As Charlie Kirk’s family, friends and colleagues barreled through the sky to Utah, one staffer kept throwing up in her mouth. Each time she quietly swallowed. She did not want to add to the distress of the others sitting in deathly silence on the jet – especially Kirk’s 36-year-old wife, Erika. She was already a widow.
Those who work at Turning Point USA – the ultraconservative activist organization based in Phoenix, Arizona, that Charlie Kirk founded – believe deeply in a Christian God. Many also believe that Satan and his deputies vie for influence on Earth. Earlier that day, on 10 September 2025, those forces had seemingly persuaded an angry young man to hide on a roof at Utah Valley University, where Kirk was speaking to 3,000 people, with a loaded rifle.
Since Kirk started Turning Point as an 18-year-old high school graduate in 2012, the organization had become a big operation. It employed more than 400 staff, boasted an operating budget of greater than $100m and hundreds of chapters at colleges and high schools, and had launched a political arm, Turning Point Action, that endorsed candidates and mobilized Republican voters. Although Kirk, now 31, told confidants that he had no interest in office, some political observers thought he might one day be the Republican nominee for president.
As an attack dog for the Trump administration and an organization that has often framed political disagreements as civilizational struggles, Turning Point promoted the dangerous and destabilizing idea that Democrats stole the 2020 election; the organization has also often adopted stances that contradict Kirk’s own stated commitment to free speech.
Kelly Rogers told employees Wednesday that she is resigning from her post overseeing special education at the U.S. Education Department as the agency is in the midst of upheaval and downsizing.
Democratic socialist David Morales is projected to oust Providence Mayor Brett Smiley (D) from a Tuesday primary, according to Decision Desk HQ.
France and Canada have followed the United Kingdom in announcing a ban on goods from illegal Israeli settlements, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told the House of Commons on Tuesday.
The British government has recognised the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, declared the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and announced both comprehensive sanctions on Israeli settlements and a ban on all arms licences and other exports that "materially contribute to the occupation."
Under a government program extended for another year, children of Ukrainian veterans will have their contract-based tuition fully covered by the state for the 2026-27 academic year.
Lonnie G. Bunch III, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, is stepping down from his post at the end of the year.
