Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest takes place this weekend, one of the largest gatherings of America’s right wing from across the country.

This is the first AmFest since the assassination of the group’s founder, Charlie Kirk, on Sept. 10 at Utah Valley University. The vacuum left behind after Kirk’s death has opened the movement up to change, which can be glimpsed at the conference this weekend.

The event, which is being held in Phoenix, Arizona, from Dec. 18 to 21, will include more than 60 guest speakers, including Vice President JD Vance. The 115 sponsors of the event include companies like TikTok and the John Birch Society. Meta was also listed as a sponsor until they were removed without notice.

On the first night, Erika Kirk signaled her control of the organization and its battling fractions in her opening address.

“You may not agree with everyone on this stage this weekend, and that’s OK,” Kirk told a packed audience. “Welcome to AmericaFest.”

Turning Point USA (TPUSA) draws in students as part of its mission to “promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government,” and has been instrumental in promoting right-wing ideologies among young people.

This year will include more students than any other TPUSA event to date, according to the TPUSA-affiliated Human Events Daily senior editor Jack Posobiec – himself a far-right media personality who rose to prominence in 2016 by promulgating the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

The boom in student participation in TPUSA’s right-wing project coincides with a trend of young people seeming to align more with far-right political views.

This comes on top of the rising popularity of Nick Fuentes, a virulently anti-semtic live streamer whose followers call themselves “Groypers,” with the same demographic.

According to the Fall 2025 Yale Youth Poll, voters from 18 to 22 years old are more likely to hold various anti-semitic beliefs than other age groups. This demographic was most likely to agree with the statement that Jews in the U.S. have too much power – 15% strongly agreed, more than double the average across all age groups for this response. Another 12% somewhat agreed.

A Stanford Review article published on Nov. 14 quotes conservative columnist Rod Drehr as saying about 30% of young, conservative staffers are fans of Fuentes. The article goes on to estimate that roughly a quarter of Stanford freshmen exhibit Groyper-adjacent beliefs.

While Fuentes and TPUSA have long clashed, the beliefs the two foster and encourage among young people have converged since the Groyper Wars of 2019

In an October livestream, Fuentes claimed that Charlie Kirk was becoming increasingly aligned with Groypers before he was killed. Part of this alignment, according to Fuentes, was because Kirk had been becoming more “pro-white.”

“AmericaFest 2025 would’ve been Groyper Fest,” Fuentes said.

He also suggested that Kirk’s increasing opposition to giving more federal aid to Israel was going to make AmFest the most anti-Israel event TPUSA has ever held, which Fuentes says is a motive for Israel to carry out the Kirk assassination.

In May 2024, Turning Point Action Chief Operating Officer Tyler Bowyer appeared on Charlie Kirk’s podcast to say Groypers were “OK-ish” and defended them as just wanting to have an honest debate.

The comments reflected a shift in the relationship between TPUSA and Groypers, which had been filled with tension up to that point.

Fuentes reacted to the remarks by lauding the infiltration of the organization by Groypers.

“That’s because they all work for Turning Point now,” Fuentes added. “They can’t hire anybody that isn’t a groyper because there aren’t anybody [sic] under 25 that aren’t a groyper.”

But as Fuentes and TPUSA seem to increasingly overlap, others in the right-wing media are falling out with the group.

Candace Owens, who left TPUSA in 2019 after making comments lauding Adolf Hitler, has been at the forefront of promoting conspiracy theories about Kirk’s assassination. Owens pointed to the government’s supposed lack of investigation into Kirk’s death as proof of conspiracy, implying a connection with Israel and even TPUSA employees.

Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, who has taken a more prominent role in TPUSA since the assassination of her husband, met with Owens for a four and a half hour meeting on Dec. 15 in Nashville in light of Owens’ accusations. In an X post made after the meeting, Erika claimed it was fruitful.

“Had a very productive conversation with [Owens],” Erika wrote. “More to come from both of us.”

In a livestream the very next day, Owens reassured listeners that she still believed there was a conspiracy behind the assassination.

Tim Pool, a regular guest at AmFest, claimed on a Dec. 9 episode of his livestream Timcast that Owens’ conspiracy peddling has resulted in death threats against him and others affiliated with TPUSA, including alleged gunshots heard outside of his home.

“She is a degenerate cunt,” Pool said. “She is burning everything down and she’s gloating and smiling while she does it.”

On Nov. 18, Pool announced TPUSA disinvited him from AmFest, which he theorized on his livestream was because of his “anti-interventionist” stance, meaning specifically that he does not support aid to Israel. This puts him in the same position as Candance Owens and Tucker Carlson, according to him. While Owens was not invited to speak at the event, Carlson remains a featured speaker, potentially because “it would be too difficult to cancel him,” Pool said.

Carlson, the former high-rated Fox News pundit turned podcaster, remains a popular figure on the right. His X profile has 16.8 million followers and episodes of the Tucker Carlson Show typically attract more than a million views each.

Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes on Oct. 27 has garnered nearly seven million views as of Dec. 17, making it one of his most watched videos. The interview resulted in a split in the American right, with many upset by the optics of boosting a notorious anti-semite.

Carlson was one of the speakers at the Charlie Kirk memorial in Phoenix on Sept. 22, where he made remarks that likened Kirk to Jesus and heavily implied that Jews were responsible for the assassination in September.

Recounting the killing of Jesus, Carlson theorized what the covert meeting was like that led to the decision to have Jesus executed.

“I can just sort of picture the scene in a lamp-lit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus, thinking about — what do we do about this guy telling the truth about us? We must make him stop talking,” Carlson said. “And there’s always one guy with the bright idea, and I can just hear him say, ‘I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we just kill him? That’ll shut him up, that’ll fix the problem.’”

In his interview with Fuentes, Carlson recalled the event as simply “recounting the gospel.”

Ben Shapiro spoke on stage after Erika Kirk’s opening remarks, wasting no time to take a swing at Owens.

“The people who refused to condemn Candace’s truly vicious attacks, and some of them are speaking here tonight, are guilty of cowardice,” Shapiro said, suggesting that Carlson was also in his crosshairs. “If you host a Hitler apologist, Nazi loving, anti-American piece of refuse like Nick Fuentes … you ought to own it.”

Carlson himself was one of the speakers to follow Shapiro, and he accused the Daily Wire pundit of trying to cancel him.

“‘Shut up, Nazi’ is no different from ‘shut up, racist,’” he said.

While the right-wing media bickers and trafficks in xenophobia, pundits are also vying to fill the space left in the wake of Kirk’s killing. This year’s AmericaFest may provide a platform for those who seek to align with the influential group Kirk founded.

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