,” added Taylor.

Climate justice activists responded with fury.

“Once again, we witness a disheartening attempt by the US to evade its responsibilities as one of the world’s largest polluters,” said Vishal Prasad, director of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change. “The US is content with its business-as-usual approach and has taken every possible measure to shirk its historical responsibility, disregard human rights and reject climate justice.”

Ashfaq Khalfan, Oxfam America’s climate justice director, said: “It is absurd for the Biden administration to argue before the ICJ that countries do not have clear legal obligations to reduce carbon pollution, especially as it prepares to turn over the executive office to a proven climate denier like president-elect Trump, whose policies are likely to deeply harm US climate action.”

Australia, China and Saudi Arabia – major fossil fuel economies and among the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitters – also argued against legal accountability that developing nations are pushing for.

After years of campaigning by vulnerable nations and the global climate justice movement, the UN asked the ICJ to provide an advisory opinion on what obligations states have to tackle climate change and what the legal consequences could be if they fail to do so. More than 100 countries and organisations are testifying over the course of two weeks, and many hope the hearings will elevate science to the forefront, ensuring international law reflects the realities of climate breakdown and the urgent need for transformative action.

ICJ advisory opinions are non-binding but carry significant legal and political weight, and this will likely be referred to as an authoritative document in future climate litigation and during international climate negotiations.

Those most vulnerable to climate change – predominantly Pacific nations led by Vanuatu – are pushing for fair financial support and compensation for irreversible loss and damage from the states most responsible as they face an existential threat from rising tides, floods, drought and other climate disasters.

On Wednesday, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change, Ralph Regenvanu, said his country was “disappointed” at the US and others. “These nations, some of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, have pointed to existing treaties and commitments that have regrettably failed to motivate substantial reductions in emissions … these treaties are essential, but they cannot be a veil for inaction or a substitute for legal accountability.”

Taylor also appeared to dismiss the idea that the ICJ should propose in its opinion that historic emitters be held responsible for past pollution. “An advisory proceeding is not the means to litigate whether individual states or groups of states have violated obligations pertaining to climate change in the past or bear responsibility for reparations … nor would it be appropriate to do so,” she said.

The ICJ is one of three international courts tasked with producing an advisory opinion on the climate crisis, alongside the international tribunal for the law of the sea (Itlos) and the inter-American court of human rights. Itlos found earlier this year that greenhouse gases are pollutants which states have a legal responsibility to control – that goes beyond the UNFCCC. The inter-American court held hearings in Barbados and Brazil this year and is expected to be the next to publish its opinion. The ICJ ruling will likely take many months.

France has been plunged into political crisis after a no-confidence vote brought down the government, ending the beleaguered minority coalition of the rightwing prime minister Michel Barnier after only three months.

The no-confidence motion brought by an alliance of left-wing parties was supported by MPs from Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration, far-right, National Rally. A total of 331 lawmakers — a clear majority — voted on Wednesday night to bring down the government.

Barnier will have to resign as prime minister, having warned before the vote that France would be “plunged into the unknown”.

The toppling of the government leaves the president, Emmanuel Macron, facing the worst political crisis of his two terms as president. There is uncertainty over how a 2025 budget can be decided as France faces a growing public deficit, and over whom Macron could appoint as prime minister.

Macron, whose second term as president runs until spring 2027, is not obliged to stand down himself. He has ruled out resigning, calling such a scenario “political fiction”. But part of the left and far right called for his exit.

Wednesday’s vote was the country’s first successful no-confidence vote since a defeat for Georges Pompidou’s government in 1962, when Charles de Gaulle was president. The lifespan of Barnier’s government became the shortest of any administration of France’s Fifth Republic, which began in 1958.

No new parliament elections can be called before July 2025, narrowing Macron’s options faced with a deeply divided national assembly.

Since Macron called a sudden and inconclusive snap election in June, the French parliament has been divided between three groups with no absolute majority. A left alliance took the largest number of votes but fell short of an absolute majority; Macron’s centrist grouping suffered losses but is still standing and Le Pen far-right National Rally gained seats but was held back from power by tactical voting from the left and centre.

Barnier, the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, was appointed by Macron in September after two months of political paralysis this summer.

Barnier’s key task, which proved his downfall, was to vote through a budget for 2025 in which he said he would begin to tackle France’s deficit with €60bn in tax increases and spending cuts. But after weeks of standoff over the budget, Barnier on Monday pushed through a social security financing bill, using article 49.3 of the constitution, which allows a government to force through legislation without a vote in parliament. This sparked a no-confidence motion brought by the left alliance, and another brought by the far right.

Barnier’s minority coalition had been essentially propped up by Le Pen, who, although outside government, had an unprecedentedly powerful role as Barnier attempted to placate her to avoid her party joining a no-confidence vote. Barnier had negotiated with her directly, tapering the budget to her demands.

But Le Pen pulled rank, saying Barnier’s budget was a danger to the country. She said French people had expected Barnier’s appointment to calm government institutions and provide a “vision for the country”. Instead, she said, the budget was a disaster.

Le Pen wrote on social media that, by following the “catastrophic continuity of Emmanuel Macron”, Barnier, who led a coalition dominated by the right and centre, “could only fail”. She said she was “protecting and defending” her party’s 11 million voters, who she said were deeply concerned about the cost of living. Jean-Philippe Tanguy, a National Rally MP, said: “[Having] no budget is better than the actual budget, which says a lot about how bad it is.”

If parliament does not pass a budget by 20 December, the government can propose emergency legislation that would roll over spending limits and tax provisions from 2024, pending the arrival of a new government and a new 2025 budget bill.

The savings through spending cuts, and tax rises planned by the Barnier government would be shelved.

Le Pen’s party has said households would be better off in this scenario. Barnier had fiercely contested this, saying that the government’s collapse would bring “extremely serious and turbulent conditions on financial markets”. Barnier’s ministers said more people would end up paying tax or additional tax if thresholds could not be adjusted for inflation. The labour minister, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, said there would be “sadness and worry” after a government collapse.

The head of the parliament’s finances commission, Éric Coquerel, a member of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s leftwing La France Insoumise party, said the no-confidence vote was a sign of “hope” and he felt the “vast majority of French people backed it”. He said Barnier was being “alarmist” when he said that “financial and economic chaos” would be the result if the government fell. Mélenchon, who is not currently an MP, was in parliament, to witness what he called a “historic day”.

The left alliance’s no-confidence motion contained wording that attacked the far right. It noted that despite a large number of French citizens choosing to block the far right in June’s parliament snap election, Barnier had still “ceded to their most vile obsessions” – a reference to their anti-immigration stance. But Le Pen’s party said it would still vote for the no-confidence text as the key issue was to overthrow the government.

The Socialist party leader, Olivier Faure, who said there should now be a prime minister from the left, said Macron must speak to the French people. “How can he leave the French people in this uncertainty just before Christmas?” Faure told Le Monde.

The British army would be wiped out in as little as six months if it was forced to fight a war on the scale of the Ukraine conflict, a defence minister has warned.

Alistair Carns said a rate of casualties similar to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would lead to the army being “expended” within six to 12 months.

He said it illustrated the need to “generate depth and mass rapidly in the event of a crisis”.

In comments reported by Sky News, Carns, a former Royal Marines colonel, said Russia was suffering losses of about 1,500 soldiers killed or injured a day.

“In a war of scale – not a limited intervention, but one similar to Ukraine – our army for example on the current casualty rates would be expended – as part of a broader multinational coalition – in six months to a year,” he said in a speech at a conference on reserves at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank in London.

He added: “That doesn’t mean we need a bigger army, but it does mean you need to generate depth and mass rapidly in the event of a crisis.”

Official figures show the army had 109,245 personnel on 1 October, including 25,814 volunteer reservists.

Carns said: “The reserves are critical, absolutely central, to that process. Without them we cannot generate mass, we cannot meet the plethora of defence tasks.”

Carns, the minister for veterans and people, said the UK needed to “catch up with Nato allies” to place a greater emphasis on the reserves.

The prime minister’s official spokesperson said the defence secretary, John Healey, had spoken previously about “the state of the armed forces that were inherited from the previous government”.

The spokes person said: “It’s why the budget invested billions of pounds into defence, it’s why we’re undertaking a strategic defence review to ensure that we have the capabilities and the investment needed to defend this country.”

The armed forces’ numbers have dropped steadily over the past 14 years, a decline that was seized on by Labour when it was in opposition.

Shortly before the election, Keir Starmer accused the Conservatives of cutting the army to its smallest size “since Napoleon”.

In 2021, the then-defence secretary, Ben Wallace, justified planned reductions by saying: “When the threat changes, we change with it … It’s really important we’re driven by the threat not sentimentality.”

However, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and Donald Trump’s re-election as president of the US, has led to fresh calls for substantial investment in the military.

Trump has indicated he will end America’s military and financial support for Ukraine – leaving Nato allies in Europe to potentially fill the gap.

The CEO of UnitedHealthcare, one of the the US’s largest health insurers, was reportedly fatally shot in the chest on Wednesday in midtown Manhattan, according to multiple reports.

Brian Thompson, 50, was reportedly shot outside the Hilton Hotel at 1335 Avenue of the Americas just after 6.45am after arriving early for the annual UnitedHealthcare investor conference. A man wearing a mask approached him and fired at him repeatedly, according to the New York Post.

When police arrived, the victim was unconscious with a gunshot wound to his chest, police told the Guardian. He was rushed to Mount Sinai hospital in critical condition, where he was later pronounced dead.

Police told the New York Times that they believe that Thompson was targeted in the attack. The outlet also noted that the gunman reportedly knew which door Thompson was going to enter and shot him several times from mere feet away, then fled.

UnitedHealthcare did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.

The UnitedHealth Group was scheduled to host its annual investor conference for analysts and institutional investors in New York City on Wednesday, beginning at 8.00am local time.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the New York Hilton Midtown told the Guardian: “We are deeply saddened by this morning’s events in the area and our thoughts are with all affected by the tragedy” and directed any further questions the New York police department.

Officials have said that no arrests have been made yet and that the investigation is ongoing.

Police are searching for the gunman, who fled the scene on foot before jumping on a bicycle and pedaling away, according to the New York Times. The gunman was reportedly wearing a cream-colored jacket, a black face mask and a gray backpack.

Amar Abdelmula, a driver who witnessed the incident, told ABC News he heard “the shot” adding: “It was silent gun, black gun”. He said he saw the shooter running across the street and tried to take a picture but he was too far away.

“I was shocked,” Abdelmula said. He said he was afraid of being shot too, adding: “I saw everything.”

Thompson was named chief executive officer for UnitedHealthcare in April 2021, according to the company. Prior to this role, he served as CEO of UnitedHealthcare government programs including medicare and retirement and community and state. Before leading government programs, Thompson served as CEO of UnitedHealthcare medicare and retirement.

Thompson, who lives in Minnesota, joined UnitedHealth Group in 2004.

Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, called the shooting “horrifying news and a terrible loss for the business and health care community in Minnesota” in a statement on Wednesday.

“Minnesota is sending our prayers to Brian’s family and the UnitedHealthcare team” Walz added.

A senior European diplomat said that up to 100 “suspicious incidents” in Europe this year could be attributed to Russia, as western officials grapple with how to respond to suspected Russian sabotage attempts.

Speaking ahead of a meeting with Nato counterparts in Brussels, the Czech foreign minister, Jan Lipavský, stressed that Europe “needs to send a strong signal to Moscow that this won’t be tolerated”.

“This year there were 500 suspicious incidents in Europe. Up to 100 of them can be attributed to Russian hybrid attacks, espionage, influence operations,” Lipavský told reporters.

The issue of Russian hybrid threats was one of the main topics discussed during the two-day meeting of the NATO alliance in Brussels, which concluded on Wednesday.

Nato secretary general Mark Rutte said that “both Russia and China have tried to destabilise our countries and divide our societies with acts of sabotage, cyber-attacks, and energy blackmail”

Rutte added that the block agreed on a set of measures to counter “Russia’s hostile and cyber activities, including enhanced intelligence exchange, more exercises, better protection of critical infrastructure and improved cyber defence.

Speaking separately in Berlin on Wednesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated that his country faces a significant threat of sabotage from both Russia and China. He emphasized the need for the country to better prepare for attacks and become more resilient.

Over recent years, European nations have witnessed a spate of incidents – cyber-attacks, arson, incendiary devices, sabotage and even murder plots. The aim of such episodes, security officials believe, is to sow chaos, exacerbate social tensions among Ukraine’s allies and disrupt military supplies to Kyiv.

Concerns in Europe over potential Russian hybrid attacks have intensified following western approval for Ukraine to use US and British long-range missiles in strikes within Russia.

Rutte warned last month that Russia’s “intensifying campaign of hybrid attacks” highlighted the way in which Moscow was quickly shifting the frontline from Ukraine “to the Baltic region, to western Europe and even to the high north”.

European intelligence services are studying a range of suspected Russian operations.

Sweden is leading the investigation into the suspected sabotage of two undersea cables in the Baltic Sea, with western officials suspecting that a vessel intentionally severed the cables by dragging an anchor along the seabed for more than 100 miles.

In the UK, a court is examining the case of a “sophisticated” UK-based spy ring that allegedly passed secrets to Russia over nearly three years, collecting intelligence on targets across Europe.

Police are also investigating whether Russia-linked spies posted incendiary devices – via the delivery firm DHL – around Europe, to Birmingham in the UK and Leipzig in Germany.

Arguably the most serious threat was an assassination plot targeting Armin Papperger, the CEO of the German defence company Rheinmetall, one of many European firms helping supply Ukraine.

Germany’s foreign intelligence chief, Bruno Kahl, said that Russia’s acts of sabotage may eventually prompt Nato to consider invoking the alliance’s article 5 mutual defence clause.

The wide geographical scope and diverse nature of the threats pose a significant challenge for the west in mobilising resources and effectively countering Russian aggression.

One former senior European defence official said it was “practically impossible” to fully confront Moscow’s escalating hybrid warfare. The former official, who recently left their position, said that for years the west underestimated Russia’s hybrid activities, losing valuable time for intelligence sharing and scaling up defence capabilities.

Some countries are now compelled to rely on non-governmental agencies to safeguard their territories.

Last month, the Netherlands announced plans to temporarily enlist private shipping companies to bolster security in its portion of the North Sea.

The increase in Russian activity has come as the Kremlin’s spy apparatus recovered from the initial shock of 450 agents posing as diplomats being expelled from Europe in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Without the traditional network of embassy-based spies, western officials believe that Russia has been forced to resort to riskier and less conventional methods, relying on criminals and others to carry out its dirty work.

The Iraqi artist Vian Sora has seen the absolute worst that politics has to offer – she spent most of her first 30 years living under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq, then endured the destruction of her country following the US invasion in 2003. Years later, she surfaced in the United States as a refugee. Her art, which mixes bright, neon colors with motifs from the ancient history of her homeland, is a testament to the history that has scarred her and her resilience as a survivor.

Settled now in Louisville, Kentucky, along with the family that she worked tirelessly to bring over from Iraq, she is a part of an art community grappling with what their vocation will mean now that Donald Trump has been elected president. The stakes for Sora are not just creative; her family itself may be threatened by Trump’s presidency. “I am acutely frightened by the prospects of refugees and immigrants becoming persona non grata,” she said, “as my sister has an asylum case that remains in jeopardy.”

Sora was one of many artists and exhibitors who I spoke with following the re-election of Donald Trump, and she was not the only one who felt personally threatened by a second Trump term. Cassils, a non-binary artist whose work frequently involves large-scale performance pieces that involve mass groups of trans individuals, said a curator friend recently canceled an upcoming exhibition and quit her job – instead of continuing her career as usual, she was making an impromptu move from her home in Arizona to California in order to protect her transgender child from hate legislation targeting their rights and body. These are threats that Cassils themselves feels subject to. “There’s the anticipation of not knowing, and that’s a really scary place to be.”

In spite of very real threats, Sora and Cassils both highlighted the power of art to guide them through frightening times. Sora tsaid: “Artists are vessels for truth, which can be neither restrained nor abated. This is an instinct we creatives share, and the more it is repressed, the more we will produce against ignorance and suppression.”

Cassils also shared their belief that the impulse to create art can’t be eradicated by autocratic regimes. “Creative freedom at a moment when you’re being told to shut up is absolutely imperative,” they said, “art is something they can’t legislate out of you.” They believed that art is vital at a time like this – simply because it provides a place for communities to come together in solidarity, and to be in their bodies in healthy ways. “I will continue to build artworks that provide visual and metaphoric strategies for resistance. I’m trying to create somatic body practices, meditation techniques, things that can help people stay in their bodies, finding a sense of power within while collectively building power.”

For the artist Zoë Buckman, whose work has engaged feminist themes through striking, in-your-face practices such as plastinating her own placenta and embroidering rap lyrics onto vintage lingerie, the impacts of this election on artistic communities came down in a very different way. “The past year in the arts has seen unprecedented hostility with folks canceling, boycotting and straight-up bullying their fellow colleagues and artists. This has been incredibly painful to witness and personally experience. We are supposed to be standing shoulder to shoulder, debating in the areas we disagree – not further isolating each other. I hope this election will be a wake-up call to the tribalism and ostracism taking over many art communities and spaces, but I do not have much faith that it will be.”

Community was also on the mind of the freelance art historian and curator Noa Wynn, who frequently works with younger feminist and queer artists. Immediately after the election she was eager to come together with her artistic community as she struggled to process the election – she found herself turning again and again to social media, with Instagram providing an impromptu gathering site for collective grieving. “I think I really found solace and comfort, looking on social media at what artists were thinking and producing,” she said.

She added that she expected artists in her network to need time to come to terms with the election before they were prepared to respond it. “Immediately afterwards I saw people saying things like, ‘What did this artist say? What did that artist say?’ but I feel like we have to give artists space to process. Artists are people too, and right now they’re processing.”

Wynn’s comments point to the fact that in the social media age we have come to expect immediate statements from community leaders, be it in the arts or in politics, but artists traditionally work on different timelines. The immediacy of social media is often at odds with how they contemplate and respond to historic events, if they do so at all.

Such sentiments were in keeping with comments by Marilyn Minter, whose work often engages with feminist themes and who collaborated with For Freedoms on their 50 State Initiative in the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections during the last Trump presidency. She turned to the tumult of the 1960s, sharing a quote that resonated with her from What Kind of Man Am I?, the Met’s recent Philip Guston show: “Reflecting on the shifts that he felt compelled to make in his practice in 1968, he recalled: ‘The war [in Vietnam], what was happening to America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man I am, sitting home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything – and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue.’”

As Minter indicates, sometimes artists are just as confused as anyone with how to meaningfully engage with massive political upheavals. She added that setbacks, even ones that feel cataclysmic, are all a part of the process of change – “I was 20 years old in 1968. Cities were burning, leaders were getting assassinated. Progress is two steps forward, one step back.”

In contrast to Minter’s remarks, the artist Amy Sherald said she did not want the election to impact her art at all. While her portraits of Black individuals have included paintings of Michelle Obama as the first lady, as well as of Breonna Taylor after her death at the hand of police officers, she does not see politics as affecting her artistic inspiration. “I make what I make, and I feel like my work does good,” she told me. “but I don’t see how I would change. It wouldn’t be authentic. As artists we have to create from an authentic place, and everybody can’t start creating protest art. But if it’s something that naturally aligns with what you do, then I feel like you should follow that. I don’t want to make work from a reactionary place.”

Wynn said that for her, engagement right now looks like more of the same – her work curating shows and showcasing artists was already deeply political, and she now sees it as even more vital. “This election gives me motivation to continue doing what I’ve been doing so far,” she said. “Championing and amplifying female queer artists. People are trying to push these voices to the margins, but we’re here to stay.”

Wynn’s project as a curator is in part a process of reshaping narratives about the world that have traditionally excluded queer and female voices. Although Sherald did not see her practice as consciously collaborating in that task, she did say that art was an integral part of the process of creating a better future. She expected that art museums and galleries would be places that the politically dispossessed turned to during a second Trump administration, whether for solace or for inspiration. “Art can create transformation and justice, and it allow us to imagine a future,” she said. “Important conversations can happen around art that can’t happen in different space, so it can be healing. It can offer peace and restoration.”

Sora came down in a similar place, offering her belief that artists would be leading the way toward imagining something better than a Trump presidency’s vision for America. “Art, by its nature, is humane and illuminates the darkest paths. The artistic world will respond with vigorous concepts to confront any reversal in humanity’s forward march.”

For Cassils, art will ultimately work on a much more individual scale. They believed that the art world can be a way for individuals to come together support one another in retaining a basic sense of humanity, reflecting that it was not the first time that the trans and queer communities faced an existential threat. They asserted that art would be a way of countering that threat, one person at a time. “We work with what we have. How is it that we have held extreme difficulty and not lost ourselves? I think it’s so important that we have that ability to calm ourselves, so that we can be calm and see clear-eyed together such that we can go back out. How is it that we hold on to ourselves, and our wellbeing in this tsunami that is bound to be difficult?”

Democrat Adam Gray captured California’s 13th congressional district on Tuesday, unseating Republican John Duarte in the final US House contest to be decided in the 2024 elections.

Gray’s win in the farm belt seat that cuts through five counties means Republicans won 220 House seats this election cycle, with Democrats holding 215 seats.

Gray won by a margin of fewer than 200 votes, with election officials reporting on Tuesday that all ballots had been counted.

Duarte captured the seat in 2022 when he defeated Gray by one of the closest margins in the country, 564 votes. He was often listed among the most vulnerable House Republicans given that narrow margin of victory in a district with a Democratic tilt – about 11 points over registered Republicans.

Gray said in an earlier statement: “We always knew that this race would be as close as they come, and we’re expecting a photo-finish this year, too.”

Duarte told the Turlock Journal he had called Gray to concede, adding “That’s how it goes.”

“I’m a citizen legislator, and I didn’t plan on being in Congress forever,” Duarte told the newspaper, though he didn’t rule out a possible future campaign.

In a tough year for Democrats nationally, the party picked up three GOP-held House seats in California.

Both Gray and Duarte stressed bipartisan credentials during the campaign.

Gray, a former legislator, was critical of state water management and put water and agriculture at the top of his issues list. He also said he wants improvements in infrastructure, renewable energy and education.

Duarte, a businessman and major grape and almond farmer, said his priorities included curbing inflation, crime rates and obtaining adequate water supplies for farmers in the drought-prone state.

There is a large Latino population in the district, similar to other Central Valley seats, but the most likely voters statewide tend to be white, older, more affluent homeowners. Working-class voters, including many Latinos, are less consistent in getting to the polls.

South Korea became a democracy only in the late 1980s, and military intervention in civilian affairs remains a touchy subject.

During the dictatorships that emerged as the country rebuilt from the destruction of the 1950-53 Korean war, leaders occasionally proclaimed martial law that allowed them to station combat soldiers, tanks and armoured vehicles on streets or in public places to prevent anti-government demonstrations.

Such scenes are unimaginable for many today.

The dictator Park Chung-hee, who ruled South Korea for nearly 20 years before he was assassinated by his spy chief in 1979, led several thousand troops into Seoul in the early hours of 16 May 1961, in the country’s first successful coup.

During his rule, he occasionally proclaimed martial law to crack down on protests and jail critics.

Less than two months after Park Chung-hee’s death, Maj Gen Chun Doo-hwan led tanks and troops into Seoul in December 1979 in the country’s second successful coup. The next year, he orchestrated a brutal military crackdown on a pro-democracy uprising in the southern city of Gwangju, killing at least 200 people.

In the summer of 1987, massive street protests forced Chun’s government to accept direct presidential elections. His army ally Roh Tae-woo, who had joined Chun’s 1979 coup, won the election held later in 1987 thanks largely to divided votes among liberal opposition candidates.

Only with Roh’s inauguration on 25 February 1988, after 40 years under various forms of military-authoritarian rule, and with the enacting of its fifth constitution in that time, did South Korea become the current, democratic Sixth Republic.