reform

May 30 (UPI) — Nearly 100 million Mexicans are set to take part in an unprecedented election on June 1 that will reshape the country’s judiciary.

Voters will elect 881 judicial officials, including Supreme Court justices, electoral magistrates, district judges and circuit court magistrates, under a sweeping reform originally pushed by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and backed by current President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Initially presented in 2014 as a step toward democratizing justice and combating corruption, the reform has drawn mounting criticism from legal experts, academics and civil society organizations. Many warn it could erode judicial independence, increase political interference, and weaken the rule of law.

An analysis by Stanford Law School’s Rule of Law Impact Lab and the Mexican Bar Association warns that electing judges by popular vote compromises their independence and impartiality by aligning judicial decisions with public opinion rather than strictly with the law.

It also highlights the risk that judicial rulings will be influenced by judicial election campaign donors.

Academics, legal experts and civil society organizations have raised concerns about the complexity of the electoral process, highlighting several key issues.

First, the proposed reform has been criticized for a lack of clear criteria to assess candidates’ qualifications.

Candidates are only required to hold a law degree, have at least five years of professional experience, no criminal record, and a good reputation. Candidates are also asked to submit a legal essay and letters of recommendation.

Studies show that the selected candidates have, on average, 20 fewer years of experience than the judges they are replacing under the reform. Many of the candidates also come from outside the judiciary and lack the training and background needed to carry out judicial duties effectively.

Second, voters in Mexico have received limited information despite the complexity of the process, which includes six ballots and more than 7,000 candidates competing for 2,600 local and federal judicial seats.

The Judicial Electoral Observatory, or OEJ, has warned that voters are not receiving adequate information, compromising electoral fairness. One factor is that the National Electoral Institute, or INE, received 52% less funding than it requested, limiting its ability to provide outreach and education.

The OEJ also criticized the ballot design and inconsistent selection standards across the evaluation committees, saying these issues undermine the legitimacy of the process and make it difficult for voters to make informed choices.

Third, the judicial reform has raised serious concerns about the influence of political actors and power groups in the process. The complexity of the changes and the short, eight-month timeline to organize the election may have created openings for political parties to assert control in parts of the country.

Organizations including México Evalúa, the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics, or CIDE, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM, have warned that the system could allow political, economic or criminal interests to infiltrate the judiciary, especially in regions where organized crime is strong.

Many of the candidates have ties to the ruling party, said Luis F. Fernández, executive director of Practica: Laboratorio para la Democracia, in an interview with CNN en Español.

“We’ve identified others linked to the country’s 10 wealthiest businessmen, and more than 15 candidates connected to drug trafficking,” he said.

The popular election of judges is rare internationally and, where it exists, is usually limited to local or mid-level courts.

In most democratic countries, judges are appointed by technical committees, the judiciary or the executive branch with legislative approval. The goal is to preserve judicial independence and prevent politicization.

Mexico’s proposed model — a direct, large-scale, nationwide election of judges at all levels, including the Supreme Court — is unprecedented.

Reform UK has said it will fully reinstate winter fuel payments to pensioners and scrap the two-child benefit cap, if the party gets into government.

The commitments – to be unveiled at a press conference next week – come after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer faced pressure from Labour MPs to change his approach to both policies.

By the time of the next general election there may be no need to reverse either policy.

Sir Keir has already announced plans to ease cuts to winter fuel payments – without saying when or how.

And ministers say he has privately indicated he would like if possible to find a way to scrap the two-child benefit cap – although a formal decision may be many months away.

The intervention by Nigel Farage – first reported in the Sunday Telegraph – will highlight and magnify the increasingly awkward divisions over policy within Labour.

Reform UK said they would pay for their new polices by cutting net zero projects and scrapping hotels for asylum seekers.

A source told the paper it was “already outflanking Labour” on both issues.

Downing Street has been contacted for comment.

More than 10 million pensioners lost out on winter fuel payments, worth up to £300, when the pension top-up became restricted to only people receiving pension credit last year.

But Sir Keir has announced plans to ease the cuts in a U-turn following mounting political pressure in recent weeks.

The prime minster said the policy would be changed at the autumn Budget, adding ministers would only “make decisions we can afford”. He did not lay out exactly what this would entail.

The winter fuel payment is a lump sum of £200 a year for households with a pensioner under 80, or £300 for households with a pensioner over 80.

On the two-child benefit cap, the Observer reported Sir Keir had privately backed plans to scrap it.

The paper’s report that the PM was asking the Treasury to find ways to pay for it came alongside growing unrest and threats of rebellion among backbench Labour MPs.

The policy – which prevents most families from claiming means-tested benefits for any third or additional children born after April 2017 – was introduced in 2017 by the then-Conservative government and is estimated to affect 1.5 million families.

But the government’s child poverty strategy, which had been due for publication in the spring, has been delayed as it is still being worked on and measures including scrapping the cap are being considered.

Labour MPs have long been calling for it to be axed, with seven of them suspended from the parliamentary party for voting against the government on an amendment to do so.

Four were readmitted in February but the remainder continue to sit as independent MPs.

Pressure to remove the limit has remained on the government from senior Labour figures, including former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who said it was “condemning children to poverty”.

The resurgence of conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has drawn renewed international attention following M23’s swift capture of Goma and Bukavu in late January 2025. In response, global actors have called for an immediate ceasefire and direct negotiations. Notably, Qatar and the United States have stepped forward as emerging mediators. This new momentum offers a rare opportunity to revisit the shortcomings of past mediation efforts – particularly failures in disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR), wealth-sharing, and regional consensus. Any new diplomatic initiative must prioritise these elements to forge a durable settlement and lasting regional stability.

To achieve a sustainable and enduring peace in eastern DRC, it is essential to address the root causes of the conflict. The region’s vast deposits of natural resources – especially rare earth minerals – have attracted international, regional and local actors competing for control, fuelling instability. Compounding this is the Congolese central government’s limited capacity to govern the eastern provinces, enabling the proliferation of armed groups with diverse allegiances. Ethnic tensions further exacerbate the crisis, particularly since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, after which the arrival of Hutu refugees and the formation of hostile militias heightened insecurity and cross-border conflict.

While regional dynamics, including Rwandan involvement, are undeniably significant, attributing the conflict solely to Rwanda risks oversimplification. Such narratives obscure the DRC’s longstanding structural inequalities, particularly the marginalisation of Congolese Tutsi communities. A durable peace must engage with these internal dynamics by ensuring the meaningful inclusion of Congolese Tutsi in the national political framework and addressing their grievances through equitable and just mechanisms.

Despite repeated international engagement, past mediation efforts in eastern DRC – from the Pretoria Agreement to the 2009 peace accords – have consistently failed to deliver lasting peace. These initiatives were undermined by structural weaknesses that eroded both their credibility and effectiveness.

A central flaw has been the absence of credible enforcement mechanisms. Most agreements relied on voluntary compliance and lacked robust, impartial monitoring frameworks capable of verifying implementation or deterring violations. Where monitoring mechanisms existed, they were often under-resourced, poorly coordinated, or perceived as biased. The international community’s inconsistent attention and limited political will to exert sustained pressure further undermined these efforts. In the absence of meaningful accountability, armed groups and political elites repeatedly violated agreements without consequence, fuelling a cycle of impunity and renewed violence.

Equally problematic has been the exclusionary nature of the peace processes. Negotiations were often dominated by political and military elites, sidelining civil society, grassroots communities, and particularly women – actors essential for building sustainable peace. Without broad-based participation, the accords failed to reflect the realities on the ground or earn the trust of local populations.

Moreover, these efforts largely ignored the root causes of the conflict, such as land disputes, ethnic marginalisation, governance failures and competition over natural resources. By prioritising short-term ceasefires and elite power-sharing arrangements, mediators overlooked the deeper structural issues that drive instability.

DDR programs – vital to breaking the conflict cycle – have also been inadequately designed and poorly executed. Many former combatants were left without viable livelihoods, creating fertile ground for re-recruitment into armed groups and further violence.

Crucially, these flaws were compounded by a lack of political will within the Congolese government. Successive administrations have, at times, instrumentalised peace talks to consolidate power rather than to advance genuine reform, undermining implementation and eroding public confidence.

More recent efforts, such as the Luanda and Nairobi processes, aimed to revive political dialogue and de-escalate tensions. However, they too have struggled to gain legitimacy. Critics argue that both initiatives were top-down, narrowly political and failed to include the voices of those most affected by the conflict. Civil society actors and marginalised communities perceived these dialogues as superficial and disconnected from local realities.

These processes also fell short in addressing the underlying drivers of violence – displacement, land ownership disputes, poor governance and the reintegration of ex-combatants. Without credible mechanisms for local participation or structural reform, the Luanda and Nairobi processes came to be seen more as diplomatic performances than genuine pathways to peace.

Taken together, these recurring shortcomings explain why international mediation efforts in DRC have largely failed. For any new initiative – including those led by Qatar and the United States – to succeed, it must move beyond these limitations and embrace a more inclusive, accountable and locally rooted approach.

The latest round of international facilitation – led by the United States and Qatar, alongside African-led efforts by the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) under Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe – offers renewed potential for meaningful progress. However, success will depend on whether these efforts can overcome the systemic failures that have plagued previous mediation attempts.

To chart a more effective and durable path to peace, Qatari and American engagement should be guided by three core principles drawn from past experience:

First, prioritise inclusive participation. Previous peace processes were largely elite-driven, involving governments and armed groups while excluding civil society, women and affected communities. This lack of inclusivity weakened legitimacy and failed to address the grievances of those most impacted by violence. A credible mediation process must include these actors to build a broad-based coalition for peace and ensure that negotiated outcomes reflect the lived realities of eastern DRC communities.

Second, address the root causes of the conflict – not just its symptoms. Earlier efforts focused narrowly on ceasefires and power-sharing, without tackling the structural drivers of instability. Effective mediation must engage with unresolved land disputes, ethnic marginalization, governance failures and the socioeconomic reintegration of former combatants. Without addressing these underlying issues, any agreement will be fragile and short-lived.

Third, establish credible enforcement and accountability mechanisms. One of the most persistent weaknesses of past agreements has been the absence of strong implementation tools. Agreements often lacked independent monitoring bodies, clear benchmarks and consequences for violations. The international community, including Qatar and the United States, must commit to sustained diplomatic pressure and support mechanisms that can ensure compliance and respond decisively to breaches. Without this, the risk of relapse into violence remains high.

By adopting these principles, current mediation efforts stand a greater chance of breaking the cycle of failed peace initiatives and laying the groundwork for a more just and lasting resolution in eastern DRC.

The crisis has once again reached a critical juncture. The involvement of new actors such as Qatar and the United States, working alongside African regional mechanisms, presents a rare opportunity to reset the approach to peacebuilding. By learning from past failures and committing to an inclusive, root cause oriented, and enforceable mediation framework, these efforts can move beyond temporary fixes and lay the foundation for a durable peace – one that finally addresses the aspirations and grievances of the Congolese people.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The administration of President Donald Trump has begun the process of ending the federal government’s involvement in reforming local police departments, a civil rights effort that gained steam after the deaths of unarmed Black people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

On Wednesday, the United States Department of Justice announced it would cancel two proposed settlements that would have seen the cities of Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, agree to federal oversight of their police departments.

Generally, those settlements — called consent decrees — involve a series of steps and goals that the two parties negotiate and that a federal court helps enforce.

In addition, the Justice Department said it would withdraw reports on six other local police departments which found patterns of discrimination and excessive violence.

The Trump administration framed the announcement as part of its efforts to transfer greater responsibility towards individual cities and states — and away from the federal government.

“It’s our view at the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division under the Trump administration that federal micromanagement of local police should be a rare exception, and not the norm,” said Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, said.

She argued that such federal oversight was a waste of taxpayer funds.

“There is a lack of accountability. There is a lack of local control. And there is an industry here that is, I think, ripping off the taxpayers and making citizens less safe,” Dhillon said.

But civil rights leaders and police reform advocates reacted with outrage over the news, which arrived just days before the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s murder.

Reverend Al Sharpton was among the leaders who called for police departments to take meaningful action after a viral video captured Floyd’s final moments. On May 25, 2020, a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, leaned his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, causing him to asphyxiate and die.

“This move isn’t just a policy reversal,” Sharpton said. “It’s a moral retreat that sends a chilling message that accountability is optional when it comes to Black and Brown victims.”

He warned that the Trump administration’s move sent a signal to police departments that they were “above scrutiny”.

The year of Floyd’s murder was also marked by a number of other high-profile deaths, including Taylor’s.

The 26-year-old medical worker was in bed late at night on March 13, 2020, when police used a battering ram to break into her apartment. Her boyfriend feared they were being attacked and fired his gun once. The police responded with a volley of bullets, killing Taylor, who was struck six times.

Her death and others stirred a period of nationwide unrest in the US, with millions of people protesting in the streets as part of social justice movements like Black Lives Matter. It is thought that the 2020 “racial reckoning” was one of the biggest mass demonstrations in US history.

Those protests unfolded in the waning months of Trump’s first term, and when Democrat Joe Biden succeeded him as president in 2021, the Justice Department embarked on a series of 12 investigations looking into allegations of police overreach and excessive violence on the local level.

Those investigations were called “pattern-or-practice” probes, designed to look into whether incidents of police brutality were one-offs or part of a larger trend in a given police department.

Floyd’s murder took place in Minneapolis and Taylor’s in Louisville — the two cities where the Trump Justice Department decided to drop its settlements on Wednesday. In both cities, under Biden, the Justice Department had found patterns of discriminatory policing.

“Police officers must often make split-second decisions and risk their lives to keep their communities safe,” the report on Minneapolis reads.

But, it adds, the local police department “used dangerous techniques and weapons against people who committed at most a petty offence and sometimes no offense at all”.

Other police departments scrutinised during this period included ones in Phoenix, Arizona; Memphis, Tennessee; Trenton, New Jersey; Mount Vernon, New York; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and the Louisiana State Police.

Dhillon, who now runs the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, positioned the retractions of those Biden-era findings as a policy pivot. She also condemned the consent decrees as an overused tool and indicated she would look into rescinding some agreements that were already in place.

That process would likely involve a judge’s approval, however.

And while some community advocates have expressed concerns that consent decrees could place a burden on already over-stretched law enforcement departments, others disagree with the Justice Department’s latest move, arguing that a retreat could strip resources and momentum from police reform.

At the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD), Chief Paul Humphrey said the commitment to better policing went beyond any settlement. He indicated he would look for an independent monitor to oversee reforms.

“It’s not about these words on this paper,” he said. “It’s about the work that the men and women of LMPD, the men and women of metro government and the community will do together in order to make us a safer, better place.”

And in Minneapolis, Mayor Jacob Frey doubled down, saying he could keep pushing forward with the police reform plan his city had agreed to.

“We will comply with every sentence of every paragraph of the 169-page consent decree that we signed this year,” he said at a news conference.

“We will make sure that we are moving forward with every sentence of every paragraph of both the settlement around the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, as well as the consent decree.”

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday threw his support behind two bills that would streamline housing development in urban areas, saying it was “time to get serious” about cutting red tape to address the housing crisis.

Newsom said his revised state budget proposal, which he announced at a news conference Wednesday, also will include provisions that clear the way for more new housing by reforming the state’s landmark California Environmental Quality Act and clearing other impediments.

The governor praised Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) and state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) for sponsoring bills designed to ease the permitting process for infill projects, or building in urban areas that already have development.

Newsom’s housing proposal looks to force permit deadlines on the Coastal Commission, allow housing development projects over $100 million to use CEQA streamlining usually available to smaller projects, and create a fund, paid for by developers, to finance affordable housing near public transit.

CEQA has long been used by opponents to impede or delay construction, often locking developers into years-long court battles. The law is so vague that it allows “essentially anyone who can hire a lawyer” to challenge developments, Wiener said in a statement.

“It’s time to accelerate urban infill. It’s time to exempt them from CEQA, it’s time to focus on judicial streamlining. It’s time to get serious about this issue. Period, full stop,” Newsom said during the morning budget news conference. “… This is the biggest opportunity to do something big and bold, and the only impediment is us. So we own this, and we have to own the response.”

Assembly Bill 609, proposed by Wicks, who serves as the Assembly Appropriations Committee chair, would create a sweeping exemption for housing projects that meet local building standards, especially in areas that have already been approved for additional development and reviewed for potential environmental impacts.

“It’s time to refine CEQA for the modern age, and I’m proud to work with the Governor to make these long-overdue changes a reality,” Wicks said in a statement.

Senate Bill 607, authored by Wiener, who serves as chair of the Senate Housing Committee, focuses the environmental review process and clarifies CEQA exemptions for urban infill housing projects.

“By clearing away outdated procedural hurdles, we can address California’s outrageous cost of living, grow California’s economy, and help the government solve the most pressing problems facing our state. We look forward to working with Governor Newsom and our legislative colleagues to advance these two important bills and to secure an affordable and abundant future for California,” Wiener said in a statement.

Both bills are pending before the appropriations committees in the Assembly and Senate, respectively.

May 3 (UPI) — Reform Party leader and Member of Parliament Nigel Farage says Thursday’s elections herald the end of a two-party system in the United Kingdom.

The Reform Party is viewed as a “right-wing” organization and now is the “opposition party to this Labour government,” Farage said Friday, Fox News reported.

Farage said 100 years of two-party rule over U.K. politics is “now dead” after Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party lost what many considered to be a safe seat.

The Reform Party added a fifth member of Parliament following the election, plus control of 10 local councils and two mayoral seats, the BBC reported.

The Runcorn & Helsby district was considered a safe seat for the Labour Party, but Reform Party candidate Sarah Pochin won the election to become the Reform Party’s fifth member of Parliament.

Starmer explained the loss as evidence that voters aren’t yet seeing the benefits of his Labour Party-led government.

Starmer’s Labour Party won the general election in July after securing 412 seats and handing the Conservative Party its first election loss in 14 years, the BBC reported in July.

The Conservative and Labour parties still hold commanding numbers in the U.K. Parliament.

The Labour Party holds 403 seats in Parliament to the Conservative Party’s 121. Liberal Democrats control 72 seats and Independents 14.

The Reform Party is one of 11 other political entities that hold the remaining 40 seats in Parliament.

While the numbers show the Labour Party with a large majority in Parliament and well ahead of the Conservative Party, the two long-established political parties lost seats in Thursday’s election.

The election results mean “now is the time to crank up the pace on giving people the country they are crying out for,” Starmer said in an opinion piece published Friday in The Times.

Leader Nigel Farage, a Trump ally, hopes to position anti-immigration party as significant political force in UK.

The radical-right Reform UK party has made gains in local and by-elections, seeking to establish itself as a significant political force.

The anti-immigration party won a fifth parliamentary seat, gained its first mayoralty, and took a number of seats on local councils, results on Friday showed. Reform hopes to ride growing support to unbalance the United Kingdom’s political system, which is traditionally dominated by the governing Labour Party and opposition Conservatives.

“It’s been a huge night for Reform,” said Reform leader Nigel Farage after the party was declared winner of the seat of Runcorn and Helsby.

The victory in northwest England, previously a Labour stronghold, came by just six votes.

Reform also prevailed in a mayoral race in Greater Lincolnshire and picked up dozens of council seats from Labour and the Conservatives in the first polls since general elections last year.

The results appear to underline the fracturing of the UK’s political landscape.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer led Labour to one of the largest parliamentary majorities in British history in last year’s election but has gone on to suffer the fastest decline in popularity of any newly elected government.

Brexit champion Farage, a populist who has allied himself in the past with United States President Donald Trump, noted that the win in Runcorn and Helsby, which Labour won in last year’s national election with a majority of almost 15,000 votes, showed that the ruling party’s vote had “collapsed”.

Labour has lost support as the government has raised taxes, cut benefits for the elderly and proposed sweeping welfare reforms, alienating the left-wing party’s traditional voter base and driving some into the arms of Reform.

‘Soft-touch Britain’

In Greater Lincolnshire, newly elected mayor Andrea Jenkyns, a former Conservative minister who defected to Reform after losing her seat last year, became the party’s most powerful elected politician yet, with responsibility for an area covering about a million people.

In her victory speech, Jenkyns pledged to bring an end to “soft-touch Britain” and said asylum seekers should be held in tents, not in hotels as they often are in the country.

“The rebuilding begins here … we’re going to have a Britain where we put British people first,” she said.

Reform UK is the latest in a series of parties led by Farage, a veteran hard-right politician who was crucial in taking the UK out of the European Union through a 2016 referendum. A divisive figure, he has said many migrants come to the UK from cultures “alien to ours”.

Reform, which has pledged to “stop the boats” of irregular migrants crossing the English Channel, is hoping that winning mayoralties and gaining councillors would help it build its grassroots activism before the next general election – likely in 2029.

The party hopes to scoop up hundreds of municipal seats in the elections that are deciding 1,641 seats on 23 local councils and six mayoralties, as well as the parliamentary seat.

Ballots in most of those contests are being counted on Friday and results should be announced in the afternoon.