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Two men killed while pointing guns at the ground. Should police have waited?
U.S. Airman Roger Fortson answers the door of his apartment on May 3, 2024, as captured by the body camera of the Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputy responding to a report of a domestic disturbance. A split second later, the deputy fired at Fortson, killing him.
Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office/Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office
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Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office/Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office
The shootings of two men on opposite ends of the country this month have refocused attention on deadly force standards for police — and how officers should respond to the sight of a gun. In both cases, the men were fatally shot within moments, even as they held their weapons pointed down.
On May 3, “fourth-person” reports of a domestic disturbance at an apartment complex in Okaloosa County, Florida, brought a sheriff’s deputy to the front door of 23-year-old U.S. Airman Roger Fortson, who was alone in his apartment. The deputy’s body camera video shows him pausing to listen at Fortson’s closed door, then knocking, waiting, knocking and again and calling out, “Sheriff’s office, open the door!”
The door opens and Fortson comes into view: a slender African-American man dressed in jeans and standing barefoot on the tiles of his entryway. His left hand is coming up in an open-palm gesture; his right hand is holding a pistol. It’s held loosely, pointed at the floor. In the second it takes him to open the door, the deputy says, “Step back,” unholsters and draws his gun, and fatally shoots Fortson.
“It wasn’t a good exchange, he never fired a weapon or anything,” says Benjamin Crump, an attorney. who represents Fortson’s family and appeared at the funeral. “He respected authority,” he says of Fortson.
The Okaloosa Sheriff’s Office initially called the shooting “self-defense,” but the case is now under investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Ten days later, another man holding a gun pointed down was shot and killed by police during a domestic disturbance call, this time in Anchorage, Alaska. The morning after the shooting, Police Chief Bianca Cross said the man, Kristopher Handy, had “raised the long gun towards officers,” but a video released later by one of Handy’s neighbors appears to contradict that. It shows Handy outside the apartment building, walking toward officers with an apparent long gun held roughly parallel with his legs. Like Fortson, Handy was shot within moments of facing the police.
The Anchorage Police Department is investigating; Handy’s family is calling for the release of body camera videos of the incident.
Kristopher Handy faces police during a domestic distburbance call in Anchorage, Alaska, moments before being shot. This image comes from a video recorded by a neighbor, who says Handy never pointed the long gun he was holding
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Virginia Miller/YouTube
The recent deaths have renewed questions about whether police are allowed to shoot someone who’s armed, but not pointing the weapon.
“There is no hard and fast rule as it relates to that,” says Rodney Bryant, a 34-year veteran of the Atlanta Police Department, former chief, and now president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.
“Sometimes you may have a person that’s not pointing that still may pose a significant threat to law enforcement officers,” Bryant says. “But… you can have a very similar situation and it’s clear the person is not a threat.”
No Hard And Fast Rule
What complicates matters for police is the science of human reaction times. At Washington State University, Stephen James runs a lab that studies this by running subjects — including police officers — through simulations. Those studies have demonstrated a two-to-three-second disadvantage for officers who wait to have a weapon pointed at them.
“There’s no way a human can see the weapon coming up, make a decision about whether or not it’s a threat, then decide to press the trigger and then the electrical signal has to go from the brain down the nervous system into the finger,” James says. “If you have to wait for all of that, the other person will get a shot off first.”
Because of this lag, James says officers across the nation are trained that “action will beat reaction.”
But he says that’s not an excuse to preemptively shoot anyone holding a gun.
James also takes part in state-mandated reviews of police shootings, and he says police have to keep the law in mind, especially the1989 U.S. Supreme Court case Graham v. Connor, requiring an officer’s decision to shoot to be judged by a “reasonableness” standard.
“When we look at the totality of the circumstances, is the individual acting in a threatening manner? Are they being compliant or are they being defiant?” Even the location of the person could end up determining whether a shooting is justified.
“[In] the case in Florida, it was within the threshold of his own home. And that is absolutely protected by the Second Amendment as long as he could legally hold the firearm,” James says. “It’s very different when you’re out in public … and we don’t allow open carry of guns in schools, for example.”
“It’s hard to train for this,” says Chief Bryant. He says he’s seen some departments that emphasize the research showing the time disadvantage for officers who wait; others emphasize the need to back up and de-escalate a potential confrontation, if there’s time.
What he has seen over three decades in policing, he says, is that officers are facing this situation more often, especially as states have legalized open carry. And it can take time for an officer to understand what’s happening.
“I’m arriving on the scene, and the person that’s taking the gun from one person — from the volatile person — is there intervening, and I pull up and they have the gun,” Bryant says. “I don’t know who’s who, but I challenge that person as well [to drop the gun],” he says.
“When you have the proliferation of weaponry that we’ve seen, you just encounter it more,” he says. “Seeing the gun will be very common, and we have to be prepared for that on both sides.”
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Trump Says Israel and Lebanon Agree to Extend Cease-Fire by Three Weeks
President Trump announced a three-week extension of a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon that had been set to expire in a few days, after hosting a meeting between Israeli and Lebanese diplomats at the White House on Thursday.
Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group that has been attacking Israel from southern Lebanon, did not have representatives at the meeting and did not immediately comment on the announcement. The prime minister of Israel and the president of Lebanon also did not comment.
A successful peace agreement would hinge upon Hezbollah halting attacks, which Lebanon’s government has little power to enforce because it does not control the militia. Lebanon’s military has mostly stayed out of the fighting and is not at war with Israel.
The cease-fire, which was scheduled to end on April 26, would last until May 17 if it takes effect as Mr. Trump described it. Before the cease-fire was brokered last week, nearly 2,300 people were killed in Lebanon and 13 in Israel. Since then, the number of Israeli airstrikes and Hezbollah attacks have been dramatically reduced, though the two sides have continued exchanging fire.
The Lebanese Ambassador to the United States, Nada Hamadeh, credited Mr. Trump for extending the cease-fire, saying that “with your help and support, we can make Lebanon great again.” Mr. Trump replied, “I like that phrase, it’s a good phrase.”
Asked about the potential of a lasting peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon, Mr. Trump said that “I think there’s a great chance. They are friends about the same things and they are enemies on the same things.”
But Lebanon and Israel have periodically been at war since Israel’s founding in 1948. Israel has invaded Lebanon for the fifth time since 1978, incursions that have destabilized the country and the delicate balance of power between Muslim, Christian and Druze communities.
In the hours before the president’s announcement on social media, Israel and Hezbollah were trading attacks in southern Lebanon, testing the existing cease-fire.
Mr. Trump said the meeting at the White House had been attended by high-ranking U.S. officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the U.S. ambassadors to Israel and Lebanon.
Earlier on Thursday, an Israeli strike near the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh killed three people, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Hezbollah claimed three separate attacks on Israeli troops who are occupying southern Lebanon, though none were wounded or killed.
Hezbollah set off the latest round of fighting last month by attacking Israel soon after the start of the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran. Israel responded to Hezbollah’s attacks by launching airstrikes across Lebanon and widening a ground invasion of the country’s south.
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U.S. soldier charged with suspected Polymarket insider trading over Maduro raid
Smoke rises from Port of La Guaira in Venezuela on Jan. 3, 2026 after U.S. forces seized the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro and his wife.
Jesus Vargas/Getty Images
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Jesus Vargas/Getty Images
Federal prosecutors on Thursday unsealed an indictment against a U.S. Army soldier, accusing him of using his insider knowledge of the clandestine military operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January to reap more than $400,000 in profits on the popular prediction market site Polymarket.
The Justice Department says Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, who was stationed at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, was part of the team that planned and carried out the predawn raid in Caracas earlier this year that resulted in the apprehension of Maduro.
The Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed the actions against Van Dyke, the first time U.S. officials have leveled criminal charges against someone over prediction market wagers.
According to the indictment, Van Dyke now faces counts of wire fraud, commodities fraud, misusing non-public government information and other charges.
Trading under numerous usernames including “Burdensome-Mix,” Van Dyke allegedly traded about $32,000 on the arrest of Maduro, resulting in profits exceeding $400,000.
“Prediction markets are not a haven for using misappropriated confidential or classified information for personal gain,” said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York. “Those entrusted to safeguard our nation’s secrets have a duty to protect them and our armed service members, and not to use that information for personal financial gain.”
Van Dyke’s defense lawyer is not yet publicly known. Polymarket did not return a request for comment.
The charges against Van Dyke come at a sensitive time for the prediction market industry, which has been growing exponentially, despite calls in Washington and among state leaders for the sites to be reined in.
Van Dyke is the first to be charged in the U.S. for suspected Polymarket insider trading, but Israeli authorities in February arrested several people and charged two on suspicion of using classified information to place bets about military operations in Iran on Polymarket.
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Senate Adopts GOP Budget, Laying the Groundwork to Fund ICE and Reopen DHS
The Senate early Thursday morning adopted a Republican budget blueprint that would pave the way for a $70 billion increase for immigration enforcement and the eventual reopening of the Department of Homeland Security.
Republicans pushed through the plan on a nearly party-line vote of 50 to 48. It came after an overnight marathon of rapid-fire votes, known as a vote-a-rama, in which the G.O.P. beat back a series of Democratic proposals aimed at addressing the high cost of health care, housing, food and energy. The debate put the two parties’ dueling messages on vivid display six months before the midterm elections.
Republicans, who are using the budget plan to lay the groundwork to eventually push through a filibuster-proof bill providing a multiyear funding stream for President Trump’s immigration crackdown, used the all-night session to highlight their hard-line stance on border security, seeking to portray Democrats as unwilling to safeguard the country.
Democrats tried and failed to add a series of changes aimed at addressing cost-of-living issues, seizing the opportunity to hammer Republicans as out of touch with and unwilling to act on the concerns of everyday Americans.
Here’s what to know about the budget plan and the nocturnal ritual senators engaged in before adopting it.
Republicans are seeking a way around a filibuster on D.H.S. funding.
The budget blueprint is a crucial piece of Republicans’ plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security and end a shutdown that has lasted for more than two months. After Democrats refused to fund immigration enforcement without new restrictions on agents’ tactics and conduct, the G.O.P. struck a deal with them to pass a spending bill that would fund everything but ICE and the Border Patrol. Republicans said they would fund those agencies through a special budget bill that Democrats could not block.
“We can fix this with Republican votes, and we will,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and the Budget Committee chairman. “Every Democrat has opposed money for the Border Patrol and ICE at a time of great peril.”
In resorting to a new budget blueprint, Republicans laid the groundwork to deny Democrats a chance to stop the immigration enforcement funding. But they also submitted themselves to a vote-a-rama, in which any senator can propose unlimited changes to such a measure before it is adopted.
The budget measure now goes to the House, which must adopt it before lawmakers in both chambers can draft the legislation funding immigration enforcement. That bill will provide yet another opportunity for a vote-a-rama even closer to the November election.
Democrats used the moment to hammer Republicans on affordability.
Democrats took to the floor to criticize Republicans for supercharging funding for federal immigration enforcement rather than moving legislation that would address Americans’ concerns over affordability.
“This is what Republicans are fighting for,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the Democratic leader. “To maintain two unchecked rogue agencies that are dreaded in all corners of this country instead of reducing your health care costs, your housing costs, your grocery costs, your gas costs.”
Democrats offered a host of amendments along those lines, all of which were defeated by Republicans — and that was the point. The proposals were meant to put the G.O.P. in a tough political spot, showcasing their opposition to helping Americans afford high living costs. Fewer than a handful of G.O.P. senators crossed party lines to support them.
Republicans blocked Democrats’ proposals to address high living costs.
The G.O.P. thwarted an effort by Mr. Schumer to require that the budget measure lower out-of-pocket health care costs for Americans. Two Republicans who are up for re-election this year, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, voted with Democrats, but the proposal was still defeated.
Republicans also squelched a move by Senator Ben Ray Lujan, Democrat of New Mexico, to create a fund that would lower grocery costs and reverse cuts to food aid programs that Republicans enacted last year. Ms. Collins and Mr. Sullivan again joined Democrats.
Also defeated by the G.O.P.: a proposal by Senator John Hickenlooper, Democrat of Colorado, to address rising consumer prices brought on by Mr. Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran; one by Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, to require the budget measure to address rising electricity prices, and another by Mr. Markey to create a fund to bring down housing costs.
Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat who is up for re-election in Georgia, also sought to add language requiring the budget plan to address health insurance companies denying or delaying access to care, but that, too was blocked by Republicans.
Republicans sought to amplify their hard-line messages on immigration, voter I.D. and transgender care.
While Republicans had fewer proposals for changes to their own budget plan, they also sought to offer measures that would underscore their aggressive stance on immigration enforcement and dare Democrats to vote against them.
Mr. Graham offered an amendment to allocate funds toward a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to the apprehension and deportation of adult immigrants convicted of rape, murder, or sexual abuse of a minor after illegally entering the United States. It passed unanimously.
Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, sought to bar Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion and other services, and criticized the organization for providing transgender care to minors. Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, also attempted to tack on the G.O.P. voter identification bill, known as the SAVE America Act. Both proposals were blocked when Democrats, joined by a few Republicans, voted to strike them as unrelated to the budget plan.
The Republicans who crossed party lines to oppose their own party’s proposals for new voting requirements were Ms. Collins along with Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski also opposed the effort to block payments to Planned Parenthood.
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