Staff at a high school in Arizona have been doxed and flooded with online attacks, and have received multiple death threats, after a spokesperson for Turning Point USA inaccurately accused a group of teachers of wearing Halloween costumes that purportedly mocked the assassination of TPUSA cofounder Charlie Kirk.
On Friday, members of Cienega High School’s math department wore matching, bloodied white T-shirts with the words “Problem Solved” written in black lettering across the front. A picture of the group was posted on the Vail School District Facebook page. The district’s superintendent, John Carruth, said in a statement that no student or parent complained about the costumes during the school day.
Then, on Saturday, Andrew Kolvet, who was the executive producer on Charlie Kirk’s show, posted the picture on X. “Concerned parents just sent us this image of what’s believed to be teachers in [Vail School District] mocking Charlie’s murder,” Kolvet wrote. “They deserve to be famous, and fired.”
The white T-shirts, Kolvet implied, bore a resemblance to the “Freedom” T-shirts Kirk was wearing when he was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on September 10.
Kolvet’s post went viral and had been viewed almost 10 million times before it was deleted on Tuesday after WIRED contacted him.
Immediately following Kolvet’s post going live, Cienega High School was bombarded with social media posts, comments, direct messages, emails, and at least one voicemail containing racial slurs, calls for the teachers to be fired, the personal information of school staff, and explicit threats of violence. The school shared these messages with WIRED.
The school district immediately responded to the accusations, clarifying on Facebook that the costumes were not a reference to Kirk’s assassination and that the math department had in fact worn the same costumes a year previously.
“We want to clarify that these shirts were part of a math-themed Halloween costume meant to represent solving tough math problems,” Carruth, the superintendent, wrote. “The shirts were never intended to target any person, event, or political issue.” The Vail School District provided WIRED with a copy of an email from October 31, 2024, featuring a picture of the same costumes.
While Kolvet acknowledged Carruth’s statement and admitted in a post on X later on Saturday that the costumes had been worn the year previously, he did not remove his original post.
“It’s a very weird costume for teachers in general, but after what happened to Charlie, I’m absolutely floored they wore it again,” Kolvet wrote. “I do not believe for a second that all of them are innocent.”
