For all of President Trumps bullishness on the coronavirus vaccine, his administration declined to order additional rounds of Pfizers vaccine when offered the opportunity months ago, leaving the United States to wait behind other countries that made deals.
The F.D.A. could approve the Pfizer vaccine, created in collaboration with the German firm BioNTech, within the week. But the United States has reserved only 100 million doses of the vaccine, enough to cover 50 million people, or fewer than one in six Americans.
The president plans to issue an executive order today pledging to ensure that United States government prioritizes getting the vaccine to American citizens before sending it to other nations, according to a draft statement. But its not obvious what this means in terms of substantive action.
Asked if the Trump administration had missed a chance to snap up more doses for Americans, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services noted that other vaccine candidates were also in development.
Georgias secretary of state recertified the presidential election results there yesterdayafter yet another recount showed Joe Biden ahead by about 12,000 votes the latest in a volley of blows to the Trump campaigns effort to discredit Bidens win.
We have now counted legally cast ballots three times, and the results remain unchanged, Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state, said.
Officials in Cobb County, Ga., announced that for the Senate runoff elections in January they would be opening fewer than half of the early voting locations that they used in Novembers general election. Cobb is the third largest county in the state, and so far among the only ones to close such a high percentage of polling places.
The countys lead elections official blamed the closures on staffing shortages after a grueling election year, but Democrats pointed out that the closed locations were largely located in Democratic areas, and argued that politics were in play in the decision.
Biden is expected to nominate retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, a former commander of the American military effort in Iraq, to become secretary of defense, according to two people with knowledge of the selection. If confirmed by the Senate, Austin would be the first African-American to hold the position.
He was previously the first Black American to run the U.S. Central Command, the militarys marquee combat command, with responsibility for places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria.
In choosing Austin, Biden skipped over Michèle Flournoy, a former Obama Defense Department official who had drawn fierce opposition from voices on the left.
Mitch McConnell still hasnt agreed to open Senate debate on a compromise stimulus package being pushed by a bipartisan group of senators.
So in the meantime, Congress is preparing to vote on a stopgap spending measure that would keep the federal government funded for another week as it moves toward a stimulus deal. The House plans to hold its vote tomorrow.
Even as Republican Senate leaders drag their feet on the stimulus proposal, calling it too costly, other lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have argued that the bill is insufficient because it doesnt include another round of direct stimulus checks to Americans. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, told Politico he had urged Trump to veto a bill that doesnt include the checks.
The Labor Department finalized a rule yesterday allowing companies to hire and fire workers based on religious justifications, a decision that civil rights groups said could open the door to widespread discrimination.
This final rule doesnt give us a limiting principle, said Jennifer Pizer, the law and policy director of Lambda Legal, an L.G.B.T. advocacy group. It invites massive mischief.
The rule will go into effect Jan. 8, less than two weeks before Biden assumes the presidency. If he were to overturn the rule, he would probably have to go through a relatively lengthy review process to do it.
