Turning Point USA Brings Its 'This Is the Turning Point' Tour to Five Campuses This April — Including the University of Idaho

Turning Point USA is bringing its spring 2026 college tour to five campuses across the country in April, culminating in a stop at the University of Idaho in Moscow on April 28. The tour — titled "This Is the Turning Point" — is explicitly framed as a tribute to TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, who was killed last September while speaking at Utah Valley University in Utah in the same shooting that prompted the state to ban open carry on college campuses.

The tour's April 28 University of Idaho event will feature Matt Walsh, author and host at The Daily Wire, and Michael Knowles, commentator and host of The Michael Knowles Show. The event begins at 6:30 p.m. and is organized by the UI TPUSA chapter. Registration is open.

The Full April Tour Schedule

The University of Idaho stop is the final date in a five-campus April swing. The confirmed stops, as announced by TPUSA, are:

• April 2, 2026 — George Washington University, Washington, D.C., featuring Erika Kirk and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
• April 14, 2026 — University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, featuring Erika Kirk and Vice President JD Vance
• April 21, 2026 — Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, featuring Vivek Ramaswamy, Fox News host Lawrence Jones, and television personality Savannah Chrisley
• April 22, 2026 — Baylor University, Waco, Texas, featuring Donald Trump Jr., Border Czar Tom Homan, and conservative media personality Benny Johnson
• April 28, 2026 — University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, featuring Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles

The tour encourages students to participate in open mic sessions to challenge what TPUSA describes as "prevailing campus biases" and engage in public debate. Additional dates are expected to be announced.

Honoring Charlie Kirk — and His Campus Legacy

The "This Is the Turning Point" tour title carries direct weight given how Kirk died. Kirk had visited the Moscow-Pullman corridor in spring 2025 as part of his "American Comeback" tour — speaking at Washington State University in Pullman, just eight miles from the University of Idaho in Moscow. His assassination last September at Utah Valley University was directly cited as the motivation for Utah's 2026 legislative session open carry ban, in which Rep. Walt Brooks — previously an NRA-backed lawmaker — reversed course and pushed through a bill prohibiting open carry on Utah's public college campuses.

Kirk had spent more than a decade building TPUSA into the country's most prominent conservative student organization. Founded in 2012, the organization operates chapters at hundreds of campuses nationwide, hosts national conferences including AmericaFest and the Student Action Summit, and has been a central vehicle for connecting conservative students with national political figures. The University of Idaho has one of the active TPUSA chapters in the Pacific Northwest.

The Tour's Place in the Broader Campus Political Moment

The spring 2026 tour comes at a moment when the relationship between conservative political movements and American university campuses is more charged than at any point in recent memory. The Trump administration's ongoing higher education crackdown — targeting DEI programs, research funding, and campus political activity at major research universities — has created a political environment in which TPUSA's campus events carry significance beyond the individual appearances.

The roster for this tour reflects the administration's inner circle as much as TPUSA's traditional speaker network. Vice President JD Vance at Georgia, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt at George Washington University, and Border Czar Tom Homan at Baylor represent active executive branch officials participating in partisan campus events — a notable convergence of federal power and conservative campus organizing.

Whether those appearances generate campus protests, counter-programming, or both is a question each host institution's student body will answer for itself. Universities receiving federal funding are obligated under the First Amendment to permit the events to proceed.

For students at the University of Idaho interested in attending the April 28 event, tickets are available at events2022.tpusa.com. The event begins at 6:30 p.m. Pacific time.