David Salzillo’s Notes From Underground (#17)-Turning Point USA:
There is a reason why Trump regularly credits Turning Point USA for his 2024 reelection. We should take note, as my brother recently did.
Also makes it quite notable that Trump is now trying to suppress the voters he successfully courted in 2024 by targeting the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-voter-suppression-college-campuses_n_69bc773fe4b01c6ce884c822
Notes From Underground (#17): TPUSA
44 minutes ago · 2 likes · David Salzillo
Guess whose face the Department of Education featured on a display outside its main building alongside Martin Luther King Jr., Booker T. Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Anne Sullivan, and Catharine Beecher to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary?
No, it’s not who you think (cough, cough, Donald Trump); it’s actually a man named Charlie Kirk.
His face was part of a series of banners meant to show the past and future of American education, and it perhaps unintentionally displayed the Trump Regime’s plan to bend American education to its will.
What do I mean by that? After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, many anti-free speech and anti-free thought opportunists like Donald Trump and J.D. Vance tried to use his death to tie “radical leftism” (meaning, anything that criticizes Dear Leader, his immigration policy, or his attacks on religious freedom) to violence.
Of course, the fact that a Democratic politician in Minnesota had been assassinated just months before was completely irrelevant, as was the fact of other violence and threats of violence directed against Democrats or Trump critics in general. Because who cares about that political violence?
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Out of that push came Trump’s most notable attacks on free speech thus far. First, there was “NSPM-7,” a national security memo tying “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” to “domestic terrorism.” Then, the Regime declined to “rule out…the possibility that it may summarily and extrajudicially kill and assassinate American political rivals on the NSPM-7 watch list.”
Yes, you read that right. I could go on and on. But overlooked until now have been the Trump Regime’s attacks on free education.
Before that, let me briefly discuss Turning Point USA (TPUSA), the organization established by Charlie Kirk in 2012 to “engage high-school and college students in conservative politics.” Though Charlie Kirk was best known for his debates with college students, the organization itself actually first gained notoriety for creating its Professors’ Watchlist in 2016.
The Professors’ Watchlist is exactly what it sounds like. It is a centralized national monitoring tool meant to force teachers who do not follow TPUSA’s views to censor themselves or risk harassment from TPUSA followers or cadres.
(By the way, if you are curious to see which professors in Rhode Island made the infamous watchlist, you used to be able to see here. Hopefully, TPUSA restores that link again soon).
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In 2016, TPUSA created its “watchlist” to ensure teachers fall into line. That was then. Now, it is even worse. Today, TPUSA has closely linked itself with people at the highest levels of power in the Trump Regime. For instance, days after Kirk’s assassination, none other than Vice President Vance guest hosted Kirk’s show.
Yes, the Vice President.
To give yet another example, TPUSA has used its financial campaign war chest to attack Indiana Republicans who dared to oppose the Trump Regime’s Indiana redistricting plan. In other words, it’s not even just going after Democrats anymore; it’s going after Republicans too.
Funnily enough, TPUSA apparently considers itself a 501(c)(3) organization. Such organizations are required by law to refrain from participating or intervening in “(including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office“ (emphasis mine).
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I know this personally because, as president of the local RWU Law chapter of a national 501(c)(3) group (the American Constitution Society), I have to think about this every time I make a statement in my official capacity. Unfortunately, TPUSA — at the highest levels — does not care about these “pesky” legal requirements. Instead, it repeatedly, openly, and notoriously flouts these rules, even to the point of posting merchandise on their website that uses MAHA campaign slogans.
In fact, in Indiana, those allied with the current Trump Regime have attempted to solidify partnerships with TPUSA precisely to force TPUSA chapters onto their state’s educational institutions, threatening to punish any school that gets in their way. At that point, a local TPUSA chapter is less like a free association of students in a spirit of free inquiry and more like a Trumpian version of Chairman Mao’s Red Guard.
More on this may be forthcoming. Stay tuned.
