Confronted by crises, Philippine president delivers state of the nation speech
About 22,000 policemen were deployed Monday to secure the House of Representatives complex in suburban Quezon city in the capital region before Marcos' address to both chambers of Congress, top government and military officials and diplomats.
Thousands of protesters staged rallies to highlight a wide range of demands from higher wages due to high inflation to the immediate impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte over a raft of alleged crimes.
Marcos' rise to power in mid-2022, more than three decades after an army-backed 'People Power' revolt overthrew his father from office and into global infamy, was one of the most dramatic political comebacks. But he inherited a wide range of problems, including an economy that was one of the worst-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, which worsened poverty, unemployment, inflation and hunger.
His whirlwind political alliance with Duterte rapidly floundered and she and her family, including her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, became her harshest critics.
The former president was arrested in March in a chaotic scene at Manila's international airport and flown to be detained by the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands for an alleged crime against humanity over his deadly anti-drugs crackdowns while still in power.
Sara Duterte became the first vice president of the Philippines to be impeached in February by the House of Representatives, which is dominated by Marcos' allies, over a range of criminal allegations including largescale corruption and publicly threatening to have the president, his wife and Romualdez killed by an assassin if she herself were killed during her disputes with them.
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that the impeachment case was unconstitutional due to a key procedural technicality, hampering Duterte's expected trial in the Senate, which has convened as an impeachment tribunal. House legislators said they were planning to appeal the decision.
Unlike his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, who nurtured cozy ties with China and Russia, Marcos broadened his country's treaty alliance with the United States and started to deepen security alliances with Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada France and other Western governments to strengthen deterrence against increasingly aggressive actions by China in the disputed South Chin Sea. That stance has strained relations between Manila and Beijing.
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said the Marcos administration would continue to shift the military's role from battling a weakening communist insurgency to focusing on external defense, specially in the disputed South China Sea, a vital global trade route where confrontations between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and naval forces have intensified in recent years.
'The president's statements were, we would be unyielding and resistant to Chinese aggression in the West Philippines Sea,' Teodoro said in an interview by the ABS-CBN TV network, using the Philippine name for the stretch of disputed waters off the western Philippine coast. 'We've been gearing up towards that mission.'
After returning to Manila, Marcos traveled to an evacuation center outside Manila to help distribute food and other aid to villagers displaced by back-to-back storms and days of monsoon downpours that have flooded vast stretches of the main northern Luzon region, including Manila.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
22 minutes ago
- The Hill
We can't just let states go rogue and redistrict more than once a decade
Consider this a call to state reason. Here in Maryland, I am introducing legislation to automatically redraw our state's eight congressional districts if and only if another state breaks from our shared norms and chooses to redraw their lines more than once this decade. Texas and others are currently threatening to do so — even though they, Maryland and other states have already redrawn their U.S. House districts for this decade based on the 2020 U.S. Census. If these states are allowed to change the rules and districts in the middle of the coming election, the remaining states will be forced to counter this blatant power grab. Even if it takes states years to implement a response, a strong response must be offered to disincentivize such conduct now and in future election cycles. But I still hope we can all step back from the brink. Indeed, Texas leaders ran this play once before, in 2003, when they drew and re-drew congressional districts until they got the result they wanted. Georgia followed suit soon after, but the rest of the states looked on quietly as this questionable, anomalous behavior played out in that decade. Now, as we watch history repeat itself two decades later, we cannot again allow states to go rogue and form a lasting precedent for re-drawing congressional districts whenever they want. Since each state draws its own lines to elect its members of Congress, we at least need parity on this fundamental question of how often a state can redraw its share of the combined 435-member House of Representatives. Parity — and predictability — on these basic ground rules is essential to the integrity of our shared democracy. Fairness dictates either that all states should redistrict whenever they want, or that none should do so. The reasonable choice is the latter. It should be obvious that subjecting the public — and Congress itself — to endless redistricting should be avoided. Unfortunately, this is not obvious to President Trump. He is attempting to rig the system and is publicly encouraging efforts to make state officials to 'find' votes for him in Congress. Amid plummeting approval ratings, Trump's strategy this time around is asking state leaders to keep redrawing the lines of their state's U.S. House districts until he gets the election results he wants. The last time the president needed help 'finding' votes, numerous state leaders dared to say no. We need that same courage now. Meanwhile, there is another, better way forward. States can choose reason by adopting an interstate compact to govern redistricting — at least on this question of how often they are allowed to redistrict. I urge states to adopt such a treaty until Congress puts these ground rules into federal law or the courts see fit to step in and properly referee for our fragile democracy. But again, I hope state leaders can all quickly step back from the brink. With any luck, my legislation and call to action will be moot, and states will stick with the norm of only drawing new congressional districts one time after the decennial census. But if rogue states repeat their history of trying to one-up their fellow American states, the other states must unfortunately respond in kind this time. Hopefully, that coming spiral will give members in both parties the courage of reason to end this race to the bottom.
The Hill
22 minutes ago
- The Hill
Thailand and Cambodia plan border visits for diplomats as violence eases
BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand and Cambodia separately planned border visits for foreign diplomats to observe damages from the nearly weeklong clash, as violence that continued after a ceasefire appears to have eased. The ceasefire reached in Malaysia was supposed to take effect midnight Monday, but it was quickly tested as Thailand and Cambodia continued to accuse each other of violating the truce agreements. Thailand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday it is organizing a trip to the border for military attachés of foreign missions and the media on Friday to show the impact of the clashes on the ground. Cambodia is also organizing a border visit for foreign diplomats on the same day. It held a similar trip on Wednesday attended by representatives from 13 countries, including the U.S. and China. Thailand's government spokesperson Jirayu Houngsub said Thursday that there had been no new clashes reported overnight Wednesday. But tensions on other fronts continue to simmer. Officials in Thailand's border province of Surin, one of the critical locations of the conflict, on Thursday cautioned evacuees against returning home as they were surveying affected areas for any ammunition that might still pose a risk. A spokesperson for Cambodia's Defense Ministry Maly Socheata said Thursday that Cambodia has received the body of one of its soldiers from Thailand. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet said the military is now in contact with its Thai counterparts to facilitate the return of about 20 other soldiers captured by Thai forces. 'I hope that the Thai Army will return all our soldiers who are currently in the custody of the Thai Army to Cambodia as soon as possible,' he said. Thai foreign minister Maris Sagniampongsa said the Cambodian soldiers were being well taken care of and would be sent back once Thailand is confident they no longer pose a threat. He said security officials would determine when the return would be. Hun Manet and Thailand's acting prime minister, Phumtham Wechayachai, agreed Monday to an 'unconditional' halt in the fighting which has killed at least 41 people. The fighting began last week after a land mine explosion along the border wounded five Thai soldiers. The peace talks were hosted by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. He called the ceasefire a 'vital first step towards de-escalation and the restoration of peace and security.' The ceasefire was brokered with U.S. pressure as President Donald Trump said he would not move forward with trade agreements if the conflict continued. But both countries continued to blame at each other and Thailand accused Cambodia of launching new attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday after the agreement took effect. Cambodia's Maj. Gen. Chan Sopheaktra of the Preah Vihear province said Wednesday that the Cambodian military has been strictly adhering to the ceasefire agreement and that there had been two ceasefire violations by Thai forces since the agreement took effect. He did not elaborate on the violations. Cambodia and Thailand have clashed in the past over their 800-kilometer (500-mile) border. Tensions had been growing since May when a Cambodian soldier was killed in a confrontation that created a diplomatic rift and roiled Thailand's domestic politics.
Newsweek
24 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Republicans Look Set To Get Wiped Out in 2025 and 2026
Someday, someone will crack the most difficult code in American politics—how to win midterm elections two years after securing a governing trifecta. But based on the polling that we have right now, President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress are not going to be the ones to do it. President Trump burned mindlessly through his limited political capital within weeks of taking office in January, and the Republican-controlled Congress has essentially ceded its constitutional authority—and its political fate—to the White House. Unless something dramatic changes in the coming months, that may have fateful consequences for Republicans up and down the ballot starting with November's bellwether off-year gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey. The numbers are already stark. The GOP has trailed averages of the generic congressional ballot—which asks voters whether they would vote for a Democrat or a Republican for the House—since March. By way of comparison, after Joe Biden took office in 2021, Republicans didn't take the lead in Real Clear Politics averages until November of that year. The race for the House of Representatives is starting to look much more like the 2018 cycle, when Republicans trailed from pretty much the day pollsters started asking thanks to the enduring unpopularity of President Trump's policy agenda, and more importantly, his gratuitously provocative and confrontational political style. President Donald Trump listens as he meets British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for bilateral talks at Trump Turnberry golf club on July 28, 2025, in Turnberry, Scotland. President Donald Trump listens as he meets British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for bilateral talks at Trump Turnberry golf club on July 28, 2025, in Turnberry, betting site Polymarket gives Democrats a 70 percent chance of retaking the House in 2026, and this grim outlook certainly isn't lost on the GOP, which is scrambling to pull off a mid-decade redistricting in Texas to squeeze a few extra seats out of an already-aggressive gerrymander that gave them 25 out of 38 seats in both 2022 and 2024. As Princeton's Sam Wang noted, this may ultimately backfire on them even if they get it done, by creating a larger number of seats with significant but not unbreachable Republican advantages that could be overcome in a true wave election. There's actually a nearer-term threat on the horizon. Republican gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey are also trailing badly in races that will be decided in just a few months. In 2017, Democrats scored blowouts in both races that previewed the 2018 blue wave. And in 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin's shock win over Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia, and Democrat Phil Murphy's surprisingly narrow 3-point reelection over Republican Jack Ciattarelli were clear warning signs that Democrats had already lost the public's trust less than a year into the Biden administration. That recent history has to worry Republicans. Former Democratic Representative Abigail Spanberger led the last two public polls of the race against Republican Winsome Earle-Sears by 17 and 12 points. And in the only polls taken of the race between Democrat Mikie Sherrill and Ciattarelli in New Jersey, Sherrill led by 21 and 8 points. Are Democrats likely to win by those margins? Probably not, but these are already Democratic-leaning states that could tilt toward a big, blue blowout if the political environment for Trump and the Republicans doesn't improve quickly. The bad news for Republicans doesn't end with the House. While Democrats are a distinct underdog in the race to control the Senate, they scored a major victory this week when Roy Cooper, the popular former Democratic governor of North Carolina, announced he would seek the seat being vacated by the retiring Senator Thom Tillis. Democrats are already favored in Maine, where 72 year-old Senator Susan Collins' remarkable run of defying partisan polarization seems unlikely to continue even if she chooses not to retire. But even assuming Democrats win all the battleground state seats they have to defend, including Michigan and Georgia, flipping North Carolina and Maine would still leave them two seats short of a majority. But Republican primary voters might own-goal themselves yet again. Democrats are eagerly watching the mess unfolding in Texas, where scandal-ridden extremist Ken Paxton is ahead in limited polling against incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn. While he would probably still be the favorite, a Paxton win in the primary would without question put Texas in play. Even with a Texas miracle, though, Democrats will still need to win a race in at least one state that Donald Trump carried by double digits in 2024, whether that's Iowa, Alaska, Florida, or Nebraska. It's an extremely heavy lift, but Republicans certainly can't feel as secure about their lock on the Senate as they did after November's elections unexpectedly left them with a seemingly insurmountable 53 seats. Is there anything Republicans could do to avoid the fate that almost every president's party has met in the midterm elections? For starters, President Trump would need to stop doing unpopular things—like building a lavishly funded internal detention gulag, securing trade "deals" that make daily life more expensive for ordinary Americans, and wasting his time whining about what D.C.'s football team is named, or what's happening in the writer's room of adult cartoon TV shows—and start governing in a way that isn't designed to deliberately alienate more than half the country. I'm no gambling whiz, but I certainly wouldn't bet on that. David Faris is a professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. His writing has appeared in Slate, The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Washington Monthly, and more. You can find him on Twitter @davidmfaris and Bluesky @ The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
