killing

Reporting from Washington — A Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee says it is “unacceptable” that the Obama administration is refusing to provide Congress with the secret legal opinions cited to justify killing American citizens during counterterrorism operations.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who has pushed against the notion of classified legal opinions, expressed his concerns in a letter to Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday.

Previously, Wyden has complained about the refusal of the Justice Department to make public secret interpretations of domestic-surveillance law. On Wednesday, the senator said he wanted to know just how much authority President Obama claims when it comes to the matter of killing American terrorism suspects, but that his request, made last April, to see the classified legal opinions exploring that topic has been rebuffed.

“How much evidence does the president need to decide that a particular American is part of a terrorist group?” Wyden wrote. “Does the president have to provide individual Americans with an opportunity to surrender before using lethal force against them? Is the president’s authority to kill Americans based on authorization from Congress or his own authority as commander-in-chief? Can the president order intelligence agencies to kill an American who is inside the United States?”

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, also has asked for copies of any classified legal opinions dealing with killing American citizens — but has not been provided any, his office said. At a Nov. 8, 2011, congressional hearing, Holder told Leahy that he could not “address whether or not there is an opinion in this area.”

For the executive branch to claim that intelligence agencies have the authority to knowingly kill American citizens while refusing to provide Congress with the legal opinions explaining its reasoning “represents an indefensible assertion of executive prerogative, and I expected better from the Obama Administration,” Wyden wrote to Holder.

A Justice Department official said the department is reviewing Wyden’s letter and will respond later.

“It would be entirely lawful for the United States to target high-level leaders of enemy forces, regardless of their nationality, who are plotting to kill Americans both under the authority provided by Congress in its use of military force in the armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces as well as established international law that recognizes our right of self-defense,” the official said.

Last month, officials said Holder would be making a speech in the coming weeks laying out the legal justification for lethal strikes against Americans, such as the September CIA drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar Awlaki, a U.S.-born citizen accused by U.S. officials of helping plan terrorist attacks against American targets. Wyden said he welcomed that.

U.S. officials have said that the CIA goes through extra legal steps when targeting a U.S. citizen as part of its drone strike program.

In early 2010, then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that the intelligence community “take[s] direct action against terrorists” and added that “if we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”

Wyden said he is not suggesting “that the president has no authority to act in this area. If American citizens choose to take up arms against the United States during times of war, there can undoubtedly be some circumstances under which the president has the authority to use lethal force against those Americans. For example, there is no question that President Lincoln had the authority to order Union troops to take military action against Confederate forces during the Civil War.”

However, he said, the question becomes thornier when the U.S. is at war around the world with terrorists who don’t wear uniforms. “And it is critically important for the public’s elected representatives to ensure that these questions are asked and answered in a manner consistent with American laws and American values,” Wyden wrote.

Members of Congress need to understand how or whether the executive branch has attempted to answer these questions so that they can decide for themselves whether this authority has been properly defined, Wyden wrote.

“Americans have a particular right to understand how the U.S. government interprets the statement in the Bill of Rights that no American shall ‘be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,’” Wyden wrote. “The federal government’s official views about the president’s authority to kill specific Americans who have not necessarily been convicted of a crime are not a matter to be settled in secret by a small number of government lawyers.”

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Wednesday found that 83% of respondents said they approve of the use of drone strikes against terrorist suspects overseas. Sixty-five percent in the poll, conducted by telephone Feb. 1-4, said that American citizens suspected of terrorism are legitimate targets. Democrats approved of the drone strikes on American citizens by a 58%-33% margin, and liberals approved of them, 55%-35%, according to the Post’s blog, the Plum Line.

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[For the record, 9:41 a.m., Feb. 10: An earlier version of this post incorrectly reported that Anwar Awlaki, a U.S. citizen killed by a CIA drone strike last year in Yemen, was born in Yemen. He was born in New Mexico.]

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

This week I spoke to James L. Brooks, whose legendary career includes “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Terms of Endearment,” “Broadcast News” and “The Simpsons,” about his new film “Ella McCay,” which opens in theaters Dec. 12.

The film stars Emma Mackey as a classic Brooksian heroine: a lieutenant governor of a small, unnamed state with a genuine desire to make other people’s lives better who unexpectedly finds herself thrust into the job of governor.

Albert Brooks and Emma Mackey in the movie “Ella McCay.”

(Claire Folger / 20th Century Studios)

Warm and affectionate toward its characters while also clear-eyed about their all-too-human imperfections, the film is the kind of made-for-adults dramedy that is currently out-of-favor with Hollywood.

“I don’t believe people don’t want comedy,” Brooks said. “Obviously, I hope that you have meat on the bone and that doesn’t mean you can’t do a real scene about real difficulty, especially with this picture.”

Matt Brennan spoke to Renate Reinsve, star of Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” while the two of them toured Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House. Carlos Aguilar spent time with Amy Madigan, the veteran actor enjoying renewed career energy thanks to her role as Aunt Gladys in “Weapons.”

Among the movies’ new releases, Amy Nicholson reviewed Rian Johnson’s latest Benoit Blanc story, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” calling it the “darkest, funniest and best installment yet.”

Mila Kunis, Daniel Craig and Josh O’Connor in the movie “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.”

(Netflix)

Amy also reviewed Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet,” an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel about William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley) as they grapple with the death of their young son Hamnet, a grief that results in the play “Hamlet.”

If you are really looking to get away from family this week, consider Julia Loktev’s five-and-a-half-hour documentary “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow,” which chronicles the fall of one of the last independent news channels in Russia, largely run by women, during the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Loktev and one of the film’s subjects, Ksenia Mironova, will be at the Laemmle Royal for Q&As after certain shows on the 28th and 29th.

As Tim Grierson put it in his review, “During a year in which the worst-case scenarios of a second Trump presidency have come to fruition, ‘My Undesirable Friends’ contains plenty of echoes with our national news. The canceling of comedy shows, the baseless imprisonment of innocent people, the rampant transphobia: The Putin playbook is now this country’s day-to-day. Some may wish to avoid Loktev’s film because of those despairing parallels. But that’s only more reason to embrace ‘My Undesirable Friends.’ Loktev didn’t set out to be a witness to history, but what she’s emerged with is an indispensable record and a rallying cry.”

Also opening this week is another of the year’s most boldly unconventional films, Kahlil Joseph’s “BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions,” a dense, collage-like exploration of Black identity and history, playing at the Lumiere Music Hall. Anyone who saw the recent blockbuster exhibition of artworks by Joseph’s brother, the late Noah Davis, at the Hammer Museum will also find “BLKNWS” a worthwhile experience.

Cinematographer Roger Deakins on the future of the Coen brothers

Cinematographer Roger Deakins photographed at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Roger Deakins is among the most celebrated and best-known cinematographers of his era. A two-time Oscar winner, he has worked with filmmakers such as Joel and Ethan Coen, Sam Mandes, Denis Villeneuve and many more, on films including “No Country for Old Men,” “The Big Lebowski,” “Skyfall,” “Sicario,” “Blade Runner 2049” and “1917.”

Deakins, 76, who often works in collaboration with his wife James Ellis Deakins, has for the past few years been hosting a podcast, “Team Deakins,” interviewing filmmakers. He has recently published “Reflections: On Cinematography,” which is part memoir and part how-to, drawing from his personal archives to explore his work on so many contemporary classics.

On Sunday, the American Cinematheque will screen director Andrew Dominik’s 2007 “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” at the Aero Theatre with both Roger and James present for a Q&A and book signing.

They recently got on a video call from their home in Santa Monica to talk about the book, their relationship and whether to expect another movie from the Coen brothers.

Javier Bardem in Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2007 movie “No Country for Old Men.”

(Miramax Films)

One of the things that’s so striking about the book is that it is very much a memoir, the story of your life, but it is told through these movies and an exploration of your artistic practice.

Roger Deakins: Well, that was the balance. We didn’t want it to be a technical manual and we didn’t want it to be a sort of tell-all or just recounting old stories.

James Deakins: When you work in the film business, it’s so intense. Your work is your life.

Roger Deakins: Especially when I started out, shooting in documentaries for a few years, that was the life experience that opened the world to me. I didn’t see the world other than my experiences shooting films, whether it was documentaries or later fiction films, like going together to Morocco to shoot “Kundun.” The life experience actually has always been as important to me as the actual work.

Can you tell me a little bit more about just the relationship between the two of you, traveling together, working on all these different movies? What has that meant to you?

Roger Deakins: It’s all very weird. That is so not me.

James Deakins: The reason why we work so well together is Roger’s very intent on what he is doing and doesn’t particularly want to talk to other people during that time period. And I do — I love to talk to people. I love to solve problems. I love to do all that. So together we kind of make this whole. But we also have a lot of people come up to us and ask us for relationship advice.

Roger Deakins: When we met, I think I was 41 or something. We were both fairly kind of, not lonely, but we were loners, both of us. And we connected on a film. We met on a film together. James was script supervisor on a film that I was shooting. And after that film, it just seemed obvious to me that we should be together. And it’s been wonderful. We’ve just shared these life experiences together. I couldn’t really understand other relationships, which seemed to work well, where one person goes away and works on a movie for like six months and then comes back home and tries to step back into a relationship like nothing had happened. I don’t see that. So we’ve always shared things together. Doing the podcast was very much James’ idea, but I’ve kind of warmed to it.

James Ellis Deakins, left, and Roger Deakins at the 95th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in 2023.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

When people ask for relationship advice, what do they want to know?

James Deakins: They’re saying, “I’ve got to travel so much. How do I keep it together?” Or: How do we work together? Just, will this work? Is it possible? It’s very strange, because we’ve just done a very technical Q&A and my head’s there, and then someone comes up to me — and I can always kind of tell because they’re bearing down on me — and they go, “I just want to ask you…”

Roger, in the book you talk about how, when you were starting out and in film school, you thought of yourself as a director. As you started shooting more for other people, did that create a sense of a path not taken?

Roger Deakins: I would be lying if I was saying there wasn’t a little bit way down deep inside of me that was saying: What if I had tried to become a director instead? But on the other hand, I’ve been part of so many movies with so many really nice, intelligent people. And I really do have a confidence problem. We did try and get together a couple of projects a number of years ago and I just don’t have the confidence. I’m terrible going into a studio and pitching a project.

I’m just not that political person. I love nothing more than being on a set with a whole group of people. I love just working with the camera crew and electricians and the grips and the painters and everybody else. I love that collaboration. And often a director is in a much more lonely place.

Do you feel like you have a signature? What is it that you bring to a project?

Roger Deakins: I hope I don’t have a signature. I hope I just have a way of relating to a story and something in front of me. Maybe there’s some sort of personal perspective.

James Deakins: Well, I think you bring a commitment to the project. And you also are so committed to creating the director’s vision as opposed to you coming in and saying, “Well, let’s make it the way that I always do it.” And so I think you allow what the director has in his head to come out.

Roger Deakins: It’s also really important that you’re not just there to create pretty pictures. Oh, that’s a great sunset, but what the hell does it have to do with this story? Or: Let’s put up five cameras and get a lot of material and we’ll cut something out of it later. That’s the extreme version of something that’s anathema to me.

You say that people confuse pretty cinematography with good cinematography. How do you define good cinematography?

Roger Deakins: Cinematography that’s not noticed. Not noticed because people are too absorbed in the story. When you go to a premiere or any screening and you come out and somebody comes out and says, “Oh, I love that shot where such and such” — that was a mistake because not one shot should stand out. Somebody said, “Oh, wasn’t that a lovely sunset?” Then you’ve taken the audience out of the film. You’ve just drawn attention to the image.

Ryan Gosling in the movie “Blade Runner 2049.”

(Stephen Vaughan / Warner Bros. Pictures)

So even for all the astonishing images you’ve created, you still think that they shouldn’t be noticed?

Roger Deakins: In a way. I mean, obviously on some films you’ve got more license than others. Obviously I could have more fun on “Skyfall” in certain instances, or “Blade Runner,” more than I could on “No Country for Old Men.” “Blade Runner,” I could do these kind of lighting things in the Wallace building because that was part of the character, that was part of his creation, not mine. So it kind of felt integral to the character. But in another situation, I’m never going to do that kind of lighting.

You haven’t shot anything for a few years now. Are you hoping to find something?

Roger Deakins: Kind of. It depends which day you ask me, really.

James Deakins: Really depends on the project. And we haven’t seen anything, really.

A lot of people are very eager for Joel and Ethan Coen to work together again. Have you had any conversations with them?

Roger Deakins: Well, Joel’s just been directing a film in Scotland, his own film. I’ve talked to Joel on and off lately and, well, actually Ethan not that long ago, but I’m not sure what their plans are now. So that’s all talk. That’s like talking about my football team, Manchester United. What’s the next player they’re going to buy? Who knows?

Points of interest

‘Coming Home’

Jane Fonda and Jon Voight in the movie “Coming Home.”

(Herbert Dorfman / Corbis via Getty Images)

On Monday, the Frida Cinema will show Hal Ashby’s 1978 “Coming Home,” starring Jane Fonda, Jon Voight and Bruce Dern. Fonda and Voight both won Academy Awards for their performances and the film was named best picture by the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

“Coming Home” is an exploration of the costs of war at home and also about learning to live with disability. Voight plays a Vietnam veteran who returns a paraplegic, struggling to adjust to his new life. Fonda is a woman whose husband (Dern) is deployed to Vietnam. When she begins to volunteer at the local VA hospital, she reconnects with Voight’s Luke, a friend from high school. As the two begin an affair, all three of their lives are upended.

Critic Kristen Lopez will be there to introduce the screening, as well as sign copies of her new book, “Popcorn Disabilities: The Highs and Lows of Disabled Representation in the Movies.”

Via email, Lopez explained her selection of “Coming Home,” saying “it’s one of the few movies that, I think, even though it’s not cast authentically, does illustrate the disabled experience in an authentic way. Director Hal Ashby, producer Jane Fonda and star Jon Voight did deep research into disabled veterans, specifically wheelchair users, and it’s the first movie I remember seeing that got the little bits of disabled business correct. It’s also a movie that, even today, is remarkably progressive in how it portrays disability. Luke Martin has a home and a car, he’s self-sufficient, and too often we don’t see how disabled people live.”

‘Putney Swope’

An image from “Putney Swope,” directed by Robert Downey Sr.

(Cinema 5 / Photofest)

Opening the series “Present Past 2025: A Celebration of Film Preservation” at the Academy Museum will be the world premiere of a new 35mm print of Robert Downey Sr.’s 1969 “Putney Swope.” A biting satire of how corporate culture handles race, the film stars Arnold Johnson as the title character, who is unexpectedly made president of a major advertising firm and proceeds to upend all of its messaging. Paul Thomas Anderson has often spoken of Downey as an influence — an influence that can be clearly seen in the anti-authoritarian “One Battle After Another.”

In his original January 1970 review, Charles Champlin wrote, “‘Putney Swope’ is not so much a movie as a cartoon with real people. … ‘Putney Swope’ is not for anyone who demands good taste in movies, or restraint, or a presumption of dignity in the human character. But in its youthful, irreverent and uninhibited but medicinal way, ‘Putney Swope’ is shocking good fun.”

Also playing as part of the Academy’s preservation series, which runs through Dec. 22, will be world premiere restorations of William Wyler’s 1934 “Glamour,” John M. Stahl’s 1933 “Only Yesterday,” Lloyd Corrigan’s 1931 “Daughter of the Dragon” and George Marshall’s 1945 “Incendiary Blonde.” Other titles in the series include North American restoration premieres of Konrad Wolf’s 1980 “Solo Sunny” and Mikio Naruse’s 1955 “Floating Clouds,” plus the U.S. restoration premieres of Howard Hughes’ 1930 “Hell’s Angels” and Pedro Almodóvar’s 1986 “Matador.”

‘While You Were Sleeping’

Peter Gallagher and Sandra Bullock in the romantic comedy “While You Were Sleeping.”

(Michael P. Weinstein / Hollywood Pictures)

On Dec. 5, the New Beverly will screen a matinee of John Turteltaub’s 1995 “While You Were Sleeping.” (Take that extra long lunch or just knock off work early. It’s the holidays.) This winsome, utterly charming romantic comedy really helped cement Sandra Bullock’s screen persona and stardom, and deservedly so. A lonely woman (Bullock) who works in a ticket booth for the Chicago Transit Authority quietly pines for a handsome man (Peter Gallagher) she sees every day. After she helps save him from an accident, a misunderstanding at the hospital leads his family to believe she is his fiancée while he is in a coma. Then she meets his brother (Bill Pullman) and the complications really ensue.

In his original review of the film, Peter Rainer wrote, “Bullock is a genuinely engaging performer, which at least gives the treacle some minty freshness. Her scenes with Pullman are amiable approach-avoidance duets that really convince you something is going on between them. Like Marisa Tomei, Bullock has a sky-high likability factor with audiences. She can draw us into her spunky loneliness — you want to see her smile.”

Russian forces have launched a drone and missile attack on the Ukrainian capital, killing at least one person, as officials from Ukraine and the United States sought to rework a plan proposed by Washington to end the war.

In a statement on Tuesday, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said the overnight attack on Kyiv damaged residential buildings in the Pecherskyi and Dniprovskyi districts.

“In Kyiv, as a result of a night attack, two people were killed, six were injured, and 18 people were rescued, including three children,” the service said.

Another attack on Brovarsky, Bila Tserkva and Vyshgorod districts, hours later, wounded a 14-year-old child, it added.

There was no immediate comment from Russia.

The attack followed talks between US and Ukrainian representatives in Switzerland’s Geneva to thrash out Washington’s so-called 28-point plan, which Kyiv and its European allies saw as a Kremlin wish list.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his nightly address late on Monday, said the talks in Geneva mean the “list of the necessary steps to end the war can become doable”.

But he said there remained “sensitive issues” that he will discuss with US President Donald Trump

“After Geneva, there are fewer points – no longer 28 – and many of the right elements have been taken into account in this framework. There is still work for all of us to do together – it is very challenging – to finalise the document, and we must do everything with dignity,” he said.

“Ukraine will never be an obstacle to peace – this is our principle, a shared principle, and millions of Ukrainians are counting on, and deserve, a dignified peace,” he added.

No Trump-Zelenskyy meeting scheduled

Trump, too, hinted at new progress.

“Is it really possible that big progress is being made in Peace Talks between Russia and Ukraine??? Don’t believe it until you see it, but something good just may be happening,” the US president wrote earlier on Monday on his Truth Social platform.

At the White House, spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said there were a couple of points of disagreement remaining, but “we’re confident that we’ll be able to work through those.”

She said Trump wanted a deal as quickly as possible, but there was no meeting currently scheduled between the US president and Zelenskyy.

Trump, who returned to office this year pledging to end the war quickly, has reoriented US policy from staunch support for Kyiv towards accepting some of Russia’s justifications for its 2022 invasion.

US policy towards the war has been inconsistent. Trump’s hastily arranged Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August led to worries that Washington was prepared to accept many Russian demands, but ultimately resulted in more US pressure on Russia.

The latest, 28-point peace proposal again caught many in the US government, Kyiv and Europe off-guard and prompted new concerns that the Trump administration might be willing to push Ukraine to sign a peace deal heavily tilted towards Moscow.

The plan would require Kyiv to cede more territory, accept curbs on its military and bar it from ever joining NATO, conditions Kyiv has long rejected as tantamount to surrender.

It would also do nothing to allay broader European fears of further Russian aggression.

Ukraine’s European allies drew up a counter-proposal which, according to the Reuters news agency, would halt fighting at the present front lines, leaving discussions of territory for later, and include a NATO-style US security guarantee for Ukraine.

A new version of a draft worked on in Geneva has not been published.

Kremlin slams EU proposal

An adviser to Zelenskyy who attended the talks in Geneva told The Associated Press news agency they managed to discuss almost all the plan’s points, and one unresolved issue is that of territory, which can only be decided at the head-of-state level.

Oleksandr Bevz also said the US showed “great openness and understanding” that security guarantees are the cornerstone of any agreement for Ukraine.

He said the US would continue working on the plan, and then the leaders of Ukraine and the US would meet. After that, the plan would be presented to Russia.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, speaking to reporters, welcomed the “interim result” of the Geneva talks, saying the US proposal “has now been modified in significant parts”, without details.

Merz added that Moscow must now become engaged in the process.

“The next step must be that Russia must come to the table,” he said in Angola, where he was attending a summit between African and European Union countries. “This is a laborious process. It will move forward at most in smaller steps this week. I do not expect there to be a breakthrough this week.”

The Kremlin said it had yet to see the revised peace plan.

Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov added there was no plan for US and Russian delegations to meet this week, but the Russian side remained “open for such contacts”.

Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, said the plan the Kremlin had received before the Geneva talks had many provisions that “seem quite acceptable” to Moscow. But he described European proposals “floating around” as “completely unconstructive”.

Countries supporting Kyiv – part of the “coalition of the willing” – are meanwhile due to hold a video call on Tuesday following the Geneva talks.

Turkiye also said it hopes to build bridges between Russia and Ukraine.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office said he spoke to Putin by telephone and told him Ankara will contribute to any diplomatic effort to facilitate direct contact between Russia and Ukraine.

Erdogan “stated that Turkiye will continue its efforts for the termination of the Russia-Ukraine war with a fair and lasting peace”, his office said.

MINNEAPOLIS — Attorneys in the case of a man charged with killing a top Minnesota Democratic lawmaker and her husband said Wednesday that prosecutors have turned over a massive amount of evidence to the defense, and that his lawyers need more time to review it.

Federal prosecutor Harry Jacobs told the court that investigators have provided substantially all of the evidence they have collected against Vance Boelter. He has pleaded not guilty to murder in the killing of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and to attempted murder in the shootings of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. Some evidence, such as lab reports, continues to come in.

Federal defender Manny Atwal said at the status conference that the evidence includes more than130,000 pages of PDF documents, more than 800 hours of audio and video recordings, and more than 2,000 photographs from what authorities have called the largest hunt for a suspect in Minnesota history.

Atwal said her team has spent close to 110 hours just downloading the material — not reviewing it — and that they’re still evaluating the evidence, a process she said has gone slowly due to the federal government shutdown.

“That’s not unusual for a complex case but it is lot of information for us to review,” Atwal told Magistrate Judge Dulce Foster.

Jacobs said he didn’t have a timeline for when the Department of Justice would decide whether to seek the death penalty against Boelter. The decision will be up to U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi.

Foster scheduled the next status conference for Feb. 12 and asked prosecutors to keep the defense and court updated in the meantime about their death penalty decision. She did not set a trial date.

Hortman and her husband, Mark, and Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot by a man who came to their suburban homes in the early hours of June 14, disguised as a police officer and driving a fake squad car.

Boelter, 58, was captured near his home in rural Green Isle late the next day. He faces federal and state charges including murder and attempted murder in what prosecutors have called a political assassination.

Boelter, who was wearing orange and yellow jail clothing, said nothing during the nine-minute hearing.

Minnesota abolished capital punishment in 1911 and has never had a federal death penalty case. But the Trump administration is pushing for greater use of capital punishment.

Boelter’s attorney has not commented on the substance of the allegations. His motivations remain murky and statements he has made to some media haven’t been fully clear. Friends have described him as a politically conservative evangelical Christian, and occasional preacher and missionary.

Boelter claimed to the conservative outlet Blaze News in August that he never intended to shoot anyone that night but that his plans went horribly wrong.

He told Blaze in a series of hundreds of texts via his jail’s messaging system that he went to the Hoffmans’ home to make citizen’s arrests over what he called his two-year undercover investigation into 400 deaths from the COVID-19 vaccine that he believed were being covered up by the state.

But he told Blaze he opened fire when the Hoffmans and their adult daughter tried to push him out the door and spoiled his plan. He did not explain why he went on to allegedly shoot the Hortmans and their golden retriever, Gilbert, who had to be euthanized.

Hennepin County Atty. Mary Moriarty said when she announced Boelter’s indictment on state charges in August that she gave no credence to the claims Boelter had made from jail.

In other recent developments, a Sibley County judge last month granted Boelter’s wife a divorce.

Karnowski writes for the Associated Press.

WOLF POINT, Mont. — On the open plains of the Fort Peck Reservation, Robert Magnan leaned out the window of his truck, set a rifle against the door frame and then “pop!” — a bison tumbled dead in its tracks.

Magnan and a co-worker shot two more bison, also known as buffalo, and quickly field dressed the animals before carting them off for processing into ground beef and cuts of meat for distribution to members of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes in northern Montana.

As lawmakers in Washington, D.C., plod toward resolving the record government shutdown that interrupted food aid for tens of millions of people, tribal leaders on rural reservations across the Great Plains have been culling their cherished bison herds to help fill the gap.

About one-third of Fort Peck’s tribal members on the reservation depend on monthly benefit checks, Chairman Floyd Azure said. That’s almost triple the rate for the U.S. as a whole. They’ve received only partial payments in November after President Trump’s administration choked off funds to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the shutdown.

Fort Peck officials say they anticipated such a moment years ago, when they were bolstering their herd with animals from Yellowstone National Park over objections from cattle ranchers worried about animal disease.

“We were bringing it up with the tribal council: What would happen if the government went bankrupt? How would we feed the people?” said Magnan, the longtime steward of Fort Peck’s bison herds. “It shows we still need buffalo.”

Treaty obligations

In October, the tribal government authorized killing 30 bison — about 12,000 pounds of meat. Half had been shot by Tuesday. A pending deal to end the shutdown comes too late for the rest, Magnan said. With Montana among the states that dispersed only partial SNAP payments, Fort Peck will keep handing out buffalo meat for the time being.

Tribes including the Blackfeet, the Lower Brule Sioux, the Cheyenne River Sioux and the Crow have done the same in response to Washington’s dysfunction: feeding thousands of people with bison from herds restored over recent decades after the animals were hunted to near extinction in the 1800s.

Food and nutrition assistance programs are part of the federal government’s trust and treaty responsibilities — its legal and moral obligations to fund tribes’ health and well-being in exchange for land and resources the U.S. took from tribes.

“It’s the obligation they incurred when they took our lands, when they stole our lands, when they cheated us out of our lands,” said Mark Macarro, president of the National Congress of American Indians. “It lacks humanity to do this with SNAP, with food.”

Fort Peck tribal members Miki Astogo and Dillon Jackson-Fisher, who are unemployed, said they borrowed food from Jackson-Fisher’s mother in recent weeks after SNAP payments didn’t come through. On Sunday they got a partial payment — about $196 instead of the usual $298 per month — Agosto said.

It won’t last, they said, so the couple walked 4 miles into town to pick up a box of food from the tribes that included 2 pounds of bison.

“Our vehicle’s in the shop, but we have to put food on the table before we pay for the car, you know?” Jackson-Fisher said.

Moose in Maine, deer in Oklahoma

Native American communities elsewhere in the U.S. also are tapping into natural resources to make up for lost federal aid. Members of the Mi’kmaq Nation in Maine stocked a food bank with trout from their hatchery and locally hunted moose meat. In southeastern Oklahoma, the Comanche Nation is accepting deer meat for food banks. And in the southwestern part of the state, the Choctaw Nation set up three meat processing facilities.

Another program that provides food to eligible Native American households, the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, has continued through the shutdown.

Mi’kmaq is among the tribes that don’t have the program, though the tribe is eligible. The Mi’kmaq also get funding for food pantries through the federal Emergency Food Assistance Program, but that money, too, was tied up by the shutdown, tribal Chief Sheila McCormack said.

Roughly 80% of Mi’kmaq tribal members in Aroostook County are SNAP recipients, said Kandi Sock, the tribe’s community services director.

“We have reached out for some extra donations; our farm came through with that, but it will not last long,” Sock said.

The demise of bison, onset of starvation

Buffalo played a central role for Plains tribes for centuries, providing meat for food and hides for clothing and shelter.

That came to an abrupt end when white “hide hunters” arrived in 1879 in the Upper Missouri River basin around Fort Peck, which had some of the last vestiges of herds that once numbered millions of animals, Assiniboine historian Dennis Smith said. By 1883 the animals were virtually exterminated, according to Smith, a retired University of Nebraska-Omaha history professor.

With no way to feed themselves and the government denying them food, the buffalo’s demise heralded a time of starvation for the Assiniboine, he said. Many other Plains tribes also suffered hardship.

Hundreds of miles to the west of Fort Peck, the Blackfeet Nation killed 18 buffalo from its herd and held a special elk harvest to distribute meat to tribal members. The tribe already gave out buffalo meat periodically to elders, the sick and for ceremonies and social functions. But it’s never killed so many of the 700 animals at once.

“We can’t do that many all the time. We don’t want to deplete the resource,” said Ervin Carlson, who runs the Blackfeet buffalo program.

In South Dakota, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has distributed meat from about 20 of its buffalo. The tribe worked to build its capacity to feed people since experiencing shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic. It now has a meat processing plant that can handle 25 to 30 animals a week, said Jayme Murray with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Buffalo Authority Corp. Tribes from Minnesota to Montana have asked to use the plant, but they’ve had to turn some down, Murray said.

A former ‘food desert’ leans on its own herds

The Lower Brule Sioux Tribe in central South Dakota recently got its first full-fledged grocery store, ending its decades-long status as a “food desert” where people had to drive 100 miles round trip for groceries. The interruption to SNAP benefits stoked panic, tribal treasurer and secretary Marty Jandreau said.

Benefits for November were reduced to 65% of the usual amount.

But the Lower Brule have buffalo, cattle and elk in abundance across more than 9 square miles. On Sunday, the tribe gave away more than 400 pounds of meat to more than 100 tribal members, council members said.

“It makes me feel very proud that we have things we can give back,” tribal council member Marlo Langdeau said.

Brown and Brewer write for the Associated Press. Brewer reported from Oklahoma City, and Schafer, who reports for ICT, from Lower Brule, S.D.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth says attacks take place in international waters amid mounting criticism against US campaign.

The United States has carried out another set of military strikes against what it says are drug boats in international waters headed to the country.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said on Monday that the US military targeted two vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Sunday, killing six people.

“These vessels were known by our intelligence to be associated with illicit narcotics smuggling, were carrying narcotics, and were transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the Eastern Pacific,” he wrote in a social media post.

“Both strikes were conducted in international waters, and three male narco-terrorists were aboard each vessel. All six were killed. No US forces were harmed.”

The administration of President Donald Trump has faced mounting criticism over such attacks, including accusations of violating domestic and international law.

But Washington appears to be stepping up the campaign. Sunday’s deadly double attack was the fourth this month. Previous strikes in the Pacific and Caribbean Sea killed at least eight people, according to US authorities.

The Trump administration started targeting boats in the Caribbean in September and later expanded its military push to the Pacific Ocean.

The US has carried out 18 strikes on vessels so far, killing dozens of people.

Last month, United Nations rights chief Volker Turk said the US attacks have no justification under international law.

“These attacks – and their mounting human cost – are unacceptable,” Turk said. “The US must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats, whatever the criminal conduct alleged against them.”

The US has described the attacks as “counterterrorism” operations after having designated drug cartels as “terrorists”.

“Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people,” Hegseth said on Monday.

Other than grainy footage showing the strikes, the Trump administration has not provided concrete proof that the vessels targeted were carrying drugs.

Trump himself has previously joked that fishermen are now afraid to operate in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela.

Critics have questioned why US authorities would not monitor the boats and intercept them when they enter the country’s territorial waters instead of extrajudicially executing the suspects.

The strikes have sparked regional tensions, particularly with Venezuela, with Trump accusing its president, Nicolas Maduro, of links to “narcoterrorists”.

The ramped-up US military campaign near Venezuela has raised speculation that Washington may be preparing for conflict in the oil-rich South American country.

This month, Trump suggested that war with Venezuela is unlikely but said Maduro’s days are numbered.

After months of blockade and starvation in Gaza, Israel allowed a new United States venture – the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – to distribute food. Branded as a lifeline, its sites quickly became known by Palestinians and dozens of human rights groups as “death traps”.

Fault Lines investigates how civilians seeking aid were funnelled through militarised zones, where thousands were killed or injured under fire.

Through the testimonies of grieving families, a former contractor, and human rights experts, the film exposes how GHF’s operations replaced UNRWA’s proven aid system with a scheme critics say was designed for displacement, not relief. At the heart of this investigation is a haunting question: was GHF delivering humanitarian aid – or helping turn breadlines into killing fields?

United States President Donald Trump has directed the Department of War to prepare for what he called “possible action” to eliminate Islamic terrorists in Nigeria, citing alleged widespread attacks on Christians. The directive, issued through his Truth Social media platform on Saturday, marks one of the most aggressive foreign policy statements by the Trump administration since returning to office.

In the post, President Trump accused the Nigerian government of “allowing” the killing of Christians and threatened to end all U.S. aid and assistance to the country if what he described as “Christian persecution” continued.

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Trump wrote. “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our cherished Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!”

The remarks came barely a day after Washington redesignated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC), a status applied to nations accused of tolerating or engaging in severe violations of religious freedom. Nigeria was previously placed on and later removed from the CPC list under the Biden administration. 

Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu responds cautiously, “Nigeria is a Secular Democracy.” He rejected Trump’s claims and designation, describing them as “ill-informed and unhelpful”, adding that “Nigeria remains a secular democracy anchored on constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and belief.”

The Nigerian presidential office said in a statement from Abuja, “We reject any characterisation that seeks to define our complex security challenges through a single religious lens.” The Nigerian government maintains that ongoing violence in the country’s Middle Belt and northern regions is driven by multiple intersecting factors—including poverty, criminality, land disputes, and weak governance—rather than a campaign of religious persecution.

Security analysts and conflict researchers have similarly warned against oversimplifying Nigeria’s insecurity as a Christian–Muslim conflict. “What we see in places like Plateau, Benue, Zamfara, and Borno are overlapping crises involving ethnic competition, resource scarcity, violent crimes, and terrorism,” said a recent HumAngle report.

The HumAngle analysis titled Nigeria’s Conflicts Defy Simple Religious Labels revealed that communities of both faiths have suffered from terrorism and violent crimes, and that attackers often frame violence around identity to justify or mobilise support for their actions.

While Boko Haram and its offshoot, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), continue to target civilians and security forces in attacks that often include Christian victims, the violence has also claimed thousands of Muslim lives.

HumAngle’s investigations have shown that the narrative of a “Christian genocide” obscures the complex and fluid alliances that define local conflicts. Extremist groups, criminal gangs, and vigilante forces often operate with shifting motives, depending on context.

Analysts say Trump’s statement may reflect both foreign policy posturing and domestic political calculation. With the 2026 midterm elections approaching, evangelical Christian groups have increasingly highlighted claims of Christian persecution across the world, particularly in Africa and the Middle East.