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A memorial service for Charlie Kirk is expected to draw a large crowd at a football stadium in Arizona, where President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other prominent MAGA allies will pay tribute to the slain conservative activist.
Organizers said they expected to fill State Farm Stadium in Glendale, which has a capacity of more than 73,000 seats.
Security will be extremely tight, given Trump's attendance, as well as the ongoing political turmoil following Kirk's death. A senior Department of Homeland Security official said the service had been given the agency's highest security clearance, reserved for "events of the highest national importance" such as the Super Bowl.
Kirk, 31, was killed by a single gunshot on Sept. 10 during a campus event in Utah. The 22-year-old suspect in the killing has been charged with murder, and investigators say he told his partner via text message that he had killed Kirk.
The killing has raised fears about the increasing frequency of political violence in the US across the ideological spectrum, while also deepening partisan divisions. Trump, a close ally of Kirk, has cited the killing in escalating his calls for a crackdown on his political opponents, including left-wing organizations he has blamed for the shooting, even though authorities have said the gunman acted alone.
The firestorm surrounding Kirk's killing intensified last week when ABC dropped talk show host Jimmy Kimmel after conservatives expressed outrage over comments he made about the killing. The company's decision came just hours after Brendan Carr, the head of the Federal Communications Commission under Trump, threatened to use his agency to punish the network for Kimmel's comments.
In his remarks, Trump planned to portray Kirk as a martyr to the conservative movement and highlight his legacy as a cultural and political force, according to a White House source. He was also expected to use the moment to redraw a line between Kirk's death and what he calls left-wing extremism; the source declined to say whether the president would urge supporters to remain peaceful or whether his tone would be unifying or combative.
Kirk, who built a large following through his clever use of social media, radio shows and campus tours, often inviting skeptical students to debate with him, was credited with mobilizing young voters to Trump's cause in 2024.
Braxton Mitchell, a 25-year-old Republican lawmaker in Montana, climbed into his friend's Ford F-150 pickup truck on Tuesday and began the 17-hour drive to Phoenix to attend Sunday's memorial.
Mitchell said it was Kirk who inspired him to speak out as a young conservative. He organized a gun rights protest at his high school in 2018, in response to other students protesting gun violence after the Parkland school shooting in Florida.
"He's the guy who set the tone, set the stage for what I've done in my life in politics," said Mitchell, who joined Turning Point's ambassador program in 2019 and met Kirk in person several times. /Adapted from Reuters/
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