What You Need to Know About Charlie Kirk’s Assassination

Charlie Kirk never held office or worked on a campaign. But he was a crucial organizer of the MAGA movement. Turning Point USA, the group he founded when he was 18, helped recruit many young conservatives and elect Republicans across the country. He was a practiced debater who posted videos of himself parrying liberal critiques.

That’s exactly what he was doing yesterday when a shooter assassinated him during a talk at Utah Valley University. Here is what we know about the killing:

• The authorities continue to search for the shooter. They captured two people yesterday — one immediately after the attack, another in the evening — but released both without charges.

• Kirk was hit in the neck by a single bullet, the police said. About two hours later, his spokesman announced that he had died. Here is a timeline.

• About 3,000 people attended the outdoor event. After the shooting, police officers went building to building to escort students off campus.

• Videos recorded before and after the shooting show someone on the roof of a campus building about 150 yards away. A university official identified the building as the shooter’s location.

Kirk’s influence

Kirk built Turning Point USA to mobilize students. The group, which has more than 850 chapters, sends right-wing speakers to college campuses and convenes young people for political discussions. In a feature in The Times Magazine this year, Robert Draper, a political reporter, explained how the group had guided many young men to vote for Trump in 2024.

Kirk frequently visited college campuses for speaking engagements and debates, and videos of his question-and-answer sessions amassed millions of views on YouTube. He frequently criticized D.E.I., abortion, immigration and gun control. He was answering a question about mass shootings when he was shot.

Kirk was a close friend of Trump’s and a fixture in his administration. He spoke at Trump’s inauguration, helped vet appointees and frequently visited the White House. He was also a close friend of Donald Trump Jr. (the two recently took a trip together to Greenland) and an early backer of Vice President JD Vance.

Kirk, a Christian, lived in Arizona with his wife and two children. Read his Times obituary here, and hear more about him on today’s episode of The Daily.

Reactions to the shooting

• Trump posted a tribute to Kirk on social media, writing: “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.”

• In a video address from the Oval Office, Trump said that liberal criticism of conservatives was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today,” and he vowed to go after groups that fund or support it.

• Democratic politicians condemned the shooting. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California called the attack “disgusting, vile and reprehensible.”

• Social media fell into a well-worn groove: Some users posted tributes, while others posted dark jokes. And many argued with each other along the usual partisan lines.

• Shortly after the shooting, many conservative and religious influencers began to refer to Kirk as a “martyr.”

• Speaker Mike Johnson paused the House mid-vote for a moment of silence. But afterward, when Representative Lauren Boebert called for a spoken prayer, several Democrats objected, pointing out that the House had not done the same for a school shooting in Colorado earlier in the day.

Political violence

Several politicians said yesterday that they were worried that political violence was becoming normalized in the United States. In recent years:

Trump survived two assassination attempts. Rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, attacking police officers. A masked man shot two Democratic lawmakers and their spouses in Minnesota, killing one couple and wounding another. A man attacked Paul Pelosi, the husband of Nancy Pelosi, with a hammer at their San Francisco home. A man set fire to the home of Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.

In a story on political violence for The Times Magazine, Charles Homans wrote that about a fifth of Americans believe political violence is at least sometimes justified, and at least half agree that it’s sometimes justified if the other political party committed violence first.

At a speaking event four years ago, a man in the audience asked Kirk about when it would be justified to kill political opponents. Kirk shut him down. “We must exhaust every peaceful means possible,” Kirk said.

• Senate Republicans blocked an effort by the chamber’s Democratic minority leader to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files.

• A Venezuelan boat that the U.S. military destroyed in the Caribbean last week is said to have turned around before the attack.

• The Trump administration wants to repeal a Biden-era rule that protected millions of acres of public lands and to prioritize oil drilling, coal plants and timber instead.

• In her new book, Kamala Harris writes that it was a mistake to let Joe Biden insist on running for re-election, and that “perhaps” she should have told him not to.

• The White House has exerted extraordinary influence over decisions at the F.B.I., a lawsuit by three ex-officials said.

Education

• The Trump administration says it will restart the flow of some federal research money to Harvard. But its pressure campaign against the university probably isn’t over.

• The Education Department is halting federal funding for some of America’s most diverse colleges, saying the programs it has cut were inherently racist.

• The Supreme Court says a transgender boy can use the boys’ bathroom in his South Carolina high school — at least for now.

• Texas A&M fired an instructor after a student accused her of teaching “gender ideology” in a children’s literature class.

Immigration

• The Justice Department abandoned a claim that parents of unaccompanied Guatemalan children wanted them to be deported.

• ICE officers raided a construction site near the C.I.A. headquarters and some fleeing workers tried to scale the fence around the spy agency’s campus.

Britain

• The British government fired its ambassador to Washington after emails showed that he had close ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

• Prince Harry met with his father, King Charles III. It may be the first step toward healing a rift.

More International News

• Israel attacked Houthi sites in Yemen, a day after its widely criticized airstrike against Hamas leaders in Qatar.

• With escalating air attacks, Vladimir Putin seems determined to demonstrate that he will dictate the terms for any end to the war in Ukraine, Anton Troianovski writes.

• A gas explosion under a highway overpass in Mexico City killed three people and injured at least 70, creating chaos in one of the city’s most heavily populated areas.

Other Big Stories

• After critically injuring two other students, a male student suspected of a shooting at a high school in Colorado died of self-inflicted injuries.

• CBS News is considering making Bari Weiss editor in chief or co-president as part of a deal to buy her media start-up, The Free Press.

• Twenty-four years ago today, Ruth Fremson photographed the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City. In the video below, she describes her memories. Click to watch.

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