Bipartisan Unrest After Charlie Kirk’s Death: What Pres. Trump is Calling a ‘dark moment for America’

Charlie Kirk distributes ‘MAGA’ hats to the public before speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. Photo Credit: Tess Crowley/The Deseret News via AP

Charlie Kirk distributes ‘MAGA’ hats to the public before speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. Photo Credit: Tess Crowley/The Deseret News via AP

Sept. 11, 2025

White House flags have been lowered to half-staff per President Trump’s orders, in the stead of 9/11 and most recently, Wednesday’s shooting in Orem, Utah, that led to political activist Charlie Kirk’s death in what Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called a “political assassination.” Mr. Kirk’s death spurred a bipartisan opprobrium, with commentary from Republicans and Democrats alike rebuking the vicious act.

This is the latest in a string of assassination attempts made in the past year, with Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman, her husband and dog shot and killed in their home in June, the Pennsylvania governor’s home set aflame in April and President Trump shot during his presidential campaign last summer. However, Kirk’s killing marks the first of these attacks targeted at a political commentator. This realization begs the question: What precedent does this attack set for a nation whose political masses are so polarized?

On September 12, President Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office, nominating Kirk as “a martyr for truth and freedom.” The president was closely tied to Kirk, as the activist had been largely credited for registering thousands of young conservative voters and flipping Arizona’s vote for Trump through his non-profit, Turning Point USA. Trump made a statement lambasting the ‘demonization’ of opposing parties, which has led to these consecutive attacks: “It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree,” Trump said. Trump vowed to posthumously award Kirk with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, naming him as a ‘patriot’ and ‘the best of America.’

Congressional Democrats at the U.S. Capitol have also made headlines with their statements, speaking to a slew of reporters at a legislative meeting on Thursday. Many left-wing political figures are condemning the assassination with former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, being one of them. Written in her social media post on X, “the horrific shooting today at Utah Valley University is reprehensible. Political violence has absolutely no place in our nation,” Pelosi said. The former Speaker of the House herself was a prospective victim of an armed attacker in 2022, who broke into her home and injured her husband with a hammer. On Kirk’s death, “Political violence of any kind…is completely incompatible with American values,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a press statement, urging his constituents and fellow U.S. citizens to unify rather than divide further into their respective sides of the political spectrum. The republic must conjoin “…not as Democrats or Republicans, as Blacks or Whites or Latinos or Asians but as Americans,” Jeffries said.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, joined the social media conversation commemorating Kirk. “Once again, a bullet has silenced the most eloquent truth teller of an era,” Kennedy wrote, calling Kirk “a relentless and courageous crusader for free speech.” Kennedy Jr., of course, descends from a lineage of political martyrs silenced by bullets.

In the wake of Mr. Kirk’s assassination, the nation finds itself in a state of precarious unbalance. The killing of a non-legislative political activist in broad daylight has jolted both politicians and citizens. Even as live updates proceed to inform the public on the ongoing FBI investigation, this moment will outlive the one during which Kirk’s shooter is put behind bars. “We are going through what I call an era of violent populism,” Robert Pape, head of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago, said. “It is a historically high era of assassination…and it is occurring on both the right and the left,” Pape said. 

As our democracy grieves, we also must recall the definition of a democratic republic – the power is ultimately in the hands of its people and, as people, now is the time to unify, not polarize. Now is the time to speak, not for silence.