Politics
Outgoing WH official calls for US to bolster cybersecurity workforce by hiring non-degree holders
The White House’s outgoing cyber czar, Harry Coker, called for three key things to meet the growing threat of digital attacks: more funding, deregulation and opening up cyber jobs to those without college degrees.
As adversaries like Iran, China and Russia lob near-constant attacks on the U.S. digital infrastructure, “we have to prioritize cybersecurity within federal budgets” President Joe Biden’s national cyber director said at an event with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.
“I would love for the incoming administration, or any administration, to recognize the priority of cybersecurity,” Coker said.
He added that he understands the U.S. is in a “tough budget situation.”
“I get that, and I support making progress towards reducing the deficit, but we have to prioritize cybersecurity within our current budgets,” he said.
“I would love for the incoming administration, or any administration, to recognize the priority of cybersecurity,” Coker said. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
At the same time, the Biden appointee railed against “duplicative federal regulation” and said he’d heard from those working to protect the nation’s online infrastructure that they spend “a staggering 30 to 50%” of their time working to comply with regulation, rather than ensuring protection from hacks.
“Armed with the industry’s call to streamline, we worked with Congress to write bipartisan legislation that would bring all stakeholders, including independent regulators, to the table to advance the regulatory harmonization,” he went on.
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“Many of us were disappointed that this has not become law yet, but we have laid the groundwork for the next administration in Congress to do the right thing for our partners in the private sector.”
His urging comes as the U.S. is grappling with the fallout of one of China’s biggest attacks on American infrastructure in history, dubbed Salt Typhoon.
A Chinese intelligence group infiltrated nine U.S. telecommunications giants and gained access to the private text messages and phone calls of Americans, including senior government officials and prominent political figures.
China was behind a slew of major cyberattacks on the U.S. this year. (PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP via Getty Images)
A Chinese intelligence group infiltrated nine U.S. telecommunications giants recently. (REUTERS/Adriano Machado)
The Salt Typhoon hackers also gained access to an exhaustive list of phone numbers the Justice Department had wiretapped to monitor people suspected of espionage, granting them insight into which Chinese spies the U.S. had caught onto and which they had missed.
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China was also behind a “major” hack of the Treasury Department in December, gaining access to unclassified documents and the workstations of government employees.
And earlier this year, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s communications were intercepted by Chinese intelligence, just as she was making determinations about new export controls on semiconductors and other key technologies. The same hacking group also targeted officials at the State Department and members of Congress.
Amid this onslaught of attacks, Coker said the cyber industry is suffering a recruitment issue.
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“Today there are nearly 500,000 open cyber jobs in this great nation,” he said.
“The federal government is leading by example… removing federal employee and contractor hiring from a focus on college degrees to a focus on what we’re really after: skills.
“When we do away with the four-year college degree requirement, we expand our talent pool,” Coker went on. “Many Americans don’t have the time or the means to go to college for four years, but they can do it for two years or less.”
Since his death, Jimmy Carter has been lauded for brokering the Camp David Accords and for his post-White House mission to help the poor and battle disease. But glossed over amid all the tributes is the burdensome legacy that Mr. Carter left for his Democratic Party: a presidency long caricatured as a symbol of ineffectiveness and weakness.
This perception has shadowed the party for nearly 40 years. It was forged in the seizure of American hostages by Iranian militants in 1979 and the failed military attempt to free them, as well as the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. And it lingered in memories of Mr. Carter wearing a cardigan as he asked Americans to conserve energy, or bemoaning what he called a “crisis of confidence” in an address to the nation that became a textbook example of political self-harm.
Over the decades, these events have provided endless fodder for attacks by Republicans, who reveled in invoking Mr. Carter’s name to deride Democrats. And that mockery, in turn, influenced the way Democrats have presented themselves to voters. Without Mr. Carter’s image of weakness on national security and defense, for example, it is hard to imagine the party’s war-hero candidate for president in 2004 introducing himself with a salute at its nominating convention and saying, “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty.”
Mr. Carter’s political legacy produced what many analysts argue was a kind of conditioned response: an overreaction among Democrats anxious to avoid comparisons to him on foreign policy issues. This was evident in the roster of prominent congressional Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, who voted for the 2002 resolution that authorized President George W. Bush to take the nation to war in Iraq, a vote many said they came to regret.
It could even be discerned in the taciturn response from President Biden after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 descended into chaos, said Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of political history at Princeton.
“Democrats always feel defensive about these messy situations,” Professor Zelizer said. He linked that reflex to the taking of the Iranian hostages and to the raid Mr. Carter ordered to save them, which ended in a helicopter crash that killed eight Americans.
“They don’t act with command in talking about tough foreign policy events,” Mr. Zelizer said, pointing in particular to the struggle by Democrats in Congress over Iraq. “The instinct when things go bad is to either be silent or apologetic.”
Historians and Democrats say the characterization of Mr. Carter as weak is in many ways unfair and exaggerated, ignoring some of the major accomplishments of his four years in office. He ordered an American boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow and a grain embargo against the Soviet Union after its invasion of Afghanistan.
Nonetheless, “He became an exemplar of why you had to look tough and not weak in foreign policy,” said Robert Shrum, a Democratic consultant who worked for Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts when Mr. Kennedy challenged Mr. Carter for the presidential nomination in 1980.
Indeed, more than 30 years after Mr. Carter left office, Republicans reached back to the Carter years to dismiss a momentous decision by President Barack Obama that delivered a forceful rebuttal to the idea of Democrats as weak or ineffective: approving the American raid to assassinate Osama bin Laden in 2011.
“Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order,” said Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for president.
(None other than Mr. Biden, as Mr. Obama’s vice president, made that raid a staple of his speeches in their 2012 re-election campaign. “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive,” Mr. Biden said often.)
This aspect of Mr. Carter’s legacy was ultimately set in cement by his defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan, a former actor and governor who presented himself as a decisive and forceful contrast to the sitting president. “He was the standard by which Democrats and Republicans judged political effectiveness,” Tim Naftali, a presidential historian, said of Mr. Reagan. “So by definition, Carter, whom Reagan had beaten, was the opposite of effective, the model to be avoided.”
“The killer Reagan line, ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’ was first aimed at Carter,” he said.
So it was that from the moment Mr. Carter left office — on the day Iranian militants released the hostages — Democratic candidates for president have sought, with word and action, to escape his shadow.
Bill Clinton frequently invoked strength in talking about both international and domestic issues when he ran for president. During his 1996 re-election campaign, he boasted of putting 100,000 police on the street and promised to keep America “the world’s strongest force for peace and freedom and prosperity.”
For her part, Mrs. Clinton, who as the Democratic candidate in 2016 also had to allay voters’ doubts about whether a woman had the fortitude to be president, repeatedly cited her experience as secretary of state under Mr. Obama, and made “Stronger together” her campaign slogan. She used the words “strong,” “stronger” and “strength” 13 times in her speech accepting the party’s nomination.
In last year’s presidential campaign, Kamala Harris, the vice president and Democratic candidate against Donald J. Trump, boasted of owning a Glock pistol, and left little doubt about her belief in military might as she accepted her party’s nomination in Chicago.
“As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” she said.
But some efforts to escape the Carter legacy only seemed to reinforce it.
Michael S. Dukakis, the former governor of Massachusetts, was ridiculed when he donned a green tank helmet and “military coveralls over his Filene’s suit,” as a New York Times report said at the time, to ride a 63-ton M1 tank around a field at a manufacturing plant in front of a battery of television cameras. “Rat-a-tat,” Mr. Dukakis said.
“Dukakis was trying to demonstrate strength,” Mr. Shrum said. “Instead, he demonstrated weakness. People are always fighting the last campaigns, and they are often wrong.”
In the case of Mr. Kerry, who, like Mr. Kennedy, was a Shrum client, Republicans sought to turn his decorated military record against him by accusing him of fabricating details of his Navy service, in an advertising campaign — later discredited — that was launched by a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. (One producer of those ads was Chris LaCivita, a co-manager of Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign.)
To be fair, the seeds for this line of attack against Democrats predated Mr. Carter: In 1972, four years before Mr. Carter burst on the national scene, Republicans invoked the “weak on defense” argument against George McGovern, the Democratic senator from South Dakota, when he challenged Richard M. Nixon for the presidency.
“The 1972 presidential campaign and the landslide defeat of McGovern made the weak-on-defense argument a centerpiece for the G.O.P.,” Mr. Zelizer said. “The problems that Carter faced in the final year — Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan — cemented this political imbalance, placing Democrats in a position to constantly stress that they would be tough on defense.”
President-elect Trump on Wednesday morning filed an emergency petition to the United States Supreme Court in an effort to block his sentencing in New York v. Trump.
Judge Juan Merchan set Trump’s sentencing in New York v. Trump for Jan. 10 after a jury found the now-president-elect guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree, stemming from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges and has appealed the ruling but was rejected last week by Merchan.
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“President Trump’s legal team filed an emergency petition with the United States Supreme Court, asking the Court to correct the unjust actions by New York courts and stop the unlawful sentencing in the Manhattan D.A.’s Witch Hunt,” Trump spokesman and incoming White House communications director Steven Cheung told Fox News Digital.
“The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the Constitution, and established legal precedent mandate that this meritless hoax be immediately dismissed.”
Cheung said the “American People elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate that demands an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and all of the remaining Witch Hunts.”
He added: “We look forward to uniting our country in the new administration as President Trump makes America great again.”
Former President Donald Trump attends the first day of his trial at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on April 15. Judge Juan Merchan poses for a picture in his chambers on March 14 in New York. (Angela Weiss/AFP via AP, POOL/AP)
TRUMP FILES MOTION TO STAY ‘UNLAWFUL SENTENCING’ IN NEW YORK CASE
Trump’s lawyers, in its petition to the high court, said it should “immediately order a stay of pending criminal proceedings in the Supreme Court of New York County, New York, pending the final resolution of President Trump’s interlocutory appeal raising questions of Presidential immunity, including in this Court if necessary.”
“The Court should also enter, if necessary, a temporary administrative stay while it considers this stay application,” the filing states.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg arrives at Daniel Penny’s trial following a lunch break at the Manhattan Supreme Criminal Court building in New York City on Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)
Trump attorneys also argued that New York prosecutors erroneously admitted extensive evidence relating to official presidential acts during trial, ignoring the high court’s ruling on presidential immunity.
The Supreme Court, earlier this year, ruled that presidents are immune from prosecution related to official presidential acts.
Trump’s legal team is arguing Merchan should not be permitted to move any further, and said their appeal on the ruling “will ultimately result in the dismissal of the District Attorney’s politically motivated prosecution that was flawed from the very beginning, centered around the wrongful actions and false claims of a disgraced, disbarred serial-liar former attorney, violated President Trump’s due process rights, and had no merit.”
“In the meantime, the New York trial court lacks authority to impose sentence and judgment on President Trump—or conduct any further criminal proceedings against him—until the resolution of his underlying appeal raising substantial claims of Presidential immunity, including by review in this Court if necessary,” the filing states. “As discussed herein, this Court should order an immediate stay of criminal proceedings against President Trump in the New York trial court, including but not limited to the criminal sentencing hearing scheduled for January 10, 2025, at 9:30 a.m.”
New York has to file a written response by Thursday at 10:00 a.m.
JUDGE DENIES TRUMP MOTION TO STOP NY CRIMINAL CASE SENTENCING
The filing to the United States Supreme Court comes after a judge in New York on Tuesday denied Trump’s motion to stay the Jan. 10 sentencing, which is currently set for Friday, Jan. 10, at 9:30 a.m.
U.S. Supreme Court. Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Merchan set the sentencing date last week but said he will not sentence the president-elect to prison.
Merchan wrote in his decision that he is not likely to “impose any sentence of incarceration,” but rather a sentence of an “unconditional discharge,” which means there would be no punishment imposed.
Trump will be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States on Jan. 20.
Trump has maintained his innocence in the case and repeatedly railed against it as an example of “lawfare” promoted by Democrats in an effort to hurt his election efforts ahead of November.
Fox News’ Shannon Bream and Bill Mears contributed to this report.
Politics
Bracing for Trump, Mexico aims to roll out a 'panic app' for Mexican nationals being deported
Mexico City — Hardly a day goes by here that Mexico’s president or one of her aides does not speak of some plan being devised in case President-elect Donald Trump goes through with his threats of mass deportations and punishing tariffs — testament to how vulnerable Mexico is to shifting policies in Washington.
The latest from Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum‘s administration is a “panic button” — an emergency cellphone application that will enable Mexican citizens fearing detention and deportation in the United States to alert diplomats and relatives of their plight.
Sheinbaum also says her government has bolstered staff at Mexico’s more than 50 consulates in the United States, adding advisors to provide legal counsel to those facing potential deportation.
Trump’s pronouncements have generated profound uncertainty among Mexican officials, business leaders on both side of the border and millions of Mexican immigrants in the United States.
Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has spoken out against President-elect Donald Trump’s deportation threats.
(Fernando Llano / Associated Press)
Sheinbaum, who calls Mexican migrants “heroes,” opposes Trump’s mass-deportation plan but has been muted in her criticisms of Trump himself.
Mexican nationals who could face deportation “are not alone and will not be alone,” Mexico’s foreign minister, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, vowed last month, speaking to reporters during one of Sheinbaum’s daily morning news conferences.
According to Mexican government estimates, some 4.8 million Mexicans reside in the United States illegally, by far the largest number among any nationality. Some have resided in the north for decades and have U.S.-born children, own homes and run businesses.
Trump and his representatives have offered no comprehensive details on how his deportation plan will take shape. Some aides have spoken of prioritizing roundups of undocumented immigrants with criminal records and pending deportation orders — longtime targets of U.S. immigration enforcement.
The U.S. House on Tuesday passed a bill that would target for deportation immigrants who are in the country illegally and have been charged with nonviolent crimes.
And some Trump proxies have not ruled out expanded raids in workplaces and sweeps in immigrant communities.
It’s unclear if Sheinbaum and her government hold out any hope that Trump’s deportation threats — a central pillar of his campaign — can be averted. Their public posture is to try to convince Trump of the importance of Mexican workers to key U.S. industries, including agriculture, meatpacking and the hospitality sector. But Trump and his allies have shown little sympathy for that argument.
Vulnerable Mexican citizens “need to know that they have rights,” Sheinbaum told reporters. “You can’t just deport a person, detain them, take them to the border. There are a series of legal procedures that need to be followed.”
Formal deportation cases can take months, even years, to resolve before immigration judges.
A legal assistance program for Mexicans residing in the United States now includes more than 300 advisors across Mexico’s 53 U.S. consulates, the government says, and also receives voluntary support from consultants and law firms.
Some critics question whether the Mexican government’s preparations will be effective, or if they’re really meant to be.
“The panic button, the stuff with the consulates — it’s all a smokescreen to give the impression of doing something in response to Trump,” said Irineo Mujica, who heads the Pueblo Sin Fronteras rights group. “Basically, they are going to give in to whatever Trump wants.”
The so-called panic-button app, to be fully rolled out this month, would allow citizens to alert officials at the nearest Mexican Consulate — as well as previously selected family members — of enforcement action targeting them, officials say.
Questions remain about how the app will work, and when it will become widely available. It will be simple to use and designed to be utilized if someone is facing “imminent detention,” De la Fuente said. Some immigration lawyers in Texas have launched a similar initiative, albeit of a smaller scale, and it has proved an effective tool, the foreign minister said.
“If someone is detained, independent of their migratory status, the most important thing is that the consulate is notified,” said De la Fuente. “This guarantees that the consulate is advised and we can make a quick reaction.”
According to the State Department, foreign nationals detained in the United States must be advised of the option of having the closest consulate or embassy notified. Immigrant advocates say arrested migrants are often not told of this option.
A deportation officer with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts a briefing before an operation last month in the Bronx borough of New York.
(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)
People in immigration proceedings may hire attorneys, but they often cannot afford the fees — or may be unaware of how to go about finding counsel. Unlike criminal defendants, those detained for immigration violations have no right to court-appointed lawyers. Various studies have shown that having counsel greatly reduces the chances of someone being deported.
Mexican authorities, De la Fuente said, are also making “extensive efforts” to encourage compatriots in the United States with U.S.-born children to register their names and those of their children with consulates. One of the great fears of mass deportation is that sweeps could separate U.S.-citizen children from undocumented parents — or even result in the removal of U.S. citizen minors.
In Mexico, the migrant panic-button plan has been greeted with considerable skepticism. Some have noted that, in Mexico, authorities are often slow to respond to emergency calls reporting crimes or to the many fixed panic buttons in parks and other sites that are meant to summon police.
“Are Batman and Robin going to come to the rescue?” one person asked on social media after the government unveiled the app plan.
Also, many remain unconvinced that Mexican consulates — which, like other parts of the Mexican government, have seen budget cuts in recent years — will be much help in the face of sweeping deportations. Mujica said the consulates are often viewed with distrust by Mexican migrants. “They treat people like second-class citizens,” Mujica said.
Another element of Sheinbaum’s plan is to bolster aid for deportees removed to Mexican border cities and elsewhere in Mexico. “They will be received with social programs … and all the help they need,” Sheinbaum said, but she has provided few details.
Skeptics note that Mexican authorities have traditionally done little to assist Mexican nationals who are daily deported or otherwise repatriated to Mexico — beyond welcoming them and offering free or discounted bus fare back to their areas of origin.
Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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