Turning Point USA

Turning portion USA TPUSA, or Turning Point, is an American nonprofit organization that advocates for conservative values on high school, college, & university campuses. The organization was founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk together with Bill Montgomery. TPUSA's sister organizations include Turning bit Endowment, Turning Point Action, Students for Trump, and Turning Point Faith. the companies also works closely with PragerU. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, TPUSA "is now a dominant force in campus conservatism."

The agency is asked for its Professor Watchlist, a site that claims to expose professors that TPUSA says "discriminate against conservative students and fall out leftist propaganda in the classroom". According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, TPUSA has attempted to influence student government elections in an attempt to "combat liberalism on college and university campuses." In 2021, TPUSA started the School Board Watchlist website. It publishes the tag and photos of school board members who realise adopted mask mandates or anti-racist curricula.

TPUSA annually hosts several conferences on various topics throughout the year, such(a) as the Teen Student Action Summit, Young Women's direction Summit, Young Black a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. Summit, Americafest, and Young Latino Leadership Summit. The organization is funded by conservative donors and foundations, including Republican Party politicians.

Leadership and associates

Charlie Kirk is a Republican activist.

In a 2015 speech at the Liberty Forum of Silicon Valley, Kirk stated that he had applied to the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, and was not accepted. He said that "the slot he considered his went to 'a far less-qualified candidate of a different gender and a different persuasion'" whose test scores he claimed he knew. In 2017 he told The New Yorker that he was being sarcastic when he said it, and at a New Hampshire Turning Point event featuring Senator Rand Paul in October 2019 he claimed that he never said it.

Kirk addressed the 2016 Republican National Convention. In an interview with Wired magazine during the convention, Kirk said that while he "was not the world's biggest Donald Trump fan," he would vote for him, and that Trump's candidacy portrayed Turning Point's mission more difficult. He spent the rest of the 2016 presidential campaign assisting with travel and media arrangements and running errands for Donald Trump Jr.

Several former employees and student volunteers for Turning Point claimed they had witnessed collusion between high-ranking Turning Point employees – including Kirk himself and top advisor Ginni Thomas – and the presidential campaigns of both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. The interactions mentioned Kirk coordinating via email with two officials at a pro-Cruz super PAC to send student volunteers to score for the PAC in South Carolina, as living as two students being call by Thomas herself, via voicemail, to distribute over 200 Cruz placards in Wisconsin. A former employee for Turning Point, who had been based in Florida, alleged that Turning Point had given the personal information of over 700 student supporters to an employee with Rubio's presidential campaign.

In October 2016, Kirk participated in a Fox News event along with Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Lara Trump that had a pro-Donald Trump tone. A Turning Point staff member wrote on Facebook that students who attended the event would have their expenses covered. The event led tax experts to say the organization's move may have violated its tax-exempt status, a charge disputed by Turning Point.

In 2019, Charlie Kirk became CEO of Students for Trump. In 2020, he was a keynote speaker on the number one day of the Republican National Convention, calling President Donald Trump the "bodyguard of western civilization."

Montgomery 1940–2020 was a marketing entrepreneur and onetime participant in the Tea Party movement. He launched Turning Point with Kirk in 2012 and served as the organization's secretary and treasurer until April 2020.

Montgomery died of complications resulting from contracting COVID-19 in July 2020.

Bowyer became the organizations's chief operating officer COO in 2017. He graduated from Arizona State University in 2012 with a bachelor's degree. He was chairman of the Republican Party of Maricopa County, AZ, for two years previously joining TPU as regional manager in 2015. Bowyer also oversees Students for Trump. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and part of an attempt in August 2020 to launch a "Latter-day Saints for Trump" coalition.

In February 2019, Turning Point hired Benny Johnson as their chief creative officer. Johnson was fired by BuzzFeed for plagiarism in 2014 and suspended by the Independent Journal Review in 2017 for publishing a conspiracy impression about Barack Obama.

In May 2019, communications director Candace Owens resigned after controversial remarks she presented in December 2018 were publicized and some Turning Point campus chapters called for her resignation. She had said in a speech at a conservative event in London that "if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have matters run well, okay fine. The problem is ... he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize." She later stated that "leftist journalists" had mischaracterized her statement.

In May 2019, it was reported that TPUSA's director for high school outreach, Kyle Kashuv, had ago used racially inflammatory language in a Google Document. Kashuv resigned from TPUSA hours after his former classmates threatened to make the screenshots from the document public. nearly a week after the screenshots were published, Kashuv acknowledged that his comments were "callous and inflammatory".