Today’s Headlines and Commentary

Days after Joseph Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, the president’s campaign has made no indication that they plan to concede, reports Politico. The president’s legal team is pursuing legal challenges in Pennsylvania and Georgia and baselessly claiming that widespread fraud enabled Biden’s victory. However, in the clearest sign yet that he has accepted his loss, Axios reports that Trump is privately discussing another run for the White House in 2024.

President-elect Biden announced the members of his new coronavirus task force, writes the Washington Post. The task force will include University of Minnesota epidemiologist Michael Osterholm and famed medical writer Atul Gawande. It will have subgroups to focus on vaccine distribution, personal protective equipment and testing. Among the task force’s most ambitious goals is building a public health corps of 100,000 Americans for contact-tracing. According to the Post, Biden will urge Republican and Democratic governors alike to institute mask mandates and give clear information about social distancing.

There’s good news on the global race for a coronavirus vaccine. According to the Associated Press, Pfizer’s vaccine has been 90% effective at preventing infections. The American drug company will likely apply later this month for emergency-use approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the results “just extraordinary.”

Starting on Jan. 20, President Trump’s Twitter account will be subject to the same rules as any other user, reports The Verge. Twitter allows world leaders to publish a wide range of rule-breaking content, which can include inciting violence and spreading disinformation about elections, if there is “a clear public interest value to keeping the tweet on the service.” But government officials have no such privileges once they leave office. The Verge notes that position-specific Twitter accounts like @POTUS, @FLOTUS and @WhiteHouse will be transferred to the new administration after Trump steps down.

President Trump announced on Twitter this afternoon that Defense Secretary Mark Esper “has been terminated” and that Christopher C. Miller, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, will be Acting Secretary of Defense. The New York Times called Esper a “dead man walking” on Oct. 23 after he sparred with Trump over deploying the military to quell civil unrest. According to Lawfare contributor Steve Vladeck, the Senate-confirmed Deputy Secretary of Defense, David Norquist, is statutorily next in line for the top department job unless the president has already fired him as well.

Defense News reports that Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, resigned Saturday after repeatedly clashing with Energy Secretary Dan Broilette. Tensions between Gordon-Hagerty and Brouillette reached their apex in early September after a House bill sought to give the Energy Department greater power over the nuclear weapons agency. Sen. Jim Inhofe blasted Brouillette in a statement on Friday, writing that he has shown “a complete lack of respect for the semi-autonomous nature of NNSA.”

Chinese government officials have yet to officially recognize President-elect Biden’s victory, writes the Times. Although presidential rhetoric may change under a Biden administration, scholars of U.S.-China relations do not anticipate major shifts in policy. While campaigning this past year, Biden called President Xi a “thug” and promised to combat China’s human rights abuses in the Xinjiang province against Uyghur Muslims. Communist Party officials are reportedly worried that Biden will be more effective than Trump in curbing both China’s economic influence and its military power in the South China Sea.

Voters turned out in massive numbers in Myanmar’s Sunday elections, the Times also reports. Preliminary results show that voters rebuked Aung San Suu Kyi, the figurehead of the powerful National League for Democracy party, whose reputation collapsed when she failed to condemn the government’s genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. “In some ethnic areas, people are very hostile to the N.L.D. and support ethnic parties instead,” observed Andrew Ngun Cung Lian, a constitutional scholar.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Azerbaijan claimed yesterday that it had seized the crucial Armenian city of Shusha, which is known as Shushi to Armenians. The two South Caucasian countries have been warring since Sep. 27 over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-controlled territory landlocked inside Azerbaijan. If it’s true that Azerbaijan has taken Shusha– a claim which the Armenian government steadfastly denies– then Azeri troops are only ten miles from the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh.

ICYMI: This Weekend on Lawfare

Pablo Escribano argued that Latin and Caribbean countries offer useful lessons for how to approach climate migration.

Scott R. Anderson, Susan Hennessey, Rohini Kurup, David Priess and Jacob Schulz wrote that, so far, the 2020 election has avoided a long list of things that could have gone wrong.

Quinta Jurecic, Alan Z. Rozenshtein and Benjamin Wittes discussed how the election results are an opportunity to strengthen and renew American democracy.

Email the Roundup Team noteworthy law and security-related articles to include, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for additional commentary on these issues. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Visit our Events Calendar to learn about upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.