A Turning Point USA event at the University of Washington featuring detransitioner and conservative activist Chloe Cole has been postponed after leftist student groups and Antifa-linked activists pledged to shut it down.

Cole had been scheduled to speak on Wednesday from 6 to 8 pm at UW’s Kane Hall for a TPUSA “Pick up the Mic” event. The event drew backlash from activist organizations, including Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at UW and the UW Divestment Campaign, both of which have been heavily involved in anti-Israel campus demonstrations over the past year.

The groups circulated a protest flyer calling Cole a “transphobic grifter” and demanding the university cancel the event and ban TPUSA from campus altogether. The flyer also attacked late TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, falsely labeling him a “Nazi” and accusing the organization of promoting “fascist views.”

On Monday, a trans student was stabbed to death in off-campus student housing. The suspect is still at large. Activists used the tragedy as a rally cry for more radicals to target TPUSA’s event. The protest effort quickly gained traction among Seattle-area anti-Israel radicals, Antifa, and transgender activist networks online, with black bloc militants and anarchist accounts reportedly calling for direct action to disrupt the event. Some activists posted messages encouraging violent confrontation and efforts to physically prevent attendees from entering Kane Hall.

In a video statement posted to X, Cole said organizers decided to postpone after alleged threats escalated beyond what security and local law enforcement were prepared to handle. “As many of you may know now, I was scheduled to speak tomorrow at an event at the University of Washington hosted by TPUSA’s local chapter there,” Cole said. “Antifa has assembled a local militia, in their own words, to shut down this event.”

Cole said “explicit threats” had brought the event to “national attention,” adding that the political climate had changed after the assassination of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk in September 2025. Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at Utah Valley University, according to multiple reports. “I am not afraid of Antifa,” Cole said. “But there’s a difference between being brave and being stupid.”

Cole, who began transitioning as a minor before later detransitioning, has become one of the country’s most prominent critics of sex-change procedures for children. In an interview on The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI, Cole described how she was placed on puberty blockers and testosterone as a child before undergoing a double mastectomy at age 15. “Before I could even legally drive a car, I had a double mastectomy surgery to get rid of my breasts,” Cole said. She later realized, “none of this is actually helping me,” and described the process as “experimental medicine.”

Hoffman noted during the interview that many of the organizations promoting the anti-Cole demonstration were primarily anti-Israel activist groups rather than traditional LGBT organizations. Cole also mocked the coalition of pro-trans activists and pro-Hamas organizations protesting her appearance.

“I laughed that it’s always so shocking to me how these protesters are so willing, these gay and transgender protesters, they’re so willing to ally with a country that literally wants people like them dead,” Cole told Hoffman, referencing Gaza.

Cole said activists view detransitioners as a threat because their experiences undermine gender ideology. “The very existence of detransitioners, I think, highlights an insecurity in the ideology,” Cole said. “The detransitioners only highlight the importance of biological sex.”

Leftist student organizations and Antifa militants have repeatedly targeted conservative speakers at the University of Washington and elsewhere in Seattle. Last year, Antifa activists confronted attendees outside a TPUSA event featuring women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines, allegedly chasing elderly attendees to their vehicles and threatening them for attending.

Despite the postponement, Cole vowed she would return to campus speaking events in the future. “This is not a win for Antifa because truth will always win,” Cole said. “I will be back, not just to UW, but to many campuses across the country, because once conversations stop, that is when the violence begins.”