By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
They laughed about gas chambers. They mocked Black people as “monkeys” and “the watermelon people.” They joked about rape, slavery, and “fixing the showers” to suit the “Hitler aesthetic.” These weren’t anonymous extremists on the internet. They were rising Republican leaders — state chairs, vice chairs, campaign strategists, and even staffers with ties to Donald Trump’s administration — plotting their path to power while spewing messages of hate.
A new investigation by Politico has uncovered thousands of leaked messages from a private Telegram group of Young Republican officials in New York, Kansas, Arizona, and Vermont. The chats reveal leaders of the GOP’s youth wing — many working in government — joking about killing their political opponents and celebrating Hitler. “Everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber,” wrote Peter Giunta, then-chair of the New York State Young Republicans. Joe Maligno, who identified himself as the group’s general counsel, responded, “Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic.” Annie Kaykaty, another member, added, “I’m ready to watch people burn now.” Others cheered them on, with one member replying simply, “I love Hitler.”
According to Politico, the 2,900 pages of messages detail more than seven months of conversation among a dozen millennial and Gen Z Republicans coordinating their plan to seize control of the Young Republican National Federation — a group of more than 15,000 members. The report found that the chats were filled with antisemitic, racist, and violent language and that several participants held or sought roles inside the Trump administration.
Joe Feagin, a Texas A&M University sociologist who has studied racism for six decades, told Politico that Trump’s rise has created what he called “a liberating atmosphere” for bigotry. “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,” Feagin said. “It’s chilling, of course, because they will act on these views.”
That atmosphere has flourished in Trump’s government, where racism isn’t just tolerated — it’s official policy. Capital & Main reported that Trump’s second term has brought a sweeping purge of Black officials, including the removal of Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, both replaced by less qualified white appointees. “This wasn’t the usual cleaning house,” the outlet reported. “These brutal dismissals are an expression of deep-rooted antiblackness that says Black people are never qualified to hold the jobs they have.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned that Trump’s administration and campaign have “rolled back the clock on racial justice,” dismantling decades of civil rights protections. In a detailed report, the ACLU said Trump’s policies seek “the eradication of all programs designed to address profound and persistent inequalities in American life — with the effect of further entrenching systemic racism.” The organization said Trump had promised to weaponize the Department of Justice and Department of Education to investigate so-called “anti-white” discrimination while dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the country.
The results of those policies are visible across Trump’s nearly all-white cabinet. Following his firing of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook — the first Black woman ever to serve on the Fed’s board — the White House released a photo of Trump surrounded by 24 officials, only one of whom was Black. “He chose to fire her out of all the governors because she’s a Black woman,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, in an interview with The Guardian. “He knows that racism and sexism are very effective tools.”
That same weaponization of race now extends to entire cities. In August, Trump ordered National Guard troops into Washington, D.C., claiming he was rescuing the city from “crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor.” He declared it “liberation day in D.C.” — language PBS noted echoes a long history of racist narratives about “lawless” Black cities used to justify federal crackdowns. “We have to be vigilant,” said D.C. activist April Goggans in the PBS report. “Regardless of where you fall on the political scale, understand that this could be you, your children, your grandmother, your co-worker who are brutalized or have certain rights violated.”
Taken together, the investigations form a unified picture of Trump’s America — a country where racism is no longer confined to the margins, but embedded in the machinery of power. From private group chats idolizing Hitler to federal firings, from DEI bans to military deployments against Black communities, Trump’s movement has turned prejudice into policy and hate into hierarchy. “The administration’s goal is the eradication of all programs designed to address profound and persistent inequalities in American life,” the ACLU said. “The effect is to further entrench systemic racism.”
