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What to expect from Obama after the midterm elections

Republican Thom Tillis and wife Susan react after the results in Charlotte, North Carolina.

By Steve Holland and John Whitesides

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans rode a wave of voter discontent to seize control of the U.S. Senate, dealing a punishing blow to President Barack Obama that will limit his legislative agenda and may force him to make a course correction for his last two years in office.

The Republican rout on Tuesday was wide and deep in what was bound to be seen as a sharp rebuke to Obama, who has lurched from crisis to crisis and whose unpopularity made him unwelcome to Democratic candidates in many contested states.

Obama, who watched election returns from the White House and saw little to warm his spirits, scheduled a news conference for 2:50 p.m. EST (1950 GMT) on Wednesday. He invited Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress to the White House on Friday to take stock of the new political landscape.

Republicans also strengthened their grip on the U.S. House of Representatives in what Representative Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, on MSNBC calling it "a pretty ugly night" for Democrats. When the new Congress takes over in January, Republicans will be in charge of both chambers for the first time since elections in 2006.

The Republican takeover in the Senate will force Obama to scale back his ambitions to either executive actions that do not require legislative approval, or items that might gain bipartisan support, such as trade agreements and tax reform.

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Republican Thom Tillis and wife Susan react after the results in Charlotte, North Carolina.

It also will test his ability to compromise with newly empowered political opponents who have been resisting his legislative agenda since he was first elected in 2008. Americans elected him to a second and final four-year term in 2012.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a possible presidential candidate in 2016 who campaigned for fellow Republicans around the country, said the Senate results put the onus on Obama.

"We need to get things done ... and put things on the president's desk and make the president make some decisions," Christie said on "CBS This Morning." He cited tax reform, a national energy policy and job stimulation as pressing needs.

The shift in the Senate also could prompt a White House staff turnover as some exhausted members of the Obama team consider departing in favor of fresh legs. {ID:nL1N0SS0FC]

Before the election results, the White House had signaled no major changes for Obama. Officials said Obama would seek common ground with Congress in such areas as trade and infrastructure.

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The dome of the U.S Capitol is seen behind autumn leaves in Washington November 5, 2014. REUTERS/Ke …

"The president is going to continue to look for partners on Capitol Hill, Democrats or Republicans, who are willing to work with him on policies that benefit middle-class families," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Tuesday.

Obama, a one-term senator before he became president, has often been faulted for not developing closer relations with lawmakers.

He will find one familiar face in a powerful new position. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who won a tough re-election battle against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, will replace Democrat Harry Reid as Senate majority leader. Reid has been one of Obama's top political allies and helped steer the president's signature healthcare law through the Senate in 2010.

“Some things don’t change after tonight. I don’t expect the president to wake up tomorrow and view the world any differently than he did when he woke up this morning. He knows I won’t either. But we do have an obligation to work together on issues where we can agree," McConnell said in his victory speech in Louisville.

TOSS-UPS BECOME REPUBLICAN WINS

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Mitch McConnell waves to supporters with his wife, former United States Secretary of Labor Elaine Ch …

In Tuesday's thrashing, Republicans won in places where Democrats were favored, taking a Senate race in North Carolina, pulled out victories where the going was tough, like a Senate battle in Kansas, and swept a number of governors' races in states where Democrats were favored, including Obama's home state of Illinois.

Of eight to 10 Senate seats that were considered toss-ups, Republicans won nearly all of them. They needed six seats to win control of the 100-member Senate, and by early on Wednesday they had seven. Democrats had dominated Republicans in the Senate, 53-45 with two independents, going into the election but Republicans will now outnumber them 52-45 with two independents and Louisiana's U.S. Senate race yet to be decided.

The winning margin came when Iowa Republican Joni Ernst was declared the winner over Democrat Bruce Braley and Republican Thom Tillis defeated incumbent Democratic Senator Kay Hagan in North Carolina.

The Louisiana Senate race will be decided in a Dec. 6 runoff between incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu, who took 42 percent of the vote, and Republican Representative Bill Cassidy, who had 41 percent.

The Iowa race was particularly indicative of Republican fortunes. Ernst came from behind and surged in recent weeks despite herculean efforts by powerful Democratic figures to save Braley, including a campaign visit by Obama's wife, Michelle.

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Tina Spann, 49, displays a 'I Voted Today' sticker on her sweatshirt with a President Barack …

Republican Senate candidates also picked up Democratic seats in Montana, Colorado, West Virginia, South Dakota and Arkansas.

'RESPONSIBILITY ... TO LEAD'

Once the euphoria of their victory ebbs, Republicans will be under pressure to show Americans they are capable of governing after drawing scorn a year ago for shutting down the government in a budget fight. That will be a factor in their ambitions to take back the White House in 2016.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz, a conservative firebrand who may run for president in 2016, told CNN: "The American people, they’re frustrated with what’s happening in Washington but now the responsibility falls on us to lead."

While there was talk of conciliation, no major breakthrough in Washington's chilly climate is expected soon.

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Republican Scott Brown greets supporters after conceding in his midterm election race for the U.S. …

Partisan battles could erupt over immigration reform, with Obama poised to issue executive actions by year's end to defer deportations of some undocumented immigrants, and over energy policy, as Republicans press the president to approve the Keystone XL pipeline carrying oil from Canada.

Jay Carney, Obama's former spokesman, said he expects Obama to make an "all-out push" on his priorities regardless of the makeup of Congress.

Whatever the case, Obama will face pressure to make changes at the White House. A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 75 percent of respondents believe the administration needs to "rethink" how it approaches major issues facing the United States (bit.ly/1ph8sLs). Sixty-four percent said Obama should replace some of his senior staff after the election (bit.ly/1rTVVbb).

The Republican victory had been widely predicted ahead of Tuesday's voting to elect 36 senators, 36 state governors and all 435 members of the House of Representatives.

Obama and other White House officials blamed the electoral map - noting that many key Senate races took place in conservative states that Obama lost in 2012.

Election Day polling by Reuters/Ipsos found a dour mood among the electorate with less than one-third of voters believing the country is headed in the right direction.

Roughly 40 percent of voters said they approved of the job Obama is doing as president, though they were split over whether they expected the economy to improve or worsen in the coming year.

In a consolation for Democrats, Jeanne Shaheen won re-election over Republican Scott Brown in New Hampshire in what polls had forecast as a tight race.

In Virginia, heavily favored Democratic incumbent Senator Mark Warner found himself in a surprisingly close fight against Republican challenger Ed Gillespie, with much of the vote counted. By late evening, he claimed victory but Gillespie had not yet conceded.

In the most closely watched governors' races, Florida's Republican Governor Rick Scott edged out Democrat Charlie Crist, and Republican Scott Walker survived a challenge from Democrat Mary Burke in Wisconsin.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Susan Heavey, Tim Ryan and Ian Simpson in Washington; Marti Maguire in Raleigh, North Carolina; David Beasley in Atlanta; Steve Bittenbender in Louisville, Kentucky; Barbara Liston in Orlando, Bill Cotterell in Tallahassee and Zachary Fagenson in Miami Beach; Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Jonathan Kaminsky in New Orleans; Editing by Frances Kerry and Howard Goller)

After a string of victories by Iraqi and Kurdish forces against ISIS over the past two weeks, the rumors started popping up online: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, had been replaced by his Syrian deputy, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani.

The rumors were untrue, but they were the first clear evidence that the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS has actually started to work. The past two weeks have seen Iraqi military victories near Baghdad, and in the Diyala, Salahuddin, and Ninevah provinces to the east and north of the city.

Related: If ISIS Captures Baghdad, Terror Takes a Giant Step Forward

Coalition airstrikes have significantly increased and improved over the past two weeks. In Mosul alone, two separate sources confirmed that no fewer than 150 ISIS fighters were killed in the last 10 days of October and more were injured in air raids. In retribution, ISIS arrested eight Iraqi reporters in Mosul and dozens of Iraqi army and police officers, fearing that they were planning to join a newly formed Arab Sunni force in Kurdistan aiming to recapture Mosul.

Since the U.S.-led air campaign began, at least 1,000 ISIS fighters have been killed by the air bombardment, Iraqi security analyst Hisham al-Hashimi said. The ISIS military commander of Nineveh province, Bashar al-Jarjari, and his counterpart in Salahuddin province, Ala’ al-Mashhadani, as well as ISIS leaders in Fallujah and Ramadi provinces in the south and religious leader Mustafa al-Zaidi were among those killed in air raids and ground fighting.

Other signs of progress include a decline in the number of foreign ISIS fighters who had been sneaking into Syria from Turkey, from an average of 50 fighters a day to an estimated five per day. ISIS’s recruiting campaign has also been damaged by the removal of more than 180,000 ISIS Twitter accounts and YouTube videos from the Internet. ISIS has also suffered from self-imposed communication problems due to a ban it issued on using smartphone applications because it feared U.S. surveillance.

A Turning Point
With defeats on all these fronts and sagging recruitment, ISIS is showing signs of desperation. This week the jihadists targeted a Sunni tribe that had fought ISIS for months to protect the town of Hit in al-Anbar province, which fell to ISIS last month. In a barbaric attack, ISIS fighters executed more than 300 members of the Albu Nimir tribe, including 50 women and children whose bodies were dumped in a well.

Related: How ISIS Wages a Brutal and Hideous War on Women

The latest massacre was the largest against the Iraqi Sunnis since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. As a result of the violence, many tribes in Anbar joined forces against ISIS. On a single day, 3,000 tribal fighters joined, al-Hashimi confirmed.

With losses mounting, ISIS has begun shifting its leadership. ISIS leader Baghdadi fired the ISIS governor of Salahuddin and replaced the military commander of the province. Baghdadi also made changes to his group’s leadership in Syria.

Iraq’s New Security Approach
The latest Iraqi victories are also the first indication of the success of the new Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s security approach. Last month, Abadi appointed Ministers of Defense and Interior after those posts were vacant for four years. He also dissolved the office of Commander in Chief that his predecessor had used to run the security forces, and he fired several senior military commanders. Iraqi forces have made tactical changes as well, such as using some of ISIS’s guerilla warfare tactics to take advantage of ISIS’s inability to maneuver in long convoys as a result of U.S. air raids.

Related: 9 ISIS Weapons That Will Shock You

The recent victories against ISIS include:

• On the Baghdad front, the Iraqi special forces and the Shiite militias led by the newly appointed Minister of Interior have taken the strategic town of Jurf al-Sakhar, 40 miles to the southwest of Baghdad. This area is a massive space connecting al-Anbar province in the west with the Iraqi south.
• In the province of Diyala to the northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi forces cleared much of the mountains of Himrin, a major stronghold for ISIS and a hideaway that also serves as a crossing point between the provinces of Diyala, Salahuddin and Kirkuk.
• In the province of Salahuddin to the north of Baghdad, Iraqi forces and affiliated militias regained control of most of the town of Baiji, where Iraq’s largest oil refinery is located. The refinery had been kept out of ISIS’s control, but a new offensive under a new government commander of the military operations in Salahuddin, has helped retake much of Baiji, according to a McClatchy report.
• In Nineveh province in the north, where the city of Mosul is located, the Kurdish Peshmergacontrolled the town of Zummar to the northwest of Mosul after taking the border town of Rabia few weeks ago, closing the Iraqi/Syrian border there on ISIS.
• ISIS’s elite “shield of Islam” unit has lost much of its force, according to al-Hashimi, who said the group’s military council has been “significantly damaged, too.”

Related: How Yemen Is Making ISIS and al-Qaeda Even More Dangerous

In addition, Iraqi Kurdish fighters have helped the cause in Syria. Kurdish defenders of the city of Kobani have battled ISIS fighters for weeks, with new reinforcements in the form of hundreds of armed fighters from both Syria and Iraq as well as U.S. air drops of military supplies.

A Long War Ahead
Despite the crucial gains made by the Iraqi military and U.S.-led air raids, the war with ISIS is still in its early phase. ISIS still has about 40,000 active fighters, with 18,000 of them in Iraq. Sleeper cells, with around 60,000 members are waiting for a chance to act in Iraq and Syria, al-Hashimi added. With all of these assets, ISIS is engaging in seven battlefronts in Iraq and 10 in Syria.

Despite the progress in Iraq, government forces there have not been able to clear ISIS from the big cities. For example, ISIS booby-trapped so many buildings in the city of Tikrit that it made it very difficult for any force to deploy. Both Mosul and Fallujah will also be difficult to clear.

American advisors have suggested that Iraq form a national guard to clear the Sunni cities. Yet draft legislation to introduce a national guard has been derailed by sectarian interpretations and heavy criticism by Iraqi Kurds and Shiites. The Kurds have said that they will never accept a non-Kurdish force in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Shiites have protested that the draft would give the Sunni insurgents and tribal fighters a way to form their own army.

The situation in Syria remains even more challenging. Except for the city of Kobani, ISIS is still making gains, taking control of two gas fields near the city of Homs in a week. Also, the Nusra front, al-Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, has defeated the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army in Edlib and captured much of its U.S.-supplied weapons. The Free Syrian Army still needs more fighters and more training, equipment, morale, and time to be able to counter ISIS and the al-Nusra front.

By Mubasher Bukhari

LAHORE Pakistan (Reuters) - Police in Pakistan arrested dozens of people on Wednesday after a mob beat a Christian couple to death and burned their bodies for allegedly desecrating a Koran.

Blasphemy is a serious offense in conservative Muslim Pakistan where those accused are sometimes lynched on the spot.

The latest incident took place in a village in Punjab province on Tuesday when a local cleric told his community through the loudspeakers of his mosque to punish the couple for burning a few pages of the Koran, a police source said.

A mob then gathered outside the house of Shehzad Masih, 32, and his wife Shama, in her 20s, dragged them out and beat them to death, police said.

Their bodies were then set on fire in a brick kiln where they worked.

"We have arrested 44 people, it was a local issue incited by the mullah of a local mosque," Jawad Qamar, a regional police chief, told Reuters.

"No particular sectarian group or religious outfit was behind the attack."

Blasphemy charges, even when they go to court, are punishable by death in Muslim-majority Pakistan. They are hard to fight because the law does not define clearly what is blasphemous. Presenting the evidence can sometimes itself be considered a fresh infringement.

Christians make up about four percent of Pakistan's population and tend to keep a low profile in a country where Sunni Muslim militants frequently bomb targets they see as heretical, including Christians, and Sufi and Shi'ite Muslims.

Punjab police spokeswoman Nabila Ghazanfar said the couple, like many other poor Christians in the area, worked in a brick kiln owned by a local man who has also been arrested.

"Three days ago, a co-worker alleged that they had burnt pages of the holy Koran. On Tuesday morning, a mob gathered outside their house, dragged them out, beat and burnt them in the same kiln where they worked," she said.

All of Pakistan's minorities feel that the state fails to protect them, and even tolerates violence against them.

A local journalist, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said police were too slow to act to protect the couple.

"Police did not take it seriously. Later they sent five officers to the spot," the journalist said. "The couple was thrashed and burnt in their presence."

Last month a British man with a history of mental health illness, sentenced to death for blasphemy earlier this year, was shot by a prison guard in his cell.

Also in October, a Pakistani court upheld the death penalty against a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, who is also accused of blasphemy, in a case that drew global headlines after two prominent politicians who tried to help her were assassinated.

(Writing by Maria Golovnina; additional reporting by Syed Raza Hassan)

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