US Politics

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If Dick Cheney gained notoriety as George W Bush’s “Darth Vader”, William Barr, the US attorney general, appeared a worthy successor as Donald Trump’s Lord of the Sith.
Barr played the role of presidential enforcer with apparent relish, whether spinning the Russia investigation in Trump’s favour or defending a harsh crackdown on this summer’s civil unrest.
But even he could not or would not pass the ultimate loyalty test: shredding the US constitution to help his boss steal an election. As Trump’s niece, Mary, puts in the title of her book, it was a case of Too Much and Never Enough.
Trump tweeted on Monday that Barr will resign before Christmas. Barr, for his part, issued a resignation letter that noted election fraud allegations “will continue to be pursued” before going on to lavish praise on Trump’s “historic” record despite resistance that included “frenzied and baseless accusations of collusion with Russia”.
David Axelrod, the former chief strategist for Barack Obama, observed in a Twitter post: “In writing his fawning exit letter, Barr reflected a fundamental understanding of @realDonaldTrump: Like a dog, if you scratch his belly, he is a lot more docile. Just as[k] Kim [Jong-un] !”
But the sycophantic words could not conceal how Barr, like the attorney general Jeff Sessions and the FBI director James Comey before him, had refused to do the 45th president’s bidding once too often. With democracy in existential danger, he was the dog that did not bark.
Barr, who previously served as attorney general under George HW Bush in the early 1990s, had always been a believer in expansive presidential power and being tough on crime. He was therefore “simpatico” – to borrow one of Joe Biden’s favourite words – with Trump from the off.
Weeks after his Senate confirmation, Barr cleared the president of obstruction of justice even though Robert Mueller’s report would identity 10 credible allegations (for which Trump may yet face prosecution after leaving office). Barr’s pre-emptive summary of the special counsel’s report more than accentuated the positive.
Barr did much else to emulate Roy Cohn, the bullying lawyer and Trump mentor. Appearing before Congress, he haughtily defended the aggressive law enforcement response to protests in Portland and other cities. He intervened in the cases of Trump allies such as Michael Flynn and Roger Stone and railed against coronavirus lockdowns. He acted more like the president’s personal attorney than the attorney general. More

More than 300,000 people have now died because of Covid-19 in the United States, with the latest milestone coming amid record daily fatalities and the national rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.The first shot in the US mass vaccination program was given shortly after 9am ET on Monday morning at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, New York. Intensive care nurse Sandra Lindsay became the first person not enrolled in the vaccine trials to receive the shot in the US.“I believe this is the weapon that will end the war,” New York governor Andrew Cuomo said. Donald Trump tweeted: “First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!”As hospitals around the US warn of a crisis of capacity in intensive care units, experts have described this winter as likely the most perilous time, despite the hopes brought by the recent vaccine progress. It also comes less than a month after the country lost a quarter of a million people to the disease.The latest figures from Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus resource center show more than 300,000 fatalities in the US, and more than 16m cases.The US has the highest death toll from the disease in the world, followed by Brazil, India and Mexico, and the US is among the worst-hit of developed nations in terms of its death rate. Globally, there have been more than 69m cases and at least 1.5m deaths.On Sunday, trucks hauling trailers loaded with suitcase–sized containers of Covid-19 vaccine rolled out of Pfizer’s manufacturing facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, launching the largest and most complex vaccine distribution project in the US.While progress on the vaccine is being celebrated across America, it also comes amid safety concerns and fears of anti-vaccination sentiments that might hinder the rollout. There are also worries over a potentially chaotic roll-out with local plans for vaccine distribution that vary widely, lack federal funding, and will not reach everyone even in early, limited populations.The US, which has recently been reporting around 2,200 deaths per day, recorded more than 3,000 deaths on one day for the first time on 9 December.Cases have been surging in the US since mid-October to more than 200,000 a day and experts including Dr Anthony Fauci have said the worst of the surge is expected after Thanksgiving – despite official requests not to travel – and likely just before Christmas.Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, told CNN his fears about Christmas were the same as Thanksgiving: people traveling and not social distancing, “only this may be even more compounded because it’s a longer holiday”.Dr Michael Osterholm, a member of US president-elect Joe Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board, told CNN: “No Christmas parties. There is not a safe Christmas party in this country right now.“It won’t end after that but that is the period right now where we could have a surge upon a surge upon a surge.”Earlier this month the UK became the first country in the world to begin administering Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, followed quickly by the US.Hospitals around the country have reported being under huge pressure. One in 10 Americans – especially across the midwest, south and south-west – live in an area where intensive care beds are either full, or available at lower than 5% of capacity, the New York Times reported.In California, Fresno county’s interim public health officer, Dr Rais Vohra, told CNN that there was recently one day in the county with zero intensive-care capacity: “I know that those who aren’t in the medical field may not understand or quite grasp just how dire the situation is, but all the things you’re hearing about – how impacted our hospitals are, about how dire the situation with our ICUs is – it’s absolutely true. And that really is the reason that we want everyone to stay home as much as possible.” More

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Joe Biden took another step closer to the White House as key states in the electoral college system formally confirmed his election victory on Monday, effectively ending Donald Trump’s long-shot attempt to overturn the results.
The state-by-state votes, traditionally an afterthought, have taken on outsized significance because of Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud.
Election results from November show Biden won 306 electoral college votes, exceeding the 270 needed to win, after four tumultuous years under Trump. The president-elect and running mate Kamala Harris are due to take office on 20 January.
There is next to no chance Monday’s voting will negate Biden’s victory and with Trump’s legal campaign floundering, the president’s hopes rest with a special meeting of Congress on 6 January, where the odds against him are as good as insurmountable.
At 78 the oldest person to become US president, Biden was due to make a speech at 8pm on Monday about the electoral college “and the strength and resilience of our democracy”, his transition team said.
Electoral college members in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin voted for Biden on Monday, confirming his victories in battleground states Trump challenged in court. Electors in Arizona, which Trump lost after winning in 2016, cast the state’s votes for Biden.
“While there will be those who are upset their candidate didn’t win, it is patently un-American and unacceptable that today’s event should be anything less than an honored tradition held with pride and in celebration,” the Arizona secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, said.
The Democrat said Trump’s claims of voter fraud had “led to threats of violence against me, my office and those in this room today”, echoing similar reports of threats and intimidation in other states.
A group of Trump supporters called on Facebook for protests all day outside the state capitol in Lansing, Michigan. But by early afternoon only a handful had gathered.
Under a complicated system dating back to the 1780s, a candidate becomes US president not by winning a majority of the popular vote but through the electoral college, which allots votes to the 50 states and the District of Columbia largely based on population.
Electors are typically party loyalists who represent the winning candidate in their state, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, which give some of their electoral college votes to the candidate who won in the state’s congressional districts.
While there are sometimes “rogue” electors who vote for someone other than the winner of their state’s popular vote, the vast majority rubber-stamp the results, and officials did not expect anything different on Monday.
Trump said late last month he would leave the White House if the electoral college voted for Biden, but has since pressed on with his unprecedented campaign to overturn his defeat, filing numerous lawsuits challenging state vote counts. On Monday, he repeated a series of unsupported claims of electoral fraud.
He has also called on Republican legislators to appoint their own electors, essentially ignoring the will of the voters. State lawmakers have largely dismissed the idea.
“I fought hard for President Trump. Nobody wanted him to win more than me,” Lee Chatfield, the Republican speaker of the Michigan house of representatives, said in a statement. “But I love our republic, too. I can’t fathom risking our norms, traditions and institutions to pass a resolution retroactively changing the electors for Trump.”
Once the electoral college vote is complete, Trump’s sole remaining gambit would be to persuade Congress not to certify the count on 6 January. Any attempt to block a state’s results must pass both chambers of Congress that day. Democrats control the House of Representatives and several Republican senators have acknowledged Biden’s victory.
In 2016, Trump won the electoral college despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3m votes. The formal vote saw some Democrats call for electors to “go rogue” against Trump. In the end, seven broke ranks, an unusually high number but still far too few to sway the outcome. More

Last week the writer Joseph Epstein embarrassed himself by publishing a Wall Street Journal column denigrating incoming First Lady Jill Biden for using the “Dr” title she earned with her doctorate. He wrote: “Madame First Lady — Mrs. Biden — Jill — kiddo. Any chance you might drop the ‘Dr.’ before your name? ‘Dr. Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.”The backlash was swift. The president-elect’s communications director, Kate Bedingfield, tweeted: “What patronizing, sexist, elitist drivel”. The daughter of Martin Luther King Jr tweeted in support of Jill Biden, reminding people that her father used the title Dr, despite not being a medical doctor. She added “And his work benefited humanity greatly, yours does, too.” And the first lady to be replied herself in a tweet on Sunday, saying: “Together, we will build a world where the accomplishments of our daughters will be celebrated, rather than diminished.”Epstein’s article exposed the cultural powder-keg Dr Biden was always destined to ignite. She maintained her professional career teaching community college while serving as second lady and intends to continue working as first lady. While some of us are thrilled with that, others, like Epstein are threatened.First ladies have often been expected to sacrifice their careers to perform ceremonial tasks. I can’t imagine what it was like for Michelle Obama, a Harvard-trained lawyer like her spouse, to be expected to oversee a White House garden and Christmas decorations while her husband ran the free world.Of course, Michelle Obama had much less flexibility in defining the first lady role than her predecessors. Because of the unfair stereotypes that caricature African American women, the bar for her to succeed was set incredibly high. Unfortunately, that meant mimicking the least threatening first ladies who preceded her. At the time plenty of Americans would have been unlikely to describe a nearly 6ft-tall, Ivy league-educated, brown-skinned black woman as non-threatening. So instead Michelle transformed into a pearls-and-sweater set hugger-in chief. No one is threatened by a hugger-in-chief.For Melania, the transformation was far less pronounced. With her modeling days behind her, prior to her husband’s election she had settled comfortably into the role of trophy wife turned socialite. Essentially her full-time job was being the charming spouse of her powerful husband, which is ultimately what the role of first lady has been. While audio tapes recorded by her former friend and aide Stephanie Winston Wolkoff denote a darker, less charming side of Trump, she fundamentally did what most first ladies do. She hosted state dinners, did some volunteering, and remodeled various parts of the White House grounds. Again, she leaves a fairly non-threatening legacy, like the First Ladies who most recently preceded her.But Dr Biden announced from the get-go that she would continue her career as a community college professor, regardless of whether her husband was elected president. She had already broken the mold by maintaining her career while he was vice-president. Though this is not particularly unusual in some of our allied countries (Cherie Blair, for example, maintained a career in academia while her husband Tony was British prime minister), it is highly unusual for America.Dr Biden will soon become the least traditional first lady in recent history. The last time an American first lady charted a nontraditional path it didn’t go so well. Remember when Hillary Clinton was leading the charge on healthcare reform back in 1993? She probably wishes that you didn’t. Years later Clinton is looked back on as a pioneer – yet the blowback she received at the time was brutal. Some of it was driven by the legitimate gripe that when you elect a president you are not electing his spouse to do policy. Fair enough. But some of the opposition and vitriol was clearly driven by something more disturbing and enduring: the idea that many Americans want a traditional and non-threatening first lady – a first wife, first mother, first hostess, first cookie-baker, first-hugger, but not a first career woman and certainly not an ambitious woman.The fact that Dr Jill Biden is a woman whose professional ambitions are important enough to her to continue them despite being married to the country’s most powerful man is what really troubles Epstein. He makes that clear in his column’s conclusion, in which he writes, “Forget the small thrill of being Dr Jill, and settle for the larger thrill of living for the next four years in the best public housing in the world as First Lady Jill Biden.” He is oblivious to the fact that marrying a powerful man may not be what Dr Biden, or any modern woman, would consider her greatest thrill today.Thanks to the example set by vice-president-elect Kamala Harris, and her husband Doug, perhaps soon more men will become comfortable seeking out the thrill of marrying a powerful woman. More

I thought Biden had won the election – why is there another vote?Yes, Joe Biden has won and all US states have certified their election results. But the constitution demands that the electoral college formally cast its vote for president. The constitution requires “electors” to cast those votes – 538 such electors make up the electoral college.The vote happens on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, a wait after the election in early November designed to give states enough time to clarify and certify results.What is the electoral college?It is not a place – the term refers to the group of people who formally elect the president. Electors are chosen by political parties in each state ahead of the election. The party which wins a state has its electors formally vote for its candidate. Donald Trump tried to remove electors in some states ahead of today’s vote but the US supreme court rejected that attempt last week.Where does the electoral college vote happen?The electors gather in their own states and cast ballots on paper, usually in the state capitol or the office of the governor or the secretary of state.Do we know who these electors are?They are usually though not always significant figures in their state’s party establishment. Stacey Abrams is one of Georgia’s electors while Hillary Clinton is an elector in New York.Howe long will this take?Indiana, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Vermont were the first states to vote at 10am ET. Hawaii will be the last to vote, at 7pm. Some states at the heart of Trump’s baseless lawsuits – his campaign has lost 59 cases and won one, which affected a tiny number of votes – vote a little later, Wisconsin at 1pm and Michigan at 2pm.What happens next?The electoral college sends its votes to Washington, where they are counted in a joint session of Congress on 6 January. The president of the Senate – the vice-president, Mike Pence – then formally announces the winner.Can Trump do anything to frustrate that process?Republicans can object to the counting of the votes on 6 January. If objections are raised in the House and Senate, Congress has to adjourn to consider them. However, a successful objection would have to be upheld by both houses of Congress. As Democrats control the House, this will not happen.Will Trump finally accept the result at that point?Unlikely. The Latin motto on Trump’s Scottish coat of arms, which he gained after a lawsuit, can be translated as “Never Concede”. He has not shown any sign that he will. More

If there is one silver lining to the months-long global cyber-espionage campaign discovered when a prominent cybersecurity firm learned it had been breached, it might be that the sheer numbers of potentially compromised entities offers them some protection.By compromising one piece of security software – a security tool called Orion developed by the Texan company SolarWinds – the attackers gained access to an extraordinary array of potential targets in the US alone: more than 425 of the Fortune 500 list of top companies; all of the top 10 telecommunications companies; all five branches of the military; and all of the top five accounting firms.But they are just a fraction of SolarWinds’ 300,000 global customers, which also include UK government agencies and private sector companies.For now, we only have only confirmation from investigators that the US Treasury and commerce departments were attacked. The hack, attributed to Russian state actors, took the form of a so-called supply chain attack. Rather than directly attacking the US government, the attackers succeeded in compromising the automatic update function built into Orion.That breach provided the foothold the attackers needed to begin monitoring internal emails at the departments. By hacking SolarWind and inserting weaknesses into the Orion software at source, the attackers simply had to wait until their targets downloaded and ran a fake software security update.Thankfully, even then, the full attack was a technically challenging manoeuvre. In order to stay below the radar of the US government’s own security teams, the update was programmed to sit silently for two weeks after it was installed, and then to only upload stolen data in small quantities so that it could be disguised as normal Orion traffic.That, investigators say, means it is unlikely that the perpetrators made the most of the widespread access they could have gained. Rather than exfiltrating untold gigabytes of stolen data to peruse at their leisure, the attackers had to operate in a much more labour-intensive fashion, navigating through the government network as quietly as possible, and only uploading data already presumed to be valuable.At the moment it is not clear how much information was taken, and what other departments and entities the hackers chose to enter.Nevertheless, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an emergency directive late on Sunday night advising all federal civilian agencies to “review their networks for indicators of compromise and disconnect or power down SolarWinds Orion products immediately”. The acting director, Brandon Wales, said the compromise “poses unacceptable risks” to the security of federal networks.The long-term impact of the hack is unlikely to be known for a while, if at all. Although journalists and the public think about the impact of attacks simply in terms of any striking secrets revealed, cyber-warfare tends to have multiple goals.As well as looking for ill-guarded secrets of individuals, this sort of attack can be used to map how organisations work and their structural vulnerabilities, with a view to potentially exploiting them at a later point..More broadly, cyber operations like this undermine confidence in existing security measures and hand a propaganda coup to the country directing the attack.Silently eavesdropping on high-value targets is a labour-intensive job – particularly if the attacker wants to stay hidden, and for now it appears that the temptation to eavesdrop on internal communications at the US treasury and commerce departments was the most compelling.If other customers of SolarWinds do not find evidence that they were under surveillance, they will take solace in the fact that the US government was too big a target to pass up. More

The US recorded another 1,389 deaths from Covid-19 on Sunday, pushing the toll closer to 300,000 as hospitalisations continued to hit new heights. There was a ray of hope on Monday morning, however, as the first vaccinations were carried out using the Food and Drug Administration-approved Pfizer vaccine.
“I feel hopeful today. Relieved,” said critical case nurse Sandra Lindsay after getting a shot at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York.
Watching via video, New York governor Andrew Cuomo said: “This is the light at the end of the tunnel. But it’s a long tunnel.”
From Washington, Donald Trump tweeted: “First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!”
Earlier, responding to a New York Times report that senior administration staffers would be among those vaccinated first, Trump rowed back, tweeting: “People working in the White House should receive the vaccine somewhat later in the programme, unless specifically necessary. I have asked that this adjustment be made.”
According to Johns Hopkins University, the US death toll stood at 298,949 out of a caseload of 16,242,953, itself up by 190,920 on Sunday. Deaths were down from a daily peak of more than 3,000 last week but according to the Covid Tracking Project 109,331 people were hospitalised, a record. A record 21,231 people were in intensive care.
States across the US are under increasing strain, healthcare systems creaking and economies, already battered, close to damaging collapse.
In California, where large parts of the state are under lockdown until after Christmas, Alan Auerbach, director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Guardian an eventual recovery could look more like a “K” than a “V”, as high earners thrive and the most vulnerable plunge.
“We have lacked a coherent national strategy for dealing with the pandemic and 2021 is probably going to be a pretty tough year for California,” he said.
In Washington, a bipartisan group of senators was due to unveil a $908bn stimulus package, though it was reported to have little chance of success. Agreement between House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell remains elusive.
Though the vaccination effort just beginning will be the biggest public health push in US history, it will take some time for the vaccine to reach most of the population. On Monday, health secretary Alex Azar told NBC the vaccine will be available to the broader public “by late February going into March”. By that time, he said, vaccine distribution will be “like a flu vaccination campaign” at local pharmacies.
That timeline is ambitious, especially in light of news that the administration did not expand its order for the Pfizer vaccination, sparking concerns there will be a shortage after initial doses. Vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, which is expected to be approved by the FDA for emergency use this week, require two doses.
According to the Times, the Trump administration is “rushing to roll out a $250m public education campaign to encourage Americans to take the coronavirus vaccine”. Former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W Bush are among famous names who have said they are willing to be vaccinated in public and an ABC News poll released on Monday said 80% of respondents said they would take the vaccine.
Speaking to Fox News Sunday, however, Dr Moncef Slaoui, chief science adviser to the federal effort to speed vaccine development, said he was “very concerned” about skepticism about the vaccine in some circles.
“Unfortunately … there’s been a confusion between how thorough and scientific and factual the work that has been done is, and the perception that people are thinking that we cut corners,” Slaoui said. “I can guarantee you that no such things have happened, that we follow the science.”
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Trump, who recovered from Covid-19 in October, said he would not initially be taking the shot and was reversing an administration directive to vaccinate top officials while public distribution is limited to frontline health workers and people in nursing homes and long-term care.
Trump made the announcement hours after his administration confirmed that senior officials, including some aides who work in close proximity to Trump and Mike Pence, would be offered vaccines as soon as this week.
“I am not scheduled to take the vaccine,” Trump tweeted, “but look forward to doing so at the appropriate time.”
It was not immediately clear what effect Trump’s tweet would have on efforts to protect top leadership, two people briefed on the matter told the Associated Press.
News that White House staff would receive the vaccine early drew criticism on social media. Trump and his aides have flouted Covid-19 guidelines issued by his own administration, including hosting large holiday parties with maskless attendees this month.
Officials said earlier on Sunday doses of the Pfizer vaccine would be made available to those who work in close quarters with the nation’s leaders, to prevent Covid-19 spreading in the White House and other critical facilities. The move would be consistent with the rollout of rapid testing machines, which were reserved to protect the White House and other facilities.
According to guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is not yet enough information to determine whether those who have had Covid-19 should also get the vaccine.
Pence has not come down with the virus, and his aides have been discussing when and how he should receive the shot. Aides to the president-elect, Joe Biden, have been discussing how he should receive the vaccine and working to establish plans to boost virus safeguards in the West Wing. More

The US will hold a climate summit of the world’s major economies early next year, within 100 days of Joe Biden taking office, and seek to rejoin the Paris agreement on the first day of his presidency, in a boost to international climate action.Leaders from 75 countries met without the US in a virtual Climate Ambition Summit co-hosted by the UN, the UK and France at the weekend, marking the fifth anniversary of the Paris accord. The absence of the US underlined the need for more countries, including other major economies such as Brazil, Russia and Indonesia, to make fresh commitments on tackling the climate crisis.Biden said in a statement: “I’ll immediately start working with my counterparts around the world to do all that we possibly can, including by convening the leaders of major economies for a climate summit within my first 100 days in office … We’ll elevate the incredible work cities, states and businesses have been doing to help reduce emissions and build a cleaner future. We’ll listen to and engage closely with the activists, including young people, who have continued to sound the alarm and demand change from those in power.”He reiterated his pledge to put the US on a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and said the move would be good for the US economy and workers. “We’ll do all of this knowing that we have before us an enormous economic opportunity to create jobs and prosperity at home and export clean American-made products around the world.”António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said: “It is a very important signal. We look forward to a very active US leadership in climate action from now on as US leadership is absolutely essential. The US is the largest economy in the world, it’s absolutely essential for our goals to be reached.”Donald Trump, whose withdrawal of the US from the Paris agreement took effect on the day after the US election in November, shunned the Climate Ambition Summit. Countries including Russia, Saudi Arabia and Mexico were excluded as they had failed to commit to climate targets in line with the Paris accord. Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, had sought to join the summit but his commitments were judged inadequate, and an announcement from Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, of a net zero target just before the summit was derided as lacking credibility.The Climate Ambition Summit failed to produce a major breakthrough, but more than 70 countries gave further details of plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris agreement goal of limiting temperature rises to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, with an aspirational 1.5C limit.Many observers had hoped India might set a net zero emissions target, but its prime minister, Narendra Modi, promised only to “exceed expectations” by the centenary of India’s independence in 2047. China gave some details to its plan to cause emissions to peak before the end of this decade but stopped short of agreeing to curb its planned expansion of coal-fired power.The UK pledged to stop funding fossil fuel development overseas, and the EU set out its plan to reduce emissions by 55% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.Alok Sharma, the UK’s business secretary, who will preside over UN climate talks called Cop26 next year, said much more action was needed. “[People] will ask: have we done enough to put the world on track to limit warming to 1.5C and protect people and nature from the effects of climate change? We must be honest with ourselves – the answer to that is currently no,” he said.When Biden’s pledge to bring the US to net zero emissions by 2050 is included, countries accounting for more than two-thirds of global emissions are subject to net zero targets around mid-century, including the EU, the UK, Japan and South Korea. China has pledged to meet net zero by 2060, and a large number of smaller developing countries have also embraced the goal.The task for the next year, before the Cop26 conference in Glasgow next November, will be to encourage all the world’s remaining countries – including oil-dependent economies such as Russia and Saudi Arabia – to sign up to long-term net zero targets, and to ensure that all countries also have detailed plans for cutting emissions within the next decade.Those detailed national plans, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs), are the bedrock of the Paris agreement, setting out emissions curbs by 2030. Current NDCs, submitted in 2015, would lead to more than 3C of warming, so all countries must submit fresh plans in line with a long-term goal of net zero emissions. The US will be closely watched for its plans.Nathaniel Keohane, a senior vice-president at the Environmental Defense Fund, said: “The [Climate Ambition] Summit captured and reflected the momentum of recent months, but didn’t push much beyond it. The world is waiting for Biden to bring the US back into the Paris agreement, and will be looking for how ambitious the US is willing to be in its NDC.” More