Charlie Kirk, 31, dies from gunshot wound

Charlie Kirk, a conservative commentator who changed the political ground game for the Republican Party, has died after being shot at a public speaking engagement. He was 31.

Kirk was the executive director of Turning Point USA, a political advocacy organization he founded in 2012, when he was 18. He customarily traveled to college campuses, set up a white folding table, wrote a controversial opinion on a poster, and asked passers-by to “prove me wrong.” Kirk was known for public debates on conservative issues. He built TPUSA into a seven-arm entity, with branches for political advocacy, media, a faith network, and an academy to teach about conservative values.

Kirk was speaking about political violence at Utah Valley University during a TPUSA event on Wednesday. As of Wednesday, nearly 1,000 people had signed a petition asking the school to block Kirk from the campus due to his divisive rhetoric. It was the first stop on a new tour called The American Comeback Tour. While he spoke with an audience member about mass shootings, a gunman struck him. Kirk was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital roughly an hour later.

He was a close friend and confidant of President Donald Trump. The flags on the White House north lawn lowered to half-staff after the president broke the news of Kirk’s death in a post on Truth Social, saying, “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us.”

Kirk first began working in politics doing door-knocking in Illinois for then–U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk (no relation). After a couple of years at Harper College in the Chicago suburbs, Kirk dropped out to pursue political activism full-time. In 2016, he publicly supported Donald Trump, appearing at interviews with Trump family members and traveling with the campaign. In 2019, he took over Students for Trump and merged it with Turning Point Action. Kirk said he was on a mission to flip the youth vote conservative.

“I’ve been at this for 13 years, and it’s been a wild movement,” Kirk said in a podcast appearance with California Gov. Gavin Newsom in March. He said that in 2021, he set a goal to move the youth vote Republican by 10 points in 10 years. They achieved it in four. “Our whole hypothesis was, and we did this alongside President Trump and his great team, was that this demographic is disproportionately to the Democrat side. We believe Democrats were taking them for granted.”

Kirk advocated for pro-life causes, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade. He said that there could be a few medical exceptions for women seeking abortions. He also opposed birth control medication for any reason. Kirk supported laws that protected women in sports from competing with athletes of the opposite gender.

In 2020, he claimed that voter fraud changed the presidential election results from a Trump win to a Biden win. In January 2021, Kirk sent hundreds of buses of college students to Washington to support Trump on Jan. 6. He pleaded the Fifth Amendment when testifying about the U.S. Capitol riot before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. He said the events were not an insurrection.

Kirk hosted TPUSA tours on college campuses during the 2024 election. TPUSA also hosts an annual conference called America Fest. Since its creation, TPUSA now has more than 1,200 student-led chapters at colleges and high schools. The organization says it has more than a quarter-million members. Kirk also hosted a daily, three-hour podcast called The Charlie Kirk Show. His organization published a regular professor watchlist to warn college students when professors included what TPUSA considered woke ideology.

“I hope Turning Point survives this,” University of North Georgia professor Matthew Boedy told me. He is listed on the professor watchlist and has studied Kirk’s career and rise in influence. “I cried for his family and our nation. We have become a nation of assassinations. No one deserves to be shot.”

Kirk galvanized college campuses in a way conservative movements never had, Boedy said. His appeal came from a willingness to talk to everyone, even hecklers. He often invited protesters to take the microphone and explain their views.

“He made Turning Point into the indispensable organization for conservative causes,” Boedy said. “This is terrible for our country because we are a country of debate and democracy and voices, not violence.”

Conservative activists praised Kirk for building a youth-based network for conservatives through TPUSA.

“Even at 31, Charlie Kirk was already one of America's greatest political leaders,” conservative lawyer Mike Davis posted on X. “Charlie motivated millions of young people, especially on college campuses, to engage in political debate and activism. Charlie welcomed and encouraged all sides. America just lost a great one.”

Kirk was an evangelical Christian and espoused dominionist theology—a belief system seeking to institute a nation governed by conservative Christianity—later in his life. In a 2020 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Kirk referenced the seven mountains of cultural influence, a belief that Christians must dominate each of these and turn the nation toward God. He was a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist.

“One of the reasons we’re living through a constitutional crisis is that we no longer have a Christian nation,” he said last year in a video he posted to X. “But we have a Christian form of government, and they’re incompatible. You cannot have liberty if you do not have a Christian population.”

Kirk is survived by his wife, Erika, and two children, ages 3 and 1.