Election Deniers Aren’t Waiting for November | Anthrax Redux: Did the Feds Nab the Wrong Guy? | Trump and the Spy Agencies on a Collision Course, and more

Grasping to salvage the measure before the law expires, Speaker Mike Johnson put forward a shorter extension than its originally envisioned five years, persuading hard-right Republicans who had blocked the bill to allow it to move forward. The final vote was 273 to 147, with both parties split. One hundred and twenty-six Republicans joined 147 Democrats in favor, while 88 Republicans and 59 Democrats were opposed.
The legislation still must be cleared by the Senate and signed by President Biden. But the main obstacle has been in the House, where Republicans are deeply divided and Mr. Johnson had tried and failed three times to push it through.

Change Healthcare Faces Another Ransomware Threat—and It Looks Credible  (Andy Greenberg and Matt Burgess, Wired)
For months, Change Healthcare has faced an immensely messy, months-long ransomware debacle that has left hundreds of pharmacies and medical practices across the United States unable to process claims. Now, thanks to an apparent dispute within the ransomware criminal ecosystem, it may have just become far messier still.
Last month, the ransomware group AlphV, which had claimed credit for encrypting Change Healthcare’s network and threatened to leak reams of the company’s sensitive health care data, received a $22 million payment—evidence, publicly captured on Bitcoin’s blockchain, that Change Healthcare had very likely caved to its tormentors’ ransom demand, though the company has yet to confirm that it paid. But in a new definition of a worst-case ransomware, a different ransomware group claims to be holding Change Healthcare’s stolen data and is demanding a payment of their own.
Since Monday, RansomHub, a relatively new ransomware group, has posted to its dark-web site that it has 4 terabytes of Change Healthcare’s stolen data, which it threatened to sell to the “highest bidder” if Change Healthcare didn’t pay an unspecified ransom. RansomHub tells WIRED it is not affiliated with AlphV and “can’t say” how much it’s demanding as a ransom payment.

Campaign Puts Trump and the Spy Agencies on a Collision Course  (Charlie Savage, Julian E. Barnes and Alan Feuer, New York Times)
Even as president, Donald J. Trump flaunted his animosity for intelligence officials, portraying them as part of a politicized “deep state” out to get him. And since he left office, that distrust has grown into outright hostility, with potentially serious implications for national security should he be elected again.
Citing his belief that his 2016 campaign had been spied on by the intelligence community, Mr. Trump on Wednesday urged his House allies to “kill” a bill that would extend an expiring surveillance law that national security officials say is crucial to their ability to gather foreign intelligence and fight terrorism on behalf of the country. The House approved the legislation on Friday only after Republicans revised it to ensure that Mr. Trump would get another crack at shaping it to his liking if he wins the presidency again.
Indicted last year on charges of hoarding classified documents after leaving office and obstructing efforts to retrieve them, Mr. Trump has also translated his anger into legal arguments, telling a federal court that there is no reason to believe the “meritless claims” of agencies like the C.I.A. regarding the “alleged sensitivities” of the files.
Intelligence agencies have shown a bias against Mr. Trump since the first impeachment against him, his lawyers have argued in the classified documents case, promising a fight if officials testify that his actions put the country at risk.
Mr. Trump is now on a possible collision course with the intelligence community. After he formally accepts the Republican presidential nomination in July, he will be entitled to receive a briefing from intelligence officials. Should he win the election, he would again command security agencies that he has repeatedly portrayed as his enemy and vowed to “demolish.”
The result is a complicated and possibly destabilizing situation the United States has never seen before: deep-seated suspicion and disdain on the part of a former and perhaps future president toward the very people he would be relying on for the most sensitive information he would need to perform his role if elected again.

How Election Deniers Became Mainstream—and Are Weaponizing Tech  (Leah Feiger, David Gilbert, and Vittoria Elliott, Wired)
Election deniers are mobilizing their supporters and rolling out new tech to disrupt the November election. These groups are already organizing on hyperlocal levels, and learning to monitor polling places, target election officials, and challenge voter rolls. And though their work was once fringe, it’s become mainstreamed in the Republican Party. Today on WIRED Politics Lab, we focus on what these groups are doing, and what this means for voters and the election workers who are already facing threats and harassment.

Immigrants in Maine Are Filling a Labor Gap. It May Be a Prelude for the U.S.  (Jeanna Smialek, New York Times)
Maine has a lot of lobsters. It also has a lot of older people, ones who are less and less willing and able to catch, clean and sell the crustaceans that make up a $1 billion industry for the state. Companies are turning to foreign-born workers to bridge the divide.
Maine has the oldest population of any U.S. state, with a median age of 45.1. As America overall ages, the state offers a preview of what that could look like economically — and the critical role that immigrants are likely to play in filling the labor market holes that will be created as native-born workers retire.
Nationally, immigration is expected to become an increasingly critical source of new workers and economic vibrancy in the coming decades.
It’s a silver lining at a time when huge immigrant flows that started in 2022 are straining state and local resources across the country and drawing political backlash. While the influx may pose near-term challenges, it is also boosting the American economy’s potential. Employers today are managing to hire rapidly partly because of the incoming labor supply. The Congressional Budget Office has already revised up both its population and its economic growth projections for the next decade in light of the wave of newcomers.
In Maine, companies are already beginning to look to immigrants to fill labor force gaps on factory floors and in skilled trades alike as native-born employees either leave the work force or barrel toward retirement.

N.Y.C. Schools Chief to Testify as Congress Expands Antisemitism Inquiry  (Troy Closson, New York Times)
The chancellor of New York City’s public schools will testify about how the district is handling antisemitism before a congressional committee next month. It will be the first time that a K-12 district takes center stage in the House hearings focused on how schools are responding to a wave of student protests since Hamas’s attacks against Israel on Oct. 7.
At least two other districts were also invited to attend the hearing on May 8, according to the chancellor, David C. Banks. A spokesman for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce confirmed that Mr. Banks was asked to attend the hearing, but did not identify the other districts.
The earlier congressional hearings helped trigger the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Columbia University’s president is appearing before a congressional committee next week.
Now, representatives appear to be expanding their scope beyond higher education. The inquiry next month will offer a window into how the tensions on American college campuses are also stirring painful debates in public school communities.
High school students across the country have led a number of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel demonstrations against the war in Gaza, at times drawing the ire of Jewish families.

Anthrax Redux: Did the Feds Nab the Wrong Guy?  (Noah Shachtman, Wired)
Finally, the investigation was over. The riddle solved. On August 18, 2008—after almost seven years, nearly 10,000 interviews, and millions of dollars spent developing a whole new form of microbial forensics—some of the FBI’s top brass filed into a dimly lit, flag-lined room in the bureau’s Washington, DC, headquarters. They were there to lay out the evidence proving who was responsible for the anthrax attacks that had terrified the nation in the fall of 2001.
It had been the most expensive, and arguably the toughest, case in FBI history, the assembled reporters were told. But the facts showed that Army biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins was the person responsible for killing five people and sickening 17 others in those frightening weeks after 9/11. It was Ivins, they were now certain, who had mailed the anthrax-filled letters that exposed as many as 30,000 people to the lethal spores.
The FBI unraveled the mystery, officials said, thanks in part to the microbiologists seated at a U-shaped table in the front of the room. Among them was Paul Keim, who first identified the anthrax strain used in the attacks, and genetic specialist Claire Fraser-Liggett, who led the team that sequenced the DNA of the anthrax in the letters, tracing the spores back to their genetic match: a flask of superconcentrated, ultrapure anthrax held by Ivins. Several of the researchers at the table had previously counted Ivins as a peer and even a friend. Now they were helping brand him a monster.