Donald Trump has said his supporters should respond peacefully to the killing of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk as the gunman continued to evade a manhunt more than 24 hours after the fatal shooting.
A day after Trump gave an inflammatory address blaming the “radical left” for the killing and pledging a wide-ranging response, the president agreed with a suggestion from a conservative reporter that his supporters should not respond with violence.
Trump said Kirk had been “an advocate of nonviolence” and “that’s the way I’d like to see people respond”.
The president cited “big progress” in the investigation while authorities said the gunman remained at large a day after 31-year-old Kirk – a close ally of Trump who drove youth recruitment to the president’s Maga movement – was fatally shot while addressing a crowd at a Utah university.
Here are the day’s key Trump administration stories at a glance.
FBI releases images of person of interest in Charlie Kirk shooting
The FBI has put out two images of a person of interest in connection with the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk and asked for the public’s help in identifying them.
The pictures posted on X show a person in sunglasses, a baseball cap, dark jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt with a US flag on the front. The FBI is offering up to $100,000 for information leading to the person’s identification and arrest.
US plans to punish foreigners ‘making light of’ Kirk death
Action will be taken against foreigners in the US who are considered to be “praising, rationalizing or making light of” Charlie Kirk’s death, a top state department official has said.
The statement comes against the backdrop of an aggressive crackdown on free speech and dissenting views in the US under the second Trump administration, especially when it comes to campus protests sparked by Israel’s war on Gaza.
Far right calls for ‘vengeance and retribution’ over Kirk’s death
Within hours of Charlie Kirk being shot dead at a college event in Utah, he had been turned into a far-right martyr in the US’s raging culture war. Many prominent rightwing voices and influencers quickly characterized his murder as an act of war from the left – and have vowed to respond in kind.
Trump to award Kirk presidential medal
Donald Trump said he would be awarding Charlie Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, calling him a “giant of his generation, a champion of liberty and an inspiration to millions and millions of people”.
Senators say US complicit in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza
Two Democratic senators claim they have reached the “inescapable conclusion” that Israel is acting on a systematic plan to destroy and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza to force locals to leave, and they say the US is complicit.
What else happened today:
Inflation rose slightly in August as companies continued to push the cost of Trump’s tariffs on to consumers.
A judge allowed the Trump administration to purge more than 1,600 research grants issued by National Science Foundation worth more than $1bn.
MSNBC fired senior political analyst Matthew Dowd after he suggested on air that Charlie Kirk’s own radical rhetoric may have contributed to the shooting that killed him.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 10 September 2025.
