Leftists Target Conservative Students at TPUSA Summit with Doxing and Bomb Threats

I recently traveled to Tampa, Florida, for Turning Point USA’s (TPUSA) 2025 Chapter Leadership Summit and Student Action Summit, representing Texas State University as the president of its TPUSA chapter. I went to grow in confidence, learn from seasoned conservative activists, and gain the tools to be a stronger advocate for conservative values on campus, connecting with more than 7,000 like-minded students from across the country. I never expected protesters to try to dox me—nor did I think the convention would be targeted with bomb threats.

TPUSA, founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk, is a right-leaning nonprofit that aims to equip high school and college students with the knowledge and values to promote liberty, family, patriotism, and fiscal responsibility. But outside the summit, those values were met with hostility. 

Protests to shut down the conference had been organized well in advance.

Groups like Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society plastered anti-TPUSA flyers across social media, calling to push TPUSA “out of Tampa.” Protesters marched from City Hall to the convention center. As I passed between my hotel and the event, I saw the protesters—some in Handmaid’s Tale costumes, others—with children— chanting obscenities. 

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Signs read “Charlie Kirk is a Nazi,” “F[**]k Trump,” and “TPUSA is weird in a bad way.” One protester even carried a fake toilet paper roll with the words “Punch Nazis” written on it. Other protesters chanted slogans such as “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Donald Trump, go away.”

 

 

Kirk responded to the upset with humor during a Fox News interview, saying, “I hope they’re well hydrated—the humidity’s terrible out there.” 

Behind the theatrics, however, were genuine efforts to intimidate the convention’s attendees. 

A man from Unf**k America, an organization backed by National Ground Game, which purports to “spark meaningful conversations that inspire action toward a transformative working-class agenda,” approached me and my friend Rebekah Bushmire, vice president of the TPUSA chapter at the University of West Georgia, with odd, leading questions, pretending to be a neutral interviewer. We thought he was conducting a street interview; however, it turned out to be a doxing attempt. He flipped his phone to show our name tags on a livestream. Security, noticing tensions rising over this incident, quickly escorted us across the street.

Ken Carson, a gay conservative influencer who attended the event, had a direct run-in with the Unf**k America group. “I had a couple of encounters with them,” Carson told me. “The first was when everyone was outside protesting—I ended up walking into Mercedes Chandler.”

Chandler, a former Trump influencer, now positions herself as a centrist trying to combat extremism on both the left and right. She says she hopes to bridge the gap between blue-collar Americans and progressive ideals by creating a space rooted in “unconditional love.”

“But the second I approached her and tried talking,” Carson said, her entire posse of liberals started “screaming at me to ‘crash out’ and began antagonizing me. I was nothing but kind and loving toward her.”

Carson added that he found himself in multiple tense confrontations with leftist protesters. In one encounter, he was approached by a woman who proudly claimed to have had 17 abortions. When Carson called her behavior evil, she laughed and struck his camera. He stood his ground, refusing to back down. “You’re not going to assault me just because you don’t like being called what you are,” he later told me, describing leftists protesters as hostile, chaotic, and deeply intolerant of conservative voices—especially those that didn’t fit the left’s expected identity categories.

Many conservative attendees had their compassion tested, especially when we all faced a bomb threat. 

A suspicious package—visible behind the officer in this article’s cover photo—was delivered to the convention center, prompting police to bring in bomb-sniffing dogs. One officer turned to a group of us and said, “Go that way if you want to live.” We didn’t panic, but the atmosphere got darker. 

Bushmire, who was with me at the time I discovered news of the bomb threat, told me: “When I heard there had been a bomb threat at the convention center, my first reaction was disbelief. I was genuinely shocked that someone would go so far as to threaten violence against a peaceful student summit, and it honestly says a lot about how threatened [the left] must feel by what we’re doing.”

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Some moments perfectly captured the deeper problems with the so-called tolerant left: immaturity, emotional appeals, and a lack of substance. Grown adults screamed at teenagers. Children were trotted out as props, holding protest signs they likely couldn’t read—handed to them, no doubt, by activist parents. At one point, a man even leapt from his car toward a group of students who were singing hymns and tried to start a fistfight. Police had to intervene and take him down.

But doxing, bomb threats, and absurdities did not prove successful in shutting down the TPUSA summit. 

As Bushmire put it: “Keep using your right to ‘peacefully’ protest. That’s what makes this country great … I support your right to stand outside and make your voices heard, just like I stand inside and make mine heard too. That’s America. That’s freedom.”

Turning Point USA equips students to lead boldly and defend fundamental American values like liberty, faith, and free speech. In Tampa, we experienced that mission firsthand—not only through inspiring speakers but also by standing firm against attempts to silence us.


Image by Leona Salinas

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  • Leona Salinas

    Leona Salinas is a political writer and the Recruitment Chair for the Network of Enlightened Women (NeW) at Texas State University. She has written extensively on gender, politics, and voting behavior, and she currently oversees political coverage for The Bobcat Tribune.

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2 thoughts on “Leftists Target Conservative Students at TPUSA Summit with Doxing and Bomb Threats

  1. WOW….

    All I can say is WOW — you don’t make mistakes like this at UMass Amherst, you simply can’t….

    First and foremost, if you are going somewhere, this is your mantra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg9MIstRhko&list=RDpg9MIstRhko&start_radio=1

    Don’t run, but DON’T STOP — for anything. Just like when you are driving on the highway in a snowstorm and the cars in front of you start to spin out — find the biggest hole you can and go through it — Don’t Cha Stop. Plan your route, consolidate your group, and GO — Don’t Cha Stop for anything or anyone…

    When I got the late Mike Adams out of what was rapidly becoming a riot at UMass, I took him right through the middle of the assembling mob, across the concourse, up the escalator and out of the building — before anyone (including the campus police) quite realized what I had just done. You move — you walk, not run, but you move deliberately and Don’t Cha Stop…

    And you all have a meet up location — in this case it was a restaurant downtown — and you leave it to those who aren’t in your immediate group to get there on their own. Don’t abandon anyone in your immediate group, but don’t stop and don’t wait — don’t give the opposition time to assemble and organize.

    And as to wearing name badges outside the event — DON’T. You don’t publicly display anything — tote bags, buttons, hats — anything that would identify you as being associated with the event because predators (which is what you are dealing with) will get you when you are alone, not in the midst of hundreds if not thousands of supporters.

    Those attempting to engage you in conversation aren’t interested in hearing what you have to say, and nothing you say will change their minds, so don’t bother. And there is no obligation to be polite to A-holes. Ignore them — Ronald Reagan was famous for not being able to hear reporters over the noise of his helicopter. Of course he could hear them, he chose not to. Chose not to.

    Or — excepting situations where it could provoke a brawl — there’s always the creative insult. My response to being told that someone had 17 abortions would be to pause, and then say, almost to my self, “20 and 17 is 37” — and then look at her and say “with 17 abortions, you gotta be in your 40s.”

    Or — “I didn’t know it was even possible to get pregnant after that many abortions — I wish you the best of luck if you ever try to carry a child to term.”

    Look at how Hannah Giles responds to the insult of “Minstrel Show.”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vztHmjV5134

    But notice two other things — first, she’s maintaining situational awareness, she’s discretely looking all around her to see who is there. Watch her eyes when she turns to face the camera — she’s looking ALL the way around her. And she’s hiding some of it behind moving her hair around — she’s being discrete and you don’t notice it unless you are looking for it, but she is always watching.

    And look at the end where you can see what she is wearing — a professional dress, but not something that would hinder her if she had to get out of an ugly situation. She is wearing sensible shoes, which also wouldn’t hinder her if she needed to move fast.

    Be like Hannah — always maintain situational awareness. Know who and what are around you, and continually assess both. Be aware of how clothing could be a liability, not only high heels but neckties, which are a slipnot around your neck. Etc.

    There is no obligation to be nice to people who don’t intend to be nice to you. But why are you talking to them in the first place? Remember the mantra:

    DON’T CHA STOP!!!!

    Bomb threats are a given, but why was that box allowed that close to the venue? That was a breach of security — the worst place for a bomb to detonate is an egress area because you’ve also lost the egress route. You may have to turn off the fire alarm system so that people can’t disrupt it by pulling the fire alarm — it’s legal to do that if you get the permission of the fire department which means you hire a firefighter to monitor the control panel (which is still on, just the noisemakers aren’t).

    Etc…

    1. “when you are driving on the highway in a snowstorm and the cars in front of you start to spin out — find the biggest hole you can and go through”

      Off topic but possibly useful:

      A car moving at 60 MPH is going to remain moving — there’s little/no traction so it simply is not going to stop. It might change direction, particularly if it hits something, but there is absolutely no way it is going to be where it currently is when you get to that piece of pavement 2 seconds from now. So that’s where your hole will be.

      DO NOT track the vehicle, which is easy to do, identify the piece of pavement and that is your target. Remember that it isn’t going to come to a complete stop, an object in motion remains in motion, and hence CAN’T remain there.

      Also remember what I was told when I learned to drive a school bus — there is more square inches of your seat touching the driver’s seat than there is of your *six* tires touching the road. It’s a lot less than that with two smaller car tires…

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