Happy Monday! We hope TMD readers spent time with their loved ones this weekend, after a rather bleak end to last week. On a more sobering note, today marks 90 years since Germany’s Reichstag passed the Nuremberg Laws, stripping German Jews of citizenship and imposing the first systematic antisemitic prohibitions that would lead to the Holocaust.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- A 22-year-old man, Tyler Robinson, was arrested late Thursday night for the suspected murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. The nearly 33-hour manhunt came to an end after Robinson’s father reportedly recognized him from the FBI suspect photographs and confronted him. According to current reporting, the suspect’s father called a local youth pastor and ultimately persuaded Robinson to turn himself in. While officials said Robinson confessed to his father before being apprehended, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said on Sunday that “he has not confessed to authorities” and “is not cooperating,” though those around him are.
- More than 500 gigabytes of internal documents from China’s Great Firewall leaked online on Thursday, with researchers confirming over the weekend that the leak exposed tens of thousands of pages of documents, along with source code and work logs from the censorship system’s core developers. The leaked materials originated from Geedge Networks—led by Fang Binxing, the “father of the Great Firewall”—and the MESA Lab at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, revealing systems that monitor internet traffic and algorithms to detect and block virtual private networks (VPNs). Documents show the company has exported censorship technology to Burma, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Kazakhstan under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, including a ready-to-use system called Tiangou, which has been deployed across 26 data centers in Burma. The breach represents the largest leak in the Great Firewall’s history, potentially exposing vulnerabilities in surveillance systems used by multiple authoritarian regimes.
- Romanian officials said late on Saturday that a Russian drone had entered its airspace, prompting the Romanian Air Force to deploy two fighter jets to monitor it. The Russian drone “did not overfly populated areas and did not pose an imminent threat to the civilian population,” according to the Romanian Defense Ministry, but it marked the second such incursion of a NATO ally this month, with at least 19 Russian drones entering Polish airspace last week. In a social media post early Saturday morning, President Donald Trump said he was ready to impose additional sanctions on Russia “when all NATO Nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing, and when all NATO Nations STOP BUYING OIL FROM RUSSIA.”
- Former Nepali Supreme Court Chief Justice Sushila Karki was sworn in as interim prime minister on Friday, days after youth-led, anti-government protests and riots led to the resignation of the country’s now-former prime minister, K.P. Sharma Oli. Karki, known for targeting government corruption while serving on the Supreme Court, said she would hold the position for only six months and then hand over power to new leaders following elections in March. “I did not wish for this job,” she said. “It was after voices from the streets that I was compelled to accept.” At least 72 people have been killed and more than 1,300 others injured after crowds gathered to protest a recently enacted law that blocked several major social media platforms from operating in the country for failing to register with the government, which has since been repealed.
- An agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Friday shot and killed a suspected illegal immigrant about 20 miles west of Chicago who federal officials said attempted to resist arrest by driving his car into law enforcement. “One of the ICE officers was hit by the car and dragged a significant distance,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement. “Fearing for his own life, the officer fired his weapon.” The statement added that the suspect, later identified as 38-year-old Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, had a history of reckless driving. Villegas-Gonzalez was transported to a nearby hospital and, soon after, was pronounced dead. The ICE agent sustained multiple injuries, per DHS, but is in stable condition.
- Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump is attempting to fire over claims of alleged mortgage fraud, had listed one of her properties in Atlanta as a “vacation home” rather than a primary residence, according to documents obtained by several news outlets on Saturday. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte first accused Cook of mortgage fraud last month, indicating that she had listed both her Atlanta and Michigan homes as primary residences and prompting Trump to order her removal. Cook, who remains in her post after a judge temporarily blocked Trump from firing her, is suing Trump for what she says is unlawfully removing her without “cause,” but the Trump administration said in court filings on Sunday that the allegations against her are a “reasonable” reason for removal.
- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin proposed a federal rule on Friday to repeal the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which requires more than 8,000 power plants, oil refineries, steel mills, and other industrial facilities to submit annual emissions reports, describing it as “nothing more than bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to improve air quality.” According to a statement from the EPA, ending the program, which began in 2010, will save “American businesses up to $2.4 billion in regulatory costs.” Specifically, it added, the proposed rule intends to “remove reporting obligations for most large facilities, all fuel and industrial gas suppliers, and CO2 injection sites.”
- Trump announced on Friday that he will deploy the National Guard to Memphis, Tennessee, which he described as a city “deeply troubled” with crime. While the president claimed that both Tennessee’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee and Memphis’ Democratic Mayor Paul Young indicated they were “happy” about the plan, Young balked at the plan during a Friday news conference. “I want to be clear, I did not ask for the National Guard, and I don’t think it’s the way to drive down crime,” he told reporters. “However, they are coming.” Meanwhile, Lee tweeted that the plan will further assist an “ongoing FBI mission” in Memphis to “that has already arrested hundreds of the most violent offenders.” Memphis has the highest crime rate of any American city, with 2,501 violent crimes per 100,000 people, according to FBI data, and 145 murders this year alone. In June, a man was charged with attempting to kidnap Mayor Young.
The Aftermath
On Friday morning, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, announced an official end to the manhunt for the shooter who assassinated right-wing activist Charlie Kirk two days earlier. “We got him,” he told reporters.
Local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies had all been engaged in the search—which also involved appeals to the public and the offer of a $100,000 reward—but the high-profile hunt had been plagued by poor communication. On Wednesday, FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on social media that the shooter had been arrested, only to be quickly contradicted by local officials, who clarified that authorities had detained and released two individuals. During a press conference on Thursday evening, officials released security footage of the suspect climbing down from the rooftop from which he shot Kirk, but indicated that they had few leads in identifying him. “We need as much help as we can possibly get,” Cox said. Beau Mason, the commissioner of Utah’s Department of Public Safety, told NBC News that investigators had “no idea” if the shooter was still in the state.
The search came to an end hours later, however, when 22-year-old Tyler Robinson surrendered to law enforcement officials.
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Robinson, a Utah resident, had fled the scene on Wednesday after allegedly shooting Kirk in the neck in front of a large crowd at Utah Valley University. But when speaking to a relative the following day, he reportedly confessed or implied that he had committed the murder. The chain of events that led to his arrest remains unclear, but according to CNN, Robinson’s father recognized his son from photos released by the FBI, and contacted a local youth pastor, who “works with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Marshal’s Service.” A family friend then reportedly contacted that office, which passed the information along to Utah state authorities and the FBI.
Robinson’s father then persuaded his son on Thursday evening to surrender to the police, who arrested him on suspicion of the crimes of aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm, and obstruction of justice. “We are confident we have the right individual in custody,” an FBI spokesman said at a press conference announcing the arrest, “but we are still working to establish the full picture of who he is and why he acted.”
Theories regarding why, exactly, Robinson chose to shoot Kirk swirled on both sides of America’s political divide in the hours after his arrest—but a clearer picture is beginning to come into focus. Robinson, who had enrolled in an electrical apprentice program after attending Utah State for less than one year, had no prior arrests and hailed from a quiet, predominantly Mormon suburb. Family members told investigators that he had become more political in recent years and had discussed his dislike of Kirk with a family member at a dinner.
“It’s very clear to us and to the investigators that this was a person who was deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology,” Cox told reporters on Friday. In an interview with NBC News over the weekend, the Utah governor noted that, although Robinson came from a “conservative family,” Robinson’s own ideology “was very different.” Cox also confirmed that Robinson had been living with a “boyfriend who is transitioning from male to female,” who has been “very cooperative” with authorities. The Utah governor added that more information about Robinson’s motives would be released on Tuesday, when prosecutors plan to file charges.
Cox declined to enter into too much detail on the exact details of Robinson’s radicalization, claiming that investigators still needed to gather more information from his partner, his family, and eventually Robinson himself, whom Cox said was not yet cooperating with law enforcement. He did note, however, that Robinson’s radicalization likely happened quickly—sometime after Robinson dropped out of Utah State in 2021 or 2022—and that friends had confirmed that Robinson was deeply involved in the “dark corners of the internet.”
Robinson, who grew up hunting, also appeared to leave clues as to his motives on his murder weapon, an imported Mauser bolt-action rifle that was recovered in the woods near the area where Kirk was shot. Robinson had engraved slogans on unfired bullet casings, many of which seem related to online gaming culture. The arrows in “Hey fascist! Catch! ↑ → ↓↓↓,” for example, are taken from Helldivers 2—a game inspired by Starship Troopers, which parodies fascism. “Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao”—found on another casing—are the lyrics from a popular Italian folk song associated with anti-fascist partisan groups, and also a core part of a main story mission from the game Far Cry 6. Other casings were engraved with, “If you are reading this you are gay LMAO” and “notices bulges OwO what’s this?”—an ironic online phrase often used to make fun of “furries” (people who dress up as anthropomorphic animal characters).
Despite all of Robinson’s online messaging, Luke Baumgartner, a research fellow in the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told TMD that it would be premature to assume he was part of some organized digital community. “As a professional, I see [the murder] as a symptom of the disease of the desire for feeling seen, for feeling heard, for forming engagement and content, and just being famous,” he said. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that, before he turned himself in on Thursday, Robinson was joking with friends in a Discord group chat that Kirk’s killer was his “doppelganger.”
Even before his assassin was captured, Kirk had become a martyr for a shocked and grieving American right. Canceling his attendance at a 9/11 memorial event, Vice President J.D. Vance flew to Utah on Air Force Two to personally collect Kirk’s remains and transport them to his home state of Arizona. Kirk’s widow, Erika, waved to flag-carrying supporters from a motorcade transporting Kirk’s body to a chapel in Phoenix on Thursday evening with a rosary in her hand. “If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea, you have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country and this world,” she proclaimed in a tearful address to supporters on Friday. “My husband’s voice will remain.”
While most American political leaders have sought to at least temporarily cast aside political differences in the aftermath of Kirk’s murder, a vocal minority has doubled down on division. Few, if any, elected Democrats have equivocated about the immorality of the shooting, but it’s easy to find lefties mocking or even celebrating the murder on social media. It’s just as easy to find people on the right using Kirk’s assassination as a pretext for a broader “war” against the left.
Indeed, numerous Trump administration officials have declared that they plan to pursue retribution on a broader scale. Rejecting a proposed comparison between right- and left-wing radicalism by a Fox News host, Trump on Friday said that the “radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy.” On Wednesday, the president had vowed to punish “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.”
Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller also signaled plans to pursue alleged radical leftist networks, writing on X that the “fate of millions depends upon the defeat of this wicked ideology.” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau implied on X that the State Department would re-evaluate the legal status of immigrants who mock Kirk’s death, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also directed staff to identify any members of the military who defended or mocked Kirk’s murder, reportedly resulting in multiple firings.
However, Trump also called for those angered by Kirk’s death to respond peacefully. And on Sunday, Cox said that the White House had asked him to speak to national media “because they’re worried about the escalation that’s happening out there.”
Regardless, an atmosphere of fear increasingly hangs over U.S. politics, even though politically motivated murder is still extremely uncommon in the U.S. Following Kirk’s murder, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, postponed two public events. Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina running for governor, said she would be canceling all outdoor and public events indefinitely.
But as candlelight vigils for Kirk continue to take place across the country—with an event hosted by Turning Point USA, the student activist organization he founded, slated for September 21— some U.S. leaders hope that this time, Americans will realize that their politics has come to an unacceptably divisive point. “If your view of America is not shaken right now, then there’s something wrong with you,” Cox told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday. “Every one of us has to look in the mirror and decide, are we going to try to make it better, or are we going to make it worse?”
Today’s Must-Read
We have long wanted to view violence. In 1939, the first filmed guillotining took place in France—and after it became clear that such a public execution was not just a deterrent, but a spectacle, guillotinings became private. “After that, the guillotine was rolled away behind prison walls – not because decapitations were too horrifying to watch, but because people will watch them no matter how horrifying they are,” wrote one historian. Fast-forward to more modern times. In 2014, photos and videos of beheadings by ISIS began to propagate across the internet, and starting in 2022, footage from the Ukraine war proliferated. But violence does not need to have a geopolitical bent to attract eyes: Last month, the Anti-Defamation League reported on an internet forum called “WatchPeopleDie,” which is what it sounds like—“a forum where users can post and view real images and videos of violence, including murders, torture, rape, executions, beheadings, suicides, dismemberments, accidents and animal killings.” Two kinds of people form this online bazaar. One is the kind of person who posts these videos. The other is the kind of person who watches them.
Toeing the Company Line
Reciting What’s True to Defuse a Politics of Hate
Why, even after Charlie Kirk’s murder, our bonds can transcend our differences.
There Is No ‘They.’ Only ‘We.’
Only one person shot Charlie Kirk. But we are all responsible for the state of our country.
The Coming Tripolar World Order
A new defense strategy could squander America’s post-World War II advantage.
The Recipe for America’s Next Espionage Scandal
By shrinking the federal government, Trump’s team has generated all the forces that drive people to sell secrets.
Why We Still Need Rom-coms
And why 'Materialists' doesn’t count.
The ‘Right’ Way to Have a Baby
The surrogacy industry is booming. A lot of questions remain.
Je Suis Charlie
The best way to honor or oppose Charlie Kirk’s legacy is to keep arguing—peacefully and courageously.
Threats and Threats and ‘Threats’
What Charlie Kirk was, and wasn’t.
The Problem with ‘They’ | Ruminant
Is political violence part of our culture?
Congress and Artificial Intelligence | Interview: Adam Thierer
'Defining AI has proven very, very hard, including for experts in the field.'
Worth Your Time
- In a piece for Persuasion, Yascha Mounk—a Dispatch contributing writer—warns readers to beware the merchants of rage. “This week is the stuff with which the road to hell is paved,” he wrote. “As scholars of civic conflict have long argued, political violence is always in search of excuses. It is hard to dehumanize others to such an extent that it seems justified to kill them. That’s why the descent into large-scale political violence nearly always starts with a more subtle proposition: conflict entrepreneurs paint their political adversaries as so intent on causing harm that violence is the only realistic means of self-defense. We now live in a country in which millions of people on, yes, both sides of our partisan divide have convinced themselves of that dangerous article of faith. And that, more than anything else, makes me fear for our country right now. Amidst these dark times, it is important to remember that most Americans aren’t sociopaths who hate anyone who disagrees with them. Most Americans do not celebrate political violence even if it hits what they consider the ‘right’ target. But the minority of Americans who are consumed by their longing for chaos and violence are doing what they can to draw the rest of us into their warped logic. Over the past days, these merchants of rage have been frighteningly successful. If there is any political duty which this darkest of timelines calls forth, it is to resist these bad actors irrespective of what ideological garb they happen to wear.”
Presented Without Comment
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Let Us Know
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Clarification, September 16, 2025: This newsletter has been updated to clarify that only the arrows in “Hey fascist! Catch! ↑ → ↓↓↓” come from Helldivers 2.
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