Charlie Kirk

As a human type Hunter Biden is familiar enough. Like George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy, he is a wayward member of a political dynasty with a strange knack for slaloming his way out of trouble. Before the internet it was much easier for such figures to go about their business. It is hard to see how the goings-on at Chappaquiddick could be covered up now, in the age of X and camera phones. It was Hunter’s misfortune to be born too late.  Dynasties are self-interested and adopt ideas based on the needs of the moment. The Habsburgs placed themselves at the head of the Counter-Reformation, and the Bushes, who were once liberal Republicans of the Nelson Rockefeller mold, later became the spokesmen of the evangelical revival. Hunter Biden is now going along in a similar vein.

In the financial world, most frauds are short-lived. Ponzi schemes such as Bernie Madoff’s eventually run out of new suckers to provide enough funds to pay the phony “returns” promised to earlier investors. When the cash flow dries up, the scam collapses. The con artists at the non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center have a different racket, and a different problem. Instead of swindling the public with promises of unrealistic, too-good-to-be-true investment returns, the fear-mongering SPLC sold “paranoia porn” to credulous donors, convincing them – falsely – that the country is full of dangerous right-wing extremists who need to be identified and brought to heel.

Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin’s DealBook summit, sponsored by the New York Times, made a lot of news yesterday, though it felt more like 1975 than 2025, particularly when it came to “women’s issues”. We were one degree of separation from participants arguing over galleys of Ms. Magazine or getting into shouting matches with Norman Mailer. In the role of Phyllis Schlafly, the beautiful right-wing career woman leading a charge for a return to traditional values, was Erika Kirk, CEO of Turning Point USA and recent widow of Charlie Kirk. She claimed it was “ironic” that women in New York City had voted for Zohran Mamdani, given that many of them are childless but voiced support for his promise to provide free childcare for children under six years old.

In the year since his triumphant reelection, Donald Trump has racked up an enormous list of accomplishments, both foreign and domestic. His sweeping, “move fast and break things” approach to governance has generated a form of accepted normalcy which his first administration never experienced. His White House staff and cabinet, once full of leaks and disloyalty, has turned out to be incredibly faithful. On the international scene, he has credibly been suggested as deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize. And at home, according to polling averages from RealClearPolitics, Trump is more popular at this point in his second term than either George W. Bush or Barack Obama was. Yet within the movement that made all this possible, it seems everyone is at each other’s throats.

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Democratic lawmakers and commentators found themselves in a quandary. On the one hand, most of them loathed Kirk. On the other, many felt that they should try to hold the line condemning the shooting through the throat of a young husband and father at an American university. These so-called ‘anti-fascists’ started behaving like nothing so much as the fascists they were searching for The New York Times’s Ezra Klein was among those who dipped his toe into the water, writing a piece within the day titled “Charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way.

October 14 will mark the birthday of two very different American martyrs. On that day in 1973, George Floyd was born. And, as everyone knows only too well, he died in 2020 after being placed under arrest by a Minneapolis police officer. Twenty years later Charlie Kirk was born on the same October day. The nation is still coming to terms with his assassination while speaking to students on the Utah Valley University campus two weeks ago. Floyd’s death was the result of a tragic mistake; officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of second-degree murder, but on the basis that he killed Floyd unintentionally. Kirk was struck down by an assassin with an explicitly political motive.

In as Trumpian a fashion as it gets, the president has rekindled the years-long debate: Did progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) marry her brother? Shortly after conservative icon Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood by a deranged leftist, Omar reposted a video on X that called Kirk a “reprehensible human being” who was “spewing racist dog whistles” in his “last, dying words.” Republican lawmakers saw an opportunity to censure the “Squad” member and remove her committee assignments. The motion failed by a 214-213 vote.Nevertheless, some conservatives are demanding Omar’s denaturalization and deportation to Somalia. Denaturalization is allowed in cases of “concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation.

ICEBlock is an app that uses real-time information to pinpoint the location of ICE agents in the field. Launched in April in response to Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, it now boasts more than one million users across the country. Among them, until recently, was self-styled “anti-fascist” sniper Joshua Jahn, who killed one person – a detainee – and critically injured two more at an ICE facility in Dallas. The FBI has discovered that Jahn used the app, or one like it, to track his intended victims. In a handwritten note, Jahn, who took his own life, wrote, "Hopefully this will give ICE agents real terror.”ICEBlock claims that its purpose is to help illegal immigrants evade arrest by alerting them to the presence of ICE agents.

It’s often noted that American society is becoming ever more politicized and polarized. Those who once imagined themselves uninterested in politics find themselves dragged into America’s culture wars. Small children now carry placards and attend political marches. Max Horder and Danit Sara Finkelstein explain the extent to which social media has played a part in this growing radicalism, not just because of the ideological echo chambers we now inhabit, but due to the mindset online algorithms create: rewarding outrage, encouraging extremism. Nuance and balance are anathema; shock and division set each day’s tone.