Vox Sentences - “A full-blown constitutional crisis”

The Senate Judiciary Committee issued a scathing report on Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election; Moderna will open a vaccine factory in Africa, after criticism of its vaccine distribution to low-income countries.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes.

A new report on Trump’s attempts to overturn the election

Sean Rayford/Getty Images

• The Senate Judiciary Committee released an interim report Thursday showing the extreme measures former President Donald Trump took to try to overturn the 2020 election. [Senate Judiciary Committee]
• The 400-page report details a tense January 3 meeting in the Oval Office, during which Trump tried to pressure high-level Department of Justice officials to help him stay in power. [NBC / Rebecca Shabad]
• During the meeting, Trump reportedly floated replacing then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, who had promised to support Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. [New York Times / Katie Benner]
• Trump reportedly dropped the plan when told that acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and all of the assistant attorneys general might resign if he did not. [NPR / Ryan Lucas]
• The report also described a letter Clark and Trump wanted the DOJ to send to Georgia officials, asking them to investigate voting “irregularities” in the state. Rosen and Donoghue refused to send the letter. [Washington Post / Devlin Barrett]
• Sen Dick Durbin (D-IL), the head of the Judiciary Committee, said the report shows how close the US was to “a full-blown constitutional crisis.” [CNN / Katelyn Polantz and Zachary Carter]
• Republicans on the Judiciary Committee issued their own report on Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, finding that nothing untoward took place, and arguing Trump “did not pressure” DOJ officials to go along with election fraud claims. [Fox News / Tyler Olson]

Moderna will build a vaccine factory in Africa

• US pharmaceutical company Moderna announced Thursday that it plans to build a $500 million manufacturing facility in an as-yet-unannounced African country, with the goal of helping reduce vaccine shortages like those faced in lower-income countries during the Covid-19 pandemic. [Wall Street Journal / Peter Loftus]
• Moderna’s new plant, which likely will take two to four years to build, is slated to produce up to 500 million doses of the company’s mRNA Covid-19 vaccine. The plant will eventually also manufacture other Moderna vaccines. [NYT / Lynsey Chutel]
• But according to John Nkengasong, the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 4.5 percent of people on the continent are inoculated against the virus, and Moderna’s announcement won’t help African countries get the vaccine doses they need now. [Reuters / Josephine Mason and Maggie Fick]
• Vaccine companies, including Moderna, have faced intense criticism for their refusal to waive intellectual property rights so that other countries can manufacture doses themselves. Vaccine distribution through the worldwide Covax program has been less effective than initially hoped, in part because vaccine manufacturers have fallen behind on orders but also because richer companies bought most of the supply. [Financial Times / Jamie Smyth and Hannah Kuchler]
• Pfizer, a German drug manufacturer, announced in July that it would manufacture some vaccine doses at South Africa’s Biovac facility; that location will receive the vaccine components from Europe, then mix and package them for distribution, starting next year. [the Telegraph / Sarah Newey]

Pfizer announced Thursday that it is seeking FDA approval to provide Covid-19 vaccine doses to children ages 5 to 11, after promising immune responses in late-stage clinical trials. [WSJ / Jared S. Hopkins]

• A federal district court judge in Austin issued a ruling to stop enforcement of Texas’ draconian SB 8, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and encourages citizens to sue people who get an abortion or aid in obtaining the procedure. [NYT / Sabrina Tavernise and Katie Benner]
• The CIA is reshuffling its structure to introduce a China-focused mission center, in alignment with President Joe Biden’s focus on the nation’s power and global ambitions. [Politico / Quint Forgey and Daniel Lippman]
• The WHO is sending Covid-19 aid to North Korea, which has maintained strict border lockdowns since the beginning of the pandemic; supplies are currently being held in quarantine in the port city of Nampho. [Reuters / Josh Smith]

“From the moment SB 8 went into effect, women have been unlawfully prevented from exercising control over their own lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution. This court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right.”

[Federal District Court Judge Robert Pitman, in his ruling to stop Texas from enforcing its ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy]

Vox's Jamil Smith talks with attorney, author, and activist Bryan Stevenson about the newly expanded Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. Listen to Vox Conversations wherever you get podcasts. [Spotify]

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