LES BLOC HEAD

Blanchet's choice to block critics on Twitter limits free speech: experts

OTTAWA — Dozens of people — including some MPs — say Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet has blocked them on Twitter after they criticized his statements about Transport Minister Omar Alghabra, with some arguing they have a right to be heard.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Nour El Kadri, the president of the Canadian Arab Federation who was among those blocked by Blanchet on the social media platform, said people should be able to respond to accusations made by politicians.

Last week, after Alghabra, born to a Syrian family in Saudi Arabia, was sworn in as federal transport minister, the Bloc issued a release that sought to sow doubt about his association with what it called the "political Islam movement" due to the minister's former role as head of the Canadian Arab Federation.

El Kadri tweeted at Blanchet to say the Canadian Arab Federation has been a secular organization under its constitution since it was founded in 1967.

"(I told him) it's secular like Quebec that you're asking for, then he blocked me," he said.

"He started to block other people who were voicing opposing opinions."

On Twitter, Blanchet argued against the idea that he was robbing anyone of their right to free expression.

"When I 'block' people, it's because their posts don't interest me (fake accounts, political staff, insults …)," he wrote in French last Thursday.

"That does not prevent them from publishing them. I just won't see them, nor they mine," he said, adding things are calmer this way.

Richard Moon, a law professor at the University of Windsor, said it is credible to claim that Blanchet infringed the charter-guaranteed right to freedom of expression of those who can no longer see or comment on his tweets.

While Twitter is not itself subject to the charter as a private entity, Moon said, when a politician uses it as a platform to make announcements and discuss political views, the politician's account becomes a public platform.

"To exclude someone from responding or addressing because of their political views could then be understood as a restriction on their freedom of expression," he said.

Duff Conacher, co-founder of the pro-transparency group Democracy Watch, said Blanchet's Twitter account is a public communication channel and he cannot decide arbitrarily to not allow voters to communicate with him there.

"Politicians are public employees, so they can't just cut people off from seeing what they're saying through one of their communication channels," he said.

"The public has a right to see all their communications."

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson faced a lawsuit in 2018 from local activists he had blocked on Twitter. The court action was dropped after Watson conceded his account is public and unblocked everyone he had blocked, so no legal precedent was set.

Blanchet has also blocked some fellow members of Parliament, including Quebec Liberal Greg Fergus, Ontario New Democrat Matthew Green and Manitoba New Democrat Leah Gazan.

Green said he found himself blocked when he criticized Blanchet's statements that defended the right of universities' professors to use the N-word.

Gazan accused Blanchet last week of racism and Islamophobia over his statement about Alghabra.

"When criticized, he refuses to engage in a conversation, and a conversation he clearly needs to have around his Islamophobia," she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 18, 2021.

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This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Maan Alhmidi, The Canadian Press

'Salvator Mundi': Italian police recover 500-year-old stolen version of Leonardo da Vinci's artwork


A 16th-century copy of Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi," the world's most expensive painting, has been recovered by police after it was stolen from a museum in Naples

© Photo by Salvatore Laporta/IPA/Shutterstock (11715403f)

 Agents of the Crimes Against the Heritage Section of the Naples Flying Squad show the "Salvator Mundi", a painting from the Leonardo school dating back to the 15th century, which is part of a collection kept at the Doma museum of the Basilica of San Domenico Maggiore, in Naples, placed in the Muscettola Chapel from which it was stolen. The agents found the painting hidden in a room of an apartment in via Strada Provinciale delle Brecce. 'Salvator Mundi' painting found in Naples, Italy - 18 Jan 2021

The artwork, which was likely painted by one of the Renaissance master's students, was discovered at an apartment during a search in the Italian city, according to a statement issued by Italian police. The property's 36-year-old owner was found nearby and taken into custody on suspicion of receiving stolen goods.

The portrait was modeled on Leonardo's famed depiction of Christ with one hand raised in blessing and the other holding a crystal orb. Numerous copies of the work were made during the artist's lifetime by his students and assistants.

Although it is not known who created this particular "Salvator Mundi," it is thought to have been painted towards the end of the 1510s by someone from the artist's workshop. The portrait's owner, the Museum of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, said on its website that there are "several hypotheses" about the painter's identity, with the "most convincing" theory crediting Leonardo's student Girolamo Alibrandi.

It is believed that the painting was created in Rome before being brought to Naples by Giovanni Antonio Muscettola, an envoy and advisor to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.

The artwork briefly returned to the Italian capital in 2019, when it was loaned to the Villa Farnesina for its exhibition "Leonardo in Rome." The exhibition brochure described it as a "magnificent" copy of the artist's masterpiece. The San Domenico Maggiore's online listing meanwhile described the work as a "refined" and "well preserved" pictorial draft.

Police did not specify when the painting had been stolen, though the Naples museum reported being in possession of the work as recently as January 2020, when it was returned from Rome.

Leonardo's original "Salvator Mundi" made history in 2017 when it sold for $450.3 million at Christie's in New York. Once dismissed as a copy, it sold in the UK for just £45 ($61) in the 1950s.

While some scholars have disputed the attribution to Leonardo, suggesting it was at least partly created by members of his workshop, the painting was restored and authenticated before becoming the most expensive artwork ever to sell at auction. It is widely thought that the record-breaking bid was made on behalf of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

The "Salvator Mundi" has not, however, been seen in public since the November 2017 sale. After the Louvre Abu Dhabi announced that it would show the painting, it postponed the grand unveiling in 2018 without explanation.

Top image caption: The "Salvator Mundi" copy found in Naples, Italy on January 18, 2021

© Salvatore Laporta/IPA/Shutterstock Italian police present the recovered painting, which is believed to date back to the 1510s.

LESE MAJESTE BULLSHIT

Thai court gives record 43-year sentence for insulting king

BANGKOK — A court in Thailand on Tuesday sentenced a former civil servant to a record prison term of 43 years and six months for breaching the country's strict law on insulting or defaming the monarchy, lawyers said.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Bangkok Criminal Court found the woman guilty on 29 counts of violating the country’s lese majeste law for posting audio clips to Facebook and YouTube with comments deemed critical of the monarchy, the group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights said.

The court initially announced her sentence as 87 years, but reduced it by half because she pleaded guilty to the offences, the group said.

The sentence, which comes amid an ongoing protest movement that has seen unprecedented public criticism of the monarchy, was swiftly condemned by rights groups.

“Today’s court verdict is shocking and sends a spine-chilling signal that not only criticisms of the monarchy won’t be tolerated, but they will also be severely punished,” said Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher for the group Human Rights Watch.

Violating Thailand's lese majeste law — known widely as Article 112 — is punishable by three to 15 years’ imprisonment per count. The law is controversial not only because it has been used to punish things as simple as liking a post on Facebook but also because anyone — not just royals or authorities — can lodge a complaint that can tie up the person accused in legal proceedings for years.

During Thailand's last 15 years of political unrest, the law has frequently been used as a political weapon as well as in personal vendettas. Actual public criticism of the monarchy, however, had until recently been extremely rare.

That changed during the past year, when young protesters calling for democratic reforms also issued calls for the reform of the monarchy, which has long been regarded as an almost sacred institution by many Thais. The protesters have said the institution is unaccountable and holds too much power in what is supposed to be a democratic constitutional monarchy.

Authorities at first let much of the commentary and criticism go without charge, but since November have arrested about 50 people and charged them with lese majeste.

Sunai said Tuesday's sentence was likely meant to send a message.

“It can be seen that Thai authorities are using lese majeste prosecution as their last resort measure in response to the youth-led democracy uprising that seeks to curb the king’s powers and keep him within the bound of constitutional rule. Thailand’s political tensions will now go from bad to worse,” he said.

After King Maha Vajralongkorn took the throne in 2016 following his father's death, he informed the government that he did not wish to see the lese majeste law used. But as the protests grew last year, and the criticism of the monarchy got harsher, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha warned a line had been crossed and the law would be used.

The protest movement has lost steam since the arrests and since new restrictions on public gatherings were implemented following a surge in coronavirus cases.

Thai Lawyers for Human Rights identified the woman sentenced Tuesday only by her first name Anchan and said she was in her mid-60s.

Her case dates back six years, when anti-establishment sentiment was growing after a 2014 military coup led by Prayuth. She was held in jail from January 2015 to November 2018.

She denied the charges when her case was first heard in military court, where lese majeste offences were prosecuted for a period after the coup. When her case was transferred to criminal court, she pleaded guilty with the hope that the court would have sympathy for her actions, because she had only shared the audio, not posted or commented on it, she told local media Tuesday on her arrival at court.

“I thought it was nothing. There were so many people who shared this content and listened to it. The guy (who made the content) had done it for so many years," Anchan said. “So I didn’t really think this through and was too confident and not being careful enough to realize at the time that it wasn’t appropriate.”

She said she had worked as a civil servant for 40 years and was arrested one year before retirement, and with a conviction would lose her pension.

What is believed to have previously been the longest lese majeste sentence was issued in 2017, when a military court sentenced a man to 35 years in prison for social media posts deemed defamatory to the monarchy. The man, a salesman, had initially been sentenced to 70 years, but had his sentence halved after pleading guilty.

Biden picks transgender woman as assistant health secretary

WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden has tapped Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine to be his assistant secretary of health, leaving her poised to become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

© Bonnie Jo Mount Rachel Levine, physician general for the state of Pennsylvania, with her mother Lillian Levine, in Harrisburg, Pa., on May 16, 2016. (Bonnie Jo Mount / The Washington Post via Getty Images file)

A pediatrician and former Pennsylvania physician general, Levine was appointed to her current post by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf in 2017, making her one of the few transgender people serving in elected or appointed positions nationwide. She won past confirmation by the Republican-majority Pennsylvania Senate and has emerged as the public face of the state's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic — no matter their zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability — and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond," Biden said in a statement. "She is a historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration’s health efforts.”

A graduate of Harvard and of Tulane Medical School, Levine is president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. She's written in the past on the opioid crisis, medical marijuana, adolescent medicine, eating disorders and LGBTQ medicine.

Biden and his transition team have already begun negotiating with members of Congress, promoting speedy passage of the president-elect's $1.9 trillion plan to bring the coronavirus, which has killed nearly 400,000 people in the United States, under control. It seeks to enlist federal emergency personnel to run mass vaccination centers and provide 100 immunization shots in his administration’s first 100 days while using government spending to stimulate the pandemic-hammered economy,

Biden also says that, in one of his first acts as president, he'll ask Americans to wear masks for 100 days to slow the virus' spread.

Levine joins Biden's Health and Human Services secretary nominee Xavier Becerra, a Latino politician who rose from humble beginnings to serve in Congress and as California’s attorney general.

Businessman Jeff Zients is Biden's coronavirus response coordinator, while Biden picked infectious-disease specialist Rochelle Walensky to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vivek Murthy as surgeon general and Yale epidemiologist Marcella Nunez-Smith to head a working group to ensure fair and equitable distribution of vaccines and treatments.

The government's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, will also work closely with the Biden administration.

Analysis: With Trump's exit, the Fox News presidency will come to an end

© White House/News Pictures/Shutterstock Mandatory Credit: Photo by White House/News Pictures/Shutterstock (11709384j) Donald Trump delivers remarks at the 450th mile of the new border wall, near the Texas Mexico border. US President Donald Trump visit to Texas, USA - 12 Jan 2021

Four years ago, Fox News headed into the Trump presidency with an unprecedented opportunity. It was not only the primary source of news for the Republican Party, but also the primary source for President Trump himself. The network could have used the opportunity to act responsibly. It could have leveraged its contacts within Trump's inner circle and the GOP to double down on reporting and break some real news. It could have — at the very least — delivered the cold hard truth to the millions who relied on it for accurate, reliable information.

But it did none of those things. Instead, Fox chose to run in the opposite direction. The propagandists on the network were empowered like never before while the so-called "straight news" hours became Trumpier and Trumpier. Its hosts scored dozens of Trump interviews, but, in most cases, instead of pressing him with tough questions, they egged on his worst tendencies. Even when not talking directly with him, the hosts were speaking directly to him. And they egged on those poor tendencies by feeding him a steady diet of hyper-partisan stories and outright disinformation. While it is officially called the "Trump presidency," there is a good case to be made that it should be referred to as the "Fox News presidency."

Now, that is all coming to an end. But it is important to realize that none of that had to happen. Rupert Murdoch, who has already earned more money than he can possibly know what to do with, could have put an end to it with a snap of a finger. He could have done this when his hosts lied about the Russia investigation and pushed "deep-state" nonsense. He could have done it when his hosts misled the American public about the coronavirus. He could have done it when the network's top personalities entertained wild conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. He did not.

Instead, Murdoch tweaked the network in another way. As Stelter reported earlier this month, Murdoch was personally involved in shaking up Fox's daytime lineup. That new lineup premiered on Monday. The biggest change? Replacing Martha MacCallum's newscast — which was already overtly conservative — with another right-wing talk show. More opinion, less news.

Is MacCallum hosting a right-wing opinion show now?

While MacCallum lost her 7pm time slot, she is now hosting at 3pm. The promos said she would bring her "unmatched perspective" to the daytime hour. If Monday's show was any indication, that "unmatched perspective" translates to a right-wing POV. For her debut at 3pm, MacCallum's guest list consisted of Sara Carter, Charlie Kirk, Alex Berenson, Geraldo Rivera, Rep. Nancy Mace, K.T. McFarland, Heather Higgins, and Stephanie Cutter. Which is to say her hour was ripe with pro-Trump pundits. And while Cutter was on her show, MacCallum's posture was adversarial, of course.

Kilmeade plays the hits

Brian Kilmeade on Monday became the first person to try out for host of "Fox News Primetime" — which, I feel obligated to note, is not actually in primetime given that primetime doesn't start until 8pm. Kilmeade played all the hits for the Fox audience. He led his show talking about censorship, moved on to fear-mongering about a migrant caravan heading toward the US border, and finished off a segment featuring Barstool's Dave Portnoy. It felt like Kilmeade's chief aim was to hit directly back at Newsmax's Greg Kelly, which has chipped away some of Fox's audience at 7pm, and earn some of that audience back...

Will this call Fox's viewers back home?

Fox is used to obnoxiously boasting that it dominates its competitors in the ratings. But right now, as Stelter wrote Friday, the channel is stuck in third place. The changes that were implemented Monday should be viewed through that frame. Will the shakeup bring Fox fans home? Also: More big changes are coming soon. Which hours will be shaken up next?

Workers trapped week in China mine ask for pickles, porridge

BEIJING — Workers trapped for more than a week in a Chinese gold mine asked for pickles and porridge to be dropped to them while they wait to be rescued, state media reported Tuesday.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The website of the People's Daily said the request came after a telephone line was dropped to the group of 11 inside the mine's No. 6 chamber. Another survivor of the mine explosion a week ago is inside an adjoining chamber while the fate of 10 others remains unknown, according to officials in the city of Yantai in the eastern province of Shandong.

People's Daily said two of the miners were recovering from exhaustion and another was injured by the explosion that ripped through the mine on Jan. 10.

Medicine, food and liquids have twice been delivered to the workers, enough to last at least two days, Yantai mayor Chen Fei told reporters at a briefing Tuesday morning.

“Their overall physical condition seems to be pretty good," Chen said.

The porridge requested, also known as millet congee, is a nourishing breakfast staple common throughout northeastern China. Pickles and chilies are often added for flavour and vitamins.

A brief video clip released by the city government Tuesday morning showed rescuers cutting through metal cages used to transport miners and ore that were blocking the shaft. Hundreds of rescuers were drilling six shafts in an attempt to reach the different sections of the mine.

Workers passed a note to the surface on Monday saying they were suffering from toxic fumes and rising water levels but calling on rescuers not to give up.

Mine managers have been detained for waiting more than 24 hours before reporting the accident, the cause of which has not been announced. The mine in Qixia, a jurisdiction under Yantai, had been under construction at the time of the blast.

Increased supervision has improved safety in China's mining industry, which used to post an average of 5,000 deaths per year. Yet demand for coal and precious metals continues to prompt corner-cutting and two accidents in the southwestern megacity of Chongqing last year killed 39 miners.

The Associated Press

Four UNICEF schools for Rohingya children in refugee camps in Bangladesh have been destroyed in a fire, officials said Tuesday, with the UN children's agency calling it arson.

© - UNICEF runs some 2,500 learning centres in the 34 refugee camps in Bangladesh's southeastern border district of Cox's Bazar

It was unclear who might attack the schools, which were empty at the time, but the security situation in the camps housing around a million people has worsened in recent months.

Last week a blaze thought to have been started by a gas stove burned down hundreds of bamboo shacks in one of the camps, leaving thousands of the refugees originally from Myanmar homeless.

Razwan Hayat, Bangladesh's refugee commissioner, told AFP that he believed the latest fire wasn't started deliberately and said that the schools were made of flimsy flammable materials.

"We are investigating. But we think it is an accident. These centres are not permanent structures," he said.

However, UNICEF said on Twitter the incident was arson and that it was "working with partners to assess the damages of the attack and speed up the process of rebuilding these learning Centres".

UNICEF runs about 2,500 learning centres in the 34 refugee camps in Bangladesh's southeastern border district of Cox's Bazar. Some 240,000 Rohingya children studied in them before the pandemic.

They have been closed for months because of measures to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus but are expected to open again from next month, aid workers say.

The Rohingya are largely conservative with many opposing the education of girls.

Those living in the camps include around 750,000 Rohingya who fled a brutal military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017 that the UN has likened to ethnic cleansing.

There is little prospect of them returning to Myanmar, leading to tensions with the local population and prompting many to attempt treacherous sea journeys to Malaysia and Indonesia.

Recent months have seen clashes between groups including the militant Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), killing seven dead and many houses torched.

Nicaragua congress adopts life sentences; opposition opposes

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Nicaragua’s congress gave final approval Monday to change the constitution to permit life imprisonment.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Congress is dominated by President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista party, and opposition legislators voted against the measure or abstained.

Opponents say life sentences could be used against the political opposition, like other recent measures passed by Ortega’s party.

“When there isn't an independent judicial system ... applying sentences like this could be interpreted as a political move to punish any Nicaraguan citizen," said congressman Miguel Rosales of the opposition Liberal Constitutionalist Party.

Ortega has claimed opponents are guilty of “hate crimes,” one of the categories that could be punished by life in prison. In recent months, Ortega’s party has passed laws essentially banning opposition candidates from running in the 2021 presidential election.

Sandinista legislators defended the life sentence measure as providing protection against rapists and killers. The government gathered 3 million signatures supporting the change.

Ortega initially led Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990 following the Sandinista revolution that ousted the Somoza dictatorship. He returned to the presidency in 2007 after three failed election attempts, and he won reelection in 2011. He then sidestepped term limits to get himself reelected in 2016, and packed courts and government agencies with allies. The Sandinista party controls the courts and the legislature.

In October, congress approved legislation mandating prison sentences for those who use online platforms to spread false information or information that could raise alarm among people. The bill raised alarm among opposition and human rights groups, who described it as a threat to free speech.

The Special Cyber Crimes Law establishes prison terms of two to four years for “those who promote or distribute false or misleading information that causes alarm, terror, or unease in the public.” The law allows the government to define what information fits that description.

The Associated Press

Conspiracy theories have devastating impact on Canadian-founded Dominion Voting firm and its employees: CEO

When John Poulos and his co-founder launched a voting-machine company 18 years ago in Toronto, they named it after a long-forgotten piece of Canadian legislation – the Dominion Elections Act of 1920.

© Provided by National Post Dominion Voting Systems John Poulos:

The law expanded women’s right to vote and established a new, independent federal system for overseeing elections.

“We liked that, it resonated with our mission,” said Poulos in an interview with the National Post on Monday, noting that Dominion Voting Systems originally just strived to help blind people cast their ballots privately.

But nearly two decades later, even the company’s seemingly innocuous name is cause for suspicion among fans of President Donald Trump, as Dominion suffers the fallout from a barrage of baseless conspiracy theories about its role in the U.S. election.

It’s not over yet. With Trump’s Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, to be inaugurated as U.S. president Wednesday, Poulos says the firm risks a “devastating” loss of business while its employees still weather threats, stalking and other abuse.

“There are websites that have now been linked to Iran that call for the death of various election officials and our employees,” he said. “We have some employees that have still not returned home, because there are (threatening) people who drive in front of their home every day.”

“They’re in hiding,” said the Dominion CEO. “We’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on security … to help us get through this, to provide safety for our employees.”

And the intimidation of his 300 or so employees has not stopped at the border, said Poulos.

Dominion sues ex-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for $1.3 billion over vote-fraud claims

How a Canadian-founded firm became the focus of latest U.S. rigged-election conspiracy theory

Even those in the company’s Toronto office have been “harassed at their place of business, harassed at home … threatened over telephone, by text and by email.”

Dominion responded last week by filing a $1.3-billion libel lawsuit against Sidney Powell, the Trump lawyer who has led the charge in spreading unsubstantiated claims about the firm.

And on Monday, Mike Lindell, My Pillow CEO and a confidante of the president, was added to the list of Trump loyalists and media allies put on notice of possible future legal action.

The charges against Dominion have been debunked by numerous media fact-checkers, dismissed by judges and elections administrators in both Republican and Democrat-run battleground states, and deemed unfounded even by the Trump administration’s own cyber-security czar, before Christopher Krebs was fired by the president. Attorney General William Barr, one of the president’s most loyal cabinet secretaries, also said there was no evidence of widespread election fraud. His resignation was accepted by Trump shortly after.

But the constant drumbeat about a stolen election has triggered a crisis of sorts in American democracy, with rioters storming the U.S. Capitol building and 75 per cent of Republicans, according to a recent CNN poll, saying they had little faith in the electoral system.

For Dominion, which years ago expanded into providing a range of voting and vote-tabulation machines, it’s been a more practical calamity.

© John Bazemore/AP, File 

An example of the Dominion Voting Systems machines used in Georgia.

The firm has contracts with 1,200 counties in 28 states. Poulos fears a “massive” impact on his business, with some states already talking about legislation barring the firm from their jurisdictions, Poulos said.

“Frankly, there is no amount of money that’s going to fix this problem for us, because our name will always have this against it.”

The compensation demanded by the company in the Powell suit is huge, but a key aim of the litigation is to get to the bottom of why Dominion was targeted for the disinformation campaign in the first place, says Poulos.

The allegations originated with followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which imagines a vast cabal of Democratic politicians and other liberals who kidnap, rape and cannibalize children, then was repeated and amplified by conservative news organizations. Finally the allegations, still lacking any real evidence, were embraced by the president, his legal team and other followers.

Central to the theory is that Dominion’s machines somehow flipped millions of votes from Trump to Biden. And among a stew of other theories was that the company was founded in or had close ties to the regime of the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and that his successor, Nicolas Maduro, was anxious to tilt the election against Trump.

Dominion has no ties to Venezuela. By 2010, most of Dominion’s clients were in the U.S., and it moved its head office from Toronto to Denver; by 2017, 90 per cent of its customers were American and Poulos sold a majority stake to a New York private equity firm.

But ironically, it’s chief rival — Nebraska-based Election Systems and Software — does have a history of working in the South American country, and was embroiled in a controversy over Venezuela’s 2000 election. It was replaced as a voting-machine vendor there by another Dominon competitor, Smartmatic. ES&S is number one in the American voting-technology market, Dominion number two.

“They conflated a bunch of things about other companies and made it about us,” said Poulos. “I have no idea what the motivations were.”

Then there is that one about the company name. On social media, Trump supporters unfamiliar with Canadian history theorize that it refers to holding dominion over voters, said the CEO, who was asked about the name by a suspicious state senator at a recent hearing in Michigan .

Even one of the industry’s most steadfast critics sees nothing but fiction in the allegations leveled against the former Canadian company.

Aleks Essex, a Western University computer science professor and election integrity expert, believes all the main vendors of election technology should do more to secure their systems, but says he has seen zero evidence to support the Dominion charges.

Regardless, the back-up paper ballots used in the systems provide a fail-safe way of validating the machine tabulation — in case there was some issue with the computer software.

“All the risk-limiting audits, all of the recounts, have not shown any significant divergence,” said Essex. “If the election integrity community thought there was anything here, we would be right on board … What I am seeing is an intentional assault on the integrity of the democratic system.”

REPUPLICAN MINING SHILL

Tribes slam GOP lawmaker for trying to derail Haaland nomination

WASHINGTON — A group of Native American tribes is rushing to the defense of Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for Interior secretary, and blasting a Republican lawmaker’s campaign to derail Haaland’s historic nomination as a slap in the face to his constituents.

© Provided by NBC News

Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., who sits on the House’s subcommittee on Indigenous Peoples, has been asking fellow lawmakers to join him in urging Biden’s transition team to withdraw Haaland’s nomination. In a draft of a letter obtained by NBC News, Stauber cites Haaland’s support for the Green New Deal and opposition to oil and gas drilling on public lands.

“Nominating Representative Haaland is a direct threat to working men and women and a rejection of responsible development of America’s natural resources,” Stauber wrote in his letter, a copy of which he circulated to fellow House members asking them to add their names.

Now all five tribes in Stauber’s congressional district are accusing him of blindsiding them and appeasing big industrial interests at their expense.

“This historic nomination is more important to us and all of Indian country than any other Cabinet nomination in recent history,” leaders of the five tribes wrote in a letter dated Jan. 14 and reviewed by NBC News. “Your opposition to the first and only American Indian ever nominated to a Cabinet position is likely to reverberate across Indian country.”

The letter was signed by the chairs of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, Bois Forte Band of Chippewa, Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.

Stauber’s communications director, Kelsey Mix, said the focus of his efforts was limited to “the anti-jobs and anti-mining record of the nominee” and policies she’s embraced that would “severely and negatively impact every economic sector and family in Northeastern Minnesota.” She said Stauber hadn’t consulted with any industry groups in crafting the letter, still in draft form.

“The nominees’ support for extreme policies is not what hardworking families across northeast Minnesota need, which is why Congressman Stauber cannot get behind her nomination,’ Mix said, adding that he “remains committed to working with and building strong relationships with tribal communities and their leaders, and he will continue to hear them out on this issue.” HEARING IS NOT LISTENING

A spokeswoman for the Biden transition declined to comment.

Stauber, in his letter, argued that Haaland’s approach to natural resources would stifle a key economic engine, focusing on legislation Haaland co-sponsored banning mining in a 234,000-acre stretch of Superior National Forest. That includes an area in Stauber’s district where the Twin Metals mining company is seeking to mine for copper. Stauber has supported the mine while many Democrats oppose it. Several environmental groups allege Stauber interfered in the environmental review process for Twin Metals. Stauber has said he merely sought to ensure a “fair, rigorous regulatory process.”

In a separate letter to Stauber, the Midwest Alliance of Sovereign Tribes, which represents 35 tribal nations in the region, called the lawmaker’s campaign against Haaland “offensive, “hostile” and “irresponsible. The group’s chair, Aaron Payment, said Stauber had “subordinated the interests of Indian tribes to the interests of those you represent in your letter without any consultation with the tribes.”

“We are unaccustomed to any member of Congress serving in such a public role in leading an attack that diametrically opposes the wishes of nearly all of Indian country,” Payment wrote. “This is unprecedented."

Haaland, a Democratic lawmaker from New Mexico and member of the Laguna Pueblo people, serves alongside Stauber on the House Natural Resources Committee. If confirmed, she would lead a department with broad oversight over tribal lands in the U.S. and the complicated relationship between tribal nations and the federal government.

In the House, Haaland has been a vocal opponent of drilling and mining on public lands, although as a Cabinet secretary she would be be responsible for carrying out the broader Biden administration’s policies. President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to ban new permitting for drilling on federal lands, a move expected to face swift legal challenges.