By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jen Murphy · BUSINESS, FEATURES, TRAVEL
In January, the experiential travel platform Peek celebrated $1 billion in bookings since its founding in 2012. Then the novel coronavirus hit. Ruzwana Bashir, founder of the San Francisco-based start-up, watched business vanish overnight. “By April, we were at zero,” she says. “With America in lockdown, people couldn’t experience anything. Things looked dire.”
Fast-forward through the turbulent spring and early summer months, which saw travel slow to a crawl, and now Bashir is telling a different story. Hers is one of the few nimble travel businesses that have found themselves booming; in July, Peek saw $50 million in bookings and has continued to break monthly sales records since, as travelers eagerly look for exciting ways to explore their own backyards.
The few thriving corners of the travel industry offer hope of a rebound and the possibility of traveling safely, even during an uncertain period. They may stoke your wanderlust or allow you to explore safely and securely-but they’re also good reminders that the travel industry still means big business.
– Local experiences, wherever you’re stuck
Peek is a two-sided marketplace that connects consumers to thousands of small business owners creating such travel experiences as cooking classes or kayak trips. “When our operators don’t get bookings, we don’t get bookings,” says Bashir, whose company takes a cut from each activity purchased on her site. Peek entered the pandemic fresh off a $23 million Series B funding.
Bashir used her newfound financial stability to advise clients on applying for disaster loans, implementing contactless payment, and creating covid-19-safe tours. Bookings skyrocketed to $50 million in July as shelter-in-place orders began to lift-a figure that represents 5% of Peek’s all-time sales.
The bigger picture: Viator, a TripAdvisor company, also used small business relief to keep its vendors-and its own business-going. And Airbnb stayed afloat in the pandemic’s early days by launching 400-some virtual experiences, such as a Peloton-compatible “Cycling With an Olympian” class.
What you might book: Broadway may be closed until 2021, but you can still belt out show tunes with actors who serve as guides on Peek’s $40, two-hour theater district walking tour.
– The vacation home you don’t actually own
Members-only vacation clubs, which provide access to a collection of luxury homes with on-site concierges, are capitalizing on city dwellers who need long-term escapes and idyllic remote offices. Among them, Denver-based Exclusive Resorts says it saw its largest growth in membership sales since 2014 in this year’s third quarter-and has grown head count by almost 10% since March.
“Members are looking for a change of scenery, and now that many offices and schools are remote, they are taking full advantage,” says Chief Executive Officer James Henderson. Bookings for 14-plus-day vacations in 2021 have already doubled 2020 numbers, and new partnerships that offer private jet and medical evacuation transport are easing the anxieties of traveling during a pandemic.
The bigger picture: After shutting down most of its operations in the pandemic’s early days, vacation club Inspirato has also seen growth in memberships for its Inspirato Pass, which offers unlimited rental nights, free of taxes or fees, for a $2,500 monthly fee.
The same dynamics are driving up business for RV companies such as Kibbo, which creates RV parks with work spaces, clubhouses, and amenities.
What you might book: Real del Mar, a gated beach community just outside of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, was voted Exclusive Resorts 2019 destination of the year, thanks to the club’s 12 cliffside, four- and five-bedroom homes, which share access to an infinity-edge pool and beach club.
– Simple shortcuts for calculating risk
DragonSlayer was born in December as an app that matches your travel personality (e.g., active, cultural) to fit experiences available around the world. By March, this was irrelevant. Founder Peter Wells relaunched the company in September as a subscription-based service that tells travelers about covid-19-related restrictions in any state or country. Its proprietary, numeric SAFE-T scores (it stands for Smart Analytics for Educating Travelers) grade 124 countries and all U.S. states on everything from new case trends to local testing capacities.
Memberships start at $10 per month, with a free two-week free trial, or $70 for a year. The company experienced 55% growth in the first four weeks of the relaunch. Industry professionals drove the new business; Wells says he netted 200 annual subscriptions from agents in the first month. Looking ahead, he hopes the tools will help travel operators assess risks for a variety of global events and share those analytics directly through a white-label option.
The bigger picture: Tools with less comprehensive health insights than DragonSlayer include Kayak, which allows users to see the number of active cases in any global destination through the site’s “Explore” map, and Google, whose new booking features help users navigate the changing rules for hotels and airlines they are considering.
What you might book: On crunching the data, Wells deems Bermuda one of the safest bets for travel right now. “The island has done the absolute best job in protecting the local population, while welcoming back tourism,” he says.
– Travel insurance on steroids
With serious limitations on all but the most expensive of policies-the ones with “cancel for any reason” clauses-travel insurance is often a skipped step in the travel booking process.
Enter Berkshire Hathaway, whose travel protection products have historically included such consumer-friendly options as low-price-tag policies that specifically target flight delays. During the pandemic, it launched two new options for skittish travelers that are cumulatively making up 14% of the company’s total insurance sales.
LuxuryCare, announced in June, grants 100% cancellation coverage on ultra-high-end trips that cost up to $100,000 per person; it also covers emergency medical treatment and evacuations that cost up to $1 million. ExactCare Lite, meanwhile, hits the opposite end of the spectrum, offering $500 in protection per person for road trips.
The latter, in particular, shows a company that is seizing on the moment. “In our industry, no one bought travel insurance for road trips,” says Berkshire Hathaway spokesperson Carol Mueller. “But we saw people worrying about losing money if for some reason they couldn’t go.”
The bigger picture: Success has been a commonality for almost anyone who can guarantee a vacation-escape plan. Take air-medical transport membership company Medjet. It struggled at the pandemic’s onset, but reported year-over-year growth in October on the heels of a new service that transports Covid-19-infected members from many American-friendly destinations to their home hospital of choice.
What you might book: An over-the-top, bush plane adventure across Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia with bespoke outfitter Tin Trunk Safaris. You’ll stay in the most luxurious lodges, such as Singita Mara River and Giraffe Manor, while traveling like the continent’s early explorers.
– Airfare hawks that minimize your (financial) exposure
Hopper-an app that uses big data to predict how hotel and flight prices will fluctuate ahead of your next booking-once generated nearly all of its revenue from the sale of plane tickets. In 2019, that started to change with the addition of such popular new features as Price Drop Protection and Price Freeze, which offer payment protection at nominal cost. With their help, less than half of the company’s revenue now stems from airfare.
Covid-19 has accelerated that trajectory. Responding to the fact that economy and low-fare tickets are often exempt from flexible refund policies, Hopper created its own such assurance; since Oct. 13, it’s allowed customers to pay a premium of 5% to 20% on any fare to make it fully refundable. Couple that with a Flexible Dates upcharge for easy, last-minute rescheduling, and CEO Frederick Lalond is looking at a projected 100% increase in revenue in 2020.
“It’s stupefying,” says Lalond. “And I continue to be optimistic, as we’re seeing a lot of pent-up travel demand. Now that people realize travel can be taken away, they’re not going to put off trips like they used to.”
The bigger picture: Changing a flight used to mean facing penalties of up to $400, but the pandemic spurred Alaska, American, United, and Delta to waive change fees permanently on domestic flights. International flights, which carry the additional risk of border closures, remain harder to cancel, except those via Alaska.
What you might book: Easy cancellations and rescheduling under any circumstances can make the world feel like your oyster for the first time in months-so book anything, as long as it’s not a flight to nowhere.
By The Washington Post · Matt Zapotosky, Devlin Barrett · NATIONAL, POLITICS, COURTSLAW Attorney General William Barr on Monday gave federal prosecutors approval to pursue allegations of “vote tabulation irregularities” in certain cases before results are certified and indicated he had already done so “in specific instances” – a reversal of long-standing Justice Department policy that quickly drew criticism for fueling unfounded claims of massive election fraud pushed by President Donald Trump and other conservatives.
The two-page memo comes as the Trump campaign and its allies have urged the department to investigate their claims, despite little evidence that such fraud exists. Justice Department officials had previously confirmed they were looking into allegations in Nevada, and had referred other information out of Michigan to the FBI.
In his memo, circulated two days after results showed former vice president Joe Biden had defeated Trump, Barr seemed to take aim at previous guidance from the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Branch that said prosecutors should not – in most instances – take overt steps in voter fraud or related investigations until after election results are in and certified. The guidance was designed to ensure that voters and state and local election officials, rather than the federal government, decide the results.
But Barr wrote that the previous directive was never “a hard and fast rule,” and that a “passive and delayed enforcement approach can result in situations in which election misconduct cannot realistically be rectified.” He also noted that concern about the Justice Department influencing an election were reduced once voters had finished casting ballots.
“Given this, and given that voting in our current elections has now concluded, I authorize you to pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certification of elections in your jurisdictions in certain cases, as I have already done in specific instances,” Barr wrote.
Vanita Gupta, the former head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration who is now president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said the memo amounts to “scaremongering” that will allow officials to send letters or take other public steps that might suggest there is voter fraud in a particular state, when in fact there is none.
“This is totally predictable. It’s DOJ scare tactics again. It’s the same show we’ve seen before,” Gupta said. “Barr is probably doing this because Trump is demanding that he do something, but the voters decided this election, and overwhelmingly voted for Biden.”
Matthew Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman during the Obama administration, said, “There’s no justification for doing this now.”
“The best case scenario is that Barr did this to appease Trump and add credibility to his allegations of voter fraud,” Miller said. “The worst case scenario is that DOJ is planning to intervene in some way and try to throw the election to the president. Neither one is good, but one is much, much worse than the other.”
Barr’s move came a day after the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote to him urging an investigation into possible impropriety in Pennsylvania. On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., sent a letter to Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray asking them to investigate claims made by a postal worker in Erie, Pa., that there was mishandling of mail-in ballots by postal supervisors there.
“I urge you to investigate these claims as soon as possible,” wrote Graham. “It is imperative that the American people have confidence in the 2020 election and all other elections. The expansion of voting by mail has placed the post office at the center of the election and we must ensure that the entire postal system operates with integrity.”
A Justice Department official said it is reviewing Graham’s letter. The official said Barr had not been asked to send the memo by the White House.
Barr’s directive was heavily caveated, and did not offer new evidence of substantive election fraud. He did not identify the “specific instances” in which he had authorized prosecutors to examine allegations of vote tabulation irregularities, and he noted pointedly, “Nothing here should be taken as any indication that the Department has concluded that voting irregularities have impacted the outcome of any election.”
Barr also limited the cases that prosecutors might be able to open under the new guidance to irregularities that “if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.”
“Any investigation of claims of irregularities that, if true, would clearly not impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State should normally be deferred until after the election certification process is completed,” Barr wrote.
Before Monday, the department had taken only modest steps to investigate fraud, despite significant pressure from the Trump campaign and its allies.
Last week, for example, lawyers for the Trump campaign sent a letter to Barr alleging voter fraud in Nevada, where they claimed to have identified more than 3,000 people who voted improperly because there was some evidence to suggest they moved out of state. But state officials soon pushed back on that claim, saying some of those voters might have been serving in the military. A Justice Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said at that time that the department was “looking into” the matter, but declined to comment further.
Similarly, Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel last week said she had sent claims to the Justice Department about election workers in Michigan being told to backdate certain ballots, though she conceded the allegations were not fully vetted. A Justice Department official said the information McDaniel provided has been referred to the FBI, though the FBI declined to say what – if anything – it was doing.
Before Monday, the Justice Department had issued just one public statement on Trump’s broad allegations of fraud. Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, told reporters, “The Department of Justice pursues all actionable information it receives and, as is always the case, encourages anyone who suspects a federal crime to report it to their local FBI office.”
The Justice Department had reaffirmed its long-standing policy of not taking overt steps on possible election fraud before results are certified as recently as December 2017, when it issued a guide telling prosecutors “not to conduct overt investigations, including interviews with individual voters, until after the outcome of the election allegedly affected by the fraud is certified.” But more recently, department also issued guidance offering prosecutors more leeway, particularly when misconduct by federal employees, such as postal workers, might be at issue.
In Monday’s directive, Barr seemed to defer to his subordinates, telling those to whom the memo was addressed, “You are the most senior leaders in the United States Department of Justice and I trust you to exercise great care and judgment in addressing allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities. While serious allegations should be handled with great care, specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims should not be a basis for initiating federal inquiries.”
The directive was sent to U.S. attorneys throughout the country, as well as the heads of the Justice Department’s criminal division, civil rights division, national security division and the FBI director.
Head of House Democratic campaign committee to step down after election losses
InternationalNov 10. 2020Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., speaks to her constituents from Illinois’ 17th District at the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers Reception in D.C. in 2018. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Melina Mara.
By The Washington Post · Mike DeBonis · NATIONAL, POLITICS, CONGRESS
WASHINGTON – The chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said Monday that she will not seek a second term in that post, moving to leave the House leadership days after her party sharply underperformed expectations in last week’s general election.
Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., campaigned for House Democrats’ top political job on the premise that she was best equipped to help win races in swing districts, including those President Donald Trump had won in 2016.
Bustos, representing a swath of rural northwest Illinois, had easily outperformed Trump in 2016. Following Democrats’ historic 2018 gains, she pledged to hold on to those Trump-friendly seats and push Democratic gains farther into the suburbs – adding to the Democrats’ 15-seat majority.
But last week’s results instead appear to have cut deeply into that majority, with a net loss of four seats to Republicans so far and with more races yet to be called. Bustos herself was nearly a victim of the GOP surge, eking out a four-point victory after winning by more than 20 percentage points in 2016 and 2018.
Bustos has faced angry recriminations from fellow Democrats who were blindsided by the losses, and the underwhelming results have turbocharged long-simmering infighting between moderate Democrats and liberal members who have been critical of the DCCC’s centrist messaging and recruiting practices.
The latter faction had previously battled with Bustos over her decision to blacklist campaign vendors who work to unseat Democratic incumbents in primaries as well as a lack of diversity in her initial staff hires – an effort that prompted the replacement of several committee officials, including Bustos’s handpicked executive director.
On a conference call with Democratic lawmakers last week, Bustos blamed bad polling that underestimated GOP turnout for the misguided 2020 expectations and promised to launch a thorough postmortem review to identify missteps. But it now appears that Bustos will not see that review to its conclusion.
In a statement, she said she will “instead focus my work on exciting legislative possibilities in the years to come” rather than seek another term leading the campaign committee.
“Now, for the first time in a decade, our caucus will serve in a House majority with a Democratic president. After four years of this administration’s chaos and broken promises, there is now no limit to what we can achieve as we work to Build Back Better for the communities we serve,” said Bustos, a member of the Appropriations and Agriculture committees.
Bustos will remain as DCCC chair until a new chairman is chosen by the Democratic caucus later this year, said a Democratic aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.
Significant Democratic gains were expected to propel Bustos further up the party leadership ladder, perhaps into the assistant speaker post vacated by Sen.-elect Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M. Now Bustos appears to be out of the competitive Democratic leadership derby for the time being.
Hours after Bustos made her decision public, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., announced that he would run to succeed her, touting his own experience winning in a swing district and his fundraising prowess.
Maloney led a postmortem review of the DCCC’s similarly underwhelming performance in 2016, when party leaders thought they would be in contention for the majority but instead only made modest inroads. That familiarity with the organization, Maloney said in his letter Monday, “will shorten the learning curve and allow me to hit the ground running immediately.”
Another potential successor is Rep. Tony Cárdenas, D-Calif., who pushed for the shake-up inside the DCCC ranks last year and leads BOLD PAC, the political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Cardenas has announced his intentions to run for the assistant leader post but could change course and instead pursue the campaign post.
Leadership of the party campaign committee stands to be a crucial job ahead of the 2022 elections. Democrats are likely to have the narrowest House majority in 20 years in the 117th Congress, and they will be facing the political head winds that have typically hampered the president’s party in congressional midterms.
“We must defend vulnerable front-line members while working to expand our majority in what will almost assuredly be a difficult environment,” Maloney said in his letter.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., paid tribute to Bustos in a statement Monday, calling her “a leader of great integrity and inspiration.”
“Chairwoman Bustos brought strategic thinking, political astuteness and boundless stamina to Hold The House, with the added challenge of the coronavirus,” Pelosi said.
By The Washington Post · Felicia Sonmez · NATIONAL, POLITICS Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Monday threw his support behind President Donald Trump’s legal challenges in the wake of his loss to Democrat Joe Biden, saying that the president is “100% within his rights” to pursue recounts and litigation, though Trump has produced no evidence of widespread voting fraud.
“This process will reach its resolution. Our system will resolve any recounts or litigation. In January, the winner of this election will place his hand on a Bible, just like it’s happened every four years since 1793,” McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor.
Trump and his campaign have offered no evidence to back up their baseless claims, and state and local officials from both parties have rejected the accusations made by the president and his supporters. McConnell, later pressed by reporters, declined to answer when asked to produce evidence of fraud that would overturn the election results.
McConnell heralded Republican wins in Senate and House races, results that have been called by media organizations but have not been certified by state election officials. Among those results was McConnell winning a seventh term.
But the GOP leader dismissed concerns about the president’s actions as Trump has refused to concede while making unfounded claims. McConnell argued that “a few legal inquiries” from Trump “do not exactly spell the end of the republic” and that the president should not “immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results.”
McConnell, speaking for the first time since Biden was projected as the winner Saturday, did not congratulate the president-elect, though four members of the Senate Republican conference have done so in recent days.
McConnell’s remarks came shortly after he met with Attorney General William Barr on Monday afternoon. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the meeting.
“Our institutions are built for this,” McConnell said. “We have the system in place to consider concerns. And President Trump is 100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., took to the floor shortly after McConnell spoke. He pushed back against the Kentucky Republican’s remarks and called for GOP lawmakers to follow the lead of former president George W. Bush, who congratulated Biden in a statement Sunday.
Schumer called the unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud “extremely dangerous” and “extremely poisonous to our democracy.”
“As in any campaign, the president has a right to bring legal challenges or request recounts where state law allows,” Schumer said. “However, there is no legal right to file frivolous claims. Lawsuits must have basis in facts and evidence. And make no mistake: There has been no evidence of any significant or widespread voter fraud. Joe Biden won this election fair and square.”
InternationalNov 10. 2020Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper meets with crew members of the USS Bonhomme Richard on September visit to Naval Base San Diego. MUST CREDIT: Lisa Ferdinando/Defense Department.
By The Washington Post · Missy Ryan, Dan Lamothe, Paul Sonne, Josh Dawsey · NATIONAL, NATIONAL-SECURITY WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Monday, ousting his fourth Pentagon chief and stoking uncertainty as the nation navigates a chaotic transition marked by an incumbent who is refusing to concede.
“Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service,” the president said on Twitter, making a sudden but widely anticipated move that underscored his insistence on absolute loyalty from top advisers even as he contests the outcome of the Nov. 3 election.
Trump said that Christopher Miller, who was recently named director of the National Counterterrorism Center, would immediately become acting defense secretary. “Chris will do a GREAT job!” Trump wrote.
Esper’s firing plunges the Pentagon into a new period of leadership upheaval as it tries to manage an unusual transition period fraught with political tensions and potential security risks. Democrats and independents criticized the decision, saying the abrupt change could endanger American security at an already vulnerable moment.
The move comes as the Trump administration refuses to allow President-elect Joe Biden’s team to launch its work, increasing the likelihood of a disorderly transition as the country hurtles toward the Jan. 20 inauguration and grapples with a sharp worsening of the coronavirus crisis.
In a letter to Trump on Monday, which was obtained by The Washington Post, Esper said he accepted the president’s decision to replace him.
“I have served these last few years . . . in full faith to my sworn oath to support and defend the constitution, and to safeguard the country and its interests, while keeping the department out of politics and abiding by the values Americans hold dear,” he said.
An Army veteran and former weapons lobbyist who was confirmed as defense secretary in July 2019, Esper was mostly aligned with his commander in chief on major foreign policy issues had clashes with Trump over his steps to draw the military into partisan politics.
Chief among those occurred in June, when Trump demanded that thousands of troops be dispatched on the streets of Washington amid protests over the police killing of George Floyd. Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to use active-duty service members against demonstrators, but Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pushed back, concerned it would look like martial law.
Two officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment to the news media, said Esper’s public opposition to using troops in June drew the most fierce response from the president that they had ever seen.
While aides talked Trump out of firing Esper that week, the president regularly raised the issue throughout the campaign season, believing the defense chief was trying to embarrass him and damage his reelection prospects, the officials said. In recent months, Esper has rarely seen the president.
One former senior administration official said that Esper often asked for advice on how to deal with the president and “knew he was going to be fired for many months.” The former official said Esper frequently complained that Trump was not listening to him and was agitated when he was around.
In recent months, Esper has kept a low profile and distanced himself from the presidential campaign, steering clear of the campaign activity embraced by other Cabinet members, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Two officials said White House chief of staff Mark Meadows called Esper about five minutes before Trump posted his Twitter message to inform him of the president’s decision.
John Kelly, the former chief of staff, said Esper had “made the decision to stay loyal to the law and constitution and paid the price.”
“The irony is that the president derided him as ‘Mark Yesper’ and the reason that he got fired is that he wasn’t,” said Eric Edelman, a former top Pentagon official under President George W. Bush. “It’s mean-spirited vengeance and vindictiveness, and he’s doing it because he can.”
Esper’s departure may be the first in what some officials say could be a series of senior-level ousters, possibly including FBI Director Christopher Wray, in a presidential score-settling now that the election is over.
In recent days, the Trump administration has also fired the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and forced out the No. 2 official at the U.S. Agency for International Development, a move apparently aimed at keeping the agency’s head, a Trump appointee, in place.
Esper took over amid earlier upheaval in 2019, after then-acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan abruptly resigned in the midst of preparations for his confirmation hearing. Shanahan served in an acting capacity for six months after his predecessor, retired Gen. Jim Mattis, resigned over disputes with Trump about military alliances and other matters. Richard Spencer, the then-Navy secretary, served as acting defense secretary for a week while Esper underwent Senate confirmation.
Since his clash with Trump in June, Esper presided over the military’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, sought to take steps to address racial and gender discrimination, and announced troop cuts in line with Trump’s foreign policy goals. But he also continued to subtly defy the president on matters that Pentagon officials see as a threat to the military’s status as a nonpartisan institution.
In July, Esper issued a de facto ban on the display of the Confederate battle flag on military bases and stated openness to renaming Army posts that recognize Confederate officers who fought to preserve slavery. Trump angrily tweeted that he would not allow bases to be renamed but did not overturn the ban.
But Esper also struggled at times to achieve his stated goal of protecting the military from politicization.
In the same June week that he broke with Trump over the use of active duty troops to restore order, he referred to U.S. cities as a “battlespace,” a remark for which he apologized. He also drew criticism for appearing alongside Trump for a photo at St. John’s Church near the White House shortly after uniformed personnel cleared protesters from the area.
It was not immediately clear whether the Trump administration would seek Senate confirmation for Miller, an Army Special Forces veteran with more than 30 years of government service, before Biden takes office in January.
Miller previously oversaw Special Operations policy at the Pentagon and served as a top counterterrorism official at the White House National Security Council, where he focused on pressuring the Islamic State, hostage recovery and hunting down the remnants of al-Qaida’s leadership. On his watch, the U.S. military killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
While in uniform, Miller was part of the first deployment of American Special Operations troops to Afghanistan in 2001 and to Iraq in 2003.
Arnold Punaro, a retired Marine Corps general with extensive experience preparing nominees for Senate confirmation, said he did not expect the appointment to present any legal issues, because Miller was already confirmed by the Senate before being sworn for his previous job in August.
But some analysts and politicians warned that the shuffle at the top of the Pentagon was ill-timed and dangerous, citing geopolitical crises that have required the engagement of national security officials during past presidential transitions.
The Iranian hostage crisis continued to play out during the transition from President Jimmy Carter to President Ronald Reagan in 1980. The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, occurred during the transition from Reagan to President George H.W. Bush in 1988. Four years later, Bush ordered U.S. troops into Somalia as part of a United Nations mission during the transition from Bush to Bill Clinton in 1992.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, called the firing a destabilizing move that will embolden adversaries and puts the United States at greater risk.
“Until President-elect Biden is sworn into office next January, it is imperative that the Pentagon remain under stable, experienced leadership,” Smith said. “It has long been clear that President Trump cares about loyalty above all else, often at the expense of competence, and during a period of presidential transition competence in government is of the utmost importance.”
One Republican official who works in national security, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, called Trump’s decision “irresponsible and petty.”
Mark Cancian, a former Marine officer and White House budget official, said a possible confirmation effort could prove an uphill battle for Miller, who only several months ago was assigned to a mid-level Pentagon role.
“He doesn’t have that national reputation,” Cancian said.
Funding for Pfizer vaccine came from Berlin, not Washington
InternationalNov 10. 2020A pedestrian wearing a protective mask passing in front of Pfizer signage is reflected outside headquarters in New York on July 22, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Jeenah Moon
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Riley Griffin, Drew Armstrong · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, HEALTH, WHITEHOUSE, HEALTH-NEWS The encouraging data from Pfizer’s experimental covid-19 vaccine had plenty of people in Washington lining up to take credit.
A logo sits on a sign outside the headquarters of BioNTech in Mainz, Germany, on July 17, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Alex Kraus
Vice President Mike Pence was among Trump administration officials saying support from the government’s Operation Warp Speed program helped accelerate the development of the vaccine, which was found to be more than 90% effective in preventing symptomatic Covid-19 infections in an interim analysis.
Pfizer received no funding from Operation Warp Speed for the development, clinical trial or manufacture of the vaccine. Its partner, BioNTech, did receive government money — from Germany.
BioNTech is credited for contributing the messenger RNA technology, which prompts the body to make a key protein from the virus, creating an immune response. The biotechnology company already had a history of working with Pfizer on influenza vaccines, and in March they clinched a deal to co-develop a shot to prevent against covid-19 at research sites both in the U.S. and Germany. The two companies began human testing of the vaccine in April, before the existence of Operation Warp Speed was revealed publicly.
Berlin gave $445 million to the German company in a September agreement to help accelerate the vaccine by building out manufacturing and development capacity in its home market.
What the U.S. did, meanwhile, was commit to buying hundreds of millions of vaccines in advance to ensure Americans were among the first in line if it clinches an emergency-use authorization or approval from the FDA. The Trump administration agreed in July to pay almost $2 billion for 100 million doses, with an option to acquire as many as 500 million more, once that clearance comes.
As part of that agreement, the U.S. gets to decide who gets the vaccine first, and will work with the company on logistical support. While most vaccine front-runners that have been tapped by Warp Speed will distribute their doses through a government partnership with McKesson Corp., Pfizer is handling its own delivery of its products. The company has designed reusable containers that can keep the doses at ultracold temperatures, and is organizing trucks and flights to move them.
Operation Warp Speed is credited with speeding along several other vaccine programs, including one from Moderna Inc.that uses similar technology to Pfizer’s and could produce trial data later this month. The Trump administration’s rapid-vaccine operation, led by the Health and Human Services Department, the Defense Department, and other agencies, could well prove to be the reason many Americans get a vaccine in 2021, even if it’s not made by Pfizer.
Some Republicans, including Donald Trump Jr. and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, questioned the timing of Pfizer’s release of its positive data on Monday, almost a week after the presidential election — with the implication that the information could’ve changed the outcome and tipped the scales toward President Donald Trump, who lost to former Vice President Joe Biden.
Pfizer said on Oct. 27, a week before Election Day, that it hadn’t met the threshold for positive cases that would’ve allowed it to report the data. After that, it revised its trial protocols to raise that threshold higher, after consulting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on what would be acceptable to gain approval. The FDA has been under pressure from scientists to set tough standards for a vaccine so that Americans will feel it has been rigorously vetted and is safe to use.
If Pfizer hadn’t raised its threshold in response to the FDA’s recommendations, it’s possible it could have hit the lower bar of 32 positive cases before the Nov. 3 election. But it’s unclear when the trial hit that number. The company didn’t find out it had surpassed the new, revised threshold of 62 positive cases until Sunday.
All along, Pfizer’s top executives have attempted to quell notions that it has been influenced by political players.
Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla has said repeatedly that the drug giant has avoided taking taxpayer dollars for research and development purposes.
“I wanted to liberate our scientists from any bureaucracy,” Bourla said in a Sept. 16 interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “When you get money from someone, that always comes with strings. They want to see how we are growing to progress, what types of moves you are going to do. They want reports. I didn’t want to have any of that.
“Basically I gave them an open checkbook so that they can worry only about scientific challenges, not anything else. And also, I wanted to keep Pfizer out of politics, by the way,” Bourla said.
Trump supporters launch disparate efforts to fight results as no GOP or Trump allegations of irregularities have been proved
InternationalNov 09. 2020Joe Mullica, 56, along with a select few supporters of President Trump, maintain their protest of the vote count outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia on Nov. 8. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Amanda Voisard
By The Washington Post · Robert Klemko, Annie Gowen, Holly Bailey, Scott Wilson · NATIONAL PHILADELPHIA – President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the presidential election results is being reinforced in pockets of denial nationwide, but the anger continues to fall short of a coherent resistance movement that would threaten to overturn the vote.
In states where Trump won and here in one where he lost a close race, elected Republicans and GOP voters called for the continuation of efforts to challenge the results, which in Pennsylvania give President-elect Joe Biden a roughly 45,000-vote margin of victory.
Small clusters of Trump supporters gathered on several Philadelphia street corners Sunday to condemn a vote-counting process in which the president lost an early lead to Biden over several agonizing days. No evidence of improper counting procedures or any type of voter fraud has been presented.
“If he won and you want to go communist, knock yourself out,” said Joe Mullica, 56, a truck driver who grew up in south Philadelphia and demonstrated with a handful of others. “But when you consider Trump increased the Black vote, the Hispanic vote and yet you’re gonna tell me Biden won more than Obama? Hello? That don’t send up red flags?”
The flashes of defiance on the streets reflected the larger one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where Trump continued to insist, without evidence, that Biden and the Democratic Party stole the election.
At five days, the lag between Election Day, on Nov. 3, and a result was not close to the longest in U.S. history. But the delay did represent perhaps the most perplexing one, based less on proof than petulance.
By the end of Sunday, all but four states had been called, leaving Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, with nine more than the 270 electoral votes needed to secure the presidency. But Trump allies have kept up questions primarily about the counts in Arizona and Georgia, both uncalled, and here in Pennsylvania.
There appeared this weekend to be no centralized effort – at the White House or elsewhere – to bring together scattered Republican protests in an effort to reverse the results in Trump’s favor. On a conference call with allies Saturday, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said the campaign may be “propping up” rallies, protests and other events in upcoming weeks.
Bill Whalen, a political analyst at Stanford University’s conservative Hoover Institution, compared a legal challenge based on what he has seen and heard so far to the band-already-on-the-field kickoff return that won the game for the University of California at Berkeley over Stanford in 1982.
“It would be a once-in-a-lifetime coincidence of events – in other words, Trump is going to lose,” Whalen said. “The president will run out of legal options and the election will go to Joe Biden. Eventually, there will be a Barry Goldwater moment.”
Whalen was referring to a meeting in 1974 when President Richard Nixon was trying to stave off impeachment over the fallout from the Watergate break-in. Goldwater, a leading Republican senator from Arizona, told him he did not have support in the chamber to save his presidency.
Whalen said Trump will probably receive the same message regarding support within his party.
“Until then, Biden will begin making daily policy announcements and appointments,” Whalen said, “and we will forget all about this.”
“The 2000 election stretched into mid-December before it was conceded,” Whalen continued. “And today, the republic still stands. The only damage done by these kinds of challenges is in the short term, not the long term.”
But some Republicans said Sunday that the president has a case to make in some close-run states and showcase an issue – voter fraud – that the party has attempted to elevate into a national issue for several election cycles. There has been little proof of its existence.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., urged Trump to refuse to concede the election, calling it “contested” on Fox News Sunday.
Kris Kobach, a former Kansas secretary of state who lost two statewide races on the issue, said: “There’s very much a live legal controversy in multiple states.”
He pointed to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Nevada, where Republicans have alleged that more than 3,000 voters who do not live in the state cast their ballots there.
“If anything, this latest election has once again raised the profile of the issue,” Kobach said. “It’s a perennial problem.”
Most of the Republican legal efforts have been small-scale and thrown out by judges. In Nevada, a federal judge rejected Republicans’ request to intervene in ballot counting in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. Judges in Georgia and Michigan quickly dismissed Trump campaign lawsuits last week. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. ordered Pennsylvania counties to comply with state guidance to keep late-arriving ballots separate, but did not direct officials to stop counting ballots as Republicans requested.
The GOP defiance and frustration about the still-emerging results faded in some parts of the country Sunday, as arguments against accepting the vote moved from the streets to social media.
Hundreds of Trump supporters had descended upon the steps of the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul and later in front of the governor’s mansion last week, waving Trump flags and bearing signs alleging widespread voter fraud, despite there being evidence of none. On Sunday, the scene was silent.
In nearby Anoka County, a conservative-leaning suburb about 20 minutes north of Minneapolis where neighborhood streets had been dotted with Trump campaign signs as late as Saturday morning, many of those signs had been removed.
Most of the criticism came from prominent Republicans in a state the president believed he could win but did not.
On Thursday night, Jennifer Carnahan, the chairman of the Minnesota GOP, held a private Zoom call with party activists where she said Republican National Committee Chairman Ronna McDaniel had asked her to rally other Republicans to back the president’s claims of voter fraud.
She cited “the looseness of the election laws,” among other issues.
“In regards to the fraud and the concern that the president’s campaign is feeling around the country, another thing that Ronna had said on the call today is she asked us as chairs: ‘Can you get your other leaders in the state to start coming out and speaking about this?’ ” Carnahan said, according to audio posted by the Minnesota Reformer, which had a reporter on the call.
“Because it can’t just be the state party chair, right? It can’t just be me saying, ‘Hey, we have concern of the validity of some of this stuff.’ . . . So I’m gonna be making calls tomorrow to all of our leaders asking us to be a voice,” she said.
An RNC spokesman did not return a request for comment.
After Carnahan’s call, several other Minnesota Republicans spoke out about the election, including her husband, Rep. Jim Hagedorn, who represents the state’s 1st Congressional District. In a Facebook post, he described an “eerily exact emerging pattern” in how votes were being handled and processed in “Democrat-run battleground states” that he described as “suspicious.”
“What makes this all the more suspicious is that in each case the tabulation process has taken an extremely long period of time and the new votes have always helped Joe Biden close the gap or move ahead,” Hagedorn wrote. “And so far, once Biden has finally pulled ahead, the voting is miraculously complete. Biden never comes up short! What are the odds of that?”
On Friday, Rep. Tom Emmer, who represents the state’s 6th Congressional District and is also chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, called for a “thorough investigation” of Trump’s claims.
“All Americans can agree that only legal ballots should be counted,” Emmer said in the statement. “Allegations of fraud deserve a complete and thorough investigation. Our nation is stronger when we work together to root out fraud and protect our Democratic process and the right of every American to have their vote counted.”
In Michigan, which Trump won in 2016 and lost this year, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party said Sunday that an effort was underway to identify witnesses to voter fraud and affidavits attesting to them. Biden won the state by a little more than two percentage points.
National and state Republican leaders have claimed that there were multiple problems in the state, including in Antrim County, which was initially awarded to Biden but was reversed after what officials called a software updating glitch. Over the weekend, Republican leaders of the state’s House and Senate oversight committees subpoenaed voting-related documents from the Michigan Department of State.
“President Trump won more than 70 million votes and we owe it to those voters to make sure it was a fair election,” Tony Zammit, the Michigan Republican Party’s communications director, said in an interview Sunday.
Republican officials, including McDaniel, made unsubstantiated allegations that ballots were missing in Rochester Hills, Mich – something the City Clerk Tina Barton said was a egregious misrepresentation of a technical error that was quickly fixed.
“As a Republican, I am disturbed that this is intentionally being mischaracterized to undermine the election process,” Barton said in a statement.
In Georgia, which has yet to be called for either candidate, Democrats have greeted Republican claims that they would be filing lawsuits in a dozen counties with skepticism, even as a recount is expected to proceed.
On Thursday, a judge in Chatham County dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign and the Georgia Republican Party claiming that Republican observers had seen a woman mix 50 ballots into a stack of uncounted absentee ballots.
In Pennsylvania, state Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R, who has been critical of election officials and the state’s Democratic governor, described a variety of concerns. No evidence of voter fraud has surfaced.
Corman pointed to issues regarding discrepancies in poll watching at early voting sites, signature verification for absentee ballots and the availability of provisional ballots – all of which, he alleged, may have helped swing the vote in favor of Democrats.
“We’ll have to find out if there was actual fraud. It’s all anecdotal, but it gives the appearance there’s a problem.”
“The last thing we want is to not have a clear winner,” he continued, “and now you’re going to have three million-plus people in Pennsylvania not accept the vote because they believe there was some underhanded activity.”
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โจ ไบเดน เตรียมออกมาตรการบังคับใช้หน้ากากอนามัยทั่วประเทศหลังเข้ารับตำแหน่ง
ตลาดหุ้นเอเชียปรับตัวสูงขึ้นหลังประกาศชัยชนะของไบเดนและพรรคเดโมแครต
Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., speaks to her constituents from Illinois’ 17th District at the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers Reception in D.C. in 2018. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Melina Mara. 
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper meets with crew members of the USS Bonhomme Richard on September visit to Naval Base San Diego. MUST CREDIT: Lisa Ferdinando/Defense Department. 
A pedestrian wearing a protective mask passing in front of Pfizer signage is reflected outside headquarters in New York on July 22, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Jeenah Moon 
Joe Mullica, 56, along with a select few supporters of President Trump, maintain their protest of the vote count outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia on Nov. 8. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Amanda Voisard 
