Hackers who targeted the city of St. Paul in a cyberattack last month published stolen data online after the city refused to pay them a ransom, Mayor Melvin Carter said Monday.

The 43 gigabytes of data largely appear to have come from a computer network drive used by the Parks and Recreation department where employees stored personal files, and is not tied to core systems like payroll or licensing, the mayor said.

Some of the files included images of employee identification cards submitted to human resources, work documents, or even “personal items like recipes.” Carter said the contents are “varied and unsystematic.”

It’s still unclear if the hackers gained access to any other city data in their attack. Since they might have more, Carter said the city should remain cautious.

“While the scope of what they published against us is far smaller than what they’ve accomplished elsewhere, the fact remains: Someone was inside our systems,” he told reporters. “Once that happens, there’s no way to guarantee that they could not have access to more.”

Data posted online

Until this point, the city had said there was no evidence that it had any data stolen.

Carter said city officials and investigators didn’t believe the hackers had any data of serious value because they didn’t attempt to sell it and instead posted it for free online.

Gov. Tim Walz activated the Minnesota National Guard to provide the city with cybersecurity specialists, and the FBI is investigating the attack. Carter said both advised against paying a ransom.

Still, cybersecurity experts and information technology staff continue to comb through every corner of the city’s computer networks to ensure there are no remaining traces of the attack.

City officials have said there’s no evidence that resident information like names, addresses and phone numbers was affected.

Bill payment information, like credit card numbers, is generally handled by “cloud-based” applications and should not have been affected by the hack, Carter said.

Who is responsible?

City officials still haven’t shared how much money hackers demanded or the exact nature of their threats.

But the mayor confirmed that St. Paul was targeted by a ransomware variant known as “Interlock,” and that the origin of the attack is a “sophisticated, money-driven organization known for stealing and selling massive volumes of sensitive information from large corporations, hospitals and governments.”

The federal government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a warning about Interlock attacks on July 22. The ransomware variant was first identified in September 2024.

It’s unclear where the hackers are located, and there’s still concern that the group responsible for the cyberattack could continue attempting to extort the city.

Systems offline

St. Paul shut down its computer systems after learning of the cyberattack on July 25. Many city services have been disrupted as a result, but officials say the move was necessary to prevent hackers from doing more damage.

Many services remain offline weeks later, including the St. Paul Regional Water Services’ online payment portal. Public libraries are open, but their computers aren’t functioning, presenting a challenge for searching and organizing collections.

City human resources departments had to manually build spreadsheets in a makeshift office in order to make payroll on time, Carter said last week. The city said each employee got paid on time on Aug. 8.

Laptops in police cars also were affected, though emergency services such as 911 are still functioning.

Reset effort

In response to the attack, the city has called thousands of employees to report for in-person password changes and equipment inspections.

The effort started Sunday at 6 a.m., and the city’s goal is to process all 3,500 employees with login information by the end of Tuesday. The operation runs until 10 p.m. each night.

Employees have been reporting to a sprawling operation in the basement of Roy Wilkins Auditorium at the RiverCentre in downtown St. Paul to get new credentials.

As of around 5:30 p.m. Monday, more than 2,000 had gone through the process, according to the city.

Once a sufficient number of employees have new credentials, the city can begin reactivating systems, said Mary Gleich-Matthews, deputy chief information officer for St. Paul’s Office of Technology and Communication.

Carter said he expects that to start before the end of the week. It’s still not clear how much the effort will cost.

“If there’s a fire, we put out the fire and figure out how much the water costs later,” he said.

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By PAUL WISEMAN and DIDI TANG

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump extended a trade truce with China for another 90 days Monday, at least delaying once again a dangerous showdown between the world’s two biggest economies.

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Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he signed the executive order for the extension, and that “all other elements of the Agreement will remain the same.”

The previous deadline was set to expire at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. Had that happened the U.S. could have ratcheted up taxes on Chinese imports from an already high 30%, and Beijing could have responded by raising retaliatory levies on U.S. exports to China.

The pause buys time for the two countries to work out some of their differences, perhaps clearing the way for a summit later this year between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and it has been welcomed by the U.S. companies doing business with China.

Sean Stein, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, said the extension is “critical” to give the two governments time to negotiate a trade agreement that U.S. businesses hope would improve their market access in China and provide the certainty needed for companies to make medium- and long-term plans.

“Securing an agreement on fentanyl that leads to a reduction in U.S. tariffs and a rollback of China’s retaliatory measures is acutely needed to restart U.S. agriculture and energy exports,” Stein said.

Reaching a pact with China remains unfinished business for Trump, who has already upended the global trading system by slapping double-digit taxes – tariffs – on almost every country on earth.

The European Union, Japan and other trading partners agreed to lopsided trade deals with Trump, accepting once unthinkably U.S. high tariffs (15% on Japanese and EU imports, for instance) to ward off something worse.

Trump’s trade policies have turned the United States from one of the most open economies in the world into a protectionist fortress. The average U.S. tariff has gone from around 2.5% at the start of the year to 18.6%, highest since 1933, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University.

But China tested the limits of a U.S. trade policy built around using tariffs as a cudgel to beat concessions out of trading partners. Beijing had a cudgel of its own: cutting off or slowing access to its rare earths minerals and magnets – used in everything from electric vehicles to jet engines.

In June, the two countries reached an agreement to ease tensions. The United States said it would pull back export restrictions on computer chip technology and ethane, a feedstock in petrochemical production. And China agreed to make it easier for U.S. firms to get access to rare earths.

“The U.S. has realized it does not have the upper hand,’’ said Claire Reade, senior counsel at Arnold & Porter and former assistant U.S. trade representative for China affairs.

In May, the U.S. and China had averted an economic catastrophe by reducing massive tariffs they’d slapped on each other’s products, which had reached as high as 145% against China and 125% against the U.S.

Those triple-digit tariffs threatened to effectively end trade between the United States and China and caused a frightening sell-off in financial markets. In a May meeting in Geneva they agreed to back off and keep talking: America’s tariffs went back down to a still-high 30% and China’s to 10%.

Having demonstrated their ability to hurt each other, they’ve been talking ever since.

“By overestimating the ability of steep tariffs to induce economic concessions from China, the Trump administration has not only underscored the limits of unilateral U.S. leverage, but also given Beijing grounds for believing that it can indefinitely enjoy the upper hand in subsequent talks with Washington by threatening to curtail rare earth exports,” said Ali Wyne, a specialist in U.S.-China relations at the International Crisis Group. “The administration’s desire for a trade détente stems from the self-inflicted consequences of its earlier hubris.”

It’s unclear whether Washington and Beijing can reach a grand bargain over America’s biggest grievances. Among these are lax Chinese protection of intellectual property rights and Beijing’s subsidies and other industrial policies that, the Americans say, give Chinese firms an unfair advantage in world markets and have contributed to a massive U.S. trade deficit with China of $262 billion last year.

Reade doesn’t expect much beyond limited agreements such as the Chinese saying they will buy more American soybeans and promising to do more to stop the flow of chemicals used to make fentanyl and to allow the continued flow of rare-earth magnets.

But the tougher issues will likely linger, and “the trade war will continue grinding ahead for years into the future,’’ said Jeff Moon, a former U.S. diplomat and trade official who now runs the China Moon Strategies consultancy.

Associated Press Staff Writer Josh Boak contributed to this story.

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump took unprecedented steps toward federalizing Washington, D.C. on Monday, saying it’s needed to fight crime even as city leaders pointed to data showing violence is down.

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He took command of the police department and deployed the National Guard under laws and Constitutional powers that give the federal government more sway over the nation’s capital than other cities. Its historically majority Black population wasn’t electing its own city council and mayor until 1973, when Republican President Richard Nixon signed the Home Rule Act.

The measure still left significant power to the president and Congress, though no president has exercised the police powers before.

He activated the National Guard

The Constitution calls for the creation of the District of Columbia to serve as the federal seat of power under the jurisdiction of Congress rather than any state.

While the Home Rule Act allowed for greater local control, the president can still call up the National Guard in Washington. His administration did it during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, when members were later faulted for flying a helicopter too low over a crowd. The Guard was called out again during Trump’s first term on Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters overran the Capitol.

Trump’s second-term moves in Washington come as the legal battle continues over his deployment of the National Guard in another Democratic-led city, Los Angeles, despite the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

His authority is less clear there, but an appeals court has so far refused to intervene. A lower-court judge was starting a trial Monday to determine whether the deployment violated another federal law.

He took over the police

Section 740 of the Home Rule Act allows for the president to take over Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department for 48 hours, with possible extensions to 30 days, during times of emergencies. No president has done so before, said Monica Hopkins, executive director of the ACLU of Washington.

Trump cited a number of recent high-profile incidents, including the killing of a 21-year-old congressional intern and the beating of a DOGE staffer during an attempted carjacking.

“This is liberation day in D.C. and we’re going to take our Capitol back,” the president said.

The Democratic mayor of D.C., Muriel Bowser, called the takeover “unprecedented.” She said that violent crime overall in Washington has decreased to a 30-year low, after a rise in 2023. Carjackings, for example, dropped about 50% in 2024, and are down again this year. More than half of those arrested, however, are juveniles, and the extent of those punishments is a point of contention for the Trump administration.

He didn’t specify how long it would last

It wasn’t immediately clear how long the takeover might last or exactly what it might mean. It could also face challenges in court.

Congress still has power over things like the budget and laws passed by the city council, but would have to repeal the Home Rule Act to expand federal power in the district.

It’s something a few Republican lawmakers have pushed to do, but such an overhaul would almost certainly run into steep resistance from most Democrats, making it difficult to achieve.

The law is specific to D.C., and doesn’t affect other communities around the U.S. referred to as having their own “home rule” powers in relationship to their state governments.

Hopkins said Trump’s moves in Washington could foreshadow similar tactics in other cities. “That should alarm everyone,” she said, “not just in Washington.”

With the planned closing of the Stillwater prison, the Minnesota Department of Corrections has notified inmates they need to downsize their storage bins — and for some that means picking between their legal documents and personal belongings, advocacy groups said Monday.

The DOC is also decreasing the amount of electronic storage space for legal and academic documents for people who are imprisoned throughout the state.

“There is a concerted assault on people-in-prisons’ ability to access their due process rights in court, … prove their innocence, address conditions,” said David Boehnke, co-executive director of Minnesota Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), which organized Monday’s news conference to sound the alarm.

The DOC said in a Monday statement that, as part of the phased four-year closing of Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater, inmates are being transferred to other prisons with different physical layouts and fire code requirements.

“In particular, facilities with double-bunked housing units are subject to stricter storage limits for safety reasons,” the statement said. “The DOC has a generally applicable two bin property limit, including for legal materials, that has been repeatedly upheld when challenged in courts.”

DOC Commissioner Paul Schnell said he and his department understand the concerns raised and they “want to be clear: access to legal and educational materials is a right we are committed to upholding. The updates to our digital storage policy and property limits are driven by safety, operational capacity, and the need to modernize outdated systems.”

Inmates given options; advocates see problems

The aging and functionally obsolete Stillwater prison, which is actually located in Bayport, holds men with the lengthiest sentences and they have long been able to apply for an additional storage bin, according to IWOC.

As many as 100 men “are being told that their legal documents that they have been given approval for will be destroyed or must be shipped out when they transfer facilities, Boehnke said.

“When a person is sentenced to prison, the loss of their freedom is the punishment, not all of the other kinds of extraneous things that … eliminate their access to the court system,” said Michelle Gross, Communities United Against Police Brutality president. “They have that legal right … and the measures that the DOC is taking right now … deny people those rights.”

Stillwater prison inmates who were allowed a third storage bin for legal or academic materials “may be required to reduce to two bins to comply with fire safety standards or layout limitations,” the DOC said in its statement.

“This is not a punitive or targeted measure,” the statement continued. “The DOC is working closely with affected individuals to ensure that essential legal and academic materials are prioritized during the transfer process.”

Anyone who has “excess property” will have 30 days from the date they’re notified to make a decision, which could include shipping legal or other materials to family, friends or attorneys for long-term storage, the DOC said.

But inmates who are working on their own appeals need their documents because they “have a narrow window” and “have to have certain kinds of evidence,” Gross said.

“If this was happening when my brother Marvin Haynes was still in prison, he may still be there,” said Marvina Haynes, founder of MN Wrongfully Convicted Judicial Reform, whose brother spent 19 years in prison for murder before he was exonerated and released.

“I know how important legal documents are and how hard sometimes they are to obtain,” she added. “… Some of these folks have spent years waiting on specific documents.”

Electronic storage also at issue

Inmates keep their storage bins with them in their cells. Some go under beds or are stacked in a corner, Gross said. They are 11.25 inches by 32.25 inches by 16.25 inches, according to the DOC.

Kimberly Morgan, whose husband is incarcerated at the Stillwater prison, said he filed a petition for post-conviction relief in his case in July.

“He’s one of those at risk of losing or having to ship out his legal documentation, and if he has to do that, that’s really going to set him back a lot,” she said. He’s “having to choose between basic necessities like shoes, clothes, hygiene items or legal” documents.

If people have to get rid of their legal documents by mailing them out, it’s going to cost money and time, Morgan added.

DOC has also told inmates they’ll be reducing electronic storage of legal data from 50MB to 20MB per person and, anything not modified within one year will be automatically deleted. They’re not allowed to have personal external storage devices, such as USB or jump drives.

But evidence that includes videos and audio files can take up a lot of space, said Gross, who is a paralegal for a civil rights attorney.

“Why is the prison suddenly taking this position, especially given that … electronic storage … is dirt cheap,” she said. “… That’s actually probably easier than letting people have a bunch of paper documents. … Why are they curtailing people’s ability to have what they need to pursue their legal matters?”

The DOC is updating its digital file management practices for the first time since 2015 “in light of evolving technology and limited system-wide storage capacity,” the agency said in a statement.

The intention is “to steer storage and use of the computers to a more current model of use for legal, school, and transitional purposes, rather than a place to store documents indefinitely,” the statement continued.

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Academic materials

Inmates who are taking college courses for associate’s or bachelor’s degrees and who’ve been allowed an extra bin for their academic materials are also affected, according to IWOC.

“This isn’t just inconvenient,” Haynes said. “… Education is supposed to be a path to stability and opportunity, not a trap door that falls out from under you.”

She urged the institutions involved and elected officials “to find immediate situations.”

IWOC is calling on the Department of Corrections to allow people who had been permitted extra storage to keep it and to not reduce digital storage, but rather increase it.