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      How Charlie Kirk turned campuses into cultural battlefields – and ushered in Trump’s assault on universities

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      Charlie Kirk, the far-right activist killed this week while speaking at a campus event at Utah Valley University, never graduated from the community college he briefly attended. But his lack of a degree didn’t stop him from assuming a defining role in the ongoing transformation of US higher education.Kirk pioneered a style of ideological warfare against what he viewed as bastions of leftism, helping turn campuses into cultural battlefields and paving the way for Donald Trump’s unprecedented campaign to weaken American universities and subject them to his movement’s ideological agenda.“Charlie Kirk will be remembered as one of the foremost architects of the political strategy of treating faculty and students with whom he disagrees as enemies to be defeated,” said Isaac Kamola, a political science professor at Trinity College whose research focuses on conservative efforts to undermine higher education.Kirk’s murder at the age of 31 followed more than a decade of on-campus activism, which was characterized by his staunch bigotry and Christian nationalism; hundreds of often incendiary “debates” – his favored medium; and the 2012 establishment of Turning Point USA, a conservative powerhouse that calls itself, with more than 900 chapters, the nation’s largest youth movement. Starting from his parents’ garage in suburban Chicago, Kirk often boasted, the movement grew one viral attack line at a time, supercharged by social media’s conflict-rewarding algorithms.View image in fullscreenKirk wore his lack of a degree as a point of “pride”, he told California governor Gavin Newsom in a podcast interview earlier this year, and as ammunition for his characterizations of American campuses as elitist and out of touch.“I didn’t even graduate community college,” Kirk said. “I represent most of the country. Actually, still, the majority of the country does not have a college degree and if I may, you know, bluntly critique the Democratic party, you guys have become so college-credentialed and educated that you guys snobbishly look on the muscular class of this country.”While Kirk had in recent years moved from campus activist to the upper echelons of Republican politics and Trump’s inner circle, on university campuses he will mostly be remembered for his role galvanizing the so-called “culture wars” with his regular diatribes against diversity initiatives, immigration and minority groups. Kirk emboldened conservative students to turn on faculty and classmates, established a “professor watchlist” for faculty it accused of spreading “leftist propaganda”, and embarked on an anti-woke crusade that has since become official government policy.View image in fullscreen“Turning Point was not the first group to target professors, and of course attacking higher education is not new,” said Matthew Boedy, a professor of English at the University of North Georgia who has been studying the group and its founder after being targeted on its watchlist. “What Turning Point did was take the traditional, old ways of conservatives fighting the culture war and translated it into millennial speak.”Katie Gaddini, a history professor at Stanford University who studies US conservatism, recalled seeing Kirk speak at an event years ago, where he boasted that if given 15 minutes with any college student, he could “de-program years’ worth of indoctrination”.“His whole mission, and Turning Point’s original mission, was what he called de-programming the woke indoctrination that he thought was taking place on college campuses,” she said. “And of course, we’re seeing the contestation over what can be taught in college campuses playing out on a macro, policy-level scale right now.”Beyond the campus warsIf Kirk’s aggressive, often rude style and frequent forays into explicit racism and sexism ruffled feathers with more traditional conservative groups on campus, he quickly surpassed them in relevance. Boedy recalled attending an event with Kirk and Black conservative activist Candace Owens, a TPUSA veteran who resigned from the organization in 2019 after making comments in which she appeared to defend Adolf Hitler. When a group of Black students raised their fists and walked out of the event in protest, Kirk and Owens mocked them and stirred the crowd to cheer them off. “It was emblematic,” said Boedy. “They’re in it for the culture war and that does mean warring against other people.”Hasan Piker, a leftwing political commentator who rose to prominence about the same time as Kirk and had been scheduled to debate him in two weeks at Dartmouth College, said that while Kirk wasn’t the first to debate speakers on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, “he was able to serialize this format better than other people, especially because he had a lot of institutional backing”.“He was a true operative,” Piker added, noting that his relationship with Kirk had been “cordial” even as their worldview was “diametrically opposite”. Still, he cautioned against interpreting Kirk’s predilection for debates as a sincere effort to engage in an argument.View image in fullscreen“It’s being presented right now with this notion that everyone was doing these debates because they wanted to arrive at the truth,” said Hasan. “The ultimate purpose of these sorts of debate culture, focused video sequences, is not to actually arrive at some kind of hidden truth through discourse or the Socratic method, but more so to just ritualistically humiliate your interlocutors.”Kirk’s influence soon expanded well beyond campuses, said Boedy, whose forthcoming book examines Kirk’s mobilization efforts in churches, media and beyond. “Turning Point expanded beyond merely college campus wars. Kirk used the college campus wars as a springboard to talk about the larger national culture war,” Boedy added, noting that TPUSA now has more high school chapters than it has college ones, and that the group is also involved in canvassing for conservative candidates.TPUSA “incubated” more than 350 rightwing influencers over the years, the group said last year, and more recently Kirk had also taken his activism abroad, promoting Turning Point chapters in the UK and Australia. In May, Kirk debated the Oxford Union’s president-elect, and earlier this month he traveled to Japan and South Korea to spread his message before new audiences.Kirk successfully tapped into conservative students’ feelings that they had been persecuted on campus by intolerant liberals. Now, his killing risks turbocharging those grievances. “There is now proof in the minds of a lot of young conservatives that they are persecuted for their views on college campuses,” Gaddini said.As some brace for retribution from the president, others warn that the chilling effect of the violence will be devastating for universities already battered by months of conflict and division.“This is a terrible day,” said Kamola, the Trinity professor. “Even if we disagree, the project of teaching and learning, and pursuing knowledge, is fundamentally threatened by violence.” More

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      When Mandelson met Maga: how Labour lord charmed Trump’s inner circle

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      Peter Mandelson was in his element. Lounging on a sofa one June evening at Butterworth’s, a bistro serving as the gastronomical centre of the Maga movement in Washington DC, the recently appointed British ambassador was being honoured with a plaque that indicated he was easing his way into the conservative circles around Donald Trump.The appointment of Mandelson, an architect of Tony Blair’s New Labour project in the 1990s, had not been without controversy. He was the first political ambassador to the United States in almost half a century and had twice resigned from Labour governments in the past over scandals (not to mention his past association with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein).So he would have to move quickly to replace the well-sourced expertise of his predecessor and build ties with a new administration that had upended all the rules of the traditional Washington establishment.Mandelson managed that by leaning into the heady conservative politics surrounding the US president, working old contacts in Trump’s circles of businessmen and courting the new media right. Surrounded by conservative journalists that evening, he said that, while the two leaders’ politics may differ, both Trump and UK prime minister Keir Starmer were riding the same political winds of upheaval.Both had received mandates, he said that evening according to British media reports in the Times, from “angry people who felt they were being unheard by mainstream politics” and were “angry about the cost of living, angry about uncontrolled immigration and angry about uncontrolled woke culture spreading across institutions”.It was a textbook performance for the once-dubbed “Prince of Darkness” who was testing the lines between ambassadorial deference and open flattery. In public, a favourite adjective for Trump was neutral but weighty: “consequential”. In private, he tended away from criticism of the new administration, even as the White House leaned toward Vladimir Putin and flirted with authoritarian measures at home.His firing now amid new details of the Epstein scandal – one that the Trump administration has sought to outrun – plays out just days before Trump’s state visit to the United Kingdom, when Starmer must seek to influence Trump over the war in Ukraine, continue negotiations over a US-UK trade deal, deflect concern over a potential UK recognition of Palestine, and more.“[Mandelson] has his own independent stature and status, and that was a good thing, but it carried risks, and now it’s gone wrong,” said Alexandra Hall Hall, a former British diplomat who resigned while serving as lead envoy for Brexit in the US in 2019. “And now it’s gone wrong on the worst possible topic at the worst possible time.”In Washington, the British ambassador’s Edwin Lutyens-designed residence, where Mandelson lived with his partner and “diplo-dog” Jock, hosted parties that saw an influx of the new conservative media elite in Washington. At a White House Correspondents’ Dinner co-hosted by the Daily Mail in June, new media influencers like Natalie Winters, seen as a protege of the rightwing firebrand Steve Bannon, rubbed shoulders with established journalists from across the media spectrum. It reflected the White House’s own inclusion of conservative bloggers among accredited correspondents as a counterweight to a perceived liberal bias among the media.At a celebration for King Charles’s birthday that month, Mandelson wryly inserted jokes about Trump as guests mingled among cigar and whiskey stations, drawing laughs as he recognised a leader “associated with grand ceremonies and golden aesthetics. So happy birthday, President Trump”.It is precisely what Mandelson was sent to Washington DC to do: charm the Maga faithful around Trump while bringing the political heft that would allow a UK envoy to negotiate in the name of the prime minister.He replaced Dame Karen Pierce, a veteran diplomat who was already a regular at Mar-a-Lago and one of the best-sourced foreign ambassadors in Trumpworld. Some, like Bannon, had rejected Mandelson as a “terrible choice” because of his past remarks about Trump and links to establishment politics in the UK.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYet Mandelson proved the doubters wrong, as at least one conservative outlet put it. His main success was the outlines of a US-UK trade deal, which was feted at an Oval Office meeting with Trump where Mandelson was complimented by Trump for his “beautiful accent” and given the floor in a rare show of deference to a foreign ambassador.The White House team around him laughed as he described Trump’s “typical 11th-hour intervention by you with your phone call demanding even more out of this deal than any of us expected”. He then channelled Winston Churchill as he added: “For us it is not the end, it’s the end of the beginning.”His absence will be noted as Trump arrives in the United Kingdom for the controversial state visit that Mandelson’s quick-found relationship with the US president could have helped to smooth.After the Oval Office meeting with Trump, Mandelson left with a souvenir – a handwritten note in Trump’s distinctive marker scrawl and unmistakeable signature.“Peter,” it read. “Great Job!” More

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      Charlie Kirk and the rise of Maga in US politics: ‘He changed the ground game’

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      What a swell party it was. Guests feasted on half-shell oysters and champagne at Washington’s luxury Salamander Hotel. Donald Trump Jr danced to YMCA while JD Vance quipped: “They don’t tell you when you run for vice-president that you get brought on stage with the Village People.”Guests at the $15,000-a-head Turning Point Inaugural Eve Ball last January included future FBI director Kash Patel, Jeanine Pirro and the Irish mixed martial artist Conor McGregor. But towering above them all, literally and figuratively, was Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and key enabler of the rise of Donald Trump.Kirk, a 31-year-old rightwing activist, podcaster and provocateur, was killed on Wednesday by a single gunshot as he gave a talk at a university in Utah. For the Trumps, it was like a death in the family. Don Jr wrote on the X social media platform: “I love you brother.”The shock, grief and anger of Trump and his allies reflected not only their personal closeness to Kirk but his political utility to the “Make America great again” (Maga) movement and prominent role in vetting who would staff Trump’s government. It also raised fears that, in a moment of peril for the nation when cool heads are needed, the president’s response to the killing was just as likely to be shaped by highly charged emotions and calls for vengeance.Kirk grew up in an affluent suburb of Chicago, the son of an architect whose firm designed the Trump Tower in New York. Rejected by the military academy at West Point, Kirk was 18 when he launched the grassroots organisation Turning Point USA in 2012, later admitting that he had “no money, no connections and no idea what I was doing”.Kirk’s rhetorical gift for provocative statements, inflaming cultural tensions and “owning the libs” galvanised conservative students during the Barack Obama years. He held mass rallies that drew tens of thousands of young voters each year to hear conservative leaders speaking on glitzy stages backed by ear-splitting anthems and bright pyrotechnics.He was the right man at the right time to pour rocket fuel on Trump’s Maga movement. In the summer of 2016 he secured a meeting at Trump Tower and gave Don Jr advice on how his father could woo young voters. Don Jr was so impressed that he instantly hired Kirk as his personal campaign assistant – or “bag boy”, as Kirk put it – as the pair took fundraising trips across the country.Kyle Spencer, a journalist and author of Raising Them Right: The Untold Story About America’s Ultraconservative Youth Movement and Its Plot for Power, said: “Don Jr didn’t think much of it until he started hanging out with Charlie and seeing how incredibly driven and ambitious he was, how skilled he was at building alliances with people of all different ages and how comfortable he was, even at a very early age, with people who had a tremendous amount of money and power. He was charming to those people but not intimidated and that was a winning combination.”A year later, the New York Times reported, Kirk was a guest at Don Jr’s birthday party at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump held a private conversation with him for 40 minutes.Spencer, who interviewed Kirk many times, continued: “Trump took a liking to him and that was very genuine. As much as Trump can have a relationship with someone and a fondness for them, he always had a real fondness for Charlie, and part of it was because he and Charlie are very similar.“Charlie had a kind of charismatic infectiousness and ability to draw certain people in a very similar way that Trump had. Charlie also had a real understanding of being at the forefront of media communication methods and that you always had to be a little bit ahead of the curve. Trump understood that too, which is why both of them were so comfortable building followings and communicating online and creating, in Charlie’s case, a lot of online assets.”View image in fullscreenVance said Kirk first made contact with him through a direct message on Twitter (now X) after the future vice-president appeared on Fox News in 2017. They became fast friends. Kirk was one of the first people Vance called when he thought of running for the Senate in early 2021, Vance said. Kirk introduced him to people who eventually ran his campaign – and to Don Jr.Vance, whom Kirk had championed as a potential running mate for Trump, tweeted this week: “Charlie was fascinated by ideas and always willing to learn and change his mind. Like me, he was skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016. Like me, he came to see President Trump as the only figure capable of moving American politics away from the globalism that had dominated for our entire lives.”By his own estimate, Kirk visited the White House more than a hundred times during Trump’s first term. In 2020, he published the The Maga Doctrine, a bestselling book that argued in favour of Christian nationalism and the “America First” agenda.He pushed conspiracy theories popular among white nationalists, including the false claim that the 2020 election was rigged in favour of Joe Biden. His Turning Point Action group sponsored buses to take supporters to Washington ahead of the “Stop the Steal” rally on 6 January 2021, though Kirk himself did not attend. Two people connected to Turning Point Action, including its chief operating officer, served as fake electors in Arizona as part of Trump’s plot to steal the election.Kirk stuck by Trump during the wilderness years, in which the former president battled four criminal cases, and helped plot his improbable comeback. Turning Point Action was instrumental in driving youth support in last year’s election and was credited by Trump’s campaign for helping deliver the battleground state of Arizona.Steve Bannon, a godfather of the Maga movement, said by phone from Utah: “People underappreciated this: he changed the ground game. This ballot-chasing initiative was absolutely fundamental to winning in 2024. It will be fundamental going forward. What he did with young people is extraordinary.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThen Kirk played an outsized role in the presidential transition, advising Trump on his staff picks. Bannon, whose War Room podcast was followed by The Charlie Kirk Show each day on the Real America’s Voice platform, said: “In the transition, Charlie basically moved to Mar-a-Lago. He was a central part of the transition.“He was, with Sergio Gor [director of the White House presidential personnel office], doing all the vetting and in a ton of meetings. He was so busy he skipped the show a bunch; I bet you Charlie only did a third of the shows during the Mar-a-Lago transition period. That’s how involved he was in the transition. The president liked having him around and he delivered.”Kirk supported the controversial nomination of Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, as defence secretary. He also made the case for Turning Point USA allies to get government jobs. Bannon believes that Kirk’s “imprint” is felt in the defence, health, homeland security and other government departments.“Folks he didn’t know, he would do vettings. If he had a candidate or somebody he wanted to push, maybe not for a top level job but for second or third tier where the action is, people would go to Charlie. He had very active role and that continued. He spent a lot of time in Washington in the first couple months of the administration.”In January, Kirk travelled to Greenland with Don Jr to promote Trump’s declared ambition to acquire the Arctic territory. More recently he returned to Phoenix, Arizona, to work on Turning Point and prepare for next year’s midterm elections, Bannon added.“If Charlie had wanted a senior position in the government, it was there for the taking. He could have asked for virtually anything – maybe not a cabinet-level position but in a super-important position, either in the White House staff or in any of the department – and Charlie would have gotten what he wanted.”Kirk remained in ideological lockstep with Trump and his inner circle, often echoing, amplifying and seeking to normalise their brazen displays of sexism, racism and Islamophobia. Earlier this year, he questioned the qualifications of Black airline pilots, just as Trump had done during an attack on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.Jared Holt, a researcher at Open Measures, a company that monitors influence operations online, said: “Kirk was a reliable propagandist who worked to sanitize the most alarming aspects of Trump’s movement. He relentlessly attacked Trump’s critics and demonized his scapegoats – immigrants, LGBTQ+ people and racial minorities, to name a few.”There have been moments during Trump’s second term when Kirk was reportedly uncomfortable with the president’s decision to bomb Iran and refusal to release files on the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. But he was careful to avoid direct criticism of the man who was both political mentor and soulmate.After Kirk’s death this week, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us.” The president ordered flags flown at half-mast and announced he would posthumously award Kirk the Medal of Freedom. Vance escorted Kirk’s body home to Phoenix on Air Force Two.His place in Maga mythology is assured, as his political legacy. Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “There are Turning Point people in the Trump administration and they are directly there because of Kirk’s influence. Charlie Kirk was talking about building a sustainable Maga movement. They’re playing for tomorrow. A lot of people are playing for today.” More

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      Six great reads: rebels in Nazi Germany, how creativity works and Europe’s biggest pornography conference

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      1. The astonishing story of the aristocrat who hid her Jewish lover in a sofa bed – and other German rebels who defied the NazisView image in fullscreenFrom a diplomat who embraced the exiled Albert Einstein to a schoolteacher who helped “non-Aryan” students flee, these remarkable individuals refused to bend the knee to Hitler – only to be dramatically betrayed. What, asked Jonathan Freedland, in this extract from his new book, The Traitors Circle, made them risk it all?Read more2. The unconscious process that leads to creativity: how ‘incubation’ worksView image in fullscreen“One of the most marvellous properties of the brain,” wrote Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis in this fascinating piece from Well Actually, is its ability to continue working unconsciously when the conscious mind has moved on to something else.Read more3. Disgruntled NYT journalist to ‘anti-woke’ power grab: how far can Bari Weiss go?View image in fullscreenAfter leaving the New York Times, Weiss turned her Substack into an unshakable pro-Israel voice. Now as Paramount eyes acquisition of her company, David Klion profiled a writer who is poised to become Trump’s ally among media elites.Read more4. Israel is forcing us to leave Gaza City. We know they may never let us returnView image in fullscreenIn this deeply personal piece, Gaza reporter Malak A Tantesh wrote about her family’s decision to leave northern Gaza, the area they call home, for the tents of the south where they had also endured last year’s winter. The family has stayed in 10 locations since they were first forced out of their prewar home in Beit Lahia.Read more5. Boom times and total burnout: three days at Europe’s biggest pornography conferenceView image in fullscreenIn this powerful feature, Amelia Gentleman, alongside photographer Judith Jockel, reported from the biggest pornography conference in Europe, where she spoke to entrepreneurs who were excited about AI and soaring profits, and creators who were battling burnout and chronic illness due to the industry’s gig-economy structure.Read more6. ‘I wasn’t terrified of dying, but I didn’t want to leave my kids’: Davina McCall on addiction, reality TV and the brain tumour that nearly killed herView image in fullscreenWhen the TV presenter was offered a free health screening, she thought it was pointless: she was “the healthiest woman you’ve ever met”. But then came the shocking diagnosis. Now fully recovered, she told Simon Hattenstone, she’s re‑evaluating everything.Read more More

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      Trump news at a glance: president urges death penalty in Charlie Kirk killing, as widow says: ‘we’ll never surrender’

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      Donald Trump on Friday advocated for the death penalty in the killing of his close associate Charlie Kirk, as the widow of the rightwing activist spoke publicly for the first time since the shooting.The president told Fox & Friends in an interview – during which he also announced that a suspect was in custody – that he hopes the shooter “gets the death penalty”. He added: “Charlie Kirk was the finest person. He didn’t deserve this”.On Friday night, Kirk’s widow, Erika, gave a combative speech from the office where her late husband hosted his podcast, telling “the evildoers responsible for my husband’s assassination” that “You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.”In an interview on Fox & Friends on Friday morning, the US president was asked what he intended to do to heal the wounds of Kirk’s shooting in Utah. “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?” he was asked by the show’s co-host Ainsley Earhardt, who commented that there were radicals operating on the left and right of US politics.Less than 48 hours after Kirk was shot in broad daylight on the campus of Utah Valley University, Trump replied: “I tell you something that is going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less.”He went on: “The radicals on the right are radical because they don’t want to see crime … The radicals on the left are the problem – and they are vicious and horrible and politically savvy. They want men in women’s sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders. The worst thing that happened to this country.”Trump declines to call for unity after Charlie Kirk killing in stunning moveDonald Trump has declined to call for the US to come together as a way of fixing the country’s divisions in the wake of the assassination of his close associate, the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, preferring to cast “vicious and horrible” radicals on the left of US politics as the sole problem.Read the full storyTrump says he will send national guard to Democratic-run MemphisDonald Trump said on Friday that he will send national guard troops to Memphis as part of his administration’s expanding military-led response to urban crime in Democratic-run cities.“I think maybe I’ll be the first to say it right now: we’re going to Memphis,” the US president said during an appearance on Fox & Friends, describing the violence in Memphis as dire.Read the full storyJudge stops statement of man defending himself over Trump assassination attempt The trial defense of the man accused of trying to assassinate Donald Trump at one of his golf resorts in Florida in September 2024 got off to a shaky start on Thursday, after he was cut off by the judge minutes into his opening remarks.Ryan Routh, 59, who is representing himself despite having no legal education, is charged with five crimes including attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate. He has pleaded not guilty.Read the full storyCourt lets Trump block Medicaid funds to ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood The Trump administration can move forward with its plan to “defund” Planned Parenthood by blocking it from receiving reimbursements from Medicaid, the US government’s insurance program for low-income people, a federal appeals court has ruled.Read the full storyUS immigration officers shoot dead man trying to flee vehicle stop near ChicagoA man was fatally shot during a vehicle stop on the outskirts of Chicago by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers after attempting to flee, according to officials, and another officer was injured during the altercation.The target of the stop was Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, an undocumented immigrant with a history of reckless driving, according to the Department of Homeland Security.Ice said the suspect attempted to drive his vehicle into the arrest team, striking an officer and subsequently dragging him as he fled the scene.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Missouri Republicans approved a new congressional map on Friday that adds an additional GOP-friendly seat in Congress, a boost to Donald Trump as he tries to redraw districts across the US to stave off losses in next year’s midterms.

      The US government is drawing nearer to a potential shutdown after Donald Trump told Republicans on Friday “don’t even bother dealing with” the Democrats, whose congressional leaders are refusing to support spending bills that do not include their healthcare priorities.

      The US Environmental Protection Agency proposed on Friday a rule to end a mandatory program requiring 8,000 facilities to report their greenhouse gas emissions. The agency said mandatory collection of emissions data was unnecessary because it is “not directly related to a potential regulation and has no material impact on improving human health and the environment”.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 11 September 2025. More

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      US immigration officers kill man trying to flee vehicle stop near Chicago

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      A man was fatally shot during a vehicle stop on the outskirts of Chicago by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers after attempting to flee the scene, according to officials, and another officer was injured during the altercation.Ice released the following statement after the shooting: “This morning in Chicago, Ice officers were conducting targeted local enforcement activity during a vehicle stop, the suspect resisted and attempted to drive his vehicle into the arrest team, striking an officer and subsequently dragging him as he fled the scene, fearing for his life, the officer discharged his firearm and struck the subject. Both the officer and subject immediately received medical treatment and were transferred to a local hospital.”It continued: “The suspect was pronounced dead at the hospital, the officer sustained severe injuries and is in stable condition, viral social media videos and activists encouraging illegal aliens to resist law enforcement not only spread misinformation, but also undermine public safety, the safety of our officers and those being apprehended.”The target of the stop in Franklin Park, to the west of Chicago, was Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, who was an undocumented immigrant with a history of reckless driving, according to the Department of Homeland Security.“We are praying for the speedy recovery of our law enforcement officer. He followed his training, used appropriate force and properly enforced the law to protect the public and law enforcement,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary. She then echoed the statement by Ice regarding the dangers of social media videos.The incident was first reported on X by the CBS immigration correspondent Camilo Montoya-Galvez.He wrote: “An ICE operation turned deadly in Chicago today, after a suspect resisted arrest and tried to drive his vehicle into agents, prompting an officer to shoot the suspect, who has been pronounced dead, a DHS official tells me. The officer suffered severe injuries but is stable.”The incident involved a traffic stop to check on what Ice said was an undocumented immigrant. It happened about six miles from where, separately, a daylong protest had been unfolding outside an Ice processing center in Broadview, Illinois, where demonstrators clashed with federal government agents on Friday morning and there were reports that a demonstrator was shot in the leg with a pepper ball by enforcement officers.A worker at a tire shop across the street from where Villegas-Gonzales was killed spoke to BreakThrough News, according to the outlet, saying: “I thought it was your run-of-the-mill car crash, because car crashes have been here all the time, so I thought nothing of it. That’s when my boss came out and told me, ‘Hey, something happened here.’ And I saw a huge police presence, military presence and FBI presence.“So right now, the community is a bit scared about Ice and the military operations here in Chicago,” he added. “Franklin Park is heavily Latino and Polish, so I didn’t know that they were going to come here one day. It’s just, once it happens, you’re in shock, like you can’t believe your eyes.”He also provided reporters with security footage from outside the shop, which included audio of what sounds like gunshots.Police taped off the area and behind patrol vehicles a grey sedan could be seen that the man had been driving. It had crashed into a parked truck, and it could be seen that the driver’s side window was open.A neighbor who did not want to be identified spoke highly of Villegas-Gonzalez with a small group of reporters and mentioned that Villegas-Gonzalez was a hard worker and a good neighbor.One time, the neighbor recalled, Villegas-Gonzalez scraped the neighbor’s car, came over and offered to fix it. The neighbor said it’s been distressing to see social media posts about Villegas-Gonzalez.“It’s such a sickening world that everybody’s celebrating his death,” the neighbor said. It’s just wrong, you know? He’s a human being.”When asked about Ice’s arrest of Villegas-Gonzalez and the agency having said Villegas-Gonzalez tried to drive into officers, the neighbor said Villegas-Gonzalez “was scared 100%” and didn’t speak English.Meanwhile, in nearby Broadview, demonstrations began at dawn and were set to continue until the evening. By late morning, several dozen people had assembled outside the facility, according to CBS News Chicago.These incidents and some others are part of a surge of immigration enforcement into parts of the Chicago area in the last week as part of a crackdown pledged by Donald Trump, as neighborhoods have braced. He has threatened to send in troops to deal with crime in the kind of unilateral action taken by the administration in WashingtonDC, ongoing, and Los Angeles earlier in the year following protests there against Ice raids.This would be expressly against the wishes of Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, and the state governor, JB Pritzker, both Democrats, who have condemned the saber rattling and called for resistance. By Friday troops had not been sent.Crowds in Broadview could be heard and seen on video shouting “shame on you” towards officers and the facility.At one point, a reporter observed Ice officers forcing protesters back while clearing the way for agency vehicles to pass through the crowd. Tensions escalated further as protesters and Ice officers began facing off directly.Another reporter shared a video from that scene, writing: “I am at Broadview Village ICE detention center where demonstrators just chased Chicago US Army Special Reaction Teams (SRTs) as they were leaving the building.” The footage shows Ice personnel retreating as demonstrators pursue them, shouting. More

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      ‘She doesn’t have the power to stop him’: DC mayor walks a tightrope with Trump

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      During a press conference at the end of August, Washington DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, made sure to say “thank you” – in her own way – for Donald Trump’s influx of federal law enforcement in the nation’s capital.“We greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance what MPD has been able to do in this city,” Bowser said. She admitted that, after a recent meeting with the president, his knowledge of DC had “significantly increased” since his first term in the White House.Bowser pointed to recent data that shows a significant drop in violent crime, particularly carjackings, since more federal law enforcement began working with DC police. But she also offered some pushback.“What we know is not working is a break in trust between police and community,” Bowser said. “We know having masked Ice agents in the community has not worked, and national guards from other states has not been an efficient use of those resources.” She also underscored that if there were more local police officers, it would cancel out any need for any supplemental federal law enforcement.The president has spent years denigrating DC. After leaving office in 2021, and mounting his re-election campaign, he called the district “horribly run” and a “nightmare of murder and crime”. In August, he justified his “crime emergency” – after a former Doge staffer was attacked in DC – by describing the “bloodshed, bedlam and squalor” of the nation’s capital. He has also falsely claimed that violent crime in the district is the “worst it’s ever been”, despite it reaching a 30-year low in 2024, according to data compiled by the justice department.Trump promised repeatedly to “take over” DC on the campaign trail. Then, on 7 August, he started to send hundreds of federal agents to the capital to work with local law enforcement. Just days later, he declared a “public safety emergency”, allowing him to federalize the MPD for 30 days . He supplemented all of this by deploying the DC national guard. Now, about 2,300 national guard troops are patrolling the district – including several hundred sent from Republican-run states.Bowser did not denounce the move. Instead, she called it “unsettling” and said that it resembled an “authoritarian push” on a Zoom call with local organizers.Expressing deference to the president, while displaying a quiet pushback against his policies, is emblematic of the tightrope Bowser, who is the second-longest-serving mayor in DC’s history and is eyeing a fourth term, has been walking since Trump returned to office this year.It’s a far cry from her past willingness to undermine the president publicly. In 2020, during the height of the George Floyd racial justice protests that swept the country, the mayor called Trump a “scared man” on social media, as he tried to quell the demonstrations in the capital.She also called his use of federal law enforcement officials and national guard at the time an “invasion of our city” before announcing that a section of 16th Street, which is in front of the White House, would be renamed “Black Lives Matter Plaza” – with the road’s new name painted in tall yellow letters on the ground.When Trump returned to office, the pressure from the president and congressional Republicans to rename and pave over the plaza, or risk losing federal funding, forced Bowser’s hand in March. “We have bigger fish to fry,” she said of her decision to comply with the administration’s demands. “Now our focus is on making sure our residents and our economy survives.”Arguably, it signaled a new dawn in her ongoing power struggle with the president.Her apparent cooperation, including a recently signed executive order that ensures cooperation between MPD and federal officers indefinitely, has earned her praise from the administration. Trump congratulated Bowser’s compliance in a post from Truth Social. “Wow! Mayor Muriel Bowser of D.C. has become very popular because she worked with me and my great people in bringing CRIME down to virtually NOTHING in D.C,” the president wrote.On Monday, he also suggested that the mayor was more aligned with the administration’s goals than he had previously thought. “That’s not her ideology, but now I think that maybe is her ideology,” he said, while giving remarks at the Museum of the Bible in DC. “She’s taking a lot of heat from the radical left.”But Bowser’s apparent willingness to work with Trump has elicited frustration from members of the DC council. In a post on Twitter/X, the at-large council member Robert White pushed back against the mayor’s choice to credit federal officers in the capital.“This is trampling on democracy in real time, on our watch,” he said. “Sometimes we want to wait and see what’s happening, but that time has passed.” White later issued a statement that called for the rescission of the mayor’s order, calling it a “permission slip” that Trump was using to justify sending forces into other Democratic-led cities.“I wish there was greater resistance in this moment,” said Zachary Parker, a DC council member who represents Ward 5, which spans the Northeast quadrant of the district.“The mayor has been conciliatory to the president from the day she went to Mar-a-Lago to greet him to now – and look where we are,” he said.For longtime DC political analysts like Tom Sherwood, Bowser is stuck between a rock and a hard place.While he notes that her public appearances, like the late August press conference, could have more “vinegar”, Sherwood also says that language is only part of the dance – Bowser is ultimately forced to bend to the whims of a mercurial president who has a majority in both chambers of Congress.“The mayor has to consider pushing back where she can and not provoking even more attacks from this president, whose mind is like a weather vane when it comes to his attention to the district,” he said. “Both legally and politically, she doesn’t have the power to stop him.”Although DC does have limited self-governance, Congress is ultimately in charge of the district. Meanwhile, the president is allowed to keep both federal agents and national guard troops in the capital for as long as he deems necessary.“Every political person I’ve spoken to who doesn’t like what the mayor is doing can’t answer one question,” Sherwood said. “If you were mayor, with the limited power you had, what would you have done differently?”Many progressives in DC argue that Bowser is playing too nice, and isn’t reflecting the fact that almost 80% of DC residents oppose the takeover, according to a recent Washington Post-Schar School poll.While there isn’t any recent polling to show how the impact of the federal takeover has affected the mayor’s approval among DC locals, in May, 53% of residents were happy with Bowser’s job leading the district – a marked improvement from 46% the year prior. But the mayor has failed to reach the crest of approval ratings she received in the first five years of her tenure, which began in 2015.Recently, more than a hundred groups, local organizations and unions signed an open letter to Bowser, saying that her actions since 11 August had appeased Trump. “History is calling upon you to lead our people, not to cower in the face of an authoritarian who does not have our best interests in mind,” the letter reads.Ultimately, the mayor has to play the long game when handling the administration, according to a DC government source familiar with the mayor’s thinking. “We’re only eight months into this. There’s a lot of time left on the clock. DC’s only tool in the toolbox is soft power,” the source said. “Her only job is to protect the residents of Washington DC. She’s going to use whatever strategy is going to yield the best result for that specific mission.”Trump’s police takeover expired on 10 September, and the US House is not expected to vote on an extension – a sign that there might be a payoff to Bowser’s strategy.But, for Michael Fanone, the former DC police officer who has chronicled his work helping to defend the Capitol during the January 6 attack, it’s not as simple as hoping that Trump’s focus on the district will wane.“I don’t think we can say whether or not we know definitively that he’s off her back. I think that you see he’s moved on to another shiny object,” he said, referring to the surge of federal immigration agents in Chicago, and the president’s repeated threats to deploy national guard troops to the city. “Quite frankly, this isn’t just a local fight.”While the governors of blue states, like California’s Gavin Newsom, Illinois’s JB Pritzker and Maryland’s Wes Moore, have all taken vocal stands against the president, Sherwood recognizes that Bowser can’t risk the same ferocity. “I think she has made the calculation that most DC citizens will support her effort trying to battle Trump without the weapons other governments have,” he said. More

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      RFK Jr does not just reject vaccines. He rejects science and must step down | Bernie Sanders

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      Since taking office, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the health and human services department (HHS), has undermined vaccines at every turn. He has dismissed the entire Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory panel, narrowed access to life-saving Covid-19 vaccines, filled scientific advisory boards with conspiracy theorists and fired the newly appointed CDC director for refusing to rubber-stamp his actions.But his rejection of vaccines is only part of the problem. Secretary Kennedy is unfit to be our nation’s leading public health official because he rejects the fundamental principles of modern science.For generations, doctors have agreed that germs – like bacteria or viruses – cause infectious diseases.In the 1850s, John Snow, known as the father of epidemiology, traced a cholera outbreak in London to water contaminated with human waste – not the “bad air”, or so-called miasma, that many at that time believed to be the cause.In the 1880s, Louis Pasteur, the French chemist, in a controlled experiment, injected one group of sheep with an anthrax vaccine while another group went without it. Then he injected all of the sheep with anthrax bacteria. The vaccinated sheep survived, the unvaccinated did not.The germ theory led to a revolution in public health and medicine which, over the years, has saved tens of millions of lives.Just a few examples.At a time when many women were dying during childbirth at hospitals, Dr Ignaz Semmelweis found that handwashing by doctors saved lives.Joseph Lister showed that sterilizing medical equipment before surgery prevented needless deaths.Florence Nightingale, considered the mother of modern nursing, substantially improved hygiene at hospitals and made healthcare much safer for patients.Pasteur made the food we eat and the milk we drink safer through a process of heating called pasteurization.And these are just a few examples.Yet, incredibly, in the year 2025, we now have a secretary of HHS who has cast doubt and aspersions on the very concept of the germ theory – the very foundation of modern medicine for over a century.In his book The Real Anthony Fauci, Kennedy absurdly claims that the central tenet behind the germ theory “is simply untrue”. Vaccines are not, Kennedy falsely asserts, responsible for the massive decline in deaths from infectious diseases. Instead, Kennedy falsely proclaims that “science actually gives the honor of having vanquished disease mortalities to sanitation and nutrition”.Yes. No one disputes that proper sanitation, a nutritious diet and exercise can lead to healthier lives. But no credible scientist or doctor believes that alone makes a person immune from polio, measles, mumps, Covid, HIV/Aids and other infectious diseases. Otherwise healthy people can become sick, hospitalized or even die from these and other terrible diseases.Sadly, Kennedy’s dangerous rejection of well-established science is behind his wild conspiracy theories and misinformation campaigns.It’s what led to Kennedy’s false assertion that “there is no vaccine that is safe and effective” despite peer-reviewed scientific studies finding that vaccines have saved more than 150 million lives and reduced infant deaths by 40% in the past 50 years.It’s behind Kennedy’s bogus claim that the polio vaccine “killed many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did”, even though the scientific data has shown that the polio vaccine has saved 1.5 million lives and prevented about 20 million people from becoming paralyzed since 1988.It undergirds his history of promoting the ridiculous idea that HIV does not cause Aids, despite rigorous studies finding the exact opposite. This type of outrageous HIV/Aids denialism is widely believed to have caused the deaths of at least 330,000 people in South Africa who did not receive the life-saving medicine they needed.It’s what led him to say that the Covid vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made”, that vaccines cause autism, and that the hepatitis B vaccine doesn’t work and should only be used for “prostitutes” and “promiscuous gay men” – lies that have been thoroughly debunked by scientific data and the medical community.Frighteningly, it’s what caused Kennedy to say: “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not get him vaccinated.’ And he heard that from me. If he hears it from 10 other people, maybe he won’t do it.”As a private citizen, Kennedy is entitled to his views, no matter how misguided they may be.If Kennedy would like to swim in water contaminated by raw sewage and fecal matter, as he has done recently in Washington DC’s Rock Creek Park, he is free to do that.But as our nation’s top health official, Secretary Kennedy’s rejection of science and the actions he has taken as a result of his bizarre ideology is endangering the lives of millions of children in the United States and throughout the world.Today, Kennedy is making it harder for people to get vaccines. Tomorrow, what will it be? Will he tell doctors they don’t need to wash their hands before surgery? Will he tell hospitals that they don’t need to sterilize their scalpels and other medical equipment?The American people need a secretary of HHS who will listen to scientists and doctors, and not conspiracy theorists.We need a secretary of HHS who will listen to medical experts who may disagree with him, not fire them summarily.Bottom line: we need an HHS secretary who will not engage in a war on science and the truth itself.Secretary Kennedy must step down.

      Bernie Sanders is a US senator, and ranking member of the health, education, labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress More