Charlie Kirk S Assassination And The Rise Of Political Violence

The Republican governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, articulated the feeling of many Americans when he said on CNN a few days after the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, “If your view of... The country has indeed been shaken—not only by last week’s assassination but also this year by the shootings of two state legislators (one of them fatal) in Minnesota, the attempt to burn down the... Trump as he campaigned for president last year. The country should also be shaken by the prospect that these acts of violence, even if irrational and committed by individuals with no coherent political philosophies, could accelerate a slide into authoritarianism and the... Mr. Cox was justified in asking, at the announcement that the suspected assassin of Mr.

Kirk had been apprehended, “Is this the end of a dark chapter in our history, or the beginning of a darker chapter in our history?” “We can return violence with violence, we can return hate with hate, and that’s the problem with political violence—it metastasizes,” Mr. Cox also said at that press conference. “Because we can always point the finger at the other side. And at some point, we have to find an off-ramp, or it’s going to get much, much worse.” We cannot assume that everyone is looking for that off-ramp.

In an interview with Fox News two days after the assassination, President Trump explicitly rejected the idea that extremists on both the left and the right were responsible for encouraging violence, instead insisting, “The... The assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk is testing political leaders, as some meet the moment with calls for unity and others call for a fight. Scott talks with Brian Levin, the founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at CSU San Bernardino, about the rise of political violence and where we go from here. Check out Political Breakdown’s weekly newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox. The killing of Charlie Kirk and the political violence haunting America, the deadly ‘kissing bug’ disease spreading across the U.S., and more Charlie Kirk was doing what he so often did—working a college crowd, prodding and provoking students in debate.

The 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA was at Utah Valley University near Salt Lake City on Sept. 10, surrounded by thousands of students gathered in an outdoor courtyard. It was the first stop of Kirk’s fall campus tour, and he was seated beneath a tent emblazoned with the words “The American Comeback.” Kirk became a star in these settings. Since founding his right-wing advocacy organization at 18, he proved peerless at channeling youthful discontent into political energy, shaping a movement with national reach. As Kirk fielded questions from the audience, a shot rang out, striking him in the neck. Panicked students scattered.

Kirk was rushed to the hospital. Grisly footage of the shooting rocketed across social media. Inside the West Wing, staff sat in shocked silence, scrolling to see the latest updates of news on their phones and messages on their computer screens. At 4:40 p.m., Trump announced Kirk’s death on Truth Social. “No one,” the President wrote, “understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie.” He leaves behind a wife and two young children. Click here to buy your copy of this issue

In recent years, the prospect of a political assassination such as this, carried out before a stunned crowd in broad daylight, has hung over a nation riven by factional fury. Elected officials whispered about it in green rooms and on campaign buses. When the moment arrived, it unfolded with chilling precision: a campus stage, a microphone, a single burst of gunfire. Where it will lead now is an ominous question with no obvious answers. Three thousand people attended the Turning Point USA event at which Charlie Kirk spoke on Wednesday, on an outdoor green at Utah Valley University. The sheer size of that crowd—in the morning, at a school in a suburb of Provo, and even if some were there to protest—is just another piece of evidence that Kirk, in his years-long...

There was a Q. & A. portion, and someone asked how many transgender Americans had been mass shooters in the past decade, to which Kirk replied, “Too many.” The person next asked, “Do you know how many mass shooters there... In the audience, heads turn: someone had shot him, apparently from an elevated position about a hundred and fifty yards away. Soon, Kirk’s spokesman announced that he had been killed. He was thirty-one, and left behind a wife and two young children.

President Trump, a close ally, ordered all flags flown at half-staff until Sunday evening. Kirk’s death was brutal, and tragic. It also had the effect that terrorists aim for, of spreading political panic. In the immediate aftermath of a killing with obvious political resonance, there is a period of nervous foreboding, as the public waits for news of the perpetrator’s identity and for any hints of what... But, as often as not, information brings no clarity. We have a fairly good sense of the politics that motivated Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of the UnitedHealthcare C.E.O., and James Fields, who sped his car into a crowd of counter-protesters at the...

But attempts to define the political motives of Thomas Crooks (who tried to kill Trump last summer, in Butler, Pennsylvania), or of Cody Balmer (who has been charged with firebombing Governor Josh Shapiro’s official... Robin Westman, who stands accused of shooting and killing two children at a Catholic church in Minneapolis last month (and whose transgender identity was the focus of many right-wing media reports), had written “Kill... The motives were strange and idiosyncratic enough that they couldn’t easily be blamed on any one partisan side. The effect of these violent acts on politics has been easier to track. Shortly after the news of Kirk’s shooting, the former Obama Administration official and liberal pundit Tommy Vietor echoed a common sentiment when he wrote on social media, “Political violence is evil and indefensible. It’s a cancer that will feed off itself and spread.” If that is right—if violence is contagious—then that is because each act generates its own responsive pattern of fear.

The news itself in recent years has been a catalogue of the ubiquity of political aggression and anticipatory dread. In 2022, a man arrived at Brett Kavanaugh’s home with a Glock and padded boots; later that year, a man broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home and tried to murder her husband with a hammer. Threats against members of Congress have also escalated significantly in the past decade. The Republican senator Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, said at a conference this summer, “I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real.” After the shootings of lawmakers in Minnesota, the... “It’s still in my head. I don’t think it will go away,” he said.

What politicians can control is how they respond. Speaking from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening, Trump denounced his perceived enemies. “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” he said, and vowed to find those he deemed responsible for... The man sitting at the Resolute desk and blaming his enemies for political demonization—for acting “in the most hateful and despicable way”—had earlier in the week promoted a new campaign of ICE raids in... . .’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” That aggression, combined with Kirk’s shooting, seemed to be literalizing the culture war, in real time.

A photo of President Donald Trump is seen at a growing memorial for Charlie Kirk outside Timpanogos Regional Hospital after Kirk was shot and killed Sept. 10, 2025, in Orem, Utah. (AP) The assassination of Charlie Kirk stunned first the audience at Utah Valley University, where he was shot while speaking Sept. 10, and then the country, as footage of his killing quickly spread. For many Americans, the conservative influencer’s death crystallized a growing fear: The United States is experiencing more and more political violence.

Kirk, 31, had the ear of both everyday Americans and the most powerful people in the United States. He founded Turning Point USA, a conservative organization focused on young people, when he was 18. Until he was fatally shot in the neck during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University, Kirk was close to President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Kirk’s assassination followed numerous recent instances of political violence. In 2025 alone, Minnesota Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were fatally shot; an arsonist set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s residence with Democratic Gov.

Josh Shapiro and his family inside; an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer was shot and injured outside a detention facility in Texas; the New Mexico Republican Party headquarters was set on fire; and a... The assassination of Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative activist, has raised alarms about the scourge of political violence in the United States, escalating anxieties about the safety of public figures on both sides of... Kirk’s killing was the latest in a series of attacks and threats targeting a range of American political figures, from President Donald Trump and members of Congress to governors and judges. Kirk was not an elected official, though he wielded influence as the founder of conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA and a close ally of the Trump administration. “I was not, in any way, surprised” by Kirk’s killing, said Michael Jensen, a researcher at the University of Maryland who tracks such violence in a domestic terrorism database. Jensen said he has seen an increase in attacks targeting what he characterizes as “government entities” — legislators and candidates, as well as officers carrying out immigration enforcement actions.

“You cannot simply say it’s coming from the left, it’s coming from the right [or] it’s coming from the fringe. It’s coming from everywhere,” Jensen said. American politics has long been haunted by political violence. In the 1960s, for example, one of the most socially turbulent decades in modern U.S. history, assassins gunned down President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F.

Kennedy and the civil rights leader Medgar Evers. In the decades that followed, President Gerald Ford and President Ronald Reagan survived attempts on their lives that were captured by television cameras. We look at the political fallout of Charlie Kirk's assassination, as well as the possibility of a government shutdown as Congress considers President Trump's budget. The assassination of right-wing youth leader Charlie Kirk last week has once again shifted focus onto political violence and the increasing polarization in American society. Here's Utah's Republican Governor Spencer Cox speaking to the press on Friday. SPENCER COX: To my young friends out there, you are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage.

It feels like rage is the only option. But through those words, we have a reminder that we can choose a different path. RASCOE: We're now joined by NPR senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Good morning, Mara. MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Ayesha. Public officials have repeatedly denounced political violence.

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