ASSASSINATION:  Police are still looking for the person who shot and killed right wing youth organizer Charlie Kirk, who was cut down by a single gunshot to the neck yesterday while speaking to a crowd on the campus of Utah Valley University south of Salt Lake City. The 31-year-old Kirk was sitting in a chair under a tent answering a question about mass shootings at the moment he was shot.

  Investigators for a while held someone they called “a person of interest” who was later released.

  Kirk appears to have been shot at long range from another campus building. He collapsed and one witness told CBS, “There’s just blood pouring out everywhere, and his eyes kind of rolled back.” He had a wife and two young children.

  The killing brought nationwide reactions from both sides of the political divide, some conciliatory and some vitriolic. President Trump, who credited Kirk with rallying young people to vote for him, called Kirk “Great, and even Legendary.” Former President Barack Obama posted that “this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy.”  

  Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, without knowing anything about the killer or motive, posted that, “The Left is the party of murder.” Right wing pundits called it an act of war. Fox News host Jesse Watters said, “They are at war with us. What are we going to do about it?”

  Involved in politics since he was a teenager, Kirk was a co-founder of Turning Point USA, an organization dedicated to bringing the conservative political message to high school and college campuses.
  Kirk was a proponent of conservative Christianity, advocating for Christian influence in government, business, and education. He railed against what he called the “LGBTQ agenda” and “gender ideology.” He dismissed climate change. He was a major figure in the Trump movement and just yesterday threw “47” caps into the crowd. Trump posted that, “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States or America better than Charlie.”

  Kirk was an avid supporter of gun rights. He said during a 2023 appearance that, “I think it’s worth to have a cost of unfortunately some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the 2nd Amendment. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.” 

FIRED: MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd was fired yesterday after saying the following during the network’s coverage of the Charlie Kirk assassination:

  “He’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in.”

THE REGIME:

— Senate Republicans blocked an effort by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files regarding the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Schumer lost the vote but won the point that the Republican majority doesn’t want the Epstein information released.

— Three fired senior FBI agents sued the agency claiming the Bureau and Director Kash Patel dismissed them as part of “a campaign of retribution” for their “failure to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty.” The agents claim that they were subjected to outright political vetting, including who they voted for.

— The Bureau of Land Management is moving to remove President Biden’s protection of millions of acres of public lands and give them over to drilling for oil and gas, coal mining, and other industrial activities. 

— Education Secretary Linda McMahon says she’s holding back $350 million in funding for some of the country’s most diverse colleges and universities, saying programs aimed at supporting specific enrollment requirements for minority students are racist.

— Following the raid in which 316 South Korean nationals were arrested working at a Georgia Hyundai plant, the country’s president said yesterday that if Washington does not ease visa requirements for workers from his country, its businesses would hesitate to build new factories in the US.

  He said that the employees were there as technicians to build the factory and you can’t find people with similar skills in the US. 

BOOKNOTE: Former Vice President Kamala Harris in her new book published yesterday says that it was “recklessness’ on the part of her and Democratic leaders to leave it up to Joe Biden whether to run for re-election.

  Harris writes, “’It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’” We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”

THE SPIN RACK: Two students were wounded and the shooter killed himself  yesterday in a gunfire incident at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colorado, outside Denver. — The annual reading in New York of the names of people killed in September 11^th terrorist attacks begins today. — Britain’s Prince Harry, who lives in California with his actor wife Meghan Markle, met yesterday with his father King Charles for the first time in 19 months, leaving royal watchers wondering whether there’s a reconciliation. Harry has been on the outs with the royal family since resigning from the royal duty of appearing at the opening of shopping malls.

BELOW THE FOLD:  Are we alone? NASA scientists say that a rock sample found by the Mars Perseverance rover “contains potential biosignatures” … signs of microbial life. It’ll be great company for Elon Musk when he moves to Mars.

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