Morning Brief: Trump Honors Kirk, Letitia James Accused Of Housing Fugitive, UK Advances Digital ID

President Donald Trump awards Charlie Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ grandniece may be a fugitive from the law, and the U.K.’s Labour Party turns to digital ID to curb illegal immigration.

It’s Wednesday, October 15, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.

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Trump Awards Charlie Kirk The Highest Civilian Honor

Topline: President Trump posthumously honored Charlie Kirk on Tuesday, on what would have been Kirk’s 32nd birthday, with the country’s highest civilian award: the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In front of a large audience in the Rose Garden, the president presented the award to Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk. The event was attended by many family members, friends, and acquaintances of Kirk from within the administration, Kirk’s conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, and elsewhere.

“Five weeks ago, our nation was robbed of this extraordinary champion. He was a champion in every way — I got to know him so well,” said Trump. “It was a horrible, heinous, demonic act of murder. He was assassinated in the prime of his life for boldly speaking the truth, for living his faith, and relentlessly fighting for a better and stronger America. He loved this country, and that’s why this afternoon, it’s my privilege to posthumously award Charles James Kirk our nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

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Erika Kirk also spoke at the event.

“Today, we’re gathered not only to celebrate Charlie’s birthday, but to honor a truth that he gave his entire life to defend, and that’s freedom. The very existence of the Presidential Medal of Freedom reminds us that the national interest of the United States has always been freedom,” she said.

“Our founders etched it into the preamble of our Constitution, and those words are not relics on parchment; they are a living covenant. The blessings of liberty are not man’s invention, they are God’s endowment. Charlie lived for those blessings, not as abstract words, but as sacred promises,” she added.

Letitia James’s Fugitive Family Member

Topline: New York Attorney General Letitia James may have sheltered a fugitive in her Virginia home for the past five years. 

James was charged with bank fraud last week for allegedly lying on mortgage papers to get a lower interest rate on a house in Virginia. While James owns the home, the current tenant is her grandniece, Nakia Thompson, and her three children, who have lived in the house since 2020. 

Thompson is officially listed as an “absconder” in the database of North Carolina’s Department of Adult Correction, according to the Daily Mail. She’s wanted by authorities in Forsyth County for skipping out on her probation.

A spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Corrections said Thompson was “sentenced to probation for misdemeanor convictions for assault and battery and trespassing.” He confirmed that she is considered a fugitive from the state, but he added that because her crimes are considered low-level, she is “non-extraditable.”

Won’t stay silent: In opposition to the standard legal advice to keep quiet after being charged with a crime, James is loudly speaking out against the Department of Justice, claiming to be a victim of a political prosecution.

“We see powerful voices trying to silence truth and punish dissent and, yes, weaponize justice for political gain. We are witnessing the fraying of our democracy, the erosion of our system of government,” said James at a rally for New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani on Monday evening.

Limiting her ability to attract supporters to her cause, James is perceived widely on the right to be guilty of pushing the same kind of political prosecutions she is now denouncing. James campaigned for New York attorney general on a platform of investigating President Trump.

After winning her election, James eventually pursued Trump on a civil charge related to defrauding banks, though no banks claimed to have ever been defrauded by Trump. James won the case in a bench trial, and Trump was hit with a civil penalty of nearly half a billion dollars. That penalty was later thrown out by an appeals court in a major victory for the president.

U.K.’s Labour Turns To Digital ID To Curb Illegal Immigration

Topline: The U.K. recently approved a controversial new law that mandates a digital ID as a way to curb illegal immigration. Morning Wire spoke with Guy Dampier, senior researcher on nationhood at the Prosperity Institute, about the new law. (The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

Morning Wire: So, Guy, a lot of frustration boiling over in the U.K. right now over immigration, and now we have this heated debate over digital ID. Let’s start with Prime Minister Starmer – he’s defending his party’s immigration policies and accusing the conservative Reform party of pushing supposedly “racist” policies. Catch us up, what’s the story here?

Dampier: The issue is Reform’s policy on residency for immigrants. “Indefinite Leave to Remain” means that an immigrant can, after five years, get access to the same welfare benefits as a British citizen. The vast majority of people who get ILR will stay forever. That matters because in the last few years, there was an immigration wave of around 4 million people. Most of those were low-skilled and will be a drain on the taxpayer. One estimate said that it would cost around £80 billion, another said over £200 billion. Whatever the true figure is, it will be a huge cost at a time when the British economy is doing very badly. Reform have announced that they will abolish ILR, forcing those who have come to apply for new visas, which will include new checks on their qualifications and language skills. That also matters because the current rules are incredibly lax. The language test only requires that you have B1 English, which is enough to struggle through a book for small children, but nowhere near enough what you need just to read a newspaper. As most of these 4 million migrants come from Africa and the Indian subcontinent, Labour have branded it “racist.” 

Morning Wire: Now, the Labour Party has actually also admitted that this “Indefinite Leave to Remain” law needs to be reformed. What are they suggesting?

Dampier: This is why it is so incoherent. They were calling Nigel Farage racist. On Monday, they announced policies that were not a million miles away. The Home Secretary, Shababa Mahmood, has said that immigrants who want residency will now need better English skills, no criminal record, and evidence that they have volunteered in the community to show that they are integrating. The problem for Labour is that while they want to win over voters who are upset about immigration, they don’t really believe in reducing immigration. So they end up promising things they won’t deliver, and then when they get called out, they lash out. The problem for Britain is very simple: the country has become rapidly more foreign, with over 16% of people born overseas. Most of those came in the last few decades or even the last few years. This is changing the face of the country: around 38% of school children are now from an ethnic minority group. At the same time the economy has ground to a halt. And there is increasing evidence that migrants are overrepresented when it comes to accessing welfare and committing crime. So people are asking a simple question: if we want fewer immigrants, and if immigration isn’t good for the economy, then why are politicians refusing to seriously reduce the numbers?

Morning Wire: As we mentioned at the top, we also have this new digital ID that’s supposed to help crack down on illegal workers. But that has been very controversial. How would that work?

Dampier: This is the so-called Brit card. Labour have long been advocates for digital ID. In fact, the last Labour government, over a decade ago actually introduced ID cards. But they were immediately scrapped by the conservative government which followed them. Labour are now arguing that it would stop illegal immigrants from being able to work and rent. But there is already a digital Visa verification system which is supposed to do this. It just isn’t adhered to. There’s no reason to think that this would be any different. In fact, there are many European countries which already have ID cards and still have a major problem with illegal immigration. In Germany, for example, you are supposed to carry your ID card with you everywhere. But the country has one of the highest numbers of illegal immigrants in all of Europe. This won’t really fix the problem. What it will do is add on another layer of bureaucracy and further reduce the freedom of native British people. There is also another potential danger. Paul Mason, a well-known Labour activist who is close to the senior leadership of the party, suggested that digital ID could be used to help regularise the illegal immigrants who are already here. That is somewhere between 3/4 of 1 million and 2 million people. Instead of discouraging illegal immigration, it could end up being used to reward it.