Wednesday, 1 December 2021

POLITICO

POLITICO

Šefčovič: EU ‘ready to move’ unilaterally on Northern Ireland medicines

Posted: 01 Dec 2021 01:00 PM PST

Maroš Šefčovič says the EU wants to conclude a post-Brexit deal Friday with the U.K. to keep medicines flowing freely into Northern Ireland — but is ready to move ahead on its own to ensure that happens.

Šefčovič, the EU commissioner leading talks with the U.K. over the Northern Ireland trade protocol, told lawmakers in Belfast on Wednesday he shared their sense of worry that hundreds of British medical products soon could stop being distributed to Northern Ireland because they do not meet EU regulatory requirements.

He said he hoped to reach a joint agreement that resolves the problem during a meeting Friday with the U.K. lead negotiator, David Frost.

The protocol, agreed as part of the 2019 Withdrawal Agreement, keeps Northern Ireland within the EU single market for goods — and still subject to European standards on medicines. While many British goods subject to new checks at Northern Irish ports can be sourced from the Republic of Ireland or elsewhere in the EU, that is not the case for medicines, many of which are bulk purchased and distributed through the U.K.'s National Health Service.

The U.K. and EU agreed to a one-year waiver on enforcing EU standards on medicines shipped from Britain to Northern Ireland, a grace period due to expire January 1.

Citing unacceptably high regulatory costs, British generic drugmakers already have notified Northern Ireland’s Department of Health they will stop shipping more than 2,000 product lines by that date if the legal impasse isn't broken.

Šefčovič, who spoke to the Northern Ireland Assembly by video link from Brussels, told lawmakers that resolving the medicines supply problem had been top of his negotiating agenda for the past four weeks, adding that his side had submitted proposals to the U.K. pledging to pass new EU legislation as part of broader solutions in late June and mid-October.

During the session, Šefčovič said the European Commission was ready to move ahead with legislation changing the EU's rules relevant to Northern Ireland's supply chain for British medicines.

"I know time is running out and I will push again this Friday in the discussion with Lord Frost to solve this matter. At the same time, I also have to be very, very clear that we are ready to move on our own if that should be not possible to push at this stage on the joint approach," Šefčovič said.

Šefčovič cited “extensive consultations” with British and EU drugmakers, who have offered guarded approval for the EU's proposed legislative blueprint to keep medical shipments flowing uninterrupted to Northern Ireland.

EU grants emergency asylum measures for Belarus border — but insists no crisis yet

Posted: 01 Dec 2021 12:50 PM PST

The European Commission on Wednesday unveiled emergency measures to toughen asylum procedures at the Belarus border — while simultaneously insisting the situation was now under control, leaving human rights activists and progressives fuming. 

The proposals will let several EU members bordering Belarus — Latvia, Lithuania and Poland — hold migrants in processing centers for up to four months, while also giving them several more weeks to register asylum applications. Both changes significantly lengthen the current legal time periods.

EU Commissioner Margaritis Schinas, a top migration official, called the moves "temporary and exceptional," saying they were justified by the extraordinary situation at the Belarus border. EU leaders have accused Minsk of luring migrants from the Middle East and elsewhere to Belarus before pushing them to the border — a tactic the bloc has dubbed a "hybrid attack," using migrants as weapons.

Yet at the same time, Schinas and Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson, the EU's other top migration official, also said the situation was easing, and didn't qualify as a migration crisis. 

The influx of migrants to Minsk, Johansson said, "has more or less stopped totally."

The dual approach — taking emergency steps while also saying the emergency had receded — infuriated humanitarian organizations and left-wing parties. They argued the Commission had simply caved to migration hardliners like Poland, facing the pressure to act with thousands of migrants trying to cross into the EU.

"We are not talking about a major crisis here. We’re talking about a few thousand migrants” Agnès Callamard, secretary-general for Amnesty International, told POLITICO. "We are [taking away] bit by bit all the rule-of-law system infrastructure that has been built over the last decades."

Erin McKay, European migration campaign manager at Oxfam, echoed the point in a note: "Supporting the detention of migrants at EU borders puts politics over peoples' lives."

Emergency steps

During an almost hour-long press conference on Wednesday, Johansson and Schinas said the EU's work thus far has significantly alleviated the situation at the border.  

So far, Johansson said, almost 2,000 Iraqis have returned to their home country from Belarus. And, the Swedish commissioner added, "more flights are planned." 

She credited the Commission's work reaching out to countries of origin like Iraq, as well as its efforts to convince airlines to stop bringing migrants into Belarus. 

Still, Johansson warned, “we have to remain vigilant," noting that 8,000 migrants have already crossed the border and are now in migration centers in Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Additionally, around 10,000 migrants have reached Germany. 

"This shows that the numbers are not high, this is not primarily a migration crisis, it is a hybrid threat,” she said, adding that overall, the "situation in Belarus is de-escalating."

IOM, the United Nations migration agency, on Monday estimated at least 7,000 migrants remain in Belarus. 

Schinas argued the new measures are “firmly anchored in EU law" and "living proof” of the EU's solidarity with its member states facing the brunt of Belarus' behavior. He stressed that the initiative came at the request of EU leaders, who in October asked the Commission to propose changes to the EU’s legal framework to respond to the state-sponsored hybrid attack. 

To fight these actions, he said, "we need to rewrite a bit [of] the whole textbook."

Officially, the changes will give Latvia, Lithuania and Poland up to four weeks to register asylum applications, up from the 3 to 10 days currently allowed. The three countries will also now be allowed to keep migrants near the border in processing centers for up to 16 weeks while processing the asylum claim, including an appeal. 

The measures will remain in force for six months, unless extended or repealed.

The backlash

Some diplomats were critical of the measures: "There is no crisis, there is no warfare, there is only standards being lowered, EU law being violated and it all being whitewashed by the Commission," said one EU diplomat.

Progressive lawmakers also quickly raised doubts Wednesday about the initiative, questioning not only its wisdom but its potential efficacy. 

"It is unclear how these derogations will apply in practice and how they will help the Member State in emergency situation or the vulnerable people trapped at the borders," German Green MEP Damian Boeselager wrote in a statement. “On the contrary, the new measures will create a heavy burden on the Member State in crisis, in terms of reception facilities, human capacity and financial capability."

Boeselager's opinion carries more weight after his party recently joined the coalition set to lead Germany's next government. The biggest party in that coalition, the Social Democrats (SPD), was also critical on Wednesday of the EU's move.

“Instead of helping the member states and the local people, the projects play into the hands of governments who want to exploit the plight of vulnerable people to conjure up a supposed migration crisis,” said Birgit Sippel, the domestic policy spokeswoman for the Socialists & Democrats group in the European Parliament and a member of Germany’s SPD. 

“The Commission under President Ursula von der Leyen is bowing to pressure from these governments,” Sippel said. 

US VP Harris calls for new international rules for space after Russia blows up satellite

Posted: 01 Dec 2021 12:36 PM PST

Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday said Russia’s “irresponsible act” last month of blowing up one of its satellites demands a more robust global effort to adopt rules of behavior in orbit to protect national security and defend growing commerce.

“By blasting debris across space, this irresponsible act endangered the satellites of other nations, as well as astronauts in the International Space Station,” Harris said in convening the inaugural meeting of the National Space Council under her leadership.

“We must demand responsibility from all space-faring nations,” she added. “We must expand rules and norms on safety and security, on transparency and cooperation, to include military, commercial and civil space activity.

Calls have grown for enhancing the security of space systems following the Russian action, which created thousands of pieces of debris that pose new hazards in an increasingly congested low-Earth orbit.

Harris’ comments, her first public remarks on the issue since the Nov. 15 test, were also underscored in a new “space priorities framework” she released Wednesday ahead of the council meeting.

It commits to “enhance the security and resilience of space systems that provide or support U.S. critical infrastructure from malicious activities and natural hazards.”

The administration also pledged to “enhance the security and resilience of space systems that provide or support U.S. critical infrastructure from malicious activities and natural hazards,” according to the document, which cites the need to “bolster space situational awareness sharing and space traffic coordination.”

Also on Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed an executive order expanding the membership of the space council as part of efforts to harness space technologies to advance science and math education and tackle climate change.

The Cabinet-level body, which has been focused on national security, space exploration and commerce, will now also include the secretaries of Education, Labor, Agriculture and Interior, along with the national climate adviser.

Harris called it the “largest and most expansive space council in our nation’s history” that “reflects our broad priorities as an administration.”

The council was revived in 2017 by then-President Donald Trump after a nearly 25-year hiatus. Chaired by then-Vice President Mike Pence, the group was the focal point for a series of presidential directives, including the establishment of the Space Force.

Harris has made clear that her priorities for the space portfolio are to expand STEM education and bring the benefits of space to under-served communities, including those most affected by climate change.

“Right now our nation is falling behind as others develop their STEM workforce,” she said on Wednesday. “Our nation must invest in more scientists, more engineers, more programmers.”

She also highlighted the growing role of satellites in tracking changes to the climate and providing tools to mitigate environmental damage.

“Today this council will commit to make this data more accessible to more people,” Harris said. “And we will expand out global partnerships to increase the data we are able to collect.”

“We are on the cusp of historic changes in access to and use of space — changes that have the potential to bring the benefits of space to more people and communities than ever before,” the new White House policy document concludes.

Poland’s persistent forbidden zone on the border with Belarus

Posted: 01 Dec 2021 12:00 PM PST

PUSZCZA BIAŁOWIESKA, Poland — The Polish government has no intention of making it easy for outsiders to poke around on the country’s border with Belarus — the scene of regular confrontations between Polish authorities and migrants trying to cross into the European Union.

The government locked down a 3-kilometer-wide strip running along the 400-kilometer frontier in September. The state of emergency bars anyone but locals, the police, border guards and the military from the area. That’s led to outrage from opposition politicians, journalists and NGOs, who accuse the authorities of illegally pushing back migrants into Belarus and refusing to process asylum applications.

That three-month state of emergency expired Tuesday, but the government raced a replacement measure through parliament while rejecting an effort by the opposition-controlled Senate to allow in journalists.

The provision went into effect Wednesday, applies for three months and “forbids staying in the area,” tweeted Interior Minister Mariusz Kamiński.

The reluctance to open up was clear when five members of the European Parliament, led by Poland’s Janina Ochojska from the European People’s Party, tried to enter the zone on Wednesday. They were stopped by border guards, who refused to let them pass.

"Nothing has changed, we practically still have the state of emergency," said Ochojska. "This means that people will continue to freeze in the forests and there will be no access to them."

The restrictions extend wider than the immediate zone. A bus carrying reporters accompanying the MEPs was stopped twice despite not being in the closed area.

The border crisis was sparked by Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko in retaliation against EU sanctions levied after a violent crackdown on opponents following last year’s disputed presidential election. Lukashenko has encouraged people to fly to Minsk from the Middle East, who have then been escorted to the borders with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to try to enter the EU. It’s a policy the EU has denounced as a “hybrid attack.”

Thousands of people have managed to filter across the border and have ended up in Germany while about 2,000 are still on the Belarusian side of the frontier. The area is thinly populated with swamps and birch forests. As many as 12 people have died there in the effort to cross into the EU.

Poland has put up a border fence and is planning for a more permanent barrier. The Border Guard said there were 102 attempts to cross on Tuesday.

The exclusion zone makes it difficult to monitor what is happening on the border.

The new rules won’t make that easy either. Journalists can apply for permission to enter with the head of the Border Guard, but Poland’s government doesn’t have a media-friendly reputation. The Border Guard also plans to organize press tours.

The possibility of entering the zone will be purely "fictional,” said Joanna Klimowicz, a reporter with the pro-opposition Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper. “We want to get to the forest in the zone where the people are, so we'll need approval immediately. What will we do with an approval given the following day?"

Humanitarian workers were also dismayed at the decision to extend restrictions.

"It means for us that we cannot effectively help those who're in the forest … and those people are going to freeze to death," said Maria Złonkiewicz with Grupa Granica, an NGO operating near the border zone that tries to help migrants.

Dunja Mijatović, the commissioner for human rights with the Council of Europe, a human rights organization that is not part of the EU, said the new border zone measures will have "negative effects on the freedom of movement, assembly, and expression on Poland's eastern border."

“It is deeply concerning that under the new legislation, the journalists' access to the border will be subjected to special permissions while access by humanitarian actors, providers of legal aid and human rights monitors is not explicitly guaranteed," she said.

Germany to tighten coronavirus restrictions

Posted: 01 Dec 2021 11:23 AM PST

BERLIN — The outgoing German government and the leaders of the country’s 16 states are planning to tighten pandemic rules, according to a draft document seen by POLITICO.

According to the plan which is set to be adopted Thursday, only those fully vaccinated and those who have recovered from COVID-19 will have access to venues such as theaters, cinemas and restaurants, which may ask guests to show a negative test if they see fit. Moreover, private gatherings that include unvaccinated people or people who haven’t recently recovered from COVID-19 can no longer exceed one household and a maximum of two individuals from a different household.

The stricter measures are to come as Germany continues to grapple with its fourth wave of coronavirus cases that has already overwhelmed hospital intensive care units in some regions and forced patients to be transferred out for treatment. On Wednesday, health authorities reported 67,186 new infections and 446 deaths from COVID-19.

Scientists have urged stricter restrictions for weeks, but decision-making in Berlin has been hampered because Germany is between governments. That has left lame-duck Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose conservatives lost a September general election, stuck an awkward “cohabitation” with her current finance minister and prospective successor Olaf Scholz, who is expected only to be confirmed in office next week at the head of a centre-left coalition.

Big events will also be subject to restrictions, meaning that the number of spectators must no longer exceed 5,000 indoors and 10,000 outdoors. Further rules will apply when fewer people are present, depending on the seating capacity of a venue. Regardless of the number of viewers, however, only the vaccinated and recovered will be able to attend big events.

In areas with more than 350 new infections per 100,000 people over seven days, indoor nightclubs will have to close and in schools the wearing of face masks will be mandatory for students of all age groups. The current nationwide weekly incidence is 443 cases per 100,000 people.

To get more Germans vaccinated, the federal government is also preparing to introduce mandatory vaccination in areas with particularly vulnerable people, while a general vaccine mandate will be voted on by parliament “in the near future.” According to the document, the government and the states will work to offer first and second vaccine doses and booster shots to everyone who requires them by Christmas.

Finally, an expert council of scientists will be set up in the chancellery and will convene on a weekly basis to make further suggestions for pandemic containment — confirming a pledge by Scholz last week when he announced a deal to form a government between his Social Democrats, the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats.

Macron says Brexit rules matter of ‘war and peace’ for Ireland amid UK spats

Posted: 01 Dec 2021 11:19 AM PST

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron urged the U.K. to work with the EU to resolve post-Brexit issues, as he called the divorce deal’s Northern Ireland protocol a matter of “war and peace for Ireland.”

“It is for us an existential question, in two respects,” Macron said of the protocol during a meeting Wednesday of local and regional representatives in the EU’s Committee of the Regions.

The protocol aims to shield the EU's single market post-Brexit while avoiding a politically sensitive hard border between Northern Ireland, part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland, an EU member country. London and Brussels are currently in talks over the operation of the protocol amid political controversy in Northern Ireland and complaints from traders in the U.K. about its rules.

Macron said that for the EU, the existential question is about the “integrity of our single market,” while also stressing the importance of the 1998 Irish Good Friday Agreement, meant to bring peace to the island.

“I think we should not play with this topic,” he added.

Macron called for the U.K. to work with the EU, “be it on fishing, be it on the Northern Irish protocol, be it on migratory topics.”

His remarks come amid continued tensions between France and the U.K. over post-Brexit fishing rights as well as migration in the wake of the deadly migrant boat sinking in the English Channel.

France’s maritime minister, Annick Girardin, declared Wednesday there had been “good progress” and “excellent news” on fishing rights after the Channel island of Guernsey granted the country’s fishermen 43 licenses. But Girardin said “111 licenses are still to be obtained,” mostly from Jersey and from the U.K. government.

How Trump’s ‘America First’ edict delayed the global COVID fight

Posted: 01 Dec 2021 11:11 AM PST

WASHINGTON — Decisions by top officials responding to President Donald Trump's edict to protect "America first" contributed to a global delay in COVID-19 vaccine donations and a lack of effort to assist low- and middle-income countries, according to five current and former U.S. officials who worked under Trump on the federal pandemic response.

The failure to view the COVID threat in global terms left some nations — including those where the Omicron variant emerged in recent weeks — lacking inoculation and much more vulnerable to mutations, the officials said.

They described a White House and its health agencies fixated on one goal: obtaining enough drugs and protective gear to shield the American people from COVID-19. But that strategy, pushed directly by Trump and his senior aides, neglected to seriously consider the threat of variants and spread of infections if lower-income countries were left unprotected, the officials said.

Despite a series of high-level internal conversations and discussions with the World Health Organization in 2020 about the danger of limiting lower-income countries' access to the shot, including the emergence of new, more dangerous variants, the Trump administration did not develop a strategy for helping the rest of the world access the vaccine or develop the infrastructure needed to administer vaccines. Instead, it raced to secure as many of the world's components needed to manufacture a vaccine as possible, cutting other countries out of the supply chain, and quickly scaled up manufacturing of a COVID -19 vaccine to deliver to the American people — not to the global population.

"In 2020 there was no discussion at all about global donations," said one former official with direct knowledge of the administration's conversations about protecting Americans from COVID -19. "We didn't know if we had a vaccine. It was always, 'Let's just wait until we have a vaccine, and then we will decide what to do with that.'"

Another former senior Trump official who worked on the virus response said the president "did not see helping other countries as a priority."

"If anything, the message inside the White House was to disengage from the world community and deflect blame," the second official said.

With the election of Joe Biden and changing of the guard in January of this year, longtime global public health officials hoped the new administration would usher in an era of international cooperation. But in the spring of 2021, the Biden team failed to heed calls from within Operation Warp Speed, the group that worked to fast-track a vaccine, to ship surplus doses overseas before they expired. White House officials pushed back, claiming the U.S. needed to hold onto its extra vaccine in case of another surge. The Biden administration didn't begin delivering international doses until the summer of 2021.

A White House official disputed the idea that the Biden administration held on to its surplus, saying the U.S. did not have enough doses to make overseas donations until it started planning in April.

Trump's office did not respond to a request for comment.

Paul Mango, who served on Operation Warp Speed and as deputy chief of staff at the Department of Health and Human Services, told POLITICO that the Trump administration wanted to vaccinate Americans first before giving doses overseas. But, he said, the Department of Health and Human Services developed an initial plan for international distribution in the summer of 2020, well before the vaccines were available.

"We knew the whole world was going to be beating down our door once we finally had the vaccine," Mango said.

Still, the failure to move more quickly and to develop a more comprehensive plan for helping poor countries across the world access and administer doses has raised new frustrations among international health advocacy groups who say the Omicron variant is partly the result of that inaction. The variant first appeared in seven African countries, none of whom had a sizable percentage of their population vaccinated. Despite efforts to contain the variant through travel bans, dozens of Omicron cases have been reported across Europe, Asia and Africa. The U.S. has stopped travel from seven countries in southern Africa while scientists study whether the strain causes severe disease and can evade the vaccine.

"We've been warning about this the whole time," Lily Caprani, head of advocacy for health and pandemic response at UNICEF, said of the emergence of the Omicron variant. "It means we need to pick up the pace of getting these vaccines distributed more equally across the world."

Although the Biden administration has donated close to 275 million doses worldwide, the U.S. has moved slowly to roll out doses to low- and middle-income countries, and it has sent only a fraction of its total donations to Africa, where less than 10 percent of the population is vaccinated.

In response to increasing calls for the U.S. and other Western countries to do more, Biden, in his first statement on Omicron Nov. 26, said the U.S. has donated more doses internationally than all other countries combined.

"It is time for other countries to match America's speed and generosity," he said.

Two other current Biden health officials pushed back on recent scrutiny of the Biden administration's global COVID efforts, saying even if the U.S. had billions of doses available to send to countries overseas, many would not be able to administer the doses because of their failing health systems.

"Some of these countries just don't have the capacity to store the doses and then give them out," one of those senior health officials said, adding that countries and Europe and Africa were also struggling with decreasing demand for the shot.

Racing to develop a vaccine first

The delay in establishing a global strategy to combat COVID -19 extends back to early 2020,when the U.S. first determined that cases of the virus, which originated in China, would soon begin rising in the U.S. Rather than rely on existing structures within the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Trump White House took control of the Covid-19 response itself.

The president and his confidants implemented the same "America First" strategy it had fostered in the national security apparatus — isolating America and downplaying the importance of international cooperation, according to four former officials directly involved with discussions within the administration, several of whom worked inside the administration's health agencies.

By March of 2020, the White House had closed the borders to Canada and restricted travel from other countries experiencing surges. It blamed China for the outbreak and hoardedlife-saving medical supplies for domestic use. Trump also pulled out of the World Health Organization — the international group now responsible for helping aid the COVID -19 fight across the globe.

"China has total control over the World Health Organization despite only paying $40 million per year compared to what the United States has been paying, which is approximately $450 million a year," Trump said during a news conference May 29, 2020.

Trump personally enlisted his son-in-law Jared Kushner and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro to help find ways to ensure the U.S. gained access to personal protective equipment and medical supplies before other countries, particularly those in Europe.

"We need these items immediately for domestic use, we have to have them," Trump said of COVID -19 personal protective gear during a press conference on April 3, 2020 in which he invoked the Defense Production Act to stop companies from exporting the equipment overseas.

Kushner created a small office within the White House — a team that called in favors with businesses and manufacturers to procure the necessary equipment. Navarro drafted and pitched an executive order that would have blocked the import of foreign goods and spurred the increased production of American medicines, raw materials and vaccines. The "Buy American" executive order was never implemented — but the ideology lived on within the Trump COVID -19 pandemic response, the officials said.

In March, the WHO declared COVID -19 a pandemic. But the Trump White House focused solely on keeping case numbers down in the U.S. and worked to keep information about the spread in the country within the administration, four former officials said.

"That early on we were just trying to figure out the science. We still did not know how it spread or what we should be doing to keep transmission down," one of the former senior Trump health officials told POLITICO.

But the Trump administration moved quickly to develop a vaccine. By the spring of 2021, Trump officials were brokering conversations with pharmaceutical companies about how quickly they could manufacture a COVID -19 vaccine.

In May, HHS formed Operation Warp Speed, a group to fast-track the development of a vaccine for the American people. Three of the former senior Trump officials, all of whomworked with the team, said the directive from the White House was clear: find a way to manufacture a COVID -19 vaccine with a high-degree of protection against infection and severe disease and bring it to the market in record time.

To do that, the White House pushed Operation Warp Speed and other agencies such as HHS and the Pentagon to procure supplies and components American companies needed to make the vaccine before other countries.

"There was clearly competition between Europe, India, China and the US on the materials and the components," one of the former senior Trump officials working with Operation Warp Speed said. "That was the big debate — how we get the materials. We were competing with Europe more than anything else."

The Trump White House enacted the Defense Production Act "several times to take priority deliveries of the components," that official said.

"It essentially made it more difficult for Europe to access what they needed to make the shot for their people," a current senior Biden health official told POLITICO, adding that the act of pushing out others from the market unnecessarilydelayed the manufacturing of vaccines in places outside the U.S.

That delay ultimately limited the ability of other, poorer countries across the world to quickly receive both direct donations and purchase the shot from pharmaceutical companies. Those countries would not receive doses until both the U.S. and Europe secured enough vaccine for their respective populations.

The rest of the world had little option but to wait until the U.S. and Europe — as well as Russia and China — had enough doses in their stockpiles to donate or until pharmaceutical companies were able to develop enough manufacturing capacity to ramp up production of new doses to sell.

But even then, low- and middle-income countries would have difficulty garnering the vaccine needed to inoculate their populations. Major U.S. vaccine makers such as Moderna and Pfizer refused to share their vaccine technology so other countries could try and manufacture doses on their own. And the Trump administration signed a contract with Moderna, a company that had reaped more than $1 billion in federal funding to develop a shot, for hundreds of millions of doses for the American people that prevented the U.S. government from shipping any of those doses overseas. The provision allowed the company to negotiate its own prices with other countries.

Throughout 2020, COVAX, the international group formed at the beginning of the pandemic to help distribute vaccine products across the globe, worked to gain commitments from wealthy countries, including the U.S., to donate doses and cash to its vaccine campaign.

"The only countries that were going to get vaccinated and get out of the pandemic were those with the buying power," Caprani said of the thinking behind the formulation of COVAX.

The Trump administration refused to sign on. It had officially pulled out of the WHO, one of the main organizations leading the global vaccination effort.

“The United States will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China,” White House spokesperson Judd Deere told reporters in a statement in September of 2020.

But there would be little attention to the global aspects of the fight against COVID -19 for the remainder of the Trump administration. In November, after the election, the administration announced that it believed it would be able to vaccinate 20 million people by the end of the year and the majority of the U.S. population by April.

Weeks later, on Dec. 8, Trump signed an executive order that solidified his America First strategy. The order was designed to ensure that Americans were given first priority in receiving the COVID -19 shot before federal agencies such as the State Department and USAID helped inoculate other people across the world.

Biden's own America First moment?

When President Biden stepped into office in January, 2021, he promised that the U.S. would become a world leader in delivering COVID -19 doses to the rest of the world.

In February, Biden pledged $2 billion to COVAX to help finance the shipment of COVID -19 vaccine to countries in need.

"As the virus continues to spread throughout the world, and with new variants emerging, the facts are clear that it is critical that we vaccinate as many people as possible, as quickly as possible," a White House press statement said about the pledge.

But despite the promises made by Biden and his team, White House and COVID -19 task force officials pushed back on calls from within Operation Warp Speed to begin laying out a strategy for shipping U.S. doses to the rest of the world.

In a series of meetings in February and March, Operation Warp Speed advocated to David Kessler, the chief science officer of Biden's COVID -19 task force, and Jeff Zients, the head of the task force, that the administration begin to donate doses internationally, according to two of the former Trump officials who were directly involved in the conversations. Those officials said the U.S. was quickly building up its supply and that the country would soon have more than enough doses for the American population.

"We kept saying these doses are going to expire on the shelves, we are going to have more doses than the U.S. can absorb," one of those officials said. "They refused to have in February a discussion about what to do with the doses when the supply would exceed the demand. The administration didn't want to face the governors and curtail shipments because the message was 'there are vaccines available to everyone.'"

Those same two officials said there were several weeks in February and March where states were ordering more doses than they were administering.

"General [Gustave] Perna was very well aware of the problem," the other official said, referring to the former chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed.

Finally, in March, the Biden administration announced that it was developing plans to send doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine — which was not yet authorized for use in the U.S. — to Mexico and Canada. The total anticipated shipment: 4 million doses, a tiny fraction of the populations of those countries. In April, the administration announced that it would bump up its worldwide AstraZeneca donations to 60 million and would deliver the shot as they became available.

Those deliveries did not start rolling out en masse until May — the same time the administration laid out its strategy for delivering 80 million more doses to the world — still a fraction of what was needed to help quicken the pace of vaccinations in poor countries. The Biden team promised those doses by the end of June. Weeks later, though, after sending 20 percent of what it had promised, the White House revised its pledge, saying it would only allocate those doses to countries across the world by that time, not ship them.

The shipment of those 80 million doses — and additional Pfizer doses pledged by Biden — moved slowly. Throughout August and September, vaccine deliveries trickled out to various countries in Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. Only 15 million were allocated for countries in Africa, home to some of the world's most populous nations.

In October, the Biden administration significantly ramped up its donations. It's now delivered close to 275 million doses internationally.

Still, international health advocacy groups continue to call on the Biden administration — and wealthy countries in Europe — to do more to help prevent more variants like Omicron from emerging.

Those calls for action have grown louder in recent days and top Biden officials have become increasingly frustrated with international criticism. Fearing international blame for low vaccination rates in Africa, U.S. officials have begun to push back, saying the U.S. shouldn't be held responsible for vaccinating the world without significant help from other wealthy countries in Europe and Asia.

"We've done more than our share," said one senior Biden official working on the federal COVID -19 response.

"And some of the doses we want to give … countries don't want them. They are sending them back," the official said, referring to South Africa recently delaying a shipment of Johnson & Johnson vaccine, claiming the country had too many doses in stock and not enough demand.

But international health advocates say there is significant demand, including in Africa, for COVID -19 vaccine but that more work is needed in helping countries receive and distribute the doses locally.

"This isn't about supply anymore," another senior Biden official said. "It's about making sure these countries have the infrastructure they need to actually administer the doses. That's where the real hold up is."

UK Home Office doubles down on migrant pushback tactics despite criticism

Posted: 01 Dec 2021 09:19 AM PST

LONDON — A U.K. immigration minister Wednesday said the government will not amend its proposal that would allow border officials to push back small boats carrying undocumented migrants across the English Channel.

Opposition MPs have tabled amendments to the Nationalities and Borders bill, due to conclude its passage through the House of Commons next week, which are aimed at reducing the risk to life posed by pushback tactics. For instance, opposition lawmakers want the bill to ban pushbacks against unseaworthy vessels.

Asked if the government would accept these amendments, Home Office minister Tom Pursglove said such changes are not necessary. Any decision on the use of pushbacks, Pursglove said, would be made by operational commanders at sea on the basis of their experience, and the operational model developed by the department takes safety into account.

"I am confident that the operating model already takes proper account of that issue," Pursglove told parliament's joint committee on human rights.

In a report Wednesday, the committee warned the government proposal to push back small boats could breach Britain's human rights obligations and urged ministers to prioritize other measures that avoid compromising people’s safety at sea.

The legislation comes amid an increase in the number of small boats attempting the journey from France to the U.K., and after at least 27 migrants drowned in French waters in the Channel last week.

The tragedy bolstered efforts from various European countries to tackle Channel crossings. U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel is due to meet Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese in Rome Thursday for talks on the issue.

Blinken urges Russia to ‘de-escalate’ and return to diplomacy on Ukraine

Posted: 01 Dec 2021 08:42 AM PST

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday urged Russia to withdraw its troops from the Ukrainian border and resume peace talks, while also warning Moscow that an invasion would prompt Washington and its allies to impose fresh “high-impact economic measures.”

Speaking at a news conference at the end of a two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Riga, Blinken rejected assertions earlier Wednesday by Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia was somehow under threat. Blinken also warned that Russia, as before its invasion of Crimea in 2014, has “intensified disinformation to paint Ukraine as the aggressor” potentially “to justify pre-planned military action.”

“The idea that Ukraine represents a threat to Russia would be a bad joke if things weren’t so serious,” Blinken said in response to a question about Putin’s remarks. “NATO itself is a defensive alliance. We’re not a threat to Russia. We don’t have aggressive intent toward Russia.”

He added, “The idea that Ukraine represents a threat to Russia or for that matter that NATO represents a threat to Russia is profoundly wrong and misguided.”

At his news conference, Blinken said allies had not reached any conclusion about the intentions of Putin’s large military build-up on the border but believed the Russian leader had the capability to order a swift invasion.

“In recent weeks, Russia has stepped up planning for potential military action in Ukraine including positioning tens of thousands of additional combat forces near the Ukrainian border,” Blinken said. “We are deeply concerned by evidence that Russia has made plans for significant aggressive moves against Ukraine. The plans include efforts to destabilize Ukraine from within as well as large-scale military operations.”

Blinken continued, “Now, we don't know whether President Putin has made the decision to invade. We do know that he is putting in place the capacity to do so on short order should he so decide.”

Blinken said NATO allies were “resolute” in preparing serious consequences should Russia initiate a military incursion, adding that U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns had traveled to Moscow to warn Russia directly.

Blinken said he would meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday in Stockholm, on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. But in the meantime, the secretary of state urged Russia to withdraw its troops and resume diplomatic talks.

“That's how we can turn back from a crisis that would have far-reaching and long-lasting consequences for our bilateral relations with Moscow, for Russia's relations with Europe, for international peace and security,” Blinken said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a speech to the Ukrainian Parliament called for direct talks with Moscow to end the war in eastern Ukraine.

Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel said this week that Putin had refused her entreaty to participate in a leaders’ meeting of the Normandy Format, the peace talks sponsored by Germany and France aimed at implementing the Minsk 2 peace accords and ending the war in Donbass.

At his own post-ministerial news conference, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated the allies’ intent to hold Russia accountable if it invades Ukraine, while also rejecting any assertion that Russia should have a say over Ukraine’s aspirations to join the alliance. 

Noting that he also comes from a small country, Norway, Stoltenberg said Ukraine should control its own destiny.

“Ukraine is an independent, sovereign nation with internationally recognized borders, guaranteed by Russia and all the other powers,” he said. “And those borders, those internationally recognized borders should be respected. And that includes, of course, Crimea as part of Ukraine and Donbass as part of Ukraine.” 

Stoltenberg said that allies had numerous options for responding to new Russian military aggression, but that if Moscow wanted less allied military activity it should think again about inciting a new conflict. Should Russia attack, he said, allies might respond with “everything from economic sanctions, financial sanctions, political restrictions.” 

As for Ukraine one day joining NATO, Stoltenberg said: “Russia has no veto. Russia has no say. And Russia has no right to establish a sphere of influence, trying to control their neighbors.”

Biden’s young voter problem

Posted: 01 Dec 2021 07:59 AM PST

Younger Americans are a key part of Democrats' base, but they have soured on President Joe Biden.

Polling shows — despite winning roughly three-in-five voters under age 30 — Biden's approval rating slipping below 50 percent among the youngest segment of the electorate. That includes a new Harvard Youth Poll released Wednesdaythat pegs Biden at 46 percent approval among Americans aged 18 to 29, compared to 51 percent who disapprove.


President Joe Biden takes a selfie with a member of the audience after speaking at Dakota County Technical College, in Rosemount, Minn., on Tuesday. | Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo

By STEVEN SHEPARD

12/01/2021 06:00 AM EST

Younger Americans are a key part of Democrats' base, but they have soured on President Joe Biden.

Polling shows — despite winning roughly three-in-five voters under age 30 — Biden's approval rating slipping below 50 percent among the youngest segment of the electorate. That includes a new Harvard Youth Poll released Wednesdaythat pegs Biden at 46 percent approval among Americans aged 18 to 29, compared to 51 percent who disapprove.

It's a 13-point drop for Biden from March, when 59 percent of young Americans approved of the job Biden was doing.

The slippage is consistent with other polling, which portrays an across-the-board polling rut for the president. And it's a warning sign ahead of next year's midterm elections, when Democrats will be trying to convince younger voters — who are more likely to sit out non-presidential elections — to show up at the polls.

"You can clearly make the argument that, along with other important subgroups, young people were essential to Biden's victory and the Democratic Senate," said John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics.

But despite Biden's slide, Della Volpe said young Americans are not unplugging from politics a year after helping him defeat then-President Donald Trump. A little more than a third, 37 percent, said they definitely plan to vote next November — a number that Della Volpe noted was equal to what the Harvard Youth Poll measured in spring 2018, just before the Democratic midterm wave.

"I see them continuing to be engaged politically," Della Volpe said.

Younger Americans are more difficult to survey, and the Harvard Youth Poll is perhaps the most rigorous measurement of their political opinions. In other polls, younger people make up only a small part of the sample, though the trendline is similar.

The most recent POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, conducted Nov. 20-21, found Biden's approval among voters under 35 was 50 percent, compared to 42 percent disapproval. A Fox News poll conducted a week earlier showed Biden's approval rating upside-down among young voters: 44 percent approve, 52 percent disapprove.

Meanwhile, even with Biden falling, Democrats still have an edge over Republicans among younger Americans. In the Harvard Youth Poll, approval of Republicans in Congress was 15 points lower, 31 percent, than Biden's mark. And while Americans aged 18 to 29 were split on Biden's personal favorability — 46 percent view him favorably, while 44 percent have an unfavorable opinion — that's still miles ahead of Trump, who's favorable rating is just 30 percent. More than three-in-five Americans under 30, 63 percent, have an unfavorable opinion of Trump.

The most popular politician among Americans under 30 continues to be Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) The 80-year-old independent tied Biden's favorable rating of 46 percent, but only 34 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Sanders.

The Harvard Youth Poll was conducted Oct. 26-Nov. 8. It consists of 2,109 interviews with Americans aged 18-29, conducted in English and Spanish using both probability and non-probability sampling frames. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Other polls are limited in their portrayal of younger voters ahead of next year's midterms. In last week's POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, Democrats held a 30-point lead on the generic ballot among voters under age 35, 57 percent to 27 percent. But a Quinnipiac University poll in mid-November found voters younger than 35 were split: 36 percent said they wanted Democrats to control the House of Representatives after the election, 32 percent wanted Republicans in charge and 32 percent were undecided.
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