Charles James Kirk was an American political activist, author, and media personality.

He co-founded the conservative organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA) in 2012 and was its executive director.

He was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Turning Point Action (TPAction) and a member of the Council for National Policy (CNP). 

The Washington Post described him as "one of the most prominent voices on the right" in his later years.

Kirk was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs of Arlington Heights and Prospect Heights, Illinois. In high school, Kirk actively engaged in politics, supporting Republican candidate Mark Kirk (no relation) and his U.S. Senate campaign. He briefly attended Harper College before dropping out to pursue political activism full-time, influenced by Tea Party member Bill Montgomery. In 2012, Kirk founded TPUSA, a conservative student organization that quickly grew with backing from donors like Foster Friess.

Kirk expanded the organization's influence through initiatives like the Professor Watchlist and School Board Watchlist, which sought to fire or silence professors for sharing opinions opposed by Turning Point. Critics called this a form of modern day McCarthyism. In 2019, Kirk founded Turning Point Action, a political advocacy arm, and later, with Pentecostal pastor Rob McCoy, formed Turning Point Faith—aimed at mobilizing religious communities on conservative issues. Kirk hosted The Charlie Kirk Show, a conservative talk radio program.

A key ally of Donald Trump, Kirk promoted conservative and Trump-aligned causes. He received criticism for a variety of controversial statements, especially regarding his opposition to gun control, abortion, LGBTQ rights, his criticism of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Martin Luther King Jr., and his promotion of Christian nationalism, COVID-19 misinformation, false claims of electoral fraud in 2020, and the Great Replacement conspiracy theory.

In September 2025, Kirk was shot and killed at the age of 31 while speaking at a TPUSA event on the campus of Utah Valley University (UVU), as part of his long-running public debate events at higher education institutions across the United States. The shooting received international attention and condemnation.

Early life and education

Charles James Kirk was born on October 14, 1993, in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, Illinois, and raised in nearby Prospect Heights. His mother is a mental health counselor, and his father is an architect. Kirk was a member of the Boy Scouts of America and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. In 2010, during his junior year at Wheeling High School, he volunteered for the successful U.S. Senate campaign of Illinois Republican Mark Kirk (no relation). In his senior year, Kirk created a campaign to reverse a price increase for cookies at his school. He also wrote an essay for Breitbart News alleging liberal bias in high school textbooks, which led to an appearance on Fox Business. Kirk attended Harper College near Chicago, but dropped out before completing a degree or certificate.

At a subsequent speaking engagement at Benedictine University's "Youth Empowerment Day", Kirk met Bill Montgomery, a retiree more than 50 years his senior, who was then a Tea Party–backed legislative candidate. Montgomery encouraged Kirk to engage in political activism full-time. He subsequently founded Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a "grass-roots organization to rival liberal groups such as MoveOn.org." At the 2012 Republican National Convention, Kirk met Foster Friess, a prominent Republican donor, and persuaded him to finance the organization.

Leadership of Turning Point organizations

Turning Point USA

Kirk was CEO, chief fundraiser, and the public face of Turning Point from its founding to his death in 2025. He co-founded the organization in 2012 at 18 years of age. According to The New York Times, he turned the organization into a "well-funded media operation, backed by conservative megadonors like the Wyoming businessman Foster Friess." TPUSA's activities include publication of the Professor Watchlist and the School Board Watchlist.

In 2020, ProPublica investigated the finances of TPUSA and claimed in their report that the organization made "misleading financial claims", that the audits were not done by an independent auditor, and that the leaders had enriched themselves while advocating for Trump. ProPublica also reported that Kirk's salary from TPUSA had increased from $27,000 to nearly $300,000 and that he had bought an $855,000 condo in Longboat Key, Florida. In 2020, Turning Point USA had $39.2 million in revenues. Kirk earned a salary of more than $325,000 from TPUSA and related organizations.

In 2021, TPUSA announced an online academy targeted towards students in schools "poisoning our youth with anti-American ideas." Turning Point Academy was intended to cater to families seeking an "America-first education." Arizona education firm StrongMind initially partnered with TPUSA with plans to open the academy by the fall of 2022 and assessed its "potential to generate over $40 million in gross revenue at full capacity (10,000 students)." The partnership ended after StrongMind received backlash from its own employees and key subcontractor Freedom Learning Group, who prepared course content for the academy, also backed out of the academy after learning that it would be run by TPUSA.

Political positions and activities

Kirk was the William F. Buckley Jr. Council Member of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a group "that has served for decades as a hub for a nationwide network of conservative activists and the donors who support them", according to the CNP's September 2020 membership directory leaked in February 2021. He was a spokesperson for CNP Action, the political arm of the CNP. In March 2025, President Trump appointed Kirk to the United States Air Force Academy Board of Visitors. Kirk's last political rally had taken place in Kentucky, where he appeared alongside Senate candidate Nate Morris.

Republican and pro-Trump activism

Kirk addressed the 2016 Republican National Convention. In an interview with Wired magazine during the convention, Kirk said that while he "was not the world's biggest Donald Trump fan", he would vote for him, and that Trump's candidacy made Turning Point's mission more difficult. Kirk flipped to supporting Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention and spent the remainder of the campaign assisting with travel and media arrangements for Donald Trump Jr.

In October 2016, Kirk participated in a Fox News event along with Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Lara Trump that had a pro-Donald Trump tone.

In July 2019, Kirk became chairman of Students for Trump, which had been acquired by Turning Point Action, and launched a campaign to recruit one million students for the 2020 Trump reelection campaign. The unsuccessful effort led to TPUSA and the Trump campaign blaming each other for an overall decline in youth support for Trump.

At an August 2020 meeting of the Council for National Policy, Kirk said: "Democrats have done a really foolish thing by shutting down all these campuses ... It's gonna remove ballot harvesting opportunities and all their voter fraud that they usually do on college campuses – so they're actually removing half a million votes off the table. So please keep the campuses closed – it's a great thing. Whatever!"

Matthew Rosenberg and Katie Rogers wrote in the The New York Times that Kirk "[walks] the line between mainstream conservative opinion and outright disinformation" and that "with a powerful ally in the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Kirk both amplifies the president's message and helps shape it.

In December 2022, Kirk warned the Republican National Committee that they needed to listen to their grassroots voters or face the consequences of ignoring them. Kirk stated that "If ignored, we will have the most stunted and muted Republican Party in the history of the conservative movement, the likes of which we haven't seen in generations."

Kirk was an early investor in 1789 Capital, which invests in conservative "MAGA" businesses. Trump Jr. joined 1789 Capital in November 2024, after Trump won the 2024 election.

Prior to the 2024 presidential election, Kirk visited approximately 25 college campuses, marketed as the "You're Being Brainwashed" tour. His aim was to stir up more Gen Z voter turnout, and he would engage and debate with students on many different relevant topics. According to Turning Point Action, the tour produced around two billion viral views on social media. The tour has been praised as having a "critical role" in helping Donald Trump's election. Kirk aided the president-elect in choosing leadership positions for his administration, including cabinet positions.

Views on relationships and "sexual anarchy"

In October 2021, Kirk said on his podcast that Democrats wanted Americans to live where "there is no cultural identity, where you live in sexual anarchy, where private property is a thing of the past, and the ruling class controls everything." Following social media backlash, he released a statement on the website of the Claremont Institute doubling down on and expanding his remarks.

According to Media Matters, at the TPUSA Young Women's Leadership Summit 2022 Conference, Kirk said that the "biblical model" for women to pursue in romantic relationships is a partner who is "a protector and a leader, and deep down, a vast majority of you agree" and that "if you want to go meet conservative men that have their act together, that aren't like, woke beta men, like, start a Turning Point USA chapter, you'll meet a lot of them."

Kirk advocated for parents to never let their daughters receive prescriptions for birth control medication for any reason. He claimed that the medication makes women angry and bitter, which he alleged suited the political leanings of the Democratic Party.

Race and Martin Luther King Jr.

Kirk said that the concept of white privilege is a myth and a "racist idea". Kirk served on President Donald Trump's 1776 Commission, a response to the 1619 Project. Assuming "more hard-right positions", he said that Democratic immigration policies were aimed at "diminishing and decreasing white demographics in America." In October 2021, Kirk began the "Exposing Critical Racism Tour" of a number of campuses and off-campus venues to "fight racist theories on America's college campuses!" On the Minnesota leg of the tour on October 5, 2021, Kirk called George Floyd a "scumbag" and appeared to refer to the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol when he said that "if you dare walk into the U.S. Capitol building and take a selfie, they'll put you in solitary confinement." Kirk also promoted several debunked conspiracy theories about Floyd, such as that he was “illegally counterfeiting currency,” and had once “put a gun to a pregnant woman’s stomach.” On Facebook, YouTube and Rumble, Kirk repeatedly promoted the false claim that the medical examiner who performed the autopsy declared Floyd had died of an overdose. Following a fact check by AFP that noted the doctor stood by the classification of Floyd's death as a homicide, corrections were added to Kirk's posts on social media.

In a November 2021 Fox News article, Kirk wrote that he believed state power should be used to stop teachers from instructing children on critical race theory: "directly confronting the left, and promising to fight their illiberal ideology with state power when necessary, is the key to winning everyday Americans."

Kirk praised Martin Luther King Jr. prior to December 2023, variously calling him a "hero" and a "civil rights icon"; that December, however, he used a speech at AmericaFest to describe him as "awful ... not a good person" and as someone who is admired only because he "said one thing he didn't actually believe." The speech also saw Kirk condemn the Civil Rights Act of 1964, calling its passage a "huge mistake" and alleging that it had created a "permanent DEI-type bureaucracy". Kirk told The New York Times, "I take the Caldwellian view, from his book The Age of Entitlement, that we went through a new founding in the '60s and that the Civil Rights Act has actually superseded the U.S. Constitution as its reference point. In fact, I bet if you polled Americans, most of them would have more reverence for the Civil Rights Act than the Constitution. I could be wrong, but I think I'm right." In January 2024, Kirk said that a "myth" had been created around King which had "grown totally out of control" and that King was currently "the most honored, worshiped, even deified person of the 20th century" despite "most people" supposedly disliking him during his life. Responding to accusations by Malcolm Kenyatta that he was working to undermine King and the Voting Rights Act, Kirk called this claim "a lie" and "fear-mongering", and added that telling the "truth" about King "should not be trampling sacred ground" since he was "just a man ... a very flawed one at that" and a "mythological anti-racist creation of the 1960s." Kirk later said he had "found the sacred cow of modern America" in criticizing King.

Also in January 2024, Kirk blamed DEI programs for national aviation issues, saying, "If I see a Black pilot, I'm going to be like, 'Boy, I hope he's qualified.'" He had previously expressed opposition to DEI programs, describing them as "anti-White". NBC News further reported that Kirk's comments about DEI programs and his comment about Black or African American airline pilots resulted in ongoing conflict with the Republican National Committee over outreach to Black voters.

Kirk posted on Instagram in March 2024 that "The 'Great Replacement' is not a theory, it's a reality." Alongside this statement, Kirk shared a screenshot from a Fox News story headline that read; "7.2M illegals entered the U.S. under Biden admin[istration], an amount greater than population of 36 states." After Elon Musk was widely criticized for endorsing an antisemitic post that referenced the Great Replacement Theory and blamed "Jewish communities" for supporting mass migration, Kirk defended Musk, stating that "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them." Kirk went on to say that it was "completely correct" that "the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country", praising Tucker Carlson's statements on the issue.

LGBTQ issues

According to a 2024 NBC News report, Kirk was relatively secular regarding LGBTQ issues in 2018, but shifted towards more socially conservative stances. Kirk argued there is an "LGBTQ agenda", and he opposed gay marriage.

In 2024, Kirk cited Leviticus 20:13 ("If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them") as "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters".

Kirk argued against gender-affirming care for transgender people, saying, "We must ban trans-affirming care — the entire country. Donald Trump needs to run on this issue", according to Media Matters.

Kirk stated that "there are only two genders" and that "transgenderism and gender 'fluidity' are lies that hurt people and abuse kids".

Islam

Following the victory of Zohran Mamdani in the 2025 New York City Democratic mayoral primary, Kirk posted that "24 years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11. Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City." Liberal Fox News commentator Jessica Tarlov asked Kirk to take down the "gross and islamophobic" post. In a separate post, Kirk argued that "It's not Islamophobia to notice that Muslims want to import values into the West that seek to destabilize our civilization."

Personal life

Kirk and his wife, Erika Frantzve, speaking together at an event in Texas in 2025

In May 2021, Kirk married Erika Frantzve, a businesswoman, podcaster, and philanthropist who won the Miss Arizona USA pageant competition in 2012. The couple's first child, a daughter, was born in August 2022. The couple's second child, a son, was born in May 2024.

On September 10, 2025, while on stage at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, for a TPUSA event, "The American Comeback Tour", Kirk was fatally shot in the neck. The shooting took place around 12:20 p.m. MDT (18:20 UTC), 20 minutes after the event began, in front of an audience of about 3,000 people. Footage recorded at the moment of the shooting shows him recoiling from the impact and blood pouring from a wound in his neck. A university spokesperson later stated that a suspect was in custody, but the person was determined not to be the shooter.

Kirk was taken to the Timpanogos Regional Hospital in critical condition, where he was pronounced dead later that afternoon at the age of 31. His death was publicly announced by US President Donald Trump at 2:40 p.m. MDT in a post on Truth Social, and was later confirmed by Kirk's spokesperson.

At 4:21 p.m. MDT, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Kash Patel announced on social media that a "subject" was in custody. Utah governor Spencer Cox confirmed that there was one person in custody and that it was believed the perpetrator acted alone. This individual was later released after interrogation. At a press conference, FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Bohls described the investigation as "in its early stages" and encouraged members of the public to come forward with information.