The Week Magazine September 26, 2025

In the first day or two after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, it seemed that a consensus view was emerging among conservatives: The killing of Kirk, who waded into college campuses to debate opponents, was the ultimate expression of “cancel culture,” and people who equated speech they detested with violence would turn to violence to stop that speech. Since then, the evidence has supported the idea that this murder was conceived as the ultimate way to end a debate. “Some hate,” Kirk’s alleged killer Tyler Robinson wrote to his romantic partner soon after Kirk’s death, “can’t be negotiated out.” Unfortunately, MAGA world has moved on from defending free speech. On X, online vigilantes have hounded hundreds of ordinary people who expressed the wrong views about Kirk. A few were in fact celebrating…

What happened Utah prosecutors said this week they would seek the death penalty for the accused assassin of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, saying the 22-year-old suspect told his transgender partner that he’d murdered the right-wing star because “I had enough of his hatred.” The 31-year-old Kirk—a podcaster, leader of the youth mobilization group Turning Point USA, and fierce critic of trans rights—was killed by a single rifle shot fired from a nearby rooftop as he spoke to a crowd of thousands at Utah Valley University. After a 33-hour manhunt, authorities arrested Tyler Robinson, 22, whose parents recognized their son in surveillance images and persuaded him to surrender. A former straight-A student raised by Republican parents in St. George, Utah, Robinson had grown “more pro-gay and trans-rights-oriented” over the past year,…

Robinson’s court appearance this week “marks the beginning of a long road to trial,” said Taylor Romine in CNN.com. He faces seven state charges, including aggravated murder, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering—and if convicted could face death by firing squad or lethal injection. Evidence against Robinson so far includes alleged confessions to his parents, roommate, and friends on the chat app Discord, and DNA evidence on a bolt-action rifle found near the crime scene. He entered no plea this week and is being held without bail. Robinson currently faces no federal charges, which “might seem surprising,” said Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney in Politico. But homicides are charged as federal crimes in “only a few circumstances,” such as a killing on federal property or the targeting of a government…

What happened President Trump this week threatened to unleash the federal government against the “radical left,” as he and his allies suggested without evidence that a leftist network bore responsibility for the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah last week. “My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence,” Trump said, “including the organizations that fund it and support it.” Administration officials told The New York Times that department heads and Cabinet secretaries have begun identifying left-leaning groups that may have funded or supported violence so it can label them domestic terrorism organizations. Guest-hosting a memorial episode of Kirk’s podcast, Vice President JD Vance—a personal friend of the slain activist—said, “We are going to go after the…

■ Danie Wright and her dog Dax’s afternoon walk in Land O’ Lakes, Fla., was upended this month when an alligator suddenly emerged from a creek and chomped down on the shih tzu’s collar. Wright, a 53-year-old former rugby player, was dragged into the creek but wrangled her puppy free and tossed him back to land. But the gator bit down on Wright’s left arm. She proceeded to punch, kick, and knee the reptile until it let go, escaping with minor bite wounds. “I was so lucky it was a small alligator,” Wright said. ■ For 26 years, Richard Smith lived a double life in Concord, Mass.: as a suburban cat owner and Pittsburgh Steelers fan—and as a Henry David Thoreau impersonator at Walden Pond State Reservation. Often dressed in…

Whether you shared his beliefs or found them abhorrent, no one can deny that Charlie Kirk “changed American politics,” said John Brabender in The Wall Street Journal. Most concretely there is Turning Point USA, the conservative youth-outreach group Kirk founded at 18 after dropping out of college. Kirk, who was assassinated last week at age 31, grew it into a sprawling network with chapters on 3,500 high school and college campuses, and more than 250,000 members. TPUSA’s get-out-the-vote efforts in key swing states arguably helped “tip the 2024 election” to Donald Trump, said Ian Ward in Politico. In 2020, nearly two-thirds of voters 18 to 29 cast a ballot for Joe Biden; last year, Trump lost the demographic to Kamala Harris by only 4 percentage points and won a majority…