PHOENIX — Nearly a year has passed since Charlie Kirk was shot and killed debating politics on a Utah college campus, an assassination that shook the conservative movement and beyond. Now at the headquarters of Turning Point USA, which Kirk grew from a small youth organization into a movement with global reach and the ear of the White House, his team is increasingly focused on an electoral mission.
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To some extent, they’re gearing up for the midterm contest just eight weeks away, in which Republicans are bracing for losses. One reason those losses seem likely is erosion among the young voters Kirk played a major role in rallying in 2024. But Turning Point’s main focus is now 2028, when the group intends to play a key part in getting Kirk’s close friend, Vice President JD Vance, elected president.
“There is no doubt that we lost ground with the youth vote. Charlie saw it coming. Charlie was frustrated,” said Andrew Kolvet, Kirk’s friend, spokesman and right-hand man, referring to the administration’s handling of documents related to the deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, among other issues.
“And he knew that Iran — that it was going to be a tough pill to swallow for Gen Z,” he said.
Public polling shows younger Americans widely skeptical of the war. Just 16 percent of Americans younger than 30 and 18 percent of those 30 to 44 said they thought the decision to go to war with Iran was the right decision, a recent YouGov/Economist poll found, compared with 29 percent of those 45 to 64, and 36 percent of those 65 and older.
The gains Republicans saw with young voters two years ago have largely melted away — a decline that always was likely to happen during the midterm cycle but that may be more pronounced without young conservatives’ most charismatic leader urging them to keep the faith.
Top Turning Point officials are not expected to attend President Donald Trump’s midterm convention Wednesday and Thursday, which will overlap with the anniversary of the killing and memorial events.
The Sept. 10, 2025, assassination of Kirk, 31, at Utah Valley University rattled Americans across the political spectrum. Inside Turning Point USA’s office complex in Phoenix, tributes to Kirk abound. Floor-to-ceiling wall decals have been added with the timeline of his three-decade life: His birth in Illinois in 1993, founding Turning Point in 2012, becoming the youngest Republican National Convention speaker in 2016, launching a radio show in 2020, marrying Erika Kirk and becoming a father in 2021 and 2022. And another feat marked in 2024: “Crucial to Donald J. Trump’s re-election.”
In the year since Charlie Kirk’s killing, Turning Point has grappled with how to sustain impact in the absence of its young, energetic leader. Kirk had grown a following of millions, not just fans of his conservative rhetoric but also fierce liberal opponents who engaged with his content as critics.
The organization also has had to deal with a proliferation of conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death, many fueled by onetime allies, including Candace Owens, an early Turning Point employee who has attacked the organization since Kirk’s killing.
The organization remains in good financial shape, according to people inside and outside it, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release financial data. Turning Point experienced a surge in donations after Kirk’s death. While “The Charlie Kirk Show,” the daily podcast that has continued in his absence, has lost some of its audience without Kirk, Turning Point has seen continued growth on campuses. The number of new high school and college chapters is up 168 percent and 64 percent, respectively, comparing the past school year with the previous one.
Last week, his team was still carrying on the business: filming “The Charlie Kirk Show”; meeting to discuss strategy with Erika Kirk, who was named CEO after Kirk’s death; training new “ballot chasers,” the term the group’s campaign arm uses to describe field workers deployed in swing states; contacting business sponsors and donors; shipping orders of branded merchandise; planning a one-year memorial vigil.
Like others continuing the work at the organization, Tyler Bowyer, the chief operating officer of Turning Point Action who joined Kirk in the early days of Turning Point, described the last year as a “nightmare.” Bowyer described having to wake up day after day and “tell yourself that this is all real.” As a close friend and work partner with Kirk for more than a decade, the two men had talked on an hourly basis, Bowyer said.
Andrew Sypher, Turning Point USA’s chief field officer, said there was a point this spring when the conservative infighting, conspiracy theories and attacks on the organization felt like too much to handle, and that the progress Kirk had made seemed “fleeting.”
That prompted the remaining team to decide whether to “throw in the towel” or continue forward with Kirk’s fight — and by late spring and early summer, there was clear resolve to do the latter, Sypher said.
“He may not be proud of the movement as a whole right now,” Sypher said of Kirk, “but he’d definitely be proud of this organization that he left in good hands.”
Turning Point has been in the process of training and deploying a set of new, young, on-camera activists on college campus debates. Next week, it will launch another fall campus tour, featuring a rotating cast of guest speakers, including Donald Trump Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Ben Shapiro and various conservative influencers.
“You can’t snap your fingers and create a new Charlie Kirk, because it’s never going to happen,” Kolvet said. What serves as motivation to keep trying, he added, is the desire to prove to other would-be killers that they can’t successfully stop a movement.
The comeback is taking time, though.
“The best way that you fight the assassin’s veto is you prove — and in this case it has to be over time, maybe it’s over years — that when you do an act like that, there will be such an outpouring and an uprising that whatever thing you think you accomplish in the short term will be outweighed over the long term by tenfold,” Kolvet said. “We have to create so many new voices and so many new leaders and so much new momentum that it will be very clear that this is the wrong way to achieve your political ends.”
Vance stands as the closest thing to a current substitute for Kirk, both with his wide-reaching platform, and interest in debating and defending “America First” policies to young voters, Kolvet and other Turning Point leaders say. The 42-year-old vice president serves as a “generational bridge,” Kolvet said, and has signaled a desire “to speak to Charlie’s fans directly.”
Kirk and Vance had become close friends, with Kirk endorsing Vance early in his 2022 Senate primary even as Vance trailed in polls, and advocating for Trump to select Vance as his running mate in 2024. Top Turning Point officials remain in regular contact with Vance.
Within hours of Trump’s winning the 2024 election, Kirk was already strategizing about how to prepare for a Vance victory in 2028. The next day, he and Bowyer began writing a plan.
They sketched out an effort to build a new “red wall,” believing Democrats were bound to double down on longtime campaign infrastructure in the Upper Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states, and to seek to mobilize voters of color in Southern swing states.
Kirk identified three states to focus on: his home base of Arizona, neighboring Nevada and New Hampshire, a culturally libertarian state that a Republican presidential candidate hasn’t won since 2000.
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New Hampshire would have the added benefit, Kirk and crew noted, of being an early nominating state where Turning Point infrastructure could help boost Vance in a 2028 Republican primary. The group launched a new operation in Iowa last year, starting to recruit during the Iowa State Fair to have a presence in all the state’s 99 counties far ahead of the 2028 caucuses.
Erika Kirk endorsed Vance for 2028 at Turning Point’s annual year-end convention in December, though Vance has yet to say whether he will seek the nomination.
Since Charlie Kirk had always intended to work with an eventual Vance campaign to announce an official endorsement of his candidacy, Bowyer said Turning Point probably will still hold a large early-state rally — “in Charlie’s honor,” he added — to endorse if and when Vance runs.
Kirk still being alive wouldn’t have kept Trump from being underwater with new, young voters in a difficult midterm year, Kirk’s close allies concede.
“But maybe Trump would be one point better or two points better with young men,” said Blake Neff, producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” who has appeared on the show with Kolvet most days since Kirk’s death.
“I think it’s very clear Charlie played a major role in that surge we had in 2024, but I think Charlie himself knew that, by its very nature, that was going to be tough to stick in a permanent way,” he said.
In the weeks before Kirk’s death, Neff noted, he continued to float ideas he thought could cement Trump’s backing from younger voters, such as a project to build 10 million new affordable houses to make ownership more attainable for young people, a proposal the administration has not adopted.
Kirk had predicted a shift of young voters — including young men whom Trump had just picked up in the 2024 election — toward socialist policies if the Republican Party didn’t act faster to address affordability concerns. He told The Washington Post in a July 2025 interview that young people would embrace progressive populists such as Zohran Mamdani, now New York’s Democratic mayor.
“We have a serious problem of massive debt, sports-gambling debt, credit card debt, medical debt of a generation that I speak to,” Kirk said at the time. “This is going to be on us. We have to deliver a better economy, materially, for them, with better wages, higher incomes, hopefully more affordable housing.”
And Kirk’s closest allies are clear-eyed about the likely limits of his influence on Trump — of which he had more than most — when it comes to the Iran war.
Ahead of Trump’s June 2025 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Kirk played a leading role in an effort by war-skeptical conservative leaders to dissuade Trump from authorizing the bombings. Kirk spent days in Washington, at times working out of the White House, according to two people with knowledge of Kirk’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering, trying to ensure that Trump was hearing from voices who questioned the policy.
In his final weeks, Kirk continued to serve as a bridge between factions of Trump’s base — condemning antisemitism and framing Israel as a key U.S. ally, even as he spoke out against war with Iran and remained close with other MAGA commentators who expressed frustration at the state of the U.S. relationship with Israel.
Much of the controversy surrounded Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News personality, who has been accused of antisemitism because of his commentary about American Jews’ influence on U.S. policy toward Israel. Carlson has denied the accusation. In an interview in May with the New York Times, he said that “many American presidents have put Israel’s interests before our own,” including Trump, and that “no amount of ‘Oh, you’re an antisemite’ — which I’m not, and I’m never going to be — is going to stop me from noting that that’s outrageous.”
By August, Kirk faced pressure from a couple of significant donors who threatened to withhold millions of dollars if Turning Point allowed Carlson to appear at its annual year-end conference, Kirk went ahead and advertised that Carlson would be a featured speaker, announcing the lineup earlier than in years past.
Vance has increasingly faced pressure to disavow Carlson, a longtime friend and ally, but has declined to do so. Support for or opposition to Carlson has emerged as a litmus test for some in the conservative movement — with some traditional Republicans claiming Vance’s failure to denounce him will hurt his 2028 candidacy.
“I think Charlie would not have played any disavowal games,” Kolvet said when asked about Carlson’s controversial podcasts. Kirk probably would have “worked quietly” to “hammer out some sort of third way,” he said, adding, however, that even Kirk could never repair every rift on the right.
“I don’t like ascribing godlike qualities to Charlie,” Kolvet continued. “He was a man after all, and just a man.”
Last week, Kolvet, Erika Kirk and Charlie Kirk’s parents were among those in the courtroom in Utah as Tyler Robinson, the 23-year-old charged in Kirk’s killing. was deemed fit to stand trial, facing the death penalty.
Kolvet said he had assumed beforehand that he would feel an urge to jump the railing and take out his anger on Robinson. But once he sat down, just spitting distance away, Kolvet was surprised by how insignificant a figure Robinson seemed.
“He’s just — he’s another lost boy that we’re trying to reach,” Kolvet said, borrowing the term Kirk used to describe the listless, unemployed, debt-strapped men in their 20s whom he sought to inspire to become productive members of society. “That was striking to me, how little I considered him — which, I think, is a testament to how much of a giant Charlie is.”
This week, a memorial event will take place at Utah Valley University, though Kirk’s inner circle will remain in Phoenix, where they’ll gather with supporters outside the Turning Point headquarters.
“Politics is frustrating, and it’s a grind, and it’s slow, it’s tough, and it was going to be like that no matter what,” Neff said. “But it was more bearable with Charlie. You did get more wins with Charlie, I think.”
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