Erika Kirk urges conservative students not to back down in first school year since Charlie's assassination
Erika Kirk is urging conservative students not to back down as they return to college campuses for the first school year since her husband Charlie Kirk was assassinated, challenging them to carry forward the movement he founded in 2012.
Kirk, who took over leadership of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) following the fatal shooting of her 31-year-old husband at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025, posted a lengthy message on Instagram Wednesday evening directed primarily at students beginning the new academic year.
She warned that conservative and Christian students may encounter hostility at their schools but offered a stern message: Don't retreat from campus activism.
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"Your table might get flipped," Kirk wrote. "Someone might call you every name imaginable because you have a Turning Point USA sign sitting in front of you."
"What are you going to do about it?" she continued.
"Are you going to stop tabling? Are you going to shut down your chapter? Are you going to decide it is easier to keep your head down and get through the semester? No. You keep going."
The CEO of the conservative nonprofit then invoked her husband's commitment to courage.
"Charlie committed himself to a life of courage," she wrote. "I want to challenge you to do the same. He'd often talk about how courage is doing the right thing even when you don't know how it's going to work out. He would tell you that courage is being committed to the right course of action regardless of the cost associated with it."
Erika Kirk also recalled how her husband deliberately traveled to college campuses where he encountered people who disagreed with him because he wanted debate rather than an audience that already shared his views.
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"Charlie wanted the conversation; he wanted the debate, he wanted you to ask the hard questions and challenge him," she wrote. "And he wanted you to learn how to defend what you believe instead of repeating something because somebody you follow online said it."
"That is still who we are," she added.
Charlie Kirk founded TPUSA to promote conservatism on college campuses nationwide. He was speaking before more than 2,000 people at a TPUSA event in Orem, Utah, when he was assassinated, leaving behind Erika and their two children.
Erika Kirk argued that her husband's assassination ultimately failed to derail the student movement he created.
"What was meant to destroy the student movement my husband started 14 years ago did the opposite," she wrote.
She pointed to the creation of new TPUSA chapters and said students have registered others to vote, tabled on campuses, organized events and knocked on doors.
Erika also thanked students for supporting her over the past year and said being around them makes her feel her husband's presence.
She acknowledged the emotional weight of beginning the first school year without Charlie.
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"It's still so painful that it's our first Start of the School Year without my Charlie," she wrote. "It hasn't been easy to do any of this without him."
"But he left us a blueprint for how to continue his mission, and that's what we're doing," she added.
Tyler Robinson, 23, is accused of fatally shooting Kirk and has not entered a plea.
Following a weeklong preliminary hearing in July, Judge Tony Graf Jr. is expected to decide Sept. 1 whether prosecutors have established enough probable cause to send Robinson to trial.
Fox News Digital's Stepheny Price and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.