I believe we are neglecting the issue that lies underneath or, in some cases, directly in front of us until today, when President Trump spoke about anti-Christian bias. Unfortunately, this bias is not synonymous to our country alone. It’s taking place all around the world in the shadows of the night, and in most cases, right under our noses.
Janelle King
This episode explores how anti-Christian bias is spreading worldwide—from China’s strict controls and Nigeria’s violence to subtle signs of oppression here in America, like censorship and declining church attendance. We discuss the dangers of rising secularism and communist influence, and why it’s more important than ever to stand firm in our faith. A timely reminder of the ongoing fight for religious liberty across the globe.
We examine essential mid-year financial steps that could help you finish the year strong and brighten your financial future. Time flies by quickly, making it crucial to check in on your financial goals periodically rather than putting them off indefinitely.
• Consider saving for retirement early, even if in small amounts, to harness the power of compound interest • Check your workplace retirement plans – many now offer automatic enrollment at 3%, but experts recommend aiming for 10-15% contribution rates • Consider taking advantage of catch-up contributions at age 50 ($7,500 extra in 401k) and the new higher limits between ages 60-63 ($11,250 extra) • Are you planning for a potentially 30+ year retirement, as people are living longer but retiring earlier? • Consider Roth accounts for tax-free growth – even opening one with minimal contributions starts the important 5-year clock • Have you developed a tax strategy for retirement as most retirement savings are in tax-deferred accounts requiring future taxation? • Are you prepared for healthcare costs averaging $165,000 per person during retirement? • Have you ensured your estate planning documents are current and properly prepared? • Is it time to rebalance your investment portfolios to match your risk tolerance and time horizon?
Schedule a complimentary consultation at masterplanretire.com or call 770-980-9262 to get comprehensive retirement planning reports that show if you’re on track.
By ERIC TUCKER, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER, JESSE BEDAYN and HANNAH SCHOENBAUM Associated Press
OREM, Utah (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that the suspect in the Charlie Kirk killing has been captured.
This undated combination of images provided provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows a person of interest in connection with the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025, in Orem, Utah. (Federal Bureau of Investigation via AP)
“With a high degree of certainty, we have him,” Trump announced in a live interview on Fox News Chanel on Friday morning.
Trump said a minister who is also involved with law enforcement turned in the suspect to authorities.
“Somebody that was very close to him said, ‘Hmm, that’s him,'” Trump said.
Kirk was killed by a single shot Wednesday in what police said was a targeted attack and Utah’s governor called a political assassination. Kirk co-founded the nonprofit political organization Turning Point USA and was a close ally of Trump.
Authorities recovered a high-powered, bolt-action rifle near the scene and had said the shooter jumped off a roof and vanished into the woods after the shooting.
Kirk was speaking at a debate hosted by Turning Point at Utah Valley University at the time of the shooting. He was taken to a local hospital and pronounced dead hours later.
Federal investigators and state officials on Thursday had released photos and a video of the person they believe is responsible. Kirk was shot as he spoke to a crowd gathered in a courtyard at Utah Valley University in Orem.
More than 7,000 leads and tips had poured in, officials said. Authorities have yet to publicly name the suspect or cite a motive in the killing, the latest act of political violence to convulse the United States.
Grisly video shared online
The attack, carried out in broad daylight as Kirk spoke about social issues, was captured on grisly videos that spread on social media.
The videos show Kirk, who played an influential role in rallying young Republican voters, speaking into a handheld microphone when suddenly a shot rings out. Kirk reaches up with his right hand as blood gushes from the left side of his neck. Stunned spectators gasp and scream before people start running away.
The shooter, who investigators believe blended into the campus crowd because of a college-age appearance, fired one shot from the rooftop, according to authorities. Video released Thursday showed the person then walking through the grass and across the street before disappearing.
“I can tell you this was a targeted event,” said Robert Bohls, the top FBI agent in Salt Lake City.
Trump, who was joined by Democrats in condemning the violence, said he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S. Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, visited with Kirk’s family Thursday in Salt Lake City. Vance posted a remembrance on X chronicling their friendship, dating back to initial messages in 2017, through Vance’s Senate run and the 2024 election.
“So much of the success we’ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie’s ability to organize and convene,” Vance wrote. “He didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government.”
Kirk’s casket was flown aboard Air Force Two from Utah to Phoenix, where his nonprofit political youth organization, Turning Point USA, is based. Trump told reporters he plans to attend Kirk’s funeral. Details have not been announced.
Kirk was taking questions about gun violence
Kirk was a conservative provocateur who became a powerful political force among young Republicans and was a fixture on college campuses, where he invited sometimes-vehement debate on social issues.
One such provocative exchange played out immediately before the shooting as Kirk was taking questions from an audience member about gun violence.
The debate hosted by Turning Point at the Sorensen Center on campus was billed as the first stop on Kirk’s “American Comeback Tour.”
The event generated a polarizing campus reaction. An online petition calling for university administrators to bar Kirk from appearing received nearly 1,000 signatures. The university issued a statement last week citing First Amendment rights and affirming its “commitment to free speech, intellectual inquiry and constructive dialogue.”
Last week, Kirk posted on X images of news clips showing his visit was sparking controversy. He wrote, “What’s going on in Utah?”
Attendees barricaded themselves in classrooms
Some attendees who bolted after the gunshot rushed into two classrooms full of students. They used tables to barricade the door and to shield themselves in the corners. Someone grabbed an electric pencil sharpener and wrapped the cord tightly around the door handle, then tied the sharpener to a chair leg.
On campus Thursday, the canopy stamped with the slogan Kirk commonly used at his events — “PROVE ME WRONG” — stood, disheveled.
Kathleen Murphy, a longtime resident who lives near the campus, said she has been staying inside with her door locked.
“With the shooter not being caught yet, it was a worry,” Murphy said.
Meanwhile, the shooting continued to draw swift bipartisan condemnation as Democratic officials joined Trump and other Republican allies of Kirk in decrying the attack, which unfolded during a spike of political violence that has touched a range of ideologies and representatives of both major political parties.
___
Tucker and Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Nicholas Riccardi in Denver; Michael Biesecker, Brian Slodysko, Lindsay Whitehurst and Michelle L. Price in Washington; Ty O’Neil in Orem, Utah; Hallie Golden in Seattle; and Meg Kinnard in Chapin, S.C., contributed to this report.
Flags, candles and signs sit at a vigil for Charlie Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of Turning Point USA who was shot and killed, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025, in Orem, Utah. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
As of right now, they’re still looking for the killer, the person who shot Charlie Kirk. When they do, if they do, I’m betting that the left will immediately start setting up GoFundMe accounts to pay for his legal defense.
ATLANTA – Boortz reports from the road on the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the increase of violence against the right by the left.
FILE – Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk speaks at a Turning Point event prior to Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, speaking, Sept. 4, 2024, in Mesa, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
By NICHOLAS RICCARDI and ALI SWENSON Associated Press
Charlie Kirk, who rose from a teenage conservative campus activist to a top podcaster, culture warrior and ally of President Donald Trump, was shot and killed Wednesday during one of his trademark public appearances at a college in Utah. He was 31.
Kirk died doing what made him a potent political force — rallying the right on a college campus, this time Utah Valley University. His shooting is one of an escalating number of attacks on political figures, from the assassination of a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota to last summer’s shooting of Trump, that have roiled the nation.
Trump announced Kirk’s death on his social media site, Truth Social: “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” Trump wrote.
Kirk personified the pugnacious, populist conservatism that has taken over the Republican Party in the age of Trump. He launched his organization, Turning Point USA, in 2012, targeting younger people and venturing onto liberal-leaning college campuses where many GOP activists were nervous to tread.
A backer of Trump during the president’s initial 2016 run, Kirk took Turning Point from one of a constellation of well-funded conservative groups to the center of the right-of-center universe.
Turning Point’s political wing helped run get-out-the-vote for Trump’s 2024 campaign, trying to energize disaffected conservatives who rarely vote. Trump won Arizona, Turning Point’s home state, by five percentage points after narrowly losing it in 2020. The group is known for its flamboyant events that often feature strobe lighting and pyrotechnics. It claims more than 250,000 student members.
Trump on Wednesday praised Kirk, who started as an unofficial adviser during Trump’s 2016 campaign and more recently became a confidant. “He was a very, very good friend of mine and he was a tremendous person,” Trump told the New York Post.
Kirk showed off an apocalyptic style in his popular podcast, radio show and on the campaign trail. During an appearance with Trump in Georgia last fall, he said that Democrats “stand for everything God hates.” Kirk called the Trump vs. Kamala Harris choice “a spiritual battle.”
“This is a Christian state. I’d like to see it stay that way,” Kirk told the 10,000 or so Georgians, who at one point joined Kirk in a deafening chant of “Christ is King! Christ is King!”
Kirk had also remained a regular presence on college campuses. Last year, for the social media program “Surrounded,” he faced off against 20 liberal college students to defend his viewpoints, including that abortion is murder and should be illegal.
Kirk was married to podcaster Erika Frantzve. They have two young children.
Turning Point was founded in suburban Chicago in 2012 by a then 18-year-old Kirk and William Montgomery, a tea party activist, to proselytize on college campuses for low taxes and limited government. It was not an immediate success.
But Kirk’s zeal for confronting liberals in academia eventually won over an influential set of conservative financiers.
Despite early misgivings, Turning Point enthusiastically backed Trump after he clinched the GOP nomination in 2016. Kirk served as a personal aide to Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, during the general election campaign.
Soon, Kirk was a regular presence on cable TV, where he leaned into the culture wars and heaped praise on the then-president. Trump and his son were equally effusive and often spoke at Turning Point conferences.
As money poured in, Kirk bought a $4.75 million Spanish-style estate on a gated Arizona country club. Turning Point steered millions of dollars to contractors owned by Kirk and his associates, and some Republicans were skeptical when it announced it would spearhead an attempt to turn out infrequent voters during Trump’s 2024 campaign.
But as younger voters shifted right in 2024 and Trump ran up a five-point margin of victory in Arizona, Kirk and his allies claimed vindication of his view of a sharp-elbowed, culture-war-oriented conservatism.
Kirk’s evangelical Christian beliefs were intertwined with his political perspective, and he argued that there was no true separation of church and state.
He also referenced the Seven Mountain Mandate, which specifies seven areas where Christians are to lead — politics, religion, media, business, family, education and the arts, and entertainment.
Kirk argued for a new conservatism that advocated for freedom of speech, challenging Big Tech and the media, and centering working-class Americans beyond the nation’s capital.
“We have to ask ourselves a question as a conservative movement: Are we going to revert back to the party of the status quo ruling class?” he said in his speech opening the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2020.
“Or are we going to learn from what I call the MAGA doctrine? The MAGA doctrine, which is a doctrine of American renewal, revival, one that America is the greatest country in the history of the world.”
FILE – Charlie Kirk speaks during a town hall meeting on March 17, 2025, in Oconomowoc, Wis. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps, File)
OREM, Utah (AP) — Charlie Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, was shot Wednesday at an event at a Utah college, Turning Point said.
“We are confirming that he was shot and we are praying for Charlie,” said Aubrey Laitsch, public relations manager for Turning Point USA.
Kirk was attending an event at Utah Valley University.
Videos posted to social media show Kirk speaking into a handheld microphone while sitting under a white tent emblazoned with the slogan “The American Comeback” and “Prove Me Wrong.” A single shot rings out and Kirk can be seen reaching for his neck with his right hand. Stunned spectators can be heard gasping and screaming before people start to run away. The Associated Press was able to confirm the videos were taken at the Sorensen Center courtyard on the Utah Valley University campus, where Kirk was speaking Wednesday.
President Donald Trump and a host of Republican elected officials offered prayers for Kirk on social media.
“We must all pray for Charlie Kirk, who has been shot. A great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
The shooting comes amid a spike in political violence in the United States across all parts of the ideological spectrum. The attacks include the assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband at their house in June, the firebombing of a Colorado parade to demand Hamas release hostages, and a fire set at the house of Pennsylvania’s governor, who is Jewish, in April. The most notorious of these events is the shooting of President Donald Trump during a campaign rally last year.
In this powerful episode, I address a deep and often uncomfortable truth—the role of white liberals and black gatekeepers in perpetuating division, stereotypes, and misinformation in America today. Using the words of Thomas Sowell, I explore how these archetypes keep racism on life support, fueling chaos and undermining true progress. From DC protests and policies on crime to the debates over abortion, school choice, and reparations, I reveal how this toxic cycle has long shaped our society. Historically, figures like Lyndon Johnson and leaders like John Lewis have been used to push agendas that often do more harm than good.
ATLANTA – We tackle the often-overlooked issue of retirement tax liability and explore strategies to create tax-free income streams for a potentially more secure financial future.
• Understanding the “mortgage” on qualified plans (401(k)s, IRAs) where the IRS owns an unknown percentage of your savings • The current “tax sale” has been extended but will eventually end with rates likely rising dramatically • Strategic Roth IRA conversions can move money from tax-deferred to tax-free status during this window of opportunity • “Super Roth” life insurance policies offer tax-free income, death benefits, and potential long-term care coverage • Tax location matters as much as asset allocation – having the right balance of tax-free, tax-deferred, and taxable accounts • The tax snowball effect in retirement impacts Social Security taxation, Medicare premiums, and available deductions • Some retirees can achieve a 0% tax bracket by properly structuring their retirement income sources
Visitmasterplanretire.com to access our retirement checklists, podcasts, and schedule a complimentary consultation. Call 770-980-9262 to speak with someone directly about your retirement planning needs.
President Donald Trump speaks at a dinner in the State Dinning Room of the White House, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Well, I know y’all are on the edge of your seats right now, wanting to hear my opinion on how Trump is doing so far. And even if you’re not waiting to hear my opinion, you’re going to hear it anyway. By and large, like most decent Americans, I’m really happy with what he’s doing.
NEAL BOORTZ
ATLANTA – Boortz gives his unfiltered take on Donald Trump’s early days in office. From border security and tariffs to NATO funding and National Guard deployments, he highlights the wins and the missteps. When Trump turns his attention to personal feuds, like targeting Rosie O’Donnell, Boortz argues it undercuts the real progress being made.
