Politics
Conservative influencer Charlie Kirk shot dead, manhunt on for suspect underway
- Manhunt launched for sniper suspected of firing from rooftop.
- Kirk co-founded largest conservative youth organisation in US.
- President Donald Trump orders US flags flown at half-staff.
US conservative activist Charlie Kirk, an influential ally of President Donald Trump, was fatally shot on Wednesday while speaking at a Utah university, sparking a manhunt for a lone sniper who the governor said had carried out a political assassination.
Authorities said they still had no suspect in custody as of Wednesday night, some eight hours after the midday shooting at Utah Valley University campus in Orem, Utah, during an event attended by 3,000 people.
The lone perpetrator suspected of firing the single gunshot that killed Kirk, 31, apparently from a distant rooftop sniper’s nest on campus, remained “at large,” said Beau Mason, commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety, at a news conference four hours later.
State police issued a statement on Wednesday night saying that two men had been detained and one was interrogated by law enforcement, but both were subsequently released.
“There are no current ties to the shooting with either of these individuals,” the statement said. “There is an ongoing investigation and manhunt for the shooter.”
In a video message taped in the Oval Office and posted to Trump’s Truth Social online platform, the president vowed that his administration would track down the suspect.
“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organisations that fund it and support it,” Trump said.
Cellphone video clips of the killing posted online showed Kirk addressing a large outdoor crowd on the campus, about 40 miles (64km) south of Salt Lake City, around 12:20pm MT (1820 GMT), when a gunshot rang out. Kirk moved his hand toward his neck as he fell off his chair, sending onlookers running.
In another clip, blood could be seen gushing from Kirk’s neck immediately after the shot.
Jeff Long, chief of the university police department, said he had six officers working the event and coordinated with the head of Kirk’s private security team, which was also on site.
Trump ordered all government US flags flown at half-staff until Sunday in Kirk’s honor.
The killing was the latest in a series of attacks on US political figures, including two assassination attempts on Trump last year, that have underscored a sharp rise in political violence.
“This is a dark day for our state, it’s a tragic day for our nation,” Utah’s Republican Governor Spencer Cox said at the press conference. “I want to be very clear that this is a political assassination.”
With the suspect still at large, there was no clear evidence of motive for the act of violence.
Trump, who routinely describes political rivals, judges and others who stand in his way as “radical left lunatics” and warns that they pose an existential threat to the nation, decried violent political rhetoric.
“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” Trump said in the video.
“This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
On Capitol Hill in Washington, an attempt to observe a moment of silence for Kirk on the floor of the US House of Representatives degenerated into shouting and finger-pointing.
Kirk’s appearance on Wednesday was the first in a planned 15-event “American Comeback Tour” at universities around the country. He often used such events, which typically drew large crowds of students, to invite attendees to debate him live.
Asked about shootings, then shot
Seconds before he was shot, the married father of two young children was being questioned by an audience member about gun violence, according to multiple videos of the event posted online.
“Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America in the last 10 years?” Kirk was asked.
He responded, “Counting or not counting gang violence?” He was shot moments later.
Kirk and the group he co-founded, Turning Point USA, the largest conservative youth organisation in the country, played a key role in driving young voter support for Trump in November.
After winning his second presidential term, Trump credited Kirk for mobilising younger voters and voters of color in support of his campaign.
“You had Turning Point’s grassroots armies,” Trump said at a rally in Phoenix in December. “It’s not my victory, it’s your victory.”
Kirk had 5.3 million followers on X and hosted a popular podcast and radio program, “The Charlie Kirk Show.” He had also recently appeared as a guest co-host on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
He was part of an ecosystem of pro-Trump conservative influencers – including Jack Posobiec, Laura Loomer, Candace Owens and others – who helped to amplify the president’s agenda. Kirk frequently attacked mainstream media and engaged in culture-war issues around race, gender and immigration, often in a provocative style.
At the White House, staff members, many of them young and admirers of Kirk, were ashen-faced as news of the shooting spread.
Political violence on the rise
Republican and Democratic politicians alike expressed dismay over the shooting.
Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement: “Political violence of any kind and against any individual is unacceptable and completely incompatible with American values. We pray for his family during this tragedy.”
The US is undergoing its most sustained period of political violence since the 1970s. Reuters has documented more than 300 cases of politically motivated violent acts since supporters of Trump attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
In July 2024, Republican Trump was grazed by a gunman’s bullet during a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania. A second assassination attempt two months later was foiled by federal agents, with opening arguments in that suspect’s trial set to begin on Thursday.
In April, an arsonist broke into Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence and set it on fire while the family was inside.
Earlier this year, a gunman posing as a police officer in Minnesota murdered Democratic state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and shot Democratic Senator John Hoffman and his wife. And in Boulder, Colorado, a man used a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to attack a solidarity event for Israeli hostages, killing one woman and injuring at least six more.
In 2022, a man broke into Democratic then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home and bludgeoned her husband with a hammer, leaving him with skull fractures and other injuries. In 2020, a group of right-wing militia members plotted unsuccessfully to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.
- Trump again annoyed at Netanyahu, but rupture unlikely.
- Analysts see Trump’s support for Israel despite disagreements.
- Israel kept Washington in dark about Qatar strikes, officials say.
WASHINGTON: Less than four months ago, President Donald Trump met with the leader of Qatar, praising his opulent palace and signing a sweeping defence agreement with the Gulf monarchy, a key ally that hosts the biggest US base in the Middle East.
Israel’s surprise attack on Tuesday against Hamas leaders in Doha has jolted that relationship, angering Trump and drawing fierce condemnation from Doha and Western allies.
Ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and targeting the political offices of the Palestinian group, the strikes killed a Qatari security agent and five others, but failed to kill the Hamas leaders. Trump said he was “very unhappy about every aspect” of the Israeli operation.
But for all the indignation, the strikes are unlikely to change the president’s fundamental approach toward Israel, analysts and US officials say. If anything, the bombings underlined the cold calculus beneath the Trump-Netanyahu relationship.
Israel has shown it is not afraid to act against US interests. The administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not formally warn Washington of its impending bombing campaign on Tuesday, US officials said.
That lack of warning recalled Israel’s September 2024 attack on Hezbollah, when Israel wounded thousands of the group’s members with booby-trapped pagers, without informing then-President Joe Biden.
Trump, for his part, has occasionally expressed displeasure with Netanyahu. But his administration has strongly supported Israel’s campaign to weaken Hamas and allowed it to largely take the lead on key issues such as Iran’s nuclear program.
“On this one, I think Trump is annoyed by Netanyahu’s tactics,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and veteran US peace negotiator.
But, Miller added, “(Trump’s) instinct is that he agrees with Netanyahu’s notion that Hamas cannot just be hollowed out as a military organisation. It needs to be fundamentally weakened.”
Asked for comment, the White House referred Reuters to remarks by Trump on Truth Social on Tuesday night, during which he said the bombings did not advance US or Israeli interests.
“However,” Trump wrote, “eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”
The Israeli Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
No rupture likely
Some analysts declined to rule out the possibility that Netanyahu may yet exhaust Trump’s patience if he springs more surprises on Washington.
In practice, that could mean a withdrawal of political cover for Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza, which has provoked outrage among European and Arab nations as famine conditions spread.
Israel’s military campaign in the Palestinian enclave was triggered by a Hamas-led rampage in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“As his Arab friends complain to him about what Israel is doing — and they are doing so now — he may say to them give me a credible plan for the day after in Gaza and with an alternative to Hamas running it and I will tell Bibi you have done enough,” said Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator for Democratic and Republican administrations.
Israel’s strike in Doha will likely dampen Trump’s hopes for more Gulf states joining the Abraham Accords, a landmark agreement brokered by his first administration in which several Arab countries forged diplomatic ties with Israel.
Still, a rupture between the two men seems unlikely, argued Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, saying that Trump appreciates strength and transactions that end wars.
“If Netanyahu can continue to appeal to those two sides of this president then he will be okay. I’m not concerned about the relationship,” said Oren.
Hot and cold
The Trump-Netanyahu partnership has seen ups and downs, administration officials acknowledge.
“It’s been hot and cold since the campaign,” said one senior White House official.
In May, Trump travelled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates during his first major foreign trip, skipping Israel, which many analysts viewed as a snub. The Republican president returned to office in January promising to reinvigorate relations with Netanyahu that had deteriorated under his Democratic predecessor.
During that trip, Trump agreed to lift sanctions on the new Syrian government at the behest of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. That move alarmed Israeli officials who question the motives of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda commander.
But just a month later, the Trump-Netanyahu alliance seemed back on track. After Israel launched an air war on Iran in June, Trump — who campaigned on ending foreign conflicts — surprised even some of his own political allies by sending B-2 bombers to partially destroy Iran’s key nuclear facilities.
If that created goodwill within the Netanyahu administration, it did not benefit Trump’s foreign policy interests, at least in the short term.
Days later, Trump profanely chastised Iran and Israel for breaking a US-brokered ceasefire. In July, the US appeared to criticise an Israeli strike in Damascus, which destroyed part of Syria’s defence ministry. And on Tuesday, Israel notified the US shortly before the Qatar strike, but there was no coordination with or approval from Washington, two US officials said.
“The US can seek to cajole and push Israel to take decisions,” said Jonathan Panikoff, a former deputy US national intelligence officer on the Middle East. “But Netanyahu will continue to act in a manner that it views as in the best interests of Israel alone.”
A male suspect in a shooting that wounded two fellow students at a high school near Denver died of self-inflicted injuries hours after the violence on Wednesday, a law enforcement official said.
Jacki Kelley, spokesperson for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, said the suspect was one of three students hospitalised with gunshot wounds after the shooting at Evergreen High School.
The shooter fired with a handgun inside and outside the school, Kelley said.
Dr Brian Blackwood, head of trauma at CommonSpirit St Anthony Hospital, said one of the wounded had critical injuries and the other non-life threatening injuries.
- Nepal protesters back ex-chief justice Sushila Karki as leader.
- Army chief meets Gen Z protesters to discuss interim govt plan.
- Streets in Kathmandu quiet as soldiers keep patrols, checkpoints.
Nepal’s former chief justice Sushila Karki is the leading choice to be interim leader, a representative of the “Gen Z” protesters said Thursday, after demonstrations that ousted the veteran prime minister.
Army chief General Ashok Raj Sigdel held “consultations with related stakeholders and held a meeting with representatives of Gen Z” on Wednesday, a military spokesperson said, referring to the loose umbrella title of the protest movement, without giving further details.
The army is seeking to restore order in the Himalayan nation of 30 million people, after the worst violence in two decades ousted the prime minister and left the parliament ablaze on Tuesday.
“Right now, Sushila Karki’s name is coming up to lead the interim government — we are now waiting for the president to make a move,” said Rakshya Bam, who was among those attending the meeting.
“We discussed with the army chief about the future,” she told AFP.
“The conversation was about how we can move forward, keeping the peace and security of the country.”
Karki, 73, an academic and Nepal’s first female Supreme Court chief justice, has told AFP that “experts need to come together to figure out the way forward”, and that “the parliament still stands”.
But others warned the choice of the protesters — who are not one single party — was far from unanimous.
In a virtual meeting attended by thousands on the online social platform Discord, young people discussed their varied agendas — and debated who should represent them.
There were conflicting arguments and several names proposed.
“There are divisions,” journalist Pranaya Rana said. “It is natural in a decentralised movement like this that there are going to be competing interests and competing voices.”
Soldiers patrolled the streets of the capital for a second day on Thursday, which appeared to be quiet, with multiple army checkpoints set up along the streets.
Demonstrations began on Monday in Kathmandu against the government’s ban on social media and over corruption.
But they escalated into an outpouring of rage nationwide, with government buildings set on fire after at least 19 people were killed in a deadly crackdown.
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