LOGAN, Utah (AP) — Turning Point USA's college tour is returning to Utah on Tuesday for the first time since founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a college campus earlier this month.
The stop, at Utah State University in Logan, is about two hours north of Utah Valley University, where Kirk was killed Sept. 10 by a gunman who fired a single shot through the crowd while Kirk was speaking.
The Logan campus temporarily evacuated a building Tuesday after
a “non-explosive” device was found and detonated by the bomb squad “out of an abundance of caution,” the school said in an alert to students. The building is safe, the school said, and events “may resume as normal.”
The assassination of a top ally of President Donald Trump and a significant figure in his Make America Great Again movement has galvanized conservatives, who have vowed to carry on Kirk’s mission of encouraging young voters to embrace conservatism and moving American politics further right. Kirk has been celebrated as a “martyr” by many on the right, and Turning Point USA has seen tens of thousands of requests to create new chapters in high schools and colleges.
Tuesday’s event, scheduled before Kirk’s death, will showcase Turning Point's path forward without its influential leader, who headlined many of its events and drew crowds.
The tour is now headlined by some of the biggest conservative names, including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Glenn Beck. Tuesday’s event will feature conservative podcast host Alex Clark and a panel with Rep. Andy Biggs, former Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Gov. Spencer Cox.
Sen. Mike Lee will appear by video due to budget votes in Washington, his spokesperson said.
Erika Kirk had pledged to continue the campus tour and the organization's work. She oversees Turning Point along with a stable of her late husband’s former aides and friends.
Kirk's widow, Erika Kirk, is now running the operation and has said she is doing so as her late husband intended, closely following plans he laid out to her and to staff.
“We’re not going anywhere. We have the blueprints. We have our marching orders,” she said last week on Kirk's podcast, which she also vowed would continue with rotating hosts and decades of clips of her husband.
“My husband’s voice will live on," she said.
Erika Kirk, however, made clear that she does not intend to appear on the podcast often, and so far seems to be assuming a more behind-the-scenes role than her husband.
Mikey McCoy, Kirk's former chief of staff, said Erika Kirk is in daily contact with the Trump administration, and has described her as “very strategic” and different from her husband.
The college tour's events since Kirk's death have focused on honoring his memory as well as prayer and the question-and-answer sessions Kirk was known for.
At Virginia Tech last week, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, urged the crowd to carry Kirk's legacy forward.
“The question that has been asked over and over again is: Who will be the next Charlie? And as I look out in this room and I see thousands of you, I want to repeat the best answer that I have heard: You will be the next Charlie,” he said. “All of you.”
Kelly, who headlined the event, told the crowd that she knew appearing carried risk, but that it was important “to send a message that we will not be silenced by an assassin’s bullet, by a heckler’s veto, by a left-wing, woke professor or anyone who tries to silence us from saying what we really believe,” she said to loud cheers.
At the University of Minnesota last week, conservative commentator Michael Knowles, who was originally set to appear with Kirk, responded to attendees' questions, ranging from a man quibbling about Catholic doctrine to another arguing against women's suffrage. A spotlight illuminated a chair left empty for Kirk.
Knowles said Kirk was instrumental in keeping together disparate conservative factions, and he worries about Trump's conservative movement fracturing without Kirk.
“The biggest threat right now is that without that single figure that we were all friends with, who could really hold it together, things could spin off in different directions,” Knowles said. “We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
___
Colvin reported from New York and Cooper from Phoenix.
