In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk shooting, this message was posted to the website of Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded to educate and mobilize young people in support of the conservative cause:
"Charlie Kirk poured his life into building a movement rooted in faith, freedom and love of country. He believed America's future depended on raising up a generation who would never surrender.
"That vision is alive and stronger than ever. Prayers are rising, support is pouring in, millions of students are rallying, volunteers are flooding in, and vigils are filling churches and schools across the nation. The fire Charlie lit is burning brighter than ever.
"Now the responsibility is ours. We will honor his legacy by pressing forwards, not slowing down, not surrendering. This is not a time to preserve what was built. This is the time to fight harder, grow faster and unleash the true power of the grassroots machine that Charlie created.
"We will make Charlie proud. We will defend America's future, and we will not stop until freedom prevails."
Instead of canceling public events, Turning Point USA is pushing forward. They have at least eight events scheduled at college campuses around the nation over the next two months, featuring many prominent conservative voices like Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, and Glenn Beck.
One of the first stops post-shooting was Utah State University, a mere two hours from the scene of Charlie's assassination. This felt like an important political and cultural moment, so I wanted to attend so that we could learn about the state of Turning Point USA and its followers here in Utah.
The events of the day in Logan created a tense atmosphere. Earlier that afternoon, a suspicious package reported on campus prompted the evacuation of a building.
“I got the alerts of what happened at Old Main,” said Zach, a student I met at the Turning Point event. “It was, it kind of scared me. It definitely made me a little hesitant to come you never know what's going to happen.”
Like several other people that I spoke with, he said that the significance of the event outweighed the risk.
“At the end of the day, I really believe in stuff like this, and I think if something's going to happen, it will happen, but I trust our law enforcement and everything to keep us safe," he said.
When the UPR team arrived at the Dee Glenn Smith Spectrum in Logan for the event, we were a couple hours early, but there were still hundreds of people that were already queuing up outside. Like Zach, many of those in attendance were students voicing their support for the movement.
“I think Turning Point gives a great voice to the youth of America and the conservative youth of America. And I love all of the perspectives that you get from the Turning Point community, and I think that's the beauty of it,” Charity, a sophomore at Utah State, said.
Charity attended the event with her friends Lily and Avery. For Lily, the Turning Point events are an important opportunity to remind people they have a voice.
“I think that we should all have the right to be able to express our freedom of speech,” Lily said, "and showing up to an event like this is a great way to do that. Anybody and everyone should be welcome as long as we are respecting each other.”
Avery said that Kirk's shooting shocked her, but the resurgence of the conservative community since then has been inspiring.
“It was really hard when I first found out,” she said. “I found out by hearing people laugh about it, and it was, like, really disturbing for me. And since then, I think a lot of us have felt this shift, and a lot of us have felt our faith growing and just felt the strength happening in America.”
Lily added that she hoped events like this could be productive forums for open political dialogue.
“I think at events coming forward, people who have different political beliefs should come because that's what Charlie was advocating for, was to share his message with everybody, and not just people that believed with him," she said.
But as I interviewed people waiting to enter the event, it became clear that almost everyone in attendance was of the same political persuasion, which I thought was surprising since Charlie Kirk's events were famous for their intense debates.
I also found it surprising that while many of the attendees were enrolled students at Utah State, the line for non-students was at least three times longer.
Though Turning Point USA is most well known for its mobilization of young people, clearly the enthusiasm was equally present in older generations.
“I love seeing the kids that are here,” said Christy Downing, an older woman in attendance. “I love seeing the quality of them. I don't know, there's just — it's a feel-good thing, and so I'm really glad I came, even though I'm older.”
Downing is a proud conservative, but she appreciates the value of conversation that Charlie Kirk stood for.
“We have a large family and some are — we have both Republican, Democrats, libertarian, so we have both," she said. "And it'd be terrible if we didn't speak to each other at family get-togethers.”
One family member that Downing came with, however, feels that this moment's political discourse has escalated past mere contention over free speech. He supports Turning Point USA and fears the growing trend of political violence, specifically violence he perceives to be perpetrated by the political left.
“When I was young," he said, "there wasn't this side, that side. It was just, you know, people could have a civil conversation. Now they kill people if they don't like what you say. And so that's not good. And so that says, hey, their core values lead to these killings, and that's not good. So what are they? They're beating the drum. You know, we got war on our hands, they're saying.”
It's important to note here that an independent analysis conducted by the Anti-Defamation League identified that 76% of the 429 killings motivated by political extremism in the United States since 2014 were perpetrated by far-right individuals or groups.
A separate report issued by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that between Sept. 11, 2001 and Dec. 31, 2016, 106 of 225 politically extremist killings in the United States were carried out by far-right groups or individuals and 119 were carried out by Islamic extremist groups or individuals, with no instances of far-left extremist killings observed in the same time period.
I asked another man attending the event with the Downing family how he had been feeling since the shooting. “Oh, I've been terrified, man,” he said. “You know, it's just been really sad, you know. That he just did — what they did.”
“It's innocent blood. It's his opinion. Okay? It's his opinion. It was his opinion. You ever watched him, he was — he didn't put people down. He tried to uplift everyone to a higher station, and he just engaged in conversation. And so that's what the left has done. They gave him this name, they dehumanized us, and now it's, okay, the end justifies the means, and why not? We're making the world a better place if these guys die.”
Unsurprisingly, a lot of the people that I spoke to waiting to enter the event said some version of, “Charlie was trying to uplift everyone to a higher station, and he just engaged in conversation.”
There's no doubt that Kirk tried to engage people in conversation, but many people take issue with the notion that Kirk was trying to uplift everyone to a higher station.
Several protesters that I met at this event classified Kirk's rhetoric not as uplifting, but as bigoted, cruel, and tending towards the authoritarian.
One protester I met at the event held a sign that said, “Vile bigot. Kirk rots in hell.” The protester said, “Kirk was, in his life, a bigot.”
“I was planning on protesting here," the protestor continued, "if you know, hopefully he would have survived or not been shot in the first place. And, well, I guess that gets to the other side of the sign, which says, ‘Say no to fascism and political violence.’ There's a little peace sign at the end.”
After the assassination, the protester was driven by what they saw as a false representation of Kirk's life to come and voice their perspective on Kirk's real legacy.
“I do not believe that he should have been shot,” they said. “I think that was horrible. I think that's pretty straightforward, but I would have been protesting here if he was speaking here, regardless of what happened. So it's a shame that I'm here under these circumstances.
"But the main reason why I'm extra motivated to show up here today is because of the sanitization I've seen of who Charlie Kirk was in his life just because he died — which, again, shouldn't have happened — but someone being horrible, spreading hate, and targeting minority groups and the vulnerable, does not change what they did in life, be that Hitler or any other fascist. It doesn't change whether or not they died or they had kids or a family. An evil person is still an evil person, though still the law is to be followed and he shouldn't have been shot.”
This protester also took issue with Kirk's reputation as a debater who sought to engage people in conversation. Instead of building consensus, they said, Kirk sought to dominate his opponents.
“I don't think there was any honesty in the way he went about his discourse,” the protestor said. “And then there's also the issue of tolerating, the paradox of tolerance and intolerance. And I don't think what Charlie stood for, it didn't really make that viable. Like, when you cross a certain threshold, you're not really about discourse. You're just about putting people down.”
While this protester was conspicuously placed only about 50 feet from the event entrance, only a few other protesters appeared before the event began. Most of the people in attendance had a long, boring wait before the doors finally opened.
At 6:30 p.m., students and community members were finally allowed to enter into the Spectrum, the 10,000-seat arena used for sports, commencement, and other major events at Utah State University.
As people filed into the stadium, the mood was surprisingly upbeat. Loud, energetic music played, and the crowd seemed enthusiastic.
Before the national anthem was sung, a Kirk montage video showed some of Kirk's most iconic moments speaking and debating around the nation.
“Be welcoming. Even if people have different viewpoints. Be open. For those of you starting Turning Point USA high school chapters, starting Turning Point USA college chapters, you are on the front lines of saving this country. You look around and our numbers are increasing. We are happier, we are joyful, we love the nation.
"College campuses should be a marketplace of ideas, where you can have debate, dialogue, and discussion, where you can hear something that is different from the point of view that you’re entering with.
"Every day you get to fight for what is good and what is truly beautiful. You are doing something that is bigger than you.”
It was clear that Turning Point USA did not intend this event to be a solemn memorial of Kirk's life, but as a moment to channel the tragic loss of their leader into forward momentum.
TPUSA USU Chapter President Kaitlin Griffiths opened the event and led the crowd in another loud cheer for Kirk. After an introduction by Griffiths, the conservative influencer Alex Clark took the stage.
“I was supposed to do this event with Charlie, and I saw a video of a liberal student that goes to school here," Clark began. "She's on campus. She was being interviewed about what she thought of the event right before I came up, and she said that she was actually really mad that we were all showing up. She said that TPUSA’s presence was putting lives in danger, that we were putting lives at risk. Sweetheart, I think you're confused. The bullets only ever go one way. You're safer with us than we are with you.”
When I heard these remarks, I was struck by how the us-against-them mentality that Clark refers to is exactly the trend that many of those in attendance were concerned about when I spoke with them outside.
Furthermore, when Clark said, “the bullets only ever fly one way, you're safer with us than we are with you”, she inferred that political violence is exclusively carried out by those on the political left.
As I mentioned above, independent and government analyses have both found that the degree of violence carried out by left-wing extremists in the U.S. is consistently a small fraction of that committed by right-wing extremists.
To give context to the story that Clark related about the student that thought the TPUSA event put lives in danger, it's also important to remember that earlier that day, a building on the Utah State campus was evacuated because of a suspicious package that the bomb squad ultimately detonated out of caution.
Clark also shared a story with the crowd about her early days with the Turning Point USA organization.
“I was hired by Charlie in 2019, but it wasn't until I gave a speech in 2023 at our young women's conference where I was railing on hormonal birth control, talking about how predatory the fertility industry was and the dangers that daycare can have on childhood attachment, that Charlie said ‘I had no idea that Alex Clark was so based. She's insane. I love it.' That was the best compliment that Charlie Kirk ever gave me. So I have a question for you, Utah: are you insane enough for Charlie Kirk?”
The crowd cheered wildly in the affirmative. “I’m not here to eulogize Charlie Kirk,” Clark said. “I am here to pass the torch on to every single one of you.”
After Clark's address, a pre-recorded video from Utah Sen. Mike Lee played. Then Turning Point USA Chief Operating Officer Tyler Bowyer moderated a panel with former Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, current Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox.
Here's Chaffetz telling the crowd how he invited Kirk to join Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the day while in Utah.
“You know, I traded text messages with Charlie. Yeah, he's excited, because he's coming to Utah twice. That morning, I was going to go out with ICE. I did go out with ICE. I invited him to come with us. ‘Come with us. It's always fun.’ He’s like, 'Ah, I don’t know if I can do both.'”
At one point, Bowyer asked Cox a question, but he was prevented from speaking by a loud chorus of boos from the audience. They may have been motivated by Kirk's declaration that Cox should be expelled from the Republican Party after Cox vetoed a transgender sports ban in 2022
Bowyer restored order to the crowd, saying that they should be respectful listeners as Kirk would have wanted. To conclude the event, Cox, Biggs, and Chaffetz took questions from the audience, but it wasn't the classic Kirk debate format that Turning Point followers have come to expect.
Most of the questions were non-confrontational and conservative in nature. One person asked about some recent instances of political unrest: “How do you both view the violent pockets of politically and religiously charged violence like antifa and what we just saw happen in Michigan?"
“So, if you have constantly a group of people that you demonize and dehumanize and use the worst possible rhetoric,” Biggs responded, “you're going to actually trigger some people to actually engage with dangerous and violent acts, and so that's what we've seen.
"And when you take a leader like Donald Trump, who I assume everybody in here would acknowledge he's a great president and he's a great leader. Let's take what he's done. Let's see, multiple impeachments, investigations. The FBI went after him before he was actually sworn in, and they came up with a Russian hoax.
"And when you see this kind of demonization now, first of all, you kill trust in your government. And if you can't trust your government, all of a sudden, trust in your fellow man is a little bit weaker, and the rhetoric continues to go strong.
"We get back to what I was saying about Congress, and some of the stuff you've heard from various members of Congress that after Charlie's death have been to continue to perpetuate the very language that actually causes and inspires those who are not the same and who are evil to actually come after people and you throw gas on the fire, and that's exactly the opposite of what Charlie was doing.
"So I would just say, for instance, if you have rhetoric that demonizes the LDS church … it's going to trigger somebody who may not have been rational, who decided he hated Mormons and we were somehow demonic, and there are people who think we are demonic, that kind of rhetoric, has got to end, and it's largely as Alex said, it's coming from one side, and we have got to make sure that as we fight the fight, that we call that out and say no more.”
Bowyer followed up by addressing Cox, asking, “You’ve said some things, that there's been some inflammatory rhetoric on both sides, and that you’ve coined the ‘disagree better’ slogan. Is that really a both sides issue? Or what's, like, what's your opinion?”
“I want to add to what Andy said here, because I think that's really important,” Cox said. “This isn't just about left and right. It's about, it's about good at evil, right, up and down. That piece really matters to me.”
At the conclusion of the event, I spoke to a lot of people coming out of the Spectrum who had fairly mixed reactions to what they had seen.
One of those was Tanya Burgoyne, a woman who drove down from Pocatello, Idaho for the event.
“The energy [in the event] was refreshing," Burgoyne said. "It was just really beautiful to see the college students be so excited and engaged in politics."
I asked Burgoyne if she thought this event was progress towards helping people with different beliefs to come together in peaceful discourse.
“I think we just watched that in there with Spencer Cox," she said. "I mean, when he walked in, he got booed, but he held out, and he had good things to say. And I thought he was, he has disagreed better. He brought that up. And I think that's really important. It's what we need, civil discourse. We need absolutely to bring civil discourse back to America, back to people. That's why I stopped and talked to a protester. Let's talk about it.”
“It's not wrong to disagree,” her companion, Richard Burgoyne added. “It’s not wrong to disagree. It's okay, because we're all different. Everybody has different opinion.”
Other folks, however, felt that there was little left to be desired.
“[Cox] spreads a message of unity and civility and bringing people together,” said one man I spoke to. “And I feel like a lot of the rhetoric that we're hearing from our leaders, our political leaders, right now is not in line with the message that he spreads. So I wanted to see if he would, you know, condemn some of the things that maybe our president has said recently.”
One man I spoke to after the event brought a very unique perspective to the philosophy and mission of Turning Point USA.
“My name is Hui Chen. I was born and raised up in China. And I live in China 26 years and I came to this country in 1999 and have been living in this country for 26 years," he said. "So I knew Charlie Kirk quite early, years ago, and I didn't follow him much, but I really liked the conservative movement. And when I was in China, I was heavily brainwashed, and I didn't realize I'm a conservative until Trump coming round to run for president and since 2016. And this about eight years, nine years, and I find out conservative is — it's not just old tradition, it's preserve the human values, human principles, that make our life better, like life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. And what kind of liberty we need is free speech freedom, personal freedom, and that make us better, better future, and better personal personality. And that's part of the reason we can pursue happiness.”
By the time people were leaving the event, several more protesters had gathered at the exit to make their voices heard.
“All of us are just students here at USU. We're just out here trying to start conversations is our main thing," said Luke Jackson. "We feel that there's a lot of ignorance surrounding today's political climate, and we think that the only way out of that is through conversations. So, we've got some signs, with some quotes and with some talking points, hoping to get people talking to us, mainly about the life of Charlie Kirk, the state of our political climate, funding of things in Israel, ICE, kind of hot-button topics like that.”
“We’re really just trying to get more people to look beyond their current political bubble," Haley Owens said. "We know that the way that the media is set up is that everybody is stuck in their echo chambers, and we've all been in our own echo chambers, and no matter how hard we try, we all get stuck in them. And it's really important for us to look beyond what we're being fed because we're all being fed what we want to see and what we want to hear, and that leads to a lot of ignorance on a lot of topics, regardless of whether you're on the left or on the right. And so, it's really just trying to look beyond, look beyond your bubble.”
“It's our responsibility to be informed about what's happening," Addie Smith said, "and to be uninformed is ignorant and naive, and we're trying to take responsibility for that and to get other people to kind of become aware of the reality of some of the issues in America, because things are not how they seem.”
Jackson held up a sign that said, ‘Death does not forgive life.’
“Obviously,” he said, “we believe that it is a tragedy that somebody was shot, somebody died, especially here in our home state. But we think it's important to drill the fact that what happens to you does not change the things that you've said and the impacts that you've had on people and the weight that your words have carried."
Scott Tilton had a sign that said, ‘Your taxes are funding genocide.’
“America has sent over $150 billion to Israel since 2023,” Tilton said, “and only $5 billion to Palestine in the entire 21st century. The back says, free Palestine. There's just a lot of injustices and murder happening.”
I fact-checked the claim about the relative amount of money sent to Israel and Palestine. According to the U.S. Congressional Research Office, the U.S. has given Israel about $175 billion in military and economic aid since 1946. The Poynter Institute, however, reports that in the same time period, the U.S. has sent Israel $318 billion in aid of all types, more than $100 billion more than it has given to any other nation since 1950. The USA has sent roughly $11 billion to Palestine.
While most of the interactions between the spectators and demonstrators were civil, at one point, a protester found themselves surrounded by at least 25 angry Turning Point USA fans.
“Do you feel oppressed in the current political environment?” asked one man “Do you feel that you are consistently oppressed the way that, like, a Nazi, like Hitler, oppressed Jewish people?”
“I believe that we are started down that path,” the protestor responded.
“Do you feel that you are there yet?” another man asked.
“I mean, I'm here right now, and I'm fine in theory, but I could be targeted by the administration,” the protester said.
“You could be?” asked a woman in the audience. “So, this is all based off of fear?”
Eventually, the confrontation got so big that attending police officers had to disperse it.
“We're done,” an officer said. “You're impeding the flow of traffic and pedestrians. We need everybody to move on. I appreciate the peaceful debates, but we're done.”
One of the officers I spoke to after the fact was extremely open with his opinion about the confrontation, but he reaffirmed the most important theme of the day and maybe of Charlie Kirk's entire career, which is the individual right to free expression.
“I completely disagree with the message being displayed by the protester," said Deputy Chad Sorenson, an officer with the Cache County Sheriff's Office. "But I very much believe in the Constitution, and I believe in his right to display this and his beliefs. I wear the uniform for everybody, and the protection doesn't just go for those I agree with. It goes for those that I disagree with, as well.”