Category: Latest News

LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office said he would announce a migration partnership with Rwanda on Thursday, prompting speculation that the deal will include sending migrants arriving in Britain to the African country for processing.

Details of the new pact, and who it might impact, were not clear Wednesday night, though British media reports have suggested that the government was exploring proposals to fly asylum seekers arriving in Britain to Rwanda, for their claims to be dealt with there.

Downing Street said the move Mr. Johnson was set to announce would be as an effort to tackle illegal immigration at a time when thousands of people have crossed the English Channel in small boats.

Any proposal to “offshore” the processing of asylum application would be likely to provoke opposition and outrage on civil liberties grounds. Previous efforts to discuss the processing of migration cases in Albania and Ghana came to nothing.

The British government has proposed a legal framework that would make it possible to transfer asylum seekers out of the country while their applications are processed and to arrest those who arrive by boat across the English Channel. The proposal is still working its way through Parliament.

Mr. Johnson is scheduled to speak on Thursday morning in Kent, a coastal region, where thousands of asylum seekers have arrived after making dangerous crossings of the English Channel, often in unseaworthy boats from France.

In a statement issued Wednesday, Downing Street said that, after his speech, the prime minister would detail the plan, which was “signed by the home secretary, Priti Patel.” The statement also called Rwanda “one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa which is recognized globally for its record on welcoming and integrating migrants.”

According to the BBC, at least 2,354 people arrived in Britain on small boats last month, almost three times as many as in the same month last year, and Sky News reported that British border agents were expecting a total of around 60,000 arrivals this year.

While the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat was significantly higher in 2021 than the previous year — and appears to be rising again in 2022 — experts have said it signals a change in route: Those hoping to enter Britain to claim asylum have shifted from other means of entry such as smuggling by truck and arriving by plane, as some means of international travel were halted by the pandemic.

The number of overall asylum applications is still significantly lower than its peak two decades ago, with the total in 2021 just over half of what it was in 2002.

Asylum seekers often come to Britain from war-torn countries, like Syria and Iraq, or looking for financial opportunity, even though crossing can be deadly. In one episode last year, at least 27 men, women and children died trying to cross.

Mr. Johnson, who is under political pressure at home after being fined on Tuesday over breaches of lockdown rules, would be likely to welcome debate on another issue.

Other countries have tried such hard-line tactics to try to deter migrants, including Australia, which has used asylum processing centers on Pacific islands such as Nauru. In September, Denmark’s Parliament passed a law that allows the nation to relocate asylum seekers outside of Europe to have their refugee claims assessed, despite criticism from rights groups and the United Nations.

Britain’s failure to stop the boat crossings has been a persistent embarrassment for a government led by Mr. Johnson, who campaigned for Brexit in a 2016 referendum, claiming that it would allow the country to “take back control” of its borders.

According to excerpts from his speech, released in advance by Downing Street, Mr. Johnson is expected to say that Britain “cannot sustain a parallel illegal system. Our compassion may be infinite, but our capacity to help people is not.”

Megan Specia contributed reporting.

The United States is considering whether to send a high-level official to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in the days ahead as a sign of support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, according to a person familiar with the internal discussions.

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have both made high-profile visits over the past month to countries neighboring Ukraine as the war raged. And other top American officials have made similar visits, some coming close to the border. But no American official has publicly visited Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in late February.

It is highly unlikely that Mr. Biden or Ms. Harris would go to Kyiv, according to the person familiar with the deliberations. The security requirements for the president or vice president in a war zone are enormous and would require a huge number of American personnel and equipment to make the trip.

But it is possible that another official — perhaps a cabinet secretary or senior member of the military — could make the trip safely with a smaller security entourage.

Top officials — including some world leaders — from other nations have made official visits to the Ukrainian capital since the war began. Boris Johnson, the prime minister of Britain, made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Saturday. The presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia visited Kyiv on Wednesday.

A possible visit by a senior U.S. official, which was earlier reported by Politico, would be intended as another show of solidarity with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. But it would also be a high-risk mission, putting Americans in harm’s way and potentially risking a direct confrontation with Russian forces that Mr. Biden has repeatedly vowed to avoid.

No decision has been made, and the administration is unlikely to announce a visit in advance, given concerns about security. Previous visits by senior American officials to other war zones, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, were typically not announced until after the official had arrived in the country — and sometimes not even until after the official had left.

Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff in the Trump White House, has been removed from the voter rolls in North Carolina as officials investigate whether he fraudulently registered to vote and cast a ballot in the state during the 2020 presidential election, according to a local election official.

Mr. Meadows, who helped amplify former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of voter fraud, was “administratively removed” from the poll book by the Macon County Board of Elections on Monday “after documentation indicated he lived in Virginia and last voted in the 2021 election there,” Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the North Carolina Board of Elections, said in a statement.

Mr. Meadows represented North Carolina in Congress until March 2020, when he went to work in the White House. Months later, Mr. Meadows and his wife, Debra, registered to vote using the address of a modest, three-bedroom mobile home with a rusted roof in Scaly Mountain, N.C.

On the voter registration application that Mr. Meadows submitted on Sept. 19, 2020, he stated that he intended to move into the home the following day.

And in November, he voted absentee by mail from that address, according to state records.

Last month, a report in The New Yorker cast doubt on whether Mr. Meadows had ever lived — or even spent the night — at the home.

Mr. Meadows did not immediately respond to telephone and text messages on Wednesday afternoon. A spokesman for Mr. Meadows, Ben Williamson, declined to comment.

In 2021, Mr. Meadows registered to vote in Virginia, where he and his wife own a condominium in the Washington suburbs, ahead of that state’s contentious election for governor. Property records show that Mr. and Ms. Meadows bought the unit in July 2017.

The inquiry into Mr. Meadows’s voting activity in North Carolina remains open, according to Anjanette Grube, public information officer for the state’s Bureau of Investigation.

Though documented cases of voter fraud are rare, Mr. Meadows and other Republicans have seized on the concept in order to claim, without evidence, that the results of last presidential election are illegitimate.

During an August 2020 interview on CNN, Mr. Meadows warned of fraud in voting by mail. “Do you realize how inaccurate the voter rolls are, with just people just moving around, let alone the people that die off?” he told the host, Jake Tapper.

When Mr. Tapper said there was no evidence of widespread vote fraud, Mr. Meadows replied, “There’s no evidence that there’s not, either. That’s the definition of fraud, Jake.”

Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department took steps on Wednesday to overhaul policing practices in Washington, D.C., and Springfield, Mass., such as how and when to use force, as President Biden works to fulfill his campaign promise to curb police abuses.

The department said it had reached an agreement with the city of Springfield, Mass., after an investigation into its police department’s narcotics bureau found a pattern of excessive force. Under that agreement, known as a consent decree, the Springfield police will improve policies and training to ensure that officers avoid the use of force whenever possible.

In a separate legal filing, the Justice Department said the U.S. Park Police and the Secret Service had changed policies related to how they police demonstrations, bringing to a close a case that civil rights groups had brought against the Trump administration. The groups accused officials of abusing their power in violently dispersing protesters who had gathered outside the White House two years ago.

The Biden administration has struggled to make meaningful progress on a vow to curb police abuses. A bipartisan effort to pass a national policing overhaul collapsed in Congress last year, and the White House is still working to draft an executive order on police reform after police groups complained that their views had not been taken into account in an early version of the document.

Efforts to overhaul law enforcement are particularly sensitive as police agencies suffer from thinning ranks and increasing workloads and crime ticks higher in cities across the country.

The consent decree in Springfield, the first under the Biden administration since Attorney General Merrick B. Garland rescinded a Trump administration policy curbing their use, still awaits approval by a federal judge.

The Justice Department began investigating Springfield’s police department under the Trump administration. In a statement on Wednesday, Kristen Clarke, the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said the department had found systemic problems that led to excessive violent use of force by officers in the narcotics bureau. Those problems, she said, had been created by deficiencies in policies, training and accountability mechanisms.

“The pattern or practice of unlawful conduct eroded the public’s trust,” Ms. Clarke said. “It undermined the police department’s ability to fight crime.”

The Biden administration has so far opened four other similar investigations, in Louisville, Ky.; Minneapolis; Phoenix; and Mount Vernon, N.Y. The administration is also enforcing 11 consent decrees.

The agreement with the Park Police and the Secret Service is part of a settlement that stems from multiple lawsuits that civil rights groups filed against former President Donald J. Trump; his last attorney general, William P. Barr; and officials from other federal agencies as well as the local police.

In June 2020, demonstrators gathered in Lafayette Park, outside the White House, to denounce police violence in the days after George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, was killed by a police officer. Law enforcement officers, including from the Park Police and the Secret Service, and National Guard troops flooded into the park to clear the way for Mr. Trump to walk across it, with mounted police and riot officers using tear gas, other military-grade weapons and violent force. Some officers were accused of covering their badges and other identifying markers.

The Park Police has now agreed that all officers must wear clearly visible identification on their uniforms. It can no longer revoke demonstration permits absent danger to public safety or violations of law, and officers must let protesters safely leave if they are asked to disperse.

The Secret Service, for its part, must make clear in its policies that using force and dispersing protesters are not generally justified simply because some people in a crowd of protesters are engaged in unlawful conduct.

The changes “will strengthen our commitment to protecting and respecting constitutionally protected rights,” Vanita Gupta, the associate attorney general, said in a statement.

Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a police think tank based in Washington, welcomed the changes.

“When I think about that day at Lafayette Park, there were so many things that went wrong,” he said. “It’s important that the Justice Department came to these conclusions.”

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — When their mail stopped arriving about a week ago, residents on a neat block near the beach on the west side of Los Angeles County were perplexed.

At first, said Charlotte Jay, “I just thought I hadn’t got any.” A day or so passed. She was expecting a certified letter. Then a neighbor tipped her off: Their mail was suspended.

Ms. Jay added, “I was like: ‘What?’”

The disruption had been explained in a letter from the United States Postal Service, but some residents said they had not initially received or seen it.

According to the note, delivery service had been halted to “all addresses located on the 1300 block of 14th Street” following multiple “assaults and threats of assault” against postal workers by a person in the neighborhood.

“The safety of our employees and the mail they deliver to you is our highest concern,” the letter said, adding that until service was resumed, residents could collect their mail at a nearby post office.

“The entire block? It’s an extreme measure,” Ms. Jay, a stock trader, said Tuesday afternoon outside her apartment, where she had just returned from a walk with her brown terrier mix.

She added: “I was shocked, and I was angry.”

Service to the area resumed on Tuesday, but the episode has left lingering questions of residents’ expectation of mail delivery, one of the few remaining constants in a world upended (and hastened to anger) by the coronavirus pandemic. It has also brought into focus the right to safety for postal workers who, like other essential workers, have battled through the past two years, hand delivering the nation’s letters, bills and paychecks, day in and out.

The police confirmed that on Jan. 19, a man assaulted a mail carrier in Santa Monica with a broomstick.

“The victim sustained a minor injury to his arm and did not require medical attention,” the Santa Monica Police Department said in a statement.

Though the Postal Service has cited episodes involving “three separate letter carriers” in Santa Monica, the police said that they had received information about only one attack.

A suspect was arrested and charged in the Jan. 19 assault, the police said, but those charges were later dropped after the victim decided not to proceed. That same suspect was arrested on April 6 on unrelated charges of “misdemeanor vandalism and possession of drug paraphernalia,” the police said.

The police said authorities were trying to locate other postal workers who may have been victims as part of their continuing investigation.

“It’s unfortunate that these three carriers experienced this,” Natashi Garvins, a spokeswoman for the Postal Service said by phone on Wednesday. The service, she added, can and does occasionally suspend mail delivery — though she said she could not provide numbers or say whether any had been made previously in response to attacks on mail carriers.

“It could occur for various reasons,” Ms. Garvins said, adding that the Postal Service would always attempt to provide alternative means for people to collect their mail.

In the case of Santa Monica, she added, the service had decided to cancel the mail to the entire block because the person responsible for the three episodes “could be anywhere” in the area.

Harassment of mail carriers, however, does not appear to be isolated.

In New York, the police began an investigation last June after a mail carrier was attacked by two people on his route in Brooklyn. In Providence, R.I., a federal grand jury indicted a man in January on charges that he had attacked and robbed a postal worker in September. In Arizona, a man assaulted a postal worker in May after she requested that he provide his identification.

Marjon Barrigan Husted, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Inspector, said on Wednesday that she was unaware of any recent increases in such episodes in Los Angeles.

The American Postal Workers’ Union and the National Association of Letter Carriers did not immediately return requests for comment.

Some residents said they were familiar with the person they believe had attacked the postal workers. They described him as transient and erratic. One man, a valet worker who asked not to be named to protect his safety, said that he had seen the man wielding a golf club at a postal worker. Another said that after the Jan. 19 attack, his regular mail carrier had suddenly vanished.

Cori Newman, 49, a manager at a local restaurant, said that the person in question had approached her several times at work, as well as after hours in the neighboring car park.

“I lived in Santa Monica a long time ago as a child and never felt it was dangerous ever before,” Ms. Newman said. Now, she said, she keeps a baseball bat and pepper spray behind the bar. “If I have to use it,’’ she said, “I have to use it.”

Others, however, said that, aside from the recent episodes, the neighborhood was largely peaceful. “I just think it’s sad,” said Jim Price, 55.

“This is Santa Monica,” he added. “It’s safe; it’s a nice city seaside community.”

WASHINGTON — New Jersey is billing itself as a “microcosm of the country.” Washington State is highlighting its diverse communities — and robust vote-by-mail process. And as Iowa’s status as home to the first-in-the-nation presidential nominating contest looks increasingly tenuous, other Midwestern states see an opening.

Just over two years after Iowa’s disastrous Democratic caucuses, in which officials struggled to deliver results, party officials across the country are increasingly weighing whether to pursue their own early-state primary slots — a dynamic set to rapidly accelerate.

On Wednesday, members of the Democratic National Committee’s powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee voted to begin an application process that will determine which states host the first presidential nominating contests in the 2024 cycle. The outcome may overhaul how the party’s presidential nominee is chosen and reorder which constituencies have the greatest influence.

The resolution adopted on Wednesday laid out a framework for applicants, and committee leaders also detailed a timeline for assessing applications, which are due by June 3. Committee recommendations regarding up to five early-voting states — an increase from the traditional four — are expected in July, with final approval set for a vote at the Democrats’ summer meeting.

Criticism of Iowa and, to a lesser extent, New Hampshire — two states that have long opened the presidential nominating process — has grown louder in recent years from those who see them as unrepresentative of the party’s diverse electorate. Iowa has faced particular scrutiny, given high-profile missteps as well as the state’s increasing tilt toward Republicans in general elections.

On Wednesday, members of the committee gathered at a hotel not far from the White House, home to the man who finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire but still became president of the United States. President Biden won the nomination on the strength of later-voting, more diverse states that in some cases also had more centrist primary electorates.

He landed a distant second-place finish in Nevada before making a campaign-resurrecting comeback in South Carolina and going on to dominate contests on Super Tuesday. Those first four early states could retain their positions, but now they must apply to do so.

The resolution — which included a lengthy amendment process — urged an emphasis on racial, ethnic, geographic and economic diversity and labor representation; cited logistical questions about feasibility and matters of transparency; and raised issues of general election competitiveness. Several of those terms are subject to broad interpretation.

“Fundamentally we focused on competitiveness in the Electoral College,” said James Roosevelt Jr., the chairman of the committee. “They can be useful in different ways. They can be useful because they help a Democratic candidate become popular in that state, or because they have a track record of choosing in their state primary somebody who is effective, ultimately, in the general election.”

The committee now has one week to formally inform the states of the application process — but some have already moved to clearly signal their interest. For instance, Nevada, previously a caucus state, is making the case to go first as a state-run primary. Top Nevada Democrats sent personalized letters to members of the rules committee that described a “battle-tested early state that represents the future of the Democratic Party,” according to two copies of the letter obtained by The New York Times. (NBC News earlier reported on Nevada’s letter.)

“As a highly competitive battleground with strong union representation and one of the most diverse electorates in the country, our state offers a real test of who can put together a winning coalition,” said the letter, signed by top elected Democrats in the state.

“I was in Iowa last time, and that was just a lot of confusion,” said Representative Dina Titus, a Nevada Democrat who signed the letter and called the push “a pretty unified effort from the state,” adding, “It makes sense to pick a more representative state to go first.”

In addition to New Jersey Democrats, who are pitching their state to the national party chairman, Michigan and Nebraska Democrats are making their case, too.

“The most interesting part will be what happens in the Midwest, since many folks think Iowa may not be one of the first five states moving forward,” said Tina Podlodowski, the Democratic chairwoman in Washington State. She said that her state was “absolutely” considering applying.

Ken Martin, the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and a vice chairman of the D.N.C., did not rule out a potential early-state bid for Minnesota. He stressed instead his interest in ensuring Midwestern representation, which would become more urgent if Iowa lost its spot.

“I think it’s probably a strong likelihood that Minnesota will consider being a part of this conversation,” he said. “I don’t make those decisions on my own, but I would bet that Minnesota’s going to be in the mix.”

Scott Brennan, a Democratic National Committee member from Iowa who voted against the resolution, said Wednesday that the state intended to defend its historical status.

“I’m going to take folks at their word that they are going to be open-minded about the process,” he said, adding that Iowa would apply for consideration. “Iowa caucuses have been a great part of that early-state process.”

And certainly, it is possible that there will ultimately be no changes to the traditional lineup — though many D.N.C. members are bracing for an outpouring of interest from other states.

“The country’s changing, has changed. The demographics of the party have changed. People want to make sure the calendar reflects those changes and the realities of the party,” said Leah D. Daughtry, a veteran member of the Democratic National Committee. “That may lead you back to where we already are, or it may take you in a different direction.”

Still, not every state seemed prepared to jump into the melee.

“We have our hands full here as it is,” Ben Wikler, the chairman of Wisconsin’s Democratic Party, said in a text message. “No plans to apply!”