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NOTN- Authorities have officially released the name of the officer involved in the July 30 use-of-force incident, where a Juneau Police Department officer arrested 49-year-old Chris Williams, Jr.
Williams was medevaced to Anchorage after being taken to the ground.
Awareness of the incident online, including a video posted to social media as well as a protest, has meant that many individuals already knew the name of the officer involved.
Officer Brandon LeBlanc is a 17-year law enforcement veteran hired by the Juneau Police Department in August 2024 after serving in Louisiana.
The department said an outside law enforcement agency is leading the investigation into the use-of force incident, which remains ongoing.
When it concludes, the Alaska Office of Special Prosecutions will review the case to determine whether the force used was consistent with state law.
LeBlanc is on administrative leave during the investigation. In line with city code, body-worn camera footage from the incident will be released Aug. 29 on the department’s website.
By: Yereth Rosen, Alaska Beacon
The secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, visiting Alaska this week, said he hopes to learn about challenges facing both the state’s urban centers and remote rural communities.
“I came here to be a great listener, to understand the needs of the people of Alaska, to understand the challenges of the people of Alaska and particularly when it comes to homelessness and affordable housing,” Scott Turner, the Trump administration’s HUD secretary, said at a news conference Tuesday in Anchorage.
Turner is among several Trump administration cabinet members touring Alaska this summer.
He spent part of Tuesday meeting with Anchorage municipal officials who discussed the challenges of homelessness in the state’s largest city.
It is a national issue, Turner said.
That 770,000 people identified as homeless in the nation “is unacceptable to me, it’s unacceptable to my colleagues and I know it’s unacceptable to you,” he said.
In Alaska, he said, almost 2,700 people are homeless, with about 1,700 of them in Anchorage. “That’s something that we want to attack and eradicate,” he said.
Those numbers show that past efforts by HUD to address homelessness have not been effective, said Turner. To make his point, he referred to his background as a professional football player.
“One of the things that holds you accountable in the NFL is called game film,” he said. “You can say what you want to on Sunday during the game. You can say, ‘Well, I did the right thing,’ but on Monday, the film will tell the story, and the film does not lie.”
On Wednesday, Turner was touring Bethel, in Western Alaska, to learn about rural Alaska housing problems.
Crowding is a dire concern in rural communities, according to the Alaska Housing Finance Corp., a state agency. Conditions are most severe in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region, where Bethel is located, according to AHFC. Crowded conditions are linked to poor health, including transmission of respiratory diseases like COVID-19.
Turner said HUD wants to add 7 million more units of affordable housing to the national supply and is focused on reducing regulations that reduce housing access in rural areas as well as in urban areas.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, accompanied Turner and asserted at the news conference that overregulation by HUD is one of the major impediments to housing availability and quality in rural parts of the state.
“You can send all the money you want to rural Alaska, but it’s so smothered in red tape that it costs a million bucks to build a duplex. One duplex. A lot of that, I think, is self-inflicted,” Sullivan said.
Other analysis identified different problems for rural Alaska housing.
The high cost of energy in rural communities, which are unconnected to larger power grids, is one problem that for years has been cited as a key factor making rural Alaska housing unaffordable.
However, the budget reconciliation bill passed by Congress at the end of June, along with various actions by the Trump administration, has created new barriers to renewable energy development in rural Alaska and elsewhere.
Climate change has also exacerbated rural Alaska’s housing crisis, according to reports by government agencies.
A 2019 statewide assessment by the Denali Commission found that 144 rural communities are threatened by increased erosion, flooding, permafrost thaw or some combination of those factors.
More frequent flooding in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region, for example, is attributed to climate change and has affected housing quality and safety.
But the Trump administration is seeking to halt in-state policies intended to mitigate and adapt to climate change, including those in Alaska.
The administration also abolished the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Building Resistant Infrastructure and Communities program. The program provided grants to help communities prevent damage from natural disasters, many of which are linked to climate change.
With his Aug. 11, 2025, announcement that he was sending the National Guard – along with federal law enforcement – into Washington, D.C. to fight crime, President Donald Trump edged U.S. troops closer to the kind of military-civilian confrontations that can cross ethical and legal lines.
Indeed, since Trump returned to office, many of his actions have alarmed international human rights observers. His administration has deported immigrants without due process, held detainees in inhumane conditions, threatened the forcible removal of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and deployed both the National Guard and federal military troops to Los Angeles to quell largely peaceful protests.
When a sitting commander in chief authorizes acts like these, which many assert are clear violations of the law, men and women in uniform face an ethical dilemma: How should they respond to an order they believe is illegal?
The question may already be affecting troop morale. “The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring,” a National Guard member who had been deployed to quell public unrest over immigration arrests in Los Angeles told The New York Times. “This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all.”
Troops who are ordered to do something illegal are put in a bind – so much so that some argue that troops themselves are harmed when given such orders. They are not trained in legal nuances, and they are conditioned to obey. Yet if they obey “manifestly unlawful” orders, they can be prosecuted. Some analysts fear that U.S. troops are ill-equipped to recognize this threshold.
We are scholars of international relations and international law. We conducted survey research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Human Security Lab and discovered that many service members do understand the distinction between legal and illegal orders, the duty to disobey certain orders, and when they should do so.
Hu Yousong/Xinhua via Getty Images
Compelled to disobey
U.S. service members take an oath to uphold the Constitution. In addition, under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the U.S. Manual for Courts-Martial, service members must obey lawful orders and disobey unlawful orders. Unlawful orders are those that clearly violate the U.S. Constitution, international human rights standards or the Geneva Conventions.
Service members who follow an illegal order can be held liable and court-martialed or subject to prosecution by international tribunals. Following orders from a superior is no defense.
Our poll, fielded between June 13 and June 30, 2025, shows that service members understand these rules. Of the 818 active-duty troops we surveyed, just 9% stated that they would “obey any order.” Only 9% “didn’t know,” and only 2% had “no comment.”
When asked to describe unlawful orders in their own words, about 25% of respondents wrote about their duty to disobey orders that were “obviously wrong,” “obviously criminal” or “obviously unconstitutional.”
Another 8% spoke of immoral orders. One respondent wrote that “orders that clearly break international law, such as targeting non-combatants, are not just illegal — they’re immoral. As military personnel, we have a duty to uphold the law and refuse commands that betray that duty.”
Just over 40% of respondents listed specific examples of orders they would feel compelled to disobey.
The most common unprompted response, cited by 26% of those surveyed, was “harming civilians,” while another 15% of respondents gave a variety of other examples of violations of duty and law, such as “torturing prisoners” and “harming U.S. troops.”
One wrote that “an order would be obviously unlawful if it involved harming civilians, using torture, targeting people based on identity, or punishing others without legal process.”
UMass-Amherst’s Human Security Lab, CC BY
Soldiers, not lawyers
But the open-ended answers pointed to another struggle troops face: Some no longer trust U.S. law as useful guidance.
Writing in their own words about how they would know an illegal order when they saw it, more troops emphasized international law as a standard of illegality than emphasized U.S. law.
Others implied that acts that are illegal under international law might become legal in the U.S.
“Trump will issue illegal orders,” wrote one respondent. “The new laws will allow it,” wrote another. A third wrote, “We are not required to obey such laws.”
Several emphasized the U.S. political situation directly in their remarks, stating they’d disobey “oppression or harming U.S. civilians that clearly goes against the Constitution” or an order for “use of the military to carry out deportations.”
Still, the percentage of respondents who said they would disobey specific orders – such as torture – is lower than the percentage of respondents who recognized the responsibility to disobey in general.
This is not surprising: Troops are trained to obey and face numerous social, psychological and institutional pressures to do so. By contrast, most troops receive relatively little training in the laws of war or human rights law.
Political scientists have found, however, that having information on international law affects attitudes about the use of force among the general public. It can also affect decision-making by military personnel.
This finding was also borne out in our survey.
When we explicitly reminded troops that shooting civilians was a violation of international law, their willingness to disobey increased 8 percentage points.
Drawing the line
As my research with another scholar showed in 2020, even thinking about law and morality can make a difference in opposition to certain war crimes.
The preliminary results from our survey led to a similar conclusion. Troops who answered questions on “manifestly unlawful orders” before they were asked questions on specific scenarios were much more likely to say they would refuse those specific illegal orders.
When asked if they would follow an order to drop a nuclear bomb on a civilian city, for example, 69% of troops who received that question first said they would obey the order.
But when the respondents were asked to think about and comment on the duty to disobey unlawful orders before being asked if they would follow the order to bomb, the percentage who would obey the order dropped 13 points to 56%.
While many troops said they might obey questionable orders, the large number who would not is remarkable.
Military culture makes disobedience difficult: Soldiers can be court-martialed for obeying an unlawful order, or for disobeying a lawful one.
Yet between one-third to half of the U.S. troops we surveyed would be willing to disobey if ordered to shoot or starve civilians, torture prisoners or drop a nuclear bomb on a city.
The service members described the methods they would use. Some would confront their superiors directly. Others imagined indirect methods: asking questions, creating diversions, going AWOL, “becoming violently ill.”
Criminologist Eva Whitehead researched actual cases of troop disobedience of illegal orders and found that when some troops disobey – even indirectly – others can more easily find the courage to do the same.
Whitehead’s research showed that those who refuse to follow illegal or immoral orders are most effective when they stand up for their actions openly.
The initial results of our survey – coupled with a recent spike in calls to the GI Rights Hotline – suggest American men and women in uniform don’t want to obey unlawful orders.
Some are standing up loudly. Many are thinking ahead to what they might do if confronted with unlawful orders. And those we surveyed are looking for guidance from the Constitution and international law to determine where they may have to draw that line.
Zahra Marashi, an undergraduate research assistant at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, contributed to the research for this article.
Charli Carpenter directs Human Security Lab which has received funding from University of Massachusetts College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the National Science Foundation, and the Lex International Fund of the Swiss Philanthropy Foundation.
Geraldine Santoso and Laura K Bradshaw-Tucker do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Politics + Society – The Conversation
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Meghan Markle is spoiling Kris Jenner and Khloe Kardashian.
Yes, she somehow ended up the scapegoat of the British monarchy.
But that doesn’t mean that she can’t get along with other royalty closer to home.
Meghan’s As Ever lifestyle brand’s debut rosé was an instant hit. Now, she’s gifting new bottles to some of the biggest influencers on the planet.
Meghan Markle sent gifts to Kris Jenner and to Khloe Kardashian
As many have already quipped, Meghan Markle is giving the royal treatment to Kris Jenner and Khloe Kardashian.
On Tuesday, August 12, the momager took to her Instagram Story to share a look at her gift.
She shared a glimpse of a simple yet refined wooden box containing three bottles of wine.
The wine is not merely a gift. It’s from Meghan’s own lifestyle brand.
Those are three bottles of As Ever Napa Valley Rosé.
And, yes, there is also a bowl of fresh peaches in the snap. And another bowl of apples.
Kris was sure to give the Duchess a shoutout, writing: “Thank you @meghan @aseverofficial.”
This was so much more than just wine
Meanwhile, just two days before Kris Jenner showed off her swag, Khloe Kardashian shared her own gift from Meghan Markle.
The mother of two took to her own Instagram Story to show off a generous gift basket full of fruits and jams.
And some big, gorgeous bottles. And at least one gourd?
These, two, are part of As Ever’s brand. In fact, the wine is only a recent venture.
Back in April, Kris received a promotional gift of As Ever jam. This was before the brand had this name, in fact.
The momager was one of only 50 recipients — as her gift had the batch number of “13/50” to prove it.
Meghan’s jam has been controversial in certain circles, with critics arguing that it is too easy to spread and therefore does not qualify as a jam. You know, everyone needs a hobby.
Maybe not jam snobbery, though.
Is As Ever a success?
Not everyone is a fan of Meghan Markle’s As Ever brand, with or without the wine. Actual recipients seem to be happy, but not … others.
In addition to criticizing the lifestyle brand itself, some have drawn wild connections to accuse the Duchess of “disrespecting” Princess Diana. Yes, really.
However, with the exception of Jam Purists, the actual product seems to be well-received. And when she offers things for sale, they sell out quickly.
Are there people rooting for Meghan to fail? Always. But that doesn’t mean that they’re getting their wish.
Meghan Markle Spoils (American) Royalty Kris Jenner, Khloe Kardashian with As Ever Rosé was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.
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As we’ve previously reported, Kelly Clarkson’s ex-husband, Brandon Blackstock, passed away last week at the age of 48.
Clarkson’s feelings toward Blackstock were likely rather complex in his final years.
Their divorce was infamously contentious, but they also had two children together, and she credited him with inspiring her to launch her own talk show.
Now it seems that the situation was even more complicated than we realized, as Blackstock was living with Kelly’s former assistant at the time of his death.
Kelly’s former assistant described as Brandon’s ‘soulmate’
According to an obituary obtained by TMZ, Brittney Marie Jones was the “loving partner” who resided with Blackstock in Montana in the final years of his life.
“Brandon, along with his beautiful and loving partner in life and business, Brittney Marie Jones, started building a life, building companies, and working tirelessly to create Headwaters Livestock Auction and what will live on as his legacy, The Valley View Rodeo in Bozeman, Montana,” reads the obit.
The relationship was reportedly confirmed by a social media post from Jones’ father.
“Yesterday we lost a good man, Brandon Blackstock my daughter’s soulmate and I considered him my son,” he wrote, according to Page Six.
The outlet notes that the post is no longer available to the public.
Blackstock has been the subject of several moving tributes in the days since his death, including one from his former stepmother, Reba McEntire.
“There is no one else like him, and I’m thankful for the time we had together. His legacy and laughter will be carried on through his family,” McEntire wrote on her social media pages, adding:
“Rest in peace cowboy. Happy trails to you til we meet again.”
“The best thing Brandon has left for his children is they know where he is. I’ve heard it said, ‘Nothing is lost when you know where it is’ and Brandon is with Jesus his Savior,” Blackstock’s first wife wrote on her Instagram page.
“There’s no one else on this earth that I would want to be my dad because no one can be half the man you were to me,” Brandon’s eldest son, Seth Blackstock, wrote in his own post.
Kelly Clarkson reportedly ‘devastated’ by Brandon Blackstock’s death
While Clarkson has yet to publicly comment on her ex’s passing, sources close to the singer say she’s “devastated” by Blackstock’s death.
Over the course of the past year, there was widespread speculation about Clarkson’s frequent absences from her talk show.
It now looks as though she was attending to family matters ahead of Brandon’s passing.
Our thoughts go out to Kelly and all of Brandon Blackstock’s loved ones during this enormously difficult time.
Brandon Blackstock Was Dating Kelly Clarkson’s Former Assistant at Time of Death: … was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.
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New season. New episodes.
New group of individuals who apparently aren’t satisfied with just one romantic partner in their lives.
The first trailer for Seeking Sister Wife Season 6 dropped this week, courtesy of Us Weekly, and it features two returning couples … along with three brand new and seemingly confused ones.
“Polygamy is something we really feel God led us to live,” returning cast member Garrick Merrifield tells the cameras in this sneak peek, making his statement with spouse Dannielle Merrifield, by his side.
Previously, the Merrifields were prominent players on this same TLC reality show, which at one point saw them get dumped by a woman named Roberta via text message.
The two will not be deterred, however!
In this preview, the couple reveals that they are trying polygamy again with a Brazilian woman named Lorrana.
While Dannielle seems to be excited at first about adding another woman into her universe, she breaks down in the trailer after seeing her husband happy with Lorrana. Because, d’uh. Who wouldn’t be?!?
“I’m happy for them. It just makes me feel less tied to Garrick. I don’t know why,” Dannielle says while wiping away tears.
Elsewhere, returning family, Nick Davis, April Davis and Jenny Davis learn that girlfriend Teresa wants to be more committed that she has been.
“I just want to have Nick to myself, let’s get that straight,” Teresa tells the cameras, after saying she isn’t alright with not sharing the same last name as the other women.
(One could easily wonder why anyone who wants a man to herself would get involved in a polygamous family. But we’ll just be left to wonder, we suppose.)
“Polygamy is certainly not for the faint of heart,” Nick adds in the video.
Additionally, there are three new couples who are attempting to navigate polygamy on this season of the TLC program.
Having been married four years, Reise Williamson and Billie Jean Williamson are psyched to welcome another woman into their family — all while raising twins.
Then there’s is Matt Johnson and Anjelica Johnson… who find themselves at a crossroads after their sister wife Shanay, who has been part of their lives for three years, says she wants to make their union official.
That’s a big deal!
Finally, Yessel Peralta and Dani Peralta seem to be the most out of sync as they just begin their polygamy journey. In front of a camera no less.
“I don’t want to feel resentful toward my husband for being intimate with another woman when that is what we’re setting out to do,” Dani confesses in the season preview, stating the obvious.
During a dinner date with a prospective suitor, the woman catches Dani by surprise by asking point blank, “When can I expect sex with your husband?”
Points for being forward, huh?
Seeking Sister Wife made all kinds of negative headlines years ago after the Snowdens were accused of various types of abuse against their partners.
The all-new season of the show will kick off on September 22 and will dive into “the emotional highs and lows of navigating polygamous relationships, as each household explores the challenges and rewards of finding a potential new sister wife,” according to a press release.
TLC teases:
“As each couple leans into the power of partnership and possibility, their pursuit of love and family unfolds in unexpected ways.”
Seeking Sister Wife Season 6: Meet the New Couples! was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.
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Jussie Smollett is maintaining his innocence ahead of the upcoming documentary.
And we probably don’t need to tell you that Smollett’s situation is still rather controversial.
He says that his story has never changed — and that he became an easy target for police and a distraction following the widespread viewing of the police murder of a Black teenager.
Jussie Smollett says that he knows who the real ‘villains’ are in his story
Speaking to Variety, Jussie Smollett maintains his innocence — and his account of who the wrongdoers are — from the 2019 incident that sent his entire life into a tailspin.
“The villains are the two people who assaulted me, the Chicago Police Department and, if I may be so brave, the mayor,” the actor listed as the culprits.
Rahm Emanuel is deservedly infamous for many reasons.
And Smollett suggests that the authorities decided that it was a much more convenient narrative than to make him into a one-man false flag.
“Could it be that they had just found out about the missing minutes and the missing tape from the murder of Laquan McDonald?” Smollett proposed. “Could it be that the mayor helped hide that?”
Jason Van Dyke, the CPD officer who shot McDonald in the back, ultimately served only three years and one month for the murder.
“We’re living in a world where the higher-ups, their main mission, in order to do all of the underhanded things that they’re doing, is to distract us with the shiny object,” Smollett commented.
‘I hope it was worth it’
As many may recall, a pair of Nigerian-American brothers cooperated with the CPD, alleging that Jussie Smollett had enlisted them to “attack” him in a phony hate crime.
The actor declined to attack the brothers.
He does maintain that they did not attack him, and that his actual assailants remain at large.
“All I can say is, God bless you, and I hope it was worth it,” he commented on the brothers. “Every single other person’s story has changed multiple times. Mine has never. I have nothing to gain from this.”
His comment about people in power is difficult to dispute, and not merely for our current political nightmare on the national level.
Initially, the charges against Smollett were dropped. Then, a year later, a special prosecutor refiled. Smollett received a conviction and a sentence.
The Illinois Supreme Court stepped in to reverse the lower court’s conviction.
Why? Because retrying him had, in this case, constituted a clear violation of Smollett’s due process rights.
When does the Jussie Smollett Netflix documentary come out?
The Netflix documentary on Jussie Smollett, which come out August 22, doesn’t promise to exonerate or convict the actor.
“To be honest with you, I don’t really know,” he admits when asked why exculpatory evidence has not emerged. “I’m not an investigative reporter or a detective. I can’t sit and tell you exactly, beat by beat, what happened.”
Smollett emphasized: “I can only tell you what did not happen. And what did not happen is the story that’s been out there for almost seven years, that somehow I would have even a reason to do something as egregious as this.”
Jussie Smollett Decries Real ‘Villains’ in Alleged Hoax Ahead of Netflix … was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.
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