Nine months after Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University, a 26-year-old valet driver named Jacob Wenske allegedly emailed bomb threats targeting Kirk's widow Erika and other speakers at a Turning Point USA event — specifically singling out "Christian nationalists." And a new report from the Network Contagion Research Institute says this isn't random. It's a pattern. A growing, foreign-funded assassination culture aimed squarely at Christians and conservatives.
But sure, we're the "dangerous" ones because we go to church on Sunday and think boys are boys.
Bexar County has charged Wenske with a third-degree felony for the terroristic threat, which included a bomb plot against the TPUSA event. He also posted multiple threats on social media, because apparently even aspiring domestic terrorists can't resist the urge to post. Erika Kirk, who took over as CEO of Turning Point USA after her husband's murder, was specifically named in the threats.
Let that sink in. A woman whose husband was murdered for his beliefs — assassinated by Tyler Robinson, who confessed via a Discord chatroom — is now getting bomb threats herself. Not because she did anything wrong. Because she's a Christian conservative who refused to shut up and disappear.
Travis Hawley, a cyber threat and open-source intelligence analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute, laid out the ugly truth in the report. "What we're seeing is a massive influx of foreign malign influence" shaping Western culture through social media, he said. "And there are many countries, organizations, and wealthy individuals trying to push us and accelerate us into violence."
The numbers back him up. According to the U.S. Capitol Police Threat Assessment Section, threats against Congressional members jumped 58% between 2024 and 2025. They've doubled since 2020. That's not a blip. That's a trend line pointing straight at chaos.
And here's the stat that should make your blood run cold: 38% of surveyed U.S. adults said murdering President Trump was "somewhat justified." Among those identifying as left of center? That number climbed to 55%.
More than half.
We're not talking about fringe lunatics scribbling manifestos in a basement. We're talking about a majority of self-identified leftists who think political assassination is acceptable. The report calls it a "permission structure" — cultural messaging that provides psychological justification for violence. The media mocks conservatives, Hollywood dehumanizes us, academics call us fascists, and eventually some unstable kid with a valet parking gig decides he's the hero of the story.
Hawley connected the dots further. "The motivation of our adversaries to push Marxist ideology is to defeat us from within," he said. And they're spending real money to do it. The report flagged U.S. tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham — who now lives in Shanghai, because of course he does — for funneling $278 million to nonprofits promoting CCP propaganda. Foreign money. Foreign ideology. American bodies.
Remember Luigi Mangione? The guy who allegedly assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson? His legal defense fund collected over $1.5 million from adoring fans. Pro-Mangione demonstrators showed up at the courthouse to cheer. That's the "permission structure" in action — kill someone the internet doesn't like, and you become a folk hero.
Charlie Kirk warned about this exact phenomenon. According to Fox News, just 153 days before his own assassination, Kirk posted about the growing assassination culture documented in a similar study. One hundred and fifty-three days. Then he was dead.
FBI Director Kash Patel is now overseeing the federal response, but let's be honest — no amount of law enforcement can fix a culture that's been deliberately poisoned to view Christians and conservatives as legitimate targets. The threat isn't just lone wolves. It's a coordinated ideological machine funded by foreign adversaries and cheered on by domestic leftists who consider themselves the "good guys."
Erika Kirk buried her husband and then went back to work running his organization. Jacob Wenske allegedly tried to bomb her for it. If that doesn't tell you everything about who the real extremists are in this country, nothing will.