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    Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist

    Peter Thiel, the billionaire political svengali and tech investor, is worried about the antichrist. It could be the US. It could be Greta Thunberg.Over the past month, Thiel has hosted a series of four lectures on the downtown waterfront of San Francisco philosophizing about who the antichrist could be and warning that Armageddon is coming. Thiel, who describes himself as a “small-o orthodox Christian”, believes the harbinger of the end of the world could already be in our midst and that things such as international agencies, environmentalism and guardrails on technology could quicken its rise. It is a remarkable discursion that reveals the preoccupations of one of the most influential people in Silicon Valley and the US.“A basic definition of the antichrist: some people think of it as a type of very bad person. Sometimes it’s used more generally as a spiritual descriptor of the forces of evil,” Thiel said, kicking off his first lecture. “What I will focus on is the most common and most dramatic interpretation of antichrist: an evil king or tyrant or anti-messiah who appears in the end times.”Thiel was on the forefront of conservative politics long before the rest of Silicon Valley took a rightward turn with Donald Trump’s second term as president. He’s had close ties to Trump for nearly a decade, is credited with catapulting JD Vance into the office of vice-president, and is bankrolling Republicans’ 2026 midterm campaigns. Making his early fortune as a co-founder of PayPal, he has personally contributed to Facebook as its first outside investor, as well as to SpaceX, OpenAI and more through his investment firm, Founders Fund. Palantir, which he co-founded, has won government contracts worth billions to create software for the Pentagon, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and the National Health Service in the UK. Now, with more attention and political pull than ever, the billionaire is looking to spread his message about the antichrist, though he is better known for his savvy politics and investments than his contributions to theology.“I’m a libertarian, or a classical liberal, who deviates in one minor detail, where I’m worried about the antichrist,” Thiel said during his third lecture.The meandering gospel of PeterThiel’s talks, which began on 15 September and ended on Monday, were long and sweeping, mingling biblical passages, recent history and philosophy and sometimes deviating into conspiracy theories. He peppered them with references to video games and TV shows along with musings on JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. He likewise recalled conversations with Elon Musk and Benjamin Netanyahu and spoke at length about how he thinks Bill Gates is “a very, very awful person”.Tickets for the series went for $200, selling out within hours. Attenders were told that the lectures were strictly off the record and that they were forbidden from taking photos, videos or audio recordings. At least one person who took notes and published them had his ticket revoked by a post on X.Guardian reporters did not attend the lectures or agree to the off-the-record stipulation. Recordings were provided by an attender who gave them on the condition of anonymity.When reached for comment, Thiel’s spokesperson, Jeremiah Hall, did not dispute the veracity of the material given to the Guardian. Hall did correct a piece of the Guardian’s transcription and clarified an argument made by Thiel about Jews and the antichrist.The Silicon Valley heavyweight drew on a wide swath of religious thinkers, including the French-American theorist René Girard, whom Thiel knew at Stanford University, and the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, whose work he said helped create the core of his own beliefs. He credited the English Catholic theologian John Henry Newman as the inspiration for his four-part series, saying: “Newman did four, so I’m doing four. I’m happy about it.”The venture capitalist has hosted and attended events and lectured on the topic for decades, going back to the 1990s, according to a report by Wired. In recent months, he has spoken to theologians and podcasters about the antichrist both publicly and in private. His beliefs are diffuse, meandering and often confusing, but one tenet he’s steadfastly maintained over the years is that the unification of the world under one global state is essentially identical to the antichrist. In his talks, he uses the term “antichrist” almost interchangeably with “one-world state”.“One world or not, in a sense is the same as the question antichrist or Armageddon. So in one sense, it’s completely the same question,” he said.His version of history, and its potential end, posits technology as a central driver of societal change and takes a Christianity-focused, Eurocentric view that declines to engage much with other religious movements or parts of the world.On the day of Thiel’s final lecture in San Francisco, as the mostly young and mostly male crowd lined up to get in, a group of about 20 protesters stood out front holding anti-Palantir and anti-Ice signs that said things such as “Predatory tech”, “We do not profit from people who profit from misery” and “Not today Satan”.View image in fullscreenA trio of self-described “satanists” dressed in black costumes with goth makeup walked up and down the line of attenders carrying a goblet of red liquid with a small plastic replica of a bone. “Will you bring our dark lord Peter Thiel this baby’s blood?” they asked. Then they performed what they called a “dark ritual”, dancing slowly in a circle to Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, which ended with them writhing on the city sidewalk, and yelling: “Take us to your personal hell … Thank you for being our dark lord.”What do Thiel’s lectures say?The Guardian is publishing substantial quoted passages alongside contextual annotations so that the public may be informed on what an influential figure in politics and technology was saying behind closed doors.He believes the Armageddon will be ushered in by an antichrist-type figure who cultivates a fear of existential threats such as climate change, AI and nuclear war to amass inordinate power. The idea is this figure will convince people to do everything they can to avoid something like a third world war, including accepting a one-world order charged with protecting everyone from the apocalypse that implements a complete restriction of technological progress. In his mind, this is already happening. Thiel said that international financial bodies, which make it more difficult for people to shelter their wealth in tax havens, are one sign the antichrist may be amassing power and hastening Armageddon, saying: “It’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money.”
    It’s because the antichrist talks about Armageddon nonstop. We’re all scared to death that we’re sleepwalking into Armageddon. And then because we know world war three will be an unjust war, that pushes us. We’re going hard towards peace at any price.
    What I worry about in that sort of situation is you don’t think too hard about the details of the peace and it becomes much more likely that you get an unjust peace. This is, by the way, the slogan of the antichrist: 1 Thessalonians 5:3. It’s peace and safety, sort of the unjust peace.
    Let me conclude on this choice of antichrist or Armageddon. And again, in some ways the stagnation and the existential risks are complementary, not contradictory. The existential risk pushes us towards stagnation and distracts us from it.
    How does Thiel think Armageddon will happen?Thiel rarely gives a definitive answer about who exactly the antichrist might be or how Armageddon might come about – a central point across his lectures is that nothing is written in stone or inevitable – but he does give the contours of what a global conflict that could lead to Armageddon might look like.
    There’s all sorts of different ways, one world or none, antichrist or Armageddon, that I’m tempted to think about this, and here’s one sort of application. In terms of how does one think about the current geopolitical moment. How does one think about the nature of the conflict between the United States and China, the west and China. You don’t really know how it’s going to go. You can ask, are we heading for world war three or cold war two? And if you sort of reflect on the history of the two world wars and the first cold war. But first, if there ever was an unjust war, world war one is an unjust war. If there ever was a just war, world war two was probably a just war, with certain caveats. World war one is really insane. World war two was about as justified as a war can be. I think we can say that if you had an all-out world war three or war between nuclear powers involving nuclear weapons, it would simply be an unjust war. A total catastrophe, possibly literal Armageddon, the end of the world. So world war three will be an unjust war. But then if you have a cold war, you have to distinguish between – can you have a just peace and an unjust peace?
    Somehow, it’s very strange how the first cold war from ‘49 to ‘89 ended. But it ended with roughly what I think of as a just peace, where somehow you didn’t have a nuclear war. And somehow our side, which I think was more the good side, basically won. And you ended up not with a perfect peace, but more or less a just peace. And so if we have world war three, it will be an unjust war. If we have cold war two, maybe it can end in a just peace or an unjust peace. Reflecting on this material and thinking about it, it’s obviously not written in stone and there’s a lot of different ways this stuff can go. But I keep thinking that, if you had to put odds on it, aren’t the odds that we’re trending towards the fourth quadrant this time. The fourth possibility that cold war two will end an unjust peace.
    Thiel devotes a large section of his second lecture to a quote from the Book of Daniel that involves a prophecy about the end times, which he equates to modern advances in technology and globalization.
    Let’s go on to ‘many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be increased.’ It means science progressing, technology improving, globalization, people traveling around the world. Of course in some sense, I think these things … I’m not sure they’re completely inevitable, but there is some direction to it. Where there’s a linear progression of knowledge and something like globalization that happens. But of course, the details matter a lot. Knowledge increasing, science progressing, technology improving can be a very good thing. No disease, death, protect people from natural disasters. Then, of course, we can destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons, bioweapons, etc. And similarly, globalization is … you have trade in goods and services. There’s certain ways to escape from tyrannical governments. And of course there is danger in the one-world state of the antichrist.
    As the antichrist is synonymous with a one-world state for Thiel, he also believes that international bodies including the United Nations and the international criminal court (ICC) hasten the coming of Armageddon. Throughout his lectures, he warns of what he sees as the danger of these bodies and the harms they have already caused. In the following quotes, he’s lamenting the actions of the ICC:
    They’ve started arresting more and more people. Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, was arrested this year. They had arrest warrants out for Netanyahu and Gallant.
    When I met Netanyahu early in 2024, about a year and a half ago, we talked about what he’s doing in Gaza, and the one-liner he had was: ‘I can’t just Dresdenize Gaza – you can’t just firebomb them.’ So it’s like, come on, ‘I’m less of a war criminal than Winston Churchill. Why am I in so much trouble?’
    During a Q&A portion of one of the lectures, an attender asked specifically about Thiel’s thoughts on abolishing the ICC, saying: “If we get rid of the ICC or other organizations that exist to bring, in theory, justice, how can we right crimes? Should we not have prosecuted Nazi criminals?” Thiel responded:
    I think there was certainly a lot of different perspectives on what should be done with the Nuremberg trials. It was sort of the US that pushed for the Nuremberg trials. The Soviet Union just wanted to have show trials. I think Churchill just wanted summary executions of 50,000 top Nazis without a trial. And I don’t like the Soviet approach, but I wonder if the Churchill one would have actually been healthier than the American one.
    Who could be Thiel’s antichrist?Thiel believes that the antichrist would be a single evil tyrant. He mentions several figures he believes are particularly dangerous and, while he never definitively says who the antichrist is, he makes suggestions about how some people could be antichrist-type figures.
    A basic definition of the antichrist. Some people think of it as a type of very bad person. Sometimes it’s used more generally as a spiritual descriptor of the forces of evil. What I will focus on is the most common and most dramatic interpretation of antichrist: an evil king or tyrant or anti-messiah who appears in the end times.
    Specifically, he suggests the antichrist would be a “luddite who wants to stop all science”, referencing Thunberg, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Marc Andreessen.
    My thesis is that in the 17th, 18th century, the antichrist would have been a Dr Strangelove, a scientist who did all this sort of evil crazy science. In the 21st century, the antichrist is a luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta or Eliezer.
    It’s not Andreessen, by the way. I think Andreessen is not the antichrist. Because you know, the antichrist is popular. I’m trying to say some good things about Andreessen here, come on.
    During a question-and-answer session, Thiel was asked to respond to a quote from fellow investor Andreessen – a name he audibly bristled at. He said Andreessen was engaged in hyperbole and “gobbledygook propaganda” when it comes to the promises of AI.
    Where should I start? I’m tempted to be triggered in some nasty ad hominem argument, but I can’t resist so I’ll do that. I don’t know, this is just pure Silicon Valley gobbledygook propaganda. I wouldn’t give someone who said things like that too much money to invest.
    Later, he returns to these “legionnaires of the antichrist”.
    In late modernity, where science has become scary and apocalyptic, and the legionnaires of the antichrist like Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nick Bostrom and Greta Thunberg argue for world government to stop science, the antichrist has somehow become anti-science.
    Gates, the philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft, is high on the list of people Thiel does not like.
    One of my friends was telling me that I should not pass up on the opportunity to tell those people in San Francisco that Bill Gates is the antichrist. I will concede that he is certainly a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde-type character. The public Mr Rogers, the neighborhood character. I saw the Mr Hyde version about a year ago, where it was just a nonstop, Tourette’s, yelling swear words, almost incomprehensible what was going on.
    Ultimately, Thiel concedes Gates cannot be the antichrist, bringing up the topic more than once:
    He’s not a political leader, he’s not broadly popular, and again, perhaps to Gates’s credit, he’s still stuck in the 18th century alongside people like Richard Dawkins who believe that science and atheism are compatible.
    I don’t think even someone like Bill Gates, who I think is a very, very awful person, is remotely able to be the antichrist.
    Pope Benedict XVI is someone who Thiel admired because he was one of the few popes who referenced the possibility of an antichrist:
    The tl;dr: my belief is that Benedict literally thought that the historic falling away from the church during his papacy was a sign of the end times.
    However, Thiel said Benedict failed at spreading the message of the antichrist because he “was not very courageous”.
    I often like to say libertarianism and marijuana are both gateway drugs to alt-right, other ideas. The danger of the red pill is you move on the black pill. And somehow Benedict overdosed on red pills.
    Musk, a longtime friend and ally of Thiel, came up during one of the lectures in the context of the Giving Pledge, a pact Gates founded in 2010 where billionaires pledged to donate the majority of their money to philanthropy. Here is Thiel recapping the conversation:
    If I had to pick a little bit on Elon – and I’m going to pick on him because I think of him as one of the smarter, more thoughtful people …
    This is a conversation I had with him a few months ago, and it was like: ‘I want you to unsign that silly Giving Pledge you signed back in 2012, where you promised to give away half your money. You have, like, $400bn. Yes, you gave $200m to Mr Trump, but $200bn – if you’re not careful – is going to leftwing non-profits that will be chosen by Bill Gates.’
    And then I – one step ahead – rethought it and said: ‘You don’t think about this much because you don’t expect to die anytime soon, but you’re 54 years old. I looked up the actuarial tables: at 54, you have a 0.7% chance of dying in the next year. And 0.7% of $200bn is $1.4bn – about seven times what you gave to Trump. So Mr Gates is effectively expecting $1.4bn from you in the next year.’
    And to his credit, Elon was, well, pretty fluid on it. He said: ‘Actually, I think the odds of me dying are higher than 70 basis points.’ A shocking explosion of self-awareness. Then: ‘What am I supposed to do – give it to my children? I certainly can’t give it to my trans daughter; that would be bad. You know, it would be much worse to give it to Bill Gates.’
    When asked about the slain far-right commentator Charlie Kirk’s memorial in reference to the role of Christianity in American politics, Thiel initially demurred saying it was “above his pay grade”. When further prompted, he described what he saw as two versions of Christianity on display at the event:
    I think, um – what to say – I was thinking about, you know, I had the chart: the katechon pagan Christianity versus the eschaton – the Christianity of Constantine versus that of Mother Teresa. We had an illustration of that with Kirk’s wife saying that she forgave the murderers because that’s what Christ would do. This was an incredibly saintly form of Christianity. And then, you know, President Trump – I don’t know, I forget the language exactly – but, you know, Charlie was into forgiving, being nice to his enemies. He doesn’t believe in being nice to his enemies; he wants to hurt his enemies. And that’s sort of the pagan Christian view. And the problem – the naive view – is: there has to be something somewhere in between, right? But how do you concretize that? What’s the thing that’s in between Mother Teresa and Constantine – between forgiving the murderer and delighting in punishing your enemies?
    Perhaps, I don’t know, perhaps the in-between thing I thought was that maybe Trump and Elon were able to forgive each other.
    Thiel argues that, in order for the antichrist to be able to pull off the Armageddon in one lifetime, they need to be young today – he points to 33 as an auspicious number. In these quotes, he draws parallels to powerful figures who died at the age of 33, including Jesus, Buddha and some literary characters:skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion
    Christ only lived to age 33 and became history’s greatest man. The antichrist has to somehow outdo this. I don’t want to be way too literal on the 33 number – I’d rather stress the antichrist will be a youthful conqueror; maybe in our gerontocracy, 66 is the new 33. But something like these numbers do occur almost mystically through a number of different contexts.
    Buddha begins his travels at age 30 and experiences Nirvana, ego death, at age 33. But I had to be ecumenical and say something nice about Islam. One idea that’s pretty cool is, when you’re reborn into your afterlife, you’re born into your 33-year-old self. Your 33-year-old self is your best self. Livy’s – the Roman historian’s 33rd chapter of the 33rd book – it announces this 33-year-old conqueror. It’s like Alexander at the peak of his power. Or even in Tolkien, the hobbits have a coming-of-age ceremony at 33. That’s how old Frodo is when he inherits the ring.
    By the same token, people who are older cannot be Thiel’s antichrist. Here Thiel gives some examples:
    Trajan, a Roman emperor, wept when he reached the Persian Gulf in AD115 at the age of 65. He’s too old to beat Alexander the Great’s achievements in India. He died two years later. Hitler is 50 by the time world war two starts – he mimetically loses to Napoleon, who’s only 30 when he became first consul of the French Republic. That goes on to the same problem for a seventysomething Xi Jinping. Racist, sexist, nationalist, maybe the second coming of Hitler. But not even the second coming of Genghis Khan. Past the sell-by date.
    He frequently oscillates between talking about the antichrist and the katechon – a term very briefly used in the Bible that refers to something holding back the coming of the antichrist. In one example, he describes a post-cold war shift to embracing neoliberalism and bureaucracy as an example of antichrist-like government.
    Of course, you have all these examples where it’s one toggle switch from katechon to the antichristic thing. Claudius to Nero, Charlemagne to Napoleon, anti-communism after the Berlin Wall comes down, it gets replaced by neoliberalism. Which is, you know, the Bush 41 new world order, which you can think of as anti-communism where there’s no communists left. Or Christian democracy, which is sort of the European form of the katechontic, transnational anti-communism. Once the communists are gone, it sort of decays into the Brussels bureaucracy. All kinds of different riffs one could do with this. Or to go even further, if something is not powerful enough to potentially become the antichrist, it probably isn’t that good as a katechon.
    In his last lecture, Thiel also responds during the Q&A portion to a question about potential 2028 presidential candidates and whether they are antichrist or katechon. When asked about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Thiel says that he worries about there being a “woke American pope”– Pope Leo XIV – and a “woke American president”, creating a “Caesar-Papist fusion”. He goes on to talk about Ocasio-Cortez in relation to Thunberg:
    One of the ways these things always get reported is, I denounce Greta as an antichrist. And I want to be very clear: Greta is, I mean she’s maybe sort of a type or a shadow of an antichrist of a sort that would be tempting. But I don’t want to flatter her too much. So with Greta, you shouldn’t take her as the antichrist for sure. With AOC, you can choose whether or not you want to believe this disclaimer that I just gave.
    What does he say about Trump and politics?Thiel is asked several times about Trump and how he fits into his imagination of what form Armageddon might take. In one instance, he is asked whether Trump’s opposition to global governance makes Thiel feel any relief about the hastening of a one-world order.
    At the very best, you shouldn’t have even the most fanatical Trump supporter. You know, no politician, not even Reagan, will solve all problems for all time. Maybe we both were sort of delusional about Reagan in the 80s. There was some moment in the 1980s when we thought that Reagan had permanently solved the deepest problems in the world for all time. And that’s too high a bar. That was too high a bar for Reagan. That’s an unfairly high bar you’re giving to Mr Trump. You’re just trying to make a subtle anti-Trump argument and I’m not going to let you do that.
    One of Thiel’s longstanding political affiliations has been anti-communism, and in his fourth lecture, he suggests that opposition to communism following the second world war is something that held back the antichrist. At other times, he is critical of post-cold war presidents and government order.
    I always sort of wonder what functions as the katechon in the world after 1945. This is Schmitt’s 1947 diary. ‘I believe in the katechons, for me the only possible way to understand Christian history and find it meaningful. The katechon needs to named for every epoch for the past 1948 years.’ The way I interpret this is that sotto voce, Schmitt is saying he has no idea what the katechon is. And maybe, the New Dealers are running the whole planet. Then of course, 1949 the Soviets get the bomb, and my sort of provisional answer is that the katechon for 40 years, from ’49 to ’89, is anti-communism. Which is in some ways is somewhat violent, not purely Christian but very, very powerful.
    I’ve argued that the katechon, or something like this, is necessary but not sufficient. And I want to finish by stressing where one goes wrong with it. If we forget its essential role, which is to restrain the antichrist, the antichrist might even present himself or itself or herself as the katechon, or hijack the katechon. This is almost a memetic version. A similarity between the antichrist and the katechon, they’re both sort of political figures. The katechon is tied in with empire and politics. If the antichrist is going to take over the world, you need something very powerful to stop it.
    Thiel also opines on modern-day Russia and offers his views on Vladimir Putin:
    In some sense, there are perhaps two candidates for the successors to Rome. For all sorts of reasons, I don’t particularly like the Russian theories of all these ways where you have Putin describing himself as the katechon and the last Christian leader in the world. It’s hard to look into someone’s heart. I always suspect he’s more of a KGB agent than a Christian. And then, of course, to be a katechon, you have to be strong enough to possibly become the antichrist. And Russia is not nearly powerful enough to take over the world. It cannot simply be the katechon or the new Rome.
    Thiel also comments on the relation between Jewish people and the antichrist. He argued against medieval theologians’ idea that the antichrist would be Jewish.
    There’s probably a lot I can say about the relation of the Jews to the antichrist. The philo-semitic rebuttal, just to get it on the table, is that the Jews in the Bible are described as a stubborn and stiff-necked people. Which is mostly a bug, but maybe in the end times, it is a feature because – this is sort of the way [Vladimir] Solovyov phrased it – that they’re too stubborn to accept Christ, they will be too stubborn to be charmed by the antichrist. And so, they become the center of resistance to the antichrist in the Solovyov narrative.
    In response, Thiel’s spokesperson said: “Peter was arguing against medieval, antisemitic theologians who suggested that the antichrist will be Jewish,” citing Solovyov.Thiel’s final lecture dedicates a large portion of its time to talking about empires and what role the US government plays in holding back or advancing the antichrist. He is characteristically noncommittal, describing the country as having characteristics of a one-world government and also being outside it:
    Now this is not meant to be an anti-British or anti-American lecture. It’s just that America is, at this point, the natural candidate for katechon and antichrist, ground zero of the one-world state, ground zero of the resistance to the one-world state. The US world police is the one truly sovereign country. They always say the president is the mayor of the US and the dictator of the world. International law gets defined by the US. That’s sort of Nato’s prime, to see in some ways, coordination of the world’s intelligence agencies.
    Then of course, the global financial architecture we discussed is not really run by shadowy international organizations, it’s basically American. And perhaps always a very important feature is the reserve currency status of the dollar, where it’s sort of the backstop for all the money. The petrodollar regime, there’s sort of crazy ways you have trade deficits, current account deficits, but then in all these ways, the money gets recycled into the US.
    Then of course, there’s sort of a way where from a certain perspective, the US is also the place that’s the most outside the world state. In many ways, it’s probably one of the best tax havens, at least if you’re not a US citizen. And then there are all these ways the US is a kind of ideological superpower. Christian, ultra-Christian, anti-Christian sense, woke Protestant liberation theology, social gospel, social justice. City on a hill, this institution serves as a beacon of light for other nations and honor.
    At another point in his final lecture, he seems to suggest that when things are codified or formalized they tend to lose their power or ability to operate. He selects Guantánamo Bay detention camp as an example:
    By 2005 in Guantánamo, you were way better off as a Muslim terrorist in Guantánamo, the liberal lawyers had taken it over by 2005, than as a suspected cop killer in Manhattan. In Manhattan if you were a suspected cop killer back in 2005, you know, there was some informal process they had for dealing with you. Guantánamo, it was formalized. Initially, they did some bad things and then very quickly, they weren’t able to do anything, any more. And this is again a sort of revelatory unraveling process.
    During the Q&A section, Peter Robinson talks about John Henry Newman’s description of the antichrist promising people things like civil liberty and equality. “He offers you baits to tempt you,” Robinson said, quoting Newman. Then, Robinson says to Thiel: “The antichrist is a really cool, glamorous hip operator. Is that Zohran Mamdani?” Thiel doesn’t directly answer the question, but does offer his take on the young, progressive mayoral candidate:
    I don’t think Mamdani can be president because he’s not a natural-born citizen. So he’s capped out at mayor. I also don’t think he’s really promised to reduce my taxes.
    In his final lecture, Thiel was asked to comment on various potential 2028 presidential candidates and whether they’d be more of an antichrist figure or a katechon.Thiel says he is “very pro-JD Vance”. But he has some concerns about his allegiance to the pope.
    “The place that I would worry about is that he’s too close to the pope. And so we have all these reports of fights between him and the pope. I hope there are a lot more. It’s the Caesar-Papist fusion that I always worry about. By the way, I’ve given him this feedback over time. And you know with the sort of … I don’t like his popeism, but there’s sort of a way if I steel manned it. It’s always, you have to think about whether if you say you’re doing something good, whether it’s a command, a standard or a limit, or whether in philosophical language, is it necessary or sufficient. And so when JD Vance said that he was praying for Pope Francis’s health, it’s as a command, as a necessary thing. OK, that’s … if you’re a lot more if you’re a good Catholic. But what I hope it really means is that it’s sufficient, and that he’s setting a good example for conservative Catholics like you, Peter, who listen to the pope too much. And perhaps all you have to do to be a really good Catholic is pray for the pope. You don’t really need to listen to him on anything else. And if that’s what JD Vance is doing, that’s really good. I’m worried about the Caesar-Papist fusion.
    Thiel also spoke about San Francisco and his views on Gavin Newsom, the California governor.
    ​​I would say that if we go to the katechontic thing and the US is that, tech and politics are radically separate, Silicon Valley is really, really separate from DC in an extreme way. If these things could be fused, … someone like that perhaps represents a way to do that. That’s the part where, if there was a way to … you know, he was the governor of California, he was the mayor of San Francisco. In a way, San Francisco is more important than California. The world city is more important than just this sort of silly province called California. And if you could fuse Washington and San Francisco, that’s a very dangerous thing. It’s kind of, it’s sort of in a way the last precedent where such a fusion of sorts happened. I think it was FDR with New York and DC. So that’s the piece that would be tricky.
    And you know, by the way, these things have been very, very unfused historically. Back in 2008, one of my liberal friends was trying to get 75 tech-type people to endorse Obama and they got like 68, 69 and thought maybe they could get me. I told them, man, if there are only six or seven, you want to be in the minority. It’s more valuable to be one of the seven than one of the 68. And then his counterpoint was, well, you know, we need to all get on board with Obama because he’s going to win and then we’ll have an influence. And then, the really crazy … and then in a way, Obama … if you think about the primary in 2008, the Democratic primary, Obama had the students, the minorities, the young people. Hillary was the finance world in New York, the unions. Hollywood was sort of split 50/50 between Obama and Hillary.
    But Silicon Valley was the one sector of the economy that went all in for Obama. But it didn’t work at all. And then if you fast forward to the Obama cabinet, there were zero people from Silicon Valley. There was no representation at all. And so, even Obama was very far from anything resembling a fusion. And then the question is whether Newsom will be like that or different.
    Why is he fixated on stagnation?Chief among Thiel’s concerns about how quickly the world is hurtling toward an Armageddon is what he describes as a stagnation or slowing down of technological and scientific progress. He attributes part of that to the use of science and technology – once largely seen as a force for good, in his telling – for harm.The creation of the gun and the machine gun “wounded our faith in science and tech”, he said. “And then the atom bomb somehow blew it up entirely. And in some sense in 1945, science and tech became apocalyptic. It left us with a question.” This fear of tech is what the antichrist will seize on to gain power, he says.During the Q&A portion of the first lecture, Thiel is asked about how artificial intelligence (AI) – the much-hyped darling of his fellow Silicon Valley investors – fits into this larger narrative of technological stagnation. Thiel said AI was a symptom of the larger tech stagnation and that people including Andreessen needed to boost its promises because there’s nothing else going on.
    If we’re going to not have this sort of crazed corporate utopianism versus effective altruist luddism, luddite thing. If you try to have some more nuanced version of this, you try to quantify it. How big is the AI revolution? How much is it going to add to GDP? Add to living standards? Things like that. My placeholder is, it’s looking probably on roughly the scale of the internet from 1990 to the late 90s. Maybe it can add 1% a year to GDP. There are big error bars around that. And I think the internet was quite significant. People talked about the internet in very similar terms in 1999. That’s another way where it sounds like roughly the right scale.
    The place where it’s very different, where it feels both true of the internet and maybe it’s true of AI, maybe a place where I would agree with Andreessen. The negative part of the statement is: ‘But for AI, nothing else is going on.’ He’s not talking about going to Mars, so it doesn’t sound like he believes Elon’s about to go to Mars. I think there’s a negative part, if AI was not happening, wow, we are really stuck. Things are really stagnant. And maybe that’s why people have to be so excited about this one specific vector of technological progress. Because outside of that, to a first approximation, things are totally, totally stagnant. Maybe even the internet has run out of steam but for AI. So that’s another framing. Now, the thing that strikes me is very different from ’99, if I had to give a difference, again I’m too anchored and rooted in the late 90s. But the late 90s, it was broadly optimistic. And there were a lot of people who thought about it just like Andreessen does. Nobody feels that personally. You can’t start a dotcom company from your basement in Sacramento. You can’t start an AI company, you have to do it in San Francisco. You have to do it in Silicon Valley. It has to be at an enormous scale. Most things aren’t big enough. And then there are layers and layers and layers where it feels incredibly non-inclusive. Maybe people just updated from the internet because maybe the internet turned out to have a lot of winner-take-all dynamics.
    In one of the lectures, Thiel plays a video of a 60 Minutes segment about a German law that cracks down on online hate speech. He’s trying to show an example of where tech regulation goes too far – hence giving power to the antichrist:
    This kind of video is ridiculous but, of course, indicative of this larger trend. There is this crazy judge in Brazil who is arresting everybody. Australia has more or less ended internet anonymity with age verification required for all social media. The UK is arresting 30 people a day for offensive speech. I’m sort of always in favor of maximal free speech, but my one concrete test is whether I can talk about the antichrist. If I can’t, that’s too restrictive.
    In his fourth lecture, he also suggests that his beliefs about the end of the world informed his own work in tech at companies such as PayPal:
    I was working at PayPal at the time trying to build the technology to evade these policies of the world’s powers and principalities. So it was natural to think about the antichrist in the context of the world of financial architecture. I’ll still defend PayPal as more good than bad.
    References to pop culture and literatureThiel peppered his lectures with references to pop culture, calling out YouTube influencers like MrBeast and throwing out terms like “libtard” – a rightwing slur for people with progressive political views. Sometimes these references pertained to the antichrist; at other times, Thiel was just giving his views on politics, modern society and Silicon Valley, like here:
    The Succession TV show about the Murdochs is unthinkably retro in Silicon Valley. Only a 20th-century media company could be handed off to someone’s children. If you think about the tech companies, I don’t know, would anybody name a company after themselves? The last tech person who did this was, I think, Dell in the mid-1980s. This is like if you’re a retro Republican from Texas. It is so unthinkable to do this.
    In his second lecture, Thiel also explores the idea of the antichrist through four works of literature – Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Alan Moore’s Watchmen graphic novel and Eiichiro Oda’s manga series One Piece. Thiel states that identifying the antichrist is possibly “hard to do in the present and always sort of controversial”, but that “you at least identify the antichrist in literature”.He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:
    The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.
    Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.
    In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.
    Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.Do Thiel’s arguments make sense?In a word, no. For one representative example, look to his muddled, contradictory summation of who the antichrist may be:
    There is a way to think that the antichrist represents the end of philosophy – culmination, termination. He is the individual who gets rid of all individuals; the philosopher who ends all philosophers; the Caesar who ends all rulers; the person who understands all secrets. How is this possible in late modernity, where we don’t believe a philosopher-king, tyrant or ruler can come to power? More

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    US government shutdown: Donald Trump promises firings and cuts to ‘Democrats’ favorite projects’ if shutdown continues – live

    President Donald Trump on Thursday said firings of federal workers and cuts to projects could occur if a government shutdown that began Wednesday continues, Reuters reports.“There could be firings, and that’s their fault,” Trump said of Democrats in Congress, when asked during an interview with OAN television network about a recent memo from the Office of Management and Budget that raised prospects of firings.“We could cut projects that they wanted, favorite projects, and they’d be permanently cut,” he said, adding “I am allowed to cut things that should have never been approved in the first place and I will probably do that.”My colleage Lauren Gambino has another key line from the Donald Trump interview that aired today on One America News:“A lot of people are saying Trump wanted this, that I wanted this closing, and I didn’t want it, but a lot of people are saying it because I’m allowed to cut things that should have never been approved in the first place, and I will probably do that,” Trump said.Federal authorities refuse to release a Michigan man in a pending deportation case, despite his life-threatening leukemia and the inconsistent health care he’s received while in custody since August, his lawyer said Thursday, according to the Associated Press.The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan is now seeking a bond hearing for Contreras-Cervantes, which could allow him to return to his Detroit-area family and doctors while his case winds through immigration court. He’s currently being held at a detention center about three hours away.Jose Contreras-Cervantes, a 33-year-old married father of three who has been living in the U.S. for about 20 years, but not legally, was arrested at a 5 Aug traffic stop in Macomb County, near Detroit. He had no criminal record beyond minor traffic offenses, said ACLU lawyer Miriam Aukerman.Contreras-Cervantes was diagnosed last year with chronic myeloid leukemia, a life-threatening cancer of the bone marrow, said his wife, Lupita Contreras.“The doctor said he has four to six years to live,” she said.Trump’s proposed “compact” with nine prestigious universities was offered to schools that were seen by Trump as “good actors”, May Mailman, a senior White House adviser told the Wall Street Journal yesterday, with a president or a board who were, in the Trump administration’s view, “reformer[s]” who have “really indicated they are committed to a higher-quality education.”The “compact” requires universities to eliminate departments that are seen as hostile or dismissive to conservatives, limit the proportion of international students on campus, accept the Trump administration’s definition of gender, and restrict the political speech of employees.Among the universities the Trump administration is wooing with promises of preferential federal funding in exchange for compliance with Trump’s values is the University of Southern California, a private research university with an $8.2 billion endowment.And even putting academic freedom aside, some of Trump’s proposals would be economically challenging for the University of Southern California, the Los Angeles Times reported.At USC, “26% of the fall 2025 freshman class is international,” the more than 50% of those students come from China or India, the Los Angeles Times reported. The Trump administration’s compact not only limits international student enrollment to 15% of students, but also requires that no more than 5% come from any one country.“Full-fee tuition from international students is a major source of revenue at USC, which has undertaken hundreds of layoffs this year amid budget troubles,” the Los Angeles Times noted.In threatening to cut state funding to any California university that cuts an ideological deal with Trump, California governor Gavin Newsom’s office called Trump’s proposed “compact” with nine leading American universities “nothing short of a hostile takeover of America’s universities.”“It would impose strict government-mandated definitions of academic terms, erase diversity, and rip control away from campus leaders to install government-mandated conservative ideology in its place,” Newsom’s office said in a statement. “It even dictates how schools must spend their own endowments. Any institution that resists could be hit with crushing fines or stripped of federal research funding.”Any California universities that sign the Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” will “instantly” lose their state funding, California governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.“If any California University signs this radical agreement, they’ll lose billions in state funding—including Cal Grants—instantly. California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers, and surrender academic freedom,” Newsom said in a statement. Trump offered nine prominent universities, including the University of Southern California, the chance to sign his “compact” yesterday, which asked that the universities close academic departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” limit the proportion of international undergraduate students to 15% , and ban the consideration of race or sex in hiring and admissions, in exchange for “substantial and meaningful federal grants”.Newsom’s office said Trump’s offer to universities “ties access to federal funding to radical conservative ideological restrictions on colleges and universities.”President Donald Trump on Thursday said firings of federal workers and cuts to projects could occur if a government shutdown that began Wednesday continues, Reuters reports.“There could be firings, and that’s their fault,” Trump said of Democrats in Congress, when asked during an interview with OAN television network about a recent memo from the Office of Management and Budget that raised prospects of firings.“We could cut projects that they wanted, favorite projects, and they’d be permanently cut,” he said, adding “I am allowed to cut things that should have never been approved in the first place and I will probably do that.”The government shutdown will likely go into next week, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune telling Politico that it is “unlikely” senators will be in the Capitol voting this weekend.“They’ll have a fourth chance tomorrow to vote to open up the government, and if that fails, we’ll give them the weekend to think about it, and then we’ll come back and vote on Monday,” the Republican senator said.Thune also reiterated he will not negotiate the Affordable Care Act tax credits, which has been the point of contention leading to the government shutdown.Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer previously said that Republicans need to work with Democrats “to reach an agreement to reopen the government and lower healthcare costs.”The Trump administration is considering giving at least $10bn in aid to US farmers, as the agriculture industry begins to grapple with an economic fallout due to Trump’s tariffs, the Wall Street Journal reports.The Journal reports that the Trump administration is considering using revenue from tariffs to fund the aid provided to US farmers and may start to be distributed in the coming months.The deliberations are reportedly still ongoing and the deal to give billions for US farmers has not been finalized. A potential negotiation with China in the coming weeks may change Trump’s calculation to provide aid to the farmers.House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the Trump administration has done “nothing” to lower the high cost of living for people in the US, while at the same time giving the wealthy significant tax breaks.“The Trump tariffs are actually making life more expensive,” Jeffries said. “And now Republicans refuse to do anything to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credit.”House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused the Trump administration and Republicans of desiring a government shutdown.“They want to inflict on the American people, they continue to engage in their retribution efforts,” Jeffries said. “And they have zero interest in providing high-quality, affordable and accessible care to everyday Americans.”House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries called Trump’s behavior “unserious and unhinged.”Ahead of the looming shutdown, Trump shared a racist video on his Truth Social account on Tuesday, depicting Jeffries wearing a sombrero and mustache, while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke in a fake, AI-generated voice.House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said “Republicans have shown zero interest in even having a conversation” to come to a government funding agreement.Jeffries added Democrats are willing to meet with Republicans, including Trump and vice-president JD Vance, to come to an agreement.House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries blamed Republicans for the government shutdown during a press conference.“This is day two of Donald Trump’s shutdown, but it’s day 256 of the chaos that the Trump presidency has unleashed on the American people,” Jeffries said. “Republicans have shut the government down because they don’t want to provide healthcare to working class Americans.”The Trump administration is seeking to strike deals with companies across 30 different industries deemed critical to national or economic security, Reuters reports, in a concerted push before next year’s midterm elections. In some cases, the Trump administration is offering tariff relief in exchange for concessions.Reuters reports that pharmaceutical companies have been contacted by the White House and top Trump administration officials to strike potential deals. For example, Eli Lilly was asked to produce more insulin, Pfizer was asked to produce more cancer and cholesterol medications and AstraZeneca was asked to consider moving its headquarters from London to the US.The administration’s plan to strike deals with companies is an effort to push companies to further Trump’s goal of moving manufacturing to the United States, reducing dependence on China, strengthening supply chains for critical products and contributing to the government’s coffers, according to Reuters. It is an all-out effort to secure wins before next year’s midterms.The administration has reached out to companies working in the pharmaceutical, semiconductor, AI, mining, energy and other industries.This week, Trump announced a deal with Pfizer to cut drug prices in exchange for relief from looming tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals.WIC, the federal program that provides free, healthy food to low-income pregnant women, new mothers and children under five, could run out of funds if the government shutdown persists, NBC News reports.The program serves some 6.8 million people. According to the National WIC Association, “devastating disruptions” may deny millions of moms and children access to nutritious foods if the government remains closed for longer than a week or two, as contingency funds from the USDA will have dried up by then.“Historically, when there has been a shutdown, WIC has remained open for business, but because this one falls at the start of the fiscal year, there are some risks,” Georgia Machell, president of the National WIC Association, told NBC. She called on Congress to pass a funding bill that protects the program and keeps it running without interruption.A USDA spokesperson told the outlet that WIC’s continued operation will depend on “state choice and the length of a shutdown”.Meanwhile, some administration officials are privately warning agencies against mass firings during the shutdown, the Washington Post (paywall) reports.Senior federal officials are telling agencies not to fire employees en masse, warning that it may violate appropriations law and be vulnerable to challenges from labor unions, the Post reports citing two anonymous sources.Senate majority leader John Thune told Politico last night that Democrats folding is the only way he sees the shutdown ending.His comments were echoed House speaker Mike Johnson, who earlier told reporters this morning, “I have quite literally nothing to negotiate,” and insisted that Democrats should support the “clean” continuing resolution.Per Politico’s report, Thune “insisted he would not negotiate on the substance of an extension [to Obamacare subsidies] while the government is closed. But pressed on whether he was open to discussions with Democrats about how the health care negotiations might work post-shutdown or how to advance full-year appropriations bills, he said, ‘We are.’”
    Some of those conversations are happening. With our members and their members there’s a lot of back-and-forth going on right now about some of the things they would like to see happen.
    Thune also said it’s “unlikely” that there will be Senate votes this weekend, meaning the shutdown is likely to last for at least six days. He told Semafor this morning:
    They’ll have a fourth chance tomorrow to open up the government. If that fails, we’ll give them the weekend to think about it. We’ll come back vote again Monday.
    Venezuela’s defense minister General Vladimir Padrino said on Thursday that five combat planes had been detected near country’s coast, in what he characterized as a threat by the United States.“They are imperialist combat planes that have dared to come close to the Venezuelan coast” Padrino said at an air base, in comments broadcast on state television, saying information about the planes had been reported to a control tower by an airline. “The presence of these planes flying close to our Caribbean Sea is a vulgarity, a provocation, a threat to the security of the nation.”The US has deployed a fleet of warships through the Caribbean, which Washington says is to combat drug trafficking, and has also struck several boats it claims were carrying drugs from Venezuela, killing those aboard. Experts have questioned the legality of the strikes.Earlier, we reported that Trump has declared drug cartels operating in the Caribbean are unlawful combatants and said the US is now in a “non-international armed conflict”, according to a memo obtained by the Associated Press.The US military last month carried out three deadly strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean. At least two of those operations were carried out on vessels that originated from Venezuela.On Monday, Venezuela’s vice-president said Nicolás Maduro was ready to declare a state of emergency in the event of a US military attack on the country, and warned of “catastrophic” consequences if such an onslaught materializes.Hamas will demand key revisions to Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire proposal but is likely to accept the plan in coming days as a basis for renewed negotiations, analysts and sources close to the group have told my colleague and Guardian international security correspondent Jason Burke.Trump imposed a deadline of “three or four days” from Tuesday for Hamas to give its response to his 20-point plan, which aims to bring the two-year war in Gaza to a close and allow an apparently indefinite international administration of the devastated territory, or “pay in hell”.Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist from Gaza based in Cairo, said Hamas now had to “choose between the bad and the worst”. “If they say ‘no’, as Trump has made clear, that will not be good and will allow Israel to do whatever it takes to finish this. They will say “yes, but we need this and that”, Abusada said.Hamas leaders are divided between Istanbul, Doha and Gaza, which complicates discussions on the group’s response. Turkey and Qatar are putting pressure on Hamas to make concessions.One sticking point is the plan’s demand that Hamas disarm, a source close to the organisation said. The surrender of all weapons would be very difficult for Hamas to accept, especially without any political process or substantial progress towards a two-state solution.Another concern for Hamas is the vague promise of Israeli withdrawals, though the clear statement that there will be no annexation or occupation of Gaza by Israel was welcomed by one source close to Hamas.Hugh Lovatt, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said it would be very difficult for Hamas to accept the terms unconditionally. “That is understandable. The text lacks details. But then anything other than total and final acceptance will be used against Hamas by Israel, the Trump administration and possibly the Europeans,” he said.You can read Jason’s full piece here: More

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    White House plays racist deepfake video of Democratic leaders on loop

    As the Trump administration insists it is serious about negotiating an end to the government shutdown, a pair of racist deepfake videos mocking Democratic leaders played on a loop in the White House briefing room for hours on Wednesday.The videos, posted by Trump on his social media platform on Monday, use fabricated audio to make it seem as if the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, called Democrats “woke pieces of shit”, and showed the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, with a fake mustache and sombrero.JD Vance, the US vice-president, made light of the tactic during a rare appearance in the briefing room. “I think it’s funny. The president’s joking and we’re having a good time. You can negotiate in good faith while also making a little bit of fun at some of the absurdities of the Democrats’ positions, and even poking some fun at the absurdity of themselves.“I’ll tell Hakeem Jeffries right now, I make the solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop. I’ve talked to the president of the United States about that.”Jeffries has denounced the memes as racist. Vance retorted: “I honestly don’t even know what that means. Like, is he a Mexican American that is offended by having a sombrero meme?”The clips, both set to Mexican mariachi music, are intended to drive home the administration’s false claim that the Democrats are demanding health insurance subsidies for unauthorized immigrants as a condition for funding the federal government.In fact, Democrats want to ensure that funding is provided to Americans who rely on Affordable Care Act subsidies to purchase health insurance. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for those subsidies.Democrats have also asked to reverse a provision of the Republican tax and spending bill that stripped health benefits of lawfully present immigrants, including refugees with Temporary Protected Status and non-citizens who were brought to the US as children, who were previously eligible for federal benefits under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) designation.The fabricated words put in Schumer’s mouth are presented as an admission by the Democratic senator of a far-right conspiracy theory promoted by white supremacists, that Democrats want to give government benefits to undocumented immigrants from Latin America as part of a plot to replace white voters with immigrants who will then vote for Democrats.The so-called “great replacement” theory has been cited by a number of shooters who have carried out racist mass shootings, including the gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019, and another who murdered 11 congregants in the the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. The conspiracy theory also prompted torch-carrying, white supremacist marchers at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 to chant “Jews will not replace us.”After Jeffries called the first video racist, Trump posted a second clip, of the Democrat calling the fabricated video “disgusting”, in which the sombrero and mustache are again added to the congressman, and a mariachi band featuring four versions of Trump plays in the background.David Smith, Guardian Washington bureau chief, contributed reporting More

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    Vance uses false claims to pin shutdown blame on Democrats as White House warns of layoffs

    JD Vance, the US vice-president, used false claims to blame Democrats for the government shutdown as the White House warned that worker layoffs were imminent.Federal departments have been closing since midnight after a deadlocked Congress failed to pass a funding measure. The crisis has higher stakes than previous shutdowns, with Trump racing to slash government departments and threatening to turn furloughs into mass firings.Making a rare appearance in the White House briefing room, Vance told reporters: “We are going to have to lay some people off if the shutdown continues. We don’t like that. We don’t necessarily want to do it, but we’re going to do what we have to do to keep the American people’s essential services continuing to run.”Vance denied workers would be targeted because of their political allegiance but acknowledged there was still uncertainty over who might be laid off or furloughed. “We haven’t made any final decisions about what we’re going to do with certain workers,” he said. “What we’re saying is that we might have to take extraordinary steps, especially the longer this goes on.”About 750,000 federal employees are expected to be placed on furlough, an enforced leave, with pay withheld until they return to work. Essential workers such as military and border agents may be forced to work without pay, and some will likely miss pay cheques next week.At the same briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that government agencies are already preparing for cuts.“Unfortunately, because the Democrats shut down the government, the president has directed his cabinet, and the office of management and budget is working with agencies across the board, to identify where cuts can be made – and we believe that layoffs are imminent,” she said.The press secretary acknowledged she could not be precise about timing or identify the percentage of workers likely to be affected.As the messaging war over the shutdown intensifies, Democrats, motivated by grassroots anger over expiring healthcare subsidies, have been withholding Senate votes to fund the government as leverage to try and force negotiations.Vance sought to upbraid Democrats over their demands, targeting Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, known as AOC.“The Chuck Schumer-AOC wing of the Democratic party shut down the government because they said to us, we will open the government only if you give billions of dollars of funding to healthcare for illegal aliens. That’s a ridiculous proposition.”It is also a false claim. US law bars undocumented immigrants from receiving the health care benefits Democrats are demanding, and the party has not called for a new act of Congress to change that.At a press conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives, said Trump and Republicans shut the government down to deny healthcare to working-class Americans.“The president has been engaging in irresponsible and unserious behaviour, demonstrating that, all along, Republicans wanted to shut the government down,” he said. “That’s no surprise, because for decades, Republicans have consistently shut the government down as part of their efforts to try to extract and jam their extreme rightwing agenda down the throats of the American people.”On another front, the White House began targeting Democratic-leaning states for a pause or cancellation of infrastructure funds.Russ Vought, the OMB director, said on X that roughly $18bn for New York City infrastructure projects had been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing to “unconstitutional DEI principles”. Later he said nearly $8bn in clean energy funding “to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled”.Schumer and Jeffries responded in a joint statement: “Donald Trump is once again treating working people as collateral damage in his endless campaign of chaos and revenge.”Shutdowns are a periodic feature of gridlocked Washington, although this is the first since a record 35-day pause in 2018-19, during Trump’s first term. Talks so far have been unusually bitter, with Trump mocking Schumer and Jeffries on social media.The president’s most recent video showed Jeffries being interviewed on MSNBC with an AI-generated moustache and sombrero, and four depictions of the president playing mariachi music.Vance made light of the tactic. “I think it’s funny. The president’s joking and we’re having a good time. You can negotiate in good faith while also making a little bit of fun at some of the absurdities of the Democrats’ positions, and even poking some fun at the absurdity of the themselves.“I’ll tell Hakeem Jeffries right now, I make the solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop. I’ve talked to the president of the United States about that.”Jeffries has denounced the memes as racist. Vance retorted: “I honestly don’t even know what that means. Like, is he a Mexican American that is offended by having a sombrero meme?”Efforts to swiftly end the shutdown collapsed on Wednesday as Senate Democrats – who are demanding extended healthcare subsidies for low income families – refused to help the majority Republicans approve a bill passed by the House that would have reopened the government for several weeks.Congress is out on Thursday for the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday but the Senate returns to work on Friday and may be in session through the weekend. The House is not due back until next week.A Marist poll released on Tuesday found that 38% of voters would blame congressional Republicans for a shutdown, 27% would blame the Democrats and 31% both parties. More

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    Texas Ice facility shooting: Republicans blame ‘radical left’ as Democrats focus on victims and gun control

    A deadly shooting at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Dallas has been met with markedly different reactions from the political right and left.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed shortly after the news broke that detainees were the victims of the sniper attack on the facility and that no federal agents had been injured. The president and his allies, however, were quick to frame the shooting as an attack on Ice and place blame on the “radical left”.The department previously said two detainees were killed, but later issued a clarifying statement saying the shooting killed one detainee. It said two other detainees were shot and are in critical condition.Official statements have lacked focus on the victims having been detainees, and at a press conference officials said the identities of the victims would not be released at this time. Figures on the left have centered on the victims’ families, pushed for greater gun control and urged a rejection of anti-immigrant sentiment.Donald Trump rushed to politicize the incident, blaming the violence squarely on “Radical Left Terrorists” and the Democratic party. “This violence is the result of the Radical Left Democrats constantly demonizing Law Enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to “Nazis,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.JD Vance called the shooting an “obsessive attack on law enforcement” that “must stop”. The vice-president claimed it was carried out by “a violent left-wing extremist” who was “politically motivated to go after law enforcement”.Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem also said: “This shooting must serve as a wake-up call to the far-left that their rhetoric about Ice has consequences. Comparing Ice Day-in and day-out to the Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police, and slave patrols has consequences.”The FBI said authorities recovered shell casings with “anti-Ice messaging” near the shooter, but officials said the investigation was continuing and have neither confirmed the motive behind the attack, nor corroborated claims about the shooter’s ideological background.The FBI is investigating the incident as an act of targeted violence. The DHS said the shooter “fired indiscriminately” at the Ice facility, “including at a van in the sallyport where the victims were shot”. The attacker died from a self-inflicted gun wound.Greg Abbott, the Republican Texas governor and staunch Trump ally, called the attack an “assassination” and said that “Texas supports Ice”. He wrote on X: “This assassination will NOT slow our arrest, detention, & deportation of illegal immigrants. We will work with ICE & the Dallas Police Dept. to get to the bottom of the assassin’s motive.”Texas senator Ted Cruz also invoked the killing of rightwing commentator Charlie Kirk as he told reporters that political violence “must stop” and rebuked politicians who have been critical of Ice. “Your political opponents are not Nazis,” Cruz raged at Democrats, who he accused of “demonizing” Ice. “This has very real consequences,” he said.Later, after a reporter brought up reports that the victims were detainees, Cruz acknowledged that the motive of the shooter was not known.The attack comes amid fears the Trump administration plans a crackdown on leftwing organizations and amid the censorship of critical or nuanced commentary in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, targeting people from visa holders to late-night talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel.Marc Veasey, a Democratic representative for Texas who represents the area where the shooting took place, told the Notus website that political “gamesmanship” was spiraling out of control, and said he was “sickened” by officials’ focus on law enforcement and lack of acknowledgement that the victims were detainees.He added that he lacked trust in the FBI, which had become “overly political” under Trump, and said smears against Democrats were not helpful, citing that the GOP also routinely call colleagues on the left “Marxists”.“We have to start condemning this rhetoric from both sides,” Veasey said. “I was hoping that after the assassination of Charlie Kirk that we would have learned lessons and that we realize that this is not about gamesmanship. This is not about one-upsmanship … This is about public safety.”Former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who leads the gun violence prevention group Giffords, said her heart broke for the victims’ families and urged leaders to take action against the “gun crime crisis” gripping the country.Congresswoman Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, wrote on X: “Leave it to this administration to use a shooting against immigrant detainees to score political points and further provoke violence. We have to get guns off our streets and reject xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment that makes all of us less safe.”Pennsylvania state representative Malcolm Kenyatta said: “Kristi Noem couldn’t get to Twitter fast enough to use the Dallas Ice shooting for political points. But local news now says it was detainees who were shot – not Ice agents.” More

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    Vance puts Charlie Kirk’s Christian faith front and center – with an eye on 2028

    JD Vance went into confessional mode. “I was telling somebody backstage that I always felt a little uncomfortable talking about my faith in public,” he said. “As much as I love the Lord, and as much as it was an important part of my life, I have talked more about Jesus Christ in the past two weeks than I have my entire time in public life.”The crowd at rightwing political activist Charlie Kirk’s memorial service at a football stadium in Glendale, Arizona on Sunday rose to its feet and roared its approval.The apparent ad lib by the US vice-president showed his ability to read the room. The service had put Kirk’s Christian faith front and centre. Vance’s moment of self-revelation could also have political utility if and when he runs to succeed Donald Trump as president in 2028.Trump, a thrice-married New Yorker with little knowledge of scripture, secured the evangelical vote with promises that included a pliant supreme court. Candidate Vance would have to win them all over again, and knows the new generation of young Christians who idolised Kirk would be a good start.The 41-year-old former Ohio senator has already taken a lead role in mobilising Kirk’s online army at Turning Point USA, likely to be a crucial part of the next Republican electoral coalition, and seeking to claim his mantle as “youth whisperer”.After Kirk was shot dead at an event in Utah, Vance posted a heartfelt tribute on social media, describing him as “true friend” who had advocated for him to be Trump’s running mate.He personally escorted Kirk’s casket from Utah to Arizona on the vice presidential plane Air Force Two. After disembarking, his wife Usha held hands with Kirk’s widow Erika – both dressed in all black and wearing sunglasses – as Vance followed dutifully behind.Vance then guest-hosted Kirk’s podcast from his ceremonial office and demanded that anyone caught celebrating the murder be named and shamed. “Hell, call their employer,” he said.Some of this may be the genuine response of a friend. But it is also impossible to ignore Vance’s ruthless ambition. The author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, drawing on his upbringing in Ohio and Kentucky, only joined the Senate in 2023 and is now vice-president.In her new book, 107 Days, former Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris described Vance as a “shape-shifter” and “a shifty guy” who, in last year’s vice presidential debate against Tim Walz, “sane-washed the crazy” and played the role of “a mild-mannered, aw-shucks Appalachian”.Vance’s presidential campaign for 2028 is already said to be in “soft launch” mode as he positions himself as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. He has reportedly expressed a desire for Susie Wiles, the White House of chief staff, to manage his potential campaign.His most overt move came in March, when he was appointed finance chair of the Republican National Committee – a role unprecedented for a sitting vice-president. It positions him at the nexus of Republican money, allowing frequent interactions with mega-donors.Vance has methodically built a profile that blends Trump’s populist bombast with a sharper focus on economic nationalism and cultural warfare. Vance is sceptical of foreign intervention in Ukraine and elsewhere. He bared his teeth in February when, sitting in the Oval Office, he berated Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for showing insufficient gratitude to Trump.His media strategy builds on Trump’s “podcast election” playbook, emphasising unfiltered platforms to rally the base. His appearance on the memorial Charlie Kirk Show demonstrated a merger of Maga’s grassroots fervour with Turning Point’s youth-focused activism – a partnership likely to define the party’s outreach strategy in future elections.Vance’s willingness to engage critics in online debate has an echo of Kirk’s go-everywhere, talk-to-anyone approach. When US forces recently struck a vessel allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, Vance wrote on X: “Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.”Brian Krassenstein, a podcaster and Trump critic, responded to Vance’s post by stating: “Killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime.” Vance shot back “I don’t give a shit what you call it.” (Rand Paul, a Republican senator, responded: “What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”)Charlie Sykes, a political commentator and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, says: “The only question I have is whether JD Vance wants to be the heir apparent to Donald Trump or to Charlie Kirk.“The line between people wanting to be influential podcasters and real political power is getting somewhat shaky. Apparently JD Vance has decided his route to power is to essentially try to fill Charlie Kirk’s shoes and engage in his kind of rhetoric.”Vance’s lead in hypothetical 2028 Republican primary polls is commanding, a testament to his proximity to Trump. A June 2025 Emerson College Polling survey of 416 likely Republican primary voters found Vance at 46% support, dwarfing secretary of state Marco Rubio (12%) and Florida governor Ron DeSantis (9%).His performance on Sunday will have done no harm, especially with the religious right. He referenced God 10 times, spoke of “the truth that Jesus Christ was the king of kings” and said of Kirk “He would tell me to pray for my friends, but also for my enemies. He would tell me to put on the full armour of God and get back to work.”His white shirt, red tie and blue suit were all the same shade as Trump’s, and he delivered his remarks from a lectern with the presidential seal. It was a glimpse of a possible future featuring an occupant of the White House who could prove even more hard-edged, pitiless and authoritarian than Trump himself.Sykes adds: “I would never describe Trump as more moderate but I do think that JD Vance’s rhetoric could be a warning that, if you think things are bad, they can possibly get even worse.” More

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    Charlie Kirk memorial: JD Vance speaks as tens of thousands attend service – latest updates

    Vice president JD Vance just took the stage, hailing Charlie Kirk as someone who “transformed the face of conservatism in our own time.”Making multiple references to conservative talking points including anti-abortion sentiments and religiously-guided family values, Vance said:
    “Charlie Kirk brought many truths in his life… He brought the truth that marriage and family were the highest callings, far more important than any job or educational credential. He brought the truth that our nation would fade unless it brought order to its neighborhoods and prosperity to its people. He brought the truth that life was precious and we must fight to protect it at all stages and at all times.”
    In his concluding remarks, JD Vance said:
    “For Charlie, we will speak the truth every single day. For Charlie, we will rebuild this United States of America to greatness. For Charlie, we will never shrink, we will never cower, and we will never falter, even when staring down the barrel of a gun. For Charlie, we will remember that it is better to stand on our feet, defending the United States of America and defending the truth than it is to die on our knees.”
    He went on to say:
    “My friends, for Charlie, we must remember that he is a hero to the United States of America, and he is a martyr for the Christian faith. May our heavenly father give us the courage to live as Charlie lived. That is what we must do. For Charlie, you ran a good race, my friend. I love you. We’ve got it from here. Thank you.”
    JD Vance went on to add:
    “He was taken from us by those who despise the virtues that actually made our civilization great to begin with, dialogue, truth-seeking, family and faith. In the wake of his death, we have seen some of the very worst parts of humanity. We have watched people slander him. We have watched people justify his murder and celebrate his death. I know that this makes you angry, just as it has made me angry, but it is easy in these moments to see only the worst of our fellow man.
    I found myself wishing that I could pick up the phone and talk to my friend and ask him for his advice and his counsel, to ask him how to respond to such hate and the souls from which that hate springs…
    I think he would encourage me to be honest, that evil still walks among us, not to ignore it for the sake of a fake kumbaya moment, but to address it head on and honestly as the sickness that it is.”
    Vice president JD Vance just took the stage, hailing Charlie Kirk as someone who “transformed the face of conservatism in our own time.”Making multiple references to conservative talking points including anti-abortion sentiments and religiously-guided family values, Vance said:
    “Charlie Kirk brought many truths in his life… He brought the truth that marriage and family were the highest callings, far more important than any job or educational credential. He brought the truth that our nation would fade unless it brought order to its neighborhoods and prosperity to its people. He brought the truth that life was precious and we must fight to protect it at all stages and at all times.”
    Donald Trump Jr just delivered an explicitly political tribute to Charlie Kirk, kicking off with an impersonation of his father before referencing Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton.Trump Jr said:
    “To say Charlie knew more about the Bible than me is an understatement, folks. It’s like saying Donald Trump knows more about being president than Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris. No kidding…
    Charlie embodied something at the very core of our movement. When people disagree with us, we don’t silence them, we don’t destroy them, and we certainly don’t sink to violence. We don’t burn down their businesses. We don’t scream at their children at Disneyland. No, we debate. We stand tall and we win with our ideas.”
    Trump Jr’s comments come as dozens of workers across the country, ranging from journalists to popular late-night show host Jimmy Kimmel, have been penalized as employers and public officials crack down on remarks that they regard as “inappropriate” towards Kirk.Earlier this week, US attorney general Pam Bondi faced backlash across the political spectrum, including from rightwing communities, after she vowed to target “hate speech” following Kirk’s killing.Bondi later walked back on her remarks, saying: “My intention was to speak about threats of violence that individuals incite against others.”Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr just delivered a tribute to Charlie Kirk, saying:
    “He understood democracy’s great advantage was that our policies were formed by ideas that triumphed in a marketplace of debate and conversation.
    He thought that conversation was the only way to heal our country, and this was important, particularly important during a technological age when we are all hooked into social rhythms, social algorithms that are hacked into reptilian cords of our brain and amplify our impulses for tribalism and for division.”
    Defense secretary Pete Hegseth just addressed the crowd in a highly religiously charged address filled with references to war and religious crusade.Hegseth called Charlie Kirk “a true believer for the cause of freedom, for the power of young people, belief in our republic and our founding principles in America first and make America great again.”He also pointed to what Kirk saw as a “spiritual war,” saying:
    “You see, we always did need less government. But what, Charlie understood and infused into his movement, is we also needed a lot more God… On this Sunday morning, I’d like to think we’re all in Charlie’s church.
    He went on to add:
    “Charlie waged war, not with a weapon, but with a tent, a microphone, his mind and the truth and the gates of hell could not prevail against him… Charlie Kirk was a citizen who had the biblical heart of a soldier of the faith, who put on every single day the full armor of God with a smile as the Scriptures tell all Christ followers to do. Charlie Kirk a warrior for country, a warrior for Christ. He ran the race. He finished the fight.”
    Secretary of state Marco Rubio was the next speaker, following suit from previous speakers and comparing Charlie Kirk to historical figures including Jesus.Addressing the crowd, Rubio said:
    “Here was this voice that inspired a movement in which young Americans were told that is not true. The highest calling we are called to is to be in a successful marriage and to raise productive children. The…movement that taught them that ours was not a great country, but the greatest, most exceptional nation that has ever existed in the history of all of mankind, and that it’s worth fighting for…
    God took on the form of a man and came down and lived among us, and he suffered like men, and he died like a man, but on the third day, he rose unlike any mortal man, and then, and to prove any doubters wrong, he ate with his disciples so they could see and they touched his wounds… And when he returns, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and we will all be together, and we are going to have a great reunion there again with Charlie and all the people we love.”
    Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has just addressed the crowd in what was a markedly political speech.
    Gabbard, who was an opponent of same-sex marriage at the start of her career, said: “Charlie, he chose our schools as his arena because he knows that they are meant to teach, to train our young people to think critically, to debate ideas, to test their strength through a clash of reason. But too often, these schools silence debate, saying words are violence and dissenting voices are hush and those who speak of God, those who speak the truth, simple, objective truths like there are only two genders in these schools, they are told you have no voice.”
    Gabbard, who spoke of schools but made no mention of the slew of mass school shootings that occur each year in the US, went on to add:
    “History shows this dark pattern that when ideas cannot withstand scrutiny, whether it’s the ideology of so called religious fanatics or political fanatics, they’re …terrified that their weak ideas will be exposed for what they are… They kill and terrorize their opponents, hoping to silence them. But in this evil that we have experienced that Charlie face, their flawed ideology is exposed. Because by trying to silence Charlie, his voice is now louder than ever.”
    Tucker Carlson, political commentator and former Fox host, has just spoken at State Farm stadium.In a religiously charged and charismatic speech, Carlson said:
    “Charlie was a political person who was deeply interested in coalition-building and in getting the right people in office, because he knew that vast improvements are possible politically, but he also knew that politics is not the final answer. It can’t answer the deepest questions, actually, that the only real solution is Jesus.
    Politics at its core is a process of critiquing other people and getting them to change. Christianity, the gospel message, the message of Jesus begins with repentance …
    This gathering and God’s presence, God’s very obvious presence in this room, the presence of Jesus, is a reminder of what we’ve known for 2,000 years, which is any attempt to extinguish the light causes it to burn brighter.”
    Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies, just addressed the crowd.In an incendiary speech, Miller said:
    “You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk. You have made him immortal. You have immortalized Charlie Kirk, and now millions will carry on his legacy.”
    Miller, speaking as if Kirk’s killing had been incited by “our enemies”, went on to add:
    “We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened … We we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble.
    And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build.”
    Prosecutors have said that they suspect 22-year old Tyler Robinson killed Kirk because he personally had become sick of what he perceived to be Kirk’s “hatred”.But, citing three sources familiar with the investigation into Kirk’s killing, NBC reported on Saturday that federal authorities have not found any link between Robinson and leftwing groups, on which the Trump administration has threatened to crack down after the deadly shooting.Millers comments came days after he threatened a crackdown on what he called a “vast domestic terror movement” without providing evidence. Miller said the administration would use the federal government to achieve this goal.“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, [Department of] Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks,” Miller said, adding that they would do this “in Charlie’s name”.at the State Farm stadium in Glendale, ArizonaAn ear-splitting roar just broke out as the camera showed Donald Trump for the first time. The president flew from the White House to Glendale on Sunday morning for the service.From a box on an upper level of the arena, Trump, wearing a red tie, pumped his fist.“We’re going to celebrate the life of a great man today,” Trump told reporters before departing Washington earlier today. He said he was braced for a “tough day.”Charlie Kirk’s memorial service kicked off with religious tributes made by his colleagues and friends who recounted their memories of the slain 31-year old who founded the conservative advocacy organization Turning Point USA.The tributes then slowly made way for more political messaging with very few calls of unity.Addressing the crowd was Ben Carson, a former Republican presidential candidate and Trump’s transporation secretary during his first term.In a politically charged address, Carson made references to 1950s communism and alleged progressive attempts to gain control of media outlets and Hollywood.Meanwhile, Florida’s Republican representative Anna Paulina Luna, compared Kirk to Martin Luther King Jr, the civil rights icon who Kirk once called “awful” and Kirk claimed “said one good thing he actually didn’t believe”.Addressing the crowd, Luna said that Kirk “altered the trajectory of our modern fight against cultural decay and ideological tyranny”.Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma introduced legislation this week that would require every public university in the state to construct “a Charlie Kirk Memorial Plaza”, with a statue of the assassinated Republican activist and a sign calling him a “modern civil rights leader”, or pay monthly fines.Each plaza must also include “permanent signage commemorating Charlie Kirk’s courage and faith and explaining the significance of Charlie Kirk as a voice of a generation, modern civil rights leader, vocal Christian, martyr for truth and faith, and free speech advocate”.The state-dictated reference to Kirk as a civil rights leader echoes the widespread effort on the right to cast the founder of the conservative youth group Turning Point USA as a figure equivalent to Martin Luther King Jr, a man Kirk once called “awful”.After everyone from a Georgia representative to a deputy chief of the New York police department made the comparison with MLK, the slain civil rights leader’s son, Martin Luther King III, took time this week to reject it, noting that Kirk had accused prominent Black women of lacking “the brain processing power to be taken seriously”, while his father “was about bringing people together”.“When you’re doing that, it’s a disservice to unification,” King told a reporter in Virginia. Kirk, he said, “certainly was a force in this society and a significant force, but I just disagree with the position that his force was about inclusiveness. When you denigrate Black women and say that somebody is in a position just because of the color of their skin, that’s gravely false.” More

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    Charlie Kirk murder suspect told he faces death penalty if convicted in first appearance – live updates

    Tyler Robinson is now appearing for his first, virtual court appearance from the Utah jail where he is being held.A Utah judge has ruled Robinson indigent, saying he qualifies for a court-appointed attorney.The judge has also granted a pre-trial protective order for Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk.A Utah state prosecutor has also shared that the state intends to pursue the death penalty.Viewers of Tyler Robinson’s recent court appearance may have witnessed the suspected shooter of far-right political activist Charlie Kirk wearing a green vest.The BBC’s Kayla Epstein reports that two court officers told her the vest is intended to prevent self-harm and that it is not a bulletproof vest. So-called “anti-suicide smocks” are not uncommon in US prisons.While announcing the charges against Robinson earlier today, Utah county attorney Jeff Gray shared that Robinson suggested he might harm himself, rather than turn himself in, while speaking with family after the shooting.The next hearing in Tyler Robinson’s case is scheduled for September 29, and will be conducted virtually.A lawyer must be appointed to represent Robinson by then.Today’s hearing has concluded.Judge Tony F. Graf is currently reading Tyler Robinson the charges that Utah county attorney Jeff Gray announced earlier today.Those are:1. Aggravated murder,2. Felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury,3. Obstruction of justice for moving and concealing the rifle used in the shooting,4. Obstruction of justice for disposing the clothing he wore during the shooting,5. Witness tampering for directing his roommate to delete his incriminating text,6. Witness tampering for directing his roommate to stay silent if police questioned him,7. Commission of a violent offense in the presence of a child.Tyler Robinson is now appearing for his first, virtual court appearance from the Utah jail where he is being held.A Utah judge has ruled Robinson indigent, saying he qualifies for a court-appointed attorney.The judge has also granted a pre-trial protective order for Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk.A Utah state prosecutor has also shared that the state intends to pursue the death penalty.Earlier today, Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace introduced a resolution to censure Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar over comments Omar made following the death of far-right political activist Charlie Kirk.“Ilhan Omar has shown us exactly who she is: someone who defends political violence and refuses to condemn the loss of innocent lives when it doesn’t suit her agenda, even the cold-blooded assassination of Charlie Kirk,” Mace said in a statement released before she introdued the resolution. “If you mock a political assassination and celebrate murder, you don’t get to keep your committee seat, you get consequences.”A spokesperson for Omar challenged that characterization in comments shared with CNN.“Congresswoman Omar was one of the first to condemn Charlie Kirk’s murder. She explicitly expressed her sympathies and prayers to his wife and children. She condemned his assassination and has routinely condemned political violence, no matter the political ideology,” the spokesperson said. “In her interview, she also grappled with his divisive legacy, but she in no way implied violence was deserved, nor did she celebrate his death.”The news comes as members of the Trump administration have fired public officials who have spoken out about Kirk’s legacy, and just one day after JD Vance guest-hosted Kirk’s podcast, where he told listeners to “Call them out, and hell, call their employer,” if they knew anyone celebrating Kirk’s death.Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused of murdering far-right political activist Charlie Kirk last week, is expected to appear in court at 5pm ET, according to the Utah County Attorney’s Office.The hearing will be conducted online and will be Robinson’s first court appearance in the murder case.We’ll bring you the latest when it begins.Here is footage from our coverage earlier of Utah state prosecutors charging Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old Utah man accused of killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk, with aggravated murder, among other charges.A separate piece of news from the United Kingdom as Donald Trump is expected to land there shortly: Microsoft has announced that it will invest $30bn in the UK through 2028.The company’s president, Brad Smith, told reporters, including the Associated Press, that Microsoft planned to invest in the UK due to the company’s “regulatory stability” and commitment to developing power data centers.In other news, Air Force One is due to land soon at London Stansted airport as Donald Trump heads to the UK for an unprecedented second state visit.The UK’s largest and tightest security operation since King Charles’s coronation is now under way, with police boats in the River Thames, and snipers and drones also in place.There will be no public-facing engagements for the duration of the president’s two-day visit, with last week’s fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk – as well as the attempt on Trump’s life last year – at the forefront of security considerations.Tomorrow Trump is expected to meet with the king in Windsor before heading to Chequers – the prime minister’s country residence – on Thursday to meet with Keir Starmer.The suspect in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, has been charged with aggravated murder and weapon and obstruction offenses, and the state of Utah will be pursuing the death penalty. He continues to be held without bail and is due to appear in court for the first time – via video link – at 5pm ET.DNA “consistent with” Robinson was also found on the trigger of the bolt-action rifle believed to have been used in Kirk’s shooting, as well as on other parts of the rifle, the fired cartridge casing, two of the three unfired cartridges, and the towel the rifle was found wrapped in.According to charging documents filed today, Robinson allegedly planned the shooting for a little over a week and confessed to his roommate/partner.His roommate told authorities that Robinson texted on 10 September and told them to look under a keyboard. A note was under the keyboard that stated: “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I’m going to take it.”The roommate then texted Robinson and asked if he was joking. Robinson responded: “I am still OK, my love. … Shouldn’t be long till I can come home, but I gotta grab my rifle still. To be honest, I had hoped to keep this secret until I died of old age.”In further messages, Robinson said he was the one who shot Kirk. Roommate: you weren’t the one who did it right???? Robinson: I am, I’m sorryWhen the roommate asked why he did it, Robinson responded: “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”In further text messages, Robinson told his roommate that the rifle belonged to his grandfather and sent several messages about how he might retrieve it while police were searching for him. He appeared to consider whether it could be traced back to him.Authorities said the suspect might have concealed the murder weapon in his pants as he walked on campus, tipping off authorities with his “unusual gait”. The suspect walked “with very little bending in his right leg, consistent with a rifle being hidden in his pants,” the charging documents read.Robinson then instructed the roommate to delete “incriminating” text messages and to not speak to police or media, according to the documents.We’ve also learned that the suspect’s mother identified him in a photo released by authorities. His mother told the police that her son had “become more political and started to move more to the left” over the last year or so and had become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented”.In one conversation with his parents before the shooting, Robinson mentioned that Kirk would be holding an event at UVU, which Robinson said was a “stupid venue” for the event. Robinson accused Kirk of spreading hate.While talking to his parents at their home after the shooting, Robinson allegedly implied that he shot Kirk, “and stated that he couldn’t go to jail, and just wanted to end it”, alluding to suicide. He allegedly told his parents when they asked why he did it: “There’s too much evil in the guy.”My colleagues Anna Betts and Ramon Antonio Vargas have the full report on the news conference:Utah state prosecutors have charged Tyler Robinson, the man accused of fatally shooting the far-right activist Charlie Kirk, on Tuesday with aggravated murder, meaning the 22-year-old could face the death penalty if convicted.Jeff Gray, the top prosecutor in Utah county, said Robinson also ordered his roommate to delete incriminating text messages and stay silent if police questioned him in the aftermath of the Turning Point USA executive director’s killing on 10 September.“I do not take this decision lightly,” Gray said. “And it is a decision I have made independently as county attorney based solely on the available evidence and circumstances and nature of the crime.”And that’s it, the briefing is over.Asked why his office has been measured in sharing the investigation information around Charlie Kirk’s killing, in stark contrast to FBI director Kash Patel, Gray says:
    Well, as attorneys, we typically like to control that information to preserve an impartial jury and a fair trial.
    Gray says he talked to officials from both the governor’s office and the Trump administration before filing charges, but said the decision to seek the death penalty was his.Gray says he wants to ensure a fair and impartial trial.Robinson confessed to his roommate in a series of messages after the incident, according to the charging documents filed today.Roommate: you weren’t the one who did it right????Robinson: I am, I’m sorryRoommate: I thought they caught the person?Robinson: no, they grabbed some crazy old dude, then interrogated someone in similar clothing. I had planned to grab my rifle from my drop point shortly after, but most of that side of town got locked down.In another part of the exchange, Robinson’s roommate asked why he did it. “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out,” Robinson replied, according to the documents.Robinson also told his roommate that the rifle he allegedly used belonged to his grandfather. He sent several messages about how he might retrieve it while police were searching for him in the hours after the shooting.“I’m worried what my old man would do if I didn’t bring back grandpas rifle,” Robinson said in the messages, and appeared to consider whether it could be traced back to him.“I might have to abandon it and hope they don’t find prints. how the f*ck will I explain losing it to my old man,” he said, according to the documents.Robinson also told his roommate to delete the messages and not to speak to police or the media.According to charging documents, Tyler Robinson’s roommate and romantic partner appears to have discovered that Robinson carried out the Kirk shooting when Robinson sent a text saying: “Drop what you are doing, look under my keyboard.”That’s where the partner found a note that said, “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I’m going to take it,” according to the charges.After reading the note, the roommate asked Robinson if he was joking. Robinson responded: “I am still OK, my love. … Shouldn’t be long till I can home, but I gotta grab my rifle still. To be honest, I had hoped to keep this secret until I died of old age. I am sorry to involve you.”The roommate then asked Robinson if he was involved in the shooting. Robinson confirmed that he was and said he intended to grab his rifle, but the area was on lockdown.When the roommate asked why he did it, Robinson responded: “I had enough of his hate. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”Robinson instructed the roommate to delete their text conversation, Gray said.Robinson’s mother told the county sheriff’s office that her son had accused Charlie Kirk of spreading hate, Gray says.While talking to his parents at their home, Robinson allegedly implied that he shot Kirk, “and stated that he couldn’t go to jail, and just wanted to end it”, Gray says.When Robinson was then asked why he did it, Robinson said that Kirk “spreads too much hate”, Gray said.“There’s too much evil in the guy,” Robinson allegedly told his parents, Gray says.Robinson’s mother told the police that her son had “become more political and started to move more to the left” over the last year or so and had become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented”, Gray says.He had also become romantically involved with his roommate, who was transitioning, Gray says.This resulted in several discussions with family members, but especially between Robinson and his father, who have very different political views, he adds.In one conversation with his parents before the shooting, Robinson mentioned that Charlie Kirk would be holding an event at UVU, which Robinson said was a “stupid venue” for the event. Robinson accused Kirk of spreading hate, says Gray. More