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The Guardian
10 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Newsom says California will draw new electoral maps after Trump ‘missed' deadline
California governor Gavin Newsom says the state will draw new electoral maps after Donald Trump 'missed' a deadline on Tuesday night in an ongoing redistricting battle between Democratic and Republican states. 'DONALD 'TACO' TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, 'MISSED' THE DEADLINE!!!', Newsom's office wrote on social media. 'CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE 'BEAUTIFUL MAPS,' THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!)'. 'BIG PRESS CONFERENCE THIS WEEK WITH POWERFUL DEMS AND GAVIN NEWSOM — YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR — THAT WILL BE DEVASTATING FOR 'MAGA.' THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GN,' reads the post. The post follows a series of snarky, all-caps tweets meant to mimic Trump's social media writing style. Newsom was mocking Trump's moniker, 'Taco', short for 'Trump always chickens out', prompted by his flip-flopping deadlines. Several states have waded into the redistricting wars, where Newsom and other Democratic state leaders had threatened to draw retaliatory maps if Texas were to move ahead with its redistricting scheme. Texas Democrats had left the state to stop Republicans from passing a new congressional map. The Texas senate passed the new congressional map on Tuesday, but it will not earn full approval from the legislature because of the quorum-break. Lawmakers are set to adjourn on Friday and Texas's governor, Greg Abbott, has said he will immediately convene a new special session. In a letter sent to Trump on Monday, Newsom said he would prefer to leave the matter of congressional map-making to independent commissions, not partisan legislative bodies and emphasized that he would 'happily' stand down if other states abandoned their redistricting effort. But, Newsom said: 'California cannot stand idly by as this power grab unfolds.' Newsom's office summarized the letter Monday in a mocking social media post to Trump: 'DONALD TRUMP, IF YOU DO NOT STAND DOWN, WE WILL BE FORCED TO LEAD AN EFFORT TO REDRAW THE MAPS IN CA TO OFFSET THE RIGGING OF MAPS IN RED STATES. BUT IF THE OTHER STATES CALL OFF THEIR REDISTRICTING EFFORTS, WE WILL DO THE SAME. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!' At a press conference with several quorum-breaking Texas lawmakers, as well as California's legislative leaders, Newsom outlined his plan to ask voters to override the existing congressional maps drawn by an independent commission and accept a new proposal to create five more Democratic-leaning seats. The governor expressed confidence that voters would approve the plan and said the state legislature would act in time to get the measure on the ballot this November. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Trump has defended the Texas plan, arguing that he is 'entitled to five more seats' because he won the state's popular vote in the 2024 presidential election. The argument, however, is flawed – a popular vote win does not necessarily mean a president's party is awarded more congressional seats. Despite Newsom's appeal, the White House is seeking to enlist other red states in the redistricting clash. Last week, vice-president JD Vance traveled to Indiana, where he met with state Republican leaders to lobby them on the effort. Republicans have also targeted Ohio and Missouri. Lauren Gambino contributed reporting
Daily Mail
40 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Major US adversary believed to be behind 'unprecedented' cyber hack on US court data
Russia is believed to be behind an 'unprecedented' cyber hack that exposed some of the Department of Justice's most high-profile sources. Last week, it was revealed the hackers breached the electronic case filing system used by the federal judiciary - and may have accessed confidential information from federal district courts around the country. It has since been dug up by investigators that those responsible, at least in part, have Russian origins, just days before Donald Trump is set to meet with Vladimir Putin in Washington. Several people briefed told the New York Times that despite the certainty, it was unclear if the hackers were with Russian intelligence or if other nations were involved in what they call a yearslong effort. The searches involved in the breach often involved mid-level criminal files that featured people with Russian surnames. Last week, it was revealed that among the information that may have been compromised are the identities of confidential informants in criminal cases, though the identities of those who were thought to face exceptional risk for cooperating with the DOJ are held on separate systems than the ones hacked. Department of Justice officials under Attorney General Pam Bondi have reportedly been informed that the court files have faced 'persistent and sophisticated cyber threat actors have recently compromised sealed records.' The staffers have been warned to remove any of their most important documents from the system. Officials are still dealing with figuring out the patterns of the breach and determine the complete damage done. The Daily Mail has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment. Other information the hackers may have acquired are sealed indictments detailing confidential information about alleged crimes and arrests and search warrants that criminals may use to evade capture. The Administrative Office of the US Courts, which manages the federal court filing system, has now been left scrambling with the Department of Justice and district courts around the US to determine how much of a threat the hack poses. But an unidentified source who spent more than two decades on the federal judiciary told Politico: 'It's the first time I've ever seen a hack at this level.' It is now suspected that the attack was conducted by nation-state affiliated actors, though criminal organizations may have also been involved. Officials were first made aware of the breach around the July 4 holiday, and chief judges of the federal courts in the 8th Circuit - which includes Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota - were alerted about the hack last week, according to Politico. It affected the judiciary's federal core case management system - which includes the Case Management/Electronic Case Files that lawyers use to upload and manage case documents as well as PACER, a system that gives the public limited access to the data. Roughly a dozen court dockets were also tampered with in one court district during the hack, an unidentified source said. The incident demonstrates the susceptibility of the outdated court filing system to hackers. PACER had even been hacked at least once before - back in July 2022 - in a breach that then-House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler described as 'startling in breadth and scope.' Michael Scudder, who chairs the Committee on Information Technology for the federal courts and national policymaking body, warned the House Judiciary in June of this year that more such attacks may be coming. He said that because the Judiciary holds such sensitive information, it faces 'unrelenting security threats of extraordinary gravity.' 'Experience has shown that the Judiciary is a high-value target for malicious actors and cyber criminals seeking to misappropriate confidential information and disrupt the judicial process in the United States,' he testified. 'These attacks pose risks to our entire justice system.' In fiscal year 2024, he noted, 200 million harmful cyber 'events' were prevented from penetrating court local area networks in fiscal year 2024, according to The Record. But, Scudder said, the Case Management/Electronic Case Files and PACER systems pose an even greater risk as they are 'outdated [and] unsustainable due to cyber risks and require replacement,' which he said is a 'top priority' for the Department of Justice. Still, Scudder said, a new, more modernized system would have to be 'developed and rolled out on an incremental basis.'
The Guardian
41 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Ukraine will not cede land that could be Russian springboard for new war, Zelenskyy says
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine could not agree to a Russian proposal to give up more of his country's territory in exchange for a ceasefire because Moscow would use what it gained as a springboard to start a future war. The Ukrainian president said he did not believe that Donald Trump supported Russia's demands, and he expressed hope the US leader would act as an honest mediator when he meets Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. He added there was no sign that Russia was preparing to implement a ceasefire, as reports emerged that small sabotage groups had pierced Ukrainian defences in the eastern Donbas, advancing about six miles in three days. Zelenskyy also warned that Russia was planning new offensives on three parts of the frontline. Speaking to journalists in the run-up to the Trump-Putin summit, and a day before a virtual meeting with US and European leaders, Zelenskyy said he believed Putin wanted to dominate his country because he 'does not want a sovereign Ukraine'. It was therefore dangerous, Zelenskyy said, for Ukraine to be forced by the US into accepting Russia's demand to take over the parts of Donbas it does not control after the Alaska summit. The region sought by Russia amounted to 'about 90,000 square kilometres' of the country, he said. Last week Russia indicated it was prepared to consider a ceasefire in the Ukraine war for the first time, in exchange for Ukraine withdrawing from the parts of Donbas it still controlled. Though Trump then suggested that Russia and Ukraine could engage in some 'swapping of territories', Zelenskyy said he understood that Russia was 'simply offering not to advance further, not to withdraw from anywhere' and that swaps were not on the table. 'We will not leave Donbas. We cannot do it,' Zelenskyy said. 'For Russians, Donbas is a springboard for a future new offensive.' The region demanded by Russia was too strategically important to give up, he said, because it was a heavily fortified area that protected Ukraine's central cities. 'I have heard nothing – not a single proposal – that would guarantee that a new war will not start tomorrow and that Putin will not try to occupy at least Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv' once Russia had gained all of Donbas, Zelenskyy said. Ukraine's leader said he wanted Putin instead to agree to a ceasefire on the current frontlines and for both sides to return all prisoners of war and missing children, before any discussion about territory and the future security of the country. 'Any question of territory cannot be separated from security guarantees,' he said. Zelenskyy said he would not be at the summit in Alaska, the first face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin with both in office since 2018. But he said he hoped it would be followed by 'a trilateral meeting' with Trump and Putin, though the Russian leader has so far said he is not willing to meet Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian leader also expressed faith in the unpredictable Trump, who he said could act as an honest broker between himself and Putin. 'I do not believe that Putin's proposal is Trump's proposal,' he said. 'I believe that Trump represents the United States of America. He is acting as a mediator – he is in the middle, not on Russia's side. Let him not be on our side but in the middle.' He said he did not know what exactly Putin and Trump were going to discuss in Alaska, saying 'probably there is a bilateral track' of talks about other topics of mutual interest, such as trade, sanctions and business. But he said Putin had scored a diplomatic win in securing the meeting: 'He is seeking, excuse me, photographs. He needs a photo of his meeting with President Trump.' Zelenskyy said Russia was desperately trying to show it was winning the war and that the Kremlin wanted 'to create a certain narrative, especially in the American media, that Russia is moving forward and Ukraine is losing' by mounting sabotage attacks in the Donbas region. He acknowledged that 'groups of Russians advanced about 10 kilometres in several places' although he said: 'They have no equipment, only weapons in their hands,' and said that some had already been killed or captured. But the breach is ill-timed from Ukraine's point of view. In Alaska, Putin is likely to tell Trump that such successes show that Russia is gradually winning the three-year war in the east, and so US future support for Kyiv will be wasted. War maps showed two lines of advance east of the town of Dobropillya, and gains of about six miles since Friday. Experts said the next few days would be critical to see if Ukraine could contain the break in the front. Ukraine's military said Russia had concentrated about 110,000 troops in the sector and that the invaders were 'brazenly attempting to infiltrate our defensive lines with sabotage and small infantry groups, regardless of their losses'. The military command said in a social media post that reserves had been deployed at the order of Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine's chief military commander, in an effort to restore the frontlines. The Institute for the Study of War said Russian 'sabotage and reconnaissance groups' had infiltrated Ukrainian-held territory near Dobropillya, a key supply point in the west of the Donetsk region. 'It is premature to call the Russian advances in the Dobropillya area an operational-level breakthrough,' the ISW said on Monday night. It said the invaders would now try to turn 'tactical advances' into something more significant. Russia is taking heavy casualties of about 1,000 a day, with 500 killed and 500 wounded on Monday, Zelenskyy said, as it relies heavily on infantry assaults to break Kyiv's defensive lines. Zelenskyy said Ukraine's casualties on the same day were much smaller – a total of 340 – '18 killed and 243 wounded, with 79 missing in action'. But in the past when Moscow's forces have broken through, Ukraine has frequently proved unable to push them back. A former senior Ukrainian army officer, Bohdan Krotevych, said the piercing of Ukraine's lines had come about because 'instead of reinforcing defensive units with infantry', senior commanders in Kyiv had prioritised deploying newly mobilised soldiers into assault forces, leaving units already on the frontline weakened. 'To stabilise the front, we must reinforce brigades on the line of contact with infantry,' Krotevych said, and he called for Ukraine to urgently strengthen its reserve forces and adopt a defensive strategy rather than try to counter high-risk Russian infantry assaults with its own. Dobropillya is a key supply point for the beleaguered towns of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad to the south and the principal cities of Ukrainian-held Donbas to the east from the centre of the country. Zelenskyy said Russia was preparing a fresh offensive in the autumn involving nearly 30,000 troops moved from Sumy, in the north-east of Ukraine, 'in three directions' on the frontline – towards Zaporizhzhia in the south and Pokrovsk and the nearby Novopavlika in the south-east.
