A video shared on X shows Erika Kirk at the Turning Point USA office surrounded by staff members, proudly showing them the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to her late husband, Charlie Kirk.

In the clip posted by Mikey McCoy, Charlie Kirk’s former chief of staff, Erika speaks movingly to the assembled team.

In the clip, she can be heard saying, ‘I wanted you guys all to see the Medal of Freedom and be able to look at it and the back of it.’

‘You guys are all part of the legacy. Thank you,’ she says warmly.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award in the U.S. It was awarded posthumously to Charlie Kirk by President Donald Trump on Oct. 14, 2025, a date that would have been Kirk’s 32nd birthday. 

Erika accepted the award on her husband’s behalf at a ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House. She also delivered remarks highlighting her husband’s beliefs and sacrifice.

Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10, 2025, while speaking at a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley State University in Orem, Utah.

Following her husband’s death, Erika was unanimously appointed CEO and chair of Turning Point USA’s board.

A teenage street musician has been jailed and charged with leading a public gathering in which she led a crowd in singing an anti-Putin rock song in St. Petersburg, a rare act of defiance, according to local reports.

Diana Loginova faces a single administrative charge for organizing an unauthorized public gathering and has been jailed for 13 days, The Moscow Times reported.

After serving her sentence, Loginova will face an additional administrative offense of ‘discrediting’ the Russian military, Reuters reported.

Loginova, who performs under the name Naoko with the band Stoptime, was arrested Tuesday after being filmed earlier leading a crowd in singing the lyrics to exiled rapper Noize MC’s hit song ‘Swan Lake Cooperative.’

Noize MC, the musician who wrote ‘Swan Lake Cooperative,’ is openly critical of the Kremlin and left Russia for Lithuania after the start of the war in Ukraine.

For its part, Moscow has added him to its list of ‘foreign agents,’ which includes hundreds of individuals and entities accused of conducting subversive activities with support from abroad, Reuters reported.

The song doesn’t reference Russian President Vladimir Putin or mention the war in Ukraine. It is a reference to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, which was played on television after the deaths of Soviet leaders and during the 1991 coup attempt against President Mikhail Gorbachev.

In May, a St. Petersburg court banned the song on grounds it ‘may contain signs of justification and excuse for hostile, hateful attitudes towards people, as well as statements promoting violent changes to the foundations of the constitutional order.’

House Republicans in battleground districts appear to be closing ranks as GOP leaders dig in on their government shutdown strategy, while the fiscal standoff shows no signs of slowing. 

Eight House GOP lawmakers whose seats are being targeted by Democrats in 2026 spoke with Fox News Digital this week. And while some shared individual concerns, they were largely united in agreeing with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., that Republicans should not renegotiate their federal funding proposal — and were confident that Americans are behind them.

‘The more people understand the math inside of the Senate, the more I would say Republicans are winning,’ said Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., who defeated a moderate Democrat for his seat last year.

Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., who also flipped her seat from blue to red, argued the results of the 2024 election show Americans ‘can see through a lot of the games that the Democrats have been playing.’

‘We’ve gotten to work with the demands of the American voters, and Democrats are still in disarray,’ she said.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., said, ‘It’s a simple math problem. And the Democrat Party grossly underestimated the American public’s ability to understand math.’

For a House GOP conference that’s been plagued by historic levels of division in recent history — particularly over the issue of government funding — it has shown a notable display of unity amid the shutdown, with few exceptions.

The shutdown is poised to roll into next week after most Senate Democrats voted to block the GOP’s bill for a tenth time. 

Republicans put forward last month a seven-week extension of fiscal year (FY) 2025 funding levels, called a continuing resolution (CR), aimed at giving congressional negotiators more time to strike a long-term deal for FY2026.

But Democrats in the House and Senate were infuriated by being sidelined in those talks. The majority of Democrats are refusing to accept any deal that does not include serious healthcare concessions, at least extending COVID-19 pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of this year.

Several vulnerable Republicans who spoke with Fox News Digital pointed out they’re in favor of extending the Obamacare subsidies as well. Indeed, a majority of them are backers of a bipartisan bill to extend them for one year, led by Kiggans.

‘I think we would actually prefer to have … longer term than one year,’ said Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa.

But Mackenzie also pointed out that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., criticized the one-year bill, adding, ‘He already said ‘Absolutely not,’ so I don’t even know what their position is and what they’re asking for.’

Jeffries walked those comments back somewhat a day later, telling reporters that Democrats were willing to look at any good-faith offer.

Kiggans told Fox News Digital, ‘I care about that issue, certainly, you know, I had introduced that [Affordable Care Act] premium tax cuts extension.’

She added that Obamacare, formally called the ACA, and reopening the government are ‘two different issues, though’ that should be discussed separately.

The House Republicans who spoke with Fox News Digital, while largely supportive of discussing Obamacare subsidy reforms and extensions, were united in refusing to entertain Democrats’ demands to come back to the negotiating table on federal funding. All maintained, in some form, that the House did its job in passing the CR on Sept. 19.

‘We have a clean CR that would fund all of the programs — all of the federal employees, keep everything up and running through Nov. 21st, so that we can finalize FY2026 appropriations and address issues like healthcare. But you don’t do it at the barrel of a gun,’ said Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y.

Lawler is one of three House Republicans who won in a district that President Donald Trump lost in 2024.

‘I think what the Democrats are doing here is creating a mess for the American people. And they’re not actually solving any of the problems,’ he said.

Mackenzie said, ‘It was a seven-week continuing resolution so that we could have time to have policy discussions on other issues that did need to be wrapped up by the end of the year. And we were on track to do that. And I think [Democrats] totally blew that process up.’

‘This is an unprecedented thing that Senate Democrats are doing, trying to add policy programs into the new continuity of funding bill,’ Rep. Tom Kean, R-N.J., the most vulnerable Republican in the Garden State, also said.

Both Lawler and Rep. Dave Valadao, R-Calif., warned that giving up a policy rider-free spending bill in favor of inserting partisan demands would create an unworkable new standard.

‘Holding the government office is never a good strategy. And if it becomes a successful way of negotiating … it’ll set a bad precedent for governing moving forward,’ Valadao said. ‘So this is an absolute no-go, should never be successful.’

Lawler said, ‘The reality is, the moment you start giving in on a clean CR and start giving in to demands, this will continue in perpetuity. Every time there’s a government funding lapse, you’ll have a group of people demanding something, and it will turn into a fiasco.’

Several of the battleground Republicans also praised Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., in the process.

Valadao told Fox News Digital, ‘I think they’re doing a good job. At least all the calls I’ve been on, the conversations I’ve had with my colleagues and, again, folks in the district, they all seem pretty confident that we’re doing the right thing.’

Lawler said Johnson had ‘handled it well,’ while Bresnahan said, ‘I would say, at least with members, they’re, you know, keeping very fluid conversations. We have daily or at least biweekly calls here as to what the messaging needs to be and what the conversations are.’

But there has been some dissent within the House GOP as the shutdown drags on.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has criticized House Republican leaders for not announcing a plan on extending the Obamacare subsidies.

And Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., publicly ripped Johnson’s decision to keep the House out of session while the Senate considers the CR.

‘It is absolutely unacceptable to me and I think only serves further distrust,’ Kiley told MSNBC on Wednesday.

Notably, not all battleground House Republicans who spoke with Fox News Digital directly backed Johnson’s move — but none explicitly condemned it, either, and most blamed Senate Democrats for the holdup.

‘I’m kind of torn on that, because to come back and just be a part of the gimmicks that you see going on right now is not helpful,’ Valadao said. ‘Holding the government hostage is what’s the problem here.’

Kiggans, who said she’s lobbying for the House to vote on a standalone bill to pay both active duty and civilian members of the military, said, ‘I think we all want to get back to work. We know that we have work to do, but the ball’s in the court of the Senate Democrats and Chuck Schumer.’

Others more directly backed the move, however.

Kean told Fox News Digital that his staff were still busy in D.C. and in New Jersey trying to help constituents navigate the shutdown and other matters.

‘Any chance we can get back to our district, it’s always important that we listen to our constituents and hear their concerns,’ Kean said. ‘Right now, I 100% support the decision.’

Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, said it was ‘the right move.’

‘We should be with our district. I’m keeping all my district offices open despite nobody getting paid,’ Nunn said. ‘Coming back and having a theatrical debate is less effective than having a real conversation about how to get the government back open.’

In theory, this should be a moment of vindication for the Free Palestine movement. A ceasefire holds. Israel has pulled back troops. International headlines finally reflect what activists have shouted for months: that Gaza’s suffering matters. 

And yet, the plazas are still. The hashtags have gone dormant. The chants that once shook campuses have faded into uneasy silence.

Why? 

Many activists can’t celebrate because celebration feels like surrender.

Behavioral science has some explanations. First, there’s cognitive dissonance at play. When the suffering that fueled your cause suddenly ends, any gesture toward happiness feels obscene. They still see bombed hospitals and displaced families. To cheer would feel like betrayal – not of Israel, but of grief itself.

Second, social identity theory tells us people bond most tightly when facing a common enemy. But when the enemy momentarily recedes, cohesion falters. You can see it in activist networks now debating purity tests and political hierarchies: who’s really anti-colonial, who’s performative. The silence isn’t apathy; it’s fragmentation.

And then there’s the matter of trust. The Free Palestine movement’s emotional currency is their perceived moral authenticity. That’s why President Donald Trump, despite questioning aid to Israel, gains no credit here. Even if he were to deliver every demand the Free Palestine movement has ever made – an end to occupation, full recognition, humanitarian aid – he would get no credit. 

To them, he is not a messenger; he is a metaphor. His name evokes everything they stand against: nationalism, hierarchy, cruelty disguised as strength. Their ears are hardened not by indifference, but by identity. When a message comes from a symbol of what you despise, its meaning dies on arrival. That’s not hypocrisy – it’s human nature. We hear only what affirms who we are. What remains is a vacuum of feeling – neither victory nor defeat, just unresolved tension.

For many, that tension is unbearable, so silence becomes self-protection. But silence has a cost.

A movement that cannot speak when conditions improve loses moral clarity. If the world only hears you when you’re angry, it stops listening when you’re right. The tragedy of the Free Palestine silence is not hypocrisy; it’s heartbreak. It reveals how thoroughly moral identity has replaced moral imagination.

To move forward, supporters must learn to celebrate small mercies without mistaking them for betrayal – to see progress not as perfection, but as proof that pain is finally being heard. Until then, the quiet will continue. Not because there’s nothing to say, but because joy, after so much rage, feels foreign on the tongue.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a directive ordering the Department of War to keep paying U.S. troops despite the ongoing government shutdown, bypassing Congress after lawmakers failed to reach a funding deal for weeks.

The White House said the move is necessary to protect ‘military readiness’ as the budget standoff stretched into its third week. The order, issued as National Security Presidential Memorandum-8 (NSPM-8), directs the department to use available fiscal year 2026 funds to cover military pay and allowances.

‘The current appropriations lapse presents a serious and unacceptable threat to military readiness and the ability of our Armed Forces to protect and defend our Nation,’ the memo states.

Trump cited his Article II powers as commander-in-chief in issuing the order, which covers active-duty troops and reservists on service orders. The directive instructs officials to use only funds that are legally tied to military pay, in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

More than one million service members were expected to miss paychecks starting this week if Congress didn’t act. Trump’s move marks a break from past administrations, which often waited for bipartisan deals instead of intervening directly.

Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital that ‘Trump’s mid-month action was welcome news to the military community. But now that same community is anxious about what happens at the end of the month, where mortgages and rents and car payments all become due.’

‘Democrats were wrong to try to use troop pay as leverage to accomplish their political goals. And it would be wrong, it would be just as wrong, for a Republican to hope that that lack of pay would be a catalyst to get Democrats to acquiesce,’ LaLota said. ‘[Trump is] protecting the troops when Congress won’t.’

The Pentagon has not said which specific accounts will be used. Reports from Roll Call and Reuters indicate the administration has identified roughly $8 billion in unobligated defense funds as potential options.

Critics warn the move could face legal challenges under the Antideficiency Act, which bars spending money not appropriated by Congress. But White House officials argue the law permits spending that has a ‘reasonable, logical relationship’ to the purpose of the original funds: in this case, keeping troops paid.

The directive follows Trump’s Oct. 11 order to keep troop payments flowing during the shutdown. The White House’s latest move Wednesday with Congress still in gridlock could shape government shutdowns for generations to come.

Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.

The State Department told Fox News that it is aware of reports Wednesday that two American tourists were attacked in a popular European seaside destination that local media and police said left one person dead and another wounded.

The alleged attack happened early Wednesday in Cascais, Portugal, a coastal resort town about 20 miles west of Lisbon. 

Video taken by Reuters showed blood stains on a sidewalk, where a stabbing had taken place during an attempted robbery, according to media reports.

A State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the agency takes seriously its commitment to protect U.S. citizens abroad and stands ready to provide consular assistance. 

‘One of the young men died at the scene and the other suffered injuries to his face and arms and was taken to [a] hospital,’ the Portugal Resident newspaper cited the Lisbon Metropolitan Command police force as saying.

The attack was carried out by three suspects who fled the scene in a vehicle, the newspaper added.

Further details about the incident and the identities of the victims were not immediately available. 

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. 

Fox News’ Nick Kalman contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced federal law enforcement will next set its eyes on San Francisco, commending the FBI’s more than 23,000 violent criminal arrests, which he said is more than double the number arrested in the final year of the Biden administration.

During an Oval Office news conference at the White House, Trump said the FBI has ‘destroyed or severely disrupted’ more than 170 organized criminal enterprises and gangs, 1,600 of the most violent gangs, and confiscated more than 6,000 illegal firearms since he was sworn in.

He added he wants to make every city safe, and his focus has turned to San Francisco.

‘These are great cities that could be fixed,’ the president said. ‘I’m going to be strongly recommending … [we] start looking at San Francisco. I think we can make San Francisco one of our great cities. … It’s a mess, and we have great support in San Francisco. … Every American deserves to live in a community where they’re not afraid of being mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted, or shot.’

During the news conference, FBI Director Kash Patel announced ‘Operation Summer Heat,’ which the FBI created to target violent criminals, yielded 8,700 arrests of violent offenders in three months.

More than 2,200 guns and 421 kilograms of fentanyl seized during the operation—enough fentanyl to kill 55 million Americans, according to Patel.

To date, he said the FBI has seized 1900 kilograms of fentanyl—enough lethal doses to kill 127 million Americans alone to date.

‘If you look at the past four years of the Biden administration, [there were] 16,000, 17,000, 15,000, 15,000 … arrests year over year of violent felons in this country,’ Patel said. ‘You have 28,600 arrests of violent felons in just seven months alone because of your leadership and the dedication of the men and women at the FBI who want to go out there and do the job they were prevented from doing. … This number is historic by every metric.’

Patel also highlighted the FBI’s efforts to find missing children, claiming 5,400 were located since January.

‘That is a 30% increase year to date over the last administration,’ he said. ‘Violent crimes against children arrests alone are up 10% [and] gang arrests are up 210% in the last seven months alone. … Mr. President, you said we have to go after the worst of the worst. … This is just the beginning.’