Today’s Headlines and Commentary

The Food and Drug Administration is aiming to issue an emergency authorization for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine by Friday evening, reports the New York Times. Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, today announced that Americans may receive vaccinations as soon as Monday or Tuesday of next week. The announcement comes as the daily coronavirus death toll in the United States broke the 3,000 mark on both Wednesday and Thursday.

An extraordinary lawsuit filed by the state of Texas against four battleground states—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—seeks to overturn the results of the presidential election, according to the Times. Texas asked the Supreme Court to consider the case and temporarily prohibit the four states from having their electors cast votes in the Electoral College. Legal experts say the Supreme Court is likely to reject the Texas lawsuit given the case’s procedural and substantive shortcomings.

The Senate passed a veto-proof defense authorization bill this morning, writes the Washington Post. The $741 billion bill provides direct funding for the Pentagon and includes everything from employee benefits to funding for overseas operations. President Trump has been threatening to veto the legislation for the past few weeks.

The Ethiopian government is returning Eritrean refugees to camps they had fled in the Tigray region, reports Reuters. “Given the traumatic events to which refugees say they were exposed in Tigray, we believe Eritrean refugees should have the opportunity to receive protection and assistance outside of the region,” said Dana Hughes, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees. Because Eritrean troops have helped Ethiopia stifle opposition in Tigray, several Eritrean refugees told Reuters that they are at risk for retribution from neighboring Tigrayans.

Reuters also reports that a prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) will likely begin a probe into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity by Boko Haram and related groups in Nigeria. The ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has overseen preliminary investigations in countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Mali. Reuters notes that judges must approve her request before a full investigation can commence.

Hong Kong Police announced today that Jimmy Lai, the publisher of a pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong, has been charged with foreign collusion under Beijing’s new national security law, writes the Wall Street Journal. The arrest—which was, in the word’s of Lai’s newspaper, “reportedly based on Lai’s acceptance of interviews and calls for sanctions from foreign governments”—makes him the highest-profile Chinese figure to be charged under the new law. The bill, which was designed to crush dissent in China, has received widespread condemnation and sparked human rights concerns from the international community since it was imposed in June this year.

According to ABC News, European Union leaders agreed last night to reduce their net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2030. The bloc’s leaders had failed to reach an agreement in October after due to funding concerns of eastern European nations. . ABC notes that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared last week his ambition to cut Britain’s emissions by at least 68 percent by the decade’s end.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) has sentenced Salim Ayyash, a member of the Hezbollah militant group, to life imprisonment for his involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, reports AP News. Back in August, the STL convicted several alleged Hezbollah members, including Ayyash, for charges linked to the 2005 bombing that killed 22 people and injured 226—a ruling that Arthur Traldi explored in-depth on Lawfare.

Setara Begum, a Rohingya woman, is suing for $2 million after her husband was murdered by government soldiers in Myanmar, reports NBC News. The Myanmar government has driven more than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims into Bangladesh since 2017 in what the UN has characterized as a campaign with genocidal intent.. Although the country is already charged with genocide by the International Court of Justice, Begum’s lawsuit is the first brought under Myanmar’s human rights commission.

In a statement yesterday, Facebook announced that a famous state-sponsored hacking group called APT32 is linked to the Vietnamese government. According to ZDnet, the hackers used phishing and malware to attack targets such as international automakers, Vietnamese human rights activists and the Cambodian government. ZDnet notes that it is unusual for a social media platform to dox—or reveal the identity of—state-backed hackers.

An ongoing malware campaign dubbed “Adrozek” that targets Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Yandex browsers has been found to install malicious browser extensions and make changes to users’ security preferences and other computer settings, writes Ars Technica. Adrozek began spreading no later than May and peaked in August, at which point the malware was observed on 30,000 devices per day.

ICYMI: Yesterday on Lawfare

Shayan Karbassi discussed the future of NATO after the Trump administration under the Biden administration.

Daniel Byman reflected on the New Zealand government’s report on what went wrong leading up to Christchurch terrorist attacks.

Curtis Bradley, Jack Goldsmith and Oona Hathaway argued that there are serious flaws in Congress’s ability to ensure accountability about executive agreements.

Michael Garcia and Mieke Eoyang gave the U.S. government a roadmap for addressing cybercrime.

Jen Patja Howell shared an episode of The Lawfare Podcast entitled “The Vaccine Misinformation Cometh.” As part of Lawfare’s Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Claire Wardle, the co-founder and leader of the nonprofit organization First Draft and a research fellow at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center. They talked about First Draft’s recent report on online misinformation about COVID-19.

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.