Vice President JD Vance and the U.S. State Department have weighed in on the British scandal surrounding the murder of English teen Henry Nowak and the systemic issues that Nowak's mistreatment at the hands of police have illuminated.

Quick background

Nowak, 18, was fatally stabbed in an unprovoked attack on Dec. 3, 2025, by a knife-wielding Sikh named Vickrum Digwa. Adding grievous insult to injury, Digwa told police that he had acted defensively — that Nowak was a racist who had called him a "Paki" and attacked him.

The police officers from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary who arrived on the scene reflexively accepted the Sikh's false claim that the dying teen was a racist aggressor, arrested and handcuffed Nowak based on those false accusations, and then dismissed his final pleas.

Digwa was convicted of murder last week and sentenced on Monday to a minimum of 21 years in prison.

Unlike Nowak's killer, the scandal surrounding his death is not going away anytime soon.

Following the release of horrifying bodycam footage showing Nowak's undignified death in the custody of members of Southampton police, multitudes of Britons took to the streets of southern England in protest, demanding the termination and/or prosecution of the officers involved, one of whom has resigned.

British politicians meanwhile sounded off about the discriminatory policies and practices that lay the groundwork for the teen's mistreatment.

RELATED: Amnesty International frets about 'racial justice' again — just not for white people

JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images

The National Police Chiefs' Council announced amid the protests that it is reviewing its anti-racism guidance, which, as currently worded, explicitly calls for treating people differently on the basis of race:

Our commitment to racial equity means producing equality of policing outcomes for people from different ethnic groups by responding to individuals and communities according to their specific needs, circumstances, and experiences, with understanding that these will be racialised and with the aim of reducing harm. It does not mean treating everyone "the same" or being "colour blind" (racial equality).

Criticism from the land of the free

The U.S. State Department chimed in on Thursday, writing on social media, "Ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing are glaring symptoms of civilizational decline. They must be rejected across the West."

"The United States sends our condolences to the family of Henry Nowak and the people of the United Kingdom at this troubling time," added the State Department.

'He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred.'

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) stressed in response that "Henry Nowak deserved better," and BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre wrote that "it would be nice to see the State Department treat the UK as a totalitarian terrorist state oppressing its population because that’s obviously true."

The chatter in America has evidently enraged some leftists in the United Kingdom.

Ed Davey, a British politician who serves as leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons, responded to the State Department's post with apoplexy, writing, "The Trump administration is attacking our democracy. Not in secret, but openly on social media. [U.K. Prime Minister Keir] Starmer needs to show some backbone and call this out today. We can’t turn a blind eye to this blatant interference any longer."

U.S. Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers calmly reminded Davey that Starmer and other British liberals previously opined on the death of career criminal George Floyd. She also highlighted the markedly different response between those who took to the streets after Floyd's death and those who have done so to protest Nowak's death.

"Protesters mourning Nowak have not ignited infrastructure, murdered anyone, or otherwise cut an antisocial swathe of destruction through the UK," wrote Rogers. "To the extent any of them care what America thinks, we urge them to remain peaceful — and we expect they will. Just like Henry Nowak and just like Americans, ordinary Brits have been slandered as racist. Thus violent. They’re not."

On Friday, Vance underscored in a scathing message that Nowak's death was an indictment of Britain itself.

"Henry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit," wrote the American vice president. "His murder is as tragic as it is enraging. He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it."

In a message sure to prickle Starmer and others who have been clutching pearls over Reform U.K. party leader Nigel Farage's recent call for "pure, cold rage" over the Nowak case, Vance noted further, "Henry was far from the first to so needlessly lose his life, and I fear he won’t be the last. Each time a life like his is lost, the proper response — the only response — is righteous anger."

After emphasizing that the Trump administration has taken meaningful steps to stop the flow of mass migration and defend American sovereignty, Vance noted, "It is because we love the West that we want to preserve it. We love our civilization. We love our country. We love our children. And nobody — nobody — should ever die the way that Henry Nowak died. May God comfort those who loved him, and may God rest his soul."