Lawyers for the man charged with killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk say he shouldn't be eligible for the death penalty because the shooter "hit the intended target” during the assassination last year at a Utah event attended by thousands of people.
Defendant Tyler Robinson's attorneys say prosecutors have not proven that others who attended Kirk's event at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10 were endangered by the shooting — a potentially aggravating factor under state law that would make it a capital crime.
The defense lawyers also disputed claims that Robinson targeted Kirk over his political views. Prosecutors alleged that Robinson told his roommate that he killed the activist because he “had enough of his hatred." But the defense said that was not enough to prove what could have motivated Robinson, after searches of his apartment, computers and telephone failed to produce anything beyond that one statement.
The arguments were contained in documents filed late Tuesday as the defense tries to block the case from proceeding to trial.
Prosecutors last month presented what they call “overwhelming” evidence against Robinson, including DNA tests that tie him to the suspected murder weapon and apparent confessions by the defendant.
His defense attorneys during that hearing questioned the reliability of the prosecution's evidence, but they didn't offer any alternative theories for Kirk's assassination. The defense made no mention of DNA in Tuesday's filing.
Robinson has not yet entered a plea in the case. He turned himself in a day after Kirk was killed.
His defense attorneys previously tried to get the death penalty taken off the table after prosecutors were found to be in contempt of court for talking about the case to the media. State District Judge Tony Graf rejected that request.
Prosecutors have until Aug. 18 to respond to the defense arguments. The Associated Press left telephone and email messages with the Utah County Attorney’s Office seeking comment.
Robinson faces possible sentence enhancements if prosecutors can prove he targeted Kirk because of his political views.
Robinson's former roommate, Lance Twiggs said in an April interview with prosecutors and investigators that Robinson sometimes talked about politics, including President Donald Trump. But Twiggs said he never heard Robinson talk about Kirk before the shooting. The defendant also did not talk much about gender issues or LGBTQ+ rights, Twiggs said.
Closing arguments in the preliminary hearing are scheduled for Sept. 1. Graf will then decide if the case can go to trial and on what charges.
Preliminary hearings typically don’t last so long. Legal experts said the slow pace reflects a cautious approach by Graf and the large volume of evidence. Lawyers for Kirk’s family have asked Graf to make his decision on Sept. 1 so they case can proceed without further delay.
FILE - Tyler Robinson, accused of fatally shooting of Charlie Kirk, appears during a hearing in 4th District Court in Provo, Utah, on June 12, 2026. (Francisco Kjolseth /The Salt Lake Tribune via AP, Pool, File)
President Donald Trump says he slipped away from Air Force One after a trip last month in Turkey because the Secret Service and military wanted him on a “different plane” due to a threat he insisted didn’t scare him.
Trump downplayed the extraordinary nature of the subterfuge involved in his flight, which saw him stow away in an airport catering container to sneak onto another plane while Air Force One was sent into the sky, essentially as a decoy.
Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan won the Minnesota Democratic Senate primary Tuesday in the latest victory for an insurgent progressive over the party’s establishment. Flanagan defeated centrist U.S. Rep. Angie Craig with a pledge to fight the influence of corporations and confront Trump.
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The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez is warning Republicans that deporting vulnerable people who don’t have a criminal record could lose them the Latino vote in the midterm elections.
Rodriguez is a conservative pastor from California and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.
In an op-ed for the Christian Post on Wednesday, he said that not everyone the administration is arresting and deporting is a criminal. Many, he said, are “construction workers, healthcare professionals and Sunday school teachers who have been rooted in this country for 20 years or more.”
“This does not mean open borders,” he said. “It means the mechanisms of enforcement must be proportional, just, and morally defensible.”
Rodriguez said there is “still time to course correct.”
“When indiscriminate enforcement becomes the story, it hands the moral high ground to the progressive Left and confirms their most damaging narrative about the Right.”
Primary results in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Connecticut have reiterated that Democratic voters are hungry for change, even as they remain divided over the party’s ideological future.
Progressives secured a major victory in Minnesota but fell short in Wisconsin, while a longtime Connecticut congressman was ousted by a younger challenger.
The results followed similar outcomes this year in places such as Michigan that showed an appetite for turnover that cuts across the party’s ideological divisions.
They also highlighted the growing influence of younger voters, who have been particularly drawn to progressive candidates.
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The Trump administration says it will resume a leadership role in an international bloc opposed to abortion that had been established in Trump’s first term but then abandoned by President Joe Biden.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday the U.S. would serve as the “secretariat” for the Geneva Consensus Declaration. The Geneva consensus was created in 2020 with great fanfare from then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “to secure meaningful health and development gains for women; to protect life at all stages; to defend the family as the fundamental unit of society.”
Critics, however, saw it as a way for the U.S. to further push Trump administration goals to limit family planning initiatives and ban abortion.
Participation in Geneva Consensus was one of the first Trump administration actions rescinded by Biden when he took office in early 2021.
The winner of Wisconsin’s Democratic primary race for governor immediately tied his Republican opponent to President Trump in his first public comments since his razor-thin victory.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley told supporters Wednesday he intends to build a broad coalition to defeat Republican Tom Tiffany, who’s voted 100% in line with Trump.
“The biggest difference between me and the congressman is I’m loyal to the people of Wisconsin. I’m not loyal to MAGA,” Crowley said referring to Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
Tiffany began the general election campaign with a message connecting Crowley to Francesca Hong, a the democratic socialist Crowley narrowly defeated.
“I’ve said all along that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between these Democrat candidates,” Tiffany said in a statement.
Scott, who also serves as chair of the chamber’s political arm, said on social media Wednesday morning that he’d voted for Darline Graham in Tuesday’s special Republican Senate primary.
Graham has been serving in an interim role since her brother Sen. Lindsey Graham’s death last month. Scott called his fellow South Carolinian “a conservative stalwart” who “represents our beloved state with class, humility, and dignity.”
Graham and Rep. Ralph Norman will go head to head in an Aug. 25 GOP runoff. The winner of that contest faces Democrat Annie Andrews in November.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced the creation of a State Department task force to combat “birth tourism,” a Trump administration phrase for foreign women coming to the United States with the intention of giving birth to a child on U.S. soil in order to secure their child’s American citizenship.
Trump and his administration have fought unsuccessfully in courts to end “birthright citizenship,” which gives U.S. citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. Despite those legal setbacks, Trump has continued the fight to end the practice.
In a social media post Wednesday, Rubio said the new task force would “review the activity of visa holders, dismantle illegal birth tourism networks, and put an end to this heinous abuse of our nation’s laws.”
He said that since the task force was created last month, it had already taken action to revoke the visas of more than 600 people suspected of being involved in birth tourism schemes.
Presidents have regularly tested the confines of their office, pushing their security advisers to visit war zones as a show of American presence and their own leadership. Usually, this happens in the form of trips that aren’t announced until the president is deemed to be out of harm’s way.
What’s different this time is that Trump was covertly separated from the rest of his travelers — including the press pool meant to provide independent coverage of the president — and, instead of informing the public about what occurred once the risk had passed, the White House still hasn’t fully revealed what took place.
Commanders in chief have sometimes kept overseas trips covert for security reasons, with schedules and logistics kept classified until after for safety reasons. But the fact that Trump’s whereabouts were concealed at the time and for weeks afterward is believed to be unprecedented.
“We have absolutely seen the president fly on unmarked or decoy planes before, into Iraq, Afghanistan, other war-zone-like places,” said Garrett M. Graff, author of “Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself — While the Rest of Us Die.”
“But this was an ongoing secret that I don’t think we’ve ever seen before.”
After hiding in the catering vehicle and being moved to the other plane, Trump stopped in Britain, sneaked back aboard the presidential plane undetected, and even later scoffed when asked about potential danger.
“If I go, you go. Right?” he told reporters then — gliding past the fact that if the plane had been shot down, the president wouldn’t have been aboard.
U.S. inflation slowed last month and a measure of underlying price pressures also cooled, suggesting higher oil and gas prices from the Iran war are only having a limited impact on broader costs in the economy.
Consumer prices rose 3.4% in July from a year ago, down slightly from 3.5% in June, the Labor Department said Wednesday. But inflation is still higher than before the Iran war began in February, when it was 2.4%. On a monthly basis, prices rose just 0.1% from June to July.
Inflation has been pushed higher by a series of shocks to the economy, including President Trump’s tariffs imposed last spring, higher gas prices stemming from the Iran war, and a surge in investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure that has boosted computer chip prices. The key question for the inflation-fighters at the Fed — not to mention for consumers struggling with high gas and grocery prices — is how quickly those one-time effects will fade.
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President Trump pivoted the nation’s attention back to vaccines this week with an executive order that aims to scale back the childhood immunization schedule and space out shots into separate visits.
After acting to overhaul the nation’s vaccine policy and guidance, the Trump administration had recently largely stepped back from additional changes to focus on less controversial subjects, raising questions over the political impetus behind and implications of the Republican president’s renewed focus on vaccines.
For well over a decade, Trump has expressed his view — against medical groups’ guidance — that childhood vaccines should be administered in smaller doses over a long period of time. The executive order sought to bear out that discredited theory.
While the move could endear Trump to some “Make America Healthy Again” voters who want more flexibility on immunizations, it’s also already attracting attacks designed to hurt Trump’s aligned candidates in November’s midterm elections.
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Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan won the Minnesota Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday in the latest victory for an insurgent progressive over the party’s establishment.
Flanagan defeated centrist U.S. Rep. Angie Craig with a pledge to fight the influence of corporations and confront Trump.
“For months now, I have been telling you that this campaign was about the many versus the money,” Flanagan said as she celebrated her victory in Minneapolis. “Well guess what? The many just won.”
The outcome was another sign of progressive energy among Democratic primary voters. It comes a week after Abdul El-Sayed won a bitter and divisive primary in Michigan that fired up the left and fueled anxiety among party leaders that Democrats will alienate moderate swing voters.
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President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he slipped away from Air Force One after a trip last month in Turkey because the Secret Service and military wanted him on a “different plane” due to a threat he insisted didn’t scare him.
Trump downplayed the extraordinary nature of the subterfuge involved in his flight, which saw him stow away in an airport catering container to sneak onto another plane while Air Force One was sent into the sky, essentially as a decoy.
He also downplayed the risk to the people — White House officials, security and support staff, and reporters — he left on the plane.
“They wanted me to go on a different flight, different plane,” Trump told reporters after returning from an event in Ohio, saying he had little choice in the matter.
“I guess there was a threat out there. I didn’t really ask too much about it,” he said. “I get a lot of threats.”
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President Donald Trump talks to reporters after arriving on Air Force One Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport in Cleveland, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
