USA: Will the Biden Administration Shine Light on Special Ops Programs?

U.S. special operations forces deployed to 154 countries, or roughly 80 percent of the world’s nations, last year, but information about exactly where elite forces conduct missions, under what authorities they operate, who they’ve killed, and whether they’re adhering to the laws of armed conflict is closely guarded, buried in obscure legal provisions, shrouded in secrecy, or allegedly unknown even to Special Operations Command.

The command, known as SOCOM, will only name half the countries where its forces were active in 2020. It claims that its personnel — Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and Marine Corps Raiders among them — have captured or killed “thousands of terrorists” under one obscure program but also that it doesn’t track such data. SOCOM refuses to provide even basic information about publicly acknowledged operations.

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USA: Reality Check: COVID, Russia and Biden's High Approval Rating –by Heather Cox Richardson

The first is that President Biden announced today that Merck, the pharmaceutical company, will pitch in to help make the Johnson & Johnson single-shot coronavirus vaccine. Along with high production rates from the other manufacturers, this should enable the government to produce vaccines for all U.S. adults—300 million of us—by the end of May, two months ahead of the previously projected schedule. The administration has facilitated this rate of production by using the Defense Production Act, a 1950 law that enables the government to manage production of materials deemed necessary for national defense. That law is used quite frequently, but while the previous president used it repeatedly during his administration, he was curiously reluctant to use it to address the coronavirus pandemic.

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Saudi-US Relations: Biden plans to ‘recalibrate’ relations with Saudi Arabia and downgrade MBS

President Joe Biden plans to shift U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia and will conduct diplomacy through Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz rather than his powerful son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the White House said on Tuesday.

The announcement by White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki was an abrupt reversal in U.S. policy from Biden's Republican predecessor, President Donald Trump, whose son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner maintained steady contact with the crown prince.

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