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Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk’s suspected assassin, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, lived with a transgender-identifying roommate, several reports have confirmed. The findings could point to a potential motive.

‘This had to have been a motivation for Tyler Robinson.’

The two, who resided in an apartment in Saint George, Utah, had a “romantic relationship,” Fox News Digital first reported.

The roommate is a biological male who claims he is transitioning to a female. The FBI stated that he has been “extremely cooperative” with the agency’s investigation. He allegedly “had no idea” Robinson had planned the fatal shooting and has not been accused of any criminal activity in connection with the assassination.

Several sources told Axios that investigators initially did not want the roommate’s so-called gender identity to be leaked to the public since he was cooperating with investigators.

One of those sources claimed that the roommate was “aghast” to learn about the assassination and provided authorities with message exchanges he had with Robinson.

“That’s what happened? Oh my God, no,” the roommate allegedly said. “Here are all the messages.”

RELATED: Officials file affidavit with intended charges against Charlie Kirk’s suspected assassin: Report

Photo by ROMAIN FONSEGRIVES/AFP via Getty Images

Robinson had wrapped the rifle in a towel and hidden it in some bushes near Utah Valley University, according to the messages.

“It’s pretty clear that Robinson’s roommate knew a lot and didn’t say anything after the killing, so they’re a person of interest officially and are cooperating,” a second official told Axios. “We want to keep it that way.”

Utah Governor Spencer Cox (R) confirmed that Robinson’s roommate identified as transgender, indicating that this information may assist investigators in determining a motive, although he noted that Robinson’s motive remains unclear.

“It’s very clear to us and to the investigators that this was a person who was deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology,” Cox told the Wall Street Journal.

RELATED: VIDEO: Erika Kirk makes first public remarks since the death of her husband, Charlie Kirk

Photo by Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images

Cox also noted that Robinson has not confessed to authorities that he committed the assassination.

“He is not cooperating,” Cox said. “All the people around him are cooperating.”

“The FBI is investigating a record number of tips,” an FBI spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “Every connection, every group, every link will be investigated and anyone involved in this matter, anywhere in the world they might be, will be brought to justice.”

Terry Schilling with American Principles Project told Blaze News that there is “a serious mental health crisis that America needs to address.”

“Transgenderism is obviously a mental illness. It was classified as a mental illness for decades, and then the science on this and the medicine got politicized,” he continued. “Now, with Charlie getting shot, it’s clear that this is causing serious problems. This had to have been a motivation for Tyler Robinson. Even though he doesn’t identify as trans, he’s directly related to it.”

Schilling blamed legacy media for lying to the American public about transgenderism.

“They tell these people that there is a trans-genocide going on, simply because there’s a large group of Americans who don’t want to give sex change procedures to children, or don’t want boys in their daughters’ sports or boys in their daughters’ showers and locker rooms,” he added. “[Transgender-identifying people] think their lives are at stake because they’ve been lied to, and they’ve been whipped up in hysteria.”

“We need to get these people the proper help they need,” Schilling concluded.

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​News, Charlie kirk assassination, Charlie kirk, Turning point usa, Tpusa, Fbi, Utah, Spencer cox, Politics 

I’ve concluded that the British left would be happy if the entire population of the country were replaced with foreigners. Since these people are so virtuous, I would not be surprised if some of them decided to self-deport and hand their home over to a family of 24 Somali refugees.

It’s not a lie to claim that our chronically inept government has developed an addiction to immigration.

Allow me to state the obvious: There is no need to import drag queens. Unlike nurses and midwives, drag is one field of employment where there is no significant labor shortage.

Both main political parties have been completely incapable of enforcing the borders. Between 2018 and 2024, the Conservative Party oversaw the arrival of more than 150,000 undocumented migrants. Meanwhile, more than 50,000 migrants have crossed the English Channel in small boats since Labour took power in July 2024.

Are you experienced?

Aside from jumping on a rubber dinghy or hiding in the back of a truck, one surefire way to enter Britain is with a skilled-worker visa. The Home Office frequently grants these to highly qualified individuals with years of training and experience in a field that this country requires.

So whenever someone argues that immigration is too high, the left always responds: If we had low immigration, we’d run out of doctors and nurses (20% of the NHS is composed of non-U.K. nationals).

It appears that we are not only experiencing a lack of homegrown labor in the medical field. Britain requires radical supply-side reforms in other, more important areas. Apparently, we’re running out of drag queens.

God save the queens

Yes, the Home Office has given five-year Global Talent visas to drag queens from Turkey.

The Global Talent visa program aims to attract some of the world’s top artistic talent to live and work in Britain. Unfortunately, the government’s definition of “skilled” appears to encompass lip-syncing and parading around in high heels.

Recently added to the U.K. talent pool is transgender drag queen Kübra Uzun, known as Q-BRA. His back catalog includes a ditty about searching for casual sex partners as well as a reworking of an aria from Carmen in “Turkish queer slang.”

Another one of these visas was issued to Akis Ka, whose artistic objective is to “leave queer marks on art history.” I’m sure they will both leave a lasting cultural legacy, something the United Kingdom has unfortunately lacked since J.M.W. Turner’s death.

RELATED: NFL platforms ‘child-friendly’ drag queen cheerleaders

Todd Kirkland / Contributor | Getty Images

No drag drain

Allow me to state the obvious: There is no need to import drag queens. Unlike nurses and midwives, drag is one field of employment where there is no significant labor shortage. Besides migrants, one thing we do have a surplus of is native drag queens. I know this because the BBC constantly informs me it is the case.

As of writing, there are currently 24 stories this year on the BBC’s Drag Queen page tag. That’s almost one per week. Recent headlines include “Meet the Deaf Drag Queens Keeping Gay Sign Language Alive,” “How a Former Slave Became the World’s First Drag Queen,” and “As a Female Drag Queen, I Had to Fight for Work.”

I can already hear them now, employing the same low-level racism they frequently attribute to us: “Those damn Turks, coming here and stealing our jobs.”

Exceptionally broken

There is rising concern about the use of Global Talent for artists, as the scheme has witnessed a 178% increase in successful applications over the last five years. Since 2019, Nigeria has emerged as the leading country of origin for application submissions, with a startling 2,225% rise, mostly from self-identifying rappers and poets.

These visas are meant for individuals with “exceptional” talents in music, theater, and dance. Apparently, exceptional is the new norm, as more than 70% of applicants are approved. It allows the recipient — and their dependents — to stay in Britain for at least five years.

With thousands of migrants already working illegally in the U.K. labor market, this is further proof that our immigration system is an absolute joke. We should tell the men risking their lives on the dangerous Calais to Dover journey that it’s a lot easier to put on a pink wig and apply some flamboyant makeup.

There may well be some fields in the U.K. that could benefit from importing foreign talent. But more men in wigs lip-syncing Gloria Gaynor? We will survive with our current supply.

​Drag queens, Global talent visa, Immigration, Culture, Letter from the uk 

Iryna Zarutska’s suspected killer wasn’t a productive citizen who just snapped one day — the man had over a dozen prior arrests — yet somehow was still walking the streets freely.

And the crime he is suspected of committing is not an isolated incident.

“I don’t even know his name. I’m not that interested in his name. He’s unimportant individually, but what he represents is very important,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock says on “Jason Whitlock Harmony.”

While Whitlock admits it might sound crazy, his major takeaway after watching the video of Zarutska’s horrifying murder is that her killer was “demon possessed.”

“And because we have become so secular, we don’t even understand demons and the wickedness, the evilness that we’re seeing. We don’t interpret things the way that we used to interpret things previously … when our worldview was much more Christian, much more biblical, much more rooted in the spiritual nature of this world,” he explains.

“Now everything is very secular, and so we don’t think this way,” he adds.

Many Americans have responded to the tragedy by pointing to the need for mental institutions or fixing the justice system that let a violent criminal out to do what he pleased, but Whitlock notes that the solution is much deeper than that.

The entire “culture” that the alleged killer was created by is “demonic” in itself — and needs to be completely changed.

Whitlock notes that rap music has long glorified murder within the black community, saying, “It flirts with all this demonic, devil worshipping, all of this stuff.”

“And then we look out and see someone like Decarlos Brown Jr., who clearly to me, if he were trying to rob this woman, and kill her, I think we’d all sit back and say, ‘Oh man, this is a terrible tragedy, lock this dude up for life, give him the death penalty’ … but just killing a young woman that got on a train and sat in front of you, and then saying something about ‘I got that white girl,’ this is demonic,” Whitlock says.

“And it’s the fruit of a demonic culture,” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Video, Camera phone, Upload, Free, Sharing, Video phone, Youtube.com, Fearless, Jason whitlock, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Demonic, Iryna zarutska, Decarlos brown, Charlotte stabbing, Charlotte murder, Black culture, Demonic culture, Possession, Demonic possession, Fearless with jason whitlock 

Turning Point USA announced that it plans to hold a massive public memorial service in honor of founder Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated on Wednesday while speaking to students at Utah Valley University.

‘Show up patriots! Let’s fill it up!’

“Join us in celebrating the remarkable life and enduring legacy of Charlie Kirk, an American legend,” TPUSA wrote in a social media post announcing the event.

The memorial, “Building a Legacy,” will be held at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on September 21. The door opens at 8:00 a.m. and the program will begin at 11:00 a.m. The stadium, home to the Arizona Cardinals, can be expanded to hold up to 73,000 people. Details of the event can be found at FightForCharlie.com.

“Charlie Kirk’s life was a testament to faith, courage, and conviction,” the website read. “From his earliest days, he believed America was worth fighting for, and he dedicated every moment of his 31 years to that cause. He lived with eyes fixed on eternity, grounded in the truth of God’s Word, and driven by a calling bigger than himself.”

RedWave Press responded to the memorial announcement, stating, “Show up patriots! Let’s fill it up!”

“This is a Turning Point for our country,” Martin Walsh, the editor in chief of the Conservative Brief, wrote.

RELATED: Why Charlie Kirk’s assassination will change us in ways this generation has never seen

Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)

Many individuals reacted to TPUSA’s memorial post by expressing their intention to attend the event.

“Hope to see you there!” wrote investigative reporter Nick Sortor.

Former Cardinal kicker, Jay Feely, who is running for Arizona’s 5th Congressional District, called for patriots to “fill State Farm stadium.”

“Spread this far and wide. I want that stadium packed like a NFC championship game. We need to honor Charlie Kirk in his home state,” Feely said.

RELATED: VIDEO: Erika Kirk makes first public remarks since the death of her husband, Charlie Kirk

Photo by PHILL MAGAKOE/AFP via Getty Images

Vigils and other local memorial events honoring Kirk’s life have been held all over the country.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Thursday that he plans to attend Kirk’s funeral in Phoenix.

“They’ve asked me to go and I think I have an obligation to do that,” Trump stated. “Whenever it is, I’ll be going.”

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​News, Charlie kirk assassination, Charlie kirk, Arizona, State farm stadium, Utah, Turning point usa, Tpusa, Politics 

Thirty-seven years ago, an executive at Monsanto named Harold Corbett delivered a speech titled “Chemical risk: Living up to public expectations.” The 1988 speech called out an industry that delivered miracles and devastating mistakes.

Corbett described two chemical industries. One was responsible for safe drinking water, higher crop yields, medicines, and a better standard of living. The other was responsible for contamination, waste, and health crises: “The public doesn’t care how far we’ve come. They care how far we still have to go.”

MAHA is about returning to a Republican Party that answers to voters, not corporate boards, and that means telling the truth about the harm caused when Big Health dictates our policies.

It still rings true today. Harold Corbett was my grandfather.

Lost trust

To turn a profit, pharmaceutical companies suppress unfavorable data and mislead consumers with predatory advertising. Food manufacturers sell metabolic dysfunction; hospital systems consolidate care; and chemical conglomerates litigate instead of innovate.

Now, a growing number of Americans are speaking out decisively against the quartet of Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Food, and Big Health. This coalition of “Make America Healthy Again” voters is targeting a crisis of institutional credibility and a growing unease with an industry that is no longer trusted and seems more focused on profits than on people’s health.

As a psychiatric nurse practitioner, I see these problems firsthand. With the MAHA coalition powering Republican victories up and down the ballot, we as Republicans have a generational opportunity to take back our health system. We can make changes and save American lives, but we need to agree on the problems to start.

More than two-thirds of all Missouri adults are overweight. Synthetic opioid overdoses claimed nearly 850 lives last year, with local St. Louis and St. Charles Counties ranking at or near the worst in the state. And should we forget the COVID mandates that caused overdoses to spike, caused childhood anxiety and depression to rise, and kept healthy toddlers in masks? Such measures stunted their development for years, as dissenting scientists and members of the public were told to “trust the experts” and shut up.

Dismissing people is the quickest way to continue to diminish what little trust remains. In my practice, I encounter this lack of trust in our medical establishment every day with my patients. After years of being told to trust “the science” — meaning “don’t question us” — many people no longer trust anything the medical establishment has to say.

A prescription for healing

This is where the MAHA movement can help heal our nation. The Trump administration and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have been making significant strides to regain public trust, both through the MAHA Commission and through medical reforms in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Trump signed in July.

Republicans need to get on board, and Congress needs to act, to do much more on this crucial issue.

On food transparency and clean labels, Americans deserve full disclosure of the chemicals, additives, and pesticides that are going into our foods, particularly those banned in Europe and Canada. This includes food dyes and glyphosate, a pesticide and carcinogen that is found throughout our food system.

RELATED: It’s been a year since Kennedy and Trump joined forces. Here are MAHA’s top 3 wins.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

On preventive care and lowering costs, we have made great strides by prioritizing direct primary care in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. We should work to expand choice even more so that individuals and families have direct access outside our bloated and opaque insurance system.

Finally, our country needs a national plan for longevity and health: a real approach to wellness beyond relief for chronic symptoms, focusing instead on treatment of root causes. This must include protecting our kids from harmful food additives, encouraging beneficial physical and social activities, and stopping the grasp of powerful social media companies that are harming their health.

Until the scientific community admits past failures and entanglements, trust won’t return. Our public officials must lead as well, instead of following whatever Big Pharma and special interest groups have to say. Liberty thrives when truth is public and trust is earned.

Making health care thrive again

The same problems facing Americans are the problems facing our government. We keep swapping out treatments — new politicians, new leaders, new promises — but the patient keeps getting worse. The solution is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but to improve the system so that it works for regular people. That is how we restore faith in our institutions and return to responsible, trusted capitalism.

I don’t want to dismantle the health care industry. We need it to thrive. MAHA is about returning to a Republican Party that answers to voters, not corporate boards, and that means telling the truth about the harm caused when Big Health dictates our policies.

This movement can and will win broadly if we deliver on these promises.

In his speech, my grandfather quoted Mark Twain: “When in doubt, tell the truth.” To that, I would add: When the truth is clear, act. The restoration of trust and survival of these industries, our government, and our people depend on it.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Maha, Make america healthy again, Rfk jr, Rfk, Big pharma, Big pharma corruption 

I am the Turning Point USA faculty adviser at Arizona State University. As a philosophy professor, what Charlie Kirk was doing stood out to me immediately. It also stood out to the ideologue professors who didn’t like being questioned. That’s why they tried to stop him.

Charlie did something no one thought possible. He walked into the heart of the modern university — where the left claims to hold the keys to knowledge — and did what their professors should have been doing all along: He asked questions. He challenged assumptions. He demanded clarity. He gave logical arguments.

Charlie wasn’t there to score points or win applause. He cared about students’ souls.

He was the American Socrates.

Modeling the Socratic dialogue

Like the Athenian philosopher, Charlie confronted those who claimed to be wise. He took questions — hundreds of them — on camera for all to see. Students asked about gender, economics, faith, and politics. He asked if they could rationally defend their views.

Again and again, Charlie turned the tables, and we saw that the content of the leftist classroom is irrational.

On gender ideology, he exposed what I call the “transsexual heresy,” showing students that reality — not ideology — defines what it means to be a man or a woman. He warned against letting confusion dictate truth. Objective reality matters, and he ensured that students knew it. The mentally ill should not be able to dictate to the rest of us what reality is. And anyone who doesn’t know basic things, such as the difference between a man and a woman, isn’t ready to teach students.

On economics, he dismantled Marxist clichés students had absorbed from their professors, showing that personal responsibility — not socialism — is the bedrock of human flourishing. They came at him with Rousseau, stating that private property and “the system” force the “oppressed” to live lives of crime. In one video, a student told him the poor and marginalized have to become criminals, and Charlie demolished this by simply asking if they have free will. It was brilliant, and everyone watching knew it.

On Christianity, he confronted the narrative that faith is merely patriarchy and white supremacy in disguise. The background narrative is that these professors hate the Bible. Professors had planted these lies in the minds of students to prevent them from reading it.

An untold multitude of students had their faith shipwrecked by such professors while their parents paid the tuition. The unbelieving profs thought they had sufficiently salted the ground and planted tares in the field. Charlie tore them out, root and branch, preparing the ground for the gospel itself to be heard.

The professors’ ire

And that’s why the professors despised him.

I’ve been in those faculty meetings. I’ve heard professors laugh about “deconstructing” the faith of Christian students. I’ve watched them assign books praising witchcraft while condemning Christianity as “oppressive.” I’ve seen them try to ban Charlie Kirk from speaking on campus by declaring him a “white supremacist.”

ASU “honors faculty” successfully prevented him from speaking at the honor college even while they held events on the benefits of witchcraft — while the outlet Jezebel bragged about hiring “Etsy witches” to hex him. If the witches hated him this much, it tells the good guys he was on to something.

The spiritual battle lines could not be clearer.

Charlie wasn’t there to score points or win applause. He cared about students’ souls. He stood in the breach against professors who see students not as young men and women searching for truth, but as recruits for their ideological crusades. He laughed at the degree programs that promised jobs for students such as “radical advocate.” He was there because he believed those students were worth saving from the godless ideologies peddled in classrooms.

Blatant hypocrisy

When Charlie was murdered, some on the left rushed to say, “Let’s all calm down.” There is no moral equivalency here between the right and the left. Yet the left is the one who heated it up by calling him a white supremacist. The left controls the American university, where conservatives and Christians are called “fascist white supremacist patriarchs worse than Hitler” all day and night.

Where was that call for calm after George Floyd’s fentanyl overdose? Violence erupted. Cities burned. Professors excused it all. They used class time to tout Black Lives Matter.

But you won’t see TPUSA students burning cities BLM-style. They will do what Charlie taught them: Use logic and reason to expose falsehoods. Like the students of Athens after Socrates’ death, they will remember the example of the man who confronted their professors — and won.

And those professors will live knowing they were weighed in the balance and found wanting. They are the baddies.

Socrates’ prediction still stands

Before his execution, Socrates told his accusers they would face a heavier judgment than the one they inflicted on him. They killed him to silence him. But his death only proved their ignorance and wickedness. They were unable to give an account to explain themselves and were exposed as living the unexamined life.

The same is true here.

Charlie’s death will not silence him. It will amplify his example. Students will keep questioning. They will expose the foolishness of professors who despised Charlie’s example. And those radical professors will carry the shame of knowing they tried to cover ignorance with hatred.

RELATED: Why Charlie Kirk’s assassination will change us in ways this generation has never seen

Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

As a Christian pastor, I know Charlie saw that souls were at stake. Charlie publicly professed Christ to be his savior, and the ideological professors know it also. They saw students giving their souls in faith to Christ rather than John Money and hated it.

Now those professors think Charlie is silenced, but they must live with their own darkness. They can repent — or they will live in that darkness forever and face the judgment of God. The blood of martyrs has always been the seed of revival.

May the Lord use Charlie’s life — and yes, even his death — to raise up a generation of students who love truth, pursue wisdom, and refuse to bow to the false gods of the modern university. Let’s question godless professors to reveal to everyone watching that they don’t know clear truths about God and what is good.

Charlie Kirk was the American Socrates. The leftist professors hated him for it. And they will never escape the questions he taught a generation to ask.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Charlie kirk, Charlie kirk assassination, Tpusa, Conservatives, Republicans, Diversity equity inclusion, Leftism, Universities, Activism, Professors, Religion, Philosophy, Socrates 

Moments after announcing Charlie Kirk’s death on Fox News’ “The Five,” Dana Perino, normally composed and unflappable, fought back tears. Her voice trembled as she pleaded for what she called a “circuit breaker,” something to break the rising current of fury now running through our culture.

Her words were not political. They were profoundly human. And they named what many feel: The world is burning too hot, and we are running out of ways to cool it down.

There is only One who has ever absorbed the full current of hatred and did not pass it on.

We’ve all sensed that current. It hums beneath politics, families, neighborhoods, even churches. Rage lurks like a storm, waiting for the next spark. Perino wasn’t just mourning a death. She was begging for relief from the relentless voltage of hate.

But no human circuit breaker exists. History proves it. Every attempt to interrupt the current — revolutions, reforms, resolutions — eventually fails. We reset the breaker, and the current surges again. Because the overload isn’t out there in the systems. It’s in here, in the human heart.

There is only One who has ever absorbed the full current of hatred and did not pass it on. Jesus Christ didn’t just defuse tension. He took the lightning bolt straight into Himself. The cross was the great interruption, where perfect love bore the full load of human rage and divine justice in one cataclysmic strike.

Stephen, the first Christian martyr, saw it. As he was about to be stoned, he gazed into heaven and declared he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. That proclamation didn’t calm his killers. It enraged them.

Truth always incites the fury of hell.

We don’t make Jesus “Lord of our life.” He already is Lord, whether we acknowledge Him or not. And Scripture says that one day, “every knee will bow … and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10-11). Some will bow in gratitude. Others will be brought to their knees by the rod of iron (Revelation 19:15). But all will bow.

Which means this: Hatred will not burn itself out. It will not abate. The closer Christ’s light comes, the more ferociously darkness will fight it.

King Théoden, in Peter Jackson’s “The Two Towers,” voiced the dread many feel: “What can men do against such reckless hate?”

Aragorn’s reply was simple and defiant: “Ride out and meet them.”

Charlie Kirk did just that. He rode out and met the storm head-on.

But greater still, Christ did that. He rode out from heaven into the teeth of our hatred and took the full charge of it upon Himself. The cross was not retreat. It was the countercharge that broke the power of darkness forever.

Centuries later, Martin Luther stood before the full weight of church and empire, knowing they could kill him for refusing to recant. He said simply: “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.”

He wasn’t fearless. He was anchored. And as the storm closed in around him, he gave the church its battle hymn:

The body they may kill;
God’s truth abideth still.

Luther never believed the hate would abate. He simply knew it could not win. And that is where we must stand as well.

We do not stand with bravado. We stand with scars. We stand, not by denying the darkness, but by fixing our eyes on the One who already absorbed its full blast and still stands.

He doesn’t only stop the current from destroying us. He rewires the entire system. What was corroded, He makes new. What was dead, He makes alive. He is not just the breaker. He is the pure current, the very life of God now flowing through those who belong to Him.

I have lived long enough to see what hate does when it is unleashed. It devours not just its targets but its hosts. It corrodes from within. And it will not stop on its own. Hate is never satisfied. It must be interrupted.

RELATED: Why Charlie Kirk’s assassination will change us in ways this generation has never seen

Photo by Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images

That interruption has already come. The current has already been broken. And the one who bore it all now reigns, and one day, so will we.

We, like Aragorn of “The Lord of the Rings,” and like Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, are only shadows of that greater warrior, Christ, who rode out to meet the fury and shattered it at the cross.

And our response to Him is not with clenched fists, but with lifted eyes and steady voices:

Lead on, O King eternal,
We follow, not with fears;
For gladness breaks like morning
Where’er Thy face appears.
Thy cross is lifted o’er us;
We journey in its light;
The crown awaits the conquest;
Lead on, O God of might.

The hate will not abate. Charlie knew this.

But God’s truth abideth still.

And our King rides before us.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Charlie kirk, Charlie kirk assassination, Life, God, Jesus christ, Christianity, Hate 

Beatles don’t come cheap.

A quartet of movies based on the Fab Four is coming our way, and while the films aren’t close to releasing yet, we’re getting a peek at the price tag for the project.

$400 million.

‘By saying “Free Palestine,” you’re not admitting what you really think.’

Now, that may be the catering budget for your average Marvel movie, but it’s still an alarming figure for four dramatic features. All four films, to be shot over an extended 15-month period, will be helmed by Sam Mendes (“Skyfall,” “1917”).

“Can’t Buy Me Love,” perhaps, but money will get you some recognizable faces.

Let’s meet the Beatles: John Lennon (Harris Dickinson), Paul McCartney (Paul Mescal), Ringo Starr (Barry Keoghan), and George Harrison (Joseph Quinn).

The Liverpool lads remain a permanent part of pop culture — for us older folk. But is that the case for Gen Z, the generation most likely to visit theaters?

“Money (That’s What I Want).” And they’ll need plenty of it to recoup those exorbitant costs …

Spinal Nap

These reviews don’t go to 11. In fact, some are real “s**t sandwiches.”

“Spinal Tap: The End Continues” hits theaters this weekend, 41 years after the original mockumentary made this faux band immortal. We certainly didn’t need a new “Spinal Tap” movie. The original, directed by and co-starring Rob Reiner, gave us so many classic lines and gags, it feels like it never went away.

The new film features the key original cast members (Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, and Michael McKean) along with returning co-stars (Fran Drescher, Paul Shaffer) and copious cameos (Paul McCartney, Elton John).

Reviews have been mixed so far, with even the positive notices saying the sequel can’t come close to measuring up to the original.

What could?

One relief? It appears Reiner’s late-stage Trump derangement syndrome didn’t enter the frame, beyond a brief reference to Stormy Daniels. Phew.

The bad news is one distinct reality. Reiner’s directorial career fell off a creative cliff after a stunning run of movie classics (“Stand By Me,” “Misery,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “A Few Good Men,” “The Princess Bride”). He hasn’t had a hit since 2007’s “The Bucket List,” a film few would rank near the top — or even middle — of his filmography.

More than one critic cited a brutal line from the 1984 original in their reviews — the aforementioned sandwich …

Seinfeld stands up

For a guy who made a show about nothing, Jerry Seinfeld suddenly has something profound to say. And he’s virtually all alone in saying it, especially in the rarefied air of modern celebrity.

The legendary comic teed off against the pro-Palestinian movement, comparing it to the KKK. Except the latter group at least scores points for honesty.

Not this bunch, the sitcom superstar said.

Free Palestine is, to me, just — you’re free to say you don’t like Jews. By saying “Free Palestine,” you’re not admitting what you really think. So it’s actually — compared to the Ku Klux Klan, I’m actually thinking the Klan is actually a little better here because they can come right out and say, “We don’t like blacks; we don’t like Jews.” OK, that’s honest.

The comments come as nearly 4,000 of his industry peers pledge not to work with film groups with Israeli ties for their complicity with war crimes.

Seinfeld has all that sitcom money at this point. He also has a bigger moral compass than many of his peers, apparently …

RELATED: Grieving Charlie Kirk: How to cling to God in the face of evil

JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images

Sunny makes sense

“There are no words,” we often say in the face of tragedies like Wednesday’s shocking murder of conservative superstar Charlie Kirk. Unfortunately, the media generally insists on talking anyway.

Sometimes, miraculously, they get it right. Like “The View” host Sunny Hostin, of all people:

This man was 31 years old with two children, I think ages 1 and 3, a family man, a wife. Now, all these children will grow up without their father. This woman will grow up, you know, grow old without her husband. I just — this country — there’s just no place for this kind of violence in this country. I am heartbroken over it. … The First Amendment is the first amendment for a reason. We should be able to voice whatever opinions we have.

God bless Charlie Kirk and his family.

​Culture, Entertainment, Palestine, Jerry seinfeld, Spinal tap, The beatles, Movies, Rob reiner, The view, Toto recall 

Music originates in heaven. Scripture tells us that angels sing and play instruments. Life in heaven centers around eternal worship. Revelation foretells a time when, after Satan’s ultimate defeat, joyous songs of victory and triumph will resound in heaven, celebrating God’s glory.

It’s inarguable that music is a good gift from God that serves a purpose in His kingdom. But like all good gifts, it can be corrupted by Satan — and it has been. Today, a staggering amount of music, especially popular music, contains demonic messaging.

But it goes even deeper than profane, debaucherous lyrics and sin-promoting artists.

“Behind a lot of musical success are demon-possessed people,” says Rick Burgess, BlazeTV host of “Strange Encounters,” a podcast that explores spiritual warfare.

The pervasive darkness in the entertainment industry has fueled a widespread conspiracy theory about the illuminati — a secretive, occult group believed to control the music industry, manipulating culture through artists, lyrics, and symbolism to advance a satanic agenda.

But is it really a conspiracy theory?

Rick plays a recent viral clip of an emerging American rapper and producer from Atlanta, Georgia, named Lil Tony, whose full name is Tekai Elijah Key. On evangelist and street preacher Bryce Crawford’s podcast, the artist shared the terrifying experience that convinced him that the illuminati, God, and Satan are all real.

“I got booked for a photoshoot. They took me all the way up this mountain. I was on top of the mountain. We finished the photo shoot. They have OD cars. They got a three-seater McLaren. They got a Ferrari. And I’m asking them, like, ‘How y’all get all this money?’ They like, ‘We do demonic rituals,”’ Key recounted.

When he pressed the crew on how they really obtained such wealth, believing their original answer was a joke, they doubled down. “The illuminati never talk to you?” they asked him, claiming that Leonardo DiCaprio conducts the initiation ceremonies, which involve sexual acts.

Weirded out, Lil Tony tried to call an Uber to pick him up, but because he was in the mountains, he had no cell service. He was forced to drive back with another person who was part of the photoshoot. On the way down, this driver suddenly took a different route.

“His face changed,” said Key, comparing the scene to how Spider Man’s face morphs into the sinister visage of Venom. “It threw me all the way off.”

Right as his creepy driver was backing into somebody’s driveway, his saving grace came in the form of a mailman.

“I start running up to him like, ‘Hey bro, let me get in the back of your truck,’” Key recounted, admitting that he resorted to practically begging the mailman to help him get off the mountain.

“It was God. He took me down to the bottom. … The people on camera, you ain’t gotta believe me. I don’t care. I’m not lying. I really saw this. That’s what made me know that the devil and God was real,” he told Crawford.

“I don’t know whether that is true or not true. … Now, do I know that these things are out there? I feel very strong about that,” says Rick.

To hear Rick’s in-depth analysis of the darkness in the music industry, as well as other topics, like spiritual house cleaning, watch the full episode above.

Want more from Rick Burgess?

To enjoy more bold talk and big laughs, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Strange encounters, Rick burgess, Demons, Demonic, Blazetv, Blaze media, Blaze, Lil tony, Illuminati, Spiritual warfare, Hollywood elites, Leonardo dicaprio 

Big news: California’s iron grip on the automotive market could finally be over!

The Stop CARB Act, introduced in the U.S. Senate as part of larger legislative efforts to address vehicle regulations, is generating a lot of buzz for its aim to curb the influence of the California Air Resources Board on national auto standards.

Whether you’re a truck enthusiast, a daily commuter, or an auto industry worker, this bill touches your life.

This bill seeks to limit CARB’s ability to set stringent emission rules that impact not just California but 17 other states. As debates over vehicle costs, consumer choice, and environmental regulations heat up, the Stop CARB Act could reshape how cars are built and sold across America.

What is the Stop CARB Act?

The Stop CARB Act is a proposed piece of legislation focused on restricting the California Air Resources Board’s authority to enforce its own vehicle emission standards, particularly those stricter than federal regulations.

While the bill is often discussed in connection with the Transportation Freedom Act (S.711), introduced on February 25, 2025, by Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), the Stop CARB Act specifically targets CARB’s waivers under the Clean Air Act. The bill aims to eliminate these waivers, preventing California from dictating emission policies beyond its borders and blocking other states from following its lead.

Currently, S.711, which includes provisions aligned with the Stop CARB Act’s goals, is pending in the Senate Committee on Finance, with no floor vote scheduled as of September 3, 2025.

Sponsored by Sens. Moreno, Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), and Jim Justice (R-W.V.), the broader Transportation Freedom Act also seeks to repeal federal emission standards, such as the EPA’s Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for 2027 and later model years and Phase 3 heavy-duty vehicle greenhouse gas rules, while offering tax deductions for auto manufacturing wages. The Stop CARB Act’s focus on CARB makes it a key component of this larger deregulation effort.

Why do we need it?

CARB’s influence stems from a unique provision in the Clean Air Act, which allows California to request waivers to set stricter emission standards than the federal government. Since the 1970s, CARB has used this authority to implement rules like the Advanced Clean Cars II program, which mandates zero-emission vehicles by 2035.

Seventeen other states, representing over 40% of the U.S. population, have adopted CARB’s standards, effectively giving California outsized influence over national auto markets — even though it arguably violates the Constitution.

The Stop CARB Act argues aims to remedy this in a few key ways:

Reducing costs for consumers: CARB’s strict standards require automakers to invest heavily in technologies like electric vehicles or advanced combustion engines. These costs often raise vehicle prices, with estimates suggesting compliance could add thousands to the sticker price of new cars. By limiting CARB’s waivers, the bill aims to lower these costs, making vehicles more affordable for everyday Americans.

Streamlining regulations: The patchwork of federal, California, and state-adopted CARB standards creates complexity for automakers. Companies must design vehicles to meet multiple requirements, increasing production costs and delaying innovation. The Stop CARB Act seeks to establish uniform federal standards, simplifying compliance and fostering a more predictable market.

Preserving consumer choice: CARB’s push for zero-emission vehicles by 2035 limits the availability of gas-powered cars, trucks, and SUVs, which many drivers prefer for their affordability, range, or utility. The bill aims to protect consumer choice by preventing California’s mandates from dominating national markets.

Supporting U.S. manufacturing: Companies like General Motors, Stellantis, Toyota — as well as the National Automobile Dealers Association — argue that CARB’s rules strain manufacturers, particularly smaller suppliers. By curbing CARB’s influence, the bill could reduce compliance costs, boost domestic production, and create jobs.

RELATED: Ride or die: How Ford, Honda, VW, and 3 more got stuck with California’s strict emission standards

Mandel Ngan/Getty Images

CARB counting

The bill’s progress is uncertain, given the polarized views on environmental policy and state rights. If scheduled and it passes the Senate, it must clear the House and gain presidential approval. Legal challenges from California or environmental groups could also delay implementation if the bill becomes law. The next goal is to get this bill on the floor to vote on it.

Whether you’re a truck enthusiast, a daily commuter, or an auto industry worker, this bill touches your life. Will it lower vehicle costs and preserve your choice of gas-powered cars? Or will California continue to tell you what to drive? It’s time to reach out to your senators and representatives to tell them to get this bill to the floor.

​Ev mandate, California, Donald trump, Zev, Carb, Transportation freedom act, Align cars 

If you are reading this, you should not be.

Because you are reading this on LED light. This is an abbreviation for Luciferian emission devices.

Knowing this, then … so what? Sew buttons on your underwear. This is what my mother would tell me. She is wonderful. Is your mother wonderful? Do you love her? Do you honor her?

Do you do her honor when you are on your iPhone? Or have you forsaken your mother in favor of an image of yourself curated by an algorithm?

This is why everyone who stays online for long enough goes insane, one way or another.

Surely, you know that this is being done to you every time you look at an LED device. But are you in control of your device? Or is your device in control of you? Either way — how would you know? You could know if you noticed. But noticing is hard. Have you, for example, ever noticed how hideous LED lights are? The harsh, bright white light. It is unnatural.

Here’s a trick question: When is the last time you did drugs? Here’s the trick: You are doing a drug right now.

A drug, according to one Joe Rogan podcast guest — or rather, a guest who was quoting a cynical but realistic professor of medicine — is a substance that when put into your body produces a measurable effect.

Light, then, is a drug.

Light comes not only into your eyes, but also bathes your skin. Sunbathing is fun. Have you ever bathed naked in a white room of LED light? It would be less fun and is not recommended. And yet, as doctors know, tanning salons can be healthy. It is all a question of Vitamin D. This is a hormone, actually, produced mostly endogenously — although it can be taken orally.

If you watch a sunset on a beach, you will sleep well that night. This is science. And you believe in science, do you not — anon?

If you believe in science, you should know that being in an LED-lit room and then just turning off the light, bathing your face in an LED-lit machine glow, reading articles, and looking at images will not help you sleep.

And if you believe in science, you should know that sleeping well is good, actually. So then why — pray tell — were incandescent lights banned by Obama? For the environment? Did anyone actually believe that?

RELATED: Sun’s out, guns out: Finally, therapy even men can enjoy

Photo by Luke Hales / Contributor via Getty Images

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he wasn’t there — it has been said.

Obama was the first president to tweet. His reign lasted eight years. Then the world caught on fire. The fire was orange. Everyone got deranged. Well, not everyone. But everyone who hated the color orange so much that their entire lives became consumed by a pathetic fiery pathos, summarized in three words: Orange Man Bad.

But Heraclitus said that the world is fire. And only fire.

Earth? Wind? Water? You do not feel these elements when you are inside, bathed in LED light. You do not feel these elements when you are outside, staring at your iPhone. Or Samsung. What are you, an Android? If so, do you even dream of electric sheep?

Every time you submit to the LED-lit algorithm, you trigger yourself. This is true. Because the algorithm is designed to trigger you. This is how the “apps” make money off of you. This is why everyone who stays online for long enough goes insane, one way or another. And usually in a bad way if they don’t log off and love someone or something real.

What does Hillary Clinton really love? Her adulterous husband? Her email server? The United States of America? At this point, what difference would it make?

She wrote her college thesis on a man who wrote a book that started with an epigraph honoring Lucifer in his own words. That man’s name was Saul Alinsky. She deeply disappointed him. He was right. She proved him right by being the biggest loser in American politics of the past half-century.

But her emails! Her emails were not good for her. She would have been better off if she stuck with incandescent light bulbs. But the world did not stay that way. She was defeated by a half-black man, who was cooler than she was because he mastered the LED light show. And then she was defeated by an Orange Man, so that you could log off and go outside and enjoy being in America once again.

Throw away your LED lights. Buy incandescent. It is more like fire and less Satanic.

​Digital superstitions 

Bill Maher urged the left to stop equating President Donald Trump with Adolf Hitler, arguing that “makes it a lot easier to justify things like assassination.”

‘I’m no fan of this guy but he is right, and people on the Left like him need to call for this as well.’

Maher made the comments on a Friday episode of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” His remarks followed the tragic assassination earlier this week of Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk.

Maher mentioned Trump’s recent dinner at Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab in Washington, D.C., where left-wing protesters confronted him.

“Trump is the Hitler of our time! Free D.C., free Palestine!” the protesters chanted.

As they were escorted out of the building, they told diners, “You should all be ashamed that [Trump] was welcomed here. He’s terrorizing communities in D.C. He’s terrorizing communities all over the world, from Puerto Rico to the Philippines, to Palestine, to Venezuela.”

RELATED: Filmmaker David Mamet tells Bill Maher that Democrats have destroyed the family — and he agrees

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Maher told his audience, “This s*** has to stop, too. [Trump] went out to dinner — I wouldn’t have done that — in Washington, D.C., okay. And people started to gather around him, and they were chanting, ‘You’re the Hitler of our time.'”

“First of all, assholes, he’s not Hitler. An insult to everybody in the Holocaust, to begin with,” Maher continued. “Second of all, calling somebody Hitler makes it a lot easier to justify things like assassination. Let’s put a s***load of that away, shall we?”

RELATED: Bill Maher shocks with humble admission about Trump: ‘I gotta own it’

Photo by BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images

X users reacted to Maher’s comments.

“Gotta give credit to Bill Maher for being basically the only person in his party to acknowledge the damage Democrats have done by calling everyone they don’t like Hitler,” Outkick writer Ian Miller stated.

Shawn Farash wrote, “Bill Maher believes people should STOP calling Trump ‘Hitler’ because it leads to the justification for assassination. I’m no fan of this guy but he is right, and people on the Left like him need to call for this as well.”

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​News, Washington d.c., Washington dc, Dc, D.c., Donald trump, Trump, Bill maher, Politics 

Less than 20 minutes after Taylor Swift posted photos celebrating her engagement to Travis Kelce to Instagram, the comments section filled with young fans warning her to get a prenup or to resist taking Travis’ last name.

For the fanbase, this engagement was an exciting personal achievement, but one that was not meant to be overshadowed by her individual professional achievements. They didn’t want to lose sight of the brand Swift has meticulously crafted over the past two decades.

Their engagement is touted as the ideal American relationship — but it’s not.

Swift is something of a marketing genius, constantly altering her image and music to adapt to what is culturally relevant. This skill for promotion reached its peak when she began dating Kelce, a relationship that was exhaustingly promoted by everyone from TMZ to the NFL.

Perfect illusion

Seeing the couple take the next step in their relationship is, generally, a good thing. Many conservatives rushed to defend the couple against those who were weary after the endless, inescapable coverage of their romance.

Their defense was correct: It is good for young people to see examples of healthy relationships ending in marriage. Swift, one of the most profitable musicians of all time, has become a cultural icon who many young women look up to. Seeing her mature into marriage is an encouraging illustration for her loyal fanbase.

But it’s also a kind of illusion.

Swift and Kelce, both 35 years old, are millionaires several times over. They each have achieved international stardom, forging lives, careers, and fame long before they began building a life together. Their combined net worth is a number that would make most Americans laugh as they fret over the price of eggs, gas, and college.

Their engagement is touted as the ideal American relationship — but it’s not. Their engagement came only after they first pursued individual personal success. They waited until their mid-30s to begin the marital process, instead expending their younger years focusing on worldly success above all else.

They will likely never have to worry about mortgages or grocery bills, their children will probably never have to save money for college, and their age of retirement will not be based on financial necessity. Their coming marriage is entirely different from the typical American marriage.

Broken blueprint

But why is that a bad thing?

In a recent poll of Gen Z Americans, 34% of men who voted for President Donald Trump said that having children is the most important part of their personal definition of success. Of that same group, 29% defined their personal success by being married. On the other hand, 51% women who voted for Kamala Harris said the most important definition of personal success is having a fulfilling job or career. Shockingly, only 6% of those women believe that having children or being married are definitions of success. Even women who voted for Trump ranked their financial independence and career success above familial obligations.

It’s no secret that our culture is divided. But this polling reveals where the line is drawn and how deeply it’s splitting society apart. Young women, who make up a large portion of Swift’s audience, are focused on fiscal obligations. Young conservative men, who are seeking family life above all else, are the outliers.

Gen Z sees marriage as something that can only come after they have achieved financial independence and professional success. Wherein marriage was once the foundation of a healthy, thriving society, it’s now the capstone on a fully established life.

Need more proof? Shortly after World War II, the median age for marriage was between 20 and 22. Today, that number is much closer to 30. Meanwhile, between 1900 and 2022, the U.S. marriage rate dropped by almost 60%.

Twisted priorities

Pundits use a plethora of excuses for these changes. They blame financial insecurity, inflation rates, crime statistics, souring housing prices, and societal disasters, like 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. But wars, famines, and periods of uncertainty have always been a part of the human experience.

The real problem is rooted in how young people are now taught to view marriage.

RELATED: Misogyny? Please: Our real problem is female entitlement

David Eulitt/Getty Images

Zoomers are taught that personal identity and financial success are life’s greatest achievements. Public schools relentlessly promote college education as the predominant adolescent accomplishment and cite university degrees as distinguished identities. A secure bank account and a high-yield stock portfolio are championed above building families.

The feminist movement has clearly made this problem much more severe for young women. As seen in the polling, women are subjected to this financial enslavement regardless of political affiliation. And as feminism wormed its way into every aspect of our culture, it removed the value of being a loving wife and mother. From an early age, young girls are told that they have been freed from the “oppression” of familial duties. Instead, they are encouraged to build corporate, highly marketable identities.

It’s good to see Swift and Kelce take on the responsibility of marriage. But the idea that marriage is the capstone of an economically viable partnership is a rejection of the natural order.

Fans who want to see Swift sign a prenup and refuse to change her name are the manifestation of a confused generation. They have been taught to think that it’s better to isolate the individual for their valuable branding rather than find peace in the glory of marriage.

​Taylor swift, Travis kelce, Taylor swift engaged, Marriage, Gen z 

Jenny Lynne Boelter, the wife of political assassination suspect Vance Luther Boelter, has filed for divorce in Sibley County, Minnesota.

According to Minnesota court records, Jenny Boelter, 51, of Green Isle, Minn., filed suit for divorce on Aug. 29. She is represented by family law attorney Maury Beaulier. Vance Boelter is listed on the case docket as a self-represented litigant.

Beaulier told Blaze News that Jenny Boelter “will not be making a further statement.”

‘We are appalled and horrified by what occurred.’

Both of the Boelters filed a motion and stipulation to seal all of the case records. Sibley County District Court Judge Amber Donley issued an order to that effect on Sept. 2.

The suit is listed as “dissolution with children.” The Boelters have five children, four of whom have reached adulthood.

Vance Boelter, 58, faces a slew of federal and state murder-related charges from the June 14 assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman (DFL-Brooklyn Park), her husband, Mark Hortman, and their golden retriever, Gilbert.

He also faces attempted murder charges for the shooting and grievous wounding of state Sen. John Hoffman (DFL-Champlin) and his wife, Yvette Hoffman, and the attempted shooting of their daughter, Hope Hoffman.

RELATED: Assassination suspect Vance Boelter tells STUNNING inside story about shooting

Vance and Jennifer (Doskocil) Boelter were married on Oct. 4, 1997. They have five children.Jenny Boelter/Facebook

A Minnesota grand jury on Aug. 14 indicted Vance Boelter on eight criminal counts, including first-degree premeditated murder, attempted first-degree murder, impersonating a police officer, and felony cruelty to an animal.

He earlier pleaded not guilty to six federal grand jury charges that include stalking, murder, attempted murder, and firearms offenses related to the other felonies. Boelter could face the death penalty for the federal murder charge. He will be in federal court in November for a status conference.

Vance Boelter is being held for trial at the Sherburne County Jail in Elk River, Minn. Hennepin County set his bail at $5 million on the state charges. He won’t face state prosecution until the federal charges are resolved.

The Boelters were married in October 1997. The family moved around quite a bit with Vance Boelter’s numerous jobs in the food-processing industry. They lived in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, according to property records.

The Boelters were partners in nonprofit charitable and religious ventures, including Revoformation Ministries Inc. and You Give Them Something to Eat Inc. They were also part of a partnership that owned Red Lion Group, a company dedicated to increasing locally grown food supplies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The other partners are the Rev. Mcnay Nkashama and his wife, Nathalie, according to documents obtained by Blaze News.

The Boelters attempted to establish a security company in 1999 and again in 2018. The more recent business, Praetorian Guard Security Services LLC, invested in equipment, including decommissioned police vehicles, but the business never got off the ground. Jenny Boelter was listed on the company website as president and CEO of Praetorian Guard, and Vance Boelter was named as director of security patrols.

One of the Praetorian Guard vehicles, a 2015 Ford Explorer Police Interceptor, was allegedly used to shuttle Vance Boelter to the homes of four Democratic Minnesota state legislators on June 14. Prosecutors said Boelter’s plan was to murder the lawmakers. Boelter has said he planned only to make citizen arrests but that plan went horribly wrong. The vehicle was originally owned by the Osceola Police Department in Polk County, Wis., according to title records.

RELATED: How did a religious, small-town Minnesota boy morph into an alleged political assassin?

The stuff of nightmares: Vance Luther Boelter allegedly sought to kill 4 Minnesota lawmakers in the overnight hours on June 14, 2025. Photos by FBI and Liz Collin/Alpha News

The suspect’s first stop just after 2 a.m. on June 14 was the Hoffman home in Champlin. According to Hennepin County prosecutors, the senator and his wife were able to push Vance Boelter out of the front entry of the home and close the door. He then allegedly fired at least nine shots through the door, striking the senator nine times and causing eight bullet wounds to Yvette Hoffman.

In an interview with Blaze News from behind bars, Boelter claimed he opened fire on the Hoffmans only because they placed hands on him and he feared losing control of his weapon. Boelter said he had no intention of shooting anyone on June 14.

‘There’s gonna be some people coming to the house armed and trigger-happy.’

After finding his second alleged target in Maple Grove was not at home and being scared off from his third target by a New Hope Police Department squad car, Boelter allegedly drove to Brooklyn Park and the home of the Hortmans, the FBI said.

He was at the front door speaking to Mark Hortman when Brooklyn Park police drove up about 3:30 a.m., prosecutors said. Boelter then shot Mark Hortman, forced his way inside the home, and gunned down Melissa Hortman and the family dog, prosecutors said.

Boelter allegedly texted his wife and children about three hours after the murders and said, “Dad went to war last night.” In a separate text to Jenny Boelter, Vance Boelter apologized for creating the mayhem the family was about to face, police said.

“Words are not gonna explain how sorry I am for this situation,” Boelter wrote, according to the FBI. “… There’s gonna be some people coming to the house armed and trigger-happy and I don’t want you guys around.”

The FBI said Jenny Boelter took the children and fled the family home at her husband’s suggestion. Police were tracking her vehicle. Reached by phone, Jenny Boelter agreed to pull over and wait for law enforcement near Onamia, Minn.

She gave police permission to search the family vehicle and her cell phone. In the vehicle, police found two handguns, ammunition, passports, and about $10,000 in cash. She was not detained and has not been charged in the case.

Jenny Boelter retained the Halberg Criminal Defense law firm. On June 26, she released a statement saying she was “absolutely shocked, heartbroken, and completely blindsided” by the shooting rampage.

“It is a betrayal of everything we hold true as tenets of our Christian faith. We are appalled and horrified by what occurred and our hearts are incredibly heavy for the victims of this unfathomable tragedy.”

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​Politics 

One of the challenges of being a teacher is having to deal with how different young people are not only from yourself but also from whom you had been at the same age.

We expect political opinions, musical taste, and career aspirations to shift from one generation to the next, but with the passing of decades, it becomes harder to pinpoint the forces driving these changes.

It seemed to mean little to my students that modern people were now free to marry or not marry, or to have short-term liaisons or long-term relationships.

Take Generation Z. Most were born after 9-11 and have no real memory of the catastrophic event that brought terrorism and then war to the forefront of public attention. Moreover, Zoomers grew into their teen years shaped less by fears of terrorism and worries about war than by an increasing social liberalism.

By the time the oldest Zoomers, those born in the late 1990s, reached high school, media and educational institutions had discarded any pretense of maintaining neutrality about fundamental ethical and cultural questions in favor of actively promoting progressive stances on issues of race, sexuality, and gender.

Past progressive

Because they came of age in a climate where anything connected to religion, tradition, and middle-class norms could be condemned as backward and oppressive, Gen Z, I have found, has developed a very different relation to the values of liberal progressivism than have previous generations.

Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials tend to integrate gay marriage, gender transition, and identity politics into a broader narrative having to do with the continual expansion of freedom. Even when they criticize the excesses of social experimentation, they tend to emphasize the harm caused by excessive personal freedom to the health and well-being of the community.

In other words, regardless of whether one thinks this is a positive development or not, the idea that the U.S., and the rest of the world along with it, has been set on a course of increasing personal choice and expanding individual self-determination has been taken for granted by nearly all.

Vexed by sex

But this past semester, a conversation with the undergraduates in my upper-level seminar hinted that Zoomers are prepared to see these matters quite differently.

I teach at a university in South Korea with a large population of international students. Many of the Korean students have attended international schools which follow an Americanized curriculum and have grown up watching Disney and Pixar films, as well as engaging with social media that also brings them into contact with progressive ideas.

In discussing topics like sexual equality and changes in sexual mores, there was surprisingly little readiness among the students to view the right of women to have careers or the freedom to have sex outside of marriage as the result of an emancipatory political struggle.

Older liberals, of course, believe that these gains were won by fighting against a staid, conformist, and conservative establishment that was dead set against change. The basic liberal narrative divides the bad old days of unquestioning conformity from a present or a future marked by tolerance, openness, and experimentation.

While such a conception of history has been overused in contemporary society, I was shocked to discover how foreign such a way of thinking was to my students.

Freedom rot

When I brought up how much freer individuals are today in comparison to the 19th century, when an adulterous affair could lead to irrevocable banishment from respectable society, the students were hesitant to describe modern sexual mores as liberating. It seemed to mean little to them that modern people were now free to marry or not marry, or to have short-term liaisons or long-term relationships. Instead, they preferred to describe the conditions of their lives in terms that called to mind a “prison.”

What weighs on them is the predicament of living at a time when competition keeps growing ever more intense for the emblems and markers of middle-class affluence that are shrinking in supply. The idea of viewing gay marriage and even gender equality in the manner of the older generation of progressives — as a reassuring sign that the world is becoming more just, free, and equal — seems to offer little in the way of reassurance against the daunting economic realities they feel are bearing down on them.

Who’s the boss?

But it is not only the rising cost of living and the disappearance of economic opportunity that accounts for this change in mindset. What is perhaps just as decisive is the fact that Zoomers are the first generation for whom social justice and identity politics had become entrenched as the governing ideology, in which expressing the wrong views about race, gender, and sexuality could have severe consequences for one’s future.

As much as Zoomers may be convinced that the U.S. and the West committed grave moral wrongs in having colonized or dominated the world, it does not escape their attention that members of victim groups for whom previous generations had extended much sympathy have now become authority figures possessing the power to punish those who deviate from the ideological line.

Thus, Gen Z is much less likely to regard woke progressivism as an emancipatory force that will ultimately improve the lives of all. Rather, they are prone to regard it as a weighty burden that they must bear in order to demonstrate that they are good and moral people.

As with other forms of deontological ethics, it is necessary to uphold political correctness for its own sake, and not because one derives a concrete benefit or advantage from doing so. The psychological burden of carefully controlling one’s speech is the price of living in a diverse and open society, which they feel they have no choice but to accept.

That they feel they have no choice is the consequence of a progressive education, which distorts and effaces the past.

RELATED: The first disembodied generation

AFP/Getty Images

Use your illusion

Zoomers might be under far fewer illusions than Millennials about how political correctness actually functions in society, but ask them how diversity and tolerance came to be the most important values, and you are likely to get bewildered looks. Being free of the spell of the emancipatory narrative of liberalism seems to come at the price of not being able to know the story of how one arrived at the grim destination of woke liberal hegemony.

Zoomers are shrewd enough to recognize that the system which seeks to control them is a hodgepodge of prohibitions and freedoms, a mess of license and licenses, and a motley of opiates and superstitions. The insidious aim of their education appears to have been to fill them with so much confusion and uncertainty as to leave them immobilized and at a loss as to how to proceed.

This education has had the effect of making them reticent. Yet, at the same time, Zoomers can show an intense curiosity about the things their education has not taught them or sought to discourage them from learning in the first place.

Described as a cautious group, brought up in a time of ideological conformity that seeks to root out rebellion and independence, Zoomers, especially when approached in a gentle and humble spirit, are likely to embrace as helpful advice the lessons that current-year liberalism wants everyone to forget.

​Gen z, Zoomers, Wokeness, South korea, College, Education, The youth 

America’s colleges and universities ought to advance the public interest by serving as bastions of old-fashioned liberalism. If they did, they would champion free speech. They would establish communities of scholarship, teaching, and learning grounded in civility, toleration, and equality under law. And they would transmit knowledge about the sciences, social sciences, and humanities while cultivating students’ capacity to ask questions, listen attentively, examine evidence, formulate their opinions, and persuasively convey their views.

Instead, America’s colleges and universities purvey illiberalism by punishing dissent from campus orthodoxy, rewarding intolerance, treating individuals unequally under the law, and politicizing the curriculum.

The recovery of liberal education in America depends not least on liberals’ recovery of liberalism.

For decades liberals have dominated higher education in America. Why did they transform, or fail to prevent the transformation of, the nation’s colleges and universities into institutions advancing illiberal education?

Several hypotheses spring to mind.

A progressive revolution

One possibility is that liberals subordinated education to the promotion of progressive priorities. Convinced that they discovered the guiding principles for politics, the formulas for generating fair and effective public policy, and the mechanisms for implementing it, liberals demoted rigorous study of America, the West, and the world.

They marginalized messy and time-consuming debates about competing principles and rival preferences. They disseminated what they regarded as the final word about political norms, practices, and institutions. Instead of assisting students to gain appreciation for their civilizational inheritance, they concentrated on equipping them to change the world in accordance with progressive theories of justice and jurisprudence.

Another possibility is that liberals suffered from a ruinous mix of conformism, complacency, and cowardice. Formally committed to a diversity of perspectives — while identifying diversity with an openness to the varieties of progressivism — liberal professors in the 1970s welcomed a new generation of graduate students to campus who espoused a variety of left-wing doctrines. These students viewed scholarship and teaching as politics by other means.

In the 1980s, liberal faculty tenured the post-1960s generation of scholars. In the 1990s, liberals stood idly by as the recently tenured professors institutionalized political correctness by promulgating speech codes, truncating due process for students accused of sexual misconduct, and exploiting the curriculum to inculcate progressive doctrine.

In the 2000s, with the students of the post-’60s generation professors entering the professoriate, faculty discovered new weapons to enforce uniformity of opinion, including trigger warnings, microaggressions, and bias-response teams. Few were the liberals who challenged these illiberal measures or contested the illiberal slogan, “Speech is violence,” that justified them. Most campus liberals held their tongues for fear of that dreaded censure: “conservative.”

RELATED: Harvard’s hypocrisy hits the courtroom

Photo by Cassandra Klos/Bloomberg via Getty Images

In the 2010s and 2020s, with critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs ripening into full-blown progressive wokeism, conventional campus wisdom proclaimed that “silence is violence.” Liberals evaded accusations of complicity with violence by openly embracing the fashionable theories according, which concluded that America is racist to its core, necessitating that government and private-sector organizations give decisive weight to race, sex, sexual orientation, and gender in allocating rights, responsibilities, and benefits.

A third possibility is that liberals confused sophistication in moral reasoning with sound ethics. Under liberal supervision, college courses on moral reasoning proliferated. These typically provide students with fanciful moral dilemmas, like whether you should pull a switch to divert a runaway trolley from striking five people tied to the track onto another, which would kill one immobilized baby. Or students were served divisive public policy questions about abortion, affirmative action, and same-sex marriage.

Professors invite students to apply a variety of theoretical perspectives — from which professors typically exclude traditional conservative considerations — to resolve the moral dilemmas or settle the public-policy debates. Such courses in moral reasoning foster the delusion that the moral life consists of clever reasoning in support of progressive ends rather than in the exercise of courage, self-restraint, integrity, generosity of spirit, friendship, and the other moral virtues. Moreover, they reinforce the prejudice among professors that only those who equate progressive moral reasoning with moral excellence deserve faculty appointments, administration positions, and a respectful hearing in the public square.

Liberals reclaiming liberal education

It would be useful for liberals to examine these hypotheses — and others — that endeavor to explain one of the great failures of liberalism over the last 75 years: the demise on liberals’ watch of liberal education in America.

Cass Sunstein appears well-suited to the task. A longtime Harvard Law School professor, Sunstein is a distinguished and remarkably prolific scholar, by far the most cited in legal academia. He has written widely and influentially on law, politics, and economics. He possesses substantial government experience, having served from Sept. 2009 to Aug. 2012 as the Obama administration’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. And he is the author of a short and lucid new book, “On Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom,” that restates liberalism’s core convictions and maintains that it deserves the allegiance of Americans of diverse viewpoints and persuasions.

Explaining where liberals went wrong in governing American universities is inextricably connected to understanding liberalism and defending freedom. Yet the closest Sunstein comes to even acknowledging the problem is the anodyne remark that liberals “do not like the idea of orthodoxy, including on university campuses.” That, however, is like saying that corporate executives who bankrupt their companies don’t like losing money. The issue is how those in charge contribute to their organization’s downfall.

“Liberals,” Sunstein states, “prize two things above all: freedom and pluralism.” Liberal freedom means in the first place that “people are allowed and encouraged to establish their own path, to take it if they like, and to reverse course if they want to do that.” Pluralism follows because people, possessing different backgrounds, skills, and interests, will choose different paths or alter course by their own lights. Liberalism so understood forms an enduring part of the American creed.

America’s colleges and universities purvey illiberalism by punishing dissent from campus orthodoxy, rewarding intolerance, treating individuals unequally under the law, and politicizing the curriculum.

However, Sunstein writes, “More than at any time since World War II, liberalism is under pressure — even siege.” New right critics “hold it responsible for the collapse of the family and traditional values, rampant criminality, disrespect for authority, and widespread immorality.” Intellectuals on the left decry liberalism’s inability “to handle the problems posed by entrenched inequalities, racism, sexism, corporate power, and environmental degradation.”

Sunstein’s book responds to the “urgent need for a clear understanding of liberalism — of its core commitments, of its breadth, of its internal debates, of its evolving character, of its promise, of what it is and what it can be.”

Liberalism, he observes, has roots in the premodern virtue of liberality, which encompasses generosity, openness, and public-spiritedness. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the thinking and practices that acquired the name liberalism in the 19th century came to be associated with religious toleration and limited government.

In 20th- and 21st-century politics, some liberals emphasized negative rights, or freedom from coercion particularly by government; others stressed positive rights, or entitlements to government assistance — in housing, education, and health care. In academic political theory, John Rawls developed the leading account, which views liberalism as centrally concerned with basic political principles to which all reasonable citizens should agree; other academic liberals hold that liberalism consists in promoting autonomy as the highest human ideal.

Sunstein celebrates liberalism as a big tent and fighting faith while preferring a progressive liberalism that revolves around John Stuart Mill’s “experiments of living.” Believing that the state should assist citizens to experiment adequately, Sunstein favors a government that, under limited circumstances, counters citizens’ expressed preferences to enhance their deliberations and make their choices more reasonable. He considers measures that extend from government information campaigns, accurate labeling, and mandatory seatbelt laws to tax incentives, cap-and-trade systems, and fuel-economy mandates.

Sunstein’s sophisticated yet accessible discussions of the rule of law, free speech, markets, regulation, and government’s role in ensuring the material and moral bases of security and opportunity provide a welcome corrective to the proliferating misunderstandings of the liberal tradition along with its many faces and supple sensibilities.

Missing the mark

His brief for freedom also reinforces liberal narrow-mindedness and smugness.

First, Sunstein mischaracterizes liberalism’s core. It is not, as he asserts, experiments of living, but rather, as John Locke and America’s founders affirmed, the conviction that human beings are by nature free and equal. This conviction sustains liberalism’s big tent, which hosts, among others, those like Sunstein who are drawn to experiments of living.

Second, Sunstein dismisses and deflects liberalism’s critics, right and left, rather than learning from them. This is costly because liberalism’s critics have much to teach about liberalism’s tendency, like all schools of political thought and all regimes, to carry its principles to an extreme.

RELATED: Students are trapped in mandatory DEI disguised as coursework

Photo by filo via Getty Image

Liberalism’s vices include the dissoluteness bound up in the tempting belief that opposition to coercion entails overcoming the imperatives of morality. It also fosters the complacency that stems from overreliance on formal procedures to mete out justice. And it is steeped in the arrogance that assumes liberals have refuted faith and supplanted rather than supplemented classical teachings on ethics and politics. Brushing off critics, Sunstein fails to explore the extent to which liberalism finds itself “under pressure, even siege” because of its own shortcomings.

Third, Sunstein idealizes liberal character. He depicts liberals as secular saints neither deficient in certain virtues nor prone to specific vices. Yet to take one telling example, liberals, as Mill argues in “On Liberty” and elsewhere, tend to disregard the wisdom stored up in traditional writings, inherited beliefs, and established institutions.

Sunstein’s disregard of essential wisdom stored up in the modern tradition of freedom — particularly its early appreciation of freedom’s dependence on biblical faith and classical political philosophy — converges with the biases of many of his left-liberal friends and colleagues. This disregard begins to explain his and their failure to connect liberal education’s demise to liberals’ departures from the liberal tradition in its richness and fullness.

The recovery of liberal education in America depends not least on liberals’ recovery of liberalism.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Woke, Woke college students, Woke college, Liberalism, Liberals, Cass sunstein, John rawls, John stuart mill, Liberty, Colleges and universities, Diversity equity inclusion, Conservatives, Leftists 

On August 22, Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, was fatally stabbed in an unprovoked attack while riding a public transit train in Charlotte, North Carolina. The suspect, 34-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr., who had a long history of criminal activity and mental health issues, was charged with first-degree murder and faces a federal charge that could carry the death penalty.

It’s as clear cut of a case as there ever was — and yet, here comes the left furious, not at Zarutska’s preventable death, but at conservatives for pointing out the soft-on-crime Democrat policies that made the homicide possible.

Except conservatives are spot on. If it wasn’t for Charlotte’s no-carry law for all public transit, perhaps knowing that firearms could be present would have prevented Brown from acting, or perhaps someone could have stopped him.

“Law-abiding citizens should be able to protect themselves wherever the hell they are, especially if my tax dollars pay for it … because what ends up happening every single freaking time in a gun-free zone?” asks Sara Gonzales, BlazeTV host of “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

“You have someone who doesn’t give a s**t about the laws, and they bring a weapon, and they kill people.”

Other progressive policies to blame are lenient or cashless bail, sentencing reductions, early release and parole expansions, decriminalization of certain offenses, and restorative justice initiatives, among others. Brown was arrested and released at least 14 times, showing he likely benefited from some of these Democrat-backed crime policies.

“This man, 14 prior arrests — felony larceny, robbery with a dangerous weapon, assault, shoplifting, making threats, diagnosed with schizophrenia — why was he on the streets? Democrat policies,” says Sara.

“If that guy were in prison, he would not have harmed this woman. So it’s really that simple.”

But it’s not just soft liberal crime policies that paved the way for the suspect’s heinous act. It seems the Democrat-spawned race war also played a key role.

Surveillance footage from the train not only captured the horrific attack but also Brown’s comments immediately after. In the video, he can be heard saying, “I got that white girl,” as he waited to exit the Charlotte light rail train.

And yet, CNN’s Van Jones dismissed the idea that Zarutska’s murder was racially motivated, claiming the suggestion was nothing more than “race mongering” and “hate mongering.” He declared there was “no evidence” of a racial motive and then displayed sympathy for the suspect, saying, “We don’t know how to deal with people who were hurting in the way this man was hurting. Hurt people hurt people.”

Sara ponders what would have happened if the situation were reversed and a white man killed an innocent black woman, stating, “I got that black girl.” Almost certainly there would be zero sympathy for the mental health issues of the white person.

“We would see riots in the streets right now in every major city in the country,” says Sara.

“If anyone dares say anything about the black community, about the crime in the black community, about black people killing each other in Chicago every single weekend in record amounts, about black fatherlessness, about violent crime in black people,” they’re condemned as racists, says Sara. “The statistics are there, but you’re not allowed to say it. … You’re only allowed to talk about race when it’s against white people.”

“Hurt people hurt people?” she scoffs. “Have you ever heard Van Jones say that when a killer or an aggressor or anyone who is not the victim is white?”

To hear more of Sara’s commentary, watch the episode above.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred take to news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Sara gonzales, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Blazetv, Blaze media, Van jones, Cnn, Leftist rhetoric, Iryna zarutska 

Over 100,000 demonstrators packed the streets of London on Saturday afternoon for a “Unite the Kingdom” march led by British independent journalist Tommy Robinson.

The march, featuring people holding the English flag aloft, comes as local councils across the United Kingdom are taking down English flags flown by Britons. Some politicians are calling the mere flying of the English flag a rallying point for “hate.”

‘You either fight back, or you die.’

Robinson live-streamed his festival on X, which opened with a prayer and featured musical performances, as well as speeches from actor Laurence Fox, Rebel News journalist Ezra Levant, and activist Sammy Woodhouse. His supporters packed the blocks around Whitehall, waving the Union flag of Britain and the red and white St. George’s Cross of England. Some in the audience around the stage held photographs of Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated earlier this week.

“This is the biggest demonstration in Britain’s history!” Robinson told the crowd. “This is your community. These are your brothers and your sisters. We today are united. Today is the spark of a cultural revolution in Great Britain.”

“They’ve managed to silence us for 20 years with labels: racist, Islamophobe, far-right. They don’t work anymore,” Robinson declared. “The silent majority will be silent no longer.”

He slammed the “globalist revolution” for attacking the family, Christianity, and opening the borders.

Robinson connected Elon Musk to speak to the attendees via video chat. He thanked the billionaire for supporting freedom of speech by purchasing X.

RELATED: ‘Christ is king!’ chants break out at large memorial for Charlie Kirk in London

Laurence Fox, Kate Hopkins, and Tommy Robinson attend the Unite The Kingdom rally on September 13, 2025 in London, England. Photo by Ben Montgomery/Getty Images

“What I see happening is a destruction of Britain,” Musk stated. “The government has failed in its duty to protect its citizens, which is a fundamental duty of government.”

Musk had a message for those in the “reasonable center,” who “ordinarily wouldn’t get involved in politics.”

“Look carefully around and say, ‘If this continues, what world will you be living in?'” he said. “If this continues, that violence is going to come to you. You will have no choice.”

“You either fight back, or you die,” Muck concluded.

RELATED: Why the English flag now terrifies the regime

Photo by Guy Smallman/Getty Images

A counterprotest, “March Against Fascism,” formed nearby, organized by the Stand Up To Racism group. Those demonstrators held up signs reading, “Oppose Tommy Robinson. Stop fascists & the far right.”

Left-wing media outlets labeled Robinson’s march as an anti-immigration protest.

Metropolitan Police claimed that the crowd was “too big to fit into Whitehall.”

The deparment further added, “We have deployed additional officers with protective equipment in multiple locations, supported by police horses, to deal with the disorder,” via a social media post.

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​News, Elon musk, Tommy robinson, U.k., United kingdom, Britain, Great britain, Sammy woodhouse, Ezra levant, Laurence fox, Unite the kingdom, Politics 

It was supposed to be a normal Wednesday.

I arrived at work like I usually do. It’s taping day. I need to put in the ads. I need to post some Facebook clips. I have the “4 Minute Buzz” to produce. What stories am I going to discuss? It’s been the same stories for the past couple of days. Maybe I can find something else to discuss. I need to. I wish something would drop. Nothing major, but maybe a Trump executive order announcement. Something interesting.

I also need to run prompter for Glenn Beck’s special. I’m nervous about the delay due to Glenn being remote at his ranch. I know it’s annoying when I’m not fast enough. I need to be better. Man, I wish I didn’t have to run this prompter right now. That was my thought.

You did not destroy his legacy; you ensured that it will never die. Charlie Kirk and his impact will live forever.

And at that moment, I learned. Just as we all did. Charlie Kirk was shot, and it didn’t look good.

And the conservative movement was forever changed. We lost a courageous leader, somebody who spoke the truth and didn’t care. Somebody who used his platform, first and foremost, to share the good news of Jesus Christ. To spread the Great Commission. Somebody who portrayed Christ in every video.

If you examine my writing over the years, you’ll see I’ve been struggling in my faith walk. To be honest, the first legitimate prayers I’ve prayed in years were praying to God that Charlie would pull through. I needed him to make it through this. I’m not sure where I’m at now that those prayers were answered in the way I dreaded.

Because Charlie is me. I saw a post on X that took my breath away. It read:

Charlie was my age. He was a father just like me. He was a Christian just like me. He had no beliefs more extreme than I hold. I can only assume this means they want me dead as well.

Charlie and I were the exact same age. I went home to my son at the end of that horrific day. Charlie didn’t. I held my son, and I cried. I put him to bed, and I wondered: Will I get to see him wake up tomorrow? I may not be the Christian I once was, but I still hold strong to the core beliefs. What Charlie preached, I agree with. He was murdered because of his beliefs.

Who’s next? Is another conservative commentator next? Am I spared because I’m not as commonly known as Charlie Kirk? If they knew me, if they knew I believe everything Charlie believed, would they kill me too?

Looking back, the stress that I had going into the day, everything within me wishes I had dealt with only that. I wish I struggled with what stories to discuss. I wish I had to run prompter. The minor inconveniences of my job, what I dreaded going into the day, I would trade the world to have experienced them. Anything to avoid what happened. I’ll always hate that day.

This loss will resonate forever with the right. This truly is a turning point in American politics and discourse. I pray that Charlie’s atrocious and horrific assassination will only cement Charlie’s legacy forever.

RELATED: ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’: Remembering Charlie Kirk

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

To the coward who took Charlie’s life, who took a woman’s true love and robbed two innocent children of their father: You failed. You did not remove his voice; you amplified it. You did not destroy his legacy; you ensured that it will never die. Charlie Kirk and his impact will live forever.

I’m telling myself this now, and I urge readers: Go to church. Get healthy. Start a family, or continue your family. Charlie stood on principle, and the least we could do is to ensure that his passion lives on for generations.

We owe that to him. His legacy must continue. This will be a turning point. Let’s make it a good one.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Charlie kirk, Charlie kirk assassination attempt, Charlie kirk assassination 

You’ve never seen a resume quite like Kaizen Asiedu’s. He’s a Harvard philosophy graduate with an Emmy-winning career at Riot Games, who’s been publicly endorsed by Elon Musk as a “clear thinker.” After years in the e-sports industry, Asiedu left his impressive role as an architect at League of Legends to pursue life coaching.

And then quite by accident, he transitioned into the political arena when he spoke out on July 13, 2024, about President Trump’s near assassination. Even though Asiedu was a centrist who usually voted liberal or just avoided politics altogether, watching Trump narrowly avoid death was “a spiritual experience,” he tells BlazeTV host Nicole Shanahan.

“When I saw him get shot and get up and put his fist up, it was like the center of my chest just jumped out of me,” he says.

“I just thought if humanity has gotten to the point where people, regardless of who shot him and why … are trying to kill one another over politics, we’ve gone too far and I need to say something.”

He made a video responding to the horrific act of violence — a “message of basic humanity,” he calls it — and it instantly went viral. Without really meaning to, Asiedu launched himself into the political sphere, where he’s since become well known for his nonpartisan approach to teaching people how to engage with politics and social issues in a way that bridges the fiery chasm that’s formed between the right and the left.

On a recent episode of “Back to the People,” Asiedu shared some of his philosophy.

“There’s just so much media manipulation and confusion and division that it’s causing people to actually celebrate violence,” he tells Nicole.

“So many of us have checked out of politics or have tried to check out … because [we] felt like there’s no humanity in it anymore. It’s just a bunch of political machinations and games and name calling, and it’s just so distasteful because politics is really supposed to just be the software upon which civilization operates. It’s not supposed to be this all-consuming thing,” he explains.

There’s a huge population in the country, he says, that doesn’t want any part of the political warring, smoke and mirrors, pandering, or media bias that’s come to define modern politics. Instead, they crave unfiltered truth and respectful discourse among people with opposing views.

“People still underestimate how many of us want that. It’s just buried under layers of extremity and the loudest voices dominating the room,” says Asiedu.

“I want realness. I want authenticity. I want people who say what they believe, even if I don’t like it because that’s how we actually can get to the point where we battle these ideas out in the public square and we come up with the best solutions,” he adds.

The other thing we need to do is “treat the truth as an inherent virtue.”

“We’re afraid that saying the truth makes us come across as judgmental. It’s like if we say, ‘Hey, a homeless person shouldn’t be able to just live on the street or be in a public park or harass people,’ then that means we’re not compassionate. It’s like, no, actually, we can be compassionate and still want boundaries,” says Asiedu.

He explains that even though much of the social media censorship that barred Americans from speaking freely during the pandemic has lightened, “There’s still a cultural suppression of having conversations about narratives that run counter to the idea that America is awful.”

For example, one of the topics Asiedu has been recently covering is slavery. In his videos, he’s been debunking the idea that slavery is a white invention, explaining that it’s “a collective evil that all humans share.”

“The common theme throughout history is not that white people [enslaved] black people … but that people with power abused people who didn’t have power,” he says.

Many have praised him for being brave enough to speak out about the false narrative around slavery, but Asiedu says “pointing out historical facts” shouldn’t have to require bravery.

But sadly, in today’s culture where even facts are considered offensive, it does take guts to speak the truth. “The reason it’s scary is because you get projected upon when you say these things. And then people will call me a race trader or say that I’m tap dancing for white people or whatever. And it’s like, look, actually the reason I’m saying it is because I think the truth is helpful for everyone,” he says.

“It’s cultural software; it’s programming. … There’s American cultural software, there’s black cultural software, there’s white cultural software, and everything in between. The problem is when we become so attached to that software, we can’t actually see people as individuals.”

He explains that for a long time black people were viewed as intellectually inferior, but today, that prejudice is aimed mostly at white people, especially white men, because progressives view them as “morally inferior.”

But this mindset is not only racist, it keeps us entrenched in the past and unable to move in a positive direction. “The only thing you can do is perpetuate the past or you can focus on the future,” says Asiedu.

If we continue to be obsessed with past sins, we will continue cultivating a culture of hatred. And “hatred hurts both the hater and the hated. So when you engage in any form of hatred, it always comes back around on you,” he warns, explaining that racism begets racism. Black resentment from slavery has transferred to white people who are decades removed from it, and that in turn is causing some white people to become racist toward black people again.

“If you keep swinging the pendulum from left to right, everyone gets damaged because hatred just keeps on getting transferred instead of getting healed,” he says.

His solution? We need a common enemy to unite us.

But that enemy “needs to be hatred and division itself,” he says.

To hear more of Asiedu’s insightful commentary, watch the full interview above.

Want more from Nicole Shanahan?

To enjoy more of Nicole’s compelling blend of empathy, curiosity, and enlightenment, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Back to the people, Blazetv, Blaze media, Nicole shanahan, Kaizen asiedu, Left vs. right, Political divide, Political division, Trump near assassination