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

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

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      GOP lawmaker pulls measure to allow Marco Rubio to revoke US passports

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      The chair of the House foreign affairs committee moved to cut a contentious provision from legislation that would have granted the secretary of state sweeping powers to revoke US citizens’ passports over allegations of supporting terrorism.Representative Brian Mast, a Florida Republican, filed an amendment to eliminate the measure from his department of state policy provisions act, a bill meant to reform the state department in the Trump administration’s image, after widespread criticism from civil liberties advocates, according to the Intercept.The original language would have given Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, the power to deny or revoke passports for individuals the department determines have provided “material support” to terrorist organizations. Given similar language employed by the Trump administration in other contexts, it is believed to have been intended to target pro-Palestinian activists specifically.Since Rubio became secretary of state, he has overseen efforts to deport pro-Palestinian international students and deploy an AI-powered “Catch and Revoke” system to target foreign nationals government authorities allege support Hamas. The US also recently announced it will look for “anti-American” views when assessing visa applications.But the new measure would have significantly escalated these efforts by targeting US citizens. Mast had initially defended the broader legislation, saying it “ensures every dollar and every diplomat puts America First and is accountable to the president’s foreign policy” when the House foreign affairs committee introduced the package last week.However, a committee spokesperson told the Intercept the committee would not allow the passport revocation amendment to “overshadow the bipartisan effort to restore command and control of the State Department to the Secretary”.A committee spokesperson did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on Mast’s decision to remove the provision.Among other provisions, the bill package also includes a proposal to create a new “state sponsor of unlawful or wrongful detention” designation to penalize foreign governments that detain US nationals and require stronger accountability measures in those cases.The episode unfolded as Rubio wrapped a trip to Israel, Qatar and the UK to discuss Israel’s war in Gaza, ahead of the UN general assembly meeting in New York next week.The amendment to remove the passport provision still requires approval at a committee hearing scheduled for Wednesday. Even without it, the broader state department reform package faces uncertain prospects in the Senate. More

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      Top Democrat accuses Trump of dismantling efforts to prosecute sex crimes

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      A top House Democrat on Tuesday accused Donald Trump of “systematically dismantling” efforts to prosecute sex crimes and hunt down traffickers, as the president faces continued pressure to make public investigative files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.The memo from House judiciary committee ranking member Jamie Raskin and his staff, shared exclusively with the Guardian, said that beyond refusing the demands for transparency around Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, Trump has also undercut efforts to hold people accused of similar crimes accountable by “systematically dismantling the offices and programs we rely on to combat human trafficking and prosecute sex crimes”.“President Trump in office has repeatedly taken the side of criminal sex predators and violent abusers against their victims, and this pattern goes well beyond his strenuous efforts to bury the Epstein Files,” Raskin wrote in the memo.“Far from aiding victims and survivors, President Trump consistently sides with their abusers,” he said. “His all-of-government policy to aid traffickers and sex criminals and abandon survivors has made American women dramatically less safe.”White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers called the accusations “total nonsense” before criticizing former president Joe Biden and his handling of immigration. “Their party’s president spent the last four years coddling and apologizing for criminals and sexual predators. Joe Biden’s wide open border allowed hundreds of thousands of innocent children to be kidnapped across the southern border by smugglers and gang members illegally residing in our communities,” Rogers said.She added that Trump had “totally secured our border to stop the trafficking of children” and “implemented tough-on-crime policies to hold these disgusting monsters accountable to the fullest extent of the law”.Raskin’s memo to Democratic members of the judiciary committee comes in advance of testimony scheduled for Wednesday by FBI director Kash Patel, at which Democrats are expected to press him for details on the bureau’s handling of its investigation into Epstein.Appearing before the Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday, Patel acknowledged shortcomings in how an investigation into Epstein was handled that led to the financier pleading guilty in 2008 to charges related to procuring a child prostitute. However, the director insisted that court orders prevented him acceding to Democrats demands to release more files related to Epstein.In the memo, Raskin argues: “The Trump Administration’s sympathetic alignment with powerful sex traffickers and rapists goes far beyond its efforts to suppress the truth of what happened in one explosive case,” and pointed to several policies Trump implemented that he believes help criminals.Among those are its dismantling of USAID, which he described as one of the most effective agencies at documenting trafficking routes and undermining efforts to use forced labor to scam Americans.“Closing USAID has blinded federal law enforcement to developing threats overseas, allowing trafficking networks to strengthen in power, influence, and size, almost certainly leading to an increase in the number of women and children trafficked into the United States,” Raskin said.About half of the federal law enforcement personnel who would normally be investigating criminals and terrorists are now focused on deportations as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the memo said. This includes one in five FBI agents, almost two thirds of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and three quarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration, among other agencies.“By diverting extraordinary amounts of money and personnel to its immigration crackdown, the Trump Administration has undermined the investigation and prosecution of nearly every other law enforcement priority, including human trafficking and child exploitation,” Raskin wrote.Trump has also cancelled hundreds of grants to local law enforcement agencies and non-profits that were used to help victims of such crimes, according to the memo. Federal funds are no longer flowing to trainings of sexual assault nurse examiners in disadvantaged areas or victim advocates employed at rape crisis centers, nor to American Sign Language interpretation for survivors of domestic violence.Trump’s immigration crackdown has intruded into efforts to help trafficking survivors, with the memo saying one organization has been told it cannot use grant money to help anyone in the country illegally. Such a notice may violate federal law, and the groups receiving the grants typically have no way of knowing their clients’ immigration status, Raskin said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnother group that received federal funding to work with child abuse victims had its funding terminated after more than three decades, then partially restored with instructions that “its affiliates to never again mention race, class, and gender diversity in it training materials”.“These findings reveal the Trump Administration’s structural bias in favor of human traffickers, rapists, and sexual violators and against their victims, survivors, and opponents. The question of why this alignment exists cannot be answered in this memo, but the pattern is unmistakable,” Raskin wrote.He also noted that several top officials, including defense secretary Pete Hegseth and health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, have been accused of inappropriate conduct, while the Trump administration acted to facilitate the return of “misogynist influencer” Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan from Romania, where they faced charges including rape. Dozens of those who were pardoned of charges related to January 6 had also faced trafficking and sex abuse charges before and after the insurrection, Raskin said.The memo comes amid a spike in interest in the Epstein case, which began in July after the justice department released a report concluding that his death was a suicide, and saying no further information about the matter would be released. The assertions flew in the face of conspiracy theories Trump and his senior officials have encouraged that held Epstein was at the heart of a wide-ranging conspiracy involving global elites.A bipartisan group of lawmakers is circulating a petition in the House of Representatives that would force a vote on legislation mandating the release of the Epstein files. The petition needs just one more signature to succeed.Trump opposes the effort, calling it a “Democrat hoax”, but sent a deputy attorney general to interview Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and petitioned unsuccessfully for release of grand jury transcripts related to the financier’s indictment.The House oversight committee is also investigating the Epstein matter, and earlier this month released a “birthday book” containing a sexually suggestive drawing Trump appears to have made for his one-time friend. More

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      Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro says leaders need ‘moral clarity’ amid rising political violence

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      Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro said on Tuesday that the arson attack on his home earlier this year had “left emotional scars” while calling for leaders to recognize that political violence is not a one-sided problem.Shapiro talked about the arson attack and political violence at this week’s Eradicate Hate summit in Pittsburgh, designed to discuss tools and action that can prevent and confront violence.Shapiro ran through a list of acts of targeted violence in the past year, including the assassination attempt of Donald Trump, the killing of United Healthcare’s CEO, the gunman who killed Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The one common thread, he said, was “people using violence to settle political differences”.“Leaders have a responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity – and as I have made clear time and time again, this type of violence has no place in our society, regardless of what motivates it, who pulls the trigger, who throws the molotov cocktail, or who wields the weapon,” he said.People have a responsibility to be “clear and unequivocal” in condemning all forms of political violence. He chided those who have celebrated political violence against their opponents and those who have called for revenge in the wake of it.“Unfortunately, some the dark corners of the Internet all the way to the Oval Office want to cherry pick which instances of political violence they want to condemn,” he said. “Doing that only further divides us and it makes it harder to heal. There are some who will hear that selective condemnation and take it as a permission slip to commit more violence, so long as it suits their narrative or only targets the other side.”In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, the Trump administration has said it will go after left-leaning organizations, declaring without evidence that they were somehow tied to the shooting.Shapiro said these acts of vengeance will deepen the divide and that using the government to censor people and “silence people, silence businesses and nonprofits and restrict their right to free speech” will only deepen mistrust.The governor also detailed his own first-hand experience with political violence. In April, on Passover, a man set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion while Shapiro, his wife and kids were inside. Shapiro said that he woke up to a bang on the door – a state trooper telling him to evacuate because there was a fire. He and his wife grabbed their kids, dogs and other family members who had gathered at the home for seder hours earlier in the room the arsonist set ablaze with molotov cocktails. The man had a metal hammer that he later said he had planned to use to kill Shapiro if he found him, Shapiro said.Cody Balmer was charged by police for terrorism, attempted murder and other charges associated with the attack. Police say Balmer was allegedly motivated by “perceived injustices toward the people of Palestine”. Shapiro is Jewish.Shapiro said he thanks God every day that his family was able to evacuate safely and no one was injured or killed.“That doesn’t mean that the attack hasn’t left emotional scars,” Shapiro said. “I can attest to that, especially as a father, a father to four children, knowing that my life choices put them at risk.”He called the rise in political violence dangerous because it not only seeks to injure or kill opponents but to intimidate people into silence.“I’m here today to tell you that I will not be deterred in my work on behalf of the good people of Pennsylvania and I sure as heck will not be silenced,” he said. More

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      The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s Ukraine strategy: talking tough and doing very little isn’t working | Editorial

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      Back in January, with Donald Trump’s campaign promises to end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” still fresh in the memory, there was genuine unease in Moscow over the US president’s intentions. When Mr Trump mused that “high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions” on Russia might be necessary, one high-profile and pro-war Moscow commentator wrote: “It’s better to prepare for the worst. Soon, we’ll look back on Biden’s term with nostalgia, like a thaw.”How wrong can you be? Since then, the US president has repeatedly talked the talk without coming close to walking the walk. In May, when Vladimir Putin rejected a 30-day ceasefire, and peace talks in Turkey went nowhere, a “bone-crushing” US sanctions package failed to materialise. An 8 August deadline for Mr Putin to agree to a ceasefire somehow morphed into a red carpet welcome in Alaska, where Mr Trump applauded a leader wanted for war crimes as he disembarked from his plane. The “severe consequences” threatened by Mr Trump if the Alaska talks failed to lead to peace never happened.Emboldened, Mr Putin has thus continued to prosecute his war aims in Ukraine, and probe for western weaknesses. Last week’s incursion of Russian drones into Polish territory laid bare inadequate Nato planning, as F-35 and F-16 fighter jets were hastily scrambled to deal with cheap kamikaze devices that cost around $10,000 each to produce. It also communicated a warning of possible escalation in the event of any future “reassurance force” deploying European troops on Ukrainian soil. Such a provocation called for a robust and unified response, exerting the kind of pressure on the Kremlin which Mr Trump has so far refused to countenance. Instead the US president appears, once again, to prefer bullying his European allies to targeting Mr Putin. In a statement which reeked of bad faith, Mr Trump declared over the weekend that the US was “ready” to impose tougher sanctions on Russia, but only if certain unlikely conditions were met.Eyeing a considerable economic prize, Washington is insisting that the EU must increase its imports of US liquified natural gas at a rate that analysts judge undoable. Other demands include the imposition by the EU of 50%-100% tariffs on Russia’s most important ally, China, and an end to all imports of Russian oil by Nato members. This includes Turkey, which has refused to sanction Moscow, imports 57% of its oil from Russia, and lies outside the EU.Those looking on the bright side in Brussels hope that Mr Trump’s pressure may persuade Maga-friendly governments in Hungary and Slovakia to end their deep dependence on Russian energy imports. That is extremely unlikely to happen, as Mr Trump and his advisers must know. Nor can the EU afford to court the kind of economic retaliation from Beijing that caused Mr Trump himself to back down from a full-blown trade war recently.During this week’s state visit, it will be Sir Keir Starmer’s turn to try to pin Mr Trump down on decisive action. But from the unproductive Alaska talks to his latest diversionary tactics with the EU, Mr Trump keeps finding reasons not to get tough on Russia. Last week’s drone incursion in Poland represented an ominous upping of the ante. Ukraine’s prospects, and wider European security interests, are being steadily undermined by a president who, in this context, barks but never bites.

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      How memes, gaming and internet culture all relate to the Charlie Kirk shooting

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      Hello, and welcome to TechScape. Dara Kerr here, filling in for Blake Montgomery, who promises he’ll come back from vacation. Meanwhile, I’m looking at the memes, gaming and internet culture behind the shooting of Charlie Kirk.The bullet that killed conservative activist was inscribed with a message: “Notices bulge OwO whats this?” The online world quickly recognized the reference. It’s a phrase used in internet culture to troll people in online role-play communities, specifically furries (a subculture that cosplays as anthropomorphic animal characters).“The phrase has been popularized not only as a way of making fun of furries and related communities for being cringe, but has also been embraced by furries as a way of owning the meme,” writes Know Your Meme, a website that documents viral phenomena. “Ultimately, the phrase is portrayed in memes as being one of the most cringeworthy things someone could possibly write to another person.”Other bullet casings recovered by law enforcement in Utah also had etched inscriptions that appeared to nod to online gaming and insider memes, which have become part of the intense social media speculation on a possible motive for the killing. One said: “O Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao”, another said: “If you read this, you are gay, LMAO.” The first message refers to an Italian anti-fascist folk song that has become a gamer reference that’s big in Twitch and Discord circles. The second message is what web culture writer Ryan Broderick calls “just boilerplate edgelord speak” in his newsletter last week titled “Charlie Kirk was killed by a meme”.The final inscribed casing that law enforcement released said: “Hey fascist! Catch!” and was followed by an up arrow, right arrow and three down arrow symbols. The arrow sequence appears to reference the video game Helldivers 2, and is a set of commands used by players to release a 500kg bomb in the game.The alleged shooter, Tyler James Robinson, is a 22-year-old from a small town in Utah near the Arizona border. He is accused of killing Kirk at a campus event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Kirk was struck by a single bullet fired with a “high-powered bolt action rifle” from a distant rooftop.As the suspect was steeped in online culture, so was Charlie Kirk, who was 31. He was at the school on behalf of his conservative youth organization, Turning Point USA. He’d become known worldwide speaking about and debating others, often on his extremist views on race, immigration, gender identity and gun rights. Kirk’s rise to fame was also largely bolstered by being extremely online.As my colleague Alaina Demopoulos wrote:A key figure in Donald Trump’s success, Kirk galvanized college-aged conservatives who moved in a different ecosystem from traditional media. The decade or so between Kirk’s beginnings as a teen activist and the shooting saw the rise of Maga politics alongside the shake-up of the conventional media landscape, with Kirk playing a crucial role in both.Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012 with a clear goal of making Obama era-style youth outreach work for the right, and even those who didn’t agree with his values could not deny his ubiquity on the political scene. For the young Americans who grew up watching Kirk on their screens, he was a savant at YouTube, Twitter and later X, TikTok and live events. He was like a gen Z and millennial version of Rush Limbaugh – the rightwing, shock-jock commentator who dominated US airwaves in the 1990s – even if his base had no clue who that was.Read the full story here.Whistleblowers against Meta stack upView image in fullscreenMeta was hit by two separate whistleblower claims last week. One by a group of six former and current employees, who allege the social media company has covered up harm to children on its Metaverse virtual reality devices and apps. And another by Meta’s former head of security for WhatsApp, Attaullah Baig, who alleges the company brushed aside major security and privacy flaws in its messaging app, according to the New York Times.In response to my reporting about VR devices, Meta spokesperson Dani Lever said the company has approved 180 studies related to its VR Reality Labs since 2022, which include research on youth safety and wellbeing. “These few examples are being stitched together to fit a predetermined and false narrative,” she said, adding that Meta has introduced features to its VR products to limit unwanted contact and supervision tools for parents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOne of the first whistleblowers was Sophie Zhang, who brought her findings to the Guardian in 2021. Zhang documented how Facebook allowed political manipulation in more than 25 countries, which led to disastrous circumstances in several places including Myanmar, Azerbaijan and Honduras. Later that same year, Frances Haugen turned over to the Wall Street Journal reams of documentation verifying much of Zhang’s allegations and also bringing to light Facebook’s knowledge of how its social media apps harmed teens.In 2023, Arturo Bejar also went to the Wall Street Journal with evidence that Meta knew its algorithms for Facebook and Instagram were pushing content to teens that promoted bullying, drug abuse, eating disorders and self-harm.This year alone, eight more whistleblowers have come forward. Baig and the group of six former and current employees went public last week.US lawmakers are taking the allegations seriously. Politicians as disparate as Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri, and Richard Blumenthal, the democrat from Connecticut, have said they see eye-to-eye when it comes to regulating Meta and other social media companies.“The details in these disclosures are hard to stomach – because they reveal such major risks to kids’ safety, and because they are so painfully familiar. Yet again, Meta is revealed to be willfully misrepresenting abuses on its platforms,” Blumenthal said of the whistleblower claims last week. “‘Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil’ is simply not an acceptable business philosophy.”Blumenthal added that he and other senators were looking forward to pushing ahead with “long overdue reform”.The wider TechScape

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      How huge London far-right march lifted the lid on a toxic transatlantic soup

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      A young man in a suit made of union jacks held up a framed photograph of their hero above his head. The crowd loudly chanted the name. The focus of this acclamation was not Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, the organiser of the so-called “free speech” march in central London last Saturday.They were instead shouting themselves hoarse for Charlie Kirk, the murdered political activist from Cook County in the US state of Illinois.It is unlikely that many of the 110,000 to 150,000 protesters estimated to have been on the streets last weekend, at what turned out to be the largest rally of its type in British history, knew much about Kirk before his death at the hands of a gunman at Utah Valley University.The UK version of Kirk’s Turning Point USA, which claims to be the “largest Conservative student movement” in the US, has never really taken off in Britain.But they were moved to cheer him on Saturday. Clips of an almost entirely white and predominantly male crowd of Britons chanting the first name of the murdered 31-year-old were lapped up on social media accounts said to be US-based, as was the minute’s silence afterwards.View image in fullscreen“Thousands of British patriots just fell silent in honor of Charlie Kirk in London,” tweeted Eric Daugherty, an assistant news director at the conservative Florida’s Voice website (“Honest political reporting to Florida, minus the mainstream talking points.”)It is said that when America coughs, Britain catches a cold.The reality with this strain of politics is that there is something of a feedback loop between the US and the UK that is proving mutually beneficial to both sides, said Prof Paul Jackson, author of Pride in Prejudice: Understanding Britain’s Extreme Right.Kirk may not have been a household name in the UK but his murder offered validation for a view that a certain outlook on life is under threat. In turn, the scenes on Saturday provided evidence of the righteousness of the cause back in the US.There is history to this mutually enforcing exchange of ideas on the extreme right, said Jackson.A certain type of US political thought has never travelled well across the Atlantic, notably the Ku Klux Klan, which grew after the civil war in the late 1860s, said Jackson.But other ideas have thrived in the past as they do today, including those contained in Madison Grant’s 1916 book The Passing of the Great Race, which influenced some European white supremacists, and Henry Ford’s The International Jew.It has not all been one way. The Blood & Honour movement, founded by British neo-Nazi and white power music pioneer Ian Stuart Donaldson in 1987, led to the birth of Blood & Honour American Division and Blood & Honour Council US.That was the analogue age, though.In the digital era, particularly in the so-called “counter-jihad” space that now dominates what is loosely termed the far right, the mutual reinforcement of messages is done in real time. Stories of social conflict or moral panic in one country are used to boost a political claim in another.Kirk himself was one of those who picked up on the case of Lucy Connolly, the 42-year-old English woman –married to a Conservative councillor – who was sentenced to 31 months in prison for calling for hotels that were housing asylum seekers to be burned down during last summer’s riots. (She was released in August after serving less than half her sentence.)View image in fullscreen“Every day people say: ‘Well someone should go kill Charlie Kirk.’ I don’t like it, but that is protected speech,” he told GB News. “In America, we care what you do and not what you say.”It was of a piece with the general claim that free speech is under threat in the UK, confirmed in the mind of the likes of JD Vance by the UK’s Online Safety Act, aimed at preventing young people from encountering harmful content, which the US vice-president claims has put Britain on a “very dark path”.The amplification of certain causes, the repetition of choice phrases, cannot be said to be highly organised, but it is nonetheless powerful.The Infowars website, founded by the prominent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, promoted Robinson’s content about the rally on Saturday, but also that of a series of obscure accounts on X, said to be based in both the UK and the US.“Breaking: London falls silent for fallen hero Charlie Kirk,” said one such account with 335,700 followers that described itself as a defender of western values and culture. “The British media hated him. The British people certainly didn’t.”View image in fullscreenAnother account promoted by Jones’s site was that of Naomi Seibt, a US-based German political influencer linked to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, who is known for her climate change denial and promotion of “great replacement theory” tropes.She tweeted images from the rally to her 436,700 followers that included the words: “White children will grow up as patriots from now on. White guilt is over.”Brigitte Gabriel, founder of the anti-Muslim movement Act for America, which claims to have 1,000 local chapters across the US, posted on X: “Don’t let the media downplay how massive this is. Millions of patriots in the UK are standing up for free speech.”Then there is Elon Musk, who appeared via videolink at Saturday’s rally. It would be difficult to overplay the importance to Robinson of the support of one of the world’s richest men, according to analysts including the Hope Not Hate anti-extremist organisation.View image in fullscreenIn lifting the ban on Robinson’s content on X and through his own misleading posts framing him as a free speech warrior persecuted by the state, Musk gave the activist a vital leg-up, it is argued.Robinson, a former member of the racist British National party, who has a string of convictions to his name including for assault, using a fake passport, mortgage fraud and contempt of court, is said to have been able to build upon his profile in the US, stir up protests outside hotels accommodating asylum seekers while pushing anti-immigrant messages that circle around a supposed threat of Islamisation to the UK.“When you hear people talk about the special relationship between America and Great Britain, this is the special relationship that you’re seeing here,” Robinson said at the rally.“Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die,” Musk told the crowd, in turn.Musk is not yet believed to have directly funded anyone in the UK, although he reportedly flirted with offering money to Reform, the rising political party on the right that is led by Nigel Farage. But such transatlantic relationships do exist, albeit they tend to remain below the radar. It is a murky soup – but some of the chunkier players can be made out.One is the US tech billionaire Robert Shillman, known as Dr Bob, who in 2018 financed a fellowship that helped pay for Robinson to be employed by the rightwing Canadian media website, Rebel Media, now called Rebel News, on a salary of about £5,000 a month.View image in fullscreenOther Shillman fellows have included Katie Hopkins, the English former reality TV star who compared migrants to cockroaches, and Laura Loomer, the American conspiracy theorist referred to by some as the president’s “de facto national security adviser”.The rightwing Middle East Forum thinktank, led by the neoconservative academic Daniel Pipes, has paid for foreign speakers to attend Robinson rallies in the past, in addition to funding the activist’s legal defence.There are laws against foreign donations in both the US and the UK but the far-right echo chamber is also clearly a useful tool for those seeking electoral success on both sides of the Atlantic.Trump has had no qualms about bouncing off certain British causes, sometimes unadvisedly. He said he was prepared to apologise in 2018 when he retweeted posts from Britain First, an offshoot of the BNP. But he is notably cautious about certain characters.Trump, who will be in the UK for a state visit this week, did not comment on social media about Saturday’s rally. He appears to prefer his outriders to do the work at times, including his son.When the rightwing activist Kurt Schlichter claimed – falsely – on X that Robinson had been arrested for reporting on a court case in May 2018, Donald Trump Jr retweeted it, writing: “Reason #1776 for the original #brexit. Don’t let America follow in those footsteps.”In the UK, Farage, who successfully fought for decades for the UK to leave the European Union and is today riding high in the polls with his anti-immigration populism, has sought to keep a sterile gap between himself and Robinson, who he fears is beyond the pale for much of the British public.He steps carefully in the digital space, seeking support but without getting too close to the most strident actors, including those in the US. He is notably quite loth to associate himself too much with Trump these days when he is at home in the UK, given the US president’s poor approval ratings among the British public.View image in fullscreenBut his long-standing ties to the Make America Great Again movement remain financially advantageous. This week, Farage apologised for breaching parliamentary rules by failing to register a trip to Florida to headline a fundraising event for Trump. He had been the main speaker at the $500-a-head Republican party dinner in Tallahassee in March.Farage hopes to benefit from the promotion of anti-immigrant themes in the digital world, including from US commentators, without putting off those with more mainstream outlooks, say insiders. It will be a difficult trick to get away with – as Musk’s criticism of Farage at the start of the year over his lack of support for Robinson illustrated.“British people are kind of looking for an international source of inspiration,” said Jackson. “[Then] some of the reason why somebody like Nigel Farage or Tommy Robinson might be of particular interest in the US is because they’ve had a lot of success in their own terms.“Tommy Robinson’s social media profile of the last few years has been highly impactful, even more so since [Musk] reversing his ban from Twitter. Nigel Farage’s impact on Britain shortly before Trump’s first presidency can be seen as perhaps providing some blueprints about how to have impact.”Gawain Towler, who was Farage’s long-standing press adviser until he left Reform earlier this year, said he believed the American interest in shaping British politics was also instinctive.“Trump sees the UK as the spiritual home of the US,” he said. “He sees our traditional political and legal traditions as the spiritual background to America’s right.“Musk certainly feels that way. He sees the UK as the spiritual homeland of the concepts of the American Declaration of Independence and its bill of rights and all the rest of it. This is where freedom was born, right? It’s like losing a great-uncle if it falls.” More

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      ‘It seemed like a ghost town’: LA food vendors on how Trump’s Ice raids affected business

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      From early morning to late at night, food vendors are feeding the people of Los Angeles. They offer nearly anything – tamales, fried fish, crispy tacos, mole, pupusas, fresh fruit, esquites, bacon-wrapped hot dogs – to Angelenos as they start their commutes or head home after the bars have closed.Taco trucks and food vendors are a vital part of the city’s celebrated culinary scene, one that came under attack this summer as Donald Trump ordered mass immigration raids across the city.Shannon Camacho, a senior policy associate at Inclusive Action for the City, a non-profit in the Boyle Heights neighborhood that focuses on community economic development, says that many street vendors made the painful calculation between risking losing much-needed income or being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).“Vendors are in a particularly vulnerable situation, given that they have to work outdoors,” Camacho said. “They rely on foot traffic. They rely on busy neighborhoods and streets … This was something intentional that the Department of Homeland Security was doing – targeting vendors that were outside, understanding that many of them are immigrants and many of them are undocumented.”The LA Vendor Street Campaign, which includes Inclusive Action and three other organizations, has been advocating for the rights of vendors long before this summer. The LASVC led efforts to create a statewide policy decriminalizing street vending throughout the state. Recently, it raised around $100,000 of direct cash assistance for street vendors across Los Angeles county.Still, Camacho says more is needed.“There are thousands and thousands of street vendors, even just in the city of Los Angeles,” Camacho said. “And that’s not even including other parts of Southern California. We don’t have enough to support everybody.”The Guardian spoke to three food business owners in LA about the summer of Ice, and how it’s affected their families and businesses.Juan Carlos Guerra, Taqueria FronteraIt’s Los Angeles … you drive anywhere on the street, you’re going to see pop-ups. You’re going to see street vendors. But it just seemed like a ghost town during that time. No one was out on the street.I was going to open the new Silver Lake location of Taqueria Frontera at the beginning of June. And then the raids happened. It didn’t seem like we should have a celebration or a grand opening.I reached out to Javier Cabral from [the hyperlocal news site] LA Taco, and I said to him, “I want to try to help out. Whatever I can do. Do you know a good organization?” And he said: “Oh, yeah. CIELO is a great organization.”I talked to someone at CIELO, Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo (Indigenous Communities in Leadership). I was just like: “Taco Tuesday is usually a thing. Is it okay if I set up something saying that all proceeds of our trompo [taco] – which is what we sell the most – is going to be donated towards fundraising for CIELO so they can help immigrant families during this time?”We did Taco Tuesday with a purpose, and we ended up raising $4,000 from selling the trompo that day alone.Everyone was pretty supportive about it. And not just that day – a lot of people would come in just to check up on us, on my employees, see how they’re doing, how they’re feeling. There’s no way you could live in Los Angeles without being affected by this. And a lot of my clients were like: “I can’t believe this is going on.” Who doesn’t have a friend or family member or co-worker that isn’t undocumented here in Los Angeles?Street vendors are back out now and more people are outside eating. But I think that it’s still in the back of their minds. Could this happen at any time again? Right now it’s pretty calm, but what happens a month from now if they decide to do it again?Bulmaro, street vendorWhen we started the business, there weren’t many jobs out there. We knew how to make tamales, which is what we sell. Due to the lack of jobs and opportunities, we decided to do what we know how to do. From there, business grew and we started getting more clients, little by little. It’s our sole source of income.Because of the raids, everything stopped. We stopped selling for about a month, without working or anything. We just started working again a little more about two weeks ago. A lot of people don’t go out to buy things anymore because they’re scared. Sales have gone down a lot because of the raids. More than half of the clients we had haven’t come back to buy anything because of the fear that continues.We haven’t had phone orders, either. We just bring the day’s supply, and sometimes we come back home with tamales or with atol that didn’t sell. It’s never going to be the same as before the raids.View image in fullscreenIt’s me, my wife and another employee – three of us depend on the business. There’s nothing we can do, we have to keep working. We need to pay rent and bills, even though we’re going outside with fear. There’s no other way. The rent isn’t going to wait. The bills, and the food we need to buy, aren’t going to wait either.Alejandra Rodriguez, Alex Foods and Cemitas PoblanasA lot of our customers stopped coming. They were scared because a lot of them are Latino. Even at the local restaurants in the city of West Hollywood, [the workers] have their visas to be here, but they were still scared because of everything that was going on. They were saying that even if you had a visa, even if you had permission to be here, everybody was still getting kicked out. Our sales dropped more than 70%.Even on the street, there was nobody walking, nobody coming. It did take a very big toll on us … the local people that work at the restaurants, the chefs or the servers or the valet guys, they weren’t coming in to work.We closed down for about 10 days because it wasn’t worth coming out here. And luckily, we had a little bit of money saved up. Usually, when we leave on trips, customers will still call us to place orders. But no, the whole 10 days we were gone, we didn’t go to work. We didn’t get any calls or people asking us when we were going to come back.I had to let one of my two employees go. I couldn’t afford it anymore. And we’ve just slowly been climbing back. We have customers from the local car washes, and they told us that Ice actually got there at that car wash and took about four people. People are still aware. People are still scared. Any time they see a police officer pass by or a sheriff’s department or just somebody, they would flinch.People are just trying to get to work and come back. I know they were able to stay away, maybe for a couple of weeks, but everybody has to pay rent. More