September 2025 EVENTS

On Tuesday, Trump said the U.S. military blew up a vessel in the Caribbean, killing 11 people. The administration said the boat had departed from Venezuela and described the operation as a narco-trafficking bust against Tren de Aragua gang members. 

The Trump administration quickly produced a blurry video of the explosion, but the images don’t prove who was aboard, what they were doing or whether drugs were even present. The White House has offered no hard evidence that the dead were members of a gang. “Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters,” The New York Times reported.

Defending the decision to reporters in Mexico City on Wednesday, Rubio said that “instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up — and it’ll happen again.” He argued that ordinary seizures don’t deter traffickers, adding, “What will stop them is if you blow them up. The president is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations.”

Florida State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, a long-time vaccine skeptic who also led a push to ban flouride in drinking water, has announced that Florida would move to end all state school requirements for vaccines.

“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo said about Florida’s vaccine requirements. “Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body? I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God.”

Florida currently has a variety of immunization requirements for those entering schools and colleges, including shots for measles, polio and chickenpox. The state does allow for exemptions, and the recent data shows nearly 89 percent of students entering kindergarten are immunized.

DeSantis said Wednesday that he backed Ladapo. This change will require action by the state Department of Health and the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature. He also touted Ladapo as a possible head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC director was just ousted amid a conflict that included disagreements over vaccine requirements.

Minnesota epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm called the announcement a “reckless decision” that “will needlessly endanger the health of children in Florida.”

“It flies in the face of a mountain of evidence that clearly shows the benefits of vaccinating kids before they enter school, and it makes the entire state less safe to visit or live in,” said Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. “Every parent of a child who dies or who is hospitalized with a vaccine-preventable disease will know exactly why.”

Victims of Jeffrey Epstein shared emotional accounts of sexual abuse as they called for lawmakers to release all of the Epstein files on the steps of the US Capitol.

During the two-hour news conference on Wednesday, nine female Epstein accusers detailed their experiences and abuse.

One of the women, Lisa Phillips, said the group had begun compiling a confidential list of Epstein associates who they say were involved in abuse.

"We will confidentially compile the names we all know were regularly in the Epstein world," she said. "It will be done by survivors, and for survivors."

Phillips urged the US Department of Justice to release all the documents and information it has from the investigation, adding that many victims were afraid of repercussions if they went public with names themselves.

A lawyer for the accusers said that they were scared of being sued or attacked because "nobody protected them the first time".

Liz Stein, who sued Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, told the BBC that she spoke at the Capitol rally to "humanize survivors" because she was tired of them being ignored.

"It's really important for us all to remember that this is a crime. It's a crime of sex trafficking. This isn't a political issue, but it's being politicized because of the people involved," Stein said.

Trump will sign an executive order Friday to alter the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. 

The executive order calls for using the Department of War as a secondary title for the Department of Defense, along with phrases like "secretary of war" for Hegseth, according to a White House fact sheet.

In the wake of the Minneapolis Catholic church shooting, senior Justice Department officials are weighing proposals to limit transgender people’s right to possess firearms, according to two officials familiar with the internal discussions.

The preliminary talks appear to be based on the recent Minneapolis shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church, an attack that police say was carried out by a 23-year-old transgender woman.

From January 2013 to the present, of the more than 5,700 mass shootings in America (defined as four or more victims shot and killed), only five shooters were confirmed as transgender, according to Mark Bryant, founding executive director of the Gun Violence Archive.

The goal of the potential ban, according to the Justice official, is “to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell.”

During around three hours of testimony in a Senate hearing on Thursday, Kennedy repeated vaccine misinformation, was unable to answer questions which any head of the CDC should know, went after the CDC, gave differing explanations on his vision for reshaping the agency, and got in shouting matches with Senators.

Some examples include:

 WARNER: Do you accept the fact that 1 million Americans died from covid?

RFK Jr: I don't know how many died

WARNER: You're the secretary of health and human services. You don't have any idea how many Americans died from covid?

RFK Jr: I don't think anybody knows that because there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC 

and

 RFK Jr.: We are the sickest country in the world. That's why we have to fire people at the CDC. 

and

SEN. CASSIDY (R) : “Do you agree Trump deserves the Nobel Prize for Operation Warp speed?”

RFK JR.: “Absolutely.”

SEN. CASSIDY: “But you just told Senator Bennet the COVID vaccine killed more people than COVID.”

RFK JR.: “….”

Israel has launched a strike on Hamas officials meeting in Qatar’s capital, Doha, reportedly including the group’s chief ceasefire negotiator.

Hamas said six people had been killed, including the son of its exiled Gaza chief, Khalil al-Hayya. It said its top leadership, including the negotiations team, had survived.

White House officials confirmed that the US had been informed in advance of the attack.

In a social media post, Trump sought to distance himself from the attack and insisted he played no role in the attack by one close US ally against another.

“This was a decision made by the prime minister Netanyahu, it was not a decision made by me,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network.

Trump added that his administration had tried to warn Qatar of the attack but were “unfortunately, too late.”

White House The US president’s spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, said that Trump was informed by the US military of the impending strike on Tuesday morning and that he directed his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to tip off the Qataris of the strike.

Qatari officials told Reuters they had received the warning only as the explosions began in Doha.

Charlie Kirk, the influential conservative activist who co-founded Turning Point USA when he was 18 and went on to become a leading voice in Trump’s MAGA movement, died Wednesday after he was shot at a political event in Utah.

A newly-gerrymandered congressional map and limits on voters’ ability to amend the state constitution cleared the Missouri Senate Friday.

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The new map, designed to give Republicans control of seven of Missouri’s eight seats in Congress, now heads to Gov. Mike Kehoe for his signature. It may ultimately end up on next year’s ballot as well, with a group called People NOT Politicians Missouri announcing Friday that it filed a referendum with the secretary of state’s office to “put this deeply flawed map before Missouri voters.”

The legislature reconvened last week at the urging of Trump. 

The initiative petition changes were added to the agenda by Kehoe, with Republicans arguing the current system makes it too easy to change the Missouri Constitution.

The changes to the initiative petition process will appear on the statewide ballot next year. 

Missouri is one of 24 states that allows citizen initiative petitions that can be used to amend the constitution or change state law, requiring tens of thousands of signatures to even land on the ballot.

In recent years, Missourians have used the initiative petition process to legalize abortion and recreational marijuana use, as well expand Medicaid eligibility.

Republican state Rep. Ed Lewis said amending the state constitution has become too easy. Any changes, he said, should have “broad consensus across the state.”

The legislation approved Friday would require constitutional amendments put on the ballot by Missouri voters to attain both a simple majority statewide and a majority in all eight congressional districts in order to pass.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a man in the Chicago area during an attempted arrest Friday.

The Department of Homeland Security identified the man as Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez and said he was an immigrant living in the country illegally.

Villegas-Gonzalez resisted when ICE officers attempted to detain him at a traffic stop, authorities said in a news release. The officer was “dragged a significant distance” by the man’s car, authorities said, and suffered multiple injuries. “Fearing for his own life, the officer fired his weapon,” according to the news release.

Video footage of the incident is unclear, not showing the ICE agent that was supposedly dragged by the car, but an ICE officer can be seen pointing his gun at the car before the car drove away.

Tyler Robinson has been arrested after confessing to a family member that he shot Charlie Kirk.

Robinson, a conservative white male, grew up in a conservative Utah community and became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at a young age.

Robinson’s parents are registered Republicans.

Social media posts from his family show years of him shooting and posing with various weapons at gun ranges and shows alongside his siblings.

A Facebook photo suggests he engaged with Groyper memes.  Groypers are an online-based far-right movement known for their virulently antisemitic, racist, and homophobic views, often hidden behind layers of irony and meme warfare. The leader of this group is Nick Fuentes. They accused Kirk of being a “gatekeeper” of establishment conservatism—too moderate and insufficiently radical in his white nationalist and anti-LGBTQ stance.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade called for executing homeless individuals with mental health issues during a September 10 episode of Fox & Friends, suggesting "involuntary lethal injection" as a solution for those who refuse government assistance.

"For 33 hours, I was  praying that if this had to happen here, that it wouldn't be one of us.  That somebody drove from another state, somebody came from another  country... Sadly, that prayer was not answered... But it did happen  here, and it was one of us"   Utah Governor  Spencer Cox said at a press conference.

A major crackdown of free speech has begun after Charlie Kirk’s shooting.

Charlie Kirk, who held no government position, was a noted white supremacist and misogynist who promoted false information and conspiracy theories.

Multiple conservative groups have said that liberals are “glorifying his death” for quoting his own words and refusing to treat him as a “American hero”.

Oklahoma and Florida Departments of Education says that teachers will lose their teaching licenses for saying anything critical of Charlie Kirk.

The Pentagon has also said that any military personnel who say anything critical of Charlie Kirk ”will be dealt with swiftly and decisively”.

An Office Depot employee was fired and Office Depot apologized for refusing to print a poster of Charlie Kirk for a vigil, calling it “propaganda”. This, despite Office Depot's general printing policy reserving the right to refuse any reproduction that advocates the persecution of groups.

Major corporations like Microsoft and Delta Air Lines are taking action against employees who have made social media posts critical of Kirk's own views.

On Friday, Nasdaq said it fired an employee for their remarks about Kirk because they violated company policy.

Political analyst Matthew Dowd was widely attacked online after making remarks about Kirk during an appearance on MSNBC's "Katy Tur Reports" on Wednesday.

“Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions,” Dowd said, adding: “You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place.”

Comcast and Versant executives urged employees to "treat people with kindness" in a memo on Friday. Comcast is MSNBC's parent company. Versant is an independent media company being spun off from Comcast and NBCUniversal that will eventually own MSNBC.

"Regardless of whether you agreed with his political views, his words and actions underscore the urgency to maintain a respectful exchange of ideas — a principle we must champion," the memo said.

The memo added: "As employees, we ask you to embody our values in your work and communities. We should engage with respect, listen, and treat people with kindness."

The Perkins Coie law firm fired a lawyer whose social media posts about Kirk gained attention online, where commentators noted his place of work, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

The Carolina Panthers fired a public relations employee over his remarks about Kirk.

Delta Air Lines suspended an unknown number of employees over their social media posts about Kirk. 

 If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024

If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022

Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023

If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024

If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 13 July 2023

Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.

– Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025

The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.

– Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape on the debate show Surrounded, published on 8 September 2024

We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024

I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.

– Event organized by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, on 5 April 2023

America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025

The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024

The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024

America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank: large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 30 April 2025

We’ve been warning about the rise of Islam on the show, to great amount of backlash. We don’t care, that’s what we do here. And we said that Islam is not compatible with western civilization.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 24 June 2025

Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.

– Charlie Kirk social media post, 8 September 2025

There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 6 July 2022

"I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it, and I've thought about it," Kirk said. "We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s." 

- December 2023 political conference hosted by Turning Points USA

 "No, Israel is not starving Gazans," 

- July 28 video on X 

On Monday, Trump announced a strike on a second alleged Venezuelan drug cartel vessel in international waters.

He said three men were killed in the attack, and they had been “positively identified” as working for “extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists”.

He provided no evidence that the boat was carrying drugs.

Shortly before this announcement, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro said Venezuela would defend itself against US "aggression", and called Marco Rubio the "lord of death and war".

More than 100 of Donald Trump’s inaccurate statements will be dissected by Channel 4 to coincide with his state visit, in what it described as “the longest uninterrupted reel of untruths, falsehoods and distortions ever broadcast on television”.

Trump will arrive in the UK on Tuesday night, enjoying a ceremonial welcome at Windsor Castle.

Trump v The Truth, starting at 10pm, is expected to cover everything from the president’s false boast that his administration had “stopped $50m being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas”, to his debunked claim to have sent Ukraine more than $300 billion in wartime aid, as well as inaccurate claims about the price of eggs and the impact of immigration.

The Washington Post reports that his administration has ordered the removal of multiple signs and exhibits at national parks related to the history of slavery.

These moves are the result of the executive order Trump signed in March, in which he ordered the Interior Department to whitewash materials at national parks and other federal sites that recount the factual story of American inequality — which the order called “corrosive ideology.” 

The Trump administration has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks, according to four people familiar with the matter, including a historic photograph of a formerly enslaved man showing scars on his back.

That historic photo — known as “The Scourged Back” — shows Peter Gordon, an enslaved man who was whipped after attempting to escape. 

The latest orders also include removing information at Harpers Ferry National Historic Park in West Virginia, two people familiar with the matter said, where the abolitionist John Brown led a raid seeking to arm slaves for a revolt. 

A National Parks Service spokesperson told the Post that all signs are under review and that interpretive materials “that disproportionately emphasize negative aspects of U.S. history or historical figures, without acknowledging broader context or national progress, can unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it.”

After Jimmy Kimmel criticized MAGA for attempting to blame liberals for Charlie Kirk’s death, when he was shot by a conservative right-wing white male, ABC suspended him indefinitely.

ABC suspended Kimmel after Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened the network to take action against the comedian. Disney, ABC's parent company, said Kimmel's comments were "ill-timed and thus insensitive," but the suspension sparked widespread outcry and accusations of government censorship.

Delivering his opening monologue, the host said the "MAGA gang" was "desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it".

He also accused them of "working very hard to capitalise on the murder".

He then played a clip of Mr Trump being asked about how he was "holding up" by a reporter two days after Kirk's shooting, in which the president said he was doing "very good" before pivoting to the subject of construction being done nearby for the White House's new ballroom.

Kimmel then quipped: "He's at the fourth stage of grief: construction.

"This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish," he added.

He highlighted supposed hypocrisy in how Republicans have responded to Kirk's death, suggesting  JD Vance's unfounded claims that "most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left" were "complete bull****".

Kimmel drew attention to Capitol rioters who, on 6 January 2021, "wanted to hang" Mr Trump's first-term vice president, Mike Pence, for certifying Joe Biden's 2020 election win.

He said: "Was that the liberal left? Or the toothless army who stormed the Capitol on January 6?"

The US justice department has scrubbed a study from its website concluding that far-right extremists have killed far more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group.

The report, What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism, vanished from the Department of Justice website between 11 and 12 September, according to Jason Paladino, an independent investigative reporter who first wrote the story. 

The report opened with: “Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”

The National Institute of Justice study, which was based on research spanning three decades, represented one of the most comprehensive government assessments of domestic terrorism patterns. It found that “militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States” and that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism”.

Where the report once appeared, the justice department wrote it was “reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent executive orders”, according to 404Media, though the page is now unavailable.

The findings align with independent research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which analyzed 893 terrorist plots between 1994 and 2020. That study concluded: “Rightwing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994.”

The report was archived by the Wayback Machine and can be read using the link below.

The University of California, Berkeley has provided the federal government with the private information of more than 150 students, staff, and faculty.

The move comes in response to the Trump administration’s investigation into alleged campus antisemitism, which is widely viewed as a means to crack down on campus Palestine activism.

Students say they received an email notification two weeks after their information had been handed over to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

“As part of its investigation, OCR required production of comprehensive documents, including files and reports related to alleged antisemitic incidents,” the email read. “This notice is to inform you that, as required by law and as per directions provided by the UC systemwide Office of General Counsel (OGC), your name was included in reports as part of the documents provided by OGC to OCR for its investigation on August 18, 2025.”

“It is obvious that the Department of Education and UC Berkeley are using the very office meant to protect civil rights as a Trojan horse to silence anyone who condemns the genocide of the Palestinian people, target those who reject the conflation of Judaism with the genocidal Zionist regime, and disempower those of us who call on our academic institutions to uphold their integrity and honor the BDS mandates that their communities demand,” said the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter in a statement on Instagram.

The University of California is not the only institution to comply with Trump’s crackdown on Palestine activism.

After the administration cut $400 million of Columbia University’s funding over an alleged failure to address antisemitism, the school’s Board of Trustees restructured the University Judicial Board to prohibit student representation and eliminate faculty oversight of protest-related disciplinary cases.

Shortly after, Columbia expelled and revoked the degrees of more than 70 students for participating in a Gaza protest at the Butler Library.

In July, The Guardian reported that multiple schools had begun “antisemitism trainings” in response to Trump’s threats. Many of those trainings were designed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a pro-Israel organization that openly conflates antisemitism with anti-Zionism.

Several actors who have starred in Marvel and Disney movies and shows have spoken out against Disney after the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, with some endorsing a boycott of the studio and its subsidiaries. 

Mark Ruffalo, who has played Bruce Banner / Hulk in the MCU since 2012, shared a report indicating Disney’s stock had dropped by 7 per cent following Kimmel's suspension. 

“It’s going to go down a lot further if they cancel his show,” noted Ruffalo. “Disney does not want to be the ones that broke America.” 

Pedro Pascal, who starred in the Mandalorian and recently starred as Mister Fantastic in this year’s The Fantastic Four: First Step,  took to Instagram to write: “Standing with you Jimmy Kimmel Live!” He added: “Defend free speech” and “defend democracy.” 

Marisa Tomei, who played Aunt May opposite Tom Holland in the Spider-Man franchise, reposted a call to “unsubscribe and boycott” platforms under the Walt Disney Company umbrella, while Tatiana Maslany, who plays She-Hulk, urged her Instagram followers to “cancel your Disney+, Hulu, ESPN subscriptions!” 

Joining these Marvel-affiliated creatives are Andor writer Dan Gilroy, who wrote a guest column in Deadline denouncing a “venomous evil” and governmental “siege”, and former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, who condemned the move to pull Jimmy Kimmel Live! as a signal of poor leadership at Disney. 

“Where has all the leadership gone? If not for university presidents, law firm managing partners, and corporate chief executives standing up against bullies, who then will step up for the first amendment?” Eisner wrote on X. 

Elsewhere, Damon Lindelof, the creator of ABC’s Lost, showed his support for Kimmel on Instagram, writing that he was “shocked, saddened and infuriated” by the news. The Emmy-winning showrunner has a long-standing relationship with ABC and said that if the suspension isn’t lifted, he “can’t in good conscience work for the company that imposed it.”

The Guardian reports that thirty-one journalists and media staff were killed by Israeli strikes on newspaper offices in Yemen last week in what the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Friday was the deadliest attack on journalists in the last 16 years.

Israel struck a newspaper complex in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, which housed three Houthi-connected media outlets on 10 September, killing 35 people, including one child who accompanied a journalist to the office, and wounding 131 were wounded. All of the journalists worked for either the Houthi-affiliated 26 September newspaper or Yemen newspaper.

The attack was the second-deadliest against journalists that the CPJ had ever recorded, after the Maguindanao massacre in the Philippines in 2009.

“It is a brutal and unjustified attack that targeted innocent people whose only crime was working in the media field, armed with nothing but their pens and words,” Nasser al-Khadri, the editor-in-chief of 26 September, told the CPJ.

Killing journalists or media workers, even those who have an affiliation to armed groups, is against international humanitarian law unless they directly take part in hostilities.

The Israeli military said in a statement that it had struck “military targets” in Sana’a that included the Houthi public relations department, which distributed “psychological terror”. It also said the strikes were in retaliation to continued Houthi attacks on Israel, which the Houthis have said are meant as “solidarity” with Palestinians during the war on Gaza.

The Houthis have consistently launched missiles at Israel since the beginning of the conflict in Gaza, and have targeted ships in the Red Sea, which they determine to have an association with Israel.

New York State Democratic Committee (NYSDC) Chairman Jay Jacobs announced this week he will not back Mamdani for mayor despite Democratic voters selecting the Democratic socialist as the party’s nominee. 

"Mr. Mamdani and I are in agreement that America’s greatest problem is the continued growth of income disparity in our nation," Jacobs said in a statement to The Hill. "On how to address it — we fundamentally disagree." 

The Hill reported that the NYSDC leader said he disagreed with Mamdani’s stance on Israel. 

Mamdani has been a vocal critic of Israel’s actions throughout the war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza. His stance on the issue has become a major topic of the campaign cycle.

Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijjarto demanded that the European Union classify antifa as a “terrorist” group, citing a series of incidents across Europe allegedly linked to the anti-fascist movement.

On Friday, Peter Szijjarto, in a post on X, released excerpts from a letter he sent to the EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas demanding action against antifa.

“Individuals and groups linked to the so-called Antifa ideology have carried out numerous terrorist attacks across the European Union, including in Germany, France, and Italy,” he wrote.

“This violent far-left network has carried out brutal attacks across Europe, including in Budapest. To our great regret, suspects later avoided justice by finding refuge in EU states,” Szijjarto said.

Szijjarto highlighted the case of Italian Ilaria Salis, who he said “gained immunity after becoming an MEP”.

In February 2023, Salis was arrested with other activists in Budapest while taking part in a demonstration against an annual commemoration by neo-Nazis.

One year later, she was elected to the European Parliament, leading to the end of her house arrest in the Hungarian capital.

The foreign minister cited US President Donald Trump’s recent move to label antifa as a “major terrorist organization” as a reason Europe should take similar actions.

Antifa, short for “anti-fascists,” is not a unified group but rather a term used to loosely connect anyone that confronts fascist movements.

Szijjártó is well known for his right-wing policies and beliefs, having previously called mass migration the "the greatest challenge that the EU has had to face since its foundation" and condemned European leaders for the misguided policies their political correctness engendered.

Szijjártó has also expressed support for Israel during the Gaza war, criticizing South Africa's genocide case against Israel, saying that accusing a "country that has suffered a terrorist attack of genocide is obviously nonsense."

Szijjártó also expressed his support for the government of Serbia during the student led protest against government corruption which caused the death of 15 people in Novi Sad train station. 

Trump said Friday the U.S. military has carried out its third fatal strike against an alleged drug smuggling vessel this month.

In a social media posting, Trump said the strike killed three and was carried out against a vessel "affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility." He did not provide more precise details about the location of the strike.

Trump also posted a video of the strike that shows a vessel speeding through waters before it appears to be struck by a pair of missiles from overhead and sink in a fiery explosion.

The Pentagon deferred questions about the strike to the White House, which did not respond to a request for clarity about the origins of the vessel.

Trump told a crowd of thousands that he “hates” his opponents at a public memorial service held at State Farm Stadium in Glendale to honor Charlie Kirk.

“He did not hate his opponents, he wanted the best for them,” Trump said, before breaking from his prepared remarks to add: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them, I’m sorry.”

Trump’s speech was an awkward mix of eulogy and campaign speech, during which he frequently veered away from reading somber remarks about Kirk’s life and violent death to make offhand comments and jokes.

He mentioned his use of federal forces to police cities and took a moment to promote an announcement at the White House on Monday. “I think we found an answer to autism. How about that? Autism: tomorrow we are going to be talking in the Oval Office in the White House about autism,” the president said.

Trump also claimed Kirk had urged him to dispatch federal troops to Chicago. “One of the last things he said to me was ‘Please sir, save Chicago’. And we’re going to do that, we’re going to save Chicago, from horrible crime.”

At the end of his remarks, after calling Erika Kirk back on stage, Trump acted more like he was at a rally than a memorial, mouthing the words to America the Beautiful in a comic manner and swaying side to side.

When Erika Kirk took the stage at the memorial service for her late husband Charlie Kirk on Sunday, she walked onto a red-carpeted stage amid instrumental music and pyrotechnics to share a strangely intimate hug with Trump.

Earlier, Vance eulogized Kirk in explicitly religious terms, calling him “a martyr for the Christian faith”, despite the fact that he did not regularly attend any church and his religion did not play a role in the killing.

Stephen Miller pledged to finish Kirk’s life’s work.

“You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk,” Miller said. “You have made him immortal. You have immortalized Charlie Kirk, and now millions will carry on his legacy.”

“To our enemies. You have nothing to give. You have nothing to offer. You have nothing to share but bitterness. We have beauty. We have light. We have goodness. We have determination. We have vision. We have strength.”

Since Kirk’s death, Trump and his advisers have sought to cast blame on Democrats, although the shooter was a follower of Nick Fuentes, American far-right political commentator, activist and live streamer known for leading the Groypers, who frequently criticized Kirk.

After his death, teachers, students, journalists and the late-night show host Jimmy Kimmel have been fired, suspended or disciplined over comments related to Kirk or his death, including simply sharing actual quotes from Kirk, in a clampdown that amounts to government censorship.

404 Media reports that YouTube removed a channel that was dedicated to posting AI-generated videos of women being shot in the head that had been running for 3 months after they reached out to them for comments. The videos were clearly generated with Google’s new AI video generator tool Veo,  according to a watermark included in the bottom right corner of the videos. 

The channel, named Woman Shot A.I, started on June 20, 2025. It posted 27 videos, had over 1,000 subscribers, and had more than 175,000 views, according to the channel’s publicly available data. 

All the videos posted by the channel follow the exact same formula. The nearly photo-realistic videos show a woman begging for her life while a man with a gun looms over her. Then he shoots her. Some videos had different themes, like compilations of video game characters like Lara Croft being shot, “Japanese Schoolgirls Shot in Breast,” “Sexy HouseWife Shot in Breast,” “Female Reporter Tragic End,” and Russian soldiers shooting women with Ukrainian flags on their chest. 

Veo claims  that they take safety steps to make AI video generation a safe experience, including extensive red teaming and evaluation aimed at preventing the generation of content that violates their policies.

Jimmy Kimmel will return to his  late-night talk show on Tuesday after he was suspended for making jokes  relating to the death of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.

Disney,  which owns the US broadcast network that airs Jimmy Kimmel Live, said  on Monday that it suspended the show because it "felt some of the  comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive".

"We  have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy,  and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the  show on Tuesday," Disney said.

In a news conference at the White House on Monday, Trump linked autism to childhood vaccines and the taking of Tylenol by women when pregnant, claims not backed by any scientific evidence.

The advice goes against that of medical societies, which cite data from numerous studies and decades of practice showing that acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, is safe when used under a doctor's care while pregnant. Dozens of medical, research, and autism advocacy groups have decried the announcement.

This first of all is an attempt to make pregnant women suffer, as Tylenol is one of the only pain relievers recommended for pregnant women, as others like ibuprofen have been linked to birth defects and other adverse outcomes.

It should be also noted that there is actual scientific research that older sperm may cause autism, yet the government wants to focus on trying to find a way to only blame women.

On Monday, Trump issued an executive order designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.

Antifa, which is a loose term for anti-fascist ideology and has never been identified as a formal organization, takes its name from anti-fascist movements that sprung up post-World War I in opposition to far-right political parties, including the Nazi Party.

In his order, Trump describes antifa as a “militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law”. 

The order and an accompanying “fact sheet” states that antifa’s “campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide” includes doxing of “political figures and activists”, assaults against ICE officers and organized riots. 

The purpose of this executive order is to suppress and criminalize first amendment activity such as protests against ICE activity by labeling it as “domestic terrorism”.

 The Military Times reports that the Pentagon is terminating a 75-year-old advisory committee serving female service members, days after a previous memo established plans for reactivating it.

A Sept. 17 memo signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and reviewed by Military Times directs the “formal disestablishment” of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.

“After further review, I have determined that the reinstatement of the Defense Advisory Committee for Women in the Services (DACOWITS) should not proceed,” Hegseth wrote in the memo “The Department’s Advisory Committee Management Officer will terminate the DACOWITS in accordance with the requirements of [the Federal Advisory Committee Act]. In addition, the DACOWITS Sponsor will take appropriate action to realign resources associated with the DACOWITS, such as the reassignment of personnel, conclusion of contracts, and the archiving of DACOWITS’ records.”

“After further review, Secretary Hegseth has decided to terminate the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services,” Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said in a statement. “The Committee is focused on advancing a divisive feminist agenda that hurts combat readiness, while Secretary Hegseth has focused on advancing uniform, sex-neutral standards across the Department.”

A 70-year report on the committee’s work, published in 2020, highlighted how more than 1,000 DACOWITS recommendations made since 1967 had informed Defense Department policy, with a 97% full or partial adoption rate as of 2019. Major themes since the 2010s, according to a data analysis, have been prevention of sexual assault and harassment, gender equality and integration, career progression and women’s health and wellbeing.

Business Insider reports that on Wednesday, a coalition of Disney shareholders sent a letter to the company demanding internal records, including emails and meeting schedules, related to its brief suspension of Jimmy Kimmel. 

Lawyers representing the American Federation of Teachers and Reporters Without Borders asked Disney to disclose how the suspension decision was made, the financial impact assessment, Disney's agreements with affiliates Nexstar and Sinclair, and communications with government officials or political groups.

"Although we are pleased that ABC did the right thing and put Jimmy Kimmel back on the air last night, due to the Trump administration's continued threats to free speech, including with respect to ABC, we are writing to seek transparency into the initial decision to suspend Mr. Kimmel and his show," the lawyers wrote in a letter viewed by Business Insider.

"There is a credible basis to suspect that the Board and executives may have breached their fiduciary duties of loyalty, care, and good faith by placing improper political or affiliate considerations above the best interests of the Company and its stockholders," the lawyers added in the letter addressed to Bob Iger, Disney's CEO.

The rapture is a Christian belief that in the final days of the world, Jesus will come to raise all Christians (dead or alive) into Heaven. A South African Pastor, Joshua Mhlakela, said he had a vision of Jesus returning during Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah is a Jewish holiday that goes from Sept. 22-24.

The prediction went viral, causing some believers in it to sell off their belongings, such as cars and homes, and prepare for the apocalyptic event. 

Now that the 24th has passed and the rapture did not happen as predicted, pastors who promoted Mhlakela’s prediction are asking for forgiveness.

“I’m here with all humility to apologize to everyone who has heard me promote brother Joshua’s 23rd and 24th date of September rapture,” said King Salemigwe, a pastor, on social media. “The date was not given to me. I only believed a man who claimed Jesus told him.”

He added, “I want to admit that was erroneous.”

Another self-proclaimed prophet and evangelist, Tilahun Desalegn, issued an apology. 

“The rapture didn’t happen. I am sorry to anyone I let down,” Desalegn said. “I will never publicly talk about the rapture again.”

Although several church leaders have publicly apologized for their false claims, the originator of the viral false prophecy, Mhlakela, has not been active on social media since Wednesday, when he said, “Please keep waiting with us, he is coming. September 23rd, 24th. One of these two days, he is coming.”

 Hundreds of people who were once detained in the immigration jail in the Florida Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” have disappeared. 

Shirsho Dasgupta, a Miami Herald reporter found that, as of late August, about two-thirds of the 1,800 immigrants who were held there in July have gone missing from ICE’s online database, with their families and attorneys unable to locate them. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered hundreds of the U.S. military’s generals and admirals to gather on short notice, without stating a reason for the meeting, at a Marine Corps base in Virginia next week.

The highly unusual directive was sent to virtually all of the military’s top commanders worldwide earlier this week, according to more than a dozen people familiar with the matter. 

With about 800 general-level officers in the armed forces, the meeting could involve hundreds of attendees and their aides, potentially totalling more than 1,000 people.

In a statement Thursday, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell affirmed that Hegseth “will be addressing his senior military leaders early next week,” but he offered no additional details. Parnell, a senior adviser to the defense secretary, voiced no security concerns about The Washington Post reporting on the meeting, scheduled for Tuesday in Quantico, Virginia.

Ben Hodges, a retired commanding general, wrote on X: “July 1935 German generals were called to a surprise assembly in Berlin and informed that their previous oath to the Weimar constitution was void and that they would be required to swear a personal oath to the Führer. Most generals took the new oath to keep their positions.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced that the 19 soldiers who received the Medal of Honor for their actions in 1890 at Wounded Knee will keep their awards in a video posted to social media Thursday evening.

In 2024, Hegseth’s predecessor, Lloyd Austin, ordered the review of the awards for those who participated in the bloody massacre on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation near Wounded Knee Creek.

The U.S. Army killed an estimated 250 Native Americans of the Lakota Sioux tribe, including women and children, while attempting to “disarm” Native American fighters who had already surrendered at their camp.

After the fighting, Medals of Honor were given to 19 soldiers from the 7th Cavalry Regiment.

In 1990, Congress apologized to the descendants of those killed at Wounded Knee but did not revoke the medals.

ICE Agents are using chemical agents against peaceful protestors and shooting paintballs at them from the roof of the Broadview ICE facility in Chicago, IL. 

Retired financier Howard Rubin, 70 and his assistant Jennifer Powers, 45, have been accused of running a decade-long sex trafficking operation where women were tortured during sex in a BDSM dungeon in a swanky New York City penthouse, authorities said.

The two were charged Friday with sex trafficking and transporting women to engage in commercial sex acts.

The defendants allegedly spent around $1 million of Rubin’s fortune to run the operation from 2009 to 2019 that flew former Playboy models to New York City to a leased penthouse.

A room in the penthouse was soundproofed and furnished with straps and restraints, with devices that could shock or electrocute them, prosecutors said.

Some of the women consented to the encounters but were unaware how violent they could become. Some were seriously injured during the encounters with Rubin, including one woman whose breast implant flipped upside down and required surgery to fix, the complaint said.

“In still other instances, women became unconscious during the sexual encounters, such that they were unable to consent,” prosecutors said.

Authorities said some of the women were paid $5,000 for the trysts with Rubin and were required to sign blank non-disclosure agreements.

Rubin was arrested Friday in Connecticut, and Powers was taken into custody on Texas, officials said. Their arraignments were pending.

“As alleged, the defendants used Rubin’s wealth to mislead and recruit women to engage in commercial sex acts, where Rubin then tortured women beyond their consent, causing lasting physical and/or psychological pain, and in some cases physical injuries,” stated United States Attorney Joseph Nocella.

Trump has ordered an indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, in a breach of Justice Department independence.

The bare-bones indictment secured by Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan, is exceptionally weak, and the charges can be considered selective and vindictive, according to legal experts.

In the days leading up to the indictment, Trump engineered the firing of the U.S. attorney Erik Siebert, who is believed to have recommended not charging Comey. Trump then pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to install Halligan, Trump’s own former personal lawyer in the job. The president explicitly linked the moves to his desire to see Comey, and other adversaries, face criminal charges.

Comey’s lawyers are certain to highlight the public pressure campaign in a motion asking U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff, the Biden appointee randomly assigned to handle the case, to dismiss the charges as selective and vindictive.

Comey is charged with two felonies: making a false statement and obstructing a congressional proceeding. Both charges stem from testimony that Comey gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020 about the FBI’s probe of Russian links to Trump’s 2016 campaign.

But the indictment is devoid of any details about how Comey’s testimony can be proven to be a criminal lie. It doesn’t contain a single quote that Comey allegedly uttered.

During the hearing in question, in a response to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Comey stated: “I stand by the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of 2017.” That was a reference to an earlier hearing, in which Comey told Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that he had not authorized anyone at the FBI to speak anonymously to the press about the Trump-Russia investigation or about a separate investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email for State Department business.

Some believe Comey did authorize his deputy FBI director, Andrew McCabe, to leak information about the Clinton probe to the Wall Street Journal, but McCabe has never claimed he got advance permission from Comey for any leak.

Some also contend that the disclosure came from a longtime friend of Comey, Columbia Law Professor Daniel Richman. Because Cruz’s asked Comey about an authorization to “someone else at the FBI” and Richman was a full-time law professor, whether he could be considered to be “at the FBI” is open to debate.

A telling sign of the weakness of the Comey case is that no career prosecutors put their names on it.

Typically, federal indictments are signed by assistant U.S. attorneys who specialize in specific areas of criminal law and who spend months or years building the case. But the Comey indictment was signed only by Halligan, a longtime insurance lawyer who had no prosecutorial experience when she was sworn in as interim U.S. attorney on Monday.

Halligan is best known in Trump world for being the first attorney present when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago. More recently, she had been combing through Smithsonian offerings to ensure they align with Trump’s agenda.

Prosecutors can face professional sanctions — including disbarment — for bringing a case without a valid basis. 

When criminal cases are underway, federal prosecutors and their bosses also usually keep silent to avoid corrupting the jury pool or misstating facts of the case.

However, on Thursday night, the president called Comey “one of the worst human beings.” By Friday morning, he was calling the alleged false statement “not a complex lie, it’s a very simple, but IMPORTANT one.” Then, speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump branded Comey “a dirty cop.”

In ordinary cases and in a normal world, such comments would be considered highly prejudicial and would violate the defendant’s right to a fair trial. 

Trump announced on social media on Saturday that he will send troops to Portland, Oregon, “authorizing Full Force, if necessary” to handle “domestic terrorists”.

He posted that he was directing the Department of Defense to “provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland.”

Trump said the decision was necessary to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, which he described as “under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”

In case you wanted to keep track, the following sports teams decided to pay tribute to Charlie Kirk.

NFL franchises, including the Green Bay Packers, New York Jets, Dallas Cowboys, Miami Dolphins, New Orleans Saints, Kansas City Chiefs, Pittsburgh Steelers, Tennessee Titans, and Arizona Cardinals all held moments of silence or tribute.

In baseball, the Chicago Cubs and New York Yankees paid tribute. 

College football teams, such as the South Carolina Gamecocks, LSU Tigers, and the Wyoming Cowboys, paid tribute, as did the UFC and NASCAR.

Federal authorities in Texas have arrested a man for allegedly threatening to shoot people at a pro-LGBTQ+ parade, to avenge the murder of Charlie Kirk.

According to court documents viewed by the Guardian, on 18 September, the FBI’s field office in Dallas was notified by Abilene, Texas, police about online threats from a local resident.

The resident, identified as Joshua Cole, allegedly used a Facebook account under the name “Jay Dubya” where he “threatened to commit a shooting” at a Pride parade in Abilene on 20 September.

“Fk their parade, I say we lock and load and pay them back for taking out Charlie Kirk,” Cole allegedly wrote.

As the federal government inches toward a shutdown, tensions simmer around Democrat U.S. Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva's swearing-in to Congress who won Arizona's Sept. 23 special election.

Her presence in Congress would put pressure on Republicans amid the ongoing government funding fight. She also was expected to be the majority-making signature on the resolution that would force Trump's administration to release the Epstein files.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, still has not sworn her in.  In a written statement to The Arizona Republic, Johnson's office confirmed the House has "received the appropriate paperwork from the state" attesting to Grijalva's victory.

“The Speaker’s Office intends to schedule a swearing in for the Representative-elect when the House returns to session," spokesperson Athina Lawson wrote.

Johnson has the power to swear in Grijalva during upcoming pro forma sessions of the House, as he did for two Florida Republicans earlier this year. The next pro forma sessions are scheduled for Sept. 30 and Oct. 3.

Johnson's office has brushed off allegations of delaying the swearing-in, saying he plans to schedule the ceremony per "standard practice."

Usually, a new representatives take office once state officials formally certify the result of the election and transmit the result to the U.S. House's Office of the Clerk.

Afterward, it falls to the House speaker to schedule the swearing-in.

Comedians such as Marc Maron, Shane Gillis, and Atsuko Okatsuka have come out to criticize comedians who have chosen to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia.

Saudia Arabia continues to face severe criticism from human rights groups for its human rights policies. 

In 2018, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the operation to kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who had been an outspoken critic of the Saudi government and its policies. His body was dismembered and the remains have never been found.

In 2023, a retired teacher, Muhammed al-Ghamdi, was sentenced to death based solely on his activity on Twitter, and in 2022, a Saudi doctoral student, Salma a-Shehab, was sentenced to 34 years in prison for her tweets supporting women’s rights. In 2024, Manahel al-Otaibi, a fitness instructor and women’s rights activist was sentenced to 11 years in prison in a secret hearing based solely on her choice of clothing and her social media posts. 

While changes have been made to the way women are treated in the country, women still need a male guardian’s consent to get married, divorced in Saudi Arabia.

Comedians who have chosen to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival include Ali Siddiq, Ben Hart, Jeff Ross, Dave Chappelle, Gabriel Inglesias, Omid Djalili, Jimeoin, Jessica Kirson, Aziz Ansari, Kevin Hart, Nimesh Patel, Chris Distefano, Tom Segura, Jo Koy, Sam Morril, Hannibal Buress, Andrew Schultz, Sebastian Maniscalco, Andrew Santino, Bobby Lee, Maz Jobrani, Jimmy Carr, Louis C.K., Pete Davidson, Mark Normand, Russell Peters, Zarna Garg, and Chris Tucker. 

The Guardian reports that at least 300 students have been prevented from registering for classes at Northwestern University in Chicago because they refused to watch a controversial antisemitism training video they said was biased in favor of Israel and contained factual inaccuracies.

Students were required to complete the training by mid-September to be able to register.

Universities across the US are requiring students to undergo similar trainings in response to the Trump administration threats to pull funding for institutions they say fail to address campus “antisemitism”.

Many of the students objecting to the training are Jewish, and wrote in an open letter that the material “reinforces, rather than reduces, the proliferation of discriminatory bias in our communities.”

The university has stated “Students are not required to agree with the training modules but must attest that they will abide by the student code of conduct, as well as the university’s policy on discrimination, harassment and sexual misconduct.” 

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Students objecting to the video say it equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. The video compares critics of Israel to former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, uses a controversial definition of antisemitism, states that Israel was founded “on British land” and refers to the occupied West Bank as “Judea and Samaria”, the biblical name used for the region by the Israeli government.

“The training is not just about silencing speech, but achieving consent so that we are complicit,” said Salma Moustafa, a PhD student in sociology. “Northwestern wants its student and faculty body to pretend it is not happening and instead consume propaganda that justifies the Israeli Zionist occupation project.”

The Northwestern training was produced by the Jewish United Fund (JUF), a pro-Israel advocacy group. JUF has in the past contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “anti-Muslim extremists,” as revealed by tax documents.

Shortly after 1 p.m. local time on Wednesday, Sept. 24, an unidentified ninth grader from Canyon View Junior High in Orem, Utah pulled the trigger on a gun they had brought with them on the school’s visit to South Fork Park in Provo Canyon, local news outlet Fox 13 reported. Teachers and staff quickly alerted authorities while moving other students away from the wounded child.

The student was flown to a local hospital after deputies and medical teams arrived at the scene, “Unfortunately, the student did succumb to their injuries,” the sheriff’s office stated. 

Detectives are investigating the “tragic incident” to find out where the student got the firearm, as well as their motive for allegedly shooting themselves.

Classes were scheduled to continue at the school as normal in the immediate days following the shooting, but a parent-teacher conference that was planned was canceled.  

Nigel Edge, 39, a white male combat veteran of Oak Island, has been identified and arrested as the suspected gunman in a mass shooting that left three people dead and several others injured at a waterfront bar in Southport, North Carolina, authorities said on Sunday.

Edge is charged with three counts of first-degree murder, five counts of attempted first-degree murder and five counts of assault with a deadly weapon.

The shooting occurred around 9:30 p.m. on Saturday near a popular stretch of bars and restaurants along Southport’s historic waterfront, approximately 30 miles south of Wilmington. Investigators said Edge piloted a small boat close to shore, stopped briefly, and opened fire on diners at the American Fish Company restaurant before fleeing the scene.

He is due in court on Monday at 2 p.m.

10 people were shot, at least two fatally,  in a shooting at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Michigan (a suburb of Flint), according to police.

The shooter is down but a fire has broken out at the church, according to local authorities, who urged residents to stay out of the area.

The shooter drove a truck flying two American flags into the church, before exiting the vehicle and opening fire.

The shooter has been identified as Thomas Sanford of Burton, MI, a white male who had a Trump-Vance 2024 sign outside his home, and his family's Facebook history is full of anti-Biden, pro-Trump posts.

Republican Representative Nancy Mace was a guest on Bill Maher and  told pregnant women not to take Tylenol and to take ibuprofen instead. Tylenol has been proven safe for pregnant women, but ibuprofen has been proven to cause serious harm to fetuses,  particularly after 20 weeks.  

The American crowd at the Ryder Cup this weekend, a conservative white crowd draped in the stars and stripes, displayed cruel and disgusting behavior towards the European team.

On Saturday insults were shouted, including slurs aimed at players’ wives, homophobic slurs, cheap shots at McIlroy’s nationality. 

Even the master of ceremonies, comedian Heather McMahan lead chants of “Fuck you Rory!” on Saturday morning. The PGA announced her departure and apology before the singles.

Europe went on to win the cup against the United States.

Newsweek reported that South Carolina state Rep. RJ May (R), a white male anti-LGBTQ+ politician who has accused drag queens and transgender people of harming kids, pled guilty last Friday to distributing child sex abuse material, including images of adults sexually abusing seven-year-olds. The anti-LGBTQ+ “parents’ rights” group Moms for Liberty honored the child pornographer as their 2023 Legislator of the Year.

May exchanged 265 different files of toddlers and young children involved in sex acts during spring 2024. May originally asked the judge to throw out the warrant used to search his home, laptop, and mobile devices, as well as evidence that he had flown to Colombia to film himself having sex with three underage girls.

However, last Friday, May changed his plea to guilty in order to avoid trial which would have laid out all the evidence against him. He now faces up to 100 years in prison, fines of up to $250,000, and must register as a sex offender.

Prosecutors said May showed interest in incest between young children and their parents, including children the same age as his own child (7 years old). Because of this, he is being held without bail until his trial.

Trump announced new policies on Monday, giving $625 million to utilities to extend the life of coal-fired power plants. Such facilities would likely otherwise close because of the availability of cheaper energy sources.

Coordinated actions from the departments of Interior, Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency would seek to open as much as 13.1 million acres of federal land to coal mining at reduced royalty rates. In addition, the EPA would ease regulations on water and air pollution to allow for the extension of coal power plants’ lifetimes.

Jon Paul Sheptock, a white male worship pastor at First Montgomery Baptist Church in Montgomery, Texas, was arrested on Friday. He was charged with one count of promotion of child pornography.

Sheptock was immediately removed from his role at the church, the church’s senior pastor, Chris Gober, said in a statement. 

In Hegseth's meeting with top military personnel, he said the following:

• "We also don't fight with rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our people."
• "An entire generation of generals and admirals were told that they must parrot the insane fallacy that 'our diversity is our strength."
• "Real toxic leadership is promoting destructive idealogies that are an anathema to the Constitution and the laws of nature and nature's God."
• "..Undertaking a full review of the department's definition of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing, to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing."
• "No more beardos, the era of rampant an ridiculous shaving profiles are done." (Note: This is a direct comment on Blacks in the military. Service members in the past have been able to get shaving waivers for  pseudofolliculitis  barbae, or PFB, a condition in which hairs curl back into the skin after  shaving and cause irritation. This is a condition which predominantly affects Black males. )
• "I don't want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape or in a combat unit with females who can't met the same combat arms physical standards as men."
• "Anonymous, online or keyboard complaining is not worthy of a warrior. It's cowardice masquerading his conscience." (Note: This is a comment on service members being able to make anonymous complaints, particularly women being able to file complaints for sexual assault.) 
•   "And when we give you this guidance, we know mistakes will be made. It's the nature of leadership. But you should not pay for earnest mistakes for your entire career. And that's why today, at my direction, we're making changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable earnest or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity. People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career. Otherwise, we only try not to make mistakes, and that's not the business we're in. We need risk takers and aggressive leaders and a culture that supports you." (Note: This also has to do with military members who have been accused of sexual assault in the past.)

Ted Cruz, in a hearing on the Trump Administration's actions on addressing crimes in cities being broadcast on C-SPAN3 said "How about we all come together and say let's stop attacking pedophiles". Yes, he actually said this on camera.

The Chicago Sun Times reports that after Dovid Akiva Shenkman was arrested last fall on child pornography charges, Jewish religious figures in the Chicago area and elsewhere sent letters to the court to seek leniency, minimizing his actions.

A resident of the New York City region who previously lived in Chicago, Shenkman had child pornography that involved images of “rape, torture and infants,” as well as “bestiality,” court records show. He sought “even more messed up stuff” to “sexually gratify himself,” the records say.

A prosecutor asserted in court records that in “graphic” social media chats prior to his arrest, Shenkman “claimed to have committed hands-on sexual abuse of children,” though he wasn’t charged with that.

Shenkman has since pleaded guilty to possession and transportation of child pornography. Now 40, he was sentenced last week in a Michigan courtroom to nearly eight years in prison.

One of those who sent letters to the court supporting Shenkman was Rabbi Moshe Yosef Unger, who oversees an Orthodox Jewish school for children in prekindergarten through eighth grade in West Rogers Park, called Yeshiva Ohr Boruch-The Veitzener Cheder. The school has about 400 students.

“I am confident that he poses no danger to anyone — young or old — and my experience has proven that young men drawn to self-corrosive behaviors usually suffered some serious trauma which can be healed,” Unger wrote to U.S. District Judge Matthew Leitman.

“He is already bearing the punishment of stigmatization and shaming.”

In the letter, Unger described himself as “spiritual leader of Congregation Shearis Yisroel” that was “attended by Akiva and his family when they moved to Chicago shortly after his parents divorced” when he was young.

After Shenkman moved to the East Coast, they stayed in touch.  Unger said, “Over the years, I’ve observed Akiva emerging as a kind and socially competent adult. He was always a welcome guest in the synagogue, admired for his courteous and warm demeanor.”

When contacted through the school more than a week ago, Unger confirmed sending the letter, and said “Basically what did he do? Did he touch anybody or just watch a video?”

Another letter writer on Shenkman’s behalf was from Esther Shkop, who described herself in her letter as director of the Wisdom of Torah Institute and a longtime former dean and professor at the Hebrew Theological College, with campuses on the North Side and in Skokie.