By LISA MASCARO and ALI SWENSON, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the tragic roll call of violence in American public life, Charlie Kirk’s name joins what has fast become a long list.

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The influential 31-year old commentator, who cast his young professional life rousing other young people to embrace or debate his brand of conservatism, was slain doing what he does best: holding a provocative question-and-answer session on a college campus.

Kirk had been sparring with a questioner at Utah Valley University over who commits gun violence. Then the shot rang out.

President Donald Trump, a survivor of assassination attempts including at a 2024 campaign rally, announced on social media: Kirk was dead.

“It has to stop,” House Speaker Mike Johnson pleaded from the U.S. Capitol. “This is not who we are.”

Condemnation of the violence came quickly, from all corners and across the political divide, and it was universal. But it has never been enough. Within minutes a shouting match erupted during a moment of silence in the House. One Republican lawmaker wanted an actual prayer for Kirk; Democrats called for changes in gun laws. Online, certain far-right figures responded with anger and pointed blame. And so did Trump.

“We’re moving in a very dangerous direction, and I think we have been moving in this direction for quite some time,” said Kurt Braddock, an assistant professor of public communication at American University.

Though nothing is publicly known about the shooter or the motive in this case, Braddock said it can’t be ignored that polarization and normalization of violence have become threaded through U.S. politics.

“It’s incumbent on both sides to take steps to lower the temperature and make it clear that violence should never be considered an acceptable form of political action,” he said.

The nation’s long history of violence in the public realm carries many data points. It has felled presidents, presidential contenders, activists like Kirk and some of the most consequential figures in American civic life — Abraham Lincoln, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Among those who have survived the violence, Trump does not stand alone. Elected officials in the U.S. have been shot at and critically wounded while talking to voters outside a grocery store in Arizona; practicing for a congressional baseball game in Virginia; answering the door to their own home in Minnesota. The governor’s house in Pennsylvania was set ablaze as he and his family slept inside. Members of Congress fled the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“It’s 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 day after day, year after year,” said Trump — who then proceeded to blame what he called the “radical left” for the attacks.

Members of the U.S. Secret Service counter sniper team walk onto the roof of the White House after the American flag at the White House in Washington, was lowered to half-staff after Charlie Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of Turning Point USA, was killed at an event in Orem, Utah, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Bruce Hoffman, a senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations, said how the country responds to Kirk’s killing will be crucial to what happens next.

“In the past, we had elected officials that would seek to bring the country together rather than to cast blame,” he said. “We’ll have to see what in the coming days our national leaders have to say about this, and whether they can be effective in lowering the temperature.”

College campuses where Kirk draws robust and curious crowds to discuss not just politics but their questions about growing into adulthood have often been battlegrounds of ideas and centers of American thought, from the Vietnam War protests at Kent State to the Israel-Hamas war demonstrations of the Trump era.

Conservative commentators in particular have complained of being unfairly blocked from universities as students protested their appearances at college campuses. Trump has turned the force of the U.S. government against Harvard, Columbia and the nation’s premier universities to end policies his administration views as too “woke.”

Kirk, a charismatic figure who founded his Turning Point USA as an 18-year-old, grew into an influential leader tapping into the mood of a younger generation’s grievances with society.

A Christian father of two, he demonstrated a combative new approach to conservatism that openly criticized racial justice movements, the news media and LGBTQ rights. Critics said his views perpetuated racist, anti-immigrant and anti-feminist ideas.

Kirk often faced protests and controversy when he visited college campuses, including on his recent tour.

Ahead of Wednesday’s event, an online petition calling for the university’s administrators to reconsider allowing him to speak received nearly 1,000 signatures. A similar petition at Utah State University, where Kirk was set to appear later in the month, gathered nearly 7,000 signatures.

In Utah, Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, pleaded with Americans to look at themselves, and the way they treat one another, as the nation prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its founding.

“We desperately need leaders in our country, but more than the leaders, we just need every single person in this country to think about where we are and where we want to be,” he said. “Is this what 250 years has wrought on us?”

He prayed that “all of us will try to find a way to stop hating our fellow Americans.”

Swenson reported from New York. Associated Press writers Gary Fields, Matt Brown, Kevin Freking, Stephen Groves, Brian Slodysko and Michael Biesecker contributed to this report.

It’s hard to believe that it’s almost that time again, but as summer ends, booya time begins.

Does your organization host an event centering around this thick, rich stew? If so, send your information, including time, date, place, offerings and prices, to eat@pioneerpress.com and we’ll list it in the Pioneer Press.

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One of the traits that makes America great is its wilderness. The Trump administration is moving to open to extraction and development tens of millions of acres of forests now protected by a federal regulation known as the Roadless Rule.

In officially designated roadless areas, no new human infrastructure is permitted, except for conservation and public safety matters, such as wildfire prevention. (In those cases where roads already exist in newly designated wilderness, maintenance is permitted.)

This effectively holds these regions off-limits to logging, mining and other extractive industries. The rule applies to 58.5 million acres of American wilderness. Most of the nearly 200 million acres supervised by the Forest Service is available to industry in some way.

The Roadless Rule is a case study in participatory democracy. When the Clinton administration codified the rule, which went into effect in early 2001, an astounding 1.6 million Americans submitted comments to regulators.

While the vast majority of roadless areas are in the West, Pennsylvania also benefits: About 5% of the Allegheny National Forest, 25,000 acres, is designated roadless by the Department of Agriculture and its subsidiary, the Forest Service, according to the PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center. Those areas, many of which hold some of the last remaining old growth tree stands in northern Appalachia, are regional and national treasures whose loss would be incalculable, no matter what brief economic gain might result.

America has protected this wilderness not just to preserve special and irreplaceable forests. Protection also ensures that animal habitats, especially those of wide-ranging creatures, is as free as possible from human influence. Perhaps most of all, it’s about preserving these places for the enjoyment and benefit of humanity for generations to come.

Few people, if any, walk through an ancient landscape, like the “forest cathedral” of Pennsylvania’s Cook Forest State Park, and complain that it wasn’t clear-cut a century ago. They give thanks for the foresight the people who held back industry, who insisted that some lands must remain intact. Because of them, in this very commonwealth you can touch a hemlock that first broke through the earth while Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel.

The Roadless Rule has always been controversial, with both the George W. Bush and first Trump administrations attempting to weaken it. The rule is a much more potent political issue in the West, where it protects tens of millions of acres many states would like to control and to use to generate tax revenue. Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced plans to rescind the rule at a meeting of the Western Governor’s Association.

Western politicians have long complained that because the Roadless Rule lets the USDA secretary create roadless areas, the department creates de facto wilderness areas by fiat, while the official “wilderness” designation requires Congress to act. This argument has been rejected by federal courts, but the expansion of roadless areas remains a sore point.

It may be possible to adjust the rule in a manner that would place some limits on this expansion. But, characteristically, thoughtful reform is not what the Trump administration wants: They’d like to rescind the Roadless Rule in its entirety. And that would be a disaster for American wilderness, and thus for Americans as a whole.

Roadless wilderness represents a moral principle: that some things are good in themselves and more important than short-term economic gains, and that among them is our country’s responsibility to steward its lands for generations to come. Entirely rescinding the Roadless Rule would deny that principle, and in so doing wound America’s distinctiveness, and its greatness.

— The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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For months, if not years, the shed-like, one-story building at 1350 Hague Ave. sat largely unattended at the edge of a Hamline Avenue service road, on a small spit of land that runs beneath Ayd Mill Road and the Hamline Avenue bridge. A house on the site was demolished in 2018.

Bradley Taylor, who lives within walking distance, figured the small black box of a building would be an affordable place to launch The Donut Trap, an homage to his favorite Los Angeles doughnut shop and his love of the arts. Backed by city STAR grant funding to fix up the heating, ventilation and air conditioning, Taylor opened his coffee, ice cream and doughnut counter this summer with the support of the Union Park District Council and others eager to see him succeed.

The Donut Trap’s exterior mural and hot pink front door have helped draw families from a nearby playground on the other side of the bridge. What hasn’t helped is a $5,000 bill from the city for purchasing a vacant building that is no longer vacant.

Surprised by an outstanding vacant building fee that has more than doubled his tax assessment, Taylor took his concerns to the Department of Safety and Inspections, and then to Ramsey County, and then to the city’s legislative hearing officer, and finally to the St. Paul City Council.

Disagreement, ambiguity

The strange, years-long saga of the Donut Trap’s vacant building fee came to a close on Wednesday when the city council agreed to meet the budding shop owner — the self-proclaimed “Black Martha Stewart” — halfway and voted 5-2 to cut his special assessment in half, even though it had already been added to his tax statement.

The unusual decision followed some disagreement and ambiguity over whether Taylor had been told by city inspections to ignore the fee while he was in the process of installing the Donut Trap with some $24,000 in STAR grant funding from the mayor’s office and the Ward 1 council office.

At the very least, “DSI failed to ask Ms. Taylor and Mr. Taylor if they understood St. Paul’s vacant building program,” wrote Sarah Dvorak, president of the Union Park District Council, in a letter to the city last month, which was later backed by the Lexington-Hamline Community Council.

The vote also followed strong words from the city attorney’s office to Ward 1 Council Member Anika Bowie, who was advised in a two-page letter to recuse herself from the vote. She did not.

“This is not a problem property,” said Bowie on Wednesday, urging the council to cut a new business some slack. “This is not a property that is in the vacant building program. This is a building that operates as a doughnut shop. They are done with all of their (upkeep), as far as being up to code. The thing that complicates this is there was a change in ownership.”

The $5,000 vacant building fee, according to Taylor’s appeal to the council, was incurred by a previous owner and then added to his property taxes after he had filled the long-underutilized structure with a menu inspired by his own sweet tooth and love of pop culture.

Taylor has maintained that when he inquired with DSI about the vacant building notices, he was advised by city employees to ignore them, and that he had text messages proving as much. DSI officials have said no such conversations took place.

Vacant building fee

The building was enrolled in the city’s vacant building program in April 2019, a few years before Taylor acquired the property, according to the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections.

“We purchased the building in May 2023 and immediately filed for sewer permit, building permit, plumbing permit, gas permit, etc.,” wrote Taylor, in an email last May to Marcia Moermond, the city’s legislative hearing officer.

“Shortly afterward we began receiving letters regarding a vacant building fee,” he added. “We were very concerned since it was for a large dollar amount, so we reached out multiple times to DSI — via phone, text, and even in person — and were repeatedly told it was a mistake. We were advised not to worry about the letters and that no further action was needed on our part. At no point were we informed that we needed to formally appeal or take additional steps.”

“I even visited the DSI office in person for clarity, where I was again told the issue would be resolved and to ignore the notices,” he wrote.

Ashley Taylor, who co-owns the property, testified before Moermond this June: “We called every time we got a letter or notice. We received the same answer every time we contacted someone. Our confusion is we called multiple vacant building inspectors in 2023. What could we have done differently when we feel we were proactive … and (were) told it was a mistake?”

Taylor’s appeal won the support of the Union Park District Council, which assembled a timeline of events to share with the city council. Several neighborhood residents have expressed relief to see a derelict building find a new public-facing purpose.

‘Eat Donutz, Keep It Sexy’

The building’s exterior, previously painted industrial black, has been redecorated with a dynamic collage of splashy colors. Benches now line the patio. Taylor’s menu is no less bold, with inventive ice cream, coffee and doughnut flavors promising a quick sugar high.

Under the motto “Eat Donutz, Keep It Sexy,” the Donut Trap’s wide-ranging temptations include the Gay 90s (a vanilla glazed doughnut encrusted with Fruity Pebbles cereal), the Thotiana (a churro and tres leches-flavored doughnut) and a Coca-Cola Cold Brew (“Bubbly. Buzzed. A little wrong, but somehow so, so right.”).

Behind the scenes, the wrangles with City Hall have been less joyous.

On Dec. 3, 2023, the unpaid $5,000 vacant building fee — representing a year of vacancy — was forwarded to Ramsey County, to be added to the Donut Trap’s property tax notice. The building was released from the city’s vacant building program in March of 2024, at which time Taylor was sent a reminder of the fee, which was neither paid nor appealed at the time, according to the city.

During a public hearing last month on Taylor’s appeal, Bowie asked the council for a two-week layover, giving Taylor time to produce copies of the communications from DSI.

“I asked if they would please provide those text messages,” said legislative hearing officer Marcia Moermond, addressing the council on Wednesday. “Those text messages did not come forward.”

The vote

Council Member Nelsie Yang, who cast one of two votes against reducing or refunding the assessment, said she could not support a fee reduction without evidence. “The fact that we haven’t received anything is really disappointing,” Yang said.

Bowie this week was advised by the city attorney’s office that she had been seen conversing with the Taylors in the hallway outside the council chambers, which could be construed as stepping outside of her role as a neutral party in an appeals hearing. For appeals, council members serve quasi-judicial roles, and are expected to steer clear of dealings with either side.

Bowie denied that she held a hallway conversation, though she said her legislative aide talked with the Taylors. The county attorney’s office noted Bowie had written to the Union Park District Council, thanking them for their input, which could be construed as encouraging them to continue speaking out on behalf of the Taylors.

Bowie said she acted as a neutral party seeking more clarity on the situation. “If there’s evidence, I have to make a judgment call on that evidence,” said Bowie, in an interview. “Deciding to continue a hearing should not be reason to recuse myself.”

“The previous owner did not disclose that they had this assessment, and their title company did not disclose it,” she added. “(The Taylors) testified and said ‘we made calls and texts (to DSI).’ When I look at the record, I don’t see any evidence of that. I’m being neutral and saying, ‘well, show the evidence.’”

On Wednesday, after some discussion and disagreement, the city council voted 5-2 to support Moermond’s recommendation to cut the Donut Trap’s assessment by half. The relief will be structured as a refund, Moermond said, which is unusual for the city.

Council members Yang and Cheniqua Johnson cast the dissenting votes.

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