By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice
I arrived late to the Young Conservatives of Colorado happy hour on Saturday night, nearly an hour after it had begun. The happy hour was already winding down in an outdoor hotel lounge in Phoenix. A small circle of college students and recent grads sat around a fireplace after a full day at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest. Some were holding drinks. The tone was relaxed amid laughter, but not rowdy.
They stayed long enough to share their thoughts.
By Saturday night, AmericaFest had already moved through its most turbulent phase. The opening night featured sharp internal disagreements that spread quickly across social media, forcing questions about tone, unity and the future direction of the conservative movement.
Attendees had already heard forceful arguments about coalition, faith, debate and division. Among this group, the conversation had moved past the spectacle.
Several of the students and young activists interviewed for this story gathered for a group photo during a Saturday evening break at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix.
Long before Glenn Beck, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Erika Kirk and her surprise guest Nicki Minaj, and finally Vice President JD Vance took the stage on Sunday, the young conservatives gathered there were already articulating the same themes that would later define the conference’s closing message.
Unity over infighting. Courage without cruelty. Faith as grounding rather than branding. Debate without dehumanization. And action over performance.
This was not a movement waiting to be instructed. It was one already in formation.
When listening changes everything
Sara Barahman came back to AmericaFest to reconnect with people she once studied alongside. Barahman left Colorado Christian University in 2025 with a political science degree and headed to California soon after. She is now working toward a master’s in public policy at Pepperdine University.
Barahman said her early views of Donald Trump and the conservative movement reflected how politics were presented to her at the time. As a minority woman, she said she was expected to see herself as “oppressed” and to fall in line with groupthink about what she was supposed to believe.
For Barahman, it came down to listening.
“I was told to think a certain way,” she said. “When I decided to actually listen for myself, what I heard was the complete opposite.”
This changed how she understood Donald Trump and the conservative movement. Instead of hatred, she said, she heard arguments centered on law and order and national identity.
She didn’t keep that to herself. “I started speaking out when I was 14,” Barahman said. “And adults came after me for it.”
The pushback that followed didn’t slow her down. Faith, she said, kept her grounded without turning her inward or bitter.
But when it comes to disagreements within the movement, Barahman said that standard still matters. “We need to do this in love and grace and truth,” Barahman said.
By the time Nicki Minaj took the stage and said, “It’s okay to change your mind,” Barahman had already reached the same conclusion.
Erika Kirk and Nicki Minaj participate in a live discussion during AmericaFest in Phoenix.
For Barahman, changing her mind was not weakness. It was conviction.
Unity isn’t optional
Jonathan Radcliffe came into AmericaFest already thinking about what unity would require going forward.
Radcliffe is a senior studying political science at Colorado Christian University and serves as the student body president. He’s also worked inside the Colorado state legislature. He said that combination influenced how he evaluated AmericaFest from the start.
“What we saw on opening night was disappointing for me,” Radcliffe said.
Radcliffe was clear that disagreement itself was not the problem. He questioned whether public infighting belonged at the largest conservative gathering of the year, particularly with critical elections ahead.
“If we’re too busy focusing on the things we disagree with within our movement,” he said, “the more ground we’re going to give Democrats to have a big election in 2026.”
For Radcliffe, the stakes weren’t theoretical. They came from seeing the consequences up close.
“I worked at the state legislature this last session, and that was by far the worst legislative session in state history,” he said. The scope of what passed that year, he added, changed how he thought about the cost of infighting.
For Radcliffe, unity is not a slogan. It is a strategic necessity, especially in Colorado, where registered independents outnumber both Republicans and Democrats.
He pointed to Charlie Kirk’s approach as a model for managing disagreement without turning it into public warfare.
“It’s easy to call yourself a conservative,” Radcliffe said. “It’s another thing to show up.”
Truth requires practice
For Jess Clark-Scott, disagreement is not something to avoid. It is a skill to develop.
Clark-Scott is a lifelong Grand Junction resident and a political science major at Colorado Mesa University, where he serves as secretary of the campus Turning Point USA chapter.
“Debate is a skill,” Clark-Scott said. “You don’t just wake up good at it.”
He said confidence came with experience and honest self-evaluation.
“As much as I hate it, go back and rewatch clips of yourself,” he said. “That’s how you get better.”
Clark-Scott said preparation and restraint matter more than performance. That distinction was later echoed from the main stage when Glenn Beck told the audience, “People are not your enemies. Lies are your enemies.” Beck urged young conservatives to resist turning disagreement into personal animosity and instead aim their energy at falsehoods themselves.
Glenn Beck speaks to youth during AmericaFest’s final day in Phoenix.
“I had a completely different speech prepared,” Beck told the crowd.
He said he changed it after watching the night before, choosing instead to speak to young people who had watched promises break and rules change over the years. “You are not crazy. You are not lazy. You are not imagining things.”
For Clark-Scott, recognizing lies was only the first step. As he thought about how he had learned to debate more effectively, Clark-Scott said, “The art of spotting a lie is really important. You can challenge someone without tearing them down.”
He argued that without organized debate, campuses quickly become echo chambers.
Action and humanity
Scott Shamblin spoke less about speeches and more about people.
Shamblin described a year spent mostly on the road, driving more than 30,000 miles across Colorado to organize and attend legislative meetings. A Gen Z activist from Arapahoe County, he serves as president of Colorado Right to Life. It was Shamblin’s first time at AmericaFest.
“For me, coming here wasn’t for the big speakers,” Shamblin said. “Meeting the people has been the biggest effect for me personally.”
He described AmericaFest as a rare chance to connect with others doing similar work in a state where conservative activism can feel isolating.
That focus explained why Shamblin’s favorite moment so far had nothing to do with a headline speaker.
It was Grandma Jeanie.
Shamblin was referring to Jeanie, the Target employee who went viral after calmly enduring verbal harassment while wearing a Charlie Kirk shirt at work. The moment was replayed on stage by Benny Johnson before Jack Posobiec brought Jeanie out to speak.
“She’s just a normal grandma,” Shamblin said. “I told her she was my favorite part of the whole conference.”
Jeanie encouraged kindness and restraint, saying anger would only make things worse.
“We need to be men of action,” Shamblin said. “But action doesn’t mean yelling.”
Leadership in real life
James Ruehmann experienced the weekend from the position of someone responsible for others.
Ruehmann serves as president of the Turning Point USA chapter at Colorado Mesa University and described the event as a leadership test.
“It’s like herding cats,” he said.
Ruehmann warned that silencing debate or casting people out over disagreements often backfires.
“If you don’t talk about these issues,” he said, “you’re going to force people to seek out more radical voices.”
His focus, he said, is participation rather than silencing disagreement.
When the stage caught up
By Sunday, the conference’s closing speakers began articulating what many of the young conservatives had already been saying in smaller conversations.
Glenn Beck spoke about agency in a broken system. Speaker Mike Johnson followed with a constitutional argument for dignity and responsibility in a self-governing republic.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson delivers remarks during AmericaFest in Phoenix.
Vice President JD Vance closed the conference with a warning against infighting and a call to turn urgency into participation.
For many of the young people gathered around the fire the night before, the messages sounded familiar.
From fracture to formation
“The conservative movement is best when we think about what unites us instead of what divides us,” Radcliffe said.
After acknowledging the frustration many young conservatives feel—with institutions they see as broken and progress that feels stalled—Vice President JD Vance urged them to “be impatient” and to “use that desire for justice for your country as fuel to get involved.”
Vice President JD Vance speaks to attendees during the closing session of AmericaFest in Phoenix.
Speaker Johnson reinforced the principle that makes that urgency sustainable. Charlie Kirk, he said, “loved vigorous debate, but he loved people more.”
The charge and the caution captured where the weekend had already arrived.
AmericaFest did not manufacture that posture. It revealed it.
The next generation isn’t waiting for instructions. They’re already doing the work.
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