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    Rare Early June Rainfall Could Reach Phoenix

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    Measurable rainfall in the first week of June has only been recorded 21 times since 1896, according to weather records. The rain would be welcome after a winter of below-normal precipitation.A storm spinning off the coast of Baja California in Mexico on Saturday was poised to dive into the Southwest United States and drag with it remnants of post-tropical storm Alvin.This system, which is uncommonly wet for this time of year, will bring a rare chance for thunderstorms and brief heavy downpours to the region, especially to southeast California, southwest New Mexico and southern Arizona, including Phoenix, Sunday into Monday.The rain would be much welcome in an area with widespread drought conditions after a winter of below-normal precipitation.“For this time of year this is quite unusual,” said Mark O’Malley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Phoenix.The Weather Service’s official gauge for the Phoenix area is at Sky Harbor International Airport. It has recorded measurable rainfall in the first week of June on 21 occasions, with records going back to 1896.“Normal rainfall is zero,” Mr. O’Malley said of the first week in June.There’s a 75 percent chance the airport will record rain on Sunday afternoon or evening, with rainfall chances continuing into Monday.A thunderstorm or two could move over the airport and bring half an inch of rain, or the downpour could hit 10 miles west of the airport, and there would hardly be any rain.This unusual weather setup will bring a chance for rain and thunderstorms to most of the Southwest on Sunday into Monday, including southeastern California, southern Nevada, all of Arizona, western New Mexico, the Wasatch Mountains in Utah and portions of the Colorado Rocky Mountains.“This is a fairly large swath of moisture, so I’d actually say, there’s not just a chance of rain, but rain is likely,” said Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist with the Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.The chances are highest across southern Arizona, southwest New Mexico and southeast California, and the Weather Prediction Center has put this area under a marginal risk — level 1 out of 4 — for excessive rainfall that could lead to flash flooding on Sunday. A slice of Southern Arizona is at a higher slight risk, level 2 out of 4.Mr. O’Malley said that minor flooding on roadways in the greater Phoenix area is possible.Storms occasionally pass over the Southwest in late spring but they’re usually dry. Rain is more common during the monsoon season that starts June 15 and lasts into September.“These storms come through and you’d never know, other than a little wind,” Mr. O’Malley said. “With this storm, you have that moisture that’s being pulled in from Alvin — that’s the big difference.”Mr. Mullinax said there’s also a strong southerly wind component that’s escorting the tropical moisture northward into the Southwest.Alvin formed over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of west Mexico on Thursday, sending pounding surf to west-central Mexico and southern Baja California. The system has since dissipated and was a post-tropical cyclone over the North Pacific Ocean on Saturday. More

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      Trump Administration Pulls Back From Local Police Oversight Across U.S.

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      The Justice Department said that it would abandon efforts to overhaul local policing in Minneapolis and other cities with histories of civil rights violations.The Trump administration moved on Wednesday to scrap proposed agreements for federal oversight of police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, Ky., as part of a broader abandonment of efforts by previous administrations to overhaul local law enforcement across the United States.Justice Department officials said they planned to drop cases filed after incidents of police violence against Black people in Minneapolis and Louisville, and to close investigations into departments in Memphis; Phoenix; Oklahoma City; Trenton, N.J.; and Mount Vernon, N.Y., as well as a case against the Louisiana State Police.In those cities and states, Justice Department officials said, they were retracting Biden-era findings that police departments had violated the constitutional rights of residents and were declaring those findings to be misguided.The announcement came four days before the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who died at the hands of the Minneapolis police. That act of violence, caught on video, inspired national outrage and worldwide protests against police violence targeting Black Americans.It also resulted in a withering federal report that found that the Minneapolis Police Department had routinely discriminated against Black and Native American people and had used deadly force without justification. After nearly two years of negotiations, the Justice Department and the city submitted an agreement to the court in January calling for federal oversight of the Police Department’s efforts to address the issues.That arrangement, known as a consent decree, was similar to court-approved agreements between the federal government and at least 13 other cities whose police forces have been accused of widespread civil rights abuses, including Los Angeles, Newark and Ferguson, Mo.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      EMTs Get a New Way to Treat Heat Victims: Body-Sized Ice Cocoons

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      In overheated Phoenix, firefighters are carrying giant plastic, ice-filled bags to quickly cool people, a technique pioneered in the military and at sporting events.As America comes to grips with hotter summer temperatures that already are seizing the nation’s Southwest, emergency medical responders in some areas are carrying new gear to treat heat victims: giant plastic bags to immerse people in ice water.The tactic involves placing patients suffering from heat-related illnesses in zippered bags that engulf the body, then packing them with ice cubes and water, until they cool to safe levels.It’s a technique that has been used for years to cool overheated soldiers or athletes facing heat stroke. Now the bags are being routinely deployed in some emergency rooms and on ambulance calls.In Phoenix, where record-breaking temperatures last year killed 645 people, fire trucks and ambulances have been equipped with specially designed “immersion bags,” said Phoenix Fire Captain Todd Keller. Emergency responders fill the bags with water and ice at fire stations before heading out on heat-related calls, he said.“Sometimes, when they get to the hospital, the ice is completely melted, the patient is so hot,” Mr. Keller said.Patients typically stay inside 15 to 20 minutes or so, until their body temperature is reduced to about 101 degrees Fahrenheit. A pilot program using the therapy in Phoenix last summer proved successful enough that fire officials decided to deploy it across the entire department.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Rails Against Border Crisis in First Campaign Event as a Felon

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      In his first campaign event since he became the first American president to be convicted on felony charges, Donald J. Trump on Thursday tried to turn the focus on President Biden by likening his border policy to a criminal enterprise.Broadly denouncing the migrants crossing the border illegally of being violent criminals and terrorists, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. Biden’s recent executive order meant to curb crossings, saying it would be ineffective after Mr. Biden had taken little action for months.“With his actions on the border, Joe Biden is the ringleader of one the most vile criminal conspiracies of all time,” Mr. Trump said at a town hall in Phoenix hosted by Turning Point Action, a conservative group.Mr. Trump, whom prosecutors in Manhattan accused of a criminal conspiracy, and who is also facing felony conspiracy counts in a federal election-interference case, often defends himself from criticisms by dismissing the claims against him, then pointing fingers at his opponents and accusing them of worse transgressions.His speech in Phoenix previewed how Mr. Trump will most likely downplay the guilty verdict in his Manhattan trial by keeping immigration at the center of his efforts to persuade voters in battleground states to restore him to the White House in November, while defeating the man who thwarted his re-election in 2020.That strategy may prove particularly potent in Arizona, a border state that Mr. Trump had not visited since 2022. Republican lawmakers voted this week to put a measure on the ballot in November that would make unlawfully crossing the border from Mexico a state crime, part of an effort to harness anti-immigration sentiment at the polls.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Giuliani and Other Trump Allies to Be Arraigned in Arizona Election Case

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      A total of 50 people, including former President Donald J. Trump, are now facing charges in four states related to efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power after he lost in 2020.Rudolph W. Giuliani and 10 other allies of Donald J. Trump are scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday in an Arizona criminal case that charges them with trying to keep Mr. Trump in power after he lost the 2020 presidential election.A total of 50 people — including Mr. Trump, who has locked up the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential race — now face charges related to election interference in four states. A number of Trump allies have already pleaded guilty or reached cooperation agreements in cases in Georgia and Michigan.Mr. Giuliani, who was served a notice of his indictment on Friday, was expected to appear at his arraignment virtually, while most of the other defendants were due to appear in person Tuesday at a courthouse in Phoenix. The other defendants include Christina Bobb, a Trump campaign adviser in 2020 who is now the election integrity counsel for the Republican National Committee, and Kelli Ward, a former head of the Arizona Republican Party.All of the defendants in the Arizona case are charged with conspiracy, fraud and forgery. Others will be arraigned next month, including Boris Epshteyn, who is one of Mr. Trump’s main lawyers, and Mark Meadows, a former White House chief of staff.The first to be arraigned in the case was John Eastman, a lawyer who helped hatch a plan to deploy fake electors for Mr. Trump in swing states that he lost; Mr. Eastman was arraigned in Phoenix last week and pleaded not guilty.Mr. Trump has not been charged in the Arizona case. He is listed as “Unindicted Co-conspirator 1” in the indictment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why It’s So Expensive to Live in Phoenix

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      In the five years since they began their life together in the desert sprawl of greater Phoenix, Devon Lawrence and Eren Mendoza have bounced from one itinerant home to another.They have camped alongside a freeway off-ramp, using a gas station sink as their bath and a plastic tarp as their refuge from the relentless sun. They have slept on an air mattress in a friend’s living room. For the last two years, they have crammed into rooms at motels, paying as much as $650 a week.Ms. Mendoza and Mr. Lawrence are both 32, and both have jobs. She works at a supermarket deli counter. He stocks shelves at a convenience store. Together, they earn about $3,500 a month. Yet they have been stymied in their reach for a modest dream: They cannot find an affordable home in a safe neighborhood in Phoenix, where rents have roughly doubled over the last decade.“These prices are just wild,” Ms. Mendoza said. “It’s pretty much all anybody talks about. The fact that a dual income can’t support us is insanity.”The impossible arithmetic of housing is a potent source of economic anxiety in Phoenix, and in many major American cities — a reality that could influence control of the White House.Devon Lawrence and Eren Mendoza earn about $3,500 a month together, but they have been unable to find affordable housing in Phoenix.Cassidy Araiza for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mother of Dead Baby Found at Phoenix Airport in 2005 Is Arrested

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      The authorities said that genetic evidence was used to find Annie Anderson of Washington State. She will be charged with first-degree murder in the death of her child, who came to be known as Baby Skylar.The dead baby girl was found in a trash bin in a women’s bathroom at main airport in Phoenix on Oct. 10, 2005. Wrapped in newspapers and a towel, the newborn had been stuffed into a plastic bag from a Marriott Hotel, the police said.Detectives immediately began investigating the death of the child, who came to be known as Baby Skylar. A medical examiner determined two days after the baby was found that she had been suffocated and was the victim of a homicide. But leads in the case eventually dried up, and the investigation remained dormant for years.On Tuesday, more than 18 years after the gruesome discovery at Terminal 4 of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, the authorities announced at a news conference that they had identified and arrested the baby’s mother, Annie Anderson, 51, of Washington State, and that she would be charged with first-degree murder in the child’s death.Ms. Anderson was in custody in Washington on Tuesday, and was awaiting extradition to Maricopa County, Ariz., Lt. James Hester of the Phoenix Police Department said at the news conference.Among the few and early leads that the police had was the plastic bag in which the baby’s body had been found. That prompted detectives to investigate Marriott hotels in the Phoenix area, Lieutenant Hester said. But those leads and others proved unsuccessful.Then, in 2019, the Phoenix police partnered with the F.B.I. to use genetic genealogy, an emerging tool in solving cold cases, to look into the Baby Skylar mystery, Lieutenant Hester said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Man Pleads Guilty to Sending Bomb Threat to Arizona Election Official

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      The man made the threat online and searched for the official’s address and name with the words “how to kill,” according to prosecutors.A Massachusetts man who searched online for an Arizona election official’s address and name along with the words “how to kill” pleaded guilty on Friday to making a bomb threat to the official, the U.S. Justice Department said.The man, James W. Clark, 38, of Falmouth, Mass., sent the threat on Feb. 14, 2021, by using a contact form on the website for the Arizona Secretary of State’s election division, prosecutors said.The message was addressed to the official, who is not named in public court documents, and said the official needed “to resign by Tuesday February 16th by 9 am or the explosive device impacted in her personal space will be detonated.”Prosecutors said Mr. Clark also searched a few days later for information about the Boston Marathon bombings, which killed three people in 2013.When Mr. Clark made the threat, Arizona’s secretary of state was Katie Hobbs, who is now the governor.After Mr. Clark was arrested in July 2022, Ms. Hobbs’s office told reporters that she was the target of the bomb threat and that it was one of thousands of threats she received after the 2020 presidential election.Ms. Hobbs’s office could not immediately be reached for comment on Sunday. Mr. Clark’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Threats against election workers and officials increased after former President Donald J. Trump spread the lie that fraud had cost him the 2020 presidential election.In Arizona, which Joseph R. Biden Jr. won by a little over 10,000 votes, politicians and other conspiracy theorists aligned with Mr. Trump claimed without evidence that the election was marred fraud.A review of the election by Mark Brnovich, a Republican who served as Arizona’s attorney general until January, which was released by his Democratic successor in February, discredited the numerous claims of problems.Scholars who study political violence say threats of political violence, and actual attacks, have become more common because of a heightened use of dehumanizing and apocalyptic language, particularly by right-wing politicians and media.The U.S. attorney general, Merrick B. Garland, said in a statement about Mr. Clark’s guilty plea that the Justice Department was investigating and prosecuting illegal acts against election officials and workers.“Americans who serve the public by administering our voting systems should not have to fear for their lives simply for doing their jobs,” Mr. Garland said.Mr. Clark pleaded guilty to one count of making a threatening interstate communication and faces a maximum of five years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 26.The F.B.I. field office in Phoenix is investigating Mr. Clark’s case with help from the F.B.I. field office in Boston.The investigation is part of the Election Threats Task Force, a group started by the Justice Department in June 2021 to address threats against election workers.One in six local election officials has personally experienced threats, according to a survey by the Brennan Center for Justice conducted online in January and February of 2022, and nearly a third of the officials said they knew an election worker who had left the job at least in part because of safety concerns, threats or intimidation. More