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IBM planning 10,000 job cuts in Europe ahead of unit sale (nationthailand.com)

IBM planning 10,000 job cuts in Europe ahead of unit sale

InternationalNov 26. 2020An IBM logo in London, on Oct. 29, 2018. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Chris J. Ratcliffe. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Olivia Carville, Helene Fouquet, Daniele Lepido · BUSINESS, WORLD, TECHNOLOGY, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS, EUROPE

International Business Machines Corp. is planning to cut about 10,000 jobs in Europe in an attempt to lower costs at its slow-growth services unit and prepare the business for a spinoff.

The wide-ranging losses will affect about 20% of staff in the region, according to people familiar with the matter. The U.K. and Germany are set to be most impacted, with cuts also planned in Poland, Slovakia, Italy and Belgium.

IBM announced the job cuts in Europe earlier in November during a meeting with European labor representatives, according to a union officer briefed on proceedings. The person asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

“Our staffing decisions are made to provide the best support to our customers in adopting an open hybrid cloud platform and AI capabilities,” an IBM spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. “We also continue to make significant investments in training and skills development for IBMers to best meet the needs of our customers.”

Hardest hit will be IBM’s legacy IT services business, which handles day-to-day infrastructure operations, such as managing client data centers and traditional information-technology support for installing, operating and repairing equipment.

IBM said in October it’s planning to spin off the business and focus on its new hybrid-cloud computing and artificial intelligence unit, which the company hopes will return it to revenue growth. IBM said it aims to complete the carve-out as a tax-free spinoff to IBM shareholders by the end of 2021.

“We’re taking structural actions to simplify and streamline our business,” said IBM Chief Financial Officer James Kavanaugh during the company’s third-quarter earnings call in October. “We expect the fourth-quarter charge to our operating results of about $2.3 billion.”

Once an iconic blue-chip company, IBM’s star has faded over the years as its legacy in mainframe computing and IT services fell behind while newer technology firms like Amazon.com Inc. swooped in to dominate the emerging cloud-computing market.

IBM was already cutting jobs earlier this year, although the company wouldn’t say how many positions were being eliminated. The company has traditionally declined to disclose the numbers of job cuts for decades, with arguably one exception in 1993 when Lou Gerstner, a CEO hired from outside the company, announced 60,000 dismissals.

The spin-off of its services unit is the first big move by Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna, who took over from Ginni Rometty in April and has been pushing to revive growth after almost a decade of shrinking revenue. Krishna earlier this year cut thousands of jobs as he began reshaping the business.

The current round of job cuts should be completed by the end of the first-half of 2021, one of the people added.

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Dell, HP report sales topping estimates on pandemic PC Surge (nationthailand.com)

Dell, HP report sales topping estimates on pandemic PC Surge

InternationalNov 26. 2020A man walks with a box bearing the HP logo in New Delhi onJune 24, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Prashanth Vishwanathan. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Nico Grant · BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY, RETAIL

Dell Technologies and HP reported quarterly revenue that topped Wall Street estimates, lifted by customer upgrades of personal computers for remote work and school during the pandemic.

Dell’s sales climbed 2.8% to $23.5 billion in the period that ended Oct. 30, the Round Rock, Texas-based company said Tuesday in a statement. Rival HP reported it shipped a record 19 million PCs in its recent quarter, as well as more home printers than it has sold in years. HP also gave a profit forecast for the current period that beat analysts’ projections and said it would raise its quarterly dividend 10%.

Michael Dell and HP Chief Executive Officer Enrique Lores are trying to revamp their PC makers into more profitable businesses. Both companies have taken steps to cut operating expenses during the pandemic, and they produced better-than-projected profits in the October quarter. Billionaire Dell is trying to spur more predictable, recurring revenue by letting corporate clients pay for products over time rather than upfront. Lores, meanwhile, is overseeing a corporate restructuring that will result in lower expenses and a smaller workforce.

“We are very optimistic about where the company is going to be going during the next quarters and years,” Lores said in an interview.

HP shares gained about 5% in New York trading, helped by the company’s announcement that it would boost the quarterly dividend to 19.38 cents a share. Dell shares fell roughly 2%. The stock is up more than 30% so far this year.

HP’s revenue fell about 1% to $15.3 billion in the period that ended Oct. 31, the Palo Alto, California-based company said in a statement. Analysts, on average, expected $14.7 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Profit, excluding some items, was 62 cents a share in the fourth fiscal quarter, while analysts projected 52 cents.

Adjusted profit in the current quarter will be 64 cents to 70 cents a share, HP said. Analysts, on average, estimated 54 cents.

Dell’s sales from consumer PCs jumped 14% to $3.5 billion in the fiscal third quarter, the company said. PC sales to business and government clients increased 5.4% to $8.78 billion. Server and networking sales fell 1.8% to $4.16 billion, the seventh consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines for the unit. Executives said they expect continued “soft” data-center spending in the current period. Storage hardware revenue declined 7% to $3.86 billion.

“I’m generally pleased with how the business performed,” Dell Chief Financial Officer Tom Sweet said in an interview. “We’ve got to continue to work our way through the uncertain environment. Given our broad, diversified portfolio, we have an ability to drive a consistent stable cash flow, consistent results.”

Dell said that it expected revenue in the current period to increase 3% to 4% compared with the third quarter’s.

Sales of HP’s Personal Systems, mostly computers, was little changed from a year earlier at $10.4 billion. Revenue from consumers jumped 24% while business sales decreased 12%. Printing revenue declined 3% to $4.8 billion. The company reported a 21% rise in consumer hardware sales and a 22% drop in hardware revenue from businesses.

While corporate customers aren’t buying printers with their offices closed or at reduced capacity, Lores said demand from consumers working at home was so strong that HP shipped 12 million printers in the quarter — the highest number since the corporate split from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. in 2015.

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Sunak warns of 2.6 million jobless in historic U.K. slump (nationthailand.com)

Sunak warns of 2.6 million jobless in historic U.K. slump

InternationalNov 26. 2020A commuter wears a protective face mask on a bus in London on Nov. 17, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Simon Dawson. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Alex Morales, David Goodman · BUSINESS, WORLD, EUROPE

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak warned the U.K. will suffer its deepest recession in more than 300 years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, with unemployment expected to reach 7.5%, as he set out government spending plans.

Sunak announced billions of pounds for new infrastructure projects to boost jobs, and support for low-paid workers, but he cut funding for policies he said were hard to “justify” — such as public sector pay rises and overseas aid.

“Our health emergency is not yet over and our economic emergency has only just begun,” Sunak told Parliament. “So our immediate priority is to protect people’s lives and livelihoods.”

The chancellor’s statement to Parliament on Wednesday began the British state’s painful reckoning with the financial consequences of the pandemic, with some tough decisions on how to address a ballooning budget deficit.

With renewed lockdowns threatening further economic damage, the chancellor focused on support for jobs and the unemployed, plowing tens of billions of pounds into infrastructure spending, and ensuring the health care system can cope with a resurgent wave of infections.

Sunak’s choices will set the tone for the ruling Conservative Party’s approach to the fiscal legacy of the coronavirus.

The most noteworthy announcement in advance was the biggest uptick in defense spending in three decades: a four-year, 24 billion-pound investment in the country’s armed forces that pleased traditional Conservatives. The chancellor also confirmed a cut in the U.K.’s foreign aid budget to 0.5% of national income, breaking a promise to spend 0.7%.

The drop in overseas development spending is likely to dismay other Tories including former Prime Minister David Cameron, who warned it will hamper renewed efforts to display Britain’s global role just as Brexit takes effect.

Sunak said the 0.7% aid commitment was “difficult to justify” to the British people. “I have listened with great respect to those who have argued passionately to retain this target,” he said. “But at a time of unprecedented crisis, government must make tough choices.”

Curbs to public sector pay also provoked an immediate backlash.

“Earlier this year the chancellor stood on his doorstep and clapped for key workers, today his government institutes a pay freeze for many of them,” Labour’s shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, told Sunak. “The beginning of his speech was that our economic emergency was only just begun. Try telling that to people who’ve been out of work since March.”

A new infrastructure strategy is expected to detail planned projects to deliver on 100 billion pounds of projects pledged over the course of the five-year Parliament that started last December. Sunak also unveiled a new financial institution to help attract private money into such programs.

The chancellor has found himself spending in a way that no Conservative chancellor would easily countenance. As of July, costs totaling 200 billion pounds had been racked up or earmarked to tackle the virus and support jobs and businesses through the crisis.

More borrowing will be needed. The government plans to issue a record 485.5 billion pounds of bonds this fiscal year.

The Office for Budget Responsibility forecast that the already dire economic situation would be made worse if the Brexit negotiations end without a deal. In that scenario, unemployment would peak at 8.3%, while the economy wouldn’t reclaim its pre-virus size until well into 2023. The long-term GDP scarring of virus would be 5% rather than 3%, according to the OBR’s latest forecasts, published Wednesday.

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U.S. new-home sales remain elevated in October (nationthailand.com)

U.S. new-home sales remain elevated in October

InternationalNov 26. 2020Homes under construction in the Versilia at Southern Highlands master-planned community are seen in this aerial photograph taken over Las Vegas on Sept. 17, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Roger Kisby. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jarrell Dillard · BUSINESS, PERSONAL-FINANCE, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS

New-home sales in the U.S. held up in October, remaining near the best pace since 2006 and well above pre-pandemic levels, the latest sign that record-low mortgage rates are underpinning robust buyer interest.

Purchases of new single-family houses dropped 0.3% from September to a 999,000 annualized pace from an upwardly revised 1.002 million rate, government data showed Wednesday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 975,000 rate. The median selling price rose 2.5% from a year earlier to $330,600.

Recent momentum in housing has been driven by attractive mortgage rates and buyers looking for more space as they work from home. Purchases, however, may face greater headwinds after infections began to soar around the U.S. in recent weeks and new restrictions threatened to curb hiring.

The number of properties sold for which construction hadn’t yet started increased to a fresh 14-year high of 385,000 in October, suggesting that strength in construction will continue in coming months.

The supply of new homes remained the tightest on record. At the current sales pace, it would take 3.3 months to exhaust the supply, the same as the prior month and the leanest inventory in data going back more than a half century.

The number of homes for sale was unchanged at 278,000, the fewest since 2017.

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Biden’s UN pick boosts morale for diplomats Trump sidelined (nationthailand.com)

Biden’s UN pick boosts morale for diplomats Trump sidelined

InternationalNov 26. 2020Linda Thomas-Greenfield, during a Bloomberg West Television interview in San Francisco on May 31, 2016. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Paul Morris. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · David Wainer · NATIONAL, WORLD, POLITICS, NATIONAL-SECURITY, WHITEHOUSE

When Linda Thomas-Greenfield was held at gunpoint on a diplomatic assignment in Rwanda in 1994, she tried her best to look calm as she explained to a “glazed-eyed young man” that she wasn’t the woman he was told to kill.

“I was afraid, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t panic,” Thomas-Greenfield, now one of America’s most experienced diplomats and President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for United Nations ambassador, later recalled in a TED Talk. The Tutsi woman who was the intended target was among hundreds of thousands killed during the genocide that year.

Some 26 years after that harrowing experience, Thomas-Greenfield will soon be preparing for her Senate confirmation hearing, leaning on her experience across four continents, including State Department assignments in Jamaica, Nigeria, Switzerland and Pakistan, as well as in Washington as assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

After four years of “America First” messaging from President Donald Trump and Secretaries of State Rex Tillerson and Michael Pompeo, Thomas-Greenfield’s appointment is a clear signal of a return to traditional diplomacy and to cooperation over confrontation at the U.N. It’s also a vote of confidence in career diplomats whose influence has been diminished.

“America is back. Multilateralism is back. Diplomacy is back,” Thomas-Greenfield said Tuesday as Biden introduced his foreign policy team.

In a sign of how much this reflects a shift in attitude, Pompeo responded on Fox News hours later that “multilateralism for the sake of hanging out with your buddies at a cool cocktail party, that’s not in the best interest of the United States of America.”

Raised in Louisiana, Thomas-Greenfield was the oldest of eight children and was bused to a segregated school as a child. Her father dropped out of school in the third grade, and her mother had an eighth-grade education. She attended Louisiana State University, where she faced harassment and discrimination from students and faculty members, according to a person close to her.

The 67-year-old Thomas-Greenfield, who would be one of the highest-ranking Black officials in Biden’s administration, said Tuesday that she taps into her Louisiana roots to conduct “gumbo diplomacy.”

“Wherever I was posted around the world, I’d invite people of different backgrounds and beliefs to help me make a roux and chop onions for the Holy Trinity, and make homemade gumbo,” she said. The Holy Trinity of Cajun cuisine is a base made of onions, bell peppers and celery. “It was my way of breaking down barriers, connecting with people.”

Biden plans to give his UN envoy the full Cabinet status that current Ambassador Kelly Craft lacks, but the job at the world body won’t be easy. Under Trump, the U.S. took on other members of the organization on issues from reimposing sanctions on Iran to quitting the World Health Organization, a move Biden has pledged to reverse.

“Her appointment will be seen at the UN as a sign that Washington will re-engage with the world and that the Biden administration will not be staffed with individuals who are antagonistic to the organization,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations

Thomas-Greenfield’s experience and contacts in Africa will come in handy at a time when African countries have grown exasperated with the U.S., which recently held up the appointment of African diplomats to head the UN mission in Libya in favor of a Bulgarian national.

Much like her recent predecessors, she would have to deal with China’s rise at the UN, where it has gained clout by getting its nationals tapped to head top agencies.

“China has been much more willing to play the game than the U.S.,” said Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. “Anything that dents that and suggests the U.S. is paying attention to Africa, where China has been a major benefactor, will benefit U.S. diplomacy at the UN.”

Diplomats and African leaders view Thomas-Greenfield as a hands-on envoy who was determined to get out into the field as much as possible.

“She got to know Liberia, not only the capital, but also rural Liberia,” former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said by phone. “As the deputy secretary for African affairs she was able to mobilize support from the U.S. for Liberia during the 2014 Ebola outbreak.”

Thomas-Greenfield’s appointment also will send a message to the career diplomats of the U.S. foreign service, who were largely sidelined from senior positions during the Trump administration.

Pompeo sought to rehire Thomas-Greenfield when he took over as Trump’s top diplomat in April 2018, but she declined, according to a person familiar with his thinking at the time who asked not to be identified.

In a November article for Foreign Affairs magazine that she co-wrote with William Burns, Thomas-Greenfield, who served for a time as director general of the foreign service, lamented the “wreckage” at the State Department and called for a commitment to investing in the people at the department.

“Her appointment sends an important message to the foreign service that one of their own, and a person of color, can become a Cabinet member,” said Wendy Sherman, a former undersecretary of state for political affairs under President Barack Obama who has worked closely with Thomas-Greenfield, including in her recent post at Albright Stonebridge Group, a consulting group founded by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Thomas-Greenfield is “very capable of holding a press conference and putting out a public narrative but does not need to be the shiny object in the room,” Sherman said.

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Brexit talks entering decisive days, EU’s Von Der Leyen says (nationthailand.com)

Brexit talks entering decisive days, EU’s Von Der Leyen says

InternationalNov 26. 2020Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, delivers a State of the Union address in the European Parliament in Brussels on Sept. 16, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Geert Vanden Wijngaert. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Ian Wishart, Viktoria Dendrinou · WORLD, EUROPE

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the coming days will be “decisive” for trade negotiations with the U.K. and crucial differences between the two sides remain.

“Frankly I cannot tell you today if there will be a deal,” von der Leyen told the European Parliament in Brussels. “There are still three issues that can make the difference between a deal and no deal.”

Von der Leyen said the disagreements that have bedeviled the talks since the beginning are still proving difficult: the level playing field for business, the enforcement of any agreement and access to British fishing waters.

“With very little time ahead of us, we will do all in our power to reach an agreement,” she added.

Negotiations are continuing virtually after a member of the European team tested positive for the coronavirus but face-to-face contact is expected to resume in London before the end of the week. Officials on both sides have expressed optimism that an agreement is possible and could be reached by the end of next week.

“In the discussions about state aid we have still serious issues, for instance when it comes to enforcement,” von der Leyen said. “Significant difficulties remain on the question how we can secure — now and over time — our common high standards on labor and social rights, the environment, climate change and tax transparency.”

Before the European Commission chief spoke, U.S. President-Elect Joe Biden used a conversation with reporters to remind the U.K. of the importance of sticking by the agreement it struck last year to keep the Irish border free of checkpoints after Brexit. Reneging on those commitments could disrupt any potential trade deal before it’s ratified.

“We do not want a guarded border,” Biden said on Tuesday. “The idea of having the border, north and south, once again being closed. We’ve just got to keep the border open.”

Turning away from Brexit, von der Leyen broached the topic of the rule of law in the EU as Poland and Hungary threaten to withhold agreement on the bloc’s budget and pandemic recovery fund amid a row over plans to tie the funding to basic principles such as the maintenance of an independent judiciary.

“In July all 27 member states agreed on a conditionality mechanism,” von der Leyen said. “We’re talking here about violations of the principle of the rule of law, which are now threatening the EU budget.”

She described the rule of law conditions as appropriate, proportionate and necessary.

“It is very difficult to imagine that anybody in Europe could have anything against this principle.”

With the coronavirus still ravaging the continent, von der Leyen welcomed the European Commission’s contracts with six different vaccine suppliers and said the first Europeans might be vaccinated before the end of the December.

But she warned against repeating the mistakes of the summer.

“Relaxing too fast and too much is a risk for a third wave after Christmas,” she said. “Weeks ago, I said that this Christmas will be different. And yes, it will be quieter.”

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Joe Biden calls for shared sacrifice to fight the pandemic as Trump rails about baseless election accusations (nationthailand.com)

Joe Biden calls for shared sacrifice to fight the pandemic as Trump rails about baseless election accusations

InternationalNov 26. 2020President-elect Joe Biden gives a pre-Thanksgiving speech on Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman 

By The Washington Post · Jenna Johnson, Amy B Wang, Josh Dawsey · NATIONAL, POLITICS, WHITEHOUSE

President-elect Joe Biden urged Americans on the eve of Thanksgiving to recommit to fighting the coronavirus, not one another, and to take it upon themselves to make decisions that can save lives.

In a somber and at times pleading speech, Biden reflected on other times in history that Americans have suffered, on the pain felt by the families of the more than 260,000 people who have been killed by the virus, on the sacrifices many Americans are making by scaling back or canceling their holiday plans and on the additional deaths that will undoubtedly come in the months ahead.

He urged Americans to take “simple steps” like wearing a mask, limiting the size of gatherings and socially distancing from others.

“This is the moment where we need to steel our spines,” Biden said from a stage in Wilmington, Del. “Redouble our efforts and recommit ourselves to the fight.”

He later added: “Hang on. Don’t let yourself surrender to the fatigue, which I understand – it is real fatigue. I know we can and we will beat this virus. America is not going to lose this war. We’ll get our lives back. Life is going to return to normal, I promise you.”

As Biden called on Americans to come together, President Donald Trump spent the day tweeting a steady stream of grievances and baseless accusations, twice scream-tweeting: “RIGGED ELECTION!” The president made no mention of the pandemic, which has killed more than 260,000 under his watch, offered no suggestions to Americans conflicted about how to celebrate Thanksgiving safely and publicly expressed no gratitude.

Just before Biden began speaking in Wilmington, Del., Trump called the cellphone of his attorney Jenna Ellis, who was at a news conference about voter fraud in Pennsylvania. As she put him on speakerphone, he continued to unleash his grievances over the sometimes scratchy line.

“This election was lost by the Democrats,” Trump said, falsely. “They cheated.”

Earlier in the day, Trump’s aides hastily canceled a trip to that event. The president had planned to helicopter there for a news conference featuring his attorney Rudy Giuliani to again allege widespread voter fraud, despite not having yet provided any evidence. Trump was angry, several advisers said, at the perception he had given up the election fight after allowing the transition to begin.

The travel plan caught Trump’s advisers by surprise, including campaign attorney Justin Clark, RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and many others close to the president, three officials said. Efforts were made to talk him out of the trip, but he continued to say it would be a good idea to appear with Giuliani and continue fighting the election results.

At the event, Giuliani appeared without a mask, even though he had been in close contact with campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn, who tested positive after appearing last week at the RNC with Giuliani.

Much of the White House was empty on Wednesday morning, and several advisers said they were no longer paying attention to Trump’s antics. RNC lawyers are distancing themselves from the Giuliani efforts, officials said, and the campaign has stopped holding morning calls to talk about how to talk to the country about Giuliani’s fights.

Biden’s team, as it has for days, continued to beef up a transition that only began officially on Monday evening, when the General Services Administration finally notified federal agencies they could cooperate with the Biden team.

“The election is over. Virtually everyone on Earth has accepted that truth, except for Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani,” said Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the Biden-Harris transition team. “The Trump campaign has been laughed out of every courtroom with their meritless and baseless lawsuits meant to undermine the will of the American people. This is a sideshow.”

Bedingfield said that the Biden-Harris transition team has been quickly making up for lost time since Monday night when GSA administrator Emily Murphy gave the go-ahead, ending a three-week delay.

She and Jen Psaki, another spokeswoman, provided a laundry list of logistical accomplishments, refreshingly boring compared to parade of attacks, boastful claims and context-lacking assertions often uttered by Trump administration officials.

Since Monday night, the Biden-Harris transition team has made contact or met with more than 50 major federal agencies and commissions, and held more than 30 virtual briefings, Bedingfield said. She praised civil servants assisting with the transition from the Trump Administration for being “professional and welcoming” and for beginning to prepare for this moment weeks ago, despite Trump’s attempts to stall. She thanked them for clearing their schedules and, at in-person meetings, offering coffee and meals.

Biden is now receiving classified information and expects to start in-person security briefings next week, the aides said. The process of background checks for political appointees has begun, and some members of the transition team have begun to receive government-issued laptops.

Next week, Biden plans to announce some members of his economic team. Biden has already picked economist Janet Yellen to be U.S. treasury secretary. When asked when Biden would name a health secretary, given the pandemic, Psaki said that “it is front and center on the top of the mind” of Biden, Harris and other officials, but declined to provide a time frame. More appointments are expected in the weeks to come, although the spokeswomen would not say in which areas.

“Buckle up for December,” Psaki said.

Despite Trump’s efforts, Bedingfield and Psaki both said they were confident that, so far, Biden has access to the information and resources needed for a smooth transition.

Biden still has not spoken with Trump, which Bedingfield said is not necessary. If Trump eventually wants to speak with Biden, she said, “that’s something we would work out in the future.” A conversation between the two is not something “mission critical,” she said.

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GOP effort to invalidate more than 2.5 million votes in Pennsylvania dealt another setback (nationthailand.com)

GOP effort to invalidate more than 2.5 million votes in Pennsylvania dealt another setback

InternationalNov 26. 2020President Trump and then-candidate Joe Biden are pictured at the first debate in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 22, 2020. Trump has had no success in court regarding his allegations of election fraud. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo Jabin Botsford 

By The Washington Post · Elise Viebeck, Josh Dawsey · NATIONAL, POLITICS, COURTSLAW, WHITEHOUSE

Republicans faced another procedural setback in a Pennsylvania lawsuit seeking to invalidate more than 2.5 million votes, as a temporary order blocking further certification of election results was stayed on appeal from state officials who had already formalized President-elect Joe Biden’s win the day before.

Legal experts said the case had little chance of success, much like the other last-ditch GOP election lawsuits pending in battleground states. Republicans have gained no substantive traction across more than two dozen cases trying to undo results favoring Biden since Election Day, and as of Tuesday, four of six states where President Donald Trump tried to overturn the outcome have certified Biden’s win.

In the Pennsylvania case, Republican plaintiffs are retroactively challenging the state’s mail-voting system, calling into question virtually every contest that took place there on Nov. 3 and asking for judges to take the unprecedented step of voiding election results across the state.

On Wednesday morning, Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough, who was elected as a Republican in 2009, placed a hold on the certification process for downballot races pending an evidentiary hearing. State officials appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court later Wednesday, which triggered an automatic stay of McCullough’s order. They then asked the state high court to step in and dismiss the case altogether.

“The Commonwealth Court’s Order threatens to disrupt the certification of every race in the 2020 general election; foreclose the seating of elected representatives; indefinitely postpone the December 1 start of the General Assembly’s term; undermine the will of the voters; and cast a wholly unwarranted cloud over Pennsylvania’s election results,” lawyers for the state wrote in a filing.

Legal experts said it was unlikely that judges assigned to the case would ultimately grant a request to change the rules of an election after the fact in a way that disenfranchises millions of people.

Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School who tracks voting rights litigation, called the case “internally incoherent” and “an attempt to magically disappear an entire election.”

“It basically says Pennsylvania had something other than an election, which is another explanation for why it’s not going anywhere,” he said.

McCullough’s order followed a late-night filing by Republicans speculating that Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, might have accelerated certification of the presidential results on Tuesday to avoid a possible injunction stemming from their case.

Boockvar stated Tuesday that she certified the results for president and vice president and that Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, signed the Certificate of Ascertainment for Biden’s slate of electors, adding that the certificate was submitted to the archivist of the United States.

Separately, Pennsylvania Republicans sought to build support for their voter fraud claims on Wednesday with an hours-long, largely maskless indoor news event at a Wyndham Hotel in Gettysburg.

Led by Republican state legislators, the gathering featured Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and adviser Jenna Ellis alongside Pennsylvanians who voiced suspicions that the election was dishonest based on their experiences as observers. At one point, Trump called in via Giuliani’s cellphone, telling the room and people watching online that “we have to turn the election over.”

Trump had planned to attend the event in person, which caught advisers by surprise, including campaign attorney Justin Clark, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and many others close to the president, three people involved with the campaign said on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak. Efforts were made to talk Trump out of the trip, but he continued to say it would be a good idea to appear with Giuliani, the people said. They said Trump told several advisers that he appreciated Giuliani wanted to keep fighting, while he believed they were prematurely declaring defeat.

By Wednesday morning, the president had decided not to go, even as his team whirred into motion to make the Thanksgiving Eve trip happen. “Bullet dodged,” said one campaign adviser. “It would have been a total humiliation.”

Giuliani appeared without a mask, even after he had been in close contact with campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn, who tested positive for the coronavirus and appeared last week at the RNC with Giuliani and attorney Sidney Powell, maskless.

RNC lawyers were distancing themselves from Giuliani’s efforts, the officials said. Much of the White House was empty on Wednesday morning. The campaign has stopped holding morning calls to talk about how to craft messaging around Giuliani’s fights, several advisers said.

Many of the president’s advisers do not see the effort by Ellis and Giuliani going anywhere, and they believe Trump is only hurting his reputation and legacy by participating in it.

Elsewhere in the country, Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward continued her push to challenge Biden’s victory there ahead of Nov. 30, when Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, is scheduled to certify results.

Ward on Tuesday asked a judge to begin examining ballots and envelopes ahead of what she said would be a formal election contest filed after certification. Arizona law allows any voter to challenge the results of an election on the grounds that illegal votes were cast or that election officials engaged in misconduct. To succeed, Ward would have to show that Trump actually received the most votes in the state, which appears unlikely given that Biden’s margin of victory is greater than 10,000 votes.

A judge has set a hearing in the case for Monday.

In Wisconsin, recounts in the two largest counties – Dane and Milwaukee – continued on Wednesday. Election officials plan to pause the process on Thursday to observe the Thanksgiving holiday before returning to work on Friday and working through the weekend to complete the recounts by Dec. 1, as required by Wisconsin law. Biden leads Trump by about 20,000 votes in the state. As of the close of Tuesday, the state’s recount, which began on Friday, had resulted in Biden’s margin being whittled by just 52 votes.

In Georgia, a machine recount is underway of the state’s 5 million presidential votes, at the president’s request. While most counties plan on taking Thanksgiving Day off, they are scheduled to resume the recount at 7 a.m. on Friday and work through the weekend to meet the deadline of Dec. 2. The new recount is a machine rescan of the presidential ballots, which were already hand-recounted during the state’s risk-limiting audit process to ensure the accuracy of the initial count of ballots.

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

Trump tweets string of falsehoods about Wisconsin absentee voters (nationthailand.com)

Trump tweets string of falsehoods about Wisconsin absentee voters

InternationalNov 26. 2020

By The Washington Post · Salvador Rizzo · NATIONAL, POLITICS

” ‘In Wisconsin, somebody has to be indefinitely confined in order to vote absentee. In the past there were 20,000 people. This past election there were 120,000…and Republicans were locked out of the vote counting process.’ @VicToensing @newsmax” – President Trump, in a tweet, Nov. 24, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/5d8a6a71-d8e8-4201-88ff-918f5beed8ad?ptvads=block&playthrough=false

Every part of this is false, proving once again why none of President Donald Trump’s claims about election fraud should be given any credence.

As we’ve documented in recent fact checks, the statements from Trump and his lawyers are all absurd and easily debunked. Last week, it was Sidney Powell alleging with no evidence that an algorithm from Venezuela had changed millions of Trump votes to votes for President-elect Joe Biden. This week, Rudy Giuliani is mixing up Michigan and Minnesota to peddle a false claim about “phantom voters.”

Here, we have Victoria Toensing mangling pretty much everything about Wisconsin in a Newsmax interview and Trump repeating the disinformation to more than 88 million Twitter followers. (Twitter quickly flagged the tweet as misleading.)

Biden won Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes. The Trump campaign is paying for an ongoing recount in Dane and Milwaukee counties, the most heavily Democratic in the state. The campaign is expected to file a lawsuit after the recount, challenging thousands of ballots.

Trump already is seeking to throw out thousands of votes in Wisconsin, including any absentee ballots from “indefinitely confined” voters, roughly 69,000 absentee ballots cast in person during the two weeks before Election Day and more.

Let’s debunk these claims one by one.

– “In Wisconsin, somebody has to be indefinitely confined in order to vote absentee.”

False. Wisconsin law allows any registered voter to request an absentee ballot, and no excuse has been required since 2000.

– “Under Wisconsin law, voters do not need a reason or excuse, such as being out of town on Election Day, to vote absentee,” the state’s election website says. “Any voter who prefers to vote by absentee ballot may request one.”

“In the past there were 20,000 people. This past election there were 120,000.”

– Under Wisconsin law: “Voters who are indefinitely confined due to age, illness, infirmity, or disability may request that a ballot be automatically sent to them for each election. Indefinitely confined voters do not need to provide a photo ID with their absentee ballot request.”

This is an accommodation for voters who cannot physically go to the polls. They have the option of receiving mail ballots automatically for each election and don’t need to provide a photo ID with their request. The requirements are stricter for other Wisconsin absentee voters, who must request ballots for specific elections or years.

The suggestion here is that the number of indefinitely confined voters in Wisconsin grew suspiciously this year. But these numbers from Trump and Toensing are inaccurate, contradicted by the state’s official statistics. The real numbers tell a different story, and Reid Magney, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, told us “we have seen no evidence of fraud.”

Magney said that in November 2016, the state recorded 56,978 indefinitely confined absentee voters out of 144,802 absentee-by-mail voters. (That’s 39 percent.)

For November 2020, Wisconsin’s preliminary figures show 215,713 indefinitely confined absentee voters out of approximately 1.32 million absentee-by-mail voters, or 16 percent. (Final figures will not be available until mid-December.)

“Republicans were locked out of the vote counting process.”

Republican observers have been present throughout Wisconsin’s counting process, during the initial count and now during the recount. In fact, local election officials say that Trump’s observers are seeking to gum up the works, “in some instances by objecting to every ballot tabulators pulled to count,” according to the Associated Press.

No recount in Wisconsin history has overturned a vote margin as large as Biden’s. Trump and his lawyers also have falsely claimed that Republican observers were not allowed inside the room as votes were counted in Philadelphia and Detroit, among other cities.

A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

In case anyone needed a reminder that Trump simply cannot be believed on the election, this is it. He is casting doubt on Wisconsin’s results, but every part of his claim is demonstrably false. Trump earns Four Pinocchios.

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

U.S. closes Texas facility for migrants (nationthailand.com)

U.S. closes Texas facility for migrants

InternationalNov 26. 2020A young child holds onto a fence at the U.S. Border Patrol Central Processing Center in McAllen, Tex., in August 2019. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Carolyn Van Houten. 

By The Washington Post · Nick Miroff · NATIONAL, COURTSLAW

WASHINGTON – U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have shut down the South Texas warehouse where chain-link enclosures were deplored as “cages” during the Trump administration’s crackdown on migrant families and children. The facility will undergo renovations until 2022, CBP officials said.

Male minors rest under Mylar blankets in the Border Patrol Central Processing Center in McAllen, Texas., in August 2019. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Carolyn Van Houten.

The chain-link partitions will be removed, and the warehouse will be redesigned to provide detained migrants with more humane conditions, CBP officials said. The renovations will take 18 months or longer, leaving border agents without a large-volume facility if a new migration surge occurs next year.

“The new design will allow for updated accommodations, which will greatly improve the operating efficiency of the center as well as the welfare of individuals being processed,” Thomas Gresback, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, told The Washington Post.

The Obama administration opened the facility in 2014 after a record number of Central American families and children began streaming into South Texas, leaving U.S. agents and border stations dangerously overcrowded. CBP obtained a large warehouse and hastily converted it into a clean, air-conditioned processing center to accommodate the surge. Inexpensive chain-link fencing was used to create partitions in the cavernous space, but its grim appearance came to symbolize the dehumanizing treatment of migrants in U.S. custody.

The warehouse has been mostly empty this year, as CBP implemented emergency public health measures in March that allow agents to quickly “expel” more than 90% of border crossers back to Mexico. Last week, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt the practice of expelling underage migrants.

During pre-pandemic times, migrant families and children who were taken into custody in the Rio Grande Valley after crossing illegally into the United States typically were taken to the CPC warehouse. Their personal and biometric information was recorded into government databases, and they would sometimes spend several days or more inside the facility, sleeping on mats as they waited for authorities to determine whether they would be transferred to a longer-term detention facility, returned to Mexico or released into the United States.

The partitions were used to separate different demographic groups – such as keeping teenage boys apart from mothers with infants. The renovation is likely to replace the chain link with clear plastic dividers, and officials said the new facility will provide more recreation and play areas for children, as well as more permanent kitchen, infirmary and shower facilities.

The CPC’s capacity will be reduced from 1,500 to 1,100, Gresback said.

Men sit on a bench with other fathers of young children in the McAllen, Texas, facility. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Carolyn Van Houten.

Department of Homeland Security officials and migration experts have warned that the incoming Biden administration risks facing a new migration crisis next year. Mexico and Central America have been battered by the economic squeeze of the coronavirus pandemic, and catastrophic flooding and crop damage this fall from multiple hurricanes.

Last month, the number of migrants taken into custody along the Mexico border jumped to 69,237, up 21 percent from September. It was the highest one-month total since February 2019.

President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign promises to reverse the Trump administration’s restrictive approach to immigration enforcement have also raised fears that smuggling organizations will use the anticipation of weaker enforcement to recruit clients.

The Rio Grande Valley remains the busiest area for illegal migration along the entire U.S. southern border, but the bare-bones detention cells of its Border Patrol stations were designed to hold adults, not families and children. Those stations became so overcrowded during the 2014 surge that families were left for hours in the sweltering exterior garages of the stations, in conditions so poor that the Obama administration was forced to look for an indoor, climate-controlled facility, settling on the warehouse.

“It was the best solution at the time,” said Rodolfo Karisch, who retired in January as the Border Patrol chief of the Rio Grande Valley sector. Karisch said the decision to remove the chain link and renovate the facility was a sign that the Border Patrol had heeded the public outcry and asked “What else can we do to make it better?”

When the families and children began crossing the border in large numbers again in 2018, the Trump administration responded with a “Zero Tolerance” crackdown that intentionally separated thousands of migrant children from their parents. The children were sent to shelter facilities and dormitories that the Department of Health and Human Services oversaw, while the adults were kept in immigration jails.

When CBP officials allowed television crews inside the Central Processing Center during the surge to draw attention to the humanitarian crisis, the facility’s chain-link fencing triggered an immediate uproar. Opponents of the Trump administration’s immigration and border policies latched onto the phrase “kids in cages” as a way to attack what they saw as inhumane treatment of people seeking refuge in the United States.

During the second presidential debate in October, then-candidate Biden denounced the president’s family separations as “criminal,” to which Trump responded: “Who built the cages, Joe?” – blaming the Obama administration.

In 2018, CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan pushed for the removal of the chain-link fencing, and he advocated for the creation of new border facilities that would be more appropriate for families and children. Congress blocked proposals for a processing center in the El Paso area, but lawmakers in 2019 approved a $4.5 billion emergency spending bill to set up temporary migrant shelter facilities, during a year when the Border Patrol made nearly 1 million arrests and detentions.

CBP likely would need to set up short-term tent facilities again in the event of a new migration wave, officials said. “CBP consistently revaluates future operational requirements to support the safe and legal processing of aliens who have entered the United States illegally,” Gresback said.