U.N. study shows women working harder, getting poorer during pandemic

Women worldwide are doing more unpaid labor and risk falling into poverty due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a study released by the United Nations said. 

File Photo by Pat Benic/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 26 (UPI) -- Women are doing more unpaid work during the COVID-19 pandemic and have a greater danger of slipping into poverty, a report released Thursday from the United Nations shows.

The report, "Whose Time to Care?" from U.N. Women, surveyed data in 38 countries and found that both women and men have increased their unpaid workloads, but women are "still doing the lion's share."

More women than men were leaving the workforce to take on care burdens for children and other family members, the research gathered by telephone and online survey methods showed.

"Greater numbers of women -- who are already less likely to be in the workforce -- have left the labor market altogether," the new report said. The difference is highest in Latin America, a region hard hit by the economic fallout of COVID-19, with 83 million women outside the labor force (up from 60 million before COVID-19).

Since the pandemic began, 56% of women and 51% of men have increased the time they spend on unpaid care work, the report says, but the difference expands when the study looked at caring for children.

Research in July by Ipsos for U.N. Women in 16 countries showed that before COVID-19, women spent an average of 26 hours per week on child care, but that has increased to 31 hours since the pandemic began. For men, the reported number of hours increased to 24 per week from 20 per week in pre-COVID-19 times.

Most alarming, the report says is that research published in September by U.N. Women shows that the economic losses related to the pandemic could push 13% of women and children into poverty.

"Next year 435 million women and girls will be living on less than $1.90 a day worldwide -- including 47 million specifically impoverished by COVID-19," the report said.

The report calls on governments to adopt concrete policy actions, including investing in the so-called "care economy," which suffers from underpayment and exploitation. U.N. Women encourages governments to support paid family and sick leave and organize "cash for care" programs that subsidize parents who take off work to care for children when schools are closed due to COVID-19.

"It is high time that this work be recognized, reduced, redistributed and, ultimately, supported," the report said.

International shipping is killing the climate
By Christiaan De Beukelaer, University of Melbourne

Trucks deliver offloaded containers to designated areas at the Qingdao New Qianwan Automatic Container Terminal in Qingdao, Shandong Province, in 2019.
File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 17 (UPI) -- The shipping of goods around the world keeps economies going. But it comes at an enormous environmental cost -- producing more CO₂ than the aviation industry. This problem should be getting urgent international attention and action, but it's not.

This week, all 174 member states of the International Maritime Organization will discuss a plan to meet an emissions reduction target. But the target falls far short of what's needed, and the plan to get there is also weak.

As other industries clean up their act, shipping's share of the global emissions total will only increase. New fuels and ship design, and even technology such as mechanical sails, may go some way to decarbonizing the industry -- but it won't be enough.

It's high time the international shipping industry radically curbed its emissions. The industry must set a net-zero target for 2050 and a realistic plan to meet it.

Globally, more than 50,000 merchant ships ship about 11 billion tons of goods a year. In 2019 they covered nearly 60 trillion ton-miles, which refers to transporting one ton of goods over a nautical mile.

Per ton-mile, carbon dioxide emissions from shipping are among the lowest of all freight transport options. But in 2018, shipping still emitted 1,060 million tons of CO₂ -- 2.89% of global emissions. By comparison, the aviation industry contributed 918 million tons of CO₂, or 2.4% of the total.

And as international trade increases and other sectors decarbonize, global shipping is expected to contribute around 17% of human-caused emissions by 2050.

An emissions pariah

The IMO, which regulates the global shipping industry, did not set meaningful emissions reduction targets until April 2018. This is despite being requested to reduce emissions as far back as 1997 under the Kyoto Protocol.

The IMO has pledged to halve shipping emissions between 2008 and 2050 while aiming for full decarbonization. By 2030, the carbon intensity (or emissions per ton-mile) of individual ships should fall by 40%, compared with 2008 levels.

The IMO's Marine Environment Protection Committee, is devising binding rules for the industry to achieve these emissions goals. Draft measures being considered this week focus solely on reducing the carbon intensity of individual ships. The plan has been slammed by critics because emissions reductions are not in line with Paris Agreement commitments of limiting global warming to 1.5℃ or 2℃ by 2100.

There are two main issues with the 40% emissions intensity target.

First, it's not ambitious enough. Research suggests limiting warming to 1.5℃ requires the shipping industry to reach net-zero emissions. Merely reducing the carbon intensity of ships will barely make a dent in current emissions. Worse, even the best-case scenario will likely lead to a 14% emissions increase compared to 2008.

Second, the IMO has yet to say how it will meet its targets. The plan up for discussion this week is weak: not least because it lacks enforcement mechanisms.

So how do we fix the problem?

Earlier this year, I sailed on the Avontuur. This 100-year-old two-masted schooner under German flag sailed from Germany to the Caribbean and Mexico to load 65 tons of coffee and cacao, then ship it under sail to Hamburg.

The round-trip took more than six months and 15 crew members. Roughly 169 million ships like the Avontuur would be needed to transport the 11 billion tons of goods moved by sea each year. It would require 2.5 billion crew, compared with 1.5 million today. Clearly, that is not realistic.

So how, then, do we solve the international shipping problem? Clean transport advocates say we must reduce demand for cargo transport by using what's locally available, and generally consuming less and moving to a post-growth economy.

Some scientists concur, arguing either carbon intensity or shipping demand must come down -- and probably both.

Ships can significantly reduce their emissions simply by slowing down. Carbon emissions increase exponentially when ships travel above cruising speed. But the industry seems unwilling to pick this low-hanging fruit, perhaps because it would compromise just-in-time supply chains.

Ships commonly burn huge amounts of heavy fuel oil. Emerging fuels, such as hydrogen and ammonia, have the potential to cut emissions from ships. But producing these fuels may create substantial emissions, and adopting new fuels would require building new ships or retrofitting existing ones.

Existing vessels can also be retrofitted with more efficient propulsion mechanisms. They could also be fitted with wind-assist technologies such as sails, rotors, kites and suction wings. Research suggests these technologies could reduce a ship's emissions by 10%-60%.

And new designs for sail-powered cargo vessels are emerging. But these ships are yet to be built and it may be a long time before they are widely used.

Looking ahead

Technological solutions on their own will not bring the necessary emissions reductions. New technologies must be embraced immediately, and ambitious regulation is necessary. Industry and consumer demand for shipped goods must fall as well.

Earth's remaining carbon budget is fast shrinking and all industry sectors must do their fair share. At this point in the climate crisis, further delays and weak targets are inexcusable.

Christiaan De Beukelaer is a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denies permit for Pebble Mine in Alaska

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday rejected Pebble Limited Partnership's permit to build a mine in Alaska's Bristol Bay. Photo by Stan Shebs/Wikimedia Commons

Nov. 25 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday rejected a permit for the proposed, controversial Pebble Mine in Alaska.

The Corps' Alaska commander, Col. Damon Delarosa said that Pebble Limited Partnership's plan to deal with waste from the mine "does not comply with Clean Water Act guidelines" and that the project as proposed "is contrary to the public interest."

Delarosa said the decision was "based on all available facts and complies with existing laws and regulations," following analysis of the project and about three years of review.

The site of the proposed mine is located in a remote area in southwestern Alaska, which drains into the Bristol Bay, prompting opposition to the plan from activists and local fishing operations, as well as President Donald Trump's son, Donald Jr., and prominent Republicans.

In August, the Corps said the project -- which would be the largest gold and copper mine in North America -- has the potential to provide the creation of jobs and extraction of natural resources.

But, "as currently proposed, the project could have substantial environmental impacts within the unique Bristol Bay watershed and lacks adequate compensatory mitigation."

At the time, then-CEO Tom Collier, who since has resigned, said the company was "well into" an effort to present a mitigation plan.

Pebble said it plans to launch an appeal of Wednesday's decision within 60 days.

"One of the real tragedies of this decision is the loss of economic opportunities for people living in the area," Pebble CEO Joh Shively said. "A politically driven decision has taken away the hope that many had for a better life."

Joel Reynolds, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Wednesday's decision "speaks volumes about how bad this project is, how uniquely unacceptable it is."

"We've had to kill this project more than once and we're going to continue killing for as long as it takes to protect Bristol Bay," said Reynolds.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, also said that the Army Corps "made the correct decision."

"Pebble had to meet a high bar so that we do not trade on resource for another," he said.

Trump administration to relax rules on killing birds
By
Clyde Hughes
(0)


Birds fly on and off of a lamp post on 5th Avenue in New York City on November 30, 2018. The Trump administration is changing its interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to shield companies from regulations to protect migratory birds. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo


Nov. 27 (UPI) -- The Trump administration Friday published an analysis of the 102-year-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act that would shield companies from responsibility for "incidentally" killing birds.

The weakening of the law through the new interpretation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would likely lead to more bird deaths because energy companies, construction firms and land developers would have less incentive to take precautionary measures to protect birds, the analysis said.

"This proposed rule clarifies that the scope of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act applies only to intentional injuring or killing of birds," a statement from U.S. Fish and Wildlife said. "Conduct that results in the unintentional (incidental) injury or death of migratory birds is not prohibited under the act."

The administration had been gunning for a new interpretation of the law since 2017. In August, U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni rejected efforts to change the rule.

"There is nothing in the text of the MBTA that suggests that in order to fall within its prohibition, the activity must be directed specifically at birds," Caproni said in her ruling. "Nor does the statute prohibit only intentionally killing migratory birds. And it certainly does not say that only 'some' kills are prohibited."

The new analysis suggested, though, that scaling back the rule was a "preferred alternative" to how the law is currently applied.

Attorneys general in New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon, California and New Mexico, have all fought the administration in modifying the rules.

Hong Kong activist tells German paper he's doing well in prison isolation

Thu, November 26, 2020

FILE PHOTO: Pro-democracy activists Joshua Wong and Tiffany Yuen arrive at West Kowloon Magistrates's Courts to face charges related to an illegal vigil assembly commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, in Hong Kong


BERLIN (Reuters) - Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong told a German newspaper he was doing well despite being held in solitary confinement and having trouble sleeping because of bright lights after he was remanded in custody this week.

Wong, who on Monday pleaded guilty to charges of organising and inciting an unauthorised assembly near police headquarters in last year's anti-government protests, also said he does not expect a fair trial on Dec. 2.

Facing a maximum three-year jail term, Wong told Die Welt daily he was not allowed to leave his solitary cell or meet other prisoners and was forbidden to do sport.


"Because the light in the cell burns for 24 hours, it is difficult for me to sleep," Wong told the paper in written answers from prison.

"I have to cover my eyes with protective face masks to fall asleep," he wrote, adding he does not expect a fair trial and that he felt like a dissident in China.

"I have long since lost confidence in this legal system," he wrote, adding, however, that if he and other activists were convicted, the democracy movement would continue.

"I want to tell the world that the movement in Hong Kong will not come to a halt just because Agnes Chow, Ivan Lam and I are in prison," he said, adding that he saw China as a threat to world freedom.

"Universities, journalists and companies - everyone is forced to adhere to Chinese standards," said Wong.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

GRIFTED

A donor who gave $2.5 million to a pro-Trump group looking for election fraud wants his money back after disappointing results

Sinéad Baker
Fri, November 27, 2020

President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday. Erin Schaff - Pool/Getty Images

A venture capitalist who gave $2.5 million to a pro-Trump group that said it was trying to find evidence of election fraud is now looking for a refund.

A lawsuit said Fred Eshelman gave vast sums to the Texas-based True the Vote Inc. but was soon disappointed with its efforts.

True the Vote mounted suits in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin but later dropped them. It says it is nonetheless still investigating fraud allegations.

Eshelman said he pressed True the Vote for details of how it was spending his money but instead got "platitudes, and empty promises."


A venture capitalist who donated $2.5 million to a pro-Trump group trying to find evidence of fraud in the US election wants a refund after being disappointed with the group's efforts.

Fred Eshelman is suing True the Vote Inc., a monitoring organization in Houston, to reclaim the money.

The lawsuit says Eshelman sent $2 million to True the Vote on November 5, two days after Election Day.

At that point no winner had been called, but Joe Biden was by most tallies ahead of President Donald Trump, who had long claimed without evidence that the election was vulnerable to fraud.

The suit, first reported by Bloomberg, said Eshelman sent another $500,000 to True the Vote a week later, by which time media outlets including Insider had long called the election for Biden.

Business Insider also obtained a copy of Eshelman's complaint.

Eshelman is the founder of Eshelman Ventures LLC and used to be a pharmaceuticals executive, according to the company.

Trump has continued to claim the election was stolen, mounting a disjointed legal effort to challenge the result. He had still not conceded as of Friday morning.

The lawsuit said that Eshelman "regularly and repeatedly" asked for updates on how True the Vote was using his money and that he sought "specific and actionable updates" about True the Vote's "purported investigation, litigation, and communication efforts in key states."

But it said he was "consistently met with vague responses, platitudes, and empty promises of follow-up that never occurred."

The suit accuses True the Vote of breach of contract, and also "conversion," a legal concept linked to the misuse of someone else's property.

It said he asked for a refund, at which point True the Vote offered to return $1 million so long as he did not sue the group.

The suit said True the Vote promised to launch lawsuits in swing states, to gather whistleblower complaints about issues with the election, and to conduct "sophisticated data modeling and statistical analysis to identify potential illegal or fraudulent balloting."

True the Vote announced on November 17 that it was dropping lawsuits it had brought in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Eshelman's lawsuit said he was "not provided any specific update on the status or strategy behind those cases."

The group's president and founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, blamed "barriers to advancing our arguments, coupled with constraints on time."

She said the group was continuing to investigate issues in the US electoral system and argued that the lawsuits represented only a "fraction" of its work.

Business Insider has contacted True the Vote for comment. It did not respond to a request from Bloomberg.

The Trump campaign has filed its own lawsuits in battleground states, though it is yet to win any of them.

It also launched a hotline for people to share testimony about election fraud, but it ended up being overwhelmed with prank calls.

Trump said on Thursday that he would "certainly" leave the White House if Joe Biden won the Electoral College, which is scheduled to formally vote on December 14.

It was the closest he had come to conceding the election, though he later insisted via Twitter that he won.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Op-Ed: To stamp out Trumpism, the U.S. needs to deal with these six things

Ian Bassin and Justin Florence
Fri, November 27, 2020

The thin crowd on the National Mall at President Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. Other images were doctored to make the crowd seem bigger. (Associated Press)

The United States barely survived the most acute threat to its political system since the Civil War by averting a second Trump term. But Donald Trump was always just a carrier for a political virus that predated and will outlast him. As evidenced by the finding that 8 in 10 Trump voters do not think he should relinquish power, Trumpism as a political movement very much remains.

A return of Trumpism to the White House would mirror the second wave of COVID-19, which has been worse than the first. Trump 2.0 would have seen America’s openness to strongman rule — and likely be more competent at it.

To avoid that, the political virus that gave us Trump must be addressed. It is a disease with two strains, global and national.

The global strain is a wave of authoritarianism. Over the past 15 years, democracy has been in retreat around the world, with autocrats supplanting democratic governments in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, Venezuela and Poland. Across the globe, citizens are growing less committed to democracy and more open to alternatives. These trends are being driven by factors that transcend borders and include globalization, migration and new information technologies.

The United States has not been immune. Openness to the idea of military rule jumped from 1 in 16 Americans 30 years ago to 1 in 6 pre-Trump. And while some of the shift is likely attributable to global factors, this political virus also carries a uniquely American strain.

The country has become more polarized politically as liberals and conservatives segregate into different geographic areas and consume different media. Previously dominant groups who feel they are losing status in an ever-more diverse nation have captured the Republican Party, turning it into an instrument for holding power at all cost. That party, in turn, has taken advantage of unique structures of American democracy such as the electoral college and the Senate to give itself governmental powers that are out of proportion with the support the party has among voters. For example, Republicans have lost the popular vote in 7 of 8 presidential elections yet dominate the Supreme Court.

As a result of the global and national strains mixing, Trump was able to go a long way toward executing the modern autocrat’s playbook, which typically involves six things.

Spreading disinformation: Trump began doing this on Day One with petty efforts to doctor images to make his inauguration crowd seem bigger and continues this behavior today through his false claims of electoral victory.

Politicizing independent institutions: Trump sought to do this with the Department of Justice, the intelligence community, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and even the U.S. Postal Service.

Delegitimizing vulnerable populations: Trump tried to do this by falsely claiming he would have won the popular vote in 2016 but for millions of “illegal votes” from communities of color, and continued this with abusive immigration policies that separated families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Aggrandizing executive power: Trump repeatedly did this in such forms as declaring a fake emergency to appropriate funds that Congress refused to authorize for a border wall as well as asserting “the right to do whatever I want” and that his “authority is total.”

Quashing dissent: Trump tried to do so by using regulatory powers to retaliate against critics in the media, stoking violence to silence opponents, even attempting to ban books.

Corrupting elections: Trump was impeached for trying to pressure Ukraine into corrupting the 2020 election. And to this day his baseless claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent are undermining public trust in our electoral system.

We came far too close to a full authoritarian takeover. Even absent Trump, anti-democratic toxins will remain in our body politic. To purge them, Trump-era abuses must be reckoned with — not as retribution, but to deter recurrence.

The U.S. government advises other countries that are emerging from authoritarian regimes to undertake a process of “transitional justice” to return to healthier footing. We should heed our own advice. That means establishing independent investigations to account for abuses that took place, prosecuting violations of law, and restoring ethical and professional norms through government and private-sector actions.

Immediate reform legislation should be passed to impose stronger guardrails against executive abuses. Congress should be re-empowered to have lead responsibility for making hard decisions on such matters as war powers, emergency powers and spending. And barriers to voting should be removed while better protecting our elections from foreign interference. There are already three bills before Congress that would accomplish this.

States need to fix some of the current system’s incentives for counterproductive political behavior. The primary system in many states rewards extreme candidates; uncontrolled gerrymandering enables minority parties to control state legislatures.

At the national level, President-elect Joe Biden should convene a diverse set of experts and citizens to make recommendations on how to address the representational deficiencies that are built into the Senate and the electoral college, including the way they have translated into an overly politicized federal judiciary.

Finally, we must reclaim our national identity as a country that derives its strength from its diversity. We’ve seen a skilled demagogue divide us and lead more Americans to see their political adversaries as worthy of violence. To reverse that trend, we need leaders across the political, cultural, religious, business and grass-roots spectrum to consistently tell a more unifying and uplifting story about America in the 21st century — a narrative about how we can become the first truly multiracial, pluralist democracy the world has seen. Then they need to take action to make that story a reality.

Voting Trump out of office was the treatment our critically ill government needed, but it’s this set of next steps that will be the vaccine.

Ian Bassin and Justin Florence are co-founders of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Protect Democracy. They previously served as associate White House counsels to President Obama.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

In his wake, Trump leaves vulnerabilities of democracy exposed

Peter Grier
Wed, November 25, 2020


President Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert an election he falsely claims to have won appear to be falling apart. The United States has likely avoided the sort of post-vote struggle for power that characterizes countries with less stable, shallowly rooted democracies.

But the extraordinary actions of the last three weeks could leave lasting marks on U.S. governance. Mr. Trump has identified many cracks and holes in America’s unwieldy, decentralized electoral system – and tested them to see what, if anything, might give.

The result has laid out a path for how others could push further in the future. The way the nation chooses its leader depends at many points on norms and traditions, as well as the goodwill of election workers and local and state officials. Recent weeks have highlighted how a candidate could conceivably manipulate or improperly influence events and key people – particularly if the candidate begins sowing doubts before the ballot, as Mr. Trump tried to do by attacking mail-in voting.

“Elections are the ways we resolve political differences peacefully, and he tried very hard to set up a false choice: one in which either he won or the system was broken,” says Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Voting Rights and Elections Program. “That really undermines the American system ... in which people choose their elected leaders – not the other way around.”

Trump’s four-pronged approach

Mr. Trump has refused to concede to President-elect Joe Biden and continues to insist that he has a path to reelection. On Wednesday he tweeted, “2020 is a long way from over!”

Many Republicans back the president’s resistance. A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that 84% of self-identified members of the GOP believe that Mr. Biden did not legitimately win the election.

But this week marked a turning point in the official transition of power, as the General Services Administration announced Monday that it would begin coordinating with the incoming Biden administration team. Mr. Biden is now receiving the classified President’s Daily Brief of sensitive intelligence information.

States with a total of 270 Electoral College votes – the margin needed for victory – have now certified a Biden victory.

Mr. Trump’s post-vote strategy to prevent the nation from reaching this point consisted of four things:

Direct appeals to the nation that he was the 2020 winner, which began with a White House appearance in the wee hours after the polls closed and continued on Twitter.


Court cases meant to stop vote counts or throw out duly cast ballots.


Lobbying state and county officials to delay the certification of vote totals.


Lobbying state legislators to ignore vote totals and seat pro-Trump electors.

Of these, the court cases have been the weakest link by far. While Trump lawyers and surrogates and right-leaning media have publicized what they claim to be evidence of voter fraud, those cases have largely dissolved upon close attention or constitute too few votes to make any difference. Judges have tossed virtually all the cases filed by the Trump legal team.

“Republican-appointed judges, Democratic-appointed judges, state and federal judges – they’ve all done their job and they’re acting as guardrails,” says Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School and host of the “Passing Judgment” podcast.

Yet the court cases have still had an effect. They have meshed with the president’s communications strategy to portray the 2020 election as “stolen.”

“The lawsuits themselves aren’t posing a legal obstacle. The dangerous thing is that there’s probably at least 40 to 50 million Americans who are buying falsehoods, lies, discredited conspiracy theories,” says Professor Levinson.

The president also broke norms by trying to interfere with the election process in some key states. He brought Michigan state Republican leaders to the White House while some of his surrogates on television were suggesting that those Republicans seat pro-Trump electors in the state, overruling Mr. Biden’s Michigan win. Mr. Trump and his allies also attacked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger prior to the state’s vote certification – despite the fact that Mr. Raffensperger voted for him.

These precedents might encourage future losers, particularly in close elections, to decline to concede, file multiple lawsuits, push to overturn state results, and delegitimize the seating of their opponent, all in a hardball attempt to gain power.

“The goal was to undermine not only the election outcome, but our democratic processes,” says Ms. Pérez.
Strengthening trust in elections

One way to counter this might be more nationwide voting standards and procedures. That could reassure voters that their election systems reflect broad best practices.

Easier registration, with standardized voter databases, would keep voters from being purged from rolls and help allay notional worries about fraud, writes Zeynep Tufekci, a University of North Carolina social scientist, in The New York Times.

Standardized and more common sharing of voter information between states could have the same effect. Required audits after elections – such as Georgia now has – could check for irregularities without the drama involved in asking for recounts or suing states to act.

Voting officials – the unsung heroes of this election cycle – need more resources to do their jobs, adds Ms. Pérez of the Brennan Center. Improved civics education could fill in the gaps in voters’ knowledge, so they have a better idea of when fraud claims are implausible.

Finally, citizens themselves need to stand for democracy.

“Voters need to tell our politicians in one very clear voice that we want free, fair, and accessible elections,” says Ms. Pérez. “We even want people who may not agree with us to have a free, fair, and accessible vote.”

Dominion Voting Systems tore into Sidney Powell's lawsuit accusing it of a vast conspiracy, calling it 'baseless, senseless, physically impossible'


Mia Jankowicz
Fri, November 27, 2020

Sidney Powell. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Dominion Voting Systems, a provider of election infrastructure, responded on Thursday to the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell's accusations that it took part in vote rigging.

Powell released two lawsuits on Wednesday alleging "massive election fraud" in Georgia and Michigan.

The company is not a defendant in either lawsuit, but its products are mentioned. It responded to dozens of claims made about it in the Georgia suit.

In a point-by-point rejoinder, Dominion said Powell was "alleging a bizarre election fraud conspiracy" that would be impossible to carry out.

Powell was until recently part of President Donald Trump's legal team. She was unceremoniously dropped after criticism of her outlandish claims.

Dominion Voting Systems, the company that President Donald Trump's supporters have accused of enabling vast voter fraud in the US, on Thursday released a blistering point-by-point rebuttal to allegations from the attorney Sidney Powell.

Powell on Wednesday published two lawsuits challenging the election results in Georgia and Michigan that accused Dominion of being part of "massive election fraud."

The company is not a defendant in the lawsuits; governors and local election officials are listed. But allegations about it were scattered throughout, with mentions on 30 pages of the 104-page Georgia lawsuit.

The Michigan case has been filed. But as of Friday, Business Insider had not been able to verify the status of the Georgia complaint in federal court.

Dominion Voting Systems described the allegations in the Georgia suit as "baseless, senseless, physically impossible" and said the events that Powell claimed happened "simply did not occur."

It said Powell's document "appears to be a very rough draft" of a lawsuit "alleging a bizarre election fraud conspiracy that — were it possible — would necessarily require the collaboration of thousands of participants."

The company said that the allegations against it led to harassment and death threats to its staff.

Powell's lawsuit — which was peppered with typos — claimed that President-elect Joe Biden's victory in Georgia is fraudulent and should be overturned because of physical and digital vote tampering.

She accused Dominion Voting Systems of being one of two companies "founded by foreign oligarchs and dictators to ensure computerized ballot-stuffing and vote manipulation to whatever level was needed to make certain Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez never lost another election."

She claimed that in Georgia, votes for Trump were "switched" to votes for Biden in such a way as to be undetectable.

She also claimed the voting software "was accessed by agents acting on behalf of China and Iran in order to monitor and manipulate elections."

Many of her claims have been independently debunked, according to CNN. None of the allegations has been given credence by a judge.

Dominion Voting Systems said the fact that it was founded in Canada is a matter of public record, and it denied any connection to Venezuela or Chávez.

It also said the manipulation Powell described was not possible — "not on a machine-by-machine basis, not by alleged hacking, not by manipulating software, and not by imagined ways of 'sending' votes to overseas locations."

"But even if it were possible, it would have been discovered in the statewide handcount of votes," it said.

The company's statement addressed many other points.

Biden was certified as the winner in Georgia after an audit that included a hand recount of more than 5 million paper votes. The Trump campaign has nonetheless requested another recount.

Dominion Voting Systems had already issued a lengthy rebuttal to a wide range of theories floated by Powell and others about its role in numerous states' elections.

The company did not immediately respond to Business Insider's questions about whether it planned to write a rebuttal to charges in the Michigan case, which are similar.

Powell was a prominent part of the Trump campaign's legal team, but it disowned her after she made claims similar to those in her lawsuits at a press conference with Rudy Giuliani last week.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Indiana asks US Supreme Court to deny parental rights to same-sex couples


Stephanie Guerilus
Wed, November 25, 2020


Indiana is appealing a decision to the US Supreme Court that recognized lesbian mothers as parents to their children

The state of Indiana is asking the newly conservative Supreme Court to strip same-sex couples of their parental rights.

Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill asked the High Court to rule that states have the authority to deny married same-sex couples the right to be legally recognized as parents to their own children.

Read More: Martin Jenkins confirmed as California’s first openly gay Supreme Court justice

The case is centered on eight married lesbian couples who used artificial insemination to start families. They want Indiana to recognize both mothers on the birth certificate but the state has refused to do so.

A view of the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, Nov. 11, 2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Ashlee and Ruby Henderson, who filed suit in 2015, were one of the couples denied their request by the Tippecanoe County Health Department. When their son was born the couple was not allowed to put both their names on his birth certificate. The health department, which issues them, cited Indiana state guidelines. A federal court ruled in the Henderson’s favor a year later, determining that same-sex married couples should have the same rights as heterosexual parents.

However, Indiana insists that biology is the determinative factor in paternity, arguing that two women cannot conceive a child and has taken the matter to the US Supreme Court. In the state’s laws, according to the Journal & Courier, it’s presumed that a child’s biological parents are a man and a woman. If that is not the case, as with same-sex parents, one parent would have to formally adopt the child to be considered the child’s legal parent.

“Doing so, however, is in tension with the traditional, constitutionally protected understanding that, at birth, only a baby’s biological parents have legal rights and obligations toward the child,” Tom Fisher, Indiana’s solicitor-general said about issuing the birth certificates to a same-sex couple. “To protect these rights, Indiana lists a child’s biological parents, and no one else, on the child’s birth certificate unless the child is legally adopted.”

A request was filed by Indiana on June 15 for the case to be reviewed after a U.S. Appeals Court ruled that same-sex couples were entitled to the same parental rights that heterosexual couples have.

“We are disappointed the state of Indiana continues to fight against families headed by same-sex spouses,” Karen Celestino-Horseman, the Hendersons’ Indianapolis-based attorney, said in June. “The Supreme Court has already spoken on this issue, and yet Indiana continues to expend resources fighting against same-sex marriage.”

Read More: Supreme Court rules in favor of BLM activist DeRay McKesson

(Photo by Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images)

In September, the Supreme Court rescheduled a private conference on the case and asked for a response from the plaintiffs. The mothers asked the Court to reject the appeal by Indiana.

The justices will now hear the case in a private conference on Dec. 11, in a court now shaped by a 6-3 conservative majority who have openly criticized the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision that made gay marriage legal. Last month, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito suggested the law needed to be overturned to maintain religious liberty.

“[Kim] Davis may have been one of the first victims of this Court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision,” Thomas said, “but she will not be the last.”

Davis is the Kentucky clerk who in 2015 refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples citing her religious beliefs.

As theGrio reported, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Sept. 18. The liberal jurist was replaced by Justice Amy Coney Barrett who ie expected to rule with the Court’s conservative majority.


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