Trump health officials plan to link coronavirus vaccines to the deaths of 25 children as they consider limiting which Americans should get theshots, according to four people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential information.
The findings appear to be based on information submitted to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which contains unverified reports of side effects or bad experiences with vaccines submitted by anyone, including patients, doctors, pharmacists or even someone who sees a report on social media. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emphasizes that the database is not designed to assess whether a shot caused a death, a conclusion that requires thorough investigations by scientists and public health professionals.
Trump health officials plan to include the pediatric deaths claim in a presentation next week to an influential panel of advisers to the CDC that is considering new coronavirus vaccine recommendations,which affect access to the shots and whether they’re free.
The plan has alarmed some career scientists who say coronavirus vaccines have been extensively studied, including in children,and that dangers of the virus itself are being underplayed. While Trump health officials are investigating deaths due to vaccines, CDC staff in June presented data to the same vaccine committee showing that at least 25 children died who had covid-associated hospitalizations since July 2023. That number, the staff said, was likely an undercount, and of the 16 old enough for vaccination, none was up-to-date on vaccines.
They aren’t just trying to kill kids though. Half the seniors in the baby boom are on the chopping block too:
The FDA in August approved the latest coronavirus vaccines for people ages 65 and older or who have risk factors for severe disease, but the CDC vaccine panel can recommend the shots more narrowly or broadly. The committee is weighing a plan to recommend the shot for those 75 and older but instruct people who are younger to speak to a physician before they get the vaccine, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share policy discussions. Another option would not recommend the vaccine to people under the age of 75 without preexisting conditions, the people said.
According to CDC estimates, nearly 43 percent of people in that age group and 13 percent of children received the 2024-2025 version of the coronavirus vaccine.
Apparently, they have a tiny bit of concern that it might provoke a backlash from seniors who would prefer not to die on a ventilator in the hospital because Donald Trump made a backroom deal with a brainworm addled nutcase.
The tragic loss of Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old father, husband, and advocate for open debate, whose faith was important to him, reminds us of the fragility of life and the urgent need for unity in our nation. Our hearts are heavy, as his passing leaves a grieving family and a country grappling with division. There is no place for violence or hate in our society.
You may have seen that MSNBC recently ended its association with a contributor who made an unacceptable and insensitive comment about this horrific event. That coverage was at odds with fostering civil dialogue and being willing to listen to the points of view of those who have differing opinions. We should be able to disagree, robustly and passionately, but, ultimately, with respect. We need to do better.
Charlie Kirk believed that “when people stop talking, really bad stuff starts.” Regardless of whether you agreed with his political views, his words and actions underscore the urgency to maintain a respectful exchange of ideas a principle we must champion. We believe in the power of communication to bring us together. Today, that belief feels more vital than ever. Something essential has fractured in our public discourse, and as a company that values the power of information, we have a responsibility to help mend it.
As employees, we ask you to embody our values in your work and communities. We should engage with respect, listen, and treat people with kindness.
Uh huh. Ok. Here’s a clip from Fox News a couple of hours before the Kirk shooting.
Fox News Host Brian Kilmeade suggested killing the homeless, disabled, and mentally ill with involuntary lethal injection.
CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): I know what you’re thinking, we’ve got to get Joe Biden out of the way so we can run against Kammy. Oh my goodness, is she beatable. It’s like Black Hillary on steroids. Is she Black? I guess she says she’s Caribbean or whatever. …
She would be a lot easier to beat than Joe Biden. Joe Biden is a bumbling dementia filled Alzheimer’s corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.
Kindness and decency. Got it:
Stephen Miller: “The Democrat Party, its pundits, its allies, the educators, for ten years, have waged a campaign of eliminationist rhetoric against Trump, against, Republicans, against MAGA, against Trump officials, it has been willful and deliberate…
[The rhetoric is] the same exact rhetoric and messages that are used by the assassins…This is willful and deliberate radicalization. They know what they’re doing…
Under President Trump’s leadership, I don’t care how—it could be a RICO charge, a conspiracy charge, conspiracy against the United States, insurrection—but we are going to do what it takes to dismantle the organizations and the entities that are fomenting riots, that are doxing, that are trying to inspire terrorism, and that are committing a violence…The power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and—if you’ve broken the law—take away your freedom.”
Stephen Miller: "The Democrat Party, its pundits, its allies, the educators, for ten years, have waged a campaign of eliminationist rhetoric against Trump, against, Republicans, against MAGA, against Trump officials, it has been willful and deliberate…[The rhetoric is] the same… pic.twitter.com/7rt6PSsAgI
Charlie Kirk’s death has pushed some other important stories off the front pages. Let’s review just three.
If you missed it, Jason Leopold and a team of Bloomberg reporters obtained a cache of Yahoo emails including many between Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Wonder of wonders, Maxwell was not entirely candid about the depth and length of her relationship with Epstein:
The emails, part of a cache of more than 18,000 obtained by Bloomberg News, show that Maxwell and Epstein were closer, in many respects, than either publicly admitted. Maxwell opened at least one foreign bank account using one of his addresses, was a named director on one of Epstein’s main revenue-generating companies and traded stock in a company they were both invested in, details that haven’t been previously reported. The pair discussed undergoing a shared fertility procedure, long after Maxwell claims she largely disassociated from him. They corresponded about discrediting women who raised allegations against them, including in one exchange where Maxwell said she planned to circulate compromising information on one of Epstein’s sexual-abuse victims.
[…]
“Question,” Epstein wrote to Maxwell on May 23, 2008. “Which one do you prefer,,, lewd and lscivious conduct ,, or procuring minors for prostituion.”
Bloomberg cautions:
Riddled with typos, unfinished thoughts and missing punctuation, the emails are hardly the final word on Epstein. They do not provide complete answers for some of the most persistent questions surrounding his case, including how Epstein amassed his fortune, and no evidence that prominent public figures were sexually abusing minors. There are indications that many of the emails were deleted. Also, this Yahoo account is one of multiple email accounts Epstein used for different purposes. Nevertheless, this particular trove contains revelatory, often disturbing, details about the intricate facets of Epstein’s life. It offers new insight into how he leveraged his wealth and powerful social network, which stretched from Wall Street to Washington to Westminster, to beat back grave criminal allegations. And it showcases Epstein’s idiosyncrasies, his indignation as he’s being investigated, and his callousness toward the young women, many of them teenagers, who entered his world.
As the right raced to set its culture war narrative that “radical leftists” killed Kirk before the truth could put its pants on, ICE agents from the Trump administration continued to put their professionalism on display (Chicago Sun Times):
Federal immigration agents fatally shot a man Friday morning in a Northwest suburb after he allegedly attempted to flee a traffic stop and struck an officer with his car, officials said.
[…]
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were conducting “targeted law enforcement activity” in Franklin Park when they stopped the vehicle, according to a statement from the agency.
During the stop, a man allegedly resisted arrest and attempted to drive his car into officers, dragging one officer, ICE officials said.
The officer opened fire and shot the man, according to ICE. He was taken to an area hospital where he was pronounced dead, authorities said.
The ICE agent drew his weapon and shot and killed the driver who allegedly dragged him while the agent was allegedly being dragged.
The Guardian this morning publishes findings from a four-month investigation into ICE practices. Among them:
44,000 immigrants, 1,700 flights, 100 days
GlobalX carried out more than 1,700 flights for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the vast majority of them between domestic US airports, between January and May. The airline transported nearly 1,000 children, including nearly 500 children under the age of 10, and 22 infants.
For many immigrants, the flight paths were long, with multiple legs and layovers. Nearly 3,600 people were moved around repeatedly, forced to board five or more GlobalX flights.
Immigrants were also moved between detention facilities more than before. The average number of transfers per person has markedly increased in the past six months, and some detained immigrants have been moved as many as 10 or 20 times.
Detainees were moved around the US without notice, to locations far from their families, communities and legal counsel – leading to apparent violations of constitutional due process rights.
Along their journeys, immigrants say they were repeatedly kept in the dark about where they were going. Some say they were threatened by immigration agents with long-distance transfers and separation from their families if they did not accept voluntary deportation.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that immigrants in custody are informed about their transfers and allowed to contact their families throughout their detention. “Claims that transfers of detainees are being ‘weaponized’ or ‘hidden’ are also categorically false,” the DHS said.
“Louisiana is where people go to be disappeared,” said Nora Ahmed, legal director of the ACLU of Louisiana. “My concern about the Alexandria facility is [that] it is a black box.”
It’s worrisome. These stories remind me of the Bush II-era rendition flights I wrote about for the local paper 20 years ago:
Gulfstream’s executive jets are popular with U.S. intelligence agencies, and luxurious. More luxurious than destinations their manacled and diapered passengers disappear to, thanks to “extraordinary rendition,” also known as “outsourcing torture.”
For terror suspects en route to exotic prisons in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Uzbekistan, the tranquilizing suppositories are complimentary.
The internet, news organizations, and law enforcement flailed about this week in trying to make sense of Charlie Kirk’s killing. It simply added to the sense that the world is falling apart and you can’t trust anything you see, hear, or read.
In one sense, the algorithms were doing just what they are programmed to, Charlie Warzel complains in The Atlantic:
I saw the finger-pointing online even before I saw the news that Kirk had been shot. At that point, there was hardly any information about the incident—let alone details about the shooter or a motive. Yet there was plenty of blame to go around: Elon Musk posted on X that “the Left is the party of murder,” even before Kirk’s shocking death had been confirmed. Others blamed the shooting on the media, NGOs, and billionaire Democrat fundraisers.
This is the algorithmic internet at work. It abhors an information vacuum and, in the absence of facts or credible information, gaps are quickly filled with rage bait, conspiracy theorizing, doomerism, and vitriol.
FBI head Kash Patel seems already to have screwed his agency’s investigation. He caught heat not just for prematurely reporting that a suspect was in custody and later claiming that releasing photos of the susp[ect were his decision. There was also his mentioning that Kirk was a personal friend and hoping to see him again in Valhalla. Very professional.
In the controversy surrounding Patel’s firing of seasoned agents so he could install Trump loyalists, he opened his big mouth again (The New Republic):
“When Driscoll explained that firing employees based on case assignments would be in direct violation of internal FBI processes meant to adjudicate adverse actions and prevent retaliation based on case assignments, Patel said that he understood that and he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal and that he could be sued and later deposed,” the complaint reads.
Beyond blatantly violating the law, the statement also stood in direct contrast to what Patel had promised Congress during his confirmation process weeks earlier, when he swore to Senator Richard Blumenthal that all FBI employees would “be protected against political retribution.”
But the phrasing of Patel’s rebuke also implicated Trump, explicitly pointing to the Justice Department and the White House as the origin of the command.
“Patel explained that there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to stop these or any other firings, because ‘the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it,’” according to the legal filing.
National security journalists were quick to note that Patel’s loose lips might have made it easier for the ex-FBI agents to achieve an incredible feat: getting a U.S. president to sit for a deposition.
The prematurely reported story about messages on the alleged shooter’s 30-06 cartridges “expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology” felt not unlike conservative dogwhistles. You heard them, went baroo, thought what’s that about, then watched commentators explain them for you in real time when they didn’t know what they meant either.
As Warzel notes, it was off to the races on the right. The unidentified sniper was clearly a member of the “radical left,” our over-confident, know-nothing president insisted. “Democrats own this a hundred per cent,” said Rep. Nancy Mace (R) of South Carolina even before Kirk was declared dead.
It appears instead that rather than a lefty, suspect Tyler Robinson, 22, was something else entirely. The New York Times spoke with Adrian Rivera, 22, from Robinson’s woodworking class:
Mr. Rivera said that Mr. Robinson was a “massive Halo guy,” referring to the popular science fiction game, and that he also liked to play Call of Duty, and other shooter games.
Sam New, 23, remembered a different video game, Minecraft, which Mr. Robinson, an introvert from a conservative family, played obsessively.
Robinson’s grandmother told the Daily Mail, “My son, his dad, is a Republican for Trump. Most of my family members are Republican. I don’t know any single one who’s a Democrat.”
Online lemmings and leading Republican figures all leapt to conclusions about Robinson’s motives and what the cryptic messages meant. We find out later that they had more to do with Robinson being “yet another a fucked-up terminally online young man.” Marcy Wheeler has more about Robinson’s connection to gamer culture based on reporting in The Verge.
Yet I watched on Friday some mid-afternoon MSNBC host ask a mid-afternoon MSNBC “expert” whether advanced optics and laser sighting systems made possible the shot that killed Charlie Kirk. SMH.
Join us in wishing our “4-ever sweet” giant panda Qing Bao a happy 4th birthday! Shortly after 9 a.m., animal care staff presented her with a special panda-friendly fruitsicle cake made by the Zoo’s Department of Nutrition Science. Commissary keepers crafted the multi-tiered cake using frozen-diluted beet, pineapple and apple juices mixed with water. A giant number 4 adorned the cake, which was decorated with some of Qing Bao’s favorite treats, including apples, shredded carrots, sweet potato puree, blueberries, strawberries and peaches. Virtual visitors tuned into the Zoo’s Giant Panda Cam, sponsored by The Boeing Company, to watch Qing Bao enjoy her birthday festivities. . . .
Qing Bao took a very mindful, very demure journey to her party. Keepers hung her birthday gift—a new navy blue jolly ball—from a tree branch. Near the cake were several pink, purple and yellow enrichment boxes, each with a special message. After she batted the ball from the tree, Qing Bao ambled over to the box branded with “QB Pie
” and nibbled on the corners. Soon, she spotted the “4-Ever Sweet” box and ripped into it, revealing the cooked sweet potato hidden inside. She saved her fruitsicle cake for last, plucked the “4” off the top, and sampled a few fruits. Then, she climbed a tree and nestled into the fork for a post-party snooze. . . .
This marks Qing Bao’s first birthday at the Zoo since she arrived in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 15, 2024 with male giant panda Bao Li, who turned 4 on Aug. 4. The giant panda team affectionately describes Qing Bao as intelligent, curious and inquisitive. . . . “It’s been really fun to see her personality emerge,” said Laurie Thompson, assistant curator of giant pandas. “She was very reserved and cautious when she arrived, but now she is much more confident! She’s also become more interested in interacting with keepers. She waits for both keepers to say goodnight to her before she will go inside for the evening.”
Earlier this spring, giant panda Qing Bao experienced her first estrus cycle—the very short window when female giant pandas are able to conceive a cub. She and male Bao Li didn’t breed this year, but changes in Qing Bao’s behavior and hormones indicate she’s going through pseudopregnancy—the phenomenon where a female panda behaves as if she is pregnant, even though she isn’t.
Here’s an old story from 60 Minutes about the Chinese panda program … featuring panda babies!
Set coordinates for the Terminid Hive Worlds – and pack the extra-strength bug spray. We’re exterminating the galaxy’s most disgusting infestation in a patriotic payback mission of no mercy.
Abhorrent new enemy types, thrilling missions, strange worlds and spectacular beasts… pic.twitter.com/WDD7qFeWro
I’m sure that many of you are like me and are a bit mystified by the Kirk shooter’s “messages” on his firearms. I’m sure it has to do with me being old.
I wish the media would look more closely at all this because they are getting it wrong. Here is an excellent explanation of what it all means from people who follow the part of the online gaming world that I know nothing about. According to many others who know about this stuff on my social media feed, Alison Gill has this right:
I’m noticing the corporate media is relying heavily on the fact that the shooter – now in custody – engraved anti-fascist rhetoric on some of the bullets found at the scene. But to tie those phrases to actual anti-fascist movements, or Democrats, is a mistake.
The phrases engraved on the bullets include “Hey fascist! catch!”, “Notices, bulges”, “If you can read this, your’e gay lmao”, the lyrics to O Bella, Bella Ciao, and a series of arrows. As Anna Bower from Lawfare put it: Watching the cable news commentary on the bullet engravings is wild because none of these people seem to realize that the content of the engravings are indicative of extremely online meme brain rot.
Alexandra Matheiu sums it up nicely: A friend and I have been debating whether the alleged Kirk shooter was either a “dirtbag left cumtown chapo stupidpol poster” or if he was an “irony poisoned, terminally online, neonazi groyper type” given the gun casings, which shows just how impenetrable this is going to be for MSM.
But most of these phrases come from a video game.
The game – Helldivers2 – takes place on Super Earth in the 22nd century, and it’s a united planet governed by “Managed Democracy” – which is a fascist state made to look like a democracy to trick the citizens into thinking they’re living free.
In the game, you are from Super Earth in the 22nd century, which is now a united planet under a system called “managed democracy.” Managed democracy is an authoritarian state that uses propaganda to convince citizens they’re in a democracy. The game satirizes authoritarianism and nationalism. So “Hey fascist! Catch!” is irony. It’s self-referential. The players are essentially role playing as the bad guys while engaging in dialogue that criticizes the regime they serve.
O Bella, Bella Ciao is an anti-fascist anthem used ironically in montages from the game. The series of arrows, which the WSJ reported as signifying “transgender ideology” is actually the controller sequence to drop a 500kg bomb in the game.
Finally, “Notices, bulges” and “If you can read this, you’re gay lmao” are online gaming insults/memes.
I hope she doesn’t mind that I posted all of this. (You can subscribe to her newsletter here.) I think it’s important to get this information out there in this moment. Contrary to the immediate assumption that this was a political assassination by an ideological leftist, it appears that this was a political assassination by yet another a fucked-up terminally online young man. Whether the political world will be able to make this distinction is still up in the air. Certainly, the right wing is going to do everything it can to make sure they don’t.
EARHARDT: We have radicals on the right as well. How do we fix this country?
TRUMP: I'll tell you something that's gonna get me in trouble but I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don't want to see crime. The radicals on the left… pic.twitter.com/snOESz3x5a
EARHARDT: We have radicals on the right as well. How do we fix this country?
TRUMP: I’ll tell you something that’s gonna get me in trouble but I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. The radicals on the left are the problem.
He’s basically giving free rein to right wing terrorists. They know he pardoned over 1500 violent criminals. He’ll do it for them too.
Still, he’s grieving:
Trump on Charlie Kirk: "Oh, when I heard it? I was in the midst of building a great — for 150 years they've wanted a ballroom at the White House, right? They have to use tents for President Xi when he comes over. If it rains, it's a wipeout. And so I was with the architects …… pic.twitter.com/wBV5yz2nUC
Q: My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. How are you holding up?
TRUMP: I think very good. And by the way, right there you see all the trucks. They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get… pic.twitter.com/Jrw4j2fnVZ
Trump on Fox & Friends: "One thing I say is we have to have quick trials. I called it quick trial. 'Cause in China they do have quick trials, you know? … They should have a trial the following day." pic.twitter.com/uDqImYOMVi
Of course, if the Supreme Court wants to delay on his behalf (or speed it up for the same reason) that’s fine.
He said the people would greet him if he send the Guard into Chicago which is true. I’m just not sure it would be a friendly greeting.
Trump: "I can fix Chicago much bigger than DC. But we can bring in the military, we can bring in the National Guard. We'll do what we have to do." pic.twitter.com/vaHHZhxK3P
Trump on LA: "They lost 25,000 houses to fires because they didn't have the water come down from the Pacific Northwest. They have a lot of water but they send it out into Pacific to protect a little tiny fish which did very badly when it didn't have any water, by the way."
Trump: I'm a Republican, but Curtis [Sliwa] is not exactly prime time, he wants cats in Gracie mansion. We don’t need thousands of cats. pic.twitter.com/jdGpJ6xhet
Watch that video, without the sound and just look at him. The droop, the weird look in his sleepy eyes, staring at his hands (which are covered in make-up again — we see that at the Yankee game he attended last night.) It’s very hard not to conclude that he is having TIAs. And with his level of stress, age and unhealthy habits it’s very likely that he’ll end up with a major stroke.
It used to be that the annual CPAC conference was the gathering where all the right wing activists and conservative intellectuals would meet to compare notes and get on the same page. It was a raucous affair with lots of snarky panels and right wing celebrities but it also featured serious speeches and presentations by conservative politicians, writers and thinkers. While CPAC still exists it’s no longer the only game in town. Today it seems as if the movement has divided and the fun, entertaining activist types meet at the frequent youth oriented Turning Point USA confab while the serious thinkers come together at the much more staid National Conservatism Conference which was held last week in Washington D.C.
But if anyone thinks that the latter is less radical and extreme than the more exuberant Turning Point they need to think again. The NatCon folks are now in charge of the U.S. government and what they believe and are proposing for the future is downright chilling.
Joe Cappelletti of the AP reported that the conference featured panels on such topics as “The Bible and American Renewal” and “Overturn Obergefell” He described the movement’s vision of an America as “rooted in limited immigration, Christian identity and the preservation of what speakers called the nation’s traditional culture” which is a very mild way of putting it. It certainly doesn’t seem there was much talk of individual freedom, free markets or liberty of any kind and that is a big change from the conservative movement that has dominated Republican politics since the Reagan administration. (Apparently, they’re no longer interested in watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants since they have decided that the tyrants are the good guys.)
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Director Office of Management and Budget (and lead author of Project 2025) Russell Vought, border czar Tom Homan, and 2020 coup plotter John Eastman were among those in attendance representing some of the most extreme policy leaders in the Trump administration.
As the Congress wakes up from its self-imposed slumber to face another government shut down showdown, Vought’s comments have particular salience. According to the AP:
Vought declared that the Government Accountability Office “shouldn’t exist” after it said his latest effort to claw back funds already approved by Congress is illegal. On the broader push for the rollback of appropriated funds, or rescissions, he said, “If Congress has given us authority that is too broad, then we’re going to use that authority aggressively to protect the American people.”
There’s lots of talk about “protecting” the American people reflecting the paternalist Daddy state mentality. But according to most reports, Vought’s underlying message was reflected in a reckless refrain heard throughout the conference: “You can just do things!”
The glue that binds the NatCon coalition is their contempt for the proceduralism of the conservatism that preceded them, their conviction that Republicans’ old focus on small government and personal liberty amounted to nothing more than unilateral disarmament against the teeming hordes of the left. Seizing and wielding federal political power, not restraining it, is the mission.
It would seem that the president isn’t the only one who is drunk with power.
Perhaps the most revealing moment was a viral speech by Missouri GOP Senator Eric Schmitt entitled “What is an American?” in which he made the claim that the country belongs to the descendants of white Europeans who took the land from the violent Native Americans fair and square because they were just plain superior. He said straight out:
“America doesn’t belong to them — it belongs to us … We can no longer apologize for who we are. Our people tamed the continent, built a civilization from the wilderness. We Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims who poured out onto the ocean’s shores.”
There’s no mention anywhere of the Black Africans the white Christian conquerors abducted and brought over to be slaves. One must assume that means America doesn’t belong to them either. He continued:
Our ancestors would be astonished to learn that they were fighting for a “proposition.” They believed they were forging a nation—a homeland for themselves and their descendants. America belongs to us, and only us. If we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.
This is, of course, a nod to the Great Replacement Theory which holds that the immigrant invaders are trying to supplant the rightful owners of America — those “sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims.” You know, white people. Trump’s right hand man, Stephen Miller is a strong proponents of this idea as are such right wing luminaries as Tucker Carlson. This noxious concept is now mainstream in the GOP.
It’s never been mainstream in America however. In fact, they were fighting for “a proposition.” In fact, Schmitt just spit on the most revered Republican president (before Trump, of course) Abraham Lincoln who gave the most famous speech in our history. The first words of it go like this:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Yes, that was the proposition and it goes all the way back to the Declaration of Independence.
The basic notion of Franciscan ideology is that a revolutionary right must craft a new nationalist myth to replace both worn-out 19th-century conservatism and liberal, “managerial globalism” in order to mobilize “the core or nucleus of American civilization, the Real America, the American Nation.”
He acknowledged that America never had a national myth of a glorious past but thought it was a good idea to invent one. As Ganz archly observes, “the word for the politics that makes a pastiche of past glories to create a new type of regime is “fascism.”
It’s tempting to write this off as a bunch of right-wing kooks indulging their little fever dream of creating a white, Christian, autocracy. But these are powerful people and if there’s any person in the government who is trying to create “a pastiche of past glories” (largely by erasing the true American past, both good and bad) is the most powerful one of all, Donald Trump who has certainly discovered that “you can just do things!”
Nobody paid attention to Project 2025 until it was too late and look where that got us. It would be foolish to make that same mistake again.
“I think, with a high degree of certainty, we have him in custody,” President Donald Trump told “Fox & Friends” Friday morning. Trump said that “essentially somebody who was very close to” the suspect recognized the person from images released by law enforcement and assisted in turning him in. The president said more details would be released at a news conference authorities in Utah are expected to hold Friday morning local time.
Early reporting says the suspect, 22, is named Tyler Robinson.
In the meantime, The New York Times interviewed a set of Americans who summarize where we’re at:
Some of those interviewed had not heard of Mr. Kirk. Others felt strongly about him and his politics, for and against. But virtually all agreed that Mr. Kirk’s violent death seemed to confirm a deep fear that something is seriously wrong in this nation.
A family member of suspect Tyler Robinson’s told investigators that Robinson had “become more political in recent years,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) said at a Friday news conference.
Cox said a family member told investigators at a recent family dinner that Robinson had mentioned Kirk coming to the school and discussed why he “didn’t like” Kirk.
The family member told authorities Robinson “was full of hate,” Cox said.
Credit Utah Gov. Spencer Cox with this emotional plea to find an off-ramp to political bitterness:
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) spoke with emotion about political violence, saying, “It is an attack on all of us, it is an attack on the American experiment, it is an attack on our ideals.”
He called for civility, saying the nation won’t be able to figure out its major issues without it: “Political violence is different from any other type of violence.”
There was more. It was good. It was heartfelt. But it’s post time, so find the video when it’s available.
