Paris Burns, Obama Fires Back, and Musk Admits He Cut Ukraine's Internet: Everything That Happened Today

Paris is burning — or at least smoldering.

A day of largely peaceful protest across France ended with scenes of street confrontation in the capital. Police deployed tear gas near the Place de la République. Demonstrators overturned street furniture. Dozens were arrested. The demonstrations began around cost-of-living pressures and pension anger but, in the way France has seen before, a fringe element escalated once the main crowd had gone home.

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No formal government statement had been issued as of Saturday evening. Analysts watching the situation say the next move matters enormously — too heavy a hand, and the cycle inflames. Too soft, and the political right has its next line of attack.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Barack Obama had things to say.

The former president made his most direct return to the US political stage this week, calling the current administration an agent of what he described as 'chaos and cruelty.' He also named Vivek Ramaswamy by name in remarks that were notably sharper than his usual register.

One commenter online said it was 'the Obama people have been waiting for.' Another argued that the timing felt calculated — which, of course, it is. With midterms approaching and Democrats searching for a galvanizing voice, Obama's re-engagement is a deliberate signal.

USA Today has mapped a competitive race in all fifty states — a fact that underlines just how nationalized American elections have become. The big senate and governor contests get the money and the cameras, but chamber control often comes down to races in districts most people have never heard of.

Elsewhere in Washington, the New York Times reports that the Justice Department has, in Trump's second term, taken a notably different approach to presidential instructions than prior DOJ leadership did. Career officials have in several instances deferred to directives that earlier administrations would have routed through formal review. The administration's supporters say a president has every right to a Justice Department that reflects his legal priorities. Critics say prosecutorial independence is a safeguard, not a preference. Both sides have serious legal minds behind them.

And then there is Elon Musk and Starlink.

Musk confirmed this week that he personally ordered a restriction on Starlink satellite internet service in a context related to Ukraine — citing concern about military use and potential escalation — and that service has since been restored. Starlink is now critical infrastructure for Ukrainian military communications. One senior analyst called the episode 'the clearest example yet of private infrastructure becoming a geopolitical lever with no legal framework to govern it.'

There is no treaty that covers this. There is no international law with a clean answer. A private individual made a decision that had consequences for a nation under active military attack, and then reversed it. The precedent, whatever it is, has been set.

On sadder ground: new records reviewed by NBC News add context to the Oregon school shooting, showing a picture of significant instability in the shooter's home life that people around the student were apparently aware of. It is the same hard question the country asks every time — what does intervention actually look like, and who has the capacity to deliver it?

In Germany, prosecutors have arrested a man accused of driving an American teenage girl to die by suicide. The alleged conduct occurred across international borders and largely online. The case is moving through a jurisdictional thicket that has no clean precedent.

And at a Georgia immigration detention facility, a man has died while a hunger strike by detainees continued. It is the kind of story that lands briefly and then disappears from the front page, even when the questions it raises — about oversight, conditions, and accountability — do not.

The hosts of AVONEWS — Daily News dig into all of this on today's episode, giving each story the context it deserves.