DC has shelved its Red Hood comic book series following writer Gretchen Felker-Martin sharing posts on Bluesky that joked about the shooting of Charlie Kirk, who was killed by an assassin’s bullet Wednesday.

“Hope the bullet’s okay after touching Charlie Kirk,” read one post. “Thoughts and prayers you Nazi bitch,” read another by Felker-Martin. The writer is trans, while Kirk was known for his anti-trans stance. Felker-Martin’s Bluesky account is now deactivated, but those posts were screenshotted and widely spread before DC canceled the series.

“At DC Comics, we place the highest value on our creators and community and affirm the right to peaceful, individual expression of personal viewpoints. Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct,” a DC spokesperson said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

While the Kirk posts got attention online over the past 24 hours, insiders stress that it was merely the final straw that broke the camel’s back, rather than the sole reason for Red Hood’s cancellation. Any post viewed as promoting hostility or violence would break the company’s social media policy.

As of Thursday afternoon, law enforcement officials were still searching for the shooter behind Kirk’s death. The violent incident sent ripples through the worlds of politics and media, with Comedy Central pulling an episode of South Park that mocked Kirk.

The first issue of Red Hood arrived in comic-book shops on Wednesday, the day outspoken MAGA activist and conservative media figure Kirk was killed while speaking at Utah Valley University. The comic (intended to be part of an ongoing series, with future issues planned for October and November) centered on Jason Todd, a former Robin who has adopted the antihero persona of Red Hood. “Sweat, blood and powder burns. Broken bones and mind control. A city rotted from the inside out,” said Felker-Martin in a statement in June announcing the book. “Jason’s going through hell on the hunt for an enigmatic telepath, and he’s taking us with him. I’m thrilled to be helming this new run of Red Hood with [artist] Jeff Spokes.”

NASA’s interim administrator Sean Duffy was fired up on Wednesday when he joined a teleconference to talk about new scientific findings that concerned the potential for life to have once existed on Mars.

“This is exciting news,” said Duffy about an arrow-shaped rock on Mars found by NASA’s Perseverance rover. The rock contained chemical signatures and structures that could have been formed by ancient microbial life. The findings were intriguing, but not conclusive. Further study of the rocks in an advanced lab on Earth might prove more definitive.

Duffy was ready, he said, to discuss the scientific results along with NASA experts on the call with reporters. However, the very first question—and for any space reporter, the obvious one—concerned NASA’s on-again, off-again plan to return rocks from the surface of Mars for study on Earth. This mission, called Mars Sample Return, has been on hold for nearly two years after an independent analysis found that NASA’s bloated plan would cost at least $8 billion to $11 billion. President Trump has sought to cancel it outright.

Duffy faces the space press

“What’s the latest on NASA’s plans to retrieve the samples from Perseverance?” asked Marcia Dunn, a reporter with the Associated Press, about small vials of rocks collected by the NASA rover on Mars.

“So listen, we’re looking at how we get this sample back, or other samples back,” Duffy replied. “What we’re going to do is look at our budget, so we look at our timing, and you know, how do we spend money better? And you know, what technology do we have to get samples back more quickly? And so that’s a current analysis that’s happening right now.”

A couple of questions later, Ken Chang, a science reporter with The New York Times, asked Duffy why President Trump’s budget request called for the cancellation of Mars Sample Return and whether that was still the president’s intent.

“I want to be really clear,” Duffy replied. “This is a 30-year process that NASA has undertaken. President Trump didn’t say, ‘Hey, let’s forget about Mars.’ No, we’re continuing our exploration. And by the way, we’ve been very clear under this president that we don’t want to just bring samples back from Mars. We want to send our boots to the Moon and to Mars, and that is the work that we’re doing. Amit (Kshatriya, the new Associate Administrator of NASA) even said maybe we’ll send our equipment to test this sample to Mars itself. All options are on the table.”

WASHINGTON — Republicans triggered the “nuclear option” to change the rules of the Senate on a party-line basis Thursday, a move that will allow them to speed up confirmation of President Donald Trump’s nominees for key executive branch positions.

The vote was 53-45 to establish a new rule that allows the Senate to confirm an unlimited number of nominees en bloc, rather than process each one individually.

The rule applies to executive branch nominees subject to two hours of Senate debate, including subcabinet picks and ambassadors. It will not affect judicial nominations. Republicans say they’ll allow their own senators to object to individual nominees in any given block, but the rule will strip away the power of the minority party to do the same thing.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., initiated the process by bringing up a package of 48 Trump nominees, which under longstanding rules has been subject to the 60-vote threshold. The vote to advance them failed due to Democratic opposition. Then, Thune sought to reconsider and Republicans subsequently voted to overrule the chair, setting a new precedent and establishing the new rule.

Thune had telegraphed the move for weeks, accusing Democrats of creating an “untenable situation” with historic obstruction of Trump’s nominees. The vote was held up for hours on Thursday as the two parties engaged in last-ditch negotiations to strike a deal to avoid a rules change.

But they failed. And Republicans chose to proceed.

“It’s time to move. Time to quit stalling. Time to vote. Time to fix this place,” Thune said in an impassioned floor speech, accusing Democrats of stalling and dragging out negotiations. “This is a broken process, folks. That’s an embarrassment.”

Thursday’s vote sets up a fast track for confirmation of that initial bloc of 48 Trump nominees, including former Rep. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., to be undersecretary for nuclear security, as well as Kimberly Guilfoyle and Callista Gingrich to be ambassadors to Greece and Switzerland, respectively.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said his party was reacting appropriately to Trump’s “historically bad nominees,” a trend he predicted would worsen with the GOP’s rule change.

“This move by Republicans was not so much about ending obstruction, as they claim; rather, it was another act of genuflection to the executive branch… To give Donald Trump more power and to rubber-stamp whomever he wants whenever he wants them, no questions asked,” he said.

He also predicted that Republicans would come to regret it.

“This is a sad, regrettable day for the Senate,” he said. “And I believe it won’t take very long for Republicans to wish they had not pushed the chamber further down this awful road.”

The vote Thursday makes a far-reaching change to the rules that will tear down hurdles for Trump — and future presidents — to rapidly push their nominees through the Senate.

Moments later, Senate Republicans used their modified rule to formally advance the package of 48 nominees on Thursday, with the goal of confirming them all next week.

The tool they used is known as the nuclear option because senators typically prefer to avoid it. But over the last decade and a half, it has been used by both parties to erode the powers of the Senate minority — by nixing the 60-vote threshold for confirming judges and cutting debate time for some nominees.

Although nominations are the prerogative of the Senate, House Republicans have watched the battle with interest and pushed for faster confirmation of Trump’s nominees.

Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., gave a presentation on the rules change proposal Wednesday to a group of House Republicans, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, who had spearheaded an effort to find an agreement that would avoid the nuclear option, said there wasn’t total agreement to proceed with it.

But he said he was happy to have tried.

“We don’t have unanimous consent, we do not have unanimity,” he said on Thursday before the vote. “It’s a damn shame, and maybe this exercise builds a little muscle memory for at least exploring how to have a bipartisan negotiation. So maybe there’s some silver lining to this.”