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Some years ago, trying to understand what it might take to break America’s fever of political violence, I asked a former Justice Department official what she thought about the possibility of a second civil war in the United States.
Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor who has spent much of her career thinking about how to combat extremism, was worried about worsening political violence.

Sunil Pradhan / Anadolu / Getty
A protester carrying a Nepalese flag hangs a pirate flag as smoke and flames rise from the Singha Durbar, the seat of Nepal’s government, in Kathmandu, Nepal, on September 9, 2025.Ambir Tolang / NurPhoto / Getty
Young protesters demonstrate against corruption and the ban on social-media platforms by the government in Kathmandu, Nepal, on September 8, 2025.

Yesterday afternoon, at a Utah Valley University political event, hundreds of attendees watched the murder of 31-year-old Charlie Kirk, a conservative movement-builder and itinerant controversialist. Within hours, millions more had seen the gruesome video of the moment when, in mid-sentence, a bullet pierces Kirk’s throat and streams of blood issue forth. It did not look like a survivable wound, and I am sorry to say that it was not.

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This column generally focuses on how to become happier. But over the years, I’ve found that the questions I most often get from readers are less about getting happier and more about becoming less unhappy. People inquire about how to resolve relationship disputes, quit a job they hate, or deal with anxiety and sadness.

It’s hard to overstate just how much the conservative activist Charlie Kirk felt like family to many in Donald Trump’s inner circle, and to the president himself.
Kirk was close friends with Vice President J. D. Vance and with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., regularly texting on small-group threads with them and a coterie of young male aides and allies. He was a frequent and welcome presence at the White House and at Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club.

In December 2023, I spent half a minute with Charlie Kirk in the bowels of the Phoenix Convention Center. Turning Point USA, the youth organization that he founded in 2012 and built into a right-wing juggernaut, was holding its annual convention in the city that the Chicago-born Kirk had made his home. Tall and dark-haired, he was moving quickly with a group of aides through a crowd of admirers.

Whether the senior Hamas officials Israel tried to kill in a surprise missile strike in Doha yesterday are still alive is an open question. But the U.S.-brokered peace deal they were meeting to consider is almost certainly dead.
The diplomatic calculation is not difficult.
“When one party bombs the negotiating team of the other party, it’s hard to see a path forward,” Dana Shell Smith, the former U.S. ambassador to Qatar, told us.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk, the high-profile conservative activist, is apparently the latest in a string of terrifying acts of political violence in the United States. Real America’s Voice, which aired Kirk’s show, announced his death. He was 31.
Kirk was shot during an appearance at Utah Valley University, just north of Provo, Utah.

Early this morning, Russia sent a swarm of drones into Poland. The crisis of the NATO alliance that people on both sides of the Atlantic have been denying or trying to put off is now here: This is the moment when the world finds out whether the United States remains committed to the defense of its allies.
Ever since he began running for president, Donald Trump has been equivocal at best about America’s security commitments to Europe.