Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.Jason Beeferman and Emily Ngo at Politico:
Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.
They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.
William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”
Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote on whether he should become chair of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old.
“Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers,” he continued.
...
The 2,900 pages of chats, shared among a dozen millennial and Gen Z Republicans between early January and mid-August, chronicle their campaign to seize control of the national Young Republican organization on a hardline pro-Donald Trump platform. Many of the chat members already work inside government or party politics, and one serves as a state senator.
Together, the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely — and where the Trump-era loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders.
“The more the political atmosphere is open and liberating — like it has been with the emergence of Trump and a more right wing GOP even before him — it opens up young people and older people to telling racist jokes, making racist commentaries in private and public,” said Joe Feagin, a Texas A&M sociology professor who has studied racism for the last 60 years. He’s also concerned the words would be applied to public policy. “It’s chilling, of course, because they will act on these views.”
EMILY NGO, JEFF COLTIN and NICK REISMAN at Politico:
POLITICO’s exclusive reporting on a Young Republican group chat filled with racist epithets and hateful jokes reverberated Tuesday across the country, resulting in mounting condemnation and more chat members out of their jobs.
Peter Giunta lost his post as state Assemblymember Mike Reilly’s chief of staff, Playbook reported.
Joe Maligno was out as an employee of the New York State Unified Court System.
Vermont’s Republican governor and GOP lawmakers called on state Sen. Sam Douglass to resign.
The Kansas Republican Party announced that the Kansas Young Republicans, where William Hendrix was a leader, were inactive.
That’s on top of what happened before the story published: Hendrix lost his job with Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, and Bobby Walker’s offer to join NY-19 congressional candidate Peter Oberacker’s campaign was effectively revoked.
