A year ago today was the hardest day I've had as a writer at PJ Media, and I'm not sure I've ever fully shaken it.
I don't remember every detail from that afternoon, but I remember exactly where I was: working on a completely different story when the news broke on X. Charlie Kirk had been shot during a Q&A with students at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Bystanders said he'd been struck near the neck. I broke the story on PJ Media, and for the rest of that day, and honestly the rest of that week, it was a story I couldn't get away from no matter how badly I wanted to.
The news came in so fast that keeping up with it felt nearly impossible. New details, new video, new claims, all colliding within seconds of each other. The footage was the hardest part to sit through. Yet, it felt important to share with our readers. I understood exactly how bad the wound was, and I still spent hours trying to convince myself he'd pull through anyway.
He didn't.
My initial report went up around 3 p.m. that day. By 5 p.m., Charlie Kirk was confirmed dead. He was just 31, and he left behind his wife, Erika, and two young children who will now grow up without him.
Recommended: Here’s Proof That James Talarico’s Campaign Is in BIG Trouble
I never met Charlie Kirk. But I knew exactly who he was, and so did every conservative who's paid attention to this movement over the last decade. At just 18, he founded Turning Point USA, a group that grew from nothing into a nationwide force with chapters on college and high school campuses across the country. While Democrats and their allies in the media spend their time indoctrinating students with socialism and far-left dogma, Kirk built an army of young conservatives to push back, promoting free markets, limited government, and the traditional American values the left has spent years trying to erase. Watching him debate leftists on campus after campus was, honestly, addicting. I still watch them when they show up in my social media feeds.
A year after his murder, I still remember exactly how emotionally exhausting that day was. At times, I just wanted to stop and pull away from my computer. I couldn’t. I just kept writing and reporting. I was trying to report anything I could confirm while barely able to talk about what I was watching happen in real time. And then came the reactions from the left: the celebrating, the excuse-making, the instant pivot to blaming Kirk for his own murder. I'm still angry enough about it that I don't want to relive it here. Not today anyway.
I believed that on the day the incident took place, and I still do now, that the assassination of Charlie Kirk was a warning directed at all conservatives who were going to resist the left’s cultural and political attack on the country. It was intended to cause fear, to produce silence, and to stop the progress that he had made through Turning Point USA.
It didn't work.
A year later, Turning Point USA is bigger than it was the day he died. The students he recruited are still showing up, still asking questions, still refusing to back down. Charlie Kirk dedicated his life to proving that conservative ideas win when people are willing to fight for them in public. The left wanted that fight to end with a bullet. Instead, it's only getting louder.
I just hope we don’t forget what happened or become complacent. The left feels morally obligated to silence the right, and we can’t let our guard down.
