Walker Percy’s 1971 novel &#8220;Love in the Ruins&#8221; now reads like prophecy. Set in a collapsing America riven by ideology, technological upheaval, loneliness, and spiritual exhaustion, the novel captures the strange mixture of decadence and despair that often marks contemporary life. It meditates on what Americans forget when political disorder obscures human nature, moral responsibility, and the civic inheritance embedded in the Declaration of Independence — timely, if sobering, themes as the United States observes its 250th birthday.
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A doctor trained at Columbia University, Walker Percy left medicine after contracting tuberculosis while conducting Skid Row research in the 1940s. He turned instead to fiction and philosophy, producing novels and essays that retain remarkable power and relevance. Though rooted in the modern South — a South of air conditioning, civil rights, suburbs, and prosperity — Percy’s work reaches beyond region, exploring the anxieties and moral disorientation that accompany modern affluence and equality.
In &#8220;Love in the Ruins,&#8221; America has lost not only political unity but also a shared understanding of reality. Citizens have retreated into ideological, racial, religious, and cultural camps, viewing one another less as fellow citizens than as abstractions and enemies. Persuasion gives way to tribal loyalty; coexistence becomes increasingly difficult. The novel’s protagonist, Dr. Thomas More, observes that “our beloved old U.S.A. is in a bad way” — it is a country divided by “race against race, right against left, believer against heathen.”
Percy’s society is visibly decaying. America’s great cities have fallen into disrepair: wolves roam the streets of Cleveland; motorists abandon broken-down cars along the roadside; roads and sidewalks crack as weeds and vines creep through the ruins of civic life.
The novel unfolds in Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. More lives in Paradise Estates, a wealthy, heavily guarded enclave, whose residents divide between religious traditionalists and scientific progressives. He practices medicine locally while conducting research in nearby Fedville, a federally funded sector where scientists seek to understand the nature of man.
Beyond the ordered world of laboratories and gated neighborhoods lies a neglected social wilderness. Bordering Feliciana Parish is a swamp inhabited by hippies, social castoffs, and Bantu fighters — black Marxist revolutionaries living on the margins of society. No one appears interested in reintegrating them into any genuine civic or moral community. Their presence, lingering at the edge of federal power and upper-class comfort, casts an ominous shadow over a civilization in decline.
For More’s Fedville colleagues, scientific materialism provides the only legitimate account of man. Human freedom, love, courage, hatred, violence, and the capacity for self-destruction — all are dismissed as pathologies or relics of a less enlightened age. Religion survives only as the residue of humanity’s intellectual adolescence. At Fedville’s “Love Clinic,” even sexuality is reduced to stimulus and response, a set of impulses to be studied, managed, and ultimately mastered.
More’s own invention reflects the telos of this project: the “Ontological Lapsometer,” a device purportedly capable of detecting the psychic imbalances tearing apart “the soul of Western man.” It measures electrical activity in the brain and promises to quantify anxiety, rage, lust, and despair, offering a scientific diagnosis — and eventually a supposed treatment — for such afflictions. Percy uses the lapsometer to expose the technocratic temptation to treat moral and metaphysical disorder as if it were merely an engineering problem, even when his fictional diagnostician knows better.
For More ultimately stands apart from the technocratic worldview. A kind of Renaissance man, he possesses a grounding not only in science but also in religion, history, and the tragic dimensions of politics. Unlike the ideological partisans who surround him, he understands how political movements become dangerous when detached from the realities of human nature.
Yet More remains embedded in his society: He has family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances on both sides of the novel’s cultural divide. He observes that “most Americans do well enough,” and on the surface, he doesn’t “notice a great deal of difference” between the two warring ideological camps. His Right-wing neighbors descend into “unseasonable rages, delusions of conspiracies, high blood pressure, and large-bowel complaints,” while his Left-wing neighbors “contract sexual impotence, morning terror, and a feeling of abstraction of the self from itself.”
The gated community that More calls home includes residents from both the Right and the Left, making it one of the few places in the novel where coexistence survives. More recognizes that, while his Fedville colleagues cannot grasp the full measure of the human person, his reactionary neighbors relegate man no less aggressively to a political instrument. Both sides reduce the person to ideology.
On the Right, political and religious commitments merge into a suffocating orthodoxy. Partisan loyalty becomes so intense that believers abandon churches that refuse to conform to the latest ideological demands. The Catholic Church has splintered into rival wings. One “believes in relevance but not God.” Another plays the “Star-Spangled Banner” during Mass and champions “property rights and the integrity of neighborhoods.” Rather than transcending political division, religion itself becomes captive to it, as man’s longing for God, forgiveness, and peace is bent toward ideological conflict.
More, however, remains within the official Roman Catholic Church. He attends Mass in the old slave quarters, where the local parish has retreated into humbler surroundings. A self-described “bad Catholic” at the novel’s outset, More ultimately finds in faith the means to endure the death of his daughter from cancer, the collapse of his marriage, and alcoholism. As a coda reveals, he remarries, has children, recommits himself to medicine, and — most important — learns to love and forgive others, something that had long eluded him.
Political violence and assassinations have become almost routine in the America of &#8220;Love in the Ruins.&#8221; More observes that his mother predicted four of the last five assassinations and concludes that American democracy is not long for this world. He sees these recurring eruptions of violence as signs of profound disrepair. As citizens lose any shared understanding of themselves and one another, violence becomes a tonic — a path toward self-recognition through an emphatic release of passion in service to ideology. Citizens no longer react to aggression by trying to improve society. Instead, they mentally bypass the violence, refusing to reflect on its ominous implications.
“Don’t tell me the U.S.A. went down the drain because of leftism, apostasy, pornography, polarization, etcetera, etcetera,” More perceptively reflects. “All these things may have happened, but what finally tore it was that things stopped working and nobody wanted to be a repairman.” Many point to single causes or grand explanations for America’s problems, but More looks around his family, town, workplace, and parish and instinctively understands why society is cracking up: ideological groups exaggerate partial truths while overlooking the deeper bonds that hold a society together.
Much of the novel’s diagnosis turns on Percy’s broader theological and anthropological project, which sees man as an in-between being, suspended between God and the beasts. Human consciousness makes us uniquely aware of the possibilities of freedom, autonomy, intimacy, and misery. Yet the very qualities that distinguish man from the clockwork-determined universe also allow him to lose himself in ways no other creature can. Only man wonders about himself and others, longs to know what is true and real, and creates symbols to interpret reality. And only man descends into alienation, loneliness, depression, and madness.
Is citizenship possible once we lose the signs, clues, and mystery of who we are? A recurring theme is that if man exists between angels and beasts, he must avoid the twin temptations of “angelism” and “bestialism.” Angelism abstracts the person from both self and world. It is the disposition of the ideologue, though Percy uses the concept more broadly to illuminate what it means to live as an embodied human being. Rather than seeing the dense web of memory, family, community, and attachment that shapes human life, the angelist imposes theory upon a world treated as an experiment.
More observes that adherents of angelism become captive to abstract visions of how humanity and society ought to be organized, regardless of reality. Their ideals become the lens through which they interpret the world. Several key characters in the novel embody this tendency.
One example is Uru, a former black studies professor and athlete who leads the Bantu revolutionaries and seeks to build a socialist order from the ashes of a corrupt, capitalist, racist society. He captures More at gunpoint — but More’s life is spared by a black church deacon whom Uru mocks for showing compassion toward his supposed enslavers. From this near-death episode, More concludes that ideological commitments can justify terrible violence and scapegoating. For both More and Percy, what matters most is what binds man to love and responsibility: community, faith, and family. The church deacon possesses these things; Uru despises them.
We can describe man’s bestial aspect as a descent into desire and primitivism, in which we cease to see ourselves as persons and citizens but only as members of a tribe or collective. In &#8220;Love in the Ruins,&#8221; reactionary citizens profess religious belief, but politics becomes primary. Faith plays only a supporting role. Percy’s America features a Mormon president and a Southern Baptist vice president, both committed to a religious-nationalist ideology and convinced that their political enemies must be destroyed.
&#8220;Love in the Ruins&#8221; ends curiously. It offers no real resolution to the creeping social disorder and violence. Bantu guerrillas continue organizing for revolution, while a devious federal agent, getting hold of More’s invention, manipulates the local population toward orgiastic brutality. More collapses and awakens several days later beside Ellen, his loyal clinic nurse and eventually his new wife. She assures him that little has happened and that life has largely returned to normal. The murders that punctuate the novel turn out to have been committed by the “Love Community,” a collection of swamp tribes ignored by wider society. They profess belief in freedom (license), love (casual sex), and environmentalism elevated above the human person. In them, angelism and bestialism merge.
In later remarks on the novel, Percy said: “What interested me is what can happen in a free society in which Orwell and Huxley have carried the day &#8230;. For this novel deals not with the takeover of a society by tyrants or computers or whatever, but rather with the increasing malaise and finally the falling apart of a society which remains, on the surface at least, democratic and pluralistic.” Percy suggests that liberal democracy can conceal a deeper disorder of man. The regime has long depended on the moral inheritance of biblical religion and the virtues necessary for human flourishing. Yet it cannot easily restore those virtues once they erode. When modern ideologies discard the religious and classical understanding of the person, liberal democracy offers little guidance about what should replace it.
Percy’s analysis applies readily to America’s disordered condition today. The novel’s memorable opening, though written more than a half century ago, speaks in an apocalyptic register that sounds familiar:
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last?
Two more hours should tell the story. One way or the other. Either I am right and a catastrophe will occur, or it won’t and I’m crazy. In either case, the outlook is not so good.</blockquote>
Many Americans in 2026 seem to be operating at a similar pitch. Many of our most influential citizens have embraced angelism. The dominant intellectual tendency combines radical individual autonomy with social and economic collectivism, both requiring an expansive federal state guided by progressive ideology. This worldview often speaks as if loneliness and social fragmentation are problems of management or neurological adjustment, as though Percy’s lapsometer had escaped the novel.
We also see a bestial tendency emerging within parts of the new Right, where religion and politics fuse into an identity seemingly immune to persuasion or compromise. Figures such as Nick Fuentes represent a strain of thought influential in some right-wing circles. Conspiracy, isolationism, and, increasingly, antisemitism become elements of a pseudo-Christian politics that ignites fury online and in public life.
If we leave Percy’s fictional America and turn to our own, we find a nation deeply divided and increasingly incapable of civic trust. America remains a constitutional republic, but more as a fading habit than a confidently sustained achievement. A <a href="https://www.commentary.org/articles/abe-greenwald/trust-crisis-in-america" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2023 Pew Research Center survey</a> found that 58% of Americans believed that life was better 50 years earlier. Yet 1973 marked nearly the end of one of the country’s most violent and destabilizing periods. In 1971–72, the FBI recorded roughly 2,500 domestic bombings, nearly five per day. Violent crime today remains well below the levels reached in the late 1960s and 1970s. Still, the comparison is unsettling.
The first decades of this century have also been turbulent: unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential impeachment battles, the investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, and a COVID-era public-health regime that dramatically expanded state authority. The pandemic, in particular, fostered distrust by teaching Americans to regard neighbors as potential threats. Vaccines became, for many, instruments of social and economic coercion, with some citizens facing loss of employment if they refused them. Later revelations that officials in the Biden administration pressured social-media companies to suppress dissenting information deepened public suspicion.
The skepticism extends beyond government into ordinary relationships. Americans once understood politics as a sphere distinct from friendship, religion, family, and work. That separation has eroded. A widely cited 2020 Pew study found that nearly half the country had stopped speaking to someone because of political disagreements.
Political violence has followed. During the 2024 campaign, Trump survived two assassination attempts, one missing him by less than half an inch. Had either succeeded, the consequences for the country would likely have been catastrophic, convincing many Americans that political force, not persuasion or elections, had become the decisive instrument of power.
Nor were these isolated incidents. The 2017 shooting of Republican congressmen during a baseball practice, the attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the murders of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conservative activist Charlie Kirk, and the murders and shootings of Minnesota lawmakers and their families all reveal a political culture increasingly drawn toward purification through violence. Add to this the rise in antisemitic attacks, school shootings, and ideological extremism, and Percy’s warnings no longer appear distant or exaggerated.
The United States sometimes seems like the kind of society that Percy described: one in which citizens struggle to trust one another or practice the ordinary habits of self-government. The deeper cause is not merely polarization but the triumph of ideological and paranoid politics among citizens who have abandoned the richer moral anthropology on which our American constitutional order once depended.
Much contemporary political thought either dismisses this constitutional framework or quietly transfers sovereignty to an administrative class that distributes rights and privileges according to its own moral priorities. In doing so, it reduces political life to two actors: the isolated individual and the state. In &#8220;Democracy in America,&#8221; Alexis de Tocqueville warns that this democratic tendency will weaken liberty and normalize the soft despotism of an egalitarian administrative order.
What America requires instead is a prudent restoration of constitutional self-government and the common good through the symbols, principles, and inherited practices that Americans still share. Yet we continue down the opposite path, toward resentment and perpetual reaction. Citizens increasingly lack the humility and decency necessary for honest disagreement, and political settlements therefore do not endure. Ideological parties, plebiscitary elections, overactive presidents, and an increasingly unbounded judiciary produce a politics of continual escalation.
We need repairmen, but it is not clear that anyone still wants the job.
***
<a href="https://www.city-journal.org/person/richard-m-reinsch" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Richard M. Reinsch II</a> is editor in chief of the Civitas Institute’s Civitas Outlook and the founding editor of Law &amp; Liberty.
This is republished with permission from City Journal. The original can be read <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/walker-percy-novel-love-in-the-ruins">here</a>.
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Walker Percy’s Prophetic Vision

american culture

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love in the ruins

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The Republican college students who shared a photo of a student celebrating the anniversary of Charlie Kirk&#8217;s assassination are no longer facing disciplinary action from the University of Utah. 
“Based on the review, I do not believe there are grounds to charge you for a violation of University policy,” an email from a member of the University’s Dean’s Office read. “I will be formally dismissing the case against you and ensuring there is no record in your University file,&#8221; ABC4 <a href="https://www.abc4.com/news/education/university-utah-dismisses-doxxing-kirkiversary-cake/">reported</a>. 
The students, Rylie Barnes and Riley Beesley, <a href="https://x.com/rileybeesley/status/2100017136592896252">said</a> they were facing threats of expulsion after they shared a photo of another student holding a cake that read “Happy Kirkiversary.” Beesley is the College Republican chairman, and Barnes is the College Republican vice president at the university.
Beesley <a href="https://x.com/rileybeesley/status/2100017136592896252">said</a> that the student, Sara Larsen, came up to their young College Republicans booth &#8220;voluntarily&#8221; and “posed for pictures holding her cake mocking Charlie Kirk’s assassination.” On Tuesday, Beesley <a href="https://x.com/rileybeesley/status/2100017136592896252?s=20">shared</a> an email from the University of Utah’s Dean’s Office that accused him of “attempting to doxx another University of Utah student over a political issue.” Barnes received a similar message. 
Barnes shared the image from her personal X account on September 10 with the caption, “What is wrong with students in Utah?” The post amassed over 6.4 million views. 
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What is wrong with students in Utah?? <a href="https://t.co/KBu0jTQErx">pic.twitter.com/KBu0jTQErx</a>
— Rylie (@Rylieparis05) <a href="https://x.com/Rylieparis05/status/2098155405050581419?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2026</a></blockquote>
The school’s College Democrats Chapter issued a <a href="https://x.com/uofutahdems/status/2098894426496012292">statement </a>calling on the university “to create an environment where students can interact without fearing for their safety, and to impose consequences on those who encourage and participate in this behavior.” The chapter said Larsen has faced “thousands of hateful comments doxing her and her family, targeting her appearance, and trying to ruin her life.” 
The chapter also said Larsen issued an apology but now “fears for her family’s safety,” has had to “delete several of her accounts,” and is “unable to go to campus.” The College Democrats chapter reportedly <a href="https://x.com/Rylieparis05/status/2100750179058213352">deleted</a> their Instagram account after the students’ cases were dropped. The chapter also organized a protest and a <a href="https://x.com/Rylieparis05/status/2100750179058213352">petition</a> to &#8220;Stop Rylie Barnes.&#8221; 
Utah Senator Mike Lee rushed to the conservative students&#8217; defense when the controversy erupted, <a href="https://x.com/rileybeesley/status/2100795544436347092">saying</a>, “I cannot believe this is even on the table.” Lee added, “If these two get expelled by the University of Utah, I’ll hire both of them — and then help them find schools where they can complete their degrees without fears of political persecution.” 
Beesley thanked the X community for helping get the case dismissed. “We took down the University of Utah,” Beesley <a href="https://x.com/rileybeesley/status/2100667366963400816">shared</a>. “Case fully dismissed because of the outcry on X.” 
Barnes <a href="https://x.com/Rylieparis05/status/2100653232372711920">echoed</a> the statement: “My case is fully dismissed. This wouldn’t have happened without the outpour of support we received online. Thank you!”

University Of Utah Dismisses Misconduct Investigation Sparked By Charlie Kirk Anniversary Cake Controversy

University Drops Doxxing Case Against Students Who Exposed Twisted Charlie Kirk Stunt

campus free speech

college republicans

mike lee

politics

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The family of Charlie Kirk is taking legal action against Utah Valley University, claiming “a series of stunning failures and reckless decisions” by the university and the State of Utah created a foreseeable danger to Kirk and ultimately led to his &#8220;entirely preventable&#8221; murder.
“Charlie Kirk was violently and publicly assassinated while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University (UVU),” Brett Parkinson, counsel for the Kirk family, said in a statement sent to The Daily Wire. “His murder was entirely preventable and, in fact, would not have happened had the State of Utah and UVU followed through on their stated security promises, which included protecting the rooftops surrounding the quad where Charlie was speaking.”
A Notice of Claim reviewed by The Daily Wire names the State of Utah, Utah Valley University, the Utah Valley University Police Department, UVU Police Chief Jeffrey Long, then-UVU President Astrid Tuminez, and others. It is not a lawsuit, but it preserves the Kirk family’s right to pursue legal action against the university and other parties.
In one of the most significant allegations, UVU police were specifically warned by Turning Point USA about accessible rooftops near where Kirk was scheduled to speak, and UVU signaled that it had addressed the security, though it did not.
TPUSA received a message from a student warning that there was “student roof access pretty close to where [Charlie Kirk] will be set up” at the Sorensen Student Center and noted that staircases led to walkways on the roof, the filing details. When a TPUSA official passed the warning to UVU Police Chief Jeffrey Long and asked whether the area could be secured, or whether a member of Kirk’s security team could cover it, Long responded: “I got you covered.”
The shooter, though, later accessed a nearby rooftop and fired the fatal shot at Kirk. The FBI has released video showing the shooter climbing onto a rooftop before the shooting and fleeing across the roof afterward.
<div id="attachment_1129775" style="width: 772px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1129775" class="wp-image-1129775 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/GettyImages-2234095376.jpg" alt="Charlie Kirk speaks at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025 in Orem, Utah. Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, was speaking at his &quot;American Comeback Tour&quot; when he was shot in the neck and killed." width="762" height="501" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/GettyImages-2234095376.jpg 762w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/GettyImages-2234095376-300x197.jpg 300w" sizes=" (max-width: 762px) 100vw, 762px" />Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images</div>
Neglecting rooftop security is particularly shocking in light of the political environment at the time, the notice says. &#8220;Mr. Kirk’s visit occurred when political violence had hit a fever pitch,&#8221; it reads. &#8220;Famously, President Trump was shot by a rooftop sniper during the 2024 presidential campaign.&#8221;
&#8220;Another would-be assassin of President Trump was intercepted on a golf course only two months later,&#8221; the filing says. &#8220;Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s husband was brutally attacked in their California home. And a state legislator and her husband were ruthlessly murdered in their home in Minnesota. It was in this environment political danger that the UVU Parties chose to host Charlie and the Tour.&#8221;
The notice also alleges several additional failures surrounding the event, including the university’s decision to assign only six campus police officers to an outdoor event attended by roughly 3,000 people, despite requests for additional officers. Long confirmed after the shooting that six officers were assigned to the event, along with some plainclothes officers and Kirk’s private security team.
There was also no real-time CCTV monitoring, according to the notice, which is significant given that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lprx8-BnL9o">video</a> later showed the shooter moving across a rooftop before the attack. The filing argues that real-time monitoring could have alerted security personnel to the threat and prevented the murder.
The notice further alleges that UVU did not deploy any drones to monitor surrounding rooftops, despite the security challenges presented by an outdoor event surrounded by elevated positions. UVU police also did not have a written security plan for the event and did not conduct a security briefing beforehand, the filing says.
There have also been <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2026/09/09/year-more-than-242k-later-uvu/">questions raised</a> about UVU’s own internal review of the security failures surrounding the assassination. UVU announced in September 2025 that it would conduct a comprehensive, independent review of its planning and response to the event, saying the findings would help improve campus safety. The review process, however, has taken months and has come with a significant price tag. By May 2026, UVU had spent $242,431 on the review, and it remains unclear how much more has been spent since then.
UVU&#8217;s new president, Jon Anderson, has publicly defended the usual delay, saying the school &#8220;wanted it to be as complete and correct as possible, rather than fast.”
<div id="attachment_971445" style="width: 900px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-971445" class="wp-image-971445 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Kirk-890x576.png" alt="" width="890" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Kirk-890x576.png 890w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Kirk-300x194.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Kirk-768x497.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Kirk.png 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 890px) 100vw, 890px" />Mrserikakirk/Instagram</div>
Parkinson said that the alleged failures by UVU “not only robbed Charlie Kirk of his life, but also robbed his family of their husband, father, son, and brother, with impacts that will compound for the rest of their lives.”
“Justice and accountability under the law are key tenets of the American judicial system,” he added.
The family has not specified a dollar amount for damages at this stage, but the notice indicates that potential damages could be substantial.

Political Activist Charlie Kirk Shot Dead At Utah Valley University

Charlie Kirk’s Family Reveals Chilling Warning Before His Assassination

Charlie Kirk Family Takes Legal Action Against Utah Valley University For Fatal Security Failures

assassination

turning point usa

utah valley university

Carnegie Mellon University has promised to take &#8220;swift action&#8221; against Dr. Uju Anya over social media posts that colleagues say left them concerned for their own safety.
&#8220;Dr. Uju Anya is currently on voluntary professional leave from the university and is not teaching courses on our campus this academic year. We are deeply concerned by recent hostile and threatening social media posts by Dr. Anya and are reviewing this matter closely,&#8221; the university said in a <a href="https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2026/september/carnegie-mellon-university-statement">statement</a> on Saturday. &#8220;To be clear: These posts incorrectly imply our university&#8217;s endorsement and are contrary to our community standards and values as well as our commitment to fostering a safe, respectful and welcoming campus community.&#8221;
The post that started the <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/carnegie-mellon-promises-swift-action-professor-uju-anya-social-media-posts">exchange</a> was an old one, originally shared by Anya in February of 2021, after the death of conservative radio legend Rush Limbaugh: &#8220;Rush Limbaugh finally did something positive in life by dropping dead. Good Riddance to bad rubbish.&#8221;
Someone found that post and responded to it on Friday, asking, &#8220;Weird how you only celebrate the deaths of white people. Why is that?&#8221;
Anya replied, &#8220;Die first, white man, then ask yourself why I’m dancing.&#8221;
That post then caught the attention of X owner Elon Musk, who replied, &#8220;This is a real professor at Carnegie Mellon University …&#8221;
When others responded as well, suggesting the university would likely be displeased with her comments, Anya said Carnegie Mellon fully supported her.
&#8220;Carnegie Mellon University knows exactly who they have. They poached me from my previous job, aggressively recruiting me with a massive salary and stellar benefits. So baby, run tell them they f*cked up, and see if they pick up your call,&#8221; she wrote in one post.
&#8220;Keep crying, loser,&#8221; she told another critic, again insinuating that she had the full support of the school. &#8220;My department chair just texted me saying they’re throwing all of your emails in the trash.&#8221;
Once Musk got involved, people started <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/09/14/us-news/carnegie-mellon-academic-on-leave-after-disturbing-x-posts-calling-for-white-man-to-die-while-she-dances/">looking more closely</a> at Anya&#8217;s account and found a number of troubling posts — including one that had previously sparked backlash against her.
In 2022, while Britain&#8217;s Queen Elizabeth II was dying, she posted, “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.&#8221;
She recognized the one-year anniversary of the late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk&#8217;s assassination by saying, &#8220;May he rot in piss.&#8221; She also shared a video of students mocking him as they danced through an apparent reenactment of Kirk&#8217;s murder.
Anya responded to the flurry of activity around her posts by doubling down on her own hateful statements and suggesting that she was the victim: &#8220;During an entire day of incessant violent threats, racist abuse, and harassment on Twitter — incited by fascist white supremacist MAGA trolls — I was doxxed &#8230; I meant every word I said in my tweets responding to white men and all others insulting and maligning me. I do not retract or apologize. May they all eat sh*t.&#8221;

Campus of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Prestigious University Responds After Professor Cheers ‘Dead White’ People

'Die First, White Man': Professor Lands In Hot Water Over Racist Social Media Posts

academic controversy

carnegie mellon university

elon musk

uju anya

A newly installed bronze statue of Charlie Kirk outside Turning Point USA&#8217;s Phoenix headquarters was vandalized with red paint just three days after its unveiling, Tyler Bowyer posted on X.
The eight-foot statue, sculpted by artist Quintin McCann, was unveiled Thursday, September 10, to coincide with the one-year anniversary of Kirk&#8217;s assassination at Utah Valley University. It depicts the late TPUSA founder tossing baseball caps into a crowd, wearing his signature &#8220;FREEDOM&#8221; T-shirt along with a cross necklace. The statue sits alongside a memorial that had grown since the unveiling with flowers, flags and handwritten tributes.
Phoenix police said they received reports of vandalism around 8 a.m. Sunday. Officers taped off the area and confirmed an investigation was underway, though no suspects had been identified as of Sunday afternoon.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I hope you are awake. <a href="https://t.co/7pblK0qy3W">pic.twitter.com/7pblK0qy3W</a>
— Tyler Bowyer (@tylerbowyer) <a href="https://x.com/tylerbowyer/status/2099184571036406002?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 13, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> 
Photos and videos posted by Bowyer, TPUSA&#8217;s COO, show red paint sprayed across the statue&#8217;s face, along with a frowning expression drawn on its torso. A nearby memorial poster bearing Kirk&#8217;s photo was also defaced, with a red X drawn over his face. Bowyer noted that the phrase &#8220;May Charlie be received into the merciful arms of Jesus, our loving Savior&#8221; had been altered, with &#8220;Jesus&#8221; crossed out and replaced with &#8220;Satan.&#8221;
&#8220;I hope you&#8217;re awake,&#8221; Bowyer captioned the images.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
It appears they wrote “Satan” after crossing out Jesus. <a href="https://t.co/tJENYb9u7D">pic.twitter.com/tJENYb9u7D</a>
— Tyler Bowyer (@tylerbowyer) <a href="https://x.com/tylerbowyer/status/2099186995084066879?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 13, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> 
Bowyer separately tagged Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and suggesting her campaign would either stay silent or issue a statement condemning the act.
Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) called the vandalism &#8220;truly abhorrent&#8221; in an X post, adding that &#8220;the left is intolerant and militant&#8221; and that &#8220;evil exists and must be confronted continuously.&#8221;
The incident follows a separate act of vandalism at the same site in September 2025, when a man was arrested after trampling a makeshift memorial to Kirk in the days following his death. Turning Point USA has been led by Kirk&#8217;s widow, Erika Kirk, as CEO and board chair since his killing.

Charlie Kirk Statue Unveiled On Anniversary Of Killing

Charlie Kirk Statue Defaced With Red Paint After Unveiling

katie hobbs

phoenix

vandalism

One year ago today, our friend Charlie Kirk was brutally murdered live on camera while debating public policy at a public university. 
He was shot in the neck; he bled out in front of all of us. We all remember it. His murderer was a militant gay man in a relationship with a trans furry. The motives were perfectly clear, and the evidence was perfectly clear.
What should have happened next was just as clear. Political reunification on the Right around core principles. United opposition to left-wing violence, maybe a religious revival. 
None of that happened.
Whatever expectations we all had for what would happen next were largely thwarted. What&#8217;s truly incredible is that what wrecked those expectations was a campaign against Erika Kirk, his wife, because people decided it was imperative to destroy Erika as a human being and destroy TPUSA as an organization for their own nefarious political purposes.
The fact that Erika has had to go through all of this while simultaneously heading up TPUSA — and by all of this I don&#8217;t just mean the grief; I mean the insane desire by some to destroy her or to destroy TPUSA — demonstrates the moral limits of many people in the so-called conservative movement who were never really part of the conservative movement, who are out for themselves and wish to tear down rather than to build it up again.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-show-ep-2504?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
It was perfectly obvious almost immediately, the minute that I had heard that Charlie had been shot, that the person who shot him was likely to be a part of the radical trans movement. Charlie was not wildly offensive to a huge variety of people — he said some controversial things from time to time on matters ranging from criminal justice to the nature of Islam.
But the people who were the most agitated about Charlie Kirk were radical trans activists because, as I said at the time, there&#8217;s a permission structure for violence that is implicit in the trans radical ideology. The basic idea is that if you say a man is a man and a woman is a woman, you are “erasing” them.
Thus it was not a tremendous shock that Tyler Robinson ended up being the murderer; it was perfectly obvious who was behind this from the very beginning.
But what should have happened here? There should have been a political coming-together — at the very least — around basic principles of free speech. That is what Charlie was famous for. He was best known for his debates on college campuses and for being a free-speech advocate. 
Some people try to portray Charlie as some sort of radical, insane, nasty person. That never came from him. So what should have happened was for people to come together against those who wish to destroy the body politic. 
What also should have happened was a religious revival. Charlie openly talked about the importance of his faith. 
After Charlie&#8217;s assassination, there was what can best be termed a gigantic religious revival tent meeting for his memorial. I was privileged to be there. 
If what you were looking for was some level of political reunification against political violence, against permission structures for violence, or even on the Right more broadly, a religious revival, people returning to church, a principled rebuilding of the social fabric that Charlie actually cared about — what that did require was borders. 
That’s because people who tear apart that social fabric, or people who were not part of that movement, or people who took advantage of that movement from the inside, needed to be stopped.
But not long after this, things started to fall apart. A couple of months after his death, I spoke at the TPUSA event where I said that personal feeling is not a substitute for moral judgment, that politics is not the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants; politics is about principle. That if you&#8217;re willing to sacrifice basic truth and simple principle in favor of emotional solidarity, you have betrayed your fundamental duty to the American people. 
TPUSA is alive and well. There are lots of great things happening, but the promise of the moment was destroyed by people like Candace Owens, who has spent literally the entire year since the tragedy going after TPUSA and Erika Kirk and promoting wild, insane conspiracies with regard to pretty much everybody. Megyn Kelly defended her and still defends her. 
Tucker Carlson, of course, engaged in precisely the same sort of stuff. He laughed with Jimmy Dore about conspiracy theories surrounding Charlie Kirk, then went on to mock Erika Kirk for her incorrect grieving. 
This gave the Left permission to do the same. For a brief moment in time, the Left had to denounce political violence and say they were upset about Charlie&#8217;s death. That all went away because members of the Right decided to make it okay. 
And so now what do we get? We get comedian Druski mocking Erika Kirk in a clip that had almost 200 million views on X alone. Candace Owens then did a clip laughing about how wonderful this was.
This is what happened in America. Political unity was never part of this either, because it turned out that the exact same people who were promoting insane, hideous conspiracies are the ones who have openly declared that they&#8217;re not part of the conservative movement.
It wasn&#8217;t a matter of people like me saying they weren&#8217;t part of the movement and pointing out the truth. It was they themselves saying they were not part of the movement. Since that day, Tucker Carlson has declared himself no longer part of the GOP and called Trump the Antichrist. Candace Owens suggested that satanic Zionists were occupying the White House, and Congress needs to move to have the mad king Trump removed. 
Megyn Kelly declared with podcast host Sean Ryan that the GOP had betrayed the American people and that all it had left were Epstein fans. 
If you wanted the unity to last, if you wanted a spiritual revival, if you wanted all those things, it required you to draw borders, because it turns out those borders will be drawn for you in any case.
But here is the primary issue as we move forward: In the end, if you want a conservative future, you need a set of conservative principles. And those must be built on basic truth and decency. 
If you don&#8217;t have truth and decency, you can&#8217;t build a conservative movement. You can’t build such a movement around anything else.
You cannot. 
It is not possible.

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How We Failed The Test Charlie Kirk Left Behind

candace owens

erika kirk

tucker carlson

The White House posted an emotional tribute video honoring Charlie Kirk’s legacy on the anniversary of the conservative activist&#8217;s assassination.
The video <a href="https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2098019134411874305">posted</a> on Thursday morning comes exactly one year after Kirk was shot at Utah Valley University by a man investigators say was motivated by his far-Left views. Kirk, the founder of activist organization Turning Point USA, was a close ally of President Donald Trump and instrumental in Trump&#8217;s election victory in 2024. 
“One year ago, we tragically lost a fearless patriot. A champion for freedom and for our country,” the White House posted on social media. “Charlie Kirk changed the course of American history. His courage, conviction, and love of country will never be forgotten.”
The video posted by the White House included footage and audio from Kirk’s speeches across the country. 
“You know you are part of something bigger than yourself. You know that you are part of the most exciting, diverse, powerful movement in the history of this country. This movement is about the citizens versus the oligarchs,” Kirk is heard saying in the video. “This movement is about we the people versus the ruling class. This movement is about America versus the globalists. This movement is about all of us against them.” 
Trump also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/we-will-not-let-them-win-trump-gives-emotional-tribute-to-charlie-kirk?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=‘We+Will+Not+Let+Them+Win’%3A+Trump+Gives+Emotional+Tribute+To+Charlie+Kirk">honored</a> Kirk during his speech Wednesday night at the Republican Midterm Convention in Texas.
“One year ago tomorrow, a far-Left extremist assassinated my great friend and conservative voice Charlie Kirk because Charlie Kirk spoke the truth,” Trump said. “What shocked millions of Americans was not only the fact that Charlie was murdered, as bad as it was, but also how many people made an excuse for it or cheered for it. They were cheering, some people, sick people.”  
Tributes to Kirk poured in Thursday from other top White House officials. 
“Charlie Kirk had a unique gift for articulating the good — the goodness of family, faith, and America. One year ago today, he was killed for it,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio <a href="https://x.com/SecRubio/status/2098028266770542859">posted</a>. “We’ll honor his legacy by building great things and holding to account the enemies of civilization.”
Attorney General Todd Blanche said Kirk inspired millions through his activism. 
“One year ago, our nation witnessed pure evil when Charlie Kirk was taken from us. Charlie was a fearless advocate for his beliefs, a devoted husband and father, and a man whose faith and love of country inspired millions of Americans,” Blanche <a href="https://x.com/AGToddBlanche/status/2098026776618307813">said</a>. “Our thoughts and prayers remain with Erika, their children, and the entire Kirk family. His legacy will live on.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth focused on Kirk’s devout Christian faith. 
“A year ago, we lost the incredible Charlie Kirk. His courage, conviction, and unwavering faith left a generational impact — and ignited a spiritual revival — inside our great Republic,” he <a href="https://x.com/SecWar/status/2098026297045794842">said</a>. “We will never forget Charlie, but take great refuge in the fact that he is with his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump Holds Rally In Glendale, Arizona

WATCH: White House Honors ‘Fearless Patriot’ Charlie Kirk

donald trump

white house

A year ago, my friend Charlie Kirk was shot and killed just feet from me.
Millions knew Charlie as one of the most influential voices of his generation. He built a movement, mobilized young people, challenged institutions, and refused to accept the idea that Christians should keep their convictions safely tucked inside church walls.
I knew that Charlie too. But I also knew him as a friend, a student, and as someone I came to love like a son.
Our friendship began in 2020, when Charlie asked me to mentor him in Christian apologetics. I often joke that it can be hard to mentor somebody smarter than you. But not Charlie — because the only thing that exceeded his intellect was his humility.
In fact, despite being twice Charlie’s age, I think I learned more from him than he ever learned from me. Charlie didn’t teach simply through what he knew, but through how he lived. His intellect was remarkable and his work ethic relentless, but both were driven by something deeper: a hunger to know and serve God, a fierce love for his family, and an unwavering hope for his country.
Depending on which side of the algorithmic bubble your social media scrolling landed you on, Charlie was either a courageous voice for truth and reason or a hateful, bigoted fascist. He was, admittedly, a rather peculiar kind of “fascist”: one who routinely put himself in harm’s way by walking onto hostile college campuses, handing his opponents a microphone and inviting them to the front of the line.
Because if there’s one thing Mussolini was famous for, it was his tireless enthusiasm for open microphones and hostile questions. (News flash: The leftist who shot Charlie is the fascist!)
Despite his youth, Charlie possessed a wisdom that seemed well beyond his years. He understood that if you genuinely love people and want to reach them with the truth, you had to be willing to make yourself vulnerable. And that takes courage.
Charlie spoke often about courage because he believed it was one of the few virtues available to absolutely everyone. It requires no special talent, no money, no status, and no connections. You don’t have to be born with it or wait until you feel brave enough to use it. Courage is simply a choice: to show up, stand firm, and speak the truth even when you know you’ll be challenged, misunderstood, mocked, hated, or maybe even murdered.
That was a choice Charlie made every day, and it cost him his life.
Just days before his death, Charlie and I took what would become our final long walk together. I didn’t know it was our last. If I had, I probably would have walked a lot slower. That night, Charlie wasn’t talking about his fame, his platform, or what he had already accomplished. He was thinking about the future and the three institutions God established to help that future flourish: the family, the church, and the government.
That conversation captured Charlie remarkably well. For all he had already accomplished, his mind was fixed on the generation coming behind him. He worried that young people, particularly young women, had grown disillusioned with the beauty of marriage, family, and children, and he wrestled with how to remind people that those things are still worth aspiring to.
He had spent years laboring alongside the church, urging pastors to be bold and to equip their congregations not only in matters of salvation, but in matters of culture too, about which, inconveniently for those who would prefer Christianity remain safely confined to Sunday mornings, Scripture has quite a lot to say.
And he dreamed about the America his children would inherit. An America that remembered the Christian roots of its past and recognized that our rights are not gifts bestowed upon us by governments, but from the author of reality himself. The one to whom we owe those audacious ideas of life, liberty, and justice.
Charlie spent his life defending reality and its author. In the end, he became a casualty in the war. But he did not lose it.
A bullet can end a life. It cannot make a lie true. And death does not get the final word over someone who belongs to Christ. The murderer only managed to change Charlie’s address, while motivating thousands to come to Jesus.
Today, Charlie is absent from the body but present with the Lord. And while I long for the day when I will see my friend again, those of us still here have work to do.
For 365 days and counting, his spirit-guided wife, Erika, his faithful friends, and his devoted Turning Point family have honored Charlie not merely by remembering what he did, but by continuing what he started. Together, they have chosen to build rather than destroy, to focus rather than distract, and to defend truth, family, faith, and country even when it costs them something. I pray you have made the same choice.
Charlie once said that, for everything he accomplished, he wanted to be remembered above all for two things: his courage and his faith in Jesus Christ. One year later, that is how I remember him.
***
Frank Turek is coauthor of “The War on Reality” and was a good friend and mentor to Charlie Kirk.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

Charlie Kirk

Why Charlie Kirk’s Faith And Courage Still Define A Generation

christianity

President Donald Trump honored Charlie Kirk ahead of the one-year mark of the conservative activist&#8217;s assassination. 
The recognition took place during Trump’s speech at the Republican Midterm Convention Wednesday night as the president said that Kirk’s killing exposed the radical Left. Kirk was shot on September 10, 2025, while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University. 
“One year ago tomorrow, a far-Left extremist assassinated my great friend and conservative voice Charlie Kirk because Charlie Kirk spoke the truth,” Trump said Wednesday night. “What shocked millions of Americans was not only the fact that Charlie was murdered, as bad as it was, but also how many people made an excuse for it or cheered for it. They were cheering, some people, sick people.”  
In the wake of the assassination, many leftists across the country, including high school teachers, local government workers, restaurant workers, and professors, all mocked or justified the shooting, suggesting that Kirk deserved to be killed because of his conservative views. 
“For a brief moment, the mask came off the radical Left, and you saw what they were really all about,” Trump said. “Now, those same people are trying to get power over you in this election, and they&#8217;re all voting Democrat, okay?  They&#8217;re all voting, every one of them, and you can&#8217;t let it happen. We will not let them win, and in Charlie&#8217;s honor, I just want to say we love you Charlie.”
Chants of “Charlie” broke out throughout the convention as Trump president acknowledged Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow. Erika, who recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-advice-usha-vance-gave-erika-kirk-after-charlies-death-still-guides-her-a-year-later?author=Amanda+Prestigiacomo&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=3&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=The+Advice+Usha+Vance+Gave+Erika+Kirk+After+Charlie%E2%80%99s+Death+Still+Guides+Her+A+Year+Later">spoke out</a> about navigating her grief one year after the incident, was seated next to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Erika was elected chair and CEO of Turning Point USA, the organization founded by Charlie, after her husband’s death. 
A judge ruled earlier this month that Tyler Robinson, the man accused of murdering Kirk, will stand trial on all seven charges he faces related to the killing including aggravated murder. If convicted, he faces the death penalty. 
Prosecutors point to evidence showing that Robinson sent messages accusing Kirk of spreading “too much hate” while bullet casings recovered by investigators were inscribed with “Hey fascist! CATCH!” and “If you read this, you are GAY Lmao.” Robinson, described by family members as liberal, was dating a transgender-identifying man at the time of the shooting.

US-POLITICS-SHOOTING-KIRK

‘We Will Not Let Them Win’: Trump Gives Emotional Tribute To Charlie Kirk

tyler robinson

Jimmy Kimmel’s 24-year run in late-night television may end next year, according to a report that ABC is flatly denying. 
<a href="https://pagesix.com/2026/09/08/entertainment/jimmy-kimmels-late-night-show-set-to-end-after-next-season-after-24-years/">Page Six</a> reported Tuesday that ABC does not plan to extend Kimmel&#8217;s contract after it expires in May 2027 and that the upcoming season of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” is expected to be the show’s last, citing sources familiar with the situation. 
“His contract is not getting extended,” one source told the outlet.
ABC pushed back on the report, saying it has not made a decision about the show&#8217;s future.
“This information is inaccurate — any reports about the future of the show at this point are purely speculative,” a network spokesman told Page Six.
Kimmel, 58, signed a one-year extension with Disney in December 2025 after his previous contract was set to expire in May 2026. He has maintained an unusual arrangement with ABC, frequently signing year-to-year contracts rather than the multiyear agreements common among major television hosts, giving him more flexibility as speculation about his eventual retirement continues.
If the Page Six report is accurate, Kimmel’s final episode would air in May 2027, bringing a run that began in January 2003.
The report surfaced as Kimmel prepares to return to ABC on Tuesday night following his summer hiatus. The network has scheduled Andrew Garfield and Joey King to join him for his return. ABC’s schedule confirms the show will continue to air at 11:35 p.m. throughout the week.
Kimmel&#8217;s potential departure follows a turbulent year for the late-night host. In September 2025, ABC <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/abc-pulls-jimmy-kimmels-late-night-show-indefinitely-after-charlie-kirk-comments?author=Tim+Pearce&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=ABC+Pulls+Jimmy+Kimmel%E2%80%99s+Late+Night+Show+%E2%80%98Indefinitely%E2%80%99+After+Charlie+Kirk+Comments">pulled</a> his show from the air following controversial remarks about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
ABC initially said the program would be preempted indefinitely before Kimmel returned to the air several days later.
Kimmel has also remained one of President Donald Trump’s most frequent critics in late-night television, while Trump has repeatedly called for ABC to take action against the comedian. The political dispute has continued into 2026, although the sources cited by Page Six reportedly do not believe politics is the reason for the alleged decision to end the show.
Instead, Page Six reported that cost-cutting and restructuring at Disney could be a factor. The company has undergone broader restructuring under Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro, including efforts to reduce costs.
Kimmel’s potential departure would come amid a broader shake-up in late-night television. CBS recently ended “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” another long-running program hosted by a comedian who has frequently targeted Trump and his administration.
&nbsp;

JIMMY KIMMEL

Jimmy Kimmel May Be Running Out Of Late Nights

disney

jimmy kimmel

jimmy kimmel live

late night television

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-rules-on-charlie-kirk-assassination-trial-death-penalty" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Erika Kirk</a> says the advice she received from second lady Usha Vance the day after her husband, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated continues to guide her as she navigates her grief nearly a year later.
Kirk opened up about the past year in a New York Times essay <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/07/opinion/erika-kirk-grief-faith.html">published</a> Monday, reflecting on the pain of losing her husband while raising their two young children and learning how to move forward without him.
In the immediate aftermath of Charlie’s death, Kirk said she told Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance, that she did not know how she was going to get through it. The second lady took her hand and offered an analogy that Kirk says has been “seared” into her heart.
“You know when you’re on an airplane with your kids, and you’re going to land in 15 minutes, but the kids are going crazy, screaming, throwing things, and then the plane lands, and the kids relax, and everything is fine again?” Vance told her. “That’s how it will be. Just get through the next 15 minutes.”
Kirk previously shared the exchange publicly during Charlie’s memorial service last year, when she described Vance as a “precious woman” and said the words were “exactly what I needed to hear.”
In the year since Charlie’s assassination, Kirk said the meaning of that advice has changed.
“At first, I needed to survive the next 15 minutes. Over time, I’ve realized that Charlie would want me to live them,” she wrote.
Kirk described the waves of grief that have continued to hit during birthdays, holidays, and ordinary moments around the home she once shared with her husband. But she said she has learned that grief and joy can exist at the same time.
“I can miss him with every part of me and still laugh with our children,” Kirk wrote. “I can have a broken heart and still experience joy.”
“If you are living through grief, I won’t tell you what to feel or that tomorrow will be better than today,” she wrote. “I will tell you what a dear friend told me: Just get through the next 15 minutes.”
“One day, maybe when you least expect it,” Kirk continued, “you’ll start to see that those 15 minutes hold more than just grief. The grief is there, always, but so is the beautiful gift of life.”
Kirk was thrust into the leadership of Turning Point USA immediately after her husband&#8217;s death, when the board appointed her CEO and chair. She has since worked to carry on the organization and Charlie&#8217;s legacy while raising their two children.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-rules-on-charlie-kirk-assassination-trial-death-penalty">Judge Rules On Charlie Kirk Assassination Trial, Death Penalty</a>

Erika and Charlie Kirk

The Advice Usha Vance Gave Erika Kirk After Charlie’s Death Still Guides Her A Year Later

The Advice Usha Vance Gave Erika Kirk After Charlie’s Death Still Guides Her a Year Later

usha vance

The trial of Lindsay Clancy, who has <a href="https://apnews.com/article/7c8ad75860dd849796af2d4a367bf7b7">admitted killing her three young children</a> but argues that severe mental illness left her not criminally responsible, has gripped the nation. Unlike the O.J. Simpson trial a generation ago, today’s trial watchers have the internet to seek out information and express their opinions. What is perplexing to many is the growing number of women who express support, not for the three precious souls whose lives Clancy ended, but for Clancy herself. Columnist Caitlin Flanagan <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/caitlin-flanagan-lindsay-clancy-mental-illness">writes, </a>“What began as admirable compassion for a woman has turned into something strange: an almost exultant, fan-like celebration of Lindsay Clancy.”
Something strange indeed. Yet the Clancy fan club — complete with online support groups and <a href="https://www.wbur.org/news/2026/08/20/hundreds-rally-plymouth-courthouse-support-lindsay-clancy-postpartum">crowds who show up outside the courthouse</a> dressed in pink to cheer her on — is not the only recent cohort of crazy. Luigi Mangione, the 28-year-old man who <a href="https://www.kcrg.com/2026/08/17/luigi-mangiones-state-murder-trial-postponed-indefinitely-amid-double-jeopardy-fight/">admitted in federal court</a> that he shot and killed UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson, has a growing legion of supporters. There is even a website where fans can learn how to send Luigi letters and read his statements. This, for a self-confessed killer who left a wife without a husband and two young boys without a father. And, of course, conspiracy theorists, egged on by Candace Owens’s rapid-fire theories, have tried to make alleged Charlie Kirk killer <a href="https://apnews.com/article/a70241ea50824c0b7ea5b53b9ed1c5f1">Tyler Robinson</a> a cult hero.
Then, on August 31, a woman armed with two knives randomly attacked two people in Times Square, killing Bank of America employee Erin Piacenti as she stood at a food cart. Piacenti, 32, was a young mother who had recently returned from maternity leave. Inexplicably, online ghouls celebrated her death for the crime of working for a bank. One Hollywood director even <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/filmmaker-cheers-death-bank-america-executive-luigi-mangione-meme">marked</a> the occasion with a Luigi meme.
High-profile murderers have always attracted prurient interest and fringe groupies. The Manson Family was <a href="https://people.com/charles-manson-followers-manson-family-what-to-know-12059893">linked to at least nine murders</a>, and Charles Manson maintained a small but rabid following. But today, a few cultural forces have brought us to the point where accused and admitted killers alike are lauded as heroes.
First, we live in an age of expressive individualism, a term popularized by sociologist Robert Bellah and his coauthors. It describes the belief that every person has an authentic self within and that the purpose of life is to discover and express that self. Identity, then, is not received from family, religion, tradition, or a moral order outside us. It is found by looking inward. Authenticity becomes a virtue. So the “real” Lindsay Clancy, according to her fans, is not the woman who strangled her children in a barbaric and torturous way, but the loving and caring mother underneath the act. And the blame falls not on Clancy but on the institutions that were supposed to protect her: her family, the pharmaceutical industry, and a society that demanded too much of her. There is no doubt that Clancy suffered severe mental anguish. But according to her fans, that anguish means she is not morally culpable for what she did.
There’s also this sort of gnostic desire to find “the real story” behind the story. Even though the evidence against Tyler Robinson appears substantial, and he has been ordered to stand trial, podcasters such as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/07/11/conspiracy-theories-about-charlie-kirks-death-are-still-raging-infuriating-friends/">Owens</a> feed the suspicion that the obvious story is a cover story. Robinson is, of course, entitled to the presumption of innocence. But conspiracy thrives when trust in human institutions is low. It provides a sort of comfort, an explanation for the evil of the age. No amount of contrary evidence can pierce the personal truths people choose to believe when those “truths” shape their preferred narratives. Convinced that Israel or a global cabal is really behind Kirk’s death, the believer turns Robinson into a sympathetic pawn, even a victim.
Tribalism, fueled by an oppressor-versus-oppressed view of justice, helps excuse violence when the killer — or alleged killer — is assigned to the right class. For Luigi, the cold-blooded shooting of a husband and father becomes righteous because he was taking on the healthcare industry, which his fans regard as the summation of all social evil. For Clancy’s fans, she is not morally culpable because the system — the mental-health industry, pharmaceutical companies, and her marriage — contains the real villains. If an act is committed by someone in the oppressed class against someone in the oppressor class, it becomes understandable, even justified. This is how a slain mother such as Piacenti moves from victim to villain when people discover that she worked for Bank of America, an unforgivable choice. The actual victims no longer have names. Their humanity is subsumed beneath the entity they supposedly represent. 
Expressive individualism and moral relativism, combined with the daily algorithmic churn that catechizes Americans into narrow tribes, blind people to the moral questions at the heart of these crimes. Empathy — the good instinct to see ourselves in others — becomes twisted and warped beyond the Golden Rule. The compassionate act of imagining someone’s plight turns into justifying that person’s decisions, regardless of his or her morality. <a href="https://www.wbur.org/news/2026/08/20/hundreds-rally-plymouth-courthouse-support-lindsay-clancy-postpartum">“Any one of us could be sitting in her chair,”</a> the Clancy supporters say. “I am Luigi,” his rabid fans declare, as if this killer stands for them in an epic social struggle. And conspiracists imagine they too could be Robinson, set up by a dark global cabal as a pawn in a larger war.
The swirling cross currents, amplified in our digital age, emerge as the loss of a moral consensus — rooted in America’s Judeo-Christian heritage — has left many people without fixed standards of good and evil. Relying on the inner self and sorted by society into our clans, we make truth relative and justice preferential.
The right response is both to recoil and resist. The horror we feel about the death of the innocent and those who cheer it reflects a rightly shaped moral conscience. We should refuse to accept the upside-down morality that turns victims into villains and the accused into heroes. Cora, Dawson, Callan, Brian Thompson, Charlie Kirk, and Erin Piacenti were not symbols of oppressive systems or supporting characters in somebody else’s grievance. They were human beings made in the image of God. Luigi Mangione, Lindsay Clancy, Tyler Robinson, and Pamela Cisneros are morally culpable for the acts they allegedly committed, and the state should hold them accountable. 
What’s more, we must point ourselves and others away from the online tribal circles that nurture our baser instincts and toward the true, the good, and the beautiful. The Christian story tells us both that evil is real and that it will not win. Light, the gospel of John declares, has come into the world, and the darkness has not overcome it. Instead of belonging built around grievance, spectacle, and death, the church offers community built around shared faith and the possibility of redemption. It causes us to see ourselves and our narratives not as central, but as part of a larger and eternal story.
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Daniel Darling is the director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Seminary, a columnist for World, and the author of several books, including his latest, “In Defense of Christian Patriotism.”
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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