Texas has embarked on launching chapters of Turning Point USA – the conservative youth organisation founded by the late rightwing activist Charlie Kirk – in high schools across the state, building on similar efforts in Oklahoma and Florida.
Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor, and other Texas Republicans made the announcement on Monday alongside Turning Point USA (TPUSA)’s senior director, Josh Thifault, at the gubernatorial mansion in Austin.
A statement posted online by Abbott cited “an urgency and a need” for TPUSA and its affiliated organisation, Club America, which respectively focus on college and high school campuses.
Turning Point organisers have said Monday’s announcement came after they claim to have received 54,000 inquiries about starting new chapters within days of Kirk’s shooting death in Utah on 10 September. And some quarters in the US have claimed that there has been evidence of a surge in youth attendance at faith-based organisations, which generally aligned with conservatives.
A study released by Pew Research on Monday, though, showed “no clear evidence of a religious revival among young adults”. According to an analysis of 2023-2024 Pew data, 56% of 18- to 24-year-olds identified with any religion, down from 74% in 2007.
Abbott and Patrick said that the state had more than 500 high schools with Club America chapters – while Thifault said his organisation’s goal is to expand the number of chapters to 20,000 across the nation.
Plans to form the Club America chapters in Texas’s high schools were not sketched out in detail by Texas Republican leaders. But Abbott signaled that he would counter any opposition to new chapters with “meaningful disciplinary action”, essentially making it so that schools cannot block chapters from forming.
“Let me be clear: any school that stands in the way of a Club America program in their school should be reported immediately to the Texas Education Agency,” the governor said.
According to the Texas Tribune, Texas’s education commissioner, Mike Morath, privately met with Thifault earlier in December to discuss the organisation’s expansion. Days later, Patrick said he would commit $1m in campaign funds to help bring the project to life.
While TPUSA is exalted by conservatives as a champion of free speech, it has drawn criticism from the US’s political left for its hostile stances on LGBTQ+ communities and non-Christians based on what critics say are selective readings of the Bible.
Student and parent groups who have opposed the formation of TPUSA school chapters decry what they argue is the group’s “racist, homophobic and sexist hate speech”.
In the wake of Kirk’s death, Abbott and Morath accused some teachers of mocking Kirk’s killing and promoting violence. According to the Texas Tribune in September, about 350 complaints were filed against Texas teachers for alleged comments on Kirk’s murder.
Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, told the Tribune that TPUSA may have a place in colleges but not in high schools where students are more impressionable.
Oklahoma and Florida have previously announced partnerships with TPUSA to expand the organisation’s presence. In Oklahoma, the partnerships are facing constitutionally based challenges, including on the legality of government resources being used to promote partisan political activities.
Texas Republicans, meanwhile, generally fashion themselves as protecting students from being indoctrinated with left-leaning ideologies about gender and race, including the prominence of slavery and racism in US history.
But on Monday, the Tribune noted, the state’s Republicans sought to excise TPUSA from any explicit political ideology, instead trying to argue it was more akin to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in Texas schools.
“This is about values,” Abbott said.
Nonetheless, the governor also reportedly said it was unlikely he would endorse an initiative for progressive, left-leaning centers of education.
Abbott months earlier signed state Senate Bill 12, a law that banned student clubs focused on the LGBTQ+ community.
