Skip to content

Month: September 2025

The Right Way?

Published by digby on September 11, 2025

Ezra Klein’s headline writers did him no favor with that one. His piece isn’t actually that bad. He says that Kirk was using dialog and discussion to argue for his ideology and that’s what we do in a democracy which is correct. We’re supposed to settle our differences through argumentation and debate and any political violence endangers us all.

Some people go so far as to compare Kirk to Martin Luther King, the man who changed America using peaceful, passive resistance following the precepts of Thoreau and Gandhi. On the right we have this:

Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group, shut down his office upon hearing the news of his friend’s death.

“I’m racking my brain trying to think of another political figure that had a similar impact and following who was assassinated, and the only person I can think of is Martin Luther King Jr.,” Mr. Schilling said…

Intercessors for America, a Christian group with ties to the Trump administration, emailed supporters on Wednesday night with a suggested prayer in response to Mr. Kirk’s death. The subject line referred to “Charlie Kirk, a modern day MLK.”

Former Obama adviser David Axelrod suggested that Kirk’s murder was of similar import as well:

DAVID AXELROD, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think it’s very precarious. And you just outlined it in the questions you asked earlier. We can go. One of two ways in this country. We can embrace this notion that somehow were at war and there’ll be more killing and more violence.

Or we can learn from this moment. I — you mentioned history. I was a kid when, we went through a period of assassination in the 1960s. I remember when Martin Luther King was killed. Robert Kennedy went onto the streets of Indianapolis. He was a candidate for president at that time and was very, very dangerous, frankly, for him to be out there but he insisted on going. And he spoke to the crowd.

And, Erin, he finished, and I wanted to share this. He finished with a poem by Aeschylus, the ancient Greek poet. And it was, “even in our sleep pain which cannot forget falls drop by, drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will comes wisdom. Through the awful grace of God.”

The question is have we seen enough, to embrace wisdom here and recognize that this is not a path that we want to go? As a country, and let’s be clear, I heard what those folks said. Weve had political assassinations of Democrats and Republicans of the left and the right. This is not something that is exclusive to one or the other.

But I will say, if we continue to embrace this notion that if we disagree that were not only political opponents, but you are an enemy, you are an evil. You want to destroy the country. You want to destroy our way of life. That is a prescription for disaster.

Many of Kirk’s allies disagree with that sentiment. The following is a collage of tweets from right wing influencers:

Since Kirk is being extolled for his commitment to respectful dialog, I think it may be a good time to revisit some of his commentary in order to celebrate the salutary effect his words have had on our body politic.

Here’s Kirk on Martin Luther King himself:

He had big plans:

On political violence:

On guns:

I found those in a moment of scrolling. So that’s Kirk and it’s what he was selling to young people all over the country and doing it quite successfully. He was a talented demagogue who appealed particularly to alienated, white males.

We can give him credit for not leading a militia or a terrorist group that perpetrated violence against all those people (aka “cockroaches”) he railed against on college campuses. But I’m not going to say that he was leading a peaceful movement of passive resistance like Martin Luther King, nor am I going to say that “he did politics right.” Call me crazy but racist propaganda and rank demagoguery just doesn’t seem like a good thing for our politics. Yes, he had a right to do it but that doesn’t mean it was right.

None of this is to say he deserved to be shot. Nobody does and I’m consistent on that no matter who it is. I’m against shooting people, period. But you can hold two disparate ideas in your head at the same time: it’s an abomination that Kirk was killed but he wasn’t a hero either. It appears that our media and political establishment are having a very hard time making that distinction.

Update —

Just noting for the record:

Addicted To Outrage

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 11, 2025

And profiting from it

Reactions to Charlie Kirk’s assassination followed predictable patterns. Leaders of both major parties issued statements condemning the violence and offered condolences to Kirk’s young family.

“Below that seethed the eternal, inescapable culture war, each side excoriating the other,” Andrew Egger writes at The Bulwark. “It barely mattered how representative of their broader political cohorts these posters were; every American’s social-media algorithms made sure they got to see whichever ones would make them maddest.”

That is in itself a problem capitalism cannot and will not address. All the incentives in the attention economy support addicting social media users to agitation, anger, and resentment. Therein lies profit, dividends, career advancement. Not to pursue those is a crime against capitalism, a term found nowhere in our country’s founding documents. William Hogeland makes clear in “The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding” that below the founders’ lofty rhetoric and the framers’ revolutionary government design, wealth accumulation drove men like Hamilton as much as idealistic concepts of equality for some.

Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction, Marx believed. But they grow slowly. We are reaping the harvest 250 years and a lot of technology and a widening wealth gap later.

There is also a widening gap in the behaviors on display between two major cable networks. Stockholders of both expect profits. But one constructed its business model directly on making its viewers angry and keeping them stewing. It’s turned Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate into 24-hour programming.

Egger observes:

Over on MSNBC, just minutes after the shooting, pundit Matthew Dowd ghoulishly rushed to lay the blame at Kirk’s own feet: “I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” (He was later fired from the network.) On Fox News, Jesse Watters seemed ready to anoint Kirk the first martyr of the second U.S. Civil War: “Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. And what are we going to do about it?” (He was not fired by his network.)

Firing Watters wouldn’t be profitable.

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

50501 
May Day Strong
No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

The Shape We’re In

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 11, 2025

Conservative provocateur Charlie Kirk is dead

Charlie Kirk’s assassination in Utah on Wednesday occured at a time in Hullabaloo’s daily cycle when Digby had the conn. She posted about it here, here, and here with information on the killing still fuzzy. My turn now.

This morning, the murder suspect(s) remains at large. That information void did not dissuade Donald Trump, Laura Loomer, Christopher Rufo, Elon Musk, Katie Miller and others on the far right from claiming sans evidence that the killing was the fault of the “radical left.” Conservatives are already amplifying lefty randos on social media who mocked Kirk’s death. On this anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, don’t be surprised to hear claims that “thousands and thousands” of liberals celebrated Kirk’s death in New Jersey.

Robert McCoy of The New Republic noted instead that “prominent Democrats  were quick to condemn the violence.” Of course, they did.

A few on the right in the information void called for vengeance. Alex Jones declared, “This is a war, this is a war, this is a war.” Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok posted at 3:37 pm ET Wednesday, “THIS IS WAR.”

To be determined

Commenting on Trump’s statement on Kirk’s assassination, The New Republic‘s Greg Sargent posted this morning:

Here we go. Trump just made it unmistakably clear that it will now be absolutely open season on whoever they decide to label “the left,” and that this will be pursued with the full force of the government. This could get very, very bad.

Kirk’s murder is horrific. His family is destroyed. What happens to his Turning Point USA (TPUSA) movement remains to be written. As does what happens next. I’m holding my breath.

George Packer considers what Kirk’s death means at a moment when, as Digby suggested, this feels like 1968:

His murder is a tragedy for his family and a disaster for the country. In an atmosphere of national paranoia and hatred, each act of political violence makes the next one more likely. Last year, Trump came within a couple of inches of being assassinated. In June, two elected Democrats in Minnesota were shot, one fatally. President Trump has ordered flags across the country to be lowered to half-staff in Kirk’s honor, but he wasn’t a statesman like John F. Kennedy, or a moral leader like Martin Luther King Jr. (whom Kirk called “not a good person”). I won’t pretend that I believe America just lost a great man. In the long history of American political assassinations, Kirk belongs in the company of charismatic provocateurs such as Huey Long and Malcolm X, cut down before their time. Like them, he had a feel for the political pulse of his moment, a demagogic flair, and the courage to take on all comers in argument, which exposed him to the sniper who ended his life.

Kirk was killed on a college campus in Utah, seated under a tent with the slogan “Prove Me Wrong,” facing a crowd of several thousand people, debating anyone who wanted to approach and challenge him. He kept up this practice—part recruitment, part provocation, part entertainment—throughout his years as Turning Point USA’s leader. He was using his freedom of speech, and if his style was aggressive, divisive, sometimes mocking, losing his life this way was no less an assault on everything that democracy’s remaining believers should hold dear. Those who disagreed with Kirk ought to be able to deplore what he stood for and also the violence that killed him.

As do I.

“Words are not violence—violence is violence,” Packer continues. He cites some of the same comments by prominent conservatives to which I linked without quoting in paragraph two. Packer’s hope is that Trump’s MAGA administration will not use the murder of a young man who celebrated free speech and exercised his liberally “to muzzle others or themselves from speaking the truth about the perilous state we’re in.”

I am as concerned as Sargent is that we are on the road to Trump and his Project 2025 advisers declaring that anyone they define as “the left” is guilty of thought crimes. They’ve telegraphed that lean for months before Kirk’s killing. Whatever comes of the murder investigation, the right is already hard at work setting its preferred narrative while the adults in the room wait for actual facts to emerge.

These are perilous times. There is no First Amendment in an autocracy. Nor separation of powers in a dictatorship.

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

50501 
May Day Strong
No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Reichstag Fire?

Published by digby on September 10, 2025

“For years those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism we’re seeing in our country & it must stop right now. My admin will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity”

Meanwhile, Every Day There Is This

Published by digby on September 10, 2025

No one knows who these people are. They could be cartel gang members for all we know. They are even hiding identifiers on their vehicles.

So yeah. 1968. We even have the beginnings of a war.

Political Violence Approval

Published by digby on September 10, 2025

Nobody knew who shot Charlie Kirk when those were written. Nobody knows as I write this now. But as you can see, they aren’t waiting to find out to gin up retribution against the left.

Apropos of nothing, this discussion just before the election in 2024 about the growing acceptance of political violence in America is interesting:

UANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Tensions are high among Americans leading into the 2024 election. According to a new national survey, 75% of respondents believe the future of the country’s democracy is at risk next year. And the survey also found that a growing number of Americans support political violence in an effort to save the United States. That is all according to data collected by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution. NPR’s Ashley Lopez is here. And, Ashley, I just want to start with that finding, the increased support for political violence.

ASHLEY LOPEZ, BYLINE: Yeah.

SUMMERS: Just how common is that view?

LOPEZ: So the good news is that this is not an overwhelmingly popular position among Americans. Only 23% of people who responded to the survey said they support political violence in some situations. But the bad news is this is a view that is becoming more accepted. And I should point out, the level of support for this view is growing, like, relatively fast.

SUMMERS: How fast are we talking about here?

LOPEZ: Well, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, they’ve been asking Americans in just the past few years whether they agree with this statement, quote, “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” end quote. Researchers say they first asked about this statement in March, 2021. And at that time, only 15% of respondents said they agreed with it. Cut to just two years later, and researchers say that support has grown to nearly a quarter of Americans, which is a significant jump for such a short amount of time.

SUMMERS: Right. What do we know, if anything, about what’s driving this uptick in support for political violence?

LOPEZ: So it’s likely a combination of things. I talked to Robert Jones, who is the CEO and founder of the group that conducted this study. And he thinks two big things have been happening in American politics that are driving this. One is the continued polarization in American politics, right? Like, people in one political party are increasingly distrustful of people in a different political party, which just doesn’t really help bring down the temperature when there are big divides on issues. And the second thing, Jones says, has to do with the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

ROBERT JONES: We had our first election that we cannot say that there was a peaceful transfer of power in the last election year. We had an insurrection on January 6. So I think we are seeing violence spill over. And I think Americans are kind of feeling the country coming unraveled in a way and worried that they may have to brace themselves for that.

LOPEZ: Jones told me he thinks we are in for, like, a pretty challenging season between now and the presidential election in 2024.

SUMMERS: What did they find out about who is most likely to hold these views?

LOPEZ: Yeah, so what we know is that this does fall along party lines in a pretty significant way. Researchers found that one-third of Republicans support violence as a means to save the country, compared with 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats. And more specifically, Republicans who have favorable views of Trump were found to be nearly three times as likely as Republicans who have unfavorable views of Trump to support political violence. They also found that Americans who believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump were also three times more likely than those who do not believe the big lie to support political violence in an effort to save the country.

Just thought it was worth mentioning.

He Looked Like A Mexican

Published by digby on September 10, 2025

Horrors of Trump detention centre: Lisburn man tells his story after arrest for ‘looking like a Mexican’ Lee Stinton was lifted by US immigration police on an American street — in an incident he compared to a kidnapping. Here, he tells us his story.

Watch that interview if you have the chance.

Despite believing he had a legal right to stay in the US due to personal circumstances, Lee Stinton’s life was turned upside down when he was arrested by an ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) officer.

Lee (45) had been a successful Key West hairdresser with a partner, DeVaun Davis, whom he had planned to marry in August.

For a month, he was kept in a cramped cell in the notorious Krome Detention Centre, which has been criticised for providing inadequate and little food, overcrowded cells and denial of medication for detainees.

Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph from his parents’ home in Lisburn, he sits where he can see the door — his escape route, a safety net after what he alleges happened at Krome.

It is unbelievable:

“I had been making my own money, paying my taxes, I had my own apartment. It is all going well. I had my new partner, a great job.”

“I was on my way to work one day. An ICE officer said to me: ‘You look Mexican.’ I said: ‘I am not. I am from Northern Ireland.’

“They asked me if I had my paperwork with me. I don’t know who carried that stuff around with them anyway; I would want to keep it somewhere safe.

“It was like I was kidnapped off of the street. I managed to get through to my partner on the phone while they were shackling me in the streets.

“They were trying to say I ran a stop sign. I was on a bike — there was no stop sign. I had stopped to let a car go by me. But they needed some form of probable cause.

“The man who was arresting me looked at my phone. My screensaver is a picture of my partner and me. He said: ‘He looks Haitian. This might be a two-for-one deal today.’

“They brought me to the Krome Detention Centre in Miami.”

[…]

“I never even had so much as a parking ticket. I have no criminal record. I have never done anything wrong. I was doing everything the US Government asked me,” says Lee.

“Then I suddenly find myself in a cell with all of these people. I was housed in this concrete cell with these really bright lights. It was meant to be for about 10 people and there were over 100 men in the cell. There was one toilet.

“There were nights where everyone was lying on the ground. On the concrete, it was freezing cold. I had to sleep right by the toilet some nights because there was no where for me to sleep.

“I have been vegan for a long time. They wouldn’t get me food. If they did, it was always meat. When you talked to someone about the type of dietary requirements you had, you just didn’t get [anything].

“They didn’t bother bringing me food. I lost a lot of weight. I was very malnourished.

“You didn’t shower for about two weeks. I couldn’t brush my teeth or anything.

“It was so hard to get anything. To even get toothpaste, things for basic human needs like a shower, everything was a struggle.

“They brought you outside once a day for an hour. You’d walk around in circles to get a bit of exercise.

“This man had been begging for days for his heart medication. He literally dropped dead of a heart attack in front of my eyes. They didn’t give him the medication he needed.

“That was someone’s father, someone’s grandfather, and he just dropped dead. I never saw anything like that before.”

[…]

“I can barely deal with this as an adult. And the things they did to me were horrible. I asked one of the ladies about food. I had not eaten for three days. She just started screaming in my face: ‘Bye! Bye! Bye!’

“They weren’t supposed to mix the oranges and blues, but they had mixed everyone together.

“You were given phone calls. My partner had to put [up] a lot of money for me to be able to call them. They listen to every phone call.”

[…]

“[ICE] were meant to involve the British Consulate; they didn’t do that. It was actually my parents who got the British Consulate involved,” he explains.

“They would hold you in the holding cell for three or four hours. I only saw the consulate for 10 minutes. They put me back in a holding cell for hours, again with no food.

“Then they brought me back to the camp with everyone else. It almost felt like, for me, if you were getting any kind of help you were punished.

“When my lawyer came, they kept me in a holding cell for four hours. I could see my lawyer — there are glass doors — and she could see me very clearly. But for those four hours, [ICE] were telling me they couldn’t contact my lawyer…

“It was just non-stop trying to get food. My parents would call up the British Consulate, which would then call on my behalf to get me food. They were getting to the stage where they had to call every day.”

“An officer had been taking me to this room and he said: ‘You aren’t allowed to have those.’ He pointed at my piercings,” he recalls.

“Next thing I knew I was being shackled again. Chains around my ankles, my wrists. They brought me to a hospital in Miami.

“They made me stand with all of these people looking at me like I was some sort of murderer. It was so degrading. They brought me into a room. They told the doctors to cut out all of my piercings.

“I had already been there for almost a month. I didn’t understand why this was suddenly an issue. I just feel like everything was done to intimidate and torture.

“I told the nurses specifically: ‘I do not consent to this.’ But they put lidocaine [for numbing] on my face and on the back of my neck. The thing is it is only supposed to work for 40 minutes; I was lying there for well over an hour and they just started doing it. I was shackled to the bed. I couldn’t move.

“The guards who brought me there were laughing at me. They were just like: ‘Oh, that’s gnarly.’ I kept saying: ‘I can feel this. It hurts.’”

[…]

“[ICE] said: ‘You, you’re gone.’ They made you pack up everything you had, which was basically a few blankets,” he says.

“They held me in another holding cell for 13, 14 hours.

“They brought us to the airport, where they kept me in a little room.

“I went to the airport at 5am; my flight wasn’t until 7pm.

“They put me in this tiny room. They allow you to put your own clothes on. It was freezing cold in that place and all I had was shorts, a tank top and Birkenstocks.

“They send you to what is considered the capital of your country. They just dropped me off in London. They don’t give you any plan on getting you back home. They just left me in the middle of the big city.”

This is what we’re doing.

Feels Like ’68

Published by digby on September 10, 2025

Ever since Pelosi’s husband was attacked and Trump got hit, I’ve been wondering if we were escalating into another period of horrific political violence. It appears it’s now. Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk was shot at an event in Utah. Details aren’t available right now except that he was shot in the neck and in the hospital. The assailant is in custody. I sincerely hope he fully recovers.

This is very bad and the last thing we need right now. All violence is wrong but political violence in a situation like this is going to lead to more tyranny. I guess we wait to see what the motive was but I have no doubt that the right is going to seize on this as a rationale for escalation.

Kirk is being elevated right now on television to the level of folk hero to all of America’s youth, but that isn’t quite true. He’s very popular on the right. But that doesn’t include the entire younger generation of Americans. I suppose that’s sort of inevitable but if there’s a time for both honesty and decency it is now.

Update:

Some In GOP Express Reservations About Mass Suffering And Death

Published by digby on September 10, 2025

Will they do anything about it? Probably not.

cc

The Hill reports:

“Vaccinations have proven to be — the basic ones — helpful in preventing the spread of measles, polio and other things,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said. “My children are vaccinated, my grandchildren are vaccinated. I don’t agree with that.”

The charged issue had already been front and center under President Trump, whose pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has long fought vaccines with warnings that they cause autism — a view roundly rejected by most public health experts.

Building on that vaccine skepticism, the Florida Department of Health last week announced it will ban mandates for schoolchildren to be vaccinated for numerous diseases, making it the first state to make such an action. 

The decision affects jabs for hepatitis B, chickenpox, haemophilus influenzae type B and pneumococcal diseases, including meningitis. 

Plenty within the GOP expressed doubts about mandating the COVID-19 vaccine in recent years. But Florida’s move against routine childhood vaccinations unnerved a number of Republican lawmakers who worry not only about the decision, but also what it could mean for their respective states as vaccine skepticism continues to rise in the years following the COVID-19 outbreak. 

How odd that denigrating the vaccine that saved hundreds of millions of people around the globs might lead to skepticism of all vaccines? Who could have predicted?

“It’s a horrible idea,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told The Hill. “I think it’s a bad idea, and I think it could create … a pressure on other states to do the same thing.” 

“I just think it’s bad policy. I don’t think it’s rooted in science. I think it’s rooted in political science, but not epidemiology,” he continued. “I think it’s a mistake, and I think there could be some one-upsmanship measure that I hope North Carolina doesn’t touch.” 

That’s almost certainly going to happen. And the more states that do it the more these diseases will spread to the rest of us. This country is going to become a much more dangerous place especially for small children and anyone who is immunocompromised.

But as we saw with COVID, even mass death didn’t stop the MAGA cultists from refusing the vaccines and it’s estimated that at least 200,000 excess deaths resulted from their selfishness. Many of them were their own friends and relatives.

Some House Republicans are expressing similar misgivings with the direction the country is headed, warning that Kennedy’s ascension to the top of the HHS threatens to undermine a decades-old trust in vaccines that experts say have saved countless lives. 

“I don’t agree with him on vaccines, it’s that simple,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R), a Pennsylvania centrist. “Vaccines save lives. I support them, and I think any effort to erode them is damaging to our country.” Fitzpatrick said he’s hearing those same anxieties among his constituents, citing a simple reason. 

“My district supports common sense,” he said. 

I’m sure they still back Trump to the hilt through — the man who made a cheap backroom deal in the election to get Bobby Jr on board and is now letting him kill their children. Nothing is ever his fault.

Meanwhile in Florida, this quack thinks his job is to protect parents’ rights above all else:

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo admitted over the weekend that the department did not engage in any projections or data analysis of what removing vaccine mandates could mean for future disease outbreaks, such as measles, polio or whooping cough. He added he did not believe any such studies were necessary. 

“Ultimately, this is an issue very clearly of parents’ rights,” he said. “So, do I need to analyze whether it’s appropriate for parents to be able to decide what goes into their [child’s body]? I don’t need to do an analysis on that.”

So, I guess parents have a right to hurt their children. Good to know. But coming from the party that worships Donald Trump I guess it isn’t much of a surprise.

This Is Why He Only Goes To His Own Properties

Published by digby on September 10, 2025

Free D.C! Free Palestine!” “Trump is the Hitler of our time!” 

It was Trump’s first dinner out in D.C. as president, except at his own hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. Code Pink’s D.C. organizer, Olivia DiNucci, told the Daily Beast the group simply reserved a table “pretty last-minute” at the swanky restaurant, where king crab claws can set you back nearly $160, in order to confront Trump.

I guess the restaurants aren’t as packed as Trump says they are.