A racist, homophobic and antisemitic online forum for young Republicans in South Florida has conservative politicians working hard to distance themselves from the controversy.
Abel Alexander Carvajal
The Miami Herald and The Floridian reported March 5 on the leaked WhatsApp group chat — “Uber Retards Yapping, Inc.” — launched last year by Miami-Dade GOP Secretary Abel Alexander Carvajal mostly for conservative students at Florida Atlantic University.
The newspapers found more than 200 uses of the N-word, multiple descriptions of women as “whores,” slurs about gay people and Jews and admiration for the politics of Adolf Hitler.
The Herald said it analyzed more than two weeks of chat logs from September to October and found Carvajal participated in the chat on some occasions and did not try to shut it down.
This photo showing William Bejerano with other students is circulating online in light of the news reports.
Group member William Bejerano, who once tried to start a pro-life club at Miami Dade College, was the main user of the N-word in the forum, the Herald reported.
“At one point, he posted a block of text calling for dozens of acts of extreme violence against Black people, who he referred to using the n-word, including crucifying, beheading and dissecting people,” the paper reported.
Dariel Gonzalez, then the College Republicans’ recruiting chairman, responded to Bejerano’s chat: “How edgy,” adding “Ew you had colored professors?!” In another post, Gonzalez said he refuses “to be indoctrinated by the coloreds.”
The texts expose the divisions within the Republican Party exacerbated by young, online members, the newspaper added. “The messages among the party’s top campus leaders last fall reveal the extent to which the party is splintered by its extremist online right and concerned about their growing political power in Florida.”
But those concerns are rising in Republican circles across the country, according to an October 2025 Politico report on racist Telegram chats involving Young Republican leaders in Arizona, Kansas, New York and Vermont.
“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,” that report noted.
Comments in those spaces include referring to African Americans as “monkeys” and “the watermelon people,” while others spoke about sexually assaulting their enemies and convincing them to kill themselves. “Republicans who they believed support slavery” were lauded, Politico reported. “If we ever had a leak of this chat we would be cooked fr fr (for real, for real),” one commenter wrote.
The messages are made possible by a conservative political culture in which antisemitic, racist and violent rhetoric have free reign and are much less taboo due to the weakening of political norms in the age of Donald Trump, experts said.
“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, in the Politico account.
Many Republican leaders, meanwhile, have denounced the slur-ridden online forums, including New York state Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt. Last fall a similar scandal emerged among New York Young Republicans.
“I was shocked and disgusted to learn about the racist, anti-Semitic and misogynistic comments attributed to members of the New York State Young Republicans,” he said. “This behavior is indefensible and has no place in our party or anywhere in public life.”
Florida U.S. Sen. Rick Scott was among several Republicans to condemn the latest young conservative’ WhatsApp discussions in that state: “This is disgusting and cannot be tolerated. I’m glad that RPOF (Republican Party of Florida) is launching an investigation and expect anyone who engaged in this horrible behavior to be held accountable. Racists and antisemites are not welcome in the Republican Party.”
Republican gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida said free speech only goes so far, The Floridian reported.
“Everyone has the First Amendment right to say what they want — even when it’s vile and offensive. But free speech doesn’t entitle someone to hold a leadership position within the Republican Party or the conservative movement,” he said. “The comments reported run counter to the values our party stands for. The Republican Party rejects racism, antisemitism and bigotry.”
Miami-Dade Republican Party Chairman Kevin Cooper released a statement slamming Carvajal for launching the group chat and participating in it, adding the organization’s board voted to request his resignation.
“We are the party that fought to end slavery, the party that welcomed Cuban refugees fleeing communism to freedom in Miami, and the party that continues to welcome Americans of every race, faith, gender and nationality who believe in liberty and opportunity,” Cooper said.
FIU announced it had launched its own investigation into the online discussions and into the part played by Ian Valdes, president of the school’s Turning Point USA chapter.
“I’m more authoritarian than you, buddy. I think the church should run the government,” Valdes said in one chat thread documented in the Herald’s analysis.
“During another conversation, Valdes said, ‘fiscally conservative all the way is so gay’ and ‘Hitler himself wasn’t a fiscal conservative.’”
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The Young Republicans are old enough to know better | Opinion by Catherine Meeks
It’s not just the Young Republicans we need to worry about | Opinion by Rodney Kennedy
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