U.S. to swiftly boost global vaccine sharing, Joe Biden announces
President Joe Biden announced Thursday the U.S. will swiftly donate an initial allotment of 25 million doses of surplus vaccine overseas through the United Nations-backed COVAX program, promising infusions for South and Central America, Asia, Africa, and others at a time of glaring shortages abroad and more than ample supplies at home. The doses mark a substantial — and immediate — boost to the lagging COVAX effort, which to date has shared just 76 million doses with needy countries. The announcement came just hours after World Health Organization officials in Africa made a new plea for vaccine sharing because of an alarming situation on the continent, where shipments have ground to “a near halt” while virus cases have spiked over the past two weeks. Overall, the White House has announced plans to share 80 million doses globally by the end of June, most through COVAX. Officials say a quarter of the nation’s excess will be kept in reserve for emergencies and for the U.S. to share directly with allies and partners. Of the first 19 million donated through COVAX, approximately 6 million doses will go to South and Central America, 7 million to Asia, and 5 million to Africa. “As long as this pandemic is raging anywhere in the world, the American people will still be vulnerable,” Biden said in a statement. “And the United States is committed to bringing the same urgency to international vaccination efforts that we have demonstrated at home.” U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. “will retain the say” on where doses distributed through COVAX ultimately go. But he also said: “We’re not seeking to extract concessions, we’re not extorting, we’re not imposing conditions the way that other countries who are providing doses are doing. … These are doses that are being given, donated free and clear to these countries, for the sole purpose of improving the public health situation and helping end the pandemic.” The remaining 6 million in the initial distribution of 25 million will be directed by the White House to U.S. allies and partners, including Mexico, Canada, South Korea, West Bank and Gaza, India, Ukraine, Kosovo, Haiti, Georgia, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Yemen, as well as for United Nations frontline workers. The White House did not say when the doses would begin shipping overseas, but press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration hoped to send them “as quickly as we can logistically get those out the door.” Vice President Kamala Harris informed some U.S. partners they will begin receiving doses in separate calls with Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador, President Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Prime Minister Keith Rowley of Trinidad and Tobago. Harris is to visit Guatemala and Mexico in the coming week. The long-awaited vaccine sharing plan comes as demand for shots in the U.S. has dropped significantly — more than 63% of adults have received at least one dose — and as global inequities in supply have become more pronounced. Scores of countries have requested doses from the United States, but to date, only Mexico and Canada have received a combined 4.5 million doses. The U.S. also has announced plans to share enough shots with South Korea to vaccinate its 550,000 troops who serve alongside American service members on the peninsula. White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said that 1 million Johnson & Johnson doses were being shipped to South Korea Thursday. The U.S. has committed more than $4 billion to COVAX, but with vaccine supplies short — and wealthy nations locking up most of them — the greater need than funding has been immediate access to actual doses to overcome what health officials have long decried as unequal access to the vaccines. The U.S. action means “frontline workers and at-risk populations will receive potentially life-saving vaccinations” and bring the world “a step closer to ending the acute phase of the pandemic,” said Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, which is leading the COVAX alliance. However, Tom Hart, the acting CEO of The ONE Campaign, said that while Thursday’s announcement was a “welcome step, the Biden administration needs to commit to sharing more doses. “The world is looking to the U.S. for global leadership, and more ambition is needed,” he said. Biden has committed to providing other nations with all 60 million U.S.-produced doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has yet to be authorized for use in America but is widely approved around the world. The AstraZeneca doses have been held up for export by a weeks-long safety review by the Food and Drug Administration, and without them, Biden will be hard-pressed to meet his sharing goal. The White House says the initial 25 million doses announced Thursday will be shipped from existing federal stockpiles of Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. More doses are expected to be made available to share in the months ahead. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said via Twitter that Harris had informed him before the White House announcement of the decision to send 1 million doses of the single jab Johnson & Johnson vaccine. “I expressed to her our appreciation in the name of the people of Mexico,” he wrote. Guatemala’s Giammattei said Harris told him the U.S. government would send his country 500,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine. As part of its purchase agreements with drug manufacturers, the U.S. controlled the initial production by its domestic manufacturers. Pfizer and Moderna are only now starting to export vaccines produced in the U.S. to overseas customers. The U.S. has hundreds of millions more doses on order, both of authorized and in-development vaccines. The White House also announced that U.S. producers of vaccine materials and ingredients will no longer have to prioritize orders from three drugmakers working on COVID-19 shots that haven’t received U.S. approval — Sanofi, Novavax, and AstraZeneca — clearing the way for more materials to be shipped overseas to help production there. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
‘America is back’: Joe Biden pushes past Donald Trump era with nominees
Declaring “America is back,” President-elect Joe Biden introduced his national security team on Tuesday, his first substantive offering of how he’ll shift from Trump-era “America First” policies by relying on experts from the Democratic establishment to be some of his most important advisers. “Together, these public servants will restore America globally, its global leadership and its moral leadership,” Biden said from a theater in his longtime home of Wilmington, Delaware. “It’s a team that reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it.” The nominees are all Washington veterans with ties to former President Barack Obama’s administration, a sign of Biden’s effort to resume some form of normalcy after the tumult of President Donald Trump’s four years in office. There are risks to the approach as Republicans plan attacks and progressives fret that Biden is tapping some officials who were too cautious and incremental the last time they held power. Still, Biden’s nominees were a clear departure from Trump, whose Cabinet has largely consisted of men, almost all of them white. Biden’s picks included several women and people of color, some of whom would break barriers if confirmed to their new positions. They stood behind Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris spaced apart and wearing masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, a contrast with Trump and many of his top aides who have largely eschewed facial coverings. The president-elect’s team includes Antony Blinken, a veteran foreign policy hand well-regarded on Capitol Hill whose ties to Biden go back some 20 years, for secretary of state; lawyer Alejandro Mayorkas to be homeland security secretary; veteran diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; and Obama White House alumnus Jake Sullivan as national security adviser. Avril Haines, a former deputy director of the CIA, was picked to serve as director of national intelligence, the first woman to hold that post, and former Secretary of State John Kerry will make a curtain call as a special envoy on climate change. Kerry and Sullivan’s position will not require Senate confirmation. With the Senate’s balance of power hinging on two runoff races in Georgia that will be decided in January, some Senate Republicans have already expressed antipathy to Biden’s picks as little more than Obama world retreads. Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican and potential 2024 presidential candidate, argued that Biden is surrounding himself with people who will go soft on China. Sen. Marco Rubio, another potential White House hopeful, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that will consider Blinken’s nomination, broadly wrote off the early selections. “Biden’s cabinet picks went to Ivy League schools, have strong resumes, attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline,” Rubio tweeted. Biden said his choices “reflect the idea that we cannot meet these challenges with old thinking and unchanged habits.” He said he tasked them with reasserting global and moral leadership, a clear swipe at Trump, who has resisted many traditional foreign alliances. The president-elect said he was “struck” by how world leaders have repeatedly told him during congratulatory calls that they look forward to the U.S. “reasserting its historic role as a global leader” under his administration. Trump, who has debated recently whether to mount another presidential campaign in 2024, appeared to defend his worldview on Tuesday. “We shouldn’t go away from that — America First,” he said at the annual turkey pardon, a lighthearted pre-Thanksgiving White House tradition. While Trump expected total loyalty from his Cabinet and chafed at pushback from advisers, Biden said he expected advisers to tell me “what I need to know, not what I want to know.” Further drawing a contrast with Trump, Haines said she accepted Biden’s nomination knowing that “you value the perspective of the intelligence community, and that you will do so even when what I have to say maybe inconvenient or difficult.” Haines said she has “never shied away from speaking truth to power” and added, “that will be my charge as director of national intelligence.” Biden celebrated the diversity of his picks, offering a particularly poignant tribute to Thomas-Greenfield. The eldest of eight children who grew up in segregated Louisiana, she was the first to graduate from high school and college in her family. The diplomat, in turn, said that with his selections, Biden is achieving much more than a changing of the guard. “My fellow career diplomats and public servants around the world, I want to say to you, ‘America is back, multilateralism is back, diplomacy is back,’” Thomas-Greenfield said. Mayorkas, who is Cuban American, also offered a nod to his immigrant upbringing. “My father and mother brought me to this country to escape communism,” he said. “They cherished our democracy, and were intensely proud to become United States citizens, as was I.” But Mayorkas might pose the most difficult confirmation challenge from Biden’s early round of nominees. The Senate previously confirmed him in December 2013 by a party-line vote to be the deputy secretary of Homeland Security. The Senate was controlled by Democrats then, and all of the chamber’s Republicans voted against his confirmation mainly because he was then under investigation by the Obama-appointed inspector general in that department. At the time, the Senate historian’s office said it was unprecedented for the Senate to vote on a nominee who was under investigation. The inspector general, John Roth, found in March 2015 that Mayorkas, as director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, appeared to give special treatment to certain people as part of the visa program that gives residency preference to immigrants who agree to invest in the U.S. economy. Meanwhile, there were signs on Tuesday that the stalled formal transition of power is now underway. Biden’s team now is in contact with all federal agencies, according to a transition official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe developments that have not been announced. At the Pentagon, Kash Patel, chief of staff
From Homeland to hair: Hillary Clinton emails peek into the personal
The latest release of Hillary Clinton‘s private emails show her, as secretary of state, dealing with the complicated politics of the Arab Spring, fending off questions about her role in the deadly 2012 Benghazi attacks and attempting to navigate an intensifying conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. But they also give a glimpse into the private side of one of the world’s most public people. Clinton’s notes show her searching for videos on how to do a “fishtail bun” hairstyle and struggling to locate Showtime on her television. (She wanted to watch the CIA-centered drama “Homeland.”) She schedules – and reschedules – flights, meals and hairstyling appointments. And as she flies around the globe – logging 956,733 miles over her tenure – she tries to keep track of the time zone. The roughly 7,800 pages of emails released Monday were part of a court-ordered disclosure of correspondence sent from the private server Clinton used while she was secretary of state. Clinton, now the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has faced questions about whether her unusual email setup was sufficient to ensure the security of government information and retention of records. Included in the most recent batch was an email that Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III and State Department Inspector General Steve Linick deemed classified in July. At least two Senate committees are still investigating Clinton’s email arrangement and seeking the release of correspondence from her top aides. The FBI is also investigating the security of Clinton’s private email setup. Two-thirds of Clinton’s 30,000 work-related emails are now at least partially in the public eye – minus numerous redactions by the State Department. Here’s a closer look at some of the messages that churned through Clinton’s very busy in-box in the batch released Monday: — HEALTH POLITICS Get-well-soon notes poured in from across the globe after a stomach virus that Clinton picked up in 2012 became a serious condition that kept her out of the office – and off the congressional witness stand. After a dehydrated Clinton fainted and sustained a concussion – a condition she frequently called her “cracked head” in messages – she was forced to postpone her testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the deadly Benghazi attacks. Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein emailed her aide, Capricia Marshall, offering to send Clinton copies of any movies she wanted to watch while recuperating. Dorothea Hurley, the wife of rock star Jon Bon Jovi, checked in with Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, to say that they were “sending you all a big hug.” Chelsea forwarded the message to her mother. Her health quickly became a political issue, with Republicans questioning her fitness should she ever run for president. Her staff moved quickly to tamp down the speculation. Top aide Philippe Reines told Clinton he’d reached out to former Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist, a heart transplant surgeon, and the NFL commissioner to enlist their support pushing back on right-wing commentators. “Just not letting these comments stand, no matter who says them,” Reines said. Frist was happy to help, according to the documents. “I love her and respect her and I can help. Not sure how exactly but I know I can help. I will Keep all Confidential,” he wrote. — 2012 ELECTIONS Although Clinton wasn’t on the ticket in 2012, she and her supporters followed the race closely – and had plenty to say. In a January 2012 note, during the heat of the Florida GOP primary, Clinton refers to Mitt Romney as “Mittens” and Newt Gingrich as “Grinch.” “If Mittens can’t beat Grinch in Florida, there will be pressure on state Republican parties to reopen or liberalize ballot access,” she writes to confidant Sid Blumenthal. — BENGHAZI At least a few of the messages have come back to haunt Clinton during her presidential bid. Shortly before 9 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2012, Clinton sent an email asking her daughter to call her at her office about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The email was addressed to an account under the name “Diane Reynolds,” an alias Chelsea Clinton used for personal messages. “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an al-Qaida-like group: The Ambassador, whom I handpicked, and a young communications officer on temporary duty w(ith) a wife and two young children,” Hillary Clinton later wrote to her daughter. “Very hard day and I fear more of the same tomorrow.” In October, that email was trumpeted by Republicans on the House Benghazi committee as evidence that Clinton knew very quickly the attack on the consulate was the work of Islamic terrorists, not a spontaneous street protest triggered by the release of a video considered an insult to the Prophet Mohammed. In a later television interview, then-United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice suggested the video, which did spark anti-American protests that day in several Muslim countries, was the primary motivation for the attack. Republicans have suggested the Obama administration downplayed the terror threat to avoid stoking public safety concerns in the weeks leading up to the 2012 presidential election. Some of the messages show that Clinton worried about how her own remarks after the attacks would later be perceived. In a September 2012 message, aide Jake Sullivan compiled all her statements and assured Clinton that she was “careful” and “never said ‘spontaneous’ or characterized the motives.” “The way you treated the video in the Libya context was to say that some sought to (asterisk)justify(asterisk) the attack on that basis,” he wrote. — KEEPING THE TEAM TOGETHER Clinton maintained her ties with the Democratic Party donors who supported her past campaigns and could help her in the future. In November 2012, Samuel Kaplan, a Minneapolis lawyer and major Democratic donor who was appointed U.S. ambassador to Morocco, secured a private meeting with Clinton to discuss how he and his wife “might hope to be allied” with her in the future. Former Clinton aide Lauren Jiloty wrote to Clinton in 2012 to say she had
