Washington, DC – Journalists, academics, airline employees, doctors and restaurant workers across the United States have been fired or investigated by their employers over the past week for comments deemed insensitive on the killing of Charlie Kirk.
The firings at a moment of rising political tensions in the US have ignited debates over the limits of free speech, cancel culture, doxxing and labour protections, as well as the legacy of Kirk.
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The 31-year-old right-wing commentator was fatally shot in Utah last week.
While parts of the country mourned Kirk as a martyr who championed patriotism and open debate, others recalled his divisive views, including his anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric. Some even celebrated his death.
Many Republicans responded with a campaign of naming and shaming to ostracise people who reacted to the assassination in ways that they considered objectionable.
Former MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd was one of the earliest targets of that effort.
Shortly after Kirk was shot, Dowd said the conservative commentator pushed “hate speech” against some groups. “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions,” the analyst said on air.
The comment sparked outrage from Kirk’s supporters, leading MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler to apologise for what she called the “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable” remarks.
Dowd was later fired – a move that he rejected and blamed on a right-wing “media mob” that “misconstrued” his words.
This week, columnist Karen Attiah was also sacked from her position at the Washington Post over her response to the killing of Kirk.
Attiah had fired off a series of social media posts around race and gun violence after the assassination.
A letter of termination that she shared online on Tuesday cited a post in which she defended refusing to engage in “performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence” without explicitly mentioning Kirk as one of the reasons for her sacking.
Officials back sacking campaign
Private citizens from all walks of life have also faced calls to be let go from their jobs over their takes on the killing of Kirk – social media posts that ranged from revelling in his death to linking the assassination to the commentator’s own views and support for gun rights.
For example, influential right-wing social media accounts have been demanding the firing of a Pennsylvania teacher for calling Kirk “racist”, although she also said that he “didn’t deserve to die”.
Kirk himself was no stranger to controversial opinions. He repeatedly attacked Islam and Muslims.
“Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,” he wrote in a recent social media post.
He was also a promoter of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory – the notion that there is a plan (usually claimed to be carried out by Jewish elites) to replace white populations with immigrants, which has inspired white nationalist mass shooters across the world.
But on the right, the status of Kirk only rose after his death. With that apparent canonisation came the push to protect his legacy from detractors and those finding humour, joy or irony in his death.
Almost immediately after the shooting, right-wing groups started publishing the names and personal information – including place of employment – of social media users who allegedly celebrated the assassination.
Republican politicians, including lawmakers, joined calls for the firing of individuals over Kirk-related social media posts deemed by them to be offensive.
In Indiana, State Attorney General Todd Rokita encouraged submissions to a database on school employees who made “comments that celebrate or rationalise” the shooting of Kirk.
US Vice President JD Vance backed the effort as well, saying that people who celebrated the assassination should be held to account. “Call them out, and hell, call their employer,” he said on Monday.
US Congressman Randy Fine, of Florida, threatened to revoke the professional state licences of offenders, including lawyers, teachers and doctors.
Fine himself cheered for the killing of US citizen Aysenur Ezgi Eygi by Israeli forces last year. “One less #MuslimTerrorist. #FireAway,” he wrote on social media after Eygi was fatally shot in the occupied West Bank.
Is it legal?
While the First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, it does not apply to private employers.
But some states have laws to protect speech and political activities of employees when they are not at work.
Jenin Younes, a prominent free speech lawyer who recently became the legal director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), said private companies have “a lot of latitude” to reprimand workers for their speech.
However, when it comes to public schools and universities, it’s more complicated.
“Public employers, broadly speaking, are bound by the First Amendment,” Younes said. “But there are circumstances in which they can consider someone’s speech to fire them.”
These “exceptions and qualifications” are on a case-by-case basis.
For example, Younes said a public school teacher could say that Kirk’s ideas were “loathsome”, but saying that he deserves to die would probably cross the line.
The law aside, Younes said the firing frenzy is “problematic philosophically”, especially given that some of the people were sacked for simply criticising Kirk, not glorifying violence.
“It’s very bad for a free society,” she told Al Jazeera. “People rely on their jobs. They need their jobs in order to live and support their families. So, if we want to live in a society where we have robust dialogue and debate, which is the purpose of the First Amendment, it’s bad from a practical standpoint.”
Younes said she understands why private employers may want to curb social media posts by employees that clash with the company’s brand and mission.
But a better approach than letting go of workers, she added, is to discuss the matter with them and warn them to refrain from posting similar messages in the future.
“We should always err towards more discussion and debate and not silencing people,” Younes said. “And we have to remember people have moments when they get emotional and say things they don’t mean.”
Beyond the firing campaign, several Republican politicians have pushed policy ideas to regulate speech, especially on social media, after Kirk was killed.
Republican US Congressman Clay Higgins vowed to “use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate [an] immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination” of Kirk.
US Congressman Chip Roy led a congressional letter requesting the formation of a committee to investigate the “radical left”.
For her part, Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested that federal authorities will push to penalise speech that they view as hateful.
“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech,” she said on Monday. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
Role reversal
For some observers, that right-wing push is increasingly appearing like a role reversal of the ideological blocs in the US.
For years, the right raged against the notion of “hate speech” and some left-wing activists’ push to fire and “cancel” those with views they find offensive – especially on issues of race and gender identity.
Right-wing politicians were also vocal opponents of any governmental efforts to regulate social media content.
Kirk himself had rejected penalising “hate speech”, although he backed US President Donald Trump’s clampdown on pro-Palestine student activists.
“Hate speech does not exist legally in America,” Kirk wrote in a social media post last year. “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”
Younes, who led a lawsuit against the Democratic administration of former US President Joe Biden over alleged social media censorship efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, noted what she called “the hypocrisy”.
“A lot of the people who were against ‘cancel culture’, when it was the left doing it, are now suddenly very eager to embrace cancel culture when they don’t like the speech in question, which I think shows the heart of the struggle on this issue,” she said.
“Everybody claims to be against censorship when it’s ideas that they like that are being censored, but then when it’s their ideological opponents, they’re very happy to do the censoring.”
She warned that the push to curb freedom of expression around the killing of Kirk could extend to other issues, including intensifying the crackdown on Palestinian rights advocacy.
“Any kind of censorship that’s used for one type of speech can always be adjusted to apply to another type of speech,” she said.
Who exactly are the ABC affiliate owners who issued statements against Jimmy Kimmel?
NEW YORK — Two ABC affiliate owners spoke out against late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel ahead of ABC’s decision to suspend the presenter over comments he made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Their comments highlight the influence that local TV station owners have on national broadcasters such as Disney-owned ABC.
Here are key facts about the two companies.
Nexstar Media Group, based in Irving, Texas, operates 28 ABC affiliates. It said it would pull Kimmel’s show starting Wednesday. Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death were “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division.
The company owns or partners with more than 200 stations in 116 U.S. markets, and owns broadcast networks the CW and NewsNation, as well as the political website the Hill and nearly a third of the Food Network.
It hopes to get even bigger. Last month, it announced a $6.2-billion deal to buy TEGNA Inc., which owns 64 other TV stations.
The deal would require the Federal Communications Commission to change rules limiting the number of stations a single company can own. The FCC’s chair, Brendan Carr, has expressed openness to changing the rule.
Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair Broadcast Group, based in Hunt Valley, Md., operates 38 local ABC affiliates. On Wednesday the company, which has a reputation for a conservative viewpoint in its broadcasts, called on Kimmel to apologize to Kirk’s family and make a “meaningful personal donation” to the activist’s political organization, Turning Point USA. Sinclair said its ABC stations will air a tribute to Kirk on Friday in Kimmel’s time slot.
Sinclair owns, operates or provides services to 178 TV stations in 81 markets affiliated with all major broadcast networks and owns Tennis Channel.
Controversies
Sinclair made headlines in 2018 when a video that stitched together dozens of news anchors for Sinclair-owned local stations reading identical statements decrying “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing the country” went viral. Sinclair didn’t disclose that it ordered the anchors to read the statement.
Nexstar operates similarly.
Danilo Yanich, professor of public policy at the University of Delaware, said the company is the “biggest duplicator” of news content today His research showed Nexstar stations duplicated broadcasts more than other affiliate owners.
Affiliate influence
Lauren Herold, an editor of the forthcoming book “Local TV,” said the web of companies involved in getting Americans their television shows is “relatively unknown” to most viewers, though their influence has been made known for decades.
Often, Herold said, that’s been when local affiliates have balked at airing something they viewed as controversial, such as the episode of the 1990s comedy “Ellen” in which Ellen DeGeneres’ character came out as gay.
“It’s not a complete oddity,” Herold said. “I think what’s more alarming about this particular incident to me is the top-down nature of it.”
Whereas past flare-ups between affiliates and their parent networks have often involved individual local TV executives, Herold pointed to the powerful voices at play in Kimmel’s suspension: Disney CEO Bob Iger, the FCC’s chair Carr, as well as Sinclair and Nexstar.
“The FCC kind of pinpointing particular programs to cancel is concerning to people who advocate for television to be a forum for free discussion and debate,” Herold said.
Jasmine Bloemhof, a media strategist who has worked with local stations, including ones owned by Sinclair and Nexstar, said consolidation has given such companies “enormous influence.” Controversies like the latest involving Kimmel, she said, “reveal the tension between Hollywood-driven programming and the values of everyday Americans.”
“Networks may push one agenda, but affiliates owned by companies like Sinclair and Nexstar understand they serve conservative-leaning communities across the country,” Bloemhof said. “And that friction is bound to surface.”
Anderson and Sedensky write for the Associated Press.
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Contributor: The right now embraces cancel culture
In the days since Charlie Kirk’s killing, conservatives have embraced a phenomenon they previously called toxic: cancel culture.
The impulse to cancel some voices this past week is understandable: Celebrating murder is cruel. It’s gross. It’s wrong. But the irony is impossible to miss: Conservatives, who long treated cancel culture as an affront to the 1st Amendment spirit of open discourse, are now calling for people to lose their jobs and their livelihoods, all because of something stupid they said on the internet.
This is the same issue that drove numerous stand-up comedians, young men, podcasters and Silicon Valley tech bros into the arms of Donald Trump in 2024. But now, in an amazing turn of events, conservatives are now aping the progressive scolds and speech cops, only with red hats.
Actually, their version is worse. The left’s “accountability culture” mob might have been overbearing, but their agenda was (with a few notable exceptions) largely driven by hall monitors. Today’s “woke right” is executing things in a more overt, efficient and official manner — which for the record means it can violate not just the spirit of the 1st Amendment but the actual, you know … 1st Amendment.
As a case in point, JD Vance, the vice president of the United States of America, recently told Kirk’s radio audience: “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. And hell, call their employer.”
Which raises the question, what if their employer is the government? That would be awkward. But no problem! Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reportedly telling staff to track down soldiers guilty of wrongspeak. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) is trying to get teachers terminated, tweeting: “We don’t fund hate. We fire it” — which feels like the sort of slogan Mao might have had printed on a T-shirt.
And speaking of printers, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi has warned that the government can “prosecute” any professional printer who refuses to “print posters with Charlie’s pictures on them for a vigil.” She also pledged to “absolutely target” anyone who targets anyone with “hate speech.”
Not long ago, progressives insisted bakers must bake cakes for gay weddings, and now a U.S. attorney general from a Republican administration is insisting that printers must print images for vigils. Funny how the tables turn.
Then, there’s the so-called Charlie Kirk Data Foundation, which claims to have a searchable list of tens of thousands of people who posted mean tweets after Kirk’s death. Collectively, this purge campaign seems to be working. A lot of scalps have already been claimed, including those of prominent pundits and late night host Jimmy Kimmel (who was suspended after making remarks about the motives of Kirk’s killer).
But — let’s be clear — opposition to cancel culture is merely the latest principle that Trump-era Republicans have conveniently abandoned. Indeed, almost every tenet that conservatives held dear a decade ago has been reversed.
And people are starting to notice. Oregon state Rep. Cyrus Javadi recently switched parties, citing the GOP’s abandonment of principles like “limited government, fiscal responsibility, free speech, free trade, and, above all, the rule of law.”
He has a point. Trump’s America now owns a chunk of U.S. chipmaker Intel (so much for small government), spends like a drunken sailor, slaps tariffs on everything that moves (bye-bye, free trade) and ignores laws he doesn’t like — most recently, the TikTok sell-off mandate that was passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, which Trump decided to treat like a menu item he didn’t order — until he found a suitable buyer.
But it’s not just normie Republicans who are worried about Trump diverting from the Reagan-Bush playbook.
Comedian and podcaster Tim Dillon recently observed that the Trump agenda looks suspiciously like the dystopia that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones used to warn us about between colloidal silver ads: “Military in the street, the FEMA camp, the tech company that monitors everything, the surveillance. This is all of that.”
So why is this happening? Why the contortions? I’m reminded of an old story Rush Limbaugh used to tell about the late actor Ron Silver.
As the story goes, Silver went to Bill Clinton’s first inauguration as a bleeding-heart liberal and was horrified by the military flyover. And then he realized, “Those are our planes now.”
That’s where conservatives are when it comes to cancel culture. They’ve finally realized that this is their cancel culture now.
And maybe that’s the grubby little secret about politics in the Trump era. Almost nobody cares about values or morals — or “principles” — anymore. Free speech, limited government, fiscal restraint — these are all rules for thee, but not for me.
Cancel culture wasn’t rejected, it was just co-opted. So go ahead. Drop a dime. See something, say something. Big Brother is watching.
Irony, meet guillotine.
Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”
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What did Jimmy Kimmel say about Charlie Kirk before ABC pulled his show? | Politics News
Disney-owned ABC has pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live off the air indefinitely after the host caused controversy with remarks about Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live will be preempted indefinitely,” an ABC spokesperson said, declining to share any further details.
Prosecutors have charged 22-year-old Tyler Robinson with Kirk’s murder. Robinson is accused of having shot and killed Kirk while the conservative activist was speaking at Utah Valley University on September 10. Robinson surrendered after a two-day manhunt.
Here’s what Kimmel said that led to outrage among conservatives, and what the ABC and others have said since:
What happened?
In his opening monologue on Monday, Kimmel, a vocal critic of US President Donald Trump, accused “the MAGA gang” of trying to “score political points” from Kirk’s murder, saying they were quick to blame the left before much was known about the shooter’s motives. MAGA, or “Make America Great Again”, is the right-wing political movement that forms Trump’s base.
“The MAGA gang (is) desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said on his show. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving,” he added.
He continued to criticise Trump’s reaction to the shooting.
“This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish,” Kimmel added.
The remarks angered conservatives and triggered pushback from the Trump administration.
“What he said on Monday was he suggested the suspected shooter of Charlie Kirk was a pro-Trump Republican,” Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou-Castro noted, adding that Kimmel spoke before authorities released text messages showing the suspected killer was actually politically opposed to Kirk.
The next day, Robinson appeared in court, charged with aggravated murder. A precise motive remains unclear, but in court documents, prosecutors have cited his relatives telling them that he had veered to the left politically in recent years, and thought Kirk was full of hate.
In text messages to his flatmate and romantic partner after Kirk’s assassination, Robinson said: “I had enough of his hatred.” Then, in a separate message, he added: “Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”
Yet Kimmel returned to the topic on Tuesday night, where he accused Trump of “fanning the flames” by attacking people on the left. The Trump administration has said it will crack down on left-wing groups, whom it accuses of ratcheting up hate against conservatives. On Wednesday, Trump also said that he planned to designate the Antifa left-wing political movement a “terrorist” organisation.
Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on Wednesday that he had a strong case for taking action against Kimmel, ABC and Disney. The FCC is responsible for granting licences to broadcasters such as the ABC and its affiliates.
“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” Carr said. “They have a licence granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest.”
According to a Bloomberg report, quoting sources, Kimmel had planned to address the backlash on his show on Wednesday and rehearsed it that morning.
Carr also urged media companies that own local television stations to “push back”.
What was the fallout?
Nexstar, which owns several ABC affiliates, appeared to follow that call, announcing it would drop Jimmy Kimmel Live from its affiliates even before ABC itself confirmed the suspension.
The company said on Wednesday it would not air the show “for the foreseeable future, beginning with tonight’s show”.
Kimmel’s remarks about Kirk were “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse,” Nexstar added.
Carr expressed approval for Nexstar’s decision, thanking them “for doing the right thing”.
Nexstar, which describes itself as the country’s largest local television and media company, needs FCC approval for its $6.2bn deal to acquire smaller rival Tegna.
What was Trump’s reaction?
Trump described it as “great news for America” shortly after ABC revealed Kimmel had been suspended.
“The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” Trump said.
He then criticised two other late-night hosts, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, who he described as “two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible.”
JD Vance, the US vice president, earlier this week urged Americans to turn in fellow citizens who mocked the assassination.
In July, after CBS cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Trump said: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!”
CBS said the ‘Late Show’ was dropped for financial reasons but its timing, three days after Colbert blasted a settlement between Trump and CBS parent company Paramount, led two senators to question whether politics were at play.
Who is Jimmy Kimmel?
Jimmy Kimmel is among the most recognisable figures in US late-night television. He has hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC since 2003, making him one of the longest-serving talk-show hosts still on air.
Before breaking into television, Kimmel built his career in radio, working as a host in Seattle, Tampa, and Tucson before eventually moving to Los Angeles, where he transitioned into TV.
Over the years, Kimmel has become known for his monologues, celebrity interviews and viral comedy segments. He has also taken on a more political edge in recent years, frequently criticising Trump and weighing in on social debates.
Kimmel has also hosted Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, which won him an Emmy, and big live events like the Oscars.
In recent years, according to reports, Kimmel has scaled back his workload, often taking summers off from the show. His current contract with ABC is set to expire in less than a year, raising questions about whether he will extend his run or step away after two decades on air.
When his contract extension was announced, he joked, “After two decades at ABC, I am now looking forward to three years of what they call ‘quiet quitting.’”
How popular was his show?
Late-night viewership, like much of traditional television, has been declining as audiences migrate to streaming platforms and social media.
According to Nielsen, a United States media audience measurement firm, Jimmy Kimmel Live drew an average of 1.57 million viewers per episode during the broadcast season that ended in May.
During the same period, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert led the field, averaging 1.9 million viewers.
The US Television Database showed Jimmy Kimmel Live attracting about 1.1 million viewers per episode – a 0.35 percent rating, down 11 percent from the previous month – based on audience measurements for the period ending August 31, 2025.
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‘A script’: Texts of alleged Charlie Kirk killer fuel conspiracy theories | Politics News
The deluge of conspiracy theories began almost the moment authorities revealed the text messages allegedly sent by the suspected assassin of right-wing American activist Charlie Kirk.
After prosecutors in the US state of Utah published alleged text exchanges between 22-year-old Tyler Robinson and his romantic partner on Tuesday, countless social media users, including numerous prominent influencers, cast doubt on their authenticity.
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Some outright claimed that the texts, in which Robinson appears to confess to killing Kirk, had been fabricated by authorities.
Many of the posts suggested that the language and tone of the exchanges did not match someone of Robinson’s age, and the account of the shooting was too forthcoming and detailed to be believable.
Notably, at a time of extreme political polarisation in the US, the conspiracy theorising united figures on the left and right.
Matt Walsh, a right-wing commentator and podcast host with millions of followers on X and YouTube, suggested the exchanges had been scripted to absolve Robinson’s transgender partner of any involvement in the shooting.
“This feels like a strategy they cooked up from watching too much TV,” Walsh said on X.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox has said that the partner, described as a “male transitioning to female”, had no advance knowledge of the crime and has been cooperating fully with authorities.
Steven Bannon, US President Donald Trump’s former adviser, said on his podcast that he was “not buying” the texts, describing them as “too stilted, too much like a script”.
On the other side of the political spectrum, Majid Padellan, a progressive influencer who goes by Brooklyn Dad Defiant on social media, said he did not believe for “one second” that the texts had been written by Robinson.
“I didn’t know him personally, but I know that no 22 year old writes text messages like this,” Padellan said on X.
“This feels like that Steve Buscemi skateboard meme ‘How do you do, fellow kids?”’
Liberal commentator Joanne Carducci, who posts under the moniker JoJoFromJerz, noted that the official narrative around the assassination had prompted rare agreement across the ideological divide.
“No one is buying these text messages. No one on the left or the right,” Carducci said on X.
“We cannot agree on a damn thing anymore. But we agree on this. If that doesn’t speak volumes, nothing does.”
The Utah County Attorney did not respond to a request for comment about the claims online.
Speculation and conspiracy theories have become a routine feature of the reaction to high-profile acts of violence in the US in the polarised and trigger-happy landscape of social media and online forums.
After a gunman shot dead a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband in June, right-wing conspiracy theorists claimed that the shooting had been perpetrated by a left-wing extremist or carried out on behalf of the state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz.
The alleged gunman, Vance Boelter, espoused staunchly conservative views on issues including abortion and LGBTQ rights.
The 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas; the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida; and the 2017 Las Vegas shooting all spawned right-wing conspiracy theories, including the claim that the attacks had been staged to give the US government a pretext to curtail gun rights.
While many conspiracy theories have been driven by a particular ideological faction, Kirk’s assassination is the latest event to fuel unfounded claims with “cross-ideological appeal”, said Eric Oliver, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who studies conspiracy theories.
Claims about Robinson fit the mould of theories about the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the pharmaceutical industry, which also cut across partisan and ideological lines, Oliver said.
“People are also really emotionally charged by this, both on the left and the right, and will often gravitate to stories that rationalise their fear, rage, or feelings of powerlessness,” Oliver told Al Jazeera.
The “extraordinary circumstances” of Kirk’s murder, including a relative lack of information about Robinson, had also left a vacuum that was being filled by people “already suspicious of anything either the government does or this administration does”, Oliver added.
The transcripts of Robinson’s alleged texts released by prosecutors provided some of the clearest indications yet of a possible motive for assassinating Kirk, who was lauded by conservatives but seen as an inflammatory figure on the left for his right-wing stances on immigration, abortion and transgender rights, among other issues.
Robinson allegedly told his partner that he had “had enough” of Kirk’s “hatred” and “some hate can’t be negotiated out”.
Authorities previously announced that they recovered bullet casings inscribed with a number of politically-charged and internet subculture-influenced messages, including “Hey fascist! Catch!”
Prosecutors, who allege Kirk was targeted over his “political expression”, have charged Robinson with aggravated murder and six other charges.
That the released details of Robinson’s alleged communication with his partner after Kirk’s assassination have only further fuelled conspiracies is not surprising, suggest experts.
“Many people have a worldview in which conspiracies are going on all the time and explain our social and political circumstances – those people believe lots and lots of conspiracy theories and exist on both the right and left,” said Joseph Uscinski, a professor of political science at the University of Miami, whose research focuses on conspiracy theories.
And though conspiracy theorising has become rampant on social media, the platforms themselves are not the problem, Uscinski said.
“People have worldviews; some of those worldviews make conspiracy theories easy to believe, whether those people are on social media or not,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Conspiracy theories existed long before social media and may have been more prominent then. We have to remember that people seek out content on social media that they like; they are not necessarily persuaded by social media content as much as they are attracted to content that tells them what they already believe.”
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ABC to indefinitely halt Jimmy Kimmel Live! after Charlie Kirk remarks | Donald Trump News
Kimmel’s cancellation is the latest in a spate of firings related to comments made about Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
United States television network ABC has announced it will indefinitely cease airing Jimmy Kimmel Live due to comments made by the popular chat show’s host about the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Walt Disney-owned ABC said on Wednesday the show would be “preempted indefinitely” due to Kimmel’s comments suggesting the man charged with Kirk’s assassination in Utah last week, Tyler Robinson, is a supporter of US President Donald Trump.
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“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said on Monday in a monologue on his long-running late-night talk show.
Earlier, Nexstar Media, one of the country’s largest local TV station owners, including at least 28 ABC affiliates, announced it would stop airing the show over Kimmel’s remarks about the Kirk killing.
Announcing the move, Nexstar Media President Andrew Alford said Kimmel’s comments were “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse”.
“We do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” he said.
While Utah prosecutors have formally charged Robinson with the murder of Charlie Kirk and said they will seek the death penalty, questions remain about a possible motive.
Kimmel’s comments also drew condemnation on Wednesday from Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the independent US government TV, radio and internet regulator.
In an interview with right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson, Carr described Kimmel’s comments as “the sickest conduct possible”, and he also appeared to threaten ABC affiliate licences over the presenter’s remarks.
“What people don’t understand is that the broadcasters … have a licence granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest,” Carr said.
Carr explicitly called on ABC affiliates to “push back” on the network’s airing of Jimmy Kimmel Live as they run the risk of ” licence revocation” due to a “pattern of news distortion”.
“When we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,” he said.
Following news of Kimmel’s cancellation on Nexstar, Carr told The Hollywood Reporter news outlet he wanted to thank the firm “for doing the right thing”.
At least one other station group had contacted ABC about the Kimmel show, suggesting that an affiliate revolt may have played a role in the decision, an unnamed source told The Hollywood Reporter.
Kimmel’s cancellation is the latest in a spate of firings over the past week, brought on by a conservative backlash to public comments about Kirk’s killing that have been deemed insensitive.
Conservatives have mourned Kirk as a martyr who championed patriotism, open debate and Christian values. Others have rebuked his divisive views, including on immigration and Islamophobia, with some also celebrating his death.
Journalists, academics and doctors are among those who have been fired or investigated by their employers over comments made about Kirk, mirroring the much-maligned cancellation campaigns of recent years associated with America’s left and sparking debate over the limits of free speech in the US.
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Jimmy Kimmel taken off air over Charlie Kirk comments
ABC has pulled late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off air indefinitely over comments he made about the shooting of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live will be pre-empted indefinitely,” a spokesperson for the Disney-owned network said in a statement to the BBC.
In his Monday night monologue, Kimmel said the “MAGA gang” was trying to score political points off Kirk’s killing.
On Tuesday, a 22-year-old suspect appeared in court charged with aggravated murder over last Wednesday’s shooting of the 31-year-old conservative activist. Representatives for Kimmel did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Kimmel said on Monday: “The Maga Gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
The late-night host also criticised flags being flown at half mast in honour of Kirk, and mocked the president’s reaction to the shooting.
“This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a gold fish,” Kimmel said.
Shortly after ABC announced the host had been suspended, Trump, who has criticised him on multiple occasions, said it was “great news for America”.
“The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,”the president wrote in a social media post.
Trump then criticised two other late-night hosts, Jimmy Fallon and and Seth Myers, who he described as “two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible.”
Earlier on Wednesday, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, said on a podcast that Kimmel’s remarks showed “the sickest conduct possible” as he urged Disney to take action.
“[Broadcasters] have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest,” said Carr, who is a Trump-appointee.
“Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,” Carr told The Benny Show.
He noted that an apology from Kimmel would be a “very reasonable, minimal step”.
The ABC announcement came just after one of the biggest owners of TV stations in the US, Nexstar Media, said it would not air Jimmy Kimmel Live! “for the foreseeable future beginning with tonight’s show”.
Nexstar said the comedian’s remarks about Kirk “are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse”.
“[We] do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division.
“Continuing to give Mr Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to pre-empt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.”
Following the programme’s suspension, Carr thanked Nexstar “for doing the right thing” and said he hoped other broadcasters would follow its lead.
Authorities have not specified a motive in Kirk’s fatal shooting on 10 September. Tyler Robinson has been charged over the killing and is facing the death penalty if convicted at trial.
Charging documents said the suspect’s mother “explained that over the last year or so, Robinson had become political and started to lean more to the left – becoming more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented”.
The court papers say that when the suspect’s parents asked him why he had targeted Kirk, he told them the conservative activist “spreads too much hate”.
Robinson was not registered to any political party and did not vote in the 2022 or 2024 elections. He was not old enough to vote in the 2020 election.
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ABC drops ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ indefinitely over host’s Charlie Kirk remarks
Walt Disney Co.-owned broadcaster ABC said it is pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live” indefinitely following backlash over the host’s remarks about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
The move comes after station owner Nexstar Media Group said it is pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live” from its ABC affiliate stations as a result of the comments.
The Irving, Texas-based Nexstar announced Wednesday that Kimmel will be off its stations for the foreseeable future.
“Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets,” a company representative said in a statement.
Kimmel said during a monologue on his Monday program that Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk, might have been a pro-Trump Republican. He said MAGA supporters “are desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
Kimmel then mocked President Trump for talking about the construction of a new White House ballroom after being asked how he was reacting to the murder of his close ally.
“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division.
Alford said continuing to give Kimmel a broadcast platform “is simply not in the public interest at this current time.”
Nexstar’s decision comes just after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr blasted Kimmel and threatened to take action against ABC. Appearing on the podcast of right-wing commentator Benny Johnson, Carr said one form of punishment could be pulling the licenses of ABC affiliates, which likely got Nexstar’s attention.
Nexstar has ABC affiliates in 32 markets across the U.S., including in New Orleans, New Haven, Nashville and Salt Lake City.
Network affiliates dropping a late-night program over the political views expressed in it is unprecedented. The closest situation goes back to 1970, when CBS blacked out the image of activist Abbie Hoffman when he appeared on “The Merv Griffin Show” wearing a shirt made out of an American flag.
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Firings over reactions to Kirk killing spark free speech debate in the US | Politics News
Washington, DC – Journalists, academics, airline employees, doctors and restaurant workers across the United States have been fired or investigated by their employers over the past week for comments deemed insensitive on the killing of Charlie Kirk.
The firings at a moment of rising political tensions in the US have ignited debates over the limits of free speech, cancel culture, doxxing and labour protections, as well as the legacy of Kirk.
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The 31-year-old right-wing commentator was fatally shot in Utah last week.
While parts of the country mourned Kirk as a martyr who championed patriotism and open debate, others recalled his divisive views, including his anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric. Some even celebrated his death.
Many Republicans responded with a campaign of naming and shaming to ostracise people who reacted to the assassination in ways that they considered objectionable.
Former MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd was one of the earliest targets of that effort.
Shortly after Kirk was shot, Dowd said the conservative commentator pushed “hate speech” against some groups. “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions,” the analyst said on air.
The comment sparked outrage from Kirk’s supporters, leading MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler to apologise for what she called the “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable” remarks.
Dowd was later fired – a move that he rejected and blamed on a right-wing “media mob” that “misconstrued” his words.
This week, columnist Karen Attiah was also sacked from her position at the Washington Post over her response to the killing of Kirk.
Attiah had fired off a series of social media posts around race and gun violence after the assassination.
A letter of termination that she shared online on Tuesday cited a post in which she defended refusing to engage in “performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence” without explicitly mentioning Kirk as one of the reasons for her sacking.
Officials back sacking campaign
Private citizens from all walks of life have also faced calls to be let go from their jobs over their takes on the killing of Kirk – social media posts that ranged from revelling in his death to linking the assassination to the commentator’s own views and support for gun rights.
For example, influential right-wing social media accounts have been demanding the firing of a Pennsylvania teacher for calling Kirk “racist”, although she also said that he “didn’t deserve to die”.
Kirk himself was no stranger to controversial opinions. He repeatedly attacked Islam and Muslims.
“Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,” he wrote in a recent social media post.
He was also a promoter of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory – the notion that there is a plan (usually claimed to be carried out by Jewish elites) to replace white populations with immigrants, which has inspired white nationalist mass shooters across the world.
But on the right, the status of Kirk only rose after his death. With that apparent canonisation came the push to protect his legacy from detractors and those finding humour, joy or irony in his death.
Almost immediately after the shooting, right-wing groups started publishing the names and personal information – including place of employment – of social media users who allegedly celebrated the assassination.
Republican politicians, including lawmakers, joined calls for the firing of individuals over Kirk-related social media posts deemed by them to be offensive.
In Indiana, State Attorney General Todd Rokita encouraged submissions to a database on school employees who made “comments that celebrate or rationalise” the shooting of Kirk.
US Vice President JD Vance backed the effort as well, saying that people who celebrated the assassination should be held to account. “Call them out, and hell, call their employer,” he said on Monday.
US Congressman Randy Fine, of Florida, threatened to revoke the professional state licences of offenders, including lawyers, teachers and doctors.
Fine himself cheered for the killing of US citizen Aysenur Ezgi Eygi by Israeli forces last year. “One less #MuslimTerrorist. #FireAway,” he wrote on social media after Eygi was fatally shot in the occupied West Bank.
Is it legal?
While the First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, it does not apply to private employers.
But some states have laws to protect speech and political activities of employees when they are not at work.
Jenin Younes, a prominent free speech lawyer who recently became the legal director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), said private companies have “a lot of latitude” to reprimand workers for their speech.
However, when it comes to public schools and universities, it’s more complicated.
“Public employers, broadly speaking, are bound by the First Amendment,” Younes said. “But there are circumstances in which they can consider someone’s speech to fire them.”
These “exceptions and qualifications” are on a case-by-case basis.
For example, Younes said a public school teacher could say that Kirk’s ideas were “loathsome”, but saying that he deserves to die would probably cross the line.
The law aside, Younes said the firing frenzy is “problematic philosophically”, especially given that some of the people were sacked for simply criticising Kirk, not glorifying violence.
“It’s very bad for a free society,” she told Al Jazeera. “People rely on their jobs. They need their jobs in order to live and support their families. So, if we want to live in a society where we have robust dialogue and debate, which is the purpose of the First Amendment, it’s bad from a practical standpoint.”
Younes said she understands why private employers may want to curb social media posts by employees that clash with the company’s brand and mission.
But a better approach than letting go of workers, she added, is to discuss the matter with them and warn them to refrain from posting similar messages in the future.
“We should always err towards more discussion and debate and not silencing people,” Younes said. “And we have to remember people have moments when they get emotional and say things they don’t mean.”
Beyond the firing campaign, several Republican politicians have pushed policy ideas to regulate speech, especially on social media, after Kirk was killed.
Republican US Congressman Clay Higgins vowed to “use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate [an] immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination” of Kirk.
US Congressman Chip Roy led a congressional letter requesting the formation of a committee to investigate the “radical left”.
For her part, Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested that federal authorities will push to penalise speech that they view as hateful.
“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech,” she said on Monday. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
Role reversal
For some observers, that right-wing push is increasingly appearing like a role reversal of the ideological blocs in the US.
For years, the right raged against the notion of “hate speech” and some left-wing activists’ push to fire and “cancel” those with views they find offensive – especially on issues of race and gender identity.
Right-wing politicians were also vocal opponents of any governmental efforts to regulate social media content.
Kirk himself had rejected penalising “hate speech”, although he backed US President Donald Trump’s clampdown on pro-Palestine student activists.
“Hate speech does not exist legally in America,” Kirk wrote in a social media post last year. “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”
Younes, who led a lawsuit against the Democratic administration of former US President Joe Biden over alleged social media censorship efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, noted what she called “the hypocrisy”.
“A lot of the people who were against ‘cancel culture’, when it was the left doing it, are now suddenly very eager to embrace cancel culture when they don’t like the speech in question, which I think shows the heart of the struggle on this issue,” she said.
“Everybody claims to be against censorship when it’s ideas that they like that are being censored, but then when it’s their ideological opponents, they’re very happy to do the censoring.”
She warned that the push to curb freedom of expression around the killing of Kirk could extend to other issues, including intensifying the crackdown on Palestinian rights advocacy.
“Any kind of censorship that’s used for one type of speech can always be adjusted to apply to another type of speech,” she said.
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Obama says U.S. is at ‘an inflection point’ after Kirk’s killing
Former President Obama says that the United States is at “an inflection point” following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and that President Donald Trump has further divided the country rather than work to bring people together.
“There are no ifs, ands or buts about it: The central premise of our democratic system is that we have to be able to disagree and have sometimes really contentious debates without resorting to violence,” Obama said Tuesday night during an event in Erie, Pennsylvania, hosted by the Jefferson Education Society, according to a transcript obtained by The Associated Press.
“And when it happens to some, but even if you think they’re, quote, unquote, on the other side of the argument, that’s a threat to all of us,” he said. “And we have to be clear and forthright in condemning them.”
Obama has kept somewhat of a low profile in his post-presidency. Responding to a moderator’s questions Tuesday, he addressed Trump’s rhetoric after Kirk’s assassination, as well as other administrative actions.
The Democrat spoke about his own leadership following the 2015 slaying of nine Black parishioners at a Charleston, South Carolina, church, as well as Republican then-President George W. Bush’s actions following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He said he sees the role of a president in a crisis “to constantly remind us of the ties that bind us together.”
The sentiment among Trump and his aides following Kirk’s killing of calling political opponents “vermin, enemies … speaks to a broader problem,” Obama said.
Kirk, a dominant figure in conservative politics, became a confidant of Trump after founding Arizona-based Turning Point USA, one of the nation’s largest political organizations. Trump has escalated threats to crack down on what he describes as the “radical left” following Kirk’s assassination, stirring fears his Republican administration is trying to harness outrage over the killing to suppress political opposition.
— Former President Obama
Trump’s White House on Wednesday responded to Obama’s remarks by blaming him for animosity in the country, calling him “the architect of modern political division in America.”
“Obama used every opportunity to sow division and pit Americans against each other, and following his presidency more Americans felt Obama divided the country than felt he united it,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
Obama on Tuesday also referenced Trump’s recent deployment of National Guard troops in Washington and ID checks by federal agents in Los Angeles. He urged citizens and elected officials to closely monitor the norm-busting decisions.
“What you’re seeing, I think, is the sense that through executive power, many of the guardrails and norms that I thought I had to abide by as president of the United States, that George Bush thought he had to abide by as president of the United States, that suddenly those no longer apply,” Obama said. “And that makes this a dangerous moment.”
Shortly after Kirk’s death, Obama wrote in a post on X that he and his wife, Michelle, were praying for Kirk’s family, adding: “This kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy.”
Obama said that he disagreed with many of Kirk’s stances, noting that his position “doesn’t negate the fact that what happened was a tragedy and that I mourn for him and his family.”
Calling political violence “anathema to what it means to be a democratic country,” Obama also mentioned the June shooting deaths of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband in their home.
Obama also applauded Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s calls for civility in leading the public response to Kirk’s killing. Obama said that while he and the Republican governor “disagree on a whole bunch of stuff,” Cox’s messaging around how to respond to Kirk’s death shows “that it is possible for us to disagree while abiding by a basic code of how we should engage in public debate.”
Kinnard writes for the Associated Press.
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Charlie Kirk gave young men something to believe in. Newsom wants to do the same
Like many young men these days, Kamaldeep Dhanoa, a lanky 17-year-old, knew he wanted to do something with his life, be a part of something, but didn’t quite know what that meant.
Coming up with a career was important. But even more, it was finding the right friends — discovering what he wanted to be a part of.
He did both when he joined Improve Your Tomorrow, a mentorship organization for teenage boys and young men — that vulnerable, chronically online demographic from which Charlie Kirk drew many of his most ardent supporters, and where so much of our societal angst is focused in the wake of his death.
Now a senior at Florin High School in a suburb outside Sacramento, Dhanoa has a plan to become a paramedic, and more importantly, has those friendships that help him feel not just connected, but included and valued.
His something.
“I just know I have brothers around me,” he told me Tuesday. “We’re always with each other. It gives you, like, a sense of security. So if you’re feeling down, you could always, always rely on them.”
Dhanoa was hanging out in his school’s gym with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who dropped by to announce the California Men’s Service Challenge, an effort to recruit 10,000 Golden State males to serve as mentors to boys such as Dhanoa, so more boys can find their something.
It’s a worthy effort and before you jump to thinking it’s a reaction to Kirk, I’ll point out that 10 years ago, California’s first partner, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, made a documentary about the crisis of connection and identity facing young men, “The Mask You Live In.”
Recently, her husband caught up.
To be fair, a lot of us have been slow on the uptake when it comes to understanding why so many young men seem drawn to the obvious loneliness and disconnection of chronically online lives.
Kamaldeep Dhanoa, 17, and Michael Lynch helped Gov. Gavin Newsom announce his new statewide initiative to engage more men in volunteer and mentorship work.
(Anita Chabria/Los Angeles Times)
“Touch grass” has become a generation’s cultural shorthand to describe both the isolation and cure for people who seem so deep into a virtual world that the real one has lost meaning. It’s a dismissive way of looking at a problem that doesn’t begin and end with boys.
But, if we didn’t see it earlier, Kirk’s killing has made it clear that there are too many boys that need to be pulled back from the brink of a very bad something. One that is less about left or right and more about exactly who and what those boys stumble upon inside those ethereal spaces that most parents can’t even find, much less understand.
“We’ve got to get these kids back,” Newsom said. “They’re very susceptible young men. They’re very vulnerable online.”
Even more concerning, when the nihilism of the darkest corners of the internet catches up to their psyches, “young people weaponize those grievances,” Newsom said — whether that anger turns inward or outward.
Suicide among young men has increased. In 2023, the male suicide rate was about 23 deaths per 100,000 men, nearly four times higher than for women, a number that has been climbing for years (albeit with some slight dips). Sadly, women attempt suicide more often, but men have a higher rate of completion, often because they use more deadly means such as guns.
But lonely boys are also more prone to commit violence on others, maybe especially when they mix their anger with politics. Once recent study by social epidemiologist Julia Schleimer at the University of Washington School of Public Health found that individuals who reported having few social connections were, “more likely than others to support political violence or be personally willing to engage in it in one form or another.”
For reference, about 15% of men have no close friendships, according to a recent poll by the Survey Center on American Life. Newsom puts that figure even higher for young men, with “one in four men under 30 years old reporting that they have no close friends, a five-fold increase since 1990.”
Kirk stepped into that gap, providing meaning and belonging not just through his podcasts, where he was best known, but through the grassroots Turning Point USA organization that gave thousands of young people (of both sexes) both an ideology and, equally as important, real-world connections and events.
“Obviously Charlie Kirk was a master at not only the work he did online, but offline, and his capacity to organize and engage,” Newsom said.
Whether you agreed with Kirk’s views or not (and I did not agree on many points, including matters of race, sexual orientation, immigration or the meaning of patriotism), he created that something that is missing for so many young people. He created a vision of an America that needed to be saved, and could be saved, through a dedication to a certain kind of family and a certain kind of faith. As Newsom described it of his own effort, young people don’t just want a cause. They want to feel invested, they want to feel an “obligation to give back.”
If Newsom’s recent foray into Trump-esque social media proves anything, it’s that he’s willing to learn, even emulate, success — wherever he finds it. Newsom is trying to offer the belonging that Kirk supplied, seeped not in the exclusion and rigidity that Kirk embodied, but in California values.
“It’s about building an inclusive community of all different kinds of voices,” Michael Lynch told me of the California Challenge. He’s the co-founder and chief executive of Improve Your Tomorrow, the organization Dhanoa belongs to.
Lynch said kids get all kinds of benefits from mentors, but when he asks what those are, the sentence usually starts, “Now that I have friends…. “
The outcome of the effort to bring boys out of the virtual world is all about who those friends are, who pulls them out.
Our boys don’t just need to touch grass, they need to be around men who don’t seek to impose values, but teach them how to craft their own, how to believe in themselves before they believe in something someone is selling.
“What the world needs is your authenticity,” Newsom told a teenage journalist who covered the event for the school newspaper. “And so I just hope we take a deep breath and discover the most important, powerful thing in the world, and that’s who you are.”
If Newsom’s effort inspires just one good man to step up and help a kid figure that out — who they are, and how to believe in themselves first and forever — it will be something.
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What happened as Charlie Kirk murder suspect appeared in court | Crime
Prosecutors have revealed a digital trove of evidence including text messages, in the case against Charlie Kirk’s accused killer Tyler Robinson, who has appeared in court charged with murder.
Published On 17 Sep 202517 Sep 2025
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Trump’s order to lower flags for Charlie Kirk sparks controversy
In the queer enclave of West Hollywood, some residents were furious at the sight of a Pride flag and a transgender flag lowered to half-staff to mourn Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
In the city of Los Angeles, an internal Fire Department memo saying flags should stay raised sparked conservative anger at Mayor Karen Bass.
And in Huntington Beach, where MAGA politics are warmly received, officials pledged to honor Kirk’s memory by keeping flags lowered for an additional week past the mourning period set by President Trump.
The controversial right-wing commentator’s slaying last Wednesday ruptured cultural fault lines across the country, exacerbating fears of political violence, triggering campaigns to punish those who responded crudely and prompting the president to escalate attacks on his foes.
Amid the national maelstrom, Trump’s unusual decision to order flags lowered to half-staff at public buildings to memorialize a private citizen has been a flash point at the municipal level.
The fallout has exacerbated tensions in major cities and small towns, including in Southern California, as local officials chose whether to comply — and found wrath on either end of the decision.
Kirk, 31, founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA and a close Trump ally, was an incendiary figure. In life, he was lionized by the far right and castigated by many others for anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-Black remarks, among other offensive rhetoric. He galvanized a generation of young Americans to turn toward the GOP, with even critics acknowledging his organizing skills and impact.
It’s not unprecedented for a president to order flags lowered to half-staff for a civilian, according to James Ferrigan, a flag expert who previously served as protocol officer at the North American Vexillological Assn.
Trump called for flags to be lowered in August after two children were shot to death at a Minneapolis Catholic school, but not after Democratic Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed in June.
Two days after Kirk’s death, a screenshot of an internal Los Angeles Fire Department memo that said city flags should remain raised “unless directed by the mayor” began to go viral on social media. Many lambasted Bass for not ordering the flags lowered, with some accusing her of defying the president.
Fire Department spokesperson Margaret Stewart said the department follows city flag directives and had not been instructed to lower its flags. The internal memo was not sent at the request of the mayor or anyone in her office, according to someone with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl declined to comment on the memo but noted that during Bass’ tenure, flags have been lowered to mourn the deaths of elected officials and first responders.
Ferrigan said that a local official’s choice not to lower flags after a president’s executive directive might be seen as somewhat ill-mannered but wouldn’t be breaking any rules.
“Is it a breach of protocol? Probably not,” Ferrigan explained. “Is it a breach of etiquette? Well, maybe.”
Fox 11, which first published the Fire Department memo, reported that several firehouses lowered their flags to half-staff anyway.
In fiercely progressive West Hollywood, a local news outlet posted an Instagram video of the city’s rainbow Pride flag and a blue-white-and-pink transgender flag lowered to half-staff, blowing in a light breeze.
Thousands of people commented, with most irate or confused that the city was memorializing one of the nation’s most prominent anti-transgender voices — especially with the Pride and transgender flags. Some asked whether it was meant as satire. The flag was located in Matthew Shepard Square, which honors a gay teen who was viciously slain in 1998.
Weho Times, the local outlet in question, reported that a sign was placed Sunday in the square reading: “Shame on West Hollywood for lowering our flags in honor of a racist, transphobic, homophobic, Nazi-loving monster.”
“In particular, there has been significant outrage regarding the lowering of the LGBTQ+ flags, which are prominently flown in our city as a symbol of pride, inclusion, and community identity,” West Hollywood City Manager David Wilson said during Monday’s City Council meeting, according to written comments provided by the city.
The decision to lower the flags “should not be interpreted as an expression of alignment with, or endorsement of, Mr. Kirk’s political views or actions,” Wilson said, adding that city protocol has long been to follow presidential flag lowering directives.
But, he continued, the city’s flag policy will be taken up at a council meeting next month, and potentially reconsidered.
Ferrigan, the flag expert, wasn’t entirely surprised by the battles flaring up in municipalities across the American map.
“Remember, this might be a little $10 worth of cloth,” he said. “But these are bits of cloth that people will kill for or die for.”
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Charlie Kirk’s killing shows that censorship starts in the workplace
Remember when the notion of government censorship in the U.S. seemed like the plot of an Orwellian novel, or something that happened in other places, countries where masked militia kidnap people off the street and disappear them? Our 1st Amendment rights as Americans seemed to guarantee that would never happen here. The state could not take away our free speech.
It turns out we don’t need a state-sponsored crackdown to punish those who express sentiments that offend, because the private sector has stepped in to do the job. An office supply store, a news network and an airline carrier are among companies that recently fired staff who made comments about influencer Charlie Kirk’s death that were interpreted as celebratory, insensitive or blaming the conservative activist’s polarizing viewpoints for his targeted killing.
Now Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah says that she was unfairly fired over thoughts she expressed following the assassination of Kirk last week in Utah. She wrote: “The Post accused my measured Bluesky posts of being ‘unacceptable’, ‘gross misconduct’ and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues — charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false.”
“They rushed to fire me without even a conversation,” Attiah said. “This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.” She said that in her posts she exercised “restraint even as I condemned hatred and violence.”
Her comments were largely about gun violence and issues of race. Attiah mentioned Kirk directly in just one post, paraphrasing from a comment he made about Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and former Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, both of whom are Black. “’Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot’ — Charlie Kirk,” she wrote.
Attiah didn’t celebrate the death of Kirk in her posts or make light of his slaying, but she didn’t mourn him either. In the current political environment, that alone could be enough to make her employer nervous, even compared to all the other truly awful stuff out there.
Sadly, the cruel, inhumane and politicized responses that followed Kirk’s tragic killing shouldn’t surprise anyone. Social media behaved as it always does — as a repository for every good, bad and really bad impulse experience following a tragedy or crisis.
The same quotient of 20% civility, 80% ugliness enveloped X, YouTube, TikTok and the like when three months ago Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were assassinated in their home in a politically motivated attack. Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also allegedly shot by the same suspect in their home but survived.
The difference back in June? There wasn’t a mass movement to fire, cancel or silence those who minimized the tragic killings or, worse, turned them into a trolling opportunity. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah blamed the killings on the left — “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” he wrote on X — and posted a picture of suspect Vance Boelter with the caption “Nightmare on Waltz Street.” It was a crass reference to Tim Walz, Minnesota’s Democratic governor, who was Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 presidential election. Lee (who is now publicly mourning Kirk’s death) was taking his cues from the top.
President Trump’s short condemnation of Hortman’s killing on Truth Social stated that “such horrific violence will not be tolerated.” There was no lengthy eulogy, he did not attend the funeral, and when asked the day after Hortman’s killing if he had called Walz, the president said, “I could be nice and call, but why waste time?”
In response to Kirk’s killing, Trump issued an order to lower American flags to half-staff at the White House, all public buildings, U.S. embassies and military posts. He announced he would posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And during an appearance Friday on “Fox & Friends,” he promised vengeance against the left for Kirk’s killing, though the suspect — let alone his motives — were still unknown at the time.
“I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less,” Trump said. “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime. They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’ The radicals on the left are the problem. And they’re vicious, and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy.”
The prospect of retribution from a thin-skinned leader leaves no mystery as to why major media outlets such as the Post, “60 Minutes” and MSNBC appear to be reshaping their newsrooms to be less critical of the current administration. The same now goes for break rooms, shop floors and office cubicles across all sectors of American working life. It’s not the Big Brother scenario envisioned in George Orwell’s cautionary tale about a totalitarian state, “1984,” but it’s a start.
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Patel touts his record at hearing amid questions over probe into Kirk killing and FBI upheaval
WASHINGTON — FBI Director Kash Patel touted his leadership of the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency at a congressional hearing likely to be dominated by questions about the investigation into Charlie Kirk’s killing and the recent firings of senior FBI officials who have accused Patel of illegal political retribution.
The appearance Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee represents the first oversight hearing of Patel’s young but tumultuous tenure and provides a high-stakes platform for him to try to reassure skeptical Democrats that he is the right person for the job at a time of internal upheaval and mounting concerns about political violence inside the United States.
Patel rattled off a series of what he said were accomplishments of his first months on the job, including his efforts to fight violent crime and protect children. Nodding to criticism from Democrats, he closed his remarks by saying: “If you want to criticize my 16 years of service, please bring it on.”
Patel returned to the committee for the first time since his confirmation hearing in January, when he asserted that he would not pursue retribution as director. He’ll face questions Tuesday about whether he did exactly that when the FBI last month fired five agents and senior officials in a purge that current and former officials say weakened morale and contributed to unease inside the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.
Three of those officials sued last week in a federal complaint that says Patel knew the firings were likely illegal but carried them out anyway to protect his job. One of the officials helped oversee investigations into the Jan. 6 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, and another clashed with Justice Department leadership while serving as acting director in the early days of President Donald Trump’s administration. The FBI has declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Republican lawmakers, who make up the majority in the committee, are expected to show solidarity for Patel, a close ally of Trump, and are likely to praise the director for his focus on violent crime and illegal immigration.
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the committee’s Republican chairman, signaled his support for Patel at the outset of the hearing, praising the director for having “begun the important work of returning the FBI to its law enforcement mission.”
“It’s well understood that your predecessor left you an FBI infected with politics,” Grassley stated.
The panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, described Patel as “arguably the most partisan FBI director ever.”
“Director Patel has already inflicted untold damage on the FBI, putting our national security and public safety at risk,” Durbin said.
Republicans are also likely to try to elicit from Patel fresh details about the investigation into Kirk’s assassination at a Utah college campus last week, which authorities have said was carried out by a 22-year-old man who had grown more political in recent years and had ascribed to a “leftist ideology.”
Patel drew scrutiny when, hours after Kirk’s killing, he posted on social media that “the subject” was in custody even though the shooting suspect remained on the loose and was not arrested until he turned himself in late the following night.
Patel has not explained that post but has pointed to his decision to authorize the release of photographs of the suspect, Tyler Robinson, while he was on the run as a key development that helped facilitate an arrest. A Fox News Channel journalist reported Saturday that Trump had told her that Patel and the FBI have “done a great job.”
Robinson is due to make his first court appearance in Utah. It’s unclear whether he has an attorney, and his family has declined to comment.
Another line of questioning for Patel may involve Democratic concerns that he is politicizing the FBI through politically charged investigations, including into longstanding Trump grievances. Agents and prosecutors, for instance, have been seeking interviews and information as they reexamine aspects of the years-old FBI investigation into potential coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Patel has repeatedly said his predecessors at the FBI and Justice Department who investigated and prosecuted Trump were the ones who weaponized the institutions.
Tucker writes for the Associated Press.
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Charlie Kirk killing live: Murder suspect Robinson to appear in Utah court | Donald Trump News
Tyler Robinson, 22, expected to face formal charges in the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Published On 16 Sep 202516 Sep 2025
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Charlie Kirk murder suspect Tyler Robinson to appear in court: What to know | Donald Trump News
The man accused of fatally shooting conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Tyler Robinson, is scheduled to make his first court appearance on Tuesday afternoon in Utah, United States, where prosecutors are expected to formally charge him with murder.
Robinson is expected to attend the hearing remotely by video from his jail cell.
This is what we know:
What’s expected on Tuesday?
Robinson is behind bars as Utah County prosecutors move closer to filing charges in the killing.
Kirk, credited with rallying the Republican youth movement and helping Donald Trump reclaim the White House in 2024, was shot dead last week at Utah Valley University. Robinson was arrested two days later after a manhunt.
Prosecutors say charges could come on Tuesday, but the deadline could stretch to Friday if more time is needed to review what they call a “mountain of evidence”.
If the filing happens today, a news conference is likely.
“Assuming that we can file charges by Tuesday, we will hold a press conference to explain those charges and the next steps in this case. That press conference will be held Tuesday, September 16, 2025, at noon [18:00 GMT],” County Attorney Jeff Gray said in a press statement on Saturday.
The charges are expected to mirror Robinson’s initial booking.
“Our ability to file charges depends on how quickly we can gather and carefully review mountains of evidence. We will be thorough and deliberate at every stage of this case,” Gray added.
If charges are filed on Tuesday, Robinson’s first court appearance will follow the same day at 3pm (21:00 GMT) over Webex.
What charges are likely to be filed?
It is not clear yet, but Robinson was arrested and booked into the Utah County Jail early on Friday morning on suspicion of three crimes:
Prosecutors have listed these offences in an affidavit filed with the court.
According to Gray, under Utah law, aggravated murder is punishable by death, life in prison without parole, or 25 years to life with the possibility of parole. Obstruction of justice carries a penalty of one to 15 years in prison, while felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury carries a sentence of five years to life.
According to a Public Safety Assessment Report filed in Utah state court, Robinson has no prior convictions and no history of violent offences.
He is currently being held without bail.
What else is happening on Tuesday?
FBI Director Kash Patel is preparing to face tough congressional scrutiny over his handling of the investigation into the killing of Kirk. Congresspeople are likely to press him on early missteps, including a now-corrected social media post wrongly claiming that a suspect was already in custody.
Patel will testify before the Senate and House judiciary committees on Tuesday and Wednesday, where questions will likely extend beyond the Kirk case to his broader leadership of the FBI. Congresspeople are expected to challenge him on whether he can steady an agency riven by political infighting and internal turmoil since his appointment, at a time when toxic partisan divisions continue to grip the nation.
The hearing will start at 9am (13:00 GMT) at the Hart Senate Office Building, Room 216. A livestream will be available here.
What else do we know about Robinson?
Robinson grew up in St George, southwestern Utah, where his parents, married for about 25 years, run a granite countertop business.
Eldest of the three brothers, he lived with his family in a six-bedroom home. Social media posts show an active, close-knit household that travelled widely and enjoyed outdoor activities such as boating, riding in all-terrain vehicles, and target shooting.
A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since childhood, Robinson excelled in school, making the honour roll and scoring in the 99th percentile on national tests.
In 2021, he earned a scholarship to Utah State University but left after one semester. He is now a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship programme at Dixie Technical College in St George.
State records show he is registered to vote with no party affiliation and did not participate in the last two general elections. In their affidavit to the court, prosecutors said a family member of Robinson had told them that the 22-year-old had become “more political in recent years”. The relative also told prosecutors about a family dinner Kirk had attended before the September 10 shooting, where they had discussed Kirk. Robinson had mentioned, during that visit, about Kirk’s upcoming event at Utah Valley University.
“They talked about why they didn’t like him and the viewpoints he had. The family member also stated Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate,” the prosecutors wrote in the affidavit, referring to Robinson and the relative they spoke to.
Prosecutors have also said the ammunition recovered at the scene bore engravings tied to meme culture and anti-fascist themes.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox also said Robinson’s partner and flatmate, whom he described as “incredibly cooperative”, was transgender. However, though Kirk had anti-transgender views, investigators have not confirmed any link between that and his assassination.
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After Charlie Kirk’s slaying, workers learn the limits of free speech in and out of their jobs
NEW YORK — In the days since the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, workers in a variety of industries have been fired for their comments on his death.
It’s hardly the first time workers have lost their jobs over things they say publicly — including in social media posts. In the U.S., laws can vary across states, but overall, there’s very few legal protections for employees who are punished for speech made in or out of private workplaces.
“Most people think they have a right to free speech … but that doesn’t necessarily apply in the workplace,” said Vanessa Matsis-McCready, associate general counsel and vice president of HR Services for Engage PEO. “Most employees in the private sector do not have any protections for that type of speech at work.”
Add to that the prevalence of social media, which has made it increasingly common to track employees’ conduct outside of work or for internet users to publish information about them with the intent of harming or harassing them.
Employers have leeway
Protections for workers vary from one state to the next. In New York, if an employee is participating in a weekend political protest, but not associating themselves with the organization that employs them, their employer cannot fire them for that activity when they return to work. But if that same employee is at a company event on a weekend and talks about their political viewpoints in a way that makes others feel unsafe or the target of discrimination or harassment, then they could face consequences at work, Matsis-McCready said.
Most of the U.S. defaults to “at-will” employment law — which essentially means employers can choose to hire and fire as they see fit, including over employees’ speech.
“The 1st Amendment does not apply in private workplaces to protect employees’ speech,” said Andrew Kragie, an attorney who specializes in employment and labor law at Maynard Nexsen. “It actually does protect employers’ right to make decisions about employees, based on employees’ speech.”
Kragie said there are “pockets of protection” around the U.S. under various state laws, such as statutes that forbid punishing workers for their political views. But the interpretation of how that gets enforced changes, he notes, making the waters murky.
Steven T. Collis, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin and faculty director of the school’s Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center, also points to some state laws that say employers can’t fire their workers for “legal off-duty conduct.” But there’s often an exception for conduct seen as disruptive to an employer’s business or reputation, which could be grounds to fire someone over public comments or social media posts.
“In this scenario, if somebody feels like one of their employees has done something that suggests they are glorifying or celebrating a murder, an employer might still be able to fire them even with one of those laws on the books,” Collis said.
For public employees, including school teachers, postal workers and elected officials, the process is a bit different. That’s because the 1st Amendment plays a unique role when the government is the employer, Collis explains — and the Supreme Court has ruled that if an employee is acting in a private capacity but speaking on a matter of public concern, they’re protected.
However, that has yet to stop the public sector from restricting speech in the aftermath of Kirk’s death. For instance, leaders at the Pentagon unveiled a “zero tolerance” policy for any posts or comments from troops deemed to be making light of or celebrating the killing of Kirk.
The policy, announced by the Defense Department’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, on social media Thursday, came hours after numerous conservative military influencers and activists began forwarding posts they considered problematic to Parnell and his boss, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“It is unacceptable for military personnel and Department of War civilians to celebrate or mock the assassination of a fellow American,” Parnell wrote Thursday, referring to the Department of Defense by the name adopted recently by President Trump.
A surge of political debate
The ubiquity of social media is making it easier than ever to share opinions about politics and major news events as they’re unfolding. But posting on social media leaves a record, and in times of escalating political polarization, those declarations can be seen as damaging to the reputation of an individual or their employer.
“People don’t realize when they’re on social media, it is the town square,” said Amy Dufrane, chief executive of the Human Resource Certification Institute. “They’re not having a private conversation with the neighbor over the fence. They’re really broadcasting their views.”
Political debates are certainly not limited to social media and are increasingly making their way into the workplace as well.
“The gamification of the way we communicate in the workplace — Slack and Teams, chat and all these things — they’re very similar to how you might interact on Instagram or other social media, so I do think that makes it feel a little less formal and somebody might be more inclined to take a step and say, ‘Oh, I can’t believe this happened,’” Matsis-McCready said.
Many employers unprepared
In the tense, divided climate in the United States at the moment, many human resource professionals have expressed that they’re unprepared to address politically charged discussions in the workplace, according to the Human Resource Certification Institute. But those conversations are going to happen, so employers need to set policies about what is acceptable or unacceptable workplace conduct, Dufrane said.
“HR has got to really drill down and make sure that they’re super clear on their policies and practices and communicating to their employees on what are their responsibilities as an employee of the organization,” Dufrane said.
Many employers are reviewing their policies on political speech and providing training about what appropriate conduct looks like, both inside and outside the organization, she said. And the brutal nature of Kirk’s killing may have led some of them to react more strongly in the days since his death.
“Because of the violent nature of what some political discussion is now about, I think there is a real concern from employers that they want to keep the workplace safe and that they’re being extra vigilant about anything that could be viewed as a threat, which is their duty,” Matsis-McCreedy said.
Employees can also be seen as ambassadors of a company’s brand, and their political speech can dilute that brand and hurt its reputation, depending on what is being said and how it is being received. That is leading more companies to act on what employees are saying online, she said.
“Some of the individuals that had posted and their posts went viral, all of a sudden the phone lines of their employers were just nonstop calls complaining,” Matsis-McCready said.
Still, experts such as Collis don’t anticipate a significant change in how employers monitor their workers’ speech — noting that online activity has been in the spotlight for at least the last 15 years.
“Employers are already — and have been for a very long time — vetting employees based on what they’re posting on social media,” he said.
Bussewitz and Grantham-Philips write for the Associated Press. AP writer Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.
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After killing of Charlie Kirk, chorus of conservatives wants his critics ostracized or fired
BASKING RIDGE, N.J. — After years of complaints from the right about “cancel culture” from the left, some conservatives are seeking to upend the lives and careers of those who they believe disparaged Charlie Kirk after his death. They’re going after companies, educators, news outlets, political rivals and others they judge as promoting hate speech.
Just days after the conservative activist’s death, a campaign by public officials and others on the right has led to the firing or other punishment of teachers, an Office Depot employee, government workers, a TV pundit and the expectation of more dismissals coming. A Florida reporter was suspended for a question posed to a Republican congressman.
This past weekend, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted that American Airlines had grounded pilots who he said were celebrating Kirk’s death.
“This behavior is disgusting and they should be fired,” Duffy said on the social media site X.
As elected officials and conservative influencers lionize Kirk as a warrior for free expression who championed provocative opinions, they’re also weaponizing the tactics they saw being used to malign their movement — the calls for firings, the ostracism, the pressure to watch what you say.
Such tactics raise a fundamental challenge for a nation that by many accounts appears to be dangerously splintered by politics and a sense of moral outrage that social media helps to fuel.
The aftermath of Kirk’s death has increasingly become a test of the public tolerance over political differences. Republicans are pushing not only to punish the alleged killer but those whose words they believe contributed to the death or dishonored it. At the same time, some liberals on social media have criticized those, such as actor Kristin Chenoweth, who expressed sympathy online over Kirk’s death.
“This pattern that we’ve seen for decades seems to be happening much more now and at this moment than it ever has before,” said Adam Goldstein of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He dates the urge to persecute people for their private views on tragedies at least to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “If there was ever time to support the better angels of our nature, it’s now.”
Goldstein noted that it’s unpopular speech, such as people applauding Kirk’s shooting, that stands as the greatest test of acceptance of the 1st Amendment — especially when government officials get involved. “The only time you’re really supporting free speech is when it’s unpopular,” Goldstein said. “There’s no one out there trying to stop people from loving puppies and bunnies.”
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, has cautioned that the motive for the slaying has not been confirmed. He said the suspect in custody clearly identifies with the political left and had expressed dislike of Kirk before the shooting. But he and other authorities also say the suspect was not known to have been politically engaged.
Kirk was seen as an architect of President Trump’s 2024 election win, helping to expand the Republican outreach to younger voters. That means many conservatives see the remarks by liberals as fomenting violence rather than acts of political expression.
“I think President Trump sees this as an attack on his political movement,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on NBC as he noted the two assassination attempts against Trump as well as Kirk’s killing. “This is unique and different. This is an attack on a movement by using violence. And that’s the way most Republicans see this.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who is running for governor, called on social media for the firings of an assistant dean at Middle Tennessee State University and professors at Austin Peay State University and Cumberland University.
All three lost their jobs for comments deemed inappropriate for expressing a lack of sympathy, or even for expressing pleasure, in the shooting of Kirk. One said that Kirk “spoke his fate into existence,” an apparent reference to the activist’s comments that some view as having fueled America’s current environment of political fury.
Because conservatives previously said they felt “canceled” by liberals for their views, Trump on his first day back in office signed an executive order prohibiting everyone in the federal government from engaging in conduct that would “unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.”
In February at the Munich Security Conference, Vice President JD Vance criticized the preceding Biden administration for encouraging “private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth” regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. He assailed European countries as censoring political speech.
“Under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree,” Vance said at the time.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has cracked down on immigrants and academics for their speech.
Goldstein noted that Trump’s State Department in the minutes after Kirk’s death warned it would revoke the visas of any foreigners who celebrated Kirk’s killing. “I can’t think of another moment where the United States has come out to warn people of their impending cancellation,” Goldstein said.
The glimmer of bipartisan agreement in the aftermath of Kirk’s shooting was in a sense that social media was fueling the violence and misinformation in dangerous ways.
“I can’t emphasize enough the damage that social media and the internet is doing to all of us,” Cox, the Utah governor, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He added: “The most powerful companies in the history of the world have figured out how to hack our brains [to] get us addicted to outrage.”
But many Republican lawmakers have also targeted traditional news media that criticized Trump for contributing to a toxic political climate for his consistent rhetoric painting anyone against him as an enemy.
On Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) blamed news outlets for having guests on who called Trump a fascist or compared him to Hitler.
Such statements have been born out of Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss, his pardoning of Jan. 6 rioters and a range of other actions, including deportations, deployment of the National Guard in American cities, mass firings of federal employees and his scorn for the historical limits on the power of the presidency.
But for Britt, those expressions were unfair, inaccurate and triggered violence.
“There must be consequences with regards to people spewing that type of hate and celebration in the face of this,” Britt said. “And I believe that there will be.”
Boak and Riccardi write for the Associated Press and reported from Basking Ridge and Denver, respectively. AP writer Jonathan Mattise in Nashville contributed to this report.
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Utah governor says it’s too soon to be sure of Kirk shooter’s motive, but suspect had ‘leftist ideology’
WASHINGTON — Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said Sunday that investigators are not ready to discuss the motive behind the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. But he said the 22-year-old suspect had left-leaning political beliefs and disliked the conservative influencer.
“Clearly a leftist ideology,” Cox told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” On CNN’s “State of the Union,” he said, “That information comes from the people around him, his family members and friends.”
Cox said that Tyler Robinson, who was arrested last week, is “not cooperating” and that friends paint a picture of someone radicalized in the dark corners of the internet. “Clearly there was a lot of gaming going on,” Cox said on NBC. “Friends have confirmed that there was kind of that deep, dark internet, the Reddit culture, and these other dark places of the internet where this person was going deep.”
Cox, a Republican who has urged all partisans to tone down their rhetoric following the attack, added: “I really don’t have a dog in this fight. If this was a radicalized MAGA person, I’d be saying that as well.”
Cox stressed on several Sunday morning news shows, however, that investigators are still trying to pin down a motive for the attack on Kirk, a father of two and confidant of President Trump who was killed Wednesday while on one of his signature college speaking tours at Utah Valley University in Orem. The governor said more information may come out once Robinson appears in court Tuesday.
The governor said Robinson’s partner is transgender, which some politicians have pointed to as a sign the suspect was targeting Kirk for his anti-trans views. But authorities have not said whether it is relevant as they investigate Robinson’s motive.
“The roommate was a romantic partner, a male transitioning to female,” Cox said. “I can say that he has been incredibly cooperative, this partner has been very cooperative, had no idea that this was happening.”
Investigators have spoken to Robinson’s relatives and carried out a search warrant at his family’s home in Washington, Utah, about 240 miles southwest of Utah Valley University.
State records show Robinson is registered to vote but not affiliated with a political party and is listed as inactive, meaning he did not vote in the two most recent general elections. His parents are registered Republicans.
Ammunition found with the weapon used to kill Kirk was engraved with taunting, antifascist and meme-culture messages. Court records show that one bullet casing had the message, “Hey, fascist! Catch!”
Robinson grew up around St. George, in the southwestern corner of Utah between Las Vegas and natural landmarks including Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks.
He became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known widely as the Mormon church, at a young age, church spokesperson Doug Andersen said.
Robinson has two younger brothers, and his parents have been married for about 25 years, according to social media posts. Online activity by Robinson’s mother reflects an active family that took vacations to Disneyland, Hawaii, the Caribbean and Alaska.
Like many in that part of Utah, they frequently spent time outdoors — boating, fishing, riding ATVs, zip-lining and target shooting. A 2017 post shows the family visiting a military facility and posing with assault rifles. A young Robinson is seen smiling as he grips the handles of a .50-caliber heavy machine gun.
A high school honor roll student who scored in the 99th percentile nationally on standardized tests, he was admitted to Utah State University in 2021 on a prestigious academic scholarship, according to a video of him reading his acceptance letter that was posted to a family member’s social media account.
But he attended for only one semester, according to the university. He is currently enrolled as a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College in St. George.
Riccardi and Boak write for the Associated Press and reported from Denver and Washington, respectively.
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FBI chief Patel faces Congress amid missteps in Kirk inquiry, agency turmoil and lawsuit over purge
WASHINGTON — Hours after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, FBI Director Kash Patel declared online that “the subject” in the killing was in custody. The shooter was not. The two men who had been detained were quickly released. Utah officials acknowledged that the gunman remained at large.
The false assurance was more than a slip. It spotlighted the high-stakes uncertainty surrounding Patel’s leadership of the bureau when its credibility is under extraordinary pressure, as is his own.
Patel now approaches congressional oversight hearings this week facing not just questions about that investigation but broader doubts about whether he can stabilize a federal law enforcement agency fragmented by political fights and internal upheaval.
Democrats are poised to press Patel on a purge of senior executives that has prompted a lawsuit, his pursuit of President Trump’s grievances over the Russia investigation long after it ended, and a realignment of resources that has prioritized illegal immigration and street crime over the FBI’s traditional pursuits.
The hearings will offer Patel his most consequential stage yet, and perhaps the clearest test of whether he can convince the country that the FBI, under his watch, can avoid compounding its mistakes in a time of political violence and deepening distrust.
“Because of the skepticism that some members of the Senate have had and still have, it’s extremely important that he perform very well at these oversight hearings” on Tuesday and Wednesday, said Gregory Brower, the FBI’s former top congressional affairs official.
The FBI declined to comment about Patel’s coming testimony.
Inaccurate claim after Kirk shooting
Kirk’s killing was always going to be a closely scrutinized investigation, not only because it was the latest burst of political violence in the U.S. but also because of Kirk’s friendships with Trump, Patel and other administration figures and allies.
While agents investigated, Patel posted on X that “the subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody.” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said at a near-contemporaneous news conference that “whoever did this, we will find you,” suggesting authorities were still searching. Patel soon after posted that the person “in custody” had been released.
Two people were initially held for questioning in the case, but neither was a suspect.
As the search stretched on, Patel angrily vented to FBI personnel Thursday about what he perceived as a failure to keep him informed, including that he was not quickly shown a photograph of the suspected shooter. That’s according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press. The New York Times earlier reported details of the call.
Asked about the scrutiny of Patel’s performance, the FBI said it had worked with local law enforcement to bring the suspect, Tyler Robinson, to justice and “will continue to be transparent.”
Patel’s overall response did not go unnoticed in conservative circles. One prominent GOP strategist, Christopher Rufo, posted that it was “time for Republicans to assess whether Kash Patel is the right man to run the FBI.”
FBI personnel purge
On the same day Kirk was killed, Patel also faced a lawsuit from three FBI senior executives fired in an August purge that they characterized as a Trump administration retribution campaign.
Among them was Brian Driscoll, who as acting FBI director in the early days of the administration resisted Justice Department demands for names of agents who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Driscoll alleged in the lawsuit that he was let go after he challenged the leadership’s desire to terminate an FBI pilot who had been wrongly identified on social media as having been part of the FBI search for classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump, while out of office, was indicted for his role in Jan. 6 and the classified documents case.
The upheaval continues a trend that began before Patel took over, when more than a half-dozen senior executives were forced out under a Justice Department rationale that they could not be “trusted” to implement Trump’s agenda.
There’s since been significant turnover in leadership at the FBI’s 55 field offices. Some left because of promotions or retirements, but others because of ultimatums to accept new assignments or resign. The head of the Salt Lake City office, an experienced counterterrorism investigator, was pushed out of her position weeks before Kirk was killed at a Utah college, said people familiar with the move.
FBI’s priorities shift
Patel arrived at the FBI having been a sharp critic of its leadership, including for the Trump indictments and investigations that he says politicized the institution. Under Patel and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, the FBI and Justice Department have become entangled in their own politically fraught investigations, such as one focused on New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James.
He’s moved quickly to remake the bureau, with the FBI and Justice Department working to investigate one of the Republican president’s chief grievances — the years-old Trump-Russia investigation. Trump calls that probe, which found that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help him get elected but did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Russia and Trump’s campaign, a “hoax.”
The Justice Department appeared to confirm in an unusual statement that it was investigating former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan, pivotal players in the Russia investigation, but did not say for what. Bondi has directed that evidence be presented to a grand jury.
Critics of the new Russia inquiry consider it a transparent attempt to turn the page from the fierce backlash the FBI and Justice Department endured from Trump’s base following the July announcement that those agencies would not be releasing any additional documents from the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation.
Patel has meanwhile elevated the fight against street crime, drug trafficking and illegal immigration to the top of the FBI’s agenda, in alignment with Trump’s agenda.
The bureau defends its aggressive policing in American cities that the Trump administration contends have been consumed by crime, despite falling crime rates in recent years in the cities targeted. Patel says the thousands of resulting arrests, many immigration-related, are “what happens when you let good cops be good cops.”
Critics say the street crime focus draws attention and resources from the sophisticated public corruption and national security threats for which the bureau has long been primarily, if not solely, responsible for investigating.
Tucker writes for the Associated Press.
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