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      Charlie Kirk memorial mixes rally and revival as mourners vow to spread Maga message

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      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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      US must ‘universally condemn political violence’, Democratic governor Shapiro says

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      Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro has said Americans must “universally condemn political violence, no matter where it is” after the killing of rightwing youth organizer Charlie Kirk as well as a deadly shootout in Shapiro’s state that left three police officers dead and two others injured.Hours before Kirk’s funeral, Shapiro said that the nation stands at an “inflection point” and urged Americans to choose shared values over division, pointing to the solidarity shown by Pennsylvanians in the aftermath of the officers’ killings in York county last week.“I think we’re at an inflection point as a nation, and I think we can go in a number of different ways,” Shapiro told moderator Kristen Welker on NBC News’s Meet the Press. “I hope we go the direction of healing, of bringing people together, of trying to find our commonalities – not just focus on our differences.”Shapiro told Welker about his own recent experience with political violence: when his gubernatorial mansion was firebombed in April, an act that authorities suspect was carried out by a man unhappy with Shapiro’s support of Israel amid the Israeli war on Gaza.Shapiro also referenced the murder of Minnesota state house speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in June. Authorities charged a man described by friends as right-leaning – and who had previously registered as a Republican in another state – with the Hortmans’ killings.While Shapiro said he didn’t want to equate the gubernatorial’s mansion’s firebombing with the killing of Kirk and the Hortmans, he said, “Political violence leaves scars.”Addressing arguments that criticism of political opponents may fuel violence, Shapiro pointed to longstanding US supreme court rulings that distinguish protected political speech from illicit incitement to violence.He said most political speech – even if offensive, disliked or hateful – is legal and protected.“There is a big difference,” Shapiro said.The attack on the governor’s mansion took place in April, hours after Shapiro, his wife, their four children, two dogs and another family had celebrated Passover in one of the rooms that sustained damage in the blaze.During Sunday’s interview, the governor criticized Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership and called for an end to the war in Gaza, saying “the suffering needs to stop” while adding that Hamas needed to be out of power as well.Welker also asked Shapiro to comment on criticism about in a new memoir by Kamala Harris on her unsuccessful run for the White House against Donald Trump in 2024. As Welker put it, the book – 107 Days – portrayed him as losing out on the chance to be Harris’s running mate because he was more “focused” on defining his role than helping her defeat Trump as her “number two”.“The only thing I was focused on was working my tail off to deny Donald Trump a second [presidency],” said Shapiro, who was mum about whether he would run for the White House in 2028, as many anticipate that he may.“At the end of the day, this was a choice voters had between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. They made their choice.” More

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      Trump drive to pursue critics puts US on path to dictatorship, Democrats warn

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      Top Democratic leaders on Sunday warned that Donald Trump’s drive to go after his political opponents is putting the US on a path to becoming a dictatorship and a “banana republic” just eight months into his second presidency.The warnings came a day after Trump’s public call for the justice department to take action against perceived enemies – and after ABC yanked its late-night talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel off the air in the wake of a threat from regulators at the Federal Communications Commission who are loyal to the president. Such behaviors, along with others since his return to the Oval Office in January, has prompted many who are not fiercely aligned with him to describe him as an authoritarian.Turning the justice department “into an instrument that goes after his enemies, whether they’re guilty or not … is the path to a dictatorship,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said on CNN. “That’s what dictatorships do.”Schumer’s fellow Democratic senator Chris Murphy, meanwhile, suggested the US was already becoming a “banana republic”.“The president of the United States is now employing the full power of the federal government, the FCC the department of justice, in order to punish, lock up, take down off the air all of his political enemies,” Murphy said on ABC.ABC indefinitely took Kimmel’s show off the air after he criticized the Trump administration’s response to the 10 September shooting death of far-right political organizer Charlie Kirk – which in turn prompted FCC chairperson Brendan Carr to threaten to revoke the broadcast licenses of ABC stations.“This is one of the most dangerous moments America has ever faced,” Murphy said. “We are quickly turning into a banana republic.”In a social media post Saturday addressing “Pam” – evidently attorney general Pam Bondi – Trump fumed over the lack of legal action against US senator Adam Schiff of California and New York attorney general Letitia James, both Democrats.Schiff and James are among a handful of people who have been accused by a close Trump ally, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, of falsifying documents on mortgage applications.“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump said.On Friday, the federal prosecutor who was overseeing the probe into James resigned, after the attorney – Erik Siebert – reportedly insisted there was insufficient evidence to charge her with mortgage fraud.Siebert, US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, reportedly told staff of his resignation via an email on Friday. Trump claimed Saturday on social media that he fired Siebert.Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated to win his first presidency, echoed Schumer’s criticism. She called Trump’s moves a “very dangerous turn in our politics”.“What we’re hearing now from the White House and their supporters (is) that this may, you know, lead to even further political action, legal action, prosecutorial action, intimidation of all kinds,” Clinton said on CNN.Outgoing Republican congressman Don Bacon of Nebraska, in response to a question about the Trump administration and Kimmel, separately told CNN that “there have been some wrong statements made, to say the least”.“To threaten media and say you’re going to pull their license – that’s not what America’s about,” said Bacon, who has decided against running for re-election in the 2026 midterms. “And we do have a freedom of speech, freedom of the press. And we should defend that.”Schiff and James have separately clashed with Trump, leading investigations that the Republican president alleges were political witch-hunts.During Trump’s first presidency, Schiff – then a member of the US House – led the prosecution at Trump’s first of two impeachment trials, which was based on allegations he pressured Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election. Schiff also served on a select House committee which investigated the January 6 attack on Congress carried out a pro-Trump mob which wanted to keep him in office after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.In between Trump’s presidencies, James brought a major civil fraud case against him, alleging he and his company had unlawfully inflated his wealth and manipulated the value of properties to obtain favorable bank loans or insurance terms.A state judge ordered Trump to pay $464m in that suit, but a higher court later removed the financial penalty while upholding the underlying judgment. More

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      US House passes resolution to honor Charlie Kirk in vote that divided Democrats

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      The killing of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk last week has triggered a wave of political disquiet in Washington, with some House Democrats fearing a messaging trap over a Republican resolution to honor him while other lawmakers worry about the broader political temperature following government pressure on broadcasters.Democrats ultimately decided to side with the Republicans to pass the resolution, with 95 Democrats in support. Fifty-eight Democrats opposed it, 38 voted present and 22 did not vote.The five-page resolution, introduced by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and co-sponsored by 165 House Republicans but no Democrats, praises Kirk as a “courageous American patriot” who sought to “elevate truth, foster understanding, and strengthen the Republic”.The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, had told Democrats in a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday morning that leadership would vote for the resolution, but his team was not whipping the vote, leaving lawmakers to decide for themselves, multiple people present told Axios.Several Democrats who opposed the resolution said they condemned his murder, but could not support his speech.“I cannot vote yes on this resolution because it grossly misrepresents Charlie Kirk’s methods, views and beliefs while citing Christian nationalist language. I will always condemn heinous acts of violence, but this resolution ignores the false and hateful rhetoric that was too often present in his debates,” said Colorado’s Diana DeGette, who voted present.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who voted no, said in a statement: “We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was: a man who believed that the Civil Rights Act that granted Black Americans the right to vote was a ‘mistake,’ who after the violent attack on Paul Pelosi claimed that ‘some amazing patriot out there’ should bail out his assailant, and accused Jews of controlling ‘not just the colleges – it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.’ His rhetoric and beliefs were ignorant and sought to disenfranchise millions of Americans – far from ‘working tirelessly to promote unity’ as asserted by the majority in this resolution.”But Maryland’s Jamie Raskin said he voted yes on the measure because it “repeatedly condemns all political violence, extremism and hatred in unequivocal terms”, while adding: “We should overlook whatever surplus verbiage is contained in this Resolution designed to make the vote difficult for Democrats. We cannot fall for that obvious political trap and should rise above it.” The measure calls Kirk’s shooting “a sobering reminder of the growing threat posed by political extremism and hatred in our society”.The internal Democratic tensions reflect broader concerns about political polarization following Kirk’s killing on 10 September at Utah Valley University.The struggle has extended beyond infighting on Capitol Hill, as the Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, has now been criticized by a handful of Republicans after he pressured ABC to suspend the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over comments about Kirk’s killing.“We all should be very cautious,” Jerry Moran, a Republican senator from Kansas, told Politico. “The conservative position is free speech is free speech, and we better be very careful about any lines we cross in diminishing free speech.”The House energy and commerce chair, Brett Guthrie, whose committee oversees the FCC, said on Thursday: “Just because I don’t agree with what someone says, we need to be very careful. We have to be extremely cautious to try to use government to influence what people say.”However, more than a dozen Republicans told Politico they were not concerned by Carr’s intervention, largely framing Kimmel’s suspension as a business decision rather than government coercion.Donald Trump, while at a state visit and press conference in London with the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, blamed the Kimmel suspension on an exaggerated claim of supposedly bad ratings while simultaneously admitting the Kirk issue played a role.“Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else,” Trump said. “And he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk.”Eleven Democrats in the Senate, including the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said they were “outraged” by Carr’s comments, and demanded answers by 25 September, telling the FCC chair in a letter: “This is precisely what government censorship looks like.”Democratic leaders in the House took it a step further and demanded Carr’s resignation, accusing him of “corrupt abuse of power” in forcing ABC to suspend Kimmel’s late-night show through regulatory threats. They warned that House Democrats would “make sure the American people learn the truth, even if that requires the relentless unleashing of congressional subpoena power”. More

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      As boys shift to the right, we are seeing the rise of the ‘new chill girl’ | Naomi Beinart

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      Since Donald Trump returned to office, I have noticed a phenomenon at my high school that I call the “new chill girl”. A group of kids is talking casually about something. Seemingly out of the blue, one of the boys makes an off-handed joke. Maybe it’s racist or sexist or homophobic, but whatever the poison, they inject it and the group dynamic shifts ever so slightly. As a general rule, the boys continue as usual while the girls – who tend to be more politically progressive – face a choice: they can speak up, which usually results in them getting the reputation as annoying and unable to take a joke, or they can let it pass and be regarded as a chill girl who isn’t angry or woke. Since November 2024, the latter reaction has become far more common.This kind of fearful silence is becoming more common outside of high schools, too. In December 2024, Disney removed a transgender character from a new series. This April, the New York Times reported that a new Trump administration regulation bars government employees from adding pronouns to their email bios. Two days after that, Gannet, one of the US’s largest newspaper chains, cited Trump’s opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion when announcing that it would no longer publish statistics on employee diversity.This cultural shift promotes nostalgia for an earlier time, before the birth of DEI, when women wore aprons and let their husbands earn the money. As of August, the “trad wife” influencer Hannah Neeleman, better known as Ballerina Farm, has amassed 10 million followers on Instagram alone. Her videos of kneading sourdough and raising her eight kids mark a return to the ideal of women as homemakers. Last November, she appeared on the cover of Evie, a conservative magazine that openly praises Trump.This trickles down to us. In the Trump era, left-leaning teenage girls feel less comfortable expressing political views that could be derided as “woke”. This isn’t because most of them are becoming rightwing: last November, 58% of women ages 18-30 voted for Kamala Harris. It’s because the political atmosphere has changed and progressive-minded girls now feel more afraid of the consequences of speaking their minds.The girls I talked to say it’s riskier to be outspokenly blue. A high school girl reported that boys “are becoming more emboldened, more confident to make these [bigoted] jokes”. Another said that since Trump took office, casual racism and sexism have become common: “We see [the behavior] more and it’s happening to us.” Young women feel social pressure to remain passive in the face of offensive remarks. Your guy friends “will think you’re attacking them”, one girl said, adding that “it’s not worth it” to speak out against every incident. You need to “pick your battles”.A third girl added that the desire to not be known as one of those “super woke” girls is enough to make someone clamp their lips, knowing that if the girl objects, “there is no chance [boys] will ever take you seriously again.” These opinions are harsh, but they’re true. Pew Research Center reports that as of March, 45% of girls ages 13-17 feel “a great deal” of pressure to fit in socially, and as cultural conservatism grows, that changes what fitting in means. Even in comparatively liberal spaces, like my high school, girls who wince at locker room talk risk exclusion. No one wants to hang out with the stickler, so no one wants to become her. And therefore, juvenile illiberalism lives on.Trump has damaged our country in many blatant ways, but what I’m seeing is more subtle. Tectonic shifts don’t always make it to CNN. The cultural effects of this openly racist and sexist government on young people may skew gender relations as we enter the workforce, enabling sexual assault and discrimination and keeping women from positions of power. The divide between young women and young men is growing massively, with no end in sight. Trump is distorting American society, and I fear distorting us.

      Naomi Beinart is a high school student More

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      Kash Patel denies politicizing FBI in fiery grilling by Democratic senators

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      A defiant Kash Patel on Tuesday denied Democratic senators’ accusations that the firings of top FBI agents were politically motivated and insisted he was staying as the bureau’s director despite reports that the White House had grown concerned with his leadership.“I’m not going anywhere. If you want to criticize my 16 years of service, please bring it on. Over to you,” Patel said at the conclusion of his opening statement to the Senate judiciary committee, where he made his first appearance since being confirmed to lead the bureau in February.Several Democrats on the committee accepted the invitation, getting into angry exchanges and at least one shouting match with the director over the course of the four-and-a-half-hour hearing.“What I am doing is protecting this country, providing historic reforms and combating the weaponization of intelligence by the likes of you,” Patel told California’s Adam Schiff in a heated back-and-forth that devolved into name-calling.Schiff, a longtime antagonist of Donald Trump, had pressed the director on why the Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell had been moved to a lower-security federal prison after speaking with a top justice department official in July, prompting Patel to insist he was not involved in that decision, before calling Schiff a “liar”, the “biggest fraud to sit in the United States Senate” and “a political buffoon at best”.Demands that the Trump administration provide more transparency into its investigation of Epstein, who died while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019, loomed large over the hearing, but Patel gave little ground, insisting that a court order prevented him from making public further documents related to the case.Other Democrats zeroed in on reporting, including from Fox News over the weekend, that top aides to Trump were losing faith in Patel.“I don’t think you’re fit to head the bureau, but here’s the thing, Mr Patel, I think you’re not going to be around long. I think this might be your last oversight hearing,” the New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker said.“That rant of false information does not bring this country together,” Patel replied. He and the senator began talking over each other, with Patel at one point saying: “You are an embarrassment.”Democrats had waged a strident but ultimately ineffective effort to prevent Patel’s confirmation by the Republican majority, outraged by his support for those accused of carrying out the January 6 insurrection, as well as his compilation of an “enemy’s list” of Washington politicians and bureaucrats in a 2022 book.Their concerns have only grown in the months since he took over the bureau. Last week, three former senior FBI officials, including one who served as acting director, sued Patel for wrongful termination. They alleged that the bureau had become politicized, with Patel at one point stating that he had been instructed to fire agents who investigated Trump, according to the lawsuit.The director declined to comment on the allegations by the former agents, saying they were the subject of litigation, but insisted people were fired from the FBI only if it was justified.“The only way, generally speaking, an individual is terminated at the FBI is if they have violated their oath of office, violated the law, or failed to uphold the standards that we need them to have at the FBI,” Patel said.Patel’s leadership came further in to question last week amid the search for the suspect in the murder of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The director at one point announced that a suspect had been taken into custody, before retracting his statement. The New York Times reported that Patel used profanity on a conference call where he criticized subordinates for not quickly updating him on the case.Under questioning from the Democratic senator Peter Welch, Patel refused to concede that the premature announcement of an arrest was a mistake, instead describing it as part of the investigative process.“In my commitment to work with the public to help identify subjects and suspects, I put that information out, and then when we interviewed him, I put out the results of that. And could I have been more careful in my verbiage and included a subject instead of subject? Sure, in the heat of the moment, but I was doing the best I could,” Patel said. He later added: “I don’t see it as a mistake.”He later refused demands from the Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono for precise details of how many agents had resigned, been fired or retired since Trump took office, saying he did not immediately know the numbers. The Democrat continued asking, prompting Patel to say: “When you’re talking about firings, you’re looking for a media hit and a fundraising clip, and I’m not going to give it to you.”Patel is scheduled to testify on Wednesday before the House judiciary committee. Its top Democrat, Jamie Raskin, on Tuesday released a memo arguing that Trump had undercut efforts to fight sex trafficking and abuse through a host of policies he implemented since taking office. More

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      Top Democrat accuses Trump of dismantling efforts to prosecute sex crimes

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      A top House Democrat on Tuesday accused Donald Trump of “systematically dismantling” efforts to prosecute sex crimes and hunt down traffickers, as the president faces continued pressure to make public investigative files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.The memo from House judiciary committee ranking member Jamie Raskin and his staff, shared exclusively with the Guardian, said that beyond refusing the demands for transparency around Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, Trump has also undercut efforts to hold people accused of similar crimes accountable by “systematically dismantling the offices and programs we rely on to combat human trafficking and prosecute sex crimes”.“President Trump in office has repeatedly taken the side of criminal sex predators and violent abusers against their victims, and this pattern goes well beyond his strenuous efforts to bury the Epstein Files,” Raskin wrote in the memo.“Far from aiding victims and survivors, President Trump consistently sides with their abusers,” he said. “His all-of-government policy to aid traffickers and sex criminals and abandon survivors has made American women dramatically less safe.”White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers called the accusations “total nonsense” before criticizing former president Joe Biden and his handling of immigration. “Their party’s president spent the last four years coddling and apologizing for criminals and sexual predators. Joe Biden’s wide open border allowed hundreds of thousands of innocent children to be kidnapped across the southern border by smugglers and gang members illegally residing in our communities,” Rogers said.She added that Trump had “totally secured our border to stop the trafficking of children” and “implemented tough-on-crime policies to hold these disgusting monsters accountable to the fullest extent of the law”.Raskin’s memo to Democratic members of the judiciary committee comes in advance of testimony scheduled for Wednesday by FBI director Kash Patel, at which Democrats are expected to press him for details on the bureau’s handling of its investigation into Epstein.Appearing before the Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday, Patel acknowledged shortcomings in how an investigation into Epstein was handled that led to the financier pleading guilty in 2008 to charges related to procuring a child prostitute. However, the director insisted that court orders prevented him acceding to Democrats demands to release more files related to Epstein.In the memo, Raskin argues: “The Trump Administration’s sympathetic alignment with powerful sex traffickers and rapists goes far beyond its efforts to suppress the truth of what happened in one explosive case,” and pointed to several policies Trump implemented that he believes help criminals.Among those are its dismantling of USAID, which he described as one of the most effective agencies at documenting trafficking routes and undermining efforts to use forced labor to scam Americans.“Closing USAID has blinded federal law enforcement to developing threats overseas, allowing trafficking networks to strengthen in power, influence, and size, almost certainly leading to an increase in the number of women and children trafficked into the United States,” Raskin said.About half of the federal law enforcement personnel who would normally be investigating criminals and terrorists are now focused on deportations as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the memo said. This includes one in five FBI agents, almost two thirds of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and three quarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration, among other agencies.“By diverting extraordinary amounts of money and personnel to its immigration crackdown, the Trump Administration has undermined the investigation and prosecution of nearly every other law enforcement priority, including human trafficking and child exploitation,” Raskin wrote.Trump has also cancelled hundreds of grants to local law enforcement agencies and non-profits that were used to help victims of such crimes, according to the memo. Federal funds are no longer flowing to trainings of sexual assault nurse examiners in disadvantaged areas or victim advocates employed at rape crisis centers, nor to American Sign Language interpretation for survivors of domestic violence.Trump’s immigration crackdown has intruded into efforts to help trafficking survivors, with the memo saying one organization has been told it cannot use grant money to help anyone in the country illegally. Such a notice may violate federal law, and the groups receiving the grants typically have no way of knowing their clients’ immigration status, Raskin said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnother group that received federal funding to work with child abuse victims had its funding terminated after more than three decades, then partially restored with instructions that “its affiliates to never again mention race, class, and gender diversity in it training materials”.“These findings reveal the Trump Administration’s structural bias in favor of human traffickers, rapists, and sexual violators and against their victims, survivors, and opponents. The question of why this alignment exists cannot be answered in this memo, but the pattern is unmistakable,” Raskin wrote.He also noted that several top officials, including defense secretary Pete Hegseth and health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, have been accused of inappropriate conduct, while the Trump administration acted to facilitate the return of “misogynist influencer” Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan from Romania, where they faced charges including rape. Dozens of those who were pardoned of charges related to January 6 had also faced trafficking and sex abuse charges before and after the insurrection, Raskin said.The memo comes amid a spike in interest in the Epstein case, which began in July after the justice department released a report concluding that his death was a suicide, and saying no further information about the matter would be released. The assertions flew in the face of conspiracy theories Trump and his senior officials have encouraged that held Epstein was at the heart of a wide-ranging conspiracy involving global elites.A bipartisan group of lawmakers is circulating a petition in the House of Representatives that would force a vote on legislation mandating the release of the Epstein files. The petition needs just one more signature to succeed.Trump opposes the effort, calling it a “Democrat hoax”, but sent a deputy attorney general to interview Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and petitioned unsuccessfully for release of grand jury transcripts related to the financier’s indictment.The House oversight committee is also investigating the Epstein matter, and earlier this month released a “birthday book” containing a sexually suggestive drawing Trump appears to have made for his one-time friend. More

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      Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro says leaders need ‘moral clarity’ amid rising political violence

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      Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro said on Tuesday that the arson attack on his home earlier this year had “left emotional scars” while calling for leaders to recognize that political violence is not a one-sided problem.Shapiro talked about the arson attack and political violence at this week’s Eradicate Hate summit in Pittsburgh, designed to discuss tools and action that can prevent and confront violence.Shapiro ran through a list of acts of targeted violence in the past year, including the assassination attempt of Donald Trump, the killing of United Healthcare’s CEO, the gunman who killed Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The one common thread, he said, was “people using violence to settle political differences”.“Leaders have a responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity – and as I have made clear time and time again, this type of violence has no place in our society, regardless of what motivates it, who pulls the trigger, who throws the molotov cocktail, or who wields the weapon,” he said.People have a responsibility to be “clear and unequivocal” in condemning all forms of political violence. He chided those who have celebrated political violence against their opponents and those who have called for revenge in the wake of it.“Unfortunately, some the dark corners of the Internet all the way to the Oval Office want to cherry pick which instances of political violence they want to condemn,” he said. “Doing that only further divides us and it makes it harder to heal. There are some who will hear that selective condemnation and take it as a permission slip to commit more violence, so long as it suits their narrative or only targets the other side.”In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, the Trump administration has said it will go after left-leaning organizations, declaring without evidence that they were somehow tied to the shooting.Shapiro said these acts of vengeance will deepen the divide and that using the government to censor people and “silence people, silence businesses and nonprofits and restrict their right to free speech” will only deepen mistrust.The governor also detailed his own first-hand experience with political violence. In April, on Passover, a man set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion while Shapiro, his wife and kids were inside. Shapiro said that he woke up to a bang on the door – a state trooper telling him to evacuate because there was a fire. He and his wife grabbed their kids, dogs and other family members who had gathered at the home for seder hours earlier in the room the arsonist set ablaze with molotov cocktails. The man had a metal hammer that he later said he had planned to use to kill Shapiro if he found him, Shapiro said.Cody Balmer was charged by police for terrorism, attempted murder and other charges associated with the attack. Police say Balmer was allegedly motivated by “perceived injustices toward the people of Palestine”. Shapiro is Jewish.Shapiro said he thanks God every day that his family was able to evacuate safely and no one was injured or killed.“That doesn’t mean that the attack hasn’t left emotional scars,” Shapiro said. “I can attest to that, especially as a father, a father to four children, knowing that my life choices put them at risk.”He called the rise in political violence dangerous because it not only seeks to injure or kill opponents but to intimidate people into silence.“I’m here today to tell you that I will not be deterred in my work on behalf of the good people of Pennsylvania and I sure as heck will not be silenced,” he said. More