A simmering civil war among Texas’s young Republicans came to a boil this month after a prominent GOP donor was seen meeting with white supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes.
Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who has fantasized on livestreams about marrying a child, took an hours-long meeting with a prominent conservative donor on Oct. 6, the Texas Tribune reported this month. News of the meeting set off a wave of accusations between factions of activist Republicans in the state. Now state lawmakers are condemning one of those factions as its members flee to a rival young Republican group.
Fuentes met for several hours with Jonathan Stickland, then-president of the ultraconservative Texas donor group Defend Texas Liberty, the Tribune first reported. The Tribune also photographed Kyle Rittenhouse entering the building, although a gun rights group later stated that he was attending a meeting with them, not Fuentes. Fuentes was driven to the appointment by Chris Russo, president of the group Texans for Strong Borders. (None of the attendees have commented on the meeting. Defend Texas Liberty announced a new president this week, who did not return a request for comment on Stickland’s current status with the organization.)
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The meeting was not Fuentes’ first encounter with well-connected Texas Republicans, some of the state’s conservatives noted. This summer, the state’s largest youth conservative organization underwent a schism after some members accused peers of being Fuentes fans.
In August, the Texas Young Republican Federation (TYRF) voted to disassociate from the Republican Party of Texas (RPT), over what the TYRF claimed were troll tactics by RPT chair Matt Rinaldi. The young Republicans group accused Rinaldi of “intiat[ing] a smear campaign” against their leader, whom Rinaldi mocked for making a video in 2020 stating that “Black lives matter.” (Rinaldi was in the same building as Fuentes during the Stickland meeting, but has said he did not attend the meeting, and that he condemns Fuentes.)
During that breakup, some smaller youth Republican groups also broke from the TYRF. Some of that divide was due to members of splinter groups promoting far-right or openly neo-Nazi content, including posts praising Fuentes, writer Amanda Moore reported last week.
Those splinter groups formed their own rival young conservative coalition called the Young Republicans of Texas (YRT), which cast itself as the more MAGA alternative to the TYRF. (Neither the TYRF nor the YRT returned requests for comment.)
Texas’s State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) voted to partner with the YRT in September, with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton praising the hard-right group as “the newest generation of Young Republicans.”
But after Fuentes’ meeting with Stickland, some of Texas’s Republican brass is revisiting YRT’s ties to the white supremacist internet personality.
In a Wednesday letter to Rinaldi, two members of the Texas Executive Committee urged the state party to distance itself from the ascendant YRT.
“Because it has become clear that the YRT has actively recruited and embraced into its leadership individuals who support self-avowed Neo-Nazi White Supremacists, the Republican Party of Texas must separate from this group, as they do not represent the core values of the Republican Party of Texas,” the letter read.
Among the Executive Committee members’ concerns were a YRT leader who “openly affiliates with antisemites” online, as well as another prominent member who “is a public supporter of Adolf Hitler, making public statements such as ‘National cold brew day AND Hitler’s bday?! It’s a great day indeed’ and ‘I’m antisemitic.’” (The Republican Party of Texas did not return a request for comment.)
At least two YRT chapters also dropped out of the organization after the Fuentes meeting, and encouraged the state Republican party to cut ties with the YRT.
The Gulf Coast and Rural Young Republicans groups issued a joint statement last Thursday announcing their departure from YRT, alleging that “mismanagement and untruthfulness plagued the new organization from the outset.”
“Allegations were made that the new organization contained several members that do not reflect our values or the Republican Party of Texas’ values,” the two groups wrote. “Initially, we dismissed this concern as a concerted smear effort but subsequent reporting revealed that our chapters were misled and that these members were, in fact, involved. Knowing this, our chapters have decided to disaffiliate from the Young Republicans of Texas. In additional to disaffiliating from the Young Republicans of Texas, we encourage the SREC to consider eliminating partnership auxiliary statuses for youth organizations.”
The two now-ex YRT groups are working to join the TYRF, according to the TYRF’s chair.
In their letter to Rinaldi, the two Executive Committee members said state Republicans had heard troubling allegations against YRT members, but moved ahead with the partnership.
“During the rushed SREC vetting process of YRT, concerned activists came forward with troubling information regarding the charter members of the organization,” their letter alleges.
“Those concerns were not given full weight, and now YRT itself admits what many of us suspected all along: the ranks of YRT are infested with avowed antisemites and neo-Nazi sympathizers.”
This story has been updated to clarify Kyle Rittenhouse’s presence at a building where Nick Fuentes was attending meetings.
