The assassination of Charlie Kirk, founder of the toxic Turning Point USA, was to mark a watershed moment for the fascist movement in America, much like the murder of Horst Wessel did for the Nazi movement in Germany. Hordes of new recruits eager to smash socialism and dismantle democracy were to swell the MAGA ranks and set up thousands of new Turning Point chapters everywhere. That has not happened. There will be no American Horst Wessel. The MAGA march toward full fascism in America hit an unexpected roadblock in Minneapolis and beyond. The Resistance, America the Beautiful, has broken through irreversibly in the streets of Minneapolis and from coast to coast.
Things looked a lot different in the weeks following Kirk's assassination. Outrage against the woke culture deemed responsible for his death filled the airwaves and dominated media reports for months. Anyone who dared to besmirch his sanctified reputation was summarily dismissed or otherwise silenced. Tributes practically raising him to sainthood poured in from all corners of the Far Right. Among the many tributes honoring Kirk, was a 3-minute slick video from the White House featuring his widow, Erika, who envisioned her deceased husband "standing beside Jesus wearing a crown of a martyr"; she vowed to "make Turning Point the biggest thing this nation has seen"; and, referring to those behind his murder, "you have no idea of the fire you have ignited".
A month after Kirk's assassination, Trump issued a proclamation declaring his birthday anniversary, October 14, 2025 , to be a "National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk". Florida introduced legislation to have every October 14 commemorated as "Charlie Kirk Day"; similar bills were introduced by Republican legislators in South Carolina, Kansas, Alaska, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Illinois, and West Virginia. Three Arizona municipalities seek to erect Charlie Kirk monuments within their jurisdictions. The Arizona Senate President wants to name a 78-mile stretch of a major state road after Charlie Kirk. A Congressman from Arizona proposed minting a commemorative dollar coin bearing Kirk's image; his bill has 25 Republican co-sponsors. Republican legislators in Oklahoma wish to require every public college to build and maintain a statue of Charlie Kirk. Oklahoma's state education chief vowed to have a TPUSA chapter in every high school. Governor Abbott of Texas also intends to establish a TPUSA chapter in every high school.
The adulation of Kirk reached a climax at his memorial service on September 21. Over 90,000 people packed into the State Farm Stadium in Glendale to hear over two dozen speakers, including President Trump, pour laudatory praises on this "martyr for the Christian faith", as Vice President Vance called him. Giving the whole event the flavor and feeling of an evangelical revival were the hours of contemporary Christian music that preceded the long speeches, and the solo performances of MAGA favorites like Lee Greenwood and Cody Carnes.
Other Christian nationalist singers took advantage of the moment to record their songs for Charlie, "How Dare They (for Charlie)" by Daryl Johnson hit #1 on the iTunes Top Songs Chart in late September. "Not in Vain (A Tribute to Charlie Kirk)" by AMiYah was #32 on the chart; and "Charlie" by Tom McDonald was played over 8.5 million times on YouTube. A Charlie Kirk love fest was in full swing in the Fall of 2025.
However, before the end of that year, the tide began to turn. Rifts within the MAGA movement openly appeared at Turning Point's December AmericaFest Conference in Phoenix, the first of these annual conferences without Kirk. Disputes, ideological and tactical, broke out from the podium between Far-Right luminaries Ben Shapiro, Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson. More evidence for splits in the MAGA movement emerged with deep internal differences regarding the Epstein files; the formation of a "Leaving MAGA" organization by a former loyalist; the defection of Marjorie Taylor Greene and others; and a growing dissatisfaction with Trump's tariff policies and focus on foreign affairs instead of "America First".
Turning Point USA without Charlie also showed signs of stress, even decline. Despite the dubious claims of its leaders to have received over 54,000 inquiries to start new chapters within 48 hours of Kirk's death, many attempts to establish college chapters failed recently. In November 2025 the student government at St. John's University denied a TPUSA chapter certification; so did California Lutheran University in December 2025; and Loyola University in New Orleans that Fall; as well as Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.
Similarly, a number of educators who were dismissed or disciplined for their critical remarks about Charlie Kirk in the wake of his murder, were reinstated by successful litigation in January 2026. That includes professors at Austin Peay State University; University of South Dakota; Florida Atlantic University; Syracuse University; and Clemson. A firefighter in Toledo who was fired over his social media comments critical of Kirk filed a federal lawsuit against city officials and his supervisors in January. In late September, ABC suspended the popular late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live! after an aired broadcast contained some less-than-adulating comments regarding Kirk and Trump. The suspension was lifted within five days.
The first year of Trump's second presidency witnessed a series of massive anti-MAGA protests starting with a Not My President's Day protest of several hundred thousand participants and concluding with a massive nationwide No Kings Day protest on October 18 at more than 2,700 sites attracting the participation of nearly 7 million people. Collectively over 11 million people turned out that year to protest the growing tyranny in America. That figure reached the critical 3.4% population threshold established by social scientists to have marked the point at which eventual implementation of key demands of the protest are historically irreversible. Another No Kings Day protest is scheduled for late March of this year.
Largely fueling these massive protests are the utterly brutal and lethal tactics used by Trump's Gestapo-like federal agency, ICE, in rounding up anyone suspected of being an undocumented resident. Since the beginning of 2025, ICE has recorded 39 deaths of inmates within its custody. One of them, Geraldo Campos, a Cuban father of four, was murdered by asphyxia on January 3, 2026, at a notorious ICE facility on the grounds of Fort Bliss in Texas. Three days earlier, a racist ICE agent shot and killed Keith Porter, an African-American father of two, in Los Angeles. Then came the two murders by ICE agents that shocked and appalled the nation.
On January 7, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good, a poet; and on January 24, two ICE agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a nurse. Both were killed in Minneapolis while assisting others. Both were US citizens. The last words of Renee, directed at the thug who killed her seconds later, were: "That's fine, dude, I'm not mad at you." He responded with four bullets, one to her head, as she tried to drive away. Alex was trying to protect a woman pushed violently to the ground asking her "Are you OK?", his last words, when ICE agents swarmed upon him with pepper spray and pinned him harshly to the pavement. Within seconds, at least 10 shots were fired into his body.
Within hours of Renee's murder, over 5000 people gathered in protest at Powderhorn Park, the Minneapolis neighborhood where she resided. In the following frigid days hundreds of protests broke out in cities across the nation demanding "ICE out for Good". In the wake of Pretti's murder, sustained protests erupted in several cities demanding the abolition of ICE; seen at many were large contingents of fellow nurses carrying the sign "Nurses against ICE".
The deaths of Good and Pretti were explicitly memorialized in an anthem of the Resistance, "The Streets of Minneapolis", recorded by Bruce Springsteen. Its refrain embraces all killed and brutalized by ICE:
"Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We'll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our house they killed and roamed
In the winter of '26
We'll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
Within a day, "Streets of Minneapolis" rose to the #1 spot in the iTunes Top Songs Chart in the USA as well as several other nations. By stark contrast, no tribute song for Charlie Kirk, like the #1 one in late September, now appears anywhere among the top 200 songs. We have reached a turning point in the struggle against fascism in America.
A luta continua, vitória e' certa!
(Article changed on Feb 02, 2026 at 5:09 PM EST)
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