A bolt of lightning struck a tree just feet from leftist demonstrators protesting Erika Kirk’s commencement appearance at Hillsdale College Saturday.
Hillsdale history professor Bradley J. Birzer flagged the strike in a post on X near the demonstration site. “Lightning hit this tree during the anti Erika Kirk protest. No joke. Just feet from the protesters,” Birzer wrote. Conservative commentator Josiah Lippincott seized on the moment in his own X post, invoking the memory of the slain TPUSA founder. “Yeah, Charlie is keeping an eye out for us,” Lippincott wrote.
More than three dozen protesters rallied outside the Hillsdale County Courthouse hours before the ceremony began, with participants arriving from Macomb, Calhoun, Monroe and Branch counties, the Hillsdale Daily News reported. The demonstrators took issue with the college’s involvement in the 1776 Commission, the Barney Charter School Initiative and various school voucher programs, according to the outlet. (RELATED: ‘I Just Want To Go Home’: Erika Kirk Seen Sobbing Following Trump Assassination Attempt Months After Husband Murdered)
A group called Hope in Action organized the demonstration, WILX reported. Demonstrator Allison Bader, who attended with her daughter Norah, opposes what she called “blatant racism, homophobia, and sexism” tied to Turning Point USA and Project 2025, she told the station.
>Be a No Kings boomer
>Protest the Hillsdale College commencement and Erika Kirk.
>Get hit by lightning.Yeah, Charlie is keeping an eye out for us. pic.twitter.com/YiyKogkmPF
— Josiah Lippincott (@jlippincott) May 10, 2026
Inside the auditorium, Kirk urged Hillsdale’s 400-member graduating class to model themselves after her late husband, according to the New York Post (NYP). “Through his learning, Charlie was better able to recognize his duty to pursue truth and to defend liberty, and this responsibility he felt to God. He felt it for our family, to our country, and that was born from what he learned,” Kirk told the audience, per the outlet.
Hillsdale President Larry Arnn wrapped the ceremony by conferring on Kirk two honorary degrees of public service, with the first recognizing her own contributions and the second awarded posthumously to Charlie Kirk, according to the NYP. Arnn was fulfilling a promise he made at the activist’s September memorial, per the outlet.
A gunman killed Charlie Kirk in September as he addressed students at Utah Valley University in Orem during a Turning Point USA event. Suspected shooter Tyler Robinson remains jailed pending trial.