TPUSA Purges Staff Amid Fallout From Charlie Kirk Death Conspiracy

Turning Point USA has recently fired several employees, as a right-wing commentator’s conspiracy theories about founder Charlie Kirk’s death have reportedly begun to take root at the far-right organization, The Bulwark reported Thursday.

Last week, Aubrey Laitsch, a former communications staffer at TPUSA, posted a video claiming that the organization lied about the reason she was let go.

“I just have a gut feeling that I was terminated from Turning Point because I am questioning the narrative of what happened to my role model and CEO, Charlie Kirk, on the day of his assassination,” Laitsch said. She later documented a man who appeared to be a private investigator snooping around her house, further raising concerns that something was amiss.

Laitsch’s suspicion that Kirk’s death was an inside job didn’t come from nowhere: It’s a conspiracy theory being pushed by Candace Owens, whose claims that Kirk was murdered for his rejection of Israel and AIPAC have ripped a massive hole in the middle of the far right.

Laitsch’s firing is just the latest in a series of terminations, as staffers have reported a “purge” at the organization—and even started a “fallout fund” for terminated employees. Owens has also boosted stories of firings, sharing audio of an anonymous staffer who claimed to have been fired without explanation and another story of a TPUSA executive who showed up at an employee’s home to fire her and demand back her company electronics.

One must not cry for the discarded members of an ultra-right-wing Christian-nationalist organization—and it’s worth noting that suggesting your boss committed murder would probably get you fired from any job.

The heads of Customs and Border Protection and ICE were grilled by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Thursday about the conduct of federal agents.

Republican Senator Rand Paul called out the agency heads for what happened on Minneapolis’s streets just prior to Alex Pretti’s killing, specifically a video of agents shoving a woman face down on the ground.

CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott equivocated, saying that pushing a woman to the ground “can be” considered a de-escalation tactic, “depending on the circumstances.”

“I don’t know what happened before this. If an officer thinks that doing that is going to prevent any kind of a physical encounter, if there’s a weapon or anything else, I’m not saying there is, I’m just saying in certain cases, using hand-to-hand is a de-escalation,” Scott said. Paul didn’t agree with this.

“No one in America believes that shoving that woman’s face in the snow was de-escalation, but your officers need to know that they had a verbal encounter with her. She did not place her hands on the officers. She wasn’t trying to get their weapon,” Paul said, asking if it is “proper to physically throw a woman down or throw anyone down” in response to verbal attacks.

Scott and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons eventually both answered no.

After a video was shown of Pretti’s killing, Democratic Senator Gary Peters pointed out how Pretti was beaten with a spray canister before he was shot. He criticized the violence perpetrated by agents, asking if beating someone “with a canister, is that de-escalatory?”

The answer from Scott wasn’t encouraging.

“What I’m seeing is a subject that’s also not compliant. He’s not following any guidance. He’s fighting back nonstop. I don’t know what they’re saying. I don’t know what’s going on in this situation,” Scott responded.

Neither of the agency heads came off well during the hearing, nor did they indicate any changes are coming in how Border Patrol and ICE handles detentions or people protesting against them. Violence has become the norm, even after the outrage following the killings of Renee Good and Pretti. U.S. citizens are routinely detained, either because federal agents are trying to punish them for protesting or because they are being racially profiled as undocumented immigrants.

The Trump administration may make a few nods here and there toward de-escalation and lowering tensions, but its mass deportation agenda, complete with violence and hostility toward protesters, remains intact, even with an announced drawdown in Minneapolis. The protesters around the country aren’t going to stop as long as the injustice continues. Will the government finally get a clue?

President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday rejected scientific evidence that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, undermining a foundational pillar in the fight against climate change.

The agency revoked the 2009 endangerment finding, an Obama-era policy that emerged from the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court case that determined greenhouse gases to be a real public health risk that could be addressed via the Clean Air Act. Repealing the rule affects what the EPA can regulate, from vehicles to the oil and gas industry to major power plants.

President Trump claimed that the endangerment finding “severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers.” But this is a massive blow for the institutional fight against climate change—and for our finite environment.

Less pollution and emissions oversight will only expedite the negative impacts of climate change that we’ve already experienced.  

“This decision prioritizes the profits of big oil and gas companies and polluters over clean air and water, the health of kids and all people, and the progress we’ve made to respond to climate change,” Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health head Lisa Patel told Axios. 

Legal challenges from the D.C. Court of Appeals are expected soon. 

This story has been updated. 

A senior U.S. district judge on Thursday blocked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s efforts to punish Senator Mark Kelly.

In an exclamatory 29-page opinion, Judge Richard Leon tossed Hegseth’s attempt to censure the retired U.S. Navy captain after Kelly encouraged American troops to reject illegal orders. Hegseth attempted to silence Kelly on the basis that U.S. service members are not extended the same First Amendment protections as the general population—but that rationale didn’t fly with Leon.

“Unfortunately for Secretary Hegseth, no court has ever extended those principles to retired servicemembers, much less a retired servicemember serving in Congress and exercising oversight responsibility over the military,” Leon wrote in his ruling. “This Court will not be the first to do so!”

Leon further scolded Hegseth for trying to circumnavigate the judicial system in order to muzzle the Arizona Democrat by arguing that the military was better equipped to handle the dispute. To advance his point, Leon turned to the wise words of fabled folk singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.

“This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees,” Leon wrote. “After all, as Bob Dylan famously said, ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.’”

Leon’s decision arrived two days after a grand jury in Washington refused to approve Kelly’s charges, which were related to a pro-law and order video he took part in last November that enraged Donald Trump.

In the video statement posted to Facebook, six Democratic members of the House and Senate—a coalition of veterans and former national security professionals—urged servicemembers not to “give up the ship.” The bloc repeated that America’s military and intelligence communities “can” and “must … refuse illegal orders.” They made no reference to disobeying Trump directly, only reminding people to uphold the Constitution.

In reaction, the president called for their execution, writing on Truth Social that their behavior was “punishable by DEATH!”

This story has been updated.

House Speaker Mike Johnson pretended Thursday that he knew nothing about Attorney General Pam Bondi’s plot to spy on lawmakers—even though one Democrat had already warned him.

A photograph of Bondi’s notes at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday showed that the attorney general brought a record of what Washington state Representative Pramila Jayapal had searched in the DOJ’s unredacted files on Jeffrey Epstein—sparking outrage among lawmakers that the department had overstepped the separation of powers.

Speaking to reporters Thursday morning, Johnson offered one of his classic amnesiac responses.

“I don’t know anything about that, I’m not commenting on it. I haven’t seen or heard anything about that, but that would be inappropriate if it happened,” Johnson said.

But Johnson was lying—he had been told about it.

Jayapal told NPR News earlier Thursday that after discussing the issue with Johnson the day before, she believed there was “bipartisan agreement” that lawmakers should be able to review the files without being surveilled.

Setting aside the possibility that Johnson hit his head very hard in the intervening hours, it seems that the speaker is once again lying in order to play defense for Donald Trump’s administration—at the expense of the rights and privacy of his own colleagues.