“There is a war-opposing network in the world, with two focal points: one of power led by the US president and one of spirit found here with the Holy Father,” Viktor Orban said last week after meeting Pope Leo at the Vatican.

“We draw strength, motivation, and blessing from both,” said the Hungarian prime minister.

If his ally in the White House, US President Donald Trump, was on his mind, then his thoughts could well have turned to a tricky meeting that awaits him on Friday in Washington.

The man Trump has called a “great leader”, and who has long provoked admiration in Maga circles, suddenly finds himself in an unusual position – at odds with the US president on an issue of critical importance.

At the centre of those talks will be new US pressure on Hungary and Slovakia to wean themselves urgently off Russian oil – Trump’s latest gambit in his efforts to pressurise Russia into ending its war on Ukraine.

Asked recently whether Trump had gone too far in imposing sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies, Orban said “from a Hungarian point of view, yes”.

Orban has been using his country’s heavy dependence on Russian oil and gas to advance his own agenda in several ways.

He has used it as a weapon to attack Brussels, as a means to maintain his good relations with Moscow, and as a platform upon which he hopes to win re-election next April in Hungary. He has promised “cheap Russian energy” to voters.

He will go into this election portraying himself as a safe pair of hands in an increasingly uncertain world. But Orban is trailing in most opinion polls, after his government was shaken by the meteoric rise of opposition Tisza party leader Peter Magyar.

The Hungarian PM has also been angered by repeated Ukrainian drone attacks on the Druzhba pipeline this summer, which briefly disrupted supplies to his country.

Senior Hungarian officials have been hinting for months that they believe the war in Ukraine could be over by the end of the year – a seemingly absurd claim, until news of a planned summit in Budapest between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin broke last month.

But Orban’s carefully laid plans began to unravel on 21 October, when the White House announced that the summit had been called off.

Orban’s government had been secretly working on the summit plans for months. Balazs Orban, Orban’s political director (no relation), enjoys close relations with US Vice-President JD Vance, and is believed to have played an important role.

Orban hopes to persuade Trump to ease the pressure on Hungary at least until the election when the pair meet in Washington.

The Hungarian government appears to be counting on the idea that Trump is bored by the war in Ukraine, and wants to turn his back on it if no deal is done soon.

Orban has sharply opposed Western military and financial support for Ukraine, and rules out Ukraine’s membership of Nato and the EU. He portrays Trump as a pro-peace president, giving short shrift to what he sees as the warmongers of the EU.

The climax of the cancelled summit in Budapest would have been the moment he appeared on the balcony of the Carmelite Convent on Castle Hill, overlooking the Danube, flanked by Presidents Trump and Putin. How could Hungarians vote against such an internationally successful leader, he might have asked.

In Rome last week, despite US dismissals, Orban insisted the summit would still happen – it was just a question of time. At the weekend, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov quietly suggested the same.

The biggest issue souring US-Hungary relations is oil.

In 2024, Hungary even increased the amount of oil it receives through the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline from Russia. On 23 October, just as Orban was addressing a rally of his supporters in front of Parliament in Budapest, the US announced sanctions on the two giant Russian oil companies, Lukoil and Rosneft.

Hungary received 64% of its oil through the Friendship pipeline from Russia, via Belarus and Ukraine, in 2020. By 2024 that figure stood at 80%, or 5 million tonnes a year.

The Hungarian government argues that land-based pipelines are the cheapest way to receive oil, and that with no sea coast of its own, it has no alternative. Much smaller quantities are also imported from Kazakhstan, Croatia, Iraq, and Azerbaijan.

Another issue is that Russian Urals crude has a higher sulphur content than the Brent crude supplied from elsewhere. The major Hungarian refinery at Szazhalombatta, run by Hungarian oil giant MOL, and the Slovnaft refinery in Slovakia, also run by MOL, are both set up to process mostly Urals crude, not Brent.

Within the EU, Orban is now the longest standing leader. Far from leaving the bloc, he wants to remake it in his own image, as a union of sovereign nations. For this, he has also won praise from Putin.

But Hungary’s argument that it cannot change is undermined by the Czech example. That is a country with a similar population to Hungary, and also landlocked.

The Czech Republic traditionally relied heavily on Russian crude for the eight million tonnes of oil it needs a year.

Starting in early 2022, following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Czech government under Prime Minister Petr Fiala invested heavily in improving the existing Transalpine pipeline to the Italian port of Trieste.

At the same time, its refineries at Kralupy and Litvínov were adapted for Brent crude. In April 2025, the Czech authorities announced proudly that they were no longer receiving a drop of Russian oil.

Energy experts say that while MOL, the Hungarian oil giant, is quietly changing its technology, what is missing is a political decision from the government to shift to the Adria pipeline from the Croatian port of Omisalj.

There are also disputes between the Croatian company Janaf and MOL – over just how much oil the pipeline could support.

When the pair meet, Trump will urge Orban to show some political will to wean itself off Russian supplies.

But Orban might see that as a hard decision to explain to Hungarian voters. After arguing for years that Hungary cannot survive without Russian oil and gas, he would lose face if it turns out it can.

Matt Whitaker, US ambassador to Nato, said in a Fox News interview last week that Hungary had still “not made any active steps” to end its dependence on Russian oil.

“There’s a lot of planning our friends in Hungary will have to do,” he said, and promised US help to Hungary and Croatia to make it happen.

As the seagull flies, Omisalj is only 44 miles (70km) from Trieste. Seaborne oil from Kazakhstan, Libya, Azerbaijan, the US and Iraq could soon be flowing through the Adria pipeline to Hungary too.

Despite Orban’s dire warnings of price hikes, there is no data – so far at least – to suggest that Czech consumers have to pay more.

There is nothing his old friend Donald Trump likes more than striking a deal.

Orban is about to find out how persuasive the US president can be.

The Duke of Sussex has apologised to Canada for wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers hat while attending a World Series game against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Prince Harry joked that he was “under duress” when he wore the bright blue cap during the epic Game 4 of the World Series in Los Angeles. He thought it was “the polite thing to do” after being invited to the game by the Dodgers’ owner.

His headgear choice upset many in Canada – a Commonwealth nation- who criticised him for not showing his allegiance to the realm, or to the only Canadian team in Major League Baseball.

Prince Harry’s father King Charles is the head of state of Canada and of 13 other Commonwealth realms.

“Firstly, I would like to apologise to Canada for wearing it,” he said in a CTV interview. “Secondly, I was under duress. There wasn’t much choice.”

The prince – wearing a Blue Jays hat during the interview – quipped that “when you’re missing a lot of hair on top, and you’re sitting under flood lights, you’ll take any hat that’s available”.

He plans to wear a Blue Jays hat from now on and rooted for the Toronto team in subsequent games, appearing to do so in a clip posted on social media by the Duchess of Sussex – a Los Angeles native – when the Dodgers won the series in Game 7 a few days later.

Prince Harry, who was given a Blue Jays hat while meeting with Canada’s oldest veterans for a Remembrance event on Thursday, also said that admitting that he is a Toronto fan would likely make his reception in California more difficult.

The prince and his wife, a former actress who lived in Canada while filming her TV drama Suits, moved to California after stepping back as full-time royals in 2020.

The couple’s presence in the Chavez Ravine-set stadium in Los Angeles also disgruntled many Dodgers fans in the US. They took to social media to voice their upset over the couple’s plum front-row seats during the 18-inning game, while local legends such as Magic Johnson and former pitcher Dodgers Sandy Koufax were seated behind them.

Incidentally, Prince Harry published an essay this week about “What it means to be British” ahead of his visits with military veterans in Canada this week.

In it, he said “banter” in pubs and sports grounds and a spirit of good-humoured “self-deprecation” are some of the things that he loves about Britain and what he thinks define British culture.

In the midst of a still shaky ceasefire, Gazans are taking the first tentative steps along the long road to recovery.

Bulldozers are clearing roads, shovelling the detritus of war into waiting trucks. Mountains of rubble and twisted metal are on either side, the remains of once bustling neighbourhoods.

Parts of Gaza City are disfigured beyond recognition.

“This was my house,” says Abu Iyad Hamdouna. He points to a mangled heap of concrete and steel in Sheikh Radwan, which was once one of Gaza City’s most densely populated neighbourhoods.

“It was here. But there’s no house left.”

Abu Iyad is 63. If Gaza ever rises from the ashes, he doesn’t expect to be around to see it.

“At this rate, I think it’ll take 10 years.” He looks exhausted and resigned. “We’ll be dead… we’ll die without seeing reconstruction.”

Nearby, 43-year-old Nihad al-Madhoun and his nephew Said are picking through the wreckage of what was once a home.

The building might well collapse but it doesn’t deter them – they collect old breeze blocks and brush thick dust off an old red sofa.

“The removal of rubble alone might take more than five years,” he says. “And we will wait. We have no other option.”

The sheer scale of the challenge is staggering. The UN estimates the cost of damage at £53bn ($70bn). Almost 300,000 houses and apartments have been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN’s satellite centre Unosat.

The Gaza Strip is littered with 60 million tonnes of rubble, mixed in with dangerous unexploded bombs and dead bodies.

In all, more than 68,000 people have been killed in Gaza in the past two years, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. Its figures are accepted by the United Nations and other international bodies.

In the midst of such destruction, it’s hard to know where to begin.

There’s no shortage of ideas – including grand designs conceived by those with money and power in faraway capitals. The US President Donald Trump had his say too.

But Gazans we spoke to are sceptical of schemes drawn up abroad, and they have visions of their own. So the fight is on to shape Gaza’s future.

The question is, who will prevail?

Yahya al-Sarraj, Gaza City’s Hamas-appointed mayor, is out on the streets wearing a hi-vis jacket and surveying the ruins. Already, shops and restaurants are starting to reopen, he points out.

“Of course it’s very modest,” he says, “but they want to live, and they deserve to live.”

Gaza is no stranger to these destructions, he adds, recalling several conflicts prior to the cataclysm that erupted, following the devastating attack that Hamas launched on Israel on 7 October 2023.

“We heard about a lot of plans, international, local, regional plans. [But] we have our own plan.

“We call it the Phoenix of Gaza.”

This was the first home-grown Palestinian plan to emerge during the war – in a computer-generated video that accompanied it, shattered communities are seen transformed, as if by magic, into modern neighbourhoods.

“We wanted to fill the vacuum,” says Yara Salem, an infrastructure specialist, formerly of the World Bank, with experience in conflict areas including post-war Iraq.

“You cannot have foreign-imposed reconstruction plans while you don’t have any vision about your own country.”

The publication of the Phoenix plan in February followed 13 months of work by a broad coalition of around 700 Palestinian reconstruction experts, some based abroad. It drew on the knowledge and experience of architects and engineers across the Gaza Strip too. Students at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank were also involved as the idea evolved.

Hamas, which exercises political control over the municipalities, was not involved.

Today, the creators of the Phoenix plan know that its fate is out of their hands, as competing interests, in the Middle East and beyond, jostle for control of Gaza’s future.

This vision stands in sharp contrast to the glitzy “Gaza Riviera”, a controversial proposal first described in February by President Trump during a meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.

Trump famously reposted a bizarre AI-generated video on his social media account, showing himself, Netanyahu and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk enjoying the high life in a kind of Dubai-style fantasy.

A giant golden statue of the president towered over a street and bearded male belly dancers wearing green headbands were pictured on the beach.

Though the video was clearly a spoof, President Trump had already spoken of the US taking “a long-term ownership position” in Gaza.

“Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable,” his son-in-law Jared Kushner told an audience at Harvard University last year, “if people would focus on building up livelihoods.”

Trump’s 20-point Gaza ceasefire proposal, agreed in October, also includes references to a “Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energise Gaza”, alongside an international “Board of Peace” to oversee governance – there has been speculation about whether former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair could end up at its helm.

But Trump’s “Gaza Riviera” is not the only glossy vision of a futuristic Gaza that has emerged.

A leaked document, published in August by The Washington Post, painted a similar vision of a high-tech Gaza Strip, under US trusteeship for 10 years.

Dubbed the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust – “Great” for short – the plan was said to be the work of Israeli and American consultants, with input from members of Tony Blair’s Institute for Global Change.

The plan envisaged the creation of a series of “modern and AI-powered smart planned cities”, noting that poor urban design lay at the heart of “Gaza’s ongoing insurgency.”

“From a Demolished Iranian Proxy to a Prosperous Abrahamic Ally,” the plan’s subtitle read, in a nod to the Abraham Accords brokered during Trump’s first presidential term, suggesting that a revived Gaza could form part of a much larger regional peace initiative.

The plan also nodded to the idea of “voluntary relocation,” under which a quarter of Gaza’s population would leave the Strip, in return for a $5,000 (£3,780) relocation package and subsidised rent abroad.

It all stands in sharp contrast to the Phoenix plan that sets out to protect Gaza’s existing infrastructure and, where possible, restore the area’s social and geographical fabric.

“These sort of almost hallucinatory plans are creating an opening for disaster capitalism that is worrying,” argues Raja Khalidi, director general of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute, an independent think tank.

“The state has the ability to plan… what sort of Gaza we want to build, and when we want to build it and how much it’s going to cost us.

“It has to be a Palestinian vision – my concern [is that] we will be sidelined.”

Shelly Culbertson, a senior researcher at the US-based RAND non-partisan think tank and co-author of a detailed study on Gaza reconstruction, also believes that the Gaza Strip is not simply a blank slate waiting to be turned into a new version of Dubai.

“There’s a lot of heritage, cities that have been around for… millennia,” she says. “It’s not good practice to just wipe it all out and start over, but rather build with what you have.”

These are not the only plans however. Another, drafted by Egypt and adopted hastily by the Arab League at a summit in Cairo in March, spoke of rebuilding Gaza over a period of five years – like the Phoenix plan, it emphasised the importance of involving Gazans in every stage “to foster a sense of ownership and ensure that the needs of the local community are met”.

Meanwhile the Palestinian Authority (PA), led by President Mahmoud Abbas, has been developing its own proposals for the Gaza Strip, as part of a wider plan to reconnect Gaza and the occupied West Bank in a future Palestinian state.

At his office in Ramallah, Estephan Salameh, the PA planning minister told me that whatever plan is settled upon, Gaza of the future would look different, but that some things would have to stay the same.

“Don’t forget that 70% of Gaza’s population are Palestinian refugees,” he says. “And we need to preserve the refugee identity. We need to preserve the soul and the spirit of Gaza.”

For Salameh, that means recreating Gaza’s pre-war refugee camps, where hundreds of thousands of descendants of Palestinians, who fled or were driven from their homes in the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948-9, have lived ever since.

Over time, the camps have evolved, from the canvas tents and tin shacks of the 1950s into busy, overcrowded communities with some of the highest population densities in the world.

The PA plan is not to recreate slums, but to make sure that tight-knit communities can be restored.

“We want to have Jabalia rebuilt where it was,” Salameh says, referring to the biggest camp that was once home to more than 100,000 people, and that is now largely destroyed.

But for the time being, the Palestine Authority’s rule only extends to the West Bank, not Gaza. Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan says the Board of Peace will handle Gaza’s redevelopment “until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform programme”.

Reconstruction is likely to be a slow, painstaking process, one that Shelly Culbertson calls “incremental urbanism”.

“Living in the damaged but habitable communities and rebuilding while in them, we think is going to be a key way of preserving communities and allowing people to move back,” she says.

“[But] some places have been so destroyed and damaged and dangerous that the only thing to do really is wall them off, raise them down and completely rebuild.

“This is not going to be a five-year recovery – it’s probably going to take decades.”

The Palestinian Authority’s planning minister predicts a quicker timeline but says nothing can begin until political and security arrangements are in place, borders are open (to allow the import of building materials) and funding is secured.

But therein lies the rub. In order for international donors to pledge the tens of billions of dollars needed to rebuild Gaza, there has to be agreement on what a recovery plan will look like.

Egypt plans to hold a reconstruction summit but a date has not yet been set. And the most likely funders – Saudi Arabia and the UAE – will need reassurances that their colossal investments are not simply going to go up in smoke in some future Gaza war.

But with the current Israeli government strongly opposing the creation of a Palestinian state – something that Saudi Arabia is also pushing for – the political obstacles are formidable.

Israel has previously said that it is not opposed to investors and builders from a variety of countries beginning efforts to rebuild in areas controlled by the IDF.

On a recent visit to Israel, Jared Kushner spoke of building “a new Gaza” on territory still under Israeli military control, saying no reconstruction funds would go to areas controlled by Hamas.

But nothing substantial can happen while the Gaza ceasefire hangs by a thread, and Israel and Hamas still trade occasional blows.

Back in the shattered remains of Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, Abu Iyad Hamdouna has more immediate concerns.

“Reconstruction?” he exclaims. “What about water?”

After five forced displacements during the war, Abu Iyad just wants to stay put, in whatever shelter he can find, or make for himself.

He’s not waiting for the Phoenix to rise or indeed for any sort of Gaza Riviera to materialise.

“Here we are, making tents,” he says. “We are sitting making tents, next to the house we still cannot live in.”

Lead image credit: Bloomberg/Reuters/ Phoenix. Image shows destroyed buildings in Gaza (bottom left) and an AI-generated impression of the Phoenix plan (top left)

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A year after the Democrats found themselves out of power and without a leader, the party is standing at a crossroads.

After months of downbeat introspection, three election races this week gave them a much-needed burst of momentum.

In New York, there was the unlikely victory of a 34-year-old democratic socialist as mayor of the nation’s biggest city, while it was a former CIA agent who won in Virginia to become the state’s first female governor.

And in New Jersey, a former Navy helicopter pilot who made opposing Donald Trump a focal point of her campaign delivered a decisive victory over a Republican candidate backed by the president.

These three candidates – New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, Virginia’s law-and-order moderate Abigail Spanberger and New Jersey congresswoman Mikie Sherrill – each ran a different race.

Their victories have spurred a debate on how Democrats chart a path forward, and whether the centrists or the party’s left wing will prevail as they head into the critical 2026 midterm elections – and beyond.

But without a standard-bearer until the presidential race and the 2028 election, Democrats are grappling with how to land on a clear message, rebuild their brand and retool their strategy to win back voters.

Some believe that will happen through refining their focus on the affordability crisis while others believe it’s a matter of pushing back harder against Trump.

“This was a repudiation of President Trump and the Republicans, not an affirmation of us,” former US ambassador to Japan and Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel told the BBC.

“The first lesson for Democrats was we didn’t trip over our shoelaces. We stayed focused on what people needed to hear from us – that we were concerned about it, and we didn’t get into some cultural war debate that we can’t win.”

The Democrats have been adrift.

The party not only lost the White House last year but also both chambers of Congress, every battleground state and even some support among key demographics including working class, racial minorities and young voters.

The party has lost 4.5 million registered voters to Republicans from 2020 to 2024, according to the New York Times.

And though Trump remains under water in approval ratings, hovering in the low 40s, Democrats plummeted to a 35-year-low in popularity this summer.

A Wall Street Journal poll in July found 63% of voters had an unfavourable view of the Democratic party, the highest since 1990.

But the off-year elections could signal a tide is turning as Democrats begin to clarify their message of addressing economic pain. Party officials, operatives and strategists say the common thread in the races in New York, New Jersey and Virginia was a disciplined focus on lowering costs, despite the candidates’ ideological differences.

Mamdani ran a left-wing populist campaign that focused on a rent freeze, free buses and universal childcare, paid for by new taxes on the wealthy.

Sherrill drilled into lowering utility costs while Spanberger underscored the rising costs in Virginia where Trump’s government cuts have upended life for many of the state’s federal workers.

“Voters want their elected officials to be spending essentially all of their time and energy trying to come up with policy solutions to the affordability crisis,” said Simon Bazelon, author of a yearlong 2024 postmortem autopsy on why Democrats lost, released last week.

The expansive, 58-page report, backed by political action committee WelcomePac, which supports centre-left candidates, provides a searing analysis of the party’s leftward drift, on both economic and cultural issues, since the days of Barack Obama’s presidency.

After polling more than 500,000 voters, Mr Bazelon said the prevailing theme was Democrats focused too much on democracy, abortion and identity and cultural issues instead of cost of living, border security and public safety.

The Biden administration was slow to recognise inflation, telling voters the economy was better than they thought despite the day-to-day hardships, Mr Bazelon said. The “Bidenomics” rallies fell flat. The economic data talking points rang hollow. Prices increased, and people noticed.

“Stop trying to tell them that what they think is wrong, and instead recognise that in a democracy, if we don’t take public opinion seriously, then we are going to lose to people who don’t take democracy seriously,” Mr Bazelon added.

Following Tuesday’s Democratic sweep, Republicans – and even Trump – appeared to acknowledge they’re behind on the battle over economic messaging. Trump summoned Republican senators to the White House early Wednesday morning to discuss ending the stalemate over the government shutdown, now the longest in US history.

“The president is very keyed into what’s going on, and he recognises, like anybody, that it takes time to do an economic turnaround, but all the fundamentals are there, and I think you’ll see him be very, very focused on prices and cost of living,” James Blair, a deputy White House chief of staff and Trump’s former 2024 political director, told Politico on Wednesday.

Like his predecessors, Trump faces stiff political headwinds in next year’s midterm elections, which typically serve as a referendum on the party in power. Though Trump won the election in part due to his promise to bring prices down, inflation continues to bedevil the White House.

Democrats say Trump’s economy will be the prime focus during the 2026 midterms, when the party hopes to retake at least one chamber of Congress. The Republican-led Congress has helped Trump push through his policy agenda, and largely ignored his expansion of executive power which includes circumventing Congress’s power of the purse to cut federal programmes.

Trump’s global tariffs, which have largely fallen on US importers, have contributed to inflation, accordng to experts. Meanwhile, healthcare premiums are spiking just as food stamps are being interrupted for millions of Americans during the government shutdown.

“It’s not one economic hit, it’s a snowball of economic hits that people are feeling all at one time,” said Libby Schneider, deputy executive director of the Democratic National Committee.

“It’s a really important lesson that we have taken post-2024 and that other candidates have too, which is to really localise the economy and, unfortunately, Trump and Republicans have given us infinite opportunities to do that.”

But localising the economy has its limits. While it’s a big tent party, embracing both the left-wing and centrist models won’t necessarily work in 2028, when Democrats have to select a standard-bearer and a platform that will force them to choose one ideological path over the other.

Republican strategist Matt Gorman said that path will be determined by who gets through the primary elections both next year and looking ahead to 2028.

The party’s money and energy, he noted, has been focused on the left and Republicans will be hoping the nominee fighting a general election comes from that wing. He urged his party to respond by making affordability their message, and by courting the voters Trump was able to reach, even without him on the ballot.

Left-wing Democratic congressman Ro Khanna, who campaigned alongside candidates in New Jersey, Virginia and New York, said that means moving beyond the generic conversation on affordability and championing a bold economic message on a national level with specifics on tackling inequality.

“The vibes are not going to be enough,” he said, adding that Democrats should establish basic pillars around Medicare for all, a tax on billionaires and universal childcare. “And local candidates can adopt what they see fit for their communities.”

Republicans have already seized on Mamdani’s victory to try to shape the narrative of the Democratic party as being taken over by a Soviet-style communist. Following the election, in a speech at the America Business Forum in Florida on Wednesday, Trump said the difference between the two parties was a choice between “communism and common sense”.

“We are going to have a fight in our party about how to prosecute the case against Trump and how to beat the right-wing populists,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the centrist think tank Third Way. “And the fight is going to boil down to, mostly but not entirely, do you fight right-wing populism with left-wing populism?”

He credits Democrats for taking a more disciplined tack in pushing back against Trump, pointing to the shutdown battle during which they held firm in focusing on healthcare and rejected pressure from climate change groups to attach more demands to the fight.

“They have started to learn how to fight Trump,” Mr Bennett said.

Still, Mr Bennett and others in the party say there’s much to learn from left-wing figures like Mamdani, a skilled campaigner who focused on his constituents’ lives.

The 34-year-old mayor-elect, along with Spanberger, 46, and Sherrill, 53, represent a younger bench of Democrats at a moment when generational divide has upended the party. Though Joe Biden’s age was a major point of contention in the 2024 election campaign, four House Democrats also died in office over the last year.

After Trump’s victory last year, 39-year-old Saikat Chakrabarti listened as his state representative, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, argued on a New York Times podcast shortly after the election that nothing needed to change.

“I just thought that was unacceptable,” Chakrabarti, former chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said of his decision to challenge Pelosi in San Francisco, though she has since announced her retirement.

“Part of my motivation to run is to try to recruit people to run across the country to create a Democratic party that actually stands for working people, that stands strongly against corruption and big money in politics and has a real vision for how to build an economy that will restore the American dream.”

Many Democrats welcome the idea of ushering in fresh candidates but say it’s not the only answer to winning back voters. The majority of Democrats interviewed for this piece agreed that earning back the trust of the voters following the tumultuous 2024 campaign was the first step to winning at a national level.

But what was less clear is whether the party needs to show more contrition about how they arrived at such a low point.

The DNC’s own analysis of the disastrous election reportedly does not address the question of whether Biden should have listened to public unease about his health and dropped out much earlier.

“I think people don’t trust us. They don’t trust that we’ll keep our promises,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, which recruits new Democrats to run for office.

The group launched a $50m plan to rebuild faith in Democrats in parts of the country where they have lost ground with voters.

“The long-term mission is to try and fix the party brand by attaching a new face to it.”

Whether that face is one looking left or looking centre-left is the big question.

Typhoon Kalmaegi, one of the year’s deadliest storms, has headed west to Cambodia and Laos after barreling through central Vietnam on Thursday with winds of up to 92mph (149km/h).

Earlier this week, the typhoon flooded entire towns in the Philippines, killing at least 114 people and leaving more than 120 missing.

In Vietnam, at least one person died after a house collapsed in Dak Lak province, local media said. The government’s disaster management site has not yet released any death tolls or estimated damages.

This typhoon came even as central Vietnam struggled with the aftermath of record rainfall that killed nearly 50 people last week.

Ahead of the typhoon, Vietnam’s military deployed more than 260,000 soldiers and personnel for relief efforts, along with more than 6,700 vehicles and six aircraft.

Some airports and expressways in the country were closed and hundreds of thousands were evacuated.

Shortly after the typhoon made landfall in Vietnam at 19:29 local time (12:29 GMT), hundreds of residents in Dak Lak province called for help, local media reported.

Dak Lak province is approximately 350km (215 miles) north-east of Ho Chi Minh City.

Many people said their homes had collapsed or been flooded, while strong winds and heavy rain continued to batter the area.

The Vietnamese national weather forecaster warned of flooding and landslides in hundreds of localities in seven cities and provinces.

There were reports of damage from several provinces, including roofs torn off homes, shattered glass panels at hotels, and trees uprooted or snapped along city streets and rural roads by powerful gusts.

On Wednesday morning, a reporter from AFP news agency saw officials knocking on the doors of homes in coastal communities and warning people to evacuate.

According to local media reports, Prime Minister of Vietnam Pham Minh Chinh held an online meeting to direct the emergency response.

“We must reach isolated areas and ensure people have food, drinking water, and essential supplies,” he was quoted as saying.

“No one should be left hungry or cold.”

Before making landfall in Vietnam, the typhoon, known locally as Tino, left a trail of devastation in the Philippines.

At least 114 people were killed and tens of thousands were evacuated, particularly from central areas including the populous island and tourist hotspot of Cebu, where cars were swept through the streets.

Kalmaegi dumped the equivalent of a month of rain on the island in just 24 hours, sending torrents of mud and debris down mountainsides and into urban areas.

Stunned survivors who had made it to higher ground watched as buses and shipping containers were tossed about in the raging floodwaters.

The storm has wiped out entire neighbourhoods in poorer districts, where building materials are flimsier.

In Talisay City, which suffered some of the worst destruction, Mely Saberon looked on in despair at the pile of debris that had once been her home.

“We don’t have any home anymore,” she told the BBC. “We weren’t able to salvage anything from our house.

“We didn’t expect the surge of rain and wind. We’ve experienced many typhoons before, but this one was different.”

Residents have now started the backbreaking task of cleaning away the thick layer of mud, and picking through the wreckage for anything that can be used.

Early on Thursday, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr declared a state of emergency, the threshold of which involves mass casualty, major damage to property, and disruption to means of livelihoods and the normal way of life for people in the affected areas.

Vietnam has already been battling with floods and record rains for the past week.

Burst riverbanks have flooded some of the country’s most popular tourist spots, including the Unesco-listed city of Hue and historic hotspot Hoi An, where residents have been pictured navigating the city in wooden boats after the Hoai river overflowed.

Thailand is also bracing for the storm’s impact. Local officials have warned of flash floods, landslides and river overflows.