Trump supporters find safe space at women’s gathering

DALLAS — The young women had come from 48 states across the country, yearning for moments of belonging they rarely found at home.

Cheyenne Martin, a 19-year-old student at Georgetown University, described being ridiculed by classmates for her desire to lead the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency one day. But this weekend, she was met with a standing ovation.

Kyasia Benjamin used stealth social media accounts to hide her love of President Donald Trump from her family, she said, but the 22-year-old was now proudly sporting a bright red skirt patterned with Republican Party elephants.

Laci Williams, 20, said she felt so isolated as a conservative in Denver that she started a young women’s conservative magazine to connect with like-minded women across the country. But now, for four days at a Dallas airport hotel, Williams felt like she wasn’t the exception but the rule.

“We are left out of the national conversation,” Williams said of young conservative women. “And we’re sick and tired of being ignored.”

Welcome to Turning Point USA’S Young Women’s Leadership Summit, an annual conference sponsored by the National Rifle Association that began in 2015 and has evolved into an ultra-trumpian event complete with “lock her up” chants and vulgar T-shirts disparaging Hillary Clinton. The conference, which styles itself as an alternative to a liberal culture of feminism that many Republicans characterize as oppressive, attracted an estimated 1,000 young conservative women ages 17 to 24 for sessions like “How Political Correctness is Making Everyone Stupid” and “In the Age of Resist: Be Revolutionary.”