By Joseph Ax

(Reuters) -A New York state judge on Thursday threw out the state’s new Democratic-backed congressional map as unconstitutional and ordered lawmakers to redraw the lines, a decision that could significantly hurt the party’s chances of retaining control of the U.S. Congress in November’s elections.

Steuben County Supreme Court Judge Patrick McAllister said the map violated a constitutional provision that districts should not be drawn to favor one political party over another.

The map, passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature and signed into law by Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul in February, gave the party the advantage in 22 of the state’s 26 districts, according to analysts. Democrats currently hold 19 of 27 districts and the state will lose one seat this year due to sluggish population growth.

The plan helped offset Republican-skewed maps in states such as Texas and Georgia and went a long way toward erasing what had initially been expected to be a challenging national redistricting cycle for Democrats.

Democratic leaders, including Hochul and state Attorney General Letitia James, said they would appeal the decision.

“This is one step in the process,” said Mike Murphy, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senate majority. “We always knew this case would be decided by the appellate courts.”

In an 18-page decision, McAllister, a Republican, set April 11 as a deadline for a new map and said he would engage an expert to draw one if the legislature failed to come to a bipartisan compromise.

New York’s primary election is scheduled for June 28, and McAllister acknowledged that an expert-drawn map might not be finished in time for this year’s elections.

Under U.S. law, states must redraw congressional and legislative lines every decade to account for population changes. In most states, lawmakers control the process, allowing parties to manipulate lines for partisan advantage in a practice known as gerrymandering.

Thursday’s decision is the second redistricting setback for Democrats in the span of a week. A Maryland court last Friday tossed a new Democratic-drawn map as an illegal gerrymander.

Judges in Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania previously struck down Republican-favored maps.

Democrats currently hold a 222-210 edge in the U.S. House of Representatives, with three vacancies. Opinion polls suggest Republicans are favored to retake the House majority in November, which would allow them to block much of Democratic President Joe Biden’s agenda.

In a conference call with reporters, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the co-chair of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, which supports Republican redistricting efforts, said New York Democrats should be “ashamed of themselves for what they tried to do here.”

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein and Nate RaymondEditing by Bill Berkrot and Rosalba O’Brien)

(Corrects paragraph 25 to fix typographical error)

By Jonathan Landay and Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made John Sullivan’s tough job as U.S. envoy to Moscow even harder as he grapples with the Kremlin’s nuclear saber-rattling and threats to sever relations while keeping his embassy running on one-tenth the normal staff.

“It was really bad two and a half years ago,” Sullivan remembered of his arrival in Jan. 2020. “It’s gotten worse.”

Severe staff cuts imposed by Russia’s government have not yet forced him to clean embassy toilets or buff floors, as rumored in Washington, though he said he knows how to do both.

The loquacious grandson of Irish immigrants expounded this week in an interview about being Washington’s man in Moscow five weeks into a war in which U.S.-supplied arms are killing his host nation’s troops and sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies are devastating Russia’s economy.

Until now, he said, his meetings with Russian foreign ministry officials have “not been personally insulting or hostile,” nor has there been a serious backlash against the embassy.

“The security situation here isn’t that much different from what it was a month ago, six months ago,” he said via video call from a spartan office overlooking an embassy courtyard dusted with fresh snow. “But that could change at the discretion of the host government in a minute.”

Sullivan is dealing with circumstances that no previous U.S. ambassador to Russia faced, said John Herbst, a former U.S. envoy to Ukraine with the Atlantic Council think tank. “We are truly in a period of hostile relations with Moscow.”

U.S.-Russian ties already were at their post-Cold War iciest when former U.S. President Donald Trump tapped Sullivan for one of the most difficult jobs in U.S. diplomacy, one previously held by luminaries such as John Quincy Adams and George Kennan.

The rivals were engaged in tit-for-tat expulsions and a diplomatic visa feud, with Moscow ordering the closure of the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg in March 2018. The consulates in Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg were shut after he arrived, leaving the embassy as the only operating U.S. mission in Russia.

But its staff has shrunk from some 1,200 in 2017 to around 130, about half of them Marines and other security guards.

The sides also were at odds over issues ranging from Syria’s civil war and the Kremlin’s seizure of Crimea and backing of separatists in Ukraine’s east to U.S. sanctions slapped on Russia for trying to sway the 2016 presidential vote to Trump.

As relations deteriorated, Trump’s Democratic successor, Joe Biden, decided to retain Sullivan, an establishment Republican lawyer who does not speak Russian but whose affection for Russia dates to his childhood admiration of the Soviet hockey team.

In April 2021, Washington recalled Sullivan for consultations after Russia’s envoy was summoned to Moscow.

Implementing a decree by President Vladimir Putin, the Russian government in May 2021 ordered the embassy to fire scores of Russian employees who performed critical tasks. That forced a halt to the processing of all but “life or death” visas.

Hopes that tensions would ease rose when Sullivan and Russia’s ambassador to Washington returned to their posts in June and Biden and Putin met in Geneva the same month.

But relations worsened. Russia massed troops on Ukraine’s borders, demanded sweeping security guarantees rejected by Washington and its NATO allies, and on Feb. 24 invaded its neighbor.

“We’re in the Mariana Trench as far as diplomatic relations go,” Sullivan said, referring to Earth’s deepest ocean abyss.

Russia says it is waging a “special operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine. The war has killed thousands and uprooted millions.

Sullivan’s challenges span the ominous to the routine.

Days after he unleashed his invasion, Putin put his nuclear forces on high alert, citing aggressive statements by NATO leaders and economic sanctions against Moscow.

U.S. officials say they are concerned about veiled threats of nuclear war that they continue to hear from Russian officials, including comparisons to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

Sullivan said he takes seriously a threat “from the very top of the Russian government” to sever diplomatic ties, asserting that “The Russians don’t engage in rhetorical flourishes.”

“The United States does not want to close its embassy here. President Biden does not want to recall me as ambassador. But that’s not something that we necessarily control,” he said.

‘CROWBAR TO PRY ME OUT’

Russia expelled Sullivan’s deputy in February and recently said another 37 U.S. staffers must leave by July. That would leave the embassy in “caretaker status,” secured by a skeleton contingent, one U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

The embassy already has lost its elevator technician, meaning diplomats may soon be doing a lot of stairs, and keeping the sprinkler systems operating will become a serious safety issue if the last two electricians have to leave, the U.S. official said.

An increase in overnight calls with Washington as tensions mounted over Russia’s military build up prompted Sullivan in February to move out of Spaso House, the elegant ambassadorial residence, a 15-minute drive from the chancery and its secure communications facility.

He moved into the more modest Townhouse One, where his deputy lived before being expelled, which is a quick walk to the chancery, the U.S. official said.

If diplomatic ties were severed, requiring the embassy to close, Sullivan said he could no longer pursue one of his most pressing tasks: advocating for detained Americans.

They include basketball star Brittney Griner and former Marines Trevor Reed, who is staging a second hunger strike, and Paul Whelan, as well as an unknown number of others.

“I’ve told my colleagues back home, they’re going to have to use a crowbar to pry me out of here because I’m not leaving until, you know, until they either throw me out or the president just says, ‘Look, you gotta come home.’

Sullivan said he wants to “be here and at a minimum to advocate for those Americans that we’d leave behind iron bars.”

(This story refiles to correct paragraph 25 to fix typographical error)

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Mary Milliken and Daniel Wallis)

By Doina Chiacu

WASHINGTON – Americans will be allowed to choose an X for gender on their passport applications and select their sex on Social Security cards, the Biden administration said on Thursday in announcing measures to support transgender Americans against wave of state laws targeting them.

The State Department in June said U.S. citizens could select their gender on applications without having to submit medical documentation. In October, it issued the first American passport with an “X” gender marker, designed to give nonbinary, intersex and gender-nonconforming people an option other than male or female on their travel document.

“Starting on April 11, U.S. citizens will be able to select an X as their gender marker on their U.S. passport application, and the option will become available for other forms of documentation next year,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

Americans will also be able to select and add their gender to U.S. Social Security cards without medical documentation, beginning in the fall, the Social Security Administration said. The cards currently do not include gender indicators.

The changes were among several measures announced by the Biden administration to mark a “Transgender Day of Visibility,” a day after the Republican governors of Oklahoma and Arizona signed bills banning transgender athletes from girls’ sports in schools.

They joined a growing list of states that have passed or enacted similar laws on a contentious election-year issue. Transgender rights have been pushed to the forefront of the culture wars playing out in parts of the United States in recent years, together with issues such as reproductive rights.

“The administration once again condemns the proliferation of dangerous anti-transgender legislative attacks that have been introduced and passed in state legislatures around the country,” the White House said in a statement on initiatives it would take aimed at taking down barriers for transgender people.

They include easing travel, providing resources for transgender children and their families, improving access to federal services and benefits and advancing inclusion and visibility in federal data.

The Transportation Security Administration will implement gender-neutral screening at its checkpoints with changes in imaging technology, reducing the number of pat-down screenings, removing gender identification from checkpoint screenings and updating TSA PreCheck to include an “X” gender marker on its application.

The Department of Health and Human Services released a new website that offers resources for transgender and LGBTQI+ youth, their parents, and providers.

Other agencies will announce new actions to expand the collection and use of sexual orientation and gender identity data, the White House said.

“Every American deserves the freedom to be themselves. But far too many transgender Americans still face systemic barriers, discrimination, and acts of violence,” the White House said.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by William Maclean and Bill Berkrot)

HONG KONG – Hong Kong’s government said on Friday it rejected “unfounded and ridiculous” allegations made in policy reports from Britain and the United States of a deteriorating political and legal situation due to the city’s sweeping national security law.

    The United States and Britain released strongly-worded reports on Thursday detailing concerns about an erosion of freedoms in the global financial hub and the stifling of dissent in the city’s legislature, civil society and media.

    The reports come after two senior British judges resigned from Hong Kong’s highest court on Wednesday because of the national security law which punishes offences such as subversion with up to life imprisonment.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam called the resignations “politically motivated”, while China blamed it on “British pressure”.

    “We strongly oppose the unfounded and ridiculous allegations against the Hong Kong special administrative region’s government made by foreign countries through various reports,” Hong Kong’s government said in a statement.

    “The government urges foreign countries to stop interfering into the internal affairs of China through Hong Kong affairs.”

    The UK report said it was no longer tenable for serving UK judges to sit on Hong Kong’s top court, citing that the city’s political and legal situation “has now deteriorated beyond the point where it is acceptable for serving UK judges to take part”.

    British judges have long served among the foreign jurists appointed to the CFA, an arrangement put in place prior to Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997 to maintain confidence in a separate legal system widely seen as the bedrock of the city’s social and commercial freedoms.

    Ten other foreign judges are still serving the Hong Kong court, six of whom are retired British jurists, one Canadian and three Australians.

    Business people and diplomats are watching particularly closely, given the importance of legal independence to Hong Kong’s status as a global financial hub.

    The differences between Hong Kong and cities in mainland China are “shrinking due to ongoing repression from the People’s Republic of China,” Antony Blinken, U.S. secretary of state, said in the report.

    Hong Kong’s government said it was proud of its “unwavering commitment” to the rule of law and an independent judiciary.

    It said it was firmly committed to safeguarding press and speech freedoms, with the media able to monitor the government’s work and criticise policies as long as it was not “in violation of the law.”

(This story refiles to add dropped word “it” to 1st par)

(Reporting by Farah Master; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Michael Perry)