NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee man who goes by the moniker Chud the Builder and is known for posting racist videos is charged with attempted murder after shooting a man outside a Clarksville courthouse on Wednesday.

Dalton Eatherly, who is white, posts videos to social media where he tries to provoke Black passersby by using racial slurs and racist dog whistles. He was arrested on Wednesday after an altercation with another man. This is what we know.

‘Did I shoot myself …?’

At about 1:20 p.m. on Wednesday, police responded to a report of shots fired outside the Montgomery County Courthouse. Deputies detained two people who were involved in a “physical altercation that escalated to gunfire,” according to a news release from the sheriff’s office. Both people sustained gunshot wounds and were taken to separate hospitals where they were both listed as being stable.

District Attorney General Robert Nash, in a separate news release, identified one of the people involved as Eatherly. Authorities declined to answer questions about the second man; however, a witness who said she saw him loaded into an ambulance described him as Black.

Neither Nash nor the sheriff’s office have said what exactly led to the confrontation. It was not immediately clear if Eatherly has an attorney in the case who could speak for him. The courthouse was closed on Thursday because of the shooting, and online records were not updated. An attorney representing Eatherly in a different case did not return a call seeking comment.

In an audio stream from just after the shooting that Eatherly posted to social media, Eatherly says he shot a man in self-defense after the person started hitting him. Eatherly speaks with paramedics in the clip, one of whom takes note of a bullet wound’s entry and exit point in his arm.

“Did I shoot myself or did it graze it?” Eatherly asks.

After leaving the hospital on Wednesday, Eatherly was taken to the Montgomery County jail. He is charged with attempted murder, employing a firearm during a dangerous felony, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon.

Authorities on Thursday did not provide an update on the condition of the other man, and a hospital spokesperson said medical privacy laws prohibit them from disclosing information about victims of violence.

The free speech defense

In an online fundraiser Eatherly posted for himself at some point prior to the shooting, he complains that he cannot get jobs for his contracting business because people object to the videos he makes. He claims to make “mild jokes” and admits that he uses racial slurs while calling it “harmless humor.” It is unclear when the fundraiser was first posted. He addresses it to “friends, supporters, and champions of free speech.”

Although Eatherly repeatedly references free speech in his social media posts, what he does in those posts may actually be crimes under Tennessee law, said David Raybin, a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor who is an expert in the state’s criminal law. Because Eatherly was known to openly carry a pistol while berating people, the combination could constitute assault, Raybin said.

“You don’t have to touch someone,” he said. Assault can be charged if you “create fear of imminent harm.”

Meanwhile, merely coming at someone with “fighting words” constitutes disorderly conduct under local Nashville ordinances.

Well known in the community

Claire Martin works in a law office across the street from the courthouse and said she saw the aftermath of the shooting. She said Eatherly is well known in the community for yelling racial slurs at Black people while filming them. Eatherly also regularly does the same in downtown Nashville, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) to the southeast.

Just the previous Saturday, Eatherly was kicked out of a Nashville steakhouse after he refused to stop livestreaming from inside the restaurant. An affidavit filed by police said he started yelling, screaming and “making racial statements” before leaving without paying a nearly $400 bill. He was arrested the following day and charged with theft of services, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. He was released on $5,000 bond.

On the morning of the shooting, he had been scheduled to appear in court in Clarksville over a $3,300 debt allegedly owed to a credit company, according to Montgomery County court records. The civil case was filed in February on behalf of Midland Credit Management. Court records didn’t indicate whether Eatherly showed up for the status hearing. Online records list the case as open. The shooting occurred several hours later.

Next steps

Eatherly was not listed in online court records as of Thursday afternoon, but if the case proceeds as ones normally do in Montgomery County, he will be arraigned on Friday. That is when a judge will decide on bond.

While police have not said what happened prior to the shooting, if Eatherly is found to have provoked the other person, it would be very difficult to prove self-defense, said Raybin, the criminal defense expert. Regardless, a person only has the right to use deadly force if threatened with death or great bodily harm.

“I think a prosecutor would give very little weight to claims of self-defense,” Raybin said.

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Associated Press videojournalist Kristin M. Hall contributed from Clarksville, Tennessee. Associated Press writers Corey Williams in Detroit and John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia, also contributed.

It has become a given in Westminster circles that Keir Starmer’s tenure as prime minister could be nearing its end. This is because, fairly or unfairly, the UK public have made up their minds – and they do not like him.

Labour MPs know this all too well, having seen the level of animosity on the doorstep during recent election campaigns in England, Wales and Scotland. They just didn’t immediately know what to do about it. But then Wes Streeting quit as health secretary, criticising Starmer in his resignation letter for what he said was a “vacuum” where political vision was required.

Recent UK history is full of precedents when prime ministers found their position untenable. For the Conservatives, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss were all removed eventually. But such a course of action comes with costs: to party unity, to market sentiment, and in terms of how the voters view political shenanigans.

This is why, until now, the more thoughtful voices in the Labour party either kept their counsel or argued for caution. But a significant number of Labour MPs believe that a change at the top is now inevitable.

Streeting, Rayner or Burnham

From the right of the party, Streeting, the combative former health secretary, is the key figure to challenge Starmer. But he still requires the backing of at least 81 fellow Labour MPs.

A Streeting bid for the leadership would be supported by much of the media, but what many regard as his lukewarm re-tread of old Blairite orthodoxies would limit his appeal with the party membership. And members play a significant role in leadership contests.

By contrast, a likely candidate of the so-called “soft left”, former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, has now cleared up her tax affairs and is more popular with the party rank-and-file. But she would alienate much of the London commentariat.

What neither Streeting nor Rayner possess is genuine cut-through with the wider British public. And this is where the current mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, comes in. Burnham does not have a parliamentary seat and, although he intends to contest the Makerfield constituency made vacant by Josh Simons’ decision to step aside, it is not guaranteed that he will win. Given Labour’s current unpopularity, the party cannot assume it would win a by-election anywhere.

And even if Burnham did scale that hurdle, there is a real danger that his replacement as the Labour candidate for the mayoralty would lose to Reform UK. This would allow party opponents to portray Burnham’s move as an indulgence at the expense of the party.

Nevertheless, if the political stars were to align and Burnham navigates his passage back to Westminster in time for a leadership challenge, he would be a formidable opponent. Burnham not only outpolls his main rivals among Labour members, he also enjoys rare net approval ratings with the public (+6, compared with -12 for Rayner and -20 for Streeting). Labour MPs will be paying particular attention to those numbers.

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There is strong reason to believe that Rayner will have a crucial role in how this plays out. This could either be by standing for leader herself or through working with Burnham. Either way, she is in an incredibly influential position.

And what would Labour and the country look like under new leadership? The revolving door at the top partly reflects the extent of the challenges (economic, political, cultural) that the country faces. Voters have not seen rises in their real living standards for two decades, are truly angry and deeply polarised.

The UK is divided on how to go forward, and so is the Labour Party. That is why potential challengers to Starmer really should be careful what they wish for. Much of the political instability of recent years is down to the collective obsession with politics as a short-term and personality-based kind of show business.

But this ignores the more worrying long-term developments in financial markets that indicate that there is no faith in the UK’s ability to tackle its structural problems any time soon. The eventual winner of Labour’s leadership drama may inherit the throne just as money markets’ patience with the UK runs out.

The rule means couples can only claim benefits such as Pension Credit – worth on average £4,300 a year – when both partners have reached State Pension age

The charity Independent Age, alongside 12 other organisations, has written to Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden calling on the UK Government to abolish the ‘mixed age couples’ rule for means-tested benefits administered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Under the current rule, couples are only eligible to claim benefits such as Pension Credit – worth on average £4,300 annually – once both partners have reached State Pension age. Campaigners argue the existing regulations leave some low-income households thousands of pounds worse off each year when one partner is younger than the other.

The charities say affected couples can lose out on support worth up to £7,000 per year because they are required to claim Universal Credit rather than Pension Credit. Universal Credit is paid at a lower rate and is primarily intended for working-age households.

The organisations caution that the problem could become even more acute as the State Pension age continues to rise from 66 to 67 between now and 2028 – a gradual increase to the official retirement age which began in April, reports the Daily Record.

Fresh polling commissioned by Independent Age revealed that 62 per cent of people believe couples should be able to access pension age entitlements once one partner reaches State Pension age.

Independent Age chief executive Joanna Elson said: “Every day we hear from older people struggling to make ends meet, and for thousands of mixed age couples the system is making that struggle even harder. This rule is unfairly locking around 70,000 older people out of vital pension age support simply because their partner is younger.

“The financial support they are missing out on could be the difference between heating and eating or paying the rent.”

The charities also cautioned that the current system presumes younger partners are financially capable of supporting the household, which they argue fails to reflect the reality faced by many families where an individual may be unable to work due to poor health or caring responsibilities.

Jan Shortt, General Secretary, National Pensioners Convention said: “To treat people differently on the basis of who they fall in love with is nonsense. Mixed age couples are suffering financially because they cannot access the support they need.

“Decisions made by the government penalise mixed age couples and this must be addressed to enable them to be financially secure in the future.”

Lynn, 62, from Eastbourne, revealed that she and her husband David have faced significant financial hardship as a direct result of the rule. She explained that having initially been awarded Pension Credit, the couple subsequently discovered they were ineligible, as they were classified as a mixed age couple.

Lynn said: “We were told we could claim Pension Credit, but after seven months of receiving it we got a letter saying there had been a mistake and we weren’t entitled to it because we are a mixed age couple. For the first time ever, we had to turn to a food bank to get by.”

The charities are urging the UK Government to scrap the regulation and permit couples to claim Pension Credit and other pension age benefits once the older partner reaches State Pension age. Further details regarding the campaign can be found on the Independent Age website.

The head of U.S. Border Patrol, the agency tasked with securing the nation’s frontiers and increasingly tapped by the Trump administration for immigration operations in American cities, announced his resignation Thursday.

Michael Banks’ decision, announced in a Fox News interview and later confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security, is the latest leadership shake-up of officials implementing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and comes as the Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach to its centerpiece policy of mass deportations.

“It’s just time,” Banks was quoted as saying in a report on the Fox News website, which said the resignation was effective immediately. “I feel like I got the ship back on course,” he said, referring to what he described as previous chaos at the southern border. Banks said it was “time to enjoy the family and life.”

In a statement, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner, Rodney Scott, thanked Banks for his service “during one of the most challenging periods for border security.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It was not clear who will replace Banks. He led an agency at the forefront of Trump’s high-profile immigration enforcement efforts but kept a lower profile than some other officials such as Gregory Bovino, a now-retired commander who became a public face of the immigration crackdown.

Border Patrol participated in immigration enforcement operation in US cities

CBP is one of the federal agencies that participated since last year in a series of immigration enforcement operations, carried out primarily in cities governed by Democrats — an effort that triggered a spike in arrests and led to the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis this year at the hands of federal immigration officers.

Banks’ resignation takes place two months after Markwayne Mullin, a former Republican senator from Oklahoma, became homeland security secretary. DHS oversees CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE.

Banks is stepping down at the same time that ICE is also going through a leadership transition. Todd Lyons, the acting ICE director, is leaving later this month and will be replaced by David Venturella, who worked for years for private contractors before returning to government service.

CBP was established in 2003 and handles customs, immigration, and agricultural regulations to secure U.S. borders. It has a workforce of over 20,000 agents assigned to patrol the more than 6,000 miles of land borders, and an operating budget of $1.4 billion, according to information from its website.

As head of CBP, Banks became a pivotal figure in the Trump administration’s hardline policy to reconfigure immigration law enforcement in the United States. He oversaw the expansion of prosecutions for illegal border crossings, intensified coordination between the Border Patrol and ICE, and supervised the implementation of broader internal enforcement operations within the country’s borders.

Banks had a long career at Border Patrol

Banks returned to the Border Patrol last year after a long agency career that had never landed him in its senior ranks. His star had risen as border czar to Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, during a period when illegal crossings reached record highs and the state launched a multibillion-dollar enforcement surge that led to turf battles with the Biden administration.

Banks kept a relatively low public profile as arrests for illegal crossings that have plunged to their lowest levels since the mid-1960s, a trend that began toward the end of that Democratic administration.

Banks did not appear publicly at the Border Security Expo this month in Phoenix, an annual conference at which government officials update contractors on the state of the border. Scott, who was Banks’ supervisor, is a close ally of Trump border czar Tom Homan and has acted more as the agency’s public face.

Banks, who grew up in a small town in Warner Robins, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta, Georgia, has said his first job was picking peaches at an orchard when he was 14 years old. He worked with migrant farm workers and learned “compassion and humility,” he said, in an interview published last year on the CBP website.

Banks, in the interview, said he was “honored” to have returned to the agency.

“The United States Border Patrol will be unapologetic in its enforcement of our nation’s laws,” he said.

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Elliot Spagat in San Diego, California contributed to this report.