The New York Republican state committee has suspended the authorization of their Young Republicans chapter after members were implicated in highly offensive and racist messages that were obtained and published by Politico.
The Young Republican National Federation is made up of members aged 18 to 40 and has an active chapter in every state. Their website calls them the oldest youth political organization in the US, with the aim being to recruit young voices to the GOP before equipping and encouraging them to run for office.
“The Young Republicans was already grossly mismanaged, and vile language of the sort made in the group chat has no place in our party or its subsidiary organizations,” the New York Republican chair, Ed Cox, said in a statement announcing a unanimous vote to suspend the chapter by the executive board of the New York Republican state committee.
Related: ‘This is so vile’: Young Republicans face backlash after racist chats leaked
Backlash from the Politico article has been significant since its publication on Tuesday revealed 2,900 pages of leaked chats from a Telegram group. Some messages were sent by people actively working with elected officials and others by individuals hoping to take leading roles within the national Young Republican organization.
“If we ever had a leak of this chat we would be cooked fr fr,” said Bobby Walker, who was recently made chair of the New York division. Walker went on to describe the mass rape of Indigenous people as “epic”.
Another affiliate of the New York chapter, Peter Giunta, a former chair of the organization, posted “I love Hitler,” while additional members in the chat called Black people monkeys and “the watermelon people”, and joked about killing political opponents by putting them in gas chambers.
The meeting of the New York Republican state committee is slated to be virtual. Sources also revealed to Newsday that the youth group could be reorganized at a later date with new leaders.
In the fallout of the leak, the Kansas Republicans quickly disbanded their youth group.
Danedri Herbert, the chair of the Kansas GOP party, said: “their comments do not reflect the beliefs of Republicans and certainly not Kansas Republicans at large, who elected a Black chair a few months ago,” in a statement posted on X on Tuesday. “As of today, the Kansas young Republicans organization is inactive.”
The Politico revelations of the messages fueled controversy, with many political figures coming forward to condemn the texts, and those who participated, losing their jobs or being called on to resign.
Guinta was fired from his job as chief of staff to assembly member Mike Reilly of Staten Island and Walker will reportedly no longer have a role on the congressional campaign of state senator Peter Oberacker who is running for a Catskills/Hudson Valley seat.
“After watching the Left lose their foothold due to the radical behavior and rhetoric of the fringe Left, I would hate to see the right fall under the same feat,” said Xaviaer DuRousseau, a conservative influencer and PragerU personality. “It’s important to disassociate our Party from that sort of unprofessional, cringeworthy, and hateful behavior.”
