On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a public event at Utah Valley University in Orem.

The 31-year-old conservative activist, founder of Turning Point USA and a prominent voice in Trump’s political orbit, had set up one of his “Prove Me Wrong” tables, a hallmark of his American Comeback Tour meant to spark direct debate with young people.

A single shot rang out, striking Kirk in the neck. Chaos followed as students scrambled for cover.

Law enforcement confirmed the shot was fired from a rooftop on campus, and investigators later recovered a high-powered bolt-action rifle believed to have been used in the crime.

Kirk was pronounced dead not long after the shooting. Authorities have identified a person of interest but have yet to apprehend the shooter, and a motive remains unclear.

What is certain is that one of the most visible figures in American conservative politics was cut down in public, in the middle of the kind of face-to-face political exchange that won him both allies and enemies.

Your Rundown for Friday, September 12, 2025...

The 21st-Century Colosseum

What’s struck me most about the response to Kirk’s murder: Instead of pity for a victim’s widow and young children, poison has spilled across social media.

Left and right, Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative — so many seem more eager to score points than to acknowledge that a man lost his life.

Over the past two days, I’ve found myself reflecting on a moment in history…

A monk named Telemachus stepped into Rome’s Colosseum in the early 5th century, an arena where, for more than 600 years, crowds jeered as gladiators brutalized one another.

What Telemachus saw drove him into the arena, where he cried out for the bloodshed to end — and was stoned to death for it. Moved by his example, the emperor abolished the games soon after

Our Colosseum today? It’s digital.

Facebook, X, every comment section — arenas where we tear into one another with words.

We call it engagement, but the gladiatorial impulse endures: cruelty as sport.

Telemachus’ appeal endures also. To choose civility over cruelty, restraint over rage, pity over poison.

It’s in these moment-to-moment choices that personal accountability matters most.

Because, in the final analysis, a man is dead. His family grieves. And that should be enough to summon basic decency.

No further comment necessary.

Market Rundown for Friday, September 12, 2025

S&P 500 futures are slightly in the red at 6,590.

Oil is up 2.25% to $63.80 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is up 0.20% to $3,680.70 per ounce.

Bitcoin’s up 0.50%, just under $115,000.