major social and political events
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You aren’t alone if you’re feeling worn down as 2018 comes to a close. It’s been a trying year when it comes to the world scene. A seemingly unending parade of summits, crises, protests, and conflicts dominated the news. Below is my list of the top ten world events of the year, listed in descending order. You may want to read what follows closely. Several of these stories will continue into 2019.
10. Democrats Win Back the House. Republicans and Democrats both came away from the November midterms elections with something to brag about. Democrats, though, secured the bigger victory. Republicans picked up two seats in the Senate, meaning they will continue to have the final say on President Donald Trump’s judicial and cabinet appointments. Democrats, by contrast, picked up forty seats on their way to regaining control of the House. It was the Democrats’ biggest seat gain since the iconic Watergate class of 1974, and it came because Democratic House candidates outpolled their Republican counterparts by a record eight percentage points. When the 116th Congress opens for business on January 3, Democrats will chair House committees and decide the agenda. Democrats likely won’t succeed very often in directly overturning Trump’s decisions, whether at home or abroad. That in most instances requires them to reach agreement with the Republican-controlled Senate and override a Trump veto. But they will be able to block him on issues requiring their consent, like funding for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. They will also use their oversight powers to highlight their disagreements with the White House, potentially putting public pressure on Trump to reverse course. So the biggest consequences of the 2018 elections have yet to be felt.
9. Humanitarian Crises Deepen. Venezuela and Yemen were sad stories in 2017. Things only got worse in both countries in 2018. Over the past four years an estimated 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled the country; millions more have stayed behind and face grinding economic hardship. The cause of Venezuela’s collapse has been the mismanagement of the economy, first by Hugo Chávez, and then by Nicolás Maduro. Both men also attacked and dismantled Venezuela’s democratic institutions. Maduro won reelection in May in a rigged vote and shows no signs of retreating from policies that have brought Venezuela sky-rocketing inflation, water and electrical shortages, and growing rates of malnutrition. The Yemeni civil war entered its fourth year in 2018. Yemen now holds the dubious distinction of being the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. As many as fourteen thousand Yemenis have died in the fighting, and fifty thousand or more are thought to have died because of a war-induced famine. The horrifying photographs of emaciated Yemeni children have not persuaded either side to lay down their weapons. Meanwhile, humanitarian crises in the Central African Republic, Congo, Syria, and South Sudan, among other places, continue to grind on. It seems like ages since world leaders embraced the principle of a responsibility to protect.