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FBI arrest man who allegedly threatened to shoot people at Texas Pride parade

by Evelyn Reynolds 27 September 2025, 18:06

Federal authorities in Texas have arrested a man for allegedly threatening to shoot people at a pro-LGBTQ+ parade, to avenge the murder of Charlie Kirk.According to court documents viewed by the Guardian, on 18 September, the FBI’s field office in Dallas was notified by Abilene, Texas, police about online threats from a local resident.The resident, identified as Joshua Cole, allegedly used a Facebook account under the name “Jay Dubya” where he “threatened to commit a shooting” at a Pride parade in Abilene on 20 September.“Fk their parade, I say we lock and load and pay them back for taking out Charlie Kirk,” Cole allegedly wrote, referring to the rightwing political activist, in one comment.Kirk was shot to death on 10 September at Utah Valley University (UVU).Citing investigators’ interviews with people close to the suspect in the case, Utah prosecutors have alleged Tyler Robinson killed Kirk after becoming sick of what he perceived to be Kirk’s “hatred”. Investigators reported being told by his family that Robinson had become “more pro-gay and trans rights oriented” in the year prior to Kirk’s killing.Another comment Cole allegedly posted about the Abilene Pride parade read: “Theres only like 30 of em we can send a clear message to the rest of them.” Invoking an insult used to demean LGBTQ+ people, Cole also allegedly wrote: “come on bro let’s go hunting fairies.”In a sworn affidavit, FBI special agent Sam Venuti wrote that investigators confirmed the “Jay Dubya” account belonged to Cole.Venuti said that he had attempted to contact Cole at his place of work, where he had been employed for the past year. But the employer said that Cole had “just quit” and had “stormed out of the facility in anger”, Venuti said.Co-workers reportedly described him as a “hot head”, according to Venuti’s affidavit.Not long after, local police, with Venuti present, conducted a traffic stop on Cole.When the agent told Cole that he wanted “to talk to him about his online activity”, Venuti wrote that “Cole then sighed and his body posture indicated that [he] knew the reason for our discussion”.Venuti’s affidavit added that Cole “did not appear surprised”.Cole was then detained. According to the FBI, Cole waived his rights against self-incrimination and – during questioning – reportedly admitted to owning a firearm, to operating the “Jay Dubya” Facebook account and to making the threatening posts.The affidavit states that Cole reportedly agreed that “a reasonable person could interpret his comments as a threat”. He also said he did “not believe that the gay pride event should be allowed” though denied “that he was going to take action or shoot parade participants”.Venuti concluded in the affidavit that Cole’s “threats were not conditional”.“The threats were specific,” Venuti wrote. “The threats were also specific to a particular set of victims: people participating in the gay pride parade.”Based on the evidence, the FBI agent wrote, he believed that there was probable cause to arrest Cole for violating a federal law that prohibits threatening communications.Cole could face up to five years in prison if convicted, according to the Cornell University law school’s Legal Information Institute.After being jailed, Cole appeared briefly at a preliminary hearing, where a judge ordered him to remain in custody pending further proceedings.An attorney listed for Cole did not immediately respond to a request for comment.On 26 September, the Abilene Pride Alliance issued a public statement about the incident.“We want to reassure our community that the safety of everyone at Pride has always been, and will continue to be our top priority,” they wrote. “The swift action and continued diligence of [authorities] reflect their commitment to protecting our city and ensuring that Pride remains a safe, inclusive and celebratory space for all.”The Trump administration – which has threatened to crack down on leftwing groups who opposed Kirk’s views – did not announce and has not commented publicly on Cole’s arrest. More

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‘Free speech for me, not for thee’: how Trump’s censorship blitz is splitting the right
by Evelyn Reynolds 27 September 2025, 10:00
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It has taken barely two weeks for Donald Trump to turn the horrific killing of Charlie Kirk to his political advantage, unleashing an unprecedented peacetime assault on free speech and a free press on the back of the assassination.Since Kirk’s death, the president and his top team have:
forced a private media company to suspend late-night TV star Jimmy Kimmel for inaccurate comments he made about Kirk’s suspected shooter;
threatened other TV networks with losing their licences should they say things Trump doesn’t like;
vowed to prosecute “hate speech” that is fully protected under the first amendment;
declared antifa a terrorist organisation in an indiscriminate attack on political ideology;
and told journalists covering the Pentagon that they will have their access revoked unless they agree to restrictions on their reporting.
That’s a far cry from the promise Trump made on the first day of his new presidency.On 20 January, hours after he had been sworn in as 47th president, Trump sat at his desk in the Oval Office and applied his distinctive signature to executive order 14149 – Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.The order pronounced that government censorship of speech was “intolerable in a free society”. It promised that under Trump’s watch, no federal official would engage in any conduct that would “unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen”.View image in fullscreenIt was a bold pledge to return America to the values of free speech and expression enshrined in the first amendment of the US constitution. But for some observers following events that day, the executive order was to be taken with a large pinch of salt.“I knew at the moment that the ink was not even dry, that executive order 14149 was a load of BS,” said Matt Welch, editor-at-large of the libertarian magazine Reason. “I knew it would not last.”Despite the administration’s rush to censorship as a result of Kirk’s killing, Trump has so far enjoyed almost complete support from the Republican party and his wider “Make America great again” (Maga) movement. Relatively few voices from the right of American politics have cried foul.But those voices are pointed, and in the longer term potentially critically important. Many of them subscribe to libertarianism, with its emphasis on individual rights, civil liberties and limited government. Or as Reason puts it, devotion to “free minds and free markets”.Other free speech critics have raised their voices from the wider conservative movement, while a few brave souls have even spoken out against Trump from within the Republican party. Collectively, they articulate a conservative and libertarian critique of Trump’s second presidency that, given that it comes nominally from his own side, may carry some weight with the president as he proceeds to pulverise constitutional norms.Their presence – lonely though at times it may seem – underlines that Trump and his Maga army have not yet secured an absolute monopoly of thought on the right. As guardians of free speech trying to hold back an increasingly authoritarian tide, they can also offer tentative clues as to how American conservatism might one day claw its way back from Maga’s iron grip.But for now they remain engaged in a long, uphill battle. “We are locked in a type of memetic combat,” Welch said. “We’re standing on the sidelines trying to get their attention, telling them that each new development is making it worse, and they are not listening at all.”Rightwing thinktanks have been central to Trump’s second presidency. The Heritage Foundation presented him with the blueprint for his incendiary return to office: the 920-page Project 2025.America First Legal, founded by the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, has provided legal ballast for many of Trump’s key ambitions. They include tearing down diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and initiating mass deportations.But as Trump has begun aggrandising his own power and wielding it against his opponents, a separate heavyweight thinktank, the libertarian Cato Institute, has emerged as a thorn in the president’s side.Initially, Cato’s belief in small government and deregulation led it to show enthusiastic support for the Maga agenda.Within 48 hours of Trump’s second inauguration, the thinktank had flagged up 22 of his predecessor Joe Biden’s executive orders including several countering the climate crisis and enhancing healthcare, all of which Trump dutifully revoked. It also offered its own blueprint, in this case a manual for Elon Musk and his demolition crew, the “department of government efficiency”, that was so well received that Rolling Stone dubbed Cato “Doge’s unofficial think tank”.More recently, however, Trump’s egregiously unconstitutional assault on the first amendment has goaded Cato into speaking out as a rare but influential adversary on the right. Thomas Berry, Cato’s director of constitutional studies, told the Guardian that several of Trump’s recent actions had offended one of the institute’s most fundamental values.“When government officials use the power of the state either to suppress speech or tilt the free marketplace of ideas, that’s incredibly dangerous in the long term. It places a core restriction on individual liberty – the right to say what you want and say what you believe,” he said.Cato began objecting to Trump’s authoritarian tendencies well before Kirk’s death. In June the thinktank joined a coalition of groups in filing an amicus brief supporting Harvard in its lawsuit against the Trump administration after billions of federal dollars were withheld from the university ostensibly as punishment for its failure to combat antisemitism.Cato also expressed concern about Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, students from Columbia and Tufts universities respectively, whom the administration tried to deport after their public criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza. Berry called the administration’s yanking of Harvard funding and the student immigration actions “core infringements on academic freedom and speech”.He also denounced Trump’s executive order last month vowing to prosecute anyone burning the American flag. As he pointed out, “there is ironclad legal precedent that flag burning is protected speech.”View image in fullscreenSince Kirk’s killing, Berry has watched the unfolding of Trump’s “free speech for me, but not for thee” response with mounting alarm. Disney’s temporary cancellation of Kimmel’s late-night show for misrepresenting the Kirk suspect as a Maga supporter after threats of government penalties from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), was in Berry’s estimation a clear example of “government power being used to suppress speech that the administration doesn’t like”.Then there was the intervention of Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, who days after Kirk’s death vowed to prosecute hate speech. Like flag burning, hate speech is fully protected under the first amendment, as the country’s top law enforcement official ideally should have known.Ironically, Kirk himself was clear on this point, saying last year: “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the first amendment.”Berry also regards as a free speech violation Trump’s threats to go against leftwing groups he dislikes. On Monday the president designated antifa a “domestic terrorist organization”, a move that potentially breaches the first amendment by criminalising political ideology.All of these quick-fire steps after Kirk’s assassination towards controlling public discourse leaves Berry profoundly apprehensive. “I’m very worried about what the executive branch is trying to do,” he said.In particular, the Cato director is concerned about what he calls the “capitulation factor”. He fears that private companies such as Disney, ABC’s owner that suspended Kimmel for six days before the comic was allowed back on air on Tuesday, will settle with Trump rather than stand up for constitutional rights.“Long term, we’ll get through this,” Berry said. “But in the short term a lot of speech is going to be chilled without ever getting into court, and that’s very, very bad.”View image in fullscreenOpposition to the assault on free speech goes beyond the libertarian right. Other prominent public figures from conservative and libertarian circles have spoken out, indicating fissures that, should they grow, could challenge Trump’s Maga hegemony.Bari Weiss, a rising star on the anti-woke right who is being reportedly groomed for a top job at CBS, has castigated the president in her online outlet, the Free Press. In an editorial, the site decried Trump’s many threats against media organisations as a “case where the medicine is worse than the disease”.In Congress, senator Ted Cruz, normally a reliable Trump acolyte, warned the president to avoid habitually bullying media companies. If he did, it would “end up bad for conservatives”.Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman from Kentucky who has led the charge to have the Epstein files released, compared Bondi’s threat to prosecute hate speech to George Orwell’s dystopian “thought crimes”.Even the Maga cheerleader Tucker Carlson cleared an episode of his online show to rail against the risk of hate speech laws being introduced in America. Were that to happen, Carlson said, then civil disobedience would be called for.“Because if they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think, there is nothing they can’t do to you because they don’t consider you human.”So how did it come to this? How did Trump go from executive order 14149 to threatening an ABC reporter to his face last week that he might face prosecution “because you treat me so unfairly”?How did JD Vance move from pledging in February that under Trump’s leadership “we may disagree with your views but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square”, to calling for a mass doxing of anyone who had celebrated Kirk’s murder?How did the FCC chair Brendan Carr veer from having denounced in 2023 government censorship as the “authoritarian’s dream”, to using his federal power to force Kimmel’s suspension with the mob-like menace: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way?”Eugene Volokh, a libertarian conservative who is a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, has a word for the Trump team’s razor sharp U-turn on free speech. He calls it “censorship envy”.“It’s human nature to want to restrict speech that you disapprove of, to retaliate,” he said. “People are motivated by censorship envy – the idea that the other side got to suppress speech they disliked, so I should jump on the bandwagon and get some of that action too.”Volokh added that in his opinion Trump’s get-you-back censorship was a mistake. “It’s bad for the country. It’s bad for the conservative movement.”View image in fullscreenThat admonition was echoed by Sabrina Schaeffer, a member of the executive team of the R Street Institute, which preaches classical liberalism, individual liberty and free markets. She said that she has been scratching her head over the past few days as so many Republicans applauded the clampdown on free speech.“I know they’re tired of ‘woke’ politics. But this should be a cautionary tale, because one day Democrats will hold the levers of power again and then they will be even more empowered to shut down dissenting views.”Welch, who regards his strain of libertarianism as neither of the right nor left, sees the current moment against the long arch of history. Under Ronald Reagan, the Republican party was a broad church that combined conservatism with libertarian activism, with free speech as one of its central tenets.What Trump has unleashed, by contrast, “is going against Reagan and 40 years of American politics. People are so addicted to power right now that they are throwing principles out the window.”It was Republicans, Welch pointed out, that in the 1970s and 80s led the charge on free speech grounds against the FCC’s so-called fairness doctrine that required TV networks to carry opposing viewpoints on controversial public issues. That is a world away from the Republican chair of the FCC threatening a broadcast company over one comment from a comedian.“I care about the federal government telling a private broadcaster how they are supposed to conduct their business,” Welch said. “That’s crazy.”Cato’s Berry is clearly disturbed by the turn of events, but he has not despaired. For him, the way out of this quagmire lies with the American judiciary and the first amendment itself, which he regards as the strongest safeguard of free speech in the world.“I remain confident that the courts will uphold the principles that the government cannot be biased, that it cannot chill speech through selective enforcement, that there is no law against hate speech.”As for Welch, he draws comfort in the storm from a more amorphous source. He looks to the American spirit, and a characteristic within it that he believes has been integral since even before the country’s founding.That is, the ability of Americans to trash each other.“We criticise, always have done,” he said. “We have just always been kind of assholes, cheeky.”Welch sees the portrayal of Trump in the latest season of the animated sitcom South Park as a seamless continuation of this trait. The president is depicted as a censorship-addicted dictator sleeping with the devil.That gives Welch hope.“I feel like the South Park in all of us will eventually win,” he said. “It’s the natural place for us to be, and by the time Trump finally goes, he’ll find himself on the losing end.”body{–primary-text-color: #121212;–secondary-text-color: #707070;–tertiary-text-color: #707070;–primary-bg-color: #ffffff;–secondary-bg-color: #f3f3f3;–tertiary-bg-color: #f6f6f6;–primary-line-color: #333333;–secondary-line-color: #dcdcdc;–border-divider-color: #dcdcdc;–axis-color: #bababa;–primary-button-color: #121212;–primary-button-text-color: #ffffff;–primary-button-highlight-color: #333333;–highlight-color: #ffe500;–highlighted-text-color: #121212;–info-color: #00b2ff;–news-grey-01: #121212;–news-grey-02: #707070;–news-grey-03: #a1a1a1;–news-grey-04: #bababa;–news-grey-05: #dcdcdc;–news-grey-06: #f3f3f3;–news-core-01: #005689;–news-core-02: #0094da;–news-core-03: #c70000;–news-core-04: 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Charlie Kirk was a divisive far-right podcaster. Why is he being rebranded as a national hero?
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 September 2025, 11:00
The streets of Washington DC are unmistakable. In addition to noting the city’s signature architecture and public monuments, one will know they are in the nation’s capital when they can barely go half a city block without spotting a US flag. Two weeks ago, those flags were flying at half-staff, but not in recognition of the passing of a high-ranking public official, as would be customary. Instead, the half-staff was ordered by the White House in a highly politicized effort to memorialize the 10 September killing of Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old podcaster, hard-right party operative, and Maga youth influencer, as an event of national tragedy.Kirk ruled over an online fiefdom peddling his signature brand of rage-baiting racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic and misogynistic commentary. It wasn’t just his vitriolic style, but also his popularization of cruelty, humiliation and dehumanization of political opponents – especially college students – that attracted millions to his audience. He famously said empathy was “a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage”.As a Black woman, I felt no sorrow watching these flags hang limp and lifeless from chrome posts in the stiff, humid summer heat that, even on the eve of autumn, will not unhand a city already stifled by federal threats of military occupation. I felt the same when, just hours after the shooting, the speaker of the House of Representatives called for a moment of silence on the floor for a private citizen who had never held office nor served in the military. (The brief silence erupted seconds later into a shouting match melee when congresswoman Lauren Boebert requested that members hold an open prayer for Kirk from the floor). Just nine days later, the House passed a Republican resolution eulogizing Kirk’s life with a sweeping 310-58 majority.I felt no mourning when seven teams in the National Football League – the very organization that has long been criticized for its inconsistent and often hypocritical stance on the place of politics in sports – held in-game memorials for Kirk, who never played any professional sport nor held a role within the league. In the Dallas Cowboys stadium in Texas, Jumbotrons featured a statesman-like image of Kirk, what one might expect for the passing of a former president or a longtime team affiliate. The grand gesture was drenched in hard-to-miss hypocrisy: forced silence from Black players who were punished for advocating for social justice in 2020, while, in the endzone, a painted astroturf read “End Racism” – a relic of just how fleeting the league’s lip service to the Black Lives Matter movement just a few years ago proved to be.I feel no grief because these memorials to Kirk are not created for me to grieve. Instead, they seek not only to enshrine Kirk into the national consciousness, but also to foster national memories about what he represents ideologically and culturally. The lionizing is an official effort to coalesce the state into his movement – a brazen proclamation that his consistently hostile white nationalist, homophobic and misogynistic convictions represent the federal government’s interests, and thus, what the presidency believes should be the national priority.It’s reminiscent of the long aftermath of the civil war, when Confederate memorials were fashioned well into the 20th century not by those seeking to grieve any one individual, but rather by those who wanted to send a message about racial politics in the present. Some people have settled comfortably into a belief that the recent years of anti-racism protests and organizing have successfully toppled enough of these Confederate monuments, that their white-washed histories collapsed with them. But memorials to Kirk conducted by the country’s most powerful institutions are evidence of the revival of a new iteration of neo-Confederate memorialization.Like the Confederate tributes and monuments of the past, current memorials to Kirk function to throttle any interrogation of their subject. Those who are elevated to the esteem of official national memorializing are commonly – although with notable exceptions –figures that the public agrees are beyond reproach. In honoring Rosa Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, for example, Bill Clinton sought to canonize the entire Civil Rights Movement for which she fought. It cemented the era as worthy of national honor because it telegraphed the meaning of democracy and freedom for all Americans.In contrast, with the insta-extolling of Kirk, Donald Trump, who has announced that his late close personal friend will be awarded a posthumous Medal of Freedom, echoes the intentions behind Confederate memorials of yore. Instead of public recognitions that reflect the long march towards a national reckoning with our past, memorials like those for Kirk elevate his consistent record of hard-right extremism above the reach of public questioning.Kirk’s style of seizing upon those who challenged his ideologies and punishing his detractors is an agenda that has expanded well beyond Trump’s track record of punishing his personal and political enemies. Though I, like the majority of Kirk’s critics, do not condone his shooting, Kirk himself said gun deaths were “worth it” to maintain gun rights. While rhetoric this extreme, including his claim that Black women in government and media lacked “brain processing power”, is being euphemized in tributes as his “advocacy for free speech”, media figures and government employees who openly question if he should be publicly lauded are being fired from their jobs.Additionally, hundreds of college professors were doxed, harassed and threatened by Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, and its notorious “Professor Watchlist”, which published the names and information of any academics with views Kirk construed as incompatible with his own. It’s curious how a virtue like “doing politics the right way” can be afforded to someone who sought to devastate the lives of scholars and intellectuals.The aggrandizing of Kirk shares yet another, more lasting legacy with Confederate memorialization. The historian David Blight notes that in the aftermath of the civil war, the call for reconciliation between white northerners and southerners was achieved at the expense of erasing the legacy of slavery from the postbellum narrative. Thus, the reunification of the white citizenry was done wholly on southern terms and exacerbated the racial atrocities that were never addressed in the postwar era, leaving Black Americans to be wholesale lynched and terrorized throughout the south.Further still, reunification campaigns exonerated and elevated rebel insurgents who were, by definition, traitors and enemies of the state, to a status otherwise reserved for senior statesmen and decorated US veterans. It was a damning declaration that even those who sought to overthrow this country would be celebrated as its heroes before Black Americans would be treated as its citizens. The same tone is struck in the tributes to Kirk that exalt a highly controversial private citizen as though he were a national hero.Elected officials, journalists and public figures on the left who stress calls for unity do so on the right’s terms, and are reminiscent of the kid-gloved white northerners who sought to rebrand a war fought expressly over human trafficking and bondage into a national moment for celebration of duty, honor and valorous military service on both sides. Those who call for us to honor the life of a man who said the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a “huge mistake”, and who described Martin Luther King Jr, as “awful”, have betrayed those of us who heard Kirk espouse eugenics and replacement theory loud and clear, with such vast online influence that it prompted a 2024 investigation by the Southern Poverty Law Center.The valorization of Kirk by his far-right defenders is an insult to millions of the most marginalized Americans who lived every day in the crosshairs of his rhetoric. Kirk’s memorialization by his supporters and apologists is but a new opportunity to announce an old message about whose country this is and whose it isn’t.
Saida Grundy is an associate professor of sociology and African American studies at Boston University, and the author of Respectable: Politics and Paradox in Making the Morehouse Man More
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Pennsylvania official faces threats over post misconstrued as Charlie Kirk killing celebration
by Evelyn Reynolds 23 September 2025, 09:00
A member of a Pennsylvania school board says she is stepping back from her duties – and has been grappling with threats to her safety – after a “one down, hundreds to go” social media post about windblown milkweed seeds was misconstrued as celebrating the killing of far-right pundit Charlie Kirk.Homer-Center school district board member Misty Hunt uploaded the post in question on 10 September, the same day Kirk was shot to death by a sniper while speaking at Utah Valley University (UVU).Numerous people across the US have been fired from or otherwise disciplined at their jobs over commentary about Kirk’s murder, which authorities allege was carried out by a young man who viewed the Turning Point USA director’s political statements as “hatred”.And once it became apparent that people were accusing Hunt of extolling Kirk’s murder, the school board announced an investigation to “completely understand her intentions”.Subsequent social media posts from Hunt maintained that her “one down, hundreds to go” post was meant to accompany a video of wind blowing one of the milkweed seed pods that she customarily releases to nourish monarch butterflies.Poor cell phone reception near a former local power plant undermined her attempt to upload the video that was meant to be paired with the text, she said. She also said she did not learn of Kirk’s killing – or that video failed to upload – until later that night, having been too absorbed with the outdoors that day.“A tragedy occurred. And I was too busy enjoying nature to know what went down,” Hunt wrote. Calling gardening “my life” and offering condolences to Kirk’s family, she said her post was “only about butterflies and creating a space for them. The end.”Hunt later followed up with a separate social media post condemning all political violence, saying: “No cause, no ideology, no disagreement is worth a human life.”She also wrote: “In a world already torn by division, the killing of anyone – regardless of their political beliefs – is an unacceptable tragedy.”Nonetheless, the Homer-Center school board’s 18 September meeting drew about 60 people, much larger than the usual sparse crowds who typically attend the Indiana county-based panel’s gatherings. Authorities moved the meeting from a central district office board room to a school gymnasium to accommodate the bigger crowd. And law enforcement provided security for the meeting due to the interest Hunt’s posts had gotten online – as well as because of the “death threats” resulting from them, the news outlet PennLive.com reported.Three of seven community members who spoke at that meeting expressed support for Hunt, according to reporting from the Indiana Gazette. Three others assumed Hunt’s “one down hundreds, to go” was indeed about Kirk’s death despite her denial. And the Gazette noted that a fourth speaker simply said: “Every action has consequences, especially with being a public figure.”Hunt, for her part, reportedly apologized for causing “pain”, “misunderstanding”, and “division”.“Even though I did not celebrate anyone’s death, and I do not condone violence, the safety of myself and my children are now in jeopardy,” she said.The Gazette wrote that Hunt described people “threatening her place of work and pressuring her boss to terminate her employment”.“My children – we’re all afraid of going places right now, so it’s been really hard for the family,” she reportedly added. “That’s just where we’re at.”Hunt abstained from voting at the 18 September meeting, was removed from the school board’s negotiations committee and would step back from her role on the seven-member panel for the time being. The Gazette reported that she is running for re-election in November and would wait to see the outcome of the race before plotting her political future.“If the community chooses me again,” she said, “then I feel confident I will continue my good work.” More
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Trump claims with little evidence that use of Tylenol, or acetaminophen, in pregnancy is linked to autism – US politics live
by Evelyn Reynolds 22 September 2025, 21:44
“Effective immediately the FDA will be notifying doctors that the use of acetaminophen,” Trump struggled to pronounce the drug name, “or Tylenol, can be associated with a very increased risk of autism,” Trump said.“So taking Tylenol is not good.”“For this reason, they are strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary,” he added.Donald Trump has responded to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists statement on Tylenol announcement, following a reporter’s question.“That’s the establishment. They’re funded by lots of different groups. And you know what, maybe they’re right,” he said. “But here’s the thing, there’s no downside to doing this.”Trump has returned to the podium, sharing a range of stories and his opinions on vaccines and medications.“Don’t take Tylenol,” he said emphatically. “There’s no downside.”According to the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine untreated fever during pregnancy does carry significant risks to moms and babies, such as miscarriage and birth defects.The manufacturer of Tylenol, Kenvue Inc, has released a statement in response to the president’s announcement, saying it “strongly disagrees” with the suggestion that the medication may cause autism.“Sound science clearly shows that taking acetaminophen does not cause autism,” the statement says.The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the nation’s leading organization for obstetricians and gynecologists, says Donald Trump’s announcement regarding Tylenol use in pregnancy is “irresponsible when considering the harmful and confusing message they send to pregnant patients.”“Today’s announcement by HHS is not backed by the full body of scientific evidence and dangerously simplifies the many and complex causes of neurologic challenges in children,” the organization’s president, Dr. Steven Fleischman, said in a statement.“It is highly unsettling that our federal health agencies are willing to make an announcement that will affect the health and well-being of millions of people without the backing of reliable data.”Ahead of the president’s announcement, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine said Tylenol is “an appropriate medication to treat pain and fever during pregnancy.” It added that untreated fever during pregnancy carries significant risks to moms and babies, such as miscarriage and birth defects.The two mothers speaking at Donald Trump’s press conference have shared the experiences of their two children, both of whom have autism, and expressed gratitude to the Trump administration for prioritizing research into autism.Dorothy Fink, who served as acting health secretary pending Robert F Kennedy Jr’s confirmation and is now currently the acting assistant secretary for health, has introduced two mothers, introduced only as Jackie and Amanda.Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, says more than half of children in the United States, who are insured under Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip), will be able to access leucovorin due to the FDA’s label change. He said he hopes private insurers will follow suit.He said the agency will also collect data on the effectiveness of leucovorin.Makary has also announced the FDA’s decision to make leucovorin available as a treatment for autism.“Hundreds of thousands of kids will benefit,” he said.“Today the FDA is taking action to update the label on acetaminophen,” says FDA commissioner Marty Makary. He added his agency is sending a letter to all physicians explaining the update.Makary has also cited medical research on the link between Tylenol and autism.Here’s a helpful guide to that research from my colleagues:The National Institutes of Health has launched an Autism Data Science Initiative, says agency director Jay Bhattacharya.The initiative directs $50m to the study of autism, and will fund 13 research projects.“The NIH has invested a lot of money to study autism over the years, but the research has not produced the answers that families and parents of autistic children, and autistic children themselves deserve,” he said. “For too long it’s been taboo to ask some questions for fear the scientific work might reveal a politically incorrect answer.”Kennedy says that the FDA has announced a new treatment for autism: leucovorin, a form of folic acid.The FDA published a notice in the Federal Register announcing the treatment, it cited “patient-level data on over 40 patients, including both adults and pediatric patients” to support the finding that the drug can improve symptoms from cerebral folate deficiency, which it says has been reported in some patients.Health and Human Services will announce a nationwide public service campaign to spread knowledge about the agency’s Tylenol announcement, Kennedy said.Robert F Kennedy Jr is speaking now at the president’s White House press conference. He’s begun by describing changes at US health agencies.”We are now replacing the institutional culture of politicized science and corruption with evidence-based medicine,” Kennedy said. “NIH research teams are now testing multiple hypotheses with no area off limits.”Trump has also announced that the National Institutes of Health will be announcing 13 major grant awards from the autism data science initiatives.“Nothing bad can happen, only good can happen,” he said. More
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The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s hate for opponents: practising politics the wrong way | Editorial
by Evelyn Reynolds 22 September 2025, 18:00
At Sunday’s memorial for the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump paid a peculiar tribute. Having quoted Mr Kirk’s words of forgiveness, he put aside the script. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie,” he said. “I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them.” It was a stark and clarifying admission. Mr Trump does not seek to criminalise hate speech so much as to criminalise speech he hates.The US is being dragged into a state of emergency. Speech is framed as terrorism. Satire is rebranded as enemy propaganda. Employers punish workers for personal posts. The predictable result is a chilling climate of surveillance and reprisal, in which citizens learn to keep quiet. The assassination is not just being used to police manners; it is being used to reconstruct the public square so that dissent equals disloyalty, and disloyalty is treated as a security threat.Hannah Arendt warned of the existential peril in blurring the line between truth and lies: then truth doesn’t stand; it becomes optional. Mr Trump’s reported falsehoods about paracetamol and autism will harm mothers, stigmatise families and erode trust in medicine. But in Trumpland such costs are outweighed by the political payoff of pitting supporters against the scientific “establishment”.His assault is twofold. First, speech is being weaponised through partisan media, online influencers and harassment networks that seek to capture attention while corroding the conditions for open dialogue. Second, state power is weaponised by cowing social media platforms, threatening network licences and politicising information. Handing TikTok to rightwing billionaires is a morbid symptom of democratic decline.“Authority is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority,” said the US supreme court. That defines the first amendment: citizens, not the state, decide which ideas survive, with narrow limits like fraud or defamation. By presuming to define “truth”, Mr Trump subverts self-government. Hate rallies thrive in Trump’s America because, since 1969, speech is unprotected only if intended and likely to incite “imminent lawless action”.The US is a free-speech outlier. Other democracies accept broader, more collective trade‑offs to protect vulnerable groups, maintain public order and prevent incitement and harassment. Each country is different but the bargain is similar. Speech is presumptively free, yet words are considered acts with foreseeable harms. Words can mobilise mobs, direct harassment and orchestrate violence. The point isn’t to shield anyone’s feelings, it’s to make coexistence possible.Mr Trump has inverted the American model. Rather than robust exchanges under neutral rules, he selectively rewards allies while degrading the conditions of honest debate. All this while the infosphere is saturated with viral lies, making it easier to justify punitive state action “to keep order”. That is how an emergency becomes a system.The answer is not the censor’s pen nor a free-for-all. It requires resilient democratic plumbing; social media platforms made accountable for publishing harms; and properly defining dangerous conduct. The aim – particularly in the US – must be to preserve free expression as the bedrock of self-government while dismantling the machinery that warps attention toward outrage and partisan mobilisation. Mr Trump’s speech was disgraceful. When power learns to hate its opponents, democracy will fail. More
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Donald Trump and Elon Musk meet and shake hands months after messy split
by Evelyn Reynolds 22 September 2025, 01:31
Donald Trump met with billionaire Elon Musk, his once trusted adviser with whom the president had a spectacular public falling out, at a memorial event for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, raising speculation that the two could be reconciling.Trump shook hands with and chatted to Musk, who once led the president’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which took a hatchet to the US federal workforce and agencies in the early months of Trump’s second administration.The pair sat in the stands of a stadium in Glendale, Arizona, where tens of thousands had gathered to pay tribute to Kirk, who was shot dead on 10 September at a Utah university campus.Video of the two was shared by the official White House account on social media platform X, which Musk owns.Musk donated more than $270m to Trump’s presidential campaign, barnstorming key battleground states for the Republican.After the election, he oversaw the launch of the DOGE, a controversial initiative that eliminated thousands of government jobs deemed by the agency to be part of a pattern of waste, fraud and abuse.But Musk broke with Trump over the White House’s flagship tax and spending bill, which Musk called “utterly insane and destructive.” The extraordinary feud, which largely played out over social media, saw Musk accuse Trump of being named in the so-called “Epstein files” – documents related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In July, Trump said he would “take a look” at the idea of deporting Musk.After the falling out, Musk went as far as to announce he was launching his own “America First” party, but little has materialised so far. Musk on his X account posted an image of him and Trump sitting together at the memorial, captioning it: “For Charlie.”It is not known whether Sunday’s meeting was the first between the pair since their falling out.With Agence France-Presse More
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Vance puts Charlie Kirk’s Christian faith front and center – with an eye on 2028
by Evelyn Reynolds 22 September 2025, 00:03
JD Vance went into confessional mode. “I was telling somebody backstage that I always felt a little uncomfortable talking about my faith in public,” he said. “As much as I love the Lord, and as much as it was an important part of my life, I have talked more about Jesus Christ in the past two weeks than I have my entire time in public life.”The crowd at rightwing political activist Charlie Kirk’s memorial service at a football stadium in Glendale, Arizona on Sunday rose to its feet and roared its approval.The apparent ad lib by the US vice-president showed his ability to read the room. The service had put Kirk’s Christian faith front and centre. Vance’s moment of self-revelation could also have political utility if and when he runs to succeed Donald Trump as president in 2028.Trump, a thrice-married New Yorker with little knowledge of scripture, secured the evangelical vote with promises that included a pliant supreme court. Candidate Vance would have to win them all over again, and knows the new generation of young Christians who idolised Kirk would be a good start.The 41-year-old former Ohio senator has already taken a lead role in mobilising Kirk’s online army at Turning Point USA, likely to be a crucial part of the next Republican electoral coalition, and seeking to claim his mantle as “youth whisperer”.After Kirk was shot dead at an event in Utah, Vance posted a heartfelt tribute on social media, describing him as “true friend” who had advocated for him to be Trump’s running mate.He personally escorted Kirk’s casket from Utah to Arizona on the vice presidential plane Air Force Two. After disembarking, his wife Usha held hands with Kirk’s widow Erika – both dressed in all black and wearing sunglasses – as Vance followed dutifully behind.Vance then guest-hosted Kirk’s podcast from his ceremonial office and demanded that anyone caught celebrating the murder be named and shamed. “Hell, call their employer,” he said.Some of this may be the genuine response of a friend. But it is also impossible to ignore Vance’s ruthless ambition. The author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, drawing on his upbringing in Ohio and Kentucky, only joined the Senate in 2023 and is now vice-president.In her new book, 107 Days, former Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris described Vance as a “shape-shifter” and “a shifty guy” who, in last year’s vice presidential debate against Tim Walz, “sane-washed the crazy” and played the role of “a mild-mannered, aw-shucks Appalachian”.Vance’s presidential campaign for 2028 is already said to be in “soft launch” mode as he positions himself as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. He has reportedly expressed a desire for Susie Wiles, the White House of chief staff, to manage his potential campaign.His most overt move came in March, when he was appointed finance chair of the Republican National Committee – a role unprecedented for a sitting vice-president. It positions him at the nexus of Republican money, allowing frequent interactions with mega-donors.Vance has methodically built a profile that blends Trump’s populist bombast with a sharper focus on economic nationalism and cultural warfare. Vance is sceptical of foreign intervention in Ukraine and elsewhere. He bared his teeth in February when, sitting in the Oval Office, he berated Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for showing insufficient gratitude to Trump.His media strategy builds on Trump’s “podcast election” playbook, emphasising unfiltered platforms to rally the base. His appearance on the memorial Charlie Kirk Show demonstrated a merger of Maga’s grassroots fervour with Turning Point’s youth-focused activism – a partnership likely to define the party’s outreach strategy in future elections.Vance’s willingness to engage critics in online debate has an echo of Kirk’s go-everywhere, talk-to-anyone approach. When US forces recently struck a vessel allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, Vance wrote on X: “Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.”Brian Krassenstein, a podcaster and Trump critic, responded to Vance’s post by stating: “Killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime.” Vance shot back “I don’t give a shit what you call it.” (Rand Paul, a Republican senator, responded: “What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”)Charlie Sykes, a political commentator and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, says: “The only question I have is whether JD Vance wants to be the heir apparent to Donald Trump or to Charlie Kirk.“The line between people wanting to be influential podcasters and real political power is getting somewhat shaky. Apparently JD Vance has decided his route to power is to essentially try to fill Charlie Kirk’s shoes and engage in his kind of rhetoric.”Vance’s lead in hypothetical 2028 Republican primary polls is commanding, a testament to his proximity to Trump. A June 2025 Emerson College Polling survey of 416 likely Republican primary voters found Vance at 46% support, dwarfing secretary of state Marco Rubio (12%) and Florida governor Ron DeSantis (9%).His performance on Sunday will have done no harm, especially with the religious right. He referenced God 10 times, spoke of “the truth that Jesus Christ was the king of kings” and said of Kirk “He would tell me to pray for my friends, but also for my enemies. He would tell me to put on the full armour of God and get back to work.”His white shirt, red tie and blue suit were all the same shade as Trump’s, and he delivered his remarks from a lectern with the presidential seal. It was a glimpse of a possible future featuring an occupant of the White House who could prove even more hard-edged, pitiless and authoritarian than Trump himself.Sykes adds: “I would never describe Trump as more moderate but I do think that JD Vance’s rhetoric could be a warning that, if you think things are bad, they can possibly get even worse.” More
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Charlie Kirk memorial mixes rally and revival as mourners vow to spread Maga message
by Evelyn Reynolds 21 September 2025, 23:16
Hours before the sun rose over the Arizona desert, tens of thousands of mourners snaked through the Valley toward the State Farm stadium in Glendale – where the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was lionized as a “prophet” for the streaming era and a defender of free speech, martyred in the line of duty.The memorial was part spiritual revival and part political rally, with a program that included Donald Trump and prominent members of the president’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement. Mourners obliged the red, white and blue “Sunday best” dress code, filling the at-capacity venue with stars, stripes and Maga hats.“We’ve got it from here,” said vice-president JD Vance, memorializing Kirk, his friend and the founder of the youth activist group Turning Point USA, as one of the most pre-eminent voices on the American right.Inside the domed stadium, emotions were already raw when Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow, took the stage. She inhaled deeply and looked heavenward then dabbed tears from her eyes and began her remarks before a rapt audience, Trump among them.She said her husband’s work was devoted to saving the “lost boys of the west” who lack direction and meaning, including the 22-year-old suspect charged with his murder. “That man,” she said, her chest heaving. “I forgive him.” A tearful crowd rose to its feet in sustained applause as Kirk cast her eyes upward.A political widow in an instant, Kirk will succeed her husband as the chief executive of the political movement he founded. “I will make you proud,” she said.Her words marked the emotional crest of an hours-long service that began with Christian worship songs and ended with a live performance by Lee Greenwood of God Bless the USA – and a speech from the president to a “nation in mourning”. “America loved Charlie Kirk,” Trump said, admiring the 31-year-old’s ability to “always draw a crowd”.As the afternoon wore on, the speeches became sharper and more political – a battle cry that implored the government officials present to be aggressive in “wielding the sword against evil”. There were only a handful of explicit references to Democrats and the left – but many speeches mixed personal remembrances of Kirk with a searing vilification of his ideological opponents.“To those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing,” said Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, his voice rising with indignation.“You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build.”Prosecutors have said Kirk was killed by a lone gunman, Tyler Robinson, who has been charged with capital murder and could face the death penalty if convicted. While authorities have not revealed a clear motive for the shooting, prosecutors say texts from Robinson indicated he had enough of Kirk’s “hatred”.“We are all Charlie Kirk now,” said Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, who began her political career helping to “battle the socialist indoctrination on college campuses” as Turning Point USA’s national Hispanic outreach director.Before the memorial began, conservative media personalities and influencers circulated in the VIP section of the stadium. Colorado congresswoman Laura Boebert, wearing a blue blazer, mingled with Kyle Rittenhouse, who became a cause célèbre on the right after being acquitted of fatally shooting two men during protests against a police killing in Kenosha, Wisconsin.“Honored to be here,” tweeted billionaire businessman and former Trump administration adviser Elon Musk. Musk was seated next to Trump, a reunification Turning Point USA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet said Kirk had wanted “so badly”.View image in fullscreenEddie Wallin crossed the Atlantic to attend Kirk’s memorial. His journey took him from Sweden to Texas, where he rented a car and drove 17 hours to reach Glendale, subsisting on bananas and other provisions that he could eat behind the wheel.Wearing a white shirt emblazoned with the word “Freedom”, Wallin recalled meeting Kirk in 2019, during a trip to Texas. He said Kirk, smiling, told him he never expected to meet a Swedish conservative. Six years later, Wallin said he encountered Kirk again during the 2024 presidential election won by Trump and was surprised the organizer, by then a hugely prominent figure in Maga politics, remembered him.“After so many years, he remembered me,” Wallin said. “I will remember him for my whole life.”Friends and colleagues shared personal anecdotes, depicting Kirk as a tireless promoter of conservative cultural values and a “Maga warrior” who encouraged those he loved to get married and have “millions of kids”.Turning Point USA staff described Kirk’s journey from a teenager with an “idea and a folding table” into the leader of one of the most influential conservative youth movements of the modern era. One suggested Kirk was having “heavenly Fomo” – fear of missing out – looking down on the event, the largest in the organization’s history. The memorial, with Super-Bowl level security at the stadium where Taylor Swift launched her historic Eras tour, was pulled together in just 10 days.The stage bore stamps of a Turning Point production: columns of sparklers flared, red lights blinked and two large American flags featured prominently, atop the TV screens that reflected the program to the audience.Mike McCoy, Kirk’s former chief of staff, quoted philosopher Soren Kierkegaard: “The martyr dies and his rule has just begun.” The audience roared.Several speakers, including Trump, spoke of their shock at learning that Kirk had been fatally shot. Frank Turek was there on the Utah Valley University campus, standing feet from Kirk when he was struck by a single bullet. Turek recalled the harrowing minutes that followed, including a struggle to pull Kirk’s 6ft 5in frame into a car as medics performed first aid. “His face was looking at mine but he wasn’t looking at me,” Turek said. “He was looking past me, right into eternity.”Long before the speaking program began, mourners wiped their eyes, swayed to the music, their arms raised in worship. Parents brought young children – even babies – to the memorial. One father padded the lining of his jacket with diapers, as no bags were allowed under the rigorous security in place for the event.Near one of the entrance’s, Turning Point Action registered voters and handed out information to students interested in starting new chapters on their high school or college campuses – a political movement Erika Kirk vowed would grow “10 times greater through the power of his memory”.Several stands sold T-shirts with a sketch of Kirk and the text, “This is our turning point.”Many supporters and speakers vowed to carry on Kirk’s work.Jeffrey Barke, a physician with a large online following, came with a group of friends from Orange county, California, on what he called a “pilgrimage of sorts” to honor Charlie Kirk’s legacy.“What you’re seeing here is not just a tribute to his movement, you’re seeing a revival of his message: faith, family, freedom,” Barke said, gesturing to the crowd of supporters. Though only 31, Kirk left a lasting spiritual and political legacy, Barke said.“I think every one of us needs to be a bit more uncomfortable than we’re used to in spreading Charlie’s message,” he said, pledging to use his own platform and social media presence to do so.Christina Sawick, wearing a “Trump was right about everything” hat, said she was inspired by the attendance to pay tribute to Kirk, whom she had followed since 2016. On Sunday, she left her home in Mesa at 3am to attend the service. Sawick said the country seems to have reached a turning point, and she hopes Americans will follow Kirk’s legacy.“I want people to get behind our president,” she said. “And that there’s nothing wrong with making America great again.” More

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