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Turning Point USA

Abbreviation	TPUSA
Formation	June 5, 2012; 12 years ago (2012-06-05)
Type	Nonprofit organization
Purpose	Advocacy of conservatism on education campuses
Headquarters	4940 East Beverly Road Phoenix, Arizona 85044
Region served	United States
Leader	Charlie Kirk
Revenue (2022)	US$55 million

Turning Point USA (TPUSA) is an American nonprofit organization that advocates for conservative politics on high school, college, and university campuses. It was founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk and Bill Montgomery. TPUSA's affiliate groups include Turning Point Endowment, Turning Point Action and TPUSA Faith. TPUSA has been described as the fastest growing organization of campus chapters in America, and according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, is the dominant force in campus conservatism.

In 2016, the organization launched Professor Watchlist, a website that lists academic staff purported by TPUSA to "discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom". TPUSA has attempted to influence student government elections in an effort to "combat liberalism on college and university campuses". In 2021, TPUSA started its School Board Watchlist website, which publishes names and photos of school board members who have adopted mask mandates or anti-racist curricula.

TPUSA hosts several annual conferences, including the Student Action Summit, Young Women's Leadership Summit, Young Black Leadership Summit, and AmericaFest. The organization is funded by conservative donors and foundations, including Republican Party politicians.

History

Donald Trump speaks at the 2019 Student Action Summit

In May 2012, 18-year old Charlie Kirk gave a speech at Benedictine University's Youth Government Day. Impressed, retired marketing entrepreneur and Tea Party activist Bill Montgomery encouraged Kirk to postpone college and engage full-time in political activism. A month later, the day after Kirk graduated from high school, they launched Turning Point USA, a section 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Montgomery became Kirk's mentor, and worked behind the scenes handling the paperwork for the organization. Montgomery often described himself as the group's co-founder, although it was not an official recognition by the group or Kirk.

At the 2012 Republican National Convention, Kirk met Foster Friess, a Republican donor, and persuaded him to finance the organization. Friess also served on the organization's advisory council, alongside Ginni Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Barry Russell, president and CEO of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), is a key advisor.

Between July 2016 and June 2017, the organization raised in excess of US$8.2 million. The same year, leaked records found that the group had funnelled "thousands of dollars" into student governments to elect conservatives. Donors include Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, former Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, Richard Uihlein, and the Donors Trust on behalf of private donors.

In March 2023, it was announced via Twitter by Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens that the BLEXIT Foundation and TPUSA have partnered. Blexit would be incorporating their message through TPUSA's branding style and corporate structure, while retaining Candace Owens and Brandon Tatum in leadership roles.

Leadership and associates

Charlie Kirk

Kirk speaking at Culture War Tour, October 22, 2019

Charlie Kirk is a Republican activist.

In a 2015 speech at the Liberty Forum of Silicon Valley, Kirk said that he had applied to the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, and was not accepted. He said that "the slot he considered his went to 'a far less-qualified candidate of a different gender and a different persuasion'" whose test scores he claimed he knew. In 2017 he told The New Yorker that he was being sarcastic when he said it, and at a New Hampshire TPUSA event featuring Senator Rand Paul in October 2019 he claimed that he never said it.

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 his task more difficult. He spent the rest of the 2016 presidential campaign assisting with travel and media arrangements and running errands for Donald Trump Jr.

Several former employees and student volunteers for TPUSA claimed they had witnessed collusion between high-ranking TPUSA employees – including Kirk himself and top advisor Ginni Thomas – and the presidential campaigns of both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. The interactions included Kirk coordinating via email with two officials at a pro-Cruz super PAC to send student volunteers to work for the PAC in South Carolina, as well as two students being requested by Thomas herself, via voicemail, to distribute over 200 Cruz placards in Wisconsin. A former employee for TPUSA, who had been based in Florida, alleged that TPUSA had given the personal information of over 700 student supporters to an employee with Rubio's presidential campaign.

In October 2016, Kirk participated in a Fox News event along with Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Lara Trump that had a pro-Donald Trump tone. A TPUSA staff member wrote on Facebook that students who attended the event would have their expenses covered. The event led tax experts to say the organization's conduct may have violated its tax-exempt status, a charge disputed by TPUSA.

In 2019, Kirk became CEO of Students for Trump. In 2020, he was a keynote speaker on the first day of the Republican National Convention, calling President Donald Trump the "bodyguard of western civilization".

Bill Montgomery

Bill Montgomery (1940–2020) was a marketing entrepreneur and onetime participant in the Tea Party movement. He launched Turning Point USA with Kirk in 2012 and served as the organization's secretary and treasurer until April 2020.

Montgomery died of complications resulting from contracting COVID-19 in July 2020.

Tyler Bowyer

Tyler Bowyer became the organization's chief operating officer (COO) in 2017. He graduated from Arizona State University in 2012 with a bachelor's degree. He was chairman of the Republican Party of Maricopa County, AZ, for two years before joining TPUSA as regional manager in 2015. Bowyer oversaw Students for Trump, but the group split with Turning Point Action in 2023 when Bowyer tried to make changes that included dropping "Trump" from its name, according to The Washington Post. Bowyer is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was part of an effort in August 2020 to launch a "Latter-day Saints for Trump" coalition.

In April 2024, Bowyer and seventeen others were each indicted on nine felony charges including fraud, forgery and conspiracy in connection with the 2020 Arizona fake electors plot that attempted to reverse Trump's 2020 presidential election loss in Arizona.

Others

In February 2019, Turning Point USA hired Benny Johnson as chief creative officer. Johnson had been fired by BuzzFeed for plagiarism in 2014 and suspended by the Independent Journal Review in 2017 for publishing a conspiracy theory about Barack Obama.

In May 2019, it was reported that TPUSA's director for high school outreach, Kyle Kashuv, had previously used racially inflammatory language in a Google Document. Kashuv resigned from TPUSA hours after his former classmates threatened to make the screenshots from the document public. After the screenshots were published, Kashuv acknowledged that his comments were "callous and inflammatory".

In 2021, political activist Jack Posobiec joined TPUSA to host the show Human Events Daily.

Activities

TPUSA says its mission is "to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government". In late 2017, the organization claimed to have representation on 1,000 campuses. Journalist Joseph Guinto could not verify the number in 2018, finding that Turning Point USA had 400 officially registered chapters, many of whom showed no activity on their Facebook pages. Each of TPUSA's paid workers is supposed to meet a quota to make at least 1,500 student contacts per semester. Student volunteers have several different themes for promoting conservative ideas, including "The Healthcare Games", "Game of Loans", and "iCapitalism". According to The Washington Post, TPUSA centers "group membership on making provocative claims and publicly inciting outrage".

Turning Point USA supports the NRA and the use of fossil fuels, and opposes groups such as Black Lives Matter. Turning Point USA and Turning Point UK promote the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory and said they are working to "combat it" in universities. Kirk described universities as "islands of totalitarianism".

Annual summits

Turning Point USA holds several annual national conferences, including the Student Action Summit and the Young Women's Leadership Summit (YWLS). YWLS focuses to promote women's leadership, encourages women to get married, have children, and become homemakers. The National Rifle Association (NRA) was the headline sponsor of the YWLS in 2017 and 2018. According to The New York Times, YWLS "styles itself as an alternative to a liberal culture of feminism that many Republicans characterize as oppressive" and had by 2018 "evolved into an ultra-Trumpian event complete with 'lock her up' chants and vulgar T-shirts disparaging Hillary Clinton". Turning Point USA also hosts the Young Black Leadership Summit and the Young Latino Leadership Summit. TPUSA provided lodging and some meals for the attendees who could also apply for travel stipends. In December 2021, Turning Point USA also launched AmericaFest, a four-day conference that featured conservative speakers such as Donald Trump Jr., and Sarah Palin interspersed with country music acts. Keynote speakers in 2023 included Glenn Beck, Rosanne Barr, Mike Lindell, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk.

Professor Watchlist

First appearing on November 21, 2016, Turning Point USA also operates a website called Professor Watchlist. Kirk has said the site is "dedicated to documenting and exposing college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values, and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom". As of December 2016^[update], more than 250 professors have been added to the site. Reporting from Politico has described that the list contains many inaccuracies, and includes professors listed for things they did not exactly say or do and others listed for being rude to students or for making "clever remarks" about Trump. Talking to The New York Times, "Mr. Lamb", a director of constitutional enforcement and transparency at TPUSA admitted that the list was "simply aggregating" academics who had been subject to news reports, and that anyone could report a staff member without evidence.

The website has been criticized for using surveillance type propaganda to manipulate ideas of truth, equality, and freedom. Critics have compared Professor Watchlist to the actions of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who tried to publicly identify American citizens as Communists and Communist sympathizers in the 1950s. The New York Times wrote that it was "a threat to academic freedom", while Salon commented that it was "a sign of the stupidity of the post truth era".

In May 2017, Northern Arizona University criminology professor Luis Fernandez said TPUSA surveillance of him had led to multiple threats. In The Harvard Crimson, Harvard University Professor Danielle Allen also said she had been threatened after being targeted by Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA.

School Board Watchlist

In 2021, TPUSA launched the School Board Watchlist, a site Kirk said would "hold district leaders accountable for 'dangerous agendas'". The website publishes names and photos of members of school boards that have adopted or supported mask mandates, mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, and the way history, race, and conceptions of gender and sex are taught in schools.

Involvement in student government elections

Turning Point USA has been involved in influencing student government elections at a number of colleges and universities. Targeted universities included Ohio State University, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the University of Maryland. These claims led to conservative candidates at the University of Maryland withdrawing from student elections after failing to report assistance from Turning Point USA.

According to The New Yorker, a private brochure handed out only to TPUSA donors outlined a strategy on how to capture the majority of student-government positions at 80% of Division 1 N.C.A.A. schools, followed by defunding of progressive organizations on campus, eliminating barriers to hate speech, "blocking campus 'boycott, divestment and sanctions' movements", and using "student resources to host speakers and forums promoting 'American Exceptionalism and Free Market ideals on campus.'" The brochure included a list of every Turning Point USA-supported student who was elected to student government positions in the year 2017. Turning Point USA said that it had helped more than 50 conservatives win elections to become student-body presidents. When Politico looked into Turning Point USA's claims, it found the "success rate to be considerably overstated. Some of the students that Turning Point USA claimed to have backed flatly condemned the organization and said they'd never spoken to anyone who works for it."

Campus activism

In 2016, Turning Point USA at Grand Valley State University filed a lawsuit against the trustees of the school. The complainants asked the court to prohibit enforcement of GVSU's Speech Zone policy and declare it a violation of the students' 1st and 14th Amendment freedoms. They have since reached a settlement.

In September 2017, University of Nebraska lecturer Courtney Lawton was reassigned after a video was posted online showing her confronting a student recruiting for TPUSA.

In October 2017, several Turning Point USA student members at Kent State University conducted a protest against campus "safe space" culture, which involved members dressing up in diapers as babies. Following widespread ridicule on social media, the president of the chapter, Kaitlin Bennett, resigned, and the student-run publication KentWired.com reported that the Turning Point USA chapter at Kent State had disbanded.

In April 2023, a student chapter of Turning Point USA hosted an event at San Francisco State University featuring former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines as a speaker. Gaines' speech campaigned to exclude trans women from women's sports. After her speech she was met with protestors, which prompted campus police to escort her to a computer room where they remained for several hours. Gaines says that she was physically assaulted twice by one person and missed her flight due to being barricaded in a classroom.

Recognition of campus chapters

At Drake University, Turning Point USA was denied recognition as an official student organization in 2016 based on student senate concerns that the organization has "a hateful record", "aggressive marketing" and "an unethical privacy concern". At Hagerstown Community College, a student's attempt to start a Turning Point USA group in 2016 was initially blocked when the school said the organization duplicated an existing group. The student's lawsuit led to the school revising its policy on student organizations, clarifying that school funded groups will be denied if they duplicate existing groups while unfunded groups face no such restriction.

In February 2017, Santa Clara University's student government voted to deny recognition for Turning Point USA as a campus organization. As of March 2017, this decision was overturned by the Vice Provost for Student Life, and Turning Point USA has been recognized as a registered student organization. Wartburg College's student senate voted to deny Turning Point USA recognition in late 2017. The chapter was forced to make changes to its constitution after initially being denied approval.

The Executive Board of the student union of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute also voted on January 18, 2018 to deny the Turning Point USA chapter status as an officially recognized student organization.

Wichita State University's student court overturned a decision by the student senate denying a Turning Point USA Chapter recognition on Campus in 2021. The student court vote was unanimous that the denial of recognition was unconstitutional.

Media

In October 2020, Kirk began hosting a daily three-hour radio talk show on conservative Christian radio network Salem Media's "The Answer" channel.

Turning Point USA's online audience grew from an average of 83,000 to 111,000 in 2020. A dozen social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram combined had more than 10 million followers online.

In September 2021, TPUSA launched "Turning Point Live", a three-hour streaming talk show featuring host John Root and selling "Save America" merchandise.

In 2021, the TPUSA Productions film A Long Walk in Socialism was the Rocky Mountain Emmy Award recipient in the category Cultural/Topical documentary.

In 2022, Turning Point USA in partnership with Salem Media Group released "Border Battle", a docuseries about America's southern border.

United States election activities

2016 presidential election

Several former employees and student volunteers for Turning Point USA claimed they had witnessed collusion between high-ranking Turning Point USA employees – including Kirk himself and top advisor Ginni Thomas – and the presidential campaigns of both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. The interactions included Kirk coordinating via email with two officials at a pro-Cruz super PAC to send student volunteers to work for the PAC in South Carolina, as well as two students being requested by Thomas herself, via voicemail, to distribute over 200 Cruz placards in Wisconsin. A former employee for TPUSA, who had been based in Florida, alleged that Turning Point USA had given the personal information of over 700 student supporters to an employee with Rubio's presidential campaign.

A Turning Point USA staff member wrote on Facebook that students who attended the event would have their expenses covered. The event led tax experts to say the organization's conduct may have violated its tax-exempt status, a charge disputed by Turning Point USA.

2020 presidential election

In September 2020, Turning Point USA's affiliate Turning Point Action was reported by The Washington Post to have paid young people in Arizona, some of them minors, to produce thousands of posts with TPUSA content on their own social media accounts and on fake accounts without disclosing their relationship with Turning Point USA. According to an examination by the newspaper and an independent data science specialist, the campaign was highly coordinated and included similar messaging under the instruction of TPUSA to prevent detection.

In September 2020, Facebook removed 200 accounts and 55 pages as well as 76 Instagram accounts linked to Turning Point USA's marketing agency Rally Forge. The agency had paid teenagers in Phoenix, Arizona, on Turning Point USA's behalf to use their own and fake accounts and pages for thousands of posts boosting Trump and disparaging Democratic candidate Joe Biden during the 2020 United States presidential election. In October 2020, Facebook banned Rally Forge permanently while Twitter suspended 262 accounts from its platform. Neither organization penalized Turning Point USA or its affiliates, stating that they "could not determine the extent to which the group's leaders were aware of the specific violations carried out on their behalf, such as the use of fake accounts".

Turning Point USA hosted Trump reelection rallies, some of them featuring Trump surrogates and some of them Trump himself.

January 6, 2021, "Stop the Steal" rally

After the 2020 election, Kirk disputed the results and denied that Trump had lost. On January 4, 2021, Kirk announced in a tweet that Turning Point Action would be sending more than 80 buses to a January 6, 2021, Trump "Stop the Steal" rally near the White House in Washington, D.C, to protest the outcome of the election. They sent seven buses with approximately 350 participants. Turning Point Action also funneled money to several "Stop the Steal" rally speakers, including Kimberly Guilfoyle, but did not organize or take part in the march to the Capitol that erupted in violence. The rally, which was attended by several thousand Trump supporters, ended in a riot and the attack at the U.S. Capitol, where Biden's win was about to be certified. Kirk later deleted the tweet and said on his podcast that it was "bad judgment" and "not wise" to enter the Capitol but not necessarily insurrectionist. A Turning Point Action spokesman later said the group condemns political violence.

Turning Point organizations

Turning Point Action

Turning Point Action is a 501(c)(4) organization representing right-wing and conservative perspectives. While the group claims to be a "completely separate organization" from Turning Point USA, Forbes noted that both were founded by Kirk and use common marketing and branding styles. Kirk has received income from both Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action, according to tax documents. Donors to Turning Point Action received a bumper sticker prominently featuring the URL of Turning Point USA's website; the bumper sticker was also available for purchase from Turning Point USA's web store.

In May 2019, it was reported that Kirk was "preparing to unveil" Turning Point Action, a 501(c)(4) entity allowed to target Democrats.

During the 2020 presidential election campaign Turning Point Action paid teenagers in Arizona, some of them minors, to produce thousands of posts with Turning Point USA content on their own social media accounts without disclosing their relationship with the organization.

TPUSA Faith

In 2021, Charlie Kirk founded TPUSA Faith, an organization that says it is dedicated to "recruit pastors and other church leaders to be active in local and national political issues". The organization promotes a culture war agenda and is intended to attract supporters among religious conservatives. Its activities include faith-based voter drives "and educating members on TPUSA's core values". According to TPUSA's 2021 Investor Prospectus, the program—with a budget of $6.4 million—"will 'address America's crumbling religious foundation by engaging thousands of pastors nationwide' in order to 'breathe renewed civic engagement into our churches'".

Turning Point Endowment

Turning Point Endowment Inc. is a self-described "supporting organization" whose "mission is to support and benefit Turning Point USA's charitable purposes and long-term vitality".

Turning Point Academy

In 2021, TPUSA announced Turning Point Academy as an online academy for "families seeking an 'America-first education.'" Plans to develop a curriculum with StrongMind, the firm that owns Arizona charter school Primavera Online High School, were abandoned when StrongMind's key subcontractor, the Freedom Learning Group, an education company run by military spouses and veterans, terminated the contract after finding out that the client was TPUSA.

Foreign offshoots

In 2017, the loosely connected group Turning Point Canada registered a chapter in Canada. In 2019, Turning Point UK was set up in the United Kingdom.