Erika Kirk joins U.S. President Donald Trump onstage during the memorial service for her late husband, conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, at State Farm Stadium on Sept. 21, 2025 in Glendale, Arizona.  (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and several Cabinet officials spoke at a five-hour memorial ceremony Sunday in Arizona for the late conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, whom Republicans are mourning as a friend and crediting as a force behind Trump’s second presidency.

Trump told a packed stadium, “America loved Charlie Kirk.”

“It is agonizing and unthinkable to say goodbye to a patriot whose heart still had so much to give,” Trump said.

The president described the suspected gunman who authorities say targeted Kirk as a “radicalized, cold-blooded monster.”

Trump praised Kirk and said it was the activist’s influence that helped him  choose Vance as vice president. Interspersed in his comments about Kirk, Trump aimed insults at what he described as “radical left lunatics,” promoted his anti-crime campaign and teased a forthcoming announcement from the administration regarding autism. 

Vance spoke about his friendship with Kirk and attributed the electorate’s swing to conservatism to Kirk’s outreach, saying Kirk “changed the course of American history.”

Vance joined Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi in recent days calling for consequences for Americans who criticized Kirk following his death. During his remarks at the memorial, Vance said he saw “the very worst parts of humanity” in comments and social media posts.  

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recounted meeting Kirk a decade ago when “he was building a movement.”

“I still have this sticker (that reads) ‘Big Government Sucks,’” Hegseth said, recalling an early campaign slogan for Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk co-founded in 2012.

Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy, said those devoted to Kirk will “defeat the forces of darkness and evil.”

“You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk. You made him immortal,” Miller said.

Kirk’s wife Erika Kirk confirmed she will now sit at the helm of Turning Point USA as the nonprofit’s CEO after several speakers who heralded the organization’s future alluded to the change.

In an emotional speech, she told those in attendance that she has forgiven the suspected shooter.

“I forgive him because it was what Christ did. It is what Charlie would do, the answer to hate is not hate,” Erika Kirk said. 

During his remarks, Trump jokingly apologized to Erika because he said he “can’t stand” his opponents.

Kirk “did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That’s where I disagreed with him. I hate my opponents and don’t want the best for them. I’m sorry, Erika,” Trump said.

Musk, members of Congress in attendance

The memorial service began at 11 a.m. Mountain time at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, which seats upwards of 60,000.

A large painting of Kirk, who was fatally shot 11 days ago at age 31, was displayed on stage. Large LED screens played videos and displayed photos of the activist, who was very influential among Republicans and conservatives.

A seven-piece band backed Christian singer Chris Tomlin as Trump administration officials walked onto the floor of the stadium. Cameras captured the entrances of Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. All delivered speeches.

Billionaire Elon Musk, a major donor to Trump’s 2024 campaign and the former leader of Trump’s government efficiency project, entered the stadium to cheers, according to CNN. Cameras caught Trump and Musk shaking hands and apparently speaking while seated together prior to Trump’s remarks.

Current and former U.S. senators and representatives were among members of the audience, including former Florida U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz. 

A U.S. military color guard displayed flags during the national anthem.

The memorial service was livestreamed and is available on C-SPAN.

Journalists outside the stadium reported thousands of people lining up early hoping to attend the ceremony. 

Kirk was fatally shot by a suspected lone gunman on Sept. 10 while he was speaking at Utah Valley University, according to authorities, who are seeking the death penalty. NBC reported Saturday that law enforcement officials have not found any link between Kirk’s shooting and left-wing groups.

Utah native Tyler Robinson, 22, is charged on seven counts, including aggravated murder, violent offense in the presence of a child and witness tampering. 

Authorities say Robinson sent text messages about “hatred” to his roommate following the shooting. Charging documents say Robinson’s parents recounted their son’s recent interest in LGBTQ rights and that he had started to “lean more to the left.”

Charlie Kirk called a ‘martyr’

Speakers praised Kirk’s work and at numerous points during the ceremony referred to him as a “martyr” for the conservative movement and Christianity.

Far-right YouTube commentator Benny Johnson referred to Kirk’s “revival spirit” and influence in spreading a Christian worldview.

“Charlie Kirk is a martyr in the true Christian tradition. You take out a tyrant, his power goes away. You cut down a martyr, his power grows,” Johnson said.

Johnson called out Trump administration officials in the crowd as “rulers of our land.”  

“May we pray that our rulers here, rightfully instituted and given power by our God, wield the sword for the terror of evil men in our nation, in Charlie’s memory. I want to live in a country where the evil are terrified, and where the good and the faithful and the moral people of our nation can live in peace, debate in peace, disagree in peace and start families in peace.”

GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida said she owed her political career to Kirk, who hired her to do outreach to young Hispanic voters.

“These were the sparks that lit the path for me on the eve of my departure to medical school to decide to change course and join TP USA, where I could help Charlie battle the socialist indoctrination on college campuses,” Luna said.

The U.S. House passed a resolution Friday honoring Kirk, supported by all Republicans and 95 Democrats.

Presidents and memorial services

It is notable for a sitting president, vice president and multiple Cabinet members to deliver remarks at a memorial service for a private citizen. Trump ordered flags lowered after Kirk’s death.

Trump spoke, along with Republican congressional leaders, at the U.S. Capitol in 2018 at a memorial for the late evangelist Billy Graham, who had relationships with U.S. presidents going back decades, with Graham lying in honor in the Capitol Rotunda. Trump ordered flags at half-staff.

President Barack Obama delivered the eulogy for the nine victims of the racially motivated mass shooting at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Notably, Obama spontaneously sang “Amazing Grace.” Obama did not order flags lowered following the massacre.

Kirk maintained professor watch list, hosted podcast

Kirk was born in 1993 in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights.

He co-founded Turning Point USA aiming to mobilize conservative youth and young adults on high school and college campuses. 

Kirk toured campuses across the U.S. speaking on contemporary hard-right topics, including anti-LGBTQ positions and encouraging young women to retreat from careers and return to the home. 

Among the organization’s projects was the “Professor Watchlist” that published the names of professors across the country in searchable format by categories including “anti-Christian views,” “feminism,” “climate alarmist” and “racial ideology,” according to its web page.

Kirk hosted “The Charlie Kirk Show,” a successful daily radio show and podcast. Devoting an entire episode in July to the Jeffrey Epstein case, Kirk was among those in Trump’s voter base to urge the president to release more information about the federal investigation into the late financier and convicted sex offender.  

Kirk’s work garnered attention beyond the United States. Rev. Rob McCoy, Kirk’s pastor, recounted a recent trip to South Korea 

“Charlie looked at politics as an on-ramp to Jesus,” McCoy told the crowd.

Turning Point USA Inc., which has been tax exempt since 2014, reported $84.9 million in revenue in 2024, according to the organization’s publicly available 990 tax forms published on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., right, meets with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident who was erroneously deported to El Salvador by ICE agents. (Photo courtesy Van Hollen's office)

This report has been updated.

GREENBELT, Maryland — The Trump administration plans to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a third country once he is released from federal custody, a Department of Justice attorney disclosed during a Thursday emergency court hearing.

Attorneys for the unlawfully deported Abrego Garcia had made an emergency request Thursday to bring him back to Maryland while his criminal case continues.

The move by the lawyers followed earlier public statements from Trump administration officials that they would deport Abrego Garcia to El Salvador upon his release from a Tennessee federal court as soon as Friday. But Thursday, plans appeared to have shifted to deportation somewhere else.

DOJ attorney Jonathan Guynn, under questioning by District of Maryland Judge Paula Xinis, said the Trump administration planned to deport Abrego Garcia, and “to a third country is my understanding.”

“He will be taken into (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) custody and removal proceedings will be initiated,” Guynn said of Abrego Garcia’s release. “There are no imminent plans to remove him to a third country.”

Xinis declined the request to return him to Maryland, arguing that Abrego Garcia has not been released and that she’s not clear if she has the jurisdiction to fulfill such a request.

She added that Guynn said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security does not have “imminent plans” to deport Abrego Garcia to a third country, while holding out that possibility.

The Supreme Court this week, ruled that it will allow, for now, the Trump administration to continue carrying out deportations to third countries, after a Massachusetts judge barred removals without proper notice. In such cases, immigrants are deported to countries that are not their native countries and may be far from them.

Jonathan Cooper, a partner of Quinn Emmanuel, the firm representing Abrego Garcia in his immigration case, tried to ask Xinis if she would require the Trump administration to notify Cooper and his team before deporting him to a third country.

“We have concerns that the government may try to move Mr. Abrego Garcia quickly over the weekend,” Cooper said.

Xinis said she would not because Guynn said that the Trump administration had no “imminent plans” to remove Abrego Garcia.

Cooper laid out the same concerns in the written emergency request to Xinis Thursday.

“The Government’s public statements leave little doubt about its plan: remove Abrego Garcia to El Salvador once more,” according to the complaint written by attorneys from Quinn Emmanuel.

“If this Court does not act swiftly, then the Government is likely to whisk Abrego Garcia away to some place far from Maryland,” it says.

Federal prosecutors in Tennessee court have said that should Abrego Garcia be released, he would be immediately arrested by ICE agents and could face deportation back to El Salvador, despite having protections from such removal since 2019.

Tennessee case

Abrego Garcia was returned from El Salvador earlier this month to the United States to face federal criminal charges lodged in Tennessee that accuse him “of conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain” and “unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain.”

The indictment occurred while Abrego Garcia was housed in a Salvadoran prison.

The human smuggling charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee when police pulled Abrego Garcia over for speeding. Eight other men were in the car, but neither Abrego Garcia nor the passengers were arrested.

DHS opened an investigation into the three-year-old stop and Attorney General Pam Bondi held a press conference on the day Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. to face federal charges.

She argued that the traffic stop was part of a years-long human smuggling scheme where Abrego Garcia was paid by members of the MS-13 gang to transport migrants who entered the country without legal authorization to destinations across the country.

His attorneys have denied the charges and Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty in federal court in Nashville.

Stephen Miller, the chief architect of many of the president’s immigration policies and a senior White House adviser, has written on social media that Abrego Garcia would be deported back to El Salvador if released. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have pointed to that statement as to why they want him brought back to Maryland.

The Trump administration has alleged that Abrego Garcia is a leader of the MS-13 gang, and President Donald Trump has made those same allegations. During an interview, the president held up a photo of Abrego Garcia’s knuckles that were digitally altered to type MS-13 on his fingers.

House Democrats pressed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in May about the doctored photo and she sidestepped questions about whether the photo was real, until she eventually said she was unaware it existed.

She added that even if Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. that he would be immediately deported.

Maryland arguments

In Maryland, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said in their complaint they want to ensure he is not deported again.

“This motion does not ask this Court to adjudicate Abrego Garcia’s custodial status in the Tennessee criminal proceedings; that is for the Tennessee district court to resolve,” they wrote.

“Nor does this motion seek to alter any of the conditions of release set by the Tennessee district court or otherwise interfere with the Tennessee criminal proceedings. This motion simply seeks to ensure that when Abrego Garcia is released from criminal custody, he returns to, and remains in, this District (other than to travel to Tennessee as needed), until further order from this Court.”

Abrego Garcia lives with his family in Maryland. “Maryland is where he was on March 12 at the moment his unlawful removal saga began, when ICE agents with ‘no warrant for his arrest and no lawful basis’ arrested him and locked him up at an ‘ICE facility in Baltimore, Maryland,’” the complaint said.

“Returning Abrego Garcia to Maryland implements the Supreme Court’s directive and safeguards this Court’s jurisdiction in this matter,” it added.

Clashes between administration and judges

Abrego Garcia’s wrongful deportation drew national attention to the Trump administration’s aggressive mass deportations campaign that some judges have found skirted due process rights for immigrants. The White House has clashed with the judicial branch with some frequency over immigration decisions.

The Trump administration this week has, in an unusual move, sued the entire judicial bench of the District Court of Maryland, including Xinis, over a standing order to require a two-day pause for deportations due to a high volume of habeas corpus claims from immigrants challenging their detention in the state. A habeas corpus claim allows immigrants to challenge their detention.

Abrego Garcia has had deportation protections from his home country since 2019, but in March he was arrested in Maryland by federal immigration officials while driving his son home and informed his status had changed. Days later, he was deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, a move the Trump administration admitted was a mistake.

In April, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration had to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, but stopped short of requiring it.

For the next two months, administration officials would testify in a Maryland court that Abrego Garcia’s return was out of their hands and up to the government of El Salvador.

Xinis has accused the Trump administration of stonewalling information and is allowing for discovery in the civil case to continue to determine if the Trump administration violated her court order to return Abrego Garcia.