Utah
President of Utah university where Charlie Kirk was killed to resign from role
Astrid Tuminez, Utah Valley University’s seventh president, will step down at the end of the semester. She announced the decision on Wednesday during a State of the University address, speaking to a packed audience of students and faculty.
Tuminez, 61, said in an interview that the decision to step down had been building for some time. “There’s never a good time,” she said. “I love UVU so much.” The choice, she explained, came with a mix of grief and relief. “It is a swirl of emotion. I am heartbroken on one hand, but also happy and excited on the other, because life has its rhythms.
“I cried a lot last night, and I am not crying today,” Tuminez said, as she told the crowd she planned to leave the role in early May.
The decision follows a year marked by personal grief and institutional crisis. Her husband, Jeffrey Tolk, died suddenly in February 2025. “My heart was broken. There’s no other way to describe it,” Tuminez told the Guardian. In a later interview, she described the loss as leaving her “disconsolate and desolate”.
Months later, on 10 September 2025, the day that would have marked her husband’s birthday, Tuminez was travelling to Rome on a planned spiritual pilgrimage when news broke that Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old far-right commentator and founder of Turning Point USA, had been assassinated on campus.
“Our bodies feel these things,” Tuminez later told the Guardian. “Just utter shock, like my whole body was on fire.”
The killing thrust Tuminez and the university into the centre of a national political crisis, as political violence in the US intensified and the Trump administration escalated pressure on universities over campus speech.
Utah Valley University is still reckoning with the aftermath of Kirk’s death. Many faculty, students and state officials remain divided over how to remember Kirk, with some Republican leaders and university officials pushing to memorialise him, while others have warned against politicising the campus tragedy.
Tuminez, who became president in 2018, was the first woman, the first person of colour, and the first immigrant to lead Utah Valley University, located in one of Utah’s most conservative counties. She has described her ascent to the role with characteristic understatement. “I’m an accidental university president,” she said. “I never planned for this. It wasn’t even on the list.”
Trained as a scholar of Soviet politics, Tuminez has worked across academia, government and international institutions, an experience that shaped her approach to leading the university through an increasingly polarised national moment. She has argued that universities remain central to the American project, describing them as “facilitators of the American dream”, and has said they should prepare students to grapple seriously with questions of civic discourse.
Her nearly eight years as president, one of the longest tenures in Utah’s public university system, were marked by significant growth and institutional change. During her time in office, enrolment increased by more than 20%, the university’s endowment more than doubled from $55m to $129m, graduation rates rose sharply, fundraising expanded and new centres were established in applied artificial intelligence, fintech and constitutional studies.
Her departure comes as universities across the US face mounting political pressure from the Trump administration, including heightened immigration enforcement and deportation of many students, visa restrictions affecting dozens of countries and growing fears among international students. Tuminez, herself a former international student, said she remained concerned about what a more closed US could mean for higher education.
“One of the superpowers of America is our influence globally,” she said. “We educate people who go back and lead in their home countries.” She said she had hoped to expand UVU’s international student population, arguing that openness benefits both local students and those who come from abroad. “I had to get my own F-1 visa,” she added. “It was very, very difficult. “I think it’s good for Utahns, and it’s also good for these students, to have this experience, to be educated here.”
She framed the moment as political flux rather than sound policy, suggesting decisions driven by fear or politics risk long-term harm. Tuminez said she was concerned that fear among international students and a more closed immigration posture could erode one of the US’s defining strengths: its openness to the world. When asked about her next chapter, Tuminez was clear about one thing: she plans to pause. “I need a break,” she said. “This is not the kind of job you do for seven and a half years and feel rested.”
BEAVER COUNTY, Utah — A massive community effort is underway as volunteers and Beaver County crews distribute thousands of sandbags to protect homes from the potential path of floodwaters.
After the Cottonwood Fires, residents have been waiting for weeks for relief to come in the form of rain, though officials now warn it may come all at once with an increased risk of flooding and debris flow.
Emergency Service Director Les Whitney believes that the fire has left plenty of debris to bring trouble for residents.
“We got a lot of water. We’re bringing debris with it, so tree branches, tree limbs, logs, lots of different size firewood, and that’s all in the creeks. We’re worried about that plugging up our bridges and stuff, so we have heavy equipment and excavators located in strategic places so that we can keep those bridges open,” said Whitney.
An estimated 140 homes and condominiums were spared from the flames, but remain in the paths of floodwaters.
Residents can also pick up sandbags at the Beaver County Sheriff’s Office or at the Beaver County Rodeo Fairgrounds.
EAGLE MOUNTAIN — An Eagle Mountain man currently on pretrial release in 4th District Court who is accused of abusing his dog has been arrested again for allegedly punching the same animal.
Keith Reaves Davis, 43, was booked into the Utah County Jail on Wednesday for investigation of aggravated cruelty to an animal.
Utah County sheriff’s deputies were called Wednesday afternoon to a grocery store on a report that a man was beating his dog after it had gotten off its leash and was stopped by a bystander, according to a police booking affidavit.
“I reviewed security camera footage from the grocery store, and an individual matching the description of the suspect was seen holding the dog in the air by one paw and repeatedly striking the dog on the right hind leg area. I observed the male strike the dog several times before dropping the dog from approximately 1-2 feet. The strikes appeared to be as hard as the male could hit,” the arresting deputy wrote in the affidavit. “The dog did not cry out or whimper as if the dog was accustomed to the abuse.”
When questioned, Davis “admitted to striking the dog because it was not behaving,” the affidavit states.
An animal control officer who responded to the scene to take custody of the dog noted it was the same dog he had taken from Davis exactly three months earlier during another animal abuse investigation.
In that case, Davis was charged in 4th District Court with aggravated cruelty to an animal, a class A misdemeanor; and public intoxication, a class C misdemeanor, after deputies received a tip from a neighbor that a dog was being abused at Davis’ home, according to charging documents. When questioned, Davis “acknowledged hitting his dog as punishment,” the charges state.
Deputies also reviewed videos that the neighbor had filmed. The neighbor told investigators “there was blood from the dog on the ground of the garage and (the neighbor) can hear the dog screaming as if it’s being hurt. Deputies got the videos from the (neighbor) and you can hear very loudly the dog screaming and crying with a lot of loud banging noises. In one of the videos, you can hear the dog sounding like it is being choked by a collar and is grasping for air,” a police booking affidavit states.
Davis’ next court hearing in the April case is scheduled for July 28.
In their latest booking report, sheriff’s deputies note that they “believe further harm will be inflicted on this dog if it is released back to the male a second time,” and have recommended the dog not be returned to Davis.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
Two years after October 7th attacks, Gaza war reshapes global politics
Two years after Hamas attacked Israel, Gaza lies in ruins and global alliances have shifted. Correction: A previous version of this video incorrectly identified the conflict. The conflict is between Israel and Hamas.
A man was arrested in Utah after allegedly stabbing a Muslim employee at a mall multiple times and telling investigators he targeted the victim because of his religion, according to court records.
Peter Michael Larsen, 48, was booked into the Salt Lake County Jail on suspicion of attempted murder and prohibited dangerous weapon conduct following the attack on July 13 at the Valley Fair Mall in West Valley City, Utah, court and online jail records show. West Valley City is a suburb of Salt Lake City.
The West Valley City Police Department said the incident occurred shortly before 3 p.m. local time, when Larsen approached a man working at a kiosk at the mall.
“After a brief interaction, the suspect pulled out a knife and began stabbing him multiple times,” police said in a statement on X. “A few bystanders interfered, and were able to separate the suspect from the victim and subdue the suspect until police arrived.”
The victim, who was not identified by authorities, sustained multiple stab wounds and was taken to a hospital in critical condition, according to police and court records.
Larsen told investigators that he had “targeted the victim with intent to kill him because of his religion (Muslim),” police said in an affidavit obtained by USA TODAY. The affidavit also states Larsen said he believes he is “a catalyst” and “intends to kill Muslims.”
The incident remains under investigation, and police said they were looking into any possible relationship between the suspect and victim. USA TODAY reached out to the West Valley City Police Department for comment.
Police: Suspect poses a ‘substantial danger to the public’
The suspect approached the Muslim man, asked for his name, asked about his religion, and indicated he wanted a bottle of water, The Salt Lake Tribune reported, citing comments from Imam Shuaib Din, who leads the Utah Islamic Center and had been in contact with the victim’s family.
As the victim turned to get the water, the attacker began stabbing him, Din told the newspaper. Police said in the affidavit that they received multiple 911 calls at around 2:30 p.m. local time reporting two men “involved in a physical altercation where one male was stabbing the other.”
When officers arrived at the scene, they observed bystanders pinning the suspect to the ground and “had already removed the knife from his hand,” according to the affidavit. Police said the victim was “bleeding profusely” and was then transported to the hospital.
The victim was identified by friends as Syed Sohail Uddin, local television station FOX 13 and The New York Times reported. A GoFundMe fundraiser organized on his behalf said he was stabbed 15 times and required multiple surgeries.
Larsen was also transported to the hospital “due to being punched in the head from bystanders trying to get the knife out of his hand,” according to the affidavit. He was later medically cleared and taken to the police station for an interview.
Police said in the affidavit that Larsen posed “a substantial danger to the public if released based on his violent actions today, ideologies and pre-planned mass casualty events.”
Advocates condemn stabbing attack at Utah mall
Muslim advocacy groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), condemned the attack.
“This horrific attack is yet another reminder that anti-Muslim rhetoric has real-world consequences. When Muslims are routinely demonized, portrayed as threats, or treated as less deserving of equal rights and dignity, some twisted individuals inevitably act on that hatred,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a statement on July 14.
Civil rights advocates have noted a rise in Islamophobia in the United States over the last two-plus decades following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and more recently because of immigration policies and the fallout of the Israel-Hamas war, according to Reuters.
CAIR, which is the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, reported last year that it received a record number of complaints of discrimination and Islamophobic attacks amid the war.
The organization received more than 8,650 complaints in 2024, the highest number since CAIR began publishing its annual civil rights report in 1996, according to the report released in March 2025. Complaints rose more than 7%, breaking the previous record set in 2023.
The Utah attack follows several high-profile incidents targeting Muslims in recent years, including the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in Illinois in 2023 and a deadly shooting at a San Diego mosque earlier this year.
Contributing: N’dea Yancey-Bragg, USA TODAY; Reuters
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