The Dictatorship
Turning Point USA’s annual convention begins in the shadow of Charlie Kirk’s killing
In any other year, under different circumstances, AmericaFest would be one big celebration for the Grand Old Party.
Last year, Turning Point USA’s annual convention served as a victory lap for Donald Trump, who’d won reelection in no small part thanks to the tens of thousands of students who make up TPUSA’s sprawling network of campus Republican organizations.
This year’s convention will feature a decidedly different tone — and higher stakes — following the shooting death of TPUSA’s leader and co-founder, Charlie Kirk, in September. The last few weeks have been particularly tumultuous for the Turning Point organization, which sits at the center of Republican infighting and conspiracy theories surrounding Kirk’s death.
But the show must go on. AmericaFest, beginning Thursday in Phoenix, Arizona, and running through Sunday, will feature an array of MAGA figureheads vying for time in front of Kirk’s audience — many of whom have been warring since his death over how it happened and who his natural heir might be.
The official program includes a laundry list of party officials, right-wing pundits, media celebrities and pastors. Many of them sit in Trump’s immediate orbit, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Donald Trump Jr., longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro. They’ll speak broadly about Kirk’s legacy and host breakout discussions on issues important in the Trump-era GOP: The intersection of conservative and Christian values, the ongoing fight to rebuild American education in the party’s image, and the perceived and nebulous threat of liberalism and anti-fascism.
All eyes will be on Kirk’s widow Erika, who’s grappling not only with the death of her husband, but the MAGA movement and its penchant for building conspiracy theories around high-profile news cycles.
She has spent recent weeks on a press tour to combat a deluge of baseless claims — from the likes of far-right podcaster Candace Owens, Alex Jones, Carlson and Bannon — that the widely accepted account of Charlie Kirk’s killing might be suspicious or wholly fabricated.
Owens in particular has been a thorn in the side of Erika Kirk and TPUSA since Charlie was shot and killed at a speaking event in Utah, allegedly by 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. On her podcast Owens has offered, without evidence, an array of alternative suspects for the assassination, including the Israeli government, the French government, and unnamed members of TPUSA, upon whom she also lodged vague accusations of financial fraud (also without evidence). Robinson was arrested and charged with aggravated murderamong other counts, and authorities believe he acted alone.
In response to Owens, Turning Point officials scheduled a livestream event and invited the podcaster to join them for a debate earlier this week. The event fell apart, but on Monday, Owens and Erika Kirk opted to meet privately for what Owens described as a 4.5-hour conversation. Details are unclear, but the conversation doesn’t appear to have settled the drama — Owens said afterward that she remains unconvinced that Robinson is the primary suspect in Charlie Kirk’s killing.
“Everyone always has to think there’s more to the story. Well, sometimes there’s not,” Erika Kirk said in an interview with CBS News’ Bari Weiss. To Owens directly, she said: “Stop. That’s all I have to say. Stop.”
Kirk’s death leaves a number of question marks for TPUSA, including who might fill his shoes in the podcasting and punditry space, where he garnered an audience of millions. Though Erika Kirk currently sits atop TPUSA as its CEO, her husband’s audience and podcasting empire remain very much up for grabs.
Since September, “The Charlie Kirk Show” has seen a revolving door of Republican politicians and commentators vying for screen time, but none have emerged as a clear replacement for the charismatic talking head, let alone as a leader of a nationwide political youth movement. But the events at AmericaFest may narrow the field: meet-and-greets have been scheduled with far-right provocateurs who built substantial podcast followings of their own amid Trump’s rise to power, including Jack Posobiec, Alex Clark and Michael Knowles.
AmericaFest will also feature a fair bit of peacocking from the GOP, which will have its first chance this weekend to impress TPUSA’s network of young voters since Kirk’s killing. Vice President JD Vance — who may have already secured TPUSA’s support for a presidential run in 2028, as Erika Kirk suggested — will speak on Sunday, his first real opportunity to pitch himself as a party leader to Kirk’s audience.
Other 2026 political hopefuls will also have some stage time, including Vivek Ramaswamy, who announced a gubernatorial bid in OhioTexas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s running for U.S. Senateand Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, running for governor in his state.
Andy Campbell is a Senior Enterprise Editor for MS NOW Digital. He is also the author of “We Are Proud Boys: How a right-wing street gang ushered in a new era of American extremism.”
The Dictatorship
President Trump spoke to Live Nation CEO before antitrust case was settled, company lawyers reveal
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump spoke personally with the chief executive of Live Nation in the weeks before the Justice Department abruptly settled its longstanding antitrust lawsuit against the entertainment giant and its Ticketmaster subsidiary, the company revealed in a court filing.
Lawyers for Live Nation told the court on Monday that Trump and the company’s CEO, Michael Rapino, spoke about the antitrust lawsuit in February, but didn’t discuss “substantive terms” of any potential settlement.
They also said that White House lawyers were involved in some of the numerous in-person meetings, videoconferences, telephone calls and written communications between the company and the Justice Department in February and March.
Just days into the March trial, the Justice Department announced a settlement that most states refused to join, saying it did not go far enough to curb the company’s dominance over concert venues and ticketing for live events though Ticketmaster.
The trial continued, and a jury concluded several weeks later that the company was a monopoly that cost concertgoers and sports fans.
The White House declined to comment on Live Nation’s disclosure, referring questions to the Justice Department, which didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
The revelation comes as the Justice Department has faced criticism that its independence has been threatened by substantial oversight or interference from the White House and the president.
The Justice Department and dozens of states originally teamed up to bring the antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation.
Among other things, the jury in New York found Ticketmaster’s anticompetitive practices led to people in 22 states paying an extra $1.72 per ticket, which the judge could order the companies to pay back.
State attorneys general who sued Live Nation said the verdict could potentially lead to lower ticket prices for music fans.
The federal government’s settlement deal included a cap on service fees at some amphitheaters, plus some new ticket-selling options for promoters and venues — potentially allowing, but not requiring, them to open doors to Ticketmaster competitors such as SeatGeek or AXS.
In April, Live Nation said in a statement that the verdict “is not the last word on this matter.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance say their interim deal to end the war with Iran will deliver a financial windfall to American farmers.
But the Iranians deny it. And in the absence of more details, sanctions experts are flummoxed over exactly how billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian assets would make their way to the American heartland from the escrow accounts where they’ve been locked for years by U.S. sanctions.
A tentative agreement reached last week would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas once passed, and allow Iran to start selling its oil freely again during a 60-day period when the two countries will continue negotiating key issues. The memorandum of understanding also promised to unfreeze Iranian assets.
Trump’s deal has come under fire for failing to address the reasons the president cited for going to war with Iran on Feb. 28, including curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, its missile program and its support for militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
Lashing back at critics Tuesday on his Truth Social media platform, Trump said U.S. farmers would get a payday: The U.S. Treasury Department, he wrote, would release the Iranian assets “into escrow, controlled by the U.S.A., and will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies, exclusively from the United States, including Corn, Wheat, and Soybeans from our great American farmers. These are things that are desperately needed by Iran.’’
Vance, who spoke about the proposal after high-level talks in Switzerland, and Trump say that any frozen funds and assets held outside of Iran will be used to buy U.S. crops.
But the Iranians deny that’s part of the deal. A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said any agricultural purchases would be based on “prices and quality,’’ not terms dictated by Washington.
“It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers,” Baghaei said.
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Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, rejected Vance’s contention that the U.S. and Qatar would dictate how Iran uses unfrozen funds. “Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.
A U.S. official dismissed the contradiction, asserting that Iranian leaders were speaking to their domestic audience. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
Joseph Glauber, a research fellow emeritus at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said Iran was unlikely to abandon its other trade partners on food.
Iran’s major suppliers include Brazil, India, Turkey, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Argentina, he said. Trump’s demand to buy from the U.S. would “create some hard feelings with some of our competitors.”
Under previous sanctions, the U.S. has required that money foreign countries spend on imports from Iran — such as South Korean purchases of oil and Iraqi purchases of Iranian electricity — be locked in escrow accounts and typically released only if the Treasury approves and if the proceeds go toward “non-sanctionable’’ items such as food and medicine.
On Monday, the U.S. Treasury approved the sale of Iranian oil, petrochemicals and petroleum products through Aug. 21. It did not mention any escrow accounts.
Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who coordinated efforts to put diplomatic pressure on Iran in the first Trump administration, said in a post on X that he would welcome “a clarification that Iran is actually restricted to only buying U.S. agricultural products.”
Richard Nephew, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said it’s unclear what the new U.S.-Iran agreement actually means for releasing restricted Iranian assets.
Could the U.S. require that the assets be used to buy American farm products?
“Well, we can try!’’ Nephew, who helped design Iran sanctions in the Obama and Biden administrations, said by email. “All you really need to do is to tell a foreign bank that they can move the money but only to a U.S. bank to buy soybeans or whatever.”
Banks do not have to comply, he said. If they refuse, the U.S. could sanction them as well.
But it’s rare for the U.S. to conduct itself that way, he added, “in part because we don’t usually like to give the impression that we treat national security issues as a cash grab.”
___
Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.
Wednesday marks four years since the Supreme Court issued its landmark Dobbs decisionwhich effectively overturned Roe v. Wade and repealed the constitutional right to an abortion. On “Morning Joe,” co-host Mika Brzezinski explained how the ruling set off a domino effect across the United States, affecting not just abortion-related care, but also altering “the state of women’s healthcare as a whole.”
As Brzezinski noted, states across the country have enacted harsher abortion restrictions since the 2022 ruling, with 13 outright banning the procedure with very limited exceptions. This has created a climate of fear among those who treat pregnant patients, with many healthcare providers worrying that any care involving an abortion could violate the law, even when the mother’s health is at risk.
“We are talking about people dying when they’re miscarrying because doctors are too afraid to intervene and save their lives,” Amy Littlefield, abortion access correspondent for The Nation, told MS NOW.
Brzezinski said the laws have effectively limited women’s “access to lifesaving healthcare.”
The MS NOW host reflected on some high-profile stories of pregnant women who faced delayed care in states with near-total abortion bans, noting “the numbers of cases that we’ve covered here on the show of women who have had their lives threatened, have been forced to give birth to dying or dead babies, and then, by the way, denied the access to ever create life again, because they became sterilized in the process.”
“There’s an image I can’t get out of my head,” Brzezinski added, before sharing reporting from ProPublica about Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old mother who died in Texas in 2023 after not receiving timely care for a miscarriage.
“For months afterward, Porsha’s 3-year-old son would chase after women who looked like her on the street, shouting, ‘That’s Mommy!’” Brzezinski said. “That’s the detail I can’t forget. I can’t stop imagining that little boy chasing after strangers on the street. And that story repeats itself.”
You can watch Brzezinski’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
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