The White House is planning for dire contingencies that could include rationing supplies of vaccines and treatments this fall if Congress doesn’t approve more money for fighting COVID-19.

In public comments and private meetings on Capitol Hill, Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House coronavirus coordinator, has painted a dark picture in which the U.S. could be forced to cede many of the advances made against the coronavirus over the last two years and even the most vulnerable could face supply shortages.

Biden administration officials have been warning for weeks that the country has spent nearly all of the money in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that was dedicated directly to COVID-19 response.

A small pool of money remains, and the administration faces critical decisions about how to spend it. That means weighing whether to use it to secure the next generation of vaccines to protect the highest risk populations or giving priority to a supply of highly effective therapies that dramatically reduce the risks of severe illness and death.

That decision may be made in the coming week, according to the administration, as the White House faces deadlines to begin placing orders for vaccines and treatments before other nations jump ahead of the U.S. in accessing supply.

Jha has warned that without more money, vaccines will be harder to come by, tests will once again be scarce, and the therapeutics that are helping the country weather the current omicron-driven surge in cases without a commensurate increase in deaths could be sold overseas before Americans can access them.

“I think we would see a lot of unnecessary loss of life if that were to happen,” Jha said this past week. “But we’re looking at all the scenarios and planning for all of them.”

He said the administration was “getting much more into the scenario-planning business to make sure that we know what may be ahead of us so we can plan for it and obviously also lay those out in front of Congress.”

Jha, who declined to estimate the potential loss of life, has become the face of the Biden administration’s efforts to persuade Congress to approve an additional $22.5 billion for COVID-19 response.

“The scenarios that we’re planning for are for things like what if Congress gives us no money and we don’t have adequate vaccines,” Jha told the AP in a May 12 interview. “We run out of therapies. We don’t have enough tests. What might things look like? Obviously, that’s a pretty dire situation.”

Already, the domestic production of at-home testing is slowing, with workers beginning to be laid off. In the coming weeks, Jha said, manufacturers will sell off equipment and “get out of this business,” leaving the U.S. once again dependent on overseas suppliers for rapid test.

Drug manufactures and the Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, are working on evaluating the next generation of vaccines, potentially including ones that are targeted at the dominant omicron strain. But getting them ready before the predicted case surge in the fall means placing orders now, since they take two to three months to produce.

Jha said this week that the U.S. has yet to start negotiations with drugmakers because of the lack of money.

“We’ve had some very preliminary conversations with the manufacturers,” he said. “But the negotiations around it have not yet begun, partly because we’re waiting for resources.” He added: “The truth is that other countries are in conversations with the manufacturers and starting to kind of advance their negotiations.”

The U.S., he said, doesn’t have enough money to purchase additional booster vaccines for anyone who wants one. Instead, the supplies of those vaccines may be restricted to just the most vulnerable — not unlike the chaotic early days of the COVID-10 vaccine roll-out.

“Without additional funding from Congress, we will not be able to buy enough vaccines for every American who wants one once these new generation of vaccines come out in the fall and winter,” he said.

And while the U.S. has built up a stockpile of the antiviral pill Paxlovid, which has been widely effective at reducing severe disease and death, it’s running out of money to purchase new doses — or other, even more effective therapies that are in the final stages of development.

“If we don’t get more resources from Congress, what we will find in the fall and winter is we will find a period of time where Americans can look around and see their friends in other countries — in Europe and Canada — with access to these treatments that Americans will not have,” Jha said.

There is no guarantee of swift action on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers — particularly Republicans — have grown newly wary of deficit spending. On Thursday, a $40 billion measure to assist restaurants that struggled during the pandemic failed on those grounds. GOP lawmakers have also objected to additional funding for the global pandemic response and called for any new virus response funding to come from unspent economic relief money in the $1.9 trillion rescue plan.

The administration is preparing to lay the blame on lawmakers if there are tough consequences this fall because of a lack of money. Still, it could be perilous for Biden, who has struggled to fulfill his promise to voters to get control of the pandemic.
…

your ad here

The top U.S. military officer challenged the next generation of Army soldiers on Saturday to prepare America’s military to fight future wars that may look little like the wars of today.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, painted a grim picture of a world that is becoming more unstable, with great powers intent on changing the global order. And he told graduating cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point that they will bear the responsibility to make sure America is ready.

“The potential for significant international conflict between great powers is increasing, not decreasing,” Milley said in prepared remarks. “Whatever overmatch we enjoyed militarily for the last 70 years is closing quickly, and the United States will be, in fact, we already are challenged in every domain of warfare, space, cyber, maritime, air, and of course land.”

America, he said, is no longer the unchallenged global power. Instead, it is being tested in Europe by Russian aggression, in Asia by China’s dramatic economic and military growth as well as North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, and in the Middle East and Africa by instability from terrorists.

Drawing a parallel with what military officials are seeing in Russia’s war on Ukraine, Milley said future warfare will be highly complex, with elusive enemies and urban warfare that requires long-range precision weapons, and new advanced technologies.

The U.S. has already been rushing new, high-tech drones and other weapons to the Ukrainian military — in some cases equipment that was just in the early prototype phases. Weapons such as the shoulder-launched kamikaze Switchblade drones are being used against the Russians, even as they are still evolving.

And as the war in Ukraine has shifted — from Russia’s unsuccessful battle to take the capital city of Kyiv to a gritty urban battle for towns in the eastern Donbas region — so has the need for different types of weapons. Early weeks focused on long-range precision weapons such as Stinger and Javelin missiles, but now the emphasis is on artillery, and increased shipments of howitzers.

And over the next 25 to 30 years, the fundamental character of war and its weapons will continue to change.

The U.S. military, Milley said, can’t cling to concepts and weapons of old, but must urgently modernize and develop the force and equipment that can deter or, if needed, win in a global conflict. And the graduating officers, he said, will have to change the way U.S. forces think, train and fight.

As the Army’s leaders of tomorrow, Milley said, the newly minted 2nd lieutenants will be fighting with robotic tanks, ships and airplanes, and relying on artificial intelligence, synthetic fuels, 3-D manufacturing and human engineering.

“It will be your generation that will carry the burden and shoulder the responsibility to maintain the peace, to contain and to prevent the outbreak of great power war,” he said.

In stark terms, Milley described what failing to prevent wars between great powers looks like.

“Consider that 26,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines were killed in six weeks from October to November of 1918 in the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne in World War I,” said Milley. “Consider that 26,000 U.S. troops were killed in the eight weeks from the beaches of Normandy to the fall of Paris.”

Recalling the 58,000 Americans killed in just the summer of 1944 as World War II raged, he added, “That is the human cost of great-power war. The butcher’s bill.”

Paraphrasing a Bob Dylan song, Milley said, “we can feel the light breeze in the air. We can see the storm flags fluttering in the wind. We can hear in the distance the loud clap of thunder. A hard rain is about to fall.”
…

your ad here

The ripple effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have been devastating for families of all kinds — including those who have seen their prospective adoptions put on hold.

Ukraine was once one of the U.S.’s most frequent partners on international adoptions, but the war changed all that: The embattled country has halted all international adoptions as the country copes with the turmoil unleashed on its courts and social services. Many children, including orphans, have also fled or been displaced.

When the war started, there were more than 300 Ukrainian children previously hosted by American families that were seeking to formally adopt them, said Ryan Hanlon, chief executive officer and president of the National Council For Adoption. Representatives for adoption agencies said that means at least 200 families were at some point of the adoption process, which takes between two to three years in ideal circumstances.

But, the National Council For Adoption made clear in a statement, “this is not the appropriate time or context to be considering adoption by U.S. citizens.”

That is because adoptions can only proceed with children who are clearly orphaned or for whom parental rights have been terminated, the group said, and establishing identities and family statuses is impossible for many Ukrainian children right now.

Jessica Pflumm, a stay-at-home mom who runs a smoothie business and has two daughters in the suburbs of Kansas City, is one prospective adoptive parent. She hopes to adopt Maks, a younger teen — Pflumm was reluctant to reveal his exact age because of safety concerns — whom they hosted for four weeks in December and January. Maks is now back in Ukraine, where his orphanage’s director has moved him to relatively safety in the country’s west.

“Every day is hard. We pray a lot and we try to think of what he is experiencing versus what we’re experiencing,” Pflumm said. “For us, it’s hard, but nothing compared to what he’s experiencing.”

War, natural disasters and other destabilizing events have a long history of upending intercountry adoptions. And Ukraine is a big piece of the international adoption puzzle, Hanlon said.

International adoptions have declined in number in recent years, but they have stayed relatively common from Ukraine. In fiscal year 2020, it surpassed China to become the country with the most adoptions to the U.S., responsible for more than 10% of all intercountry adoptions to the U.S., Hanlon said. Ukraine has one of the highest rates of children living in orphanages in Europe.

There were more than 200 adoptions from Ukraine in 2020 and nearly 300 in 2019, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of State. Russia, meanwhile, banned adoptions of children by American families in 2013 (around 60,000 children from Russia had been adopted by Americans in the two preceding decades).

Many prospective adoptions begin with U.S. families temporarily hosting older Ukrainian children through a network of orphan hosting programs, Hanlon said.

“It’s a very different experience if you’ve already connected with a particular child,” Hanlon said. “There’s a very visceral connection that these families have with their children, with having them in their homes.”

Pflumm said she and her family do have a language barrier with Maks. He speaks only Russian, which they do not know. She said they communicate with him via phone, typing everything into Google Translate. A friend from Belarus sometimes interprets, she said.

Pflumm said the family truly bonded with Maks through experiences, above language. When he was in Kansas, he experienced his first Christmas opening gifts, she said. They also connected over sports, and Maks was introduced to baseball, Pflumm said.

These days, Maks hears air raids going on every night and is often unable to sleep, Pflumm said.

“He deserves to have a family, and to have opportunity in front of him,” she said. “I feel like these kids are lost in the shuffle.”

In rural Maine, Tracy Blake-Bell and her family hosted two brothers, now 14 and 17, for a month in 2020 through a Wyoming-based program called Host Orphans Worldwide. The family then began the formal adoption process — an already complex process further snarled first by the coronavirus pandemic and, now, war.

The brothers, who grew up in orphanages, are now relatively safe in a Polish facility, the Blake-Bells said. But the Blake-Bells, who have two teenage sons and a dog named Jack, want them home.

“My husband and I love these two children as much as we love anyone in the world,” Tracy Blake-Bell said.

For most families, the wait is not going to end soon.

The State Department “is working with the Ukrainian government on resolving cases involving families who have final adoption orders but need to obtain other required documents for the child’s immigrant visa processing,” spokesperson Vanessa Smith said.

However, the Ukraine government maintains, per a March statement, that “under current conditions intercountry adoption is impossible.”

The Blake-Bells are among about 15 families waiting on that final step of the process — clearance from Ukrainian court. And they said they’re going to stick with it, as long as it takes.

“These boys are eligible,” said Nat, Tracy Blake-Bell’s husband. “Let them experience something a little bit more than an orphanage.”
…

your ad here

U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday will unveil his administration’s long-awaited Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, seen as a key step in the U.S. effort to reengage with Asian nations on trade more than five years after withdrawing from a comprehensive trade pact in the region.

Observers can expect to see a statement of broad principles laid out under four distinct pillars: fair and resilient trade; supply chain resiliency; clean energy, decarbonization and infrastructure; and taxation and anti-corruption.

The statement, which Biden will deliver in Japan, is not binding; instead, it’s a road map for cooperation on issues falling under the pillars, all of which will be subject to negotiations.

Unlike other trade agreements, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, or IPEF, is not expected to contain measures to expand market access by doing away with tariffs and other trade restrictions. That frustrates many advocates of broader trade.

“Multilateral trade agreements are not seen as being beneficial to American workers,” Sheila A. Smith, a senior fellow for Asia-Pacific studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told VOA. “I believe that this is the wrong choice. I think we need to engage more forcefully in trade access and trade talks with our partners in the region. But our politics are not aligned to that at the moment.”

It remained unclear Friday how many countries are expected to sign on to the joint statement. Reports suggested that the administration was hoping for as many as 10 or 11.

Reengagement, finally

The Biden administration has come under criticism for taking so long to establish an economic strategy in the Pacific, especially given China’s increasing influence in the region.

The unveiling of the IPEF comes more than five years after former President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal that would eventually become the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, an 11-country bloc that now constitutes one of the largest free-trade areas in the world.

Experts see the IPEF as the beginning of a much longer dialogue with nations in the region about how to better align policies and practices.

“This is going to be a standard-setting, norm-creation kind of endeavor,” Smith said. “The main goal here is to be inclusive. It doesn’t just mean that countries that are more democratically inclined are going to set the rules. It means that finding a common basis of understanding about standards in these new areas of trade is going to be really important.”

Possible victories

The Biden administration has said that the IPEF will attempt to “define our shared objectives around trade facilitation, standards for the digital economy and technology, supply chain resiliency, decarbonization and clean energy, infrastructure, worker standards, and other areas of shared interest.”

While some experts doubt that much progress can be made in areas such as labor rules and decarbonization without promises of expanded market access, gains are still possible.

“Trade facilitation,” the easing of administrative burdens that slow or block the exchange of goods and services, may be among the most promising areas covered by the IPEF, according to Niels Graham, assistant director for the Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center.

In a paper published by the Atlantic Council, Graham wrote, “For large, developing nations — like Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand — to see value in signing on to the framework, the U.S. must offer clear benefits that align with their priorities.”

Recent survey data, Graham said, indicate that trade facilitation assistance is an area of “great interest” for developing economies.

“In order to effectively incentivize developing economies’ participation in IPEF, the U.S. should place particular focus on the trade facilitation chapters of the framework under the fair and resilient trade pillar,” he wrote. “If the United States can facilitate a successful arrangement surrounding the trade facilitation portions of the framework, it will help towards building a broader economic partnership in the region.”

Digital trade agreement

“Since market access is off the table for now, I think the real question will be: What are the commercially meaningful outcomes?” Jake Colvin, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, told VOA. “What we’ll be looking for is an effort to negotiate a digital trade agreement, as well as supply chain commitments that would facilitate trade and simplify customs procedures.”

Regarding digital trade, a major issue will be the role of governments in cross-border data flows. While the U.S. default is to favor free flows of information, other countries are more willing to restrict access.

“IPEF is an opportunity to contrast the path of the United States and like-minded countries from what’s going on in places like Russia and China,” Colvin said.

‘Not a replacement’

Some experts believe that whatever form the IPEF takes, it is going to fall far short of what U.S. trading partners in the Indo-Pacific region really want.

“The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework that the Biden administration is going to roll out is not a replacement for trade agreements,” Steve Okun, a Singapore-based senior adviser for McLarty Associates, told VOA. “What the countries of Southeast Asia want [are] trade agreements. They would like to see market access commitments from the United States so that they could get more access to the U.S.”

In turn, Okun said, they would offer U.S. companies better access to regional markets and enact numerous policy changes in areas such as labor rules, environmental regulations and other areas of U.S. interest.

However, in the absence of substantive increases in market access, he said, it is difficult to see U.S. trading partners in the region making any meaningful concessions.

“There is, quite frankly, a lot of skepticism right now when it comes to what it is that the Biden administration is going to do,” Okun said. “There are some people who are looking this from the glass-half-full perspective, which is: ‘They are here. They’re engaging. This is a start.’ And then there’s other people who will look at it from a glass-half-empty perspective, saying, ‘Without … trade commitments, what is this really going to mean for us?’ ”

China reacts

China has preemptively criticized the IPEF, saying that by trying to create a group of like-minded trading partners, the U.S. is adopting a “Cold War mentality.”

“The Asia-Pacific is a promising land for cooperation and development, not a chessboard for geopolitical contest,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said May 12 at a news conference.

The People’s Daily, a Chinese Communist Party-controlled newspaper, accused the U.S. of trying to force countries in the region to break away from trade relationships with China.

The paper quoted an expert as warning, “The U.S. is going to use the framework to decouple from China, and will try to lure ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] members with the market economy of the IPEF and then force them to choose between China and the U.S.”

White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
…

your ad here

Gladys Martinez’s voice is almost lost in the crackling midday heat of Arizona as she steps onto U.S. soil.

“We come seeking asylum,” she whispers as she thrusts forward pictures she says show her murdered daughter.

Martinez, a Honduran, is one of dozens of people who arrive daily in Yuma, a small city on the Mexican border where there are gaps in the wall that separate the two countries.

She has travelled more than 4,000 kilometers, some of it on foot, from her native Colon, fleeing violence and poverty, desperately hoping she will be given sanctuary in the world’s wealthiest country.

She has nothing but the clothes she stands up in and some documents in a small backpack.

“Here are the papers, look! Look!” she says, pointing to some grisly photographs that show the lifeless face of a young woman.

“They killed my daughter, they choked her to death with a pillow and a bag,” she sobs.

Wall

The wall that separates the United States from Mexico crosses dunes and hills as it snakes its way from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean.

Despite the promises of politicians, it is not solid or insurmountable.

In some places it is 9 meters high, but desperate migrants still climb it.

Some of them fall. Some die.

In other places, like in Yuma, there are gaps large enough just to walk through.

U.S. border officers say — off the record — a gate should have been built here to allow for official access, but work was halted when President Joe Biden took office.

Most of the people who arrive at the wall have come from Central or South America.

Many fly to Mexico or Nicaragua and then continue overland, often paying a coyote — a human trafficker — to get them there.

The stories they tell of their journeys are all different, but all contain the same phrase: “It is very painful.”

‘We don’t like questions’

On the Mexican side, a few meters from the opening, hardscrabble plants cling to life in shifting sand as the hot desert sun beats down.

Every few minutes, vehicles pull up on the roadside, and migrants spill out, most just carrying a small backpack.

They are guided through the blistering landscape by men and women who melt away as they near the wall.

“Everyone has their own routes here, and no one likes it when one gets in the way of the other,” says one man who has paused in the shade of a tree.

He and his companion say vaguely they work in “commerce,” but the conversation gets gradually less friendly as it becomes clear they are talking to a reporter.

“We don’t like people asking questions here,” the older man says.

“If I ask him to make you disappear, he makes you disappear,” he says, pointing to his snarling younger colleague.

‘Mommy, I want to go’

Back on the U.S. side, border patrol officers offer water to the thirsty migrants, a moment of humanity for people who have seen little of it for weeks or months.

Miguel, from Peru, arrived with his daughters and his wife, who was bleeding from a head wound.

“Someone threw a rock at her, this is her blood,” he says, pointing to the bright red stain on her T-shirt as paramedics tend to the injury.

“Mommy, I want to go,” cries a young daughter, as she hugs one of the huge steel bars that make up the wall.

“They probably got in someone’s way,” says a police officer, who asks not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

On the ground nearby lie discarded pieces of clothing, half-eaten packets of cookies, plastic bottles, torn airline tickets and scraps of paper with phone numbers for people identified only as “gringo (foreigner) whatsapp” or “cousin Luis.”

“Those who are not discovered by the border patrol leave everything they can to continue traveling as light as possible,” says the same officer.

Under a health rule imposed by then-president Donald Trump in March 2020, border patrol officers can ignore an application for asylum.

Title 42 allows for the immediate expulsion of anyone not holding a valid visa.

The rule, ostensibly instituted to prevent people with COVID-19 from getting into the country, was supposed to lapse on Monday, but on Friday a judge ruled that it should persist.

For Carlos Escalante Barrera, a 38-year-old Honduran who arrived with his family, the reasons and the rules are unimportant.

“What we want is security,” he says.

Border patrol agents don’t look at the pictures and the documents he offers.

Instead, they show him the way to a van that will take him for processing and likely expulsion.

A few hundred meters away on the Mexican side of the border, more car loads of migrants are already arriving. 
…

your ad here

The first flights of infant formula from Europe, authorized by President Joe Biden to relieve a deepening U.S. shortage, will arrive in Indiana aboard military aircraft this weekend, the White House announced Friday.

The White House says 132 pallets of Nestle Health Science Alfamino Infant and Alfamino Junior formula will leave Ramstein Air Base in Germany and arrive in the U.S. this weekend. Another 114 pallets of Gerber Good Start Extensive HA formula are expected to arrive in the coming days. Altogether about 1.5 million 8-ounce bottles of the three formulas, which are hypoallergenic for children with cow’s milk protein allergy, will arrive this week.

While Biden initially requested that the Pentagon use commercially chartered aircraft to move the formula from Europe to the U.S., the White House said no commercial flights were available this weekend. Instead, U.S. Air Force planes will transport the initial batch of formula.

The Biden administration has dubbed the effort “Operation Fly Formula,” as it struggles to address nationwide shortages of formula, particularly hypoallergenic varieties, after the closure of the country’s largest domestic manufacturing plant in February due to safety issues.

U.S. regulators and the manufacturer, Abbott, hope to have that Michigan plant reopened next week, but it will take about two months before product is ready for delivery.

The Food and Drug Administration this week eased importation requirements for baby formula to try to ease the supply crunch, which has left store shelves bare of some brands and some retailers rationing supply for parents nervous about feeding their children.
…

your ad here