Every so often a story comes along that saves this site the trouble of connecting dots. This is one of those.
On October 14th, 2025, Politico published what it had obtained: roughly 28,000 messages, some 2,900 pages worth, from a private Telegram chat among leaders of the Young Republican National Federation. Not randos in a comment section. Chapter chairs, vice chairs, general counsel, a sitting state senator. The people the party grooms to run things later.
Here is a sample of what the future of the Republican Party talks about when it thinks nobody is listening.
Peter Giunta, then chair of the New York Young Republicans, on how to handle a vote:
"Everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber."
Peter Giunta, then Chair, New York Young Republicans
Reporting also attributes to Giunta the phrase "I love Hitler."
Joe Maligno, the New York group's general counsel, workshopping the bit:
"Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don't fit the Hitler aesthetic."
Joe Maligno, General Counsel, New York State Young Republicans
Somebody get these men a shovel, they're not done digging.
Elsewhere in the chat, per the reporting: Black people referred to as monkeys and as "the watermelon people." Brianna Douglass of the Vermont chapter on a Jewish colleague, "expecting the Jew to be honest." Alex Dwyer, chair of the Kansas chapter, working the white supremacist numerology "1488" in as a hotel room number. William Hendrix, the Kansas vice chair, using racial slurs repeatedly. Rape jokes. Slavery jokes.
Worth stating plainly, since this site tries to be precise about these things: this chat wasn't only racist. It was racist and antisemitic and misogynistic, running for months, across four state chapters, with nobody in the room saying knock it off. That last part is the part that matters. These weren't slips. This was the ambient temperature of the group.
Then came the explanations, and you know how this goes by now. Giunta suggested the 28,000 messages "may have been deceptively doctored," while simultaneously taking responsibility for language he described as "insensitive." Both at once. Didn't say it, and also sorry he said it.
Bold strategy.
Credit where due, some Republicans treated this like the emergency it was. Vermont Governor Phil Scott called state Senator Sam Douglass's conduct "disgusting and unacceptable" and demanded his resignation. Rep. Elise Stefanik called the remarks "heinous, antisemitic, racist." The national federation board said those involved "must immediately resign." Giunta and Maligno left their positions. Hendrix was fired by the office of Kansas's Republican Attorney General. Kansas deactivated its chapter and New York moved to disband its own.
And then there's the Vice President of the United States, who looked at gas chamber jokes from the people running his party's youth wing and reached for the oldest excuse there is.
"A person seriously wishing for political violence and political assassination is 1,000 times worse than what a bunch of young people, a bunch of kids say in a group chat, however offensive it might be."
Vice President JD Vance, on The Charlie Kirk Show, October 2025
He also offered, in his own words, that "kids do stupid things, especially young boys."
Kids. The youngest people in that chat hold party office. One of them is a state senator. They are lawyers and chapter chairs and staffers to elected officials, and the number two official in the country waved it off like a food fight.
That right there is the whole problem in one sentence. Not that a dozen young Republicans typed vile things to each other for seven months. Groups of people are ugly in private sometimes, in every party. The problem is what happened after it surfaced: some of the party reached for the door, and the Vice President reached for an excuse.
They'll be fine. They always are. Most of these names will turn up on a ballot in about ten years, and the chat will be a youthful indiscretion, and we'll all be expected to have forgotten.
That's what this roll call is for.
ABC News coverage here, and Newsweek's full list of those involved here.
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