Trump announces he will send national guard to Memphis, with Chicago ‘probably next’ – live | Charlie Kirk shooting

Donald Trump announced he will deploy the national guard to Memphis during an Oval Office ceremony attended by the Tennessee governor Bill Lee.

Last week, Trump said “Memphis is deeply troubled” and teased that he wanted to “fix that just like we did Washington”, referring to his decision to deploy national guard troops to Washington DC last month in an effort to “crack down” on crime in the nation’s capitol. Violent crime was already at a 30-year low in the city.

Lee has welcomed Trump’s offers of federal troops and thanked the president during today’s announcement.

Trump added that he is considering sending national guard troops to “Chicago probably next” and floated cities such as St Louis may be next. “We want to save these places,” he said.

“Chicago is a great city,” Trump added. “We’re going to make it great again very soon.”

Illinois’ Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, has vehemently opposed the idea of federal troops deploying to Chicago.

Memphis, Chicago and St Louis are among the cities with the largest percentage of Black residents in the United States.

Trump said law enforcement agents from agencies including the FBI, ATF, DEA, ICE and Homeland Security will join the national guard in Memphis.

My colleauge George Chidi conducted this helpful analysis of crime rates in cities Trump has named over the past month. Although Trump has called Chicago “the most dangerous city in the world”, crime in large cities in the aggregate is lower in states with Democratic leadership. While the four cities of populations larger than 100,000 with the highest murder rates in 2024 are in Republican states.

Here’s more:

Chris Stein

The Senate’s Republican leader John Thune indicated that he hoped an agreement could be reached to stop a shutdown as soon as this week, while criticizing Democrats’ insistence on negotiating over health care cuts.

“We will be putting forward a clean resolution to ensure there is no reason for Democrats to oppose this bill and delay passage. My hope would be that we could get this done as soon as this week and then continue bipartisan work on appropriations bills,” he said. The bill would likely extend funding through mid-November, to allow lawmakers time to reach agreement on 12 appropriations bills to, in theory, keep the government funded through 2026.

He went on to accuse the Democrats of behaving irresponsibly by threatening a shutdown if their demands are not met: “Democrats seem to be looking to shut down the government. That’s right, at least a portion of their base seems eager to pick a fight with the Trump administration, and congressional Democrats, or at least congressional Democrat leadership, seem to be following along. I can’t imagine what Democrats think they’re going to gain from this. Do they think that hard working Americans are going to thank Democrats for shutting down the government?”

Speaking on the floor a few minutes later, the Senate’s Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer accused Thune and the GOP of refusing to negotiate on issues that will impact millions of Americans.

“We want to have a conversation with Donald Trump and Republicans about things we’ve been talking about for months, like health care, Medicaid, and the cost of living,” Schumer said. “And the American people know this. They know that if Donald Trump refuses to talk, even to talk about democrats, it’ll be him shutting things down. They know he needs to negotiate. They know he needs to compromise. He’s not a dictator, as much as he thinks he’d like to be.”

Chris Stein

With Congress facing an end-of-the-month deadline to prevent a government shutdown, Donald Trump on Monday afternoon encouraged Republicans to pass spending legislation without Democratic votes after the minority party’s leaders announced they would not support any bill that does not address their healthcare priorities.

“Congressional Republicans, including Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson, are working on a short term ‘CLEAN’ extension of Government Funding to stop Cryin’ Chuck Schumer from shutting down the Government,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Democrats want the Government to shut down. Republicans want the Government to OPEN. Democrats love CRIME, Republicans make our Country SAFE — WE HATE CRIME. FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION.”

He called on the GOP to pass a “Clean CR”, or continuing resolution, which is a shortterm government funding bill that would prevent a shutdown without making major changes to appropriations: “In times like these, Republicans have to stick TOGETHER to fight back against the Radical Left Democrat demands, and vote “YES!” on both Votes needed to pass a Clean CR this week out of the House of Representatives.”

Under pressure from their base to stand up to Trump using whatever leverage they have, top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries last week vowed not to vote for any bill unless it includes some concessions on healthcare. They were vague on what exactly they wanted, but pointed to looming increases in premiums for Affordable Care Act health plans and Medicaid cuts mandated by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

While the GOP can get spending legislation through the House with a simple majority, Democrats can use the filibuster to block bills in the Senate, meaning the two sides almost certainly have to find a compromise to prevent a shutdown. Responding to Trump’s insistence that Republicans should go it alone, Jeffries said: “Donald Trump and House Republicans are destroying Medicaid and Medicare, healthcare premiums are skyrocketing, millions of Americans are losing coverage and hospitals, nursing homes and community-based health clinics are closing throughout the country. House Democrats will not support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the healthcare of the American people. That’s what this shutdown fight is all about, Mr. President.”

Today So Far

Thank you for joining our US politics coverage today so far. Here are the top headlines we’ve followed and are continuing to watch:

• JD Vance guest-hosted the late Charlie Kirk’s podcast today live from his office in the White House complex. Vance was joined by key conservative voices, and members of the Trump administration, including Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of policy and architect of the administration’s hardline immigration policy, press secretary Karoline Leavitt, chief of staff Susie Wiles and health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

• In an interview on Fox News, the secretary of state Marco Rubio doubled down on the administration’s pledge to deny and revoke visas for anyone perceived to be celebrating the killing of Charlie Kirk.

• FBI director Kash Patel has said that DNA evidence found by investigators links the man accused of killing Kirk to the fatal attack despite his alleged refusal to cooperate with authorities after his arrest.

• Marco Rubio met Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem today. Rubio will travel to Qatar tomorrow.

• Treasury secretary Scott Bessent has said the commercial terms for a TikTok deal have been agreed upon between the US and China. The news comes just days before a deadline Donald Trump set for TikTok to find a non-Chinese buyer was set to expire. Trump is scheduled to speak with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Friday.

• Donald Trump has threatened to call a national emergency and federalize Washington DC after the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, said its police would not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), whose agents have been taking suspects into custody and have been accused of racially profiling people in doing so.

• Maurene Comey, a former federal prosecutor who brought criminal cases against Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell and music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, has sued the Trump administration over her abrupt July firing, according to court records reviewed by Reuters.

Rubio says Netanyahu has full support of US over plans to destroy Hamas

Julian Borger

in Jerusalem

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has put the Trump administration’s full support behind Benjamin Netanyahu in a visit to Jerusalem, saying Washington’s priorities were the liberation of Israeli hostages and the destruction of Hamas.

In public remarks standing alongside Netanyahu, Rubio did not mention the possibility of a ceasefire and did not repeat his earlier criticism of Israel for carrying out an airstrike last week in Doha, aimed at Hamas leaders the capital of another close US ally, Qatar.

The state department announced that Rubio would make a stop in Doha on Tuesday on his way to London, as the Trump administration seeks to limit the damage to US relations in the Gulf caused by the Israeli strike last Tuesday.

“At the end of the day, no matter what has happened or happens, the objective remains the same, and that is all 48 of those hostages, both living and deceased, need to be home. They need to be returned,” Rubio said.

“Hamas needs to cease to exist as an armed element that can threaten the peace and security of the region. And the people of Gaza deserve a better future. But that better future cannot begin until Hamas is eliminated.”

Rubio warned that the intended recognition of Palestine by several US allies, including the UK, France, Canada, Belgium and Australia, would make peace less likely.

“It actually makes it harder to negotiate … because it emboldens these groups,” he said, referring to Hamas and other Palestinian militants. He added that the Trump administration had warned states preparing to recognize Palestine “there will be an Israeli counter reaction to those moves” – in what may have been a reference to a possible Israeli move to annex occupied areas of the West Bank.

Rubio refrained from commenting on the planned Israeli ground offensive on Gaza City. Before that offensive, the Israel Defense Forces have been destroying buildings across the city, and ordering its inhabitants to evacuate, drawing international condemnation.

DNA evidence links suspect to killing of Charlie Kirk, FBI director says

Anna Betts

Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, has said that DNA evidence found by investigators links the man accused of killing rightwing political activist Charlie Kirk to the fatal attack despite his alleged refusal to cooperate with authorities after his arrest.

Speaking on the conservative-friendly Fox News network this morning, Patel said that DNA found on a towel wrapped around the rifle believed to have been used to kill Kirk matches that of the suspect in custody, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson.

Robinson’s arrest was announced on Friday, two days into a search set off by Kirk’s killing during an event at Utah Valley University (UVU). Robinson ultimately turned himself over to investigators after a relative recognized him in suspect photos released by investigators after Kirk’s killing.

Patel also said that additional DNA found on a screwdriver recovered from the roof of a building on the UVU campus has been “positively processed for the suspect in custody”.

The rifle itself, Patel added, is currently being processed at the federal Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) laboratories in Maryland.

Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah says she has been fired from the newspaper over social media posts about gun control and race in the aftermath of far-right commentator Charlie Kirk’s killing.

Attiah, 39, recounted in a Substack post that she had been dropped as a Post columnist after 11 years for “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns”.

The Post, she wrote, accused “my measured Bluesky posts of being ‘unacceptable, gross misconduct’ and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues – charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false”.

Attiah continued: “They rushed to fire me without even a conversation. This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.”

The columnist’s job was understood to be in jeopardy after she clashed with Post opinion editor Adam O’Neal, formerly of the Economist and the Wall Street Journal, who has reportedly offered buyouts to writers whose work does not fit with the editorial mix of the newspaper owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos.

The Bezos-owned Amazon contributed $1m to the fund for the inauguration of the second presidency of Donald Trump, for whom Kirk was a close ally. And the Post decided to forego endorsing a candidate in the November election won by Trump, a Republican, after the newspaper’s editorial board had voted to endorse Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

Rachel Leingang

Earlier, we reported comments made by vice-president JD Vance claiming that “people on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence”.

“The data is clear,” Vance said, hosting an edition of the Charlie Kirk Show. “This is not a both-sides problem. If both sides have a problem, one side has a much bigger and malignant problem, and that is the truth.”

The poll Vance is citing actually notes that it is far more common on both sides to be unsupportive of violence. YouGov’s polling shows that Americans overall are far more likely to say it’s always or usually unacceptable to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose, than they are to say this is acceptable (77% v 8%).

The poll also found that liberal Americans were more likely than conservatives to defend feeling joy about the deaths of political opponents – 16% of liberals say this is usually or always acceptable, including 24% of those who say their ideology is very liberal and 10% who say they are liberal but not very liberal. That compares with 4% of conservatives and 7% of moderates.

But even among the very liberal, the share who say it’s unacceptable to feel joy about the deaths of political opponents outnumbers those who say it’s acceptable by a ratio of more than two to one (56% v 24%).

Younger Americans are also about twice as likely as older Americans to defend feeling joy at political opponents’ deaths, but even among this group most people say this is unacceptable.

But there is evidence of a rise in support for violence to achieve political goals on both sides, support for violence and actually committing violence are two different things. And the ideology of those who do commit violence don’t right-left align neatly at all.

Robert Pape, who directs the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, which studies terrorism and conflict, noted in a recent piece in the New York Times that his research has found rising support among both left- and right-leaning Americans for the “use of force” to achieve political means.

The May survey was “the most worrisome yet”, he wrote. “About 40 percent of Democrats supported the use of force to remove Mr. Trump from the presidency, and about 25 percent of Republicans supported the use of the military to stop protests against Mr. Trump’s agenda. These numbers more than doubled since last fall, when we asked similar questions.”

If you zoom out over time, political violence is more commonly done by the far-right, said Luke Baumgartner, a research fellow at George Washington University’s program on extremism. But today’s violent actors are “much more ideologically diffuse, and they don’t strictly adhere to a single ideology”.

“People don’t start their journey as a violent extremist expert on a given ideology,” Braniff said. “There are underlying risk factors in their lives. Those risk factors go unaddressed … Ideology is often a lagging indicator for someone who’s gravitating towards violence.”

Trump ‘making the world a more dangerous place’, say top Democrats

Chris Stein

The top Democrats on three key House committees accused Donald Trump of “making the world a more dangerous place” through his policies towards adversaries like Russia and Venezuela, as well as his handling of domestic unrest.

Jim Himes, the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, along with his counterparts Adam Smith of the armed services committee and Greg Meeks of the foreign affairs committee, said:

From literally rolling out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin during his disastrous summit, to enacting steep tariffs against allies and partners, and driving India and other countries into the waiting arms of Russia, China, and North Korea, he is weakening America, not making it stronger.

The president “is undermining our national security and making the world a more dangerous place”, the trio wrote. In addition to Trump’s outreach to Putin, they cited his decision to send national guard troops onto the streets of Los Angeles and Washington DC, his deadly strike on a boat alleged to be transporting drugs off the coast of Venezuela and his order to rechristen the Department of Defense into the Department of War.

“Trump’s brazen disregard for the law and our coequal branches of government along with his bumbling attempts to exert strength by lashing out at those he views as insufficiently loyal at home and abroad have allowed existing conflicts around the world to worsen and new conflicts to arise,” they wrote.

We stand for returning the United States to a place that supports our international partners and allies, rejects autocratic and authoritarian regimes, respects the rule of law and the separation of powers at home, and prioritizes the prosperity and security of all Americans, not the ego of a fragile and weak President.

Robert Tait

The Rev William Barber, a left-leaning social activist, has condemned last week’s murder of Charlie Kirk and also called for a more general denunciation of political violence and “public violence” arising from policy choices.

His comments came during an online event commemorating the 62nd anniversary of one of the most notorious acts of political violence of the 1960s, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Street church in Birmingham, Alabama on 15 September 1963 by members of the Ku Klux Klan, which killed four Black school girls.

“This past week, there was a brutal, ugly on-camera assassination of brother Charlie Kirk and we must all despise it,” said Barber. He went on:

Despise that it left him dead, his wife heartbroken without a husband, and his children without a father. All of us should be bothered. I know about what it means to have folk say they want to kill you or assassinate you. All of us should denounce it and pray for the family and stand against this viciousness and violence of his murder.

But if you didn’t get bothered by the political death that’s happening in this country, the political violence and the public violence, until the other day, his must be challenged too, according to our deepest faith tradition.

Because the Prophet says our trouble is rooted in policy violence. We must cry out against the 800 people that are dying every day from poverty and low wealth. You can’t ignore that.

Barber, founding director of Yale Divinity School’s centre for public theology, has led a series of Moral Monday organized by Repairers of the Breach, a group committed to social justice.

‘Call them out, call their employer’: Vance urges people to go hard against anyone ‘justifying or celebrating’ Kirk’s killing

Rachel Leingang

To close out as guest host of Charlie Kirk’s podcast, JD Vance went hard against what he called the far left and an increased tolerance for violence on it, saying the administration would be working to dismantle those who celebrate Kirk’s death and political violence against their opponents.

Vance said that after he left Kirk’s family in Arizona, he read a story in the Nation, a leftwing publication, where the author detailed Kirk’s views and, he said, took a quote about a supreme court justice out of context to imply it applied to all Black women.

The magazine was not a “fringe blog” but a “well-funded, well-respected magazine whose publishing history goes back to the American civil war. George Soros’s Open Society Foundation funds this magazine, as does the Ford Foundation and many other wealthy titans of the American progressive movement,” Vance said, hinting at the organizations the administration might target in the aftermath of Kirk’s murder. Vance later mentioned that the foundations that helped fund the magazine are tax-exempt, a sign that the government could go after that status.

“Charlie was gunned down in broad daylight, and well-funded institutions of the left lied about what he said so as to justify his murder,” Vance claimed. “This is soulless and evil, but I was struck not just by the dishonesty of the smear, but by the glee over a young husband’s and young father’s death.”

Vance said Erica Kirk asked his wife, Usha, for advice on how to tell her children that their father had been murdered on the vice-president’s visit to escort Kirk’s remains back to Arizona. As she was asking for that advice, Vance said, “there were people dancing on that father’s grave”.

While Vance said he “desperately” wants national unity and appreciated the many condolences he received from Democratic friends and colleagues, he said there is no unity without confronting the truth. “The data is clear, people on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence,” he said. “This is not a both-sides problem. If both sides have a problem, one side has a much bigger and malignant problem, and that is the truth.”

He acknowledged that political movements are like pyramids, made up of activists, influencers, politicians and organizations, and most of the members of those groups would not commit murder. But, he said, many are creating an environment where these acts of violence are more likely. He said that during a visit earlier this year to Disneyland with his family, people shouted at his kids and told them to disown their father.

“Are these women violent? Probably not. Are they deranged? Certainly,” Vance said. “And while our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left.”

He said the nation can only get to a point of unity with “people who acknowledge that political violence is unacceptable and when we work to dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country”. The Trump administration would be working to do that in the coming months and will “explore every option to bring real unity to our country and stop those who would kill their fellow Americans because they don’t like what they say”, he said.

“When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. Hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility, and there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination,” Vance said.

Maurene Comey, a former federal prosecutor who brought criminal cases against Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell and music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, sued the Trump administration on Monday over her abrupt July firing.

Comey, the eldest daughter of former FBI director and longtime Trump adversary James Comey, said in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court against the justice department and the executive office of the President that she was not provided any cause for her removal.

“Defendants fired Ms Comey solely or substantially because her father is former FBI Director James B Comey,” Maurene Comey’s lawyers wrote in the lawsuit. A justice department spokesperson declined to comment.

Reuters notes that Comey’s lawsuit could test the administration’s ability to swiftly fire line prosecutors, as the president’s critics warn that he is seeking to politicize the DoJ. The department has been firing prosecutors who have worked on cases involving Trump or his political allies.

Trump fired James Comey during his first term and has attacked the former FBI director for his role in investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won.

Line prosecutors like Maurene Comey are not politically appointed, and their careers with the DoJ frequently span both Republican and Democratic administrations. Comey is asking a judge to reinstate her in her former role as a prosecutor with the Manhattan US attorney’s office, where she worked for 10 years.

On 16 July, just two weeks after the verdict in Combs’s two-month trial, Comey said she received an email from the justice department’s human resources director informing her she had been terminated. The email did not provide a reason for her firing, but cited article II of the US constitution which lays out the president’s powers, her lawsuit said.

Comey said she then asked Manhattan US attorney Jay Clayton – Trump’s pick for the role – why she was fired. “All I can say is it came from Washington,” Clayton said, according to Comey’s lawsuit.

A spokesperson for the Manhattan US attorney’s office declined to comment.

Rachel Leingang

More high-profile Trumpworld guests are joining JD Vance as he guest-hosts a two-hour podcast in Charlie Kirk’s stead.

Robert F Kennedy Jr said Kirk was a “spiritual soulmate” to him after Kirk invited him on his show in 2021 to speak freely about vaccines. Kennedy endorsed Trump at a Turning Point rally in Arizona amid fireworks and sparklers on stage, which was “Charlie’s orchestration”. Kirk helped shepherd him into his role as health secretary, Kennedy said, and also helped his daughter-in-law get a role in the administration.

Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, praised Kirk and Turning Point for delivering Trump to the White House and for not joining calls during the election to oust Wiles from the Trump campaign.

Wiles said Kirk advocated for bringing in different political factions in key administration roles to expand the Maga movement. Those groups became Trump voters, she said, but now the Trump team had three and a half years to “coach voters to being Republicans so that in 2028 we can take the White House, the House and the Senate”.

Vance put it plainly: “If it weren’t for Charlie Kirk, I would not be the vice-president of the United States.” Kirk was perhaps the “most important person” in getting the Trump campaign over the finish line and getting Vance on the ticket, other than the president himself, he said.

Vance said he was not sure how Kirk’s role in the movement gets filled. Turning Point’s infrastructure on college campuses and in the conservative youth movement is strong, he said, but Kirk was “genuinely irreplaceable” as a talent. “How do you find a person who goes into these places, who takes very difficult questions, sometimes very hostile questions, and to your point, is actually engaging with them?”

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu informed Donald Trump last Tuesday morning that Israel planned to attack Hamas leaders in Qatar shortly before last week’s strike occurred, Axios is reporting, citing three Israeli officials with direct knowledge.

The White House has repeatedly said it was notified that morning by the US military and only after missiles were in the air, giving Trump no opportunity to oppose the strike – but the White House knew earlier, even if the timeline to stop it would have been tight, seven Israeli officials have told Axios.