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      ‘The devil is not gonna win’: how Charlie Kirk became a Christian nationalist martyr

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      Christian nationalists in the US are positioning Charlie Kirk as a martyr for their movement, one that has grown in popularity and whose rise was intertwined with Kirk’s own political ascent.After Kirk’s killing, his widow, Erika Kirk, wrote on social media that the “world is evil”, but God “so good.” The “sound of this widow weeping [echoes] throughout this world like a battle cry,” she said. “They have no idea what they just ignited within this wife.”While Erika Kirk’s private sorrow is no doubt very real, her public remarks are telling, said Jeff Sharlet, the author of several books on Christian nationalism and the far right. “That’s holy war, that’s accelerationism, and it’s incredibly powerful,” he said, particularly in the emotional context of a grieving widow.Sharlet noted that although Kirk was best known for his non-religious political organizing, conservative eulogizing has overwhelmingly emphasized that he was a man of faith. Some people have gone further, and characterized Kirk’s death as martyrdom for conservative Christian values.“We know that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church,” Sean Feucht, a pastor who worked with Kirk and is known for his Christian nationalist views, said in an emotional video on social media. “The devil is not gonna win. The forces want us to be silent; they want us to shut up … We need to be more bold.”Matt Tuggle, a megachurch pastor, posted a video of Kirk’s death with the caption: “If your pastor isn’t telling you the left believes a evil demonic belief system you are in the wrong church!”The rise of Trump-era Christian nationalismKirk’s meteoric career as a pundit and far-right activist was in some ways a microcosm of the rise of Trump-era Christian nationalism. Kirk started as a publicly secular young Republican in the Alex P Keaton mold but came to embrace a strident Christian culture war, speaking of a “spiritual battle … coming to the West” that would pit “Christendom” and “the American way of life” against leftism and Islam.Similarly, Turning Point USA, which Kirk founded in 2012, started as a pro-free market organization downstream of the late-2000s Tea Party movement against “big government”, but by the time of his death he had leaned into ideas associated with the Christian right. The organization may have done so because it spotted an opportunity.Shortly before Donald Trump won his first election to the presidency, the mainstream Christian right was demoralized and open to more extreme and anti-democratic ideas, noted Matthew D Taylor, a scholar of contemporary Christianity and the author of The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening Our Democracy.View image in fullscreenChristian nationalism is the belief that the US is and should be an explicitly Christian nation. Experts tend to view the ideology as existing on a continuum that ranges from relatively mainstream cultural conservatism to extreme religious supremacy. Defining it is difficult because Christian nationalism is less an organized movement than a tendency or way of thinking, Taylor and others said.For many years, the Christian right was dominated by groups such as the Moral Majority, which emphasized the idea of organizing Christian voters to democratically achieve conservative outcomes, as well as efforts to train and elevate conservative jurists to influence the federal judiciary.Yet two electoral victories by Barack Obama and the US supreme court’s 2015 Obergefell ruling, which legalized same-sex marriage across the country, left Christian conservatives feeling that all their efforts were for nothing. Because of changing demographics and the ongoing secularization of society, the number of Americans who identified as Christian was also dropping – meaning that majoritarian democracy was no longer a reliable political tool for the Christian right.“The early summer of 2015 … was a low point for them,” Taylor said. “There was this sense of, ‘What we’re doing is not working. We need someone strong. We need a fighter.’ And it just so happened that Trump kind of appeared on the scene at that moment, and I think that was, in part, the rocket fuel behind his appeal to evangelicals; he said: ‘I will speak for you. I will defend you. I will give you more power.’”Despite occasional misgivings, the Christian right soon enthusiastically aligned with Trump. But when he came into office, Trump did something new: he surrounded himself with Christian advisers from outside the traditional leadership of the Christian right. Led by Trump’s longtime adviser, the pastor Paula White-Cain, his new consiglieres tended to be megachurch preachers who had big followings in their spheres of influence but were viewed as B-list – or C-list, or D-list – figures by the conservative Christian political establishment.White-Cain “was an independent, charismatic televangelist and megachurch pastor and was on her third marriage, a female preacher, and preached the prosperity gospel,” Taylor said – in other words, someone with many markers “that people in the conventional evangelical world would have either labeled heresy or just low-brow”.‘He drew the church into Maga’After this changing of the guard, there were “some pretty wild and extreme theologies” that gained access to the Trump administration and conservative centers of power, Taylor said, including a far-right movement, popular in some charismatic and Pentecostal circles, that is sometimes called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). The NAR advocates for modern-day apostles and prophets to lead conservative Christians in turning the US into a dominion of Christ on Earth.The NAR leaders who “attached themselves to Trump and the Maga movement very early on,” Taylor said, “had a vision of social change, of societal conquest, that was far more aggressive than some of the old frameworks of the religious right.” That vision was exciting and politically potent to people including Kirk, who adopted theories and language associated with the NAR.The NAR has a distinctly minoritarian and anti-democratic valence. Rather than a Christian public lobbying to make government and society reflect its values, NAR ideas argue for Christians to take positions of power and push their values from the top down. A key NAR concept is something called the “seven mountains mandate” – the idea that “spiritual war” will not succeed until Christians have scaled and conquered seven summits of influence in public life, commonly identified as religion, the government, the media, education, culture, entertainment, and business.“The seven mountains, as an ideology, is deeply ambivalent about democracy,” Taylor said. “If democracy works, and gets you to positions of power, great, but if not, well, God’s will is still for Christians to take over the seven mountains, and they need to do it by whatever means they can.”The concept of the seven mountains has existed since the 1970s but was popularized in the 2000s, according to Matthew Boedy, a professor of rhetoric at the University of North Georgia and the author of the forthcoming book The Seven Mountains Mandate: Exposing the Dangerous Plan to Christianize America and Destroy Democracy.Kirk had been an evangelical Christian since childhood but earlier in his career expressed reluctance at politicizing his religious views. That changed during the peak of the early pandemic, when Kirk made the acquaintance of several charismatic megachurch pastors protesting church lockdowns. He began to traffic in ideas influenced by the NAR, including the seven-mountain mandate. Turning Point USA also began to forge partnerships with churches.View image in fullscreenKirk’s own evolution was striking: he went from saying, in 2018, that it was important that Christians respect the separation of church and state to denying that any such separation existed in the US constitution.Kirk never used the exact phrase “seven-mountain mandate”, Boedy said, but at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2020 Kirk praised Trump by saying: “Finally, we have a president who understands the seven mountains of cultural influence,” which was one of the most prominent mentions of the concept in the conservative mainstream. Kirk also attended conferences organized around the theme of the seven-mountain mandate.“‘Seven mountains’ is a kind of weird, wonky theology,” Sharlet said; Kirk “normalizes it and mainstreams it and smooths it out”.Kirk understood “the political and religious baggage that comes with the idea of Christian dominionism, of theocracy,” Boedy believes, and was trying to gently popularize Christian nationalist ideas while avoiding their more negative connotations.The “Appeal to Heaven” flags seen at the January 6 riot and elsewhere are often an NAR symbol. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, has ties to NAR circles and flies an Appeal to Heaven flag at his congressional office. Ché Ahn, the Republican candidate for governor of California and a charismatic preacher, is an adherent of NAR and “seven-mountain” ideas.Kirk was an activist more interested in uniting conservative Christians than representing any one faction or denomination. Yet the NAR might be understood as one of three main currents of hardline contemporary Christian nationalism in the US, Taylor said. The other two streams are radical traditionalist Catholics and a certain aggressively “masculine” reformed Protestantism embodied in Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defense.In contrast to the Catholic and reformed Protestant camps, which tend to be very white and male in their leadership and intellectually influential but not widely popular, the NAR has roots in a rapidly growing international charismatic movement that is multi-ethnic, open to women in leadership, and viscerally exciting to rank-and-file churchgoers.Yet the symbolism and rhetoric of Christian nationalism are also attractive to broad swathes of conservative Americans, including those who are not actively religious, Sharlet noted. Although the Christian nationalism of popular imagination is a strict, Handmaid’s Tale-style piety, he said he often encounters Maga conservatives who are intensely dedicated to Christian nationalist ideas despite the fact that they do not attend church.“It wasn’t so much that [Kirk] joined the church as he drew the church into Maga,” Sharlet feels. “And I think he made a kind of influencer-lifestyle Christian nationalism that was appealing, that you could adopt [as a] kind of performance without having to change your life too much.”“No civilization has ever collapsed because it prays too much,” Kirk declared not long before he died. But he also gestured at a broader and more potent theme: that “a civilization that abandons God will deteriorate and ultimately collapse from the inside out.” More

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      US attorney tasked with inquiring into Trump critics resigns after president says ‘I want him out’

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      The federal prosecutor for the eastern district of Virginia resigned Friday under intense pressure from Donald Trump, after his office determined there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, a political rival of the president, with a crime.Erik Siebert told colleagues he was resigning in a letter sent Friday, NBC News reported. Meanwhile, in an early Saturday post on his Truth Social platform, Trump maintained that Siebert didn’t quit – but rather: “I fired him!”Hours earlier, Trump bluntly told reporters in the Oval Office: “I want him out.” The president claimed he soured on Siebert because Virginia’s two Democratic senators had endorsed his nomination, but also claimed that James “is very guilty of something”. ABC News reported earlier on Friday that Trump decided to fire Siebert after he failed to obtain an indictment against James.In 2024, James filed a civil lawsuit against Trump and his company that resulted in a significant financial penalty. That penalty was thrown out in August by an appeals court that upheld a judge’s finding that Trump had engaged in fraud by exaggerating his wealth for decades.After a five-month investigation, officials did not find enough clear evidence to charge James with a crime, ABC News reported earlier this week. Trump nominated Siebert, who worked since 2010 as an assistant US attorney in that office, for the position in May.The investigation centered on the allegation that James falsely said she was going to use a home she purchased in Virginia as her primary residence. While one document indicated James intended to use the home as her primary residence, others in the transaction show James clearly indicating she intended to use it as a second home.Ed Martin, a former January 6 defendant lawyer who is leading the justice department effort to target Trump’s political rivals, pressured prosecutors to seek an indictment, according to ABC News. Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and a staunch Trump ally, who criminally referred James, had urged Trump to fire Siebert, according to ABC.Pulte also referred California senator Adam Schiff, another political rival of Trump, and the Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook for mortgage fraud. The allegations in both of those cases appear similarly thin.The justice department has long held a level of independence from the White House, an arms length seen as necessary to give Americans confidence its prosecutors and other attorneys are making enforcement decisions based on facts and not politics. Trump has upended that norm, firing career attorneys and FBI agents who worked on January 6 cases.Those fired include Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James Comey and a career prosecutor who worked on some of the highest-profile cases in the southern district of New York. Maurene Comey, who was not given a reason for her firing, sued the Trump administration this week. More

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      Media giants accused of ‘cowering to threats’ as Trump tries to stamp out criticism

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      Over the past two decades Jimmy Kimmel has interviewed thousands of people – including his ultimate boss – on his late-night talkshow.“I’ve probably, with the possible exception of Roseanne, caused you more headaches than anyone in the last 15 years,” Kimmel grinned at his guest one night in late 2019. “Absolutely,” replied Disney CEO Bob Iger.When ABC, broadcaster of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, decided to suspend the program “indefinitely” this week, it dispatched an anonymous spokesperson to announce the news. Iger, veteran leader of Disney, ABC’s parent company, was nowhere to be seen – but was widely reported to have been intimately involved in the decision.Iger is one of a small handful of powerful executives pulling the strings behind the most prominent media organizations in the US. David Ellison, the new CEO of Paramount Skydance, and son of the billionaire tech mogul Larry Ellison, is in charge of CBS, and reportedly pursuing a deal to buy the owner of CNN. Brian Roberts, the Comcast chair, is the most senior executive overseeing NBC and its cable news network, MSNBC.View image in fullscreenIn recent months, major broadcasters have faced criticism for their responses to threats and pressure from the Trump administration. CBS paid a $16m defamation settlement to Donald Trump and scheduled the cancellation of the The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. ABC paid a $15m settlement to the US president and suspended Kimmel.And Trump is publicly pushing NBC to cancel its two late night stars, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, too.The owners of the largest US TV networks, and the ultimate employers of their stars, are even bigger companies who conduct business transactions that most viewers may not pay a lot of attention to – mergers, acquisitions, licensing deals – but are firmly in the sights of the White House.On Wednesday, FCC chair Brendan Carr – dubbed Trump’s “censor-in-chief” – dangled the power of the federal government over ABC, and Disney, saying that the regulator has “remedies we can look at” to address comments Kimmel made about conservatives in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s killing.“These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,” Carr said of the affiliates that carry ABC across the US. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”Soon after, ABC announced it would indefinitely suspend Kimmel’s show. “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” wrote Trump.But Carr is not done. “I don’t think this is the last shoe to drop,” he said of Kimmel’s suspension, in an interview on the conservative Fox News on Thursday.To Robert Thompson, a media scholar at Syracuse University who specializes in TV history, battles between government regulators and the companies that broadcast America’s favorite shows have long been a part of broadcast history. But the way TV networks are now part of far larger businesses, and complex webs of interest and influence, have changed the stakes of the fight.“Entertainment and news are controlled by these large companies that are very dependent on new acquisitions and mergers that require approval by federal government agencies,” Thompson said. “That’s why there’s a vulnerability for this kind of thing to happen.”The Telecommunications Act of 1996, signed under Bill Clinton, loosened restrictions on how many TV and radio stations a company could own nationally.Now, the dominant US TV networks – and their news and entertainment arms – are controlled by a small, but powerful, collection of entertainment giants. CBS is owned by Paramount Skydance, which includes Paramount Pictures, cable channels like MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, and other TV channels abroad, including Channel 5 in the UK. ABC is owned by Disney, which also owns Marvel Studios, Hulu and ESPN. NBC is owned by Comcast, which is also a cable TV company and an internet service producer, while also being the company behind the European broadcaster Sky and DreamWorks movies like Shrek.The timing of recent mergers have alarmed first amendment advocates, who are starting to see a pattern of companies bowing to the Trump administration in order to get approval for their deals.CBS owner Paramount was criticized for settling with Trump and cancelling Colbert’s show weeks before the FCC greenlit an $8bn merger with Skydance, a Hollywood studio.The merger installed David Ellison, founder of Skydance, at the top of Paramount Skydance, and CBS.CBS News has since appointed a Trump ally as its ombudsman and Bari Weiss, founder of the Free Press, an “anti-woke” startup, is said to be in line for a role shaping its coverage.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile, Nexstar Media, a major owner of local television stations, including over 30 ABC-affiliated stations, has been looking for FCC approval for a $6.2bn merger with Tegna, another broadcast media company. After Carr’s podcast interview, Nexstar announced it would preempt Kimmel’s show on their ABC-affiliated stations, meaning the show wouldn’t access millions of TV viewers in specific markets. (Nexstar executives “had no communication with the FCC or any government agency” before making the call, the firm has stressed.)Christopher Anders, a senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, a leading defender of rights and freedoms enshrined in the US constitution, said Carr was using “the regulatory power the government has over media companies” through his comments.“That is exactly what the first amendment is designed to stop: the government using its power to stifle speech,” Anders said. “And if there’s any speech that’s at the very heart of the first amendment, it would be the ability to criticize those in power, particularly the ability to criticize the president.”Media giants have been “cowering to threats”, he added, ignoring the responsibility they have of defending free speech.Iger, who previously considered running for president, has tried to steer clear of the culture wars that embroiled his predecessor, Bob Chapek. Now he faces intense scrutiny for overseeing a decision – suspending Kimmel – which critics say raises serious free speech concerns.Michael Eisner, Disney’s former CEO, and Iger’s former boss at the firm, wrote on X on Friday: “The ‘suspending indefinitely’ of Jimmy Kimmel immediately after the Chairman of the FCC’s aggressive yet hollow threatening of the Disney Company is yet another example of out-of-control intimidation. Maybe the Constitution should have said, ‘Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, except in one’s political or financial self-interest.’”It is still unclear when – or if – Kimmel will come back on air. The companies in charge of US television, and the government agencies who regulate their dealings, loom large.“Anyone that has the privilege of owning one of the major media networks, or owning the affiliate stations that carry those networks, ought to also have recognized the responsibility to protect the right of free speech,” said Anders. “Not just give up that right because an administration official is at least implicitly threatening to block their ability to carry out business.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: president hikes H-1B visa cost to $100,000 a year as aide tells firms to ‘train Americans’

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      Donald Trump has signed an order to raise fees for the H-1B visa to $100,000 in what could be a major blow to the US tech industry, which contributed millions to his presidential campaign.The tech industry relies, more than any other sector of the US economy, on H-1B visa holders. Roughly two-thirds of jobs secured through the H-1B program are computer-related, government figures show, but employers also use the visa to bring in engineers, educators and healthcare workers.Critics of the program, including many US technology workers, argue that it allows firms to suppress wages and sideline Americans who could do the jobs. Supporters, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, say it brings in highly skilled workers essential to filling talent gaps and keeping firms competitive. Musk, himself a naturalized US citizen born in South Africa, once held an H-1B visa.Trump signs order imposing $100,000 annual fee on key visa groupThe US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, told a press briefing that “all the big companies” had been briefed on the new fee. “A hundred-thousand dollars a year for H-1B visas, and all of the big companies are on board. We’ve spoken to them,” Lutnick said at an Oval Office event with the president.“If you’re going to train somebody, you’re going to train one of the recent graduates from one of the great universities across our land. Train Americans. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs.”Read the full storyTrump says Xi Jinping has agreed to approve TikTok deal, but details unclearDonald Trump said on Friday that he and Xi Jinping had agreed to approve a deal over TikTok.“He approved the TikTok deal,” Trump said about Xi, suggesting the leaders signed off on a preliminary agreement. But Trump offered no details about the agreement or when it would be signed.The American and Chinese leaders had connected over a phone call earlier in the day, the first direct contact between the two leaders since June. China and the US have been at loggerheads over trade negotiations and the future of TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media platform that faces a ban in the US.Read the full storyJudge strikes down Trump’s $15bn lawsuit against the New York TimesA federal judge tossed Donald Trump’s $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, book publisher Penguin and two Times reporters, and said the suit was filled with “vituperation and invective” and violated civil procedure in federal cases for failing to get to the point.US district court judge Steven Merryday in Florida will allow the president to refile and amend the action within 28 days, however.Read the full storyDemocrats reject spending bill over healthcare cuts as shutdown loomsThe US federal government drew closer to a shutdown on Friday, after Democrats made good on their vow not to support a Republican-backed measure that would extend funding for another two months because it did not include provisions to protect healthcare programs.Read the full storyUS attorney tasked with inquiring into Trump critics resignsThe federal prosecutor for the eastern district of Virginia resigned Friday under intense pressure from Donald Trump, after his office determined there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, a political rival of the president, with a crime.Read the full storyDemocrats divided over US House resolution to honor Charlie Kirk The killing of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk 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.Read the full storyTed Cruz compares threats to ABC by FCC chair to those of mob bossSenator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, compared Brendan Carr’s threats to revoke the broadcast licenses of ABC stations over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s commentary to “mafioso” tactics similar to those in Goodfellas, the 1990 mobster movie.Read the full storyTrump announces new deadly strike on suspected drug boat in CaribbeanDonald Trump announced that the US military has carried out another deadly strike on a vessel in the the Caribbean, killing three males on board the vessel whom Trump alleged were trafficking illicit narcotics.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      US law enforcement officials have claimed that the use of certain emojis could signal affiliation with Tren de Aragua(TdA), a Venezuelan gang, according to internal records reviewed by the Guardian.

      The Trump administration on Friday asked the US supreme court to halt a judge’s order allowing transgender and non-binary people to choose the sex marker on their passports.

      A top donor to Trump and other Maga Republicans has privately mocked the US president’s longtime position that he has an upper hand in trade negotiations with China, in a sign that even some loyal supporters have been uneasy with the White House strategy.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 18 September 2025. More

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      Ted Cruz compares threats to ABC by FCC chair to those of mob boss

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      Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, compared Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr’s threats to revoke the broadcast licenses of ABC stations over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s commentary to “mafioso” tactics similar to those in Goodfellas, the 1990 mobster movie.“Look, Jimmy Kimmel has been canned. He has been suspended indefinitely. I think that it a fantastic thing,” Cruz said at the start of the latest episode of his podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz. There were, however “first amendment implications” of the FCC’s role, the senator, a Harvard Law School graduate who clerked for US supreme court chief justice William Rehnquist, added.Cruz, a formerly fierce political rival of Donald Trump turned strong supporter, called Carr’s comments “unbelievably dangerous” and warned that government attempts to police speech could harm conservatives if Democrats return to power.“He threatens explicitly: ‘We’re going to cancel ABC’s license. We’re going to take him off the air so ABC cannot broadcast any more’ … He says: ‘We can do this the easy way, but we can do this the hard way.’ And I got to say, that’s right out of Goodfellas. That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it,’” Cruz said.“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said. I am thrilled that he was fired,” Cruz also said. “But let me tell you: if the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said. We’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like,’ that will end up bad for conservatives.”During an Oval Office event on Friday, when Trump was asked about Cruz’s comments on Carr, the president raised the issue of licenses and suggested stations might be “illegally” using the airwaves to broadcast critical coverage of him in news reports.“When you have networks that give somebody 97% bad publicity,” the president said, “I think that’s dishonesty.”“I think Brendan Carr is a patriot. I think Brendan Carr is a courageous person. I think Brendan Carr doesn’t like to see the airwaves be used illegally and incorrectly,” Trump said. “So I disagree with Ted Cruz on that.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe president’s claim that news coverage on ABC, NBC and CBS was almost entirely negative appears to have been based on a subjective analysis of “the networks’ spin” by NewsBusters, a conservative media watchdog group founded by Trump’s nominee to serve as US ambassador to South Africa, the activist L Brent Bozell III. More

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      Senate fails to pass short-term funding bill, with both parties blaming the other for looming government shutdown – US politics live

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      The Republican-controlled Senate has failed to pass a short-term funding bill that would prevent a government shutdown at the end of the month.Earlier, continuing resolution (CR) cleared the House, but ultimately stalled in the upper chamber – unable to reach the 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster.Democrats remain resolute that they will continue to block any bill if it doesn’t include significant amendments to health care provisions. Today, senator John Fetterman, of Pennsylvania, was the lone Democrat to vote for the GOP-drawn CR. While Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul of Kentucky, joined their colleagues across the aisle and voted no.The Trump administration officially announced plans to raise the fee companies pay to sponsor H‑1B workers to $100,000, claiming the move will ensure only highly skilled, irreplaceable workers are brought to the US while protecting American jobs.“I think it’s going to be a fantastic thing, and we’re going to take that money and we’re going to reduce taxes, we’re going to reduce debt,” Trump said.Lutnick criticized the H‑1B visa program, saying it has been “abused” to bring in foreign workers who compete with American employees.“All of the big companies are on board,” Lutnick said.President Donald Trump, along with commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, unveiled a new immigration program called the “Gold Card,” which would create an expedited visa pathway for foreigners who pay $1 million to the US Treasury.If visa holders are sponsored by a corporation, they must pay $2 million.“Essentially, we’re having people come in, people that, in many cases, I guess, are very successful or whatever,” Trump said. “They’re going to spend a lot of money to come in. They’re going to pay, as opposed to walking over the borders.”After a reporter asked President Donald Trump about his thoughts on cancel culture amid surging debates about free speech, the president claimed that networks gave him overwhelmingly negative coverage, citing – without evidence – that more than 90% of stories about him were “bad.”“I think that’s really illegal,” he said.Trump told reporters that the level of negative coverage made his election victory “a miracle” and said that the networks lack credibility with the public.He also repeated a false claim that the Federal Communications Commission licenses US TV networks. While the FCC requires the owners of local television stations, which are often affiliated with national networks that produce programming, to obtain licenses, the FCC states on its website: “We do not license TV or radio networks (such as CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox) or other organizations that stations have relationships with, such as PBS or NPR.”President Donald Trump scolded House Democrats who voted against a resolution honoring slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.In a 310-58 vote, the resolution passed nine days after a gunman assassinated Kirk while he was speaking to a crowd at Utah Valley University. Several Democrats who opposed the resolution said they condemned Kirk’s murder, as well as political violence, but could not support a figure who used his speech. Many critics have pointed out that Kirk had disparaged Martin Luther King Jr. and called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “huge mistake.”“Just today, the House Democrats voted against condemning the political assassination of Charlie Turk,” the president said during his remarks at the White House today. “Who could vote against that?”President Donald Trump is expected to announce a new $100,000 fee for H-1B visa applications, Bloomberg reports, in what marks the administration’s latest move to deter legal immigration.The presidential proclamation is slated to be signed today.Trump aides have previously argued that the H-1B program, designed to bring skilled foreign workers to the US, suppresses wages for Americans and discourages US-born workers from pursuing STEM fields.The additional fee would add to the already costly process to obtain an H-1B visa, which could go from about $1,700 to $4,500. About 85,000 H-1B visas are granted every year. More than half a million people are authorized to work in the US under H-1B visas. While these are temporary, and typically granted for three years, holders can try to extend them, or apply for green cards.Republican senator Ted Cruz compared Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr’s threats to revoke ABC’s broadcast license to “mafioso” tactics similar to those in Goodfellas, the 1990 mobster movie.On his podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican called Carr’s comments “unbelievably dangerous” and warned that government attempts to police speech could ultimately harm conservatives if Democrats return to power.“He threatens explicitly: ‘We’re going to cancel ABC’s license. We’re going to take him off the air so ABC cannot broadcast anymore’… He says: ‘We can do this the easy way, but we can do this the hard way.’ And I got to say, that’s right out of GoodFellas. That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it,’” Cruz said.“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said. I am thrilled that he was fired,” Cruz said. “But let me tell you: If the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said. We’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like,’ that will end up bad for conservatives.”The acting inspector general of the department of education, Heidi Semann, said that her office would be launching a probe into the department’s handling of sensitive data.It comes after several Democratic lawmakers, led by senator Elizabeth Warren, wrote to the department’s watchdog – asking her to review the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) “infiltration” of the education department.“Because of the Department’s refusal to provide full and complete information, the full extent of DOGE’s role and influence at ED remains unknown,” the letter states.In response, Semann – whose office serves as an independent entity tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse within the agency – said the following: “Given the sensitive nature of the data it holds, it is crucial that the [education] Department ensures appropriate access to its data systems and maintains effective access controls for system security and privacy protection purposes.”

      On Capitol Hill today, a flurry of action and inaction, after the House passed a stopgap funding bill – written by Republicans to stave off a government shutdown – only for Democrats to reject it in the Senate. In kind, GOP lawmakers blocked a Democratic version of the bill. Funding expires at the end of September, and with congressional lawmakers on recess next week the threat of a shutdown is perilously close.

      In response, legislators from both sides of the aisle have spent the day shirking blame and claiming the other party would be responsible for a shutdown on 1 October. Senate majority leader John Thune said that “Democrats are yielding to the desires of their rabidly leftist base and are attempting to hold government funding hostage to a long list of partisan demands.” While his counterpart, Chuck Schumer said that Republicans “want” the shutdown to happen. “They’re in the majority. They don’t negotiate, they cause the shutdown – plain and simple,” he said.

      Also on the Hill today, a resolution honoring murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support, but only after causing considerable consternation among Democrats. All Republicans in attendance voted in favor of the resolution, which describes Kirk as “a courageous American patriot, whose life was tragically and unjustly cut short in an act of political violence”. Ninety five Democrats supported the resolution, while 58 opposed it. Several Democrats who opposed the resolution said they condemned Kirk’s murder, and political violence at large, but could not support a figure who used his speech.

      Meanwhile, a federal judge dismissed Donald Trump’s $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times over its content. US district judge Steven Merryday said Trump violated a federal procedural rule requiring a short and plain statement of why he deserves relief. He gave Trump 28 days to file an amended complaint, and reminded the administration it was “not a protected platform to rage against an adversary”.

      The Trump’s administration also asked the supreme court on Friday to intervene in a bid to refuse to issue passports to transgender and non-binary Americans that reflect their gender identities. It’s one of several disputes in regard to an executive order Trump signed after returning to office in January that directs the government to recognize only two biologically distinct sexes: male and female. A lower court judge had blocked the policy earlier this year, and an appeals court let the judge’s ruling stay in place.

      And on foreign policy, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping “made progress on many very important issues” during their call this morning, according to a Truth Social post from the president. Trump said that the pair discussed “trade, fentanyl, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the TikTok deal”. The president also said he and Xi would have a face-to-face meeting at the APEC summit in South Korea next month, he would travel to China “in the early part of next year”, and Xi would also come to the US at a later date.
      A top donor to Donald Trump and other Maga Republicans has privately mocked the US president’s longtime position that he has an upper hand in trade negotiations with China, in a sign that even some loyal supporters have been uneasy with the White House strategy.Liz Uihlein, the billionaire businesswoman who co-founded office supply company Uline with her husband, Richard, sent an email to her staff earlier this year that contained a cartoon in which Trump can be seen playing cards with Chinese president Xi Jinping. In the cartoon, Trump claims: “I hold the cards”, to which Xi responds: “The cards are made in China.”The email, seen by the Guardian, appears to have been sent in April by an administrative assistant on Liz Uihlein’s behalf. Uihlein prefaced the cartoon with a short remark: “All – The usual. Liz”.The barb is significant because it was sent by an important political ally to Trump and his movement. Liz and Richard Uihlein were the fourth largest political donors in the presidential election cycle, having given $143m to Republicans, according to Opensecrets, which tracks political giving.A Uline spokesperson said Liz Uihlein had no comment. A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.Also on Capitol Hill today, Alex Acosta, the former US attorney for southern Florida who also served as the labor secretary during the first Trump administration, testified before lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee today in a closed-door deposition.Acosta negotiated the deal in 2008 that saw Jeffrey Epstein plead guilty and receive no federal charges for soliciting minors. At the time he served a 13-month prison sentence in a county jail and received various work privileges.Then, in 2019, Epstein was eventually charged with federal sex trafficking crimes, which shone the spotlight back on Acosta – now the labor secretary under Trump – who resigned from his cabinet position.The 2008 plea deal has come up again throughout the Oversight committee’s investigation into the handling of the Epstein case. Democrats on the committee have called it a “sweetheart deal”, and after today’s deposition several of those lawmakers characterised Acosta was “evasive” and “non-credible”.“It’s very difficult to get straightforward answers out of him regarding what happened during this time, what he knew of the relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein,” said congresswoman Yassamin Ansari, a Democrat who sits on the Oversight committee.Earlier today, Republican congressman James Comer said that the committee, which he chairs, has begun receiving documents from the treasury department relating to the Epstein case.“When we met with the victims, and we said, ‘what can we do to expedite this investigation to be able to provide justice for you all?’, they said, ‘follow the money, follow the money’,” Comer told reporters today.A reminder, government funding lapses on 30 September. The Senate isn’t back from recess until 29 September, meaning that any vote to avoid a shutdown would need to happen less than 48 hours before the deadline.In response, congressional Democrats just wrapped a press conference where they said that any blame for a government shutdown lays squarely at the feet of their Republican colleagues.“The bare minimum here is for Republican leadership to simply sit down with Democratic leadership to hammer out a path forward. Now they’re leaving town instead of sitting down with Democrats,” said Democratic senator Patty Murray, who serves as the vice-chair of the Senate appropriations committee.Minority leader Chuck Schumer said today that plans by House lawmakers to not return from recess until 1 October – effectively stymieing Democrat’s hopes of negotiations before government funding expires at the end of this month – was proof that Republicans “want” the shutdown to happen.“They’re in the majority. They don’t negotiate, they cause the shutdown – plain and simple,” Schumer added.Per my last post, on the Senate floor today, majority leader John Thune said he is unlikely to call back lawmakers next week (when Congress is on recess). Instead, he shirked any blame for government funding expiring, and said the“ball is in the Democrats’ court” now.“I can’t stop Democrats from opposing our nonpartisan continuing resolution. If they want to shut down the government, they have the power to do so,” the South Dakota Republican said. “If they think they’re going to gain political points from shutting down the government over a clean, non partisan CR, something they voted for 13 times under the Biden administration, I would strongly urge them to think again.” More

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      Democrats reject spending bill over healthcare cuts as shutdown looms

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      The US federal government drew closer to a shutdown on Friday, after Democrats made good on their vow not to support a Republican-backed measure that would extend funding for another two months because it did not include provisions to protect healthcare programs.The GOP-controlled House of Representatives had in the morning approved a bill to extend government funding through 21 November on a near party-line vote, but Democrats swiftly blocked it in the Senate, where most legislation must receive at least some bipartisan support. Republicans, in turn, rejected a Democratic proposal to extend funding through October while preventing cuts to healthcare programs, setting up a standoff that could see federal agencies shutter and workers sent home just nine months into Donald Trump’s term.“Senators will have to choose: to stand with Donald Trump and keep the same lousy status quo and cause the Trump healthcare shutdown, or stand with the American people, protect their healthcare, and keep the government functioning,” the top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer, said before the votes.Democrats have seized on the annual government funding negotiations to use as leverage against Trump’s policies and particularly cuts to Medicaid, the healthcare program for poor and disabled Americans, which Republicans approved in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act earlier this year. They are also demanding an extension of subsidies for Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance plans that are set to expire at the end of 2025, after which healthcare costs for millions of Americans are expected to increase.“We don’t work for Donald Trump, we don’t work for JD Vance, we don’t work for Elon Musk, we work for the American people,” Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat, said before the chamber voted. “And that is why we are a hard no on the partisan Republican spending bill because it continues to gut the healthcare of everyday Americans.”Republicans have backed a “clean” continuing resolution that extends funding without making significant changes to policies. Both parties’ proposals include millions of dollars in new security spending for judges, lawmakers and executive branch officials in response to the conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing.The stopgap measures are intended to give congressional appropriators more time to pass the 12 bills that authorize federal spending for the fiscal year.John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, called the Democratic proposal “fundamentally unserious” in a speech following the House vote.“Instead of working with Republicans to fund the government through a clean, nonpartisan continuing resolution, so that we can get back to bipartisan negotiations on appropriations, Democrats are yielding to the desires of their rabidly leftist base and are attempting to hold government funding hostage to a long list of partisan demands,” he said.Under pressure from their base to oppose Trump and still smarting from a disappointing performance in last year’s elections, the spending impasse will pose a major test of Democratic unity across Congress.Maine’s Jared Golden was the only Democrat to vote for the Republican spending bill in the House, while Washington’s Marie Gluesenkamp Perez missed the vote but said she supported it. In the Senate, only Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman voted for the Republican spending bill. All represent states or districts won by Trump last year.Of greater concern to Democrats is whether Schumer, the Senate minority leader, will be able to resist pressure not to allow a shutdown. A similar spending deadlock took place earlier in the year but ended on a sour note for Democrats after Schumer encouraged his colleagues to vote for a Republican bill to keep the government funded, arguing a shutdown would be “devastating”.House Democrats opposed that bill and felt burned by Schumer’s compromise, but are once again counting on the Senate minority leader not to back down.“I think Senator Schumer knows he’s got to hold the line there. We’ll see what this negotiation brings, but this is about fighting for healthcare. That’s an easy one for them to give us,” said the California congressman Ami Bera after the vote.Democrats writ large believe they have leverage they need against a president who opinion polls show is growing unpopular with many voters, even though government shutdowns can bring their own risks for the party that instigates them.“I don’t know how you could be in control of the House, the Senate, the executive, have more votes on the supreme court, and then blame the other party that’s completely not in power. That’ll be a new one,” said the Florida congressman Jared Moskowitz. Asked if he was concerned about Schumer’s resolve to oppose the Republican bill, he replied: “I’m Jewish, I have a lot of anxiety, all the time.”The appropriations process is historically bipartisan, but the progressive Washington congresswoman Pramila Jayapal warned that even if a spending deal is reached, Republicans have damaged their trust with Democrats by actions like cancelling funding Congress had approved for foreign aid and public media.“We need to make sure that once we approve a budget, that they don’t just go back and do a partisan vote to strip money away or close an agency. So, there’s got to be some provision in there about making and keeping a promise, versus getting us to vote for something, saying that they’re going to do something, and then changing their mind the very next day and passing a partisan rescission package,” she said.There is little time left for Congress to find a compromise. Both chambers are out of session next week for the Rosh Hashanah holiday, and on Friday afternoon, the House’s Republican leaders cancelled two days in session that had been scheduled for the end of September, denying the Democrats the opportunity for another vote on the issue before funding lapses. More

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      Trump has dragged the US to the abyss and Nigel Farage would do the same to Britain. Here’s how to stop him

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      The march towards the darkness is becoming a sprint. In the US, warnings about the autocratic ambitions of Donald Trump that were once dismissed as hyperbole and hysteria now seem, if anything, too mild. Faster than most imagined, he has moved to weaken institutional checks on his power – whether the courts, the universities, the civil service or the press – and now has set to work gagging his critics, even, it seems, to outlaw large swathes of the opposition.This week saw the suspension by a major broadcasting network, Disney-owned ABC, of a late-night talkshow, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, following remarks Kimmel had made about the killing of the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk. Kimmel did not criticise Kirk himself – an act now considered all but blasphemous in the US – but rather Republicans’ reaction to his murder, especially their eagerness to “score political points from it”.That was enough to prompt Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission – the body that grants, or revokes, licences to broadcast – to come on like a wannabe Tony Soprano, all but cracking his knuckles as he said: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” The threat worked: Kimmel is off the air.Of course, this is no one-off. Trump is also trying to cow the US’s biggest newspaper, filing a $15bn lawsuit against the New York Times, accusing it of “spreading false and defamatory content”. The NYT has the resources to resist, but smaller US papers will have got the message. They could hardly be blamed if they now pull their journalistic punches, if only because they do not have the money to pay for a protracted legal battle against a billionaire president.But the Trump administration is not confining its assault to the media. The Kirk killing has handed it an opportunity to crack down on dissent itself. Witness the promise Trump aide Stephen Miller made this week – on the Charlie Kirk podcast – to take on those left-of-centre organisations whose “messaging” is “designed to trigger and incite violence”. It is hardly a stretch to assume that Miller will define that category very broadly, so that it sweeps up most of those who express opposition to Trump. If that seems alarmist, recall that, even before Kirk was killed, Miller was calling the Democratic party a “domestic extremist organisation”.View image in fullscreenIn the UK, we like to think we can watch all this with, if not smug distance, then a measure of relief. It’s true that we are a long way from the precipice to which Trump has taken the US. But last week between 110,000 and 150,000 Britons took to the streets of London, heeding the summons of the rightwing agitator and serial convict who goes by the name of Tommy Robinson.It’s worth stressing that this was not a Reform or Conservative rally that was hijacked by Robinson. This was his event. Britons know who Robinson is and what he represents – and yet up to 150,000 of them marched behind him. They were undeterred by those who had labelled it a far-right protest and, indeed, by the racist rhetoric that came from the platform. Britain has an admirable history of confining the far right to the margins, ensuring that it had not, until now, demonstrated this kind of strength in numbers. So last Saturday should be understood as a watershed.Not least because of one speech in particular. Elon Musk, via video link, told the crowd “violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die.” He added that the Labour government, democratically elected a year ago, needed to be brought down. This was one of the most powerful men in the world issuing a call that may not have broken the law but which seemed to give approval in advance for rightwing political violence in Britain.And yet the British prime minister did not rush to condemn this incendiary intrusion into our politics. Indeed, Downing Street said nothing at all until prompted by reporters’ questions, and MPs’ demands, the following day. We often fault those guilty of overreaction. But, at a moment like this, underreaction is the greater sin.The polls are telling a very stark story. Absent a dramatic shift, a party of nationalist populism is on course to beat both Labour and the Conservatives at the next election, and very probably form the next government. Nigel Farage may be no fan of Tommy Robinson, but he is Trump’s loudest UK cheerleader; he does not condemn the current US gallop towards authoritarianism but rather stands alongside those responsible for it. If we want to prevent Farage doing to Britain what Trump is doing to the US, we need to halt the advance of Reform.The first move in that effort is to puncture Farage’s core claim: that he somehow speaks for the British people, that his views reflect the “commonsense” views of the silent majority. It’s not true. On issue after issue, including those that define him, Farage is an outlier, articulating the positions of a noisy but often small minority.He was the chief advocate of Brexit, a decision so calamitous that only 31% now say it was the right move. Indeed, a healthy majority, 56%, favour its reversal and want to rejoin the EU. Farage is on the wrong side of that number.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe has long banged the drum for leaving the European convention on human rights. If you read the rightwing papers, you would assume that is now a majority view. Wrong. Support for staying in the ECHR is close to 60% and has actually increased as the subject has been debated. Farage is out of step with the British people.But surely on the issue he has made his own, immigration, he is in tune with the public? After all, Labour seems to have built its entire political strategy on that assumption. And yet, the numbers tell a different story. While 81% of Reform voters believe migrants have undermined Britain’s culture, only 31% of Britons in general believe that. Ask about the effect of migrants on the economy and you get a similar picture. It’s Reform that is badly out of touch.You can keep doing this – and Labour must, pointing out that Farage speaks for the fringes not the centre. Britons don’t support handing Afghan refugees back to the Taliban, as Farage advocates. They do not agree that Britain has become North Korea – and they don’t regard as a patriot someone who sits in Washington and tells a committee of American politicians that we have. They don’t reply to the question, “Which world leader do you most admire?”, with the words “Vladimir Putin”, as Farage did. And nor do they think that the Liz Truss measures that sent the UK economy spiralling represented “the best Conservative budget since 1986”, to quote Nigel Farage.Reform’s opponents need to expose every one of these gaps between Farage and the electorate, recasting Farage as a figure of the fringes. But this can’t be a task for Labour or the Liberal Democrats alone. Any party that claims to value democracy, including what remains of the Conservatives, and that sees how swiftly nationalist populism leads to authoritarianism, needs to engage in the same effort and fast. We all do. As Americans are learning to their cost, you cannot delay – otherwise the freedoms you thought would last for ever can vanish, in the blink of an eye.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist. His new nonfiction book, The Traitors Circle: The Rebels Against the Nazis and the Spy Who Betrayed Them (£25), is available from the Guardian Bookshop at £22 More