A year after Charlie Kirk was killed, young conservatives navigate a divided movement

Charlie Kirk speaks at Turning Point's Believers' Summit on July 26, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida. Alex Brandon/AP hide caption

When Jacob York found out that Charlie Kirk had been fatally shot, he was at baseball practice. Standing in the outfield, he broke down in tears. That night, he decided that Kirk's organization, Turning Point USA, should have a chapter on his campus. So he got to work starting one himself.

"I feel like there [were] many of us who had that wake-up call," said York, 21, who attends Olivet Nazarene University, a small Christian school south of Chicago.

"I think I submitted the request to start a chapter six times," he recalled. "There were so many requests that it kept saying, 'Oops, try again later.'"

Kirk's death one year ago on the campus of Utah Valley University was as stunning for his followers as it was painful. A little more than a decade earlier, he had founded Turning Point with the goal of getting more young people involved in conservative politics. By the time he died at age 31, he had become one of the most revered figures on the right , especially among Generation Z and millennial conservatives.

From students like York all the way to the upper echelons of the Republican Party, Kirk's death was seen as a call to action. In the days following the shooting, Turning Point reported an initial surge of interest among college and high school students looking to start chapters.

His widow, Erika Kirk, spoke about that momentum in her first public remarks, just days after his death.

"If you thought that my husband's mission was powerful before, you have no idea," said Erika Kirk, who has since taken over as Turning Point's CEO. "You have no idea what you've just unleashed across this entire country, and this world."