Counting the Cost, 1–7 November 2026

Americans voted on Tuesday 3rd November for every seat in the House of Representatives, 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate and 36 state governors. Going in, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. By the early hours of Wednesday, the Associated Press had called both for the Democrats: the Senate at 11.46pm Eastern time, the House at 1.31am.¹

To win the Senate, Democrats needed a net gain of four seats.² They took seven from the Republicans, in North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, Kansas, Maine, Iowa and South Carolina.² They lost none of their own. By Sunday they held 54 seats to the Republicans' 44, with Alaska and Mississippi still too close to call; Democrats led narrowly in both. In the House, which needs 218 seats for a majority, they had won 254 to the Republicans' 162, with 19 races still being counted.³

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A list of firsts

In Texas, James Talarico won a Senate seat, the first time a Democrat has won a statewide office there since 1994.¹ Keisha Lance Bottoms became governor of Georgia, the first Black woman elected governor of any American state.¹ In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim elected to the Senate.⁴ Democrats also won the governorships of Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada.⁴

The billionaire Elon Musk spent heavily against them. The Associated Press counted $158m spent opposing Talarico alone.¹ CNBC put Musk's total across the midterms at $474m, and found that the candidates his group backed or opposed had lost 29 of their races by Wednesday, and won three.⁴ "Texas is not for sale," Talarico said.⁵

What voters said moved them

Exit polls ask people how they voted, and why, as they leave the polling station. NBC News's poll of more than 79,000 voters found that 63% thought the American military action against Iran had been the wrong decision, and that only 38% approved of Trump's job as president.⁶ Prices weighed as heavily: 86% were concerned about their utility bills and 88% about the cost of groceries.⁷

The two worries met in one place: data centres, the warehouses of computer chips that run Artificial Intelligence, which use so much electricity that some regions' power bills have risen to pay for new grid capacity. In NBC's poll, 76% said they would oppose one being built in their own community,⁷ and 56% said AI and data centres were a crucial or major factor in how they voted.⁸ Texas's new Democratic governor, Gina Hinojosa, has promised a moratorium on new ones as soon as she takes office.⁹

Trump's own side drew the same conclusion about the war. Vice-President JD Vance said: "The reason we lost is the war."⁹ Trump told reporters on Wednesday that this was "largely true", that he would "do it again", and that what had hurt was "not the war, the price".⁴ On election night he had written: "I wasn't on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!"¹

The market's verdict

Investors first welcomed the result: on Wednesday the Dow Jones index of 30 large companies rose 3%.¹⁰ On Thursday they turned on the companies building AI. The S&P 500, the index of 500 large American companies, fell 4.4%, its worst day since Trump's tariff announcement of April 2025. The technology-heavy Nasdaq fell 5.5%; Nvidia, the leading maker of AI chips, fell 9.3%.¹¹ NBC News calculated that about $2.8tn was wiped off the value of S&P 500 companies in a day.¹²

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The Associated Press linked the fall to the chance that state and local governments run by Democrats could force pauses in the building of data centres.¹¹ It followed a week in which, as Hindsight reported last Sunday, investors had already begun to ask when the vast spending on AI would pay. "I don't think this is an AI bubble bursting," said Ed Yardeni, an investment strategist; he called it "the cold shower that I anticipated might occur after a blue-wave situation".¹² On Friday the S&P 500 recovered 0.3%, ending the week 2.7% lower.¹³

A new chief of staff

On Friday afternoon Trump announced that Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, would become White House chief of staff from Monday 9th November. Susie Wiles, the first woman to hold the job, moves to Trump's political operation; Trump said she had "done a great job".¹⁴ "Sometimes in life you have to make moves," he told reporters.¹⁵

Democrats in Congress reacted with hostility. Hakeem Jeffries, their leader in the House, called Miller "a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist", and Chuck Schumer, their leader in the Senate, said: "Trump couldn't have made a worse choice."¹⁵

What it means for Trump

Trump's power shrinks wherever he needs Congress, and much less where he doesn't. Nothing changes at once: the new Congress meets at noon on 3rd January, and until then the Republican majorities remain.¹⁶ They must first agree how to keep the government funded beyond 11th December, when the current stopgap law runs out.¹⁷

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From January, Democrats can stop what Trump needs Congress for. Every law and every dollar of federal spending must pass both houses,¹⁶ so the Pentagon's requests for $67bn to pay for the Iran war and $350bn more for defence, neither yet approved, will depend on Democratic votes.¹⁸ Democrats will chair the committees that investigate the government and issue subpoenas, and a simple majority of the Senate, which they now hold, can confirm or reject his nominees for the cabinet, the courts and embassies.¹⁶¹⁹ In September the Senate rejected a resolution telling Trump to withdraw American forces from the war with Iran by one vote, 50 to 49;²⁰ the new Senate has the numbers to pass one, though lawyers have long disputed whether such a resolution binds a president, and Congress's surer lever is money.²¹

What Democrats cannot do is make law over his objection. Overturning a veto takes two-thirds of each house: 290 votes in the House and 67 in the Senate when every member votes. Democrats have won 254 and 54 so far, so they would need dozens of Republicans.¹⁶³ "I have the ultimate power — it's called 'veto,'" Trump said.⁵ Most bills also need 60 votes to get through the Senate.¹⁹ He remains commander-in-chief, keeps the power to pardon, and keeps his tariffs under trade laws that the Supreme Court left untouched in February.¹⁶²² That is why some analysts doubt he has become a "lame duck".²³

"We are going to work hard to drive costs down, with the president or without him," said Chuck Schumer, the Democrats' leader in the Senate.²⁴ His Republican counterpart, John Thune, said his party would "not stand idly by" as Democrats tried to "unwind everything we've done".²⁵ The Senate races in Alaska and Mississippi, and the size of the House majority, are still being counted.³

Late on Monday 2nd November, explosions shook Qeshm, Iran's largest island, which sits in the Strait of Hormuz opposite the port of Bandar Abbas.¹ American officials, speaking anonymously, said US jets had struck sites from which Iran had fired surface-to-air missiles at American aircraft, and that the strikes "were not a resumption of major combat operations".² The next day President Donald Trump confirmed them: "They built an anti-aircraft facility... As soon as it was completed, we hit it last night very nicely."³

The same evening, an Indian-flagged vessel with 14 Indian crew was hit by what India called an "unidentified aerial object" near Limah, on Oman's side of the strait. Oman's coastguard rescued 13; one sailor died of his injuries. Nobody has said who fired.⁴

On Friday Iranian state media reported two more explosions on Qeshm. Trump called the strikes "minor": "they built a little bit of an anti-aircraft device and we knocked it out in about 15 minutes, maybe five."⁵

"It's not a war"

The war between the United States and Iran began with American and Israeli strikes on 28th February.⁶ A ceasefire agreed in April broke down over the summer, and Iran has restricted shipping through the strait, through which about a fifth of the world's oil passed before the war.

Trump has taken to describing it differently. "This isn't a war — it's a very soft war," he told Fox News on Monday.⁷ On Friday he told reporters: "It's not a war. It can't be a war when for five months nobody was hurt, killed, or anything else."⁸ The record says otherwise: Iranian missiles killed American troops at a base in Jordan in July,⁹ and a sailor was killed off Oman on Monday.⁴

It was the same week in which his vice-president, JD Vance, said the war was why Republicans lost the midterm elections (see the first story in this edition).

A plan through Qatar

Alongside the strikes, the two sides were talking through Qatar. Iran sent a new proposal through Qatar on Thursday,¹⁰ Trump spoke to Qatar's emir on Friday, and "We are talking to Iran. We have been," he said.⁵

On Saturday the Guardian reported the outline of a Qatari plan. The United States would lift its naval blockade of Iran's ports and release part of about $8bn of frozen Iranian money; Iran would let inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, visit its bombed nuclear sites; and Iran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz on the second day.¹¹ Neither Qatar nor Iran has published it. "We will never have a perfect peace deal but you can't wait for that perfect moment," Qatar's prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said at Oxford University on Friday.¹²

Pressure ran the other way too. The US State Department offered up to $20m for information on Iran's nuclear programme,¹³ and Iran was reported to be handing out iodine tablets, which protect the thyroid from radiation, to people living near its nuclear sites.¹⁰

Oil traders bet on the talks. Brent crude futures, the main international oil price, ended the week at about $98 a barrel, down roughly 16%, their biggest weekly fall since 2020.¹⁴

The cost reaches mortgages

The war's earlier rise in energy prices is still working its way through economies far from the Gulf. On Tuesday the Reserve Bank of Australia raised its main interest rate to 4.85%. Its board said the higher outlook for inflation "partly reflects higher fuel and other commodity prices affected by the conflict in the Middle East".¹⁵ "Monetary policy cannot impact global oil prices," said its governor, Michele Bullock; the rise was "to address domestic capacity pressures".¹⁶

On Thursday the Bank of England raised Bank Rate, the rate that sets the cost of most British mortgages and loans, from 3.75% to 4%. It was its first rise since August 2023,¹⁷ and eight of the nine members of its Monetary Policy Committee voted for it; the ninth, Catherine Mann, wanted a bigger rise. The Bank said UK inflation, 3.5% in September, is now expected to rise to around 5% by the middle of next year, and that "the conflict in the Middle East is now in its ninth month".¹⁸

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"Today's increase shouldn't be seen as the first in an inevitable long sequence of hikes," said the Governor, Andrew Bailey. "But, unless the conflict is resolved, neither does it seem likely to be the last increase."¹⁹

Late on Saturday

After the oil market had closed for the week, the signals turned again. On Saturday US Central Command set up Task Force Iron Gate "to prevent Iran from using ground routes to transport advanced weapons and other materials"; its commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, said it would reinforce "our ironclad blockade against Iran at sea".²⁰ Iran's Revolutionary Guard navy said two oil tankers had "suffered severe damage and stopped after hitting sea mines" in what it called an unsafe part of the strait. Iran's official news agency reported explosions on Qeshm and in Jask, Sirik and Bandar Abbas, without saying what caused them.²⁰ The Revolutionary Guard also said it had lifted its self-imposed limit of 2,000km on the range of its ballistic missiles, though Iran is not known to have missiles that can fly further. Iran was still reviewing Qatar's proposals, the Associated Press reported.²¹

Where it stands

Strikes and talks are running together. The United States says the strikes are defensive, Iran's chief negotiator says his country "will not surrender to the enemy's threats",⁷ and the Qatari plan has been reported but not agreed. For British borrowers, the Bank of England has said what would bring rates down again: real progress towards ending the war.¹⁸

On Monday mornings the school in Komyshuvakha, a village in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region about 20km from the front line, was where people came for food parcels. The distribution on Monday 2nd November had been announced the day before, on a local channel with nearly 5,000 subscribers, for 10am to midday.¹

Russian aircraft dropped glide bombs on the school, then on its underground shelter, where people had run for cover. Glide bombs are old free-fall bombs fitted with wings and guidance, which let a jet release them tens of kilometres away.¹ President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said one bomb was followed by "a double-tap strike with nine more bombs".² Two rescuers and four police officers who came to help were among the dead.³

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The count rose all week as rescuers dug: 33 on Tuesday,² 53 on Friday,⁴ and 55 by early Saturday, with dozens of people still missing.⁵ The Kyiv Independent calls it the deadliest Russian attack on the Zaporizhzhia region since the full-scale invasion began.⁶

What each side said

Russia's Defence Ministry said it had struck Ukrainian military units in the area, killing "up to 25" soldiers. It gave no evidence.⁶ The United Nations' human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said the time and place of the distribution had been well publicised. "Either the Russian armed forces knew that there was a humanitarian distribution taking place, or they failed to take the most basic steps to find out what was happening in this village they were planning to attack," said its head, Danielle Bell. "In either case, this attack seems to have violated the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian law."¹

Zelenskyy said the second wave had been "specifically targeting the shelter where people were taking cover", and that Russia was "counting on further killings".²

A night aimed at Kyiv

Late on Friday Zelenskyy warned that a large attack on energy, bridges and civilian targets was coming. Overnight, Russia fired 36 ballistic missiles, all at Kyiv and its region, and 172 drones; Ukraine's air force says it shot down 4 of the missiles and 149 of the drones. Ballistic missiles fall too fast for most air defences.⁷

They hit substations that carry electricity from the Rivne and Khmelnytskyi nuclear power stations to Kyiv and central Ukraine, and the Northern Bridge across the Dnipro, which was closed.⁷ One person was killed in the Kyiv region, and Zelenskyy said nine were injured across the country.⁵ "The situation with the capital's energy supply is extremely difficult, affecting the city's heating and water supply systems," said Kyiv's mayor, Vitali Klitschko.⁵ Russia said it had aimed at military and industrial targets, including the bridge.⁵

"Russia is preparing for the trilateral talks by launching ballistic missiles at Ukrainian critical infrastructure," Zelenskyy said.⁷

The talks

Those talks are the next round of three-way negotiations between the United States, Russia and Ukraine, which Russia agreed to resume in October. On Tuesday the Kremlin confirmed that its delegation would be in Abu Dhabi on 10th and 11th November, led again by Vladimir Medinsky; the American envoy, Steve Witkoff, said they would cover security arrangements after the war, de-escalation and humanitarian issues.⁸ On Friday President Vladimir Putin briefed his negotiators at a meeting of his Security Council: "trilateral talks are to begin in the United Arab Emirates next Tuesday," he said.⁹ Nothing of substance has been agreed. The last round, in Geneva, was in February.⁵

The one recent agreement was small. A six-day truce around Oleshky, an occupied town on the Dnipro, ended on 1st November after nearly 800 people were evacuated. On Thursday Melania Trump, whom the White House credits with brokering it, hosted Russian and Ukrainian officials to mark it, and President Donald Trump then met the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev privately, without saying what they discussed.¹⁰

Zelenskyy said the order matters: "first, we have to discuss how to end this war", then Ukraine's security, and only then the wider question of security between Europe and Russia. "We do not want 'Yalta 2.0'," he said, recalling the 1945 conference at which the wartime allies divided Europe.¹¹

Where it stands

Washington's politics changed this week too. From January Democrats will control Congress, and "the incoming Democratic Congress will be more supportive of Ukraine than the Trump administration has been," James Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations told France 24, though Congress "cannot dictate the terms of the negotiations".¹² On Tuesday the negotiators meet in Abu Dhabi. In Komyshuvakha, the search goes on.

On Monday 2nd November a Wizz Air flight from London Luton to Sofia received a bomb threat over Bosnia and Herzegovina. It turned back to Budapest, with a Hungarian Air Force fighter alongside, and was searched. Nothing was found.¹

That was the first of at least 32 bomb threats against a dozen airlines in four days.² None involved a real bomb. Each still cost a diversion, an evacuation or a search, and hours of delay, while whoever sent it took almost no risk.

Four days of threats

On Tuesday seven flights were targeted, including Ryanair planes searched at Rome's Fiumicino airport and a LOT flight from London that diverted to Warsaw-Modlin, which closed briefly. An Israel-bound cruise ship, the Crown Iris, was evacuated off the Greek island of Syros: 1,537 passengers and crew. The British government called them "malicious hoax threats".³

After a quiet Wednesday, the second wave on Thursday was bigger. Eurocontrol, which coordinates Europe's air traffic, counted 14 flights affected,⁴ and the BBC counted at least 21.⁵ An Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Rome was diverted to a French air base in Normandy and its passengers evacuated. The email sent to Rome's airports that morning was signed by the "Fighters of the Male State" and threatened to "turn the skies red".⁵ On Friday the European Union's transport commissioner, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, counted 11 more flights.⁴

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By Friday morning the threats had moved to newsrooms. At 8.33am an email titled "Message to the West" told RTÉ, Ireland's public broadcaster, that a bomb would go off within 45 minutes. RTÉ evacuated its Dublin headquarters and played pre-recorded programmes, and other Irish newsrooms were evacuated too.⁶ Sky in Britain and Nova TV in Bulgaria also received threats; the email was signed "Mikhail Andropov", and Reuters could not identify its sender.⁷

Freezers set to 50°C

At the same time, someone was reaching into Europe's supermarkets. A supermarket's fridges and freezers are run by small control boxes, many of them connected to the internet so that engineers can manage them remotely; where they are unpatched or keep their factory passwords, an intruder can change the temperature or switch them to defrost overnight.

The first wave hit France on the night of 11th–12th October, when fridges in hundreds of supermarkets were pushed to around 50°C.⁸ The second came on the night of 1st–2nd November, in seven European countries, including about 40 Delhaize stores in Belgium and Luxembourg.⁹ In Britain, three independent meat suppliers had units defrost or heat up, though they were empty and no meat was lost.¹⁰ In France, the national blood service said cold rooms holding plasma had been affected through a contractor, with no loss of blood products.¹¹ On Thursday the FBI and four other American federal agencies warned grocers to take their refrigeration controls off the open internet.¹²

Who is doing it?

No government has said. The aviation threats have not been attributed to any group or state,⁴ and no formal attribution has been made for the freezer attacks.¹¹ Ireland's government said the threats were "likely a coordinated campaign of disruption".¹³

The Male State, the name on the Rome email, is a Russian far-right, misogynist group that a Moscow court banned in 2021. A Telegram account linked to its founder told BBC Russian: "What Male State? Where have you seen it? It hasn't existed for many years."¹⁴ Russia's government has denied involvement.⁷

Where it stands

Police in several countries, and prosecutors in France and Belgium, are investigating. Airlines and air forces have treated every threat as potentially real, which is what makes a hoax effective. Until someone is identified, each new email will be handled the same way.

Late on Monday 2nd November, the board of Paraguay's central bank voted unanimously to take control of Ueno bank, which it said no longer held even half the capital the law requires.¹ By the time customers woke on Tuesday, its app, cards and transfers had stopped working, and its branches were shut under police guard.²

Ueno had 2.94 million customers in June, by its own count about 63% of Paraguay's adults.³ Four days after the freeze, the president of the country was out of office and under arrest.

A bank on everyone's phone

Ueno began as a small finance company and became a full bank only in November 2023. It grew quickly by signing people up through a phone app, and by its own figures about three in every ten instant transfers in Paraguay went through it.³ Yet it held only about 9% of the deposits in the banking system:⁴ it was a bank that many people used for small, everyday sums.

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The central bank had first formally told Ueno to bring certain loans within legal limits on 5th June.⁵ It says the bank then lent beyond those limits to companies linked to its own owners, the Vázquez family's business group; once those loans were counted as risky, its capital fell below half the legal minimum.¹ The step the central bank took, called resolution, means a regulator takes over a failing bank, moves its deposits and good assets elsewhere and winds up the rest.⁶

Most savers will be paid. Paraguay's deposit guarantee fund covers up to 75 monthly minimum wages per person, 228.3m guaraníes, or about $36,000, and the central bank says that covers about 97% of Ueno's depositors in full.⁵ By Friday night about 1.2 million people had received a first payment of up to 10m guaraníes each, about $160m in all, according to the economy minister.⁷ The bigger losers may be public bodies. Ueno held about a quarter of its deposits for the state, including about $355m from the national social security fund, the IPS, which pays pensions and runs hospitals.⁸

Why it reached the president

Santiago Peña, Paraguay's president since August 2023 and a former central bank economist and finance minister, bought shares in 2019 in the company that later became Ueno Holding, the bank's parent.⁹ He declared them when he took office, and says he left the holding company in the spring of 2025, by not joining a reorganisation. He and Ueno say he never owned shares in the bank itself.¹

His opponents pointed to what happened while he was in office. Peña appointed Carlos Carvallo, a former head of Ueno's finance company, as president of the central bank, and 83 days later the central bank gave Ueno its banking licence.⁸ On Tuesday Carvallo said he had signed his resignation at Peña's request, but would stay to oversee the rescue.² Prosecutors ordered eight arrests that day, including the bank's president and chief executive.¹

Peña wrote on social media that "those responsible will have to answer to the courts, without exceptions or privileges".¹ On Wednesday marchers in Asunción carried a shorter message on their placards: "Cayó Ueno, ahora que caiga Santi" ("Ueno has fallen, now let Santi fall").¹⁰

Resignation refused

On Thursday afternoon Peña resigned in a recorded video. "I do so with the stability of our country, social peace and the need to preserve our democratic institutions in mind," he said,¹¹ and apologised "if at any moment I have failed".¹²

Congress did not accept it. Under Paraguay's constitution, a former president becomes a senator for life unless he has been impeached and found guilty.¹³ Minutes after the video, the Chamber of Deputies voted 78 to 0 to impeach him; every sworn deputy voted in favour.¹⁴ A joint session called to accept his resignation then collapsed when his supporters in the governing Colorado Party walked out.¹⁵ The party's leader, the former president Horacio Cartes, had already withdrawn his support: "We will not side with the theft of public, private and pension funds."¹¹

Peña's lawyers told the Senate on Friday that the charge sheet contained only circumstantial signs, that he had sold his shares before any of the people charged had acted, and that it was the Senate, not the president, that confirmed Carvallo.¹⁶ Peña did not attend. At about 7pm local time the Senate found him guilty by 44 votes to 0 and removed him.¹⁷ The only president removed this way before him, Fernando Lugo in 2012, lost by 39 to 4.¹⁸

Within the hour prosecutors moved to charge Peña and ordered him and Carvallo detained; Peña was held at home overnight.¹⁹ On Saturday the chief prosecutor for corruption, Nancy Salomón, said he faces two charges, breach of trust and administration for personal gain, which together carry up to 20 years in prison. Judge Humberto Otazú froze his assets and ordered him held at a military base while the investigation continues.²⁰ Peña denies wrongdoing and has not been convicted of any crime. In all, 27 people linked to the bank face charges.⁶

Where it stands

The vice-president, Pedro Alliana, was sworn in on Friday night²¹ and, under the constitution, serves out the term to August 2028 without a new election.¹³ "The Paraguay we receive today has urgent needs," he told Congress, promising that savers "will be fully compensated".²¹

The guarantee fund must finish paying covered savers by 17th November.² What happens to the deposits above the cap, including the pension fund's, depends on what Ueno's remaining assets fetch, and the central bank says it cannot promise full recovery. Peña's lawyers say they will ask the Supreme Court to annul his trial.¹⁶

Last Sunday Hindsight reported that 69 people had died when a high-speed train was cleared to run into another standing near Urda, south of Madrid, and that the transport minister, Óscar Puente, had refused to resign: "The easy thing for me is to leave," he had said.¹

On Tuesday 3rd November he did leave. Announcing his resignation to a standing committee of Spain's parliament, he said: "A transport minister in a country like Spain cannot remain in office after two accidents of this severity in less than a year. Regardless of how different they may be, or whether or not he bears direct responsibility for them, this is a matter of political dignity, consistency, and empathy for the victims."² He also withdrew as a candidate in the general election on 29th November.²

The two crashes, at Adamuz in January and at Urda in October, killed 46 and 69 people.³ The opposition Partido Popular's spokesperson, Ester Muñoz, said the resignation came "116 deaths too late".² The government announced €30m of aid, including €72,121 for each bereaved family.³ On Friday the BBC reported that European prosecutors had begun investigating how EU funds meant for upgrading the line were spent.⁴ The investigators have not said the money's use had anything to do with the crash.

Last Sunday Hindsight reported that Israel's election on 27th October had left no one with a majority: Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc won 53 seats, Gadi Eisenkot's four-party alliance 48 and Arab-led parties a record 19, with 61 needed to govern.¹

On Saturday evening President Isaac Herzog said he would give Eisenkot, a former chief of the army and the leader of the Yashar party, the first chance to form a government. After consulting every party, Herzog found that members with 67 of the Knesset's 120 seats had recommended Eisenkot and 46 Netanyahu; United Torah Judaism, with seven seats, recommended no one. The mandate is to be handed over on Sunday afternoon.²

Israel has both a president and a prime minister, with different jobs. The prime minister leads the government, which Israel's Basic Law calls "the executive branch of the State", and which holds office only while it has the confidence of the Knesset, Israel's parliament.³ The president, Herzog, is head of state. He is not chosen by voters: the Knesset elects the president in a secret ballot, for a single seven-year term.⁴

The presidency is largely ceremonial. The president signs every law, with no power to veto it, accredits ambassadors and signs treaties the Knesset has approved, and almost everything he signs must also be signed by the prime minister or a minister. He holds two powers of his own: to pardon offenders or reduce their sentences, and, after an election, to choose which member of the Knesset gets the first chance to form a government. Documents about forming a government are among the few he signs without a minister.⁴³

Eisenkot now has 28 days, which the president can extend by up to 14. If he fails, Herzog can give the task to another member of the Knesset, who also gets 28 days. After that, a majority of the Knesset can ask him to choose a particular member, who gets 14 days. If all of that fails, a new election is held about 90 days later.³

That leaves Netanyahu in office for now. Until a new government wins a vote of confidence, he stays prime minister, because the law says the outgoing government carries on until the new one is formed.³ He is no longer the one trying to build the next coalition, but he could still get the chance if Eisenkot fails and the president, or a majority of the Knesset, turns to him.³²

The 67 recommendations are not a coalition. They include the Arab-led parties, and Eisenkot has ruled out governing with them; Ahmad Tibi of the Joint List said he expects a minority government "with external support from the Arab parties".¹ Without them, Eisenkot's bloc of 48 would need both ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas, to support or at least not oppose him to reach 61, and Eisenkot insists that any partner accept military service for the ultra-Orthodox, whose exemption he campaigned to end.²

Eisenkot wrote that "now is the time for the formation of a national emergency government". Netanyahu, in a video, called instead for "a government of national unity which will include all the parties of the national camp", and warned against relying on Arab parties: "With a government like that, Israel simply won't survive."²

Last Sunday Hindsight reported that the protests over the cost of living that began in France's schools had spread across Europe. On Saturday France marched for a fourth weekend in a row.

The Interior Ministry counted about 146,000 people across the country, 46,000 of them in Paris; the unions said 250,000, with 75,000 in the capital. Both figures were lower than in previous weeks, and well below the 575,000 who joined Thursday's union-organised strike day.¹ Unions and student groups marched, and the Yellow Vests movement kept its call for a separate rally in central Paris, which the authorities had banned.²

There were clashes despite the smaller crowds. In Paris police charged protesters and used tear gas; they said 200 people attacked officers who were arresting a man who had set fire to a rubbish bin. In Lyon police fired tear gas to clear several hundred people blocking a road in the city centre at a gathering that had not been authorised. The interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, had warned that the authorities would be "ready and waiting" for anyone who rioted or looted.¹