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
