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Thursday, September 18, 2025

King Charles Gives Royal Treatment to Trump

Telegraph: Donald Trump has described his second state visit to the UK as “truly one of the highest honours of my life”. A US president feted by the King, in a second state visit which pulled out all the diplomatic stops. George Washington and George III could not possibly have imagined such scenes, the King said…. The banquet was the jewel in the crown of a day that had been designed to flatter the man who built Trump Tower. The military ceremonies were described as “unprecedented in scale and spectacle”. There was the “largest guard of honour ever” at a state visit, the first Beating Retreat ceremony, debatable claims of a “first” carriage ride for a US president and plans for a “first” joint flypast from UK and US F-35 fighter jets, which did not come to pass in the end owing to suboptimal weather…. “I have a lot of things here that warm my heart,” he said as he arrived in Britain. The King, he said, was “my friend” (Telegraph). Who was present? Sky News: Among the guests of honour were, of course, Donald and Melania Trump, alongside King Charles, Queen Camilla and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. The Prince and Princess of Wales were in attendance, as were the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Princess Royal and her husband, Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence (Sky).

Federal Reserve Cuts Interest Rate by a Quarter Point

The message from the Federal Reserve Board reflects concerns over stagflation—stagnant economic growth coupled with persistent inflation. The prediction is we’ll see two more cuts by year’s end. Bloomberg: Chair Jerome Powell pointed to growing signs of weakness in the labor market to explain why officials decided it was time to cut rates after holding them steady since December amid concerns over tariff-driven inflation (Bloomberg). Ed Morrissey: What choice did they have? The Federal Reserve governors finally ran out of excuses after the jobs-market data turned out to be massively cooked over the last two years. Looking at an economy with nearly two million fewer jobs than they assumed and with investment stalling out, the Fed had no choice but to lower its prime lending rate. Even so, they still played Scrooge, only lowering it minimally by 0.25% (Hot Air).

ABC Pulling Jimmy Kimmel’s Program After Host’s Comments on Kirk

First: Kimmel’s vile and factually false comments on Monday night’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it…. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish. Okay” (X). Variety: Disney’s ABC said it would take Jimmy Kimmel‘s popular late-night show off its schedule “indefinitely” after one of the biggest owners of TV stations in the U.S., Nexstar Media, said it would pre-empt airings of the program following remarks the host made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Nexstar said Wednesday that its “owned and partner television stations affiliated with the ABC Television Network will preempt “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for the foreseeable future, beginning with tonight’s show.” The company said it “strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets” (Variety). CNN’s Erin Burnett: “The job should be to speak truth to power, even when there are people who don‘t like the word truth anymore” (X).

Government Shutdown Is Looming; Schumer Looks Determined to Make It Happen

Wall Street Journal reports: America is headed toward a government shutdown in two weeks unless lawmakers reach a spending deal. On Capitol Hill, Republican and Democratic leaders are busy arguing over who should pick up the phone first. Or just pop by. “What have we heard from them? Crickets! Nothing!” complained Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), at his weekly press conference on Tuesday. “They seem like they’re kind of having this meltdown over the fact that we’re not talking to them,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.), at his own presser the same day…. If Congress can’t vote to keep the government funded beyond Sept. 30, all but essential federal operations would halt. Congress also aims to wrap in tens of millions of dollars to cover extra security measures for lawmakers and officials from the executive branch and judiciary in the wake of heightened concerns about political violence. The current House GOP proposal, expected to come up for a vote Friday, would keep the government running through mid-November (Wall Street Journal). Thune’s comments: (Thune).

The Ugly Truth About Today’s Democratic Party

Scott Pinsker for PJ Media: After a decade of unhinged rhetoric, violence, hate, lawfare, and anger, the American people have realized the ugly truth about today’s Democratic Party: In 2022, 82% of Democrats said that political violence in the U.S. was a problem. Today, it’s just 58% — a 24-point drop in just three years!… • Liberals are four times more likely than conservatives to celebrate the deaths of their political opponents. (Which, if you’ve been online lately, you’ve almost certainly witnessed.) • A jaw-dropping one in four “very liberal” Americans believe political violence is justified. (Just 6% of conservatives agreed.) That’s an astonishing 25% of American liberals! • Related: And Just Like That, the Party of Cancel Culture Suddenly Gives a Damn About Free Speech • They’ve gone from “Make love not war” to “Make war not love.” They went from “Do your own thing” and “Give peace a chance” to murdering Charlie Kirk because, in the killer’s own words, “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out” (PJ Media).

“Don’t tell me it’s both sides”

Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) is not alone in his fatigue over the both sides-ism arguments. From Schmitt in the Senate on Tuesday: And don’t tell me it’s both sides. It didn’t happen in a vacuum. Over the past decade, we’ve seen an explosion of political violence. Not just one-off lone wolf attacks, but organized, systemic political violence at a mass scale. It is not organic. It is the offspring of a dark and clandestine system funded in part with our own tax dollars, with a large network of foundations, NGOs, activist organizations, and front groups. This system lurks behind every radical leftist movement in our nation today. The George Soros empire has financed a vast ecosystem of radicals all working together to unleash a tidal wave of violent anarchists on our streets and prop it up with an army of researchers and experts and journalists and propagandists who downplay political violence. We’ve heard years of the left — their loudest voices — calling anyone on the right an extremist MAGA Republican, a fascist, a Nazi, an existential threat to democracy. Check yourself. And don’t give me this both sides b******* (Federalist).

“We have to talk about the trans issue"

That’s the opening line from Albert Mohler, summing up what so many see and so few—particularly in elite media—are willing to talking about. He writes: Tyler Robinson had a roommate, described by the governor as a romantic partner, “a male transitioning to female.” Suddenly and officially, the trans angle became part of the story. And Charlie Kirk had just answered a question about mass shootings by transgender individuals when he was assassinated. It was immediately clear that the mainstream media wanted to stay as far away from that part of the story as possible. That’s exactly what happened with the shooter who killed and injured children at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis…. That same pattern appeared in the horrifying 2023 mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville…. Most cultural authorities are running scared from any public acknowledgement of the pattern. They are so intimidated by the LGBTQ community and the cultural guardians of leftist gender ideologies that they simply want to move on—fast. They want us all to do the same. But we can’t just move on. The ideologues and activists of the transgender revolution want to prevent any discussion of the fact that there is deep trouble here. What kind of intense inner turmoil is reflected in this pattern? By definition, the intense rejection of one’s given biological sex cannot be an insignificant matter. I know this isn’t going to be easy, but the issue can’t be avoided. We have to talk about this (World).

Gavin Newsom Is Determined to Create New Congressional Districts: It Will Cost Upwards of $280 Million

California’s budget deficit is already $20 billion. The Golden State cannot afford Newsom’s game (Times of San Diego). Washington Examiner: A statewide special election in California this fall, in which a redistricting question will be on the ballot, could cost over $280 million. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and California Democrats are putting a ballot question before voters in November, allowing them to redistrict the state’s congressional map. Newsom has repeatedly said he only pursued a move to redistrict in response to Texas Republicans’ effort to gerrymander their state further…. According to a Sept. 5 letter from the California Department of Finance obtained by Mercury News, Erika Li, the agency’s chief deputy director, asked state controller Malia Cohen to allocate $251.3 million to fund the election across the state (Washington Examiner).

Salena Zito on Kirk Killing: “I've cried every day since it's happened”

Salena Zito was sitting next to Trump at the assassination attempt on the president in Butler, Pennsylvania. She’s the author of the book on that day, “Butler” (Amazon). On Wednesday, Hugh Hewitt asked her how the Kirk assassination impacted her: So I think we’ve talked about this a lot, though, when we were talking about the book, “Butler”—and that I never cried and I never could figure out why, and other than I was just had a job to do and I continued doing it. And I cried last week. And I cry. I cried Wednesday, I cried Thursday. In fact, I’ve cried every day since it’s happened. It just really, really gutted me. I’ve known that kid since he was 18 years old—a really bold and brassy kid that was going to change the world. And he did. And when you read “Butler,” you see all of these young people. I kept reporting this throughout the campaign last year. I’m like, “y’all paying attention?” There are a lot of young people out here, young women, young men. They’re excited, they’re happy, they feel purposeful, and a lot of that came from Charlie. And so he had a very direct impact on this younger generation…. They are going to be bold and purposeful and in carrying forward what he inspired them to be part of (Hewitt).

10.

Awakening?

Salena Zito’s latest report is on what she’s been seeing regarding young people and houses of worship in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk: If you were looking for young people distraught over last Thursday’s brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk here, you were looking in the wrong place. They went to The Sanctuary church by the busloads. Even Pastor Jason Howard was taken aback by the size and scope of the number of young people who came out on Sunday for service…. “The response was, we are going to be bold and unashamed about the message of Jesus more than ever before,” [assistant pastor, Cole Yocca] said of both the Thursday night vigil and the packed Sunday services…. [ Pastor Jason Howard:] “Today, the dynamic is bold, unashamed: there is salvation in Jesus, and the whole world needs to know, and we are not trying to ease you into it or slowly convince you towards it. It’s like this bold, passionate battle cry. There’s hope in Jesus. And the boldness and the fearlessness has come along with Gen Z.” … What drew them to Kirk wasn’t politics. Instead, it was upholding traditions such as marriage and not being afraid to thank God for their blessings, said Howard (Washington Examiner).

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