By Peter Hartcher

Copyright brisbanetimes

The US system doesn’t provide a formal position for a leader of the opposition. The aspirants have to forge one for themselves. Increasingly, Gavin Newsom is being nominated by friends, foes and pollsters as the new titleholder.

And the California Governor thinks America today confronts a profound crisis after the assassination of US far-right activist Charlie Kirk: “I am deeply concerned about the next few weeks and months. It’s a helluva moment in our country,” he tells me in a phone interview this week from the governor’s office in Sacramento.

Former president Barack Obama this week said America was at “an inflection point”. Newsom says that “on the other side of this, there may be something radically different”.

Before Kirk’s death, Trump already had lit a match under the gunpowder of American politics, according to Newsom. Now, the Trump administration’s rhetoric of retribution is “an accelerant” applied to the flame, he says.