Presidential transition begins - Lower cost vaccine - Secret Saudi-Israeli meeting

Following most presidential elections — with the exception of the contested 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore — [General Services Administration, or GSA] administrators have quickly ascertained the incoming president after news outlets called the race and the losing candidate conceded. [GSA chief Emily Murphy's] refusal to do so had ramped up pressure from Capitol Hill, including from House Democrats who wanted Murphy to brief them on the transition hold-up.
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Murphy, in her letter [to Biden] Monday, defended her decision-making, saying the looked to “precedent from prior elections involving legal challenges and incomplete counts. GSA does not dictate the outcome of legal disputes and recounts, nor does it determine whether such proceedings are reasonable and justified.”
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The ascertainment will provide funding for the Biden-Harris transition, and most critically, give Biden’s team the opportunity to meet with their counterparts across federal agencies to prepare for the new administration to take over in January. With the GSA ascertainment, the expectation is that both national security and pandemic coordination will begin in earnest.