All posts tagged: New Hampshire News

Federal Judge Says New Hampshire Must Make It Easier to Prove Citizenship When Registering to Vote

Federal Judge Says New Hampshire Must Make It Easier to Prove Citizenship When Registering to Vote

Published by Sam Flores

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A federal judge has said that New Hampshire must make voter registration easier by allowing applicants to attest to their U.S. citizenship if they don’t have the documents to prove it. The case was seen as the first major legal test of an election reform that has been pushed nationally by President Donald Trump and has gained favor among many Republicans, though U.S. District Court Judge Samantha Elliot said she was not deciding whether requiring proof of citizenship itself is constitutional. Her ruling late Thursday night on a narrower question of New Hampshire law was significant, however, because it underscored the potential perils of implementing strict requirements for voters to document their U.S. citizenship so they can cast a ballot. Elliot found that changes in 2024 to the state voter registration law unconstitutionally removed one method of proof — namely, a voter’s sworn affidavit attesting to citizenship. “The evidence shows that this is the only method of proof available to a significant number of New Hampshire voters,” she wrote. The changes …

US Lawmakers Say They’ll Visit Taiwan Before Trump’s Summit With China’s Xi

US Lawmakers Say They’ll Visit Taiwan Before Trump’s Summit With China’s Xi

Published by Sam Flores

WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan group of four senators has plans to visit Taiwan, Japan and South Korea in the coming days on a trip meant to bolster U.S. alliances seen as important to countering China’s dominance in Asia. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced the trip Saturday. She will be joined by Sens. John Curtis, R-Utah, Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Jacky Rosen, D-Nev. Their visits to Taipei, Tokyo and Seoul are coming before President Donald Trump’s trip to Beijing in May for a rescheduled summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The lawmakers’ stop in Taiwan could draw scrutiny from China, which opposes such relations and sees them as a challenge to its claim of sovereignty over the self-governing island. Taiwan relies on American backing for its democracy, but recent moves by Trump, such as discussing a potential weapons sales to Taiwan with Xi, have raised questions about the future direction of U.S. policy. Analysts in both China and the United States believe Xi, through …

Immigration Officials Plan to Spend .3 Billion to Boost Detention Capacity to 92,000 Beds

Immigration Officials Plan to Spend $38.3 Billion to Boost Detention Capacity to 92,000 Beds

Published by Sam Flores

Federal immigration officials plan to spend $38.3 billion to boost detention capacity to 92,600 beds, a document released Friday shows, as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement quietly purchases warehouses to turn into detention and processing facilities. Republican New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte posted the document online amid tension over ICE’s plans to convert a warehouse in Merrimack into a 500-bed processing center. It said ICE plans 16 regional processing centers with a population of 1,000 to 1,500 detainees, whose stays would average three to seven days. Another eight large-scale detention centers would be capable of housing 7,000 to 10,000 detainees for periods averaging less than 60 days. The document also refers to the acquisition of 10 existing “turnkey” facilities. Plans call for all of them to be up and running by November as immigration officials roll out a massive $45 billion expansion of detention facilities financed by President Donald Trump’s recent tax-cutting law. More than 75,000 immigrants were being detained by ICE as of mid-January, up from 40,000 when Trump took office a year earlier, …

How Two Quiet USPS Changes Are Reshaping Delivery in Vermont

How Two Quiet USPS Changes Are Reshaping Delivery in Vermont

Published by Sam Flores

The U.S. Postal Service in Vermont has quietly implemented changes to the way mail is processed that are expected to further slow down the delivery speed of many mail categories for Vermonters. Vermont is the latest region to join Regional Transportation Optimization, a new strategy that ends evening collection of mail that’s more than 50 miles away from regional mail centers. Last week, a postal service spokesperson did not answer questions about when the new program was expected to come to Vermont. But on Jan. 16, the postal service filed data in response to questions from the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission that shows the program has already been implemented in every zip code in the state. Regional Transportation Optimization is one part of the Delivering for America plan, a years-long strategy of service cuts and other changes that began in 2021 under former Postmaster Louis DeJoy. The postal service has said the plan is essential for making its operations efficient and financially self-sustaining. But critics of the program say there’s been a lack of transparency …