\n \u201cThe golden age of America is upon us,\u201d Trump declared from the stage.\n <\/p>\n
\n But this year, the mood inside AmericaFest is far more unsettled. The loss of Charlie Kirk, the charismatic activist who founded Turning Point USA and was killed in September<\/a> by a gunman, has cast a grim pall over the event and left an unmistakable void in the movement. Meanwhile, many of the promises Trump made to the group last year \u2014 including \u201clower prices,\u201d an end to foreign wars and \u201cgenerational change\u201d \u2014 have yet to materialize. Prices remain high, foreign entanglements are expanding and young people are deeply pessimistic about their future.\n <\/p>\n \n In a dozen conversations with CNN, AmericaFest attendees expressed mixed views of Trump\u2019s return to Washington and the world they are just entering. Some remain optimistic that Trump will find a way to improve their lives \u2014 that his immigration crackdown will create jobs and lower housing costs, his energy policies will lower gas prices and electric bills and his dismantling of the Department of Education will end the cycle of college debt.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe\u2019re only one year into this administration,\u201d said Chloe Szot, a 27-year-old California teacher.\n <\/p>\n \n Others are less willing to wait.\n <\/p>\n \n Gasca told CNN, \u201cUnless something changes, I plan not to vote, at least for president, in 2028.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n For many of AmericaFest\u2019s young attendees, the new realities of American life are settling in.\n <\/p>\n \n While Szot believes homeownership remains within reach for her generation, it\u2019s with a caveat that previous middle-class generations didn\u2019t always have to consider.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI think 100% I will be able to buy a house, but it also depends on where you live,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n \n Luke Phelps is starting a family soon in the Phoenix area, and the 25-year-old said he and his wife expect to continue working. It\u2019s a reality that couples are increasingly confronting \u2014 both spouses now work in about half of households in a country where two-thirds of $100,000 earners told The Harris Poll they\u2019re just getting by.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cNothing\u2019s going to be the same as it always has,\u201d Phelps said. \u201cOne income was great. Now you need two, right? Obviously you count it as sad, but every generation deals with something.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The road to adulthood once followed a familiar path: move out of the parental home, find a spouse, get a job and have kids. Today, fewer than a quarter of Americans had reached all four milestones by age 34, according to the US Census Bureau. Homeownership remains elusive as well. Earlier this year, the National Association of Realtors reported that the median age of a first-time homebuyer had reached 40, the highest on record.\n <\/p>\n \n The generation entering adulthood also faces new pressures their parents did not. More teenagers acknowledge they spend too much time on social media and expressed concern about its effects on their mental health, according to an April Pew Research Center study<\/a>. The Harvard Kennedy Institute of Politics found in a recent poll<\/a> that adults under 30 are three times more likely to believe artificial intelligence will take away opportunities from them than create them.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cYou don\u2019t want to start college and get through it and the job that you wanted isn\u2019t there anymore,\u201d said Tyler Osbon, a 19-year-old college student from West Monroe, Louisiana. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely getting harder to see what you want to do with your life, and then, is that going to be enough to support you in the future?\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n With Kirk\u2019s help, Trump\u2019s campaign appeared far more attuned with how this generation, particularly young men, had internalized their struggles, said John Della Volpe, director of polling at Harvard. Trump tailored his message to those anxieties and promised a way out. The results were undeniable: Trump saw a 7-point jump in support from voters under 30 from 2020 to 2024, according to CNN exit polls, the largest increase of any age group.\n <\/p>\n \n But one year into Trump\u2019s return to Washington, \u201cdoomerism\u201d has become a prevailing sentiment among young people. Just 13 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds believe the country is headed in the right direction, the Harvard poll found. It\u2019s a reality that is increasingly flashing warnings for Trump and Republicans heading into the midterms.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cOver the last decade it\u2019s been incredibly challenging for people to feel good about the direction of the country especially among Gen Z, which has never seen America united or at its greatest,\u201d said Della Volpe.\n <\/p>\n \n Kirk, who spent a decade connecting with high school and college-age voters, warned that the status quo was not sustainable and would have electoral ramifications for Republicans. In one of his final interviews, he accused his party and its donors of being \u201cblind to the suffering\u201d of the young people who helped deliver Trump\u2019s victory and a Senate majority.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThey should be saying, \u2018Thank you, younger voters,\u2019\u201d Kirk said.\n <\/p>\n \n Will Denton, a 27-year-old working in commercial real estate, agreed with Kirk\u2019s concerns. Standing under a mural of the slain leader at AmericaFest, Denton said it will take \u201clots of little, little Charlie Kirks that are activated by his\u201d example to enact change.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI don\u2019t think (Republicans) are doing enough,\u201d Denton said. \u201cYoung people are angry, young people are frustrated, and young people are succumbing to another scourge on our society, which is a message of systemic conspiracy against you.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The antidote, Kirk contended before he could more widely press the case, was policy aimed at giving young people a path to the American dream. If Republicans continued to apply the \u201cpull yourself up by the bootstraps\u201d philosophy that had guided conservative governance for decades, Kirk predicted that the GOP would squander its hard-won advantage with young voters.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cEven if you don\u2019t care about them, you\u2019re not going to like the politics that comes,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n There are already signs of a slide back to the left. In governor races in Virginia and New Jersey, young people overwhelmingly backed Democrats, exit polls found. Democrats now hold a 13-point edge over Republicans among young people asked which party should control Congress after 2026, according to the Harvard poll.\n <\/p>\n \n Many young voters say they plan to express their dissatisfaction by sitting out the next election. While that sentiment is strongest among independents, apathy is more pronounced among Republicans than Democrats. Only half of young people who voted for Trump in 2024 said they definitely plan to vote in 2026, compared to 66 percent of Kamala Harris\u2019 young voters.\n <\/p>\n \n Divisions remain, though, over whether Trump should attempt to win over the generation with more targeted policies. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro delivered a different message to young people on Thursday: \u201cGet off your ass and go do the thing.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cFinish high school, get a job, get married, have kids, go to church. Those are all in your control,\u201d he said from a studio at AmericaFest. \u201cYou pretending those things are not in your control is grievance culture BS.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Phoenix \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 At 23, Caleb Gasca has checked off several traditional markers of adulthood. He graduated college, found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-194822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Erika](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-12-19t234557z-1241219586-rc2zjiazr6hs-rtrmadp-3-usa-turningpoint.JPG\")
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