Charlie Kirk Day of Remembrance bills advance in Senate, House

An annual day to remember fallen conservative icon Charlie Kirk is closer to becoming law after meetings of the Senate Education Postsecondary Committee and the House Governmental Operations Subcommittee.

The panels voted on party lines to devote Oct. 14 to remember the activist and commentator who spoke for a generation on the Right before he was gunned down while addressing a Utah university crowd.

Under bills from Sen. Jonathan Martin and Rep. Yvette Benarroch (SB 194, HB 125), the Governor would be compelled to issue a proclamation every Oct. 14  — Kirk’s birthday — for the “Charlie Kirk Day of Remembrance.”

“This bill would have this day be a day of remembrance and recognition of Charlie Kirk’s influence on civic engagement, youth leadership, and constitutional education. It does not create a state holiday or mandate closures,” Martin said Wednesday.

Martin extolled Kirk’s “alternative viewpoint” and willingness to debate, saying “what he was doing when he was assassinated goes to the very core of who we are as Americans.”

“The First Amendment does not exist to protect comfortable speech,” Benarroch said. “It exists to protect speech we disagree with. It exists to protect debate, House Bill 125 is not about asking anyone to agree with Charlie Kirk. It is not about endorsing every statement he ever made. It is not about elevating a personality. This bill is about what happens when violence replaces debate.”

Ahead of the Senate vote and after numerous members of the public cited various racially provocative things Kirk said into live microphones, an amendment from Sen. Shevrin Jones creating the gubernatorial option for a George Floyd day of remembrance was rejected, saying his killing, like Kirk’s, changed “public consciousness.”

Jones noted that when he was in the House, legislation like the main bill wouldn’t have advanced, which he framed as a measure of how far to the right discourse in the Capitol has moved in just the last few years.

“We’re passing days of remembrance of an individual who … probably wouldn’t spit on me if I was on fire,” Jones said, before his amendment was turfed.

These bills are part of several efforts to remember the founder of Turning Point USA.

A proposed road renaming in Miami-Dade, an honorary naming of the Florida Civics and Debate Initiative championship trophy, and Attorney General James Uthmeier’s Combat Violent Extremism Portal all exemplify state leaders’ effort to pay tribute to a leading advocate for the kind of unapologetic conservatism Florida Republicans embrace.