BEEGE WELBORN: On September 11th – Thoughts.

I have written about it every year in some fashion, as it’s a visceral memory in our family, as it is in so many others who live or have loved ones on the East Coast. It’s hard to even say the date without tears springing to my eyes – remembering being sick at heart with worry over Bingley at work, only a few blocks from the Trade Center, the frantic calls, watching and hearing the towers I knew well fall, that deadly dust cloud of death roll across and envelop the city.

And the planes. Oh, my God, the folks on those planes. The gaping hole in the side of the Pentagon, and the ghastly gash in the verdant green earth of a field in Shanksville.

But I also remember the incredible courage. The everyday people who were so magnificent in the face of such devastation and horror, who were thinking about others even as they faced their own peril.

Years later, on that same day, the atrocity at Benghazi. The unforgivable betrayals.

The unbelievable heroics in the most desperate of hours.

Americans are amazing – that’s the only word for them.

For us.

Read the whole thing.

ASHLEY MCCULLY: Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Video Is the New Falling Man for a Social Media Age.

HIGH TECH, LOW FARES: Amazon’s Zoox jumps into U.S. robotaxi race with Las Vegas launch.

Zoox’s first public launch kicks off Wednesday on the Las Vegas strip. The company is offering free rides from a few select locations, with plans to expand more broadly across the city in the coming months. Riders will eventually have to pay, but Zoox said it’s waiting on regulatory approval to take that step.

Amazon is jumping into a market that’s all about the future, but one where Waymo has a major head start, having offered commercial driverless rides since 2020. Earlier this year, Waymo said it surpassed 10 million paid rides, and the company now operates in five cities, with Dallas, Denver, Miami, Seattle and Washington, D.C., coming next year.

Nifty tech, but that name…

YES: Charlie Kirk, Single Combat Warrior, Practiced Politics the Right Way.

ERIC S RAYMOND:

I don’t know anything other than public information about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

However, a primer follows about patterns in past political assassinations. I will sketch what scenarios an intelligence analyst would come up with looking at this one.

The first and most important rule in this kind of investigation is: when you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras.

In political assassinations, as an ordinary murders, the correct suspect is usually the most obvious suspect. Airport-thriller-style convoluted plots and false-flag ops pulled off by unlikely people or organizations are rare in the real world.

Accordingly, when you’re trying to solve a political assassination, the right question to ask is “Who said they wanted him dead?”

Then, you infiltrate those organizations, or arrest a bunch of members, and do contact tracing. Usually you do in fact find your killer that way. It’s not very different from ordinary police work except for the stakes.

There are broadly speaking three different kinds of assassin: the nutter, the zealot, and the pro. They are not difficult to distinguish once you got your hands on them.

Read the whole thing.

HMM: OpenAI CFO: We will more than triple our revenue this year.

“Revenue this year will grow over 3X. So about $13 billion in revenue from about $4 billion last year. So it’s tripling on a very big base as well,” OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told me at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference on Tuesday.

“It is a wild pace that we’re on. You’re defining a whole new era of AI,” Friar said. She declined to put a timetable on OpenAI becoming a public company.

It’s been an eventful year for OpenAI. The release of ChatGPT 5 in early August was met with mixed reviews as users complained about the interface’s less-human responses. CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the company “screwed up” on the rollout.

A few weeks removed from this episode, Altman reportedly said the AI market was in a bubble.

Profits remain elusive as ever.

HAVING MURDERED THE MODERATE, THEY WON’T LIKE WHAT COMES NEXT:

Charlie didn't "Live by the sword" he was shot while encouraging literally anyone to disagree with him in good faith. pic.twitter.com/W56zYxzXP6

— Reddit Lies (@reddit_lies) September 11, 2025

THE NEW NATALISM: Trump’s Baby Bonds. “One of the bill’s interesting experiments is the Trump Accounts, also known as Trump Baby Bonds. They are set to expire in three years, so don’t delay taking advantage if you are interested. This is a test, and as of this summer, the details are still being hammered out.”

THAT’S A SHAME, IF TRUE: Senior Hamas officials likely survived Israeli strikes on Doha, Israeli sources say.

Israel has informed the U.S. that the chances of success of its strikes Tuesday on a Hamas residence in Doha, Qatar, have “decreased significantly,” two Israeli sources familiar with the matter told ABC News — likely confirming Hamas’ assertion that the strikes failed to kill top Hamas officials.

Five Hamas members and a Qatari official were killed in the strike. Hamas’ senior leaders survived the strike, Hamas said Tuesday.

“There was a meeting of the negotiating team and some Hamas leaders to discuss the ideas sent by the United States and the paper sent by President Trump,” Hamas political bureau official Suhail al-Hindi told Al Jazeera of when the strike took place.

MORE: Hamas targets survive Israeli strike in Doha, group says
Among those killed were the son of a senior Hamas leader, Dr. Khalil Al-Hayya — the head of the Hamas movement in Gaza and the head of Hamas’ negotiating team for a ceasefire with Israel — and an aide. Al-Hayya himself survived, according to Hamas.

Until Israel officials go on the record, treat this story like that anonymous leak — since disproven — that we failed to significantly set back Iran’s nuclear program.

DAMN:

“Tell me how he died.”

“I will tell you how he lived.” pic.twitter.com/cquQI8hmF7

— Pax Americana 🧊 (@1776pax) September 10, 2025

It isn’t just America, either:

Working on a building site in Dublin and all everyone is talking about is Charlie Kirk.

Everyone has watched his content now much they liked his videos.

Is this the modern day “shot heard around the world”.

— Real News Éire (@real_eire) September 11, 2025

From the replies: “I’m in New Zealand and it is al we spoke about today, it happened here at dawn.”

I don’t know how this all sorts out, but it feels like there’s no going back to 9/9/2025.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Assassination and the Watershed Radicalization of the American Right. “Yes, the assassination of Charlie Kirk has pushed people to places that they never wanted to be pushed to. My use of the word watershed in the headline was deliberate because it means ‘turning point.’ People were already emotionally raw over the brutal murder of Iryna Zarutska; Kirk’s public execution is too much to process with anything but righteous anger.”

BE PREPARED: Poland Moves Military to Belarus Border Following Overnight Drone Strikes and NATO Alert.

Related:

🇵🇱 Poland has decided to completely close its border with Belarus. pic.twitter.com/meEHUIJ49P

— Intermarium 24 (@intermarium24) September 10, 2025

On the other side of the border, tomorrow Russia and Belarus begin their annual Zapad (West) combined military exercise — for the first time since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

SOME PEOPLE WANT WAR. MAYBE THAT’S WHAT THEY’LL GET, I DON’T KNOW:

URGENT. FYI.

After Charlie Kirk, on the sky app there are people asking for the next person to be targeted. These include JK Rowling, Matt Walsh, Trump, Ben Shapiro, Libs of TikTok, Elon Musk, and Andy Ngo.

I took as many screenshots as I could. pic.twitter.com/CnZmmJAjvh

— Jennifer 🟥🔴🧙‍♀️🦉🐈‍⬛ 🦖 (@babybeginner) September 11, 2025

Read this, too:

In Japan, Shinzo Abe was assassinated after the left spent years portraying him as a monster who deserved to die.

In America, the left has normalized violent rhetoric and extreme performances—like a comedian holding up a fake Trump head, burning Trump dolls at protests, or… https://t.co/2j8ehxuv9n

— Yoko 🇯🇵 | ランダムヨーコ (石井陽子) (@randomyoko) September 11, 2025

Most conservatives used to dismiss this stuff as idle online chatter, but that all changed yesterday.

ICYMI: NYC Developers Have an Hilarious New Dodge Against Big Government.

ALEX WROTE THIS JUST A FEW HOURS BEFORE CHARLIE KIRK WAS ASSASSINATED: I am seeing many people who are saying that the murder of Iryna Zarutska is radicalizing them.

The radical positions they are esposing are the following:

1. A man with 14 arrests, including for assault, should have been tried and jailed (presuming guilt) for the crimes committed that led to the prior arrests.

2. A man who was a diagnosed schizophrenic with a history of violence, including assault against his sister, should have been involuntarily committed and institutionalized rather than allowed to wander the streets homeless.

3. A man who was a diagnosed schizophrenic with 13 prior arrests should not have been let free from jail on cashless bail after his 14th arrest.

4. People should be able to ride public transportation without worrying that they will be violently attacked and possibly even killed for sitting in a seat in front of another human being.

Those are the radical positions being espoused.

Read those again. Slower if you must.

And now to the list we must add: 5. People should be able to engage in civil discourse on a college campus without worrying about taking an assassin’s bullet to the neck.

Whatever happens next, if Kirk’s assassination doesn’t harden our resolve, then we’ve already lost.

And do read the whole thing.

UGH: Fox Reporter Eyewitness Describes Charlie Kirk’s Tragic Assassination.

FLASHBACK: Southern Poverty Law Center Puts Largest Conservative Grassroots Youth Group on ‘Hate Map’ With Klan Chapters. “The Southern Poverty Law Center is comparing the largest conservative grassroots youth organization to the Ku Klux Klan, adding Turning Point USA to its ‘hate map’ that plots KKK chapters and claims to expose ‘the groups upholding white supremacy in the United States.'”

BREAKING:

The subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody. Thank you to the local and state authorities in Utah for your partnership with @fbi.
We will provide updates when able.

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) September 10, 2025

No further details yet.

THEY NO LONGER EVEN GIVE LIP SERVICE TO NORMAL DECENCY:

.@SpeakerJohnson: "The Chair would ask that all members present in the Chamber and those in the gallery please rise for a moment of prayer for Charlie Kirk and his family."

After the moment, various lawmakers can be heard shouting about prayers and gun control. pic.twitter.com/xDRkOMm0t4

— CSPAN (@cspan) September 10, 2025

I HOPE THIS ISN’T TRUE, BUT BASED ON A CLOSER-IN VIDEO POSTED TO X, I WOULDN’T BE SURPRISED: Charlie Kirk dead at 31 after shooting at Utah event, three officials confirm.

Here’s a link to the video. There is so much blood, so quickly… it isn’t easy to watch.

UPDATE: Re-upping this item from April.

Assassination culture is spreading on the left. Forty-eight percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk. Fifty-five percent said the same about Donald Trump.

In California, activists are naming ballot measures after Luigi Mangione.

The… pic.twitter.com/xiGAAvoPHy

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) April 7, 2025

MORE [and bumped]: What a terrible day.

THE MEDIA IS NOT ONLY WORSE THAN YOU IMAGINE, IT IS WORSE THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE: MSM Reactions to Charlie Kirk Shooting Are as Sick as You’d Expect.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

"Charlie Kirk had it coming" is more deranged than anything they accuse Kirk of saying. https://t.co/yb7r9PSigj

— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) September 10, 2025

This is such a good point. If you actually watch Charlie’s events—as opposed to the fake summaries—they are one of the few places with open and honest dialogue between left and right. He would answer any question and talk to everyone. https://t.co/ZSOFUYZ6aN

— JD Vance (@JDVance) September 10, 2025

UPDATE:

Tim Cook: “Source tells me Charlie is stable.”

Footage shows Charlie Kirk being rushed to hospital. pic.twitter.com/72UIPVtBfY

— Polymarket Intel (@PolymarketIntel) September 10, 2025

That’s Tim Pool, not Tim Cook.

Also: Never trust initial reports.

Police have determined that the man seen being taken its custody earlier following the shooting of conservative influencer and personality Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, was not actually the shooter, according to a Spokesman for Utah Valley. It is unclear…

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) September 10, 2025

I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: ‘Stark decline’ in reading, math: 1/3 of 12th-graders are ready for college.

TO BE FAIR, THEY RUIN A LOT OF STUFF: Trump Takes His Boys to Dinner. Liberal White Women Try to Ruin It.

WE’RE AWARE: ‘We Want To Keep The Power’: Older Congressional Dems Really Don’t Want To Retire.

Some older congressional Democrats are adamant that they do not want to seek retirement as the 2026 midterms loom, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Wednesday.

Despite some activists pressuring older House Democrats to make way for a new generation of party leaders, many elected officials do not want to retire, according to the WSJ. The report comes as some Democrats have been calling for party members to support younger candidates in the upcoming midterm elections.

“I think every Democrat over 70 should make this their last term,” Amanda Litman, the president of Run for Something, a political organization that recruits and supports younger left-wing candidates, told the WSJ.

Democratic New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, 71, told the WSJ that longtime congressional Democrats “want to keep the power” they presently have. The New York Democrat is set to seek a 14th term in the 2026 midterms, the WSJ reported.

“I don’t think there’s any reason to say that everybody in the delegation should be leaving, especially if you want to have power,” Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the outlet. “We want to keep the power that we have.”

Party of youth!