violence

On a Sunday evening in March this year, Akiba Ekpeyong, a community leader in Akpap-Okoyong, received a text message that made him drop everything he was doing in the community, a cluster of farming villages in Odukpani Local Government Area of Cross River State, South-South Nigeria.

The message came from another chief nearby, warning of a brewing argument between two youths at a football match in Mbabam. The tone was urgent and frighteningly reminiscent of how many communal crises begin.

“I went there immediately,” Akiba recalled. “Before it turns to something else, we have to talk to the boys.”

That message was part of a growing network of peace responders linked through an early warning system created by the Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND). In this system, the first step to preventing violence could be as simple as sending an SMS. In many communities across the region, this system has been deployed by the non-profit to end conflicts before they escalate. 

The many faces of conflict 

Cross River, fondly known as “the people’s paradise”, may be best known for its colourful annual Calabar Carnival and its vast forest reserves. However, unending land disputes, cult clashes, political rivalries, and resource competition that often turn deadly, are also a constant in the state, said Professor Rapheal Offiong, a geographer and peace scholar at the University of Calabar.

Between 2020 and 2023, communal and boundary disputes claimed more than 400 lives in the state, including that of a 10-year-old child, while over 300 houses were destroyed. A report also indicated that at least 15 of the state’s 18 local government areas have experienced one form of conflict or another during the period.

According to Professor Raphael, these crises stem from far deeper issues: Poverty, the quest for land, stress for survival, and lack of understanding, all worsened by a disconnect between the political class, traditional rulers, and the youth. “That gap in leadership and trust is what I see as the major disturbance,” he said. 

The peace scholar also blamed greed and speculative land buying in poor communities. “It’s the landmongers,” he said, “those deep pockets who want to expand their cocoa or oil palm farms. They bring money, and because of poverty, people sell. Then everyone becomes territorial, and in trying to protect their territory, they must fight.”

Cocoa and oil palm are central to Cross River’s economy, providing livelihoods for thousands of smallholder farmers and driving both local and export revenue. The state is Nigeria’s second-largest cocoa producer, exporting about 80,000 metric tons annually. With so much economic value tied to these crops, land has become a fiercely contested resource — and when speculators or large investors seek expansion, tensions often erupt among communities struggling for ownership and survival.

Climate change, Professor Raphael added, is compounding the problem. As farmlands yield less, people move in search of better land to farm and to graze, opening new fronts for conflict. “The land is shrinking as population grows, and poverty and lack of basic social structures make it worse.”

He believes the persistent conflict is also tied to weak governance and the failure of social systems to provide stability. “When the system works, people have hope,” he said. “Everybody struggles to survive. The quest to provide for yourself and your family is not easy, and that desperation drives conflict.”

The Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR) similarly notes that environmental and land-use issues are increasingly among the most common triggers of rural conflicts in southern Nigeria, particularly boundary disputes.

From just a text message 

The early warning system was developed by PIND in 2015 to monitor the country’s signs of violence during the general election, before it was later deployed to communal conflicts. 

Through the platform, anyone can report incidents by sending a text message to 080 9936 2222 or 0912 233 4455, including details such as the location, date, and a brief description of the event. Once submitted, the report appears instantly on a web-based dashboard at PIND’s headquarters, where analysts verify and map signals across the Niger Delta. These reports help identify emerging hotspots, track patterns of unrest, and guide long-term peace interventions. 

These reports are shared with Partners for Peace (P4P), a PIND-run conflict management and peacebuilding network of grassroots volunteers spread across all nine Niger Delta states. Each report helps P4P chapters plan their local peace activities, which include mediation, dialogues, and sensitisation. 

“We now prepare our interventions based on the prevailing types of conflict in a given year,” Ukorebi Esien, P4P’s Cross River State Coordinator, said. “For instance, if in 2024 most of the signals we received from Cross River State indicated cult clashes or communal disputes, then in the following year, 2025, our interventions may be focused on addressing those issues.”

Several of these text messages have been sent since it was launched a decade ago.

But in Cross River, P4P went a step further.

They saw how quickly a quarrel could escalate and began training local peace actors, such as chiefs, youth leaders, and women’s groups, on how and why they should send that text message, but also on how to respond. 

That network helped Akiba and his colleagues to build an internal communication mechanism that allows them to alert one another instantly and intervene early.

“It has helped us to identify the signs of early tension and respond before any violent escalation in our communities,” said Akiba. He added that his community is grateful for it. “We in Akpap-Okoyong have a boundary issue with Okonotte, and we also house some persons from Ikot Offiong, which has made us look like a hostile community to the people of Oku Iboku.” The longstanding conflict between Oku Iboku in Akwa Ibom State and Ikot Offiong in Cross River State has been fueled by competing claims over land and fishing rights, leading to cycles of violence for over a century.

Akiba said Akpap-Okoyong now has about 40 trained responders who monitor early warning indicators like hate speech, sudden gatherings, or disputes across the over 60 villages, and report them through SMS while also engaging directly with village elders.

It was that system that alerted him that Sunday evening.

In Ikom, on the border with Cameroon,  similar outcomes are taking shape. Clement Nnagbo, the Traditional Head of Okosora Clan, said the training has transformed how people now seek justice. “More than twenty cases have been transferred from various courts, and within less than a month, each matter is resolved,” he said, noting that their alternative dispute resolution process is faster and far less expensive than going through the formal courts.

In Ugep, Yakurr Local Government Area, Usani Arikpo, a religious leader, has seen how easily tensions can spiral, and how sometimes, conflict starts from one thing and leads to another.  He recalled a recent incident that began as a cult clash but nearly turned into a communal crisis. “We saw the signs early,” he said. “Some cult boys from Ugep had gone to Idomi to support their faction there, but along the line, they were killed. The Ugep people felt it was deliberate, and things almost got out of hand. We had to step in, meet with the chiefs, women, and other stakeholders, and from that time, there has not been anything like that again.”

Tradition as strategy 

Sometimes peace is restored by dialogue and sealed with cultural rituals that carry moral weight.

In 2023, a long-brewing conflict between Ofatura and Ovonum in Obubra LGA reignited after years of distrust. “We went to assess the level of the conflict,” recalled Ukorebi, the P4P Coordinator in Cross River. “We met youth leaders, traditional rulers, and women groups, and after several discussions, both sides agreed to a peace pact.”

Both community heads signed an accord and embraced publicly, the first time in years they had sat together. “When you hold meetings like that, you must leave a memory that resonates,” Ukorebi said. “We wanted them to understand the depth of what they were involved in and the cost of violence.”

It was the same method that Akiba and his fellow chiefs deployed in Akpap-Okoyong. “We took both sides to the Ekpe shrine. There, they swore an oath never to fight again,” Akiba said. 

Not without challenges

Yet, sustaining peace is not without limitations. Volunteers often fund their own logistics, and  “transportation is expensive”, said Usani, stating that more could be achieved if they had the means to quickly mobilise and move into areas with conflict.

PIND did not respond to HumAngle’s messages regarding some of these challenges.

Government response has also been slow. “We have found out that the government is rather reactive and not proactive,” Ukorebi said, adding that some communities they had helped bring peace to are back to fighting. “I mentioned the Ofatura-Ovonum crisis: since 2024 till date, the state government has not seen any reason to revisit that document, despite all the efforts by P4P.”

“In that document, there are responsibilities: there is a part to play by the government, there is a part to be played by the communities, there is a part to be played by partners for peace to ensure that that peace we had worked for will remain permanently,” he told HumAngle. “But that has not been the case.”

Still, there are signs of resilience: Across the Niger Delta, P4P’s volunteer peace agents, now over 11,200 strong,  have documented more than 1,148 emerging conflicts that were nipped before turning violent.

Back in Akpap-Okoyong, Chief Akiba watches a group of children play in an open field in front of his compound, hopeful that they will grow up in a community where disputes are settled on a table of negotiation rather than with machetes.

This story was produced under the HumAngle Foundation’s Advancing Peace and Security through Journalism project, supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Deadly clashes have broken out in Cameroon after opposition candidate Issa Tchiroma declared victory in an election yet to publish results. Tchiroma urged his supporters onto the streets to demand President Paul Biya, the world’s oldest serving ruler, step aside after over 43 years in power.

In recent weeks, American politics have stopped resembling a democracy and started looking more like a Manson family group chat, with a flag emoji right next to the “pile of poo” emoji in our bio.

First it was the Young Republicans (you know, the nerds who used to wear ill-fitting sports jackets and drone on about budgets) who were caught on Telegram saying things such as “I love Hitler,” calling Black people “watermelon people,” and joking about gas chambers and rape. Hilarious, right?

Then came Paul Ingrassia, Trump’s now-aborted nominee to head the Office of Special Counsel, who texted that he has “a Nazi streak” and that Martin Luther King Jr. Day belongs in “the seventh circle of hell.”

But the moral rot isn’t exclusive to Republicans. Not to be outdone, Democrat Jay Jones (who is currently running for attorney general in Virginia) was caught with texts from 2022 saying another Virginia lawmaker should get “two bullets to the head,” and that he wished the man’s children would “die in their mother’s arms.”

Charming.

Meanwhile, in Maine’s race for the U.S. Senate, old posts on Reddit reveal that Democrat Graham Platner — oysterman, veteran and self-described communist — said that if people “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history.”

Did I mention that he called police officers “bastards,” broadly criticized rural white folks and had a tattoo on his chest that resembled Nazi imagery?

What we are witnessing is a trend: Bipartisan moral collapse. Finally, something the two parties can agree on!

Keep in mind, these are not randos typing away in their parents’ basements. These are ambitious young politicos. Candidates. Operatives. The ones who are supposed to know better.

So what’s going on? I have a few theories.

One: Nothing has really changed. Political insiders have always done and said stupid, racist and cruel things — the difference is that privacy doesn’t exist anymore. Every joke is public, and every opinion is archived.

It might be hard for older generations to understand, but this theory says these people are merely guilty of using the kind of dark-web humor that’s supposed to stay on, well, the dark web. What happened to them is the equivalent of thinking you’re with friends at a karaoke bar, when you’re actually on C-SPAN.

For those of us trying to discern the difference, the problem is that the line between joking and confession has gotten so blurry that we can’t tell who’s trolling and who’s armed.

Two: Blame Trump. He destroyed norms and mainstreamed vulgarity and violent rhetoric. And since he’s been the dominant political force for a decade, it’s only logical that his style would trickle down and corrupt a whole generation of politically engaged Americans (Republicans who want to be like him and Democrats who want to fight fire with fire).

Three (and this is the scary one): Maybe the culture really has changed, and these violent and racist comments are revelatory of changing hearts and worldviews. Maybe younger generations have radicalized, and violence is increasingly viewed as a necessary tool for political change. Maybe their words are sincere.

Indeed, several recent surveys have demonstrated that members of Gen Z are more open to the use of political violence than previous generations.

According to a survey conducted by the group FIRE, only 1 in 3 college students now say it is unacceptable to use violence to stop a speaker. And according to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, “53 percent of those aged 18-34 – approve of one or more forms of hostile activism to bring about change.” This includes “threatening or committing violence, and damaging public or private property.”

Of course, it’s possible (and probably likely) that some combination of these theories has conspired to create this trend. And it comes on the heels of other trends, too, including the loss of trust in institutions that began somewhere around the Nixon administration and never reversed.

Put it all together, and we’ve arrived at a point where we don’t believe in democracy, we don’t believe in leaders, and we barely believe in each other. And once you lose trust, all that’s left is anger, memes and a primal will to power.

Worse, we’ve become numb. Every new scandal shocks us for approximately 15 minutes. Then we scroll to another cat video and get used to it.

Remember the Charlie Kirk assassination? You know, the gruesome murder that freaked us all out and led to a national discussion about political violence and violent rhetoric? Yeah, that was just last month. Feels like it was back in the Eisenhower administration.

We’re basically frogs in a pot of boiling political sewage. And the scariest part? We’re starting to call it room temperature.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

Donald Trump’s effort to overcome his deep unpopularity among female voters was dealt a setback Friday as decades-old domestic violence allegations surfaced against Stephen K. Bannon, the controversial new chief executive of his campaign.

In January 1996, according to a police report, Bannon grabbed his wife’s wrist and neck, then smashed a phone when she tried to call 911 from their Santa Monica home. Police photographed “red marks on her left wrist and the right side of her neck,” the report said.

Years earlier, three or four other arguments also “became physical,” Bannon’s wife, Mary Louise Piccard, told police. The couple divorced soon after the 1996 altercation.

Bannon was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery and witness intimidation, and the Los Angeles Municipal Court issued a domestic violence protective order against him, according to a statement Santa Monica city officials issued Friday. Bannon pleaded not guilty, records show.

The case was dismissed when Piccard did not show up for trial in August 1996, according to the statement. Politico and the New York Post first reported on the case Thursday.

Details of the case emerged just hours after Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, faulted him for hiring Bannon last week in the latest shake-up of his campaign’s high command.

Clinton portrayed Bannon as a right-wing extremist who promoted racist, “anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women” ideas as chairman of the Breitbart News Network website.

Bannon, 62, took a leave from Breitbart last week to serve as CEO of the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign. The Trump campaign did not respond to inquiries about the police report.

Alexandra Preate, Bannon’s spokeswoman at Breitbart, declined to comment on the specific allegations, apart from noting that the charges were dismissed.

“He has a great relationship with his ex-wife,” she said.

The abuse allegations against Bannon surfaced as Clinton and her allies have been highlighting Trump’s history of making derogatory remarks about women. Clinton led Trump among female voters 58-35% in a Washington Post/ABC News poll at the beginning of August, and 60% of those polled overall said they saw Trump as biased against both women and minorities,

In March, police filed a battery charge against a previous Trump campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, after he yanked and bruised the arm of Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields at a Trump event in Florida. Prosecutors declined to prosecute the case.

If Trump had vetted Bannon before hiring him, his ex-wife’s accusations should have been disqualifying, said Katie Packer, who was deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and led an effort to block Trump from getting the GOP nomination.

“Given the questions that women already have about how Trump views women and how he has treated women historically, elevating someone like this to such a high position only reinforces the idea that Trump doesn’t respect and value women,” Packer said.

Charlie Black, a Republican strategist who has informally advised the Trump campaign, said the allegations against Bannon fell into a “gray area” because the charges were dropped. But “of course it’s an issue,” he added, “because he’s in a position of CEO of the campaign.”

Piccard, who was Bannon’s second wife, did not respond to a phone message seeking comment.

She and Bannon, a former investment banker, were married in April 1995, three days before their twin daughters were born. Shortly before 9 a.m. on New Year’s Day 1996, police received a 911 call from their home in Santa Monica, but the line went dead. The police report gave this account:

An officer went to the front door and was greeted by Piccard, who appeared “very upset.” She burst into tears and took several minutes to calm down.

Bannon had slept on the living-room couch the night before, and he “got upset” in the morning when Piccard made noise while feeding the twin babies. When Bannon started to leave, she asked for a credit card for groceries, but he refused and went to his car, Piccard told police.

She followed him outside, told him she wanted a divorce and said he should move out. He laughed at her and told him he would never leave, according to Piccard. She said she spat at him when he was sitting in the driver’s seat of his car.

“He pulled her down, as if he was trying to pull [her] into the car, over the door,” the report said. Bannon grabbed her neck, pulling her toward the car again, and she struck him in the face and ran back into the house. She told Bannon she was dialing 911, and he “jumped over her and the twins to grab the phone.”

“Once he got the phone, he threw it across the room,” the report said. “After this, Mr. Bannon left the house.”

Piccard, whose name was blacked out in the police report, “found the phone in several pieces and could not use it.”

“She complained of soreness to her neck,” the officer wrote in the police report. “I saw red marks on her left wrist and the right side of her neck.”

Court papers in the divorce and child custody proceedings show Bannon was living primarily in Tucson at the time, to work on Biosphere 2, a desert refuge enclosed in a glass dome for research.

Piccard won custody of the twins in the divorce. During Bannon’s visit with the babies about nine months after the incident, in September 1996, he spanked one of them, Piccard wrote in child custody court papers. The twins were 17 months old at the time.

“I restrained him and told him that it was not acceptable to hit our daughter (he believes in corporal punishment),” Piccard wrote. Bannon “screamed at me” and “stormed out of the house.”

In March 1997, Piccard wrote that she only wanted to restrict Bannon’s visits with the children to neutral sites because he “has been verbally abusive to me in front of the girls and I do not feel safe meeting him” elsewhere.

[email protected]

Twitter: @finneganLAT

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UPDATES:

5:55 p.m.: This article was updated with a statement from Santa Monica officials detailing the charges against Bannon.

This article was originally published at 4 p.m.

Following the September assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, United States President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have shaped their political agenda by blaming the left for political violence.

“Political violence, it’s just a statistical fact that it’s a bigger problem on the left,” Vance said while guest-hosting The Charlie Kirk Show podcast on October 15 in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing. About a minute later, he added, “Right now that violent impulse is a bigger problem on the left than the right.”

A Vance spokesperson did not answer our questions. When referring to left-wing violence, a White House spokesperson recently pointed to a September 28 Axios article about a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a nonprofit policy research organisation.

Democrats, calling your political opponents Nazis has consequences.

Study: Left-wing terrorism climbs to 30-year highhttps://t.co/30NvIj9nzC

— Abigail Jackson (@ATJackson47) September 28, 2025

The study found that “2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing terrorist attacks outnumber those from the violent far right”. The study also showed that for the 30 years before 2025, right-wing attacks had outpaced left-wing violence.

“The rise in left-wing attacks merits increased attention, but the fall in right-wing attacks is probably temporary, and it too requires a government response,” the authors wrote in the study.

Vance’s statement oversimplified political violence and drew from part of one study of a six-month period. The federal government has no single, official definition of “political violence”, and ascribing ideologies such as the left wing and the right wing is sometimes complicated. There is no agreed upon number of left- or right-wing politically violent attacks.

Research before 2025 largely points to higher levels of right-wing violence over longer periods of time.

Trump has used the administration’s statements about rising left-wing violence to label antifa as a domestic “terrorist threat”, and administration officials also said they will investigate what they call left-wing groups that fund violence.

Although political violence is a small subset of violent crime in the US, it “has a disproportionate impact because even rare incidents can amplify fear, influence policy and deepen societal polarisation”, sociology professors at the University of Dayton, Arthur Jipson and Paul J Becker, wrote in September after Kirk’s assassination.

In an email interview with PolitiFact, Becker said the report in question “indicates there MAY be a shift occurring from the Right being more violent but 5 vs 1 incidents in 6 months isn’t enough to completely erase years of data and reports from multiple sources showing the opposite or to dictate new policies”.

Study examined three decades of political violence

The CSIS, a national security and defence think tank, published a September report examining 750 “terrorist” attacks and plots in the US between 1994 and July 4, 2025.

The report defined “terrorism” as the use or threat of violence “with the intent to achieve political goals by creating a broad psychological impact”.

The authors wrote that it is difficult to pinpoint some perpetrators’ ideologies, which in some cases are more of what former FBI Director Christopher Wray called a “salad bar of ideologies”. For example, Thomas Crooks, who allegedly attempted to assassinate Trump in 2024, searched the internet more than 60 times for Trump and then-President Joe Biden in the month before the attack.

The full CSIS report gave a more complete picture of politically motivated violence:

• Left-wing violence has risen from low levels since 2016. “It has risen from very low levels and remains much lower than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing and jihadist attackers.”
• Right-wing attacks sharply declined in 2025, perhaps because right-wing extremist grievances such as opposition to abortion, hostility to immigration and suspicion of government agencies are “embraced by President Trump and his administration”. The report quotes Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader pardoned by Trump, who said, “Honestly, what do we have to complain about these days?”
• Left-wing attacks have been less deadly than right-wing attacks. In the past decade, left-wing attacks have killed 13 people, compared with 112 by right-wing attackers. The report cited several reasons, including that left-wing attackers often choose targets that are protected, such as government or law enforcement facilities, and target specific individuals.
• The number of incidents by the left is small. A graphic in the report showing the rise in left-wing attacks in 2025 as of July 4 is visually striking. It is based on a small number of incidents: four attacks and one disrupted plot.

Studies have not uniformly agreed on some attackers’ ideological classifications. The libertarian Cato Institute categorised the person charged in the shooting deaths of two Israeli embassy staffers in May 2025 as “left-wing”, while the CSIS study described the motivation as “ethnonationalist”. Ethnonationalism is a political ideology based on heritage, such as ethnic identity, which can create clashes with other groups. The Cato study counted only deaths, while the CSIS analysis was not limited to deaths.

“While Vance’s statement has a factual anchor for that limited timespan, it selectively emphasises one short-term slice rather than the broader trend,” Jipson, of the University of Dayton, told PolitiFact. “In that sense, it can be misleading: It may give the impression that left-wing violence is generally now more dangerous or prevalent, which is not borne out by the longer view of the data.”

The Cato analysis, published after Kirk’s death, said 3,597 people were killed in politically motivated US “terrorist” attacks from January 1, 1975, through September 10, 2025.

Cato found right-wing attacks were more common than left-wing violence. This research has been highlighted by some House Democrats.

Wrong again, JD. The data is clear: for decades, right-wing extremism has been the greater threat.https://t.co/TkxBZ08Xjg https://t.co/PCWv4EuP4H

— House Homeland Security Committee Democrats (@HomelandDems) October 15, 2025

Cato wrote that during that period, “terrorists” inspired by what it called “Islamist ideology” were responsible for 87 percent of people killed in attacks on US soil, while right-wing attackers accounted for 11 percent and left-wing “terrorists” accounted for about 2 percent. Excluding the September 11, 2001 attacks showed right-wing attackers were responsible for a majority of deaths. Measuring homicides since 2020 also showed a larger number by the right than the left.

Our ruling

Vance said, “Political violence, it’s just a statistical fact that it’s a bigger problem on the left.”

He did not point to a source, but a White House spokesperson separately cited an article about a study that examined political violence from 1994 to July 4, 2025. It found that, in the first six months of 2025, left-wing attacks outnumbered those by the right. It is based on a small number of incidents: four attacks and one disrupted plot.

The study also showed that for 30 years before 2025, right-wing attacks had outpaced left-wing attacks.

The study detailed that the left wing “remains much lower than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing and jihadist attackers”. Research before 2025 largely points to higher levels of right-wing violence over longer periods of time.

The statement contains an element of truth because left-wing violence rose in the first six months of 2025. However, it ignores that right-wing violence was higher for a much longer period of time.

We rate this statement Mostly False.

Chief correspondent Louis Jacobson contributed to this fact-check.

The populist government has blamed the 2024 attack on ‘hatred’ spread by opposition and critical media.

A Slovak court has convicted the pensioner who shot Prime Minister Robert Fico last year of a “terror attack” and sentenced him to 21 years in prison.

The Specialised Criminal Court in Banska Bystrica convicted and sentenced 72-year-old Juraj Cintula on Tuesday, saying he had acted “with a motivation to stop a proper functioning of the government” in a “particularly serious” crime.

Cintula, a poet from Levice in western Slovakia, shot Fico four times at close range on May 15, 2024 as the premier left a government meeting in central Slovakia.

He later claimed he was driven by “moral despair”. Fico was left seriously wounded but returned to work two months later.

The shooting and subsequent trial have shaken the small NATO-member country.

Now serving his fourth term as prime minister, Fico has repeatedly accused the liberal opposition and media of fuelling the assassination attempt, without presenting evidence.

Prosecutors originally charged Cintula with premeditated murder, but they later reclassified the shooting as a “terror attack”, citing his political motivation.

Critics have said that since the shooting, the populist Fico has become increasingly divisive, accelerating his alignment of Slovakia’s foreign policy with Russia, increasing criticism of the European Union, and implementing authoritarian and hardline conservative policy.

‘Most likely appeal’

“It was worth it,” local media quoted Cintula as shouting as he left court earlier this month after giving his closing trial statement.

After the shooting, Cintula had told police he wanted to protest against steps taken by Fico’s government, including the halting of military aid to war-ravaged Ukraine, according to a leaked video.

He claimed he had sought to hurt, but not kill, the prime minister.

In his final trial statement, a visibly emotional Cintula told the court he had been overcome with “moral despair”, accusing the prime minister of being “drunk with power” and making “irrational decisions that damage this country”.

He called his defence “a manifesto … for all those who feel that the arrogance of power, corruption and lies has no place in the country where our children will grow up”.

“The premier … embodied years of accumulated frustration and despair,” Cintula said.

Cintula’s lawyer, Namir Alyasry, told reporters after the hearing that he would “most likely appeal” the verdict.

The prime minister was not present at the trial and did not immediately comment on the verdict.

He previously said he forgave the attacker, whom he described as merely a “messenger of evil and political hatred” developed by the “politically unsuccessful and frustrated opposition”.

Since his return to office in 2023, Fico’s government has launched a crackdown on nonprofit organisations, cultural institutions and some media outlets it deems “hostile”, prompting mass protests.

Fico has also angered the opposition by calling for an end to Slovakia’s support for Ukraine, criticising EU sanctions targeting Russia and saying he would not allow Ukraine to join NATO.

Last month, the Slovak parliament approved a constitutional amendment to limit the rights of same-sex couples as part of a sweeping change that also states that national law takes precedence over EU law.

WASHINGTON — President Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to uphold his deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago.

His lawyers filed an emergency appeal urging the court to set aside rulings of judges in Chicago and hold that National Guard troops are needed to protect U.S. immigration agents from hostile protesters.

The case escalates the clash between Trump and Democratic state officials over immigration enforcement and raises again the question of using military-style force in American cities. Trump’s lawyers have repeatedly gone to the Supreme Court and won quick rulings when lower-court judges have blocked his actions.

Federal law authorizes the president to call into service the National Guard if he cannot “execute the laws of the United States” or faces “a rebellion or danger of rebellion against the authority” of the U.S. government.

“Both conditions are satisfied here,” Trump’s lawyer said.

Judges in Chicago came to the opposite conclusion. U.S. District Judge April Perry saw no “danger of rebellion” and said the laws were being enforced. She accused Trump’s lawyers of exaggerating claims of violence and equating “protests with riots.”

She handed down a restraining order on Oct. 9, and the 7th Circuit Court agreed to keep it in force.

But Trump’s lawyers insisted that protesters and demonstrators were targeting U.S. immigration agents and preventing them from doing their work.

“Confronted with intolerable risks of harm to federal agents and coordinated, violent opposition to the enforcement of federal law, the President lawfully determines that he is unable to enforce the laws of the United States with the regular forces and calls up the National Guard to defend federal personnel, property, and functions in the face of ongoing violence,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in a 40-page appeal.

He argued that historically the president has had the full authority to decide on whether to call up the militia. Judges may not second-guess the president’s decision, he said.

“Any such review [by judges] must be highly deferential, as the 9th Circuit has concluded in the Newsom litigation,” referring to the ruling that upheld Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles.

Trump’s lawyer said the troop deployment to Los Angeles had succeeded in reducing violence.

“Notwithstanding the Governor of California’s claim that deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles would ‘escalat[e]’ the ongoing violence that California itself had failed to prevent … the President’s action had the opposite, intended effect. In the face of federal military force, violence in Los Angeles decreased and the situation substantially improved,” he told the court.

But in recent weeks, “Chicago has been the site of organized and often violent protests directed at ICE officers and other federal personnel engaged in the execution of federal immigration laws,” he wrote. “On multiple occasions, federal officers have also been hit and punched by protesters. … Rioters have targeted federal officers with fireworks and have thrown bottles, rocks, and tear gas at them.”

“More than 30 [DHS] officers have been injured during the assaults on federal law enforcement” at the Broadview facility alone, resulting in multiple hospitalizations, he wrote.

Officials in Illinois blamed aggressive enforcement actions of ICE agents for triggering the protests.

Sauer also urged the court to hand down an immediate order that would freeze Perry’s rulings.

The court asked for a response from Illinois officials by Monday.

After terrorists chased her from her home in Lungu village of Sokoto State, Saratu now sits in Jabo town, devastated after losing three of her own and two orphaned grandchildren who never made it out. The terrorists stormed their village in Sabon Birni, North West Nigeria. She ran barefoot to the bush, clutching a small wrapper, and never returned. For Saratu and countless others across the region, the statistics of killings, kidnappings, and cattle rustling are not just numbers. They are ruptured families, stolen futures, and a daily struggle to live with dignity in the reported violence.

Amidst shattered livelihoods and decades-long insecurity, people in Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi, and Sokoto states have continued to push back with resilience that helps them survive, facing the violence that pushes them out of their houses and farmlands. 

HumAngle interviewed locals across the states, documenting what drives the violence, how the communities struggle to cope, and what a credible path to peace might look like. Those interviewed included traditional rulers, religious leaders, women’s associations, vigilante groups, civil society activists, and members of both herding and farming communities who shared experiences, human costs, and grassroots resilience.

For about one and a half decades, these people have been engulfed in a violence that ravaged many parts of the northwestern region. What began as disputes between farmers and herders has mutated into cattle rustling, mass killing and the scourge of kidnapping for ransom. These conflicts have seeped into every facet of their lives, displacing families, crippling agriculture, eroding trust, and gnawing at the very fabric of society.

Taxed by fear

Sokoto’s geographical misfortune is evident on a map. Nestled against the volatile Zamfara State and sharing a porous frontier with the Niger Republic, the state’s rural local government areas (LGAs) have become easy targets for well-armed groups. 

Sabon Birni and Isa LGAs, the worst affected, live under the shadow of Bello Turji, a notorious non-state armed group leader imposing “taxes” on villages, a perverse form of governance enforced through violence.

In Tangaza, Gudu, Binji, and Silami, locals now face an even deadlier menace. Their ungoverned frontiers with the Niger Republic have opened the door to the Lakurawa, a transnational terror group turning the borderland into its strongest foothold. Exploiting weak state security and the grinding poverty that traps many young men, the Lakurawa has embedded itself in local communities, luring recruits with promises of power, protection, or survival. 

What began as a shadowy infiltration has evolved into a full-blown insurgency. Today, the group wages a campaign of killings, livestock raids, and mass intimidation on both sides of the border, leaving residents of Sokoto and neighbouring Nigerien villages in constant fear.

The human toll is staggering. Farming, the lifeline of most families, has been disrupted. Thousands of cattle have been stolen. In Sabon Birni alone, an estimated 600,000 cattle and five million small ruminants were rustled between 2019 and 2024, while vast tracts of farmland remain in accessible. For those farmers who manage to reach their fields, access often comes at a heavy price.

Kidnappings have become routine. In the same Sabon Birni, reports suggest that more than ₦160 billion was paid in ransoms and so-called protection levies over the same five-year period.

According to Shu’aibu Gwanda Gobir, a community leader, about 528 villages were once under the control of armed groups. A day after the brutal killing of the Sarkin Gobir of Gatawa District, Isa Bawa, in August 2024, gunmen kidnapped 192 people in the Sabon Birnin area. At the time, over 600 people were already being held captive.

Children have been driven out of classrooms; many are now in displacement camps, while countless others roam the streets, begging in the city of Sokoto. 

Women recount harrowing tales of sexual violence, their trauma lingering long after the attacks, and hunger and malnutrition stalk villages already stripped of livelihoods, leaving communities in a state of protracted vulnerability.

For farming and herding families, the cost is measured not only in stolen cattle and abandoned fields but also in fractured trust, deepening poverty, and a sense of being abandoned by the state.

Beneath this devastation, communities are not merely passive victims; they also fight back for survival. According to Magajin Balle, the village head of Balle in Gudu LGA, “in some areas, youths patrol their own streets with locally purchased weapons. Vigilante networks such as the Vigilante Group of Nigeria and ‘Yansakai’ militias provide a semblance of security. Communities pool money to support local defenders.”

Elsewhere, however, resilience takes different forms. In rural parts of Isa LGA, attempts are made to negotiate fragile truces (Sulhu) with gang leaders. In rural areas of Balle, where Lakurawa terrorists have entrenched a stronghold, residents have been forced to submit to the directives of the group.

Armed groups continue to unleash relentless violence across Sokoto State, defying local resilience efforts. In recent weeks, waves of attacks have swept through Shagari, Isa, Sabon Birni, and Raba LGAs, with outlying villages in Dange-Shuni now also under siege. Entire communities have been uprooted, with women and children bearing the brunt. 

Many families are forced into a cycle of displacement, seeking safety in nearby towns before returning to their homes by day, while others have fled entirely. Thousands are now sheltering in Jabo, Dange-Shuni, and Rara, or across the border in Guidan Roumdji of the Niger Republic, highlighting the deepening humanitarian crisis.

Tension has also heightened in Shagari LGA’s rural areas after a series of attacks in Aske Dodo, Tungar Barke, Jandutse, Lungu, and Ayeri by armed groups, leaving several dead, scores abducted, and hundreds displaced to Jabo, Kajiji, and Shagari in search of refuge. According to a BBC report, this led to women seeking shelter in Shagari town to stage a protest against the government.

In Raba LGA, over 500 people were forced to flee from their homes across six communities on August 26. Most of them are women and children, now crowded into a school and market square in Rara village, where they seek safety and shelter.

In Sabon Birni and Isa LGAs, communities remain trapped between violence and hunger. This September, armed groups unleashed deadly assaults like never before, while floods destroyed roads, bridges and crops, cutting residents off from aid. With no safe passage and livelihoods washed away, many fled across the border into Niger in search of refuge. “People are being squeezed from both sides by the gunmen and by the floods,” says Sa’idu Bargaja, a lawmaker representing the Isa-Sabon Birni constituency. It is, he says, a crisis that leaves no room for escape.

In Shagari LGA, the anguish of displacement is written into women’s lives like Saratu Sode of the Lungu community. Now taking refuge in Jabo, she describes how violence has torn apart her family and her village.

“We fled when word spread that gunmen were coming. Those who could not escape that night were caught. Two of our neighbours were attacked; one was hacked with a machete and is in hospital, and the other was shot dead. Three of my relatives were seized before they could run, and they are still in captivity,” she recounts.

“Three of my children and two of my orphaned grandchildren, whose father was killed during an earlier attack, are not with me. I don’t know where they are. They might have been killed, or they may be in the hands of armed groups.”

Her neighbour, Hadiza from the Aske Dodo community, shares a similar story. Forced from her home three times, she now shelters in an abandoned building in Jabo. “On the last occasion, we woke in the night to the news that someone nearby had been slaughtered. At dawn, we fled. Our children no longer go to school. Our husbands have abandoned their farms, fleeing to save their lives. I do not sleep at night,” she says.

Their voices echo a broader crisis in Sokoto’s rural communities, where waves of armed violence have left families fractured, livelihoods destroyed, and children robbed of education. Beyond the numbers of the dead and displaced, the stories of women like Saratu and Hadiza lay bare the daily reality: survival in a landscape where the state is absent, safety is fragile, and tomorrow is uncertain.

Magajin Tsamaye, a village head in Sabon Birni, told HumAngle that peace deals and levies payments are not the best strategies. He urges the government to reform the social justice system and tackle root causes like illiteracy and youth unemployment. “People should be less fearful of death,” Magaji bluntly added, “so they can boldly repel attacks.”

Fighting without surrender

Kebbi’s experience mirrors Sokoto’s in many ways, but with one critical difference: communities here largely reject paying taxes to armed groups. While the LGAs of Fakai, Danko Wasagu, Zuru, Augie, and Yauri, which border the dens of armed groups in Sokoto, Zamfara, and Niger, face sporadic raids and kidnappings, an ethos of resistance endures.

In Augie, Arewa, and, to a lesser extent, Dandi, Bunza, Bagudo, Maiyama, Koko, and Fakai, the shadow of the Lakurawa looms large. Their presence causes sudden waves of violence that leave communities unsettled, never knowing when the next strike might come.

These unpredictable and ruthless raids have turned daily life into a gamble of survival. Farmers abandon fields, traders fear the open road, and entire villages, especially in Arewa and Augie, live with the gnawing uncertainty that their relative calm could be shattered at any moment. This unpredictability, the incessant rhythm of violence, cements Lakurawa’s grip.

In this year’s rainy season, vast tracts of land in Kebbi State have not been tilted because the Lakurawa declared them no-go zones. In the remote areas of Augie and Arewa LGAs, the group has marked out areas as “buffer zones,” warning through local agents that any farmer seen nearby would be punished. 

“In the remote villages of Garu, Kunchin Baba, Gumki, and Gumundai, farmers now live under these restrictions,” said a man known as Bello Manager, the Commandant of the Vigilante Group of Niger in the Arewa LGA.

“Farmers are forbidden not only from cultivating their land but also from adapting to change. The militants have blocked the sale of farming bulls for power tillers; machines many had hoped would ease labour shortages, and in some cases seized and destroyed the tillers outright,” the Bello added.

A resident of Goru, speaking to BBC Hausa on condition of anonymity, said: “The majority of communities where the Lakurawa have established a stronghold are living in fear and uncertainty. These include Goru, Malam Yauro, Goru Babba, Goru Karama, Gorun Bagiga, Gumki and Faske. In these places, the Lakurawa force herders to pay ₦10,000 per cow; they have banned women from farming, and traditional rulers are forbidden from wearing turbans. Across all these areas, there is no visible sign of state presence.”

This ban is devastating for communities already struggling with the steady depletion of oxen used for ploughing and harrowing. What should have been a season of renewal is turning instead into a season of fear and enforced stagnation.

In Bunza LGA, the Lakurawa have tightened their grip, launching repeated assaults and livestock raids that have crippled livelihoods and deepened fear. In just the past seven months, more than 1,000 head of cattle have been rustled beyond several cattle they extort as so-called zakat.

“The scale of the theft underscores the vulnerability of even the most prominent figures. Victims include retired Deputy Inspector General of Police Abubakar Tilli, who lost 110 cattle; Bello Mamuda, former chairman of Bunza, who lost 67; and a former member of the House of Assembly representing Bunza, whose herd of 49 was stolen. Altogether, over 1,000 cattle have been stolen by the Lakurawa in Bunza over the past seven months,” Yau Gumundai, a local in the area, told HumAngle.

But the damage goes beyond statistics. Markets have emptied, families have scattered, and fear has become part of daily life. “Recently, there has been an intensification of Lakurawa assaults in Bunza and neighbouring Dandi,” Gumundai explains.

“Their last attack in Bunza was on Friday, Sept. 19, when they opened fire at a security checkpoint. People fled the market in panic, leaving behind their belongings. Many were injured. They keep us in constant fear.”

The attacks illustrate a grim pattern: armed groups now challenge not only ordinary citizens but also security forces and political elites. As livestock raiding evolves from economic plunder into a tool of terror, communities in not only Bunza but also many other LGAs of Kebbi State are left with dwindling livelihoods, deepening insecurity, and a gnawing uncertainty about whether the state can protect them.

Local security has become a sophisticated patchwork of formal and informal alliances. Security outfits work hand-in-hand with trade unions; from motor transport workers to petroleum marketers to monitor public spaces, track suspicious movements, and alert communities. In every LGA, from ward level upwards, volunteer patrols are organised. Wealthy residents and the poor pool resources to fund the patrols in shifts from dawn to dusk.

While the rural communities of Tangaza and Gudu in Sokoto State have succumbed and remain defenceless, an investigation by HumAngle found that, in the face of Lakurawa incursions and raids, the people of Augie in Kebbi refuse to stand idle.

Until recently, as Lakurawa incursions continue, particularly in Arewa, Augie, and Bunza LGAs, locals argued that collaborative vigilance in Kebbi was what prevented the violence of armed groups from reaching the scale seen in Zamfara, Sokoto, and Katsina. But it is also draining; financially, psychologically, and militarily, particularly now that communities face mobile insurgents armed with military-grade weapons, including PKTs, RPGs, GPMGs, AAs, and AK-49s. 

Living and negotiating with the enemy

While Sokoto is taxed by fear, some of the most striking community-led peace deals have emerged in Zamfara. 

In Kaura Namoda, Maru, Bungudu, and elsewhere, communities have brokered localised truces with armed groups. The terms vary; in some cases, farmers pay “levies” to cultivate land; in others, both sides settle for a “peace” that often turns cold. When such agreements hold, people return to their fields, markets reopen, and a fragile semblance of regular life returns.

But peace is never absolute. A deal with one gang does not protect against another, and breaches, whether through real provocations or whispered rumours, collapse months of careful dialogue. The Yansakai’s actions, sometimes indiscriminate and retaliatory, also undermine trust.

A resident of Nasarawa Burkulu and a member of Miyetti Allah, speaking to HumAngle on condition of anonymity, paints a chilling picture of life under sustained attack in Bukkuyum LGA. He says that from the first assault in 2019 through to September 2025, thousands have been kidnapped, tens of thousands of ruminants rustled, and hundreds killed, while whole villages have at times fallen under the control of armed groups.

“Between 2019 and today, over 3,000 people have been taken, 30,000 livestock stolen, and more than 1,000 people brutally killed in Bukkuyum LGA,” the local told HumAngle. “Several settlements towards the Anka-Bukkuyum boundary: Ruwan Rani, Yashi, Zauna, Bardi, Kwali, Bunkasau, Kamaru, Gasa Hula, and Rafin Maiki are flooded with armed men, some of whom appear to be recent arrivals. Many villages are effectively under siege.”

The human consequences are stark. “In these communities, most men have fled their homes,” the source added. “Women and children run into the bush when armed men arrive at night.” The testimony underlines how insecurity has hollowed out normal life: farms lie untended, markets are disrupted, and entire families live in constant fear.

Another local source described the trauma of abduction, detailing how unarmed citizens were held captive for more than four months. Also a victim of abduction, the source was released only after her parents paid ₦430,000 in ransom.

“In captivity we were dehumanised,” she recalled. “I watched people being murdered in front of me. Returning home brought stigma; I often wished for death because I felt my life was worthless.”

These accounts expose a sustained campaign that is not merely criminal theft and occasional violence but a strategy that displaces communities, destroys livelihoods and inflicts deep psychological wounds. They also raise urgent questions about the state’s capacity to protect civilians in areas where armed groups can operate with impunity.

Armed groups continue to ravage communities, where killings and kidnappings for ransom have become routine. The crisis, analysts and statesmen say, has worsened under the so-called Sulhu dialogue strategy in Kaduna’s Birnin Gwari and Katsina, pushing armed groups into Zamfara in unprecedented numbers.

“Dialogue in Birnin Gwari has led to the intensification of violence in Sokoto, Zamfara, and Kebbi, as many members of armed groups move into areas not under the Sulhu regime,” says Murtala Rufa’i, a professor of peace and conflict studies at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto.

“The truces struck with armed groups in Kaduna displaced hundreds of armed groups’ members into rural Zamfara and adjacent Sokoto, leaving villages under relentless assault while towns such as Gummi, Bukkuyum, and Garin Gaura in Zamfara, and Kebbe and Shagari in Sokoto, are overwhelmed by displaced families,” says Hon. Suleman Muhammad Abubakar, lawmaker representing the Gummi-Bukkuyum constituency.

The human toll is devastating. “Recently, a canoe carrying people fleeing Gummi and nearby villages capsized, killing 15,” Abubakar recounts. “They were escaping the siege of armed groups who had poured into Gummi and Bukkuyum after leaving Birnin Gwari, a direct consequence of the dialogue policy.”    

Despite this, there is an undercurrent of hope, as locals express the readiness of many communities to reintegrate repentant members of armed groups, provided the process is genuine and inclusive. Traditional authorities still hold moral sway, and even some armed groups’ leaders enforce discipline within their ranks to preserve deals.

Locals recommend empowering these traditional and religious actors, strengthening rural education, and ensuring government services reach neglected areas. “Peace is possible,” says village head of Birnin Magaji, “but only if we all talk honestly, and to everyone who holds a gun.”

Conflict on the city’s edge

Katsina’s pain is sharpened by geography. Not only does it border Zamfara and Sokoto, but its northern frontier touches the Niger Republic, a corridor for illicit arms. Some of the region’s most feared warlords, such as Dogo Gide and Ado Aleru, frequent the state, and in specific communities, non-state armed groups effectively govern in place of the state.

Rural violence’s evolution in Katsina follows a now-familiar pattern: resource conflict between herders and farmers, worsened by climate change and land encroachment, spiralling into cattle rustling, then into the kidnapping economy. Today, it is a fully fledged industry, drawing in disenfranchised youth as foot soldiers.

In Kankara District, Ibro Gwani and Rabi Usman Mani of Dannakwabo account for an unending ordeal of violence in Katsina State.

From 2011 to 2025, the district was scarred by killings, abductions and violent attacks that have left families shattered and entire communities traumatised.

Since the devastating blow of Dec. 11, 2020, which left over 300 boys kidnapped, waves of killings, abductions, and displacements have continued.

Ibro Gwani, for instance, was kidnapped three times for which he paid a ransom of ₦10 million. “I know that one of our community leaders, Mai Unguwa Babangida Lauwal, was kidnapped and had to pay ₦4 million,” Gwani adds.

Rabi Usman Dannakwabo was also abducted alongside her husband, Usman Mani Dannakwabo, who is a police officer. 

“Residents have been murdered in their homes, on their farms, on village roads and even on playgrounds. I know of dozens of men, women and children who have been shot dead,” she says. “Some of our relatives had also been gunned down, hacked with machetes, and some, including myself and my husband, have been dragged into captivity, many of us never return.”

The state government’s measures, from negotiations to fuel sales bans to military offensives, have had mixed results. While initial gains were sometimes significant, armed groups adapted swiftly, exploiting sophisticated communications technology and local networks and even controlling the sale of scarce commodities in some areas.

Communities often choose confrontation over negotiation. Informal militias are armed and funded by locals, and private gun ownership for self-defence is widespread. But there are costs: accusations of abuses by community militias against innocent Fulani have driven some into the arms of the very armed groups they once feared.

Past state-led dialogues faltered, partly due to the exclusion of affected communities from the process. A local tells HumAngle that effective dialogue should emphasise the need for inclusive engagement, economic empowerment, better governance, and border control to stem the flow of weapons.

Despite earlier peace deals, armed groups shatter the calm with fresh and increasingly brutal assaults. One of the most recent was on August 19, when gunmen stormed Unguwan Mantau in Malumfashi LGA. At dawn, they attacked a village mosque filled with worshippers. Young and old men were bowed in prayer when the shooting began, leaving many dead and others injured and rushed to the hospital.

Half of the population is projected to experience critical food shortages by mid-2026 as armed groups block aid.

More than half of Haiti’s population is experiencing critical levels of hunger as armed groups tighten their grip across the Caribbean nation and the ravaged economy continues its downward spiral.

A report released on Friday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) found that some 5.7 million Haitians – of a population of roughly 11 million – are facing severe food shortages. The crisis threatens to worsen as gang violence displaces families, destroys agricultural production, and prevents aid from reaching those desperately in need.

The assessment shows 1.9 million people are already at emergency hunger levels, marked by severe food gaps and dangerous rates of malnutrition. Another 3.8 million face crisis-level food insecurity.

The situation is expected to deteriorate further, with nearly six million people projected to face acute hunger by mid-2026 as Haiti enters its lean agricultural season.

Haiti’s government announced plans on Friday to establish a Food and Nutrition Security Office to coordinate relief efforts. Louis Gerald Gilles, a member of the transitional presidential council, said authorities would mobilise resources quickly to reach those most affected.

But the response faces enormous obstacles. Armed groups now control an estimated 90 percent of Port-au-Prince, the capital, and have expanded into agricultural regions in recent months.

Violence has forced 1.3 million people from their homes – a 24 percent increase since December – with many sheltering in overcrowded temporary sites lacking basic services.

Farmers who remain on their land must negotiate with gangs for access and surrender portions of their harvests. Small businesses have shuttered, eliminating income sources for countless families. Even when crops reach normal yields, produce cannot reach Port-au-Prince because gangs block the main roads.

The economic devastation compounds the crisis. Haiti has recorded six consecutive years of recession, while food prices jumped 33 percent last July compared with the previous year.

The deepening emergency affects children with particular severity. A separate report this week found 680,000 children displaced by violence – nearly double previous figures – with more than 1,000 schools forced to close and hundreds of minors recruited by armed groups.

The international community authorised a new 5,550-member “gang suppression force” at the United Nations earlier this month, replacing a smaller mission that struggled with funding shortages.

But the security situation remains volatile. On Thursday, heavy gunfire erupted when government officials attempted to meet at the National Palace in downtown Port-au-Prince, forcing a hasty evacuation from an area long controlled by gangs.

Martine Villeneuve, Haiti director at Action Against Hunger, warned that while some improvements have been made, progress remains fragile without long-term investment to address the crisis’s root causes.

NEW YORK — When a black teen-ager was killed in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn last summer after a run-in with a gang of whites, mayoral candidate David N. Dinkins made it clear what New York should expect from its top leader: “The tone and climate of the city does get set at City Hall.”

The perception that Dinkins could soothe racial tensions was probably the single biggest force behind his election as New York’s first black mayor. The last few weeks have brought a series of racial problems that have put the mayor under intense pressure to deliver on the expectations that he built.

“Though we cannot eliminate racial and ethnic friction overnight, we must take the first steps. Our beginning will, of course, be marked by small–sometimes indirect–steps. But even a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” Dinkins said Monday.

But the mayor who exults in his city as a multi-ethnic “gorgeous mosaic” is feeling the cut of its sharp edges.

Each day seems to bring worse turmoil. Dinkins appears besieged, encircled by his detractors and undercut by the expectations that he himself raised. Some black leaders have gone so far as to publicly call him a traitor.

Dinkins faces two potentially explosive controversies in Brooklyn: As two juries have deliberated almost a week in the Bensonhurst slaying of Yusuf Hawkins, angry demonstrators have rallied each day outside the Brooklyn courthouse, and some of their leaders warn that violence is inevitable if the panels return anything less than a guilty verdict.

Meanwhile, blacks in Flatbush continue a four-month boycott of two Korean grocers that started with a dispute between one of the grocers and a black woman customer. While it is far from clear who was at fault in the original incident–the woman claims to have been beaten and the grocer contends that he merely pushed her to prevent her from shoplifting–it unmistakably tapped long-festering bitterness. Demonstrators have chanted such epithets as “Korean bloodsuckers” outside the stores, and have spat at customers who try to shop there.

A few blocks from the store, a group of more than a dozen blacks on Sunday beat three Vietnamese whom they apparently mistook for Korean.

Elsewhere in the city, smaller disputes add to the tension. A black City University professor is preaching black supremacy, while a white faculty member at the same school is saying that blacks are less intelligent and more prone to commit crime than whites. A group of white students at St. John’s University in Queens stands accused of raping a black woman. And Jimmy Breslin, one of the city’s most prominent columnists, has been suspended by New York Newsday after making racial comments about another staff member.

Dinkins’ low-key and cautious approach, which had initially seemed a soothing balm to the abrasion of former Mayor Edward I. Koch, now is being criticized as weakness and indecisiveness.

Roy Innis, national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, said in an interview Monday: “We’ve got to have a commitment to telling the hard truth. David Dinkins is not strong enough to do it.”

Innis accused Dinkins of “reverse racism” for failing to denounce the grocery store boycott that is “reeking with raw and naked, palpable racism.” He attributed Dinkins’ reluctance to the mayor’s association with Sonny Carson, the self-proclaimed “anti-white” leader of the boycott, who worked for the Dinkins campaign before being dismissed for anti-Semitic remarks.

Other blacks, however, have accused Dinkins of pandering to whites, particularly after the mayor made a rare foray onto prime-time live television last Friday to appeal for tolerance. “We must repress our rage,” the mayor said.

“He is a lover of white people and the system. And last night, he bashed black people,” said C. Vernon Mason, a lawyer who has been involved in a number of racial cases. “He ain’t got no African left in him. He’s got too many yarmulkes on his head.”

Mason made his comments at a rally Saturday, where he called the mayor “a traitor,” and some people in a crowd of hundreds chanted, “Judas, Judas.”

Many of Dinkins’ critics seem to suggest that as a black, he should automatically hold sway over New York’s black community–a view that does not recognize the diversity of opinion and outlook among blacks in the city.

One source in Dinkins’ Administration noted that the mayor has alienated some factions, who say they are disappointed in the number of blacks he has appointed to key posts at City Hall. Others have not forgiven Dinkins’ denunciation of the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, the black Muslim leader who once described Judaism as a “gutter” religion.

Dinkins’ Friday night address won high marks from many quarters, however. Former Mayor John V. Lindsay described it as “superb.”

Nonetheless, any hopes that it might have turned the tide were dashed less than 36 hours later, when the three Vietnamese were beaten by the group of blacks who thought they were Korean. Police on Monday arrested two people in connection with the assault, which Police Commissioner Lee Brown said was not related to the boycott.

Dinkins and several state legislators Monday held a news conference to announce state legislation aimed at crimes committed by groups, and to make a new push for a bill to stiffen penalties for crimes that are motivated by bias.

Former USC quarterback and current Fox NFL analyst Mark Sanchez was stabbed early Saturday morning and is being treated in an Indianapolis hospital.

Fox Sports said in a statement that Sanchez, 38, is recovering and in stable condition.

“We are deeply grateful to the medical team for their exceptional care and support. Our thoughts and prayers are with Mark, and we ask that everyone please respect his and his family’s privacy during this time,” the Fox Sports statement read.

Sanchez, who was Indianapolis ahead of an assignment to cover the Raiders-Colts game, was injured following a fight in downtown Indianapolis at around 12:30 a.m.

The Indianapolis Metro Police Department released a statement that read: “Detectives believe this was an isolated incident between two men and not a random act of violence.”

Sanchez, who was born in Long Beach, led Mission Viejo to a 27-1 record as a starting quarterback, winning a Southern Section Division II title in 2004.

He played at USC from 2006-08, passing for 3,965 yards and 41 touchdowns. During his final season at USC, he passed for 3,207 yards and 34 touchdowns as the Trojans posted a 12-1 record and won the Rose Bowl.

Despite objections from then-USC coach Pete Carroll, Sanchez left school early to enter the NFL draft. He was selected by the Jets with the No. 5 pick and went on to play eight NFL seasons, posting a 37-36 record as a starter.

He spent four seasons with the Jets, starting each of his 62 games while throwing for 12,092 yards and 68 touchdowns with 69 interceptions. The Jets lost in the AFC championship in each of Sanchez’s first two years in the league.

Sanchez also appeared in games with Philadelphia, Dallas and Washington. He finished his playing career with 15,357 yards passing, 86 TD passes and 89 interceptions.

The Jets and several of Sanchez’s former teammates posted message of support on social media on Saturday.

“Sending our thoughts and love to Mark Sanchez and his family. Hoping for a speedy recovery, 6,” the Jets said, using Sanchez’s former jersey number.

“Send prayers up for my former teammate mark.. sucks so much to see this,” Kerry Rhodes wrote.

“So sad. Pray for his recovery,” Nick Mangold wrote.

Associated Press contributed to this report.

Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s horror film “Bone Lake” announces itself with a startlingly cheeky opener and closes with a bloody gore-fest, the song “Sex and Violence” by U.K. punk outfit the Exploited spelling out the thesis of the film for us. It’s about the intertwining of sex and violence, you see. But what unfolds between these naughty, viscera-drenched bookends is less of a traditional horror film and more of a psychosexual thriller, like “Funny Games” played between two, young attractive couples, with a setup borrowed from “Barbarian.”

In the script by Joshua Friedlander, a double-booking of a secluded rental mansion becomes a double date when Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita) stumble in on the intimate weekend vacay of Sage (Maddie Hasson) and Diego (Marco Pigossi). The couples decide to make the best of it and stay, promising to rock-paper-scissors for the house if anything gets “weird.”

And get weird it does. While Diego and Sage seemed perfectly happy on arrival, the sexy, uninhibited Will and Cin have a way of nosing out their insecurities, finding the cracks in their connection and weaseling their way in. Suddenly, their lackluster sex life is on trial, and Sage’s resentment about financially supporting Diego while he pursues his dream of writing a novel bubbles to the surface.

Like any weekend-goes-awry horror movie (e.g., “Speak No Evil”), the female half of the couple catches a bad vibe that her male partner dismisses, due to his vested interest in wanting to stay. For Diego, it’s the promise that Cin will share his writing with his favorite author, for whom she claims to work. They overlook the red flags, blow off their opportunities to leave and decide to go all in with this wanton pair, drinking, playing games, breaking into secret rooms and dodging sexual overtures from each of them.

Morgan and her cinematographer Nick Matthews make the location fun to look at, with a saturated color palette and clever camera movements. However, there are scenes where the film is frustratingly dim and underlit, even if it might be justified by the power going out during a storm.

While there’s a certain verve and style to the middle section, where Will and Cin draw in their prey and toy with them, the Grand Guignol climax bears no rhythm or suspense; it’s merely a bludgeoning of the audience with carnage — too much too late.

Other blunt instruments? Roe and Nechita, who don’t play their roles with any subtlety. Roe’s Will comes off as a dangerous himbo; Nechita’s Cin is an over-the-top minx in her seduction of both Diego and Sage. While Hasson’s Sage is a plausibly strident freelance journalist type, you wonder if she has much experience with female friendship, because Cin’s manipulation is so painfully obvious. Pigossi’s self-obsessed novelist, however, is perfectly pitched in his all-around obliviousness.

There’s a kernel of something fascinating at the center of “Bone Lake,” a melding of sex and violence into gestures that are familiar from true crime stories. But there’s not enough motivation baked into the big third-act twist, and the performances just aren’t strong enough to suggest anything deeper.

“Bone Lake” offers up an appealing surface but it’s ultimately too shallow to get you immersed.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

NEW YORK — A new report on book bans in U.S. schools finds Stephen King as the author most likely to be censored and the country divided between states actively restricting works and those attempting to limit or eliminate bans.

PEN America’s “Banned in the USA,” released Wednesday, tracks more than 6,800 instances of books being temporarily or permanently pulled for the 2024-2025 school year. The new number is down from more than 10,000 in 2023-24, but still far above the levels of a few years ago, when PEN didn’t even see the need to compile a report.

Some 80% of those bans originated in three states that have enacted or attempted to enact laws calling for removal of books deemed objectionable — Florida, Texas and Tennessee. Meanwhile, PEN found little or no instances of removals in several other states, with Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey among those with laws that limit the authority of school and public libraries to pull books.

“It is increasingly a story of two countries,” says Kasey Meehan, director of PEN’s Freedom to Read program and an author of the report. “And it’s not just a story of red states and blue states. In Florida, not all of the school districts responded to the calls for banning books. You can find differences from county to county.”

King’s books were censored 206 times, according to PEN, with “Carrie” and “The Stand” among the 87 of his works affected. The most banned work of any author was Anthony Burgess’ dystopian classic from the 1960s, “A Clockwork Orange,” for which PEN found 23 removals. Other books and authors facing extensive restrictions included Patricia McCormick’s “Sold,” Judy Blume’s “Forever” and Jennifer Niven’s “Breathless,” and numerous works by Sarah J. Maas and Jodi Picoult.

Reasons often cited for pulling a book include LGBTQ+ themes, depictions of race and passages with violence and sexual violence. An ongoing trend that PEN finds has only intensified: Thousands of books were taken off shelves in anticipation of community, political or legal pressure rather than in response to a direct threat.

“This functions as a form of ‘obeying in advance,’” the report reads, “rooted in fear or simply a desire to avoid topics that might be deemed controversial.”

The PEN report comes amid ongoing censorship efforts not just from states and conservative activists but from the federal government. The Department of Education ended an initiative by the Biden administration to investigate the legality of bans and has called the issue a “hoax.” PEN’s numbers include the Department of Defense’s removal of hundreds of books from K-12 school libraries for military families as part of an overall campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and “un-American” thinking.

In Florida, where more than 2,000 books were banned or restricted, a handful of counties were responsible for many of the King removals: Dozens were pulled last year as a part of a review for whether they were in compliance with state laws.

“His books are often removed from shelves when ‘adult’ titles or books with ‘sex content’ are targeted for removal — these prohibitions overwhelmingly ban LGBTQ+ content and books on race, racism, and people of color — but also affect titles like Stephen King’s books,” Meehan says. “Some districts — in being overly cautious or fearful of punishment — will sweep so wide they end up removing Stephen King from access too.”

PEN’s methodology differs from that of the American Library Assn., which also issues annual reports on bans and challenges. PEN’s numbers are much higher in part because the free expression organization counts any books removed or restricted for any length of time, while the library association only counts permanent removals or restrictions.

Both organizations have acknowledged that because they largely rely on media reports and information that they receive directly, their numbers are far from comprehensive.

The PEN report does not include data from Ohio, Oklahoma, Arkansas and other red states because researchers could not find adequate documentation. Meehan said PEN also doesn’t know the full impact of statewide laws.

Italie writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Fla., contributed to this report.

On Monday, YouTube became the latest media and tech company to settle one of President Trump’s lawsuits.

The Google-owned streamer agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit Trump filed after his account was banned following the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol. That brings Trump’s haul from media and tech companies to more than $90 million in the last year.

Some of these suits deal with conflicts the president has experienced with news networks such as ABC and CBS. Others confront the fallout from the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Some of the settlement money will pay for renovations to a presidential library Trump is building on 2.6 acres of waterfront property in Miami. Other funds will go to the nonprofit Trust for the National Mall, with the intention of building a Mar-a-Lago-style ballroom, which is expected to cost $200 million overall.

Here’s a rundown of the payouts:

YouTube: $24.5 million

After the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, YouTube suspended the president’s account on the platform because of Trump’s alleged role in the insurrection. At the time, the company had cited “concerns about the ongoing potential for violence” and violation of its “policies for inciting violence.”

Trump’s lawsuit, filed in 2021 at the U.S. District Court in Northern California, argued the account’s suspension was “censorship.” Before the case was settled, YouTube had already lifted its suspension on Trump in March 2023, in light of the then-upcoming presidential race.

In court documents filed Monday, Alphabet, the parent company of YouTube and Google, did not admit any wrongdoing in the matter. The company did not agree to make any policy or product changes in the deal.

Of the $24.5 million, $22 million is going to Trump, who will contribute the money to the Trust for the National Mall, which is “dedicated to restoring, preserving, and elevating the National Mall” as well as supporting the construction of the White House State Ballroom, according to the filing.

Alphabet will also have to pay an additional $2.5 million to other plaintiffs in the case, including the American Conservative Union and writer Naomi Wolf.

Social media platforms Facebook (now Meta) and Twitter (now X) had suspended Trump’s accounts over Jan. 6, 2021. At the time, Twitter put out a statement, saying that recent tweets from his “account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter” had to be suspended to avoid “the risk of further incitement of violence.”

Mark Zuckerberg of Meta also posted a statement on Facebook after banning Trump’s Meta accounts. He wrote, “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”

In July of that year, Trump sued the companies for “censorship.”

By January 2023, Meta had reinstated Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, as had X in 2022.

Shortly before Trump was going to take office for his second term, in January 2025, Meta decided to pay the incoming president $25 million to settle the lawsuit. Elon Musk, who had purchased Twitter and renamed it “X” in the interim, agreed to pay $10 million to settle its Trump case.

Paramount Global: $16 million

Paramount Global agreed to pay $16 million to resolve Trump’s legal salvo against “60 Minutes” over the editing of an interview with his 2024 opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump claimed “60 Minutes” edited an interview with Harris to make her look better and bolster her chances in the election. CBS denied the claims, saying the edits were standard and the case was viewed as frivolous by 1st Amendment experts.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that CBS “did everything possible to illegally elect Kamala, including completely and corruptly changing major answers to Interview questions, but it just didn’t work for them.”

Last May, CBS offered $16 million to settle the civil suit filed in Texas. The lump sum included the president’s legal fees and an agreement that “60 Minutes” will release transcripts of interviews with future presidential candidates.

Less than a month after the settlement, the FCC approved Skydance Media’s acquisition of Paramount, which owns CBS.

Disney: $16 million

Earlier this year, ABC news anchor George Stephanopoulos appeared on the network’s “This Week” news program and asserted that Trump was found liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. In May 2023, a jury in New York declined to find Trump liable for rape, but did find him liable for sexual abuse of Carroll.

Trump responded to the on-air comments with a defamation lawsuit filed in federal court in Florida. The lawsuit was settled by ABC News, owned by Disney, last December. Disney agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library and $1 million of Trump’s legal fees.

The settlement also included an editor’s note, posted on the ABC News website, expressing regret for Stephanopoulos’ comments.

Times staff writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.

New York – Members of the Rohingya community who fled violence in Myanmar have addressed a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) conference seeking to bring attention to the suffering of the persecuted Muslim minority, as fighting continues in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

Maung Sawyeddollah, the founder of the Rohingya Student Network, addressed his fellow Rohingya in a livestreamed speech in the vast UNGA hall in New York City on Tuesday, telling them: “Dear brothers and sisters, you are not forgotten. You might feel that the world doesn’t see your suffering. Rohingya see you.”

“Now this message is for the world leaders and the United Nations: It has already been more than eight years since the Rohingya genocide was exposed. Where is justice for the Rohingya? Where?” Sawyeddollah asked.

He then held up a photograph of the bodies of several people lying in a river, who he said had been killed in a drone attack by Myanmar’s rebel Arakan Army in August 2024.

“These are not isolated cases; they are part of a systematic campaign,” said Sawyeddollah, a student who spent seven years in Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh after fleeing Myanmar in 2017.

“Why is there no prevention of these inhumane atrocities by Arakan Army?” he asked.

Wai Wai Nu, the executive director of the Women’s Peace Network-Myanmar, who also addressed the high-level UNGA meeting, told Al Jazeera that the event was a “historic moment”, which she hoped would “draw the attention back to the UN on the issue of Rohingya”.

Wai Wai Nu used her speech to highlight several pressing priorities, including that humanitarian aid has been blocked from flowing to Rakhine State, where Rohingya communities are located, an issue she said was discussed on the sidelines of the conference.

“If we get this, the conference is worth it,” she said.

“We need to save Rohingya inside Rakhine state.”

I delivered opening remarks at the #UN General Assembly conference on the Rohingya and other minorities in Myanmar this morning.

I urged ending impunity, immediate action to protect the #Rohingya, advancing justice,& addressing root causes for lasting solutions.#UNGA80 #Myanmar pic.twitter.com/PtSqCf2afM

— Wai Wai Nu (@waiwainu) September 30, 2025

Nu also told Al Jazeera that “many member states also emphasised or highlighted addressing the root causes, and advancing justice and accountability”, in their speeches.

However, she added, the UN event also illustrated that a “coherent and cohesive approach” to finding a solution to the Rohingya crisis is “lacking leadership and coordination, including in the ASEAN region“, a grouping of states in Southeast Asia.

She also told Al Jazeera that it was important for countries to implement targeted sanctions on Myanmar and “all the perpetrators, including military and other armed sectors, including Arakan Army”, as well as a “global arms embargo” to protect the Rohingya.

‘Massive aid cuts’

Speaking on behalf of the UN secretary-general, Chef de Cabinet Earle Courtenay Rattray, told the meeting of UN member states that “massive aid cuts” have further worsened conditions for the Rohingya, including more than 1 million who fled ethnic cleansing by the military in Myanmar and who have sought refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh.

“In the past 18 months alone, 150,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, which has generously kept its borders open and given them refuge,” Rattray said.

Yet, while Rattray said Bangladesh has shown “remarkable hospitality and generosity”, the chief adviser of Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus, said his country is struggling to continue assisting Rohingya refugees, eight years into the crisis.

“Eight years since the genocide began, the plight of the Rohingya continues,” said Yunus, who jointly convened the meeting as well as another similar summit in Cox’s Bazar last month, to try to bring attention back to the plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh.

“Bangladesh is a victim of the crisis,” said Yunus.

“We are forced to bear huge financial, social and environmental costs,” he said.

“As funding declines, the only peaceful option is to begin their repatriation.”

“The Rohingya have consistently pronounced their desire to go back home”, he said, adding that “as an immediate step, those who recently crossed into Bangladesh escaping conflict must be allowed to repatriate”.

Yunus also told the meeting that, unlike Thailand, Bangladesh could not offer work rights to Rohingya, given his own country’s “developmental challenges, including unemployment and poverty”.

Charles Harder, the United States special envoy for best future generations, was among several speakers to thank Bangladesh and Thailand for hosting Rohingya refugees.

He also announced that the US would “provide more than $60m in assistance for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh”, which he said would be tied to Bangladesh making “meaningful” changes to allow access to work.

But funding refugees in Bangladesh was “not a burden the United States will bear indefinitely”, he said.

“It is long past time for other governments and actors in the region to develop sustainable solutions for Rohingya,” Harder said.

About 50 other UN member states also addressed the meeting on Tuesday, although few announced specific measures they were taking, aside from the United Kingdom, which announced $36m in aid for Rohingya refugees.

Dawda Jallow, The Gambia’s minister of justice, also addressed the meeting, saying that his country hopes to see a judgement from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) “soon after” an oral hearing scheduled for January next year on its case accusing Myanmar of perpetrating genocide against its Rohingya population.

“We filed our case in November 2019, almost six years ago. Now, we are preparing for the oral hearing on the merits in this case, which the court has scheduled for mid-January 2026,” Jallow said.

“The Gambia will present its case as to why Myanmar is responsible for the Rohingya genocide and must make reparations to its victims,” he added.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court rendered obsolete the 4th Amendment’s prohibition on suspicionless seizures by the police. When the court stayed the district court’s decision in Noem vs. Vasquez Perdomo, it green-lighted an era of policing in which people can be stopped and seized for little more than how they look, the job they work or the language they speak.

Because the decision was issued on the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” the justices’ reasoning is unknown. All we have is Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s solo concurrence defending law enforcement’s use of race and ethnicity as a factor in deciding whom to police, while at the same time playing down the risk that comes with every stop — prolonged detention, wanton violence, wrongful deportation and sometimes even death. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her impassioned dissent (joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson): “We should not live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.” But now, we do.

The practical effect of this decision is enormous. It strips away what little remained of the guardrails that prevented police (including agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement) from indiscriminately seizing anyone with only a flimsy pretext.

Now there is no real limit on police seizures. History teaches us that people of color will bear the brunt of this policing regime, including the millions of immigrants who are already subject to police roundups, sweeps and raids.

This decision is no surprise for those of us who study the 4th Amendment. The police have long needed very little to justify a stop, and racial profiling is not new. Yet prior to the Vasquez Perdomo order in most instances, police had to at least articulate a non-race-based reason to stop someone — even if as minor as driving with a broken taillight, not stopping at a stop sign long enough, or walking away from the police too quickly.

Now, police no longer need race-neutral person-specific suspicion (pretextual or real) to seize someone. Appearing “Latino” — itself an indeterminate descriptor because it is an ethnicity, not defined by shared physical traits — along with speaking Spanish and appearing to work a low-wage job is enough, even if you have done nothing to raise suspicion.

Some might believe that if you have nothing to hide there is no reason to fear a police stop — that if you just show police your papers or offer an explanation you can go on your way. Even if that were the case, this sort of oppressive militarized police state — where anyone can be stopped for any reason — is exactly what the 4th Amendment rejected and was meant to prevent.

Moreover, ICE agents and police are not in the business of carefully examining documents (assuming people have the right ones on them) or listening to explanations. They stop, seize and detain — citizens and noncitizens alike. If lucky, some people are released, but many are not — including citizens suspected of being in the country illegally, or individuals whose only alleged crimes are often minor (and the product of poverty) or living peacefully (often for years) in the United States without legal status. And as evidenced by plaintiffs in this case, even if eventually released, a single stop can mean harassment, violence, detention or a life permanently upended.

Even if the 4th Amendment doesn’t prevent them, can’t race-based discrimination and police violence often be addressed through civil rights lawsuits? U.S. Code Section 1983 allows individuals to sue officials who violate their rights. But the reality plays out differently. In a recent decision, this Supreme Court dramatically limited class-action lawsuits, the primary vehicle that would allow widespread relief. The court has created a world in which law enforcement can largely act with impunity under the doctrine of qualified immunity. And there is likely no recourse if a federal official such as an ICE agent violates one’s constitutional rights, as the Supreme Court has sharply limited the ability to sue federal officials for money damages even if they commit a clear constitutional wrong.

The recent decision virtually declaring that the 4th Amendment allows police to engage in express racial profiling may not be the final word on the matter. We hope it isn’t. But longstanding court doctrine had already allowed racial profiling to flourish under the guise of seemingly neutral language of “reasonable suspicion” and “consent.” By allowing a further erosion of the limits on seizures, the Court entrenches a system in which the scope of one’s constitutional rights depends upon the color of one’s skin. If the 4th Amendment is to retain meaning, it must be interpreted to constrain — not enable — the racialized policing practices that have become routine in America.

Daniel Harawa and Kate Weisburd are law professors at NYU Law School and UC Law San Francisco, respectively.

Jessica Chastain has publicly challenged Apple TV+ following the streamer’s decision to hold her upcoming series “The Savant.”

Apple TV+ on Tuesday said it would be delaying the release of the show about domestic terrorism, which follows an investigator who infiltrates online hate groups.

Chastain voiced her opposition to the postponement Wednesday on Instagram, writing that she and Apple were “not aligned on the decision to pause the release of The Savant.”

Representatives for Apple TV+ did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.

In her Instagram post, Chastain said, “In the last five years since we’ve been making the show, we’ve seen an unfortunate amount of violence in the United States,” going on to cite the Jan. 6 insurrection and the Sept. 10 shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk among instances of political violence in recent years.

“I’ve never shied away from difficult subjects, and while I wish this show wasn’t so relevant, unfortunately it is,” Chastain said.

“The Savant is about the heroes who work every day to stop violence before it happens, and honoring their courage feels more urgent than ever,” she said.

Chastain said she hopes audiences will be able to see the show soon. Apple has not yet announced a new release date for the series.

The man accused of opening fire on the lobby of a Sacramento ABC television station cited the government’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case as a motive and promised several members of the Trump administration would be “next,” according to a federal court filing made public Monday.

Anibal Hernandez-Santana, 64, is charged with multiple weapons offenses and interfering with a radio or communication station for firing several bullets at the window of ABC10’s offices in Sacramento around 1 p.m. on Friday, according to a criminal complaint.

Hernandez-Santana was arrested the same day as the shooting. During a search of his car, detectives found a note that read “For hiding Epstein & ignoring red flags,” according to the complaint filed by prosecutors in the Eastern District of California.

The note referenced FBI Director Kash Patel, his second-in-command Dan Bongino and U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, reading “They’re next. — C.K. from above.”

Sacramento Dist. Atty. Thien Ho said he believed the “C.K.” portion of the note was a reference to Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was killed by a sniper in Utah this month. In an interview on Monday, Ho said police also found a book titled “The Cult Of Trump” in Hernandez-Santana’s vehicle.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento said she could not comment beyond what was contained in court documents.

Patel said “targeted acts of violence are unacceptable and will be pursued to the fullest extent of the law,” in a post on X.

Hernandez-Santana was born in Puerto Rico and was not registered as a Republican or Democrat, according to voting records. The Trump administration has faced increasing criticism from both sides of the political spectrum to disclose more information about those who did business with Epstein, the financier charged with trafficking young girls to rich and powerful men before his death by suicide in a federal lockup in 2019.

Hernandez-Santana was a retired lobbyist, according to Ho, who said the shooting was clearly “politically motivated.”

Hernandez-Santana first registered as a lobbyist in 2001. His clients included an environmental justice group, the California Catholic Conference and the California Federation of Teachers, according to state lobbying records.

The day of the shooting, Ho said, a protest was scheduled to take place outside ABC10’s offices over their parent company’s decision to suspend late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over comments he made about the way Republicans have reacted to Kirk’s killing. Kimmel’s suspension was lifted Monday and he is expected to return to the air Tuesday,

Ho said it was clear the TV station was not a “random target.”

“When it comes to public safety it’s not about going right or left, it’s about moving forward … clearly he was motivated by current political events,” Ho said.

Hernandez-Santana did not have a significant criminal history and was not known to local law enforcement before the incident, according to the prosecutor.

Prosecutors said Hernandez-Santana fired four times at the ABC station, once near the building and three additional times at a window in the station’s lobby, according to court records. No one was injured, but there were employees inside at the time.

In addition to the message invoking members of Trump’s Cabinet, Sacramento Police detectives also found a day planner that contained a handwritten note to “Do the Next Scary Thing,” on the date of the attack, court records show.

In a court filing seeking to deny Hernandez-Santana bail, federal prosecutors said the note referencing Patel, Bongino and Bondi “indicates that he may have been planning additional acts of violence.”

Ho has also charged Santana-Hernandez with assault with a firearm and shooting at an inhabited dwelling. He was expected to make court appearances in both cases on Monday. It was not immediately clear whether he has an attorney.

Santana-Hernandez faces five years in federal prison and an additional 17 years in state prison if convicted as charged, according to Ho.

“When someone brazenly fires into a news station full of people in the middle of the day, it is not only an attack on innocent employees but also an attack on the news media and our community’s sense of safety,” Ho said in a statement.

Times staff writer Laura Nelson and researcher Cary Schneider contributed to this report.

A mosque bombed in Sudan is the latest atrocity in a conflict that has led to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, says the United Nations.

Meanwhile, a new US-led political initiative gets a cool response from Khartoum.

What’s happening in the conflict – and what are the hopes for peace?

Presenter: Tom McRae

Guests:

Amgad Fareid Eltayeb – executive director of Fikra for Studies and Development

Kholood Khair – Sudanese political analyst

Cameron Hudson – senior associate in the Africa programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies

WASHINGTON — President Trump said early Thursday that he plans to designate antifa as a “major terrorist organization.”

Antifa, short for “anti-fascists,” is an umbrella term for far-left-leaning militant groups and is not a singular entity. They consist of groups that resist fascists and neo-Nazis, especially at demonstrations.

It’s unclear how the administration would label what is effectively a decentralized movement as a terrorist organization, and the White House on Wednesday did not immediately offer more details.

Trump, who is on a state visit to the United Kingdom, made the announcement in a social media post shortly before 1:30 a.m. Thursday local time. He called antifa a “SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER.”

He also said he will be “strongly recommending” that funders of antifa be investigated.

Antifa is a domestic entity and, as such, is not a candidate for inclusion on the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations. Dozens of groups, including extremist organizations like Islamic State and Al Qaeda, are included on that list. The designation matters in part because it enables the Justice Department to prosecute those who give material support to entities on that list even if that support does not result in violence.

There is no domestic equivalent to that list in part because of broad 1st Amendment protections enjoyed by organizations operating within the United States. And despite periodic calls, particularly after mass shootings by white supremacists, to establish a domestic terrorism law, no singular statute now exists.

In an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said he would pursue a domestic terrorism designation for antifa if such a move had the support of Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and others in his Cabinet.

“It’s something I would do, yeah,” Trump said. ”I would do that 100%. Antifa is terrible.”

Wednesday night, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) praised Trump’s announcement, saying: “Antifa seized upon a movement of legitimate grievances to promote violence and anarchy, working against justice for all. The President is right to recognize the destructive role of Antifa by designating them domestic terrorists.”

In July 2019, Cassidy and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced a resolution in the Senate to condemn the violent acts of antifa and to designate the group a domestic terror organization.

In 2020, in the midst of the George Floyd protests, Trump also raised the idea of designating antifa as a terror organization.

Trump’s previous FBI director, Christopher Wray, said in testimony that year that antifa is an ideology, not an organization, lacking the hierarchical structure that would usually allow it to be designated as a terror group by the federal government.

Kim writes for the Associated Press.