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

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

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

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      How Trump is seizing on Charlie Kirk’s killing for a campaign of vengeance

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      They will gather to mourn one of their own. On Sunday the late rightwing activist Charlie Kirk is set to be hailed by Donald Trump as a martyr of the Make America great again (Maga) movement.But Kirk’s memorial service at a 63,000-seat football stadium in Arizona could, critics fear, be exploited by the US president to serve a darker purpose: turning collective grief into a campaign of vengeance against America’s enemy within.Trump has spent the past 10 days escalating threats against what he calls the “radical left” after the fatal shooting of Kirk, 31, on a university campus in Utah.The White House is considering classifying some groups as domestic terrorists and revoking tax-exempt status for certain non-profits, even though there is no evidence linking these groups to the killing.Trump and his allies have also sought to undermine the legitimacy of the Democratic party, branding it an extremist organisation despite it having roundly condemned the attack on Kirk.Although officials insist that their focus is preventing violence, critics see an extension of Trump’s campaign of retribution against his political foes and an erosion of free speech rights. They warn that, in an echo of authoritarian governments around the world, his administration is trying to harness outrage over Kirk’s killing to crush dissent.“Political violence is very often used as a pretext to crack down on civil liberties and on opponents – this is page one of the autocrats’ playbook,” said Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University and co-author of the book How Democracies Die.“I’m a Latin Americanist by training and the language we’ve heard lately reminds me a lot of the outsized response of military dictators in South America in the 1970s and that was a response to much higher levels of political violence than we see in the United States.”Levitsky added: “One is hard pressed to find an authoritarian government that did not take advantage of either a terrorist attack or a political assassination – an episode of political violence – to further crack down on civil liberties. This is mainstream authoritarian stuff.”Emotions are bound to be raw at Sunday’s tribute to Kirk, a close ally of Trump and personal friend of his son Donald Trump Jr, and a key figure in mobilising support for the president on university campuses. Authorities said they believe the suspect, Tyler Robinson, 22, acted alone and they charged him with murder on Tuesday.However, administration officials have repeatedly made sweeping statements about the need for broader investigations and punishments related to Kirk’s death. Stephen Miller, a top policy adviser, claimed without evidence that there was an “organised campaign that led to this assassination”.Miller’s comments came during a conversation with JD Vance, who was guest-hosting Kirk’s talkshow from his ceremonial office in the White House on Monday.Miller said he was feeling “focused, righteous anger,” and “we are going to channel all of the anger” by working to “uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks” by using “every resource we have.”The vice-president blamed “crazies on the far left” for saying the White House would “go after constitutionally protected speech”. Instead, he said, “We’re going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence.”View image in fullscreenAsked for examples, the White House pointed to demonstrations where police officers and federal agents have been injured, as well as the distribution of goggles and face masks during protests over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, blamed “leftwing radicals” for the shooting and said “they will be held accountable”. She warned: “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech. And that’s across the aisle.”Her comments sparked a backlash across the political spectrum, since even hate speech is generally considered to be protected under the first amendment to the constitution. Bondi tried to clean up her remarks, writing on social media that they would focus on “hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence”.But Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said: “What you’re hearing from Trump, JD Vance, Stephen Miller and Pam Bondi is an unambiguous intention to use this tragedy as a pretext to crack down on dissent and criticism.“This is almost a classic move from the authoritarian playbook: to use a crisis to declare an emergency, to identify enemies and then to use that as an excuse to use state power as a cudgel against political opponents.”Already Trump has declared that he is designating the antifa movement a terrorist organisation while the Heritage Foundation thinktank and the Oversight Project, the authors of the influential Project 2025 blueprint, released a memo designating transgender people as “violent extremists”.Conflating such so-called threats with the Democratic party would be a leap but it is one that Miller and company seem willing to make, in what Levitsky regards as another typical authoritarian manoeuvre. “There’s almost always a rhetorical slip of the hand in which you link extremists who may be real or imagined or exaggerated to your mainstream opposition,” he said.“It’s far from clear that the guy who perpetrated this assassination belongs to any far-left movement; it seems pretty clear he did not. It’s very difficult to imagine that the far left, which in the United States is incredibly weak, poses a threat.”He added: “This is being used – and this is what authoritarians have done in many places – as a pretext to go after the Democratic party, which uniformly to a person repudiated this assassination and is in no way linked to it, and to go after what might be called opposition civil society.”Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, drew a comparison with the June killing of Democrat Melissa Hortman, a former speaker of the Minnesota state house, and her husband. “The Democrats didn’t run around blaming the Republican party or the conservative philosophy,” he said. “We didn’t engage in a series of guilt by association tactics.”Raskin also reacted to recent comments in which Miller described Democrats as “a domestic, extremist organisation”. “What is his basis for that? That is out of an authoritarian how-to guide. Authoritarians like to describe anyone who does not accept their rule over society as a terrorist. That’s a Putin move; that’s a Pinochet move.”Since taking office Trump has mobilised the federal government to pressure law firms, universities and other independent institutions. The White House has reportedly pointed to Indivisible, a progressive grassroots network, and the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, as further potential subjects of scrutiny.More than a hundred non-profit leaders, representing organisations including the Ford Foundation, the Omidyar Network and the MacArthur Foundation, released a joint letter saying “we reject attempts to exploit political violence to mischaracterize our good work or restrict our fundamental freedoms”.After years of railing against censorship and “cancel culture”, Trump and his allies are now policing their opponents’ speech. People deemed to have celebrated Kirk’s death have been portrayed as complicit in the surge of political violence, with dozens fired, suspended or disciplined by employers over “inappropriate” comments.This week, late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel was suspended by the ABC network over comments he made about Kirk following pressure from the Trump administration. Trump suggested regulators should consider revoking licences for networks that “give me only bad publicity”.Trump also brought a $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times and four of its journalists in what the newspaper described as a meritless attempt to discourage independent reporting. On Friday a judge tossed out the action but allowed Trump to refile and amend it within 28 days.Sykes, author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, observed: “The irony is that Charlie Kirk justified much of his rhetoric as free speech and denied that there was such a thing as hate speech so that all the speech was justifiable. They’re willing to completely do a 180, completely turn that entire position on its head by adopting a position that they had claimed to reject.“This is the party that before 2024 had insisted that they were the defenders of free speech. JD Vance went to Europe to lecture the Europeans on free speech. And now what are they doing? They are justifying and leading a state-sponsored cancel culture.”Trump’s concerns about political violence are selective. He described people who rioted at the US Capitol on January 6 2021 as “hostages” and “patriots” and pardoned 1,500 of them on his first day back in the Oval Office. He also mocked House speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi after an attack on her husband.View image in fullscreenWhen Trump condemned Kirk’s killing in a video message, he mentioned several examples of “radical left political violence” but ignored attacks on Democrats. Asked on Monday about the killing of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman over the summer, Trump said, “I’m not familiar” with the case.A recent study of political violence by the Cato Institute, a libertarian thinktank, found that rightwing extremists have killed six times more people than their far left counterparts over the past half century.Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, observed: “They expect the Democrats and people who don’t agree with Maga’s worldview to take the high road, that somehow the onus is on that side to be the better angel, but it’s not expected of them.“Donald Trump can go out and call his political opponents scum and say that he doesn’t care about their wellbeing. But if these people point out the vile and controversial positions of someone like Charlie Kirk or those within their own administration, like Stephen Miller and Pam Bondi, then they’re domestic terrorists.”Yet still Trump has unwavering support from Republicans in Congress. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and others proposed legislation that would enable the justice department to use racketeering laws, originally envisioned to combat organised crime, to prosecute violent protesters and the groups that support them.Congressman Chip Roy of Texas wants the House to create a special committee to investigate the non-profit groups, saying: “We must follow the money to identify the perpetrators of the coordinated anti-American assaults being carried out against us.”Rightwing commentators have also cheered on the clampdown. Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist with a long record of bigoted comments, said “let’s shut the left down” and acknowledged that she wants Trump “to be the ‘dictator’ the left thinks he is”.Some analysts believe that Trump is fulfilling that ambition. Steve Schmidt, a political strategist, said there has never before been a crime committed in the US where the president and his allies have “used the occasion to demand a consolidation of political power for themselves and collective punishment against their opposition, who have been named as co-conspirators in a crime for which they had no involvement”.Schmidt noted state demands that flags be lowered and tributes enforced: “What you’re witnessing is a propaganda campaign that is ruthless, brutal and cold, right down to the use of the highly choreographed videography and photographs from the open casket. It’s obscene.” More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      What does Donald Trump think free speech means? – podcast

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      Archive: CBS, Good Morning America, The Charlie Kirk show, ABC News, Katie Miller Pod, CBS Austin, PIX11 News, Fox News
      Listen to Science Weekly’s episode on the data behind political violence
      Listen to Politics Weekly, all about Trump’s state visit to the UK
      Purchase Jonathan Freedland’s new book, The Traitor’s Circle, here
      Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian.com
      Support the Guardian. Go to theguardian.com/politicspodus More

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

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

      Naomi Beinart is a high school student More