So, this story about the Young Republican National Federation is really quite astounding, and should reverberate throughout our news cycle for a while to come.
If you’ve been hiding under a rock, or just tuned out our relentlessly frustrating news cycle, there is a group of young Republican leaders that are part of the National Federation, that have been carrying on an extraordinary chat on the messaging app Telegram.
These messages were exchanged between leaders of four chapters — Arizona, Vermont, Kansas and New York — six of eight of whom were young(ish) white men. Incels, if you like.
- Samuel Douglass, state senator from northern Vermont.
- Peter Giunta, former chair of the New York State Young Republicans.
- Bobby Walker, chair of the New York State Young Republicans and former vice chair.
- William Hendrix, vice chair of Kansas Young Republicans.
- Alex Dwyer, chair of the Kansas Young Republicans.
- Anne KayKaty, New York’s national committee member.
- Joe Maligno, general counsel for the New York State Young Republicans.
- Rachel Hope, Arizona Young Republicans events chair.
While the chat at times involved formal conversations about votes, social media strategies and logistics, the chat included a “slew of racist and antisemitic slurs, white supremacist slogans and symbols, comments encouraging rape of political opponents to drive them to suicide, praise for Adolf Hitler, promotion of gas chambers, and enthusiasm for Republicans who they believed supported slavery.”
Wow.
Somehow, reporters from Politico managed to obtain 2,900 pages of messages spanning about seven months, roughly from January through August of 2025. How they got these pages is not clear, and unsurprisingly, Politico has declined to reveal its sources.
So there are two things about this story that I find remarkable. First, this seems to be the consequence of decades of grievance and resentment and fingerpointing on the part of conservatives, so that the Republican party has now fully become the party of hate. How else to describe it? Young white conservatives in America are actually doing pretty well in 2025. And yet, the “we love America” party seems to hate everyone in it.
Second, these people were willing to put it into writing. When I worked for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, it was pretty much understood that you didn’t put into writing anything that you didn’t want published in the Boston Globe. And here are these young government professionals putting despicable things into writing. One of them reportedly wrote, “If we ever had a leak of this chat we would be cooked [for real, for real].”
No kidding.
So this is where we are in 2025. The GOP is going to have to own what it has created. And this is what it has created. Not for every member of the Republican party. But for a lot of them. A while back someone said something to the effect that “even if you’re not a racist or sexist or homophobe, still Trump’s racism or sexism or homophobia was not a deal-breaker for you.”
And that’s right.
It wasn’t a deal-breaker for you.
And then we had Vice-President J.D. Vance — who has now fully made the transition from sympathetic memoirist to soul-selling scumbag — saying that this was something that “kids do” — “Kids do stupid things, especially young boys.” These are professionals in their 30s, not kids. These are the future leaders of the Republican party.
God help us all.
