A few months ago, I attended the Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Grapevine, Texas. In a sprawling convention center in a Dallas suburb, approximately 3,000 women came together to fight wokeism, praise Donald Trump, and compliment each other on their bedazzled cowboy boots. The summit was hosted by the conservative-youth organization Turning Point USA, founded by the late Charlie Kirk. Throughout the weekend, Kirk was the anchor of the conference, hosting Q&A sessions with his wife, Erika, a former beauty queen wearing a puff-sleeve pastel-pink minidress, brusquely answering shy teenage girls’ questions about everything from Israel to the dangers of ChatGPT (“It’s not made from the energy of the divine”) and instructing them how to enter a giveaway to meet speaker Riley Gaines (“Women are better rule followers than men, so I’m sure you all are going to get that right”).
