Charlie Kirk’s death becomes a political flashpoint in NC and DC
Welcome to Monday. It’s Danielle Battaglia with the edition of Under the Dome that focuses on the Trump administration.
The past week has been hard.
I was sitting at my desk in the U.S. Capitol Wednesday afternoon when an alert flashed across my screen: Charlie Kirk, 31, was shot at a college event in Utah. I read the alert out loud.
Reporters turned and looked at me and then we all fell silent. We knew two things to be true in that moment: for many around the Capitol, Kirk was a friend and a confidant, and an attack on Kirk would be seen as an attack on the Republican Party and the president.
Kirk’s gruesome death was captured on video and then released for the world to see. We watched it (please don’t). We knew he would not survive.
Just hours prior, I wrote that President Donald Trump called for the death penalty for a Charlotte man who fatally stabbed a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, on the light rail in Charlotte. Video of her death had been released the week before. Horrific.
Since the video’s release, Republicans accused Democrats of being soft on crime and blamed them for Zarutska’s death. Democrats fought back. With a war of words on social media, in news releases and on television, tensions were already high.
Now another death, more violence: another political flashpoint.
The U.S. House was in the middle of a series of votes. I was carefully watching a TV monitor on my desk that shows a split screen of the Senate and House chambers because I knew House Republicans were attempting to add Lumbee recognition to a defense spending bill that afternoon. The split screen also includes smaller feeds of every major news channel. Each one was covering Kirk.
In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson paused work to ask for a moment of silence. The room went quiet for 30 seconds and then yelling erupted.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado, shouted that a silent prayer wasn’t enough. She wanted someone to lead a spoken prayer.
A few weeks ago, I noted in this newsletter that members of Congress were oddly quiet over the shooting deaths at Annunciation Catholic School in Minnesota. As Kirk died, another school shooting took place in Denver. House Democrats wanted those shootings acknowledged.
And now lawmakers were shouting at each other, blaming each other for the shootings and fighting about passing gun laws.
When Johnson got the House under control they moved onto the day’s business.
But tensions exploded onto social media. All of North Carolina’s members of Congress put out condolences and calls to tamp down political discord. Some called for North Carolina residents to be fired from their jobs for their responses to Kirk’s death.
Rep. Pat Harrigan, a Republican from Hickory, repeatedly made clear how angry he is, blaming the left and the media.
Another Republican, Sen. Thom Tillis told The National Journal: “What I was really disgusted by yesterday is a couple of talking heads that sees this as an opportunity to say we’re at war so that they could get some of our conservative followers lathered up over this. It seems like a cheap, disgusting, awful way to pretend like you’re a leader of a conservative movement. And there were two in particular that I found particularly disgusting.”
He didn’t say who.
Lawmakers are also scared.
Johnson told reporters that Capitol Police have tracked 14,000 threats and instances of concerning behavior in 2025. The record was around 9,600 in 2021.
Earlier this year, Tillis released audio of threats he received that targeted him, his family and his staff.
Now, as fears grow, elected officials began canceling their upcoming events.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, canceled her appearance in Raleigh. And Raleigh City Council member Jonathan Lambert-Melton announced he would not offer his office hours.
What else we worked on:
- Looking to get a COVID vaccine? Evan Moore reports what you need to know.
- North Carolina communities spent millions trying to recover from Helene. Now they’re caught in bureaucratic red tape trying to get reimbursed, Briah Lumpkins reports.
- Fed up waiting for Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to release earmarked funds to reimburse those communities, Sen. Ted Budd announced he would hold DHS nominees from reaching the Senate floor for approval until Noem gives North Carolina the money.
- A company that owns a private prison in Winton is now in talks with the Trump administration to house immigrants at the facility, Nathan Collins reports.
- The U.S. House passed a bill that includes federal recognition for the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. The bill now moves to the Senate.
- T. Keung Hui reports that the Trump administration has been withholding millions of dollars from magnet schools in Wake County and is trying to end a program meant to desegregate schools.
That’s it for now. Be kind to each other. And check back tomorrow for the Under the Dome podcast.
If you have any feedback or tips for this edition of the newsletter feel free to reach out to me directly at dbattaglia@mcclatchydc.com.
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This story was originally published September 15, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Charlie Kirk’s death becomes a political flashpoint in NC and DC."
