Recognition…James Estrin / The New York Times
JPMorgan Chase, Spotify, Uber, McDonald’s, and nearly 200 other companies have formed a coalition aimed at ensuring that women are not held back in the workforce because they bear the brunt of care in the US.
The new Care Economy Business Council, which was announced on Wednesday, represents the effort in economic terms, arguing that remedying the crumbling child and elderly care systems is essential to economic recovery.
Led by Time’s Up, the advocacy group founded by powerful women in Hollywood, the council aims to bring leaders together to share ways to improve workplace policies and pressure Congress to pass policy changes that would help people – especially women – to go back to work. The council will advocate government-funded family and sick leave, affordable childcare and care for the elderly, and higher wages for caregivers.
“What I see now, what I have not seen in the many years that I have worked on this constellation of topics, is the employers’ realization that they are involved,” said Tina Tchen, the managing director of Time’s Up . said.
The pandemic exposed the mistakes in care in the United States, particularly the problems with childcare. Many daycare centers have either closed or cut working hours to save costs so that parents do not have reliable and safe places for their children while at work. The lack of childcare support has been a major reason why hundreds of thousands of women have left the workforce over the past year and women’s participation has fallen to its lowest level since 1986.
Companies have struggled to put solutions together, from flexible hours to additional grants for childcare. For many managers, however, the crisis made it clear that the entire system had to be revised.
The problem is “bigger than something we can solve ourselves,” said Christy M. Pambianchi, Verizon’s chief human resources officer, who is part of the council.
President Biden’s two-part infrastructure plan plans to invest $ 425 billion in expanding and strengthening childcare and an additional $ 400 billion in expanding access to home care for older adults and people with disabilities. His plan also offers companies a tax credit for building daycare in their workplaces.
Members of Congress also introduced three separate but similar childcare laws.
Recognition…Erin Schaff / The New York Times
Fox News Media, the cable group controlled by Rupert Murdoch, on Tuesday filed a motion dismissal of a $ 1.6 billion defamation suit in March spreading lies by Dominion Voting Systems, an electoral technology company that accused Fox News who had ruined his reputation, had filed against them in the 2020 presidential election.
The Dominion lawsuit and a similar defamation lawsuit filed in February by another electoral company, Smartmatic, have been widely viewed as test cases to combat disinformation in the news media. And it’s another by-product of former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless attempts to undermine President Biden’s clear victory.
In a 61-page response filed with the Delaware Supreme Court, Fox’s legal team argues that Dominion’s lawsuit threatened a news organization’s powers to first adjust to record and evaluate recent allegations in a high-stakes political competition.
“A free press must be able to cover both sides of a story that involves allegations that go to the very core of our democracy,” says Fox in the motion, “especially when those allegations are numerous lawsuits, government inquiries and Eliciting recounts of elections. ” The motion adds, “The American people deserve to know why President Trump refused to admit despite his apparent loss.”
Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox News presented the situation in a different light.
Dominion is one of the largest manufacturers of voting machines, and its technology has been used by more than two dozen states in the past year. In his lawsuit, the Fox News and Fox Business cable networks were described as active participants in spreading a false claim made by Mr. Trump’s allies that the company had covertly changed the number of votes to get the results in Mr. Trump’s favor Manipulate Biden. Mr. Trump’s attorneys shared these claims during television interviews on Fox programs.
“Lies have consequences,” wrote Dominion attorneys in their first complaint. “Fox sold a false story of electoral fraud for its own commercial purposes, seriously injuring Dominion in the process.” The lawsuit cites cases where Fox hosts, including Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, uncritically repeated false claims made about Dominion by Mr. Trump’s attorneys Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
A representative from Dominion, whose founders and employees received threatening messages after the negative coverage, did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday evening.
Fox News Media has hired two prominent lawyers to lead the defense: Charles Babcock, who has a background in media law, and Scott Keller, former chief attorney for Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. Fox has also moved to dismiss the lawsuit against Smartmatic. This defense is led by Paul D. Clement, a former attorney general under President George W. Bush.
“Every story has two sides,” Babcock and Keller wrote in a statement on Tuesday. “The press must remain free to cover both sides, otherwise there will be no more free press.”
Tuesday’s Fox motion argues that its networks “had the right to freedom of expression to question the president’s lawyers and deputies, even if their allegations ultimately turned out to be unfounded.” It is argued that the security of Dominion technology had been discussed in previous legal claims and media coverage, and that the lawsuit did not meet the high legal standard of “actual malice,” a reckless disregard for the truth on the part of Fox News and its own Host.
Media organizations generally enjoy strong protection under the First Amendment. Defamation suits are a novel tactic in the battle over disinformation, but proponents say the strategy has shown some early results. Conservative Newsmax news agency apologized last month after a Dominion official in a separate lawsuit accused the network of spreading unsubstantiated rumors about its role in the election. Fox Business canceled “Lou Dobbs Tonight” the day after Smartmatic’s lawsuit against Fox in February, naming Mr. Dobbs as a co-defendant.
Jonah E. Bromwich contributed to the coverage.
Recognition…Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images
The Biden government’s efforts to provide $ 4 billion in debt relief to minority farmers are met with fierce opposition from banks, who complain that the government’s initiative to repay loans from borrowers who have faced decades of financial discrimination will detract from their profits and harm investors.
The debt relief was approved as part of the stimulus package that Congress passed in March and was designed to offset the discrimination black and other non-white farmers have faced over the years from lenders and the Department of Agriculture.
But no money has gone out the door yet.
Instead, the program is mired in controversy and litigation. In April, white farmers who claim they are victims of discrimination sued the USDA for the initiative, writes Alan Rappeport of the New York Times.
Now three of the largest banking groups are waging their own battle, complaining about the cost of early repayment. Their reasoning is based on the way banks make money on credit and how they decide where to give credit.
By allowing borrowers to repay their debts early, lenders are denying the income they have long been expecting, they argue. Banks want the federal government to pay more than the outstanding loan amount so banks and investors don’t miss out on expected interest income or the money they would have made to sell the loans on to other investors.
Bank lobbyists have asked the Department of Agriculture to make changes to the repayment program, a USDA official said. They’re pushing the USDA to just make the loan payments instead of eradicating the debt all at once. And they warn of other effects.
In a letter sent to the Agriculture Minister last month, the banks suggested that if the loans were repaid quickly, they would be more reluctant to lend, which would do worse for minority farmers in the long run. The suggestion was seen as a threat by some organizations representing black farmers.
The USDA has shown no inclination to reverse course.
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