US Politics

Joe Biden’s foreign policy in-tray is only looking more difficult as he approaches inauguration day – even as the US still confronts the pressing issue of record coronavirus deaths and infections.The massive and ongoing hack of US federal agencies – blamed on Russia – has so far elicited no response from Donald Trump, who has a long history of denying or downplaying Russian interventions.Iran, say reports, has restarted work on its nuclear site at Fordo.Then there is the knotty issue of what direction relations with China will follow after four years of mounting friction with Trump’s Washington.On top of all that add North Korea, which – despite Trump’s flip-flopping between threats and craven courting – now has both longrange missile capabilities on top of being a nuclear power, a huge failure in terms of US longterm policy.Some hangovers of the Trump era will be easier to fix – not least rapidly rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord. But the thorniest issues are likely to be circumscribed by the overwhelming pressure of domestic considerations – especially if Republicans retain control of the Senate and continue in a spirit of obstructionism.Most pressing right now, however, is how to respond to Russia if its agencies are confirmed as being behind the latest hack.In the aftermath of the SolarWinds hack, Biden has signaled that he is considering a far more proactive response to state-sponsored hacking.“We need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyber attacks in the first place,” Biden said in a statement.“Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation.”What is less clear is what that means in practical terms. One first step would be for the incoming administration to explicitly point the finger of blame.“I would imagine that the incoming administration wants a menu of what the options are and then is going to choose,” said Sarah Mendelson, a Carnegie Mellon University public policy professor and former US ambassador to the UN’s Economic and Social Council.“Is there a graduated assault? Is there an all-out assault? How much out of the gate do you want to do?”In some respects, the hack – if formally laid at the feet of the Kremlin – may offer an opportunity for Biden not only to draw a clear line with Trump’s dealings with Putin but also to carve out a more muscular response than Barack Obama managed after Russian interference in the 2016 election.Iran is more complex.While Tehran has indicated that it was keen quickly to reopen talks with the US about the nuclear deal, it has also used Washington’s withdrawal from nuclear deal to build up its bargaining chips again in terms of stockpiles of nuclear material and allegedly undertaking new work.Biden will also be confronted by the same lobbying from Israel and Republicans in Congress who set themselves against the original Iran nuclear agreement – and who will remain determined to undermine any new version of the deal.All of which poses the question of how Biden will run his foreign policy confronted with so many challenges.Biden’s instincts for a well-managed technocratic foreign policy are heavily oriented toward longstanding democratic institutions and alliances. But as Thomas Wright, a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a paper in November, the current moment may call for a more aggressive approach not least on China.Biden has indicated that he sometimes chafed against Obama’s more cautious approach.Perhaps the biggest question relates to this.The isolationism and withdrawal from the world of the Trump years built on trends already apparent under his predecessor – not least Obama’s reluctance to get further entangled in the Middle East in Syria. In that respect, the domestic foreign policy consensus that Biden grew up with may no longer actually exist.“[Biden] obviously trusts many of Obama’s senior officials and is proud of the administration’s record. At the same time, he chafed against Obama’s caution and incrementalism – for example, Biden wanted to send lethal assistance to Ukraine, when Obama did not,” wrote Wright.“Biden has spoken more explicitly than Obama about competition with China and Russia, and he favours a foreign policy that works for the [US] middle class.”Again, Wright sees an opportunity in the policy on China if Biden chooses a tougher approach than Obama, who he served under.“Biden should use competition with China as a bridge to Senate Republicans. Their instinct may be obstructionist, particularly because Trump is pressuring them not to recognize Biden’s win as legitimate, but many of them also know that the US cannot afford four years of legislative gridlock if it is to compete with China.” More

The battle is lost. The supreme court and electoral college have spoken. Even the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, so adept at remaking the rules for political advantage, has acknowledged that Donald Trump will not be the next president.But the money flowing into Trump’s political coffers suggests that defeat will not drive the soon-to-be-former president into the political shadows.Trump has been on a fundraising drive since the election, rapidly bringing in an astonishing $200m or more on the back of his false claims that the vote was rigged.His campaign bombarded supporters with emails and text messages – as many as 30 a day – pleading for donations to a fighting fund to challenge the result. But with the election settled, that is not where the money is going.Most of the cash is directed to Save America, an organisation formed as a leadership political action committee (Pac) shortly after the election. Leadership Pacs were designed to allow individuals to raise money in support of a favoured candidate and Trump cannot legally use the proceeds to directly fund a run for office himself, such as another bid for the presidency in four years.But Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance specialist at the Campaign Legal Center, said Trump’s fundraising was unprecedented and evidence of undimmed political ambition.“I can think of no other president who has set up a leadership PAC immediately after losing an election and begun fundraising for it furiously. This is entirely, entirely unique,” he said.“I think it’s basically going to be the vehicle for Trump’s post-White House political operation.”Trump raised the money in a blitz of appeals for donations to what was billed as an “official election defense fund” without clear mention of Save America. An aggressive sales pitch was built around the president’s false claims that the election was rigged – even as one legal challenge after another was struck down.“We need YOUR HELP to DEFEND the integrity of our Election,” said one email.Another email carried the subject line: “The Recount Results were BOGUS.”The money flooded in but most of it will go nowhere near fighting the outcome of an election that is already settled. Some was used to pay off Trump’s campaign debt, and 25 cents in every dollar goes directly to the Republican party. The remainder is paid to Save America.“We’d expect that there’s well over $100m in the leadership Pac account by this point,” said Fischer. “That is exceptional. That is a lot of money, far more than any other leadership Pac that I can think of has raised.”Fischer said that is an indication that Trump is not planning to quietly retreat from the political stage to write his memoirs.“The creation of his leadership Pac is certainly an indication that Trump plans to remain very active in politics, and is aiming to remain a major political player,” he said.“Because leadership Pacs are loosely regulated, he could use the funds not only to keep his campaign staff on the payroll, but also to potentially benefit financially. He could use the leadership Pac to pay himself a salary, to pay family members a salary. There’s a lot of things you can do with this.”Jennifer Victor, associate professor of political science at George Mason University, said the smart move would be for Trump to use the money to fund the election of political loyalists to keep Trumpism alive.“Is he savvy enough as a political operator to use that money to essentially build a broad coalition in which he is the center and the doler-out of the money that could strengthen his political position? It’s hard to say because his political movement so far has been so centered around himself,” she said.“He would have to have an interest in building the Republican party around Trumpism, which has kind of been happening quite naturally over the last number of years. But to make that a permanent feature of the Republican party he would have to then use the political capital that has built around his name for the benefit of party, which means giving it to other candidates.”Victor said that created a headache for the Republican party leadership if it hoped to move beyond Trump.“He will be not just a past president and candidate, but a candidate who won the second-highest vote total of any American candidate ever, second only to Joe Biden. So he has this enormous base of followers. At the same time, he’s always defied the democratic norms and the norms of the Republican party,” she said.Then there is Trump’s stated desire to run for president again in four years. “Save America cannot be used to support Trump’s campaign, but there are a number of ways that it could be used to lay the groundwork for a run for office in 2024,” said Fischer.“Probably where it’s going to be more useful is to finance Trump’s campaigning in support of another candidate. It can potentially pay for rallies in support of another candidate. It can be used to pay for ads that are run ostensibly independently of the candidate that he’s supporting.”That could include funding a run for office by one of his own children. Speculation is already swirling around the possibility of Ivanka Trump running for the US Senate in Florida.All of which maintains president’s political profile and influence in the Republican party, particularly as he has proved adept at turning other people’s campaign events into de facto Trump rallies.What Trump cannot use the donations for is to resolve the legal and financial problems he faces when he leaves the White House which may stand in the way of future political ambitions.Manhattan’s district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr, is leading a criminal investigation into Trump’s business dealings. New York’s state attorney general, Letitia James, is heading a civil probe after the president’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, told Congress Trump inflated the value of his assets to secure bank loans and then reduced them to cut tax.The investigations recently expanded to examine consulting fees that may have gone to the president’s daughter Ivanka . She responded to news of the inquiry by calling it politically motivated harassment.Trump loses his protection from criminal prosecution when he leaves office. While he claims to have the power to pardon himself before he departs the White House, any such move would only apply to federal crimes, not charges brought by New York or any other state.The president is also facing huge debt repayments. Trump has personally guaranteed about $420m in debt owed by his businesses which has to be repaid in the coming years, according to the New York Times.The bulk of those debts are with Deutsche Bank. Last month Reuters reported that the bank was trying to sever ties with the president.The Trump Organization, the president’s umbrella group that is currently overseen by his two sons, owes about $340m to Deutsche Bank. The loans, which are against Trump properties, start coming due in two years. More

A long time ago, in 1883, a future president (Woodrow Wilson, a subject of this year’s reckonings) studied political science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in a classroom in which was inscribed the slogan “History is Past Politics, Politics is Present History”, attributed to Sir John Seeley, a Cambridge professor.That was before the era of the made-for-campaign book.Politics books in this election year fell into three broad categories. The ordinary, ranging from “meeting-and-tells” to campaign biographies that outlived their relevance. The interesting, those which made tentative starts at history or contained some important revelations. And the significant, those few whose value should live past this year because they actually changed the narrative – or are simply good or important reads.Perhaps unsurprisingly, the books also fell in descending categories numerically. Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post read 150 books on Donald Trump and the Trump era for his own book, What Were We Thinking. Virtually all readers, however, will be content with simply a “non-zero” number, to quote a Trump campaign lawyer.First, the ephemera and the expected offerings of any election year. Scandals in and out of government; tales of the extended Trump family; attempts at self-justification; books, some entertaining, by correspondents; how-to guides to politics meant to be read and applied before November.The permutations and penumbras of the 2016 campaign continued to produce new books: Peter Strozk’s Compromised is the story of the origin of the investigation into the Trump campaign from one FBI agent’s perspective, strong stuff and persuasive though omitting facts inconvenient to him. Rick Gates’ Wicked Game contains some new inside scoop, but the real stuff presumably went to the Mueller investigation of which Strzok was briefly a part. Donald Trump Jr’s Liberal Privilege had a double mission: to encourage votes for the father in 2020 and perhaps for the son in 2024. American Crisis, New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s early book on the coronavirus outbreak, highlighted his programmatic vision rather than soaring prose, a choice appropriate for the year but quickly forgotten as the pandemic rages on.Second come those books that made one sit up a bit to pay attention: a new insight, important facts revealed; “worth a detour”, in the language of the Michelin guides. Psychologist and presidential niece Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough explained the pain of the Trump family over two generations and how that pain has influenced our national life for ill. David Frum was among the first to predict Trump’s authoritarian dangers. This year, Trumpocalpyse, well-written and insightful as always, focused on the attacks on the rule of law and “white ethnic chauvinism” as hallmarks of Trumpism, whether its supporters are poor or elite. Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, Pulitzer-winning Post reporters, chronicled Trump more deeply and successfully than most in A Very Stable Genius. Trump’s anger at the book showed they hit their target.Stuart Stevens’ It Was All a Lie takes Republican history back a few decades in a punchy mea culpa whose themes will be important in the debate over the future of the GOP. Among the Democrats, a rare good work by a politician, Stacey Abrams’ Our Time Is Now, as well as her triumph in political organizing in Georgia, marks her as an important force.For quality in financial journalism and the importance of its topic, not least to current and future investigations of Trump and the Trump Organization, Dark Towers by David Enrich on Deutsche Bank offers as full an analysis of the bank and its relation to Trump as is likely to be public absent a further court case in New York.Andrew Weissmann, a senior prosecutor with the Mueller investigation, wrote Where Law Ends, a strongly-written account in which he regrets his boss not having pursued further, notably in not issuing a subpoena to Trump and then in not making a formal determination as to whether the president would be charged with obstruction of justice. Weissmann’s frustration is understandable, but readers may judge for themselves how fair or not he is to the pressures and formal restrictions on Mueller himself.There is a subcategory here, of books on foreign and security policy. HR McMaster’s Battlegrounds attempts to explain his working theories (“strategic empathy”) modified for current realities and arguing against American retrenchment and isolation. In The Room Where It Happened, former national security adviser John Bolton told of Trump begging for China’s assistance and wrote that Trump was not “fit for office” – the tale would have been better told to the House impeachment committee. David Rohde’s In Deep demolished the theory of the “deep state”. Barry Gewen delivered a new biography of Henry Kissinger’s life and work. Traitor, by David Rothkopf, sought to chronicle the Trump administration while seeking to reverse its effects and giving a history of American traitors.Finally, the significant – those few books that contributed importantly to the year’s narrative, or that deserve a reading next year.There was another Bob Woodward book, Rage – with tapes. The big news was that Trump was aware of the dangers of Covid-19 yet chose not to publicize them and that Dan Coats, then director of national intelligence, thought Putin had something on Trump. Woodward got the stories others chased. Michael Schmidt’s Donald Trump v the United States is another serious book, with a strong argument of how deeply the attacks on the rule of law by the Trump administration, notably by Trump himself, threaten democracy. Schmidt’s recounting of efforts to prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey are sobering, and his revelations on how the Mueller investigation was narrowed to focus on criminality rather than Russian influence in 2016 form a useful corrective to Weissmann.Politics meets history in a few volumes, notably Thomas Frank’s plea against populism, The People, No, contrasting Trump unfavorably with FDR. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser teamed for a masterpiece biography of former secretary of state James Baker, The Man Who Ran Washington, that reminds us what (and whom) the Republican party used to call leadership. It’s a serious book that recalls Baker, Gerald Ford’s campaign manager in 1976, did not challenge the election result because Ford lost the popular vote. It also shows the truth in Seeley’s aphorism about the relation of politics and history, with many insights into one of the best recent practitioners of politics, fondly remembered for his statesmanship at the end of the cold war.Molly Ball’s well-researched and enjoyable biography of Nancy Pelosi makes sense of the most powerful woman in American history. Thomas Rid’s Active Measures, on disinformation and political warfare – Clausewitz for the cyber era – finds fresh urgency in light of recent revelations about major cyberattacks on the US government.Two books merit a final mention. As the Trump administration comes to a close, Ruth Ben-Ghiat analysed Trump’s actions and personality from the comparative perspective of fascist leaders since Mussolini and chillingly noted not only the actions that pointed to authoritarianism, but how deep the danger of going down that path.Strongmen is a vital book and a warning. Ben-Ghiat sees in Trump a “drive to control and exploit everyone and everything for personal gain. The men, women and children he governs have value in his eyes only insofar as they fight his enemies and adulate him publicly. Propaganda lets him monopolize the nation’s attention, and virility comes into play as he poses as the ideal take-charge man.” Dehumanizing rhetoric and actions against immigrants (and even members of Congress) and appointments of people whose motivation was loyalty rather than law has real cost to a political system whose fragility at points is evident. It takes both individual action and courageous will to preserve democracy.On a happier note, Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith in After Trump offer a legal, sometimes quite technical roadmap to reform of many norms of government that have been eroded. Some are obvious, others will prove controversial, but let this urgent discussion begin with Congress and the Biden administration.Of which, this year also saw the publication of A Promised Land, the first volume of memoirs from Barack Obama, whom the new president served as vice-president. Well-written despite being policy heavy, at times deeply moving, at others not as detailed as many readers might wish (despite its length), Obama is reflective both about the nature of power and about himself. More, his book serves once again to remind the world of the contrast between him and his successor. He is rightly proud to have written it – and to have written it by hand, to encourage his own deep thoughts about his presidency and the country he was honored, and sometimes troubled, to lead.To learn more about the president to come, Evan Osnos’ Joe Biden: American Dreamer is an excellent place to start: his political skills, life tragedies and conviviality are here in equal measure. Osnos ends with a Biden speech about dispelling America’s “season of darkness” – a fervent hope for the new year ahead. More

Nearly a week after the US government announced that multiple federal agencies had been targeted by a sweeping cyber attack, the full scope and consequences of the suspected Russian hack remain unknown.Key federal agencies, from the Department of Homeland Security to the agency that oversees America’s nuclear weapons arsenal, were reportedly targeted, as were powerful tech and security companies, including Microsoft. Investigators are still trying to determine what information the hackers may have stolen, and what they could do with it.Donald Trump has still said nothing about the attack, which federal officials said posed a “grave risk” to every level of government. Joe Biden has promised a tougher response to cyber attacks but offered no specifics. Members of Congress are demanding more information about what happened, even as officials scrambling for answers call the attack “significant and ongoing”.Here’s a look at what we know, and what we still don’t, about the worst-ever cyber attack on US federal agencies.What happened?The hack began as early as March, when malicious code was snuck into updates to a popular software called Orion, made by the company SolarWinds, which provides network-monitoring and other technical services to hundreds of thousands of organizations around the world, including most Fortune 500 companies and government agencies in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.That malware in the updates gave elite hackers remote access to an organization’s networks so they could steal information. The apparent months-long timeline gave the hackers ample opportunity to extract information from many targets, including monitoring email and other internal communications.Microsoft called it “an attack that is remarkable for its scope, sophistication and impact”.Who has been affected so far?At least six US government departments, including the energy, commerce, treasury and state departments, are reported to have been breached. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s networks were also breached, Politico reported on Thursday.Dozens of security and other technology firms, as well as non-governmental organizations, were also affected, Microsoft said in a statement Thursday. While most of those affected by the attack were in the US, Microsoft said it had identified additional victims in Canada, Mexico, Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.“It’s certain that the number and location of victims will keep growing,” Microsoft added.Who is responsible for the attack?While the US government has not yet officially named who is responsible for the attack, US officials have told media outlets they believe Russia is the culprit, specifically SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence outfit.We must act as if the Russian government has control of all the networks it has penetratedAndrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia’s spy agencies and the author of The Red Web, told the Guardian he believes the hack was more likely a joint effort of Russia’s SVR and FSB, the domestic spy agency Putin once headed.Russia has denied involvement: “One shouldn’t unfoundedly blame the Russians for everything,” a Kremlin spokesman said on Monday.The infiltration tactic involved in the current hack, known as the “supply-chain” method, recalled the technique Russian military hackers used in 2016 to infect companies that do business in Ukraine with the hard-drive-wiping NotPetya virus – the most damaging cyber-attack to date.What information has been stolen, and how is it being used?That’s remains deeply unclear.“This hack was so big in scope that even our cybersecurity experts don’t have a real sense yet in the terms of the breadth of the intrusion itself,” Stephen Lynch, the head of the House of Representatives’ oversight and reform committee, said after attending a classified briefing Friday.Thomas Rid, a Johns Hopkins cyberconflict expert, told the Associated Press that it was likely that the hackers had harvested such a vast quantity of data that “they themselves most likely don’t know yet” what useful information they’ve stolen.What can be done to fix the networks that have been compromised?That’s also unclear, and potentially very difficult.“Removing this threat actor from compromised environments will be highly complex and challenging for organizations,” said a statement from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) on Thursday.One of Trump’s former homeland security advisers, Thomas Bossert, has already said publicly that a real fix may take years, and be both costly and challenging.“It will take years to know for certain which networks the Russians control and which ones they just occupy,” Bossert wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Wednesday. “The logical conclusion is that we must act as if the Russian government has control of all the networks it has penetrated.”“A ‘do-over’ is mandatory and entire new networks need to be built – and isolated from compromised networks,” he wrote.How has Trump responded?As of Friday afternoon, the US president had still said nothing to address the attack.The Republican senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney has criticized Trump’s silence as unacceptable, particularly in response to an attack he said was “like Russian bombers have been repeatedly flying undetected over our entire country”.“Not to have the White House aggressively speaking out and protesting and taking punitive action is really, really quite extraordinary,” Romney said.How has Biden responded?So far, there’s been tough talk but no clear plan from the president-elect.“We need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyberattacks in the first place,” Biden said. “We will do that by, among other things, imposing substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks, including in coordination with our allies and partners.”“There’s a lot we don’t yet know, but what we do know is a matter of great concern,” Biden said.Could this attack have been prevented or deterred?“What we could have done is had a coherent approach and not been at odds with each other,” said Fiona Hill, a Russia expert and former Trump National Security Council member, to PBS NewsHour this week, criticizing conflict and dysfunction within the Trump administration and between the US and its allies on Russia-related issues.If “we don’t have the president on one page and everybody else on another, and we’re working together with our allies to push back on this, that would have a serious deterrent effect”, Hill said.Other cybersecurity experts said the federal government could also do more to simply keep up to date on cybersecurity issues, and said the Trump administration had failed on this front, including by eliminating the positions of White House cybersecurity coordinator and state department cybersecurity policy chief.“It’s been a frustrating time, the last four years. I mean, nothing has happened seriously at all in cybersecurity,” said Brandon Valeriano, a Marine Corps University scholar and adviser to a US cyber defense commission, to the Associated Press.What options does the US have to respond politically to this kind of attack?Some experts are arguing that the US government needs to do more to punish Russia for its apparent interference. The federal government could impose formal sanctions on Russia, as when the Obama administration expelled Russian diplomats in retaliation for Kremlin military hackers’ meddling in Donald Trump’s favor in the 2016 election. Or the US could fight back more covertly by, for instance, making public details of Putin’s own financial dealings.But, as the Guardian’s Luke Harding pointed out, cyber attacks are “cheap, deniable, and psychologically effective”, and Biden’s options for responding to Russia’s aggression are limited.“The answer eluded Barack Obama, who tried unsuccessfully to reset relations with Putin. The person who led this doomed mission was the then secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, herself a Russian hacking victim in 2016,” Harding wrote.What are other potential consequences of the hack?SolarWinds may face legal action from private customers and government entities affected by the breach. The company filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday detailing the hack.In it, the company said total revenue from affected products was about $343m, or roughly 45% of the firm’s total revenue. SolarWinds’ stock price has fallen 25% since news of the breach first broke.Moody’s Investors Service said Wednesday it was looking to downgrade its rating for the company, citing the “potential for reputational damage, material loss of customers, a slowdown in business performance and high remediation and legal costs”.The Associated Press contributed reporting. More

Mike Pence received the Covid-19 vaccination on live television on Friday morning, saying it was a “medical miracle” and reassuring Americans facing a surging rise of cases around the country “that hope is on the way”.The televised event came amid concerns that the rollout of the vaccine in the US could be hampered by doubts from people over its quick authorization, the anti-vaxxer movement, and skepticism from some in the Black community because of historic distrust of institutions.“Confidence in the vaccine is what brings us here this morning,” the vice-president said. “I didn’t feel a thing. Well done.”His wife, Karen Pence, and the US surgeon general, Jerome Adams, also received shots during the televised White House event. It was also attended by Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Protection, and Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who praised Pence and said it was “now up to all of us to step forward and get vaccinated”.In recent days, Fauci has been advocating that Pence, as well as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, get the vaccination as soon as possible “for security reasons”. Biden officials have said the president-elect will receive the vaccine in public in Delaware on Monday to send a “clear message it is safe”.A few hours after Pence was vaccinated, House speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted photos of her vaccination.Today, with confidence in science & at the direction of the Office of the Attending Physician, I received the COVID-19 vaccine. As the vaccine is being distributed, we must all continue mask wearing, social distancing & other science-based steps to save lives & crush the virus. pic.twitter.com/tijVCSnJd7— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) December 18, 2020
Pence is the first member of the White House to be publicly vaccinated. Trump was infected with Covid-19 in October and multiple outbreaks of the virus have occurred among staffers.After initial reports that White House officials would be receiving the first doses of the vaccine, Trump tweeted last week that he halted the Oval Office’s rollout. “I am not scheduled to take the vaccine, but look forward to doing so at the appropriate time,” he said.On Friday, Pence alluded to the imminent approval of a second vaccine developed by drug company Moderna, saying “we have one and perhaps, within hours, two vaccines.”A panel of outside advisers with the Food and Drug Administration, which is in charge of approving vaccinations, held a meeting yesterday to discuss Moderna’s vaccine. Following the meeting, the FDA could make an approval as early as Friday afternoon that would allow the vaccine’s distribution for emergency use.The US federal government has said it has six million doses of the Moderna vaccine ready for distribution upon its approval. Nearly three million doses of a vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech were distributed throughout the country this week after it was approved late last Friday.While the White House has tried to soften the appearance of the virus’ spread in the country, Pence acknowledged that “with cases rising across the country, hospitalizations rising across the country, we have a ways to go”. On Thursday, the US had 233,271 new cases of the virus and 3,270 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.Nearly 310,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 infection.States around the country have seen increases in infections after the Thanksgiving holiday at the end of November. Public health experts have pleaded with American to stay home as Christmas and New Year approaches, and millions of Americans are expected to travel to see family. The American Automobile Association estimates that 85 million people will be traveling, most by car, between 23 December and 3 January.An influential data model from Seattle-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) predicted on Friday that the US will see an additional 262,000 deaths by 1 April, reaching a total of 562,000 deaths by that point. IHME had previously predicted a total of 502,000 Americans would have died from Covid-19 by that time. The institute cited rising infection and hospitalizations numbers for the uptick in its prediction. The vaccine’s rollout will save 34,000 lives, according to the institute, though it noted that mandates on masks and indoor gatherings could further curb the spread.“The most important measures to keep the death toll down in the next months will be expanding mask use and re-imposition of some mandates in states with severe stress on hospital systems”, the institute said in a statement. More

On 4 January, a British judge is set to rule on whether Julian Assange should be extradited to the United States, where he could face a 175-year sentence in a high-security “supermax” prison. He should not. The charges against him in the US undermine the foundations of democracy and press freedom in both countries.The secret military and diplomatic files provided by Chelsea Manning, and made public by WikiLeaks working with the Guardian and other media organisations, revealed horrifying abuses by the US and other governments. Giving evidence in Mr Assange’s defence, Daniel Ellsberg, the lauded whistleblower whose leak of the Pentagon Papers shed grim light on the US government’s actions in the Vietnam war, observed: “The American public needed urgently to know what was being done routinely in their name, and there was no other way for them to learn it than by unauthorized disclosure.”No one has been brought to book for the crimes exposed by WikiLeaks. Instead, the Trump administration has launched a full-scale assault on the international criminal court for daring to investigate these and other offences, and is pursuing the man who brought them to light. It has taken the unprecedented step of prosecuting him under the Espionage Act for publishing confidential information. (Mike Pompeo, secretary of state and former CIA director, has previously described Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence agency”). In doing so, it chose to attack one of the very bases of journalism: its ability to share vital information that the government would rather suppress.No public interest defence is permissible under the act. No publisher covering national security in any serious way could consider itself safe were this extradition attempt to succeed – wherever it was based; the acts of which Mr Assange is accused (which also include one count of conspiring to hack into a Pentagon computer network) took place when he was outside the US. The decision to belatedly broaden the indictment looks more like an attempt to dilute criticisms from the media than to address the concerns. The real motivation for this case is clear. His lawyers argue not only that the prosecution misrepresents the facts, but that he is being pursued for a political offence, for which extradition is expressly barred in the US-UK treaty.Previous cases relating to Mr Assange should not be used to confuse the issue. Sweden has dropped the investigation into an accusation of rape, which he denied. He has served his 50-week sentence for skipping bail in relation to those allegations, imposed after British police dragged him from the Ecuadorian embassy. Yet while the extradition process continues, he remains in Belmarsh prison, where a Covid-19 outbreak has led to his solitary confinement. Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture, has argued that his treatment is “neither necessary nor proportionate and clearly lacks any legal basis”. He previously warned that Mr Assange is showing all the symptoms associated with prolonged exposure to psychological torture and should not be extradited to the US. His lawyers say he would be at high risk of suicide.Such considerations have played a part in halting previous extraditions, such as that of Lauri Love, who denied US allegations that he had hacked into government websites. But whatever the outcome in January, the losing side is likely to appeal; legal proceedings will probably drag on for years.A political solution is required. Stella Moris, Mr Assange’s partner and mother of his two young children, is among those who have urged Donald Trump to pardon him. But Joe Biden may be more willing to listen. The incoming president could let Mr Assange walk free. He should do so. More

Dr Jill Biden has said her doctorate, the subject of a controversial opinion column in the Wall Street Journal, is one the achievements of which she is most proud. “That was such a surprise,” she told CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert on Thursday, seated next to her husband, Joe Biden. “It was really the tone of it … He called me ‘kiddo’. One of the things that I’m most proud of is my doctorate. I mean, I worked so hard for it.”Writing for the Journal, Joseph Epstein, a former adjunct professor at Northwestern University, suggested her doctorate in education from the University of Delaware did not entitle her to use the honorific “Dr”, as she was not medically qualified. Her use of “Dr” therefore “feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic”, he wrote.The column met with widespread outrage and accusations of sexism, as well as delight in the apparent hypocrisy of many attendant rightwing attacks. The Journal’s editorial page editor defended the column, calling its critics “overwrought”.Dr Biden’s thesis was on maximising student retention in community colleges. She also has two Masters degrees. She has said she will continue to work in education while she is first lady.“I taught all eight years while I was second lady, right,” she told Colbert, referring to the eight years in which her husband was vice-president to Barack Obama.“I’m really looking forward to being first lady and doing the things that I did as second lady. Carrying on with military families and education and free community college, cancer [research] that, you know, Joe and I have both worked on. And then I’m going to teach as well.”She also said her husband had attended when she defended her doctoral thesis – “I got to hand her her doctorate on the stage, University of Delaware,” he said – and expressed thanks to those who defended her against Epstein’s attack.“Look at all the people who came out in support of me,” she said. “I mean, I am so grateful and I was, you know, I was just overwhelmed by how gracious people were.”Colbert asked the president-elect if the column had made him want to stand up for his wife, “to like get out the pool chain and go full Corn Pop on these people”.That was a reference to remarks for which he was criticised in the Democratic primary, when he reminisced about facing down a bully at a pool in the Delaware of his youth.The president-elect seemed tempted, but Dr Biden said: “The answer is no.”He said: “I’ve been suppressing my Irishness for a long time.”He was also asked if he will be willing to work with Republicans who have attacked him and particularly his son, Hunter Biden.“If it benefits the country, yes, I really mean it,” he said. “It doesn’t mean I wasn’t angry. This doesn’t mean if I were back in the days in high school, I wouldn’t say, ‘Come here, you know, and go a round.”Perhaps sensing a relapse – Biden began his presidential run saying he wanted to fight Donald Trump – Dr Biden interjected again.“But you have to take the high road,” she said. More