violent

Muzaffarabad, Pakistan-administered Kashmir: The traffic crawled beneath densely strung election bunting.

Overhead hung the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PMLN) green tigers. Further down, Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) red and black flags bearing the party’s arrow encircled the clock tower at Lal Chowk, a square near Muzaffarabad’s main market, built to honour the original Lal Chowk across the Line of Control in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Srinagar.

Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, does not look like a city in the grip of a crisis. It looks like a city preparing for an election.

Both are true.

Since early June, the territory has witnessed weeks of protests and sit-ins that have killed dozens. The protests are tied to elections for the region’s provincial legislature that were scheduled for July 27, but that on Monday were divided into voting now to be held on three separate days. Voting in the region’s Mirpur division will continue as planned on July 27. Elections in Poonch division, which has been the hotbed of protests, will now be held on August 10.

Voting in Muzaffarabad and for 12 other seats reserved for refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir who now live elsewhere in Pakistan will be held on August 2, the region’s Chief Election Commissioner Justice (retired) Ghulam Mustafa Mughal told Al Jazeera, citing security concerns arising from the unrest as the reason for the changed schedule.

It is those reserved seats for refugees that are at the heart of the agitation, with protesters demanding that they be scrapped, arguing that only those living in Pakistan-administered Kashmir should now be eligible to contest in elections to the regional legislature.

And it is in the backdrop of those tensions that the region is now readying to vote.

“I have never joined them, I never participated in their protest,” a 60-year-old driver, bespectacled and bearded, said of the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JKJAAC), commonly known as JAAC, the movement whose protests have dominated the politics of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, particularly Poonch division, in recent months.

“But my only reason to support them is that all the people in this movement are poor people, my sympathies are with them. They are the ones fighting and demanding for my rights,” the driver, who requested anonymity, told Al Jazeera, as he finished his lunch at a roadside hotel in Muzaffarabad on July 20.

When it came to the election, however, he was unequivocal: he would not vote.

“We should be part of the democratic process, but the person you want to vote for isn’t allowed on the ballot,” he said, referring to the JAAC, which was banned in June. “A vote is a responsibility, and it should only be given to those who deserve it. Right now the candidates on offer are all corrupt, and I will not be giving my vote.”

An election amid unrest

The Kashmir region, a scenic but disputed Himalayan territory, has been at the centre of multiple wars between Pakistan and India since both gained independence from British rule in 1947.

While both countries claim the region in full, they administer separate parts of it.

Home to more than four million people, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, locally known as Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), has a semi-autonomous government with its own president, prime minister and Supreme Court.

The election was always going to be shaped by the latest crisis, JAAC’s fifth major mobilisation since the movement was founded in September 2023.

But Mughal, AJK’s chief election commissioner, said Poonch was the only division where, he said, “we have a bit of security-related concern”.

He is not the only official insisting the electoral process remains on track.

In Muzaffarabad, Deputy Commissioner Munir Qureshi pointed to bustling markets, heavy traffic and an active campaign trail as evidence that daily life continues largely uninterrupted.

“It is not our job to tell people to go and vote,” he said. “If they decide, for whatever reason, not to show up, it is their democratic right.”

The city, he added, has five constituencies and 890 polling stations, with additional security personnel requested ahead of polling day.

What neither official addressed directly, however, is the absent party hanging over the election.

The banned JAAC is absent from the ballot in any form. Some of its members who attempted to contest as independents had their nomination papers rejected.

The movement’s sit-ins have entered their second month across Rawalakot, Sudhnoti and other parts of Poonch division, closer to the Indian border, while its leadership has openly urged the public to boycott the vote.

How the region votes – or not – will tell whether the election carries legitimacy in the eyes of the people of AJK.

A movement outside the ballot box

The protests that have shaped this election began more than two years ago over prices.

JAAC was formed in 2023 around 10 demands, including subsidised wheat, cheaper electricity, and a government commitment to curb the perks and pensions enjoyed by AJK officials and elected representatives.

The Pakistani government intervened in May 2024, agreeing to provide subsidies, while a charter of demands signed by the AJK government in October that year was intended to resolve most of the movement’s concerns.

By this June, however, JAAC’s focus had shifted to the 12 assembly seats reserved for Kashmiri refugees settled in Pakistan, which it wants abolished.

The group argues the seats give outsiders influence over AJK’s governance and budget, while residents themselves have no say over who occupies them.

On June 5, the AJK government declared JAAC a proscribed organisation under anti-terrorism legislation ahead of a planned June 9 protest, just weeks before the election.

Within days, police had arrested dozens of JAAC members and supporters, including the movement’s leader and public face, Shaukat Nawaz Mir.

What followed was the deadliest period of unrest AJK has witnessed in years.

The death toll remains disputed by JAAC and the authorities, but even conservative estimates place it at nearly 30 people since early June, including protesters and law enforcement personnel.

Access to Pakistan-administered Kashmir was also restricted, with entry into Poonch division almost entirely blocked for weeks, disrupting supplies of flour and other essential goods to a region dependent on routes from Muzaffarabad and Mirpur.

Banks remained closed for two weeks, leaving residents without access to cash. Mobile and fibre internet services have also remained suspended across almost the entire territory, with exceptions only for banks and a handful of government offices, including district administrations and the Election Commission.

And the Election Commission itself has become an institution whose role faces questions from the JAAC.

Sardar Amanullah, a JAAC member from Sudhnoti district in Poonch division, more than 155km (96 miles) south of Muzaffarabad, said he had submitted nomination papers as an independent candidate, only for them to be rejected.

“I don’t think these are free and fair elections,” he said. “When you cannot let people’s representation out there, the government keeps finding ways to reject our papers,” he told Al Jazeera.

Chief Election Commissioner Mughal offered a different account.

“There were only two or three people who submitted their nomination papers, who claim to be affiliated with JAAC, and their papers were rejected by the returning officer since their names were mentioned in FIRs and the Fourth Schedule,” he said, referring to police reports and Pakistan’s anti-terrorism watchlist.

Abid Shaheen, a JAAC core committee member from Bagh district, was more blunt. With the group now proscribed, he described the vote as “a selection, not an election”.

A dozen seats, one dispute

Of the AJK Legislative Assembly’s 45 general seats, 12 are reserved for Kashmiri refugees who settled in Pakistan after 1947: six linked to Jammu and six to the Kashmir Valley.

The arrangement dates back to legislation introduced in the 1960s and was later entrenched in AJK’s 1974 Interim Constitution.

In June, the AJK Supreme Court, ruling on a presidential reference, held that the seats could only be abolished through a formal constitutional amendment passed by the assembly, not through public protest.

AJK’s electorate has grown from just over 3.2 million in 2021 to more than 3.8 million this year, according to Election Commission figures.

Within that, the 12 refugee constituencies alone have expanded from about 405,000 voters to nearly 439,000. JAAC argues that the increase has further amplified the influence of seats that were never intended to carry such political weight.

Since AJK adopted its current parliamentary system in 1975, all 10 general elections have produced governments aligned with the party in power in Islamabad.

Zulfiqar Ali, a Muzaffarabad-based political analyst, argued that the seats themselves have rarely determined who governs AJK.

“Across all the governments AJK has had, these 12 seats have played no significant role in actually making or breaking a government,” he said. “That role has always belonged to native AJK politicians, or whichever party holds federal power in Islamabad.”

Islamabad, meanwhile, has shown little interest in rethinking the refugee seats.

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told the National Assembly last month that abolishing the seats under pressure from street protests would amount to “sabotaging the electoral process”.

The campaign that resumed late

For the parties actually on the ballot, the crisis all but wiped out campaigning in June.

“Frankly speaking, the campaigning was dead due to the protests all June,” said Iftikhar Gillani, a PMLN candidate contesting from Muzaffarabad.

“The campaign only picked up in the last few days,” Gillani told Al Jazeera after meeting supporters at a polling station on July 20, where government officials were casting advance ballots.

Dressed in a white shalwar kameez and repeatedly wiping his face with a tissue on a severely humid Monday afternoon, Gillani argued that many Kashmiris distinguish between supporting JAAC and participating in the election, even if some committed supporters may stay away from the polls.

“People here are cognisant of the importance of the election and understand that they don’t have to mix their support for JAAC with their responsibility to participate in the polls,” he said. “But there is obviously no denying that there is a chunk of the population which fully believes in JAAC, and they might not cast their votes.”

A 28-year-old PMLN activist, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said the internet shutdown had forced campaign workers to abandon social media in favour of door-to-door canvassing and loudspeakers mounted on vehicles to publicise the party’s manifesto.

But, he added, the election had also exposed social divisions unlike any he had witnessed before, fuelled by the JAAC-led protests.

“Families are divided over this,” he said. “Those who don’t support JAAC are being called supporters of our oppressors.”

The PPP, which currently governs Pakistan-administered Kashmir, has maintained the more visible street presence.

Its flags dominate Lal Chowk, and a Saturday night corner meeting near the square drew a crowd of supporters waving the party’s arrow banner close to midnight.

But Sardar Mukhtar, a PPP candidate in Muzaffarabad, acknowledged the changed mood.

“The campaign environment is not like previously. I personally feel that turnout might not be as strong as in the past,” he told Al Jazeera from his camp office, where party workers crowded in to catch a glimpse of the candidate.

The party’s clearest position has come from its chairman.

In a letter to JAAC’s negotiating committee last week, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari proposed establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to “examine the present situation, establish the relevant facts, consider the grievances and positions of all sides”.

He also urged JAAC to suspend its protest once such a commission was agreed, while calling on the state to halt further action pending its findings.

Bilawal is scheduled to address a public rally in Muzaffarabad on July 24.

AJK’s Prime Minister Faisal Mumtaz Rathore, the PPP’s most senior leader in the territory, has been more measured on the campaign trail, telling reporters after the revised election schedule was announced only that “the current environment is not suitable for the state” and that “problems can only be solved through dialogue”.

In the region’s legislature, he has previously said that the JAAC bears “the primary responsibility for this situation,” while conceding that “we have not absolved ourselves of responsibility as a government”.

What the election can’t fix

For Ali, the Muzaffarabad-based political analyst, the real issue lies not in the vote itself but in everything that has unfolded over the past few years.

He pointed to commitments the government made to JAAC in October 2024 that remain unfulfilled, including promises to devolve development budgets to local councillors and eliminate the perks and privileges enjoyed by politicians.

“However, people will vote,” he told Al Jazeera. “Because the entire system is designed in a certain way, tying government jobs and small favours to elected representatives. So turnout will be fine, but it will not resolve people’s fury and anger.”

Ershad Mahmud, a Canada-based researcher and author of Poonch: Identity, Politics and Resistance, sees the problem differently, arguing that the election is diminished by who is missing from the ballot.

“PTI did win last time, and they have significant following, as well as JAAC,” he said, referring to Imran Khan-founded Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, which ruled Pakistan from 2018 to 2022 before being ousted through a vote of no confidence.

PTI also formed the AJK government after the 2021 election, but since 2023 the territory has had four prime ministers.

Mahmud argued that with two major democratic forces absent from the contest, many voters will stay away as well.

“I don’t think this election will be seen as legitimate. The distance from Muzaffarabad to Islamabad is more than 120km [75 miles]. But the mental distance is now 1,000km [621 miles],” he told Al Jazeera.

An uncertain verdict

However, not everyone has reached the same conclusion.

Muhammad Ramzan, a property dealer from Mirpur division in the south of the territory, supported JAAC when its demands centred on subsidised wheat and lower electricity prices.

His support cooled once the movement shifted its focus to abolishing the 12 refugee seats, a campaign he considers disconnected from the concerns of residents and his own livelihood.

“Even I am curious,” he said. “Earlier they asked for roads or electricity or school, but now that they have changed their focus to 12 seats, I am flabbergasted why would they do that.”

He intends to vote, although he expects turnout to fall, with much of the boycott driven by younger voters aged between 18 and 35 who remain committed to JAAC.

“There are a lot of people like me,” he said, describing his gradual drift away from the movement.

But he remains doubtful that the election will resolve the crisis.

“I fear that things will go bad,” he said quietly.

AUGUSTA, Maine — The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine this week is an Army veteran who has struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood and never should have been given a badge and gun to patrol American streets, several of his close relatives told the Associated Press.

David Brouillette has a history of terrifying and violent behavior, according to those relatives. They accuse him of attacking women in his life over the years, and one shared a voicemail with the AP from last winter in which he told her that he thought someone should slit her throat.

Brouillette’s troubling past further challenges how thoroughly the Department of Homeland Security has vetted recruits as it went on a hiring spree to help carry out President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

At least 10 people have died in encounters with immigration agents since Trump launched the crackdown after retaking office, including 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national who was shot and killed by Brouillette on Monday while in his car near his home in the coastal Maine city of Biddeford.

DHS, which hasn’t released the name of the officer who killed Durán Guerrero, has said the “vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.”

Brouillette didn’t respond to text messages or an email seeking comment. Three relatives who said they had spoken to him since the shooting, including an ex-wife and daughter, said he told them he acted in self-defense.

When reached for comment about Brouillette’s record and his role in Monday’s shooting, ICE spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement that “[w]e will never confirm or deny attempts to dox our law enforcement officers,” and that “[t]he ICE officer in question has nearly a decade of federal law enforcement experience with required training including use of force training.”

The White House referred all questions about the shooting and Brouillette to ICE.

A new career in ICE

Brouillette, 37, told his ex-wife Ashley Brouillette late last year that he had been hired by ICE. She said that because of his long history of psychiatric issues, she thought he was having a mental health episode and she didn’t believe him. She didn’t realize he’d been telling the truth until this week, when videos began circulating online of the moments surrounding the shooting.

Ashley Brouillette told the AP that she spoke to her ex-husband in a Facebook audio call, and he acknowledged that he had killed Durán Guerrero. Their 18-year-old daughter, Madison Brouillette, also told the AP that her father called her Wednesday and said that he shot and killed Durán Guerrero.

David and Ashley Brouillette were high school sweethearts who got married in 2007. She said she divorced him in 2009 because he had become physically violent with her, which began after she got pregnant with their daughter.

According to Ashley Brouillette, he once threw boiling water at her while she was holding their child — an incident her mother, Avis Collins, also recounted.

The abuse continued after she left him, she said.

David Brouillette doesn’t appear to have a criminal record in Maine, as a check with the Maine Department of Public Safety returned no records for him.

But hundreds of family court records obtained from the Augusta District Court clerk’s office detail years of allegations of physical and verbal abuse raised by his second ex-wife on behalf of herself and his daughters.

The ex-wife — whom the AP is not identifying because she fears retaliation — alleged that he had stalked and harassed her and physically and verbally abused his daughter, according to multiple requests for temporary protection orders. Brouillette tackled his teenage daughter and smashed spaghetti in her hair, and during another outburst, he dragged his daughter around the house as she cried, she said.

“Dave needs counseling or something for his PTSD & depression,” she wrote in an application for a temporary protective order on behalf of his teenage daughter that a judge granted in 2021.

In court filings, David Brouillette said that his second ex-wife had slandered him.

His oldest daughter, Madison Brouillette, said she also witnessed her dad’s volatility.

“I watched my dad struggle a lot with a lot of things,” she told the AP. She said she came home from school once and he told her he had been sitting on a tree stump with a gun to his head.

“If you don’t really, truly take care of yourself, there’s no way you can protect other people. And with my dad, he never wanted to get help,” she said.

An immediate relative of David Brouillette who spoke on the condition that their name not be used said he was diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder as a child — a diagnosis that Ashley Brouillette confirmed. The immediate relative described him as “extremely mentally ill” and said he attempted suicide twice at age 12 and was hospitalized multiple times.

The relative said they’d been estranged for years after they broke off contact because they feared he would harm them. He did not respond to their outreach this week, the relative added.

A military deployment and law enforcement aspirations

Growing up in Gardiner, a city of about 6,000 people roughly 60 miles northeast of Biddeford, where Monday’s shooting occurred, David Brouillette was enchanted by law enforcement and the military, his relatives said.

High school yearbook photos show he was a member of the school’s Naval Junior ROTC, and he wrote that he planned to go to college and become a police officer.

Brouillette was initially rejected by military recruiters because of his mental health diagnoses, but recruiters encouraged him to go off his medications for a year and reapply, which he did, his immediate relative said.

He was eventually able to enlist.

According to U.S. military records, Brouillette enlisted as a chemical equipment repairer in the Maine Army National Guard but then changed jobs to be a medical logistics specialist. He was in the Guard from November 2007 until January 2010, according to records provided by the Pentagon.

A 2009 article in the Kennebec Journal listed Brouillette as a private in the Maine Army National Guard’s 152nd Maintenance Company in Augusta.

In January 2010, he joined the regular Army as a human intelligence collector. Brouillette deployed to Afghanistan from May 2012 to February 2013 and eventually left the Army as a sergeant in December 2015.

His immediate relative believes Brouillette’s time abroad worsened his emotional struggles: “Afghanistan destroyed him — trained him to be a killing monster, a machine. They took someone who was extremely mentally ill and turned him into a killing machine.”

Life after the Army

After his discharge, Brouillette held a hodgepodge of jobs — some in or adjacent to law enforcement — and was injured in an accident while training to become a firefighter, public records and court documents show.

Brouillette worked for the Maine Correctional Center — a medium-security prison — and for the state’s Health and Human Services Department, spending less than a year at each.

In 2019, court documents show, he was a police officer at a Department of Veterans Affairs medical center near the state capital, Augusta. A Veterans Affairs department spokesperson on Thursday referred questions about Brouillette’s employment to DHS.

But by the end of 2021, he wrote in a text message included in court filings, he was broke, going to school full time and making money delivering food for DoorDash.

Brouillette was enrolled in a firefighting program at Southern Maine Community College and was struck in the head by a steel beam while unloading a trailer at a training facility, according to a lawsuit he filed over his injury.

He sustained a concussion and post-concussive syndrome, with symptoms including impaired memory, cognitive deficits, headaches, vertigo and light sensitivity, and was unable to complete the program, according to the lawsuit, which was settled out of court.

In recent years, court filings show, he was collecting disability pay through the VA. He also drove a truck but quit in January 2025, citing health issues.

In March 2025, Brouillette passed an exam to become a real estate sales agent. His license was active until December. In a Facebook post, Realty of Maine announced Brouillette would be working in the firm’s Bangor office.

“David lives in Maine after retiring from the United States Army,” said the post, which has since been deleted. Brouillette is no longer listed as an agent on the firm’s website. Messages seeking comment were left for Realty of Maine.

In March, the Maine agency that handles child support matters filed a lien against him, public records show. The filing suggests that Brouillette may have been in line for a permanent impairment or disability settlement.

‘I don’t think he sees himself as a killer’

In late 2025, around the time he joined ICE, his ex-wife Ashley said he left a three-minute voicemail mocking her for taking out a restraining order against him. According to the message she shared with the AP, he repeatedly called her “disgusting” and suggested that she and the other women and girls in her “bloodline” should die.

“And all of you should have your f— throats cut,” the voicemail said. “Yeah, you should. Am I threatening that I’m gonna do that? Nope. Nope. But do I think that you should have your f— throats cuts? Or should have had them cut? Yep.”

She said she broke off contact with him until Wednesday, when his picture began circulating online.

Ashley Brouillette reached out to his current wife on Facebook and they spoke on the phone for several minutes. Her ex-husband spoke with her, according to cellphone screenshots of the phone exchange she shared with the AP. He acknowledged he had fatally shot Durán Guerrero.

“He was asking if I could tell them that he was a good person and not to talk about the abuse and stuff that I had endured while with him and he said that the most important thing is his character right now,” she said.

She said he told her he is now hiding in protective custody.

“I asked him why he did it,” she said. “He said it was a justified shooting. The guy was trying to run him over with a car.”

His daughter also said he told her it was justified.

“I don’t think he sees himself as a killer,” Madison Brouillette said.

“I think he thinks that he genuinely did the right thing,” she added. “All he said was that he did what he had to do. He said that he had to protect himself.”

Brook, Sisak, Swinhart and Galofaro write for the Associated Press. AP reporter Will Weissert contributed to this report.

The decision on Stokes and Atkinson brings an element of closure to an extraordinary period, as English cricket has had to deal with yet another off-field controversy.

Without Stokes and Atkinson, an inexperienced England team showing five changes to the one that won the first Test was soundly beaten in the second.

It means Stokes will be back for a crucial decider at Trent Bridge, with England desperate for a series win to alleviate pressure that has grown over the dismal Ashes winter and this latest chaotic episode.

And while Stokes’ return as a leader and all-rounder is vital for his team, there will be renewed scrutiny on his relationship with the rest of the England hierarchy, in particular head coach Brendon McCullum.

All of Stokes, McCullum and director of cricket Rob Key denied the captain and coach were at odds during the Ashes, when England were hammered 4-1.

Speaking on Sunday, after the loss at The Oval, McCullum said he is ready to work with Stokes again.

“We’ve worked together intimately for four years,” said McCullum. “We’ve achieved some cool things and let ourselves down in other things.

“Our motivation, belief and ambition for this side has not wavered. We have robust conversations all the way through and I think that is to be expected when you’re in positions of leadership. There is a mutual respect to how we operate with those.

“I anticipate we’ll be able to work together really well in the week coming and I’m sure that both of us have that same vision for this cricket team.”

As the noise-rap-electro act Jane Remover shrieked and pleaded through a 90-minute marathon set at the Fonda on Thursday night, one very young couple dressed right out of a conservative‘s nightmare — gender-ambiguous, purple hair, facial piercings — tapped me on the shoulder. They politely asked if I could mind their newly bought vinyl for a bit as they thrashed in the heaving crowd. Of course, this unc obliged them.

Anyone who laments that L.A. crowds don’t dance should go to one of the last sets of Jane Remover’s three-night stand at the Fonda this weekend. It had the most genuinely raucous pit I’ve seen in 2026, made all the more feral for how sweet and earnest it was. After a hotly tipped Coachella set, this Live Exhibit tour affirmed that the subculture Jane Remover built may or may not have wider pop potential, but it’s getting big enough to count for stardom in the fractured music world of today.

Jane Remover is a trans polymath producer and singer-songwriter with influences across rave, shoegaze, trap and beyond. They’ve built up a ferocious elaboration on the hyperpop of predecessors like Sophie, who similarly packed so many good ideas into songs they became talismanic to fans, a tonic to reinvent yourself (new Charli XCX opener Underscores is another fellow traveler).

The music itself sounds like reverse-engineering the moment in the 2000s when metalcore kids discovered EDM. Only now it’s Discord-disaffected youth ramping up hardstyle techno, autotuned girlypop ballads and rage-rap to an explosive fusion point. “Census Designated,” Jane’s brash and dramatic 2023 coming-out LP, tipped them as a force beyond the underground. But they soon eclipsed it with 2025’s “Revengeseekerz,” a deliriously overheated mix of romantic yearning, internet score-settling and virtuosic production prowess.

Backed by just a DJ (Dazedgxd, who opened the set) and a retina-scorching light rig up front, Jane acknowledged on Thursday that the stakes were getting much higher. They joked that they’d played the El Rey like three times before this tour, and to judge by the wild-eyed passions out in the audience, the Fonda will probably be the smallest venue they’ll play for some time. “It gets so cold this high up,” Jane sang on “Turn Up or Die.” “Can’t go to hell but I can drop you off.”

The sentiments driving the music are ultramodern: self-aware, vicious and desperately vulnerable. The hilariously zesty “Angels in Camo” (home to the all-time banger of a line: “Jesus never had it with a freak b—”) wrapped up with a bloodletting plea that “I can’t let you b— win.” Jane wields that word like the flaming sword on the “Revengeseekerz” album cover, with all the casual lustiness of Future but also the wrath of a reclaimed slur.

On “Professional Vengeance,” they grappled with the weird lures of celebrity and intimacy, where no one really knows anyone but desire still courses; “Experimental Skin” found them craving and fighting off God and nihilism and technology and addiction all at once.

The tension in these tracks are the binding agent for Jane’s fan base — the music is full of contradictions and incompatibilities smashing together that just feel like being young right now. Other than a quick affirmation that fans of all identities and backgrounds will always be welcome at their shows, they let the contorting, violent music speak for itself about the way queer fans are feeling about life under siege in the United States.

If the set was a bit too long for the limited setup onstage, it was because Jane simply had that much music to let out — that caliber of emotion to unburden, that much want to acknowledge. It seemed like the set was closing with “In the Dark,” an aching ballad from their Venturing side project, plainly declaring “I still dream of us” through a fog of effects. But instead they ramped it back up for one last cathartic blast to close, sending their faithful out onto Hollywood Boulevard, sweaty and filthy and fundamentally known.

Irish activist Caitriona Graham, who was filmed being dragged by her hair and forced to the ground by Israeli forces, recounted the violent interception of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in an interview with Al Jazeera after being deported to Istanbul.

WASHINGTON — Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche on Tuesday wouldn’t rule out the possibility that people who carried out violence during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol will be considered for payouts from a new $1.776 billion fund to pay individuals who believe they were targeted politically.

Pressed during a Congressional hearing over whether those who assaulted police officers would be eligible for compensation from the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” Blanche responded that all people can apply if “they believe they were a victim of weaponization.” The acting attorney general also refused to say whether he would direct those responsible for deciding who receives payments — a commission whose members he is tasked with appointing — to restrict funds to those convicted of violence.

“What I will commit to is making sure that the commissioners are effectively doing their jobs, and that includes setting guidelines as you’re describing,” Blanche told Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat. The decisions on payouts will be made a five-member commission appointed by the attorney general.

Appearing before Congress for the first time since taking the reins of the Justice Department last month, Blanche was peppered with questions about the fund announced on Monday to compensate those who believe they were mistreated by prior administrations’ Justice Department. Blanche said the fund was “unusual” but not unprecedented, adding that those who benefit will not be limited to Republicans or to people who were investigated or prosecuted by the Biden administration. At one point, Blanche said President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter — who faced gun and tax prosecutions under his father’s administration — could also apply.

Blanche defends $1.8 billion fund

Tuesday’s hearing was meant to address the Trump administration’s budget request for the Justice Department but quickly delved into other controversies that have escalated concerns about the erosion of the law enforcement agency’s tradition of independence from the White House. Blanche defended the creation of the fund without any acknowledgment that the Trump administration has pursued investigations of Trump’s political opponents, sparking criticism that the department is being weaponized in precisely the same way they allege it was under Biden’s administration to prosecute Trump.

In the weeks since assuming control of the Justice Department after Pam Bondi’s firing, Blanche has moved aggressively to advance the president’s priorities — pushing forward cases against Trump’s political foes, cracking down on leaks to media outlets and establishing the new fund to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.

Democrats described it as an illegal abuse of power designed to line the pockets of Trump supporters with taxpayer dollars. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the Senate appropriations subcommittee holding the hearing, blasted the move as a “pure theft of public funds.”

“Rewarding individuals who committed crimes is obscene,” the Maryland Democrat said. “Every American can see through this illegal, corrupt, self-dealing scheme.”

The fund is in keeping with Trump’s long-running claims that the Justice Department during the Biden administration was weaponized against him, even though then-President Biden himself was investigated during that time and his son was prosecuted. Merrick Garland, who served as attorney general during the Biden administration, has repeatedly denied allegations of politicization and has said his decisions followed facts, the evidence and the law.

Trump administration has been rewriting the history of Jan. 6

The mere possibility that violent rioters at the Capitol could be considered for payouts is consistent with a Trump administration pattern of rewriting the dark history of Jan. 6, a trend that began when the president pardoned and commuted the prison sentences of the participants in the melee and that continued with the Justice Department firing some prosecutors who put them behind bars.

Under questioning from Merkley, Blanche said that he “will definitely encourage the commission” responsible for deciding on the payouts to “take everything into account.” But when asked whether he believes those convicted of violence should be entitled to compensation, Blanche said: “My feelings don’t matter.”

When Merkley suggested that Trump was using the Justice Department to target his political enemies, Blanche replied that this was precisely the sort of “disgusting” behavior of the Biden administration that the fund was meant to address.

“That is completely inappropriate and wrong,’ Merkley said. “There is no comparison to the absolute fair minded pursuit of justice under the previous administration, and this administration’s pursuit of an enemies list.”

Questions over the meaning of ‘weaponization’

In announcing the fund Monday, the Trump administration did not name specific individuals who might stand to benefit from it. The money itself would come from the federal judgment fund, which pays out court judgments and compromise settlements of lawsuits against the government.

Blanche told lawmakers that the Justice Department is committed to “full transparency” in providing public information about beneficiaries of the new fund.

“It’s not limited to Republicans. It’s not limited to Democrats. It’s not limited to January 6th defendants. It’s limited only by the term weaponization,” Blanche said, though the administration has not said how it will define “weaponization.”

Meanwhile, there were signs of discomfort about the fund even among some Republican members of Congress. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that he’s “not a big fan,” adding that he isn’t sure how the administration intends to use it, but doesn’t “see a purpose for that.”

Thune’s comments come after Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who lost reelection in a GOP primary on Saturday, called it a “slush fund.”

“We are a nation of laws,” Cassidy said. “You can’t just make up things.”

Richer and Tucker write for the Associated Press. AP reporter Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.

Dozens of Israeli settlers stormed various areas of the West Bank, set cars on fire and attacked Palestinians.

Israeli settlers have launched another wave of raids in the occupied West Bank, with houses and cars set on fire and a Palestinian child attacked.

The Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that a man and his child were attacked with “sharp instruments” in the village of Khirbet Shuweika, south of Hebron, on Friday.

The father and child were taken to hospital due to head injuries.

Israeli settlers torched a home in the village of al-Lubban Asharqiya, south of Nablus, after which members of the Palestinian Civil Defence arrived to extinguish the blaze.

In Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, Wafa cited security sources that the settlers “stormed the outskirts of the village, burned a citizen’s vehicle, and wrote racist slogans on the walls of houses”.

In the village of al-Asa’asa in Jenin, Israeli forces forced residents to exhume a newly buried body and take it elsewhere. They claimed the first site was too close to an illegal Israeli settlement.

Israeli settlers also attacked a Palestinian man in the town of Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem, and stole his mobile phone.

A group of Palestinians were picnicking in the Burak Sulayman (Solomon’s Pools) area, south of Bethlehem, but were forced to leave after Israeli forces fired stun grenades at them.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society treated two people for tear gas inhalation and evacuated five others from the scene after the attack.

‘Tear gas and sound bombs’

In the town of Tuqu, southeast of Bethlehem, the mayor, Taysir Abu Mufreh, told Wafa that Israeli forces fired “tear gas and sound bombs” at a group of worshippers who were leaving a local mosque and locked a number of them inside.

On Friday, Israeli forces arrested four Palestinian men in the town of Battir, west of Bethlehem, while they were hiking near a railway line. The following day, three more Palestinians were arrested during a raid on the city of Nablus.

Settlers attacked the town of Silwad, northeast of Ramallah, leading to clashes when residents confronted them.

Human rights groups say Israeli authorities have allowed the settlers to operate with total impunity in their attacks against Palestinians.

In February, Israel approved a plan to claim large areas of the occupied West Bank as “state property”.

More than 700,000 Israelis live in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

April 27 (UPI) — White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt condemned negative comments and rhetoric about President Donald Trump in a press briefing Monday.

Leavitt addressed the press, likely for the last time before she begins her maternity leave, in the wake of a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday. Leavitt blamed the incident on “violent rhetoric” from Democratic lawmakers, television personalities, the media and others on social media.

“This hateful and constant and violent rhetoric directed at President Trump day after day after day for 11 years has helped to legitimize this violence and bring us to this dark moment,” Leavitt said. “Those who constantly falsely label and slander the president as a fascist, as a threat to democracy, and compare him to Hitler to score political points are fueling this kind of violence.”

Leavitt said one member of the U.S. Secret Service was shot in the chest but survived because they were wearing a bulletproof vest.

The Department of Justice will address the arraignment of the alleged gunman, 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, on Monday, Leavitt added. She also acknowledged that the White House Correspondents’ Dinner may be rescheduled.

“When you read the manifesto of this shooter, ask yourselves how different is the rhetoric from this almost-assassin from what you read on social media and hear in various forums every single day,” Leavitt said. “Much of the manifesto of the would-be assassin is indistinguishable from the words that we hear daily from so many.”

In response to the shooting, Leavitt said that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles will be meeting with Department of Homeland Security leadership to discuss the security of the president.

Asked why she felt it was important to delay her maternity leave after Saturday’s shooting, Leavitt said she is “honored to speak on behalf of President Trump.”