This story was originally reported by Mariel Padilla of The 19th. Meet Mariel and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
This story is part of Gen Z at the Ballot Box, a collaboration between States Newsroom and The 19th.
It was the beginning of her junior year, and 20-year-old Mia Tedesco was setting up a table for the campus open house where more than 200 recognized student organizations were preparing to recruit new students. Tedesco laid out bracelets that read “We are Charlie Kirk” — an homage to the prominent conservative media personality who was fatally shot at an event in Utah last year.
It was her first semester as president of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) at Butler University, a private school in Indiana, and she wanted to make sure her table looked nice.
“We are a more left-leaning college and university; we are a liberal arts school — I knew that signing up and coming and committing to college,” Tedesco said. “I knew I wanted to challenge it a little bit.”
She had civil conversations with many students who approached the table to learn more about TPUSA, the organization founded by Kirk, though some people scoffed or flipped her off. She considered setting up a camera for safety. Tedesco noticed that some people were taking handfuls of bracelets; then a friend told her that there were facetious posts about them on Yik Yak, a hyper-local social media platform for college students that lets users be anonymous. Many of the bracelets ended up in the trash.
It wasn’t the first time the conservative student organization had faced backlash: The previous semester, their chat on the platform GroupMe was hacked. Someone changed the name to “We love socialism,” updated chat names and photos, and kicked out members. The group chat, which was the main point of communication for the group, went from 70 members to 30.
“I know with the Democratic Club and many other clubs, there’s been loud dislike with us,” Tedesco said. “But I also know that if we don’t try, then we’re not using our voice like Charlie would want.”
Founded in 2012, TPUSA has grown to become one of the largest and most prominent conservative youth movements in the country. The September 2025 assassination of Kirk inspired conservative students across the country — many who had not even heard of Charlie Kirk or TPUSA prior — to continue the organization’s mission to champion conservative values. An evangelical Christian, Kirk advocated for gun rights; condemned abortion; held up men as the heads of households; denounced Islam; and called diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives “racist.” Within a year of his death, high school chapters jumped 180 percent and college chapters increased 60 percent — resulting in more than 1,500 college chapters as of September 2026, according to the organization.
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Eight days after Kirk’s death, his wife, Erika, was publicly appointed his successor to lead one of the most active organizations in conservative politics.
That same day, Tyler Bowyer, the chief operating officer of Turning Point Action — a sister organization to TPUSA founded in 2019 and designed for direct political action — and a longtime colleague and friend to the Kirks, posted a prediction of sorts on social media: “Charlie Kirk came and converted the young men. Erika Kirk is coming to convert the young women.”
While the number of chapters has exploded and thousands of young women have shown up to events, the organization’s influence and ability to mobilize young voters as it has in the past is uncertain.
The larger Republican base is fracturing, the war in Iran continues and gas prices are still on the rise. Disillusionment with MAGA and the Republican Party is growing among young conservatives. With that backdrop, some TPUSA members describe rising tension on campuses. Some college conservatives — especially Gen Z men — are frustrated with Erika Kirk’s leadership, wondering if she can deliver the same firebrand energy her husband did.
When Kirk was assassinated on September 10, 2025, Tedesco and a friend were in the process of starting a TPUSA chapter on Butler’s campus. For Tedesco, who grew up Catholic in a small town, it was important to create a space on campus for Christian representation, where students like her could incorporate their faith in day-to-day life and community. The assassination was “the final push” that got the paperwork across the finish line.
“Charlie was very outgoing when it came to the youth,” Tedesco said. “There was a lot of clickbaiting in his videos, but a lot of it was eye-opening. This person sees this way, that person sees that way — how can we get to a civil conversation? Charlie was able to have that connection as one human being with another.”
‘I’m not sure I can really trust her’
Andrew Roth, along with three other men, was in the process of filling out the proper documents to start a TPUSA chapter at Taylor University, a private Christian school in Upland, Indiana, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
“Prior to that, we were being very careful with how we were doing the paperwork because we wanted to make sure we got it right,” said Roth, now a junior and president of his TPUSA chapter. “Then Charlie died, and we were like, ‘OK, we just gotta send it.’”
Roth said 120 people showed up to an informal meeting to gauge interest in the new TPUSA chapter. During the club’s first semester as an official chapter in the spring of 2026, Roth said, he was surprised to see more women than men show up to events.
“In general, 20- to 21-year-old guys are just statistically more right-wing than girls are at this age,” said Roth, who is now a junior. “So I just kind of assumed it would be more guys than girls.”
Roth’s analysis bears out: Polling from The 19th and YouGov found that Gen Z women are far more likely than men to identify as liberal (38 percent vs. 28 percent) and as Democrats (37 percent vs. 21 percent).
Roth said some women were probably drawn to Erika Kirk. In June, she spoke at TPUSA’s annual Women’s Leadership Summit and addressed more than 2,000 young women, encouraging them to embrace their Christian faith and biblical womanhood — a theological concept that defines women’s role as homemakers, nurturers and submissive to their husbands — while critiquing modern feminism.
Nearly 20 percent of Gen Z women consider themself to be a “strong feminist” compared with less than 7 percent of Gen Z men, according to The 19th/YouGov poll.
“My husband always believed in this event because he could see young women being sold a vision of life that looked empowering on the surface, but left many of them increasingly dissatisfied underneath,” Erika Kirk said in her opening remarks at the summit. “He wanted to create a place for conservative women to connect with like-minded women and be poured into by female voices that would talk to them about the sanctity of life, about fiscal responsibility, about liberty and family.”
Erika Kirk’s message is less overtly political than that of her late husband. Her speeches tend to have fewer policy talking points. When asked in a Vanity Fair interview about her stance on Israel, for example, she responded that she doesn’t “sit around thinking about what Bibi Netanyahu is doing.”
“My brain bandwidth right now is honoring my husband, loving on my babies and building Turning Point to be everything it could be. I don’t really have the bandwidth to go down the rabbit holes of all of it,” Kirk said.
Erika Kirk did not respond to requests for comment.
By some measures, TPUSA has been wildly successful under Erika Kirk. In the past year, Turning Point PAC, Inc. raised the most political campaign money in its history, raking in around $9 million ahead of the 2026 midterms — compared with the $7 million it raised in the 2024 election cycle, when it became a core part of the Republican Party’s swing state strategy. The group’s nonprofit wing also reported a 30 percent spike in revenue, bringing in $115 million in 2025 on top of its $81 million endowment.
But her message does not appear to be resonating in the same way with many of the young men her husband appealed to: Roth, who is in a group chat with other TPUSA chapter presidents around the country, said people are frustrated and questioning whether Erika Kirk can be trusted. Roth pointed to one example when Erika Kirk praised the U.S. military’s war efforts in Iran under President Donald Trump — while her husband warned in April 2025 a new Middle East war would be “a catastrophic mistake.”
“People are looking at that and they’re wondering whether she’s just trying to toe the line so she doesn’t alienate Trump,” Roth said. “I’m not sure I can really trust her that much.”
Roth also noted that at least one TPUSA chapter disaffiliated from Turning Point in March, citing concerns with the national organization’s new direction.
Roth said he wants to hear more conversations about Israel’s involvement in U.S. foreign policy, the war in Iran, the Epstein files and government corruption — all topics Charlie Kirk was speaking about before his death.
“Charlie Kirk was fine to upset the people in power,” Roth said. “He had a more anti-establishment government stance. I feel like without him, they have fallen in line a little bit more.”
‘The one who was somehow able to hold it all together’
Amy Binder, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University, has studied how campuses shape young conservatives for more than a decade. While conducting research in 2008, Binder said the main organization for young conservatives was College Republicans. But things shifted a few years later when Charlie Kirk and TPUSA came to campuses.
“Charlie Kirk was an incredible entrepreneur who had a real faculty with connecting with donors and big money,” said Binder, who has written multiple books about politics on college campuses. “He was very friendly with the Trump family and had a really good sense of what would excite kids on campus.”
He painted College Republicans as old, fusty and not visible enough. Meanwhile, TPUSA became the “far more expressive, fun, energetic, confrontational group,” Binder added.
James Yock, a junior at Butler University, is both the vice president of his school’s TPUSA chapter and president of the College Republicans chapter.
“I think Turning Point resonates more with youth,” Yock said. “It’s easier to relate to someone who is younger like Charlie, more up to date with things compared to someone who our grandparents or parents might resonate with in the College Republicans.”
In the decade after its launch, Binder said she saw TPUSA’s footprint on American campuses grow. The group was able to raise enough money to funnel resources to campus organizations for events, campaigns and media efforts.
Binder said that she thinks some young conservatives, particularly young women, are fans of Erika Kirk. But Charlie Kirk was more than the leader of TPUSA — in many ways, he was the heir apparent for MAGA, she said. Without him, there’s a sense that it’s “all falling apart” as the feuding factions within the Republican Party — including the nationalists, post liberals and populists — battle for dominance.
Binder saw that at the December 2025 AmericaFest, TPUSA’s large annual event. Conservative personalities Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro clashed over Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes, a far-right commentator known for racist, misogynist and antisemitic views, and Shapiro attacked Candace Owens, a fringe personality, former TPUSA employee and close friend of Charlie Kirk’s, for her conspiracy theories. What united them, she said, was anti-trans and anti-Democrat talking points.
“If Charlie Kirk were still alive, would the base be fracturing in the same way that it is today?” Binder said. “When I listen to conservative opinion, both on the intellectual right and the more populist right, I hear that attributed to him a lot — that he was the one who was somehow able to hold it all together.”
‘No longer with Trump’
Erika Kirk took over TPUSA as young conservatives were growing increasingly frustrated with their party and searching for political leadership.
Polling consistently shows that Gen Z is unhappy with the current political situation, according to Melissa Deckman, political scientist and chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute. They are far less confident in major institutions, from the federal government to law enforcement to organized religion and the media.
“A lot of Gen Zers feel as though they play by the rules, but yet they’re unable to get ahead,” said Deckman, who also wrote the book “The Politics of Gen Z.” “The price of housing, the price of living, filling up a gas tank — all these things disproportionately hit them harder.”
And young conservative men tend to support more economically populist and sometimes progressive policies than older generations or Republicans of the past.
“The young men hate cancel culture, but they want healthcare,” Deckman said.
Roth said he and his peers are frustrated with most of the conservatives up for election.
“People my age don’t know if we even want to vote because I don’t feel like the Republican Party even represents me,” Roth said. “They just say the right things to get into power, and then they don’t do anything.”
Roth said a lot of people his age became particularly disenchanted and distrustful of government and politicians after living through the COVID-19 pandemic. He was in the eighth grade when the first shutdowns began.
“We were in favor of the 2024 Trump campaign because it was against all these things, it promised to expose all the secrets and clean up the system,” Roth said, noting Trump’s campaign promise to end forever wars, release the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and put America first. “So many people my age are no longer with Trump because they didn’t see that happen.”
Gen Z men who voted for Trump are more likely to say they now regret that decision than men Trump supporters in any other generation, according to polling from Navigator Research.
Some of the biggest conservative women’s voices are also turning on Trump. Influencers Savanna Faith Stone and Alex Clark — keynote speakers at TPUSA’s Women’s Leadership Summit this year — have given multiple interviews describing their sense of being betrayed by the president they helped elect in 2024.
In a June interview with CBC News, Stone said she’s decided not to vote in the upcoming midterm elections. She said Trump “made it seem like everything was going to become more affordable; now the economy’s worse. He promised no more wars in the Middle East, and we are in a war. So it’s disappointing.”
Clark, the host of a conservative and wellness podcast with more than half a million followers on Instagram, said in an interview with Politico that young women are considering not voting. She told the White House that people want “fight, fight, fight Trump” — not “ballroom Trump.”
“I feel some of the magic and the spark that helped us win 2024 is missing,” Clark added.
‘Where does the Republican Party go after Donald Trump?’
Eli LaGrange said he was in class at Indiana Wesleyan University, a private evangelical Christian school, when Charlie Kirk was killed. He didn’t know much about Kirk or TPUSA at the time.
“I was really curious to learn: Why did they kill this guy?” LaGrange said. “Political violence is always sad. I started watching his videos and talking to people. He was spreading a good message and encouraging conversations, which I thought was great, and it’s so sad to see a voice get silenced.”
LaGrange decided his campus — which he described as not having too many political clubs — could benefit from a TPUSA chapter. Along with a few like-minded friends, he collected more than 300 student signatures in support, drafted a constitution, and presented it to the student government and a board of teachers and faculty. After he addressed some concerns that a new chapter could cause tensions or make people on campus upset, LaGrange said, his proposal was approved.
Event participation has ranged anywhere from 15 people to more than 200. They’ve had a pickleball night to introduce themselves to new students, coffee meet-and-greets, debate tables and game nights. They’ve invited pastors to do a racial reconciliation night and even brought in the lieutenant governor to discuss faith and local politics.
“My elevator pitch to get people to join is focused on the importance of having political conversations,” LaGrange said. “Bad things happen when you don’t talk to the people you see, when you’re getting all your information and opinions from social media and the Internet. You need to go talk to people. You need to go have hard conversations with people.”
LaGrange said some of the hottest topics are immigration, Flock cameras and artificial intelligence. Perhaps most pressing, however, is trying to get conservatives to align on the future direction of the GOP.
“I think the biggest question is, ‘Where does the Republican Party go after Donald Trump and MAGA?’” LaGrange said.
LaGrange said that most of his campus TPUSA chapter’s leadership is women and that about half of the people who come to events are women. He sees young conservatives’ voices as critical to the conversation about who will lead the movement.
Some are pushing to advance MAGA while others call for a return to older, traditional conservative politics, hearkening back to past presidents like President Theodore Roosevelt. LaGrange said he falls in the latter camp.
“Organizations like Turning Point have a lot of influence, so whoever they give their voice to will probably lead,” LaGrange said. “So I think we need to take the time to decide who really is a good leader for the future of conservative politics.”
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