A manhunt is underway after 31-year-old American far-right “youth whisperer” Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while answering a question about gun violence during an outdoor speaking event at a Utah college campus Wednesday afternoon. The shooter appears to have fled the scene, which erupted in chaos moments after a shot rang out, striking Kirk in the neck in front of about 3,000 people at Utah Valley University, just north of Provo.
“Officials believe Kirk was shot from a roof,” and at least two videos have been shared that seem to show a gunman, but it’s not yet clear, the BBC reports.
Latest: Investigators Thursday morning said they’ve recovered a rifle in a wooded area around campus and isolated a footprint for further analysis, NBC News reports. The weapon was described as a “high-powered, bolt-action rifle,” which authorities say they believe was used in the shooting. Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox: “This is a dark day for our state. It’s a tragic day for our nation,” he told reporters at a press conference Wednesday, adding, “I want to be very clear that this is a political assassination.”
Kirk was one of the most visible and influential activists in conservative U.S. politics, beginning in 2012 when he co-founded the organization Turning Point USA after dropping out of college at the age of 18. By the time he reached 31, he’d become famous while spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories as conservative donors helped him build “a $92 million-a-year political empire, with millions of followers online and a direct line to President Donald Trump like few others,” Fortune reports. “Today, Turning Point says it has a presence in more than 3,500 high school and college campuses nationwide—and its revenue, per tax filings, has skyrocketed from $4.3 million in 2016 to $81.7 million in 2023. When combined with its political-action arm, Turning Point Action, that figure tops $92 million.”
FBI Director Kash Patel thought authorities had captured Kirk’s shooter Wednesday afternoon, but he spoke too soon. “The subject in custody has been released after an interrogation by law enforcement,” he wrote in a follow-up social media post two hours later. “Our investigation continues and we will continue to release information in interest of transparency.”
A second person taken into custody was also later released, the New York Times reports. Patel’s “backtrack was a source of significant embarrassment for the F.B.I. director on a day when three former F.B.I. agents filed a lawsuit against Mr. Patel that portrayed him as a partisan neophyte more interested in social media, and swag, than in the day-to-day operations of the nation’s flagship law enforcement agency,” the Times noted.
President Trump ordered flags to be lowered. “In honor of Charlie Kirk, a truly Great American Patriot, I am ordering all American Flags throughout the United States lowered to Half Mast until Sunday evening at 6 P.M.,” the president wrote on social media Wednesday. His order spans “the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions,” the White House said in a separate statement. Trump also said Thursday he will award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.
Bigger picture: Kirk’s shooting has “punctuated the most sustained period of U.S. political violence since the 1970s,” Reuters reports, noting its reporters have “documented more than 300 cases of politically motivated violent acts across the ideological spectrum since supporters of Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.” That includes the June murders of Democratic Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman, as well as the stalking and shooting of Minnesota Democratic State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman, in addition to the attempted shooting of their daughter by a man dressed as a police officer in the early morning hours of June 14. The shooter had in his possession a hit list of 45 Democratic elected officials.
Contributing factors for rising political violence in the U.S. include “economic insecurity, anxiety over shifting racial and ethnic demographics, and the increasingly inflammatory tone of political discourse,” Reuters reports separately. “That anger is amplified by a mix of social media, conspiracy theories and personal grievances.”
Without any evidence, Trump blamed “the radical left” for Kirk’s shooting. “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now,” he said in a video posted online Wednesday evening. He also vowed to “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.”
Expert reax: “In the past, we had elected officials that would seek to bring the country together rather than to cast blame,” Bruce Hoffman, who specializes in counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Associated Press. “We’ll have to see what in the coming days our national leaders have to say about this, and whether they can be effective in lowering the temperature.”
Second opinion: “This is an administration that, whether you agree with it or not, has made profound changes to this country in the eight months it’s been in office,” Mike Jensen, a researcher at the University of Maryland, told Reuters. “Some people love it, some people hate it. The people that hate it are starting to act out. People who love it are going to act out against those people that hate it, and it becomes a vicious spiral that could lead us into something really, really bad.” The New York Times has similar reporting here.
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day 24 years ago, the 9/11 attacks claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people.
Around the Defense Department
House NDAA passes. The lower house’s $892.6 billion defense authorization bill includes “a 3.8% pay raise for troops and plans to improve the military’s acquisition system, including by shortening approval timelines and increasing artificial intelligence research,” Reuters reports.
It would rescind decades-old AUMFs. A bipartisan effort added “an amendment to rescind a pair of open-ended war powers laws, originally adopted in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq but used for a host of military missions worldwide since then,” Military Times reports.
It also includes several conservative policy dictates. New York Times: “The 231-to-196 vote, mostly along party lines, reflected how Republicans in Congress have transformed the annual Pentagon policy measure, once an overwhelmingly popular bill, into a vehicle for conservative social policy dictates. For the third consecutive year, Republicans attached new restrictions to block diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, a range of climate restrictions, and an increase in the flow of decommissioned military weapons into a civilian firearms program—alienating even Democrats who had initially supported it.”
Not in the bill, per Military Times:
- A Ukraine-aid ban. “Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle joined to defeat (by a 60-372 vote) a proposal from Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to eliminate nearly all support for Ukraine security assistance from next year’s military plans.”
- A proposal to change the name of the Defense Department. “Republican leaders also blocked debate on that proposal for now.”
- A ban on sending National Guard troops to cities. Republicans shot down “Democratic proposals to limit President Donald Trump’s ability to use National Guard forces for domestic law enforcement support.”
Update: Minuteman ICBM may operate until 2050. The Sentinel program to replace the Minuteman III has gone so badly that the Air Force is now considering operating the already-half-century-old ICBM until 2050, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
What’s going on: “The Air Force reported to Congress in 2021 that Minuteman III would reach the end of its service life in 2036. Now, facing delays to Sentinel, the Air Force is evaluating options to continue operating Minuteman III through 2050,” said the report, which was released Wednesday. “The Minuteman III Program Office concluded that operation of Minuteman III until 2050 is feasible.” One of your D Briefers has more from the report, here.
Developing: The U.S. is on the brink of selling Finland more than 400 AMRAAMs, which refer to AIM-120D-3 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles from defense prime RTX, the Pentagon’s arms export agency announced Wednesday. The weapons “could be used to arm the Finnish air force’s current Boeing F-18 Hornet fighters and on-order Lockheed Martin F-35As,” Flight Global reports.
If the deal goes forward, it would “add to a record run of major contracts for the AMRAAM, with the most recent having been a $3.5 billion order to provide missiles to the US military and 19 international customers,” Craig Hoyle of Flight Global adds.
We forgot to flag another big U.S. sale of six Patriot air defense systems to Denmark for $8.5 billion. The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced that one two weeks ago, which “will require the assignment of 12-17 additional U.S. Government and 17-23 contractor representatives [who will need] to travel to Denmark periodically for up to 7 years for equipment fielding, system checkout, training, and technical and logistics support,” according to DSCA.
We’re also late to a separate, record-setting $9.8 billion U.S. Army deal with Lockheed Martin to make 1,970 Patriot PAC-3 missiles in southern Arkansas. Army officials announced the order last Wednesday, which Stars and Stripes described as “the largest in the history of the company’s missiles and fire control unit.”
Panning out: Especially since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, “Lockheed Martin has been working to increase its production for years and plans to deliver more than 600 interceptors in 2025, topping its record-breaking production of 500 last year,” Stripes writes. See also local coverage from near Camden, Arkansas, where the missiles will be made.
Related reading:
- “Marine Corps reaches deal with Palantir for Maven Smart System,” but doesn’t say how much public money it committed in the Aug. 15 deal, DefenseScoop reports;
- “Fight AI-powered cyber attacks with AI tools, intelligence leaders say” at Billington cyber conference outside Washington, D.C., reports Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams;
- In commentary, “You may not be interested in climate change, but it is interested in you,” former Defense Department civilians Josh Busby of the University of Texas and Georgetown University’s Greg Pollock argue, writing Wednesday in Defense One;
- And “Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego seeks to block [insurrectionist] Ashli Babbitt from military funeral honors,” CBS News reported Tuesday.
Trump 2.0
ODNI likely to curtail counterintelligence center in latest shake up. Two intelligence-coordination centers would shrink or be closed under a reorganization plan that some observers say will hinder the U.S. ability to counter spies and terrorists, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported Wednesday.
ODNI is considering either closing or greatly reducing the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and the National Counterterrorism Center, according to current and former officials. These developments are the latest moves in a broad restructuring of the U.S. intelligence community under Trump. Certain elements of that restructuring, which spans ODNI, CISA, the FBI, NSA, CIA, and other agencies, are already harming information sharing with partner intelligence agencies around the world, Tucker reports, citing sources. The changes, they say, are exposing the U.S. government, businesses, and civilians to a wide range of new espionage threats.
While the existence of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center at ODNI is not widely known, it plays a key role in U.S. understanding of how spies are spying on us, as one source succinctly put it. So while it rarely makes big headlines, the failure of counterintelligence operations could result in the loss of critical U.S. secrets. Continue reading, here.
And lastly: New polling shows a majority of Americans are uncomfortable with Trump’s moves to expand presidential power, Reuters reported Thursday. That includes Trump’s decision to deploy the U.S. military in American cities.
“On crime, only 32% of Americans said they would feel safer with armed soldiers deployed to large cities in their state,” Reuters reports. For a little more on those numbers, “Some 62% of Trump’s fellow Republicans were warm to military patrols in big cities, but only one in four independents felt the same way, as did just one in 10 Democrats.” More, here.
Additional reading:
- “In lawsuit, three former FBI leaders say they were fired for insufficient loyalty,” Reuters reported Thursday; Politico has similar coverage here;
- “The Government Wants to See Your Papers,” Tom Nichols wrote for The Atlantic on Tuesday;
- “They watched ICE detain their dad. Now D.C. neighbors escort them to school,” the Washington Post reported Thursday;
- “Plane to purgatory: how Trump’s deportation program shuttles immigrants into lawless limbo,” the Guardian reported Wednesday;
- “U.K. Ambassador to U.S., Peter Mandelson, Fired Over Epstein Links,” the New York Times reported Thursday from London; the Associated Press has similar coverage, here;
- “Double whammy for Americans: Inflation continues to rise as jobs outlook grows weaker,” CNN reported Thursday;
- And relatedly, “Health Insurance Costs for Businesses to Rise by Most in 15 Years,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Read the full article here