Charlie Kirk ’s killing on a Utah university campus last Wednesday has left a generation of conservatives without a leader, activists in the movement tell Vanity Fair. With his extensive online presence and close relationship to the White House, Kirk was a standard-bearer for young people coming to politics for the first time, and the network he created served as a haven for conservatives who felt out of sync with their liberal peers. In the aftermath of his death , young MAGA activists are grappling with what comes next.

“Charlie wasn’t just my boss; he was my mentor, my friend, and, in many ways, like an older brother,” 23-year-old Mikey McCoy, Kirk’s former chief of staff, tells VF. McCoy and his wife, 25-year-old Elizabeth, the administrative events director at Turning

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