Florida Republican State Rep. Kevin Steele has filed a bill ordering every public university and college campus in the Sunshine State to rename a nearby road after the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk or risk losing funding.
Kirk, the influential 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was killed by a sniper’s bullet while debating students on the campus of the University of Utah Valley in Orem, Utah, on September 10.
Steele filed his bill to honor Kirk in the Florida House of Representatives on Tuesday; however, there is no Senate counterpart so far.
Should his legislation pass, any institution that failed to comply with its terms would face losing the funding it receives from the state within 90 days.
“State funds shall be withheld from any state university or Florida College System institution whose board of trustees fails to redesignate the roadway or portion of a roadway listed above within 90 days after the effective date of this act,” it declares.
“This act shall take effect upon becoming a law.”
The bill lists the exact roadways it expects to be redesignated, giving all 40 in alphabetical order.
Another state GOP lawmaker, Juan Carlos Porras, last month filed a bill of his own to rename a portion of a busy thoroughfare in Miami-Dade County as “Charlie Kirk Memorial Avenue.”
Porras’s legislation arrived on September 23, the same day the Lake County Commission unanimously approved a resolution to redesignate Schofield Road, connecting Lake County to Orange County, in memory of Kirk.
The activist’s murder a month ago has provoked President Donald Trump’s administration to pursue a clampdown on left-wing protest organizations it accuses of promoting domestic terrorism, as a heightened state of tension persists between Republicans and Democrats.
While Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, said at his memorial service in Arizona that she forgives her husband’s killer, Trump himself has continued to rebuke his political enemies in heated terms, particularly in response to the ongoing government shutdown, which has seen him taunt the opposition leadership with memes rather than seek to set an example by finding common ground.
Trump has not ruled out honoring Kirk with a national holiday, while Florida GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has called for a statue to be erected in his honor at the U.S. Capitol in tribute.
One has already been commissioned at the New College of Florida.
