NEW YORK — With the Pentagon’s press room largely cleared of mainstream reporters, conservative activist and presidential ally Laura Loomer says she has been granted a credential to work there.
Loomer has an influential social media presence and the ear of President Trump, frequently campaigning for the firings of government officials she deems insufficiently loyal to his administration. Some targets have been in the field of national security, including Dan Driscoll, secretary of the Army.
Pentagon officials did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Tuesday. The Washington Post first reported the news of her attaining credentials.
Virtually all Pentagon reporters for legacy media outlets walked out last month rather than agree to a new policy they say would restrict their ability to report news not given approval for release by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Several right-wing outlets have taken their place, although the banned journalists are continuing to work on stories related to the Pentagon.
“I’m excited to announce that after a year of breaking the most impactful stories that pertain to our national security and rooting out deceptive and disloyal bad actors” from the Defense Department, she was ready to join the press corps, Loomer said on X, formerly Twitter. She did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Earlier this year, she criticized Driscoll for publicly honoring a Medal of Honor recipient who had previously spoken at a Democratic National Convention. Separately, Driscoll rescinded the appointment of a former Biden administration official to teach at West Point after Loomer attacked him for it.
Although Trump later downplayed Loomer’s influence, the president last spring fired a handful of National Security Council officials after she had presented him with evidence of their supposed disloyalty.
Still, she’s been a polarizing force among some in the administration, wary of her influence, which has included riding on Air Force One with Trump. Although granted space in the Pentagon press room, Loomer has not received reporting credentials at the White House. Loomer has also been criticized for entertaining conspiracy theories and making anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim posts.
“There is no denying that my investigative reporting has had a massive impact on the landscape of personnel decisions within the Executive Branch, our intelligence agencies and the Pentagon,” Loomer wrote on X. “I look forward to covering the Pentagon and breaking more stories that impact our country and our national security.”
In her social media post, she also reached out to people to alert her to news through “the Loomered Tip Line, the most influential Tip Line in all of DC.”
Phil Stewart, a national security reporter for Reuters, noted on a social media post Tuesday that Hegseth’s new media policy would make reporters subject to having their access revoked for seeking out information from Defense Department personnel that had not been authorized for release.
However, Loomer’s appeal for tips did not explicitly target people who work at the Defense Department.
On an overcast morning in September, Hector Alessandro Negrete left his beloved Los Angeles — the city he was brought to at 3 months old — and headed down Interstate 5 to Mexico, the only country where he held a passport.
It was a place that, to him, had “always felt like both a wound and a possibility.”
Negrete, 43, sat in the passenger seat as a friend steered the car south and two more friends in another car followed. He had condensed his life to three full suitcases and his dachshund mix, Lorca.
They pulled over at the beach in San Clemente. Angel Martinez, his soon-to-be former roommate, is deeply spiritual, and his favorite prayer spot is the ocean, so he prayed that Negrete would be blessed and protected — and Lorca too — as they began a new stage in their lives.
On the near-empty beach, the friends embraced and wiped away tears. Martinez handed Negrete a small watermelon.
As instructed, Negrete walked to the edge of the water, said his own prayer and, as a gift of thanks to the cosmos, plopped it into a crashing wave.
Negrete, holding a drink, embraces his friend Angel Martinez as they visit a drag club in Tijuana after leaving Los Angeles a day earlier.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Negrete doesn’t call it self-deportation.
“Self-repatriation,” he said. “I refuse to use this administration’s language.”
President Trump had been in office just over a month when Negrete decided he would return to Mexico. Methodical by nature, he approached the decision like any other — by researching, organizing and planning.
He registered Lorca as an emotional support animal, paid for a vaccine card and a certificate of good health, and crate-trained her in a TSA-approved carrier.
He announced his decision to leave in June on his Substack newsletter: “If you’re thinking, ‘Alessandro’s giving up,’ look deeper. I am choosing freedom. For the first time, I feel unshackled from the expectations of waiting.”
Negrete walks the streets of Boyle Heights while shopping for moving supplies after deciding he would leave the U.S. on his own terms.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Negrete had grown tired of wishing for immigration reform. He had built his career advocating for immigrants such as himself, including stints as statewide coordinator for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, and as executive director for the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance.
He said his work had helped legalize street vending in Los Angeles and he assisted the office of then-California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris in securing the release of a young woman from immigration detention. He was the first openly undocumented and LGBTQ+ person on the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council.
Under previous administrations, Negrete’s political work had felt like a shield against deportation. Even during Trump’s first term, Negrete had marched at rallies denouncing his immigration policies.
But that was before the new Immigration and Customs Enforcement patrols that tore into Southern California during Trump’s second term. On June 6, as anti-ICE protesters took to the streets, Negrete rushed to downtown Los Angeles when fellow activists told him street medics were needed.
“One of my homies said, ‘Hey fool, what are you doing here?’” he recalled. Seeing Los Angeles police officers advancing on the crowd, he realized that no amount of public support could protect him.
He fled. “Thank God I left.”
Negrete, in red, with his friends and colleagues at a farewell party and yard sale in August.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
In mid-August, Negrete hosted a yard sale and going away party. The flier was tongue-in-cheek: “Everything must go! Including me!”
His red T-shirt stated plainly, “I AM UNDOCUMENTED,” and his aviator sunglasses hid the occasional tears. Tattoos dotted his extremities, including an anchor on his right leg with the words “I refuse to sink.”
“I think it hit me when I started packing my stuff today,” he told a former colleague, Shruti Garg, who had arrived early.
“But the way you’ve invited everyone to join you is so beautiful,” she replied.
One table held American pop-culture knickknacks — sippy cups with Ghostface from the movie “Scream,” collectible Mickey Mouse ears, a Detective Batman purse shaped like a comic book, another purse shaped like the locker from the ‘90s cartoon “Daria.”
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Negrete said the items reminded him of his youth and represented the gothic, quirky aspects of his personality.
“I was born in Mexico, but I don’t know Mexico,” he said. “So I’m leaving the American parts of me that are no longer going to serve me.”
The back yard slowly filled with loved ones from Negrete’s various social circles. There was his mostly queer softball team — the Peacocks — his running group, his chosen family and his blood family.
Negrete’s close friend Joel Menjivar looked solemn.
“I’m scared it’s going to start a movement,” he said. “Undocumented or DACA friends who are talented and integral to the fabric of L.A. might get ideas to leave.”
Another friend, Mario Mariscal, said he took Negrete’s decision the hardest, though at first he didn’t believe Negrete was serious. More than once he asked, “You really want to give up everything you’ve built here for a new start in Mexico?”
Eventually, Negrete had to tell Mariscal that his questions weren’t helpful. During a deeper conversation about his decision, Negrete shared that he was tired of living with the constant fear of getting picked up, herded into an unmarked van and taken away.
“I just kept telling him, ‘That’s not going to happen to you,’” Mariscal said. “But the more this administration keeps doing it, the more it’s in our face, the more we’re seeing every horror story about that, it became clear that, you know what, you do have a point. You do have to do what’s right for you.”
Negrete continues packing for his move to Mexico as roommate Martinez works at their Boyle Heights home.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Negrete is cognizant of the privilege that makes his departure different from that of many other immigrants. He is white-passing, fluent in Spanish and English, and moved with $10,000 in savings.
In June, he was hired as executive director of a U.S.-based nonprofit, Old School Hub, that works to combat ageism around the world. The role allowed him to live wherever he wanted.
He decided to settle in Guadalajara, a growing technology hub, with historic buildings featuring Gothic architecture that he found beautiful. It also helped that Guadalajara has one of the country’s most vibrant LGBTQ+ scenes and is a four-hour drive from Puerto Vallarta, a renowned queer resort destination.
As Negrete began his new job while still in L.A., he picked a moving date — Sept. 4 — and booked a two-week Airbnb near the baseball stadium.
That Guadalajara’s team, the Charros de Jalisco, wore Dodger blue felt like a good omen.
On the day he left the United States, Negrete and Martinez hold a prayer at the beach in San Clemente in which Negrete offers thanks to the universe with an offering of a watermelon.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
On the drive toward the border, messages poured into Negrete’s phone.
“I’m sending you all my love Alessandro,” one read. “Cuídate. [Take care.] Know that even though you’re far away from home, you carry us with you.”
“Todo te va a salir bien,” read another. Everything will go well for you, it said. “Spread your wings and flyyyyy.”
Afraid of being stopped and detained at the airport, as has happened to other immigrants attempting to leave the country, Negrete preferred to drive to Tijuana and then fly to Guadalajara.
Negrete’s driver, his friend Jorge Leonardo, turned into a parking lot at the sign reading “LAST USA EXIT.”
Negrete put on his black felt tejana hat and called Iris Rodriguez, who was in the companion car. He asked her to cross on foot with him.
Negrete walks his last few steps on American soil as he enters Mexico en route to Guadalajara, his new home.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“I don’t want to go alone,” he said.
“We’re still on American soil,” Leonardo said. “You can still change your mind.”
Negrete ignored him.
“See y’all on the other side,” he said as he hopped out of the car.
He and Rodriguez stopped for photos in front of a sign with an arrow pointing “To Mexico.” Around a corner, the border came into full view — a metal turnstile with layers of concertina wire above it.
The line for Mexicanos was unceremoniously quick. The immigration agent barely glanced at Negrete’s passport before waving him through.
On the other side, a busker sang “Piano Man” by Billy Joel in perfect English.
“Welcome to the motherland,” Rodriguez told him. Negrete let out a deep breath.
Negrete tours downtown Guadalajara, where he now lives.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Negrete’s immediate family members, and almost all of his extended family, live in the U.S.
He was born in Manzanillo, Colima, in 1982. Three months later, the family relocated to Los Angeles, where his parents had two more children.
At 17, Negrete was one of two students in his graduating class at Roosevelt High School to get into UC Berkeley. That’s when he found out he didn’t have papers.
His parents had divorced and his father married a U.S. citizen, obtaining a green card when Negrete was at Roosevelt. They began the legalization process for Negrete in 1999, he said, but two years later he came out to his family as gay.
His father was unsupportive and refused to continue seeking to adjust his immigration status. By the time they mended their relationship, it was too late. Negrete had aged out of the pathway at 21.
In 2008, Negrete said, he was arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol. Four years later, President Obama established the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program to protect immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. Negrete failed to qualify because of the DUI.
He said he got his record expunged in 2016, but — again — it was too late.
Negrete waited until his last night in the U.S. to tell his mother, who now lives in Colorado, that he was leaving. He had grown tired of friends and other family members begging him to change his mind.
He had partially hinged his decision on the fact that his mom was in remission from her third bout with cancer and had just obtained legal residency. With life more stable for her, he could finally seek stability for himself.
“You taught me to dream,” Negrete recalled telling her. “This is me dreaming. I want to see the world.”
She cried and scolded him, promising to visit and repeating what she had said when he came out to her all those years before: “I wish you told me sooner.”
At a hotel in Tijuana, Negrete’s emotions finally caught up with him.
The day after Negrete and his three friends left L.A., three more friends surprised him by arriving in Tijuana for a final Friday night out together. One of them presented a gift he had put together with help from Negrete’s entire social circle — a video with loved ones sharing messages of encouragement.
Negrete shares a tearful moment with his friend Joel Menjivar, who gifted him a self-produced video of friends and colleagues offering good wishes.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
In Negrete’s hotel room, as he and his friends watched, the mood grew sentimental.
“You’re basically the one that formed the family friend tree,” one friend said in her clip. “Friendships do not die out in distance.”
Negrete sobbed. “Yes! Friendships don’t have borders,” he said.
“Every single one of you has said this hasn’t hit y’all, like it’s a mini vacation,” he said. “I want to think of it as an extended vacation.”
“This isn’t goodbye, this is we’ll see each other soon,” he continued.
Off his soapbox, Negrete then chided his friends for making him cry before heading to a drag show.
Negrete had a habit of leaving social gatherings abruptly. His friends joked that they would refer to him as “catch me on the 101” because every time he disappeared during a night out, they would open Apple’s Find My app and see him on the freeway heading home.
“We’re not gonna catch him on the 101 no more,” Martinez said.
The last few flights of stairs lead Iris Rodriguez and Negrete to his Airbnb apartment in Guadalajara.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
On the flight to Guadalajara, Negrete’s heart raced and he began to hyperventilate. The anxiety attack caught him off guard.
Negrete had worked hard to show his friends and family that he was happy, because he didn’t want them to think he had doubts — and he had none. But he began to worry about the unknown and to mourn his former dreams of gaining legal status and running for public office.
“It hit me all at once,” he recounted. “I am three hours away from a whole new life that I don’t know. I left everything and I don’t know what’s next.”
Many deep breaths by Negrete later, the plane descended through the clouds, revealing vibrant green fields and a cantaloupe-hued sunset.
Negrete tests the bed at his temporary home in Guadalajara.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Inside the Airbnb, he was surprised to find a clothesline instead of a dryer. Noticing the blue 5-gallon jug of water in the kitchen, he remarked that he would have to remember tap water wasn’t safe to cook with. But alongside the new was something familiar: The view from his 11–story apartment showed off a sprawling metropolis dotted with trees, some of them palms.
The next day started off like any Sunday, with a trip to Walmart and drag brunch.
Negrete marveled at the cost of a large carton of egg whites ($1) and was shocked to see eggs stored at room temperature, liquid laundry detergent in bags and only single-ply toilet paper. He treated himself to a Darth Vader coffee mug and a teapot featuring characters from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
After brunch, it was time to play tourist. Negrete was accompanied by Rodriguez, who stayed with him for the first two weeks, and a new friend, Alejandro Preciado, whom he had met at Coachella in April and happened to be a Guadajalara local.
Negrete tours downtown Guadalajara. He was drawn to the city, in part, by its Gothic architecture.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Their first stop was the city’s Spanish Renaissance cathedral, where Negrete said a quick prayer to the Virgin Mary at his mother’s request. Negrete treated his friends to an electric carriage ride around the historic buildings, where he excitedly pointed out the Gothic architecture, then they bought aguas frescas and walked through an open-air market, chatting in an English-heavy Spanglish.
“I’m trying to look at how people dress,” Negrete said, suddenly self-conscious about his short shorts. “I’m pretty sure I stand out.”
After dinner, Negrete was booking an Uber back to his Airbnb when a message popped up: “We’ve detected unusual activity.”
The app didn’t know he had moved.
Before he arrived in Guadalajara, Negrete had already joined an intramural baseball team and a running club. Practices began days after his arrival.
Negrete enjoys a view of the sprawling hills of Guadalajara.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Within a month, he moved into an apartment, visited Mexico City and reconnected with aunts in Mexico City and Guadalajara he hadn’t seen in decades.
He reflected on the small joys of greeting neighborhood señoras on morning dog walks, discovering the depths of Mexican cuisine and the peace of mind that came with no longer feeling like a target — though he’ll still freeze at the sight of police lights.
Still, Negrete remained glued to U.S. politics. In late September, the federal government detailed plans to begin processing initial DACA applications for the first time in four years. Had Negrete stayed in the U.S., he would have finally qualified for a reprieve.
He isn’t regretful.
Lorca greets Negrete as he arrives home after touring Guadalajara.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
His new dreams are wide-ranging. He wants to buy a house in Rosarito, where friends and family from L.A. could visit him. He wants to travel the world, starting with a trip to Spain. And he wants to help U.S. organizations build resources for other immigrants who are considering repatriating.
The goal isn’t to encourage people to leave, he said, but to show them they have agency.
“I actually did it,” he said. “I did it, and I’m OK.”
Now, he said, Mexico feels like an estranged relative that he’s getting to know again.
Mohammed Zakaria had not slept in two days when the news came that el-Fasher, his hometown, had fallen to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The Sudanese video journalist and human rights activist had been monitoring the deteriorating situation from Kampala, Uganda, watching as the paramilitary seized the North Darfur governor’s office in the city on Friday, edging closer to taking control of all of it.
He feared the worst.
For Zakaria, the “nightmare” scenario is intensely personal. Searching through social media after the city’s fall, he discovered footage posted on Facebook by RSF soldiers celebrating, standing over dead bodies. He recognised three of his uncles among the dead.
“They are celebrating by killing them,” he said.
He said another uncle’s Facebook profile photo had been changed to an image of an RSF fighter, a chilling message about his possible fate.
“We don’t know where he is … we’re really scared for him,” he said.
The fall of el-Fasher
The city fell to the RSF on Sunday after an 18-month siege, the Sudanese army confirming its withdrawal from what was its last outpost in the Darfur region, held for months by the resolve of fighters holed up there.
The RSF’s capture of el-Fasher gives the paramilitary control over all five state capitals in Darfur, marking a significant turning point in Sudan’s civil war.
El-Fasher endured one of the longest urban sieges in modern warfare this century. The RSF began encircling it in May 2024 and intensified its assaults after being driven from the capital, Khartoum, by the army in March.
What followed its fall has been described by international observers as a massacre on an unprecedented scale, with satellite imagery and social media footage pointing to mass atrocities by RSF fighters, reportedly along ethnic lines.
“We have been talking about this for more than a year. We knew this would happen,” Zakaria told Al Jazeera, his voice breaking.
Sarra Majdoub, a former UN Security Council expert on Sudan, told Al Jazeera observers were warning for months of the city’s fall, like other major urban areas in Darfur that were captured by the RSF, but “they surprisingly held on for a really long time”.
A communications blackout has all but cut off connection from the city, leaving those with loved ones there in a state of anxious uncertainty.
An estimated 260,000 civilians remained trapped in the city when it fell, half of them children.
The Sudan Doctors Network said a “heinous massacre” had taken place in el-Fasher, while the Joint Forces, a coalition of armed groups allied with the Sudanese army, said 2,000 people had been executed. The UN said it documented 1,350 deaths.
Reports of atrocities
The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which monitors the war in Sudan, reported Tuesday that satellite imagery revealed evidence consistent with mass killings, including what seem to be visible pools of blood and clusters of corpses.
Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, told a media briefing on Tuesday that the killings were “only comparable to Rwanda-style killings”, referring to the 1994 Tutsi genocide in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed in weeks.
As early as October 2, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk warned of the risk of “large-scale, ethnically driven attacks and atrocities”, calling for immediate action to prevent it.
Social media footage verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency after the city’s fall showed many instances of RSF fighters carrying out summary executions of civilians. In one video, an RSF commander bragged that he had killed 2,000 people.
In a statement on Monday, the RSF said it was committed to “protecting civilians”.
Majdoub told Al Jazeera that the voyeuristic nature of the videos recorded by RSF fighters was among the “most disturbing elements” of the violence.
She recalled that fighters filming abuses had been seen before in places such as el-Geneina in West Darfur and Gezira state, “but el-Fasher has been different, their violence is more exaggerated.”
“It is very painful,” Zakaria said, “finding videos in social media, and then you find that you know this person, who is a friend, or a distant relative, or uncle, surrounded by RSF fighters.
“This is a reality now for many people”.
He remains unable to locate dozens of friends and relatives.
Among them is Dr Mudathir Ibrahim Suleiman, medical director of Saudi Hospital, whom Zakaria last spoke to early Saturday morning, hours before the RSF took the city.
“He told me he would escape with his father and relatives,” Zakaria said. “Until now, I didn’t hear anything … We found that some doctors reached Tawila, but Dr Mudathir is not among them.”
Darfur’s governor, Minni Minnawi, said on Wednesday the RSF had committed a massacre in the Saudi Hospital, killing 460 people. He also posted footage on X showing a summary execution.
Residents who spoke to Al Jazeera in the weeks before the final offensive described daily bombardments and periodic drone strikes. People dug trenches to hide in at dawn as shelling began, sometimes remaining underground for hours.
The United Nations migration agency reported that more than 26,000 people fled the fighting since Sunday, either heading to the outskirts of the city or attempting the dangerous journey to Tawila, 70km (43.5 miles) to the west.
‘Genocide is happening now’
Zakaria left el-Fasher in June 2024, during the siege, making the perilous journey through South Sudan to Uganda after his house was shelled and he witnessed a deadly attack that killed seven people, including women and children, near his grandfather’s home.
“It was like the hardest decision I have made in my life, to leave my city,” he said.
From Kampala, he continued monitoring the violence and advocating for people.
El-Fasher had appealed for intervention for more than 17 months, he said, while humanitarian organisations operated in Tawila, just three hours away by car.
“The time has passed for actions. The genocide is happening now,” he said.
Zakaria says more than 100 people he knows remain unaccounted for in el-Fasher.
He continues searching social media and calling contacts, hoping for information.
A son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly has publicly revealed that he is homosexual, while at the same time defending his mother’s political views and the Republican Party’s “family values” campaign theme.
“The family values movement is not anti-gay,” said John F. Schlafly, a 41-year-old attorney who lives with his parents in Alton, Ill., and counts among his clients the Eagle Forum, the conservative group founded by his mother.
“These people are not anti-gay. They’re not gay bashers,” John Schlafly said in a telephone interview Friday. “I hold my mother in very high esteem. She’s doing good work.”
He added that he “didn’t agree with everything” he heard at the GOP convention but insisted that “efforts to convey the (Republican) Convention and the platform and speakers as bigots and gay bashers is completely inaccurate. The concept of family values should not be threatening to gays and lesbians. Most gays and lesbians have good relations with their family, as I do.”
Schlafly was “outed,” or revealed to be gay, by QW, a magazine published in New York, two weeks ago. He confirmed his homosexuality in an interview published Friday by the San Francisco Examiner.
“I thought it best to set the record straight,” Schlafly explained. “The media was trying to push the angle that there was some sort of hypocrisy going on, which I felt was inaccurate.”
Phyllis Schlafly characterized the media’s interest in her son’s revelation as “obviously a political hit against me.” She declined to say when she learned her son is gay and added that homosexuality “is not a big subject around (the Schlafly family).”
As for her stand on gay rights, Phyllis Schlafly said: “There’s nothing about my position on gay rights that should be offensive to a gay unless he’s seeking some kind of preferential status.”
While John Schlafly said he did not think it was right for someone to be fired based on sexual orientation, he said he did “not support the so-called gay-rights agenda” and was not sure what he thought of the military’s ban on homosexuals.
In his remarks to the Examiner, he disagreed with one common contention of the religious right, that homosexuality is a choice. “You can say in some sense I choose to write with my right or left hand,” Schlafly said. “But the point is that it is such an automatic decision. That’s how I see homosexuality.”
He also objected “to anyone saying that being gay constitutes not having good moral character.”
Like with cigarettes, la migra should come with a warning label: Proximity to ICE could be hazardous for your health.
From Los Angeles to Chicago, Portlandand New York, the evidence is ample enough that wherever Trump sends in the immigration agency, people get hurt. And not just protesters and immigrants.
That includes 13 police officers tear-gassed in Chicago earlier this month. And, now, a U.S. marshal.
Federal agents boxed in the Toyota Camry of local TikToker Carlitos Ricardo Parias — better known to his hundreds of thousands of followers as Richard LA. As Parias allegedly tried to rev his way out of the trap, an ICE agent opened fire. One bullet hit the 44-year-old Mexican immigrant — and another ricocheted into the hand of a deputy U.S. marshal.
Neither suffered life-threatening injuries, but it’s easy to imagine that things could have easily turned out worse. Such is the chaos that Trump has caused by unleashing shock troops into U.S. cities.
Rather than take responsibility and apologize for an incident that could’ve easily been lethal, Team Trump went into their default spin mode of blaming everyone but themselves.
Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that the shooting was “the consequences of conduct and rhetoric by sanctuary politicians and activists who urge illegal aliens to resist arrest.”
Acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli chimed in on social media soon after: “I urge California public officials to moderate their rhetoric toward federal law enforcement. Encouraging resistance to federal agents can lead to deadly consequences.” Hours later, he called Times reporter James Queally “an absolute joke, not a journalist” because my colleague noted it’s standard practice by most American law enforcement agencies to not shoot at moving vehicles. One reason is that it increases the chance of so-called friendly fire.
Federal authorities accuse Parias of ramming his car into agents’ vehicles after they boxed him in. He is being charged with assault on a federal officer.
Time, and hopefully, evidence, will show what happened — and very important, what led to what happened.
The Trump administration keeps claiming that the public anger against its immigration actions is making the job more dangerous for la migra and their sister agencies. McLaughlin and her boss, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, keep saying there’s been a 1,000% increase in assaults on immigration agents this year like an incantation. Instead of offering concrete figures, they use the supposed stat as a shield against allegations ICE tactics are going too far and as a weapon to excuse the very brutality ICE claims it doesn’t practice.
Well, even if what they say is true, there’s only one side that’s making the job more dangerous for la migra and others during raids:
La migra.
It turns out that if you send in phalanxes of largely masked federal agents to bully and intimidate people in American cities, Americans tend not to take kindly to it.
Who knew?
Gregory Bovino, center, of U.S. Border Patrol, marches with federal agents to the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on Aug. 14.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
We’re about to enter the sixth month of Trump’s plan to rid the country of undocumented immigrants. Sycophants are bragging that he’s doing the job, but they’re not caring to look at the mess left in its wake that’s becoming more and more perilous for everyone involved. They insist that those who are executing and planning raids are professionals, but professionals don’t make constant pendejos out of themselves.
Professionals don’t bring squadrons to chase after tamale ladies or day laborers, or stage flashy raids of apartments and parks that accomplish little else than footage for propaganda videos. They don’t go into neighborhoods with intimidation on their mind and ready to rough up anyone who gets in their way.
A ProPublica investigation showed that ICE has detained at least 170 U.S. citizens this year, many whom offered proof that they were in this country legally as la migra cuffed them and hauled them off to detention centers.
Professionals don’t lie like there’s a bonus attached to it — but that’s what Trump’s deportation Leviathan keeps doing. In September, McLaughlin put out a news release arguing that the shooting death of 38-year-old Silverio Villegas González in Chicago by an ICE agent was justified because he was dragged a “significant distance” and suffered serious injuries. Yet body cam footage of local police who showed up to the scene captured the two ICE agents involved in the incident describing their injuries as “nothing major.”
Closer to home, a federal jury in Los Angeles last month acquitted an activist of striking a Border Patrol agent after federal public defender Cuauhtémoc Ortega screened footage that contradicted the government’s case and poked holes in the testimony of Border Patrol staff and supervisors. Last week, ICE agents detained Oxnard activist Leonardo Martinez after a collision between their Jeep and his truck. McLaughlin initially blamed the incident on an “agitator group … engaged in recording and verbal harassment,” but footage first published by L.A. Taco showed that la migra trailed Martinez and then crashed into him twice — not the other way around.
Professionals don’t host social media accounts that regularly spew memes that paint the picture of an American homeland where white makes right and everyone else must be eliminated, like the Department of Homeland Security does. A recent post featured medieval knights wearing chain mail and helmets and wielding longswords as they encircle the slogan “The Enemies are at the Gates” above ICE’s job listing website.
The Trump administration has normalized racism and has turned cruelty into a virtue — then its mouthpieces gasp in mock horror when people resist its officially sanctioned jackbootery.
This evil buffoonery comes straight from a president who reacted to the millions of Americans who protested this weekend at No Kings rallies by posting on social media an AI-generated video of him wearing a crown and dropping feces on his critics from a jet fighter. And yet McLaughlin, Noem and other Trump bobbleheads have the gall to question why politicians decry la migra while regular people follow and film them during raids when not shouting obscenities and taunts at them?
Meanwhile, ICE is currently on a hiring spree thanks to Trump’s Bloated Beastly Bill and and has cut its training program from six months to 48 days, according to The Atlantic. It’s a desperate and potentially reckless recruitment drive.
And if you think rapidly piling more people into a clown car is going to produce less clown-like behavior by ICE on the streets of American cities, boy do I have news for you.
The lawsuit comes amid growing concerns about how AI fuels the spread of misinformation.
Published On 22 Oct 202522 Oct 2025
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Conservative activist Robby Starbuck sued Google, alleging that the tech giant’s artificial intelligence systems generated “outrageously false” information about him.
On Wednesday, Starbuck said in the lawsuit, filed in Delaware state court, that Google’s AI systems falsely called him a “child rapist,” “serial sexual abuser” and “shooter” in response to user queries and delivered defamatory statements to millions of users.
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Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said most of the claims were related to mistaken “hallucinations” from Google’s Bard large language model that the company worked to address in 2023.
“Hallucinations are a well-known issue for all LLMs, which we disclose and work hard to minimise,” Castaneda said. “But as everyone knows, if you’re creative enough, you can prompt a chatbot to say something misleading.”
Starbuck is best known for opposing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
“No one — regardless of political beliefs — should ever experience this,” he said in a statement about the lawsuit. “Now is the time for all of us to demand transparent, unbiased AI that cannot be weaponized to harm people.”
Starbuck made similar allegations against Meta Platforms in a separate lawsuit in April. Starbuck and Meta settled their dispute in August, and Starbuck advised the company on AI issues under the settlement.
According to Wednesday’s complaint, Starbuck learned in December 2023 that Bard had falsely connected him with white nationalist Richard Spencer. The lawsuit said that Bard cited fabricated sources and that Google failed to address the statements after Starbuck contacted the company.
Starbuck’s lawsuit also said that Google’s Gemma chatbot disseminated false sexual assault allegations against him in August based on fictitious sources. Starbuck also alleged the chatbot said that he committed spousal abuse, attended the January 6 Capitol riots and appeared in the Jeffrey Epstein files, among other things.
Starbuck said he has been approached by people who believed some of the false accusations and that they could lead to increased threats on his life, noting the recent assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Starbuck asked the court for at least $15m in damages.
Starbuck lawsuit comes amid growing concerns that AI-generated content has become easy to create and can facilitate the spread of misinformation. As Al Jazeera previously reported, Google’s VEO3 AI video maker allowed users to make deceptive videos of news events.
Alphabet — Google’s parent company’s stock is relatively flat on the news of the lawsuit. As of 2:30pm in New York (18:30 GMT), it is up by 0.06 percent.
A United States citizen who was detained by Israel on the Global Sumud Flotilla, which tried to deliver aid to Gaza, says he and other activists endured abuse and “psychological torture” in Israeli custody.
David Adler, who was released and deported to Jordan on Tuesday, said after Israeli forces intercepted the flotilla in international waters, they took the activists to a prison complex in the Negev desert in southern Israel.
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“We were kidnapped, stripped, zip-tied, blindfolded and sent to an internment camp on a police van without any access to food, to water, to legal support,” he said. “And for the next five days, on and off, we were psychologically tortured.”
In an audio message shared with Al Jazeera through the advocacy group Progressive International, Adler said he and another Jewish activist were picked out and forced to be photographed with Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
“After interception, we were violently forced onto our knees into positions of submission, where the two Jews of the flotilla were taken by the ear and ripped from the group for a photo-op with Ben-Gvir, staring at the flag of the State of Israel, taunted by his goons,” Adler said.
He described his time in detention as a “five-day nightmare of serial and systematic violations of our most basic rights”.
‘My Jewish heritage demands it’
Adler, who is co-general coordinator at Progressive International, added that riot troops would raid the prison with attack dogs at night to “terrify and terrorise” the detainees.
His testimony adds to the allegations of mistreatment of flotilla activists, who included climate campaigner Greta Thunberg.
The flotilla – a collection of more than 40 boats and 470 people from across the world – aimed to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza, which has sparked a deadly hunger crisis in the territory.
Israel intercepted the flotilla in international waters last week, a move that human rights advocates have argued is illegal.
Adler was one of more than 20 US citizens in the group and among the last to be released.
Earlier this week, about two dozen lawmakers from the activist’s home state of California penned a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling on him to push for Adler to be freed.
As he was sailing towards Gaza last week, Adler shared a social media post reflecting on his Jewish identity and the decision to participate in the flotilla.
“If there’s any part of the Torah that I still remember, it is this obligation it bestows upon us: ‘Justice, justice you shall pursue.’ How could we stand by while the State of Israel perverts this holy obligation, overseeing a holocaust of the Palestinian people?” Adler wrote.
“I joined this flotilla just like any other delegate – to defend humanity before it is too late. But on Yom Kippur, I am reminded that I am also here because my Jewish heritage demands it.”
Trump envoy taunts Adler
According to Adler, US officials did not provide any consular services to him and other Americans who were imprisoned by Israel.
“The US general consul said, ‘We are not your babysitters. You’d have no food, no water, no money, no phones, no planes,’” he said. “‘We’re taking you straight to the airport, and you’re on your own.’”
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee had rebuked Adler personally, calling him a “self-absorbed tool of Hamas”.
Huckabee also echoed the false Israeli claims that the flotilla is “Hamas-funded”.
Palestinian rights advocates and many Palestinians in Gaza welcomed the flotilla, saying it demonstrates the power of individuals to take direct action to help the people in Gaza even if they fail to reach the shores of the territory.
In his message, Adler called the mistreatment of the activists a marker of “how rogue the state of Israel has become in its utter disregard for basic international humanitarian law”.
“I’m obviously very aware that all of this pales in comparison to the treatment that Palestinians endure every single day,” he said.
Israel holds thousands of Palestinian detainees, many without charge or trial.
Rights groups and United Nations experts have documented horrific and systemic torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, including the use of starvation and sexual violence against captives.
Israel continues to imprison US teenager Mohammed Ibrahim, who was arrested in the occupied West Bank in February and has since lost more than a quarter of his body weight, according to his family.
The Israeli government’s Press Office and US Department of State did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment by the time of publication.
A pro-Palestine activist has interrupted the United Kingdom’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves’ speech during the annual Labour Party conference in Liverpool to call out the country’s ongoing complicity in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
The protester, later named as Sam P, stood up less than 10 minutes into the finance minister’s speech, holding a large Palestinian flag and asking, “Why is Britain still arming Israel?”
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“Labour is complicit in the mass starvation of Palestinians,” he added.
In response to the protest, Reeves told delegates, “We understand your cause and we are recognising a Palestinian state.
“But we are now a party in government, not a party of protest,” Reeves added, receiving a standing ovation from those in the audience.
UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves gives her keynote speech during the annual Labour Party conference in Liverpool, England, Monday, September 29, 2025 [Jon Super/AP]
But in a statement from the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which planned the disruption for London for a Free Palestine, the group called on the ruling Labour Party to impose a “full two-way arms embargo on Israel”.
“The end of RAF surveillance flights over Gaza that gather intelligence for Israel … The immediate resignation of Labour Party leadership for lying to the public about Britain’s complicity in enabling Israel’s genocide … [and] an end to Britain’s diplomatic ties with Israel,” the statement read.
In May, PYM released a report that found that the British government had continued to send military exports to Israel despite the UK announcing that it had cut arms export licences to Israel that could be used during the war.
Nihal, an organiser with PYM, said the action was taken because the “horror in Gaza is only growing as Palestinian people are experiencing the most violent bombardment since the beginning of the genocide.
“Tens of thousands of Palestinians have already been starved, bombed, and killed while the Labour Party approves weapons licences, shares intelligence, and offers diplomatic cover for these crimes,” they added.
Leila, an organiser with London for a Free Palestine, added that they were “watching the end of the Labour Party”, traditionally once a party of the left which has veered centre-right on many issues.
“Despite the UN Commission of Inquiry declaring Israel is enacting genocide, the Labour government still continues to deny the genocide and offer diplomatic support for Israel’s crimes,” Leila said.
Earlier in September, the UK officially recognised Palestinian statehood in a landmark decision, 108 years after the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which supported the establishment of a home for Jews in Palestine, and 77 years after the creation of Israel in the British Mandate of Palestine.
While the recognition was welcomed by Palestinian officials, for those suffering Israeli atrocities in Gaza, the announcement had no material effect to ease their daily horrors.
In nearly two years of intense Israeli bombardment, and now a ground invasion of Gaza City, the destroyed enclave’s largest urban centre, at least 66,055 people have been killed and 168,346 wounded, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported on Monday.
Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK have protested, often weekly, against Israel’s war in the last two years and feel their voices have not been heard by the government.
There have also been a series of largely peaceful rallies denouncing the UK government’s decision in July to ban the Palestine Action group under the Terrorism Act 2000, which have been met by a heavy-handed police response and mass arrests.
Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah (C) embraces his mother, Laila Soueif, (L) and his sister Sanaa Seif (R) at home in Cairo, Egypt, on Tuesday after his release following a presidential pardon by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. Photo by EPA
Sept. 23 (UPI) — Human rights activist Alaa Abdel Fattah was reunited with his family late Monday, after more than five years’ imprisonment, according to his family and supporting organizations.
Fattah, who holds both British and Egyptian citizenship, has spent a collective of more than 10 years behind Egyptian bars and was widely considered the Middle Eastern country’s most prominent political prisoner.
Fattah, along with five others, received pardons from President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Monday, according to state media.
Mona Seif, one of Fattah’s two sisters, took to X to broadcast updates on the situation, starting with hearing the news, then preparing to leave work and finally posting pictures of her brother embracing family members.
“An exceptionally kind day,” she said. “Alaa is free.”
Reporters Without Borders, which has campaigned for his release, said in a statement that Fattah was reunited with his mother, Laila Soueif, and other sister Sanaa Seif late Monday.
“We are deeply relieved to see Alaa Abdel Fattah finally walk free,” Fiona O’Brien, RSF UK director, said in a statement.
“What he and his family have been through is unimaginable: he should never have gone to prison, and his family should never have had to mount a years-long international campaign to free him. His pardon and release must mark a definitive end to their ordeal and, after so many lost years, he must be allowed to travel to the United Kingdom to be reunited with his son Khaled.”
Fattah, who rose to international recognition during the 2011 Egyptian revolution, has been repeatedly arrested in Egypt over the years.
In 2013, three months after el-Sisi’s coup, he was arrested, charged with the organization of a protest and then sentenced to five years behind bars.
He was released in 2019, but was then arrested shortly afterward.
He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison in 2021 on the charges of “spreading false news,” according to the U.S. State Department. Reporters Without Borders said he was charged with an arbitrary offense of spreading false news for sharing a Facebook post about torture in Egyptian prisons.
The Free Alaa website states his sentence was to have ended last September of last year but he was still detained by the authorities.
“Alaa Abdel Fattah is a prisoner of conscience who was targeted for his peaceful activism,” Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns, said in a statement.
“His pardon will not erase the ordeal he has endured in detention over the past six years. The Egyptian authorities should follow up on today’s decision by releasing all those solely detained for exercising their human rights and allowing them to reunite with their loved ones.”
Prominent Egyptian-British human rights activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been freed after spending most of the past 12 years in prison, his family said, a day after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi pardoned him and five other prisoners.
“I can’t even describe what I feel,” Abd El-Fattah’s mother, Laila Soueif, said from her house in Giza early on Tuesday as she stood next to her son, surrounded by jubilant family and friends.
“We’re happy, of course. But our greatest joy will come when there are no [political] prisoners in Egypt,” she said.
Considered to be among the most high-profile political prisoners in Egypt, Abd El-Fattah’s lengthy imprisonment and repeated hunger strikes had prompted international pleas for the Egyptian government to release him.
The former blogger had been detained before the Arab Spring uprising that toppled Egypt’s hardline leader, Hosni Mubarak, in 2011 and during the years of upheaval that followed.
But it was his criticism of government crackdowns on political dissidents after then-army chief el-Sisi gained power in Egypt in 2014 that landed him his lengthiest prison stints by far.
In 2014, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for protesting without permission. He was briefly released in 2019, but remained on parole, and was arrested again later that year and sentenced to another five-year term.
Friends, family and supporters shared photos on social media of the activist after his release, showing a smiling Abd El-Fattah embracing his mother and other relatives.
British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, centre, who was released from prison after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi issued a presidential pardon for him, stands next to his mother, Laila Soueif, left, and sister, Sanaa, at their home in Giza, Egypt, on September 23, 2025 [Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters]
His sister, Mona Seif, celebrated her brother’s release on social media: “The world is full of nightmares, injustice, violence, and many things that break the heart.. but we can take a breath and give happiness a chance to fill our hearts.. and keep going.”
“Oh Lord, the same joy for the families of all the detainees,” she wrote in a separate post.
“Can you imagine if this happened, how much beauty and happiness would fill our world in a single moment?”
Abd El-Fattah’s lengthy detention had become emblematic of the fraying of Egypt’s democracy.
“I strongly welcome the news that Alaa Abd El-Fattah has received a Presidential pardon,” United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said.
“I’m grateful to President Sisi for this decision. We look forward to Alaa being able to return to the UK, to be reunited with his family.”
Abd El-Fattah, who obtained UK citizenship through his mother in 2021, comes from a family of well-known activists and intellectuals who had launched several campaigns for his release.
His mother met UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer earlier this year to lobby for her son’s release.
Intensifying her campaign in September 2024, when she was expecting her son’s release due to the time he spent in pre-trial detention, Soueif staged a lengthy hunger strike in the UK, ending it only after pleas from her family as her health significantly deteriorated.
Starmer had promised he would do everything he could to secure the release of Abd El-Fattah, who has also staged multiple hunger strikes in detention, most recently in early September, to protest against his imprisonment and in solidarity with his mother.
But his most dramatic hunger strike was in 2022, as Egypt hosted the annual United Nations climate summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. The strike ended when Abd El-Fattah lost consciousness and was revived with fluids.
Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights, a state-funded body, also welcomed his release, saying it signalled a growing emphasis on swift justice for Egyptian authorities.
Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has pardoned the prominent British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, who has been imprisoned for six years, state media and his family say.
Abdel Fattah was one of six people whose sentences were commuted following a request from the National Council for Human Rights, according to Al-Qahera News. His sister Mona Seif wrote on X: “My heart will explode.”
The 43-year-old blogger and pro-democracy activist is one of Egypt’s best known political prisoners.
He was arrested in 2019 during a crackdown on dissent and sentenced to five years in prison in 2021 after being convicted of “spreading false news” for sharing a post about a prisoner dying after torture.
His family said he should have been released in September 2024. However, Egyptian authorities refused to count the two years he spent in pre-trial detention as time served.
Abdel Fattah’s lawyer, Khaled Ali, confirmed in a Facebook post on Monday afternoon that he had been pardoned and that he would be released from Wadi al-Natrun prison, north-west of Cairo, once the pardon was published in the official gazette.
Abdel Fattah’s other sister Sanaa Seif later wrote on X: “President Sisi has pardoned my brother!”
“Mum & I are heading to the prison now to inquire from where Alaa will be released and when… OMG I can’t believe we get our lives back!”
The National Council for Human Rights welcomed the pardons, saying the decision was “a step that underscores a growing commitment to reinforcing the principles of swift justice and upholding fundamental rights and freedoms”.
US-based campaign group Human Rights Watch said it hoped Abdel Fattah’s pardon act would “act as a watershed moment and provide an opportunity for Sisi’s government to end the wrongful detention of thousands of peaceful critics”.
Two weeks ago, Sisi ordered the authorities to study the NCHR’s petitions for the release of Abdel Fattah and six others, which the institution said it had submitted “in light of the humanitarian and health conditions experienced by [their] families”.
Abdel Fattah’s 68-year-old mother, Leila Soueif, who is also a British citizen, ended a nine-month-long hunger strike in July after receiving assurances from the UK government that it was doing everything it could to secure his release.
She lost more than 40% of her original body weight and was twice admitted to hospital in London during the strike, which saw her consume only tea, coffee and rehydration salts.
Abdel Fattah has also staged a number of hunger strikes himself. One in 2022, as Egypt hosted the UN climate conference, led to international pressure for his release and an improvement in his conditions in jail.
The activist first rose to prominence during the 2011 uprising in Egypt that forced long-time President Hosni Mubarak to resign.
He has spent most of his time in prison since 2014, the year after Sisi led the military’s overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi.
Sisi has overseen what human rights groups say is an unprecedented crackdown on dissent that has led to the detention of tens of thousands of people.
In 2015, a court sentenced Abdel Fattah to five years in prison for participating in an unauthorised protest.
In September 2019, only six months after he had been released on probation, he was arrested again and held in pre-trial detention for more than two years.
He was convicted of “spreading false news” and handed another five-year sentence in December 2021 following a trial that human rights groups said was grossly unfair.
Although he acquired British citizenship in 2021, Egypt has never allowed him a consular visit by British diplomats.
In May, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention – a panel of independent human rights experts – found that Abdel Fattah was arbitrarily arrested for exercising his right to freedom of expression, was not given a fair trial, and continued to be detained for his political opinions.
According to the panel, the Egyptian government said he was afforded “all fair trial rights” and that his sentence would be completed in January 2027.
US President Donald Trump to address Arizona service for assassinated ally.
Published On 21 Sep 202521 Sep 2025
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Tens of thousands of people are expected to attend a memorial service in Arizona for Charlie Kirk, the right-wing United States activist and founder of Turning Point USA who was shot dead this month.
The event will take place on Sunday at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, which seats more than 63,000 people. Organisers said additional space has been arranged nearby to accommodate overflow crowds.
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President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and several other Republicans will address the gathering, which Turning Point USA has called Building a Legacy: Remembering Charlie Kirk. Kirk’s widow, Erika, who recently became the organisation’s chief executive, is also expected to speak.
The Department of Homeland Security has classified the service as an event of “the highest national significance”, a designation usually reserved for occasions such as the Super Bowl. Officials said tight security measures are in place due to Trump’s attendance and the political tension surrounding Kirk’s killing.
Kirk, 31, was killed on September 10 during a university event in Utah. Police charged a 22-year-old suspect with murder, saying he carried out the attack alone and killed Kirk because he had “enough of his hate”.
Kirk was a polarising figure who called for the use of tear gas, rubber bullets and whips against immigrants at the US-Mexico border; suggested Islam is a danger to American society; and claimed there was “no factual data to back up global warming”.
The US right-wing viewed Kirk as a major figure in the Trump movement who played a pivotal role in building support for the US president and conservative causes among young people.
Trump has been accused of exploiting Kirk’s murder for political gain by linking the killing to what he calls “left-wing extremism” despite law enforcement dismissing claims of a wider alleged assassination plot. His remarks have drawn criticism from opponents who accused him of inflaming political divisions.
Kirk established Turning Point USA in 2012 at the age of 18. The organisation has grown into one of the largest right-wing groups in the US with influence across high schools, universities and social media platforms.
PARK RIDGE, Ill. — It was 3:30 a.m. when 10 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers gathered in a parking lot in the Chicago suburbs for a briefing about a suspect they were hoping to arrest. They went over a description of the person, made sure their radios were on the same channel and discussed where the closest hospital was in case something went wrong.
“Let’s plan on not being there,” said one of the officers, before they climbed into their vehicles and headed out.
Across the city and surrounding suburbs, other teams were fanning out in support of “Operation Midway Blitz.” It has unleashed President Trump’s mass deportations agenda on a city and state that has had some of the strongest laws preventing local officials from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement.
ICE launched the operation Sept. 8, drawing concern from activists and immigrant communities fearful of the large-scale arrests or aggressive tactics used in other cities targeted by the Republican president. They say there has been a noticeable increase in immigration enforcement agents, although a military deployment to Chicago has yet to materialize.
The Associated Press went on a ride-along with ICE in a Chicago suburb — much of the recent focus — to see how that operation is unfolding.
A predawn wait, then two arrests
A voice came over the radio: “He got into the car. I’m not sure if that’s the target.”
Someone matching the description of the man whom ICE was searching for walked out of the house, got into a car and drove away from the tree-lined street. Unsure whether this was their target, the officers followed. A few minutes later, with the car approaching the freeway, the voice over the radio said: “He’s got the physical description. We just can’t see the face good.”
“Do it,” said Marcos Charles, the acting head of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations.
Agents in multiple vehicles soon overtook the car and boxed it in. After talking to the man, they realized he was not the person being sought but concluded that he was in the United States illegally, so they took him into custody.
Eventually, a little after dawn broke on the one- and two-story brick houses, the man they were looking for came out of the house and got into a car. ICE officers closed in. The man got out of the vehicle and was arrested. ICE said both men were in the country illegally and had criminal records.
Charles called it a “successful operation.”
“There was no safety issues on the part of our officers, nor the individuals that we arrested. And it went smoothly,” he said.
‘ICE does not belong here’
Activists and critics of ICE say that’s increasingly not the norm in immigration operations.
They point to videos showing ICE agents smashing windows to apprehend suspects, a chaotic showdown outside a popular Italian restaurant in San Diego, and arrests like that of a Tufts University student in March by masked agents outside her apartment in Somerville, Mass., as neighbors watched.
Charles said that ICE is using an “appropriate” amount of force and that agents are responding to suspects who increasingly are not following commands.
There has been “an uptick in people that are not compliant,” he said, blaming what he characterized as inflammatory rhetoric from activists encouraging people to resist.
Alderman Andre Vasquez, who chairs the Chicago City Council’s committee on immigrant and refugee rights, strenuously objected to that description, faulting ICE for any escalation.
“We’re not here to cause chaos. The president is,” Vasquez said. He accused immigration enforcement agents of trying to provoke activists into overreacting to justify calling in a greater use of force such as National Guard troops.
“ICE does not belong here,” he said.
Shooting by ICE agent raises tensions
Chicago was already on edge when a shooting Sept. 12 heightened tensions even more.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said an ICE officer fatally shot Silverio Villegas González, whom it described as a Mexican immigrant who tried to evade arrest in a Chicago suburb by driving his car at officers and dragging one of them. The department said the officer believed his life was threatened and therefore opened fire, killing the man.
Charles said he could not comment because there is an open investigation. But he said he met with the officer in the hospital, saw his injuries and thought that the force used was appropriate.
The officer was not wearing a body camera, Charles said.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, has demanded “a full, factual accounting” of the shooting. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum condemned the death and said Mexico is demanding a thorough investigation.
“These tactics have led to the loss of life of one of our community members,” said Democratic Illinois state Rep. Norma Hernandez.
In another use-of-force incident under Midway Blitz that has drawn criticism, a U.S. citizen was detained by immigration agents alongside his father and hit by a stun gun three times Tuesday in suburban Des Plaines, the man’s lawyer said.
Local advocates have also condemned ICE agents for wearing masks, failing to identify themselves, and not using body cameras — actions that contrast with Chicago Police Department policy.
‘It was time to hit Chicago’
Charles said there is no timeline for the ICE-led operation in the Chicago area to end. As of Thursday, immigration enforcement officials had arrested nearly 550 people. Charles said 50% to 60% of those are targeted arrests, meaning they are people whom immigration enforcers are specifically trying to find.
He rejected criticism that ICE randomly targets people, saying agents weren’t “going out to Home Depot parking lots” to make indiscriminate arrests. Such arrests have been widely seen in recent months at Home Depots and other places of business in the Los Angeles area.
Charles said ICE has brought in more than 200 officers from around the country for the operation.
He said that for too long, cities such as Chicago that limited cooperation with ICE had allowed immigrants, especially those with criminal records, to remain in the country illegally. It was time to act, he said.
“It was time to hit Chicago.”
Santana writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Christine Fernando in Chicago contributed to this report.
Palestinian activist Saeed Taji Farouky, of Defend Our Juries, says UK free speech is under threat after dawn raids on activist Paddy Friend and others. He warns that peaceful campaigners face terror charges over holding Zoom calls.
US immigration judge said prominent pro-Palestine activist withheld information on green card application.
Published On 18 Sep 202518 Sep 2025
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An immigration judge in the United States has ordered that pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil, who played a leading role in protests last year against Israel’s war on Gaza at the prestigious Columbia University, be deported to Algeria or Syria.
Court documents, revealed on Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), showed that Louisiana immigration Judge Jamee Comans issued the ruling on September 12, accusing Khalil of failing to disclose key information when he applied and secured lawful permanent residency in the US.
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Khalil, a native of Syria and an Algerian citizen of Palestinian origin, has previously said he fears being targeted by Israel for his activism if he is deported to either country.
Judge Comans claimed that Khalil did not disclose his ties to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and Columbia University Apartheid Divest, an activist group which advocates for an economic boycott of Israel, on his green card application, describing it as a “lack of candor” by the applicant.
“This Court finds that Respondent wilfully misrepresented material fact(s) for the sole purpose of circumventing the immigration process and reducing the likelihood his applications could be denied,” Comans said.
Khalil’s lawyers responded, saying that they intend to appeal the deportation order, and pointed to a federal district court’s order earlier this year prohibiting the government from immediately deporting or detaining Khalil as his federal court case proceeds.
Khalil’s legal team now has 30 days from the day of the deportation ruling, on September 12, to appeal against the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals. His lawyers said they expect the appeal process to be swift and their attempt unsuccessful, as noncitizens are “almost never” granted stays of removal.
US immigration agents first arrested Khalil – a former graduate student at Columbia University in New York – on March 8 after showing up at his student apartment building on campus in the city.
The arrest was part of a wider crackdown on pro-Palestine activism on college campuses across the US, which saw several overseas students detained and deported while universities were hit with federal funding cuts by Trump over alleged anti-Semitic activities.
Authorities held Khalil at an immigration detention centre in Louisiana for three months until he was released in June following a ruling by US District Judge Michael Farbiarz that his detention was unconstitutional.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and law enforcement officials had repeatedly portrayed Khalil’s peaceful activism as anti-Jewish and supportive of Hamas, but they failed to provide any evidence backing their allegations.
Farbiarz ruled that the Trump administration was likely violating Khalil’s right to free speech by detaining and attempting to deport him under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which allows the removal of foreign nationals who bear “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.
The White House has been relentless in its attempts to deport Khalil, pivoting more recently to the alleged violations of his green card application.
Khalil’s lawyers expressed concern following the deportation ruling that the “only meaningful impediment” to their client’s deportation was now the “important order prohibiting removal” issued by Judge Farbiarz.
In a statement published by the ACLU on Wednesday, Khalil also accused the Trump administration of using “fascist tactics” to retaliate against him for his “exercise of free speech”.
“When their first effort to deport me was set to fail, they resorted to fabricating baseless and ridiculous allegations in a bid to silence me for speaking out and standing firmly with Palestine, demanding an end to the ongoing genocide [in Gaza],” Khalil said.
Redford was a liberal activist and godfather for independent cinema under the name of one of his best-loved characters, the Sundance Kid.
Published On 16 Sep 202516 Sep 2025
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Robert Redford, the Oscar-winning actor, director and godfather for independent cinema as Sundance founder, has died at the age of 89.
Redford died “at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah – the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved,” publicist Cindi Berger said in a statement Tuesday.
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No cause of death was provided.
The iconic actor and director is best known for his acclaimed performances in All the President’s Men and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
The tousled-haired and freckled heartthrob made his breakthrough alongside Paul Newman as the affable outlaw in the hippy Western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” in 1969.
Redford made hearts beat faster in romantic roles such as “Out of Africa,” got political in “The Candidate” and “All the President’s Men” and skewered his golden-boy image in roles like the alcoholic ex-rodeo champ in “The Electric Horseman” and middle-aged millionaire who offers to buy sex in “Indecent Proposal.”
He never won the best actor Oscar, but his first outing as a director – the 1980 family drama “Ordinary People” – won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director.
Despite their chemistry and long personal friendship, Redford was never to team up again with Newman, who died in 2008.
“Butch Cassidy” made blue-eyed Redford an overnight star but he never felt comfortable with celebrity or the male starlet image that persisted late into his 60s.
“People have been so busy relating to how I look, it’s a miracle I didn’t become a self-conscious blob of protoplasm. It’s not easy being Robert Redford,” he once told New York magazine.
His wavy blond hair and boyish grin made him the most desired of leading men, but he worked hard to transcend his looks – whether through his political advocacy, his willingness to take on unglamorous roles or his dedication to providing a platform for low-budget movies.
Intensely private, he bought land in remote Utah in the early 1970s for his family retreat and enjoyed a level of privacy unknown to most superstars. He was married for more than 25 years to his first wife, before their divorce in 1985. In 2009, he married for a second time, to German artist and longtime partner Sibylle Szaggars.
He used the millions he made to launch the Sundance Institute and Festival in the 1970s, promoting independent filmmaking long before small and quirky were fashionable. The festival has become one of the most influential independent film showcases in the world.
Redford used his star status to also quietly champion environmental causes such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Wildlife Federation.
“Some people have analysis. I have Utah,” he once remarked.
Although he never showed an interest in entering politics, he often espoused a liberal viewpoint. In a 2017 interview, during the presidency of Donald Trump, he told Esquire magazine that “politics is in a very dark place right now” and that Trump should “quit for our benefit”.
In 2001, Redford won an honorary, or lifetime achievement, Oscar.
Cofounder of anti-Islamist EDL says rally is for free speech, as protesters attack police and antiracism campaigners.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of London for a march organised by far-right activist Tommy Robinson, as support for the anti-immigrant Reform UK party soars across the country.
London’s Metropolitan Police estimated that Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally drew about 110,000 people on Saturday, crowds marching from two directions – Waterloo Bridge and Lambeth Bridge – and converging on Whitehall, next to the United Kingdom Parliament.
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Al Jazeera witnessed people waving an assortment of flags – Union Jacks, the red and white St George’s Cross of England and the Israeli Star of David – chanting “[Keir] Starmer is a w*****” as they flocked to see famous far-right speakers next to the UK Prime Minister’s Downing Street residence, including Robinson, Katie Hopkins, and Steve Bannon.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and is known for his anti-immigrant and anti-Islam views, billed the march as a demonstration for free speech, British heritage and culture, pumping up the crowd with claims that migrants now had more rights in court than the “British public, the people that built this nation”.
The Met deployed more than 1,600 officers to keep apart Robinson’s rally and a counter “Stand Up to Racism” protest attended by about 5,000 people, reporting on X that a number of officers were assaulted as they tried to stop the former breaching cordons delineating a buffer area between the two.
“We continue to see significant aggression directed at officers by Unite the Kingdom protesters,” said the force on X, which arrested nine protesters, adding that additional officers supported by police horses had been deployed in “multiple locations”.
Stand Up to Racism counterprotest held
At the counterprotest, attended by left-wing lawmakers Zarah Sultana and Diane Abbott, the crowd held signs saying “refugees welcome” and ”smash the far right,” and shouted “stand up, fight back”.
The “Stand Up to Racism” campaign group posted on X that its protesters had also been attacked by Robinson’s followers. “Are these the ‘concerned ordinary people’ we’ve heard so much about? Or are they far right thugs,” said one post.
Robinson’s rally comes at the tail end of a highly charged summer in the UK that featured several protests staged outside hotels housing asylum seekers in England, following the arrest of an Ethiopian man who was later convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in a London suburb.
BREAKING: far right thugs attack anti-fascists in Whitehall. Are these the “concerned ordinary people” we’ve heard so much about? Or are they far right thugs. #StandUptoRacismpic.twitter.com/0rkMf5BxmM
It also comes as the far-right, anti-immigrant Reform UK party establishes itself as a significant political force, with recent polls saying it would be the UK’s largest political party if a general election were held now.
People at the march displayed placards with slogans like “send them home” and “stop the boats”, the latter a reference to asylum seekers making the perilous journey over the English Channel in inflatable boats.
One woman who had travelled from Scotland for the march told Al Jazeera that she was sick of seeing homeless British people in the street while immigrants were receiving shelter and that empty buildings should be opened for both groups.
“Bad things are going to happen if things don’t change,” she said.
Robinson founded the nationalist and anti-Islamist English Defence League (EDL) and is one of the most influential far-right figures in the UK.
While the crowd attending the “Unite the Kingdom” was large, it fell far short of one of the biggest pro-Palestinian marches, which drew an estimated 300,000 people in November 2023.
CHICAGO — A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a man who officials said tried to evade arrest Friday in a Chicago suburb by driving his car at officers and dragging one of them.
The shooting just outside the city follows days of threats by the Trump administration to surge immigration enforcement in the nation’s third-largest city and less than a week into an operation labeled “Midway Blitz” by federal officials targeting the so-called sanctuary policies in Chicago and Illinois.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a news release that the officer was trying to arrest a man who had a history of reckless driving, but he refused officers’ orders and instead drove his car at them. An ICE officer who was hit and dragged by the car felt his life was threatened and opened fire, the department said.
ICE said both the officer and the driver from the shooting in the Franklin Park suburb, about 18 miles west of Chicago, were taken to a hospital, where the driver was pronounced dead.
“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 spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said he is aware of the shooting and demanded “a full, factual accounting of what’s happened today to ensure transparency and accountability.”
Video from the scene shows police tape and traffic cones blocking off parts of the street where a large food distribution truck and gray car can be seen from a distance. Multiple law enforcement vehicles were surrounding the area.
Erendira Rendón, chief program officer at a local advocacy group called the Resurrection Project, said the shooting “shows us the real danger that militarized enforcement creates in our neighborhoods.”
“A community member is dead, and an officer was injured,” Rendón said in a statement. “These are outcomes that serve no public safety purpose and leave entire communities traumatized. … When federal agents conduct unaccountable operations in our communities, everyone becomes less safe.”
Chicagoans, meanwhile, have been preparing for weekend Mexican Independence Day celebrations that include parades, festivals, street parties and car caravans, despite the potential immigration crackdown.
McLaughlin said that “viral social media videos and activists encouraging illegal aliens to resist law enforcement” have made the work of ICE officers more dangerous.
Santana and Fernando write for the Associated Press. Santana reported from Washington.
Usha Vance hand in hand with Erika Kirk as they land in Arizona with the body of Charlie Kirk
One of the first people JD Vance called before deciding to jump into politics was Charlie Kirk.
“[Kirk] introduced me to some of the people who would run my [Senate] campaign and also to Donald Trump Jr,” the vice-president wrote in a powerful tribute he penned hours after Kirk’s death.
“Don took a call from me because Charlie asked him.”
Three years after that winning Senate run, when the elder Donald Trump was pondering his choice of presidential running mate, Kirk argued the case for Vance “in public and private”, Vance wrote.
By then, Kirk was already a fixture in Trump’s orbit, courting donors and discussing strategies at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and hosting Turning Point USA summits hosted by local Republicans.
He never ran for office or held an official government position, but Kirk rose from being an unknown activist from the suburbs of Chicago to standard bearer of Donald Trump’s Maga movement.
Kirk was President Trump’s bridge to young Republicans, and Trump credited him and his organisation with his victory in 2024.
He was also a close personal friend of the Trump family, a key White House adviser, a hero to many young Republicans and a foil for the party’s opponents.
Getty Images
A meteoric rise to MAGA star
Born in a suburb of Chicago in 1993, Kirk got started early in conservative politics, first penning an essay for right-wing Breitbart News at the age of 18, accusing schools of spreading “propaganda” and “indoctrination”.
He caught the eye of Bill Montgomery, a retired businessman and Tea Party activist more than 50 years his senior, who took Kirk under his wing.
In 2012 – around the midpoint of Barack Obama’s presidency – the pair founded Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a group which focused on conservative activism on college campuses, spreading rapidly along with Kirk’s social media following.
The group tapped into online media and spread a slickly packaged style of conservatism to young people. It won him a speaking place, aged 23, at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
At the time, Kirk – who had worked with more conventional Republican candidates in the past – admitted to a Wired magazine that he “was not the world’s biggest Donald Trump fan”.
But from that moment on he quickly became one of Trump’s biggest backers, steadfastly tracking the Maga agenda and disagreeing only on rare occasions.
Following Kirk’s death, Jared Kushner – the president’s son in-law – wrote on X that he “played a significant role in helping President Trump’s 2016 campaign, building and fostering the Maga movement”, adding that he told established political organisations that “he comes with big ideas, is easy to work with and always overdelivers.”
Lawrence Muir, a former official in Trump’s first administration, said that Kirk’s influence was key early on in Trump’s first term, and that TPUSA “was the main recruitment vehicle for younger people.”
But perhaps his more far-reaching impact, Mr Muir said, was in giving other conservatives an understanding of social media and how to reach young people.
“What [Kirk] really did was give a launching pad to those who weren’t as interested in becoming bureaucratic functionalities, but were in going out and building winning coalitions,” he said.
Hard-right Trump loyalist
Kirk’s political views drifted rightward over time. He was against gay marriage and abortion, argued for Christian nationalism and was highly critical of Islam, and famously said that gun deaths were “worth it” for the right to own firearms. He was also an opponent of diversity programmes and spread falsehoods about topics such as Covid vaccines and voting fraud.
Above all, he was loyal to Trump.
At the end of Trump’s first term, with the president pushing false allegations of election fraud, Kirk bragged about sending 80 buses of supporters to Washington just in time for the rally which devolved into the Jan 6 riot at the US Capitol.
Kirk was hauled in front of a Congressional committee investigating the riot and declined to say much of anything, instead invoking his constitutional right not to incriminate himself.
But by July 2024 he had tempered his views, telling the BBC that he believed it existed but only “on the edges”. Instead, he said and his group were laser focused – like the Trump campaign – on maximising early voting methods that they had previously shunned as illegitimate and ripe for fraud.
Credit from Trump
Kirk poured millions of TPUSA dollars and thousands of volunteers into get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states during last year’s election, and his strategy appears to have worked.
The organisation’s “ground game” was crucial, analysts say, helping make up for the formal Trump campaign’s struggles reaching infrequent voters, or those untouched by traditional outreach.
Although Democrat Kamala Harris won the youth vote overall, it was by a far smaller margin than that of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.
Trump himself gave Kirk credit at TPUSA’s annual AmericaFest conference in December, just a few weeks after his election victory.
“I want to express my tremendous gratitude to Charlie Kirk. He’s really an amazing guy, amazing guy and his whole staff for their relentless efforts to achieve this very historic victory,” Trump said.
The gathering was triumphant, bombastic and slickly produced, with huge video screens – a demonstration of TPUSA’s deep pockets. The group has now spread to 3,500 high schools and colleges and brought in more than $85m (£62m) last year, according to investigative journalism outlet ProPublica.
It also showed off Kirk’s ability to bring together disparate wings of the Make America Great Again movement – members of Congress, dark arts strategists like Roger Stone and conspiracy-obsessed social media influencers.
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Donald Trump Jr (l) with JD Vance (c) and Charlie Kirk (r) on stage during the Turning Point USA Inaugural Eve Ball in Washington, DC in January
Ever closer to White House power
Kirk’s influence arguably grew even more during Trump’s second term. Just two days before Trump took office, the pair played golf together in Mar-a-Lago.
His relationships with Trump and the rest of the family even gave him sway over government posts – Kirk was reportedly involved in vetting administration appointees earlier this year.
In his tribute, Vance wrote: “He didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government.”
And while his social media and podcast output continued at pace, along with campus tours and other speaking commitments, he continued to hew to Trump’s agenda.
After criticising the Justice Department for dragging its feet on releasing files related to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, he took a phone call with Trump. Shortly thereafter, Kirk declared that he was “done talking about Epstein”.
News of his killing hit the White House hard, starting with the startled gasps of young staffers who saw news of the shooting while scrolling on their phones.
“Oh my God,” one young woman was heard saying, before scurrying down a hallway to tell others. “Charlie Kirk has been shot!”
Watch: Charlie Kirk’s speech from 2020 and interaction with Vance last year
Some staff were wiping away tears. President Trump received updates and fielded phone calls from the Oval Office before ultimately taking to Truth Social to publicly confirm his death and later delivering a video address on his murder and ordering flags across the country to fly at half-staff.
“Charlie was very much a part of this family, and maybe the highest-profile Maga person outside of those that are working here,” Chief-of-Staff Susie Wiles told CNN. “I think it shook everybody to their core.”
Donald Trump Jr posted his own message saying that Kirk “wasn’t just a friend, he was like a little brother to me.
Dr Matthew Dallek, a professor at George Washington University and expert on modern conservatism, said that the close personal ties between Kirk and the Trump family were “really important” to the TPUSA founder’s broader influence.
“Trump prizes loyalty, above maybe anything else,” he said. “And if Don Jr is saying he was like a brother to him, that suggests just how great a supporter Kirk was. They viewed him as an absolutely critical ally and advisor.
“There was a kindred spirit there, and they did not have to worry about him bolting from the movement. He was loyal.”
Charlie Kirk, an influential right-wing activist and a close ally of US President Donald Trump, wasshot dead while speaking at an event at a university in Utah.
Here is what we know.
What happened?
Kirk, 31, was speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem on 10 September, 2025 as part of his “American Comeback” tour.
He sat under a white gazebo to take questions from a crowd of about 3,000 in the university’s “quad”, an outdoor courtyard.
Footage shows the moment before Charlie Kirk is shot
At about 12:20, he is asked by a member of the crowd: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?”
He replies: “Too many.”
The questioner then states there had been five in 10 years and asks Kirk how many mass shootings there had been in that time.
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk replies.
Then a single shot is heard, which is believed to have been fired from the roof of the Losee Center, a building overlooking the quad.
Kirk then slumps in his chair with a clearly visible wound to his neck. He is bleeding profusely as his staff get him off stage.
The crowds around the tent then begin to flee, and screams can be heard.
Students flee moments after deadly shooting
What do we know about the suspect?
FBI
And image released by the FBI of a “person of interest”
No-one has been caught so far– and authorities haven’t named a suspect or their alleged motive.
But Utah’s public safety commissioner said the gunman appeared to be of “college age”, and had blended in well with other students.
Investigators have released photos of a “person of interest” and appealed for public help identifying the man pictured, who was wearing sunglasses, Converse shoes and a “distinctive” long-sleeved black top featuring an American flag and an eagle.
At a press conference on Thursday night, Utah Governor Spencer Cox also released a video of what police believe is the suspect fleeing the scene.
Watch: Officials release new video of Kirk shooting suspect fleeing the scene
A figure dressed in black is seen running across the roof of the building from where the shot was fired and jumping to the grass below, before walking towards a nearby road and a cluster of trees.
The FBI earlier said they found a high-powered firearm – an imported Mauser .30-06 bolt action rifle – wrapped in a towel in a wooded area.
Other videos, including two examined by BBC Verify, also appear to show a dark figure running across the roof of a building in the aftermath of the shooting.
Officials say a palm print and forearm imprints were also discovered, and that “a lot” of forensic evidence is being processed in federal and state laboratories.
“We are going to catch this person,” Governor Cox said on Thursday. “We’ve been working with our attorneys, getting everything that we need… ready so that we can pursue the death penalty in this case.”
Utah is one of 27 states in the US where the death penalty is legal.
Thousands of tips from members of the public have been pouring in, the largest number the FBI has received since the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, he added. More than 200 interviews have been conducted too.
Eyewitnesses at the university during the shooting have also been describing what they saw to reporters.
Witnesses describe scene before and after Charlie Kirk shot
“I heard a loud shot, a loud bang and then I saw his body actually – in slow motion – kind of fall over,” one witness said.
“We all dropped to the ground, and I want to say we sat like that for about 30 to 45 seconds, and then everyone around us got up and started running,” said Emma Pitts, a reporter from Deseret News.
Who was Charlie Kirk?
Kirk was one of the most high-profile right-wing activists and media personalities in the US. He was a trusted ally of Trump, attended his inauguration and regularly visited the White House.
As an 18-year-old in 2012, he co-founded Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a student organisation that aims to spread conservative ideals at liberal-leaning US colleges.
He became known for holding open-air debates on campuses across the country, fielding quick questions in a signature “Prove Me Wrong” style.
His social media feed and daily podcast offer a snapshot of what he often debated – the issues ranged from gun rights and climate change, to faith and family values.
Kirk had many critics who saw him as a divisive figure that promoted controversial and, at times, conspiratorial beliefs such as the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
But he also had his fans. They credit him with playing a key role in convincing younger voters to turn out for Trump in last year’s election.
He was valued within the Trump administration for his keen understanding of the Maga movement.
What has the reaction been?
There has been shock, grief and anger across the political spectrum.
“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No-one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” Trump said in a statement on Truth Social.
“He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me,” the president added, ordering that all flags be flown at half-mast across the country.
Getty Images
Kirk pictured with Trump in December at an event by TPUSA
Former US presidents have offered their condolences. Joe Biden said there was “no place in our country for this kind of violence”, while Barack Obama called the shooting a “despicable act”.
But the death has also laid bare the deep polarisations within American politics.
From the Oval Office on Wednesday night, local time, Trump said “radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people”.
Some of his allies – including Laura Loomer and Elon Musk – similarly pinned blame on the left or the Democratic Party, and called for mass arrests.
Conservative commentators have also highlighted tasteless comments by left-wing activists appearing to celebrate or condone Kirk’s death.
This has spilled out in Congress, where shouting broke out after a moment of silence for Kirk. Republican representative Anna Paulina Luna accused Democrats of spreading hateful rhetoric.
However, the comments from Trump and his allies have stirred controversy, with critics saying they neglect to acknowledge that the spate of violence is affecting left-leaning politicians too, and arguing they could heighten tensions further.
Democrats and Republicans react to Charlie Kirk shooting
Is political violence in the US increasing?
The US has experienced about 150 politically motivated attacks in the first six months of this year.
That is nearly twice as many as over the same period last year, an expert told Reuters news agency.
Mike Jensen – from the University of Maryland, which for more than 50 years has tracked political violence in a database – said the US is in a “a very, very dangerous spot right now”.
“This could absolutely serve as a kind of flashpoint that inspires more of it.”
Kirk’s murder is the latest in a string of high-profileattacks against political leaders in the US, including two attempted assassinations on Trump during his 2024 election campaign.
The president suffered an ear injury in an attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July.
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Gabrielle Giffords and Nancy Pelosi, both targets of political violence themselves, have condemned the attack
In June, Minnesota’s top Democratic legislator and her husband were murdered in their home.
In 2022, the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was bludgeoned with a hammer after a man broke into the couple’s home looking for the top-ranking Democrat with the intention of taking her hostage.
Former US representative Gabby Giffords – who survived being shot in the head during a meeting with constituents in 2011 – also condemned the attack.
“Democratic societies will always have political disagreements, but we must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story said Kirk’s wife and children were present at the event. In fact this is unclear.
Conservative activist Laura Loomer, a Trump ally, says she has a new Pentagon press pass
NEW YORK — With the Pentagon’s press room largely cleared of mainstream reporters, conservative activist and presidential ally Laura Loomer says she has been granted a credential to work there.
Loomer has an influential social media presence and the ear of President Trump, frequently campaigning for the firings of government officials she deems insufficiently loyal to his administration. Some targets have been in the field of national security, including Dan Driscoll, secretary of the Army.
Pentagon officials did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Tuesday. The Washington Post first reported the news of her attaining credentials.
Virtually all Pentagon reporters for legacy media outlets walked out last month rather than agree to a new policy they say would restrict their ability to report news not given approval for release by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Several right-wing outlets have taken their place, although the banned journalists are continuing to work on stories related to the Pentagon.
“I’m excited to announce that after a year of breaking the most impactful stories that pertain to our national security and rooting out deceptive and disloyal bad actors” from the Defense Department, she was ready to join the press corps, Loomer said on X, formerly Twitter. She did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Earlier this year, she criticized Driscoll for publicly honoring a Medal of Honor recipient who had previously spoken at a Democratic National Convention. Separately, Driscoll rescinded the appointment of a former Biden administration official to teach at West Point after Loomer attacked him for it.
Although Trump later downplayed Loomer’s influence, the president last spring fired a handful of National Security Council officials after she had presented him with evidence of their supposed disloyalty.
Still, she’s been a polarizing force among some in the administration, wary of her influence, which has included riding on Air Force One with Trump. Although granted space in the Pentagon press room, Loomer has not received reporting credentials at the White House. Loomer has also been criticized for entertaining conspiracy theories and making anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim posts.
“There is no denying that my investigative reporting has had a massive impact on the landscape of personnel decisions within the Executive Branch, our intelligence agencies and the Pentagon,” Loomer wrote on X. “I look forward to covering the Pentagon and breaking more stories that impact our country and our national security.”
In her social media post, she also reached out to people to alert her to news through “the Loomered Tip Line, the most influential Tip Line in all of DC.”
Phil Stewart, a national security reporter for Reuters, noted on a social media post Tuesday that Hegseth’s new media policy would make reporters subject to having their access revoked for seeking out information from Defense Department personnel that had not been authorized for release.
However, Loomer’s appeal for tips did not explicitly target people who work at the Defense Department.
Bauder writes for the Associated Press.
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For this undocumented activist, returning to Mexico was liberation
On an overcast morning in September, Hector Alessandro Negrete left his beloved Los Angeles — the city he was brought to at 3 months old — and headed down Interstate 5 to Mexico, the only country where he held a passport.
It was a place that, to him, had “always felt like both a wound and a possibility.”
Negrete, 43, sat in the passenger seat as a friend steered the car south and two more friends in another car followed. He had condensed his life to three full suitcases and his dachshund mix, Lorca.
They pulled over at the beach in San Clemente. Angel Martinez, his soon-to-be former roommate, is deeply spiritual, and his favorite prayer spot is the ocean, so he prayed that Negrete would be blessed and protected — and Lorca too — as they began a new stage in their lives.
On the near-empty beach, the friends embraced and wiped away tears. Martinez handed Negrete a small watermelon.
As instructed, Negrete walked to the edge of the water, said his own prayer and, as a gift of thanks to the cosmos, plopped it into a crashing wave.
Negrete, holding a drink, embraces his friend Angel Martinez as they visit a drag club in Tijuana after leaving Los Angeles a day earlier.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Negrete doesn’t call it self-deportation.
“Self-repatriation,” he said. “I refuse to use this administration’s language.”
President Trump had been in office just over a month when Negrete decided he would return to Mexico. Methodical by nature, he approached the decision like any other — by researching, organizing and planning.
Negrete secured three forms of Mexican identification: his voter credential, a renewed passport and a card akin to a Social Security ID.
He registered Lorca as an emotional support animal, paid for a vaccine card and a certificate of good health, and crate-trained her in a TSA-approved carrier.
He announced his decision to leave in June on his Substack newsletter: “If you’re thinking, ‘Alessandro’s giving up,’ look deeper. I am choosing freedom. For the first time, I feel unshackled from the expectations of waiting.”
Negrete walks the streets of Boyle Heights while shopping for moving supplies after deciding he would leave the U.S. on his own terms.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Negrete had grown tired of wishing for immigration reform. He had built his career advocating for immigrants such as himself, including stints as statewide coordinator for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, and as executive director for the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance.
He said his work had helped legalize street vending in Los Angeles and he assisted the office of then-California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris in securing the release of a young woman from immigration detention. He was the first openly undocumented and LGBTQ+ person on the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council.
Under previous administrations, Negrete’s political work had felt like a shield against deportation. Even during Trump’s first term, Negrete had marched at rallies denouncing his immigration policies.
But that was before the new Immigration and Customs Enforcement patrols that tore into Southern California during Trump’s second term. On June 6, as anti-ICE protesters took to the streets, Negrete rushed to downtown Los Angeles when fellow activists told him street medics were needed.
“One of my homies said, ‘Hey fool, what are you doing here?’” he recalled. Seeing Los Angeles police officers advancing on the crowd, he realized that no amount of public support could protect him.
He fled. “Thank God I left.”
Negrete, in red, with his friends and colleagues at a farewell party and yard sale in August.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
In mid-August, Negrete hosted a yard sale and going away party. The flier was tongue-in-cheek: “Everything must go! Including me!”
His red T-shirt stated plainly, “I AM UNDOCUMENTED,” and his aviator sunglasses hid the occasional tears. Tattoos dotted his extremities, including an anchor on his right leg with the words “I refuse to sink.”
“I think it hit me when I started packing my stuff today,” he told a former colleague, Shruti Garg, who had arrived early.
“But the way you’ve invited everyone to join you is so beautiful,” she replied.
One table held American pop-culture knickknacks — sippy cups with Ghostface from the movie “Scream,” collectible Mickey Mouse ears, a Detective Batman purse shaped like a comic book, another purse shaped like the locker from the ‘90s cartoon “Daria.”
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Negrete said the items reminded him of his youth and represented the gothic, quirky aspects of his personality.
“I was born in Mexico, but I don’t know Mexico,” he said. “So I’m leaving the American parts of me that are no longer going to serve me.”
The back yard slowly filled with loved ones from Negrete’s various social circles. There was his mostly queer softball team — the Peacocks — his running group, his chosen family and his blood family.
Negrete’s close friend Joel Menjivar looked solemn.
“I’m scared it’s going to start a movement,” he said. “Undocumented or DACA friends who are talented and integral to the fabric of L.A. might get ideas to leave.”
Another friend, Mario Mariscal, said he took Negrete’s decision the hardest, though at first he didn’t believe Negrete was serious. More than once he asked, “You really want to give up everything you’ve built here for a new start in Mexico?”
Eventually, Negrete had to tell Mariscal that his questions weren’t helpful. During a deeper conversation about his decision, Negrete shared that he was tired of living with the constant fear of getting picked up, herded into an unmarked van and taken away.
“I just kept telling him, ‘That’s not going to happen to you,’” Mariscal said. “But the more this administration keeps doing it, the more it’s in our face, the more we’re seeing every horror story about that, it became clear that, you know what, you do have a point. You do have to do what’s right for you.”
Negrete continues packing for his move to Mexico as roommate Martinez works at their Boyle Heights home.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Negrete is cognizant of the privilege that makes his departure different from that of many other immigrants. He is white-passing, fluent in Spanish and English, and moved with $10,000 in savings.
In June, he was hired as executive director of a U.S.-based nonprofit, Old School Hub, that works to combat ageism around the world. The role allowed him to live wherever he wanted.
He decided to settle in Guadalajara, a growing technology hub, with historic buildings featuring Gothic architecture that he found beautiful. It also helped that Guadalajara has one of the country’s most vibrant LGBTQ+ scenes and is a four-hour drive from Puerto Vallarta, a renowned queer resort destination.
As Negrete began his new job while still in L.A., he picked a moving date — Sept. 4 — and booked a two-week Airbnb near the baseball stadium.
That Guadalajara’s team, the Charros de Jalisco, wore Dodger blue felt like a good omen.
On the day he left the United States, Negrete and Martinez hold a prayer at the beach in San Clemente in which Negrete offers thanks to the universe with an offering of a watermelon.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
On the drive toward the border, messages poured into Negrete’s phone.
“I’m sending you all my love Alessandro,” one read. “Cuídate. [Take care.] Know that even though you’re far away from home, you carry us with you.”
“Todo te va a salir bien,” read another. Everything will go well for you, it said. “Spread your wings and flyyyyy.”
Afraid of being stopped and detained at the airport, as has happened to other immigrants attempting to leave the country, Negrete preferred to drive to Tijuana and then fly to Guadalajara.
Negrete’s driver, his friend Jorge Leonardo, turned into a parking lot at the sign reading “LAST USA EXIT.”
Negrete put on his black felt tejana hat and called Iris Rodriguez, who was in the companion car. He asked her to cross on foot with him.
Negrete walks his last few steps on American soil as he enters Mexico en route to Guadalajara, his new home.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“I don’t want to go alone,” he said.
“We’re still on American soil,” Leonardo said. “You can still change your mind.”
Negrete ignored him.
“See y’all on the other side,” he said as he hopped out of the car.
He and Rodriguez stopped for photos in front of a sign with an arrow pointing “To Mexico.” Around a corner, the border came into full view — a metal turnstile with layers of concertina wire above it.
The line for Mexicanos was unceremoniously quick. The immigration agent barely glanced at Negrete’s passport before waving him through.
On the other side, a busker sang “Piano Man” by Billy Joel in perfect English.
“Welcome to the motherland,” Rodriguez told him. Negrete let out a deep breath.
Negrete tours downtown Guadalajara, where he now lives.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Negrete’s immediate family members, and almost all of his extended family, live in the U.S.
He was born in Manzanillo, Colima, in 1982. Three months later, the family relocated to Los Angeles, where his parents had two more children.
At 17, Negrete was one of two students in his graduating class at Roosevelt High School to get into UC Berkeley. That’s when he found out he didn’t have papers.
His parents had divorced and his father married a U.S. citizen, obtaining a green card when Negrete was at Roosevelt. They began the legalization process for Negrete in 1999, he said, but two years later he came out to his family as gay.
His father was unsupportive and refused to continue seeking to adjust his immigration status. By the time they mended their relationship, it was too late. Negrete had aged out of the pathway at 21.
In 2008, Negrete said, he was arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol. Four years later, President Obama established the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program to protect immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. Negrete failed to qualify because of the DUI.
He said he got his record expunged in 2016, but — again — it was too late.
The following year, Trump began unwinding DACA, shutting out new generations of would-be recipients, including Negrete.
Negrete waited until his last night in the U.S. to tell his mother, who now lives in Colorado, that he was leaving. He had grown tired of friends and other family members begging him to change his mind.
He had partially hinged his decision on the fact that his mom was in remission from her third bout with cancer and had just obtained legal residency. With life more stable for her, he could finally seek stability for himself.
“You taught me to dream,” Negrete recalled telling her. “This is me dreaming. I want to see the world.”
She cried and scolded him, promising to visit and repeating what she had said when he came out to her all those years before: “I wish you told me sooner.”
At a hotel in Tijuana, Negrete’s emotions finally caught up with him.
The day after Negrete and his three friends left L.A., three more friends surprised him by arriving in Tijuana for a final Friday night out together. One of them presented a gift he had put together with help from Negrete’s entire social circle — a video with loved ones sharing messages of encouragement.
Negrete shares a tearful moment with his friend Joel Menjivar, who gifted him a self-produced video of friends and colleagues offering good wishes.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
In Negrete’s hotel room, as he and his friends watched, the mood grew sentimental.
“You’re basically the one that formed the family friend tree,” one friend said in her clip. “Friendships do not die out in distance.”
Negrete sobbed. “Yes! Friendships don’t have borders,” he said.
“Every single one of you has said this hasn’t hit y’all, like it’s a mini vacation,” he said. “I want to think of it as an extended vacation.”
“This isn’t goodbye, this is we’ll see each other soon,” he continued.
Off his soapbox, Negrete then chided his friends for making him cry before heading to a drag show.
Negrete had a habit of leaving social gatherings abruptly. His friends joked that they would refer to him as “catch me on the 101” because every time he disappeared during a night out, they would open Apple’s Find My app and see him on the freeway heading home.
“We’re not gonna catch him on the 101 no more,” Martinez said.
The last few flights of stairs lead Iris Rodriguez and Negrete to his Airbnb apartment in Guadalajara.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
On the flight to Guadalajara, Negrete’s heart raced and he began to hyperventilate. The anxiety attack caught him off guard.
Negrete had worked hard to show his friends and family that he was happy, because he didn’t want them to think he had doubts — and he had none. But he began to worry about the unknown and to mourn his former dreams of gaining legal status and running for public office.
“It hit me all at once,” he recounted. “I am three hours away from a whole new life that I don’t know. I left everything and I don’t know what’s next.”
Many deep breaths by Negrete later, the plane descended through the clouds, revealing vibrant green fields and a cantaloupe-hued sunset.
Negrete tests the bed at his temporary home in Guadalajara.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Inside the Airbnb, he was surprised to find a clothesline instead of a dryer. Noticing the blue 5-gallon jug of water in the kitchen, he remarked that he would have to remember tap water wasn’t safe to cook with. But alongside the new was something familiar: The view from his 11–story apartment showed off a sprawling metropolis dotted with trees, some of them palms.
The next day started off like any Sunday, with a trip to Walmart and drag brunch.
Negrete marveled at the cost of a large carton of egg whites ($1) and was shocked to see eggs stored at room temperature, liquid laundry detergent in bags and only single-ply toilet paper. He treated himself to a Darth Vader coffee mug and a teapot featuring characters from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
After brunch, it was time to play tourist. Negrete was accompanied by Rodriguez, who stayed with him for the first two weeks, and a new friend, Alejandro Preciado, whom he had met at Coachella in April and happened to be a Guadajalara local.
Negrete tours downtown Guadalajara. He was drawn to the city, in part, by its Gothic architecture.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Their first stop was the city’s Spanish Renaissance cathedral, where Negrete said a quick prayer to the Virgin Mary at his mother’s request. Negrete treated his friends to an electric carriage ride around the historic buildings, where he excitedly pointed out the Gothic architecture, then they bought aguas frescas and walked through an open-air market, chatting in an English-heavy Spanglish.
“I’m trying to look at how people dress,” Negrete said, suddenly self-conscious about his short shorts. “I’m pretty sure I stand out.”
After dinner, Negrete was booking an Uber back to his Airbnb when a message popped up: “We’ve detected unusual activity.”
The app didn’t know he had moved.
Before he arrived in Guadalajara, Negrete had already joined an intramural baseball team and a running club. Practices began days after his arrival.
Negrete enjoys a view of the sprawling hills of Guadalajara.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Within a month, he moved into an apartment, visited Mexico City and reconnected with aunts in Mexico City and Guadalajara he hadn’t seen in decades.
He reflected on the small joys of greeting neighborhood señoras on morning dog walks, discovering the depths of Mexican cuisine and the peace of mind that came with no longer feeling like a target — though he’ll still freeze at the sight of police lights.
Still, Negrete remained glued to U.S. politics. In late September, the federal government detailed plans to begin processing initial DACA applications for the first time in four years. Had Negrete stayed in the U.S., he would have finally qualified for a reprieve.
He isn’t regretful.
Lorca greets Negrete as he arrives home after touring Guadalajara.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
His new dreams are wide-ranging. He wants to buy a house in Rosarito, where friends and family from L.A. could visit him. He wants to travel the world, starting with a trip to Spain. And he wants to help U.S. organizations build resources for other immigrants who are considering repatriating.
The goal isn’t to encourage people to leave, he said, but to show them they have agency.
“I actually did it,” he said. “I did it, and I’m OK.”
Now, he said, Mexico feels like an estranged relative that he’s getting to know again.
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Sudanese activist sees his executed uncles in RSF videos from el-Fasher | Sudan war News
Mohammed Zakaria had not slept in two days when the news came that el-Fasher, his hometown, had fallen to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The Sudanese video journalist and human rights activist had been monitoring the deteriorating situation from Kampala, Uganda, watching as the paramilitary seized the North Darfur governor’s office in the city on Friday, edging closer to taking control of all of it.
He feared the worst.
For Zakaria, the “nightmare” scenario is intensely personal. Searching through social media after the city’s fall, he discovered footage posted on Facebook by RSF soldiers celebrating, standing over dead bodies. He recognised three of his uncles among the dead.
“They are celebrating by killing them,” he said.
He said another uncle’s Facebook profile photo had been changed to an image of an RSF fighter, a chilling message about his possible fate.
“We don’t know where he is … we’re really scared for him,” he said.
The fall of el-Fasher
The city fell to the RSF on Sunday after an 18-month siege, the Sudanese army confirming its withdrawal from what was its last outpost in the Darfur region, held for months by the resolve of fighters holed up there.
The RSF’s capture of el-Fasher gives the paramilitary control over all five state capitals in Darfur, marking a significant turning point in Sudan’s civil war.
El-Fasher endured one of the longest urban sieges in modern warfare this century. The RSF began encircling it in May 2024 and intensified its assaults after being driven from the capital, Khartoum, by the army in March.
What followed its fall has been described by international observers as a massacre on an unprecedented scale, with satellite imagery and social media footage pointing to mass atrocities by RSF fighters, reportedly along ethnic lines.
“We have been talking about this for more than a year. We knew this would happen,” Zakaria told Al Jazeera, his voice breaking.
Sarra Majdoub, a former UN Security Council expert on Sudan, told Al Jazeera observers were warning for months of the city’s fall, like other major urban areas in Darfur that were captured by the RSF, but “they surprisingly held on for a really long time”.
A communications blackout has all but cut off connection from the city, leaving those with loved ones there in a state of anxious uncertainty.
An estimated 260,000 civilians remained trapped in the city when it fell, half of them children.
The Sudan Doctors Network said a “heinous massacre” had taken place in el-Fasher, while the Joint Forces, a coalition of armed groups allied with the Sudanese army, said 2,000 people had been executed. The UN said it documented 1,350 deaths.
Reports of atrocities
The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which monitors the war in Sudan, reported Tuesday that satellite imagery revealed evidence consistent with mass killings, including what seem to be visible pools of blood and clusters of corpses.
Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, told a media briefing on Tuesday that the killings were “only comparable to Rwanda-style killings”, referring to the 1994 Tutsi genocide in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed in weeks.
As early as October 2, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk warned of the risk of “large-scale, ethnically driven attacks and atrocities”, calling for immediate action to prevent it.
Social media footage verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency after the city’s fall showed many instances of RSF fighters carrying out summary executions of civilians. In one video, an RSF commander bragged that he had killed 2,000 people.
In a statement on Monday, the RSF said it was committed to “protecting civilians”.
Majdoub told Al Jazeera that the voyeuristic nature of the videos recorded by RSF fighters was among the “most disturbing elements” of the violence.
She recalled that fighters filming abuses had been seen before in places such as el-Geneina in West Darfur and Gezira state, “but el-Fasher has been different, their violence is more exaggerated.”
“It is very painful,” Zakaria said, “finding videos in social media, and then you find that you know this person, who is a friend, or a distant relative, or uncle, surrounded by RSF fighters.
“This is a reality now for many people”.
He remains unable to locate dozens of friends and relatives.
Among them is Dr Mudathir Ibrahim Suleiman, medical director of Saudi Hospital, whom Zakaria last spoke to early Saturday morning, hours before the RSF took the city.
“He told me he would escape with his father and relatives,” Zakaria said. “Until now, I didn’t hear anything … We found that some doctors reached Tawila, but Dr Mudathir is not among them.”
Darfur’s governor, Minni Minnawi, said on Wednesday the RSF had committed a massacre in the Saudi Hospital, killing 460 people. He also posted footage on X showing a summary execution.
Residents who spoke to Al Jazeera in the weeks before the final offensive described daily bombardments and periodic drone strikes. People dug trenches to hide in at dawn as shelling began, sometimes remaining underground for hours.
The United Nations migration agency reported that more than 26,000 people fled the fighting since Sunday, either heading to the outskirts of the city or attempting the dangerous journey to Tawila, 70km (43.5 miles) to the west.
‘Genocide is happening now’
Zakaria left el-Fasher in June 2024, during the siege, making the perilous journey through South Sudan to Uganda after his house was shelled and he witnessed a deadly attack that killed seven people, including women and children, near his grandfather’s home.
“It was like the hardest decision I have made in my life, to leave my city,” he said.
From Kampala, he continued monitoring the violence and advocating for people.
El-Fasher had appealed for intervention for more than 17 months, he said, while humanitarian organisations operated in Tawila, just three hours away by car.
“The time has passed for actions. The genocide is happening now,” he said.
Zakaria says more than 100 people he knows remain unaccounted for in el-Fasher.
He continues searching social media and calling contacts, hoping for information.
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Son of Conservative Activist Phyllis Schlafly Reveals He’s Gay
A son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly has publicly revealed that he is homosexual, while at the same time defending his mother’s political views and the Republican Party’s “family values” campaign theme.
“The family values movement is not anti-gay,” said John F. Schlafly, a 41-year-old attorney who lives with his parents in Alton, Ill., and counts among his clients the Eagle Forum, the conservative group founded by his mother.
“These people are not anti-gay. They’re not gay bashers,” John Schlafly said in a telephone interview Friday. “I hold my mother in very high esteem. She’s doing good work.”
He added that he “didn’t agree with everything” he heard at the GOP convention but insisted that “efforts to convey the (Republican) Convention and the platform and speakers as bigots and gay bashers is completely inaccurate. The concept of family values should not be threatening to gays and lesbians. Most gays and lesbians have good relations with their family, as I do.”
Schlafly was “outed,” or revealed to be gay, by QW, a magazine published in New York, two weeks ago. He confirmed his homosexuality in an interview published Friday by the San Francisco Examiner.
“I thought it best to set the record straight,” Schlafly explained. “The media was trying to push the angle that there was some sort of hypocrisy going on, which I felt was inaccurate.”
Phyllis Schlafly characterized the media’s interest in her son’s revelation as “obviously a political hit against me.” She declined to say when she learned her son is gay and added that homosexuality “is not a big subject around (the Schlafly family).”
As for her stand on gay rights, Phyllis Schlafly said: “There’s nothing about my position on gay rights that should be offensive to a gay unless he’s seeking some kind of preferential status.”
While John Schlafly said he did not think it was right for someone to be fired based on sexual orientation, he said he did “not support the so-called gay-rights agenda” and was not sure what he thought of the military’s ban on homosexuals.
In his remarks to the Examiner, he disagreed with one common contention of the religious right, that homosexuality is a choice. “You can say in some sense I choose to write with my right or left hand,” Schlafly said. “But the point is that it is such an automatic decision. That’s how I see homosexuality.”
He also objected “to anyone saying that being gay constitutes not having good moral character.”
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Commentary: Sanctuary policies and activists aren’t endangering lives during ICE raids — ICE is
Like with cigarettes, la migra should come with a warning label: Proximity to ICE could be hazardous for your health.
From Los Angeles to Chicago, Portlandand New York, the evidence is ample enough that wherever Trump sends in the immigration agency, people get hurt. And not just protesters and immigrants.
That includes 13 police officers tear-gassed in Chicago earlier this month. And, now, a U.S. marshal.
Which brings us to what happened in South L.A. on Tuesday.
Federal agents boxed in the Toyota Camry of local TikToker Carlitos Ricardo Parias — better known to his hundreds of thousands of followers as Richard LA. As Parias allegedly tried to rev his way out of the trap, an ICE agent opened fire. One bullet hit the 44-year-old Mexican immigrant — and another ricocheted into the hand of a deputy U.S. marshal.
Neither suffered life-threatening injuries, but it’s easy to imagine that things could have easily turned out worse. Such is the chaos that Trump has caused by unleashing shock troops into U.S. cities.
Rather than take responsibility and apologize for an incident that could’ve easily been lethal, Team Trump went into their default spin mode of blaming everyone but themselves.
Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that the shooting was “the consequences of conduct and rhetoric by sanctuary politicians and activists who urge illegal aliens to resist arrest.”
Acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli chimed in on social media soon after: “I urge California public officials to moderate their rhetoric toward federal law enforcement. Encouraging resistance to federal agents can lead to deadly consequences.” Hours later, he called Times reporter James Queally “an absolute joke, not a journalist” because my colleague noted it’s standard practice by most American law enforcement agencies to not shoot at moving vehicles. One reason is that it increases the chance of so-called friendly fire.
Federal authorities accuse Parias of ramming his car into agents’ vehicles after they boxed him in. He is being charged with assault on a federal officer.
Time, and hopefully, evidence, will show what happened — and very important, what led to what happened.
The Trump administration keeps claiming that the public anger against its immigration actions is making the job more dangerous for la migra and their sister agencies. McLaughlin and her boss, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, keep saying there’s been a 1,000% increase in assaults on immigration agents this year like an incantation. Instead of offering concrete figures, they use the supposed stat as a shield against allegations ICE tactics are going too far and as a weapon to excuse the very brutality ICE claims it doesn’t practice.
Well, even if what they say is true, there’s only one side that’s making the job more dangerous for la migra and others during raids:
La migra.
It turns out that if you send in phalanxes of largely masked federal agents to bully and intimidate people in American cities, Americans tend not to take kindly to it.
Who knew?
Gregory Bovino, center, of U.S. Border Patrol, marches with federal agents to the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on Aug. 14.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
We’re about to enter the sixth month of Trump’s plan to rid the country of undocumented immigrants. Sycophants are bragging that he’s doing the job, but they’re not caring to look at the mess left in its wake that’s becoming more and more perilous for everyone involved. They insist that those who are executing and planning raids are professionals, but professionals don’t make constant pendejos out of themselves.
Professionals don’t bring squadrons to chase after tamale ladies or day laborers, or stage flashy raids of apartments and parks that accomplish little else than footage for propaganda videos. They don’t go into neighborhoods with intimidation on their mind and ready to rough up anyone who gets in their way.
A ProPublica investigation showed that ICE has detained at least 170 U.S. citizens this year, many whom offered proof that they were in this country legally as la migra cuffed them and hauled them off to detention centers.
Professionals don’t lie like there’s a bonus attached to it — but that’s what Trump’s deportation Leviathan keeps doing. In September, McLaughlin put out a news release arguing that the shooting death of 38-year-old Silverio Villegas González in Chicago by an ICE agent was justified because he was dragged a “significant distance” and suffered serious injuries. Yet body cam footage of local police who showed up to the scene captured the two ICE agents involved in the incident describing their injuries as “nothing major.”
Closer to home, a federal jury in Los Angeles last month acquitted an activist of striking a Border Patrol agent after federal public defender Cuauhtémoc Ortega screened footage that contradicted the government’s case and poked holes in the testimony of Border Patrol staff and supervisors. Last week, ICE agents detained Oxnard activist Leonardo Martinez after a collision between their Jeep and his truck. McLaughlin initially blamed the incident on an “agitator group … engaged in recording and verbal harassment,” but footage first published by L.A. Taco showed that la migra trailed Martinez and then crashed into him twice — not the other way around.
Professionals don’t host social media accounts that regularly spew memes that paint the picture of an American homeland where white makes right and everyone else must be eliminated, like the Department of Homeland Security does. A recent post featured medieval knights wearing chain mail and helmets and wielding longswords as they encircle the slogan “The Enemies are at the Gates” above ICE’s job listing website.
The Trump administration has normalized racism and has turned cruelty into a virtue — then its mouthpieces gasp in mock horror when people resist its officially sanctioned jackbootery.
This evil buffoonery comes straight from a president who reacted to the millions of Americans who protested this weekend at No Kings rallies by posting on social media an AI-generated video of him wearing a crown and dropping feces on his critics from a jet fighter. And yet McLaughlin, Noem and other Trump bobbleheads have the gall to question why politicians decry la migra while regular people follow and film them during raids when not shouting obscenities and taunts at them?
As I’ve written before, there’s never a nice way to conduct an immigration raid but there’s always a better way. Or at least a way that’s not dripping with malevolence.
Meanwhile, ICE is currently on a hiring spree thanks to Trump’s Bloated Beastly Bill and and has cut its training program from six months to 48 days, according to The Atlantic. It’s a desperate and potentially reckless recruitment drive.
And if you think rapidly piling more people into a clown car is going to produce less clown-like behavior by ICE on the streets of American cities, boy do I have news for you.
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Conservative activist sues Google over AI-generated statements | Technology News
The lawsuit comes amid growing concerns about how AI fuels the spread of misinformation.
Published On 22 Oct 202522 Oct 2025
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Conservative activist Robby Starbuck sued Google, alleging that the tech giant’s artificial intelligence systems generated “outrageously false” information about him.
On Wednesday, Starbuck said in the lawsuit, filed in Delaware state court, that Google’s AI systems falsely called him a “child rapist,” “serial sexual abuser” and “shooter” in response to user queries and delivered defamatory statements to millions of users.
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Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said most of the claims were related to mistaken “hallucinations” from Google’s Bard large language model that the company worked to address in 2023.
“Hallucinations are a well-known issue for all LLMs, which we disclose and work hard to minimise,” Castaneda said. “But as everyone knows, if you’re creative enough, you can prompt a chatbot to say something misleading.”
Starbuck is best known for opposing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
“No one — regardless of political beliefs — should ever experience this,” he said in a statement about the lawsuit. “Now is the time for all of us to demand transparent, unbiased AI that cannot be weaponized to harm people.”
Starbuck made similar allegations against Meta Platforms in a separate lawsuit in April. Starbuck and Meta settled their dispute in August, and Starbuck advised the company on AI issues under the settlement.
According to Wednesday’s complaint, Starbuck learned in December 2023 that Bard had falsely connected him with white nationalist Richard Spencer. The lawsuit said that Bard cited fabricated sources and that Google failed to address the statements after Starbuck contacted the company.
Starbuck’s lawsuit also said that Google’s Gemma chatbot disseminated false sexual assault allegations against him in August based on fictitious sources. Starbuck also alleged the chatbot said that he committed spousal abuse, attended the January 6 Capitol riots and appeared in the Jeffrey Epstein files, among other things.
Starbuck said he has been approached by people who believed some of the false accusations and that they could lead to increased threats on his life, noting the recent assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Starbuck asked the court for at least $15m in damages.
Starbuck lawsuit comes amid growing concerns that AI-generated content has become easy to create and can facilitate the spread of misinformation. As Al Jazeera previously reported, Google’s VEO3 AI video maker allowed users to make deceptive videos of news events.
Alphabet — Google’s parent company’s stock is relatively flat on the news of the lawsuit. As of 2:30pm in New York (18:30 GMT), it is up by 0.06 percent.
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US activist from Gaza flotilla alleges ‘psychological torture’ by Israel | Israel-Palestine conflict News
A United States citizen who was detained by Israel on the Global Sumud Flotilla, which tried to deliver aid to Gaza, says he and other activists endured abuse and “psychological torture” in Israeli custody.
David Adler, who was released and deported to Jordan on Tuesday, said after Israeli forces intercepted the flotilla in international waters, they took the activists to a prison complex in the Negev desert in southern Israel.
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“We were kidnapped, stripped, zip-tied, blindfolded and sent to an internment camp on a police van without any access to food, to water, to legal support,” he said. “And for the next five days, on and off, we were psychologically tortured.”
In an audio message shared with Al Jazeera through the advocacy group Progressive International, Adler said he and another Jewish activist were picked out and forced to be photographed with Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
“After interception, we were violently forced onto our knees into positions of submission, where the two Jews of the flotilla were taken by the ear and ripped from the group for a photo-op with Ben-Gvir, staring at the flag of the State of Israel, taunted by his goons,” Adler said.
He described his time in detention as a “five-day nightmare of serial and systematic violations of our most basic rights”.
‘My Jewish heritage demands it’
Adler, who is co-general coordinator at Progressive International, added that riot troops would raid the prison with attack dogs at night to “terrify and terrorise” the detainees.
His testimony adds to the allegations of mistreatment of flotilla activists, who included climate campaigner Greta Thunberg.
The flotilla – a collection of more than 40 boats and 470 people from across the world – aimed to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza, which has sparked a deadly hunger crisis in the territory.
Israel intercepted the flotilla in international waters last week, a move that human rights advocates have argued is illegal.
Adler was one of more than 20 US citizens in the group and among the last to be released.
Earlier this week, about two dozen lawmakers from the activist’s home state of California penned a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling on him to push for Adler to be freed.
As he was sailing towards Gaza last week, Adler shared a social media post reflecting on his Jewish identity and the decision to participate in the flotilla.
“If there’s any part of the Torah that I still remember, it is this obligation it bestows upon us: ‘Justice, justice you shall pursue.’ How could we stand by while the State of Israel perverts this holy obligation, overseeing a holocaust of the Palestinian people?” Adler wrote.
“I joined this flotilla just like any other delegate – to defend humanity before it is too late. But on Yom Kippur, I am reminded that I am also here because my Jewish heritage demands it.”
Trump envoy taunts Adler
According to Adler, US officials did not provide any consular services to him and other Americans who were imprisoned by Israel.
“The US general consul said, ‘We are not your babysitters. You’d have no food, no water, no money, no phones, no planes,’” he said. “‘We’re taking you straight to the airport, and you’re on your own.’”
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee had rebuked Adler personally, calling him a “self-absorbed tool of Hamas”.
Huckabee also echoed the false Israeli claims that the flotilla is “Hamas-funded”.
Palestinian rights advocates and many Palestinians in Gaza welcomed the flotilla, saying it demonstrates the power of individuals to take direct action to help the people in Gaza even if they fail to reach the shores of the territory.
In his message, Adler called the mistreatment of the activists a marker of “how rogue the state of Israel has become in its utter disregard for basic international humanitarian law”.
“I’m obviously very aware that all of this pales in comparison to the treatment that Palestinians endure every single day,” he said.
Israel holds thousands of Palestinian detainees, many without charge or trial.
Rights groups and United Nations experts have documented horrific and systemic torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, including the use of starvation and sexual violence against captives.
Israel continues to imprison US teenager Mohammed Ibrahim, who was arrested in the occupied West Bank in February and has since lost more than a quarter of his body weight, according to his family.
The Israeli government’s Press Office and US Department of State did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment by the time of publication.
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Pro-Palestine activist interrupts UK minister speech at Labour conference | Israel-Palestine conflict News
A pro-Palestine activist has interrupted the United Kingdom’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves’ speech during the annual Labour Party conference in Liverpool to call out the country’s ongoing complicity in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
The protester, later named as Sam P, stood up less than 10 minutes into the finance minister’s speech, holding a large Palestinian flag and asking, “Why is Britain still arming Israel?”
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“Labour is complicit in the mass starvation of Palestinians,” he added.
In response to the protest, Reeves told delegates, “We understand your cause and we are recognising a Palestinian state.
“But we are now a party in government, not a party of protest,” Reeves added, receiving a standing ovation from those in the audience.
But in a statement from the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which planned the disruption for London for a Free Palestine, the group called on the ruling Labour Party to impose a “full two-way arms embargo on Israel”.
“The end of RAF surveillance flights over Gaza that gather intelligence for Israel … The immediate resignation of Labour Party leadership for lying to the public about Britain’s complicity in enabling Israel’s genocide … [and] an end to Britain’s diplomatic ties with Israel,” the statement read.
In May, PYM released a report that found that the British government had continued to send military exports to Israel despite the UK announcing that it had cut arms export licences to Israel that could be used during the war.
Nihal, an organiser with PYM, said the action was taken because the “horror in Gaza is only growing as Palestinian people are experiencing the most violent bombardment since the beginning of the genocide.
“Tens of thousands of Palestinians have already been starved, bombed, and killed while the Labour Party approves weapons licences, shares intelligence, and offers diplomatic cover for these crimes,” they added.
Leila, an organiser with London for a Free Palestine, added that they were “watching the end of the Labour Party”, traditionally once a party of the left which has veered centre-right on many issues.
“Despite the UN Commission of Inquiry declaring Israel is enacting genocide, the Labour government still continues to deny the genocide and offer diplomatic support for Israel’s crimes,” Leila said.
Earlier in September, the UK officially recognised Palestinian statehood in a landmark decision, 108 years after the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which supported the establishment of a home for Jews in Palestine, and 77 years after the creation of Israel in the British Mandate of Palestine.
While the recognition was welcomed by Palestinian officials, for those suffering Israeli atrocities in Gaza, the announcement had no material effect to ease their daily horrors.
In nearly two years of intense Israeli bombardment, and now a ground invasion of Gaza City, the destroyed enclave’s largest urban centre, at least 66,055 people have been killed and 168,346 wounded, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported on Monday.
Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK have protested, often weekly, against Israel’s war in the last two years and feel their voices have not been heard by the government.
There have also been a series of largely peaceful rallies denouncing the UK government’s decision in July to ban the Palestine Action group under the Terrorism Act 2000, which have been met by a heavy-handed police response and mass arrests.
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Jailed activist Alaa Abdel Fattah freed, reunites with family
Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah (C) embraces his mother, Laila Soueif, (L) and his sister Sanaa Seif (R) at home in Cairo, Egypt, on Tuesday after his release following a presidential pardon by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. Photo by EPA
Sept. 23 (UPI) — Human rights activist Alaa Abdel Fattah was reunited with his family late Monday, after more than five years’ imprisonment, according to his family and supporting organizations.
Fattah, who holds both British and Egyptian citizenship, has spent a collective of more than 10 years behind Egyptian bars and was widely considered the Middle Eastern country’s most prominent political prisoner.
Fattah, along with five others, received pardons from President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Monday, according to state media.
Mona Seif, one of Fattah’s two sisters, took to X to broadcast updates on the situation, starting with hearing the news, then preparing to leave work and finally posting pictures of her brother embracing family members.
“An exceptionally kind day,” she said. “Alaa is free.”
Reporters Without Borders, which has campaigned for his release, said in a statement that Fattah was reunited with his mother, Laila Soueif, and other sister Sanaa Seif late Monday.
“We are deeply relieved to see Alaa Abdel Fattah finally walk free,” Fiona O’Brien, RSF UK director, said in a statement.
“What he and his family have been through is unimaginable: he should never have gone to prison, and his family should never have had to mount a years-long international campaign to free him. His pardon and release must mark a definitive end to their ordeal and, after so many lost years, he must be allowed to travel to the United Kingdom to be reunited with his son Khaled.”
Fattah, who rose to international recognition during the 2011 Egyptian revolution, has been repeatedly arrested in Egypt over the years.
In 2013, three months after el-Sisi’s coup, he was arrested, charged with the organization of a protest and then sentenced to five years behind bars.
He was released in 2019, but was then arrested shortly afterward.
He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison in 2021 on the charges of “spreading false news,” according to the U.S. State Department. Reporters Without Borders said he was charged with an arbitrary offense of spreading false news for sharing a Facebook post about torture in Egyptian prisons.
The Free Alaa website states his sentence was to have ended last September of last year but he was still detained by the authorities.
His detainment was deemed arbitrary and in breach of International law by the the United Nations Working Group.
“Alaa Abdel Fattah is a prisoner of conscience who was targeted for his peaceful activism,” Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns, said in a statement.
“His pardon will not erase the ordeal he has endured in detention over the past six years. The Egyptian authorities should follow up on today’s decision by releasing all those solely detained for exercising their human rights and allowing them to reunite with their loved ones.”
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Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah freed after Sisi pardon | Human Rights News
Prominent Egyptian-British human rights activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been freed after spending most of the past 12 years in prison, his family said, a day after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi pardoned him and five other prisoners.
“I can’t even describe what I feel,” Abd El-Fattah’s mother, Laila Soueif, said from her house in Giza early on Tuesday as she stood next to her son, surrounded by jubilant family and friends.
“We’re happy, of course. But our greatest joy will come when there are no [political] prisoners in Egypt,” she said.
Considered to be among the most high-profile political prisoners in Egypt, Abd El-Fattah’s lengthy imprisonment and repeated hunger strikes had prompted international pleas for the Egyptian government to release him.
The former blogger had been detained before the Arab Spring uprising that toppled Egypt’s hardline leader, Hosni Mubarak, in 2011 and during the years of upheaval that followed.
But it was his criticism of government crackdowns on political dissidents after then-army chief el-Sisi gained power in Egypt in 2014 that landed him his lengthiest prison stints by far.
In 2014, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for protesting without permission. He was briefly released in 2019, but remained on parole, and was arrested again later that year and sentenced to another five-year term.
Friends, family and supporters shared photos on social media of the activist after his release, showing a smiling Abd El-Fattah embracing his mother and other relatives.
His sister, Mona Seif, celebrated her brother’s release on social media: “The world is full of nightmares, injustice, violence, and many things that break the heart.. but we can take a breath and give happiness a chance to fill our hearts.. and keep going.”
“Oh Lord, the same joy for the families of all the detainees,” she wrote in a separate post.
“Can you imagine if this happened, how much beauty and happiness would fill our world in a single moment?”
Abd El-Fattah’s lengthy detention had become emblematic of the fraying of Egypt’s democracy.
“I strongly welcome the news that Alaa Abd El-Fattah has received a Presidential pardon,” United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said.
“I’m grateful to President Sisi for this decision. We look forward to Alaa being able to return to the UK, to be reunited with his family.”
Abd El-Fattah, who obtained UK citizenship through his mother in 2021, comes from a family of well-known activists and intellectuals who had launched several campaigns for his release.
His mother met UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer earlier this year to lobby for her son’s release.
Intensifying her campaign in September 2024, when she was expecting her son’s release due to the time he spent in pre-trial detention, Soueif staged a lengthy hunger strike in the UK, ending it only after pleas from her family as her health significantly deteriorated.
Starmer had promised he would do everything he could to secure the release of Abd El-Fattah, who has also staged multiple hunger strikes in detention, most recently in early September, to protest against his imprisonment and in solidarity with his mother.
But his most dramatic hunger strike was in 2022, as Egypt hosted the annual United Nations climate summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. The strike ended when Abd El-Fattah lost consciousness and was revived with fluids.
Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights, a state-funded body, also welcomed his release, saying it signalled a growing emphasis on swift justice for Egyptian authorities.
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Egypt’s president pardons prominent activist
Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has pardoned the prominent British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, who has been imprisoned for six years, state media and his family say.
Abdel Fattah was one of six people whose sentences were commuted following a request from the National Council for Human Rights, according to Al-Qahera News. His sister Mona Seif wrote on X: “My heart will explode.”
The 43-year-old blogger and pro-democracy activist is one of Egypt’s best known political prisoners.
He was arrested in 2019 during a crackdown on dissent and sentenced to five years in prison in 2021 after being convicted of “spreading false news” for sharing a post about a prisoner dying after torture.
His family said he should have been released in September 2024. However, Egyptian authorities refused to count the two years he spent in pre-trial detention as time served.
Abdel Fattah’s lawyer, Khaled Ali, confirmed in a Facebook post on Monday afternoon that he had been pardoned and that he would be released from Wadi al-Natrun prison, north-west of Cairo, once the pardon was published in the official gazette.
Abdel Fattah’s other sister Sanaa Seif later wrote on X: “President Sisi has pardoned my brother!”
“Mum & I are heading to the prison now to inquire from where Alaa will be released and when… OMG I can’t believe we get our lives back!”
The National Council for Human Rights welcomed the pardons, saying the decision was “a step that underscores a growing commitment to reinforcing the principles of swift justice and upholding fundamental rights and freedoms”.
US-based campaign group Human Rights Watch said it hoped Abdel Fattah’s pardon act would “act as a watershed moment and provide an opportunity for Sisi’s government to end the wrongful detention of thousands of peaceful critics”.
Two weeks ago, Sisi ordered the authorities to study the NCHR’s petitions for the release of Abdel Fattah and six others, which the institution said it had submitted “in light of the humanitarian and health conditions experienced by [their] families”.
Abdel Fattah’s 68-year-old mother, Leila Soueif, who is also a British citizen, ended a nine-month-long hunger strike in July after receiving assurances from the UK government that it was doing everything it could to secure his release.
She lost more than 40% of her original body weight and was twice admitted to hospital in London during the strike, which saw her consume only tea, coffee and rehydration salts.
Abdel Fattah has also staged a number of hunger strikes himself. One in 2022, as Egypt hosted the UN climate conference, led to international pressure for his release and an improvement in his conditions in jail.
The activist first rose to prominence during the 2011 uprising in Egypt that forced long-time President Hosni Mubarak to resign.
He has spent most of his time in prison since 2014, the year after Sisi led the military’s overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi.
Sisi has overseen what human rights groups say is an unprecedented crackdown on dissent that has led to the detention of tens of thousands of people.
In 2015, a court sentenced Abdel Fattah to five years in prison for participating in an unauthorised protest.
In September 2019, only six months after he had been released on probation, he was arrested again and held in pre-trial detention for more than two years.
He was convicted of “spreading false news” and handed another five-year sentence in December 2021 following a trial that human rights groups said was grossly unfair.
Although he acquired British citizenship in 2021, Egypt has never allowed him a consular visit by British diplomats.
In May, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention – a panel of independent human rights experts – found that Abdel Fattah was arbitrarily arrested for exercising his right to freedom of expression, was not given a fair trial, and continued to be detained for his political opinions.
According to the panel, the Egyptian government said he was afforded “all fair trial rights” and that his sentence would be completed in January 2027.
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Trump to join thousands at memorial for right-wing US activist Charlie Kirk | Politics News
US President Donald Trump to address Arizona service for assassinated ally.
Published On 21 Sep 202521 Sep 2025
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Tens of thousands of people are expected to attend a memorial service in Arizona for Charlie Kirk, the right-wing United States activist and founder of Turning Point USA who was shot dead this month.
The event will take place on Sunday at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, which seats more than 63,000 people. Organisers said additional space has been arranged nearby to accommodate overflow crowds.
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President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and several other Republicans will address the gathering, which Turning Point USA has called Building a Legacy: Remembering Charlie Kirk. Kirk’s widow, Erika, who recently became the organisation’s chief executive, is also expected to speak.
The Department of Homeland Security has classified the service as an event of “the highest national significance”, a designation usually reserved for occasions such as the Super Bowl. Officials said tight security measures are in place due to Trump’s attendance and the political tension surrounding Kirk’s killing.
Kirk, 31, was killed on September 10 during a university event in Utah. Police charged a 22-year-old suspect with murder, saying he carried out the attack alone and killed Kirk because he had “enough of his hate”.
Kirk was a polarising figure who called for the use of tear gas, rubber bullets and whips against immigrants at the US-Mexico border; suggested Islam is a danger to American society; and claimed there was “no factual data to back up global warming”.
The US right-wing viewed Kirk as a major figure in the Trump movement who played a pivotal role in building support for the US president and conservative causes among young people.
Trump has been accused of exploiting Kirk’s murder for political gain by linking the killing to what he calls “left-wing extremism” despite law enforcement dismissing claims of a wider alleged assassination plot. His remarks have drawn criticism from opponents who accused him of inflaming political divisions.
Kirk established Turning Point USA in 2012 at the age of 18. The organisation has grown into one of the largest right-wing groups in the US with influence across high schools, universities and social media platforms.
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ICE denies using excessive force as it broadens immigration arrests in Chicago
PARK RIDGE, Ill. — It was 3:30 a.m. when 10 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers gathered in a parking lot in the Chicago suburbs for a briefing about a suspect they were hoping to arrest. They went over a description of the person, made sure their radios were on the same channel and discussed where the closest hospital was in case something went wrong.
“Let’s plan on not being there,” said one of the officers, before they climbed into their vehicles and headed out.
Across the city and surrounding suburbs, other teams were fanning out in support of “Operation Midway Blitz.” It has unleashed President Trump’s mass deportations agenda on a city and state that has had some of the strongest laws preventing local officials from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement.
ICE launched the operation Sept. 8, drawing concern from activists and immigrant communities fearful of the large-scale arrests or aggressive tactics used in other cities targeted by the Republican president. They say there has been a noticeable increase in immigration enforcement agents, although a military deployment to Chicago has yet to materialize.
The Associated Press went on a ride-along with ICE in a Chicago suburb — much of the recent focus — to see how that operation is unfolding.
A predawn wait, then two arrests
A voice came over the radio: “He got into the car. I’m not sure if that’s the target.”
Someone matching the description of the man whom ICE was searching for walked out of the house, got into a car and drove away from the tree-lined street. Unsure whether this was their target, the officers followed. A few minutes later, with the car approaching the freeway, the voice over the radio said: “He’s got the physical description. We just can’t see the face good.”
“Do it,” said Marcos Charles, the acting head of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations.
Agents in multiple vehicles soon overtook the car and boxed it in. After talking to the man, they realized he was not the person being sought but concluded that he was in the United States illegally, so they took him into custody.
Eventually, a little after dawn broke on the one- and two-story brick houses, the man they were looking for came out of the house and got into a car. ICE officers closed in. The man got out of the vehicle and was arrested. ICE said both men were in the country illegally and had criminal records.
Charles called it a “successful operation.”
“There was no safety issues on the part of our officers, nor the individuals that we arrested. And it went smoothly,” he said.
‘ICE does not belong here’
Activists and critics of ICE say that’s increasingly not the norm in immigration operations.
They point to videos showing ICE agents smashing windows to apprehend suspects, a chaotic showdown outside a popular Italian restaurant in San Diego, and arrests like that of a Tufts University student in March by masked agents outside her apartment in Somerville, Mass., as neighbors watched.
Charles said that ICE is using an “appropriate” amount of force and that agents are responding to suspects who increasingly are not following commands.
There has been “an uptick in people that are not compliant,” he said, blaming what he characterized as inflammatory rhetoric from activists encouraging people to resist.
Alderman Andre Vasquez, who chairs the Chicago City Council’s committee on immigrant and refugee rights, strenuously objected to that description, faulting ICE for any escalation.
“We’re not here to cause chaos. The president is,” Vasquez said. He accused immigration enforcement agents of trying to provoke activists into overreacting to justify calling in a greater use of force such as National Guard troops.
“ICE does not belong here,” he said.
Shooting by ICE agent raises tensions
Chicago was already on edge when a shooting Sept. 12 heightened tensions even more.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said an ICE officer fatally shot Silverio Villegas González, whom it described as a Mexican immigrant who tried to evade arrest in a Chicago suburb by driving his car at officers and dragging one of them. The department said the officer believed his life was threatened and therefore opened fire, killing the man.
Charles said he could not comment because there is an open investigation. But he said he met with the officer in the hospital, saw his injuries and thought that the force used was appropriate.
The officer was not wearing a body camera, Charles said.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, has demanded “a full, factual accounting” of the shooting. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum condemned the death and said Mexico is demanding a thorough investigation.
“These tactics have led to the loss of life of one of our community members,” said Democratic Illinois state Rep. Norma Hernandez.
In another use-of-force incident under Midway Blitz that has drawn criticism, a U.S. citizen was detained by immigration agents alongside his father and hit by a stun gun three times Tuesday in suburban Des Plaines, the man’s lawyer said.
Local advocates have also condemned ICE agents for wearing masks, failing to identify themselves, and not using body cameras — actions that contrast with Chicago Police Department policy.
‘It was time to hit Chicago’
Charles said there is no timeline for the ICE-led operation in the Chicago area to end. As of Thursday, immigration enforcement officials had arrested nearly 550 people. Charles said 50% to 60% of those are targeted arrests, meaning they are people whom immigration enforcers are specifically trying to find.
He rejected criticism that ICE randomly targets people, saying agents weren’t “going out to Home Depot parking lots” to make indiscriminate arrests. Such arrests have been widely seen in recent months at Home Depots and other places of business in the Los Angeles area.
Charles said ICE has brought in more than 200 officers from around the country for the operation.
He said that for too long, cities such as Chicago that limited cooperation with ICE had allowed immigrants, especially those with criminal records, to remain in the country illegally. It was time to act, he said.
“It was time to hit Chicago.”
Santana writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Christine Fernando in Chicago contributed to this report.
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Pro-Palestine activist arrests test limits of UK free speech | Conflict
Palestinian activist Saeed Taji Farouky, of Defend Our Juries, says UK free speech is under threat after dawn raids on activist Paddy Friend and others. He warns that peaceful campaigners face terror charges over holding Zoom calls.
Published On 18 Sep 202518 Sep 2025
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US judge orders deportation of activist Mahmoud Khalil to Syria, Algeria | Donald Trump News
US immigration judge said prominent pro-Palestine activist withheld information on green card application.
Published On 18 Sep 202518 Sep 2025
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An immigration judge in the United States has ordered that pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil, who played a leading role in protests last year against Israel’s war on Gaza at the prestigious Columbia University, be deported to Algeria or Syria.
Court documents, revealed on Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), showed that Louisiana immigration Judge Jamee Comans issued the ruling on September 12, accusing Khalil of failing to disclose key information when he applied and secured lawful permanent residency in the US.
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Khalil, a native of Syria and an Algerian citizen of Palestinian origin, has previously said he fears being targeted by Israel for his activism if he is deported to either country.
Judge Comans claimed that Khalil did not disclose his ties to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and Columbia University Apartheid Divest, an activist group which advocates for an economic boycott of Israel, on his green card application, describing it as a “lack of candor” by the applicant.
“This Court finds that Respondent wilfully misrepresented material fact(s) for the sole purpose of circumventing the immigration process and reducing the likelihood his applications could be denied,” Comans said.
Khalil’s lawyers responded, saying that they intend to appeal the deportation order, and pointed to a federal district court’s order earlier this year prohibiting the government from immediately deporting or detaining Khalil as his federal court case proceeds.
Khalil’s legal team now has 30 days from the day of the deportation ruling, on September 12, to appeal against the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals. His lawyers said they expect the appeal process to be swift and their attempt unsuccessful, as noncitizens are “almost never” granted stays of removal.
US immigration agents first arrested Khalil – a former graduate student at Columbia University in New York – on March 8 after showing up at his student apartment building on campus in the city.
The arrest was part of a wider crackdown on pro-Palestine activism on college campuses across the US, which saw several overseas students detained and deported while universities were hit with federal funding cuts by Trump over alleged anti-Semitic activities.
Authorities held Khalil at an immigration detention centre in Louisiana for three months until he was released in June following a ruling by US District Judge Michael Farbiarz that his detention was unconstitutional.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and law enforcement officials had repeatedly portrayed Khalil’s peaceful activism as anti-Jewish and supportive of Hamas, but they failed to provide any evidence backing their allegations.
Farbiarz ruled that the Trump administration was likely violating Khalil’s right to free speech by detaining and attempting to deport him under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which allows the removal of foreign nationals who bear “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.
The White House has been relentless in its attempts to deport Khalil, pivoting more recently to the alleged violations of his green card application.
Khalil’s lawyers expressed concern following the deportation ruling that the “only meaningful impediment” to their client’s deportation was now the “important order prohibiting removal” issued by Judge Farbiarz.
In a statement published by the ACLU on Wednesday, Khalil also accused the Trump administration of using “fascist tactics” to retaliate against him for his “exercise of free speech”.
“When their first effort to deport me was set to fail, they resorted to fabricating baseless and ridiculous allegations in a bid to silence me for speaking out and standing firmly with Palestine, demanding an end to the ongoing genocide [in Gaza],” Khalil said.
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Oscar-winning actor, director and activist Robert Redford passes away at 89 | Obituaries News
Redford was a liberal activist and godfather for independent cinema under the name of one of his best-loved characters, the Sundance Kid.
Published On 16 Sep 202516 Sep 2025
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Robert Redford, the Oscar-winning actor, director and godfather for independent cinema as Sundance founder, has died at the age of 89.
Redford died “at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah – the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved,” publicist Cindi Berger said in a statement Tuesday.
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No cause of death was provided.
The iconic actor and director is best known for his acclaimed performances in All the President’s Men and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
The tousled-haired and freckled heartthrob made his breakthrough alongside Paul Newman as the affable outlaw in the hippy Western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” in 1969.
Redford made hearts beat faster in romantic roles such as “Out of Africa,” got political in “The Candidate” and “All the President’s Men” and skewered his golden-boy image in roles like the alcoholic ex-rodeo champ in “The Electric Horseman” and middle-aged millionaire who offers to buy sex in “Indecent Proposal.”
He never won the best actor Oscar, but his first outing as a director – the 1980 family drama “Ordinary People” – won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director.
Despite their chemistry and long personal friendship, Redford was never to team up again with Newman, who died in 2008.
“Butch Cassidy” made blue-eyed Redford an overnight star but he never felt comfortable with celebrity or the male starlet image that persisted late into his 60s.
“People have been so busy relating to how I look, it’s a miracle I didn’t become a self-conscious blob of protoplasm. It’s not easy being Robert Redford,” he once told New York magazine.
His wavy blond hair and boyish grin made him the most desired of leading men, but he worked hard to transcend his looks – whether through his political advocacy, his willingness to take on unglamorous roles or his dedication to providing a platform for low-budget movies.
Intensely private, he bought land in remote Utah in the early 1970s for his family retreat and enjoyed a level of privacy unknown to most superstars. He was married for more than 25 years to his first wife, before their divorce in 1985. In 2009, he married for a second time, to German artist and longtime partner Sibylle Szaggars.
He used the millions he made to launch the Sundance Institute and Festival in the 1970s, promoting independent filmmaking long before small and quirky were fashionable. The festival has become one of the most influential independent film showcases in the world.
Redford used his star status to also quietly champion environmental causes such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Wildlife Federation.
“Some people have analysis. I have Utah,” he once remarked.
Although he never showed an interest in entering politics, he often espoused a liberal viewpoint. In a 2017 interview, during the presidency of Donald Trump, he told Esquire magazine that “politics is in a very dark place right now” and that Trump should “quit for our benefit”.
In 2001, Redford won an honorary, or lifetime achievement, Oscar.
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Over 100,000 attend London rally led by far-right activist Tommy Robinson | Protests News
Cofounder of anti-Islamist EDL says rally is for free speech, as protesters attack police and antiracism campaigners.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of London for a march organised by far-right activist Tommy Robinson, as support for the anti-immigrant Reform UK party soars across the country.
London’s Metropolitan Police estimated that Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally drew about 110,000 people on Saturday, crowds marching from two directions – Waterloo Bridge and Lambeth Bridge – and converging on Whitehall, next to the United Kingdom Parliament.
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Al Jazeera witnessed people waving an assortment of flags – Union Jacks, the red and white St George’s Cross of England and the Israeli Star of David – chanting “[Keir] Starmer is a w*****” as they flocked to see famous far-right speakers next to the UK Prime Minister’s Downing Street residence, including Robinson, Katie Hopkins, and Steve Bannon.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and is known for his anti-immigrant and anti-Islam views, billed the march as a demonstration for free speech, British heritage and culture, pumping up the crowd with claims that migrants now had more rights in court than the “British public, the people that built this nation”.
The Met deployed more than 1,600 officers to keep apart Robinson’s rally and a counter “Stand Up to Racism” protest attended by about 5,000 people, reporting on X that a number of officers were assaulted as they tried to stop the former breaching cordons delineating a buffer area between the two.
“We continue to see significant aggression directed at officers by Unite the Kingdom protesters,” said the force on X, which arrested nine protesters, adding that additional officers supported by police horses had been deployed in “multiple locations”.
Stand Up to Racism counterprotest held
At the counterprotest, attended by left-wing lawmakers Zarah Sultana and Diane Abbott, the crowd held signs saying “refugees welcome” and ”smash the far right,” and shouted “stand up, fight back”.
The “Stand Up to Racism” campaign group posted on X that its protesters had also been attacked by Robinson’s followers. “Are these the ‘concerned ordinary people’ we’ve heard so much about? Or are they far right thugs,” said one post.
Robinson’s rally comes at the tail end of a highly charged summer in the UK that featured several protests staged outside hotels housing asylum seekers in England, following the arrest of an Ethiopian man who was later convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in a London suburb.
It also comes as the far-right, anti-immigrant Reform UK party establishes itself as a significant political force, with recent polls saying it would be the UK’s largest political party if a general election were held now.
People at the march displayed placards with slogans like “send them home” and “stop the boats”, the latter a reference to asylum seekers making the perilous journey over the English Channel in inflatable boats.
One woman who had travelled from Scotland for the march told Al Jazeera that she was sick of seeing homeless British people in the street while immigrants were receiving shelter and that empty buildings should be opened for both groups.
“Bad things are going to happen if things don’t change,” she said.
Robinson founded the nationalist and anti-Islamist English Defence League (EDL) and is one of the most influential far-right figures in the UK.
While the crowd attending the “Unite the Kingdom” was large, it fell far short of one of the biggest pro-Palestinian marches, which drew an estimated 300,000 people in November 2023.
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ICE officer shoots, kills suspect who dragged him with car near Chicago, Homeland Security says
CHICAGO — A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a man who officials said tried to evade arrest Friday in a Chicago suburb by driving his car at officers and dragging one of them.
The shooting just outside the city follows days of threats by the Trump administration to surge immigration enforcement in the nation’s third-largest city and less than a week into an operation labeled “Midway Blitz” by federal officials targeting the so-called sanctuary policies in Chicago and Illinois.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a news release that the officer was trying to arrest a man who had a history of reckless driving, but he refused officers’ orders and instead drove his car at them. An ICE officer who was hit and dragged by the car felt his life was threatened and opened fire, the department said.
ICE said both the officer and the driver from the shooting in the Franklin Park suburb, about 18 miles west of Chicago, were taken to a hospital, where the driver was pronounced dead.
“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 spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said he is aware of the shooting and demanded “a full, factual accounting of what’s happened today to ensure transparency and accountability.”
Video from the scene shows police tape and traffic cones blocking off parts of the street where a large food distribution truck and gray car can be seen from a distance. Multiple law enforcement vehicles were surrounding the area.
Erendira Rendón, chief program officer at a local advocacy group called the Resurrection Project, said the shooting “shows us the real danger that militarized enforcement creates in our neighborhoods.”
“A community member is dead, and an officer was injured,” Rendón said in a statement. “These are outcomes that serve no public safety purpose and leave entire communities traumatized. … When federal agents conduct unaccountable operations in our communities, everyone becomes less safe.”
Chicagoans, meanwhile, have been preparing for weekend Mexican Independence Day celebrations that include parades, festivals, street parties and car caravans, despite the potential immigration crackdown.
McLaughlin said that “viral social media videos and activists encouraging illegal aliens to resist law enforcement” have made the work of ICE officers more dangerous.
Santana and Fernando write for the Associated Press. Santana reported from Washington.
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How a teenage activist became such a close Trump ally
Bernd Debusmann Jr and Mike WendlingBBC News
One of the first people JD Vance called before deciding to jump into politics was Charlie Kirk.
“[Kirk] introduced me to some of the people who would run my [Senate] campaign and also to Donald Trump Jr,” the vice-president wrote in a powerful tribute he penned hours after Kirk’s death.
“Don took a call from me because Charlie asked him.”
Three years after that winning Senate run, when the elder Donald Trump was pondering his choice of presidential running mate, Kirk argued the case for Vance “in public and private”, Vance wrote.
By then, Kirk was already a fixture in Trump’s orbit, courting donors and discussing strategies at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and hosting Turning Point USA summits hosted by local Republicans.
He never ran for office or held an official government position, but Kirk rose from being an unknown activist from the suburbs of Chicago to standard bearer of Donald Trump’s Maga movement.
Kirk was President Trump’s bridge to young Republicans, and Trump credited him and his organisation with his victory in 2024.
He was also a close personal friend of the Trump family, a key White House adviser, a hero to many young Republicans and a foil for the party’s opponents.
A meteoric rise to MAGA star
Born in a suburb of Chicago in 1993, Kirk got started early in conservative politics, first penning an essay for right-wing Breitbart News at the age of 18, accusing schools of spreading “propaganda” and “indoctrination”.
He caught the eye of Bill Montgomery, a retired businessman and Tea Party activist more than 50 years his senior, who took Kirk under his wing.
In 2012 – around the midpoint of Barack Obama’s presidency – the pair founded Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a group which focused on conservative activism on college campuses, spreading rapidly along with Kirk’s social media following.
The group tapped into online media and spread a slickly packaged style of conservatism to young people. It won him a speaking place, aged 23, at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
At the time, Kirk – who had worked with more conventional Republican candidates in the past – admitted to a Wired magazine that he “was not the world’s biggest Donald Trump fan”.
But from that moment on he quickly became one of Trump’s biggest backers, steadfastly tracking the Maga agenda and disagreeing only on rare occasions.
Following Kirk’s death, Jared Kushner – the president’s son in-law – wrote on X that he “played a significant role in helping President Trump’s 2016 campaign, building and fostering the Maga movement”, adding that he told established political organisations that “he comes with big ideas, is easy to work with and always overdelivers.”
Lawrence Muir, a former official in Trump’s first administration, said that Kirk’s influence was key early on in Trump’s first term, and that TPUSA “was the main recruitment vehicle for younger people.”
But perhaps his more far-reaching impact, Mr Muir said, was in giving other conservatives an understanding of social media and how to reach young people.
“What [Kirk] really did was give a launching pad to those who weren’t as interested in becoming bureaucratic functionalities, but were in going out and building winning coalitions,” he said.
Hard-right Trump loyalist
Kirk’s political views drifted rightward over time. He was against gay marriage and abortion, argued for Christian nationalism and was highly critical of Islam, and famously said that gun deaths were “worth it” for the right to own firearms. He was also an opponent of diversity programmes and spread falsehoods about topics such as Covid vaccines and voting fraud.
Above all, he was loyal to Trump.
At the end of Trump’s first term, with the president pushing false allegations of election fraud, Kirk bragged about sending 80 buses of supporters to Washington just in time for the rally which devolved into the Jan 6 riot at the US Capitol.
Kirk was hauled in front of a Congressional committee investigating the riot and declined to say much of anything, instead invoking his constitutional right not to incriminate himself.
But by July 2024 he had tempered his views, telling the BBC that he believed it existed but only “on the edges”. Instead, he said and his group were laser focused – like the Trump campaign – on maximising early voting methods that they had previously shunned as illegitimate and ripe for fraud.
Credit from Trump
Kirk poured millions of TPUSA dollars and thousands of volunteers into get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states during last year’s election, and his strategy appears to have worked.
The organisation’s “ground game” was crucial, analysts say, helping make up for the formal Trump campaign’s struggles reaching infrequent voters, or those untouched by traditional outreach.
Although Democrat Kamala Harris won the youth vote overall, it was by a far smaller margin than that of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.
Trump himself gave Kirk credit at TPUSA’s annual AmericaFest conference in December, just a few weeks after his election victory.
“I want to express my tremendous gratitude to Charlie Kirk. He’s really an amazing guy, amazing guy and his whole staff for their relentless efforts to achieve this very historic victory,” Trump said.
The gathering was triumphant, bombastic and slickly produced, with huge video screens – a demonstration of TPUSA’s deep pockets. The group has now spread to 3,500 high schools and colleges and brought in more than $85m (£62m) last year, according to investigative journalism outlet ProPublica.
It also showed off Kirk’s ability to bring together disparate wings of the Make America Great Again movement – members of Congress, dark arts strategists like Roger Stone and conspiracy-obsessed social media influencers.
Ever closer to White House power
Kirk’s influence arguably grew even more during Trump’s second term. Just two days before Trump took office, the pair played golf together in Mar-a-Lago.
His relationships with Trump and the rest of the family even gave him sway over government posts – Kirk was reportedly involved in vetting administration appointees earlier this year.
In his tribute, Vance wrote: “He didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government.”
And while his social media and podcast output continued at pace, along with campus tours and other speaking commitments, he continued to hew to Trump’s agenda.
After criticising the Justice Department for dragging its feet on releasing files related to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, he took a phone call with Trump. Shortly thereafter, Kirk declared that he was “done talking about Epstein”.
News of his killing hit the White House hard, starting with the startled gasps of young staffers who saw news of the shooting while scrolling on their phones.
“Oh my God,” one young woman was heard saying, before scurrying down a hallway to tell others. “Charlie Kirk has been shot!”
Some staff were wiping away tears. President Trump received updates and fielded phone calls from the Oval Office before ultimately taking to Truth Social to publicly confirm his death and later delivering a video address on his murder and ordering flags across the country to fly at half-staff.
“Charlie was very much a part of this family, and maybe the highest-profile Maga person outside of those that are working here,” Chief-of-Staff Susie Wiles told CNN. “I think it shook everybody to their core.”
Donald Trump Jr posted his own message saying that Kirk “wasn’t just a friend, he was like a little brother to me.
Dr Matthew Dallek, a professor at George Washington University and expert on modern conservatism, said that the close personal ties between Kirk and the Trump family were “really important” to the TPUSA founder’s broader influence.
“Trump prizes loyalty, above maybe anything else,” he said. “And if Don Jr is saying he was like a brother to him, that suggests just how great a supporter Kirk was. They viewed him as an absolutely critical ally and advisor.
“There was a kindred spirit there, and they did not have to worry about him bolting from the movement. He was loyal.”
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What we know about fatal shooting of conservative US activist
Charlie Kirk, an influential right-wing activist and a close ally of US President Donald Trump, was shot dead while speaking at an event at a university in Utah.
Here is what we know.
What happened?
Kirk, 31, was speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem on 10 September, 2025 as part of his “American Comeback” tour.
He sat under a white gazebo to take questions from a crowd of about 3,000 in the university’s “quad”, an outdoor courtyard.
At about 12:20, he is asked by a member of the crowd: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?”
He replies: “Too many.”
The questioner then states there had been five in 10 years and asks Kirk how many mass shootings there had been in that time.
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk replies.
Then a single shot is heard, which is believed to have been fired from the roof of the Losee Center, a building overlooking the quad.
Kirk then slumps in his chair with a clearly visible wound to his neck. He is bleeding profusely as his staff get him off stage.
The crowds around the tent then begin to flee, and screams can be heard.
What do we know about the suspect?
No-one has been caught so far – and authorities haven’t named a suspect or their alleged motive.
But Utah’s public safety commissioner said the gunman appeared to be of “college age”, and had blended in well with other students.
Investigators have released photos of a “person of interest” and appealed for public help identifying the man pictured, who was wearing sunglasses, Converse shoes and a “distinctive” long-sleeved black top featuring an American flag and an eagle.
At a press conference on Thursday night, Utah Governor Spencer Cox also released a video of what police believe is the suspect fleeing the scene.
A figure dressed in black is seen running across the roof of the building from where the shot was fired and jumping to the grass below, before walking towards a nearby road and a cluster of trees.
The FBI earlier said they found a high-powered firearm – an imported Mauser .30-06 bolt action rifle – wrapped in a towel in a wooded area.
Other videos, including two examined by BBC Verify, also appear to show a dark figure running across the roof of a building in the aftermath of the shooting.
Officials say a palm print and forearm imprints were also discovered, and that “a lot” of forensic evidence is being processed in federal and state laboratories.
“We are going to catch this person,” Governor Cox said on Thursday. “We’ve been working with our attorneys, getting everything that we need… ready so that we can pursue the death penalty in this case.”
Utah is one of 27 states in the US where the death penalty is legal.
Thousands of tips from members of the public have been pouring in, the largest number the FBI has received since the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, he added. More than 200 interviews have been conducted too.
Eyewitnesses at the university during the shooting have also been describing what they saw to reporters.
“I heard a loud shot, a loud bang and then I saw his body actually – in slow motion – kind of fall over,” one witness said.
“We all dropped to the ground, and I want to say we sat like that for about 30 to 45 seconds, and then everyone around us got up and started running,” said Emma Pitts, a reporter from Deseret News.
Who was Charlie Kirk?
Kirk was one of the most high-profile right-wing activists and media personalities in the US. He was a trusted ally of Trump, attended his inauguration and regularly visited the White House.
As an 18-year-old in 2012, he co-founded Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a student organisation that aims to spread conservative ideals at liberal-leaning US colleges.
He became known for holding open-air debates on campuses across the country, fielding quick questions in a signature “Prove Me Wrong” style.
His social media feed and daily podcast offer a snapshot of what he often debated – the issues ranged from gun rights and climate change, to faith and family values.
Kirk had many critics who saw him as a divisive figure that promoted controversial and, at times, conspiratorial beliefs such as the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
But he also had his fans. They credit him with playing a key role in convincing younger voters to turn out for Trump in last year’s election.
He was valued within the Trump administration for his keen understanding of the Maga movement.
What has the reaction been?
There has been shock, grief and anger across the political spectrum.
“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No-one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” Trump said in a statement on Truth Social.
“He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me,” the president added, ordering that all flags be flown at half-mast across the country.
Former US presidents have offered their condolences. Joe Biden said there was “no place in our country for this kind of violence”, while Barack Obama called the shooting a “despicable act”.
But the death has also laid bare the deep polarisations within American politics.
From the Oval Office on Wednesday night, local time, Trump said “radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people”.
Some of his allies – including Laura Loomer and Elon Musk – similarly pinned blame on the left or the Democratic Party, and called for mass arrests.
Conservative commentators have also highlighted tasteless comments by left-wing activists appearing to celebrate or condone Kirk’s death.
This has spilled out in Congress, where shouting broke out after a moment of silence for Kirk. Republican representative Anna Paulina Luna accused Democrats of spreading hateful rhetoric.
However, the comments from Trump and his allies have stirred controversy, with critics saying they neglect to acknowledge that the spate of violence is affecting left-leaning politicians too, and arguing they could heighten tensions further.
Is political violence in the US increasing?
The US has experienced about 150 politically motivated attacks in the first six months of this year.
That is nearly twice as many as over the same period last year, an expert told Reuters news agency.
Mike Jensen – from the University of Maryland, which for more than 50 years has tracked political violence in a database – said the US is in a “a very, very dangerous spot right now”.
“This could absolutely serve as a kind of flashpoint that inspires more of it.”
Kirk’s murder is the latest in a string of high-profile attacks against political leaders in the US, including two attempted assassinations on Trump during his 2024 election campaign.
The president suffered an ear injury in an attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July.
In June, Minnesota’s top Democratic legislator and her husband were murdered in their home.
In 2022, the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was bludgeoned with a hammer after a man broke into the couple’s home looking for the top-ranking Democrat with the intention of taking her hostage.
Former US representative Gabby Giffords – who survived being shot in the head during a meeting with constituents in 2011 – also condemned the attack.
“Democratic societies will always have political disagreements, but we must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story said Kirk’s wife and children were present at the event. In fact this is unclear.
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