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Trump: Ukraine can win back territory lost in the war

admin - Latest News - September 23, 2025
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Trump: Ukraine can win back territory lost in the war



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Sept. 23, 2025, 5:16 PM EDTBy Curtis Bunn and Tyler KingkadeIn 2016, Charlie Kirk wasn’t yet a household name. The young activist had co-founded Turning Point USA four years earlier to help spread conservative ideas on college campuses. But shortly after President Donald Trump’s first election, the group launched an ambitious new project — the Professor Watchlist — aimed at highlighting what it saw as left-leaning bias in higher education. The list, easily available online, now has more than 300 professor names, listed under categories like “Terror Supporter,” “LGBTQ,” “Antifa” and “Socialism.” Once dismissed by critics as a fringe culture war stunt, education experts say the list helped kick off a movement that continues today to monitor and expose perceived ideological opponents. Since Kirk’s assassination earlier this month, that movement has accelerated, with conservative activists systematically outing people in what critics have decried as a right-wing version of “cancel culture.” The backlash has led to the removal or resignation of dozens of teachers and professors who allegedly disparaged Kirk or celebrated his death online.“If you make statements that right-wing politicians don’t like, then you can lose your job. Period. That is chilling,” said Isaac Kamola, director of the American Association of University Professors’ Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, who runs a project called Faculty First Responders that helps professors who have been targeted by Turning Point or other groups. “The Professor Watchlist planted that seed.”NBC News interviewed six professors on the watchlist, added between 2016 and 2023. Some are on it for work they published and others for outspoken social media posts. Once added, they received negative messages and comments; two said it escalated to death threats.This atmosphere, which intensified as social media culture evolved, changed how students and professors interact, said Peter Lake, director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University College of Law. The watchlist was part of a shift that made “what had been a semi-private space — the classroom — into a place where statements or discussions could get national attention,” Lake said. Knowing a stray comment could go viral stifles free speech, he added.“When you step in the classroom, you might as well be in the studio,” he said. “People are going to record what you’re saying, they may publish it, they may take it out of context, they may share it with your enemies — anything can happen now and it frequently does.”Charlie Kirk near the campus of Georgia State University in Atlanta in 2024.Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP via Getty Images fileThose forces were at work earlier this month, for instance, when conservatives circulated a video of a Texas A&M student confronting a senior lecturer in the English department for teaching about gender identity, citing Trump’s executive order recognizing only two genders. The lecturer, who was not on the Professor Watchlist, was fired and two administrators were removed from their posts. Last week, university president Mark Welsh also resigned amid the controversy.Some conservatives argue the watchlist was a necessary antidote to left-wing bias on campus and helped counter-balance the criticism of right-wing professors. It was “part of changing the way the right engaged with higher ed,” said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “The problem is not with the list,” he said. “The problem is that the list was ever necessary.”Turning Point USA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Charlie Kirk himself defended the project as “an awareness tool” in a 2018 interview with “The Opposition,” a Comedy Central TV show.“It’s not ‘Professor Blacklist’ and it’s not ‘Professor Hitlist,’” Kirk said at the time. “We’re not calling for the termination of these professors — let the schools make their own decisions.”Some professors targeted by the watchlist said it sparked a campaign of harassment against them.Shawn Schwaller, an assistant history professor at California State University, Chico, was added to the list in 2021. His profile includes a long list of allegations, including that he had disparaged conservatives. In one article Schwaller wrote, he offered a defense of protesters at a right-wing Christian event who used flash bombs and bear spray, arguing that they were responding to the “intensely violent rhetoric of a white Christian supremacist.”Schwaller said he was surprised by the response he received online once his name went public. “I hope the professor gets some lead,” one post read. Another said, “He better get a third eye behind his head because its gonna get serious for him.”Preston Mitchum, a former Georgetown Law adjunct professor, found himself on the list after writing on X, formerly Twitter, in 2017, “All white people are racists. All men are sexist. Yes, ALL cis people are transphobic. We have to unpack that. That’s the work!” Mitchum had also appeared on a Fox News panel alongside Charlie Kirk to discuss issues around race after President Trump met with Kanye West in 2018. He said he had been receiving backlash from his tweets but the vitriol increased after the segment aired.He received unwanted calls and emails, Mitchum said, including death threats. “I’m a Black, queer man. I don’t scare often,” he said. He said he finds it hypocritical that Kirk is hailed as a champion of free speech yet created a tool he believes has been used to silence people. “The entire goal is censorship, like fundamentally, the goal is to get you to stop talking,” he said.Preston Mitchum said he received death threats after appearing on the Professor Watchlist and on a panel with Charlie Kirk.Kollin BensonFor some professors, being put on the list was a badge of honor. Charles Roseman, an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was added after co-authoring an article on sex and gender in Scientific American in 2023. “I’m quite glad to draw their ire,” he said. “I’m glad that they disapprove of me. That’s quite the compliment.”Kirk, in a 2016 interview with Time magazine, said the list was not meant to intimidate or “make these professors feel any less secure.” “The inspiration was just to shine a light on what we feel has been an unfair balance toward left-leaning ideas and biases in our universities,” he said.In the years since its inception, the watchlist seems to have inspired other groups. Right-wing influencers like Libs of TikTok now regularly spotlight individual faculty they believe want to indoctrinate students, while conservative parent groups like Moms for Liberty have advocated for state laws limiting what can be discussed in classrooms or shared in libraries. These activists are close allies of the MAGA movement.Republican governors, such as Ron DeSantis in Florida and Greg Abbott in Texas, have also made fights over “wokeness” in colleges a core component of their legislative agendas. Death of Charlie Kirk raises questions about future of free speech in America02:00John Wesley Lowery, an expert in higher education law who advises universities on compliance with federal regulations, said it’s simpler to share details about professors today than when the watchlist was first launched. “It is so much easier to crowdsource information now,” he said. And that’s not the only change, he said, noting that past activism targeted individuals. “What we’ve seen over the last week instead is far more concerted efforts to immediately place pressure on institutions to take action.”Lake, of Stetson University, said the watchlist was a catalyst in changing the way professors work. Among professors writ large, he said, there is an “air of fatalism — do the job long enough, and you could step on a land mine and that could be it.” It’s not only professors who limit what they say in class now, he said. The same is true among students. Lake brought up Kirk’s assassination a couple times in class recently, and there was “no reaction,” he said. “They don’t want to get caught up in a whirlwind.”Curtis BunnCurtis Bunn is a reporter for NBC BLK.Tyler KingkadeTyler Kingkade is a national reporter for NBC News, based in Los Angeles.Melissa Chan and Jo Yurcaba contributed.
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Sept. 29, 2025, 8:00 AM EDT / Updated Sept. 29, 2025, 9:23 AM EDTBy Lawrence HurleyWASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices are scheduled to meet in private on Monday to discuss hundreds of appeals that piled up during their summer recess, including Ghislaine Maxwell’s challenge to her criminal convictions for recruiting and grooming teenage girls for Jeffrey Epstein.The court only takes up a tiny percentage of appeals and will likely announce a list of those it has agreed to hear later in the week. Four of the nine justices have to vote in favor of hearing a case for it to be taken up.A wide array of other cases are also scheduled to be discussed by the justices at what is known as the “long conference.” They include such issues as gun rights, social media company immunity and Covid-19 era vaccine disputes.Monday also marks 20 years since John Roberts became Chief Justice. The new nine-month Supreme Court term, when the court will begin hearing cases, officially starts on Oct. 6. Maxwell’s lawyers say that a deal Epstein made with prosecutors in Florida, in which the then-U.S. attorney agreed not to prosecute potential co-conspirators, should apply to one of the three counts in her case.Newly public emails reveal Epstein and Maxwell planned fertility procedure01:53The legal question is whether the terms of a so-called nonprosecution agreement apply only in the district where it was negotiated or also bind federal prosecutors nationwide. While the agreement with Epstein was made in Florida, Maxwell was prosecuted in New York.The Justice Department has urged the Supreme Court not to hear the case, with Solicitor General D. John Sauer noting, among other things, that under internal policies, the U.S. attorney would have needed to obtain permission from superiors if the agreement were to apply outside his district. There is no evidence that occurred, Sauer added.Epstein’s long history of abuse has surged back into the headlines this year as the Trump administration, in response to pressure from some of President Donald Trump’s own supporters, pledged to release new information about the episode.But the Justice Department and the FBI then said there was no Epstein “client list” or evidence he was blackmailing famous men. The government also said it is clear that Epstein killed himself in 2019, pushing back on unfounded conspiracy theories suggesting he was killed.This prompted a backlash against the Trump administration’s handling of the issue, including from Trump supporters. Trump himself was friendly with Epstein for many years before the two had a falling out. The U.S. attorney who oversaw the nonprosecution agreement with Epstein was Alex Acosta, who served as labor secretary in Trump’s first term.Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was previously a personal lawyer for Trump, this summer met with Maxwell for hours in an encounter that, at the time, was shrouded in secrecy.Maxwell was subsequently moved from a low-security prison in Florida to a lower, minimum-security prison camp in Texas. The Bureau of Prisons did not say why she was transferred.The Justice Department later released a full transcript and audio of Blanche’s interview with Maxwell.Maxwell was convicted in 2022 of three counts relating to her role in assisting Epstein in recruiting and grooming his victims, some of whom were as young as 14 years old. She would befriend the victims and then assist in transporting them to Epstein’s residences. She would also sometimes be present when the abuse took place, prosecutors alleged.Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison.Lawrence HurleyLawrence Hurley is a senior Supreme Court reporter for NBC News.
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