I’ve written several times over the last few days not only about the scourge of political violence which we must not only denounce but be genuinely against in every way. Notwithstanding my own personal inclination to say little of the dead for a respectful period, I want to note a particular dynamic that the right is creating in the reign of firing terror it’s unleashed in the aftermath of Kirk’s death. On X over the last few days, countless numbers of high-profile right-wing accounts’ feeds are made up almost entirely of screen grabs of random people’s reactions to Kirk’s murder and demands that they be fired from their jobs. In many cases the demands are heeded and then that fact is triumphantly posted as well.
Continue reading “Kirk’s Posthumous and Paradoxically Fitting Employment Reign of Terror”Trumpist Right Launches Purge of Anyone Who Dares Criticize Charlie Kirk
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Seizing on Kirk’s Killing to Pull Off a Power Grab
In the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the Trump administration and its MAGA allies have launched a new project to target Kirk critics, threatening their employment in government and in the private sector.
On the government side:
- DoD: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has dispatched underlings on a hunt for service members and DoD civilians who have mocked or condoned Kirk’s killing on social media so that they can be punished. “Several service members have been relieved from their jobs because of such posts,” NBC News reports.
- DHS: The department has taken action against at least three employees, Government Executive reports.
- VA: Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins warned of punishment for department employees who were caught “justifying, celebrating or mocking” Kirk’s death, per Government Executive.
While the government’s internal campaign seems mostly focused (I say this with a skeptical eye still intact) on those condoning political violence, in the private sector, the purge has broadened to include criticism of Kirk and his extremist right-wing politics:
- At least a dozen employers have put staffers on leave or dismissed them over remarks about Kirk, the WaPo reports.
- Universities — including Ole Miss, Middle Tennessee State, and Austin Peay, among others — have fired or suspended employees over online comments about Kirk.
- A public school teacher in South Carolina was fired for a post on Facebook: “Thoughts and prayers to his children but IMHO America became greater today. There I said it.”
- DC Comics cancelled a new series after the author called Kirk a “Nazi b*tch.”
- WaPo columnist Karen Attiah said this morning that she was fired by the newspaper for Bluesky posts that it deemed “unacceptable” and “gross misconduct.” By her account, Attiah’s posts condemned political violence. The one post she shared that directly mentioned Kirk quoted Kirk disparaging Black women.
You might reasonably find some of the social media posts in question offensive, but to get caught in a debate over randos on social media is to lose the bigger picture. The tribal, political, and power imperatives of Trump’s MAGA project mean the right wing must seize on his death and hold it up as a totem of loyalty among the faithful while at the same time making it an un-passable litmus test for the institutions — corporations, universities, media — that Trump was already targeting. They can’t pass the test because either they refuse to take it, in which case they are targeted anew, or they play along and in doing so capitulate and prove what Trump wants so desperately to believe: that they are all just as craven as he is.
Headline of the Day
Reuters: Charlie Kirk’s allies warn Americans: Mourn him properly or else
Seems Like This Should Be Big News
Reuters reviewed a document that showed Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook told her lender that the Atlanta property at the center of the Trump administration’s bogus mortgage fraud claim against her wouldn’t be used as her primary residence. The Financial Times similarly reported that Cook listed the home as vacation property.”
Trump Admin Pushes to See How Cruel It Can Be
Another weekend with emergency court proceedings over Trump anti-immigration policy.
Given the current state of law, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan seemed reluctant to step in to prevent migrants who were removed by the Trump administration to Ghana from being sent by Ghana to their home countries, where they face persecution, including torture.
But despite her reluctance, Chutkan in an emergency hearing on Saturday still wasn’t buying the Trump administration’s argument that it had no control over what Ghana did, even if it reneged on diplomatic assurances it made not to turn around and send the migrants to their home countries.
“I have not been shy about saying that I think this is a very suspicious scheme,” Chutkan said.
Chutkan suggested it was no accident that Ghana was reneging and that the administration was getting the outcome it wanted.
This so-called chain refoulement — illegally using third countries as middlemen to handle the transfer of migrants to countries that the U.S. is legally prohibited from deporting to directly — has been an ongoing issue for several months.
Still, after a flurry of weekend filings and extreme gamesmanship from the Trump administration of initially refusing to give the other side in the case a copy of a key filing it made, Chutkan had not ruled to protect the migrants.
Expect a ruling from Chutkan as soon as this morning.
Clean up on Aisle Five
President Trump clearly realizes he screwed up with the raid on the Hyundai plant in Georgia, setting off a diplomatic row with South Korea, who saw dozens of highly trained workers handcuffed and shackled by immigration officers during the highly-touted operation. On Sunday, Trump posted what amounted to a lengthy “oops” on social media, and the No. 2 State Department official “expressed regret” over the incident.
Pritzker Successfully Fends Off Trump’s Deployment Threat
It does seem like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s big public pre-denunciation of President Trump’s threat to send the National Guard into Chicago succeeded in blunting that effort.
President Trump is turning his attention to blue cities in red states, namely Memphis and New Orleans, “after advisers warned him that sending in troops to help with local law enforcement without buy-in from the state’s governor could create legal headaches they want to avoid,” CNN reports.
“Legal headaches” is doing a lot of work there. You might read it as political blowback.
Are Kash Patel’s Days at FBI Numbered?
After the embattled Kash Patel spent some of the weekend playing golf with President Trump at his Bedminster, New Jersey club, Fox News reported that contingency plans are being formulated for removing Patel as FBI director and giving him another role in the administration.
DOJ Is Sharing State Voter Rolls With DHS
The Trump administration confirmed that the Justice Department is sharing the voter rolls it demanded earlier this year with the Department of Homeland Security for it to use to search for noncitizens.
Quote of the Day
U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco, ruling Friday that the Trump administration’s mass firing of probationary federal employees was illegal, but that the Supreme Court’s decision to let the terminations proceed while the case was pending leaves workers with no way to get their jobs back:
[T]he Supreme Court has made clear enough by way of its emergency docket that it will overrule judicially granted relief respecting hirings and firings within the executive, not just in this case but in others. And, too much water has now passed under the bridge since the Supreme Court stayed this Court’s preliminary injunction reinstating probationary employees. The terminated probationary employees have moved on with their lives and found new jobs. Many would no longer be willing or able to return to their posts. The agencies in question have also transformed in the intervening months by new executive priorities and sweeping reorganization. Many probationers would have no post to return to.
A Big Week Ahead for Vaccines
The CDC vaccine committee stacked with vaccine skeptics by Robert Kennedy, Jr., is set to meet this week. It’s unclear how far the committee will go in using pseudo-science and their own biases to upend vaccine recommendations, especially for children. Public health experts were horrified when the WaPo reported Friday that Trump officials were planning to abuse data in presenting to the panel a misleading picture that connects the COVID vaccine to the deaths of children.
‘I Apologize for That Extremely Callous Remark’
Over the weekend, Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade apologized on the air for his comments last week on Fox & Friends calling for euthanizing mentally ill homeless people. “Or involuntary lethal injection, or something,” Kilmeade said on Wednesday’s show. “Just kill ‘em.”
Two days later, President Trump went on the same show and announced that a suspect had been apprehended in the death of Charlie Kirk.
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From The Archives
I was thinking about this post this morning and then I saw someone reference it on Bluesky. It’s from July 2016 (“This Is Not the Natural State of Things“) and notes that not only is the world of the last 80 years not permanent or unchangeable. It’s not even the natural state of things. The world we all grew up in, from the late 1940s to some point in the last decade, was the product of very conscious and deliberate decisions made largely in the United States but also in the capitals of Europe. For all its many imperfections and discontents it was a period of prosperity and security essentially unrivaled in history.
Suddenly, the Tune Changes
Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️
In the days before law enforcement officials announced that they had found a suspect for the murder of Charlie Kirk in 22-year old Utahn Tyler Robinson, prominent figures on the right were out for blood.
Continue reading “Suddenly, the Tune Changes”The Difference Between the Coup Plotters Who Are Held to Account and Those Who Aren’t
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction on Sept. 11, 2025, puts the former Brazilian president in a rogues’ gallery of failed coup plotters to be held to account for their attempted power grab.
Continue reading “The Difference Between the Coup Plotters Who Are Held to Account and Those Who Aren’t”Man Arrested in Killing of Charlie Kirk
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Trump Revealed the Arrest on Fox News
After two different people were mistakenly nabbed as suspects in the assassination of right-wing extremist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump revealed Friday morning on Fox & Friends that the alleged assailant was finally in custody:
The bizarre spectacle of the president of the United States dribbling out news of the arrest and calling for the death penalty on a morning news show came after his FBI director had spent two days live-tweeting his own investigation and touting his relationship with the victim.
A couple of hours after Trump’s appearance on morning TV, law enforcement on the scene in Utah held a press conference announcing the arrest of a man suspected in the shooting and identified him as 22-year-old Utah resident Tyler Robinson.
“We got him,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox declared.
Few details were immediately available about Robinson or his motives. The press conference in Utah was still underway as Morning Memo was published.
The arrest reportedly came late Thursday night in St. George, Utah, more than 250 miles away from where Kirk was killed Wednesday on the campus of Utah Valley University. Law enforcement had released new images and video Thursday of the alleged assailant fleeing the scene of the shooting. Investigators recovered a bolt-action rifle in a wooded area near campus.
The investigation under FBI Director Kash Patel has been marked by an even greater degree of confusion and chaos than is typical after a major incident, according to various reports. Patel and his top deputy, Dan Bongino, held a tense and desperate-sounding online meeting with some 200 agents Thursday morning: the NYT reported:
They expressed themselves with such fierce urgency that, in the view of some participants, it hinted at another motive: to prove they were up to the task.
The director wasted no time before calling out subordinates that he said failed to give him timely information …
Mr. Patel said he would not tolerate any more “Mickey Mouse operations,” an official on the call recounted. It was one of his few utterances without profanity, the person added.
Trump Leads the Way in Post-Shooting Vitriol
President Trump continued to lash out wildly in the aftermath of the Kirk shooting, before an arrest was made in the case or a motive established. “We just have to beat the hell” out of “radical left lunatics,” he said on the White House South Lawn.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller similarly poured fuel on the fire, posting on X:
There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved. It is an ideology at war with family and nature. It is envious, malicious, and soulless.
A Trump State Department official, also posting on X, suggested that visitors to the U.S. would be screened for social media comments “praising, rationalizing, or making light” of Kirk’s death.
Sign of the Times
A false report of an active shooter on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy led to an altercation between a midshipman and a law enforcement officer in which both were injured:
Amid the initial chaos and confusion on campus, the midshipman mistook a law enforcement officer for the shooter and struck him in the head with a parade rifle. The law enforcement officer then fired at the midshipman, wounding him in the arm, the officials said.
Appeals Court Judges Publicly Rip Supreme Court
In an extraordinary display of dissatisfaction with the Roberts Court’s unprecedented use of the shadow docket during the first few months of the Trump II presidency, the full 4th Circuit Court of Appeals publicly questioned during oral arguments Thursday how they’re supposed to follow the high court’s cryptic and often unexplained decisions.
Quote of the Day
“It has been observed that individual Americans are putting up more fight than many institutions. Those individuals are also smaller targets for the authoritarian president and his allies. They are less powerful. But that’s obviously why it’s more important for the institutions to engage and not to succumb to the climate of fear. That climate, after all, only exists if it goes unchallenged. There is no climate of fear without capitulation.”–Philip Bump
For Your Radar …
There’s a busy weekend ahead in Federal Reserve Board Lisa Cook’s legal challenge to her firing by President Trump. The D.C. Circuit ordered emergency briefing on whether to block the lower court order that temporarily reinstated her to Federal Reserve Board. An appeals court decision could come as soon as Sunday night, and the case could be at the Supreme Court by Monday.
Rare Oversight From the Senate GOP
Senator Michael D. Crapo (R-ID), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter this week to the Social Security Administration following up on explosive revelations by the agency’s former chief data officer that DOGE had mishandled a database containing the confidential personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans. Crapo’s letter did not include a demand for documents.
Dem Senators Try to Stop Military Funeral for Ashli Babbitt
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) tried to block the Pentagon from giving military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt, the Jan. 6 rioter killed by law enforcement in the Capitol, but was stymied this week by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).
How It’s Done
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison for couping to overturn the 2022 election.
Pro-couping Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the outcome: “The United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt.”
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We Remain Adrift in an Ocean of Lies: 30 Hours After the Charlie Kirk Shooting
Fire poured out of my eyes when I sat down at my computer and saw a Semafor email with the subject line “National Reckoning.” They cooled when I opened the email and saw the top item was a PPRI poll from March 2025. (“National reckoning” turns out to be from an Atlantic article about Kirk’s close relationship with the Trump family which was quoted in the email.) The poll contains the worrisome news that only 53% of Americans “completely disagree” with the statement that “political violence is sometimes necessary.” The story comes into clearer focus when the result is broken down by people’s view of Donald Trump. Only 39% of Trump supporters (those with a favorable view of him) believe this while 66% of his opponents do.
In other words, people who hold a favorable view of Donald Trump are overwhelmingly more likely to believe that political violence has a legitimate role in our society. The number of Trump supporters who believe this is 27% higher than that of his opponents. This is of course the least surprising thing imaginable to anyone who has lived in the United States or on earth for the last decade. But we live in a media ecosystem of ideational bullshit. So it yet comes as a breath of fresh air, a sublime encounter with reality.
Continue reading “We Remain Adrift in an Ocean of Lies: 30 Hours After the Charlie Kirk Shooting”We Don’t Even Talk About the Guns Anymore
A day after a gunman killed right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, the internet has been ablaze with recriminations: exhortations from the center and left for both sides to “lower the temperature,” calls from the president and his followers on the right to exact revenge on liberals (despite the perpetrator being unknown and at large).
This is how the mass or particularly high profile shooting routine goes now — a mad dash to unveil the suspect’s identity (sometimes claiming the privacy and reputation of innocents along the way), the better to pin the violence on one political party or the other. It’s worth asserting, as some pundits seem to find it uncouth, that it’s simply true that right-wing extremists have killed far more people and tended to be more violent than their left-wing counterparts in the past few decades.
Still, it’s striking that discussion of guns, the tools virtually always used to carry out this violence, has all but fallen out of the national discourse. Even Democrats hardly bother to bring it up anymore.
I suspect this is the malignant influence of the Supreme Court at work. Even when a Republican administration can be moved to pass a restriction, its shelf life is limited.
In 2017, the Las Vegas music festival shooting was so particularly gruesome that even the Trump administration was roused to action. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) passed the bump stock ban rule, classifying the device as a machine gun and thus, illegal. A few years later, the Supreme Court knocked it down.
The Roberts Court has drastically expanded the Second Amendment — once thought to speak to militias — into an individual right to have firearms in the home. It knocked down New York’s century-old concealed carry law, expanding people’s ability to tote guns in public. (It did draw the line at letting domestic abusers carry firearms — except for Justice Clarence Thomas.)
The gun-friendly Court has made a near-impossible feat Sisyphean. We have a Republican Congress utterly unwilling to pass meaningful legislation to stem the scourge of gun violence, backstopped by a Supreme Court that sees the Second Amendment as untouchable.
It seems like, and currently is, a lost cause. Still, dropping the subject cedes significant ground to the right. The United States is not the only country with hyper-partisanship and an irresponsible, bloodlusty leader. It’s the guns.
— Kate Riga
GOP Rep Wants a Statue of Charlie Kirk
In the wake of the killing of Turning Point USA co-founder and online provocateur Charlie Kirk, some Republicans are pushing for the kind of commemorations often reserved for elected officials, military figures, and civil rights activists. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) — who previously worked for TPUSA — sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) asking him to help create a statute of Kirk for the U.S. Capitol.
“This is not a symbolic gesture, but a permanent testament to his life’s work, his courage, and his sacrifice,” Luna wrote in the letter to Johnson. “It will stand as a reminder that political disagreement must never be answered with violence, and that the fight for truth must carry on.”
Trump ordered that flags be flown at half-staff in the wake of the shooting as well.
— Nicole Lafond
Tales from a Different Democracy
Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil and political and spiritual ally of Donald Trump, was found guilty this afternoon for his own plot to stay in office following his loss in the election.
“The government wanted to remain in power by simply ignoring democracy — and that is what constitutes a coup d’état,” Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said Tuesday, according to the Washington Post. “The leader of the criminal group made it clear — publicly and in his own words — that he would never accept defeat at the ballot, a democratic loss in the elections, and that he would never abide by the will of the people.”
The conviction rolled out over several days, as justices announced their decisions one by one.
“They acted to hijack the soul of the republic,” said Justice Cármen Lúcia, who cast the third, deciding vote.
Brazil emerged from a military dictatorship in 1985, and prosecutors had argued that conviction of Bolsonaro was necessary to prevent a return to that era.
The former president will be sentenced this week, and faces decades in prison.
— John Light
In Case You Missed It
Insiders Describe the Trump FBI Clown Show in Vivid, Buffoonish Detail
Charlie Kirk Dead After Being Shot During a College Event in Utah
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
More Thoughts on the Kirk Murder
What We Are Reading
Florida officials watching for ‘vile, sanctionable’ behavior from teachers after Kirk killing
More Thoughts on the Kirk Murder
I wanted to share two-and-a-half follow-on thoughts about the murder of Charlie Kirk and everything that is coming in its wake.
We are now seeing an escalating campaign of valorization of Kirk, one that a lot of non-partisan media and certainly everyone in the conservative movement is contributing to. Quite a few of his opponents are getting carried along with this. At the same time, you have the more extreme members of the right calling for violent and/or legal retribution against the “left” based on essentially nothing. As usual, the call is led by none other than the president of the United States. Yesterday we noted that political violence and terrorism is the antithesis of civic or liberal democracy. Because of that, civic democrats have the greatest interest in opposing it. But the gist of the matter is that we oppose civic violence targeting anyone regardless of belief, regardless of the qualities of the person. It applies to everyone. We don’t need to elevate someone or pretend they were something they weren’t to express our opposition to political assassination. And we shouldn’t. Kirk was a hyper-aggressive partisan who advocated a lot of deeply retrograde beliefs. That is just a fact. Let’s not pretend otherwise. His murder is at the same time deeply wrong and a disaster for the country.
Continue reading “More Thoughts on the Kirk Murder”Listen To This: Put Up Or Shut Down
Kate and Josh discuss the great shutdown debate and the Roberts Court’s signaling on pocket rescissions.
Continue reading “Listen To This: Put Up Or Shut Down”