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\n Less than a week after her husband was killed in the most high-profile political assassination in a generation, Erika Kirk convened a Zoom call for the 1,500 employees at Turning Point USA, the organization Charlie Kirk led until his death.\n <\/p>\n
\n She assured those on the call that they would not lose their job, that \u201ceverything is stable and safe,\u201d Alex Clark, the host of one of TPUSA\u2019s most popular podcasts, told CNN in an interview. The message was clear, Clark said, with Erika Kirk saying that they would \u201ccarry on Charlie\u2019s mission exactly as he had planned.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The call was seen as an indication that Erika intends to be at the forefront of taking TPUSA forward, according to Clark.\n <\/p>\n
\n On Thursday, the organization announced that she will serve as its next CEO and chair of the board, in accordance with her late husband\u2019s wishes.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI think she will do everything in her power to protect the legacy of Charlie,\u201d Clark told CNN. \u201cAnd I think all employees would love nothing more than to be able to have her at the helm steering the ship.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Nearly a week earlier, in her first public speech two days after his assassination, Erika Kirk had issued a warning and a vow.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cYou have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife,\u201d she said last Friday. \u201cThe cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI\u2019ll make Turning Point the biggest thing this nation has ever seen,\u201d she said. \u201cThe movement will not die. I refuse to let that happen.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Even before his death, she had been seen as a galvanizing force for young conservative women, to whom she espoused prioritizing marriage and motherhood over career \u2014 even as she had her own business pursuits.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI would not want anyone else to take over Turning Point besides her,\u201d said nineteen-year-old Faith Merrill, who has been involved with TPUSA for the past three years. \u201cShe is just this motherly figure for us. Charlie was that father figure and she is the mother figure for us.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n To Merrill, Erika Kirk \u201chas just awoken something in Gen. Z conservatives, and I can confidently say she will have Turning Point thrive and grow bigger than ever before.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n On Sunday, Erika Kirk will emerge once again in public \u2013 this time, at her husband\u2019s memorial \u2013 where she is due to be one of the speakers in a lineup that includes President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.\n <\/p>\n
\n Her tone and her message will be closely watched \u2014 by a nation divided over Charlie Kirk\u2019s legacy and by followers in a movement in which she has already played an important, though often contradictory, role.\n <\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/02-gettyimages-2234472302.jpg\")
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\n Erika Frantzve was raised in Scottsdale, Arizona by her mother after her parents divorced when she was young.\n <\/p>\n
\n She studied political science in college and was briefly an NCAA basketball player. \u201cI have played basketball since I was five, super tomboy, didn\u2019t like dresses,\u201d she once said.\n <\/p>\n
\n She later went on to be crowned Miss Arizona USA in 2012, acknowledging in introductory videos for the pageant that she was a late bloomer in some respects.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI think I always had that girly girl hidden within me,\u201d she said in her introductory video in the pageant.\n <\/p>\n
\n Six years later, she met Charlie Kirk \u2013 five years her junior \u2013 in New York City, well after he started Turning Point USA. The two have often told their origin story: Originally, he reached out via a direct message on Instagram, asking to meet with her after she attended a TPUSA event with a family member.\n <\/p>\n
\n Their meeting at \u201cBob\u2019s Burgers\u201d in Manhattan in 2018 was initially intended as a job interview, they both have said, with him peppering her with questions.\n <\/p>\n
\n Then he quickly changed course. \u201cI am not going to hire you, I am going to date you,\u201d Erika recalled him saying, during a speech at a TPUSA event.\n <\/p>\n
\n The two were engaged by 2020 and married the following year. They have two children, a 1-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl.\n <\/p>\n
\n Though she did not have a public track record of conservative activism before meeting Kirk, her late husband has described her as coming from a \u201cfiercely right-wing family.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Erika has said her grandfather, a Swedish immigrant who served in two wars, was \u201calways super far right,\u201d and that she became, \u201c100% more conservative\u201d after she became a mother, \u201cwhich I didn\u2019t think was possible,\u201d she added.\n <\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/03-gettyimages-2235141973.jpg\")
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\n As Kirk\u2019s wife, she has shared much about these personal ideals, which hew closely to conservative Christian values, on her social media, and through public appearances with him: Faith, marriage, motherhood \u2014 and in that order of importance.\n <\/p>\n
\n In discussing her role in the relationship with her husband, she has often used a provocative word \u2014 submission.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI love submitting to Charlie because he is a phenomenal leader,\u201d she has said. \u201cI want him to come home and be so unbelievably loved on. To be refueled.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n In their public appearances, they have talked openly about what they describe as fulfilling the biblical role and covenant of marriage: Charlie takes care of the finances, earning the money for the family, while she focuses on raising their kids, cooking and running the household to support him \u2014 an arrangement they encourage other young people to pursue.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cAs a woman you are meant to be the guardian of your home \u2014 to be the helpmate of your husband,\u201d she told an audience at the Bloom conference, a Christian event. \u201cBe that biblical wife you are supposed to be for him, and honor the order that God had created marriage to be in.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWhen I met Charlie \u2013 that was it, I could care less about the career,\u201d she said last year at Turning Point\u2019s Young Women\u2019s Leadership Summit.\n <\/p>\n
\n Merrill, who says she has sometimes lacked self-confidence, was first brought into the TP USA community by her mother.\n <\/p>\n
\n Listening to Erika Kirk \u201cignited something\u201d in her and her friends, Merrill said, and has committed them to the conservative movement.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt\u2019s people like Erica Kirk who transform these shy girls, these girls who have no idea what they want do into people like her.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI think if she continues that down the line Gen. Z will become extremely conservative and we will stop apologizing for things we don\u2019t need to apologize for,\u201d Merrill said.\n <\/p>\n
![\"Erika](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/04-h-16379438.jpg\")
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\n For all her emphasis on a woman\u2019s role in the home, Erika Kirk has many endeavors outside of it.\n <\/p>\n
\n Besides being a public facing figure alongside her husband \u2014 one half of a partnership touting traditional marriage \u2014she has a devotional podcast and a Christian clothing company, Proclaim Streetwear, for which Charlie Kirk had modeled. She says she has pursued a doctorate in Biblical studies, and once founded a non-profit.\n <\/p>\n
\n She has spoken with pride about female entrepreneurship \u2014 but at the same time decried \u201cboss babe culture\u201d as \u201ctoxic\u201d and \u201cantithetical to the Gospel.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n She has repeatedly said that building a family is far more important as a woman.\n <\/p>\n
\n Yet there was a lot of momentum inside TPUSA for Erika Kirk to take a CEO role, according to Clark, who told CNN that she sees an avenue for Erika operating behind the scenes of the organization.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI think it\u2019s really important for the person who knew Charlie better than anyone in this world to have a say in upcoming decisions and the direction the company goes and what different goals are set and what projects we decide to go after next.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n What comes next could be defined by Erika Kirk, who could not be reached to speak to CNN. In the past, she has played a softer image to counterbalance to her outspoken, sometimes fiery husband.\n <\/p>\n
\n Days before Charlie Kirk\u2019s death, Turning Point USA announced a change to their maternity leave policy, to expand paid leave for mothers to six months. Clark said that while the policy came from Charlie, she perceived that the change was very likely inspired by his family.\n <\/p>\n
\n As for the college campus debates Charlie Kirk was known for, Clark believes those will be left up to people other than Erika Kirk.\n <\/p>\n
\n Her leadership prowess seemed evident just 48 hours after her husband\u2019s death.\n <\/p>\n
\n In her speech last week, she directed \u201cyoung people who felt inspired by my husband\u2019s faith,\u201d to join and become involved in TPUSA.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIf there isn\u2019t a chapter, you can\u2019t find one, then start one. There is no excuse,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n
\n In the first 48 hours after her appeal, Turning Point received more than 32,000 inquiries to start new campus chapters, according to its spokesperson, Andrew Kolvet, adding: \u201cto put that in perspective, TPUSA currently has 900 official college chapters and around 1,200 high school chapters, with a presence of 3,500 total.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n By midweek, it was up to 54,000 inquiries.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook Tweet Email Link Less than a week after her husband was killed in the most high-profile political…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-154617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}