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      Trump at first says he is ‘not familiar’ with Minnesota Democrat’s assassination

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      In response to a question about why he did not order flags lowered to half-staff to honor Melissa Hortman, the Democratic speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives who was assassinated alongside her husband this summer, Donald Trump initially said he was “not familiar” with the case.The question came up during a briefing in the Oval Office on Monday, in light of the president’s order last week to lower flags in response to the killing of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.Trump was pressed on why he and Republicans continued cast blame the left for a rise in political violence when elected officials and activists from both parties have been targets.The exchange began when the reporter asked about the tributes paid by the White House to Kirk, the founder of the conservative youth activist group Turning Point USA and a close ally of the president and his family.“Do you think it would have been fitting to lower the flags to half-staff when Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota house speaker, was gunned down by an assassin as well?” asked Nancy Cordes, the chief White House correspondent for CBS News.“I’m not familiar. The who?” Trump replied, leaning in across the Resolute Desk.“The Minnesota house speaker, a Democrat, who was assassinated this summer,” she said.“Oh,” Trump replied. “Well, if the governor had asked me to do that, I would have done that.”Trump did not mention the Minnesota governor Tim Walz – a Democrat and the vice-presidential nominee in 2024 – by name, but suggested that had he made the request, the White House might have obliged.“I wouldn’t have thought of that, but I would’ve, if somebody had asked me,” Trump said. “People make requests for the lowering of the flag, and oftentimes you have to say no, because it would be a lot of lowering.”At the time, Trump said that speaking to Walz, a close friend of Hortman, would have been a “waste of time”.“I could be nice and call, but why waste time?” Trump said then, referring to Walz as “whacked out” and a “mess”.Kirk was fatally shot last week while speaking at Utah Valley University. In the wake of his death, Trump and other prominent conservatives have sought to place the blame for political violence squarely on Democrats, vowing to crack down on the left-wing groups and institutions they allege “fund it and support it”.As Republicans grieve the loss of Kirk, they have largely ignored the violence against Democrats, including Hortman’s assassination, the arson attack on the home of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, the violent assault on Paul Pelosi, the husband of former speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a thwarted plot to kidnap the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer.House Republicans and a handful of Democrats gathered at prayer vigil for Kirk on Capitol Hill on Monday. In brief remarks, Representative Tom Emmer, a Republican from Minnesota, reflected on several recent incidents of political violence, including Hortman’s killing by “another evil coward” who also shot a second Democratic state lawmaker that night.Trump, who survived two assassination attempts during the 2024 presidential campaign, denied on Monday that he had blamed just “one side” before accusing the “radical left” of causing “tremendous violence”.“The radical left really has caused a lot of problems for this country,” he said. “I really think they hate our country.”Earlier on Monday, vice president JD Vance, a close friend of Kirk’s, said he hoped for national “unity” while hosting the slain activist’s podcast. But then he insisted that this was not a “both sides problem” and that Democrats were primarily to blame, despite widespread condemnation of Kirk’s killing by party officials and elected leaders.During the lengthy episode, Vance made no reference to Hortman or other acts of political violence, such as the 6 January assault on the US Capitol.“Something has gone very wrong with a lunatic fringe – a minority, but a growing and powerful minority on the far left,” he said, and committed to using the levers of the federal government to “dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country”. More

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      Trump news at a glance: JD Vance vows vengeance after Charlie Kirk killing

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      JD Vance and senior Trump aide Stephen Miller doubled down on promises of vengeance in the aftermath of the killing of Charlie Kirk, vowing to destroy what they claimed is a leftwing “domestic terror movement” and calling on people to go hard against anyone deemed to be celebrating the rightwing political activist’s death.The US vice-president stepped in to host an episode of Kirk’s podcast and was joined by the White House deputy chief of staff for Monday’s episode. Miller sought to blame what he called “far left” organisations for Kirk’s death, despite the motive for the shooting remaining unclear.He told Vance: “We are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks,” Miller said, adding that they would do this “in Charlie’s name”.Vance then urged Americans to go hard against anyone perceived to be celebrating Kirk’s murder. He said: “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. Hell, call their employer.”JD Vance threatens crackdown on ‘far-left’ groups after Kirk shootingJD Vance assailed what he called the “far left” and its increased tolerance for violence while guest-hosting Charlie Kirk’s podcast on Monday, saying the administration would be working to dismantle groups who celebrate Kirk’s death and political violence against their opponents.Vance, hosting the podcast from his office next to the White House, spoke to high-profile members of the Trump administration and some of Kirk’s long-time friends in the movement, including Tucker Carlson and Trump adviser Stephen Miller.Vance said the administration would “work to dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country”.Read the full storyTrump announces deadly US strike on another alleged Venezuelan drug boatDonald Trump said on Monday that the United States had carried out a strike on a second Venezuelan boat and killed three alleged terrorists he claimed were transporting drugs, expanding his administration’s war against drug cartels and the scope of lethal military force to stop them.Read the full storyTrump to send national guard to Memphis, with Chicago ‘probably next’Donald Trump on Monday announced that he was sending in the national guard and other federal authorities into Memphis, in a “replica” of the administration’s expanding military-led response to urban crime in Democratic-run cities.Announcing the taskforce in an Oval Office meeting, Trump vowed to end the “savagery” and said Chicago was “probably next”. “We’re going to fix that just like we did Washington,” Trump said.Read the full storyProsecutor in Epstein case sues Trump’s DoJ over abrupt firingMaurene Comey, a federal prosecutor involved in cases against Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and led the recent case against Sean “Diddy” Combs, filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging her abrupt termination as politically motivated retaliation against her father, former FBI director James Comey.Read the full storyUS and China reach deal to transfer TikTok ownership, trade officials sayJamieson Greer, a US trade representative, said on Monday that Washington and Beijing have struck a framework agreement on transferring TikTok to US-controlled ownership.Speaking after emerging from negotiations with Chinese officials, Scott Bessent said the deal was coming but declined to reveal the commercial terms.Read the full storyRubio says Netanyahu has full support of US over plans to destroy HamasThe US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has put the Trump administration’s full support behind Benjamin Netanyahu in a visit to Jerusalem, saying Washington’s priorities were the liberation of Israeli hostages and the destruction of Hamas.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The backlash to “inappropriate” public comments made in the days following Charlie Kirk’s death has sparked a new wave of firings and suspensions, with a number of university employees disciplined for sharing their views.

      Rev William Barber, a left-leaning pastor and social activist, has condemned last week’s “brutal, ugly” murder of Charlie Kirk while calling for a broader denunciation of political violence on all sides. Barber, leader of the “Moral Monday” events staged by Repairing The Breach, a pro-social justice group, also appeared to criticize the rightwing political activist’s brand of Christianity.

      Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah says she has been firedfrom the newspaper over social media posts about gun control and race in the aftermath of far right commentator Charlie Kirk’s killing.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 14 September 2025. More

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      Trump says military carried out strike on alleged Venezuelan drug cartel vessel

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      Donald Trump said on Monday that the United States had carried out a strike on a second Venezuelan boat and killed three alleged terrorists he claimed were transporting drugs, expanding his administration’s war against drug cartels and the scope of lethal military force to stop them.The US president gave few details about the strike, saying in a social media post that the action was on his orders and that it had happened earlier in the morning. The post was accompanied by a video clip showing the boat, which appeared to be stationary, erupting into a fireball.“The strike occurred while these confirmed narco-terroists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the US,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.Trump’s announcement of the strike appeared to be worded in a way to suggest there was a valid legal basis for the strike – an issue that became a source of heavy criticism in Washington after the operation against the first alleged Venezuelan drug boat earlier this month, which killed 11 people.According to people familiar with the matter, the administration briefed Congress last week that the first strike was legal under the president’s article 2 powers because it involved a boat connected to the Tren de Aragua gang, which Trump designated a foreign terrorist organization.The administration has provided little evidence that the first boat was carrying illegal drugs beyond asserting they had tracked the drugs being loaded on to the boat in order to be distributed in the United States, even if the boat at one point was said to have turned around.Asked on Sunday about that first strike and claims it was a fishing vessel, Trump said in response to questions from the Guardian: “You saw the bags of white. It’s nonsense. So we knew it before they even left. We knew exactly where that boat, where it came from, where the drugs came from and where it was heading.”By claiming, for the strike on the second boat, that the drugs were a threat to the United States and asserting that the boat’s crew were “terrorists”, Trump appeared to be preemptively setting the groundwork to make the same Article II legal claim to order a missile strike against the second boat.The latest strike comes as the US continues a massive buildup of forces around Venezuela. Over the weekend, five F-35 fighter jets arrived in Puerto Rico to join about half a dozen US navy destroyers already moved to the US territory recently, and support assets the administration said had been deployed to disrupt the flow of illegal drugs.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump demurred on whether the US would conduct operations inside Venezuela against drug cartels there. He also deflected a question from the Guardian about its president, Nicholás Maduro, accusing Trump of acting illegally. “What’s illegal are the drugs that were on the boat,” he said.The Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group – including the USS San Antonio, the USS Iwo Jima and the USS Fort Lauderdale, carrying 4,500 sailors – and the 22nd marine expeditionary unit, with 2,200 marines, were deployed to the region ahead of the first strike this month. The US also deployed several P-8 surveillance planes and submarines, officials said. More

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      JD Vance threatens crackdown on ‘far-left’ groups after Charlie Kirk shooting

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      JD Vance assailed what he called the “far left” and its increased tolerance for violence while guest-hosting Charlie Kirk’s podcast on Monday, saying the administration would be working to dismantle groups who celebrate Kirk’s death and political violence against their opponents.Vance, hosting the podcast from his office next to the White House, spoke to high-profile members of the Trump administration and some of Kirk’s long-time friends in the movement, including Tucker Carlson and Trump adviser Stephen Miller.Vance said the administration would “work to dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country”.The administration would be working to do that in the coming months and would “explore every option to bring real unity to our country and stop those who would kill their fellow Americans because they don’t like what they say”, Vance said.Miller also detailed how the administration would use the federal government to achieve this goal.“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, [Department of] Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks,” Miller said, adding that they would do this “in Charlie’s name”.Vance added: “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. Hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility, and there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”Miller said he had been feeling “incredible sadness, but there’s incredible anger” and would be focusing his “righteous anger” on the “organized campaign that led to this assassination, to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks”.Detailing what he believes is a “vast domestic terror movement”, Miller pointed to what he said were “organized doxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people’s addresses, combining that with messaging designed to trigger, incite violence, and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence”.The political leanings of the shooter who killed Kirk are not yet clear. Bullet casings found with the shooter’s gun were inscribed with references to video games and online culture. Still, prominent figures on the right – before a shooter was apprehended – declared war on the left, claiming it was responsible for Kirk’s death.There is no evidence of a network supporting the shooter, and Miller did not provide substantiation of his claims that there is a “vast domestic terror movement” at play.Since Kirk’s death, rightwing influencers have found examples of people they say are glorifying or celebrating the violence and have sought to get them fired. One post that Miller retweeted said people should go beyond contacting employers and should go after professional licenses for lawyers, teachers and medical professionals because they “cannot be trusted to be around clients, children, or patients”.Trump has also said the problem today is on the left, not the right. “When you look at the agitators – you look at the scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag burnings all over the place – that’s the left, not the right,” Trump said on Sunday.On the podcast, Vance said that after he left Kirk’s family in Arizona, he read a story in the Nation, a leftwing publication, where the author detailed Kirk’s views and, he said, took a quote about several prominent Black women out of context to imply it applied to all Black women.The magazine is not a “fringe blog” but a “well-funded, well-respected magazine whose publishing history goes back to the American civil war. George Soros’s Open Society Foundation funds this magazine, as does the Ford Foundation and many other wealthy titans of the American progressive movement”, Vance said, hinting at the organizations the administration might target.Vance later mentioned that the foundations that helped fund the magazine are tax-exempt, a sign that the government could go after that status.“Charlie was gunned down in broad daylight, and well-funded institutions of the left lied about what he said so as to justify his murder,” Vance said. “This is soulless and evil, but I was struck not just by the dishonesty of the smear, but by the glee over a young husband’s and young father’s death.”The writer of the Nation article said on Bluesky that she was not paid by the Ford Foundation or Open Society to write the article.Vance said he “desperately” wants national unity and appreciated the many condolences he has received from Democratic friends and colleagues, but he said there was no unity without confronting the truth. “The data is clear, people on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence,” he said, citing the results from a recent YouGov poll. “This is not a both-sides problem. If both sides have a problem, one side has a much bigger and malignant problem, and that is the truth.”On the show, Vance also interviewed Kirk’s friends and political allies, showing how Kirk worked to keep the warring factions of the right aligned behind Trump and tried to bring in other political movements by elevating them into roles in the administration. They shared how Kirk was omnipresent in the transition after Trump won the White House.Robert F Kennedy Jr said Kirk was a “spiritual soulmate” to him and that his endorsement of Trump, at a Turning Point rally in Arizona amid fireworks and sparklers on stage, was “Charlie’s orchestration”. Kirk helped shepherd Kennedy into his role as health secretary, Kennedy said, and also helped his daughter-in-law get a role in the administration.On breaks between guests, the live stream rolled footage of Kirk during his typical college campus visits debating about the Trump administration’s first 100 days or the left’s views on immigration.Since Kirk’s killing, Turning Point USA has seen a massive rise in inquiries to start new chapters on high school and college campuses. Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for the organization, said on X that the group received over 32,000 inquiries over the course of two days. Turning Point currently has about 900 official college chapters and 1,200 high school chapters.“Charlie’s vision to have a Club America chapter (our high school brand) in every high school in America (around 23,000) will come true much much faster than he could have ever possibly imagined,” Kolvet wrote. More

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      Prosecutor in Epstein case sues Trump justice department over abrupt firing

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      Maurene Comey, a federal prosecutor involved in cases against Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and led the recent case against Sean “Diddy” Combs, filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging her abrupt termination as politically motivated retaliation against her father, former FBI director James Comey.According to the court documents, the justice department fired Comey without cause or explanation on 16 July, citing only “article 2 of the United States constitution and the laws of the United States” in a brief email. When she asked for a reason, interim US attorney Jay Clayton told her: “All I can say is it came from Washington. I can’t tell you anything else.”Just three months before her termination, the 35-year-old prosecutor received a glowing review from the same attorney who would later deliver news of her firing, the lawsuit alleges.The lawsuit seeks her reinstatement, back pay, and a declaration that her termination violated the constitution.Her removal came after a sustained pressure campaign by Laura Loomer, a far-right activist and Trump administration whisperer with clear influence over personnel and policy decisions. In May, Loomer posted to her 1.7 million X followers calling for the firing of James Comey’s “liberal daughter”.“Both Maurene Comey and Lucas Issacharoff need to be FIRED from the DOJ immediately,” Loomer wrote. After the termination, Loomer celebrated: “This comes 2 months after my pressure campaign on Pam Blondi to fire Comey’s daughter.”The lawsuit alleges the firing was designed to retaliate against James Comey, whom Trump has attacked in hundreds of social media posts, repeatedly calling him the “worst” FBI director in history. Tensions escalated in May when the elder Comey posted a cryptic message featuring seashells arranged to spell “8647”, which Trump interpreted as an assassination threat.Maurene Comey’s case portfolio included high-profile wins: the conviction of Maxwell for sex trafficking, the prosecution of gynecologist Robert Hadden for sexual abuse, and most recently leading the team that convicted Combs.The Trump administration has argued that article 2 grants unlimited presidential removal authority over career prosecutors, but the federal lawsuit claims that violates constitutional separation of powers and federal service protections.In a farewell email to colleagues, Comey said: “If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decision of those who remain. Do not let that happen.” More

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      Washington Post columnist says she was fired over posts after Charlie Kirk’s killing

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      Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah says she has been fired from the newspaper over social media posts about gun control and race in the aftermath of far right commentator Charlie Kirk’s killing.Attiah, 39, recounted in a Substack post that she had been dropped as a Post columnist after 11 years for “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns”.The Post, she wrote, accused “my measured Bluesky posts of being ‘unacceptable, ‘gross misconduct’ and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues – charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false”.Attiah continued: “They rushed to fire me without even a conversation. This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.”The columnist’s job was understood to be in jeopardy after she clashed with Post opinion editor Adam O’Neal, formerly of the Economist and the Wall Street Journal, who has reportedly offered buyouts to writers whose work does not fit with the editorial mix of the newspaper owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos.The Bezos-founded Amazon contributed $1m to the fund for the inauguration of the second presidency of Donald Trump, for whom Kirk was a close ally. And the Post decided to forego endorsing a candidate in the November election won by Trump, a Republican, after the newspaper’s editorial board had voted to endorse Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.In her Substack post, Attiah noted that she “was the last remaining Black full-time opinion columnist” on the paper and blasted that Washington DC, “one of the nation’s most diverse regions, … no longer has a paper that reflects the people it serves”.Attiah said her firing was “part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media – a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful – and tragic”.The Washington Post is under an editorial mandate for the newspaper’s opinion section to focus specifically on supporting and defending “personal liberties and free markets”.A Washington Post spokesperson declined to comment on personnel matters and pointed to the organization’s policies and standards, including a section governing social media use.In writings on Bluesky, Attiah lamented that the US, in her opinion, “accepts and worships” gun violence.“My only direct reference to Kirk was one post – his own words on record,” she said in her Substack letter. The letter included a screenshot of a Bluesky post alluding to a 2023 remark from Kirk about how several prominent Black women “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously.“You have to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”Attiah continued that she was pointing “to the familiar pattern of America shrugging off gun deaths and giving compassion for white men who commit and espouse political violence”.The firing described by Attiah came after the Status media newsletter – citing sources – reported in August that she had refused a buyout offer. It also comes days after MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd was dismissed for describing Kirk – in the aftermath of his killing – as a “divisive” figure who pushed “hate speech”.Some accused Dowd of implicitly justifying the violence against Kirk by having said that “hateful words” lead to “hateful actions”. Dowd has since written his comments were “misconstrued” and MSNBC caved to pressure from a “rightwing media mob”.Dowd was one of the earliest instances of people across the US either being fired from or disciplined at their jobs amid a coordinated effort to clamp down on commentary that is critical about Kirk.In August, the Post published an opinion piece by Trump administration official Jay Bhattacharya to argue that the federal health and human services department’s decision to cut to support to mRNA vaccine development was a “necessary” step. Experts have warned that the approach is wrongheaded, with mRNA vaccines having saved millions of lives during the Covid-19 pandemic.The editorial page also published an opinion from Jeanine Pirro, a former host at the conservative Fox News network who is now serving as a Washington DC district attorney, that promoted the administration’s decision to deploy national guard troops on the streets of the capital to allegedly make them safer – even though the city’s violent crime rate is at 30-year low.O’Neal reportedly sent a memo on 14 July asserting that his “top priority will be to significantly increase the reach and effect of our work”.“Advocating for free markets and personal liberties will be critical as we rebuild trust with more Americans and scale our high quality journalism,” the memo reportedly said. It said the changes were “not a partisan project” and the paper “won’t let sentimentality slow down much-needed reform”. More

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      Trump should be reassuring the country at this time. Instead he is sowing fear

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      The public response to the killing of Charlie Kirk in cold blood, has revealed how drastically our democracy – our belief in the importance of free speech and in the irreplaceable life of each and every individual – has deteriorated over the last half century.I was a senior in high school when John F Kennedy was assassinated, and a senior in college when Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King were killed. Plenty of conspiracy theories, some of which have never been put to rest, were floated and debated. But the difference between what happened then and what we are seeing now is that, in the aftermath of those violent deaths, there was a sense of shared grief, of national mourning. Those tragedies seemed to bring us, as a country, closer together in our shock and sorrow.Obviously, tha is quite unlike what is occurring today, when the president has publicly declared that he “couldn’t care less” about healing the divisions plaguing and weakening our society. The instinctive and widespread response to Kirk’s death has been to demonize and blame a perceived enemy. Donald Trump, Stephen Miller and their minions were quick to accuse the “lunatic radical left”.Despite the emerging evidence, they seem unwilling to amend their version of what happened. I will admit that, on hearing the news, my first thought was that the Maga movement had orchestrated the killing to distract us from the Epstein files, or that this was the modern-day equivalent of the 1933 Reichstag fire, which occurred when the German parliament building was torched, and the National Socialists blamed the communists, and used the event as a pretext for suspending civil liberties and installing an authoritarian regime.The motives of the suspected killer, Tyler Robinson, are still unclear. But it appears that both the right and the left both had it wrong to some degree. Robinson was a studious young man from a solidly Republican, Mormon family, used anti-fascist slogans and apparently disliked Kirk for his hateful views.Regardless of what we thought of Kirk, it is profoundly and dangerously immoral to sanction political violence, regardless of its object. It is unseemly to celebrate the shooting of a human being with a wife and children – even a man whose rhetoric we may have despised.In another country, in another era, the death of Kirk might have served to remind us of the essential importance of free speech, of the concept that even the most polarizing figures should be able to speak publicly without fear of violent retribution. In drafting the first amendment, the founding fathers affirmed the idea that even racists, misogynists and anti-immigrant bigots have the right to express their beliefs and to engage in a free and fair debate with those who hold very different views. In fact, it’s the essence of democracy, the cornerstone on which our nation was founded and that every patriot (however that word is construed now) should affirm.Instead, Kirk’s death has been weaponized as a pretext to further undermine first amendment protections, to circle the wagons around the worst aspects of censorship and blind obedience to authority. It is being employed to foster the fear of saying anything that runs contrary to what those in power believe and allow us to express. Already, teachers, soldiers, government officials, firefighters and reporters – most prominently, MSNBC news analyst Matthew Dowd – have been censured or lost their jobs after saying in public or on social media that Kirk’s rhetoric was a form of not-so-thinly-disguised hate speech.There has been some pushback, among the public and on the floor of Congress, against the directive that prayers should be said and flags lowered to half mast in Kirk’s memory. Personally, I’m fine with the idea of prayers and lowered flags, except that I think that these gestures of mourning, honor and respect are being deployed too selectively.The flags should have been lowered for, among others, another recent victim of political violence: Melissa Hortman, the Democratic speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, who was murdered, along with her husband, Mark, in June. Prayers should be said for the Colorado high school students wounded in one of the latest school shootings, on the very same day as Charlie Kirk’s murder. Flags should be lowered and prayers said for every victim lost to senseless gun violence, until we are tired of all the praying and flag-lowering, until we decide, as a nation, to take action to prevent these tragic deaths.My great fear is that we are nearing the day when, if we are being honest, the flag should be lowered in memory of our fragile, flawed, precious democracy. In that case, we may have to wait a while to see it flying proudly and at full mast, once again.

      Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences More