Nolan Wells Autopsy Raises More Questions About Black Teen’s Death

An independent autopsy report has raised more questions around the suspicious death of Nolan Wells.

Wells was a Black college freshman who went missing on July 4 in the water near Mississippi’s Horn Island while attending a boat party with around 300 other young people. According to Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter, Wells stayed behind on the island with a young woman while the friends he came with left, as he was apparently expecting to get a ride home from someone else. His friends brought back his phone and keys, but not him. His body was found two days later.  

Ledbetter announced that there was likely no foul play involved before even completing an official autopsy, leading civil rights lawyer Ben Crump to step in and call for an independent one, paid for by former NFL quarterback and activist Colin Kaepernick and conducted on July 10. It found Wells’s cause and manner of death to be “undetermined” but did not rule out foul play.

The independent autopsy most notably showed “red discoloration” on the back of Wells’s head, just above the start of his neck.

While the toxicology report is still missing, this is much more information than what the state was prepared to provide. The state performed an autopsy as well, but has yet to make its findings public.

Ledbetter’s premature dismissal of foul play, the involvement of the son of a local judge, the lack of pictures or videos from that day on Wells’s phone, and the picture his mother shared on social media of him from the day of his disappearance—smiling with three white peers—fueled speculation that race played a role in his death. This most recent finding will only stoke the flames more. 

“We are in Mississippi,” Crump said during a speech at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta on Sunday. “These were three young white men. Nolan was the only young Black man. Had the roles been reversed, we know this investigation would be going differently. It would be like the first 48. They would be interrogating those young, Black boys.”

While there are still questions swirling, claims of foul play or racism are not completely unfounded. Mississippi has a long, disturbing history of anti-Black racism, from the murder of Emmett Till 71 years ago to more recent decisions by state medical examiners to ignore police brutality and other misdeeds during autopsies. 

President Trump tried to claim Wednesday that U.S. soldiers killed in the Iran war all agreed with his stated mission.

Trump made the remarks as he was about to board Air Force One and head to Dover Air Force Base for a dignified transfer ceremony to honor the remains of four soldiers killed in the Iran war over the last week.

“Some of you are going with us to honor our heroes, and they are indeed great heroes actually. All of them said very strongly, ‘We can’t let, we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.’ They won’t have a nuclear weapon. So we’re going to honor them,” Trump said.

It makes sense for a president to say that the deaths of U.S. troops are not in vain. However, saying that they all proudly spoke in favor of the war is another story. Military service compels troops to follow orders and deploy wherever they are told, regardless of their personal opinion.

Iran has responded to U.S. and Israeli strikes on its territory with missile strikes across the Middle East, including on Israel, oil infrastructure in the Middle East, international business targets, and U.S. military bases. That has put U.S. troops on the front lines of the war, and so far, at least 18 American soldiers have been killed since hostilities began in February, with more than 500 wounded.

Some soldiers have accused the U.S. government of downplaying injuries from the war, and even lying about the nature of some of the strikes. For Trump to claim that soldiers who are no longer alive were in full agreement with his war is astounding, and insulting to their memories. Trump has no idea how the fallen soldiers felt about the war or if they agreed with it, and the opinions of U.S. troops are as diverse as those of any other group of Americans. The soldiers honored in Dover Wednesday were simply doing their duty and following orders.

The president’s inability to resolve the Iran war is spelling disaster for endangered Republican lawmakers this November.

The U.S. and Iran continued to exchange strikes this week, pushing the prospect of a potential peace deal further out of reach. The escalating conflict has killed four more American service members and sent gas prices shooting back up.

That’s put incumbent Republicans in a bind: The party already had a short list of accomplishments to curry favor with voters ahead of the midterm elections. Now, even races once thought to be safe zones for the conservative party are in doubt. Battleground areas now include Iowa, Alaska, and Ohio, as well as House districts that Donald Trump carried by double digits in 2024.

“We’re preparing for the bottom to fall out,” one GOP operative working on midterm races told Politico Playbook Wednesday. “Republicans are running out of runway here to improve their political fortunes before November.”

The war has taken an enormous toll on American life, inflaming the cost of practically everything as shipping companies contend with rising oil prices. Iowa Democratic state Representative Josh Turek—who is running for the Hawkeye State’s Senate seat—told Politico that the war has become a touchstone for his campaign.

“Everywhere I’m going—it doesn’t matter, urban or rural areas—people are telling me they’re struggling just to keep food on the table, a roof above their head, and now with this unnecessary war in Iran, we’re looking at being able to afford gas,” Turek said.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly rejected the idea that Trump’s scoresheet was negatively impacting Republican races, contrasting his “record of success” on national security issues with an alleged Democratic interest in “transgender surgeries for children.”

But off the record, people around the president aren’t so confident that his influence on the upcoming races is a good thing. One unnamed person close to the White House told Politico that the administration had badly mismanaged the war, and that the conflict was largely driven by Trump’s inability to see that he’d lost.

“They don’t have a plan here,” the person told Politico.

The source warned that a ground invasion—which Trump has repeatedly floated and Tehran has welcomed—could spark another long and inconclusive Middle East war that “runs the risk of ruining his second term.”

“This is a classic escalation trap,” they said.

President Donald Trump threatened Wednesday to keep committing war crimes against Iran in order to stop attacks in the Strait of Hormuz.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump vowed to destroy “one bridge or power plant” for every time Iran attacks a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.

Targeting civilian infrastructure is prohibited by international humanitarian law. Attacking a power plant would cause disproportionate harm to Iranian civilians.

If Trump does follow through on his threat, it wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. military has committed war crimes in the president’s military campaign against Iran.

The U.S. military has reportedly already bombed a nuclear power plant, executed a deadly double-tap strike on a bridge, violated the rules of engagement, and killed dozens of children at a primary school.

Trump’s turn to war crimes is a clear example of his failed negotiation tactics. The president’s plan seems to be to just keep bombing until the other side gives up. Meanwhile, the U.S. military is running out of weapons and money.

Trump’s threat to escalate these lawless strikes comes as the death toll of U.S. service members has risen to 18, with hundreds more injured.

The Trump administration has raked in about $13 billion after taking over Venezuela’s oil exports in the wake of its kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, according to a Financial Times analysis. But six months later, and one month after two devastating earthquakes, that money is nowhere to be found.

When Trump first seized the “millions of barrels” of oil back in January, he assumed complete control. His administration eventually proclaimed that it would use any profit from the sales for “the benefit of the American people and the Venezuelan people.” The State Department has since claimed that “billions of dollars have been disbursed to the Venezuelan economy” and that “financial monitoring is under way to ensure funds benefit the Venezuelan people.”

But none of that has been proven to be true. The Financial Times reported Wednesday that there has been no evidence of oil money going back into the hands of the Venezuelans Trump claimed to care for, and that Venezuela’s first-quarter gross domestic product was the lowest it’s been in five years.

“Trump’s invasion of Venezuela has been about oil, power, and graft from the very beginning, with billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil revenue being controlled by the Trump administration without transparency or safeguards,” Democratic Representative Joaquin Castro told the FT, adding that all of Congress had been “kept in the dark” by the Trump administration. And on Tuesday, Republican Representative María Elvira Salazar called on Trump to make the transactions known, citing “the importance of transparency over where the money is going.”

It seems clear that the most corrupt president in history is withholding oil revenue from Venezuelans who badly need it, as oil makes up nearly a quarter of the entire country’s GDP. In January, Semafor reported that Trump would be keeping proceeds from the first $500 million sale of Venezuelan oil in an offshore bank account based in Qatar. It might be worth checking up on that account.