Plan avoids antitrust rules to boost medical supplies
U.S. officials are invoking a rarely used provision of American law that would shield companies from antitrust rules to help the country from running out of medical supplies in a pandemic.
Navy Rear Adm.
John Polowczyk, who was appointed to run a White House supply chain task force in response to the coronavirus pandemic, told reporters last week that the government is expanding the emergency stockpile of critical supplies and medicines managed by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The government began formal discussions Thursday with private industry representatives on a fiveyear agreement to ensure supplies of protective materials, medical equipment, medicine and vaccines.
WASHINGTON — A sharply divided Senate confirmed Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas as director of national intelligence on Thursday, with Democrats refusing to support the nomination over fears that he will politicize the intelligence community’s work under President Donald Trump.
All Democrats opposed Ratcliffe, making him the first director to be installed on a partisan vote since the position was created in 2005. The tally was 49-44.
Ratcliffe will replace Richard Grenell, the current acting director, who has overseen some of the personnel changes.
As acting director, Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, made personnel changes and ordered reviews of the national intelligence director’s office.
Some members of the Senate Intelligence Committee said an acting director shouldn’t be engaging in reforming the intelligence apparatus. But Grenell’s office disputed fears of a purge and said some of the reforms he was considering or implementing had been recommended by past directors.
Democrats allowed a quick vote on Ratcliffe’s nomination, dropping their usual procedural delays in a signal that despite their skepticism, they prefer him in the job over Grenell.
Grenell in recent weeks had been declassifying information from the Russia investigation.
Last week, Senate Republicans released a declassified list of former intelligence officials who requested the identity of an American from intelligence reports. The American turned out to be former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn.
On Tuesday, Republicans released a January 2017 email that Susan Rice, President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, wrote to herself. The message marked a conversation about Flynn and his Russian contacts that she had participated in earlier that month with Obama and then-fbi Director James Comey. Grenell declassified the full memo after Republicans requested it.
There also have been pushes from some Democrats, and even Flynn’s own lawyer, to release transcripts of phone calls during the presidential transition period between Flynn and then-russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
“No lawyer for Flynn has ever seen it or heard the recording,” Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, said in an email to The Associated Press. “I would want both.”