Chloe Cole — the young woman who began transitioning at 12, regretted it, and detransitioned at 17 — was scheduled to speak at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Washington on May 13. She never got to take the stage. The event was canceled after organizers received threats of violence so credible that Cole herself said "Antifa has assembled a local militia…to shut down this event."
A local militia. To silence a woman talking about her own medical experience. The "compassion" crowd strikes again.
The threats came from a charming coalition of campus activist groups including the UW Divestment Campaign, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Seattle Palestine Action Network — because apparently Palestine solidarity now requires shutting down detransition testimony. These groups demanded the university "cancel all Turning Point USA events" and posted that "WE WILL NOT TOLERATE HATE GROUPS ON CAMPUS!" A woman sharing her own story about a decision she made as a child is a "hate group" now. Got it.
This is the University of Washington we're talking about — the same campus where a previous event featuring Riley Gaines was disrupted so badly that protesters threw feces. One arrest came out of that incident. One. And let's not forget the pro-Hamas building occupation that caused over $1 million in damages and led to 30-plus arrests. UW has a pattern, and the pattern is that violent mobs get what they want.
TPUSA speaker Nick Freitas appeared at UW just last week without major disruption, so the escalation for the Cole event tells you everything. They don't care about Turning Point. They care about Chloe Cole specifically — because a detransitioner standing at a podium and saying "I was a child and they let this happen to me" is the single most dangerous thing the trans activist movement can face. Not a politician. Not a pundit. A living, breathing witness.
UW spokesman Victor Balta offered the standard bureaucratic nothing-burger: "The UW develops security plans for permitted events on a case-by-case basis." Case-by-case. Meaning: if the mob screams loud enough, the event gets pulled. That's not a security plan — that's a surrender plan.
The cancellation came in the shadow of a separate, tragic incident — a trans-identifying student was killed near campus that Sunday, and in the aftermath, a TPUSA speaker received death threats. The College Fix reported that Cole was directly warned about the militia-style assembly targeting her event. She responded with something the mob will never understand: "There is a difference between being brave and being stupid."
She also said something else. "Truth will always win" and "Christ will always prevail." That's the kind of thing that makes the campus left completely lose their minds — not because it's threatening, but because they have no answer for it.
TPUSA says the event has been rescheduled for a later date. Good. Because here's what the mob accomplished: they proved every single thing Chloe Cole would have said on that stage. You don't assemble a militia to silence someone who's lying. You assemble a militia to silence someone who's telling the truth — and you're terrified other people might hear it.