‘Transgender’ student attacks conservative, says ‘Republicans should be shot’

 

A gender-confused man at the University of Utah said, ‘I think Republicans should be shot in the streets, personally,’ before lunging at a conservative student. A “transgender” student has been caught on video advocating for Republicans to be “shot in the streets” before tackling a College Republicans member at the University of Utah.

On October 28, Utah College Republican President Rylie Barnes shared video of an encounter with a student identified as “Amber Grace.”

“Do you believe we should have the right to freedom of speech?” the Republican asks, to which Grace responds, “no, I think Republicans should be shot in the streets, personally.” The clip then cuts to Grace lunging at the camera holder, with the view careening wildly as the Republican struggles to defend himself and yells for the attacker to stop. A subsequent photo showed the target’s sweatshirt ripped in the scuffle.

The College Fix reports that a university spokesperson confirms that “Police have identified the individual involved and issued two Class B misdemeanor citations– for simple assault and property damage.” But leftist campus groups are rallying behind the attacker.

The Utah Anti-War Committee, Utah Valley University Community Defense Club, and University of Utah Queer Student Union issued a joint statement claiming Grace was the one “accosted by College Republican members” who “followed and harassed [him] with transphobic attacks” because he spoke out against their “transphobic rhetoric.” 

The groups demand Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill “refuse the charges” against Grace, plus calls on the university to “ban the College Republicans from harassing marginalized students on campus.”

American institutions of higher education have long been recognized as heavily dominated by left-wing bias and historical revisionism, conditioning students to reject religion, traditional morality, and free markets, and to view America as a uniquely malignant force in the world, a society systemically rigged against the poor and minority groups, with identity-based grievances forming the foundation of so-called “social justice” and “intersectional” approaches to education. 

These lessons are consistently accompanied by hostility to opposing views. Last month, the Yale-based Buckley Institute’s 2026 survey found a “record high, 45% of American college students agree that physical violence can be justified to stop what they see as hate speech,” including 54 percent of self-described liberals (despite a record 66 percent acknowledging “hate speech” is “technically protected by the First Amendment”). Forty percent overall (and 47 percent of liberals) took the somewhat less extreme stance that “offensive speech should be subject to criminal prosecution.” 

Last year, LifeSiteNews covered similar findings from the Buckley Institute’s 2025 poll, and last month the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) own survey of college students found 30 percent agreeing that “using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases,” and 69 percent believing that “shouting down a speaker on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases.”

The left’s comfort with violence took on new urgency last year when Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a campus event by pro-transgender extremist Tyler Robinson, who deemed him “hateful.” Twenty-six percent of survey respondents endorsed the shooter’s underlying logic, agreeing that Kirk’s “rhetoric was harmful and threatening to many people” and that it “should not be a surprise that his words had consequences.”