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Trump Threatens Collective Punishment for Charlie Kirk's Killing - The Thursday AM Quickie 9/11/25

By Corey Pein —

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ON THE SHOW TODAY

9/11: Emma is hosting solo; the guests will be Edward Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast and publisher of the Where's your Ed At newsletter, discussing his piece "Why Everyone Is Losing Money on AI"; and Jostein Hague, assistant professor at Cambridge and publisher of the Global Currents newsletter.

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Today you’ll read about NATO's response to Russia's drone incursion over Poland, New Mexico's groundbreaking no-cost universal childcare program, and the signs of past life NASA has discovered on Mars.

THE BIG NEWS

Trump Vows to Punish His Critics for Killing of MAGA Youth Leader Charlie Kirk; Shooter Still at Large

Early yesterday afternoon in the Denver suburb of Evergreen, Colorado, a male high school student shot and injured two classmates with a revolver before turning the gun on himself. "I know we say 'never again,' and here we are," a law enforcement spokesperson said.

Nearly 500 miles away at almost the same time, the Republican Party's youth wing leader, Charlie Kirk, gave what would be his last Q&A with a crowd of college students at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.

"Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?" an audience member asked.

"Counting or not counting gang violence?" Kirk replied. Then a shot rang out – fired "from a figure in dark clothing on a distant roof on campus" – and a bullet struck Kirk in the neck, killing him. He was 31. There have been at least 6,224 mass shootings mass shootings in the US in the past 10 years, including 356 so far this year.

Police took two people into custody only to release one and charge the other with obstruction of justice. Kirk's killer remains at large.

Graphic videos from scene almost immediately began playing on a loop on X. A Republican member of Congress interrupted a moment of silence on the House floor with expletives shouted at Democrats. Donald Trump ordered US flags lowered to half-staff through Sunday night, after blaming "the radical left" for Kirk's murder.

"My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and everyone else who brings order to our country," Trump said in a White House video, getting quite far ahead of the police investigation, to put it mildly. He called Kirk a "martyr" and did not mention any of the political violence targeting Democrats recently, including the assassination of Minnesota's former state House speaker, Melissa Hortman.

MSNBC fired political analyst Matthew Dowd for observing that Kirk spread hate. A Florida political reporter was suspended for asking a Republican politician about gun control on college campuses. By and large liberals and leftists reacted with dismay and offered condolences to Kirk's friends and family. "This is the ultimate fear for a political commentator. This is it," Hasan Piker said on his stream. He was due to debate Kirk in two weeks at Dartmouth College.

"The scourge of gun violence and political violence must end. The shooting of Charlie Kirk is the latest incident of this chaos and it must stop," Squad Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote. "We cannot go down this road."

World Tour: Nepal's Military Imposes Curfew, Meets with Protest Leaders About Transitional Leadership 

  • NATO Scrambled Fighter Jets to Shoot Down 19 Russian Drones Over Poland "This was not an accident, obviously, given the number of drones," says Ben Hodges, former commanding general of the US Army in Europe. "This was a rehearsal." via the New York Times, the Financial Times, and the Guardian.
  • Islamophobic Biker Gang Subcontracted to Work at Phony Gaza Aid Sites Run By US-Israeli Company One member of the Infidels MC, "Josh Miller, posted a photograph of contractors in Gaza holding a banner at an aid site that reads: 'Make Gaza Great Again.' He has the numbers 1095 tattooed on his fingers," a reference to the year the Vatican launched the first Crusade. via the Guardian, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press.
  • Venezuela Boat Turned Around Before US Military Attacked It; Survivors Were Killed in Follow-Up Strikes "Eleven people were killed without any justification, other than the word of [Donald] Trump," says Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. "If there is evidence that these people were indeed cartel members trafficking drugs, it needs to be made public immediately." via the New York Times, the Intercept, and the Washington Post.
  • 'Block Everything' Protests in France Welcome New Prime Minister with Crowds 250,000 Strong "Public services are failing," says a 35-year-old hospital worker who participated in the blockades. "Meanwhile, the rich are getting richer, people are getting poorer and the politicians aren't listening. No one is even taking account of the way we vote." via the Guardian, the Washington Post, and Le Monde.

New Mexico Is the First State to Guarantee No-Cost Child Care

Effective Nov. 1, New Mexico will remove all income means testing requirements and waive family copayments for the child care assistance program run by the state's Early Childhood Education and Care Department. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the program Monday, saying "child care is essential to family stability, workforce participation, and New Mexico’s future prosperity." According to ABC News, the expanded child care problem will cost the state budget $120 million – easily paid for thanks to a windfall in oil and gas revenues – while saving families $12,000 per child per year. Republicans are opposed, naturally, calling the program "nannies for millionaires." Lujan Grisham isn't sweating it. "It's going to make New Mexico extremely attractive to build your business here," she says. "It's going to make New Mexico extremely attractive to come here and raise your family."

QUICKEST QUICKIES

  • Former Top FBI Officials Sue Kash Patel and AG Pam Bondi, Saying They Led Political Purge Former acting Bureau director Brian "Drizz" Driscoll alleges that Patel told him last month that agents who touched cases close to Donald Trump, like the Jan. 6 investigations, would inevitably be fired, because "the FBI tried to put the president in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it." via the Associated Press and the Washington Post.
  • Senate GOP Blocks Chuck Schumer Bid to Force Vote on Releasing Epstein Files The Minority Leader pitched the measure as an amendment to the defense spending bill passed by the House yesterday. via NBC News, Below the Beltway, and the New York Times.
  • NASA Rover Uncovers 'the Clearest Sign of Life That We've Ever Found on Mars' "The available evidence collected by the [Perseverance] rover seems to point more strongly towards the possibility of microbial activity," says Joel Hurowitz, lead author of a new study of traces of past life in Mars rocks. via the Washington Post and the AP.
  • Upstate New York Protesters Compel ICE Agents to Flee in SUV with Four Flat Tires Agents abandoned the raid on a home roofing operation after a four-hour "ordeal" as the crowd of angry neighbors grew and grew, and representatives from the Western New York Coalition of Farmworker Serving Agencies persuaded them that the roofers were not coming down. via WXXI Public Media, NBC News, and the Majority Report.

SOME NUMBER

906

That's how many bags of trash the National Guard troops occupying Washington, DC, had picked up as of last Friday, according to internal documents obtained by the Washington Post. The Guard's own assessment says the domestic deployment "is perceived as 'leveraging fear,' driving a 'wedge between citizens and the military,' and promoting a sense of 'shame' among some troops and veterans." Meanwhile, DC "Sandwich Man" Sean Dunn pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor assault yesterday for throwing a hoagie at a federal agent; and Trump lackeys Pam Bondi and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced a crackdown on illegal vapes in the Chicago suburbs – something less than the military invasion Trump threatened.

DON'T MISS MR CLIPS‌

Trump STUNNED By Hecklers at Restaurant

Code Pink says they "actually had a reservation."

Right-Wingers Can't Resist Politically Weaponizing Tragedies

This was before yesterday's big news.  

PARTING WORDS

"You are under a misconception that what I am saying is illegal. ... If you are uncomfortable in this class, you do have the right to leave. What we are doing is not illegal."

-- Texas A&M University senior lecturer Melissa McCoul, responding to a rightwing student who surreptitiously filmed her classroom discussion of gender and sexuality, and who falsely claimed that "our president's laws" made discussing those subjects in a classroom illegal. University leaders fired McCoul after Republican state Rep. Brian Harrison shared the student's video on social media. The free speech group PEN America calls the firing representative of "the death of academic freedom in Texas" and "the remaking of universities as tools of authoritarianism that suppress free thought."

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