Secretary Pete Hegseth of the recently renamed Department of War is warning civilian and military employees that the Pentagon is “tracking” any comments from them that celebrate or mock the Wednesday assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. 

“We are tracking all these very closely — and will address, immediately. Completely unacceptable,” Hegseth wrote in a social media post on Thursday.

Hegseth was responding to a statement from chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, who earlier said it is “unacceptable for military personnel and Department of War civilians to celebrate or mock the assassination of a fellow American. The Department of War has zero tolerance for it.”

They did not mention any specific examples of personnel who had reacted positively to Kirk’s death.

Kirk, the 31-year-old co-founder of Turning Point USA, was fatally shot in the neck at the campus of Utah Valley University on Wednesday. After a manhunt, officials identified the suspected shooter as Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah man.

Both Republican and Democratic political figures – including all living former U.S. presidents – have condemned Kirk’s assassination, but a small number of social media users have mocked or celebrated the killing, drawing outrage. 

The heads of military services also have warned those under them that any inappropriate comments on Kirk will be met with retribution. Navy Secretary John Phelan cautioned sailors, Marines and civilians that they “will be dealt with swiftly and decisively” should they bring “discredit” on the department.

“I am aware of posts displaying contempt toward a fellow American who was assassinated,” he wrote on X late Thursday. “I want to be very clear: any uniformed or civilian employee of the Department of the Navy who acts in a manner that brings discredit upon the Department, the [U.S. Navy] or the [Marine Corps] will be dealt with swiftly and decisively.”

The official X account for the U.S. Coast Guard, meanwhile, also said it “is aware of inappropriate personal social media activity made by a member regarding recent political violence,” though did not provide specifics.  

“That social media activity is contrary to our core values. With the support of DHS, we are actively investigating this activity and will take appropriate action to hold the individual accountable,” according to the post. “We recognize the harm such behavior can cause and remain steadfast in ensuring that the conduct of our personnel reflects the trust and responsibility placed in us by the American people.”

Charlie Kirk spent his career showing up where he wasn’t welcome. Mostly on college campuses, where he would set up a tent and invite students to argue with him. At 31, the Turning Point USA founder and father of two was fatally shot Wednesday afternoon while doing what he had built his career around for more than a decade: encouraging dialogue over violence and shouting matches.

Kirk believed deeply that “when people stop talking, really bad stuff starts. When marriages stop talking, divorce happens. When civilizations stop talking, civil war ensues. What we as a culture have to get back to is being able to have reasonable disagreement where violence is not an option.”

The only rational response to such an act of terror is sympathy. Keep the political statements in your pocket. But the response to Kirk’s death has been depressingly predictable. Within hours, partisan actors on both sides weaponized the tragedy for political gain. Some Republicans immediately declared war on liberal extremism, despite no known suspect or motive for the shooting. Some Democrats focused more on relitigating Kirk’s rhetoric than mourning his death.

This is our test as a civil society: Can we protect those we despise and refuse to use our losses to score political points? We are failing spectacularly.

I always thought Kirk argued with cherry-picked facts that supported his agenda. His debate style involved talking fast and self-righteously to overwhelm intimidated college students. But personal disagreement becomes irrelevant when someone dies for their political beliefs. The important thing to recognize — and this requires looking above the mess of social media and ordinary life — is that many Americans no longer accept that, in a free society, nobody should die for their political beliefs, no matter how wrong those beliefs might be.

Conservative pundits filled X with declarations of “war.” Douglas Murray claimed on Sky News just after the assassination that “most conservatives tend to think the left is wrong, but in its entirety, not evil; but that favor is not returned.”

Yet this narrative conveniently overlooks Republicans’ own complicated relationship with political violence. Jan. 6 stands as stark evidence, as does the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi by a mentally ill man echoing far-right conspiracy theories (whose motives Elon Musk recklessly mischaracterized). And recall the assassination of a Minnesota Democratic state representative and her husband by an alleged Trump supporter just three months ago.

Far worse is the left. On MSNBC, now-fired analyst Matthew Dowd declared that those like Kirk who share “hateful” rhetoric should “expect awful actions to take place.” If hateful thoughts lead to hateful actions, as Dowd suggests, then what of the hateful words Dowd himself spoke about a man whose body was still warm? Would he accept the same logic if his own family were attacked?

On X, a post reading “Breaking: Charlie Kirk loses gun debate” went viral with 424,000 likes; the hashtag #charliesquirt is trending on the platform. Former Sen. Al Franken (D-Min.) condemned political violence, but only after clarifying that he “never thought [he’d] say a prayer for Charlie Kirk.” Such smears are vile and contemptible. 

What does it say about us that assassination is first and foremost an opportunity for political point-scoring? We have lost the ability to recognize that some basic human boundaries must never be crossed. This is the logical endpoint of political discourse that no longer believes good-faith disagreement.

The onus falls especially on those of us who vehemently disagreed with Charlie Kirk to resist the inflammatory rhetoric and demand better. When someone tries to drag you into the gutter, ask them what vision they have for America. Do they still believe in democratic principles? Do they respect the rule of law? Do they value human life universally, not selectively? Many on the right will use this tragedy to silence dissent, arguing that criticism killed Charlie Kirk. That’s wrong too. We should never be afraid to express our views — that’s a fundamental right in a free society. But it’s equally fundamental to participate in that society without fear of violence.

This is the consequence of years of people peddling the line that “words are violence.” That’s typically nonsense designed to quell free speech and incite retaliatory violence. Words are words; shooting someone in the throat is violence. But words do have consequences. Those who have systematically dehumanized political opponents should examine what they have created.

Charlie Kirk believed in the possibility of reasonable disagreement. America needs more who, as Ezra Klein described today, “Practice Politics the Right Way”: willing to talk across divides, to find common ground, to remember that our political opponents are still human beings with families and dreams and fears. Just one day before his death, Kirk posted a photograph of Iryna Zarutska, the young woman murdered on a Charlotte light rail, and wrote beneath it: America will never be the same. America will not be the same. His own murder proved it. But his life’s work will inevitably shape what comes next. He fought the good fight, he kept the faith, and he finished his race. 

Kirk once wrote, “You can tell a lot about a person by how they react when someone dies.” He was right. My thoughts are with Charlie’s young wife and the two children he leaves behind. With them, and with anyone in this country who still cares about preserving a sense of common humanity.

William Liang is a writer living in San Francisco.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is leaning into his aggressive attacks against President Trump, mimicking his online style and adopting his peculiar lexicon.  

His efforts have invigorated a Democratic party that’s eager to challenge MAGA on its home turf, using its tactics and adopting its style. Other Democrats are following his lead.  

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) says he is not running for president, but he takes actions that make a run viable. He recently called President Trump a “chicken hawk” and later told him to “keep our name out of your mouth”, receiving enthusiastic applause from a supportive crowd.

This is a change for Moore, who previously presented himself as a pragmatist interested in holding the moral high ground.

Moore’s changing tone may be rooted in genuine exasperation with the president’s policies. But the timing suggests his behavior is driven by a desire to keep pace with Newsom as he redefines the contours of Democratic resistance to President Trump.

Democrats are at a crossroads. They can mimic MAGA or choose to set an example of virtuous politics. 

The latter requires trust that most Americans will support leaders who bring them out of the Trump era, rather than politicians who surrender to its worst parts by adopting its mannerisms. 

Becoming MAGA with a different tax policy won’t extricate the country from its current malaise or begin to heal our divisions. Even if Democrats are successful at eking out narrow electoral victories by inspiring their base with name calling and mockery, our core problems remain.

Except for rabid partisans, Americans sense that neither party has been the good guy, and both are responsible for this unhappy moment in our politics. 

Republican redistricting in Texas is legal but unfair. Democrats are poised to recreate that dishonorable action in California and elsewhere. But there’s an alternative. 

Democrats could make a grand gesture and un-gerrymander some of the districts in a place like Illinois that make it hard for Republicans to win. 

This would draw a clear contrast for voters and might be enough to discourage Republican states other than Texas from undertaking similar maneuvers. 

A grand gesture by Democrats might extricate us from the current cycle of partisan redistricting and doesn’t preclude them from regaining control of the House of Representatives.

As recently as 2018, Democrats flipped 40 seats, and Texas is only redistricting five.  If our country and economy are as bad under Trump as Democrats claim, winning big in 2026 is quite possible. Republicans also realize this.  

Beyond the boisterous rhetoric lies several unpopular Republican policies. Parties that engage in unusual efforts at unexpected times to create safer legislative districts, as the Republicans are doing, probably aren’t approaching the next election with confidence. 

There are two ways of resisting President Trump and the cultural change he’s unleashing on America. The first is to adopt his tactics and demeanor but doing this concedes that the president has changed us forever.  

If Democrats are Trumpian now, our most important reason to resist him is already lost. We’re either a country whose leaders call each other mean-spirited names via tapped out messages on cell phones or we’re not.  

The fact that a plurality of Americans identify as political independents suggests that large numbers prefer a more serious and sober politics.

Democrats are struggling to accept the idea that maintaining the moral high ground matters. They point to election losses as proof that being the better-behaved party doesn’t win. 

In fact, Democrats have never presented Americans with a clear distinction.  Democrats accused President Trump of acting like a dictator and then propagated a “cancel culture” that complicated free speech.

They complained about gerrymandering but undertook egregious gerrymandering of their own.  

They told Americans that MAGA was a threat and then supported MAGA candidates in Republican primaries. They lamented the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United but spent $1.2 billion in 2024 through groups that didn’t need to disclose their donors.

Democrats who advocate for fighting fire with fire should realize that the party has already tested that approach.

The result is the lowest approval ratings of Democrats in 30 years and the 2024 loss to MAGA Republicans.  Fighting fire with fire isn’t a new idea and isn’t working.  Doubling down on that effort isn’t the answer. 

Most Americans, don’t want to live in a petty world of social media taunts and retorts. What we want are serious leaders who tackle hard problems and admit when they make mistakes.  

Newsom’s latest caricature of himself doesn’t move us closer to that vision. If Democrats follow his lead, as Moore and others seem inclined, our country will complete its transition to something completely shaped by Trump and his presidency.

Colin Pascal is a retired Army lieutenant colonel and a graduate student in the School of Public Affairs at American University.

On Aug. 27, Beijing rejected out-of-hand President Trump’s call for denuclearization talks with China and Russia. 

It’s not hard to figure out why China is in no mood to talk about the world’s most destructive weapons. Alone among the major powers, Beijing is fast increasing its stockpile of them.  

“I think the denuclearization is a very — it’s a big aim,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “But Russia’s willing to do it, and I think China is going to be willing to do it too.”  

“We can’t let nuclear weapons proliferate,” he added. “We have to stop nuclear weapons. The power is too great.” 

It’s not clear what Trump meant by “denuclearization” — complete disarmament or merely a reduction in the number of weapons — but his comments indicate he is following in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan, who wanted to completely abolish nukes. 

Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, also favors disarmament, as her comments in a three-minute video posted in early June suggest. 

Denuclearization might have crossed Trump’s mind now because America’s last nuclear arms-control agreement with Russia will expire soon. 

New START, which limits the number of warheads each side may deploy, came into force in 2011 and was extended in 2021. It is scheduled to terminate in February.  

Termination may not have much of a practical impact, however. Moscow, after all, is violating New START’s terms by not permitting regular inspections. In February 2023, Vladimir Putin announced he was suspending participation in the treaty. 

Getting Russia to the negotiating table may or may not be an easy lift, but enticing the Chinese to talk will certainly be much more difficult.

“It is neither reasonable nor realistic to ask China to join the nuclear disarmament negotiations with the U.S. and Russia,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun at his regular press briefing. 

“The country sitting on the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal,” Guo said, is primarily responsible for disarmament and should take actions including “drastic and substantive cuts to its nuclear arsenal” and “[creating] conditions” for global nuclear disarmament.

Guo was likely referring to the U.S., but Russia, in fact, maintains the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that last year Russia maintained 4,380 deployed weapons. The U.S., the institute believes, possessed 3,708 warheads while China had 500, up from 410 in 2023.  

China has never publicly confirmed it number of nukes, and there is no consensus as to the current size of its arsenal. Almost all observers, however, agree that it is building warheads fast. The Pentagon in a November 2022 report forecast that China would quadruple warheads from about 400 to 1,500 by 2035.   

Nuclear analyst James Howe predicts China will have between 3,390 to 3,740 weapons by 2035.

Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center looks at the rapid increase in delivery platforms, such as missiles and subs, and thinks China will have even more. He told me his 2035 estimate: 7,000.  

“I don’t think I’ve seen anything more disturbing in my career than the Chinese ongoing expansion of their nuclear force,” said Frank Kendall when he was secretary of the Air Force in House testimony in March 2023.

Adm. Charles Richard, as commander of U.S. Strategic Command in 2021, said: “We are witnessing a strategic breakout by China.”

“For decades, they were quite comfortable with an arsenal of a few hundred nuclear weapons, which was fairly clearly a second-strike capability to act as a deterrent,” Kendall testified, referring to China. 

“That expansion that they’re undertaking puts us into a new world that we’ve never lived in before, where you have three powers — three great powers, essentially — with large arsenals of nuclear weapons.” 

With its rapid buildup, China is apparently looking for a war-fighting capability. Its increased nuclear weapons capacity means its threats to launch first strikes would be credible and Beijing would thus be able to intimidate adversaries into not defending, say, Taiwan. 

“The breakneck growth in China’s nuclear weapons tells us Xi and his [Chinese Communist Party] comrades see nuclear weapons as instruments of coercion and terror to use in furthering China’s hegemonic ambitions,” Peter Huessy of the National Institute for Deterrence Studies told me this month. 

China’s rejection of negotiations could also be a sign of weakness. 

“The [Chinese Communist Party] pushback on denuclearization talks could be easily misread as Chinese assertiveness or Xi Jinping’s ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy,” Blaine Holt, retired Air Force general and military analyst, wrote to me after the Chinese foreign ministry statement. 

“In actuality, avoiding the topic altogether and shunning dialogue betrays a Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army mired in crisis. No one in Beijing feels they can discuss this.” 

Whether China is weak or strong — that debate continues — the Chinese leadership has decided it will not talk nukes with the United States. 

During the Cold War, the U.S. did not have to consider China’s arsenal when negotiating arms control with the Soviet Union. Now, in light of the rapid buildup in China, the U.S. cannot prudently come to any agreement with Russia about nuclear weapons if the Chinese are not a party.  

Beijing has essentially taken both disarmament and arms control off the table.  

Gordon G. Chang is the author of “Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America” and “The Coming Collapse of China.”  

Many voters in rural America cast their ballots for Republicans in the last election because they believed their values would be defended — and their communities prioritized over wealthy elites and urban power centers.

But recent policy decisions have made one thing clear: Rural America was not protected. It was sacrificed.

From criminal investigations to economically backward tariffs, and now the dismantling of critical health care infrastructure, the betrayal is not accidental. It is the inevitable result of long-held priorities — polished for voters but designed for donors.

At the center of this betrayal is a bill wrapped in classic Orwellian doublespeak: the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill.” 

Behind the grandstanding lies the reality — brutal cuts to Medicaid that will devastate rural hospitals, strip healthcare from vulnerable families and stall already-precarious local economies.

Just months ago, less than two weeks after President Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, Americans were promised by Trump that programs like Medicaid and SNAP would be loved and cherished.

But that promise was quietly discarded. The legislation that ultimately passed, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, would add $3.4 trillion to the national debt while slashing more than $1 trillion from Medicaid.

To sell this, party leaders dusted off the same tired excuse: waste, fraud and abuse. But rural Americans know what that really means: clinic closures, darkened emergency rooms and a 40-mile drive to deliver a baby or for addiction or mental health care — if it’s available at all. 

According to the Government Accountability Office, rural patients already travel 20 to 40 miles farther for care after hospital closures. That delay translates into worse outcomes and, in too many cases, preventable deaths.

This isn’t abstract. In Montana, as of July 1, 50 out 56 counties are classified as medically underserved. In addition, 25 out of 55 rural hospitals are listed as facing “risk” or “immediate risk” of closing.  

And it’s not just Montana. Since 2010, over 130 rural hospitals have closed. Today, over 300 more are at immediate risk, and as former Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has warned, 600 additional hospitals may not survive the blow this legislation delivers to their budgets. 

This isn’t just a crisis — it’s a collapse in motion.

Rural hospitals were already strained. They serve communities that are older, poorer and sicker, and rely heavily on Medicaid. 

Yet while demand grows, federal support is being pulled away. CEOs like Steven Fontaine of Penn Highlands Healthcare have been blunt: “Without immediate and sustained support, the services we provide are at risk.”

Let’s be clear: This wasn’t an oversight. It was a choice. A choice to prioritize tax cuts for the wealthy over health care for working Americans. And it was made by the same political machine that claimed to fight for the forgotten heartland.

In 2024, 63 percent of rural voters backed this version of the GOP — one increasingly unrecognizable from the principles of conservatism it once claimed. These voters believed they were being heard. 

But this law tells a different story: one of betrayal, opacity and harm inflicted on the very people who believed most deeply in the promise of change.

Rural America is now paying the price. Either Congress acts to repair the damage or it will answer for it at every town hall between now and a 2026 election season that must hold members to account.

Marc Racicot is a former U.S. Army JAG Corps officer, two-term governor of Montana and former chairman of the Republican National Committee. He now serves as the national chair of Our Republican Legacy.