Editor’s Note: Everything in the article below is accurate, but the lede was buried at the bottom. While there are many out there on both sides of the political aisle who are calling for digital surveillance and censorship to stop assassinations, it’s imperative that we do NOT let the fear of tragedy take us down a draconian path. The last thing we need is another version of the Patriot Act that would supposedly prevent attacks. They won’t, and even if they did the endowment of government power would not be worth it.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah this September sent shockwaves through the nation, revealing a disturbing pattern of violence fueled by hidden corners of the internet. Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, was gunned down during his “American Comeback Tour” event at Utah Valley University in Orem on September 10, 2025.
The suspect, 22-year-old Tyler James Robinson from Washington, Utah, faces charges of aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm, and obstruction of justice. Federal investigators quickly zeroed in on Robinson’s online activity, including recovered Discord messages that point to a mix of personal grievances and digital influences rather than a clear ideological motive.
This tragedy echoes the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. Trump was grazed by a bullet from shooter Thomas Crooks, yet defiantly raised his fist as Secret Service agents escorted him to safety. Both cases expose a growing threat: isolated individuals radicalized in online echo chambers, turning personal despair into deadly action against public figures.
Experts point to a surge in such lone-wolf attacks over the past decade, no longer confined to politicians but extending to activists and media personalities. “We’re seeing activists and media figures targeted,” said former New York homeland security advisor Michael Balboni. “These are people who feel aggrieved or insignificant and believe they’ll commit a heroic act. The Charlie Kirk case shows how the threat landscape has widened.”
The digital trail in these incidents mirrors past horrors. The Buffalo supermarket shooter maintained a private “Discord diary” for community and tactical guidance, according to a New York Attorney General report. The Uvalde gunman sent alarming messages via the teen app Yubo and Instagram DMs. Shooters in El Paso and Christchurch posted manifestos on 8chan before livestreaming their crimes. Today, platforms like Reddit, Discord, and encrypted chats provide anonymity and validation, drawing in those already on edge.
“People on the pathway to violence drift into places like Discord or niche forums because those spaces give them anonymity, validation and a sense of belonging they don’t have in real life,” noted retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jason Pack. “Those corners of the internet can run like an open sewer, and folks already in a dark place tend to drink from the wrong end of the pipe.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s 2025 Homeland Threat Assessment warns of a persistently high terrorism risk in the U.S., with lone actors responsible for 93% of fatal terrorist attacks in the West over the last five years, according to a report from Vision of Humanity. Mass shootings often share these traits, amplified by years of societal strain—from the pandemic and economic fallout to fears over AI and political division.
“We’ve lived through years of anxiety — the pandemic, job loss, now fears about AI. Add deep political polarization, and you get people online being told they’re worthless and dismissed by society. Some decide to act,” Balboni added.
Former FBI investigator Bill Daly draws parallels to ISIS recruitment: “Their reasons for being radicalized are often very similar to what we saw with ISIS recruits — a mix of ideology, personal grievance and a search for belonging. It doesn’t always happen overnight. There are breadcrumbs, small behavioral changes, that build over time as they find validation in online communities.”
In the wake of Kirk’s death, the FBI offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to justice, while a broader crackdown ensued. Over 600 Americans faced firings, suspensions, or investigations for online comments praising the attack or criticizing Kirk, sparking debates over free speech. President Trump declared a National Day of Remembrance for Kirk on October 14, 2025, calling the act “pure evil.”
A viral post from Libs of TikTok on X highlighted several recent shooters identified as transgender or nonbinary, labeling it “an epidemic of trans violence.”
Trump shooter: Nonbinary
Minnesota School Shooter: Trans
Nashville Shooter: Trans
Colorado Springs shooter: Nonbinary
Aberdeen shooter: Trans
Denver school shooter: Trans
Iowa school shooter: Trans/genderfluid
Charie Kirk kiIIer: Did it on behalf of trans boyfriendIt’s time to…
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 17, 2025
While experts caution against profiling based on identity—”Identity does not predict violence,” Pack said—the pattern raises questions about how certain online communities might incubate hatred toward conservative voices. Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik has long documented what she sees as radical left influences, though her posts have been linked to real-world threats like school bomb hoaxes.
These platforms, often hosted overseas and shielded by encryption, pose a nightmare for law enforcement. “People move to encrypted sites that are difficult, if not sometimes impossible, to penetrate,” Daly explained. “Even with today’s technology, it can be extraordinarily hard for law enforcement to see what’s happening behind those walls.”
Solutions lie in vigilance and human connection. Balboni urges: “Don’t glorify the shooter. Don’t even use the name. And if families see behavior change or access to weapons, report it. That’s where intervention starts.” Pack emphasizes rebuilding ties: “What helps someone step back from the edge is connection. Sometimes that’s family, sometimes it’s friends, sometimes it’s faith that reminds them they’re not walking alone.”
As attacks like these multiply, the role of big tech in moderating content comes under scrutiny. Critics argue that while conservative speech faces swift censorship, vitriol against figures like Trump and Kirk proliferates unchecked, potentially emboldening assassins. The CSIS report on anti-government domestic terrorism notes a near-tripling of plots motivated by partisan beliefs in recent years, suggesting deeper forces at play in a polarized landscape.
But therein lies the Catch-22. To say that any form of online censorship or monitoring for “suspicious” activities is a slippery slope would be a tremendous understatement. As important as it is to use tools to prevent assassinations, the detrimental effects of doing so at the expense of privacy would be immense. Just as tens of millions have been surveilled over the decades for the so-called “war on terror,” so too would any online censorship or spying be abused.
We must remain diligent, but we must do so without letting our freedoms slip away.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
