I got kicked out of Turning Point USA’s IRL Tinder convention for young conservatives

They're is sick of my shit and I theirs

Author’s note: I’m working on a video with More Perfect Union about tradwives and the economy. If you’re a young woman interested in this topic (living in a single income household, have critiques of “girlboss feminism”, or want to share how the cost of living and other economic factors are informing your decisions about marriage and children, anything to do with the “trad” lifestyle) and are interested in participating in this project, please get in touch: madeline.peltz@gmail.com

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I’ll just get the “I got kicked out part” out of the way because it’s actually not that great of a story.

I was not given a reason why I was being removed. I behaved like a perfect angel as usual: I showed up on Friday and listened to the speakers until I couldn’t stand it anymore (mid-Hegseth), then returned on Saturday with Florida’s loveliest freelance videographer Harry Aaron. About fifteen minutes after we got there we were approached by a Very Serious Unidentified Security Guard who told us our credentials were invalid, and we were escorted off the premises.

We laid low for a few hours across the street from the convention center. We ended up being able to have a few conversations with young women outside the conference and we left without any drama.

The end.

I’ve covered Turning Point for years, and last month I wrote a viral report after I attended their conference in Grapevine, Texas for conservative young women, where founder Charlie Kirk told a 14 year-old in braces who wanted to be a journalist that she should only go to college to get an “MRS degree.” The clip I posted got nearly 3 million views.

One of my favorite TPUSA stories from my career was when I noticed that the animal on their “got raw milk?” t-shirt that they were selling was not a cow but a male bull with horns. After it ended up on Colbert, Turning Point transitioned the cow.

I actually forgot about this until Harry was asking me why we got kicked out. I learned a lot about livestock that week.

So yes, they are familiar with my work. Why they gave me a press pass for this past weekend’s Student Action Summit I don’t know, but it wasn’t mine for long.

TPUSA seems to think my beef is with their students, when it is actually with the people selling them false promises.

The young women I spoke to at the Student Action Summit expressed the same dread and uncertainty as many of their peers in Gen Z: lack of access to good, stable employment, financial barriers to education and healthcare, the prohibitively high cost of daily living and homeownership, alienation from a political system run by geriatric psychopaths with no stake in the future of this country. These are the concerns that just propelled Zohran Mamdani to a stunning upset in the New York City mayoral Democratic primary, and Charlie Kirk knows it. That’s why his opening speech made appeals to the economic prospects of young people.

“If we do not deliver on economic promises, especially for the next generation,” he said, “If we do not make you owners of this economy not just renters of this economy then you’re going to see a lot more Zohran Mamdanis.” May a thousand flowers bloom.

Kirk laid out a chilling solution, one we’ve heard before but adapted here for the young audience. “Those of you that are looking for a job — you should not have to compete against a foreigner,” he declared. “It is time for the largest deportation effort this country has ever seen.” Cheers across the ballroom.

This talking point was repeated back to me by virtually every person I spoke to as the central pillar of Trump’s plan to make the economy work for young people. In the wake of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which dismantles the last semblance of a social safety net and redirects public benefits upwards to the wealthiest through massive tax cuts, cleansing the nation of immigrants was TPUSA’s best and brightest hope for the future earners of this country.

The second plank of Turning Point’s economic agenda is, as Kirk said, is “to celebrate, embrace, platform, and sometimes, if necessary, subsidize getting married and having children.” What those subsidies might include went unexplained.

“If everyone watching online,” he said, “you want to find your future husband or wife, that’s why you should be here in Tampa, Florida because there’s a lot of eligible bachelor and bachelorettes here, a lot.” Cheers again, then Kirk went into his standard speech against women having careers.

The Student Action Summit felt like the IRL lovechild of Tinder and LinkedIn. Young women and men lingered in the hallways in groups, shaking hands and flirting and exchanging information. TPUSA events have a decidedly different vibe from Trump rallies — many of the attendees I spoke to at SAS were camera-ready and wanting to build a profile on social media and/or pursue a career in politics. On Saturday night, there was the “Palm Trees and Principles” Gen Z mixer, where college-aged Trump fans packed into Harpoon Harry’s Crab House across the street from the convention center, doing the Whip/Nae-Nae dance and hitting the YMCA in honor of their favorite president.

Harry and I were eating lunch at said crab house the mixer was being set up. The restaurant manager came through the space to give TPUSA event staff a tour, showing the giant American flag in the window, turning on highlight reels of Charlie Kirk’s on-campus debate videos on every TV in the place, and loading up the bar with at least a dozen cases of Sprite, Coca-Cola, and Fanta.

The Democratic establishment could learn something from this. There’s a lot of value in getting people together for a little thing known as hanging out and having fun. At a breakout group at the Young Women’s Leadership Summit, one high school chapter leader said that Turning Point USA paid for a mechanical bull to be brought into their school for the kids to ride. That’s the kind of thing you remember down the line. The problem is that when the Democrats bring their base together in person, they start asking questions like why did Joe Biden fund a genocide in Palestine and why didn’t David Plouffe give up corporate consulting clients while he was on the Harris campaign, a risky prospect for leadership clinging to power.

As for the tradwife thing, the young women I’ve been speaking to as I continue working on my forthcoming book PICK ME know that relying on a man in a single-income household isn’t a viable plan. Like many young people, regardless of political orientation, they expressed desires to have children and get married. It’s a fair estimate to say there’s a higher incidence of young women who want to be stay-at-home moms among conservatives than liberals. But the image of a “tradwife” portrayed by Hannah Neely of Ballerina Farms or valorized in the pages of the right-wing Evie Magazine just does not exist in real life.

Yes, the aesthetic at TPUSA conferences is flowy prairie dresses and romantic oversized bows in gently curled long hair. But the vast majority of people can’t live on a single income in this country, and no one I’ve spoken to has the luxury of being in denial about this. The only ones who do are those on the stage, making big money off selling this nostalgic fantasy for an America that never really existed in the first place.

Any time women gain traction in the fight for civil rights, from suffrage to Title IX to #MeToo and everything in between, the right wages a campaign to roll these gains back. There are repeated historical examples of propaganda campaign that allege that it’s feminism, not patriarchy, that’s making women miserable: all these rights we have now are stressing the tiny woman’s brain and she’s secretly pining to return to the days of old where daddy and husband shelter and care for her so she can stay home and avoid the confusing outside world. And time and again, this has been proven untrue. The truth usually includes both “I want rights and freedom from gendered violence” with “I don’t want to give up all my free time and intimate relationships for a faceless multinational corporation that doesn’t give a fuck if I live or die.” Imagine that.

ANNYYYWAYYYY here’s what I’m into:

• I was on

  COURIER
  ’s new podcast “
  How Is This Better?
  ” with Akilah Hughes talking young women, trad, MAHA and more. We had a great conversation and I hope you’ll take a listen.

• My work was also featured on

  Diabolical Lies
  with
  Katie Gatti Tassin
  and
  caro claire burke
  . They really get it, and I recommend.

I’m out of DC for the next week — heading to a cabin in the woods to work on the book. Thank you so much for reading, please share, leave a comment, and stay safe. Love you.