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      As Starmer’s popularity tanks, what can Labour learn from Zohran Mamdani’s success in New York?

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      Progressives in the UK and US are grappling with the same question. Why have rightwing populists become so much more successful at tapping into public concern? And why are so few politicians on the left connecting with ordinary people?Barely a year after taking power in Britain, Labour’s popularity has collapsed with unprecedented rapidity against surging support for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.In the US, a year after Joe Biden’s defeat, the Democrats are still derided by swathes of voters and remain at a loss for how to take on Donald Trump’s unique brand of politics.But while Labour and the Democrats languish in nationwide polls, there are exceptions. In New York over the summer, Zohran Mamdani rose from little-known assembly member to social media sensation and heavily favoured Democratic nominee in November’s mayoral contest.His success in the Democratic primary comes on the back of a highly impactful people-powered campaign that looks likely to propel him to victory. A poll for the New York Times this week concluded that Mamdani held a commanding lead over his three rivals for the mayoralty, including the scandal-hit incumbent, Eric Adams, and the multimillionaire former governor Andrew Cuomo.What if anything, can Labour learn from his success?It’s the economy, stupidPolitical observers in the UK believe Labour has a communications problem. But for good comms, you need substance. For Mamdani, that has come in the form of a laser-sharp focus on the economy and affordability.According to the NYT/Siena poll this week, 49% of likely voters thought Mamdani would perform best on affordability issues, compared with 23% who said the same of Cuomo and 10% for Adams.“Elections are almost always about very, very fundamental things,” said Matthew McGregor, the chief executive of 38 Degrees who is a former digital adviser to Ed Miliband and worked as a digital campaign strategist in Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign.“Mamdani has got an agenda that clicks with people’s real lived experience of a city that has become just farcically expensive, doesn’t work for working-class people, and where there is very stark inequality between people in the boroughs and the rich parts of Manhattan,” he said.Claire Ainsley, a former Labour policy chief who now runs the centre-left renewal project at the Progressive Policy Institute, a US thinktank, said: “He’s highlighted the cost of living and affordability, and that’s right – that is the major issue that’s bothering Americans. Even if inflation is under control, cost of living is a big problem.”By comparison, Labour’s first year in power has been characterised by constantly changing policy priorities. Before and after being elected, Starmer has variously talked about his six first steps, six “milestones”, five “missions” and three “foundations”.Most recently, the prime minister has sought to reset his government by announcing a “phase two” focused on delivery, including the economy – but for many Labour MPs these constantly shifting priorities betray a frustrating lack of vision that makes it difficult to connect with the public.Champion compelling, costed policiesWith his focus on affordability, Mamdani has identified the key problem for many New Yorkers. Crucially, he is also presenting clear and compelling solutions.His policies include free bus transport, a rent freeze on the city’s 2.3m regulated apartments, a crackdown on bad landlords and commercial rent control, free childcare for parents starting at six months, and a $30 minimum wage by 2030.“His answers aren’t ‘Have you read through my 12-page white paper on breaking down planning so we can get New York building again?’. It’s not ‘We’re going to make work pay by encouraging businesses to invest’. It’s ‘We’re going to make buses free, we’re going to fill in the grocery deserts’,” McGregor said. “Practical, meaningful things that people can grasp and understand.”Mamdani is seeing off criticism about the feasibility of his promises by setting out clearly how they will be paid for – imposing a 2% tax on the top 1% of residents earning more than $1m annually, and raising New York City’s top corporate tax rate from 7.25% to match neighbouring New Jersey’s at 11.5%.For its part, Labour is implementing a whole slate of progressive policies that are very popular with voters – strengthening renters’ and workers’ rights, including a ban on fire-and-rehire practices, increasing the minimum wage, cutting down hospital waiting lists and making it easier to see a GP.The trouble is, these are not being properly championed. Ministers seem reluctant to bang the drum for some of their most popular moves, sometimes for fear of angering business. Last year, Downing Street disowned a press statement that called P&O Ferries a “rogue operator” for past fire-and-rehire practices after the firm threatened to pull out of an investment summit.Craft an overarching story – and pick a sideDavid Axelrod, a former strategist to Obama who then advised Ed Miliband in 2015, memorably said Labour’s campaign that year failed because it could be summed up with: “Vote Labour, win a microwave.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHis point was that Labour in 2015 offered voters a set of loosely connected transactional promises but lacked any overarching narrative. Many believe this is a problem plaguing the current Labour government and a key to explaining the success of Trump in the US and Farage in the UK.Both Trump and Farage have clear narrative stories to tell about the problems of the country and their proposed solutions. So does Mamdani. McGregor said: “He wants to be a politician that says this whole system isn’t working, and we’re going to change things in a bigger way. Politics is a vibes-based business in the modern media environment, and everything you do is a demonstration of whose side are you on.”He added: “I think you can learn from Mamdani without saying we have to be more leftwing. Those policies need to connect to that bigger story that you’re telling. Farage is telling a story, and Trump is telling a story, and Mamdani is telling a story about the country, its challenges and problems and who’s to blame for them.”That final point – picking a side and identifying your adversaries – is key. Ed Owen, a former UK government special adviser during the New Labour years who is now a visiting fellow at the centre-left US thinktank Third Way, said: “We on the centre left are great at being rather po-faced, rational, logical, and establishing ourselves inadvertently as the defenders of the status quo that most people hate.“We are in a period of history where people’s faith in politics and politicians is at an all-time low. Insurgent political figures like Mamdani, and also on the right, are good at positioning themselves as agents of change.”Get social media-savvyEven when you tick all those boxes – a focus on people’s biggest concerns, popular policies and a compelling overarching narrative – you need a way to cut through to the public, including to voters who don’t follow politics closely.Mamdani is a hugely talented communicator who has built a huge presence on social media. His masterful campaign videos and direct, easy style are shared with 1.4 million followers on TikTok and 4 million on Instagram. Unlike most politicians, at 33 he is a social media native.“These TikTok videos, I think, are a really compelling and interesting manifestation of something,” McGregor said. “Understanding the modern media environment and the fact that huge swathes of people consume information in completely different ways to how they did five, 10, let alone 20 years ago.”The decline of traditional media means many voters consume news only through snippets on their social media feeds. The only UK politician with a major TikTok presence is Farage – he rivals Mamdani’s reach with 1.3 million followers.Despite the efforts of successive No 10 comms chiefs, the UK government has been slow at adapting to new forms of communication – though Starmer and other ministers are increasingly popping up on alternative platforms such as digital-only outlets and parenting podcasts.Owen said: “We’ve got to be able to communicate where people are – and that’s increasingly on social media channels – in the form they want. And we’ve been really bad at it.”Be an authentic local voiceMamdani is a very New York success story – and one that observers say can’t be simply copy-pasted to the UK or other parts of the US. “It isn’t as if this is some sort of template you can just transpose to any political environment,” Owen said.Ainsley said: “If there is a lesson to be drawn, it’s about the importance of authentic candidates that speak to the voters that you need. Clearly, his victory has energised parts of the left, but they are not representative of the mainstream of America, that is where the midterms and the next presidential election will be fought.“He’s played to the base that he needed, which is a narrow selectorate in New York City. He’s got conviction, and one of the things that the swing voters who’ve moved away from the Democrats over time have said to us is that they want politicians with conviction – but they also want candidates that have got the competence and credible policies that they think are going to meet their everyday needs.” More

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      US college campuses have faced hoax calls about gunmen since Charlie Kirk shooting – live

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      Donald Trump has declined to call for the US to come together as a way of fixing the country’s divisions in the wake of the assassination of his close associate, the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, preferring to cast “vicious and horrible” radicals on the left of US politics as the sole problem.In an interview on Fox & Friends on Friday morning, the US president was asked what he intended to do to heal the wounds of Kirk’s shooting in Utah. “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?” he was asked by the show’s co-host Ainsley Earhardt, who commented that there were radicals operating on the left and right of US politics.Less than 48 hours after Kirk was shot in broad daylight on the campus of Utah Valley University, Trump replied: “I tell you something that is going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less.”He went on: “The radicals on the right are radical because they don’t want to see crime … The radicals on the left are the problem – and they are vicious and horrible and politically savvy. They want men in women’s sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders. The worst thing that happened to this country.”Erika Kirk, the widow of right wing activist and provocateur Charlie Kirk, said in a statement Friday evening that her late husband’s message and mission will be “stronger, bolder, louder and greater than ever” and that her “cries will echo around the world like a battle cry”.“I loved knowing one of his mottoes was ‘never surrender’,” she said of her late husband. “We’ll never surrender.”Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of the hard-right youth organization Turning Point USA, died after being fatally shot while speaking at an event hosted at Utah Valley University (UVU) on Wednesday afternoon. The event was the first in the organization’s fall tour of college campuses. Erika Kirk said that the campus tour will continue despite her husband’s untimely death.“In a world filled with chaos, doubt and uncertainty, my husband’s voice will remain and it will ring out louder and more clearly than ever and his wisdom will endure,” she said.Erika Kirk, speaking from her husband’s Turning Point USA office on Friday evening, said Charlie had been killed because “he preached a message of patriotism, faith and of God’s merciful love”.During a news conference on Friday morning in Utah, FBI Director Kash Patel lauded the work of the FBI leading the investigation into Charlie Kirk’s killing, while also twice saying the decision to release photos and videos to the public, which led to the arrest of suspect Tyler Robinson on Thursday evening, were made at his direction.However, Patel has come under fire over his handling of the most high-profile moment of his tenure so far. Some FBI employees told CNN they found it galling for Patel to claim personal credit for the most successful parts of the investigation.In the early hours after the shooting, Patel had prematurely indicated on X that a suspected shooter was in custody, before it later turned out the killer was still at large.Less than two hours later after his initial post, Patel wrote a note saying the person had been released – a clear signal that law enforcement had not apprehended the correct person.The following day, in a meeting reported by The New York Times, Patel fumed to subordinates over failure to give him timely information, including photos of the suspect, the now-arrested Robinson. Patel reportedly went on a profanity-laced tirade, telling agents he would not tolerate “Mickey Mouse operations.”Patel personally knew Kirk and gave a tribute to the Turning Point USA founder on Friday.“To my friend Charlie Kirk: Rest now, brother. We have the watch, and I’ll see you in Valhalla,” Patel said, making a reference to the hall of slain warriors from Norse mythology.About 50 college campuses across the US have been deluged in recent weeks with hoax calls about armed gunmen and other violence, AP reported on Saturday. Students at some schools spent hours hiding under desks, only to find out later the threat had been fabricated. On Thursday, several historically Black colleges locked down or canceled classes after receiving threats, a day after the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah college.According to CNN’s analysis of events reported by the Gun Violence Archive, Education Week and Everytown for Gun Safety, there have been 47 school shootings in the US so far this year, as of 10 September. Twenty-four were on college campuses, and 23 were on K-12 school grounds. The incidents left 19 people dead and at least 77 other victims injured.

      The killing of Charlie Kirk is being used to mobilise support before what is expected to be Britain’s largest far-right rally in decades, which will include speakers from Britain, the US and Europe. The rally is expected to attract upwards of 40,000 attenders, according to the anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate. A smaller gathering organised by the group Stand Up to Racism is also taking place.

      A fundraising page, organised by Tucker Carlson’s nicotine pouch company ALP on the Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo, has already raised more than $3.7m for the Kirk family after ALP’s initial $1m donation. According to multiple sources, Kirk’s estimated net worth at the time of his death was $12m.

      Erika Kirk, widow of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, gave a combative speech saying her late husband’s message and mission will be “stronger, bolder, louder and greater than ever” and that her “cries will echo around the world like a battle cry”. A tour of college campuses by his hard-right youth organization Turning Point USA would continue, she said, in her first public statement since her husband’s killing. She urged students to start Turning Point USA chapters at their schools.

      Authorities announced on Friday that they had arrested a suspect in connection Charlie Kirk’s killing at a speaking event at Utah Valley University (UVU) on Wednesday. Tyler Robinson, 22, is now in custody at Utah County Jail.

      Robinson’s family friend turned him in, and told officers that Robinson “confessed to them or implied that he had committed the incident”, governor Spencer Cox told a press conference. A family member that investigators interviewed described Robinson as becoming “more political in recent years” and was aware that Kirk was due to speak at UVU, said Cox.

      The weapon used was identified as a high-action bolt rifle, and Cox noted that several bullet casings were found at the scene of the crime. One of three unfired casings read “Hey fascist! Catch!”, a second read “Oh Bella Ciao” (which is the name of an anti-fascist Italian anthem), and a third casing had the following engraved: “If you read this, you are gay, LMAO”. The Wall Street Journal initially reported on Thursday that an internal law enforcement bulletin said that ammunition recovered after the Charlie Kirk shooting was engraved with expressions of unspecified “transgender ideology”, but within an hour the New York Times, citing multiple sources, reported that these claims were likely not true. The WSJ has since posted an Editor’s Note saying that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “urged caution” around inaccurate reports of the transgender engravings.

      Donald Trump told Fox & Friends in an interview – during which he also announced that a suspect was in custody – that he hoped the shooter “gets the death penalty”. He declined to call for the US to come together as a way of fixing the country’s divisions, saying “I couldn’t care less” and instead casting “vicious and horrible radicals” on the left of US politics as the sole problem. He added that these radicals “want men in women’s sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders.”

      Jeff Gray, the Utah county attorney, plans to file formal charges against Tyler Robinson on Tuesday, his office said. According to court records obtained by CNN, Robinson is being held without bail on several initial charges, including aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm, and obstruction of justice.

      A Utah Valley University spokesperson confirmed today that Robinson is a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College. He also briefly attended Utah State University. More

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      Trump declines to call for unity after Charlie Kirk killing in stunning move

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      Donald Trump has declined to call for the US to come together as a way of fixing the country’s divisions in the wake of the assassination of his close associate, the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, preferring to cast “vicious and horrible” radicals on the left of US politics as the sole problem.In an interview on Fox & Friends on Friday morning, the US president was asked what he intended to do to heal the wounds of Kirk’s shooting in Utah. “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?” he was asked by the show’s co-host Ainsley Earhardt, who commented that there were radicals operating on the left and right of US politics.Less than 48 hours after Kirk was shot in broad daylight on the campus of Utah Valley University, Trump replied: “I tell you something that is going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less.”He went on: “The radicals on the right are radical because they don’t want to see crime … The radicals on the left are the problem – and they are vicious and horrible and politically savvy. They want men in women’s sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders. The worst thing that happened to this country.”Trump’s refusal to seek a common bipartisan way forward at a time of profound national anger, fear and mourning was a stunning move for a sitting US president, even by his standards.The US has a long history of presidents using their rhetorical powers to try to overcome political fissures. The pinnacle perhaps was Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address towards the end of the civil war, in which he sought to “bind up the nation’s wounds” and made a point of striving for unity “with malice toward none, with charity for all”.In more recent times, Joe Biden used his inaugural address in 2021, just days after the insurrection by Trump supporters at the US Capitol on January 6, to call for unity, without which, he said, “there is no peace, only bitterness and fury”.Trump’s appearance on Fox News made clear he has no intention of following that rhetorical tradition. Instead, the tenor of his response to the Kirk shooting has been hyper-partisan and grounded in retribution.In Friday’s comments, he threatened the philanthropist George Soros with a Rico investigation of the sort normally reserved for organised crime. He accused Soros of funding “professional agitators” who were engaging in “more than protest, this is real agitation, this is riots on the streets”.In an Oval Office address delivered hours after Kirk was pronounced dead, Trump made menacing remarks indicating he would seek revenge against “organizations that fund and support” political violence. He laid blame for the current plight entirely on what he called the “radical left”.The president has already used his second term in the White House to turn the heat up on those he regards as his political enemies. He has authorised an investigation into the main fundraising channel for the Democratic party, ActBlue, and threatened to rescind the tax-exempt status of progressive groups such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) and environmental groups. More

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      Missouri Republicans approve redistricting that gives GOP additional seat in Congress

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      Missouri Republicans approved a new congressional map on Friday that adds an additional GOP-friendly seat in Congress, a boost to Donald Trump as he tries to redraw districts across the US to stave off losses in next year’s midterms.Republicans currently hold six of Missouri’s eight congressional seats. The new map would eliminate a district currently represented by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver in Kansas City. Cleaver, who was Kansas City’s first Black mayor, has been in Congress for two decades. The new map splits up voters in the district and places them instead into more GOP-friendly ones.The plan now goes to Missouri’s governor, Mike Kehoe, a Republican, who is expected to sign it into law.Opponents of the measure pledged they would use a legal maneuver to force a statewide vote on the maps next year. Activists must gather more than 100,000 signatures in the next 90 days to put it up for a referendum.“This fight is not over. Missouri voters – not politicians – will have the final say,” Elsa Rainey, a spokesperson for the group People Not Politicians Missouri, said in a statement.Missouri is the first state to pass a new congressional plan after Texas adopted a map that gives Republicans between three and five new seats. California voters are set to vote on a ballot referendum later this year that would add five congressional districts in that state.“Missourians will not have fair and effective representation under this new, truly shameful gerrymander. It is not only legally indefensible, it is also morally wrong,” Eric Holder, the former US attorney general and chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement.Each seat is important because Republicans only hold a three-seat majority in the US House and the president’s party typically loses seats in a midterm election. Typically, redistricting is done only once, after the decennial census at the start of the decade, but Trump has pushed an anti-democratic effort to redraw district lines mid-decade, allowing politicians to pick their voters instead of having them face competitive elections.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOhio, where Republicans also control the redistricting process, is also set to redraw its maps in the coming months. Indiana Republicans are also considering redrawing their state’s map as well. More

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      The US is on the brink of another era of political violence – and Donald Trump ‘couldn’t care less’ | Jonathan Freedland

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      The killing of Charlie Kirk has left the US and those who care about it on edge. The arrest of a suspect, Tyler Robinson, has hardly settled the nerves, not when the revelation of any supposed political allegiances could touch off a fresh round of recriminations. The fear is that the country is about to descend into a new era of political violence, becoming a place where differences are settled not with words and argument but by guns and blood. After all, it has plumbed those depths before.The US was born in violence, fought a civil war less than a century after its founding and in living memory seemed to be on the brink of another one – with a spate of assassinations in the 1960s that took the lives of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and John and Bobby Kennedy. That should provide some consolation, the knowledge that the country has been through this before and survived.And yet the comfort is scant, because these are different times. For one thing, guns are even more available now than they were then: there are more than 850m firearms in private hands in the world, and nearly half of those are owned by Americans. For every 100 Americans, there are 120 guns.For another, today’s information supply is dominated by social media, amplifying the most extreme voices and rewarding the angriest sentiments. Where once the CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite could break the news of a presidential assassination and provide sombre balm, now grief is inflamed into fury, with footage of Kirk’s horrific shooting entering global circulation mere moments after his death.But the crucial difference is at the top. An act of political violence used to be met by a standard, reassuringly predictable response: the president would condemn it, grieve for the dead and their families, plead that there be no rush to judgment, and call for calm and for unity, insisting that Americans not give the killers what they want, which was division, but rather come together as fellow citizens of a republic they all loved. I heard versions of that speech, delivered at different moments by Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama. On Wednesday night, Donald Trump chose an alternative path – one that proved that, as he later admitted to Fox News when asked about bringing the country together, he “couldn’t care less”.Instead, and at a time when no one was in custody and nothing at all was known of Kirk’s killer, Trump said the blame for his death lay with “the radical left”. It was its “rhetoric” that was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today”. The problem was not political violence in general, but “radical left political violence”.Put aside the inaccuracy of such a statement. Put aside the documented fact that not some, but all extremist-related killings in the US in 2024 were connected to rightwing extremism, just as they were in 2023 and in 2022. Put aside that, although Trump listed incidents in which figures associated with the right had been attacked, he pointedly did not mention and wilfully chose to ignore the murder of the Democratic Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband in June; or the arson attack on the home of the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, in April; or an earlier plot to kidnap the Democratic governor of Michigan.Put it all aside, even though it exposes the transparent falsity of Trump’s declaration that US political violence comes from one side only. Consider instead the likely effect of his words. At best, they add fuel to an already incendiary situation. At worst, they encourage retaliation and revenge.Witness Trump’s allies and cheerleaders. “We’re gonna avenge Charlie’s death,” promised Fox News host Jesse Watters. Elon Musk declared that “The Left is the party of murder”. A legion of other rightwing influencers have already taken this talk to its logical conclusion, announcing, as one put it, that “THIS IS WAR”. Could the message being sent to a furious and well-armed support base be any clearer?And notice something else Trump said on Wednesday. He pledged to find those “organisations that fund and support” what he classifies as political violence. Given that one of his closest aides said before Kirk’s murder that the Democratic party should be viewed as a “domestic extremist organisation”, it’s not hard to imagine who he will be coming for. Surely any group that opposes him.How should they – Democrats, liberals, the left – be responding to this moment of peril? So far they have observed the old norms, with almost every Democratic figure of any standing, whether former president or serving politician, offering the decent, human response: horror at such a brutal act, sympathy for Kirk’s wife and now-fatherless young children, fear for where this leaves the country. Watch MSNBC, or listen to the Pod Save crowd, and you’ll see that that’s how most of the leading lights in the anti-Trump universe have, rightly, responded. Any deviation from that norm has been punished.It is one of the asymmetries of the US culture wars that this etiquette, rigorously enforced from left to right, is not observed in the other direction. So when an intruder broke into the home of the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and nearly clubbed her husband, Paul, then 82, to death, the leading Republican in the country did not offer condemnation or words of consolation. No, Trump responded by making repeated jokes at Paul Pelosi’s expense.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDifferent rules apply. After an act of violence, Democrats must be gracious, empathetic and call for calm on all sides, while Republicans can mock the victims, blame only one side and demand more violence. And there’s a further asymmetry: a single post from a random, anonymous user online will be treated as a statement from “the left”, while the outpourings of the right’s most powerful voices, in politics or the media, and including the president himself, somehow get a free pass.As part of this etiquette, it’s become poor taste to point out Kirk’s actual views. It’s as if the belief that no one should be killed for their opinions requires you to withhold any judgment of those opinions. But Kirk did not hold back. He was happy to tell people that he would be nervous getting on a plane flown by a Black pilot, and to talk of “prowling Blacks”; to tell Taylor Swift to “Reject feminism. Submit to your husband … You’re not in charge”; to deny the truth of the 2020 election; to recommend that children should watch public executions; and to suggest “Jewish dollars” were to blame for the spread of “cultural Marxism”.Many liberal luminaries have swerved past this back catalogue, preferring to express their admiration for Kirk’s willingness to debate and his genuine gift for engaging the young. That has left the field clear for the right to redefine Kirk not as the extremist he was – and was proud to be – but as a paragon of civic participation, one who merits a posthumous presidential medal of freedom and a lowering of the flag. While the liberal left is observing the conventional pieties, the right is swiftly sanitising Kirk’s views and canonising him, hailing him as a martyr for the cause of what they insist is “simple common sense”. As a result, it will have moved the Overton window yet further in its direction.These are dynamics Kirk knew well and that he was adroit at using to his advantage. He understood that a culture war inherently favours those willing to disregard the rules. It is a lesson that liberals and the left are, rightly, reluctant to learn – but that reluctance comes at an increasingly high price.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’

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      Charlie Kirk, the far-right commentator and ally of Donald Trump, was killed on Wednesday doing what he was known for throughout his career – making incendiary and often racist and sexist comments to large audiences.If it was current and controversial in US politics, chances are that Kirk was talking about it. On his podcasts, and on the podcasts of friends and adversaries, and especially on college campuses, where he would go to debate students, Kirk spent much of his adult life defending and articulating a worldview aligned with Trump and the Maga movement. Accountable to no one but his audience, he did not shy away in his rhetoric from bigotry, intolerance, exclusion and stereotyping.Here’s Kirk, in his own words. Many of his comments were documented by Media Matters for America, a progressive non-profit that tracks conservative media.On race
      If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024

      If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022

      Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023

      If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because affirmative action?
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024
      On debate
      We record all of it so that we put [it] on the internet so people can see these ideas collide. When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil, and they lose their humanity.
      – Kirk discussing his work in an undated clip that circulated on X after his killing.

      Prove me wrong.
      – Kirk’s challenge to students to publicly debate him during the tour of colleges he was on when he was assassinated.
      On gender, feminism and reproductive rights
      Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.
      – Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025

      The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.
      – Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape on the debate show Surrounded, published on 8 September 2024

      We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024
      On gun violence
      I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.
      – Event organized by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, on 5 April 2023
      On immigration
      America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025

      The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024

      The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024
      On Islam
      America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank: large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 30 April 2025

      We’ve been warning about the rise of Islam on the show, to great amount of backlash. We don’t care, that’s what we do here. And we said that Islam is not compatible with western civilization.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 24 June 2025
      On religion
      There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 6 July 2022 More

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      US lawmakers unite to condemn Charlie Kirk shooting: ‘Reject political violence’

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      The shooting of the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah college prompted outrage among both Democrats and Republicans, with Donald Trump and top officials condemning what appeared to be the latest act of political violence in the United States.“We must all pray for Charlie Kirk, who has been shot. A great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!” said Trump on Truth Social. The president survived an assassination attempt while campaigning for re-election in July 2024, and was targeted by a second assassin weeks later.“Say a prayer for Charlie Kirk, a genuinely good guy and a young father,” tweeted the vice-president, JD Vance. He later posted a photo of him alongside Kirk, writing: “Dear God, protect Charlie in his darkest hour.”Kash Patel, the FBI director, said the bureau “stands in full support of the ongoing response and investigation” into the shooting, which occurred during Kirk’s appearance at Utah Valley University in Orem, south of Salt Lake City. “Our thoughts are with Charlie, his loved ones, and everyone affected,” Patel said.Kirk’s condition after the shooting was described as critical.Congress’s top Republicans and Democrats joined in the condemnation, with several ascribing political motives to the attack. “There is no place in our country for political violence. Period, full stop,” said John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, echoed the sentiment, saying: “Political violence is NEVER acceptable.”“Please join us in praying for our good friend, Charlie Kirk,” said Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House.The House oversight committee took a break from considering more than a dozen bills to change laws in Washington DC as part of Trump’s militarized crackdown on crime in the district to hold a moment of silence in Kirk’s honor, after Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congressperson, informed the panel about the attack.Democrats seen as potential presidential contenders in 2028 also denounced the violence.“The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form,” said Gavin Newsom, the California governor.Wes Moore, the Maryland governor, wrote on X: “Political violence is never acceptable. Ever. The First Lady and I are praying for him and his family at this time.” More

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      House committee releases image of ‘sickening’ Trump birthday note to Epstein – US politics live

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      US immigration officers are ramping up immigration sweeps in Los Angeles again after the supreme court reversed a temporary restraining order that banned the Trump administration from stopping people solely based on their race, language or job.In a post on Twitter/X, Greg Bovino, the head of US border patrol in Los Angeles, called the temporary restraining order “very poorly” written and “the worst” he’s ever seen. He also said that border patrol would be starting operations back up again today.“We are going hard in Los Angeles today and are hitting a location as I write this,” Bovino wrote.Immigration officers were forced to pause their sweeping immigration raids after advocacy groups sued the Trump administration for systemically racially profiling brown-skinned people. US district judge in Los Angeles Maame E Frimpong granted the groups a temporary restraining order after finding a “mountain of evidence” that the immigration enforcement tactics were violating the constitution.But the supreme court ruled 6-3 to lift those restrictions on Monday. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who voted to approve the stay on the order, wrote that the Immigration and Nationality Act allows immigration officers to “interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States”. While “ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” it can be used as a “relevant” factor, he wrote.Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.We start with news that House Democrats on Monday released an image of a sexually suggestive letter and drawing that appears to bear the signature of Donald Trump, the very same note the president had denied writing after reports of its existence were published earlier this year in the Wall Street Journal.The letter, described as “sickening” by one representative, was turned over by lawyers for disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s estate in response to a subpoena from the House oversight committee, and was included in a set of notes sent to the convicted sex offender for his 50th birthday.The image showed a letter that in effect comported with a description in the Journal’s report from July. Inside the sketch of a woman’s torso, the note depicts an imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein, with what appeared to be Trump’s signature below.“The oversight committee has secured the infamous ‘Birthday Book’ that contains a note from President Trump that he has said does not exist,” Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the panel, said in a statement. “It’s time for the president to tell us the truth about what he knew and release all the Epstein files.”The White House did not immediately comment on the letter, but officials sought to discredit the note. Deputy chief of staff for communications, Taylor Budowich, suggested in an X post carrying a different version of Trump’s signature that the letter or the signature had been falsified.“Time for news corp to open that check book, it’s not his signature. DEFAMATION!” Budowich wrote, referencing the defamation suit that Trump filed against News Corp, the parent company of the Journal, over its original story.Maryland representative Jamie Raskin called the letter “sickening” and called for the full Epstein files to be released. Posting on X, he said:
      House Democrats fought to bring this sickening letter into the light while Trump and MAGA mouthpieces assured us it did not exist. Trump even sued the Wall Street Journal for reporting on it!
      We can’t trust a word MAGA says. Release the full Epstein file NOW!
      Read the full story here:In other developments:

      US immigration officers are ramping up immigration sweeps in Los Angeles again after the supreme court reversed a temporary restraining order that banned the Trump administration from stopping people solely based on their race, language or job. In a post on Twitter/X, Greg Bovino, the head of US border patrol in Los Angeles, called the temporary restraining order “very poorly” written and “the worst” he’s ever seen.

      Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK will see a big policing operation led by drones in the airspace over Windsor, police have said. King Charles is to host the US president and his wife, Melania Trump, at Windsor Castle from 17 to 19 September, where they will be entertained with a ceremonial welcome and state banquet.

      Donald Trump launched a vitriolic attack against Tom Hanks for supposedly being “destructive” and “woke” after one of America’s most beloved actors was snubbed without much explanation by West Point last week. On his social media site on Monday, the US president applauded the alumni association of the US Military Academy (or West Point) for abruptly calling off a ceremony honoring Hanks, twice an Academy award winner who has played numerous military characters and also has a long history of advocating for veterans.

      Donald Trump now cannot claim presidential immunity to get off the hook from paying $83.3m in damages to the writer E Jean Carroll, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday, upholding a jury’s 2024 award against the president for defamation. Trump’s lawyers had pointed to the supreme court’s ruling last year saying the president has immunity for official acts to argue that the damages should be overturned.

      The US supreme court allowed Donald Trump on Monday to keep a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission away from her post for now, temporarily pausing a judicial order that required the reinstatement of the commissioner who the Republican president has sought to oust.

      Intent on vindication after spending four months in prison last year, Donald Trump’s White House trade adviser Peter Navarro asked a federal appeals court on Sunday night to force the justice department to explain why it would not defend his 2022 conviction for defying a January 6 committee subpoena. More