Chatt TFP: TN GOP embracess Christian Nationalist organization in schools
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Tennessee GOP leader promotes partnership with Turning Point, but details remain unclear
53 minutes ago by Ruby Rayner
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Staff photo by Larry Sullivan II/The crowd at UTC Turning Point's "red, white and boots" event listens to a speaker on Tuesday, April 2, 2026, in Rossville.
Tennessee Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, reaffirmed the December announcement that the state is partnering with Turning Point USA to put affiliate clubs of the organization, founded by the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, in every high school in Tennessee.
"We want our high schools to be places where people can come together and meet and talk about various ideas and what's important to them, and it's going very well," Johnson said in response to a question about what the partnership is and details about its rollout. "We now have hundreds, I'm sorry, I don't know the exact number, but we have hundreds of Club America chapters that have been open in high schools all across Tennessee, and that's good."
Johnson, who made the comments at an event hosted last week by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's Turning Point USA chapter, did not provide any further details about the partnership or its progress.
As of April, there are a dozen Turning Point USA Club America affiliates in Chattanooga area schools, said Lakie Derrick, Turning Point USA's East Tennessee volunteer field representative. Derrick reported the same number of Turning Point school clubs in the area in November.
(READ MORE: Tennessee will partner with conservative nonprofit founded by Charlie Kirk)
Meanwhile, State Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, D-Chattanooga, said in an interview last week that the Tennessee Department of Education told him officials there have had no contact with Turning Point on implementation of the program, nor have any state funds been allocated to the partnership.
The information from the Department of Education came in response to a letter Hakeem sent to Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds in January, demanding answers about the partnership after it was announced and expressing concerns that schools should be politically neutral.
(READ MORE: Hakeem presses state on Charlie Kirk–founded group in schools)
"As far as funding, I have no knowledge of the state supplying any money to teachers or anything of that nature," Hakeem said by phone about his conversation with the Department of Education.
Hakeem said he does not feel like the questions he posed in his letter have been sufficiently answered but that it seems like guardrails are being put in place around the concern of preferential treatment for the club. He said he will be monitoring and observing the actions of the organization.
Hakeem said he has been told by the Department of Education that the Turning Point club has to go through the same approval process as any other club.
In the letter, Hakeem said some of his main concerns with the state's partnership with Turning Point USA are that it creates the appearance of selective endorsement and privileges one ideology over another. Turning Point is a nationally recognized partisan organization, Hakeem said in the letter.
"I think it's (the partnership with Turning Point) an attempt at a young age to narrow the perspectives that these young people would have to one that they (Republicans) are comfortable with, particularly in a state like Tennessee," Hakeem said.
The event hosted by UTC's Turning Point USA chapter drew many of Tennessee's top elected officials to a venue in Rossville.
"Turning Point -- it's just, you know, it's emerging nationwide to really capture the spirit of what it means for civil debate, mobilizing conservative ideas in places that traditionally, they've been alienated," said state Sen. Adam Lowe, R-Calhoun, about the organization during the event.
The event was put on with donations from local GOP groups and politicians, including the Hamilton County Republican Party; U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who is running for governor of Tennessee and has received Turning Point's endorsement; U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn.; U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Knoxville; state Sen. Bo Watson, R-North Chattanooga, and Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs, as well as Johnson and Lowe.
Hakeem said he understands there will be no preferential treatment for Turning Point in Tennessee high schools, so if there is a group that has a philosophy that diverges in the opposite direction from the political direction of Turning Point, the state can forget about trying to get that group out of schools.
"None of them should be disruptive," Hakeem said, "whether it's a Turning Point or anybody else."
In addition to politics, Turning Point has strong religious ties.
Kirk was a Christian and said he wanted to promote foundational Christian values. In 2022, he started Turning Point Faith, a new arm of the organization.
David Kanervo, a retired political science professor at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, expressed concerns in a previous interview about the high school partnership because of the religious dimension of the organization. Public education is supposed to be nondenominational, and the state backing an organization that has certain religious ties pushes one set of ideas over another, Kanervo said.
Media was not invited to the December announcement of the partnership with high schools, but a 30-minute video was posted on Rumble, a social media platform that's popular with right-wing creators.
After the announcement event, Lee's office did not respond to a request for comment asking about the terms of the partnership, specifically if schools would be required to have club chapters and how the state would work with schools to implement them, where the money to fund the partnership would come from, or how much it might cost.
In January, Lee's office denied a public records request made by the Chattanooga Times Free Press for certain state emails with keywords "Turning Point USA" and "TPUSA," saying that no such records exist or the office does not maintain such records.
Lee's office partially denied another public records request by the Times Free Press for emails containing keywords related to Turning Point USA, citing "deliberative process privileges."
The exemption has been carved out by the courts, though the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government has criticized the provision as overly broad and ripe for abuse.
Lee has used this exemption to deny over 60 record requests that range in topic and type since he took office in 2019, according to The Tennessean.
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Contact politics reporter Ruby Rayner at rra...@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6556.
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Ruby Rayner is the politics reporter for the Chattanooga Times Free Press. She previously worked as a reporter and then became the New York news editor for The River Reporter in Upstate, NY where her work has been recognized by the New York Press Association. Ruby holds a degree in geography with a minor in political science from Clark University and attended the London School of Economics.