“This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power,” the governor said in a statement.
By Blake Jones
SACRAMENTO, California — President Donald Trump deployed 300 California National Guard troops to Portland after a federal judge blocked the president’s call-up of Oregon’s National Guard, Gavin Newsom said Sunday, vowing to sue the Trump administration in response.
The California governor argued the move — with troops on their way to Portland on Sunday morning — flouted the Oregon order.
“This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power,” Newsom said in a statement. “The Trump Administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself and putting into action their dangerous words — ignoring court orders and treating judges, even those appointed by the President himself, as political opponents.” A Trump administration spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The overtaking of California troops, once again against the sitting governor’s will, further escalates President Trump’s relentless offensive on Golden State Democrats. His administration has in just the last few weeks lobbed mortgage fraud allegations against Sen. Adam Schiff, canceled funding to California and other blue states amid the government shutdown and threatened to move Olympic and World Cup competitions out of Los Angeles, citing crime.
Trump had already moved to send California troops — who he dispatched to Los Angeles amid immigration protests earlier this year — to train the Oregon Guard, Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle on Friday. The cross-state deployment added a new twist to the administration’s overtaking of troops in blue states. Trump’s previous plans for deployments in Illinois and Oregon involved personnel local to those states.
Trump says federal staff will be laid off if government shutdown talks go nowhere
By ELIOT FORCE, US NEWS REPORTER
5 October 2025
President Donald Trump is prepared to begin massive layoffs of federal workers if he deems that negotiations with Congressional Democrats to end the partial government shutdown are 'absolutely going nowhere.'
As the shutdown entered its fifth day on Sunday, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNN: 'President Trump and Russ Vought are lining things up and getting ready to act if they have to, but hoping that they don't.'
'If the president decides that the negotiations are absolutely going nowhere, then there will start to be layoffs. But I think that everybody is still hopeful that when we get a fresh start at the beginning of the week, that we can get the Democrats to see that it's just common sense to avoid layoffs like that.'
If Democrats back down as Hassett and the president hope, it would avoid an expensive shutdown and the federal layoffs that have been threatened by White House budget director Russell Vought.
Trump described the potential job cuts as 'Democrat layoffs,' saying: 'Anybody laid off that's because of the Democrats.'
Trump is the first president in American history to explicitly use hate as a campaign tool and then embrace it as the central focus of his rule.
By Thom Hartmann
Hate is poison; it never makes anything better. It’s corrosive like an acid, eats away at our empathy and reason, and eventually destroys our very humanity. When nations are consumed by hate—like Germany was in the 1930s, or the American South was during Jim Crow—the result is invariably the destruction of civil society and its replacement with political, economic, and legal systems based in and dependent upon violence.
Hate killed a state legislator in Minneapolis this past weekend, nearly killed Paul Pelosi with a hammer, and fuels the same violent rage that burned through Charlottesville, stormed the Capitol on January 6th, and has been stalking school board meetings and statehouses across America for the past two decades.
Hate brought Senator Alex Padilla to his knees; does anybody believe that if he’d been white he’d have been dragged out like that and beat to the ground? It inspired Senator Mike Lee and Elon Musk to essentially congratulate a would-be mass murderer. It just arrested the Comptroller of New York City for trying to defend a man seeking asylum in the United States.
Hate blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, took down the twin towers on 9/11, and keeps loading the chambers of mass shooters while whispering lies about enemies and conspiracies until blood spills in schools, synagogues, churches, and supermarkets.
So, why does Trump—and why do his followers, including those elected to federal and state office, and his cabinet members—so vigorously embrace hate?
Trump is the first president in American history to explicitly use hate as a campaign tool and then embrace it as the central focus of his rule. He launched his first campaign by calling Mexicans “rapists,” proposed a Muslim ban, called for violence at his rallies, and used dehumanizing language to describe immigrants, women, and political opponents. For Memorial Day, he posted a social media message calling the half of Americans who voted against him “scum.”
This wasn’t political strategy in the traditional sense—it was a revival of something far more dangerous: the politics of hate as a tool for seizing and maintaining power.
It works, in part, because hate can be intoxicating. It reduces complex issues to simple binaries grounded in scapegoating the hated. Economic anxiety becomes the fault of immigrants. Cultural change becomes a conspiracy by elites. Personal failures become the result of a rigged system designed to benefit “them” at the expense of “us.”
And Trump’s use of hate is unprecedented in American presidential politics. Previous presidents, even those who harbored prejudices or implemented discriminatory policies, worked to maintain a veneer of dignity and unity in their public messaging.
They understood that the presidency—the ultimate parental figure and role model for the nation, its citizens, and its children—demanded a certain moral authority, even when their actions fell short of their rhetoric.
Trump shattered that norm, showing other Republicans that explicit appeals to grievance and animosity—and the amplification of them by rightwing hate-based media—mobilized his base more effectively than traditional appeals to shared values or common purpose.
Why, after all, bother to fix things and make the country run better when you can hold power and massively enrich yourself by simply and constantly churning the rancid pool of hate that’s always deep in the underbelly of any nation?
This has worked for Trump because hate is intoxicating; it provides a rush of righteous anger that feels empowering to those who feel powerless. It creates a sense of belonging among those who’ve been marginalized by 44 years of Reaganism gutting the middle class.
Most dangerously, it absolves the haters of personal responsibility by moving the blame for society’s usually complex problems onto designated enemies like immigrants, trans people, and racial or religious minorities.
Authoritarian leaders throughout history have used hate as a unifying force; indeed, it’s the key to authoritarians seizing power in the first place. When a population is afraid, divided, or economically insecure, hate becomes a shortcut to loyalty.
“It’s not your fault you’re struggling,” the demagogue whispers. “It’s their fault—the Jews, the immigrants, the Blacks, the Muslims, the queer people, the intellectuals, the journalists, the protestors.”
Hate simplifies the world into “us” and “them,” and in doing so it becomes a weapon of distraction that keeps working people too angry at each other to realize they’re being ripped off and exploited by the very people stoking the flames.
That’s exactly what’s happening in America today.
While Trump and the GOP rage about immigrants, trans kids, and university protests, they’re shoveling trillions in tax cuts to billionaires, gutting environmental protections, slashing Social Security and healthcare funding, and selling off public lands to oil and mining companies.
This reinvented GOP—this party of hate—wants you looking at your neighbor with suspicion so you don’t notice the donor class that’s buying your government out from under you. Hate stood in a press conference last week and declared its mission was to “liberate” Los Angeles from its mayor and governor.
But there’s a deeper, psychological layer to this too. Hate feels powerful. It produces adrenaline, a rush of certainty, a sense of purpose. It gives people who feel small and angry a story where they’re not just victims; instead, they’re righteous warriors.
In a society where inequality has exploded because we still haven’t overturned Reagan’s neoliberalism and raised taxes on rich people, hate offers the illusion of control.
And Trump—with his narcissism, his need for revenge, and his boundless craving for applause—knows how to serve that illusion with a smile and a sneer. He doesn’t just deploy hate cynically. He needs it. It’s his fuel. It fills his rallies. It lights up his social media posts. It drives his movement. It’s intrinsic to his personality and has driven him throughout his life.
Tragically for the rest of us, the consequences are very real.
Black churches are being burned again. Jewish people are being murdered in synagogues. Asian American elders are being assaulted in the streets. Hispanic families are being torn apart. Queer teens are dying by suicide. Public servants—from school board members to election workers—are being harassed, threatened, and driven from their posts.
We’ve been here before. The Ku Klux Klan used Christianity and nationalism to justify lynching. Hitler used “traditional values” and economic anxiety to justify genocide. Rwanda’s broadcasters spent months using radio to call their political enemies “cockroaches” before the slaughter began. The pattern is always the same: dehumanize, divide, and destroy.
And it can happen here again—if we let it.
Already we see Republican governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott rewriting textbooks to whitewash slavery and justify bigotry. We see state legislators introducing laws that would imprison librarians, ban books, silence teachers, erase trans people, and outlaw protest. We see a Supreme Court that’s blessed voter suppression and gutted civil rights law. We see vigilantes armed with AR-15s patrolling polling places and border towns.
And we see a growing movement, led by Trump, that is explicitly preparing for violence. His allies talk about using the military against American citizens. They’re calling for mass deportations, camps, loyalty tests, and the criminalization of dissent.
This isn’t rhetoric. It’s a roadmap.
But hate is also fragile. Its political utility contains the seeds of its own destruction. Societies built on hatred eventually consume themselves: As we’re all experiencing right now, the energy required to maintain constant vigilance against enemies exhausts populations.
The paranoia that fuels hate movements creates internal fractures as former allies become new targets, something we’ve seen repeatedly among Trump’s lieutenants. No society based in hate can last long; just ask the ghosts of the Confederacy.
History provides numerous examples of this pattern. The French Revolution devoured its own children as revolutionary fervor turned to internecine purges. McCarthyism eventually collapsed under the weight of its own excesses. The Cultural Revolution in China destroyed countless lives before the leadership recognized its destructive trajectory. In each case, societies paid tremendous costs before finding ways to step back from the brink.
The antidote to hate isn’t silence or appeasement. It’s not cowardice or cynicism. It’s courage, as we saw this past weekend during the No Kings Day protests.
It’s the courage to speak out, even when your voice shakes. It’s the courage to stand with your neighbors, especially the most vulnerable. It’s the courage to vote, to organize, to protest, and to tell the truth about the haters, even when the truth is unpopular and the haters threaten you.
America is not a perfect country. But we are a country with a long tradition of fighting back against hate, from the abolitionists to the Freedom Riders, from labor organizers to marriage equality activists. Every inch of progress this nation has seen over the past 250 years has come from people refusing to let hatred have the last word.
Now it’s our turn to confront and defeat hate. Our opportunity to remake America with compassion and the embrace of our fellow human beings, regardless of their race, religion, gender identity, or politics. It’s our obligation in this new century that’s been so badly despoiled by Trump’s pathetic attempts to turn us against each other.
Trump is betting that Americans are too numb, too tired, or too divided to stand up to the hate machine he’s building. He’s betting that we’ll be distracted by his and Fox’s manufactured outrage while he consolidates power behind the scenes.
But we can prove him wrong. We can show up—in the streets, at the ballot box, in our neighborhoods and online communities—and remind each other that decency still matters, that democracy still matters, that love and solidarity are stronger than hate and fear.
Our Founders remind us that this great country belongs to the people. All of us. United not by race or religion or ideology, but by a shared commitment to democracy, liberty, and justice for everyone.
Let’s make that commitment real. Let’s reject hate. Let’s choose courage. And let’s fight like hell for the America we still believe is possible.
SCOTT JENNINGS: My friend Charlie Kirk is dead because of the Left's hateful speech... and they dare tell us to be silent. It's far too late for that
By SCOTT JENNINGS
12 September 2025
Charlie Kirk was shot in the throat while doing what Americans are supposed to do: engage in civil discourse.
He went to a college campus—not historically a hotbed of conservatism—to speak, to debate, to challenge. And now he's dead because he dared to use his voice.
I don't have time for 'both sides' today.
Charlie wasn't just a public figure. A husband. A father. A man of faith. A fellow happy warrior who relished being in the arena.
He was also a generational leader who made politics relevant for young Americans. For many conservative kids, Charlie was their first entry point into American politics.
Watching him build Turning Point USA from the ground up, watching him debate, draw crowds, and inspire action—it was nothing short of a miracle.
Charlie Kirk was a political destination for millions of people who might never have gotten interested in politics otherwise.
His impact wasn't limited to rallies and speeches. His organization had a robust data operation that helped mobilize young voters—many of whom had never engaged in politics before.
Charlie Kirk was shot in the throat Wednesday September 10, while doing what Americans are supposed to do: engage in civil discourse
As White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told me on my radio show, Charlie's work helped President Trump regain the White House. His influence extended deep into the administration. They listened to him. They trusted him. He had his hand on the pulse—not just of the MAGA base, but of the next generation.
Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old now in custody and charged with murdering Charlie, didn't act in a vacuum. He was radicalized. He engraved 'Hey fascists, catch' on his bullets.
He referenced Bella Ciao, an anthem now adopted by ANTIFA. He believed Charlie was a fascist. A Nazi. A threat to democracy. And he believed that threat had to be eliminated.
Where did he get that idea?
For years, the American Left—Democrats, media, activists—have branded conservatives as fascists. Not just wrong. Not just misguided. Fascists. Nazis. Dangerous people who must be stopped.
Every conservative view, from tax cuts to basic biology, is met with accusations of hate and harm. The rhetoric isn't just toxic — it's lethal.
And when violence erupts, conservatives are told to tone it down. We're lectured about rhetoric. We're blamed for division.
Meanwhile, elected officials on the left talk about being 'at war,' fantasize about political deaths, and normalize the idea that speech is violence. Then someone like Charlie Kirk gets murdered — and we're told to be quiet.
No. Silence is not an option.
To many conservatives, it feels like we're under siege — physically and rhetorically. Our president was nearly assassinated last summer. Our friend was just murdered in cold blood. And we're still being told that we're the problem.
Charlie Kirk was the opposite of political violence. He debated. He spoke. He reasoned. He inspired. That's what Americans are supposed to do. That's what Charlie stood for.
Kirk leaves behind his wife, former beauty queen Erika Frantzve Kirk, 36, and their two children, a three-year-old daughter and a 16-month-old son
We must call out the culture that made this possible. We must reject the idea that disagreement equals danger. We must defend the public square — not just for conservatives, but for everyone who believes in free speech and peaceful debate.
Charlie Kirk was 31. He leaves behind a young family and a movement that cannot afford to retreat. If we honor him with silence, we betray everything he stood for.
Let this be the moment we say: enough.
And yet, look at the reaction from the Right. As Utah Governor Spencer Cox reminded the country on Friday, there were no riots. No violence. No burning cities. Just prayer and vigils and pledges for more speech, more debate and always remembering our humanity. Just the way Charlie would have wanted it.
We're gutted. We're grieving. But we cannot afford to be silent.
In the first, a 22-year old man raised in a white Republican family and pickled in gaming culture shot Charlie Kirk. Utah Governor Spencer Cox, who admitted he prayed that the culprit would not be a member of his Mormon culture, claims Tyler Robinson has been radicalized by left culture, but thus far the only evidence he has presented is a claim that Tyler is in a relationship with his roommate, whom Cox describes as transitioning. Kash Patel’s latest Fox hit describes a message Robinson left that appears to reference Kirk’s hatred: “some hatred cannot be negotiated with.”
By emptywheel
An hour later and one state away, 16-year old Desmond Holly shot up Evergreen High School, putting two of his classmates in the hospital before taking his own life. The ADL describes that Holly had an account on an online gore site where he had celebrated far right shootings and seemed to speak in advance of his attack.
Holly had an account on the gore forum WatchPeopleDie, where he had commented on posts about shootings in Parkland (2018), Buffalo (2022) and at a Quebec City mosque (2017).
Holly appears to have joined the gore site on December 26, 2024, during the month window between the school shootings at Abundant Life Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, and Antioch High School in Nashville, Tennessee.
Holly is one of several mass attackers who have been active on the platform.
Groundbreaking research from ADL Center on Extremism in August 2025 revealed that Natalie Rupnow and Solomon Henderson, the perpetrators of the Madison and Nashville school shootings, also used the site. As an example, in August, a Moroccan teenager announced plans to livestream a mass stabbing and shared a manifesto on WatchPeopleDie, as well as X and 8kun.
Holly also collected tactical gear, adorned that gear with extremist symbols and posted content emulating former shooters such as Rupnow and the 1999 Columbine High School shooters. Like many attackers, Holly assembled his gear in a piecemeal fashion, drawing inspiration from the equipment used by previous mass shooters. For example, Holly posted a now-deleted TikTok video in which he modelled a tactical helmet and a gas mask; the post’s background music featured a Serbian folk song that Brenton Tarrant played while livestreaming the 2019 Christchurch Mosque shootings.
Underneath his post, Holly engaged with several comments in a manner that suggested he was close to committing his own attack. He liked one comment reading, “You got close to a full setup now man time to make a move 👍.” He also liked a comment reading, “Just need an gopro its gonan be cool an pov [sic],” and responded, “A GoPro, battery, ear protection, and maybe a patch.” Responding to another commenter, he wrote, “I’m planning on getting a camera instead.”
The Evergreen shooting, like the Annunciation school shooting — before which Robin Westman posted videos cheering school shooters in advance of her attack — was probably preventable.
In seemingly stream-of-consciousness videos that she posted, the assailant fixated on guns, violence and school shooters. She displayed her own cache of weapons, bullets and what appear to be explosive devices, scrawled with antisemitic and racist language and threats against President Trump.
Or these tragic shootings would have been preventable had not the FBI reassigned key personnel to patrol the streets of DC, had not DHS put Thomas Fugate in charge of downsizing the office that used to try to prevent such things.
In response to the Kirk shooting, Donald Trump’s Homeland Security Advisor, Stephen Miller, projecting tactics that Charlie Kirk himself used (like doxing), used those tactics to claim that Democrats are part of a domestic terror movement that he promises to take out.
“It is a vast domestic terror movement,” said Miller, speaking of left-wing political organizations.
“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” he added. “It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
It’s easy to forget given how much damage Miller has done to this country, but in addition to Wormtongue or Deputy Chief of Staff, his primary title is Homeland Security Advisor.
His job is to keep Americans, all Americans — including the two kids killed and 21 people injured at Annunciation, the two kids injured at Evergreen, as well as his beloved political ally Charlie Kirk — safe. And yet his response to a wave of violence carried out by young people radicalized online is to try to address just one shooting, and to address it in the least effective way possible, by hunting down people who had nothing to do with the Kirk killing.
I get that Miller has chosen to stoke fascism rather than grieve. I get the danger to all of this.
But Miller’s screed did something else: it said that he doesn’t care about the 8 and 10 and 16 year olds who face radicalized people with guns in their schools, he won’t do the most obvious things to address those shootings.
And that, it seems, counsels an obvious response.
Stephen Miller has announced he will do nothing to address school shootings, generally. He will do nothing to address the radicalization happening in chat rooms, including chat rooms that would be freely accessible to law enforcement if they weren’t off terrorizing Latino grandmothers.
Stephen Miller has responded to the murder of someone he calls a friend not by doing the most common sense things to try to prevent further school shootings, all school shootings, but to do the exact opposite.
And every parent of children who attend schools should be furious about Miller’s abject refusal to do his job.
The death of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy. Donald Trump and his MAGA base are treating it like an opportunity.
By Lucian K. Truscott IV
The first thing Trump did, before Kirk’s assassin was even identified, was to blame his killing on “the radical left.” He ordered the flag over the White House and all flags on federal buildings and installations to be flown at half-staff. He ordered that Air Force Two, the aircraft that is used by the Vice President, to transport Kirk’s body from Utah to his home in Arizona. A uniformed Air Force color guard carried Kirk’s casket on and off the plane, as if he was a servicemember who had been killed in combat.
The hero treatment Kirk is getting cheapens the honors that are afforded to those who have given their lives for their country. The paeans being delivered for Kirk are embarrassing. Yesterday Ezra Klein in the New York Times published a column titled, “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way,” celebrating Kirk for debating students on college campuses and being supportive of free speech and open to dialogue with people who did not share his beliefs. Kirk was certainly free in sharing his racist beliefs. He identified Joy Reid, formerly one of the evening hosts on MSNBC, as someone who did “not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person's slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” He called Reid and Michelle Obama and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Jackson Brown “affirmative action picks.”
As we would expect, Trump is canonizing Kirk’s garbage. He’s saying in effect, I think so much of Kirk’s beliefs and legacy that I’m going to afford him the same honors as someone such as John R. Lewis, who was beaten nearly to death at the Edmund Pettis Bridge for his belief in civil rights and his fight for equality between the races. Trump wants his followers to think that John Lewis was beaten for his beliefs, Martin Luther King was killed for his, and Charlie Kirk died for his.
Charlie Kirk felt entitled to go around the country telling college students there is something wrong with being gay or lesbian or transgender, that same sex marriage is an abomination, that wives should “submit” to their husbands, that aborted babies are the moral equivalent to Jews killed in the Holocaust. He made millions with a podcast that promoted exactly those beliefs.
Trump and his MAGA minions are certainly welcome to celebrate Kirk and turn him into a martyr to their cause. People paid to listen to his podcast and attend his Turning Point USA speeches on college campuses. Capitalism is perfect in that way. You get what you pay for. Martyrdom is its own reward, and the person now profiting is Trump, not Charlie Kirk.
Here Are The Biggest Lies Leftists Keep Repeating About Charlie Kirk
by Daily Caller News Foundation
September 16, 2025 at 7:36 pm
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s horrific assassination, members of the media and others with massive online platforms have misquoted or even outright lied about the late conservative activist.
From prominent journalists to one of the most well-known writers of fiction, many individuals with large followings have peddled lies about Kirk’s position on a number of issues, such as race and anti-semitism. Some of these individuals have since offered mea culpas or publicly apologized, while others have made no recognition of their false statements.
Debunked Comments About Black Women
Karen Attiah, a former Global Opinions editor for The Washington Post, publicly revealed on Monday that the news outlet fired her for alleged social media violations. In her Substack post detailing her termination, she outlined her recent online posts — some of which included diatribes against “white men” — and included a quote allegedly stated by Kirk.
Screen grab of Karen Attiah, Bluesky.
The fired WaPo writer took to Bluesky to falsely quote Kirk as saying, “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot.”
“My only direct reference to Kirk was one post— his own words on record,” Attiah wrote on Substack about the fake quote.
However, these were not Kirk’s “own words.” The origin of Attiah’s fake quote likely originated from a warped interpretation of a comment he made during a July 13, 2023, episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” in which he specifically talked about four specific individuals who happened to be black — Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, television host Joy Reid, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and former First Lady Michelle Obama. Several independent fact checkers corrected the record, but that did not stop others from continuing to claim online that the quote was real, including Pulitzer Prize winner Laurie Garrett.
‘He Advocated Stoning Gays To Death’
A viral claim that circulated online was that Kirk advocated for the stoning of gays. Perhaps the largest purveyor of this lie was famous horror author Stephen King.
“He advocated stoning gays to death. Just sayin’,” King posted on X in a since-deleted post, where he boasts nearly seven million followers.
The post drew immediate backlash, with GOP Texas Sen. Cruz calling him a “horrible, evil, twisted liar.”
The famous fiction writer later recanted and deleted his original post, saying “The horrible, evil, twisted liar apologizes. This is what I get for reading something on Twitter w/o fact-checking. Won’t happen again.”
King was not the only prominent individual forced to offer a mea culpa for spreading this false rumor.
Alastair Campbell, a former Labour Party official and journalist, issued an apology on X after claiming on a popular podcast show that Kirk supported the stoning of gay people.
“Apologies for this. I had seen a clip on social media which did not have the full context, and had seen others making the same claim… Kirk did have views with which I strongly disagree but this was not among them,” Campbell said in a statement.
Jaimee Michelle, a lesbian conservative activist and founder of Gays Against Groomers, spoke out in support of Kirk after his assassination. Speaking in response to the false accusation about stoning gays, the self-described “right wing lesbian” said Kirk welcomed gay people to the conservative movement and that her group worked alongside Turning Point “many times” over the years.
Alleged Racial Comments
“That time Charlie Kirk called an Asian woman in the audience ‘chink’ multiple times. He made millions off of his racism and sexism,” stated an X post by @alluring_nyc. The post, which at the time of this article’s publication has been shared roughly 14,000 times, included a video of Kirk appearing to use the racial slur repeatedly during a debate.
The problem with this claim is that Kirk was addressing Cenk Uygur, the Turkish-born progressive commentator and co-founder of The Young Turks. The word was an apparent reference to Uygur’s name.
The heated exchange, which took place during an October 2018 Politicon event, was covered by the media at the time.
That time Charlie Kirk called an Asian woman in the audience “chink” multiple times.
He made millions off of his racism and sexism. pic.twitter.com/Py0tOX5rfV
That time Charlie Kirk called an Asian woman in the audience "chink" multiple times.
The New York Times was forced to issue a correction on Thursday, admitting that it incorrectly attributed an anti-semitic comment to Kirk in a write-up detailing his overall political views.
“An earlier version of this article described incorrectly an antisemitic statement that Charlie Kirk had made on an episode of his podcast. He was quoting a statement from a post on social media and went on to critique it. It was not his own statement,” the correction states.
A hall of fame correction from the New York Times
NYTs: Charlie was an antisemite
NYTs also: we got the wrong guy pic.twitter.com/xOaXzWevUV
— Nathan Brand (@NathanBrandWA) September 12, 2025
The NYT had initially reported that Kirk, while speaking on his podcast in 2023, stated that Jewish communities were “pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites” that they wanted people to stop using against them. In actuality, the late activist was quoting a social media post that he proceeded to criticize, clarifying that not all Jewish people held such beliefs.
Misinformation About Kirk’s Alleged Killer
Beyond falsehoods about Kirk’s past commentary, pervasive myths about his alleged killer continue to circulate online and among the American populace.
Since Robinson’s arrest, investigators have gradually painted a picture of his background and his apparent descent into political radicalism. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox stated Sunday that interviews with family and those close to the alleged killer reveal that he adopted a leftist ideology. Law enforcement also recovered ammunition etched with phrases such as “Hey, fascist! Catch!” along with unfired casings inscribed with lyrics from Bella Ciao, an anti-fascist anthem.
Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, major figures have continued to insist that Robinson was a member of the far-right.
“Now that the Charlie Kirk assassin has been identified as MAGA, I’m sure Donald Trump, Elon Musk and all the insane GOP politicians who called for retribution against the ‘RADICAL LEFT’ will now shift their focus to stopping the toxic violence of the RADICAL RIGHT,” California Democratic Rep. Dave Min posted Friday on X.
As of the publication of this article, Min’s X post is still up, despite an overwhelming online response condemning the unverified claim. The California congressman is not the only high-profile individual making this unsubstantiated claim.
Heather Cox Richardson, a center-left historian with over 2.6 million Substack subscribers, repeated this baseless claim in a Substack post that was published Sunday.
“In fact, the alleged shooter was not someone on the left. The alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, is a young white man from a Republican, gun enthusiast family, who appears to have embraced the far right, disliking Kirk for being insufficiently radical,” the historian falsely claimed.
The rampant — and false — claims about Robinson’s ideology appear to be working. A new YouGov poll reveals that a substantial portion of Americans believe the alleged killer is affiliated with the Republican Party, despite Cox and federal officials confirming that he was influenced by leftist ideology.
Robinson’s mother told authorities in an interview that her son “had become more political and had started to lean more to the left – becoming more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented,” according to an indictment released Tuesday. The alleged killer’s political views differed greatly from his conservative father’s, she allegedly stated.
Robinson is officially charged with aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and committing a violent offense in the presence of a child.
Kirk, the founder of conservative non-profit organization Turning Point USA, was fatally shot in the neck while hosting an event at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. Law enforcement officials arrested 22-year-old Tyler Robinson on Sept. 12 and filed formal charges against the suspect on Tuesday. Kirk’s organization, which champions conservative causes on college campuses across the U.S., has since received an outpouring of support from across the globe.
Charlie Kirk and His Assassin Are Bigger than Themselves
By Deborah C. Tyler
Oct. 05, 2025
Charlie Kirk achieved great transformations of consciousness in America and beyond. He championed a radically democratized and unbounded Christianity, and through faith and intellect he blew away the smokescreen of the separation of church and state. With power and clarity, he rebuilt the three-story edifice of American faith, culture, and politics. His destiny was to awaken Americans to the threat of domestic anti-Christian violence and the harm being inflicted on young people by “trans” obsession.
The polarities of protagonism and antagonism to historic American faith, culture, and politics can illuminate the current American schism. Protagonistic Americanism believes that freedom originates in God, not man; it promotes unifying, celebratory culture, which explores beauty and truth relevant to all Americans; and it pursues equal justice for all, which serves God-given freedom.
Antagonistic Americanism is the inverse. It is purely oppositional. It rejects God-based religion, particularly Christianity; it denigrates America as racist; and it offers only ungrateful grievance and social justice victimologies, which demand unequal treatment under the law.
Charlie Kirk and the assassin represent the extremes of these polarities. Charlie championed traditional American cultural institutions as methodologies of happiness, the Constitution, and individual freedom and responsibility. The assassin’s belief is often described as nihilistic, but nihilism doesn’t inscribe hate on bullets. Antagonistic America has devolved from a critique into a tantrum. Long-running tantrums often become violent.
Charlie Kirk reached millions of young people because the Christianity he promoted is the most radically democratized religious form in history. That’s what makes it unbearable to antagonistic America. Charlie’s civic Christianity offers inclusion without formal membership, welcomes skeptics, requires no rituals, practices, or authoritarian or intercessionary priestcraft. It does not focus on sin, but does not trade in the cheap commerce of unfounded approval, as does left-wing politicized Christianity. Charlie’s faith is joined in a twinkling; it takes months or years of indoctrination against nature and common sense to join the hatred that possessed the assassin. Ironically, it was the First Amendment that protected Christianity from secular power, eventuating a purified spiritual field freed from the motivation of worldly gain.
I attended a public elementary school in New York City. Every Friday, there was a school-wide assembly. Each week, the assembly began with a reading from the Bible. When my fourth-grade teacher had the honor of choosing the verse, she held open colloquy with a student with very good posture named Beverly, whose father was a pastor. They chose the verse together. There were Jewish students in the school, and students not raised in any religion, but it did not occur to anyone that this was an unacceptable practice in a public school. There was no test of religious belief, or lack thereof, implied by this practice. No federal law respecting an institution of religion compelled this practice. Reading a few words of Scripture at this assembly represented consensual understanding that the Bible is a book that contains wisdom, and passages selected were inoffensive and respected by the assemblage. Such understanding enabled America to be one nation melded of the many pluralities. Charlie Kirk powerfully pushed back against the 20th-century manipulation called separation of church and state to the great benefit of America.
Tears were pooling on my husband’s cheekbones when he said, “Charlie Kirk was just assassinated.” A few minutes, later I said, “This is going to turn out to be a trans thing.” Minutes later, I received a text from a friend decrying the insanity of the world. We texted the small, cautious pendulum of words that swings between one’s own pain and the other person’s. Then I said, “This is going to be another trans murder.” My friend disagreed: “There have always been trans people.” I said, “Yes, there have always been people who lived as the opposite sex, but they just wanted to be left alone. They weren’t driven totally nuts by this insane world.”
Is forgiveness the way forward, or is righteous conflict needed now? In Sanskrit, the path through forgiveness is bhakti sadhana, and the path through resistance is karma sadhana. Erika Kirk said, “That young man, I forgive him.” Donald Trump said, “I hate my enemies. I cannot tolerate them.” The indivisible interdependence of the two paths is highlighted through this question: Could Erika have said, “I forgive him” if the assassin were still at large, lurking outside her home, threatening her children? Was not her utmost forgiveness conditioned upon brave men with guns who don’t allow themselves ready tolerance for monstrous crime, and were willing to risk their lives to capture the assassin?
The media are covering up the trans connection to the assassination. Soul-dead Jimmy Kimmel blamed it on MAGA, and vile yakkers are blaming the Jews. Trans ideology is discontinuous with the left-wing parade of victimologies based on a biased view of American history. It is as if the left ran out of ways to feel superior and denigrate America, so it moved on to an ahistorical, kooky theory that sex identity is a superficial attribute that can be readily changed, and hatred for anyone who doesn’t accept that. Americans have the general right to dressing, naming, and using mannerisms of the opposite sex, but the assertion that sex identity is a switch that can be flipped is untrue. And trans ideology is the hill the left has chosen to die on.
Here are three reasons trans obsessionality can lead to murder. First, falsehood fanatically believed as quasi-religious doctrine unbalances the mind. As transgenderists and their supporters face the scientific impossibility of becoming a member of the opposite sex, they blame their frustrations on traditionalists, and not the erroneous assumptions they have accepted. This frustration engenders violence. Second, it is easier to mimic superficial characteristics of the opposite sex but impossible to acquire the spiritual gifts of the compassion of womanhood and the courage of manhood. People simulating the opposite sex may acquire the least helpful traits of each. The “trans woman” may fall into narcissistic attention-seeking of insecure females while still carrying the violent aggression of weak males.
Lastly, trans ideology is dangerous for a reason that applies to both Charlie Kirk and the assassin. There is a heroic impulse in the nature of young men. The collective unconscious of many young men includes a heroic imagination of great deeds, most active in the teen years and lasting into the next decade of life. In traditional societies, the heroic impulse is fulfilled through military service, sports, or other challenging activities. Charlie Kirk fulfilled that impulse as a great American thought leader. But in a world where deepest falsehoods are inflicted upon young people, the heroic impulse can become perverted and lethal.
Harkening back once again to NYC public schools of the 1950s and ’60s, back then, students were indoctrinated to believe in what was called brotherhood. Continuing Charlie Kirk’s mission, public institutions must rebuild unifying curricula of traditional American faith, culture, and political freedom. This foundation prepares American adults to follow their own heart and conscience.
Big Tech Admissions And The 2020 Election: A Verdict
By Greg Salsbury
Oct. 05, 2025
In light of recent disclosures from Google and Meta adding to the existing evidence, Americans must confront a sobering question: Was the 2020 presidential election truly free and fair? Not merely in terms of ballot security, voter access, or “voter fraud,” but in the deeper democratic sense—where citizens are entitled to hear competing viewpoints, weigh evidence, and make informed decisions without interference or deception.
Last year, under pressure from Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, who was investigating government influence over social media platforms, Facebook admitted to yielding to pressure from the Biden administration and censoring conservative voices. That censorship, which Zuckerberg now claims to regret, included moderation decisions around election-related content, including the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Image created using AI.
As of last week, we now know that Google, also censored thousands of conservative voices—including influential commentators like Dan Bongino (radio host and former Secret Service agent), Sebastian Gorka (former White House counterterrorism adviser), Steve Bannon (host of “War Room” and former Trump strategist), Candace Owens (author and political commentator known for her critiques of COVID and race narratives), Dr. Simone Gold (founder of America’s Frontline Doctors and vocal critic of vaccine mandates), Liz Wheeler (former OANN host focused on cultural and policy analysis), and Kristi Leigh (independent journalist and former news anchor who covered election and pandemic dissent).
These weren’t fringe accounts violating platform norms with extremist language; they were prominent figures discussing COVID policy, election integrity, and the Hunter Biden laptop story—topics that turned out to be far more legitimate than legacy media initially claimed. Their combined audiences were in the tens of millions (see here, here, and here).
But the censorship is only half the story. The other half—arguably more corrosive—is the self-serving deception. For years, Google and Facebook denied that they were suppressing conservative content. They insisted their moderation was neutral, their algorithms apolitical, their fact-checking objective.
In his 2018 congressional testimony, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg assured us,
I understand where this concern is coming from because Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place. But I want to assure you that we do not favor one viewpoint over another.
It wasn’t the only time he vehemently denied Facebook censorship. Google likewise denied engaging in censorship, with CEO Sundar Pichai telling Congress,
We approach our work without political bias. We build platforms to empower users and provide access to information.
These denials were repeated not only in congressional hearings but also in press releases and public statements. Now, under subpoena and scrutiny, the executives admit what many of us suspected all along: they censored lawful speech and misled the public about it. Further, they did so, not because of company standards, but explicitly because of political views.
There is an additional question that was not put to them in the congressional hearings: Why didn’t you admit at the time that you were engaging in this censorship? The answer is obvious. It is precisely because they wanted to maintain the influential power and prestige of being seen as fair and impartial providers of news and information.
The Hunter Biden laptop, dismissed in 2020 as “Russian disinformation,” has since been authenticated by multiple outlets. Aside from revealing Hunter’s sordid lifestyle, its contents raise serious questions about the Biden family’s business dealings, particularly with Chinese entities. Yet voters were told—by tech platforms, fact-checkers, and intelligence officials—that the story was fake. Twitter locked the New York Post’s account. Facebook throttled the story’s reach. Google buried search results and YouTube videos. All of this happened in the critical weeks before the election.
It wasn’t just tech platforms. Fifty-one former intelligence officials signed a letter suggesting the laptop bore “all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation.” That letter was widely cited by media outlets and used to justify censorship across platforms. We now know that some of those signatories—includin g former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell—admitted under oath that they knew the laptop was likely authentic but signed anyway to help Joe Biden politically. This wasn’t a misjudgment. It was a coordinated effort to mislead the public at a decisive moment.
Two separate post-election studies showed that voters would have been significantly influenced by knowing the truth about the laptop in November of 2020. The Technometric Institute of Policy and Politics found that 71% of Democrats said they would have reconsidered their vote. McLaughlin & Associates found that 16% of Biden voters would have changed their vote.
This was beyond mere bias or politics as usual. It was an unprecedented asymmetric information warfare involving both our government and the biggest tech platforms on the planet. When one side of the political spectrum is algorithmically suppressed, demonetized, and banned—while the other is amplified—voters are no longer operating in a free marketplace of ideas. They’re being nudged, curated, manipulated, and deceived.
The scale of that manipulation and deception is massive. Facebook alone influenced the news exposure of over 1.3 million U.S. adults daily during the 2020 election, acting as one of the largest external referral sources to news publishers. This effect was, of course, amplified and multiplied through post-sharing. Google, which processes over 8.5 billion searches per day, controls the visibility of virtually every news story, video, and political query. These platforms don’t just reflect public opinion—they shape it.
Mainstream media outlets also played a decisive role. A study by the Media Research Center found that 92.2% of evening news coverage about Donald Trump on ABC, NBC, and CBS was negative during the final stretch of his presidency—compared to 59% positive coverage for President Biden during the same period. This imbalance wasn’t just editorial slant; it was a systemic framing of one candidate as radical and dangerous and the other as status quo and benign, regardless of policy substance.
Some might argue this isn’t “fraud” because “the votes were the votes.” But there are many flavors of fraud beyond stuffing the ballot box.
In securities law, for example, companies and executives have been found guilty of fraud for withholding information that may seem trivial on the surface but is considered “material” under the law—meaning it could influence a reasonable investor’s decision. Courts have ruled that things like failing to disclose the precise timing of revenue recognition, the health status of a key executive, preliminary involvement in litigation, or even internal dissent among senior officers on a company decision can constitute fraud. And rightfully so, as these concealments and omissions could distort the decision-making for thousands of individual and institutional investors.
This begs an obvious question: If the United States were a corporation and its voters the shareholders, how could the information withheld from them in 2020 be considered anything less than fraud? Concealing evidence that a chief executive and his son had been peddling influence internationally, lining their pockets with millions of dollars from foreign entities for years? Muzzling some of the most influential voices and arguments in support of one candidate’s ideas and strategies, while proactively promoting those of another? Enlisting former intelligence officials to knowingly mislead the public about a scandal concerning a chief executive? Indeed, if any of this had happened in the corporate world, would there not be people in jail?
Voters were lied to. They were bombarded with falsehoods and steered toward predetermined conclusions—denied the unbiased information needed to think for themselves. That’s not democracy. That’s propaganda—and it was executed with intent by the most powerful information gatekeepers in the world. Taking into account all of the evidence, which of these claims now seems more like hyperbole:
– That the 2020 election was unfairly—and perhaps illegally—influenced ,
– Or that it was free, fair, and legitimate?”
Greg Salsbury, Ph.D. is former president of Western Colorado University and Board of Advisor member for STARRS.US. He earned his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Southern California, and an M.A. from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC.
Leftists on Sexualizing Children: Full Speed Ahead
By Richard Kirk
Oct. 05, 2025
According to sociologist Peter Berger, his discipline is “an intrinsically debunking discipline that should be congenial to nihilists, cynics, and other fit subjects for police surveillance,” and the popular suspicion of sociology is grounded in “a sound instinct for survival.” That quotation is found in historian Page Smith’s fine book, Killing the Spirit (1990). An example supporting Berger’s warning is a recent paper published in the American Sociological Association’s journal Sex and Sexualities, titled “Childhood Sexualities: On Pleasure and Meaning from the Margins.”
Not surprisingly the paper’s primary author, Deevia Bhana, holds the South African Chair in Gender and Childhood Sexuality at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The relatively short article (c. 3,000 words) is written in the opaque intellectual jargon that has dominated academic discourse for the last half-century. Here’s a typical paragraph:
Re-centering pleasure at the margins therefore confronts both colonial and heteropatriarchal logics, insisting that children’s own accounts of what feels good, exciting, or frightening are legitimate sources of knowledge. Thus, letting children “do” sexual pleasure in their own way is vital for their sense of their own agency. Yet, only by tracing the circuits in which race, class, gender, and age secure or foreclose pleasure can we theorize children’s sexual worlds.
After wading through Bhana’s “scholarly” verbiage, the Manhattan Institute’s Dr. Colin Wright observed that the peer-reviewed paper views “childhood innocence” as a “colonial fiction” and that it urges us to see children as sexual beings. Wright concludes, “It is hard to read this [paper] as anything other than laying the intellectual groundwork for dismantling age-of-consent protections.” Beyond Bhana’s tributes to age, race, class, sex, and other power-based distinctions, it’s clear she minimizes the danger of sexualizing children and embraces “diverse” expressions of childhood pleasure.
Unfortunately, the sexualization of children has been going on in plain sight prior to the abstruse intellectualizing that puts a sociological seal of approval on that corruption. Bhana seeks only to add “intersectional” categories to the “educational” process of confusing youngsters about who they are by destroying “colonial” and “heteronormative” notions about childhood sexuality. For her, drag queen story hour would merely be part one of an indoctrination program touting victimhood and pre-teen sexual “agency” — “agency” being a code-word for making your own rules and doing your own thing.
The latter task is something at which Hollywood and the film community have excelled for some time, the case of Roman Polanski being Exhibit A. Polanski pleaded guilty to having intercourse with a 13-year-old girl in 1977 but still received a slew of honors subsequently, including an Academy Award for Best Director in 2003. Doubtless the overtly sexual content of music and music videos beginning in the MTV era moved the sexual needle from just teenagers toward the 9–12 “tweener” category. More recently, the “trans” movement with its companion “drag queen story hour” has exposed even younger kids to sexual expressions formerly confined to adults at Bourbon Street nightclubs.
Not wishing to be branded as “judgmental” or “conservative,” ABC’s and Disney’s Good Morning America in 2018 featured an 11-year-old “drag kid” (stage name: “Desmond is Amazing”), for whom host Michael Strahan and the studio audience cheered enthusiastically during his sexually suggestive performance. Subsequently, as Matt Walsh notes, “Desmond” graduated to dancing at gay nightclubs, where patrons threw money at him. Walsh also highlights several other “drag kid” and “drag queen” atrocities that a few decades past would have warranted arrests for indecent exposure and parental child abuse. Just recently, Elon Musk called on customers to cancel their Netflix subscriptions based on transgender themes in, among other offerings, the company’s animated show Dead End: Paranormal Park.
On the legislative front, California, as usual, leads the nation by passing a law signed by Governor Newsom in 2020 that gives judges discretion about listing someone as a sex offender for having “voluntary” oral or anal sodomy with a minor. The bill was promoted as bringing fairness to LGBT defendants. In addition, a bill passed in 2022 (SB 107) made California a sanctuary state for minors seeking “sex change” drugs and surgeries proscribed in other states. In a similar vein, in 2024, California legally prohibited schools from requiring parental notification when students decide at school to be called members of the opposite sex.
Elsewhere in the world, the United Kingdom’s government became brazenly deferential toward non-Western cultural standards vis-à-vis sex with and assaults against minors. Recent convictions of gang members engaged in the grooming and rape of girls as young as ten may signal, however, that Britons are finally ready to return to more traditional or “colonial” (cf. Bhana) anti-rape mores.
Given the academic and media-fueled frenzy in favor of deconstructing centuries of legal and cultural prohibitions against sexualizing minors (a deconstruction personified in the life and writing of its Bhana-cited intellectual avatar, Michel Foucault), one could view Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious crimes as just another degenerate byproduct of our era, perhaps slightly ahead of his time.
Four US presidents have so far got it, and Donald Trump wants it too.
By HT News Desk
The Nobel Peace Prize has come up multiple times — more recently from Trump's own team, often from his MAGA base, and of course from those who want favours, such as leaders of Pakistan and Israel — as Trump seeks a legacy of prestige along with brute power.
“I’m stopping wars. I’m stopping wars. And I hate to see people killed,” Donald Trump said at a dinner hosted for Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu. (Reuters)
“I’m stopping wars. I’m stopping wars. And I hate to see people killed,” Donald Trump said at a dinner hosted for Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu. (Reuters)
The melange of factors also includes a decade-long rivalry with Barack Obama, said an AFP report analysing what it called his obsession.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last week too: “It's well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
She gave a breakdown of why he is the right pick: Since his January 20 return to power, the US president has “brokered, on average, one peace deal or ceasefire per month”, she said.
She cited the India-Pakistan ceasefire — which came after the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor retaliation — though India has been saying it does not act on foreign cues in domestic or bilateral matters.
Pakistan has nominated Trump for the prize as he hosted its army chief, the de facto boss of the country, for lunch.
India has been more measured with a spokesman saying: “It is better to take this question to the White House.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has also backed Trump for the honour as US weapons fuel the virtual flattening of Gaza.
On the press secretary's list were many other conflicts that Trump claims to have resolved: Cambodia-Thailand, Egypt-Ethiopia, Rwanda-DR Congo, and Serbia-Kosovo, among others.
She mentioned Iran, too, where Trump had ordered strikes against its nuclear facilities, as his contribution to world peace.
Ukraine has not come up, though. Trump had pledged multiple times to end the Russia-Ukraine war on "day one" of his term, which began on January 20.
Trump sees a deal ending the war in Gaza as a step towards the prize, CNN has reported.
“I’m stopping wars. I’m stopping wars. And I hate to see people killed,” Trump reportedly said at a dinner hosted for Netanyahu.
Currying diplomatic goodwill by mentioning the prize is finding many takers. At the White House in July, a journalist asked the presidents of Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, and Gabon whether Trump deserved the award, the AFP report noted.
They agreed. Trump said this could go on all day long.
Besides Obama, the US presidents to have got the prize are Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter.
How peace prize process works
Nominations for the prize are usually taken by January 31, but names are not made public; the number is. This time it is 338.
We are close to the announcement, actually: October 10.
Tens of thousands of people, including lawmakers, some professors, former awardees, are eligible to nominate people.
Members of the committee themselves can add nominations too. The five-member committee is appointed by the Norwegian parliament.
Trumps thinks ‘the people know’ anyway
"I deserve it, but they will never give it to me," Trump told reporters in February as he hosted Netanyahu at the White House.
"But the people know, and that's all that matters to me!" he added in a post on Truth Social in June.
An Israeli-American professor of law, Anat Alon-Beck submitted Trump's name to the committee, citing his "strategic brilliance" in securing release of hostages from Gaza.
Garret Martin, a professor of international relations at American University, told AFP that since the beginning of his presidential ambitions 10 years ago, "he has put himself in opposition to Barack Obama, who famously won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009".
Even the prize to Obama sparked debate, and hindsight has led to more voices against it than in favour as the US engaged in several wars during his time in office.
But Trump thinks that, if he were named Obama, he would have “had the Nobel Prize given to me in 10 seconds”. And that was even before he won the election this time.
Voices against the idea have sometimes been as crude as Trump's neediness about it, with history researcher Emma Shortis calling it a case of “a hyena in a dog show”.
Reporter and author Belen Fernandez has argued that “it should go without saying that anyone who positively invokes the nuking of hundreds of thousands of civilians should be categorically ineligible”.
“But in a world in which the supposed pursuit of peace is so often utilised as an excuse for more war, Trump’s nomination might very well be meaningful, indeed,” she further said.
The California governor’s remarks come amid a federal government shutdown that has left Capitol Hill in a stand-off.
By Juliann Ventura
Gavin Newsom urged Democrats to stand firm amid the government shutdown Friday, saying, “You lose leverage, you lose this country.”
“You take Donald Trump at his word? Come on. No one is that naive,” the California governor told reporters when asked about whether Democrats should sign onto a continuing resolution in hopes that Republicans are acting in good faith. But, he noted, “Democrats want to compromise” and said Republicans — Trump, in particular — “are not serious people.”
Newsom’s remarks at a press conference in Berkeley come amid a federal government shutdown that has left Capitol Hill in a stand-off, with Democrats taking aim at Republicans over rising health care costs and demanding an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year.
Trump, alongside Capitol Hill colleagues like Speaker Mike Johnson, has accused Democrats of allowing undocumented immigrants to access Medicaid, arguing Democrats “want to destroy health care in America by giving it to millions and millions of illegal aliens.” The White House has called out Newsom’s California, specifically, saying it has a “loophole” for federal dollars to pay for that coverage. California uses state tax revenue to fund its public health care program for undocumented residents.
“He’s lying. Speaker Johnson’s lying. They’re lying to the American people,” said Newsom, a likely presidential contender in 2028. When asked about Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid, he said that “states have the ability to do what states do, independent of the federal contributions.”
“I guess they’re trying to connect their displeasure with what California and many other states do with state resources in this space,” Newsom said, adding, “It’s a separate topic, and has nothing to do with their assertions in relationship to the government shutdown.”
Of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who have taken a confrontational approach throughout the impasse, Newsom said he applauded “their efforts in standing firm and pushing back against the lies that are being perpetuated by this administration.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 80 years after Mao Zedong called the United States a “paper tiger” to boost morale at home, U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are exchanging barbs who is the paper tiger of today.
By Didi Tang
In a Sept. 23 post on Truth Social, Trump mocked Russia’s military powers and called the country “a paper tiger,” prompting the Kremlin to push back. Trump backed off, but on Tuesday he brought back the dismissive rhetoric when addressing a roomful of generals and admirals. “You’re four years fighting a war that should have taken a week,” Trump said of Russia’s war with Ukraine. “Are you a paper tiger?”
On Thursday, Putin retorted, “We are fighting against the entire bloc of NATO, and we keep moving, keep advancing and feel confident, and we are a paper tiger; what NATO itself is?”
He added: “A paper tiger? Go and deal with this paper tiger then.”
Those familiar with modern Chinese history have found it amusing, odd and not without irony that an American president should be using a classic Chinese propaganda slogan — words that came from the heart of a communist government that is the polar opposite of what the Trump administration frames as the best way to run a country.
“As a Chinese historian I had to laugh at the irony when President Trump appropriated one of Chairman Mao’s favorite expressions in calling Russia a ‘paper tiger,’” said John Delury, a senior fellow at Asia Society.
“Mao famously said this about the United States, at a time when the U.S. had a growing nuclear arsenal and China was not yet a nuclear power. ... How times have changed. Now the leaders of the United States and Russia are calling one another ‘paper tigers’ as Chinese leader Xi Jinping sits back looking like the adult in the room.”
How paper tiger became a propaganda term in China
The phrase — “zhilaohu” in China’s dominant dialect — is well-rooted in the culture of the Chinese Communist Party. Perry Link, a well-known American scholar on modern Chinese language and culture, recalled that Lao She, a famous Chinese writer, referred to U.S. troops as the “paper tiger” during the Korean War years.
“There’s a Cold War echo across this whole story,” said Rana Mitter, a British historian specializing in modern Chinese history.
Accounts by Chinese state media and essays by party theorists say the phrase entered into the party vocabulary when Mao, the founding revolutionary, told the American journalist Anna Louise Strong in a 1946 interview that the atom bomb by the United States was a “paper tiger,” which the “U.S. reactionaries use to scare people.”
Mao then used the Chinese phrase “zhilaohu,” which means paper tiger literally. But his interpreter translated it into “scarecrow,” according to state media reports, before an American doctor who was present suggested “paper tiger,” which Mao approved. The phrase largely refers to something that is seemingly powerful but actually fragile.
Delury said at the time that Moscow, which took the nuclear threat seriously, was aghast that Mao “casually” dismissed the threat and was annoyed that “Mao would brazenly use ‘paper tiger’ rhetoric at a time when if nuclear war broke out, China would rely on Russian involvement.”
The term became ‘a sharp thought weapon’ for China
That didn’t happen. Mao seized power in 1949, and the phrase “zhilaohu” became a propaganda staple in communist China, closely associated with western imperialists, particularly the United States. Mao famously said that “all reactionaries are paper tigers.” In canonizing the leader’s wisdom, party theorists have called the slogan Mao’s “strategic thought” and “a sharp thought weapon.”
The rhetoric subsided when U.S.-China ties warmed in the 1970s, but it resurfaced in recent years as bilateral relations chilled.
The government shutdown drama unfolding in Washington is political theater covering up something far worse. While legislators argue over budget details, they’re ignoring an uncomfortable truth: Congress has already surrendered its most important power — the power to control spending — and the bill has arrived.
That bill totals $170 billion over the next decade.
This isn’t money Congress approved. It’s money the Executive Branch simply decided to spend, creating mandatory costs through administrative decisions that lawmakers are now forced to fund. How? By strategically expanding “parole” authority under immigration law to reclassify millions of people, instantly making them eligible for federal benefits Congress never authorized.
The Parole Loophole
The whole system turns on a single phrase: “lawfully present.” Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Department of Homeland Security can “parole” non-citizens into the country temporarily. The magic number is one year — parole someone for a year or more, and federal law labels them “lawfully present,” opening the door to federal benefits.
By the end of 2024, the administration had implemented 605 immigration-related executive actions, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Critics say this was deliberate: Administratively expand who qualifies for benefits without asking Congress. Millions who entered illegally were transformed, through bureaucratic paperwork, into people with legal claims on taxpayer-funded programs.
Three Ways the Money Drains Out
The financial damage hits through three channels, draining resources at federal, state, and local levels.
1. Health Care Subsidies
The biggest cost flows through the Affordable Care Act. People classified as “lawfully present” become eligible for ACA marketplace plans, including premium tax credits and cost-sharing help — subsidies paid entirely by federal taxpayers. Congressional Budget Office analysis reveals that cutting off this population’s ACA access would save roughly $124 billion between 2025 and 2034. That’s $124 billion the government will spend insuring people whose eligibility comes solely from an executive decision.
Nearly 550,000 people earning below the poverty line are enrolled in subsidized marketplace plans. Most are “lawfully present” immigrants who can’t get Medicaid because of their immigration status, often because they’re in the mandatory five-year waiting period. Proposed laws to tighten eligibility would result in about 1.4 million lawfully present immigrants losing health coverage across all federal programs.
2. Emergency Medical Care
Federal law requires states to provide emergency Medicaid coverage to people who would otherwise qualify except for their immigration status. This includes both those here illegally and those in waiting periods. The CBO’s October 2024 letter to the House Budget Committee laid out the damage: Between 2017 and 2023, federal and state governments spent a combined $26.554 billion on emergency medical services for this group — $18.038 billion federal, $8.516 billion state.
The spending pattern tells the story. The sharpest increases happened from 2021 forward, matching exactly when arrivals surged. Emergency rooms can’t turn patients away, but someone has to pay. That someone is the taxpayer.
3. State and Local Costs
Beyond health care, cities and towns face crushing obligations. A June 2025 CBO analysis found that in 2023 alone, direct spending increases — mostly for K–12 education, shelter, and related services — hit $19.3 billion. After accounting for new tax revenue from this population ($10.1 billion), the net cost to state and local governments reached $9.2 billion in just one year.
These aren’t optional expenses. Schools must educate children who show up. Shelters must house families. Social services must respond to emergencies. Local budgets absorb the hit while waiting for federal money that rarely covers actual costs.
The Rhetorical Shell Game
Here’s where political messaging becomes Orwellian. Democrat leadership insists that “Federal law prohibits the expenditure of taxpayer dollars on providing health care to undocumented immigrants” and claims that Democrats have no interest in changing that law. Technically true. Politically deceptive.
The sleight of hand lies in the word “undocumented.” By administratively reclassifying millions who entered illegally as “lawfully present” through expanded parole authority, the previous administration ensured that these individuals are no longer categorized as “undocumented immigrants” — even though they entered illegally and would have been denied entry under traditional enforcement.
Democrats can claim with a straight face that they’re not spending taxpayer money on “undocumented immigrants” because the administration already changed their documentation status through executive action. The people receiving $124 billion in ACA subsidies aren’t “undocumented”; they’re “lawfully present.” Never mind that this status was created by bureaucratic reclassification rather than the legal immigration process Congress designed.
When Republicans demand an end to taxpayer funding for benefits to illegal aliens, Democrats respond that no such funding exists — because the aliens in question have been administratively redefined. They already changed the practical effect of federal law through executive classification, and now they’re defending that accomplished change as the status quo Congress intended.
The Republican position isn’t about changing immigration law. It’s about refusing to fund the fiscal consequences of administrative decisions that circumvented immigration law. When the Trump administration won’t continue funding these obligations, Democrats frame this as Republicans “shutting down the government” and “inflicting pain on American citizens.”
But that framing turns reality upside-down. The pain inflicted on American citizens — the $170 billion diverted from veterans, infrastructure, and genuine domestic priorities — already occurred when the prior administration created these obligations without congressional approval. The current administration is simply refusing to continue funding a constitutional violation.
The Common Sense Test
The political vitriol directed at the current administration has obliterated basic reasoning. Strip away the partisan fury and ask: Did anyone with common sense believe there would be no consequences for allowing unprecedented numbers of illegal aliens into the country — while the previous administration insisted the border was secure?
The numbers don’t lie. The prior administration implemented 605 immigration-related executive actions while claiming that border security was under control. Millions entered illegally, were reclassified as “lawfully present,” and became eligible for federal benefits. The fiscal consequences — $170 billion and counting — were entirely predictable.
Yet pointing out this reality gets labeled as extremism. The MAGA movement’s core insight wasn’t radical: Actions have consequences, open borders cost money, and governments should prioritize their own legal citizens.
The America First Response
These expenditures represent an outrageous misuse of limited resources. The “America First” view sees every dollar spent on this administratively created group as a dollar taken from citizens in need: veterans dealing with homelessness and PTSD while waiting months for V.A. care, service members and their families who must rely on private charities like Tunnels to Towers to get support their own government should provide, working families crushed by inflation, seniors watching their savings disappear, homeless Americans sleeping on streets.
This perspective flips the question: What justifies spending $170 billion on people whose eligibility was created by executive paperwork while legal citizens — including immigrants who came here the right way — suffer? When does putting legal citizens first stop being discrimination and become basic responsibility?
Taking Back Control
Congress must reclaim the constitutional authority it surrendered. The scope of discretionary powers like parole must be clearly limited, with explicit legal language requiring congressional approval before any status change that triggers federal benefits.
The $170 billion now straining federal, state, and local budgets is the cost of congressional surrender to executive overreach. The question is whether lawmakers will fight to reclaim what they’ve lost, or whether this becomes the new normal: executives spending, Congress scrambling to fund obligations it never approved, and taxpayers stuck with the bill.
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