06/13/2026
With birth rates in steep decline, marriage falling out of fashion and the future of MAGA up in the air, Erika Kirk laid out a vision for the modern conservative woman. 🔗 https://on.wsj.com/4fFqe8u
Roughly 3,000 women descended on San Antonio last weekend for Turning Point USA’s Women’s Leadership Summit. The annual gathering had been the vision of Erika’s late husband, Charlie Kirk, an antidote to what he saw as the feminist indoctrination rampant on college campuses and in popular culture.
Before her husband’s assassination in 2025, Erika played more of a supporting role at Turning Point events, the feminine foil to Charlie’s brusqueness who modeled modern MAGA motherhood. Now, she leads the coalition of conservatives her husband built, with a sharpened focus on faith.
AmericaFest, the first Turning Point event held after Charlie’s death last year, had been a display of disagreement over free speech and antisemitism, a struggle to keep MAGA’s fragile federation intact.
Here, there was no such conflict and hardly any discussion of politics. One speaker after another followed Erika’s lead, preaching the tenets of Christian womanhood to a congregation eager to be shepherded.
“Getting to hear them talk about, literally, everything you could possibly need to be a good woman, a good wife, a good mother, a good daughter of Christ,” said Lainie Shields, a 20-year-old from California, “it literally is, like, the guidebook for me.”