AmericaFest After Charlie Kirk: A Movement Mourning, Fracturing, and Searching for Its Future
AmericaFest 2025 was meant to honor the legacy of Charlie Kirk. Instead, it exposed deep fractures inside the post-Trump conservative movement—over conspiracy theories, antisemitism, foreign policy, and the limits of “open debate.” As thousands gathered in Phoenix to mourn Kirk’s assassination, the movement he helped build found itself at a crossroads between discipline and disorder.