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      The Guardian view on the killing of Charlie Kirk: a perilous moment that may lead to more | Editorial

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      “Democracy is the way that we have diverse societies that don’t kill each other, largely,” Lilliana Mason, a leading scholar of partisanship, observed recently. She added: “As soon as we stop believing in it, it disappears.” Dr Mason’s own research suggests that there is sharply rising tolerance of political violence. On Wednesday, it claimed one more victim.The shocking killing of the co-founder of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk, a hugely influential activist who rallied young people to Donald Trump’s cause and far-right ideology more broadly, has been widely and rightly condemned across the political spectrum. Leading Democrats and progressive activists made clear that such violence must not be tolerated.Before a perpetrator had even been identified, the president, like several other Republicans, blamed “radical left political violence”, claiming that liberal rhetoric against conservatives was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country”. Mr Trump himself faced two attempts on his life last year. He cited other victims, but not the many Democrats who have been targeted, including Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota state representative shot dead at her home alongside her husband, Mark, in June. Meanwhile, some far-right commentators spoke of vengeance.Political violence is hardly a new phenomenon in a country that has seen a civil war, four presidential assassinations, and lynchings. But it is rising again. Ordinary Americans are being radicalised. In such an environment, one thing unites the political poles; any prominent figure is vulnerable, though women and people of colour are particularly targeted. Threats to members of Congress rocketed last year.“Demonising those with whom you disagree” is indeed dangerous, but Mr Trump himself has normalised vicious attacks on opponents. The tolerance of violent action – as with Mr Trump’s blanket pardons for the January 6 rioters – sends a message too. The roots of violent acts are complex, but an environment conducive to political attacks may channel the propensities of potential perpetrators. Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, has warned that US politics may be on the brink “of an extremely violent era … The more public support there is for political violence, the more common it is.” The US addiction to guns drastically increases the impact.Acts of political violence exact an appalling human toll in lives lost and families shattered; Mr Kirk’s death leaves two small children fatherless. But they also – by design – deter other people from political or other civic activity at all levels. The most extreme voices may persist and prevail. Blaming political adversaries before a perpetrator has even been identified risks fuelling anger and attacks, to everyone’s cost. Research by Dr Mason, of Johns Hopkins University, and Nathan Kalmoe, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found that a fifth of respondents said political violence could sometimes be justified, but three-fifths thought it could sometimes be justified if the other side committed violence first.Yet other research notes that people appear less willing to condone violence if misperceptions of the other side’s extremism or propensity for force are corrected. In this perilous moment, the response to such hateful crimes should be to coalesce to stress non-violence and civic tolerance. To instead promote division will only increase the threat to politicians and activists of all stripes, and strike another blow to democracy itself.

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      From ‘hellhole’ UK to anti-Muslim rhetoric in Japan, Charlie Kirk took his message abroad

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      Charlie Kirk directed most of his rhetoric at the US political scene, but he also strayed into foreign affairs, drawing both favourable and critical comparisons between life in the US and in other countries on his shows and doing the occasional speaking tour.In May, Kirk visited the UK, debating against students at Oxford and Cambridge universities and appearing on the conservative GB News channel. Days before he was fatally shot in Utah he took his message to relatively new audiences on a tour to South Korea and Japan.Last weekend he addressed like-minded politicians and activists at a symposium in Tokyo organised by Sanseito, a rightwing populist party that shook up the political establishment in upper house elections this summer.In Tokyo, Kirk described Sanseito, which ran in July’s elections on a “Japanese first” platform, as “all about kicking foreigners out of Japan”, where the foreign population has risen to about 3.8 million out of a total of 124 million.Foreign residents and supporters of mass migration were, he claimed, “very quietly and secretly funnelling themselves into Japanese life. They want to erase, replace and eradicate Japan by bringing in Indonesians, by bringing in Arabs, by bringing in Muslims”.He spoke at length about his trip in a podcast released the day before his death, returning to a familiar theme – criticising women who choose not to have children – that echoed the views of his host in Japan, the Sanseito leader, Sohei Kamiya.In Seoul, he addressed more than 2,000 supporters at the Build Up Korea 2025 event, which drew predominantly young Christians and students from evangelical schools, representing a self-styled Korean Maga movement that has rallied in support of the impeached former president Yoon Suk Yeol.The event invited a host of far-right American personalities, who openly promoted conspiracy theories including claims that China orchestrated “stolen elections” in both America and South Korea, and that Lee Jae Myung’s recent presidential victory was fraudulent.Kirk criticised special prosecutor investigations into Yoon and his martial law, describing “several disturbing things happening right now in South Korea” where “pastors are being arrested” and “homes are being raided”, adding: “If South Korea keeps on acting like this, it is the American way to step up and fight for what is right.”Kirk said he had “learned a lot” from his time in South Korea and Japan, recalling how safe he had felt on the clean and orderly streets of Seoul, where there were “no bums, no one asking you for money”.In his three-day visit to the UK in May, he clashed with students at the Cambridge Union debating society, arguing that “lockdowns were unnecessary”, “life begins at conception”, and the US Civil Rights Act was a “mistake”.Kirk made the same points in Oxford, also alleging immigrants were “importing insidious values into the west” and that police violence against Black people was a result of a “disproportionate crime problem” in the Black community.He told the rightwing GB News that the UK was a “husk” of its former self and needed to “get its mojo back”. The perception among US conservatives, he said, was that “this is increasingly a conquered country … We love this country from afar, and we’re really sad about what’s happening to it, and what has happened to it”.On his first show after returning to the US, Kirk described the UK as a “totalitarian third world hellhole”, adding: “It’s tragic. I don’t say that with glib, I don’t say that with delight. It is sad. It’s chilling and it’s depressing.”He claimed he had seen a cafe in which “every single table was taken by a Mohammedan and a fully burqa-wearing woman – not a single native Brit” and that people were being arrested for online posts that displayed no apparent harmful intent.“They invented free speech,” he said. “Now there’s so much wrong with that country and it is not worthy of making fun of. I mean, you can have some laughs and some comedy, but it is depressing. It is dark.”View image in fullscreenWhile he was fond of referencing Europe in his shows, Kirk’s only other recent public visit there appears to have been a trip to Greenland in January in the company of Donald Trump Jr.He said afterwards that Greenlanders should be allowed to “use personal autonomy and agency to disconnect from their Danish masters”, then have “the opportunity to be part of the US, no different than either Puerto Rico or Guam” (two self-governing “unincorporated territories” of the US) in order to be “wealthier, richer … and protected”.Kirk was also sharply critical of many countries in his videos and podcasts. “France has basically become a joke, for a lot of reasons,” he said last year, amid widespread French protests over pension changes. “What’s happening in France should serve as a warning to America.”After JD Vance attacked Europe for alleged free speech shortcomings this year, Kirk hit out at Germany. “Germans are a bunch of troublemakers,” he said. “German prosecutors say someone can be locked up if they insult someone online. Free speech is not a German value. Totalitarianism is a German value.”He was a vocal supporter of Trump’s China-focused policies, backing the president’s attacks on Harvard University in April, and the punishing trade war with Beijing.In April, he claimed Harvard had “raked in” more than $100m from China. “We need to ask serious questions in this country about whether we can trust our elite universities to put America first when so much money is flowing to them from America’s number one rival.”The same month, he told Fox News the US had become “a glorified vassal state” subservient to the Chinese Communist party, by relying on China for rare earth minerals. He said the CCP wanted to create “lots of little colonies all around the world through the belt and road initiative”.He also waded into the complicated waters of cross-strait relations. In April, Kirk told his podcast he had “a soft spot for the people of Taiwan”, but also showed a limited understanding of its history and the complexities of the dispute.“I would say, sadly if we took Taiwan, it would probably start a nuclear war. Our leaders have largely mishandled China. We probably should have taken it in 1950 right after world war two,” he said.There has never been any discussion of the US “taking” Taiwan. The US is Taiwan’s most important backer, providing billions of dollars in weapons and some military training, and has not ruled out coming to its defence in the event of a Chinese attack or invasion.In a video in May, Kirk used the escalating hostilities between India and Pakistan to push his argument against US military intervention abroad. Describing Pakistan as a “very, very sneaky actor”, Kirk was emphatic that “very simply, this is not our war … This is a great test of whether every great conflict is America’s problem”.Kirk was equally dogmatic on the issue of Indians being granted more visas as part of a US-India trade deal, accusing Indians of taking American jobs.“America does not need more visas for people from India,” he said. “Perhaps no form of legal immigration has so displaced American workers as those from India. Enough already. We’re full. Let’s finally put our own people first.” More

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      ‘What have we become?’: shock across US political parties after Charlie Kirk shooting

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      Charlie Kirk’s death by an assassin’s bullet on a university campus in Utah on Wednesday has left the United States, a country already grappling with mounting political anger and polarization, in a state of profound shock bordering on despair.Kirk, a rising star of Donald Trump’s make America great again (Maga) movement, was struck in the neck by a single shot as he addressed a large student crowd at Utah Valley University. The event had been billed as the grand opening of his 15-stop “America Comeback Tour”, but instead will be marked as the place where he uttered his last words.The 31-year-old leader of the rightwing student group Turning Point USA was about 20 minutes into a Q&A, ironically engaging with a question on mass shootings in America, when the shot rang out. Within seconds, hundreds of students had scattered screaming from the campus lawn.Within minutes of that, gruesome videos began to proliferate through social media, apparently undeterred by any algorithm. They showed Kirk being hit, slumping to his left side and profusely bleeding.Long before Kirk was pronounced dead at 4.40pm – poignantly in a post from his champion, the US president, on Truth Social – the wave of profound shock was breaking over both sides of the US’s political divide.“This is horrific. I am stunned,” said the Republican senator from Texas Ted Cruz, who described Kirk on Twitter/X as a “good friend” since the young activist’s teenage years.Kirk was unashamedly far to the right of the US political spectrum and had expressed openly bigoted views and engaged in homophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric. He recently tweeted: “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.”He mixed evangelical Christian beliefs with rightwing politics into a combustible brew. During an appearance with Trump in Georgia last fall, he claimed that Democrats “stand for everything God hates”, adding: “This is a Christian state. I’d like to see it stay that way.”But mourning for Kirk crossed the political aisle.Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe who has been unrestrained at times in his criticism of Kirk’s political posturing, called the shooting “tragic and sickening”. He added: “Violence targeting political public figures is violence against American democracy itself and the freedom of every American to express their views.”Tommy Vietor, a former staffer in Barack Obama’s White House, issued an even darker warning. Political violence, he said, was a “cancer that will feed off itself and spread … it will rip this country apart”.The political violence that Vietor identified is etched into the US’s psyche. The country has had to absorb the assassinations of four sitting presidents including Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy, as well as the tragic trilogy of 1960s shootings of Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.Those grim historic landmarks were brought slamming back into public consciousness by the assassination attempt on Trump at a presidential campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024. Trump survived that incident by a hair’s breadth, which he has since claimed to be an act of God’s will. A second would-be assassin later waited for Trump on a Florida golf course before being discovered in the nick of time by his security detail.At the same time America has been rocked by the killing on the streets of Manhattan of a top healthcare executive, and in June an attack in Minnesota saw a gunman brutally shoot a local lawmaker dead in her own home.Kirk’s death – though the precise motive behind his killing remains so far unknown – leaves the US standing on the edge of a new abyss, over which a black cloud now looms over the safety of its public figures and the sanctity of its public debate.“What the actual hell have we become?” asked the Catholic writer Emily Zanotti, speaking for many. In a comment under her X feed, another poster said: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”Dylan Housman, editor-in-chief of the rightwing news outlet the Daily Caller, also expressed foreboding. “We can’t live in a country where things like this happen,” he said.For months now the temperature of the US’s political discourse has been rising. As JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, put it following the Kirk shooting: “Political violence unfortunately has been ratcheting up in this country.”In June a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, and her husband Mark, were killed in a shooting. Federal and state judges have reported a plethora of threats, including deliveries of unsolicited pizzas to their homes in grotesque reference to the 2020 killing of Daniel Anderl, the son of a New Jersey district judge Esther Salas.Kirk’s killing takes this booming scourge of discourse-by-bullet to another level. The location of the shooting in itself indicates that there might be trouble ahead, as the TV political journalist Chuck Todd noted. “On a college campus, no less, a place where we should be celebrating speech, not trying to silence it.”The identity of the victim, too, raises the stakes dramatically. Kirk was the golden boy of the Maga movement, a Trump favorite.The president called Kirk “legendary” in his post announcing the death. The Turning Point leader was boosted to nationwide prominence when he was taken on as personal aide to Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, during the 2016 presidential campaign.Kirk’s ascent within the Maga firmament was as fiery as the trademark pyrotechnical displays that opened his Turning Point “people’s conventions”. The speakers he attracted on stage were like a roll-call of Maga royalty – JD Vance, former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon, entrepreneur and presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and many more.By Wednesday night consternation had already begun to be aired about how the Trump administration, and the wider Maga movement, would respond to the loss of one of their dearly beloved own. “There are people who are fomenting [political violence] in this country,” Pritzker said. “The president’s rhetoric often foments it.”Later this month, Kirk had a stop on his Comeback Tour scheduled at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. On 25 September he was scheduled to debate the progressive influencer, Hasan Piker.After Kirk’s shooting, Piker spoke out about his fears on his live stream. “This is a terrifying incident,” he said. “The reverberation of people seeking out vengeance in the aftermath of this violent, abhorrent incident is going to be genuinely worrisome.” More

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      Charlie Kirk’s death shows political violence is now a feature of US life

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      The shooting of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk at an event in Utah marks another example of ongoing political violence in the US, now a feature of American life.Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday that Kirk had died, saying: “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie.”Kirk, on campus at Utah Valley University as part of a speaking tour called “American Comeback”. was asked a question by an audience member about mass shootings, including how many involved trans shooters, when he was shot in the neck.The political leanings and goals of the shooter, who is not in custody, are not yet known. Kirk is one of the highest profile allies of the US president, and his organization, Turning Point USA, has helped turn out voters for Trump and other Republicans. He is also known for his inflammatory, often racist and xenophobic commentary, particularly on college campuses.The shooting comes as a series of incidents over the past year show an increased level of violence related to political disagreements or intended to achieve political goals.Trump faced two assassination attempts in 2024. Last December, a shooter targeted and killed the head of United Healthcare. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s home was burned in an arson attack in April. Judges and elected officials report increased threats and harassment. Several instances of violence have stemmed from opposition to the Gaza war. In June, a man dressed as a police officer shot and killed a Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, and wounded another state lawmaker and his wife. A gunman attacked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in August, killing a police officer.Surveys have shown increased acceptance of using violence for political aims across party spectrums. Robert Pape, who directs the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, wrote in the New York Times that a survey his team conducted in May was its “most worrisome yet”. “About 40 percent of Democrats supported the use of force to remove Mr. Trump from the presidency, and about 25 percent of Republicans supported the use of the military to stop protests against Mr. Trump’s agenda. These numbers more than doubled since last fall, when we asked similar questions,” he wrote.“We’re becoming more and more of a powder keg,” Pape told the Guardian on Wednesday. Pape calls the current moment an “era of violent populism”.Condemnations of the shooting came from across the political spectrum. Pape has long argued that politicians need to speak out against violence, especially if it’s aligned with their own team.These condemnations are “extremely helpful here as we go forward. It won’t stop everything, but it helps to stop the snowball,” he said.Hasan Piker, the progressive streamer who was scheduled to debate Kirk later this month, said on his livestream on Wednesday that it was a “terrifying incident”.“The reverberation of people seeking out vengeance in the aftermath of this violent, abhorrent incident is going to be genuinely worrisome,” he said.The aftermath of Kirk’s death could include increased violence and retaliation, with some rightwing figures already calling for retribution.Libs of TikTok, the rightwing X account, put simply: “THIS IS WAR.” More

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

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

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      Arizona Republicans seek to expel lawmaker who reposted Ice raid information

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      A Democratic lawmaker in Arizona who is facing calls for expulsion for resharing an Instagram post warning of immigration enforcement activity near an elementary school said that state senate Republicans “absolutely are trying to make an example out of me”.Analise Ortiz, a Democratic state senator in Arizona, shared an Instagram post from a community organization that warned, in text only, that immigration enforcement agents were near a local elementary school.“Alert/Alerta: ICE activity near Southwest Elementary,” the post in early August said, adding the cross streets of the school. “ICE is present. La migra esta presente.”That post is at the center of an ethics complaint filed this week against Ortiz and a viral rightwing campaign against her.“The ethics complaint very clearly says that they want to stop other people from sharing this type of information,” she said, calling it “a stunning escalation of intimidation”.The controversy began when Libs of TikTok, the X account known for going after liberals online, posted about Ortiz’s reshare, claiming she was “actively impeding and doxxing ICE by posting their live locations on instagram” and that law enforcement officials should “charge her”.No photos of agents were shared, nor were names or other identifying information about agents.“I was not there,” Ortiz said. “There were no pictures of anybody taken. It was simply a post that said Ice presence is possible outside of an elementary school. And I think that the fact that they are outside of sensitive locations where kids should be able to learn in peace is something that people should know about. They should know how the government is acting on their behalf.”The Libs of TikTok post went viral, leaving Ortiz with an inbox full of harassing and threatening messages. The mischaracterization that she “doxed” agents had led to the vast majority of the threats she had received, she said.Jake Hoffman, a Republican state senator, and a handful of other Republican leaders in the chamber filed a formal ethics complaint that seeks to expel Ortiz from the chamber or, failing a vote to expel, remove her from all committees and take away her office and administrative staff. The ethics committee chair also referred the complaint to the US attorney’s office in Arizona for a potential investigation, saying Ortiz’s actions “may implicate federal law”.After the ethics complaint was filed, Libs of TikTok egged on Arizona senate Republicans. “Make an example out of her! Enough is enough,” the account tweeted.“What surprised me about the ethics complaint was the level of punishment they want to inflict upon me for simply exercising my first amendment right,” Ortiz said.As immigration enforcement agents have ramped up activity across the country, activists have shared locations where they see raids or Ice agents as a way to warn people to avoid the area. In Arizona, a southern border state, fear of deportations – and of detaining people who are in the US legally – is a facet of daily life in the second Trump administration. Ortiz said she had heard from constituents who are terrified to drive without a passport on hand because they fear law enforcement won’t believe they are US citizens if they are pulled over.Ortiz said she would not be intimidated by the ethics inquest or attempts to criminalize her sharing of information.“If the United States of America is going to continue as a free and fair democracy, it demands that people speak out against constitutional violations,” she said. “It demands bravery, so I am going to continue to be brave in this moment.”Hoffman claimed Ortiz’s reshare was “reckless” and “dangerous”, saying that “by publicly posting alerts about federal law enforcement activity, she actively tipped off individuals being pursued by Ice, jeopardizing the safety of officers and law-abiding citizens”. He wanted the committee to investigate her for “behavior unbecoming of an elected official and embarrassing to the entire Arizona legislature on a state and national stage”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHoffman was charged for his role as a fake elector after the 2020 election. Earlier this year, he was pulled over for driving 89mph in a 65mph zone in his Tesla Cybertruck emblazoned with the word “Freedom” on the back, though he was not cited because of a legal provision called legislative immunity.The ethics complaint details how Ortiz did not back away from her reshare after Libs of TikTok posted about it. Instead, she wrote that she would alert her community to stay away when Ice is around and that she was “not fucking scared of you nor Trump’s masked goons”. After Hoffman wrote on X that he would bring an ethics complaint and wanted her expelled, she said: “Bring it on, Jake.”Warren Petersen, the Republican state senate president, previously asked for a federal investigation into Ortiz’s reshare, claiming she may have broken a federal law that prevents “assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers or employees”.The US attorney’s office in Arizona did not respond to a request for comment.Ortiz said Republican lawmakers want to deprive her legislative district of its voice in the senate and silence her and others who want to stand against deportations.“The fact they are trying to escalate it and are blatantly lying about my actions proves that this is really about authoritarianism and wanting to have a system where masked men carry out police operations in secret, and that should really concern anyone who cares about the United States constitution,” Ortiz said.Free speech experts and other elected officials, including the state’s Democratic attorney general, have spoken out against the attacks on Ortiz for her post, which they say is well within her first amendment rights.“Senator Ortiz’s post is clearly protected speech under the first amendment,” Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, said in a statement. “This ethics complaint is nothing more than a pathetic attempt to intimidate and silence a democratically elected legislator. Warren Petersen and Jake Hoffman should be ashamed of themselves for weaponizing the ethics process just because they disagree with Senator Ortiz politically.”The ethics committee has not met yet this year and does not have operating rules in place, but will consider the complaint once those are established, said its chair, Shawnna Bolick, a Republican. An expulsion would require a two-thirds vote of the chamber, an unlikely prospect.Ortiz previously faced an ethics investigation after she and another Democratic lawmaker shouted “shame” and protested on the state house floor against their Republican colleagues over an abortion vote in 2024. She was found to have violated house rules for conduct, but no official action was taken against her. More

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      Trump claims Chicago is ‘world’s most dangerous city’. The four most violent ones are all in red states

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      As Donald Trump threatens to deploy national guard units to Chicago and Baltimore, ostensibly to quell violence, a pattern has emerged as he describes which cities he talks about.Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington DC and Baltimore.But not Jackson, Birmingham, St Louis or Memphis.An analysis of crime trends over the last four years shows two things. First, violent crime rates in America’s big cities have been falling over the last two years, and at an even greater rate over the last six months. The decrease in violence in America is unprecedented.Second, crime in large cities in the aggregate is lower in states with Democratic leadership. But the president focuses his ire almost exclusively on large blue cities in blue states, sidestepping political conflict with red Republican governors.The four cities of populations larger than 100,000 with the highest murder rates in 2024 are in Republican states: Jackson, Mississippi (78.7 per 100,000 residents), Birmingham, Alabama (58.8), St Louis, Missouri (54.1) and Memphis, Tennessee (40.6).On Tuesday, Trump called Chicago “the most dangerous city in the world”, and pledged to send military troops there, as well as to Baltimore. “I have an obligation. This isn’t a political thing,” he said at a press conference. “I have an obligation when 20 people are killed over the last two and a half weeks and 75 are shot with bullets.”When talking about crime in Chicago, Trump regularly refers to the number of people who may have been shot and killed there. But Chicago has a population of about 2.7 million, which is larger than each of the least-populous 15 states. It is roughly the same population as Mississippi. Chicago’s homicide rate for 2024 was 17.5 murders for every 100,000 residents, only a few points higher than that of the state of Louisiana, which was 14.5 per 100,000 in 2024.As has become tradition, news outlets reported how many people were killed in Chicago over the Labor Day weekend. At Louisiana’s rates, one would predict almost twice as many people to have been murdered there over the long weekend.But those numbers are harder to count. Chicago police report a single figure. One has to scour a hundred local news sites around Louisiana to aggregate the count for comparison.Notably, Trump discussed sending troops to New Orleans this week. “We’re making a determination now,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “Do we go to Chicago or do we go to a place like New Orleans, where we have a great governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to straighten out a very nice section of this country that’s become quite, you know, quite tough, quite bad?”And Landry signaled his willingness to accede. “We will take President Trump’s help from New Orleans to Shreveport!” he wrote on X, posting a clip of the exchange.Still, Chicago is bracing to be the next city targeted by the Trump administration. To date this year, 278 people have been killed in Chicago, 118 fewer people killed when compared with 2024. It is at pace for 412 deaths for the year, which would be a rate of about 15 per 100,000 residents. The rate is likely to be lower still than that, because homicide rates increase during summer months.The Windy City ranked 37th in homicide rate in 2024 for cities larger than 50,000 residents in the United States. For cities with more than 100,000 residents, it placed 14th. This year, it is likely to slide farther down the list, even as violence falls to 60-year lows.As reported by the FBI’s crime data unit in August, the United States had a homicide rate of about 4.6 per 100,000 residents in 2024. It is the lowest figure since 2014, and very close to the generational lows of 4 to 4.5 per 100,000 last experienced in the early 1960s. The pandemic wave of increased violence has largely receded.“We know that across the nation [violence is] going down,” said Dr Thaddeus Johnson, a former Tennessee police officer and senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, a policy thinktank.The 2024 homicide rate in the US decreased by about 15%, one of the largest drops in American history. Most of that decrease can be attributed to declines in the largest cities, Johnson said.Criminal justice researchers tend to place higher value on murder rates than other indicators of violent crime, because murder statistics are harder to manipulate. “It’s the most trustworthy data point,” Johnson said. But it’s not the only data point. “When you start talking about aggravated assaults and robberies, generally, we’ve seen that going down across the nation as well.”Both Chicago and Baltimore implemented or expanded antiviolence programs in 2022 using American Rescue Plan funding – much of which has been cut under Trump. Baltimore’s homicide rate has fallen about 40% since 2020, and in 2025 is pacing a 50-year low to date.Violent crime had also been falling in Washington DC by substantial margins before Trump took over the city’s policing. His announcement last month referenced DC’s 2023 crime rates, which spiked during the pandemic, while saying nothing about the precipitous fall since.In January, the Metropolitan police department and US attorney’s office reported that total violent crime in DC in 2024 was down 35% from the prior year, marking the lowest rate in over 30 years.The Guardian analyzed the murder rates for the largest 50 cities in the US and found that cities in blue states had the lowest, with just 7.8 murders per 100,000 people. The cities in red states have a much higher murder rate, of 12.9. Cities in swing states sit in the middle, with a murder rate of 10.2.Baltimore ranks fifth on a list of cities over 50,000 population by murder rate in 2024, as reported to the FBI statisticians. Washington DC is 15th. Between them are Wilmington, Delaware; Detroit; Cleveland; Dayton, Ohio; North Little Rock, Arkansas; Kansas City, Missouri; Shreveport, Louisiana; Camden, New Jersey, and Albany, Georgia.Compliance with federal rules on crime reporting is incomplete, and some agencies report incomplete data. One notable example of this is Jackson, Mississippi, which has consistently gathered crime data but only started submitting it to the FBI’s system this year. Jackson recorded 111 homicides in 2024, in a population of about 141,000: a rate of 78.7, the highest in America for any city with a population over 50,000.Though St Louis posted the second-highest homicide rate in 2024, violence there has been falling since 2023, and is on pace today for a 10% annual drop. Its rate will fall less sharply, however, because St Louis is losing population.Memphis led the country’s homicide rate in 2023. To date in 2025, murders and non-negligent homicides are down about 25%, after a 22% decrease in 2024. Like Baltimore, Memphis leaders attribute the decrease in part to an aggressive gun violence reduction initiative, Memphis Allies.Notably, small changes in smaller cities can have a big statistical effect.Birmingham, with a population of about 200,000, has cut its murder rate by more than half since the start of the year. Local officials attribute this, in part, to the arrest of a handful of people accused of violence, including Damien McDaniel, who has been charged in the murders of 18 people as a hired hitman. His arrest in October – and that of four other people who are linked to him – coincides with a 55% drop in Birmingham’s homicide rate since. More

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      Why is much of the media ignoring questions about Trump’s health? | Margaret Sullivan

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      Prestigious news organizations gave scant attention when, for several days recently, Donald Trump faded from public view. Other than some social media posts and some blurry golf-course images, the normally ubiquitous president seemed almost to disappear.But most of Big Journalism gave that subject a pass.Given Trump’s obvious health problems – swollen ankles, an uneven gait, bruised hands and instances of verbal confusion – the media silence struck a lot of people as hypocrisy.“Why are the biggest newsrooms silent?” demanded John Passantino, who writes for the media newsletter Status. “No front-page write ups. No broadcast packages.” Trump’s health problems and near disappearance “barely registered in mainstream coverage”.By contrast, the media went overboard with unrelenting coverage of Joe Biden’s old age, but it came late. Almost all of it followed the then president’s shockingly weak debate appearance during his 2024 re-election campaign.There was plenty of finger-pointing – even a bestselling book by two media bigwigs – about the failures to report Biden’s decline earlier and about the White House’s efforts to obscure it.This time, over the Labor Day weekend, wild rumors swirled on social media that Trump had died, or had suffered a debilitating stroke or a series of them. The much-read Drudge Report published a story with this headline: PRESIDENT HEALTH CRISIS DEEPENS.Nevertheless, JD Vance seemed to target big media.“If the media you consumed told you that Donald Trump was on his deathbed because he didn’t do a press conference for three days, imagine what else they’re lying to you about,” Vance posted on X.That translated, for the gullible, into the usual trashing of the mainstream press, a regular talking point from Magaworld.In fact, big journalism was guilty of nothing of the sort; if anything, they took Trump’s disappearance too lightly.As is often the case with Trump and his allies, there’s a lot of projection going on.“Imagine what else they’re lying to you about” is something that might, much more accurately, be said about Trump and his minions on any number of subjects.Trump joined in, too. “It’s fake news – it’s so fake. That’s why the media has so little credibility,” he responded to a Fox News question that conveniently set up this round of media-bashing. (“How did you find out over the weekend that you were dead?” asked Peter Doocy at a briefing after Trump re-emerged.)Nonsense, of course. Most of the mainstream media was overly cautious, if anything, in approaching the topic.When the New York Times did get around to covering the issue, the paper took up the topic obliquely – focusing primarily on the false rumors of Trump’s death and then, much lower in a long story, addressing the paucity of information about his actual health. The headline: President Trump Is Alive. The Internet was Convinced Otherwise.The story puts in historical context the tendency of White House staffs to obscure the physical problems of American presidents – from Woodrow Wilson’s stroke to John F Kennedy’s chronic back pain. Eventually, it makes the point that “justifiable concerns and questions about Mr Trump’s health have often been met with obfuscation or minimal explanation from the people around him”.(The White House in July explained Trump’s bruising and swelling as chronic venous insufficiency, but downplayed the condition as benign and common for older people; his doctor pronounced him in excellent health.)Even after an assassination attempt on Trump last year, no medical briefings were held. And, to my recollection, there was precious little investigative follow-up on that.Yet, amid all of this, the White House press secretary claimed that Trump has been “completely transparent about his health with the public, unlike his predecessor”.As usual, in Trumpworld, a lie outpaces the truth, and everything is Biden’s fault.So what does responsible media coverage of this topic look like? The question evokes the Goldilocks fairy tale: what’s too hot? What’s too cold? And what’s just right?“Evidence-based assessments of a president’s health are absolutely fair game” for journalists, Bill Grueskin of Columbia Journalism School told Associated Press media reporter David Bauder.And when someone as omnipresent in the media as Trump drops out of view for days? That’s fair game, too.With Trump now in his 80th year – he turned 79 in June – these questions are not going away. Rampant speculation certainly isn’t the answer, but it tends to flood in when there is a vacuum of real information.The unquestioning acceptance of White House reassurance isn’t the answer either.In good journalism, “just right” is founded on skepticism and addressed by persistence – by doggedly digging out the facts and presenting them forthrightly.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More