The governors of Arkansas and Indiana are setting up partnerships with Turning Point USA, joining some other Republican-led states that are helping the conservative group expand its national network, which already has 3,200 chapters of high school clubs, according to the group.
The partnership with Arkansas was announced on Wednesday by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The Indiana partnership is expected to be announced on Thursday by Gov. Mike Braun. Similar plans have already been established in Oklahoma, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Montana and Nebraska. The new partnerships come amid contentious debates over Republicans’ efforts to inject conservative values into public school curriculums, and to essentially give Turning Point the government seal of approval.
These efforts have stepped up since the Sept. 10 assassination of Charlie Kirk, the group’s leader. Mr. Kirk was something of a rock star for conservatives on college campuses; his visits would draw huge crowds. Today, he is considered a martyr by many on the political right for challenging liberal orthodoxy, promoting Christianity, encouraging vigorous debate and building a conservative campus movement.
But liberals have objected to his hard-right views. He called the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. an “awful” person and opposed diversity, equity and inclusion. He was a proponent of “replacement theory,” a once-fringe conspiracy theory positing that Jews are trying to replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants. And he repeated President Trump’s unfounded belief that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
Karen Svoboda, executive director of Defense of Democracy, a liberal group that opposes the increasing conservative influence in public schools, argued that the partnerships amounted to a sort of state-sponsored imprimatur promoting one political viewpoint. “It’s indoctrination, right?” she said in an interview. “They want to have it in every school.”
Josh Thifault, Turning Point’s senior director, said in an email that none of the state partnerships involve taxpayer money, and they “do not involve mandates to start Turning Point chapters.”
“That process is 100 percent student-led,” Mr. Thifault said. “We officially recognize Turning Point chapters when they have an active executive board, staff sponsor, and plan for reaching their fellow students. Real student engagement is our No. 1 goal.”
Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director for research, reporting and analysis at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal nonprofit that has been critical of Turning Point, said that her group had found no evidence that tax money had been directed to the partnerships. The initiative, she said, appeared to be mostly an effort in persuasion by state governments.
But, she said, the states are “kind of putting that public pressure on teachers and administrators to find an adviser and encouraging a young person to say they want to create a chapter.”
Turning Point is perhaps best known for having established influential chapters on many American college campuses since its founding in 2012. Mr. Kirk traveled the country holding his famous “Prove Me Wrong” sessions, in which he debated campus liberals.
But Mr. Kirk was also keen on expanding the group’s influence over younger students. Mr. Thifault said in his email that Mr. Kirk, in the weeks before he was killed, had been encouraging Turning Point leadership to start 20,000 Club America chapters in high schools.
Since then, Turning Point has added 2,000 high school chapters, Mr. Thifault said.
The goal of the high school clubs, according to literature Turning Point provides to students, is to foster young people’s interest in “freedom, free markets and limited government.” Indiana’s lieutenant governor, Micah Beckwith, a self-identified Christian nationalist, said such ideas should be celebrated, not feared.
“Club America is an incredibly wonderful, patriotic club, and it’s not partisan,” said Mr. Beckwith. “This is about American values.”
A key goal of the Indiana partnership, Mr. Beckwith said, is to make school officials think twice before blocking the creation of the clubs and stifling conservative viewpoints.
“It’ll say to these administrations, ‘OK, fine. If you want to go to battle with these Club America students, we’re in their corner. And you’ll have to battle us, too,’” Mr. Beckwith said.
In Arkansas on Wednesday, Ms. Sanders announced the statewide partnership accompanied by Erika Kirk, Mr. Kirk’s widow, with a proclamation that “encourages every Arkansas high school and college to engage in civil civic discourse by starting a Club America or Turning Point USA chapter.”
Lukas Klaus, a student at Fayetteville High School, said that when he started a Club America chapter, it was subject to “extra approval requirements” from school administrators. Opponents, he said, tore down posters and pressured students to quit. Fayetteville administrators did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
For her part, Ms. Kirk discussed what she said was the persecution of Christians. At one point, she spoke directly to the men in the crowd, saying, “Don’t let anyone disenfranchise you because you’re a young man, especially a young white male man.”
Earlier in the day, the Young Democrats of Arkansas held an event criticizing the governor over the partnership; Billy Cook, the group’s president, accused Ms. Huckabee Sanders of “an abuse of her state power.”
Other controversies over the clubs have erupted around the country. In some cases, such as in Mississippi, Texas and Kansas, school administrators said that they had temporarily blocked or delayed the formation of the groups not because of censorship, but because the groups needed to meet certain bureaucratic criteria.
In Clinton, Miss., for example, administrators said that an initial effort to form a Turning Point campus club had not been initiated by students, but a school employee.
Ms. Svoboda, of the liberal group Defense of Democracy, had different concerns. She described the Club America chapters as “plug and play” operations with heavier input from Turning Point rather than the “grass roots” impulse of students.
The Club America handbooks, she noted, say that the national office provides “supplies, posters, banners, sign-up cards, and apparel,” and often offers “activism grants” of up to $1,000 for food and supplies.
“Of course they’re going to want to start it up, right?” Ms. Svoboda said. “They’re, like, bribing them.”
Ms. Svoboda also accused Turning Point of being a divisive force in schools, noting that Mr. Kirk was critical of gay and transgender rights. A Turning Point club at a high school, she said, “would be offensive and probably even a little scary for kids who were members of the queer community at school, and families that are dealing with that.”
Other efforts by conservatives to honor Mr. Kirk have stirred controversy. Last week in Arizona, Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, vetoed a bill that would have created a special Kirk-themed license plate, saying the legislation was “inserting politics into a function of government that should remain nonpartisan.”
This week, Mr. Trump appointed Ms. Kirk to the advisory board for the U.S. Air Force Academy, a position her husband had held.
In Indiana, the secretary of state, Diego Morales, announced on Tuesday another high school partnership with Turning Point, described as a “statewide voter registration and poll worker recruitment initiative.”
Nick Cocca, a Turning Point official, said in a statement that “engaging young Americans early ensures they understand both their rights and their responsibility to defend freedom — just like Charlie Kirk.”
Linda Hanson, president of the League of Women Voters of Indiana, said that Mr. Morales’s effort could be tainted by party politics.
“If he’s going to support a group,” she said, “he should make sure that it is either strictly nonpartisan, or make sure that he’s got groups of all stripes.”
Richard Fausset, a Times reporter based in Atlanta, writes about the American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice.
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