civil

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Justice civil rights division was created in 1957 with an initial focus on combating racial inequality and protecting voting rights.

But in the first two years of President Trump’s second term, its mission has been reimagined.

Now, the division is focused on combating diversity initiatives, rolling back pro-transgender policies and rooting out allegations of election fraud.

It had for decades investigated police departments for using excessive force. Now it investigates police departments with excessive delays in approving gun permits.

California has served as the division’s laboratory for all of these changes, or, as one former civil rights staffer put it, its “punching bag.”

The civil rights division has been involved in twice as many cases in California as in any other state, according to a Times analysis of cases brought by the Justice Department.

And an examination of press statements by the civil rights division shows that California has accounted for a higher proportion of actions in the second Trump administration than during the same time period in the Biden administration.

The division is led by Harmeet Dhillon, a Californian and a conservative legal crusader, who made her name bringing legal challenges against many of the state’s institutions and once served as the chair of the San Francisco Republican Party.

More recently, she was a leading legal figure in challenges to COVID-19 mandates and has shown steadfast support for Trump; her firm represented him in his successful 2024 fight to remain on the ballot in Colorado.

The Times spoke with a dozen former attorneys in the division, nearly all of whom said that the division has taken on a more partisan approach under Dhillon’s leadership and that the changes in the second Trump administration are far more dramatic than anything that occurred during Trump’s first term.

“It is an ideological civil rights division in a way that we’ve never seen before,” said Regan Rush, the former chief of the division’s special litigation section, which largely focused on investigations into police departments and prisons.

Rush is now director of the Red Line for Civil Rights at Democracy Forward, a nonprofit group that tracks the division’s activities.

In response to questions from The Times, Dhillon wrote that the division’s actions aren’t political.

“This Department speaks plainly and directly when we identify violations of federal law. Being clear about violations of federal civil rights law isn’t political or combative — it’s transparent,” Dhillon said. “I stand behind the work we’ve done since I took over the Civil Rights Division.”

While California produced President Reagan — a hero on the right who as governor frequently sparred with UC Berkeley, as Dillon does today — the state has now become, in conservative circles, a symbol of everything wrong in America.

“If there’s any state that is the antithesis of the Trump administration, it’s California,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at UC Berkeley.

Dhillon said the division brings cases wherever it sees violations of federal law.

“California is where some of the most significant violations of federal civil rights law have occurred, as our enforcement actions demonstrate,” she said.

Former attorneys in the division said the desire to target California was obvious to them.

As one example, the division has announced more than a dozen actions involving universities in California, largely focused on allegations of antisemitism — the subject of an earlier Trump executive order — at University of California campuses and alleged racial preferences in hiring in the UC system and in the admissions practices at several medical schools in the state.

The division concluded that the medical schools at UC Davis and UCLA racially discriminated against white and Asian applicants and that UCLA failed to adequately respond to complaints of antisemitic harassment of Jewish and Israeli students. Other investigations are ongoing.

A pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA in 2024.

(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)

“We were never explicitly told that California institutions are of a particular interest, but it was something that was very easy to notice,” said Ejaz Baluch, a former Justice Department attorney who worked on the employment litigation team that looked into allegations that antisemitism at UC campuses had created a hostile work environment.

Trump’s priorities

Dhillon told podcast host Michael Malice in May that she was in “constant contact” with the White House on a “daily, sometimes several-times-a-day basis.”

That represents a major shift from how the division previously operated, said her predecessor, Kristen Clarke, who was the assistant attorney general overseeing the division during the Biden administration.

“There was a fairly sturdy and necessary wall between the Justice Department and the White House,” Clarke said. “This is a complete 180.”

Dhillon has said she sees her job as enforcing civil rights law through the lens of Trump’s executive orders, which took aim at diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, immigration and pro-transgender policies, among other conservative priorities.

She said that while the division “operates within the administration’s law enforcement priorities … investigative and prosecutorial decisions, including which matters to pursue and how, are made by the Division based on the law and the facts.”

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said that the division’s changes under Dhillon represent a stark shift from how it operated in the past.

“It is now very much the anti-civil rights department,” Schiff said. “We’re living in this upside-down world where departments that were set up for one purpose are acting in a way that’s antithetical to the purpose of the department.”

Dhillon said that under her leadership, the division “enforces federal civil rights laws evenhandedly, on behalf of all Americans.

“That includes protecting religious liberty, Second Amendment rights, and women’s and girls’ spaces, standing against illegal race-based policymaking and DEI, and defending parents’ fundamental right to direct their children’s upbringing and education.”

Her reorientation of the division led to a mass exodus of career staff — nearly three-quarters of the roughly 400 attorneys who were there at the beginning of 2025, by Dhillon’s telling.

That’s far more departures than in the first Trump administration.

“I said, ‘My way or the highway,’ and my way isn’t my way, it’s President Trump’s way,” Dhillon told Malice.

Dhillon told The Times that the division has added 100 new lawyers and staff in the last 15 months and plans to hire 100 more.

Prisons and police

As the division has shifted its focus to align with the priorities laid out in Trump’s executive orders, it has shut down a number of cases brought during prior administrations.

Former attorneys in the division worry that other preexisting cases are languishing.

In March, the division opened an investigation into two women’s prisons in California — California Institution for Women in Chino and the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, 35 miles northwest of Fresno — over whether they had violated the rights of other female inmates by housing transgender women in the facilities.

“There have been allegations of sexual assaults, rape, voyeurism and a pervasive climate of sexual intimidation due to the presence of males in the women’s prison,” the Justice Department said in announcing the investigation, misgendering transgender inmates.

Former attorneys in the division said that leadership also sought to open an investigation into the impact of transgender housing policies on juvenile institutions in California, but didn’t find sufficient evidence to warrant opening an investigation.

The investigation into transgender inmates at the women’s prisons came as a prior investigation into the same two prisons remains unresolved over reports from hundreds of women that they had been sexually abused by guards, even as evidence supporting the allegations mounts.

Separate from the civil rights investigation, one of the former guards at the Chowchilla facility was found guilty in January 2025 of more than 60 counts of sexual abuse of inmates and sentenced to 224 years in prison.

“We haven’t seen any kind of relief,” said Megan Marks, former deputy chief in the division’s special litigation section and the deputy director and managing editor for the Red Line for Civil Rights at Democracy Forward.

Dhillon said both investigations into the two women’s prisons are “being pursued vigorously and simultaneously.”

For the last three decades, the division has investigated allegations of police misconduct, authority it was granted by Congress after the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles Police Department officers.

But in the second Trump administration, the division has closed a number of active police investigations and moved away from what Dhillon characterized to Malice as a “standing order to persecute police departments and impose nonsense restrictions on them.”

Instead, the division has brought actions against law enforcement agencies deemed to have failed to protect the rights of gun owners.

California was the first target.

The division filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in September 2025, alleging that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had systemically denied people their 2nd Amendment rights because of long delays in approving concealed carry permits.

Last month, it filed a second gun rights lawsuit in California, this time against the state and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, over the state’s ban on Glock pistols, which acting U.S. Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche characterized as a “blatant trampling of our rights by the California government.”

Changing tone

Former attorneys in the civil rights division say the pugnacious tone in press releases, such as the one announcing the lawsuit opposing the Glock ban, and in numerous social media posts by Dhillon announcing her intent to open investigations, represents a major shift from how the department has operated in the past.

“What really stands out more than any other civil rights division is how much they demonize and personalize,” said Christy Lopez, a former attorney in the division who is now a professor at Georgetown Law. “We tried to build rapport with the jurisdiction.”

Dhillon defended the approach she and the division have taken.

“Our job is to enforce the law and ensure compliance,” Dhillon said. “That includes public messaging to ensure the public is both aware of what the law requires and knows when others violate the law. We’ve designed our messaging strategy with this goal in mind, and we are pleased with the effect it’s had.”

Numerous former lawyers in the division also said that the current leadership has put its thumb on the scale at the outset of investigations.

“We were basically fed an answer before we conducted an investigation, which is the total antithesis of how these investigations are supposed to be conducted,” said one former Justice Department attorney who worked on the investigation into allegations of antisemitism in the UC system and requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Attorneys visited UC Berkeley and UC Davis, but found enough evidence only at UCLA to bring a lawsuit on claims that antisemitism created a hostile work environment.

One of Dhillon’s early top deputies, former Huntington Beach City Atty. Michael Gates, denied that politics played a role in decision-making in his time in the division.

“We evaluated every case on a case-by-case basis,” he said. “There was nothing about politics that influenced any of that.”

Gates, who left the department in November, is now the Republican candidate challenging Bonta to be state attorney general.

Dhillon said to The Times that she is “proud of the record we’ve built” and believes the division has been “active and effective.”

But its former leaders worry that with the exodus of attorneys and the changing nature of the division’s approach, it has lost the ability to fulfill its mission.

“Where does it leave the division today?” said Clarke, its former leader. “It’s a broken agency not able to adequately stand up and defend the civil rights of all Americans.”

A protest by India’s youth-led Cockroach Janta Party has intensified after activist Sonam Wangchuk was forcibly moved to a hospital on the 21st day of his hunger strike. Party founder Abhijeet Dipke was splashed with ink after beginning a fast in solidarity.

A video showing two plainclothes ICE agents tackling a man at the Las Vegas airport before walking away after bystanders intervened has reignited criticism of the agency’s arrest tactics. ICE later said he was arrested at Los Angeles Airport for overstaying his visa.

Hungarian parliament passes amendment that would remove President Sulyok, appointed under ex-Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Hungary’s parliament has approved a constitutional amendment to remove President Tamas Sulyok from his largely ceremonial position, the latest move to dismantle the power of figures associated with former Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The measure, passed on Monday with 139 votes in favour and only six opposing, would immediately bring an end to Sulyok’s term in office and pave the way for parliament to elect a new president.

Hungarians voted out the right-wing nationalist Orban in April, with new Prime Minister Peter Magyar’s Tisza Party winning in a landslide. The election result ended 16 years of power for Orban’s Fidesz party, which had come to dominate many aspects of the country.

Since Magyar’s victory, he has sought to erode that power, including by removing the current president. The constitutional amendment also introduces a series of judicial reforms, creates a body to investigate alleged financial abuses under the previous government, and imposes a 12-year term limit on lawmakers.

Sulyok now has five days to sign the constitutional amendment passed by parliament. Magyar has said that parliament will launch an impeachment procedure against Sulyok if he does not sign it.

The president and other members of Fidesz boycotted Monday’s parliamentary session.

Sweeping away the old order

The parliament elected Sulyok, a former chief of the Constitutional Court of Hungary, in February 2024. He was nominated to replace Katalin Novak, who resigned after pardoning a man convicted of covering up child sexual abuse.

But days after Magyar’s centre-right Tisza Party won a two-thirds parliamentary super-majority in April, the new prime minister declared Sulyok “unworthy to embody the unity of the Hungarian nation” and demanded that he leave office once the new government was formed.

In June, after the deadline to resign had passed, Magyar branded the president a “puppet” of Orban and promised to strip him and other holdovers from office by constitutional means. Weeks later, he unveiled a reform programme, dubbed “Operation Cleansing Fire”, which seeks to install a new constitution, purge state institutions and establish an anticorruption office.

While the presidency is a largely symbolic post, it is empowered to approve laws and can refer them to the Constitutional Court for review, raising fears that Sulyok might use his presidential powers to stymie Tisza’s ambitious reform agenda.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — She refused to ban books, many of them about racism and the experiences of LGBTQ+ people. And for that, Suzette Baker was fired as a library director in a rural county in central Texas.

“I’m kind of persona non grata around here,” said Baker, who had headed the Kingsland, Texas, library system until she refused to take down a prominent display of several books people had sought to ban over the years.

Now, Baker is fighting back. She and two other librarians who were similarly fired have filed workplace discrimination claims with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And as culture war battles to keep certain books from children and teens put public and school libraries increasingly under pressure, their goal is redemption and, where possible, eventual reinstatement.

So far, it’s a wait-and-see whether the claims will succeed — and set new precedent — in the struggle between teachers and librarians around the country who oppose book bans and conservative activists who say some books are inappropriate for young minds.

The fight has involved a record number of book-banning efforts, some libraries cutting ties with the American Library Assn. — which opposes book bans — and even attempts to prosecute librarians for allowing children to access books some consider too graphic.

At least one terminated librarian has gained a measure of success.

Brooky Parks, who was fired for defending programs on anti-racism and LGBTQ+ stories she organized for teens at the Erie Community Library north of Denver, won a $250,000 settlement in September. Reached through the Colorado Civil Rights Division, the settlement requires her former employer to give librarians more say in decisions involving library programs.

Parks’ settlement with the High Plains Library District capped a stressful eight-month period without work, when community donations helped her avoid losing her home. And it will probably resolve Parks’ claim with the EEOC, said attorney Iris Halpern, who represents Parks and the other two librarians.

“I just wasn’t going to back down from it. It was just the right thing to do,” said Parks, now a librarian at the University of Denver.

After her firing in 2022, Baker filed an EEOC claim against her employer, the Llano County Library System in Kingsland. And in September 2023, Terri Lesley filed a claim over her firing last summer as executive director of the Campbell County Public Library System in Gillette, Wyo.

Halpern, with the Denver firm Rathod Mohamedbhai, compared the wrongful-termination claims to civil rights-era legal battles.

“It is honestly sad that we’ve gotten to this point. But history is a constant struggle, and we have to learn from our past,” she said.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act established the EEOC to enforce laws against workplace discrimination. One legal expert thinks the librarians might be able to prevail on the grounds that, under those laws, employees may not be discriminated against for associating with certain classes of people.

“With any case, the devil can be in the details in terms of how the facts come out and what they can present. But these are definitely actionable claims,” said Rutgers University law professor David Lopez, a former EEOC general counsel.

An EEOC investigation can take more than a year. After that, the EEOC may attempt to reach a settlement with the employer out of court, sue on the employee’s behalf or issue a letter saying the employee has grounds to sue on their own.

The librarians haven’t yet received an EEOC response and none is expected before the end of next year.

“I would love to be optimistic,” Baker said. “I know there are a lot of people in this community who are just absolutely behind the library being open and free and equal for all. And there’s a lot of people who aren’t. So it’s a hard, hard situation.”

EEOC spokesperson Victor Chen declined to comment on specific filings, saying, “We can’t even confirm or deny we have these complaints.”

The county attorney offices and other representatives of the government officials who fired Parks, Baker and Lesley did not return phone and email messages seeking comment, or declined to comment.

At her Texas library, Baker displayed several books that have been targeted in recent book bans and a sign that read: “We put the ‘lit’ in literature” — a reference to a Tennessee pastor’s recent burning of books.

Baker was fired after refusing to take down the display and signs — considered the last straw after she resisted book banning in her library.

In March, a federal judge ordered 17 books returned to Kingsland library shelves while a citizen lawsuit against book banning proceeded. The works ranged from children’s books to award-winning nonfiction, including “They Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group,” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti; and “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health,” by Robie Harris.

“Content-based restrictions on speech are presumptively unconstitutional and subject to strict scrutiny,” Texas U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman wrote in his March 30 ruling. He cited a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that barred communities from banning signs because of what they say.

The Llano County Commissioners Court decided against closing the county’s three libraries in response to the ruling. Closing the libraries would have echoed the history across the U.S. of closing swimming pools rather than desegregating them, Halpern said.

Like Baker, Lesley had trouble finding work after being fired from the library system she directed in Gillette, Wyo. Her dismissal followed two years of turmoil over challenges to the books available and library programs.

Some of the same county officials who opposed a transgender magician’s plans to perform at the library went on to join local residents in seeking to ban books, according to Lesley’s EEOC filing.

Baker and Lesley both were fired after local officials appointed new library board members willing to be more aggressive about pulling books.

“Our county commissioners appointed board members who were sympathetic to the people who wanted to remove the books. And it was a long dance to try to get it there. And in the end they had to fire me, I think, in order to be able to meet their goal,” Lesley said.

The Campbell County Commission skirted a deputy county attorney’s recommendation not to appoint past applicants for the board without reinterviewing them along with new candidates, according to Lesley’s EEOC claim.

“I saw this as a well-executed attack on the library by a group of citizens and elected officials. It was an attack on the LGBTQ+ community as well,” she said. “And it was an attack on the books.”

France has returned 23 Syrian antique artefacts it’s held since the outbreak of the 2011 civil war. The collection, spanning from prehistory to the Abbasid era, has been restored to the National Museum in Damascus after French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit.

Former US President Barack Obama opened his presidential centre in Chicago, using the occasion to call for unity, urging Americans to reject division and invest in the next generation.

The Delhi High Court grants bail to Kashmiri rights activist Khurram Parvez, jailed in India for nearly five years.

New Delhi, India — A prominent Kashmiri human rights activist who has been imprisoned for nearly five years has won a partial legal victory after being granted bail in a “terror funding” case, but remains in jail over a second case.

The Delhi High Court granted Khurram Parvez, 49, bail in a November 2021 case on Wednesday, according to legal website LiveLaw. However, he will remain in jail in a separate case from March 2023.

Parvez was first arrested about five years ago by India’s main counterterrorism law enforcement bureau, the National Investigation Agency (NIA), over accusations of “terror funding”, recruitment of rebels in Indian-administered Kashmir and mobilising protesters during a civilian uprising. The second case is also related to alleged “terror funding”.

International rights groups have widely condemned Parvez’s arrest and continued imprisonment.

His lawyer, Swati Khanna, said she hoped Parvez could be freed from jail soon if there was a “positive result” in the second case.

“We are hoping, in a month or two, he could be out,” she told reporters.

The trial has not begun in either of the cases – an issue highlighted by international rights organisations, which say the process becomes the punishment for political prisoners in India who have to wait years behind bars before even facing trial.

The conviction rate in the counterterror law, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), remains low at 5 percent nationally. It dips further, to less than 1 percent, when it comes to Indian-administered Kashmir.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government has been criticised for persecuting dissent and criminalising expression in Kashmir, the country’s only Muslim-majority region.

“Khurram’s arrest proved to be the last nail in the coffin of any meaningful rights activism in Kashmir, one of the world’s most militarised zones,” said a political analyst based in Srinagar, Kashmir, who requested anonymity fearing repercussions from the authorities.

“This bail comes in a completely shallow, and nearly fictitious, trumped-up case after years in jail, and Khurram would still not walk free.”

Kashmir remains disputed between India, Pakistan, and China, which control parts of the region. Pakistan controls the northern and western portions – Azad Kashmir; and Gilgit and Baltistan. India controls the southern and southeastern parts – the Kashmir valley, including its biggest city, Srinagar; Jammu; and Ladakh. China controls the Aksai Chin area in the northeast.

The two neighbours have fought three major wars over Kashmir since the end of British colonial rule and their partition in 1947 led to the creation of Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India. Both countries continue to assert claims to the entire region of Kashmir.

At least 11 people were killed on Sunday during clashes between police and protesters in Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s Rawalakot city, capital of Poonch district, before a major demonstration scheduled by a banned civil society group for Tuesday.

Authorities in Pakistan-administered Kashmir deployed federal paramilitary troops and issued a strict travel advisory before the Tuesday protest, which has gone ahead despite the restrictions.

Here is what we know about the latest unrest.

What’s happening in Pakistan-administered Kashmir?

Eleven people have been killed in clashes between the police and protesters, while more than 70 have been injured. The ban on the organisation, alongside regional grievances, set off the protests.

On Tuesday, Sardar Waheed Khan, commissioner of the Pakistan side of the Poonch district, a militarised region shared between Indian-administered and Pakistani-administered Kashmir, told the news agency Reuters that four police officers and a passer-by died “after miscreants shot at them”. Six protesters were killed, he said.

Police Chief Liaqat Malik said 23 security officials and 50 protesters were among those injured in Sunday’s clashes.

On Friday, local authorities issued an advisory urging visitors to avoid travelling to the area.

“The measure is advised to save intending visitors from any unexpected situation or inconvenience,” an unnamed official said in a statement issued by the region’s Press Information Department (PID).

“The government also requests those already in the territory for sightseeing or any other purpose to leave by Friday evening so that they do not confront any unpleasant situation,” the statement added.

Kashmir is a disputed Himalayan region which is claimed in full by both India and Pakistan, with China also controlling a portion of the territory. Pakistan-administered Kashmir – known locally as Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) – is governed under a semi-autonomous system, with its own prime minister and legislative assembly, but ultimate authority resting with Islamabad. Its population exceeds four million people, according to the 2017 census. It is separated from India-administered Kashmir by what is known as the Line of Control (LoC).

The LoC is the 740km (459-mile) military border dividing the disputed Kashmir region between Indian-administered and Pakistan-administered territories.

Who is behind the protests?

The Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) is a grassroots umbrella organisation that emerged in 2023 as the leader of a protest movement across the Pakistani-administered part of the region. The JAAC, led by activist Shaukat Nawaz Mir, represents traders and civil society groups.

On Friday, the local government proscribed the JAAC under a regional legislative framework in Pakistan-administered Kashmir called the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2014.

In a circular, the government’s home department claimed the JAAC “is engaged in terrorism, acted in a manner prejudicial to the peace & security of the State, involved in creating anarchy in the State by intimidating public, promoting hatred & creating sense of insecurity in society and public at large, etc”.

In the past, protests organised by the JAAC have led to violent clashes between protesters and security forces, leading to casualties.

In a video message on X responding to Sunday’s incident, Mir accused the authorities of unleashing violence in Rawalakot, saying, “The state has begun a massacre of our people in Rawalakot.”

In response, Khan, the commissioner of Pakistani Poonch, said, “The JAAC leadership is misleading the masses by terming it a massacre. The state’s action was meant to restore law and order.”

On Tuesday, the internet monitoring group NetBlocks said that its data showed that access to the web remained severely restricted in Pakistan-administered Kashmir for a third day in a row.

What is the trigger behind these protests?

These protests are against the reservation of 12 seats in Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s legislature for refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir who now live in other parts of Pakistan. If the refugees live in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, they are not eligible to contest for these reserved seats.

The region votes on July 27 to elect its next legislature, which has 45 seats in all — including the 12 reserved ones.

The JAAC is calling for the abolition of the reserved seats, arguing that all seats in the legislature must go to those who actually reside in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and not those living in other constituencies scattered across Pakistan.

Abdul Jabbar Nasir, a journalist currently based in Karachi, but originally from a village near the LoC in the Gilgit Baltistan area, which is the majority of the Pakistan-administered Kashmir region, told Al Jazeera that the seats are reserved for those who migrated from Indian-administered Kashmir to Karachi or any other part of Pakistan in 1947.

Nasir explained that the reserved seats have existed in various forms since the late 1940s and were formalised in Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s 1974 interim constitution, which treats the region as a self-governing, autonomous state, with its own prime minister, president and courts, while defence, foreign affairs, currency and communications remain under Pakistan’s control.

“If the constitutional protection provided begins to be changed by these protesters, then I don’t think things can function,” Nasir said.

“It is essential for these seats to exist. If we abolish them, on one hand, Pakistan’s own case for Kashmiri statehood in the United Nations will be weakened, and India’s case will be strengthened,” he added.

He drew a parallel with India, noting that New Delhi historically kept a number of seats vacant in its parliament and the former Jammu and Kashmir assembly as a way of asserting that those bodies represented the entire former princely state, including areas under Pakistani control. If Pakistan now dismantles refugee representation in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, he warned, India could argue that both countries have effectively “regularised” their control over their respective portions of the disputed region.

Marathon talks between a federal ministerial team, including leaders from Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and JAAC leadership in late May failed to yield a breakthrough. This resulted in the JAAC announcing that the protest on Tuesday would proceed as planned.

On Sunday, a top court in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, called the Supreme Court of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, ruled that the 12 reserved seats are constitutionally protected, and a constitutional amendment would be needed to abolish the reservation.

“This ruling effectively closed the legal route for groups seeking to challenge the existing arrangement and intensified calls for protest by the [JAAC],” Raja Qaiser Ahmed, director for the Area Study Centre for Africa, North and South America at the Islamabad-based Quaid-i-Azam University, told Al Jazeera.

What are the deeper issues?

Experts say the current crisis is part of a deeper, long-running debate about governance, political representation, resource allocation and regional autonomy in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The protest on Tuesday is the fourth such protest led by the JAAC.

“The current crisis reflects a broader and longer-term debate about governance, political representation, resource distribution, and regional autonomy in AJK,” Ahmed said.

“While the refugee-seat issue has become the focal point of the present mobilisation, it is intertwined with wider grievances that have surfaced repeatedly over the past several years.”

In September and October 2025, the JAAC officially released a comprehensive 38-point charter of demands and initiated a lockdown. The government, in response to a lockdown initiated by JAAC, imposed a complete communications blackout.

The protests had their roots in May 2023, when residents first protested skyrocketing electricity bills alongside widespread flour smuggling and acute shortages in subsidised wheat supplies. The movement hit its first major flashpoint in May 2024, when protesters set off on a long march towards Muzaffarabad. The ensuing violent clashes left at least five people dead, among them a police officer.

The 38-point charter remains the focal point of current tensions. The demands of the charter include economic subsidies, investigation of corrupt officials, social welfare and infrastructure, as well as the abolition of the 12 reserved seats.

Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, chairman of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP), the party with the most seats in Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s Legislative Assembly, said on Sunday that he would meet Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to discuss the ongoing tensions in the region.

“Thirty-five out of 38 demands have been implemented,” Bhutto-Zardari said during a news conference in Islamabad, explaining that the rest of the demands are not feasible or have court orders barring their implementation.

“More fundamentally, the protests reveal an ongoing tension between constitutional arrangements linked to the broader Kashmir dispute and growing demands for greater local accountability and political participation,” Ahmed said.

“The debate is therefore not only about a specific set of assembly seats but also about competing visions of representation, governance, and the future political trajectory of the region.”

Hundreds marched in Tunisia’s capital demanding press freedom and the release of political prisoners detained during President Kais Saied’s crackdown on dissent, which has jailed opposition figures including Ennahda party leader Rached Ghannouchi.

The charges stem from the January 14 shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in Minneapolis during Operation Metro Surge.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent charged with shooting a Venezuelan man during a controversial immigration raid in Minnesota has been arrested in Texas, according to United States authorities.

Agent Christian Castro, 52, was taken into custody on Friday after investigators from Minnesota tracked him down in the southern state, where he was arrested with assistance from the Texas Rangers and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) inspector general’s office. He faces four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.

The charges stem from the non-fatal shooting on January 14 of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in Minneapolis during Operation Metro Surge, a large-scale immigration enforcement campaign that drew widespread criticism for its aggressive tactics.

Prosecutors allege Castro fired through the front door of a residence, striking Sosa-Celis in the leg.

“Mr Castro was charged earlier this month with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime for an incident on January 14, 2026, when he discharged his weapon through the front door of a home knowing there were people who had just run inside,” the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

“The bullet travelled through the door and struck one victim in the leg before making its final impact in the wall of a child’s room.”

Minnesota officials welcomed Castro’s arrest, saying federal agents should be held to the same legal standards as everyone else.

“In Minnesota, we believe in equal justice under the law. That means nobody is above the law, including agents of the federal government,” said Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. “I am pleased to hear Christian Castro has been taken into custody and will stand trial for the crimes he allegedly committed in Minnesota.”

Operation Metro Surge faces increasing legal scrutiny

The case became a flashpoint after federal authorities initially claimed Sosa-Celis and another man had assaulted ICE officers.

Those allegations later unravelled when video and other evidence emerged that contradicted agents’ accounts, prompting prosecutors to drop charges against Sosa-Celis and his housemate, Alfredo Aljorna.

The DHS later acknowledged that officers involved in the incident had provided false information about the shooting.

The outgoing director of ICE, Todd Lyons, also indicated a federal investigation was under way. “Lying under oath is a serious federal offense,” he said.

But through a spokesperson, ICE rejected Minnesota’s effort to prosecute the agent involved, calling the case “unlawful” and “a political stunt”.

Castro is the second federal officer charged this year in connection with Operation Metro Surge, an unusual step that reflects growing scrutiny of federal agents’ conduct during the immigration crackdown.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty is also pursuing investigations into other incidents linked to the operation.

Operation Metro Surge began in Minnesota in December 2025. By the time Sosa-Celis was shot on January 14, hundreds of federal agents had been deployed across the Minneapolis-St Paul area in what officials described as the largest DHS operation in US history.

The crackdown ultimately prompted intense controversy, particularly after the fatal shootings of two US citizens: Renee Good on January 7 and Alex Pretti on January 24.

Against that backdrop, the investigation into the Sosa-Celis shooting further intensified scrutiny of federal agents’ tactics and conduct during the operation.

Pop crooner and “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Erika Girardi quietly put an end to a long and splashy legal battle over her ex-husband’s now-defunct law firm on Thursday, settling a $25-million bankruptcy lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court.

The suit alleged the singer should have known she was profiting off embezzled funds linked to the sprawling case against her ex-husband, former L.A. legal heavyweight Tom Girardi, and his firm Girardi Keese. The couple was accused of funneling millions from the law firm to prop up Erika’s music career.

Performing as Erika Jayne, she topped the charts in the 2010s with a series of raunchy dance club hits. But court records show she spent millions more than she made as a musician.

Larry W. Gabriel, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, wrote in a pretrial filing Monday that Erika and a company associated with her “received the benefit of [Tom] Girardi’s massive fraudulent scheme.”

Tom Girardi is currently serving a seven-year sentence in federal prison after he was convicted of wire fraud for bilking his personal-injury clients in 2024. The disgraced former attorney was found to have stolen tens of millions from his firm.

His wife’s pop hits mixed boasts about luxury brands and explicit sex acts with pulsing dance beats and a bratty falsetto, a tone actress Lake Bell famously dubbed “sexy baby voice.”

In depositions taken as part of the suit, Erika said she had no knowledge of her husband’s crimes. She claimed to be ignorant about where the millions she spent on recording, merchandise, tours and “fun, playful, and sparkly outfits” were drawn from.

“I did not know how much I spent per month or per year,” she said in one exchange. “Girardi Keese paid my Amex credit card bill every month.”

Monday’s filings show Girardi Keese paid at least $14 million in charges to her American Express account between 2008 and 2020.

The payouts began in the late 2000s when Erika, then a stay-at-home mom, sought to relaunch herself as a performer. In 2016, near the height of her pop fame, her husband began to complain she was charging too much on the credit card account. After repeated entreaties to tamp down her spending, Girardi tried for the first time to look at her balance.

Soon after, Girardi grew suspicious of charges being made to her card by a Hollywood costumer — worries she reported to one of Girardi Keese’s clients, an agent in the Secret Service, records show.

On the advice of the agent’s Secret Service colleagues, she said she disputed the AMEX charges and was ultimately refunded more than half a million dollars to her personal account, despite the original payments having come from the law firm.

Erika Girardi’s attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.