Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old right-wing activist, was shot dead while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday. On the same day that yet another deadly school shooting took place in Colorado, the New York Yankees honored Kirk with a moment of silence before their game against the Detroit Tigers.
Before tonight's game we held a moment of silence in memoriam of Charlie Kirk.
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) September 10, 2025
Kirk founded the youth activist group “Turning Point USA” and had become a fixture on college campuses. Charlie Kirk, a husband and father of two children, was 31 years old. pic.twitter.com/Fz5xPlmdu0
Kirk was the founder of Turning Point USA, an activist group that sought to turn high school and college campuses into more conservative spaces through attempts to deny free speech to their opponents. TPUSA is the organization behind the Professor Watchlist 501(c)3 organization, the stated mission of which is to "expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom." They went about achieving this goal by posting the names and photos of any professor deemed to have the wrong ideas online, marking them for harassment from students and other people who wanted to get them fired.
Kirk also lent his efforts to other anti-democratic causes. After the 2020 presidential election, Kirk led a "Stop The Steal" protest in Arizona, seeking to overturn the results of a free and fair election. Kirk's organization also sent seven buses of people to participate in the attempted insurrection at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Kirk spoke in favor of gun violence, was against the Civil Rights Act, endorsed the Great Replacement Theory, and dabbled in antisemitism.
The Yankees lost Wednesday night's game, 11-1.
