Biden’s Decision to Ease Patent Rules on Vaccines for Poorer Countries

We begin with the Biden Administration’s decision to support easing patent rules which has Big Pharma alarmed and is already getting pushback from countries like Germany. Joining us is Thomas Bollyky, director of the global health program and senior fellow for global health, economics, and development at the Council on Foreign Relations who is also a professor of law at Georgetown University and the founder and managing editor of Think Global Health. We discuss efforts by South Africa and India, countries which are suffering the ravages of the pandemic and only have one or two percent of their population vaccinated, to get waivers on patents so that they can produce drugs and vaccines that are affordable. But even though India has licensing agreements for most of the vaccines on the market including Russia’s Sputnik, there is a shortage of the precursors needed to mass produce vaccines and so far the richer countries have gotten the lion’s share of them. 

 

Florida’s Authoritarian Governor Signs Voter Suppression Bill With Only Fox News Present

Then we look into the bill to make voting difficult for Democrats and easier for Republicans in the key swing state of Florida that was signed today by Governor DeSantis in a ceremony which excluded the press except for Fox News. Joining us is Charles Zelden, a professor in the Department of Humanities and Politics at Nova Southeastern University’s Halmos College of Arts and Sciences in Florida who is an expert on voting rights and the author of Voting Rights on Trial and The Battle for the Black Ballot: Smith v Allwright and the Defeat of the Texas All-White Primary. We discuss how this ambitious and increasingly authoritarian governor is Trump’s favorite to run as his VP in 2024, even though it is against the law for two candidates from the same state to be on the same ticket.

 

Judge to Reveal How Barr Spun the Mueller Report, and a Second Steele Dossier

Then finally we speak with David Rothkopf, the producer of the podcasts “National Security Magazine” and “Deep State Radio” which he hosts and a columnist for The Daily Beast and USA Today. His latest book is Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump and we discuss how a federal judge is demanding the DOJ hand over documents the former AG kept secret which implicate Barr in misleading her and Congress about how he spun the Mueller report’s findings. We also discuss new revelations in the British press that there was a second Steele dossier produced for the FBI during Trump’s term that contains raw intelligence which makes further claims of Russian meddling in the US election and also references claims regarding the existence of further Trump sex tapes.