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.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., believed that Senate Democrats were ‘in a bad place’ after they tanked Republicans’ push to consider the annual defense spending bill on Friday.

Thune argued during an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital that Democrats’ decision to vote against the procedural exercise seemed like ‘an extreme measure, and I think it’s coming from a very dysfunctional place right now.’

‘I think there’s a ton of dysfunction in the Democrat caucus, and I think this [‘No Kings’] rally this weekend is triggering a lot of this,’ he said.

Thune’s move to put the bill on the floor was a multipronged effort. One of the elements was to apply pressure on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus to join Republicans to jump start the government funding process as the shutdown continues to drag on.

Another was to test Democrats’ desire to fund the government on a bipartisan basis — a demand they had made in the weeks leading up to the shutdown.

‘I think the leadership is applying pressure,’ Thune said. ‘They were all being called into Schumer’s office this morning to be browbeaten into voting ‘no’ on the defense appropriations bill, something that most of them, you know, like I said, that should be an 80-plus vote in the Senate.’

To his point, the bill easily glided through committee earlier this year on a 26 to 3 vote, and like a trio of spending bills passed in August, typically would have advanced in the upper chamber on a bipartisan basis.

The bill, which Senate Republicans hoped to use as a vehicle to add more spending bills, would have funded the Pentagon and paid military service members.

But Senate Democrats used a similar argument to block the bill that they’ve used over the last 16 days of the government shutdown in their pursuit of an extension to expiring Obamacare subsidies: they wanted a guarantee on which bills would have been added to the minibus package.

‘What are you — are you gonna go around and talk to people about a hypothetical situation,’ Thune countered. ‘I think, you know, once we’re on the bill, then it makes sense to go do that, have those conversations, which is what we did last time.’

The Senate could get another chance to vote on legislation next week that would pay both the troops and certain federal employees that have to work through the shutdown, but it won’t be the defense funding bill. Instead, it’s legislation from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and several other Senate Republicans.

As for the torpedoed defense bill, which was the last vote for the week in the Senate, Thune argued that it was emblematic of Senate Democrats being ‘in a place where the far-left is the tail wagging the dog.’

‘And you would think that federal workers, who you know, federal employee unions, public employee unions, who Democrats [count] as generally part of their constituency, right now, they’re way more concerned about what Moveon.org and Indivisible, and some of those groups are saying about them, evidently, than what some of their constituents here are saying,’ he said.

‘Because there’s going to be people who are going to start missing paychecks, and this thing gets real pretty fast,’ he continued. 
 

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.’

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.