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Social media and widespread availability of lethal weapons make this era more dangerous than the 1960s - and the violence may increaseCharlie Kirk's killing came amid a rise in political violence in the US, the kind now so frequent that it moves swiftly out of news cycles it would once have dominated.The list is long and growing. From the two assassination attempts on Donald Trump during his campaign last year to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's home burnt in an arson attack in April and the Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband gunned down by a man dressed as a police officer in June, to name a few. Continue reading...

A UN special rapporteur shares the stories of those trying to record the horrors of Gaza even as they live through themYesterday I talked to a mother of a child who was born and died in the war."Every day I look at my child, who instead of going to school is going to fetch water, and instead of playing football is hanging around in areas where corpses are lying."Mary Lawlor is UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders Continue reading...

How Bovino went from an unheralded border patrol agent to a key figure leading Trump's Chicago and LA takeoversGregory Bovino is indisputably a man of the political times, perfectly in harmony with the signature theme of Donald Trump's second presidency.A previously unheralded regional border patrol agent, Bovino, 55, has risen to prominence in recent weeks as the publicity-hungry spearhead of the Trump administration's crackdown on undocumented people in Los Angeles. Continue reading...

Surgeon general Joseph Ladapo retreats on his plans after the US president says: You have vaccines that work'It took barely two days, and some huffs of disapproval from the White House, before Joseph Ladapo's bold plan to eliminate all vaccine mandates in Florida began to deflate.The action, the fervently religious state surgeon general had asserted at a fire and brimstone press conference in Tampa, came straight from the heavens: Who am I, as a man standing here now, to tell you what you should put in your body?" he opined, framing the freedom to reject vaccines as a reflection of God's light against the darkness of tyranny and oppression". Continue reading...

Putin and Netanyahu are creating chaos in the vacuum left by a weak US president. But there are still ways to foil themIt is too easy to blame Donald Trump for everything that goes wrong in the world. The ability of any US president to fundamentally change or control the behaviour of other major powers is frequently overestimated. Yet by posing as a sort of uncrowned global monarch and grand arbiter of war and peace, Trump perpetuates fantasies of US hegemony, omnipotence and divine right. Intoxicated by such ego-inflating delusions, he pledged before taking office to swiftly end the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts. Perhaps, in his vanity and hubris, he truly believed he could.Eight months on, the exact opposite is happening. Both crises are expanding and escalating. The bubble has burst, his bluff has been called, the emperor has no clothes - and there is no denying that Trump, by alternately appeasing, excusing and encouraging the two foremost villains of these twin tragedies, is greatly to blame. Last week's multiple Russian drone incursions into Nato member Poland - which Polish officials are right to call deliberate - risk transforming the Ukraine war into a Europe-wide conflagration. Likewise, the reckless, illegal Israeli airstrike in Qatar, which blew up the Gaza peace process, physically and metaphorically, has supercharged regional tensions. Continue reading...

Numerous firings reported as authorities search out commentary deemed offensive on conservative free speech advocate's killing - key stories from 13 September 2025 at a glanceThe killing of Charlie Kirk has prompted a crackdown by authorities on critical commentary, with numerous people losing their jobs over their reaction to the fatal shooting of the conservative activist and free speech advocate.Those fired, suspended or censured in recent days include teachers, firefighters, journalists, politicians, a Secret Service employee, a junior strategist at Nasdaq and a worker for a prominent NFL team. Continue reading...

Suspect's background and politics are being pored over in aftermath of killing of far-right influencerThough the suspect in the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk was revealed by authorities on Friday, questions surrounding his identity and motivations have exacerbated intense US political debates in the aftermath of the shooting.Authorities revealed Kirk's suspected killer to be Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old man who grew up in Washington, Utah, along the state's south-western border. Continue reading...

Leaked documents show intent to deploy 1,000 troops to conduct law enforcement operations in urban centers. This blog is now closed.Images coming out of the far-right Unite the Kingdom' march in central London on Saturday show framed photographs of Charlie Kirk being held aloft as protesters gather.The far-right activist and political commentator, who was fatally shot this week in Utah, galvanized young conservatives through online antics and inflammatory views. Continue reading...

Documents show intent to deploy 1,000 troops to conduct law enforcement operations in urban centersDonald Trump's administration has drafted a proposal to deploy 1,000 Louisiana national guard troops to conduct law enforcement operations in the state's urban centers, the Washington Post reported Saturday, citing military planning documents it had obtained.Trump has made crime a major focus of his administration even as violent crime rates have fallen in many US cities. His crackdown on Democratic-led municipalities has fueled legal concerns and spurred protests, including a recent demonstration by several thousand people in Washington DC. Continue reading...

News network Milenio releases public apology after US deputy secretary of state threatens to revoke Mexican visasA congressional staffer from Mexico's ruling party has resigned after being called out online for comments he made on a major Mexican television news program about Turning Point USA executive director Charlie Kirk's murder.The news network, Milenio, also released a public apology after the United States' deputy secretary of state - a former ambassador to Mexico - evidently threatened to have Donald Trump's presidential administration revoke any US visas on which it may count. Continue reading...

Nato announces plans to beef up defense as Poland rejects Trump's suggestion drones were sent by mistakeThe US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Saturday said the incursion of Russian drones into Polish airspace this week was unacceptable but that it remained unclear whether Russia had deliberately sent the drones into Polish territory. Nato announced plans to beef up the defense of Europe's eastern flank on Friday, after Poland shot down the drones that had violated its airspace, the first known shots fired by a member of the western alliance during Russia's war in Ukraine.We think it's an unacceptable and unfortunate and dangerous development," Rubio told reporters before departing on a trip to Israel and Britain. Continue reading...

Teachers, firefighters and military personnel among those who lost jobs after posting their opinion on social media

Governor JB Pritzker joins US representative Delia Ramirez in response to shooting death of Silverio Villegas-GonzalezA US congresswoman from Illinois and local officials in and around Chicago are calling for an investigation into the traffic stop initiated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents that resulted in the shooting death of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez on Friday.A joint statement whose signatories included Democratic US House member Delia Ramirez said Villegas-Gonzalez's killing in the Chicago suburb of Franklin Park illustrated the inevitable violence" resulting from the deportation campaign mounted by Donald Trump's administration during his second presidency. Continue reading...

Mayoral candidate said he'd try to honor ICC warrant for Israeli prime minister's arrest over war crimesIf he wins his fall election, Zohran Mamdani would order New York's police department to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu in the event that the Israeli prime minister ever traveled there, the city's leading mayoral candidate said in a recent interview.Mamdani - the Democratic nominee in the 4 November election - alleged to the New York Times on Thursday that Netanyahu was a war criminal who was committing genocide with Israel's military campaign in Gaza, according to a report published by the outlet on Friday. He said he would honor an international criminal court (ICC) arrest warrant issued in November 2024 for Netanyahu's arrest over alleged Gaza war crimes by having the Israeli leader taken into custody at the airport if he ever steps foot in New York and Mamdani is the mayor. Continue reading...

Two-year attempt to prosecute opponents of police training center on criminal conspiracy charges ends in failureGeorgia prosecutors are facing what one expert called probably the highest-profile failure of using conspiracy charges to indict a protest movement" in US history, after a two-year attempt to prosecute a criminal conspiracy in connection with opposition to the police training center known as Cop City.Fulton county superior court Judge Kevin Farmer announced his decision to dismiss charges against the case's 61 defendants during hearings this week on a handful of defense attorney motions. Continue reading...

In Truth Social post, US president also suggests members consider imposing tariffs of 50% to 100% on ChinaDonald Trump has said he is ready to impose sanctions on Moscow, but on the condition that all Nato allies agree to completely halt purchases of Russian oil and implement their own sanctions.He also suggested members of the transatlantic alliance consider imposing tariffs of 50% to 100% on China for its purchases of Russian petroleum as a way to help end the war. Continue reading...

Invective against Kash Patel includes insults to his handling of investigation, his ethnicity and his reference to ValhallaThe killing of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk has conjured a storm of online criticism on the far right towards the FBI director, Kash Patel, both for his perceived incompetent stewardship of the bureau and his invocation of Viking lore.During the news conference announcing the arrest of Tyler Robinson, 22, the alleged killer of Kirk at a Salt Lake City campus on Wednesday, Patel made triumphant statements as the Utah governor, Spencer Cox, looked on. Continue reading...

The sex offender was worth $600m when he died, but exactly how he acquired his wealth remains a mysteryJeffrey Epstein was a very wealthy man, but exactly how wealthy and where that money came from remains shrouded in mystery.Newly unearthed emails last week shone light on Epstein's role as freelance client development officer, acting as a channel between political figures and business titans, greasing up the former with lifestyles they could not afford and the latter with avenues of political influence. Continue reading...

Survivors of previous eras of xenophobia say the harms done have lasted generations - and what's happening now threatens to do the sameMass expulsion, babies born behind barbed wire, intrusive medical exams for newcomers, families torn apart: these aren't scenes from Donald Trump's promised second-term immigration crackdown, but from the US's extensive history of xenophobic immigration policy.While so many Americans watched in horror at Immigration and Customs Enforcement's military-like raids across Los Angeles this summer, US cruelty and violence towards immigrants is nothing new, from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the mass deportation of Mexican Americans during the Great Depression. As the Trump administration escalates its attacks on immigrants - or those perceived to be immigrants - survivors of previous eras of xenophobia say it's more important than ever to remember the past. The harms done to them and their families have lasted generations, and what's happening now threatens to do the same. Continue reading...

The slain head of Turning Point USA stoked campus culture wars and treated faculty and students as enemies'Charlie Kirk, the far-right activist killed this week while speaking at a campus event at Utah Valley University, never graduated from the community college he briefly attended. But his lack of a degree didn't stop him from assuming a defining role in the ongoing transformation of US higher education.Kirk pioneered a style of ideological warfare against what he viewed as bastions of leftism, helping turn campuses into cultural battlefields and paving the way for Donald Trump's unprecedented campaign to weaken American universities and subject them to his movement's ideological agenda. Continue reading...

The country's finest male intellectuals - including some in positions of power - are weighing in on the matterShould women in the US have the right to vote? You'd be forgiven for assuming this particular issue was sorted out quite a long time ago. But, because we live in hell, it seems the question is once again up for debate.Not by women, though; the fairer sex is obviously too emotional for such muscular discussion. So please sit this one out, ladies, and listen to what America's finest male intellectuals have to say.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Reaction to the shocking killing of Charlie Kirk has largely overlooked the obvious: the country is awash with guns and people prepared to use them on fellow AmericansAt 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. Continue reading...

Erika Kirk, the widow of the conservative activist, delivered her first public remarks on Friday. In a livestreamed speech, she thanked Donald Trump, his vice-president, JD Vance, and law enforcement officials for their support since her husband's death

Document appears to undermine claim from Donald Trump allies that Cook committed mortgage fraudA loan estimate for an Atlanta home purchased by Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor accused of mortgage fraud by the Trump administration, shows that Cook had declared the property as a vacation home", according to a document reviewed by Reuters.The document, dated 28 May 2021, was issued to Cook by her credit union in the weeks before she completed the purchase and shows that she had told the lender that the Atlanta property would not be her primary residence. The document appears to counter other documentation that Cook's critics have cited in support of their claims that she committed mortgage fraud by reporting two different homes as her primary residence, two independent real-estate experts said. Continue reading...

Brianna Ladapo, the wife of Florida surgeon general Dr Joseph Ladapo, claims her husband won't work with anyone she hasn't vettedThe 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. Continue reading...

No item of clothing seems to go through revisions more than jeans. And the denim discourse is insufferableIf you're reading this, there's a good chance you are wearing clothes. Or my byline photo made you spontaneously strip down to nothing but a pair of crusty underwear and a smile. I don't judge, and I also don't blame you. That photo is from a decade ago.Assuming you're in clothes, then you had to decide what to wear. It's an arduous task for most of us - the rummaging in a closet, color coordinating, the classic smell" test to confirm you can go another week without doing your laundry. For me, dressing is a joy. I have multiple closets stocked with clothes - suits, mostly. I have some shorts, some sweats, hoodies and T-shirts, but those are for special occasions only. Like a kid's birthday or a hangover.Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist Continue reading...

Slain far-right influencer was was instrumental in driving youth support for Trump's re-election in 2020

Will Canelo's power or Crawford's precision prove the decisive factor in Saturday night's showdown in Las Vegas? Our writers set out the arguments on both sidesFor years Bud Crawford's name has been synonymous with patience. Denied mainstream recognition and opportunities against name-brand fighters, he kept beating everyone they put in front of him until he'd unified all four titles at junior welterweight. Then he did it again at welterweight with a dismantling of Errol Spence Jr so complete it cemented his place in boxing's pound-for-pound S-tier alongside Naoya Inoue and Oleksandr Usyk. His gifts are obvious: the ability to switch seamlessly between stances, to read rhythms like sheet music, and to mete out punishment with icy composure once he's cracked the code. Continue reading...

Portugal star will hand Gianni Infantino the perfect publicity coup if he does play in America for the first time in more than 10 years, having already begun cosying up to Donald TrumpIs it still safe to stage the World Cup in the United States? After more headline evidence this week of the extreme nature of American gun violence, some may conclude that the answer is no. Nine months out from the opening game, it is now almost impossible to ignore this. But believe it or not statistics suggest more than 300 people will have been shot in America last Wednesday alone.The same number will also be shot on Friday, Saturday, every day next week, and every day of World Cup year. On average 127 of these unnamed, largely non-famous people not called things such as the superstar influencer Charlie Kirk will die each day. Within this, youth gun deaths will be both alarmingly high and a register of social injustice: a disproportionate 46% of all young people shot will be black. Continue reading...

Feminism exposed the ubiquity of child abuse, rape, sexual harassment and domestic violence - and helped fight that cultureI was there. I kept the receipts. I remember how normalized the sexual exploitation of teenage girls and even tweens by adult men was, how it showed up in movies, in the tales of rock stars and baby groupies", in counterculture and mainstream culture, how normalized rape, exploitation, grooming, objectification, commodification was.The last Woody Allen movie I ever saw was Manhattan, in which he cast himself as more or less himself, a dweeb in his mid-40s, dating a high school student played by Mariel Hemingway. She was my age, 17, and I was only too familiar with creeps, and the movie creeped me out, even though it was only long afterward that I read that she said he was at the time pressuring her to get sexually involved with him in real life.Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell's Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Continue reading...

In statement Friday, Erika Kirk says evildoers responsible for my husband's assassination have no idea what they have done'

President sought to cast people on the left as sole problem of US politics, while widow of Charlie Kirk said her cries will echo around the world like a battle cry' - key stories from 12 September at a glanceDonald 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". Continue reading...

In Washington, a small city some 260 miles from where Kirk was killed, neighbors expressed shock and surprise at arrest of local college studentEditor's note: This article was updated on 12 September 2025 to remove summarized quotes after the verified source who attended high school with Tyler Robinson said after publication that they could not accurately remember details of their relationship.The quiet neighborhood was like many others in the sun-baked city of Washington, Utah, which lies amid the red rock and sagebrush mesas of the Utah-Arizona borderlands. Continue reading...

Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez shot and killed and officer injured in incident in Franklin Park, IllinoisA 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." Continue reading...

Spencer Cox said a family friend of the suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, contacted authorities and said he implied he committed the incident'

Demonstrators gathered outside an Ice detention facility in the Broadview suburb west of Chicago on Friday to denounce the Trump administration's increased crackdown on undocumented immigrants in Illinois. About six miles away, officials said a man was fatally shot during a vehicle stop on the outskirts of Chicago by Ice officers after attempting to flee the scene

Democrats Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley reach inescapable conclusion' after fact-finding trip to regionTwo Democratic senators claim they have reached the inescapable conclusion" that Israel is acting on a systematic plan to destroy and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza to force local people to leave, and they say the US is complicit.Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, both members of the Senate foreign relations committee, released their findings in a report on Thursday after returning from a congressional delegation to the Middle East where, they note, the destruction goes beyond bombs and bullets. They say they also found a systematic campaign to strangle humanitarian aid, which they call using food as a weapon of war". Continue reading...

Utah officials say they were contacted by family friend of Tyler Robinson, 22, accused of killing rightwing activistThe initial portrait emerging of the man authorities say killed the conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah is a complicated one.Tyler James Robinson, 22, was arrested on Thursday after contacting a family friend who then called the sheriff's office in Washington county, Utah, officials said. Washington county is 260 miles south of Orem, home of Utah Valley University (UVU), where Kirk was killed. Continue reading...

Surveillance footage of person suspected of fatally shooting the rightwing activist set in motion a rapid series of events

In their humane responses to the killing of Charlie Kirk, Democrats are observing the old norms. Things are different now: anger and division rule

Loomer accused TPUSA founder of betraying president in July but now bashes those she perceives to celebrate' his assassination

Conservative activist and Trump ally was shot dead at a Utah Valley University event on Wednesday

Conspiracy theorists wonder about what Epstein and his powerful friends may have done to cover up his crimes. But they barely were covered upJeffrey Epstein had a lot of friends. When his girlfriend-cum-assistant and convicted fellow sex trafficker, Ghislane Maxwell, set out to compile letters, drawings and well wishes from friends in celebration of the pedophile financier's 50th birthday in 2003, the resulting scrapbook was 238 pages long. The book, titled The First 50 Years, included letters from prominent well-wishers such as former president Bill Clinton and the Bear Stearns executives James Cayne and Alan Greenberg, as well as from the late Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling scout and Epstein's fellow pedophilic rapist.The lawyer and longtime Epstein friend Alan Dershowitz contributed a mock cover of the magazine Vanity Fair, which was working on a profile of Epstein at the time; Peter Mandelson, until this week the UK ambassador to the United States, wrote that Epstein was my best pal!" The fashion designer Vera Wang compared Epstein to the contestant on the reality series The Bachelor, and the Microsoft executive and Bill Gates deputy Nathan Myhrvold included photos from a recent trip to Africa, writing that they were more appropriate than anything I could put in words". The photos included images of lions and zebras copulating, as well as of a zebra with a visible penis.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Utah governor Spencer Cox confirmed today that Tyler Robinson, 22, is the prime suspect in the murder of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk. Kirk was shot in the neck while speaking at a campus event at Utah Valley University. In a press conference, Cox said: 'Robinson reached out to a family friend who contacted the Washington County Sheriff's Office with information that Robinson had confessed to them or implied that he had committed the incident'