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      Assassination in Utah, school shooting in Colorado: one day in US gun violence

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      At 12.23pm on Wednesday, as the rightwing influencer and provocateur Charlie Kirk was addressing a large crowd at Utah Valley University, a single shot rang out. He was struck fatally by a bullet in the neck, sending thousands of screaming students scattering in all directions and propelling the country into a new and dangerous crisis.Exactly one minute later, at 12.24pm, about 450 miles to the east in Colorado, a 911 call came in to first responders in the mountain town of Evergreen. A 16-year-old student had opened fire with a revolver on high school grounds, critically injuring two fellow students before turning the handgun on himself.The confluence of two bloody incidents just one minute apart – the first taking the life of a key figure in Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement, the second erupting in the same school district as the notorious 1999 Columbine massacre – underlined America’s dirty little non-secret: the ubiquitous, quotidian, nature of its gun violence.“Yesterday was a dark day in the United States,” the former Republican political strategist and Trump critic Steve Schmidt said on his podcast on Thursday. “It was a day of mass violence, of killing, of gun violence – in other words, in America it was a day like any other day.”The sense of shock that has ricocheted across the US since the Kirk shooting has been palpable. Cable news shows and social media feeds have been overflowing with intense browbeating and soul-searching about the parlous – and perilous – state of the nation.There have been umpteen calls to prayer, plenty of partisan name-calling, and even dark warnings about a coming civil war.What has been noticeable by its absence, though, is virtually any talk about the instrument that lies at the heart of America’s copious ongoing blood-letting: the gun.View image in fullscreen“America is an insanely violent nation,” said Hasan Piker, a progressive influencer who had been scheduled to debate with Kirk at a university in New Hampshire later this month. On his Twitch stream following the shooting, Piker lamented the lack of meaningful debate about reforming the country’s globally lax gun laws.“A bulletproof vest would not have saved Charlie Kirk. Security did not save Charlie Kirk. The only thing that could have potentially saved Charlie Kirk from getting shot in the neck was reasonable gun control.”Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA and author of a book on the second amendment right to bear arms, Gunfight, told the Guardian that Americans had shown a stubborn resistance to gun safety reform through equally terrible shooting incidents in the past. They include horrors such as the killing of 20 elementary school children in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, and the mass murder of 60 people five years later at a music festival in Las Vegas.“People’s positions on the second amendment and gun policy have really hardened in recent years,” Winkler said. “It seems like Americans are impervious to shooting-based reforms, we’re just not seeing this. I don’t think this week’s tragedies are likely to shift the substance of the debate or the current stalemate on guns.”Kirk had been discussing gun violence at the moment that he was shot. Sitting on a sparkling cloudless day in the shade of a tent bearing the logo of his “American Comeback Tour”, the Turning Point USA leader was sparring by microphone with students over how many mass shooters in the past decade had been transgender.“Too many,” he said. (In fact, trans people have carried out a tiny fraction of mass shootings, the fact-checking group Politifact found.)Kirk’s own views on guns in America were reflective of the prevailing attitude across the Maga universe which is fiercely protective of the second amendment despite the evident side-effects of such devotion. Kirk being Kirk – his willingness to confront his detractors face to face was summed up in his slogan “Prove me wrong” – he articulated his passion for gun rights in brutally frank terms.In a speech in Salt Lake City two years ago that has been widely resurfaced on social media in the wake of his death, Kirk argued that the benefits of having guns in many American hands outweighed the costs. Gun deaths were inevitable in such a heavily armed society, he admitted, but the prevalence of firearms allowed citizens to “defend yourself against a tyrannical government”.“I think it’s worth it,” he said. “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It’s rational.”Kirk went on to repeat the mantra that the pro-gun National Rifle Association (NRA) touted in the wake of the Newtown tragedy – the solution to gun violence is more guns. “If our money and our sporting events and our airplanes have armed guards, why don’t our children?”View image in fullscreenSuch a hardline pro-gun posture has been echoed by Trump. In the wake of the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, in the early stages of his first term in the White House, Trump backed raising the age of gun possession to 21, and even lent his name to comprehensive background checks which have long been a central demand of gun control advocates.It is not clear what made him change his mind – was it pressure from the NRA or from his own supporters? – but he quickly and quietly backed off the idea. The only change in gun policy in the second Trump administration has been in the direction of loosening regulations – his recent mega finance bill removed taxes from short-barrelled rifles and shotguns, and he has instructed his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to aggressively roll back measures to reduce gun violence introduced by his predecessor, Joe Biden.In the immediate aftermath of the Kirk assassination, Trump has signaled that he will be guided not by a desire to get to the root of the problem but by a desire for vengeance. He has blamed the shooting on the “radical left”, disregarding recent atrocities against Democrats including the June shooting of Democratic Minnesota lawmakers in which one was killed.In a statement from the Oval Office, Trump has insinuated that he intends to crack down on leftist civil society organisations. There has so far been no talk of similarly cracking down on guns.“There’s just no way that Trump is going to support gun reform,” Winkler said.Meanwhile, one of the bedrock causes of America’s unique struggle with gun violence goes untouched. An analysis by the Trace, a news outlet reporting on the issue, estimates that there are almost 400m guns in circulation in the US – that’s more than the number of people living in the country.More than four in 10 Americans live in households with a gun, according to the Pew Research Center. Though there is a partisan political divide in ownership, with 45% of Republicans owning a gun, that still leaves one in five Democrats also holding deadly weapons.As the number of guns has risen, so too have gun deaths. Almost 47,000 people died by the gun in the US in 2023, the latest year for which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has produced official figures. That’s the third-highest year on record, after a pandemic-induced spike in the previous two years.View image in fullscreenThe argument frequently proffered by second amendment lobbyists that this is just the way it is can easily be squelched by comparison with other rich countries. A 2016 CDC study cited by Pew put the US gun death rate at 10.6 per 100,000 people – more than five times the rate in Canada (2.1 per 100,000), and almost 20 times that of Spain (0.6).Such alarming statistics are set against a powerful subculture in which the gun manufacturing industry and pro-gun groups and magazines actively promote the allure of the sniper. “Best civilian sniper rifles”, was the headline from GunMag Warehouse.The online site Outdoor Life ran a feature on 16 of the “best sniper rifles”, defining the weapon broadly as the one that is “most capable of fulfilling the mission that whoever is carrying it is tasked with”. The author emphasised the huge variety of environments in which the sniper rifle has to operate, including “crowded cities”.First on the list was the AI AXSR which was praised for its “toughness, innovation, and accuracy”. The weapon trades to civilians for $11,000 on online firearms sites.The gun that delivered the single shot that ended Kirk’s life has been described by US investigators as a Mauser high-powered bolt-action rifle. Though it was not a purpose-built sniper rifle it was precise enough to allow the killer to strike from a rooftop about 160 metres away from his target.Josh Sugarmann, executive of the Violence Policy Center which has tracked the proliferation of the sniper subculture, sees its growth as part of the increasing militarization of the gun industry and its civilian offerings. “No one notices or seems to care that there is an industry actively designing and building the weapons that enable shooters to more effectively commit assassinations and mass shootings,” he said.“The gun industry is designing, building and promoting rifles that are effective at much longer range with the goal of ‘one shot, one kill’.” More

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      Guided by angels, pursued by chemtrails: the weird world of Florida health chief’s influential wife

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      The wife of Florida surgeon general Dr Joseph Ladapo, a leading vaccine skeptic, believes that angels have spoken to her and that “dark forces” are targeting her family with chemtrails, and has claimed her husband won’t work with anyone she hasn’t vetted.In published works and interviews reviewed by the Guardian, Brianna Ladapo – who edited her husband’s USA Today op-ed from March 2020 against Covid-19 shutdowns and appears alongside him at conferences – claims to have regularly received visions that come true and believes her life has been saved “multiple times” by angels.Joseph Ladapo, a longtime vaccine skeptic who was handpicked by Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, has faced accusations by public health advocates of peddling “scientific nonsense”. Ladapo has defended his stances on vaccines and Covid guidance, stating in 2023 in response to allegations he falsified a Covid report: “Between my scientific experience and training, and the fact that I am only comfortable saying the truth and speaking the truth, I felt completely fine with that announcement.”He recently ended vaccine mandates for children in Florida against preventable diseases, including measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio and hepatitis, comparing mandates to “slavery” and claimed the move would receive the blessing “of God”. Florida is the first state in the US to do so.The Guardian made several attempts to reach Brianna Ladapo and Joseph Ladapo by email. They did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Florida department of health and DeSantis also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.In a Substack post on 5 September, Brianna Ladapo defended her husband’s decision to end vaccine mandates and claimed there are “dubious origins, nonexistent safety profiles, and dirty money trails surrounding vaccines”.She wrote in the post: “You believe in vaccines because you’ve been told to by a corrupt medical establishment that has a vested interest in keeping you subservient and stupid.”In a July 2025 podcast, Brianna Ladapo stated: “I often think if I hadn’t had to learn to trust my own gut and learn how to think and stand on my own two feet at such a young age, when Covid had come through, apparently swept away everyone’s brains, I might have been swept away right along with it if I didn’t already know how to listen to that truth that I believe is inside every single one of us.”She added in the podcast that “even to the lead-up, I was having visions, I was having dreams”, about the pandemic, before it began in early 2020. “Immediately, ridiculous inconsistencies started to show themselves.”She also appeared in an interview with the prominent anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense in January 2025, in which she said: “If we all listen to our intuition, we listen to that voice, we would not fall for propaganda. Like, what’s happened with Covid. People did truly insane things to keep from catching a virus that over, well over 99% of people survived without intervention, right? That’s textbook insanity.”Joseph Ladapo has appeared with his wife on stage at conferences on health and parenting.In Dr Ladapo’s 2022 memoir, Transcend Fear, he wrote that his wife has “a history of extraordinary experiences that were hard to explain with natural laws”. In March 2020, he wrote an op-ed for USA Today against shutdowns in response to Covid-19, the first of several he wrote about the virus, and noted that it was edited by his wife.Joseph Ladapo wrote in Transcend Fear that when he was recruited for the job of Florida surgeon general by DeSantis, his wife claimed it was the message she was waiting for.In Brianna Ladapo’s 2023 memoir, she claimed “as long as I can remember, I have received communications from beings beyond this realm. Even as a young child, angels regularly spoke to me.”She added that “since I was born, I have also received constant communications in the form of visions” and that “eventually, every single one of them came to pass”.In the book, Brianna Ladapo claims she went on a “pilgrimage” trip to Egypt in graduate school during which she saw the rest of a “recurring vision” from a past life.In a video podcast on Rumble earlier this year, she reiterated these claims about her “gifts”.“I was born a very sensitive child, the kind of kid who would see angels and talk to beings that no one else could necessarily perceive,” she said, claiming her family “perceived what was happening to me as satanic and demonic and evil”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I saw a lot of angels, but my angels would talk to me and they saved my life multiple times,” she claimed.Brianna Ladapo also claimed their children together “have all been having experiences like this since they were born” and have “innate divine intelligence”.She claimed one of her children as a baby had “a gift” that was temporarily shared with her.“I started to hear conversations that sounded like they were right next to me. There were no people anywhere near us. And they were clearly from different eras, sometimes different countries, different languages and dialects,” Ladapo said.She said initially in their relationship, her husband was skeptical, but came to believe in her “gifts”.“After a number of years, he came to deeply trust my gift and now he won’t work with anybody I haven’t vetted,” she said. The couple did not respond to requests for comment about Brianna Ladapo’s vetting.Later in the podcast, Ladapo claimed she floated an inch above the ground during a session with a former Navy Seal and self-proclaimed traditional healing guru, whom she said her husband had also seen and had similar experiences with. The healer declined to comment, citing client confidentiality.Ladapo is also a proponent of the chemtrails conspiracy theory about planes mass-dumping chemicals. She claims in the podcast interview that she and her children got sick because of chemtrails, and she used a patch that has been characterized as pseudoscience by medical experts.“As we try to chase down where this is coming from, who is funding the companies who are flying the planes, who are piloting these planes, where are they taking off? We don’t even know where they are, because none of this is on the books.” Ladapo said about chemtrails.She added in the podcast interview about a photo of a Florida sky outside of her home: “This is how the chemtrails have been looking outside our window for the past few weeks. They are, I hate to say it, but that looks like a pentagram and they’ve been plastering it in the sky right outside our house for the last few weeks.”She characterized the perceived chemtrailers as “dark forces” out to get her and her husband.“They’ve been trying to stop us for years,” she claimed. “We are operating at a level of light that puts us essentially out of the grasp of those with a very low vibration, very evil intention.” 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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      US college campuses have faced hoax calls about gunmen since Charlie Kirk shooting – live

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      Donald 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.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.”Erika Kirk, the widow of right wing activist and provocateur Charlie Kirk, said in a statement Friday evening that her late husband’s message and mission will be “stronger, bolder, louder and greater than ever” and that her “cries will echo around the world like a battle cry”.“I loved knowing one of his mottoes was ‘never surrender’,” she said of her late husband. “We’ll never surrender.”Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of the hard-right youth organization Turning Point USA, died after being fatally shot while speaking at an event hosted at Utah Valley University (UVU) on Wednesday afternoon. The event was the first in the organization’s fall tour of college campuses. Erika Kirk said that the campus tour will continue despite her husband’s untimely death.“In a world filled with chaos, doubt and uncertainty, my husband’s voice will remain and it will ring out louder and more clearly than ever and his wisdom will endure,” she said.Erika Kirk, speaking from her husband’s Turning Point USA office on Friday evening, said Charlie had been killed because “he preached a message of patriotism, faith and of God’s merciful love”.During a news conference on Friday morning in Utah, FBI Director Kash Patel lauded the work of the FBI leading the investigation into Charlie Kirk’s killing, while also twice saying the decision to release photos and videos to the public, which led to the arrest of suspect Tyler Robinson on Thursday evening, were made at his direction.However, Patel has come under fire over his handling of the most high-profile moment of his tenure so far. Some FBI employees told CNN they found it galling for Patel to claim personal credit for the most successful parts of the investigation.In the early hours after the shooting, Patel had prematurely indicated on X that a suspected shooter was in custody, before it later turned out the killer was still at large.Less than two hours later after his initial post, Patel wrote a note saying the person had been released – a clear signal that law enforcement had not apprehended the correct person.The following day, in a meeting reported by The New York Times, Patel fumed to subordinates over failure to give him timely information, including photos of the suspect, the now-arrested Robinson. Patel reportedly went on a profanity-laced tirade, telling agents he would not tolerate “Mickey Mouse operations.”Patel personally knew Kirk and gave a tribute to the Turning Point USA founder on Friday.“To my friend Charlie Kirk: Rest now, brother. We have the watch, and I’ll see you in Valhalla,” Patel said, making a reference to the hall of slain warriors from Norse mythology.About 50 college campuses across the US have been deluged in recent weeks with hoax calls about armed gunmen and other violence, AP reported on Saturday. Students at some schools spent hours hiding under desks, only to find out later the threat had been fabricated. On Thursday, several historically Black colleges locked down or canceled classes after receiving threats, a day after the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah college.According to CNN’s analysis of events reported by the Gun Violence Archive, Education Week and Everytown for Gun Safety, there have been 47 school shootings in the US so far this year, as of 10 September. Twenty-four were on college campuses, and 23 were on K-12 school grounds. The incidents left 19 people dead and at least 77 other victims injured.

      The killing of Charlie Kirk is being used to mobilise support before what is expected to be Britain’s largest far-right rally in decades, which will include speakers from Britain, the US and Europe. The rally is expected to attract upwards of 40,000 attenders, according to the anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate. A smaller gathering organised by the group Stand Up to Racism is also taking place.

      A fundraising page, organised by Tucker Carlson’s nicotine pouch company ALP on the Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo, has already raised more than $3.7m for the Kirk family after ALP’s initial $1m donation. According to multiple sources, Kirk’s estimated net worth at the time of his death was $12m.

      Erika Kirk, widow of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, gave a combative speech saying her late husband’s message and mission will be “stronger, bolder, louder and greater than ever” and that her “cries will echo around the world like a battle cry”. A tour of college campuses by his hard-right youth organization Turning Point USA would continue, she said, in her first public statement since her husband’s killing. She urged students to start Turning Point USA chapters at their schools.

      Authorities announced on Friday that they had arrested a suspect in connection Charlie Kirk’s killing at a speaking event at Utah Valley University (UVU) on Wednesday. Tyler Robinson, 22, is now in custody at Utah County Jail.

      Robinson’s family friend turned him in, and told officers that Robinson “confessed to them or implied that he had committed the incident”, governor Spencer Cox told a press conference. A family member that investigators interviewed described Robinson as becoming “more political in recent years” and was aware that Kirk was due to speak at UVU, said Cox.

      The weapon used was identified as a high-action bolt rifle, and Cox noted that several bullet casings were found at the scene of the crime. One of three unfired casings read “Hey fascist! Catch!”, a second read “Oh Bella Ciao” (which is the name of an anti-fascist Italian anthem), and a third casing had the following engraved: “If you read this, you are gay, LMAO”. The Wall Street Journal initially reported on Thursday that an internal law enforcement bulletin said that ammunition recovered after the Charlie Kirk shooting was engraved with expressions of unspecified “transgender ideology”, but within an hour the New York Times, citing multiple sources, reported that these claims were likely not true. The WSJ has since posted an Editor’s Note saying that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “urged caution” around inaccurate reports of the transgender engravings.

      Donald Trump told Fox & Friends in an interview – during which he also announced that a suspect was in custody – that he hoped the shooter “gets the death penalty”. He declined to call for the US to come together as a way of fixing the country’s divisions, saying “I couldn’t care less” and instead casting “vicious and horrible radicals” on the left of US politics as the sole problem. He added that these radicals “want men in women’s sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders.”

      Jeff Gray, the Utah county attorney, plans to file formal charges against Tyler Robinson on Tuesday, his office said. According to court records obtained by CNN, Robinson is being held without bail on several initial charges, including aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm, and obstruction of justice.

      A Utah Valley University spokesperson confirmed today that Robinson is a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College. He also briefly attended Utah State University. 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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      Trump declines to call for unity after Charlie Kirk killing in stunning move

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      Donald 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.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’s refusal to seek a common bipartisan way forward at a time of profound national anger, fear and mourning was a stunning move for a sitting US president, even by his standards.The US has a long history of presidents using their rhetorical powers to try to overcome political fissures. The pinnacle perhaps was Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address towards the end of the civil war, in which he sought to “bind up the nation’s wounds” and made a point of striving for unity “with malice toward none, with charity for all”.In more recent times, Joe Biden used his inaugural address in 2021, just days after the insurrection by Trump supporters at the US Capitol on January 6, to call for unity, without which, he said, “there is no peace, only bitterness and fury”.Trump’s appearance on Fox News made clear he has no intention of following that rhetorical tradition. Instead, the tenor of his response to the Kirk shooting has been hyper-partisan and grounded in retribution.In Friday’s comments, he threatened the philanthropist George Soros with a Rico investigation of the sort normally reserved for organised crime. He accused Soros of funding “professional agitators” who were engaging in “more than protest, this is real agitation, this is riots on the streets”.In an Oval Office address delivered hours after Kirk was pronounced dead, Trump made menacing remarks indicating he would seek revenge against “organizations that fund and support” political violence. He laid blame for the current plight entirely on what he called the “radical left”.The president has already used his second term in the White House to turn the heat up on those he regards as his political enemies. He has authorised an investigation into the main fundraising channel for the Democratic party, ActBlue, and threatened to rescind the tax-exempt status of progressive groups such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) and environmental groups. More