CNN Politics

Nikki Haley is the First Woman and Minority Named to the Trump Administration

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (Politico)

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (Politico)

President-elect Donald Trump (I threw up a little just now writing that) has named his pick for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He’s selected Republican Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley. Haley is the first woman Trump has selected for his administration.

Haley’s also the first minority Trump has selected: She’s of Indian descent, and her parents are Sikh.

Haley has served two terms as governor of South Carolina, and is known for advocating removing the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s State Capitol grounds.

She is the first woman governor of South Carolina, as well as the first minority governor of the state.

According to CNN, “Haley will keep serving as governor until the Senate confirms her nomination.”

Planned Parenthood Hacks: By The Numbers

Planned Parenthood site outage (Planned Parenthood)

Planned Parenthood site outage (Planned Parenthood)

You may have heard that Planned Parenthood’s website got hacked earlier this week. But did you know it got hacked twice?

That’s right. It actually happened twice in one week. Planned Parenthood was first hacked this past Sunday night, and then again on Wednesday. The hacking on Sunday was performed by a group called 3301. The group hacked employees’ personal contact information and internal emails and files. According to 3301’s leader E, the breach was possible due to the organization’s “extremely outdated and broken” coding.

While previously unknown, this group holds some extreme anti-abortion views, and feels that what Planned Parenthood does is “a very ominous practice.” The hacking was prompted by some recent leaked videos showing Planned Parenthood officials “discussing the sale of aborted fetal tissue.”

3301 calls its members “social justice warriors.”

The hacking on Wednesday interfered with the organization’s usual flow of web traffic. It was a large “distributed denial-of-service” (DDoS), where users couldn’t access the site due to the server getting flooded with voluminous quantities of data.

(And for those who wish I’d write about something else this week: yes, I know I just covered another prominent website’s hacking, but I couldn’t let this one pass by unacknowledged.)

Here are the numbers behind the hacking:

1: day that Planned Parenthood took their own site offline

2: times the site has been hacked this week

2: Government agencies (Department of Justice and the FBI) investigating the data breaches

300: number of Planned Parenthood employees whose personal information has already been leaked

200K: number of people who visit Planned Parenthood’s site daily

2.7M: Number of people that Planned Parenthood helps in a given year

The Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Same-Sex Marriage

The White House (Mashable)

The White House (Mashable)

(Yes, I know this is old news by now, but I couldn’t start blogging again without acknowledging it. If only  could’ve seen into the future!)

Friday, June 26th was a historic day that was a long time coming: The Supreme Court ruled to legalize same-sex marriages nationwide in a 5-4 decision. The decision overrules states that had previously decided not to allow same-sex marriage, and prompted many previously-against states to begin issuing marriage licenses and performing ceremonies.

Naturally, this is a wonderful decision, not just for the LGBT(QQIA+) community, but also for humanity as a whole. I think people have finally recognized that it’s time. And that it’s been time. Interestingly, there hasn’t been much resistance from state governments: Though Louisiana initially said it’d wait for federal intervention to comply, towns within the state eventually began offering marriage licenses.

As an ally, I’m glad I got to see the day, and hope this is the start of many beneficial changes.