Good morning. To many observers in the Republican party, Donald Trump was the single biggest drag on their hugely disappointing performance in last week’s US midterm elections. Trump has listened, weighed the available evidence, undertaken a searching examination of his own role in the debacle, and – you are not going to believe this – concluded that he disagrees. Instead, he told an enthusiastic audience at Mar-a-Lago overnight, “in order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”

Persuaded of his own magnificence though Trump is, there are many good reasons to think that his return is extremely bad news for the Republican party. And yet. With the help of the Guardian US reporting team, today’s newsletter will run you through what the former president said, how it was received and what the arguments are for and against – gulp – Trump 2024. That’s after the headlines.

Five big stories

1. Russia | Joe Biden has said that a missile that landed in Poland killing two people on Tuesday was “unlikely” to have been fired from Russia due to its trajectory. Amid alarm over at the implications of any attack on Nato territory, Moscow has denied responsibility, while Poland would only say that the missiles appeared to be “Russian-made”.

2. Cop27 | Fear of countries backsliding on their commitments to tackle the climate crisis dominated the Cop27 UN climate talks in Egypt on Tuesday, as the first tentative drafts started to emerge of key potential decisions. Documents and proposals seen by the Guardian showed some countries attempting to unpick agreements and water down commitments.

3. Housing | The death of Awaab Ishak, an “engaging, lively, endearing” two-year-old, was a result of chronic mould in his family’s social housing flat in Rochdale, an inquest said. The coroner said Awaab’s tragic death should be a “defining moment” for the housing sector.

4. G20 | Rishi Sunak will extend Britain’s hand to China for the first time in almost five years, asking for closer relations on energy and the economy in a meeting with president Xi Jinping on Tuesday. The move risks a backlash from Conservative MPs who have had sanctions imposed upon them by Beijing.

5. Egypt | Alaa Abd el-Fattah, the British-Egyptian democracy activist in jail in Egypt, has said in a letter to his family that he has ended his six-month hunger strike.

In depth: ‘It feels very strange to be back here again’

Trump’s advisers had hoped his speech might be limited to 45 minutes: in the event, he continued for more than an hour. David Smith sent a voice note from the Mar-a-Lago ballroom shortly after he finished. Trump’s confirmation of his intention to run “prompted an eruption of cheers and whistles from several hundred guests under the crystal chandeliers,” he said, but “apart from that I think the general consensus here is that it was a pretty low energy speech … unusually for anyone who’s been to one of his rallies, it was at times quite boring.”

There were some characteristically wild moments, like his vow that drug dealers will “receive the death penalty for their heinous acts”. But overall, David said, “I did not see much at Mar-a-Lago tonight that is going to rattle Joe Biden or potential Republican rivals in the primary.” You can read David’s sketch, in which he compares Trump to “an ageing champ returning to centre court only to find he’s holding a wooden racket,” here.

It feels “very strange to be back here again”, said Guardian US political correspondent Lauren Gambino. After disappointing midterm results, “there are all these questions about what the future of the party should look like, and he’s just really pulling them back to 2020”.

Here are some arguments for and against Trump’s chances of winning the Republican nomination.

Why Trump’s not the force he was

1 He was a drag on Republicans in the midterms

If ideological or ethical concerns have never been enough to wean the GOP off Trump, cold electoral arithmetic might be. The party has now failed in three elections in a row with him as its figurehead. In a midterm year which by any historic guide should have been a success for the “out” party, Republicans failed to capture the Senate and will only squeak the narrowest of victories in the House of Representatives.

Trump ignored those disappointments, instead celebrating: “Nancy Pelosi has been fired. Isn’t that nice?” But whatever he says, it looks as if his influence was a crucial reason for the failure. In this analysis for the Washington Post, Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, writes that in competitive races, candidates with Trump endorsements fared around seven percentage points worse than those he didn’t support.

2 He’s lost important support in the media and party establishment

Until recently, Trump could count on the near-unanimous backing of the conservative media in the US. Now, as Adam Gabbatt writes in his analysis of rightwing media coverage, there have been signs that Rupert Murdoch’s empire may have turned on the former president, who was branded “Trumpty Dumpty” by the New York Post and called “the Republican party’s biggest loser” by the Wall Street Journal.

On Fox News last night, Adam writes, “it seemed that not everyone was ready to let Trump go”. But there were still nuances to the coverage which would once have been unimaginable.

“Fox News has been tied so closely to Trump for so long that an immediate ditching was always unlikely – but there were some small signs through the evening that perhaps they’re pulling away,” Adam said in a voice note. He pointed to an interview with possible rival Mike Pence, a “quite subdued” appearance from longtime supporter Sean Hannity, and the decision to cut away from Trump’s speech to analysis even as it continued.

“I think in previous years if Trump had a big announcement to make at 9 o’clock, that’s, like, three hours of Fox News coverage sorted – just Trump, Trump, Trump. It wasn’t that.”

It’s not just the media: for one example of how the party establishment feels more able to take on Trump, see this story from Monday on Politico, which notes that the influential Club for Growth – once a reliable Trump cheerleader – has pushed out polling data showing him trailing rival Ron DeSantis in key primary states. Even his daughter Ivanka says she will not be part of the 2024 campaign.

3 He has a viable rival on the far right

DeSantis (below) was one of the Republican party’s few big winners on election night, beating his Democratic rival by almost 20 points in the race to be governor of Florida. DeSantis is a threat to Trump precisely because he hews pretty closely to his extreme ideology without the former president’s baggage or unpredictability – and a YouGov poll shows him with a seven-point lead among Republican voters nationally.

Trump’s nickname for the man he views as the only serious threat to his domination of the Republican party, Ron DeSanctimonious, is pretty funny – but Republican voters may ask themselves if they wouldn’t prefer a more “normal” politician who, at 44, also presents a helpful generational contrast with 79-year-old Joe Biden. For more on the Trump-DeSantis rivalry, see this piece from yesterday by Chris McGreal. And Martin Pengelly has a guide to the other likely candidates.

Why he might be the candidate anyway

1 He wasn’t the Republicans’ only problem in the midterms

While Trump was undoubtedly an issue for Republican candidates, there are sound arguments that the party’s difficulties were not limited to his influence. In the American Conservative, the successful Trump-endorsed Senate candidate in Ohio, JD Vance, argues that blaming the former president ignores the Democrats’ advantage in “small-dollar fundraising” and calls Republican efforts “paltry by comparison”. While the overall fundraising picture is complex, Axios reported that in the 10 most competitive Senate races, Republicans were outraised by $75m among small-dollar donors.

It may be hard to wholly separate fundraising from Trump’s influence as rallying force for Democrats. But Vance argues that the best way to solve the problem is to “build a turnout machine” and that the party has “one major asset … to rally these voters: President Donald Trump”. (Unsurprisingly, Trump agrees: he has blamed the GOP establishment, the electoral system, the candidates themselves and reportedly, for her alleged role in leading him to support doomed Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, his wife, Melania.)

2 He can still win the nomination without being very popular

A presidential election is another question – but in the contest for the Republican nomination, Trump can prevail with the highly motivated minority of Republican voters who still prefer him to any other candidate. Republican pollsters estimate that proportion of GOP primary voters at between one-third and 40%. In 2016, Trump won the Republican primary with about 45% of the vote overall, and many states with less than that. Until DeSantis or anyone else proves they can defeat him with voters, he remains a very serious candidate for the nomination.

3 He’s been underestimated before

It would be foolish to write off the extensive evidence that Trump’s star is on the wane – but past experience suggests that it would be equally unwise to write him off so early. Meanwhile, there is no sign that the Republican party is thinking hard about what a successful political message that repudiates Trumpism would look like.

One plausible theory is that despite his many disadvantages, his supporters are less interested in winning elections than in maintaining their love affair with the politician who tells them they’re right about everything. “It’s tempting to see the strength of the Maga forces ebbing at last, the calendar leaf turning over on the Trump era,” Tom Scocca wrote for the New York Times this week. “But how do you declare defeat for a movement that is built around refusing to accept defeat?”

Extremely online

For a raucous summary of how Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter has gone so far, look no further than this exhaustive thread from @christapeterso. Features Mario giving the finger, and Musk on the future of the company: “We all need to be more hardcore.”

What else we’ve been reading

• Once you’ve read Dan Hancox’s account of “proper binmen” memes, you’ll see the past and the present differently. Beautifully written, subtle and featuring a three-paragraph rendition of the sweep of the “baby boomer nostalgia industrial complex” that could hardly be bettered. Archie

• India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has presented himself as a committed environmentalist who wants his country to embrace renewable energy, all while unveiling plans to increase coal production to 1bn tonnes a year. Hannah Ellis-Petersen dives into India’s energy conundrum. Nimo

• Ageing gamers like me have much to learn from Keith Stuart’s guide to surviving an online ecosystem ruled by trigger-happy teens. As with most things for the over-30s, it comes down to not running, spending a lot of money on equipment and hiding as much as possible. Archie

• David Squires’ cartoon on the death of Qatar World Cup worker Rupchandra Rumba by “natural causes”, building on the reporting of Pete Pattisson, makes the brutal conditions faced by those who made the tournament possible inescapable. And read Pattisson’s piece on what he’s learned in reporting on migrant workers’ plight. Archie

• In this hilarious and honest Q&A, Liam Pape spoke to the comedian Sara Pascoe about the best and worst advice she’s ever received, her relationship with feminism and her new show Success Story. Nimo

Sport

World Cup | Gay Qataris have been promised safety from torture in exchange for helping authorities track down other LGBTQ+ people, a prominent Qatari campaigner told the Guardian. Dr Nasser Mohamed said foreign gay fans would not face prosecution during the tournament but warned that gay Qataris faced a very different reality.

Football | England’s Lionesses could not find a 17th victory of the year but signed off on an unbeaten 2022 with a 1-1 draw against Norway, who equalised late on despite the sending off of Anja Sønstevold.

Cricket | Simon Burnton’s review of the T20 World Cup reflects on the tournament’s thrilling unpredictability – the Netherlands v South Africa for best match? – and asks the hard questions of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

The front pages

Our Guardian print edition leads with “Russian barrage strikes Ukraine amid claims missiles hit Poland”. The front-page picture is Awaab Ishak, not even two, who died from mould in the family flat. Of that, the Daily Express says “Tragic death of boy from mould shames Britain”. The Times has “Russians blamed for fatal strike on Poland” while the Daily Mirror says “Russian bombs hit Poland” under the banner “Tyrant’s war on Ukraine” with a picture of Vladimir Putin. “Putin’s war spills into Poland” – that’s the i, while the Daily Telegraph has “Russian missile strikes Poland”. The Metro says “Putin’s war escalates – ‘Russian missiles’ hit Poland”. In the Financial Times, it’s “Sunak urges bosses to curb their pay and look after staff”. The culture wars are back on in the Daily Mail: “Universities are told to ‘decolonise’ maths and computing”. And the footballer Ronaldo has told the Sun that “I keep our baby Angel’s ashes. I talk to him all the time”.

Today in Focus

Reclaiming Kherson: what Russia’s retreat reveals about the fight for Ukraine

Ukrainians have reacted with jubilation after retaking Kherson city and the region around it. But what did living under Russian occupation do to the area and its people – and is this really the beginning of the end of the war?

Cartoon of the day | Martin Rowson

The Upside

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

Corals that were planted in 2017 at Fitzroy Island on the Great Barrier Reef have spawned for the first time. They were planted as part of a pilot programme testing the benefits of offshore “coral nurseries” – the hopes were that the corals that were grown from fragments that had survived mass bleaching would be resilient to heatwaves in the future. The spawning has been described as a “beautiful milestone” in the journey to recovering Australia’s corals. So far the Reef Restoration Foundation has established 33 coral nurseries to help the health of the reef on a small localised scale.

Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday

Bored at work?

And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.

• Quick crossword

• Cryptic crossword