The New York Young Republicans group, a youth action arm of the state Republican Party, will be dissolved this week, further fallout from the damaging exposure of bigoted, racist, sexist and antisemitic conversation between the group’s top leadership.

Two people not authorized to discuss the subject confirmed to the Watertown Daily Times that party officials will meet on Friday to formally dissolve the group. The party is expected to comment on the situation after the vote. The dissolution news was first reported by the Long Island newspaper Newsday.

It’s a sudden turnaround for a group of up-and-coming Republicans, people who worked with and for some of the top state GOP leaders. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik called the group the ‘backbone’ of Republican organizing efforts in the state just this summer, and recent NY Young Republicans chair Peter Giunta made a viable play to run the national Young Republicans organization this summer as well, although he did not succeed.

Current organizational chair Bobby Walker was a communications staffer with Senate Minority Leader Robert Ortt, II, R-North Tonawanda, and was on his way to run communications for a GOP Congressional nominee in the Southern Tier.

Giunta and other NY Young Republicans met with President Donald Trump, and the New York delegation led a particularly pro-Trump message that brought them closer to the administration still.

But on Tuesday, Politico New York reported that Giunta, Walker and other leading members of the group had sent thousands of hateful, bigoted messages in a groupchat between themselves and other Young Republicans with similar political leanings.

Giunta praised Hitler, and regularly talked about employing gas chambers to kill his political opponents. At one point he called another state’s Young Republican chairman a “fat stinky Jew.” Walker proclaimed that “rape is epic,” in one message, and talked of burning his opponents in others.

The response from the New York Republican Party was to quickly denounce the chat’s members and strip them of their jobs where possible. Giunta no longer has a job with a state Assemblyman, and Walker is no longer headed to the Congressional campaign. Another chat member lost his job in the state court system. And while Walker remains the chair of the Young Republicans organization officially — there soon will no longer be a group at all.

The incident became something of a political weapon among state Democrats, who were quick to point to the effusive praise state Republican leaders had recently heaped on the organization. Governor Kathy Hochul suggested Congresswoman Stefanik’s consistently harsh language used against her political opponents was in part responsible for the culture among the GOP youth arm.

“We have a leader from the Republican Party in this state, the highest ranking official who in the backdrop of all this calls one of our candidates for mayor a jihadist and a terrorist, and then somehow says ‘oh, what these Young Republicans said was wrong’,” Hochul said. “Look at what you say yourself, look at your inflammatory words, and maybe they’ve had an effect on these young people.”

Alex DeGrasse, a spokesperson for Stefanik, denounced the groupchat as it was described by Politico, and on social media the Congresswoman called the article a “hit piece.”

When reached for comment by the Watertown Daily Times, DeGrasse reiterated the Congresswoman’s attacks on the New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, and tied Hochul to his positions because of her endorsement.

“Congresswoman Stefanik was absolutely appalled to learn about the alleged comments made by the leaders of the New York state Young Republicans and other state YR’s in a large national group chat,” he said, pointing out that none involved were ever directly employed by Stefanik or her political machine.

“Congresswoman Stefanik calls for any NY Young Republicans responsible for these horrific comments in this chat to step down immediately,” he said. “Unlike Kathy Hochul who bends the knee and refuses to condemn the vile antisemitism spewed by leading NY Democrat candidates like Mamdani every single day, Congresswoman Stefanik will call out vile hate and demand accountability.”