The Daily 202: Readouts of Biden’s calls with foreign leaders signal a return to pre-Trump normalcy

After Martin sent congratulations to Joe Biden, a thank-you call was arranged with the president-elect on Tuesday. Biden “highlighted his desire to strengthen the enduring personal, cultural, and economic ties between the United States and Ireland,” according to a statement from the Biden transition team. “He noted that he looked forward to working with the Taoiseach to address shared challenges such as controlling COVID-19; building a sustainable economic recovery, and tackling climate change. He also reaffirmed his support for the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process in Northern Ireland.”

The Trump White House curtailed the longstanding, bipartisan practice of automatically sending out summaries like that of presidential communications with other world leaders. Often this has meant that the American people find about such calls only when other countries announce them. That retreat from transparency has often allowed adversaries like Russia and China to shape the narrative of how conversations went.

Right down to the formatting and the anodyne diplomatic-speak, the readouts of Biden’s seven calls with foreign heads of states that the transition team has distributed over the past two days look exactly like the standard White House press office emails that went out routinely under Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

The familiarity of these documents belies the fact that the U.S. government is not involved in arranging or facilitating these conversations. Since Trump refuses to concede defeat, foreign governments cannot rely on the State Department to forward congratulatory missives sent through proper channels. Instead, diplomats have had to reach out directly to Biden’s aides.

The seven readouts have been as significant for their substance as their style. They also starkly illustrate the contrast between how the outgoing 45th president has dealt with his counterparts and how the incoming 46th president plans to do so. For example, Biden has discussed the value of alliances and the need to jointly address climate change in all seven calls.

Biden spoke on Wednesday with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. On Tuesday, in addition to the Irish leader, Biden spoke with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Last December, Trump slammed Trudeau as “two-faced” and abruptly canceled a scheduled news conference at the NATO summit in London after a video surfaced that showed the Canadian leader laughing and gossiping about Trump behind his back with Johnson and Macron during a reception sponsored by Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace. Biden released a campaign ad that highlighted the moment and called Trump a laughingstock on the world stage. “We need a leader the world respects,” the commercial said.

Biden chaired the Foreign Relations Committee during his 36 years in the Senate, and Obama picked him as his running mate in 2008 partly because of his extensive globetrotting experience. Biden’s portfolio as vice president was heavy on diplomacy. He promised repeatedly throughout the campaign that multilateralism will be at the heart of his foreign policy. He has often said in recent months that, on his first day as president, he would call world leaders to tell them: “America is back.” Apparently, he is not waiting until Jan. 20.

Speaking about his call with Biden to a British audience, Johnson said the president-elect had offered a “refreshing” view of U.S. power. In the House of Commons on Wednesday, responding to a question from a member of Parliament, Johnson referred to Trump as the “previous president.”

Trump’s calls with foreign leaders have long worried his aides, leaving some genuinely horrified. He has rejected much of the protocol and preparation associated with such calls, leaving him more susceptible to making commitments that are at odds with U.S. interests. Aides restricted who could see summaries of calls when embarrassing details leaked out about Trump’s conversations with his Australian and Mexican counterparts.

In a July 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump asked his counterpart to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden when the topic of military assistance came up. This conversation prompted a whistleblower complaint, which eventually led to the House impeaching Trump. The president always insisted the rough transcript showed the call was “perfect.” 

It is also noteworthy that Biden’s early round of calls has been entirely with allies. Trump has sometimes seemed star struck by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Those three adversaries have yet to acknowledge Biden’s victory. Trump has bragged about getting “love letters” from Kim. He congratulated Putin for getting reelected in an unfree election despite being urged not to do so in his briefing materials. In a 2017 call, Trump praised Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte for the “unbelievable job” he was doing in his drug war, which involved thousands of extrajudicial killings.

Warren Harding won the White House in 1920 by promising a “Return to Normalcy” after eight exhausting years of President Woodrow Wilson, which included mismanagement of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, the League of Nations ratification debacle after World War I and the Red Scare orchestrated by the villainous Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Campaigning in Boston that year, Harding promised: “Poise has been disturbed, and nerves have been racked, and fever has rendered men irrational. America’s present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy.”

Biden echoed this sentiment in his victory speech here on Saturday night when he declared: “The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season — a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow and a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.” (Every American should hope that Biden’s presidency goes better than Harding’s, which was plagued by corruption and ended with the president’s death.)

Insulting allies while cozying up to authoritarians is one of the most significant norms that Trump shattered as president. David Montgomery made a list of the 20 biggest ways that Trump has been “the abnormal president” for a feature in our Sunday magazine: personally profiting from official business; not releasing tax returns; refusing oversight; interfering in Department of Justice investigations; abusing appointment power; coarsening presidential discourse; politicizing the military; attacking judges; politicizing diplomacy and foreign policy; undermining intelligence agencies; publicizing lists of potential Supreme Court picks; making far more false or misleading claims than any previous president; abusing the pardon power; using government resources for partisan ends; making racialized appeals and attacks; dividing the nation in times of crisis; contradicting scientists; derailing the tradition of presidential debates; and undermining faith in the 2020 election results.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week directed politically appointed ambassadors during a conference call not to forward congratulations for Biden, sources told Karen DeYoung and Carol Morello. The department has been collecting those messages but will not turn them over until a Trump appointee at the General Services Administration signs the necessary paperwork. “I’ve found myself saying formally that I can’t okay the delivery of a message to the president-elect because he’s not officially that. They go into some box somewhere,” said a current official. “This is clear paranoia of not saying or doing anything that might upset the big man.” 

“Pompeo leaves Friday for an 11-day trip, with a full agenda, to seven countries in Europe and the Middle East — all of the nations’ leaders have publicly congratulated Biden on his victory,” per DeYoung and Morello. “One former senior official described Pompeo as less willing to incur Trump’s anger because he had little independent base of support outside the administration. ‘Pompeo has political ambitions, and those ambitions are tied to Trump,’ the former official said. ‘He goes nowhere without Trump.’”

Pompeo made headlines across the globe for his declaration during a Tuesday news conference: “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”

The secretary’s acquiescence to the president is actually depriving Biden of a perk he previously enjoyed. “At any other point since Biden left the White House, he would have been able to call into the State Department operations center to place a call to a foreign leader,” CNN reports. “Former presidents and vice presidents are allowed to use the resource whenever they wish. But now, as he is President-elect, Biden is being prevented from using that facility by the Trump administration.”

“Klain, 59, has been a senior adviser to Democratic presidents, vice presidents, candidates and senators. His appointment marks a homecoming of sorts, since Klain served in the late 1980s as a top aide to Biden when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and ran Biden’s office when he first became vice president,” Michael Scherer reports. “A strategist with a legal mind and political ear, Klain is the sort of behind-the-scenes Washington hand more common in decades past, an operative who has managed everything from an Ebola outbreak to candidate debates to judicial confirmations. … 

“Bucking convention, Trump’s son-in-law, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, established an independent locus of power inside the West Wing. Choosing Klain reflects Biden’s plan to move beyond that chaos-driven presidency. The internal White House structure probably will revert to form, with a single manager in charge surrounded by senior officials who also have direct relationships with the president. Mike Donilon, who helped write Biden’s campaign strategy, and Steve Ricchetti, the campaign chairman, are well positioned to land influential positions inside the White House … After a falling-out with Biden’s team when he offered early support to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid, Klain has worked his way back into the upper echelons of Biden’s trusted circle. … After the campaign, Ricchetti, who also served as chief of staff to Biden in the vice president’s office, arranged for a meeting between Klain and Biden to clear any lingering bad feelings. …

“Klain also served as chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore and led Gore’s legal efforts to force a recount of Florida ballots after the 2000 election; actor Kevin Spacey played him in the 2008 movie ‘Recount.’ ‘People frequently tell me that I should ‘get over’ the 2000 election and the recount,’ Klain tweeted in 2019. ‘I haven’t, and I don’t think I ever will.’ … He resigned as chief of staff to Gore in 1999, in the middle of Gore’s presidential campaign, after it emerged that he was in the room with Bill Clinton when the president called a reporter for a story about the Gore campaign’s struggles. … Gore was furious at the implicit criticism in that message and at Clinton for delivering it. … [He] was hired back into Gore’s team only after a shake-up in the senior campaign leadership.”

“With the Trump White House blocking the administration from formally cooperating with Biden, the members of the Democrat’s transition team are under strict orders not to have any contact with current government officials, even back-channel conversations,” Sean Sullivan, Lisa Rein, John Hudson and Laura Meckler report. “Biden transition team members are instead making contact with recently departed government officials and other experts to help them prepare for the new administration. … The Biden team has drawn up lists of recently departed senior officials at key agencies to help transition officials get up to speed on ongoing projects, budgets, trouble spots, technology and personnel, a senior transition official said, describing ‘a whole plan for this contingency where we don’t have cooperation but have to move forward.’ The plan was put in place to anticipate refusals of some agency heads to engage even if the GSA declares Biden the winner, the official said, for example from John Ratcliffe, the Trump-appointed director of national intelligence.” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) told a radio station in his state that it looks like Biden won, and he should start getting intelligence briefings right away.

“At least 40 people serving on Biden’s transition team are or were once registered lobbyists,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “The Biden transition team has sought to limit the influence of lobbyists in setting up the new administration. Its ethics rules don’t impose a blanket ban on lobbyists, but they require individuals who are registered lobbyists, or have registered as lobbyists within the past year, to get approval from the transition’s general counsel to serve on the team. … Five people on the teams are currently registered as lobbyists or were registered within the last year … A Biden transition official said all five received waivers to serve on the agency review teams.”

There are mounting concerns inside the Defense Department that the White House could use a chaotic transition period to push through destabilizing decisions or attempt to block the handover to a Biden administration. “The role of Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the country’s top officer, and other military leaders takes on new significance in the wake of Trump’s ouster this week of Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and the installation of White House loyalists in powerful Pentagon roles,” Missy Ryan, Dan Lamothe, Greg Jaffe and Josh Dawsey report. “The arrival of civilian leaders seen as zealous proponents of Trump’s foreign policy goals, which have collided with traditional Pentagon positions, has the effect of isolating military leaders such as Milley … ‘Chris Miller: Where the hell did he come from?’ one Pentagon official said. ‘It’s hard not to feel like there is an ulterior motive for their selection, and people recognize that.’ ‘It’s ‘The Twilight Zone,’’ the official said. ‘No one knows what’s going to happen next.’”

National security adviser Robert O’Brien has also “emerged as one of Trump’s biggest enablers at a decisive moment,” the Daily Beast reports: “Asked if officials in the White House feel comfortable saying Biden’s name in the West Wing, one senior White House official said, half-jokingly, ‘Sure, you can say his name. If you’re talking about who lost the election to the president.’” Another national security official said: “If you even mention Biden’s name … that’s a no-go, you’d be fired. Everyone is scared of even talking about the chance of working with the transition.”

“Biden is poised to embed action on climate change across the breadth of the federal government, from the departments of Agriculture to Treasury to State — expanding it beyond environmental agencies to speed U.S. efforts to mitigate global warming and to acknowledge that the problem touches many aspects of American life,” Juliet Eilperin and Annie Linskey report. “The far-reaching strategy is aimed at making significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions even without congressional action, by maximizing executive authority. … A team of former Obama administration officials and experts have created a 300-page blueprint laying out a holistic approach to the climate while avoiding some of the pitfalls that hampered [Obama], who shared some of the same goals but was unable to enact all of them. Dubbed the Climate 21 Project, it took a year and a half to develop and was delivered recently to Biden’s transition team.”

“David Legates, a meteorologist who claims that excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is good for plants and that global warming is harmless, has been tapped to run the federal agency that oversees a major scientific report on how climate change is affecting the United States,” Andrew Freedman, Jason Samenow and Brady Dennis report. “Legates, a controversial figure who joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in September, will move to a new slot as head of the U.S. Global Change Research Program as early as Thursday … The shift would put Legates in position at least to influence the authors chosen to craft the National Climate Assessment.”

“The president has no clear endgame to actually win the election — and, in an indication he may be starting to come to terms with his loss, he is talking privately about running again in 2024,” Phil Rucker, Dawsey and Ashley Parker report. “Trump aides, advisers and allies said there is no grand strategy … Asked about Trump’s ultimate plan, one senior administration official chuckled and said, ‘You’re giving everybody way too much credit right now.’ Republican officials have scrambled nationwide to produce evidence of widespread voter fraud that could bolster the Trump campaign’s legal challenges, but no such evidence has surfaced. … Save for a visit Wednesday to Arlington National Cemetery in observance of Veterans Day, Trump has not appeared in public since last Thursday, when he delivered a statement challenging preliminary election results. … Trump has been spending his days largely on the phone, calling advisers, allies and friends. The president has been ‘trying to find people who will give him good news,’ one adviser said. … “I’m just going to run in 2024. I’m just going to run again,” Trump has been saying, according to a senior administration official who has spoken with him this week. …

“Inside the president’s orbit, many aides find themselves grappling with a dual reality — pretending, and some perhaps believing, that Trump has a shot at holding the White House while they also look for their next opportunity, said one senior administration official who spent part of Tuesday and Wednesday searching for a job. Two administration officials added that many in the West Wing are updating their ­résumés, talking to headhunters and looking for work. But they are also living in fear, with senior Trump adviser Johnny McEntee promising to terminate anyone who gets caught seeking employment.”

The New York Times reports that Justice Department public corruption prosecutors were stewing as the scandal over Trump’s dealings with Ukraine unfolded last fall: “They had examined Mr. Trump’s actions and found no campaign finance violations, and were initially given the green light to pursue a potentially explosive inquiry into whether he had broken any other laws. But Attorney General William P. Barr and other top officials held them back while Congress investigated the same matter during impeachment hearings. After the Senate acquitted the president, Mr. Barr in effect took the case away from the Public Integrity Section, sending all Ukraine-related inquiries to the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, according to six people familiar with the matter.

“Compounding the prosecutors’ dissatisfaction was a stalled case around that time against a member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet, the former interior secretary Ryan Zinke. The deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, told the section’s lawyers that they needed a stronger case. [That inquiry has not been officially closed.] … The details of their case are not public, making it difficult to evaluate its strength, but the response from Mr. Rosen exacerbated a sense inside the Public Integrity Section that top department officials would hinder investigations into Mr. Trump and his officials.”

“In Michigan, Republican lawyers lobbied the Wayne County canvassing board to consider evidence of alleged improprieties before certifying the vote. In Pennsylvania, GOP lawmakers were the target of social media campaigns demanding the appointment of electors who favor Trump. And in Georgia, the Republican secretary of state defended the election and announced a hand audit of the results, despite calls by the state’s Republican senators for him to resign over alleged problems,” Elise Viebeck, Tom Hamburger, Jon Swaine and Emma Brown report. “While the Trump campaign’s lawsuits have so far been ‘summarily dismissed,’ Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) said Wednesday that she is concerned the GOP may try to use baseless claims about irregularities or vote tampering to disrupt the certification of Biden’s win … Election law experts said the most likely outcome in Michigan is still that Biden — who leads Trump by about 148,000 votes — is certified as the winner on Nov. 23.”

“Inside Detroit’s absentee-ballot-counting center, one Republican poll watcher complained that workers were wearing Black Lives Matter gear. She thought one of them — a ‘man of intimidating size’ — had followed her too closely,” David Fahrenthold, Rosalind Helderman and Hamburger report. “Trump’s campaign had promised ‘shocking’ evidence of misconduct. Instead, the campaign produced 238 pages of affidavits from Republican poll watchers across Michigan containing no evidence of significant fraud but rather allegations about ballot-counting procedures that state workers have already debunked — and in some cases, complaints about rude behavior or unpleasant looks from poll workers or Democratic poll watchers.”

“Georgia’s two U.S. senators demanded that he resign, declaring that Brad Raffensperger, their fellow Republican, had ‘failed to deliver honest and transparent elections.’ Trump tweeted a barrage of unfounded accusations that the state’s election was a sham. And the president tapped one of the state’s GOP congressmen to lead his effort to find evidence of fraud, though no such evidence has surfaced,” Reis Thebault and Amy Gardner report. “While his announcement Wednesday that he had decided to conduct a hand-counted audit of the presidential vote was taken by some Republicans as affirmation of their suspicions, Raffensperger has his own expectation — that the new tally will confirm a Biden win. ‘People are just going to have to accept the results,’ he said.’” Election officials in the state will manually verify each of the roughly 5 million votes cast in the presidential election. The goal is to start the audit this week and complete it by Nov. 20, the deadline for the state to certify its results.  

• An audio recording shows a Pennsylvania postal worker recanting his baseless allegation that a supervisor tampered with mailed ballots. In the two-hour recording, Richard Hopkins says he made “assumptions” based on overheard snippets of conversation. (Shawn Boburg, Jacob Bogage and Dalton Bennett)
• An attorney representing Trump claimed poll workers “incorrectly rejected” Election Day votes and asked the judge to seal the evidence he said supports that claim. But attorneys representing local election officials convinced the judge to reject the request to show the flimsiness of the Trump campaign’s complaint. (Arizona Republic)
• Snell & Wilmer, the largest law firm representing the Trump campaign and its GOP allies in litigation challenges in key states, has withdrawn from an election lawsuit in Maricopa County, Ariz. (Reuters)
• Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) rejected a call for investigations. “It is patently unreasonable to suggest that, despite there being zero credible evidence of any impropriety or widespread irregularities, election officials nonetheless have a responsibility to prove a negative,” she said. (KJZZ)
• Thousands of uncounted votes were found a week after the election in Puerto Rico. Nearly 200 boxes of uncounted votes have resurfaced, and they could potentially affect the outcome of several close races for legislators and mayors across the island. In the island’s city of Culebra, the mayor’s race currently has a margin of just two votes while it’s nine in Guánica. (NYT)
• Trump tweeted that Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, should stay in the role for another term. (Colby Itkowitz)
• Vice President Pence’s advisers want him to steer clear of Trump’s legal fights. Pence’s allies expect him to return to Indiana and make a living giving paid speeches and potentially writing a book. He currently does not own a house. (NYT)
• Mississippi state Rep. Price Wallace (R) said his state should “succeed” from the union and form its own country after Biden’s victory. The since-deleted tweet – he meant “secede” – was an overt throwback to the Confederacy. (Teo Armus)
• Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) stumped for the two Georgia Senate candidates, but he didn’t talk about the claims of fraud animating them. (David Weigel)
• Karl Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal: “This Election Result Won’t Be Overturned. Recounts occasionally change margins in the hundreds, never in the tens of thousands.”
• The Atlantic published an excerpt from Obama’s upcoming book “A Promised Land,” in which the former president writes that “no single election will settle the matter”: “Our divisions run deep; our challenges are daunting. If I remain hopeful about the future, it’s in large part because I’ve learned to place my faith in my fellow citizens, especially those of the next generation.”

“In Illinois, the rate of new infections is so high that a group of doctors sent an urgent letter to the governor. ‘We’re having to almost decide who gets treatment and who doesn’t,’ said one of its leaders. In Ohio, the rapid spread of the virus has pushed the state health-care system to the brink. Expressing deep concern, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) vowed to enforce his statewide mask mandate and issued new restrictions on social gatherings. And in Iowa, where a record number of new infections in a day coincided with a record number of deaths, the White House coronavirus task force issued a dire warning about ‘the unyielding covid spread’ throughout the state,” Darryl Fears, Joel Achenbach and Brittney Martin report. 

“The number of new daily coronavirus cases in the United States jumped from 104,000 a week earlier to more than 145,000 on Wednesday, an all-time high. … The number of patients hospitalized nationally with covid-19 — more than 64,000 as of Wednesday — is near the peak of the first wave in the spring, and has already surpassed the numbers driven by infections in the Sun Belt during the summer surge. Of the hospitalized patients, nearly 3,000 are on ventilators — more than double the number of ventilated patients as of Oct. 1 … With the rise in infections came more disturbing news: a significant uptick in the number of people who have died: 1,408 more deaths were reported as of Wednesday evening. … Anticipating a further surge in coronavirus patients, the Cleveland Clinic hospital system decided to postpone most nonessential surgeries requiring a hospital bed.” 

“Trump is lashing out at the Food and Drug Administration following a disclosure Monday that an experimental coronavirus vaccine from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is more than 90 percent effective, convinced the timing — six days after Election Day — proves the ‘medical deep state’ deliberately tried to sabotage his electoral prospects by delaying the results,” Laurie McGinley, Josh Dawsey, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Carolyn Johnson report. “Shortly after Trump heard the news Monday, he demanded Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar ‘get to the bottom’ of what happened with Pfizer … A few hours later, the issue was front and center at a meeting of the White House coronavirus task force when FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn briefed members about the vaccine data. … Azar, Hahn’s boss, pointedly contradicted Hahn in front of Vice President Pence, asserting that the FDA’s actions had in fact contributed to a delay in Pfizer’s announcement. He also asked questions that some officials thought suggested Azar believed Pfizer’s timing was affected by political motivations.”

• Three more White House staffers tested positive for the contagion, including political director Brian Jack, who attended the election night event at the White House. (NYT)
• Moderna said its vaccine trial has reached a crucial threshold allowing an independent committee to analyze its efficacy. (Johnson)
• Novavax released its $1.6 billion Operation Warp Speed contract that HHS refused to disclose, claiming it had no records of it. The contract is one of several issued through a third party, an arrangement that omits safeguards meant to come with taxpayer funding. (NPR)
• The chief executive of Pfizer made $5.6 million after cashing out a significant portion of his own stock holdings in the company on the same day the company unveiled promising results for its vaccine. Albert Bourla’s transaction was purportedly planned ahead of time. (Hamza Shaban)
• Daily infections surpassed 3,000 in the D.C. region, setting a record for the eighth straight day. (Erin Cox and Dana Hedpgeth)
• Michael Osterholm, a member of Biden’s covid-19 task force, said a nationwide lockdown of 4 to 6 weeks could control the pandemic and revive the economy. (CNBC)
• Tony Fauci said on Australian television that working with Trump has been “very stressful,” and it’s “really kind of unusual” to have people like former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon calling for his beheading.
• New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) tightened restrictions in the state by limiting private, at-home gatherings – including Thanksgiving – to just 10 people, outraging some critics, including a New York City Republican councilman who has declared he won’t follow the new rules. (Katie Shepherd)
• A man entered a tea shop near Dupont Circle yelling “Chinese” and “covid-19” and then pepper-sprayed the Chinese proprietor, according to D.C. police, who are investigating the attack as a hate crime. (Peter Hermann)
• Oregon officials will make nearly $600,000 in federal funding available to local strippers and sex workers of color who have lost income because of the pandemic. (Paulina Villegas)
• Lending money to shopkeepers, landlords and hoteliers in popular areas like Times Square used to be considered almost a sure bet for banks, but amid the pandemic, mounting commercial real estate losses on $2 trillion in loans are threatening banks – and an economic recovery. Just the fear of looming bankruptcies and defaults has prompted banks in recent months to restrict new lending, at a time when the virus-ravaged economy needs all the help it can get. (David Lynch)

While wealthy countries have already grabbed a major chunk of the available supply of vaccines, a pooled global effort to distribute vaccines equitably to more than 150 countries — including dozens of low-income nations — has secured only 700 million doses. Enter Indian vaccine makers, led by Serum Institute, the largest manufacturer in the world by volume. These makers have moved quickly to form tie-ups with global companies and increase their own production. (Joanna Slater)

• Swedish authorities implemented new restrictions amid a spike in cases after having refused to impose strict lockdowns in the spring. (Siobhán O’Grady)
• A man arriving from the U.S. became the first confirmed coronavirus case on Vanuatu. The Pacific island of 300,000 people has been one of the few places in the world to avoid an outbreak. (O’Grady)

“All of us are going to die one day,” said Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, arguing his constituents need to stop acting like “a country of sissies.” “Everyone is going to die. There is no point in escaping from that, in escaping from reality.” As he said this, Brazil’s coronavirus death toll surpassed 162,000 — the second highest in the world, behind only the United States. (Antonia Farzan and Miriam Berger)

• Eight international peacekeepers, including six Americans, were killed and one American was injured in a helicopter crash in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The peacekeepers all belong to the Multinational Force and Observers Mission, a Rome-based international peacekeeping force monitoring the Peninsula and created by both Egypt and Israel in 1979 when both nations signed a peace agreement. (Sudarsan Raghavan and Steve Hendrix)
• Azerbaijan’s drones targeting Armenian and Nagorno-Karabakh soldiers defined a 44-day war and provided the clearest evidence yet of how battlefields are being transformed by unmanned attacks. (Robyn Dixon)
• Several people were injured in an attack at an Armistice Day ceremony in the Saudi city of Jiddah, the French Foreign Ministry said. The incident occurred at a non-Muslim cemetery, where foreign diplomats gathered to mark the end of World War I. (James McAuley and Kareem Fahim)
• Pope Francis vowed to “eradicate” the evil of sexual abuse from the Catholic Church a day after an investigation into the case of ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick detailed failures that continued into his pontificate. (Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli)
• The report has triggered questions whether Pope John Paul II was rushed through the saint-making process, and whether the author of contemporary Catholic teaching on human sexuality didn’t understand the complex nature of the topic. (Michelle Boorstein and Sarah Pulliam Bailey)

For the Trumps, only certain AP race calls are valid: 

Longtime New Yorker staff writer Jeffrey Toobin, who was suspended in mid-October after he exposed himself on a staff Zoom call, will not return to the magazine:

The former Republican governor of California was upset about finding a veterans cemetery empty while Trump rallies have been packed: 

Stephen Colbert said getting Trump out of office will be a “bumpy ride”: 

Seth Meyers wants to believe that Pompeo was joking when he said there will be a transition to a second Trump term:

CNN made a supercut of a few of the times Republicans demanded Democrats should accept the results of the 2016 election: 

And C-SPAN said goodbye to a loyal follower: