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The United States is halting refueling of aircraft from the Saudi-led coalition engaged in Yemen, Saudi Arabia said Saturday, a move that would end one of the most divisive aspects of U.S. assistance to the Saudi war effort. 

Saudi Arabia, in a statement released by the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA), said it had decided to request an end to U.S. aerial refueling for its operations in Yemen because it could now handle it by itself. 

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington supported the Saudi decision. 

The change comes at a time of international outrage over the killing of U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and after Democratic and Republican lawmakers threatened to address the refueling operations next week in Congress. 

Critics of the Saudi campaign — including Democrats who won control of the House of Representatives in elections on Tuesday — have long questioned U.S. involvement in the war, which has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than 2 million and led to widespread famine in Yemen since it began in 2015. 

“I’ve been calling for this for over three years,” said Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif. “We shouldn’t be supporting coalition war crimes, and I look forward to continuing to scrutinize the U.S.’s role in Yemen when we’re in the majority next Congress.” 

Even as President Donald Trump’s administration has condemned Khashoggi’s slaying, the White House has sought to preserve its relationship with Saudi Arabia. 

Any coordinated decision by Washington and Riyadh to halt refueling could be an attempt by both countries to forestall further action by Congress. 

Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., had warned the Trump administration was running out of time to act. 

“If the administration does not take immediate steps … we are prepared to take additional action when the Senate comes back into session,” Young and Shaheen said. 

The Pentagon, State Department and White House declined to comment. 

​More time for bombers 

Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis defended U.S. military support to Saudi-led coalition forces in Yemen, when lawmakers weighed forcing the Pentagon to end Washington’s involvement in the conflict. 

Mattis argued that halting U.S. military support could increase civilian casualties, since U.S. refueling had given pilots more time to select their targets. He told them cutting off support could jeopardize cooperation on counterterrorism and reduce American influence with Saudi Arabia. 

Mattis also argued it would embolden the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, who have fired missiles at Saudi Arabia and targeted commercial and military vessels off Yemen’s coast. 

A halt to refueling could have little practical effect on the war. U.S. officials told Reuters only a fifth of Saudi-led coalition aircraft require in-air refueling from the United States. 

In recent weeks, Mattis has appeared to voice a growing sense of urgency toward ending the conflict. At the end of October, Mattis joined U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in calling for a cease-fire.  
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The U.S. Treasury Department has again extended a deadline for Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska to reduce his holdings in the aluminum company Rusal before sanctions take effect. 

The Treasury Department said Friday that licenses allowing Rusal to continue doing business would be extended from Dec. 12 to Jan. 7. 

The department said in April that it would impose sanctions on Deripaska and several companies in which he is a large shareholder, citing “malign activities” by Russia. 

However, the agency has pushed back the sanction deadline multiple times since then as it works with the companies, who are looking to find new shareholders. 

Rusal and its parent En+ Group have been taking steps to change their management to people not linked with Deripaska to ease the sanctions. Both companies recently appointed new chief executive officers. 

Concerns about the impact of sanctions on Rusal have roiled aluminum markets. 

Rusal is the world’s largest aluminum producer outside China’s Hongqiao and is a large supplier to the aerospace and automotive industries. 
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“I don’t want prayers.I don’t want thoughts,” said a mother whose son died this week when a lone gunman opened fire in a bar in California.

Susan Schmidt-Orfanos’ son Telemachus had already survived the onslaught of another lone gunman at a music festival in Las Vegas last year.This week, he went to the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, California, along with other survivors of the Las Vegas massacre.Schmidt-Orfanos’ son died Wednesday less than 10 minutes away from home.He was at the bar when a shooter fired into the crowd, killing 12 people.

Schmidt-Orfanos said Congress needs “to pass gun control so no one else has a child that doesn’t come home.” 

The shooter, Marine Corps veteran Ian David Long, 28, apparently killed himself after gunning down customers in the bar. Investigators are looking for clues to Long’s “state of mind” before Wednesday’s late-night shooting.

“It’s a gun culture,” California’s Democratic Governor-elect Gavin Newsom lamented Thursday. “You can’t go to a bar or a nightclub? You can’t go to church or a synagogue? It’s insane is the only way to describe it. The normalization, that’s the only I can describe it. It’s become normalized.” 

Paul Delacourt, assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said it appears Long acted alone.

“We’re going to pursue the leads that develop from that evidence, wherever they take us, to identify any possible motivation, paint a picture of the frame of mind of the subject, identify any possible radicalization,” Delacourt said Thursday.

Long has had minor run-ins with the law, including a traffic accident and a bar fight, law enforcement officials said Thursday. 

Earlier this year, police were called to his home after neighbors reported what officers described as a disturbance. At the time, police said Long “was somewhat irate, acting a little irrationally.”

Officers speculated Long, who had served in Afghanistan for seven months, was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But a mental health professional who spoke with Long said he did not believe Long needed to be hospitalized. 

Late Wednesday, the Borderline Bar and Grill was crowded with students who regularly attended its country music dance party.

Police say Long was dressed in black from head to toe. He shot a security guard, tossed smoke bombs into the bar and opened fire with a handgun equipped with a device that allowed it to hold more bullets than normal.

Stunned, panicked and frightened customers ran for cover and hid wherever they could — in bathrooms, in the attic, behind a pool table. Some threw barstools through windows to escape. 

The dead include a sheriff’s deputy who rushed into the bar in response to the shooting. Deputy Ron Helus was less than a year from retirement. Police and firemen lined the highways and saluted as a hearse drove his body from a hospital to the country coroner’s office.

Wednesday night’s shooting came less than two weeks after a self-proclaimed anti-Semite allegedly killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue. That shooting came days after a gunman was suspected of killing two black patrons of a Kentucky supermarket after he apparently failed to get inside a black church.

These crimes follow the mass killing of 17 students at a Florida high school in February, and the massacre of 59 people at a Las Vegas music festival in October 2017. 

The U.S. Marine Corps issued a statement extending “its deepest condolences to the families of the victims in this senseless tragedy.”

The Marine Corps said Long had attained the rank of corporal after serving nearly five years, including seven months in Afghanistan. He was a machine gunner and the recipient of numerous medals, including the Good Conduct Medal and the Combat Action Ribbon.

In a tweet, President Donald Trump applauded the response of police and extended blessings to the victims and their families. He also ordered American flags flown at half-staff in honor of the victims.

The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler, said lawmakers would start crafting a gun control bill when the House convenes with a Democratic majority in early January. 

“We must find a way to stop the senseless, and many times preventable killings that are robbing our country of innocent lives,” Nadler tweeted.

Shootings are very rare in Thousand Oaks, a city of about 130,000 people about 64 kilometers west of Los Angeles. Thousand Oaks was considered the third-safest city in the U.S. this year, according to Niche, an online company that provides data on neighborhoods, companies and schools. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump departs early Friday for his trip to France where he and dozens of other world leaders will mark the centenary of the Armistice, which brought an end to the fighting in World War I.

His trip comes as relations between the United States and many of its allies remain tense. French President Emmanuel Macron warned that the geopolitical climate is reminiscent of the buildup to the world wars.

Touring wartime battlefields in the east and north of France this week ahead of Sunday’s Armistice ceremonies, President Macron warned of ongoing threats to Europe, saying the continent must create its own army.

“We need to protect ourselves from China, from Russia and even the United States. When I see President Trump announcing a pullout from a big disarmament treaty that was taken in the middle of the 1980s in the middle of the missile crisis which had affected Europe, who is going to be the main victim? Europe and its security,” Macron told France’s Europe 1 radio station.

WATCH: As WWI Centenary Nears, Macron Warns of Threats to Europe

​Talks with Macron

French officials said relations with the U.S. would be unaffected by President Trump’s Republican Party losing control of the House of Representatives in the recent midterm elections.

The U.S. president will hold talks with Macron Saturday. It’s not clear whether a rumored meeting between Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, will go ahead.

Donald Trump will later visit Belleau Wood, scene of one of the most ferocious battles fought by U.S. troops in the war. More than 1,800 American soldiers were killed as they attacked German positions. Much of the fighting was hand-to-hand combat. After more than three weeks of fighting, American troops took Belleau Wood on June 26, 1918. Historian Jean-Michel Steg says the bravery of U.S. Marines is legendary.

“They were confronted as we will see by intense enemy fire, instead of ducking, instead of retreating, which by the time of the war would have been the normal attitude of troops and waiting for the artillery barrage to relieve them, they charged.”

By the end of the war, more than 116,000 American troops had died defending Europe. More than 14,000 are buried at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, the largest on the continent.

“Relations between these powers, they’re not always easy. And there are reasons for that. But when you get out here, where the people in these villages remember, there’s a great respect for the American soldier.”

The nearby “Romagne 14-18” museum depicts life for soldiers on the frontline using thousands of items recovered from the battlefields, most of them by founder Jean-Paul de Vries. His grandfather fought for four years on the front lines.

“What I try to show in this museum to the visitors is if you take off these helmets, it’s all the same. It’s all human beings,” he told VOA.

Forty million people were killed on all sides during the conflict. They will be remembered Sunday at the Armistice Day ceremony at Paris’ Arc de Triomphe, attended by dozens of world leaders.

President Trump will later take part in a separate Veteran’s Day ceremony at an American cemetery.
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U.S. President Donald Trump will travel to France this weekend along with dozens of other world leaders for ceremonies to mark the centenary of the armistice that brought an end to the fighting in World War I. As Henry Ridgwell reports, relations between America and U.S. allies are tense, and France has warned that the current geopolitical climate is reminiscent of the build-up to the world wars.
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Despite numerous areas of potential conflict, a politically divided and ideologically polarized U.S. Congress may find limited areas of cooperation between the two chambers and President Donald Trump beginning in January, according to political observers.

“Divided government is common in American politics — we have it more than we have a united government,” political analyst John Fortier of the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center said. “And it means that, first of all, that the president’s agenda won’t be the legislative agenda. There will be things that can get done but they will require both the cooperation of Democrats and Republicans, which is hard but still possible.”

“If there is a desire to show some level of accomplishment, there are a few, very few, areas where you could probably do that — infrastructure, maybe some strengthening of healthcare provisions,” said Guian McKee, who teaches presidential studies at the University of Virginia.

Trump and the top House Democrat, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, already have signaled a desire to find common ground.

“Hopefully, we can all work together next year to continue delivering for the American people, including on economic growth, infrastructure, trade, lowering the cost of prescription drugs,” the president said at a news conference on Wednesday. “These are some of things that the Democrats do want to work on, and I really believe we’ll be able to do that.”

“We will strive for bipartisanship,” Pelosi told reporters one day after Democrats won control of the House of Representatives in Tuesday’s midterm elections. “We believe that we have a responsibility to seek common ground where we can. Where we cannot, we must stand our ground. But we must try.”

At the same time, friction quickly surfaced over what Democrats see as their duty to provide oversight of the executive branch and what the White House sees as looming politically-motivated abuse of the investigative authority that House Democrats will wield when the new Congress is sworn in.

“The American people have demanded accountability from their government and sent a clear message of what they want from Congress,” the House Judiciary Committee’s ranking Democrat, Jerry Nadler of New York, tweeted.

Trump, meanwhile, warned that a flood of investigations of his administration would prompt “a warlike posture.”

Unified Republican control of the federal government’s elected branches brought a two-year reprieve from ferocious budget and spending battles that plagued Washington during the former Obama administration. Some are predicting a swift return.

“The next two years will be constant budget battles in Washington with threatened and actual government shutdowns being the norm,” federal budget analyst Stan Collender said. “Even if Senate Republicans and House Democrats mutually agree to provide the spending increases the other wants, there will be no guarantee that Trump will go along or that he will sign a bill without demanding his own pound of appropriations flesh.”

For now, however, key lawmakers are stressing a get-to-work attitude that presumes at least a modicum of comity and bipartisanship.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, pointed to health care during a Wednesday news conference.

“There are serious problems with Obamacare, serious problems that need to get fixed,” McConnell said. “Rhetoric doesn’t solve the problem, and I think we’re obviously going to have to address that now on a bipartisan basis.”

Moments later, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York told reporters Senate Democrats can expand their ranks “by focusing on middle-class issues that affect average voters, such as healthcare, drug prices, things like that.”
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Matthew Whitaker, appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump as the acting attorney general and now overseeing the investigation of Trump’s 2016 campaign links to Russia, has often echoed the president’s verbal attacks on the probe.

The 49-year-old Whitaker joined the Justice Department last year as chief of staff to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions after often voicing objections about special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation into the Russia meddling and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probe.

Trump ousted Sessions on Wednesday after criticizing him for more than a year over his recusal from oversight of the Mueller probe, leaving Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to oversee the investigation. Now Whitaker is overseeing the probe he has criticized, prompting calls from opposition Democrats that he recuse himself from oversight of Mueller.

Whitaker has given no indication he plans to relinquish control of the Justice Department probe, saying he was “committed to leading a fair Department with the highest ethical standards, that upholds the rule of law, and seeks justice for all Americans.”

White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said Thursday she sees no reason for Whitaker to recuse himself from the investigation for comments he made as a private citizen.

Whitaker, a one-time federal prosecutor in the midwestern state of Iowa and football player at the state’s flagship university, the University of Iowa, has suggested ways the Mueller probe could be curtailed without firing Mueller, including virtually eliminating funding for it.

In a July 2017 commentary on the news network CNN, before he joined the Justice Department, Whitaker offered a scenario in which Trump might fire Sessions and replace him with a temporary attorney general, which is now what has happened. Whitaker, in the television remarks, suggested the replacement could cut funding for Mueller’s investigation and his “investigation grinds almost to a halt.”

Whitaker also tweeted a month later that his followers should read a Philadelphia Inquirer opinion article titled, “Note to Trump’s lawyer: Do not cooperate with Mueller’s lynch mob.”

Scope of probe questioned

In an opinion column for CNN, Whitaker said that Trump was “absolutely correct” in saying that if Mueller started investigating the finances of Trump and his family, it would be crossing beyond the scope of the investigation related to the 2016 election. News accounts at the time said Mueller was looking into financial reports linking the vast Trump business empire to Russia and its possible connection to the 2016 campaign.

“Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to crossing,” Whitaker wrote.

Whitaker called reports of the expanded investigation “deeply concerning to me. It does not take a lawyer or even a former federal prosecutor like myself to conclude that investigating Donald Trump’s finances or his family’s finances falls completely outside of the realm of his 2016 campaign and allegations that the campaign coordinated with the Russian government or anyone else. That goes beyond the scope of the appointment of the special counsel.”

Since then, federal judges have ruled that Mueller has not exceeded his authority, saying the scope of his appointment as special counsel allowed him to investigate “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation,” a view Whitaker had rejected in the CNN column.

Whitaker said, “It is time for Rosenstein, who is the acting attorney general for the purposes of this investigation, to order Mueller to limit the scope of his investigation to the four corners of the order appointing him special counsel.”

“If he doesn’t,” Whitaker wrote, “then Mueller’s investigation will eventually start to look like a political fishing expedition. This would not only be out of character for a respected figure like Mueller, but also could be damaging to the President of the United States and his family — and by extension, to the country.”

Whitaker said an expanded investigation “would raise serious concerns” that the probe “was a mere witch hunt,” a description of the Mueller investigation that Trump has often expressed.

Whitaker ran for a Republican Senate nomination in Iowa in 2014, but finished fourth behind Joni Ernst, who went on to win the general election for the Senate seat.

Critics of Whitaker’s appointment voiced immediate concern that he would look to thwart the Mueller probe.

Congressman Adam Schiff of California said, “President Trump just removed Jeff Sessions. He wants an attorney general to serve his interest, not the public. Mueller’s investigation and the independence of the (Department of Justice) must be protected. Whitaker and any nominee must commit to doing both.”

 
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Sudan on Thursday welcomed a U.S. announcement that Washington was willing to remove Khartoum from its blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism and said it was ready to cooperate.

The U.S. State Department Wednesday said Washington was prepared to “initiate the process of rescinding Sudan’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism” if Khartoum undertakes more reforms.

It called on Sudan to engage in further anti-terrorism cooperation and improve its human rights record, and act on outstanding claims related to terrorism as well as work to resolve internal conflicts.

The announcement came after talks Tuesday in Washington between U.S. Deputy John Sullivan and Sudanese Foreign Minister Al-Dierdiry Ahmed.

The Sudanese Foreign Ministry said the talks marked the “launching of the second phase of the strategic dialogue with the United States” aimed at bolstering “bilateral cooperation” between the two countries and achieving “progress in a number of fields of mutual concern”.

A statement said Sudan “welcomes” these talks and the U.S. announcement that it was “ready to engage in a process to remove Sudan from a list of state sponsors of terrorism” in stages.

The statement stressed Sudan’s “readiness to engage” in steps aimed at “reaching the aspired goals”.

Washington blacklisted Sudan in 1993 over its alleged links with Islamist extremists, and in 1998 it struck Khartoum with cruise missiles.

Al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden lived in Sudan between 1992 and 1996.

In October 2017, Washington lifted decades-old sanctions on Sudan following improved relations between the two countries.

Officials say blacklisting Sudan is holding back it crisis-hit economy from recovering as international banks, global financial institutions and investors remain wary of conducting commercial transactions with the country.

 
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President Donald Trump says he is in “no rush” to finalize a deal with North Korea and remove sanctions.

“I would love to take the sanctions off, but they have to be responsive too. It’s a two-way street,” Trump said during a lengthy White House news conference Wednesday.

He told reporters he has made more progress with North Korea than any other administration and that he still plans another summit with Kim Jong Un early next year.

Trump spoke just hours after Thursday’s scheduled meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and senior Kim adviser Kim Yong Chol was called off.

Neither side gave any firm reason why the talks were postponed other than State Department spokesman Robert Palladino calling it “purely a matter of scheduling.”

“We’re in a pretty good place right now. We are confident going forward,” Palladino told reporters. “We’re not going to be driven into artificial timelines.”

The talks in New York were largely seen as paving the way for the second Trump-Kim summit. They first met in Singapore in June.

In announcing the now postponed meeting, the State Department said the two men would discuss “making progress on all four pillars of the Singapore Summit joint statement, including achieving the final, fully verified denuclearization” of North Korea.

Kim and Trump signed an agreement in June to rid the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons. However, the two sides have been at odds over the pace of Pyongyang’s efforts to end its nuclear weapons program.

North Korea warned last week that it will consider reviving its nuclear weapons program if the United States fails to lift its crippling economic sanctions against the regime. North Korea is also seeking a peace treaty with the United States and South Korea that will formally end the 1950-53 Korean War that split the communist North from the democratic South.

The fighting ended with an armistice. The North and South never signed a peace treaty and are still technically at war.

Meanwhile, Russia has asked the U.N. Security Council to meet Thursday to discuss U.N. sanctions against the North.

It is unclear exactly why Russia called the meeting and what it wants to talk about. 

Both Russia and China have said they believe the North should be rewarded for stopping missile tests and opening a dialogue with the United States.

Inter-Korean relations

While both the U.S. and South Korea want peace and stability on the Korea peninsula, there is a “fear” that fast-developing inter-Korean relations may get out of step with Washington, according to former U.S. officials and experts.

“The fear from America’s perspective would be that the South Koreans might go too fast and agree to things that would involve, for example, our troops, our economic postures that we wouldn’t be prepared to give [at this stage], without perhaps getting significant concessions on reductions of weapons testing,” retired U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenney said Wednesday.

“You could have a situation that South Korea and North Korea come to some kind of agreement and then suddenly there’s an expectation that we would fall into line with that we would be willing to put scarce budget dollars into helping North Korea economically … without having laid the groundwork or gotten enough concessions to make that possible,” Kenney said at an Asia Society event that discussed U.S. policy toward Asia after the midterm elections.

“Keeping these things in sync is always a challenge,” said former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Danny Russel.

“It’s a lot easier when the North Koreans are misbehaving, that tends to promote solidarity between Washington and Seoul,” Russel said. “When the North Koreans are seemingly opening the door, then those differences in priorities and perspective can create tensions.”

“The immediate priorities of reconciliation, family visit, and potential for infrastructure and trade between North and South [Korea] look a lot different from Seoul and from Washington as does the global non-proliferation agenda,” he added.
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Stocks rallied Wednesday as investors were relieved to see that the U.S. midterm elections went largely as they expected they would. Big-name technology and consumer and health care companies soared as the S&P 500 index closed at its highest level in four weeks.

Democrats won control of the House of Representatives while Republicans kept a majority in the Senate, as most polls had suggested. It’s not clear how the divided Congress will work with Republican President Donald Trump, but if the possibilities for compromise and big agenda items seem limited, Wall Street is fine with that because it means politics is that much less likely to crowd out the performance of the strong U.S. economy.

“The market likes when what it expects to happen happens,” said JJ Kinahan, chief markets strategist for TD Ameritrade. “We haven’t had that happen in a little while, when you think about major events like Brexit or the presidential election.”

The S&P 500 index climbed 58.44 points, or 2.1 percent, to 2,813.89. The index has risen six out of the last seven days to recover most of the losses it suffered in October.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 545.29 points, or 2.1 percent, o 26,180.30. The Nasdaq composite climbed 194.79 points, or 2.6 percent, to 7,570.75. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks added 26.06 points, or 1.7 percent, to 1,582.16. Three-fourths of the stocks on the New York Stock Exchange traded higher.

Historically markets have performed well after midterm elections and with split control of Congress.

Stocks are off to a strong start in November, and the S&P 500 is up 3.8 percent so far this month. That follows a swoon in October that knocked the S&P 500 down nearly 7 percent as investors worried about rising interest rates and the U.S.-China trade dispute.

High-growth stocks took an especially brutal beating last month. Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial, said it will be worth watching to see if investors are willing to buy those stocks again or if they continue to prefer slower-growing, more “defensive” companies like utilities and household goods makers.

On Wednesday investors bet on growth. Amazon jumped 6.9 percent to $1,755.49 and Microsoft gained 3.9 percent to $111.96, while Google’s parent company, Alphabet, picked up 3.6 percent to $1,108.24.

Steady, “defensive” stocks lagged the rest of the stock market. Those companies, which include utilities and household goods makers, tend to do well when stocks are in turmoil, but they’re less appealing when investors are betting on economic growth.

Industrial companies made strong gains, but they didn’t do as well as the rest of the market. While some investors hope that Trump and Congressional leadership will pass an infrastructure stimulus bill, they’ve had those hopes dashed more than once since he took office.

It’s not clear how the elections will affect the Trump policy Wall Street might be most concerned about: the trade dispute with China. Trump has imposed taxes of up to 25 percent on $250 billion of Chinese imports and threatened additional tariffs on top of those. Beijing has responded with tariffs on $110 billion of American goods.

A primary concern in Asia is the potential for trade tensions to hobble growth for export-reliant economies.

Economists at S&P Global, Oxford Economics and the Bank of America all agreed that government gridlock will likely result from the Democrats winning control of the House. But they don’t think a stalemate will automatically hinder economic growth.

It’s more likely that government will play less of a role in spurring economic growth in 2019 and 2020. As a result, the health of the global economy, interest rates set by the Federal Reserve, and spending by U.S. consumers and companies will have a bigger impact on determining the pace of growth.

The Federal Reserve is also meeting Wednesday and Thursday. It’s not expected to raise interest rates this month, but investors believe it will do so in December.

Banks also didn’t rise as much other stocks. Republicans had discussed a new round of tax cuts if they maintained full control over Congress, which would have expanded the government’s deficits further and required it to issue more debt. Government bond yields spiked overnight after a batch of strong early results for some GOP candidates, but then headed lower as Democrats’ fortunes improved, making a new tax cut package unlikely.

Democrats’ victory in the House also means that Rep. Maxine Waters will likely become chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees the nation’s banking system and its regulators. Waters has called for more regulation of banks, and has been vocal about Trump political appointees moving to roll back regulations on banks and other financial services companies.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose slightly, to 3.22 percent. It spiked as high as 3.25 percent Tuesday night.

The U.S. dollar also weakened. The ICE US dollar index fell 0.2 percent. The U.S. currency fell to 113.34 yen from 113.40 yen, and the euro climbed to $1.1455 from $1.1413.

Major indexes in Europe climbed. The French CAC 40 jumped 1.2 percent, while Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 1.1 percent. The DAX in Germany rose 0.8 percent.

October is historically a rough month for stocks, though markets usually rise after midterm elections regardless of how the political landscape may change because Wall Street is glad to have more certainty.

Democrats’ win in the House means Republicans won’t be able to take another shot at repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which extended health insurance coverage to millions of Americans. Voters in Idaho and Nebraska all voted to expand Medicaid, and the winning gubernatorial candidates in Maine and Kansas also favor expanding Medicaid benefits. Voting on a Medicaid expansion proposition in Utah was too close to call.

Health insurers, hospital operators and Medicaid program operators all jumped. UnitedHealth gained 4.2 percent to $274.63 and hospital company HCA added 4.7 percent to $141.65. Molina, a provider of Medicaid-related services, surged 10.5 percent to $137.32.

Marijuana stocks jumped after Michigan voted to legalize recreational marijuana and Utah and Missouri voters approved medical marijuana measures. The stocks rose even further after the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who promoted more aggressive enforcement of those laws. Tilray vaulted 30.6 percent to $139.60 and Canopy Growth rose 8.2 percent to $46.07.

Oil prices continued to fall. U.S. crude lost 0.9 percent to $61.67, and Brent crude, the standard for international oil prices, dipped 0.1 percent to $72.07 a barrel in London.

Wholesale gasoline lost 2.8 percent to $1.65 a gallon and heating oil rose 2.2 percent to $2.24 a gallon. Natural gas was unchanged at $3.56 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Gold rose 0.2 percent to $1,228.70 an ounce. Silver picked up 0.5 percent to $14.57 an ounce. Copper added 0.8 percent to $2.75 a pound.

In Asia, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 0.3 percent while South Korea’s Kospi slipped 0.5 percent. But Hong Kong’s Hang Seng edged 0.1 percent higher.
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At a combative, lengthy news conference Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated himself for achieving what he termed a “tremendous success” in the previous day’s midterm elections. 

“History will see what a good job we did in getting people over the finish line,” Trump said, noting that nine of the 11 candidates for whom he campaigned in the last week were victorious. 

Earlier Wednesday, he had tweeted:

While the Republicans comfortably kept their majority in the Senate, the Democrats wrested away enough seats to take control of the House of Representatives. That means, come January, the gavels for key congressional committees will pass from Republican legislators to Democrats, who are certain in a target-rich environment to issue subpoenas and hold hearings on matters ranging from alleged collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 election campaign to questionable spending on travel by members of the president’s Cabinet. 

Trump vowed a “warlike posture” if the Democrats pursued such investigations. 

“They can play that game, but we can play better because we have a thing called the United States Senate, and a lot of questionable things were done between leaks of classified information and many other elements that should not have taken place,” Trump said during the nearly 90-minute session with reporters in the White House East Room. 

The president expressed hope that he and his fellow Republicans in Congress could work on legislation across party lines. 

“Now we have a much easier path because the Democrats will come to us with a plan for infrastructure, a plan for health care, a plan for whatever they’re looking at and we’ll negotiate,” said Trump. 

Trump portrayed his party’s retention of the Senate majority and addition of gubernatorial seats in key states as victories by an outgunned underdog. 

“We did this in spite of a very dramatic fundraising disadvantage driven by Democrats’ wealthy donors, and special interests, and a very hostile media coverage, to put it lightly,” he said. 

During the news conference, Trump sparred with White House correspondents when they posed questions he did not like. Some interrupted his remarks, pressed forward with unwelcome follow-up questions or shouted queries even though he had not called on them. 

Although Trump has regularly insulted reporters, his remarks Wednesday reached a fresh nadir. Journalists repeatedly were ordered to desist and were accused of asking racist and insulting questions. The president also ordered microphones taken away from those he no longer wanted to hear from. 

CNN’s Jim Acosta was repeatedly admonished by Trump as a rude person who should not be working for the network, and he was accused of treating White House press secretary Sarah Sanders and others in a horrible manner. 

“When you report fake news, which CNN does a lot, you’re the enemy of the people,” the president told Acosta. 

The White House Correspondents’ Association declined immediate comment. 
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