‘No one will ever forget my husband’s name and I will make sure of it’, Erika Kirk says
In what Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA described as his widow Erika Kirk’s “address to the nation”, the late conservative activist’s wife pledged to carry out his mission, urged young people to join his organization and called for a revival of Christian faith.
She told “the evil-doers responsible for my husband’s assassination”, that “if you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country and this world”.
“You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry,” she said. “The movement my husband built will not die.”
Kirk’s scheduled campus tour, and a conference scheduled for December, AmericaFest, “will go on” she said, as will his radio and podcast show.
“His wisdom will endure,” she said.
Kirk also urged young people to join Turning Point USA chapters around the country.
“If there isn’t a chapter, if you can’t find one, then start one,” she said.
She reiterated what she said was his constant refrain: “If you want to get involved, go to TPUSA.com”
Her address was also a plea for young Americans to embrace the Christian faith and join what she called “a Bible-believing church”.
“Now and for all eternity he will stand at his savior’s side,” she said of her husband, “wearing the glorious crown of a martyr”.
She also quoted what she called one of his favorite Bible verses: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her.”
The struggle her husband was committed to, and she intends to continue, she said, was not just political, but “above all it is spiritual”.
“Spiritual warfare is palpable,” she said.
“I know my husband is still here,” she said “he’s watching over us.”
Share
Updated at 03.11 BST
Key events
-
1h ago
Summary
-
3h ago
Student who pressed Charlie Kirk on mass shootings before he was shot expresses grief on TikTok
-
4h ago
Trial of Tyler Robinson in Utah state court will probably be televised – report
-
4h ago
‘No one will ever forget my husband’s name and I will make sure of it’, Erika Kirk says
-
4h ago
‘Mr President, my husband loved you’, Erika Kirk says in address
-
5h ago
Erika Kirk, widow of murdered conservative activist, to speak soon
-
6h ago
Secret Service agent reportedly put on leave over Facebook comment that Charlie Kirk ‘spewed hate and racism’
-
7h ago
Utah county attorney plans to file formal charges against Tyler Robinson on Tuesday
-
7h ago
Pentagon to punish service members who mock Charlie Kirk’s death on social media – report
-
9h ago
Suspect’s high school classmate says Robinson was the only ‘leftist’ in a family of ‘very hard’ Republicans
-
9h ago
Casing inscriptions suggest possible link to video game – report
-
9h ago
Representative Luna says Congress is ‘watching’ universities’ response to videos about Charlie Kirk’s murder
-
10h ago
Discord says they have ‘no evidence’ that lead suspect used messaging app to plan Kirk shooting
-
11h ago
Mourners honor Charlie Kirk at vigil in London
-
11h ago
As we learn more about the suspect accused of killing Charlie Kirk, here’s a recap of the day so far
-
12h ago
Neighbor of suspect’s family describes accused as ‘respectful and quiet’
-
12h ago
Congresswoman Mace to introduce resolution to have Charlie Kirk lie in honor in US Capitol
-
13h ago
DOJ may bring federal charges against suspect this afternoon – report
-
14h ago
Utah Governor believes that shooter acted alone, says investigation is ongoing
-
14h ago
‘You are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage’, Utah governor addresses younger generation
-
15h ago
FBI director confirms that Robinson was taken into custody at 10pm on Thursday
-
15h ago
‘We got him’: Utah governor confirms Tyler Robinson as prime suspect in Charlie Kirk shooting
-
16h ago
Suspect in Charlie Kirk killing identified as Tyler Robinson – reports
-
16h ago
Suspect taken into custody on Thursday – report
-
16h ago
FBI to hold press conference at 9am ET on Kirk Shooting
-
16h ago
‘I couldn’t care less’, Trump says about division within the country
-
16h ago
Trump advocates for death penalty for Kirk shooter
-
16h ago
Trump says National Guard troops to be deployed to Memphis
-
17h ago
Trump says ‘with a high degree of certainty’, Kirk’s shooter is in custody
-
17h ago
Opinion: Charlie Kirk’s shocking killing sets the stage for a dangerous federal crackdown
-
18h ago
How the Charlie Kirk shooting unfolded – in maps, videos and images
-
19h ago
Where does the US go after the Charlie Kirk shooting? – podcast
-
20h ago
Virulent debater and clickbait savant: how Charlie Kirk pushed a new generation to the right
-
20h ago
The Guardian view on the killing of Charlie Kirk: a perilous moment that may lead to more
-
20h ago
A quiet Utah town reckons with Charlie Kirk’s shooting: ‘Nothing like this has happened here’
-
21h ago
Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’
-
21h ago
What we know so far
-
21h ago
Oxford Union condemns president-elect’s reported comments on Charlie Kirk shooting
-
22h ago
New video of Kirk suspect released
Show key events only
Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature
Ben Quinn
The killing of Charlie Kirk is being used to mobilise support before what is expected to be Britain’s largest far-right rally in decades, which will include speakers from Britain, the US and Europe.
Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, is among those listed to appear on stage at the rally in central London, which is expected to draw tens of thousands for an event that Robinson has been heavily attempting to monetise.
Other planned speakers include Ant Middleton, a former UK special forces soldier who has increasingly used far-right rhetoric, as well as an MP for Germany’s far-right AfD party and a far-right Polish MEP.
Other Americans making the trip include Joey Mannarino, a self-styled US rightwing commentator who said: “All rape cases have just become fake to me” after a civil case alleging sexual assault by Trump.
The rally is expected to attract upwards of 40,000 attenders, according to the anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate. A smaller gathering organised by the group Stand Up to Racism is also taking place.
Share
Summary
-
Erika Kirk, widow of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, gave a combative speech saying her late husband’s message and mission will be “stronger, bolder, louder and greater than ever” and that her “cries will echo around the world like a battle cry”. A tour of college campuses by his hard-right youth organization Turning Point USA would continue, she said, in her first public statement since her husband’s killing. She urged students to start Turning Point USA chapters at their schools.
-
Authorities announced on Friday that they had arrested a suspect in connection Charlie Kirk’s killing at a speaking event at Utah Valley University (UVU) on Wednesday. Tyler Robinson, 22, is now in custody at Utah County Jail.
-
Robinson’s family friend turned him in, and told officers that Robinson “confessed to them or implied that he had committed the incident”, governor Spencer Cox told a press conference. A family member that investigators interviewed described Robinson as becoming “more political in recent years” and was aware that Kirk was due to speak at UVU, said Cox.
-
The weapon used was identified as a high-action bolt rifle, and Cox noted that several bullet casings were found at the scene of the crime. One of three unfired casings read “Hey fascist! Catch!”, a second read “Oh Bella Ciao” (which is the name of an anti-fascist Italian anthem), and a third casing had the following engraved: “If you read this, you are gay, LMAO”.
-
Jeff Gray, the Utah county attorney, plans to file formal charges against Tyler Robinson on Tuesday, his office said. According to court records obtained by CNN, Robinson is being held without bail on several initial charges, including aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm, and obstruction of justice.
-
A Utah Valley University spokesperson confirmed today that Robinson is a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College. He also briefly attended Utah State University.
-
Donald Trump told Fox & Friends in an interview – during which he also announced that a suspect was in custody – that he hoped the shooter “gets the death penalty”. He declined to call for the US to come together as a way of fixing the country’s divisions, instead casting “vicious and horrible” radicals on the left of US politics as the sole problem.
ShareShare
Here is the Guardian’s write up of the statement given earlier by Erika Kirk, the widow of rightwing activist and provocateur Charlie Kirk, in which she said her late husband’s message and mission will be “stronger, bolder, louder and greater than ever” and that her “cries will echo around the world like a battle cry”.
“I loved knowing one of his mottos was ‘never surrender’,” she said of her late husband. “We’ll never surrender.”
Share
Student who pressed Charlie Kirk on mass shootings before he was shot expresses grief on TikTok
When Hunter Kozak, a mathematics student at Utah Valley University, approached the mic to challenge Charlie Kirk on Wednesday, minutes before the fatal shooting of the conservative activist, the words “Prove me wrong” were emblazoned on the tent above the Turning Point USA founder.
Kozak was sure that he could do just that, having done quite a lot of research to debunk Kirk’s recent claim that transgender Americans were responsible for a disproportionate amount of mass shootings.
As Kozak had explained in a recent video on his TikTok channel, his statistical analysis shows that the opposite is true, and he was in the middle of explaining to Kirk that just five of the 6,000 mass shootings in the past decade have been carried out by transgender people when the gunman opened fire.
After the shooting, Kozak said in an emotional TikTok video that he was overwhelmed with grief and denounced people who might have welcomed the killing of the far-right activist.
“First off, you sick, fucking psychos that think this is the answer: it’s not. I don’t know what else to say. It’s fucking not. It’s awful,” Kozak said. “It’s a tragedy.”
“People have obviously pointed to the irony that, the point that I was trying to make is how peaceful the left was, right before he got shot, and that only makes sense if we stay peaceful,” he added.
“I stand by so little of everything that he said, but one of the things that he stood by was, conversation,” Kozak said. “And if you’re salivating about what happened: don’t. I don’t know if any of my audience is, but if you are, you’re not part of what I’m trying to build here, at all.”
Kozak’s response was significantly more empathetic than that of a conservative TikToker, who goes by the handle ElderTikTok. That fan of Kirk, who was in line to ask a question, recorded a live report from the scene of the shooting, as people fled around him, in which he conveyed the news while simultaneously urging viewers to follow him on the platform. He later deleted that video, and issued an apology in which he pledged to be “a better content creator”.
Share
Updated at 03.10 BST
Trial of Tyler Robinson in Utah state court will probably be televised – report
Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old Utah resident, suspected fatally shooting killed far-right activist Charlie Kirk, is expected to be formally charged with murder next week in a Utah state court.
The fact that charges will be brought by the state, and not the federal government, also means the trial is likely to be televised, a legal expert tells Politico.
“Utah has one of the best cameras-in-the-courtroom rules in the country,” Jeff Hunt, a media lawyer, said. “There’s a presumption of electronic media coverage in our trial courts.”
Since Kirk, for all his importance to the current presidential administration, was not a federal official and was not killed on federal property, there appears to be no reason for federal charges to be filed.
Had Kirk’s suspected killer targeted him for his faith or race, federal prosecutors might have had an opening to charge the murder as a hate crime under federal law, but the suspect, like Kirk, is a white man from a Christian family.
Share
Updated at 02.44 BST
‘No one will ever forget my husband’s name and I will make sure of it’, Erika Kirk says
In what Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA described as his widow Erika Kirk’s “address to the nation”, the late conservative activist’s wife pledged to carry out his mission, urged young people to join his organization and called for a revival of Christian faith.
She told “the evil-doers responsible for my husband’s assassination”, that “if you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country and this world”.
“You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry,” she said. “The movement my husband built will not die.”
Kirk’s scheduled campus tour, and a conference scheduled for December, AmericaFest, “will go on” she said, as will his radio and podcast show.
“His wisdom will endure,” she said.
Kirk also urged young people to join Turning Point USA chapters around the country.
“If there isn’t a chapter, if you can’t find one, then start one,” she said.
She reiterated what she said was his constant refrain: “If you want to get involved, go to TPUSA.com”
Her address was also a plea for young Americans to embrace the Christian faith and join what she called “a Bible-believing church”.
“Now and for all eternity he will stand at his savior’s side,” she said of her husband, “wearing the glorious crown of a martyr”.
She also quoted what she called one of his favorite Bible verses: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her.”
The struggle her husband was committed to, and she intends to continue, she said, was not just political, but “above all it is spiritual”.
“Spiritual warfare is palpable,” she said.
“I know my husband is still here,” she said “he’s watching over us.”
Share
Updated at 03.11 BST
‘Mr President, my husband loved you’, Erika Kirk says in address
Erika Kirk, the widow of the conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot on Wednesday, just began her address from a podium next to his desk on the set of his show.
Clearly struggling with emotion, and whispering at times, she began by thanking law enforcement and emergency services for their efforts to save her husband.
She went on to thank the other leaders at Turning Point USA, the political youth organization her husband created.
She then praised JD Vance, the vice-president, and his wife, Usha, for bringing his body back to Arizona from Utah on Air Force Two.
Addressing Donald Trump, she said: “Mr President, my husband loved you and he knew that you loved him too. Your friendship was amazing.”
Erika Kirk went on to stress her husband’s Christian faith, noted his faith-driven belief in marriage and said that her husband told her “if he ever ran for office” he intended to make it his top priority “to revive the American family”.
Share
Updated at 02.12 BST
Erika Kirk, widow of murdered conservative activist, to speak soon
Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, is expected to make a statement shortly, at 8.15pm ET.
The remarks, her first public statement since the killing of her husband, will be streamed live on Turning Point USA’s YouTube channel, and we will bring them to you here.
Share
Updated at 01.19 BST
Secret Service agent reportedly put on leave over Facebook comment that Charlie Kirk ‘spewed hate and racism’
The Secret Service, the agency that provides security to the president, the vice-president and visiting foreign officials, has reportedly suspended an agent who posted a critical comment about the conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Facebook.
According to a screenshot posted online by a conservative reporter for Real Clear Politics, after Kirk was killed, the agent, Anthony Pough, shared video of Kirk’s infamous comment, in 2023, that a Black congresswoman did not have “the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously” and “had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously”.
Above the video, the agent wrote to his Facebook friends that anyone “mourning this guy” should unfollow him on the social network. “He spewed hate and racism on his show.”
“At the end of the day, you answer to GOD and speak things into existence,” he added. “You can only circumvent karma, she doesn’t leave.”
In response to the Real Clear Politics report, Marsha Blackburn, a Republican senator from Tennessee, wrote the director of the Secret Service demanding that the agent be fired for what she called his celebration and attempt to justify Kirk’s assassination.
“This employee was immediately put on administrative leave, and an investigation has begun,” the Secret Service said in a statement to CNN and other news outlets on Friday.
Susan Crabtree, the reporter who first discovered the agent’s post also shared screenshots of other posts, including one in which the agent called Pete Hegseth’s decision to fire the Black air force general CQ Brown Jr as chair of the joint chiefs of staff “racism.” Three months before Hegseth took office, he had told a podcaster the next defense secretary had to “fire the chairman of the joint chiefs” because any general “that was involved in any of that DEI woke shit has got to go.”
Another post from Pough shared by Crabtree mocked Donald Trump for refusing to rule out a recession in 2025.
Share
Updated at 00.19 BST
Anna Betts
Editor’s note: This article was updated on 12 September 2025 to remove quotes after the verified source who attended high school with Tyler Robinson said after publication that they could not accurately remember details of their relationship.
Share
Updated at 03.49 BST
Utah county attorney plans to file formal charges against Tyler Robinson on Tuesday
Jeff Gray, the Utah county attorney, plans to file formal charges against Tyler Robinson on Tuesday, his office said.
Gray’s office “is carefully reviewing all the evidence in this case to determine the appropriate charges to file”, his chief of staff said.
Gray plans to describe the charges at a news conference at noon local time on Tuesday.
If charges are filed on Tuesday, Robinson’s first appearance would be a virtual hearing at 3pm mountain time that day.
Share
Updated at 23.02 BST
Pentagon to punish service members who mock Charlie Kirk’s death on social media – report
Pete Hegseth, the former Fox weekend anchor serving as Donald Trump’s defense secretary, has ordered Pentagon officials to scour social media for comments by service members that make light of Charlie Kirk’s death and punish anyone expressing dissident views, NBC News reports.
Several service members have been relieved of their jobs already, Pentagon officials told the broadcaster.
The purge comes after Hegseth, his spokesperson and the secretaries of the army, navy and air force all warned service members to express only the correct political opinions about Kirk and his killing.
The officials warned service members, and civilian employees of the Pentagon that “inappropriate comments” including “posts displaying contempt toward” Kirk, or comments that “celebrate or mock the assassination” would be “dealt with swiftly and decisively”.
The effort to root out dissidents in the ranks comes as online activists promised to get Kirk’s critics fired in a range of fields, including the military and academia.
Share
Updated at 22.58 BST
Cy Neff
in Washington, Utah
Roy Corey, retired and in his 70s, was watering his marigolds on Friday morning in a neighborhood not far from the family home of Tyler Robinson, who was arrested in connection with the killing of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and influencer.
Corey moved to Utah and feels at home there because his wife and him are “patriots and Christians”. He has no relation to the Robinsons, but has been fielding visits all day – from local law enforcement, reporters and two people who said they were with a collections agency – because he lives in a house formerly owned by a Robinson relative.
Corey seemed amused by the coincidence, but saddened by Kirk’s death. He sees it as part of a broader pattern.
“Regardless of if Charlie got shot or not, it’s increasing,” Corey said.
Share
Updated at 21.49 BST
Cy Neff
in Washington, Utah
Miles Meloni, 14, lives in the same neighborhood as the Robinsons. Meloni followed Kirk, and feels “great sorrow” for the Robinson and Kirk families.
Meloni is alarmed by political violence in the country he is coming of age in.
“I want to see a change,” Meloni said. “I think for people like this, if the family sees any progression towards this view, that they need to hurt people, that they need to have their child, family member, friends, anybody, seek help.”
He hopes this doesn’t skew people’s perception of the state he calls home.
“It’s just not something you think would happen here,” Meloni said. “Don’t let this taint your view on Utah.”
Share
Updated at 21.35 BST