After Student Outcry, Turning Point USA Cancels UW Event Featuring Anti-Trans Speaker

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Update 5/12/26 11 PM E.T.: Scheduled speaker Chloe Cole announced the postponement of the Turning Points USA event in an Instagram story posted on Tuesday night.

Earlier in the day, Cole had posted “Thank you guys for staying strong through the pressure and keeping the event going” to the organization’s official account, which liked the reply. Cole added, “I’m excited to be there tomorrow.” Throughout the day, Cole maintained that the event would be going forward on social media.

But in an email to Them sent in the early evening, UW spokesperson Victor Balta wrote, “My understanding is that the national TPUSA organization has decided to cancel this event.”

Near 8 p.m. Seattle time, Cole made the postponement public, blaming it on a “local militia” formed by “antifa.” She further claimed that the organization’s security team and police department would be “unprepared” for the event.

“Before Charlie Kirk’s assassination, I think I would have been less careful,” Cole said. “But times have changed and speaking on a university campus in 2026 can come with deadly consequences.”

Original Article:

This story contains descriptions of fatal violence against a transgender person.

Students at the University of Washington are criticizing the school for continuing to host a Turning Points USA event days after the fatal stabbing of a 19-year-old transgender student.

The event, scheduled for the evening of May 13, is a “Pick Up the Mic” event with Chloe Cole, a right-wing detransitioner who actively opposes access to gender-affirming care. According to an Instagram post from Turning Points USA UW, the event is produced in collaboration with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative nonprofit focused on higher education. “Pick Up the Mic” events were popularized by the late TPUSA co-founder Charlie Kirk with a format that invites students on college campuses to debate a featured speaker.

“Considering your group’s hateful rhetoric surrounding transgender individuals may have contributed to a violent death in our community, I would say postponing or cancelling this event is the only appropriate response,” one commenter wrote under the TPUSA event flyer on Instagram.

“A trans student was murdered last night, please cancel this event,” another commenter wrote.

The University of Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment on student criticism of the TPUSA event.

The victim, whose identity has yet to be released by the University of Washington or Seattle Police Department pending notification of next-of-kin, was found dead on Sunday evening in the laundry room of Nordheim Court, an off-campus student apartment complex that is privately managed but affiliated with the university. Seattle Police Department Detective Eric Muñoz initially said that the victim was “believed to be a 19-year-old transgender female.”

“While investigators have not yet identified a suspect or a motive, I want to recognize that when violence affects a trans person it can be especially worrying to our LGBTQIA+ community members,” UW President Robert J. Jones said in a statement on Monday after the news broke. “Our Division of Student Life is reaching out to students affected and providing support and resources to help them through this very difficult ordeal.”

Following this statement, some students have been pushing back, demanding that the TPUSA event scheduled for Wednesday either be rescheduled or canceled altogether given the group’s embrace of anti-trans rhetoric.

“And yet they keep inviting turning point to campus…?” one student commented under an Instagram post by student newspaper The Daily about Jones’ statement on the homicide.

Amid the shock of a trans young person being murdered in an ostensible liberal enclave like Seattle, a city that is viewed by many as a sanctuary for queer and trans people, students online have criticized the University of Washington for its response to the homicide — and over safety measures in student housing.

A group of students told local Fox affiliate KCPQ that a person who matched the description of the primary suspect in the homicide case broke into their apartment in the same off-campus student apartment complex on April 25. According to the SPD blotter report, authorities are “actively searching for the suspect, believed to be a black male with a beard, 5’6-8” tall, wearing a vest with button up shirt, and blue jeans.” A trio of Nordheim Court roommates told the station that, approximately two weeks ago, they heard glass rattling outside of their first story apartment, initially thinking nothing of it, before coming into the kitchen and discovering a man crawling through their window.

The roommate who allegedly saw the man screamed at him to leave the apartment before running to the back of the apartment to create a barricade in a bedroom. When the University of Washington Police Department responded to the incident, officers found a knife on scene and logged the break-in as a robbery, per KCPQ.

While the students were moved to an apartment on a higher floor for their safety, they told the station that they still don’t live far from the laundry room where the student was murdered. 

“There was nothing done about the situation in general,” the student said of SPD and the University of Washington’s response.

This story is still developing.

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