(DCNF)—Erika Kirk, the widow of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, addressed supporters Friday evening for the first time since her husband’s assassination, saying that her late husband’s movement will “never surrender.”
Kirk, 31, was shot and killed Wednesday while debating students at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Speaking for the first time since the fatal attack, Erika Kirk thanked those who have supported her and her late husband, including both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, as well as other officials.
“I honestly have no idea what any of this means. I know that God does, but I don’t. But Charlie, baby, I know you do too. So does our Lord. And our world is filled with evil, but our God, you guys, our God is so good, so incredibly good. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose,” Erika said. “Already, I have seen the worldwide outpouring of love for my husband. I’ve heard the testimonies from people my husband inspired to get married, to start families, to seek out a relationship with God. It’s the most important, most important one of all.”
“The evildoers responsible for my husband’s assassination have no idea what they have done. They killed Charlie because he preached a message of patriotism, faith, and of God’s merciful love. They should all know this,” Erika added. “If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea. You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country and this world. You have no idea. You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.”
Kirk, who regularly spoke at college campuses to debate students on their political beliefs, made his latest stop in Utah, with videos online showing the campus packed with attendees. About 20 minutes into speaking with students, a shot rang out through the crowd, hitting Kirk.
Security rushed the TPUSA founder to the hospital, where he was initially reported to be in stable condition but ultimately succumbed to his injuries.
After a nearly two-day manhunt, authorities announced Friday that Kirk’s suspected killer 22-year-old Tyler Robinson was officially arrested after a family friend reported Robinson to authorities Thursday evening.
Officials said bullet casings from the rifle that was used contained a series of phrases such as “Hey fascist! Catch!” and “If you read this you are gay LMAO.” A third bullet casing also had the engraving of ““bella ciao,” which matches an Italian song name that became a left-wing anthem during World War II.
Erika Kirk went on to say that she refuses to let the movement of TPUSA “die,” adding she will make sure it becomes “stronger, bolder, louder, and greater than ever.”
“And I love knowing that one of his, one of his mottos was never surrender. So I want to tell you that, that we’ll never surrender. We never will. Ever. Our campus tour this fall will continue. There will be even more tours in the years to come. America Fest here in Phoenix this December will go on. It will be greater than ever. The radio and podcast show that he was so proud of will go on,” Erika said. “And in a world filled with chaos, doubt, and uncertainty, my husband’s voice will remain. And it will ring out louder and more clearly than ever. And his wisdom will endure.”
“My favorite, my favorite too, but my husband’s favorite word in the English language was earn. He would call all of you to be people of action who earn the future America deserves. So to all of the young people who felt inspired by my husband’s faith and hard work, all of you already know what Charlie would want you to do,” Erika said.
Kirk’s wife told supporters to continue their on-campus involvement, attend the upcoming TPUSA events, and “most important of all,” get involved in a “Bible believing church.”
“Our battle is not simply a political one. Above all, it is spiritual. It is spiritual. The spiritual warfare is palpable,” Erika added.
Before ending, Erika Kirk recalled how her daughter asked where Kirk had been, telling her that he’s now “on a work trip with Jesus so he can afford your blueberry budget.” She then thanked supporters once again, adding, “God bless you all, and God bless America.”
Since Kirk’s death, supporters, political figures and friends have spoken out, while some Democrats have openly cheered the loss of the TPUSA founder. Vance shared on X late Wednesday how Kirk had impacted life, recalling their friendship beginning in 2017.
Trump also expressed grief, writing on Truth Social that no one “understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie.” By Thursday, Trump announced he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.
“Charlie was a giant of his generation, a champion of liberty and an inspiration to millions and millions of people. Our prayers are with his wonderful wife Erika and his beautiful children. Fantastic people they are,” Trump said. “We miss him greatly. I have no doubt that Charlie’s voice and the courage he put into the hearts of countless people, especially young people, will live on.”
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.