An FBI spokesperson told Fox News the agency is aware of “malicious actors” targeting FBI Director Patel’s personal email information and has taken “all necessary steps to mitigate potential risks.”

The FBI noted the information in question is “historical in nature” and does not involve government information.

The Handala Hack Team, an Iran-linked hacking group, has claimed responsibility.

The State Department’s “Rewards for Justice” program is offering a $10 million reward for information leading to the identification of the Handala Hack Team — a group that has frequently targeted U.S. government officials. 

“Consistent with President Trump’s Cyber Strategy for America, the FBI will continue to pursue the actors responsible, support victims, and share actionable intelligence in defense of networks,” the FBI spokesperson said. “We encourage anyone who experiences a cyber breach, or has information related to malicious cyber activity, to contact their local FBI field office.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Rupali Chakankar resigned from the post of state president of NCP women’s wing after her name surfaced in the fake Baba Ashok Kharat case. Earlier, she had resigned from the post of Chairperson of Maharashtra Women Commission. In his ex-post, he said that after talking to party chief Sunetra Pawar on phone today (27 March) morning, he decided to resign from the post.

Rupali Chakankar said, “I had made my stand clear on the very first day regarding the Kharat case. There is no remote connection with financial transactions and misconduct. Even today my stand is equally clear and firm. All these matters will definitely be resolved during the investigation. The false and baseless allegations being made through the media without any evidence are sad. The truth will come out with full force. I have already demanded the Chief Minister, Deputy Chief Minister and Director General of Police “This matter should be investigated in a transparent and impartial manner.”

Regarding the Kharat issue, my role has been made clear on the first day. It is not the financial dealings, not the wrongdoings, but today my role is clear and firm. All things will be accomplished during the penance. The allegations made through the media to destroy false, untruthful and false evidence… pic.twitter.com/9awsGZmgJL

— Rupali Chakankar (@ChakankarSpeaks) March 27, 2026

Chakankar submitted resignation to Sunetra Pawar

After resigning from the post of Chairperson of Maharashtra Women’s Commission, a meeting was held on Tuesday to resign from the post of State President of Nationalist Congress Women’s Wing. Today (27 March) Rupali Chakankar has submitted the resignation of the post of State President of NCP Women’s Wing to Sunetra Pawar.

Action will be taken against those who broadcast obscene videos – Devendra Fadnavis

Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis on Friday (27 March) said that strict action will be taken against the making of obscene videos related to this case viral. He clearly warned that action will be taken against those who circulate obscene videos of the victims of the self-styled Baba Ashok Kharat case on social media.

Speaking to the media, the Chief Minister said, “Many more victims are coming forward in the Ashok Kharat case and some more FIRs will be registered. The identity of the victims is being kept confidential and they have been provided complete security.”

Kharat was arrested on March 18

Let us tell you that Ashok Kharat was arrested on March 18 on charges of repeatedly raping a woman for the last three years. During the investigation, many of his videos related to sexual exploitation of women have also come to light. SIT is investigating the case.

An Obama-appointed federal judge who once blocked North Carolina’s voter identification law has reversed course and ruled it constitutional, delivering a major win for Republicans and election security advocates after a seven-year court fight.

Judge Loretta Biggs upheld the law on Thursday, finding the liberal voting rights groups that sued North Carolina’s election board failed to prove the voter ID law was discriminatory. The ruling leaves North Carolina’s voter ID law in place ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 

It also comes as President Donald Trump has been advocating stricter voter ID laws nationwide, alleging what he has said is widespread fraud in elections and to prevent illegal immigrants from potentially casting ballots. 

The North Carolina case centered on a bill that the GOP-led Senate crafted in 2018 to govern how the state would enforce an amendment requiring voters to present a photo ID at the polls. The amendment had been approved by about 55% of North Carolina voters and the legislation dictated how the amendment would be put into practice.

THUNE ACCUSES CRITICS OF ‘CREATING FALSE EXPECTATIONS’ AMID BACKLASH OVER STALLED SAVE AMERICA ACT

A volunteer picks up a “Require Voter ID” sign at a press conference at the Riverside County Registrar of Voters on March 2, 2026, in California as GOP lawmakers gather in support of placing a voter ID measure on the November ballot. (Anjali Sharif-Paul/MediaNews Group/The Sun via Getty Images)

“Finally. After seven years, we can put to rest any doubt that our state’s Voter I.D. law is constitutional,” said Republican state Sen. Phil Berger, who intervened in the case to defend the law.

Biggs emphasized in her 134-page decision that North Carolina had a “history of extensive official discrimination against African Americans” that was undisputed by parties in the case. The judge said she found evidence that the voter ID law served to disenfranchise Black and Latino voters but that precedents set by higher courts meant the evidence was not enough to invalidate the law.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS PUSH JOHNSON TO GO TO WAR WITH SENATE OVER SAVE ACT

President Donald Trump holds a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., March 26, 2026. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)

“This Court … concludes that it is compelled by controlling case law to render Judgment in favor of the Defendants,” Biggs said, tossing out the plaintiffs’ allegations that the law violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Voting Rights Act.

The judge said the “case law requires this Court to assign less weight to the historical background. It further requires almost impenetrable deference to the presumption of legislative good faith.”

The judge’s findings echo prominent Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who have called voter ID laws “Jim Crow 2.0.” Schumer has said the SAVE America Act, which he is currently blocking from Senate passage, is “a dagger to the heart of our democracy.”

Trump has been aggressively urging Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a bill that would impose a nationwide requirement that people provide a physical document proving U.S. citizenship when they register to vote. But tensions have flared on Capitol Hill after the bill passed the House but stalled in the Senate because of Democrats’ opposition to it.

The decision marked a reversal for Biggs after she issued a preliminary injunction in December 2019 that blocked the state from enforcing the voter ID law for the 2020 election cycle. In that opinion, she cited the state’s “sordid history of racial discrimination and voter suppression,” arguing that parts of the law were “impermissibly motivated, at least in part, by discriminatory intent.”

In this Feb. 26, 2014, file photo, an election official checks a voter’s photo identification at an early voting polling site in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

Her injunction was later reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. The state Supreme Court also upheld the law in a separate state-level case.

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North Carolina Republicans have defended the law has one designed to be accommodating to all voters, saying it offered a wide range of identification options for people showing up to the polls while also boosting election integrity and confidence in elections.

Vice President JD Vance on Friday hosted the first anti-fraud task force meeting, where he delivered opening remarks saying the Biden administration “turned off” anti-fraud protections that “existed in our government for a very long time.”

Vance was joined by Cabinet and administration officials, including White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. The vice president, Ferguson and Miller delivered brief opening remarks before the meeting was closed to the press to further privately discuss their planned actions to combat fraud nationwide.

“We think fraud has been a problem for a long time,” Vance explained. “It became a massive, massive problem under the Biden administration. We’re going to do a number of things. First of all, we’re going to turn back on those anti-fraud protections so that all of these Cabinet officials are looking at what’s going on and focusing on it.”

President Donald Trump established the task force through an executive order last week, naming Vance to lead the team that will be focused on identifying and recovering Medicare, Medicaid and other areas of fraudulent usage of federal funds across the U.S.

LABOR DEPT DEPLOYS ‘STRIKE TEAM’ TO CALIFORNIA OVER $21B UNEMPLOYMENT DEBT, FRAUD CONCERNS

Vice President JD Vance convened the first meeting of a new anti-fraud task force, blaming the Biden administration for weakening longstanding protections. (Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)

Trump indicated that fraud is “usually in blue states,” which was reiterated by Miller during Friday’s opening meeting. 

“I think that most citizens probably assume that there’s some verification process that takes place for the receipt of most federal benefits,” Miller said. “The reality is that there is not. This is particularly true in blue states, willfully true in blue states, in which all of these programs are operated entirely on the honor system.”

At the meeting, officials including Stephen Miller and FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson emphasized restoring oversight to combat widespread fraud. (Oliver Contreras / AFP via Getty Images)

Minnesota has been the leading focus of the Trump administration after a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme involving child daycare and autism centers was exposed, leaving dozens indicted and many convicted.

JD VANCE SPEARHEADS ‘WAR ON FRAUD,’ PROMISES TO ROOT OUT TAXPAYER MONEY ‘STOLEN’ BY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

Many of those implicated in the fraud scheme come from the Somali community in Minnesota. 

“I think that the autism scam that we’ve seen in the Somalian parts of Minnesota really illustrates well what’s been going on across whole layers of our government,” Vance explained Friday. 

“What we’ve seen is Somali fraudsters at an industrial scale, taking advantage of that program to the tune of millions and millions of dollars,” Vance added. “And there are two separate tragedies there. The first tragedy is that you have people who pay into the federal government, who pay into the IRS, who pay their taxes, expecting that those taxes will go to help their fellow citizens.”

Minnesota locations accused of fraudulent claims were investigated by Fox News Digital, uncovering vacant lots and non-existent suites. (Nikolas Lanum/Andrew Mark Miller/Fox News Digital)

DEPUTY AG TODD BLANCHE SHEDS LIGHT ON NEW DOJ FRAUD DIVISION TO ADDRESS ‘INSANE’ PROBLEM

Ferguson noted that the misuse of funds goes as far as to create public mistrust in Americans paying taxes that go toward welfare. 

“Americans have turned over trillions of their tax dollars to social welfare programs to help their neighbors and fellow citizens through hard times,” Ferguson said. “They’ve done so on the basis of social trust, the belief that their governments, state and federal, will do the right things with their dollars and that their fellow citizens will honestly participate in these programs.”

Officials warned that fraud undermines public trust in government programs funded by taxpayer dollars. (Oliver Contreras / AFP via Getty Images)

Friday’s task force meeting is the first of what is expected to be many meetings following the Trump administration’s push to root out fraud in the U.S.

Prior to the meeting, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services identified and suspended 70 hospice and home health providers in Los Angeles last month. The hospice and home health providers were flagged as high-risk fraudulent providers.

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The 70 hospice and home health providers had their funding paused in just one week after being identified by the task force and CMS, Fox News Digital learned. 

“You have families who need these services who are unable to get them because people are getting rich off of fraud schemes,” Vance said during Friday’s meeting. “Instead of making sure that autistic children and their families get access to these resources.”

Story tips can be sent to Preston.Mizell@fox.com and on X @MizellPreston

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger faced dueling controversies this week as her Republican predecessor publicly rebuked her over support for Democrats’ redistricting amendment, and an Angel Mom challenged her on immigration enforcement.

Virginia has been ground zero for Democrats’ left-wing agenda since the former Henrico County congresswoman took office in January, from reversing Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s cooperation pact with DHS to supporting legislative Democrats’ alleged “power grab” to draw out every Republican congressman in the Commonwealth except Rep. Morgan Griffith in the far southwest.

During a visit to Culpeper, a largely but increasingly less rural population center between Front Royal and Richmond, Spanberger was pressed on her relative silence on the case of Stephanie Minter, a Fredericksburg mother allegedly murdered by an illegal immigrant convict at a Fairfax County bus stop last month.

As she was escorted to her car by security after an affordable housing event, local ABC reporter Nick Minock shouted a question about what her message would be to Minter’s family and others harmed by illegal immigrant felons.

POLICE WARNED PROSECUTORS 3 TIMES ABOUT VIOLENT ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT BEFORE HE ALLEGEDLY KILLED VIRGINIA MOTHER

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger responds to President Donald Trump’s, unseen, State of the Union. (Steve Helber/Reuters)

“My question would be why when there was a [unintelligible word] deportation order, ICE did not deport,” she said as she was hastened into the car.

“ICE had him in custody for 700 days governor and an immigration judge would not allow him be deported to Sierra Leone,” Minock attempted to respond as the car door shut.

Minock said Minter’s mother, Cheryl, who headlined a vigil for her daughter in front of Spanberger’s office at the Capitol earlier this week, told him that ICE had been doing what they were supposed to under current law and that “Spanberger needs to check her story because it’s inaccurate and misleading.”

That exchange came as Culpeper became the center of another case involving an illegal immigrant accused of heinous crimes, this time soliciting sexual imagery from children.

Angel David Rubio Marin was charged on March 16 with soliciting sexual content from children amid two previous charges of public masturbation, according to a statement from DHS obtained by Fox News Digital.

ANGEL MOM, GOP BLAME SPANBERGER AFTER ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT WITH 30 ARRESTS CHARGED IN KILLING

Culpeper police arrested Rubio Marin, who, according to local authorities, was soliciting sexually explicit videos in exchange for “Roblox,” a popular gaming currency, from at least three children under the age of 10. He was previously arrested in Prince William County in 2024 for allegedly exposing himself in public but was released.

Meanwhile, Spanberger took more incoming from the typically mild-mannered Youngkin – who was term limited when he left office in January.

After releasing a short video calling on Virginia voters to “vote yes” on State Senate President L. Louise Lucas’ new map that draws about half of Virginia’s districts into the densely Democratic D.C. suburbs, Youngkin responded on X, calling her posturing a “blatant lie.”

“This is a lie. A blatant lie. Not to mention a complete reversal of your campaign promises,” Youngkin said, as Spanberger speaks out in the video to say the new map is “temporary” and is “directly in response to what other states decide to do and to a president who said he’s quote entitled to more republican seats before this year’s midterms.”

Spanberger previously publicly criticized the idea of mid-decennial redistricting while in Congress, which Youngkin was referring to.

“This unconstitutional power grab will permanently rig Virginia’s congressional maps and disenfranchise millions of Virginians. Virginia, vote no,” he said.

Rep. Jennifer Kiggans, R-Va., whose Eastern Shore and Virginia Beach district is expected to be drawn partially into the liberal cities of Hampton Roads, similarly blasted Spanberger’s flip-flop highlighted by Youngkin.

“I have no plans to redistrict Virginia,” Kiggans quoted Spanberger, citing a report dated August 25.

“I am tired of the blatant lies to our face. The lack of truthfulness from this administration and the Democrat Party needs to wake up Virginians,” Kiggans said. “Don’t tell us one thing and then do another.”

“Whatever happened to affordability,” she said on Instagram.

Youngkin’s interjection was also met by supportive surprise from other recent Virginia Republican leaders, including former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

“Wow. Unusually strong language from Glenn Youngkin and of course, he’s correct on all points,” Cuccinelli said in a statement on social media.

TRUMP ADMIN ASKS SPANBERGER, VIRGINIA OFFICIALS NOT RELEASE ILLEGAL CHARGED WITH GROPING HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS

The Virginia Republican Party, currently chaired by James City County GOP Committeeman Jeff Ryer, added that “some things never change.”

“Abigail Spanberger shamefully deflects blame for Democrat sanctuary and soft-on-crime policies that keep dangerous criminals like Abdul Jalloh on Virginia streets,” Ryer said, in reference to the illegal immigrant accused of murdering Minter.

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“No sympathy for the victims. No accountability for how her own party allowed this tragedy to occur. Virginians deserve better.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Spanberger for comment.

It’s hard to have a better MLB regular-season debut than Cleveland Guardians rookie Chase DeLauter.

In the Guardians’ 6-4 win over the Seattle Mariners on Thursday at T-Mobile Park, DeLauter homered twice in his regular-season debut, becoming the sixth player to ever do so. The top prospect debuted in the American League Wild Card Series last fall, so Thursday wasn’t DeLauter’s first taste of big-league action, but he said he won’t ever forget his regular-season debut.

“That’s something I’ll never forget,” DeLauter said of his postseason debut last year. “I won’t forget this one either, don’t get me wrong.”

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Cleveland Guardians’ Chase DeLauter jogs the bases after hitting a solo home run against Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Logan Gilbert during the first inning of an opening day baseball game in Seattle, Washington, on March 26, 2026. (Lindsey Wasson/AP Photo)

In the first inning, the 24-year-old clobbered Mariners starting pitcher Logan Gilbert’s 85-mph slider 358 feet over the right-field wall for his first Major League home run, giving the Guardians a 1-0 lead.

He became the fifth player in Cleveland’s 126-year franchise history to hit a home run in his first career regular-season at-bat. He is the first Guardians player to do so since Jhonkensy Noel on June 26, 2024.

DeLauter’s second blast of the game came in the ninth inning, when he crushed Mariners reliever Cooper Criswell’s cutter 422 feet into right-center field, providing a key insurance run as he gave the Guardians a 6-4 lead.

“He’s not from this planet,” reliever Erik Sabrowski said of DeLauter, according to The Athletic. 

PHILLIES PLAYER ALEC BOHM SUES PARENTS FOR ALLEGEDLY ‘SIPHONING’ HIS MONEY

Cleveland Guardians’ Chase DeLauter jogs the bases after hitting a solo home run against Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Logan Gilbert during the first inning of an opening day baseball game in Seattle, Washington, on March 26, 2026. (Lindsey Wasson/AP Photo)

DeLauter finished the night 3 for 5, which tied him with veteran slugger Rhys Hoskins for the team lead in hits. Hoskins was particularly impressed with how unfazed DeLauter was in just his third major-league game.

“Maybe he doesn’t know, maybe ignorance is bliss,” Hoskins said. “But, to have that slow of a heartbeat, in a home opener, obviously their crowd is all charged up because of what this team was able to do last year. So yeah, just super cool.”

DeLauter is just thrilled to be around the team and available. In DeLauter’s three seasons in the organization, he has only played in 138 games while dealing with a litany of injuries.

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Cleveland Guardians’ Chase DeLauter celebrates in the dugout after hitting a solo home run against Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Logan Gilbert during the first inning of an opening day baseball game in Seattle, Washington, on March 26, 2026. (Lindsey Wasson/AP Photo)

“I mean, just thrilled to be around the guys,” DeLauter said. “Thrilled to be available. Really excited to just play some meaningful baseball again.”

DeLauter will look to continue his hot start when the Guardians (1-0) play the Mariners (0-1) again on Friday at 9:45 p.m. ET.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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