By GENE JOHNSON and HANNAH SCHOENBAUM

OREM, Utah (AP) — Just weeks into the fall semester, a crowd gathered around a white canopy on a grassy college courtyard. They were eager to hear what the speaker beneath it had to say. It was a typical university scene, with its promise of the exchange of ideas and debate, except in one way: its size.

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This speaker was Charlie Kirk, one of the most influential voices in President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, and the event Wednesday at Utah Valley University drew more than 3,000 people. Backpack-toting students watched from surrounding buildings as Kirk, wearing a white T-shirt that said “Freedom,” tossed red MAGA caps, Frisbee-style, to his fans.

He took his place beneath the canopy, the slogans “The American Comeback” and “Prove Me Wrong” emblazoned across it. He picked up a handheld microphone and he began to address the audience.

As he answered a question about gun violence, a single shot cracked.

Campuses were Kirk’s frequent stops

Kirk, 31, a podcaster, founded the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA. He embraced notions of Christian nationalism and often made provocative statements about gender, race, religion and politics. He had insisted that it was worth it to have “some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

Often he brought those ideas onto college campuses, where they were especially controversial. Kirk was known for openly debating progressives and challenging audiences to stump him on political points.

Charlie Kirk hands out hats before speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tess Crowley/The Deseret News via AP)

His campus appearances often drew protests, and Wednesday’s was no different. Online petitions signed by thousands of people had called for his talk at Utah Valley University, as well as another, scheduled for Sept. 30 at Utah State University, to be canceled.

“As students at Utah Valley University, we have come to cherish an environment that strives for inclusivity and diversity,” one said. “Yet, the planned speaking engagement of Charlie Kirk threatens this ideal. Kirk’s presence and the messages he delivers stand in contrast to the values of understanding, acceptance, and progress that many of us hold dear.”

The university responded by affirming its “commitment to free speech, intellectual inquiry, and constructive dialogue.”

No metal detectors or bag checks

As was typical for Kirk’s events, security was light. There were six university police officers assigned to the event, plus some private security. There were no metal detectors or bag checks, students told The Associated Press. Some attendees said no one even checked their tickets.

As Kirk arrived, cheers rose. The crowd packed a terraced courtyard, and students, including some protesters, watched from nearby buildings or overlooks.

“Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” an audience member asked.

Kirk responded, “Too many.”

The questioner followed up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”

“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked.

Those were his last words before the bullet struck him. The shot came from a figure in dark clothing on a distant roof on campus, authorities said.

Blood gushed from Kirk’s neck. He held the microphone a moment, then slumped over.

The map above shows the site on the Utah Valley University campus where conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot. (AP Digital Embed)

Madison Lattin, 21, was a few dozen feet to Kirk’s left when the shot echoed over. Lattin, who’d long looked up to Kirk, watched his body jerk and saw the blood.

And it clicked in her head: “That was a gunshot. Now what?”

Shock, followed by chaos and escape

“No! Charlie!” screamed an audience member.

“Go! Run! Go!” yelled another.

The crowd fled the plaza in multiple directions, some slipping and falling or leaping over benches as they did.

Cari Bartholomew, state director of Utah Moms for America, said she had taken her 17-year-old son out of school so he could attend Kirk’s event. They were joined by other women from the group and their kids. Bartholomew’s son was in line waiting to ask a question when Kirk was shot. Chaos ensued and she couldn’t find him as people ducked for cover and started running. She later learned her son was unharmed.

“All of us, we were trying to grab the little kids and getting them as near to us as possible,” she said.

Ryan DeVries, a 25 year-old who works in property management and volunteers as a first responder, said he was surprised by the lack of a security presence at the event; he left his firearm in his car as he anticipated having to walk through metal detectors.

He was weaving his way through the tightly packed crowd to pose a question to Kirk when he heard what sounded similar to a “popping” firework. Glancing at the stage after the shot was fired, DeVries saw Kirk’s head slumped.

A stampede rife with terror and panic soon erupted, said DeVries. Some attendees darted to a nearby building and ran through a water fountain to escape, he said. Others ducked and hid.

Law enforcement tapes off an area after Charlie Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, was shot at the Utah Valley University, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025, in Orem, Utah. (Tess Croewley/The Deseret News via AP)

“People definitely feared for their lives. I could see it in their eyes. I could hear it in their voices. People were crying. People were screaming,” DeVries said.

After the panic subsided, Erynn Lammi, a 35-year old student who heard the gunshot, saw AirPods, phones, keys and trash strewn across the courtyard. When she returned home, she said, she cried her eyes out, feeling for Kirk’s wife and children as she was reminded of the loss of her own father when she was 13.

“Powerlessness,” Lammi said.

In hours, his death echoed across the country

The shooting drew condemnation from across the political spectrum as an example of the escalating threat of political violence in the United States, including the assassination of a Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband in June and the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington in May. President Donald Trump was shot in the ear on the campaign trail in western Pennsylvania last year.

In this image taken from video, SWAT heads into campus after Charlie Kirk was shot during Turning Point’s visit to Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Hannah Schoenbaum)

“Today, a young man was murdered in cold blood while expressing his political views,” said former President George W. Bush. “It happened on a college campus, where the open exchange of opposing ideas should be sacrosanct. Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public square.”

Democratic former President Joe Biden posted his condolences on X. “There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now,” he wrote. “Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones.”

Late Wednesday night, the shooter remained at large. Police helicopters still circled over Orem in the early evening, and roadblocks caused congestion on the streets surrounding the campus. Armed officers walked around in small groups.

Just off campus, a man stood on a street corner holding a sign that read “R.I.P. Charlie.” A parade of trucks drove through town flying American flags in his honor.

At a nearby vigil, a few dozen people gathered, holding electric candles in the slanting afternoon light. As quiet attendees looked on, a chaotic afternoon behind them, speakers read Bible verses.

Johnson reported from Seattle. AP reporters from around the country contributed.

By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer

The average rate on a 30-year U.S. mortgage fell this week to its lowest level in nearly a year, reflecting a pullback in Treasury yields ahead of an expected interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve next week.

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The long-term rate eased to 6.35% from 6.5% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 6.2%.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also fell. The average rate slipped to 5.5% from 5.6% last week. A year ago, it was 5.27%, Freddie Mac said.

Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions to bond market investors’ expectations for the economy and inflation.

Rates have been mostly declining since late July amid growing expectations that the Fed will cut its benchmark short-term interest rate for the first time this year at the central bank’s meeting of policymakers next week.

A similar pullback in rates happened in the leadup to September last year, when the Fed cut its rate in for the first time since March 2020 in the early days of the pandemic. Back then, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage got down to a 2-year low of 6.08%, but soon after climbed again, reaching above 7% by mid-January.

While the Fed doesn’t set mortgage rates, its actions can influence bond investors’ appetite for long-term U.S. government bonds, like 10-year Treasury notes. Lenders use the yield on 10-year Treasurys as a guide to pricing home loans.

The Fed has kept its main interest rate on hold this year because it’s been more worried about inflation potentially worsening because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs than about the job market.

But in a high-profile speech last month, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled the central bank may cut rates in coming months amid concerns about weaker job gains following a grim July jobs report, which included massive downward revisions for June and May.

On Tuesday, revised jobs data from the government showed the U.S. job market was much weaker last year and this year than earlier data suggested. And the latest weekly snapshot of unemployment benefit claims shows more U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, an indication that the number of layoffs could be rising.

The housing market has been in a slump since 2022, when mortgage rates began climbing from historic lows. Sales have remained sluggish so far this year as the average rate on a 30-year mortgage has mostly hovered above 6.5%.

The average rate is now at its lowest level since Oct. 10, when it was 6.32%.

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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