The Republican texting scandals.

I'm Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Correction

On Monday, in our “Have a Nice Day” section, we said that the James Webb Space Telescope has provided astrologists with clear satellite images. This may be technically true for astrologists, and everyone else, but the correct term for a scientist who studies celestial phenomena is, obviously, astronomer. We must’ve been reading too many horoscopes recently. Thank you to the readers who pointed this out, and we’ve updated the language on our website.

This is our 146th correction in Tangle’s 324-week history and our first correction since October 7. We track corrections and place them at the top of the newsletter in an effort to maximize transparency with readers.

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Quick hits.

1. President Donald Trump is reportedly requesting that the Justice Department pay him approximately $230 million as compensation for federal investigations into him following the end of his first term. On Tuesday, Trump said he would give any money he receives to charity. (The report)
2. A White House official said President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin would not meet “in the immediate future” after Trump said on Thursday that the two planned to meet in Hungary in the coming weeks. (The update)
3. A deputy U.S. marshal and TikTok streamer were injured when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fired shots at a suspect who was allegedly trying to run from agents and use his car to ram the agent’s vehicle. (The incident)
4. The North Carolina Senate approved a new congressional map expected to help Republicans gain an additional House seat in the 2026 midterm elections. The North Carolina House is expected to approve the map on Wednesday. (The map)
5. Peru’s President José Jerí declared a 30-day state of emergency in the country’s capital, Lima, and the province of Callao to address crime. The declaration authorizes the deployment of the armed forces alongside the police to maintain public order. (The declaration)

Today’s topic.

The Young Republicans and Paul Ingrassia scandals. Last Tuesday, Politico published screenshots of text messages sent by members of Young Republicans, an organization for Republican party members between 18 and 40 years old, that featured offensive jokes and racist language. In the messages, various leaders of Young Republican chapters across the country joked about planting fake stories to smear rival GOP candidates, used racial epithets to refer to black people, and expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler. Those implicated in the texts reportedly represent chapters in New York, Kansas, Arizona, and Vermont.

Many GOP leaders have called on the Young Republicans to take accountability, as has the group’s board of directors. “Such behavior is disgraceful, unbecoming of any Republican, and stands in direct opposition to the values our movement represents,” the Young Republican National Federation’s board of directors said in a post on Instagram. As part of the fallout for the report, New York’s Young Republicans chapter voted to suspend operations. 

Other national leaders have called for leniency and understanding. Vice President JD Vance said that he did not want those exposed by the reports to have their lives “ruined because they’re saying something stupid in a private group chat.”

Then on Monday, Politico published another leaked chain of inflammatory private messages — this time from Paul Ingrassia, White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security and President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel. The messages between Ingrassia and a group of fellow Republicans show the 30-year-old attorney saying that the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and admitting to “a Nazi streak.” 

Ingrassia’s nomination was already embattled, as recent reports revealed he was the subject of an internal investigation at the Department of Homeland Security after a sexual harassment complaint was filed against him. The woman who initially filed the complaint later withdrew it, and Ingrassia’s attorney denied the allegation. Separately, in July, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said that Ingrassia was “not ready for prime time” after a meeting with Senate Homeland Security Committee staff. 

On Tuesday evening, Ingrassia withdrew his nomination in a post on X, referencing the lack of support among Republican senators. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (SD) and Sens. Ron Johnson (WI), Rick Scott (FL), and James Lankford (OK) were among the Republican senators who had publicly expressed doubts about Ingrassia’s nomination.

Today, we’ll break down the Young Republicans and Paul Ingrassia scandals, with views from the right and left. Then, Executive Editor Isaac Saul gives his take.

What the right is saying.

• Most on the right condemn the messages in the leaked chats. 
• Some argue the messages are not meaningfully worse than what elected Democrats have said. 
• Others say the Ingrassia leaks are a lesson for other young Republicans. 

In The New York Post, Rikki Schlott said “the Young Republican group chat is part of the right’s new ‘vice signaling’ bonding ritual.”

“It’s all apparently supposed to be funny — you guys are in on the joke, right? — and meant to prove loyalty. If you’re one of us, they’re implying, you’d never rat. But it’s abhorrent and fits right into a concerning mounting trend on the right,” Schlott wrote. “Vice signaling is a backlash response to the left’s smug virtue signaling, the performative and exclusionary trend of going to fashionable protests (pics or it didn’t happen), using overly genuflecting lingo (person of color, systemic oppression, birthing person, micro-aggression, etc.) — and shaming anyone to the right of far-left.”

“It’s not just a matter of rejecting political correctness. It’s about being actively and aggressively politically incorrect… Yes, it’s all free speech. But there’s also an expectation of civility and basic respect for others, especially from up and coming political leaders. There’s humor — and there’s taking a joke so far that it’s vile,” Schlott said. “The right has to rethink whether being anti-PC is really the best glue to hold together a community. Tasteless and rude isn’t a flex. And performatively standing against something isn’t a coherent ideology.”

In The Daily Caller, Geoffrey Ingersoll wrote “these leaked chats won’t get a rise out of me.”

“The leaked chat, from a group of Young Republican leaders, mostly came off like a bunch of cringe prepubescent idiots who recently discovered curse words, except it was 20-somethings LARPing as edgy 4chan racists,” Ingersoll said. “Do I think this is all bad? Yes. Condemning it is easy. I don’t even need to hit the brakes, I can do a drive-by condemnation. But do I believe they need to be rapidly unpersoned? Absolutely not.”

“[Jay Jones] the potential top law enforcement officer of the most historic state in the union fantasized about shooting a former statehouse speaker in the head. He said he’d love to do it not once but twice,” Ingersoll wrote. “As far as I can tell, not a single sitting Democrat has called for him to drop out. Abigail Spanberger is running for governor to actually work with the man, and she hasn’t either… Until a higher percentage of the ‘fiery but mostly peaceful’ crowd stops thinking it’s totally justified to assault and kill us, I won’t be getting mad about these leaked chats.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board called the Ingrassia scandal “a lesson for young MAGA.”

“Beyond the failure of vetting, it would be useful if President Trump made clear that this kind of garbage isn’t wanted in his MAGA political movement,” the board said. “A lawyer for Mr. Ingrassia told [POLITICO] he didn’t concede the veracity of the leaked messages. ‘Arguendo, even if the texts are authentic,’ he said, ‘they clearly read as self-deprecating and satirical humor making fun of the fact that liberals outlandishly and routinely call MAGA supporters “Nazis.”’ It’s impossible to know what’s in Mr. Ingrassia’s heart, but if his explanation is that he acted like an internet troll, it isn’t much of a defense.

“Other participants in the chat offered warnings. ‘Paul you are coming across as a white nationalist,’ one reportedly said. ‘You’re gunna be in private practice one day this s— will be around forever.’ The same advice could have been given to all of those Young Republican leaders whose chat thread leaked recently,” the board wrote. “Mr. Ingrassia’s nomination is dead, a sign that the GOP won’t tolerate his brand of extremist political behavior and rhetoric. It is also a potent lesson for MAGA youth in what not to do.”

What the left is saying.

• The left is appalled by the messages and alarmed by prominent Republicans’ refusal to condemn them. 
• Some commend Senate Republicans for pulling their support for Ingrassia.
• Others say the attitude shown in the group chats has already spread to mainstream Republican circles. 

In The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait asked “why is Vance defending that racist group chat?”

“When a political ally does something controversial, there are three ways to respond: defend it, repudiate it, or deflect attention away from it. Defense is the obvious option if you think the action is acceptable enough to the public. Repudiation makes sense if the matter is so toxic that you can’t afford to keep the guilty party in your coalition,” Chait wrote. “Deflection is the response of choice only when the behavior of an ally is too toxic to defend, but so widespread within your coalition that you cannot afford to criticize it.”

“That a group of ambitious professional Republicans can spread nakedly racist messages without rebuke signifies the transformation of conservative political norms in the Trump era,” Chait said. “The vice president apparently grasps that openly defending references to Black people as ‘watermelon eaters’ and quips about sending political rivals ‘to the gas chamber’ would hurt his political standing, but he also clearly needs these Young Republican leaders if he hopes to consolidate the Trump base behind him. Deflection is a calculated response.”

The Washington Post editorial board wrote about Republicans “drawing a line on Paul Ingrassia.”

“One of the differences between President Donald Trump’s first and second terms is the meekness of Senate Republicans… But it’s good to know there’s still a limit somewhere after Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) warned Monday night that his conference would reject the nomination of Paul Ingrassia,” the board said. “It was always clear that Ingrassia was a puerile troll with no business serving as an officer of the United States, but it took Senate Republicans five months to say as much.”

“Presidents deserve significant deference in filling most executive branch posts, but the Senate plays an important role enforcing certain boundaries. Thune’s majority mostly abdicated that responsibility by approving figures such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health and human services secretary and Kash Patel as FBI director,” the board wrote. “Republican and Democratic senators are too in thrall to presidents of their parties, and it’s damaging the constitutional system.”

In POLITICO, Catherine Kim and Calder McHugh called the leaked chat “a sign of where we could be headed.”

“As the leaked Young Republicans chat reveals, the hateful, troll-like way in which these people communicate has also found its way into the mainstream GOP. It’s a trend that could become more visible as a generation of chronically online young people on the right age into higher positions of power and are embraced by the party,” Kim and McHugh said. “What begins in far-right corners of the internet seeps into right-leaning spaces offline — even within Republican politics. Several members of the Young Republicans group chat are in official positions in the party. One works for the Trump administration.”

“Government agencies under the Trump administration have also demonstrated their fluency in this kind of radical, online humor and provocation. The public X accounts of the White House and the Department of Homeland Security are now sharing content that would be at home on groyper message boards — though without explicit Nazi reference,” Kim and McHugh wrote. “The transgressive nature of these kinds of posts is likely the point; it’s supposed to make the poster’s enemies mad and push the boundaries of acceptable discourse.”

My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• Ingrassia obviously should have withdrawn, and it’s great that Republicans pressured him to do so.
• I extend grace to young people making mistakes, but the Young Republicans leaks required repercussions.
• Despite notable exceptions, most Republicans are appropriately demanding these repercussions.

Executive Editor Isaac Saul: I’ll start with the easy one before moving on to the issue that I think has slightly more nuance.

Paul Ingrassia’s nomination getting pulled is obviously a good thing. It also serves as a reminder that Senate Republicans, who have displayed an incredible amount of deference to President Trump, still have lines they are not willing to cross. Someone with a self-described “Nazi streak” who uses slurs to describe black people and thinks all federal holidays honoring minorities should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” apparently crosses the line. A lot of this stuff was already known about Ingrassia, and it’s alarming it took this long for him to be rejected by the party. 

Good riddance. 

The discussion about the Young Republicans text message scandal offers a few more layers of nuance, though. If you have been reading this newsletter for a little while, you probably know that my position here is typically one of extending grace.

In 2021, I wrote a piece called “Confessing my sins,” which addressed the way cancel culture was derailing the lives of people who had made embarrassing mistakes when they were younger, and how it could also have derailed mine — had I not been given grace and room to grow. As a teenager, I used homophobic slurs and rapped along to lyrics using “the N-word.” I did this mostly because the people I grew up around did it, and I broke out of these habits because better-adjusted older kids made me feel stupid and uncool for using this language without exiling me altogether. On occasion, I’ll still make (or laugh at) an offensive or edgy joke (which describes a lot of humor), and I generally try not to judge young people by the worst things they say — especially in the context of them trying to be funny or win social approval. 

In sum: I don’t think I’m particularly sensitive about this stuff, and I’m inclined against destroying people’s lives when you can instead help them to evolve.

At the same time, extending grace is not the same as withholding consequences. Nobody is going to jail or being publicly tarred and feathered. Neither should these young leaders be permanently blacklisted from working in politics; but they also shouldn’t get to say the things they said in that chat without any blowback. There should be repercussions. 

Even assuming the best of the participants, it should still be taboo to say overtly racist things to be edgy, or joke about gas chambering your political opponents, or make light of embracing Hitler — especially in a context where you’re supposed to be modeling leadership behavior. The board of directors of the Young Republicans set the right tone in response to the leaked chats: They called the behavior disgraceful and unbecoming of Republicans, and helped force several members out of the political jobs they were holding. This is good. This is what appropriate repercussions look like.

Vice President JD Vance, on the other hand, handled the situation about as poorly as one could have imagined. Vance dismissed the vile language as “kids” doing stupid things, said that “young boys” make “edgy and offensive jokes” before repeating the mantra that we shouldn’t “ruin their lives” for it.

But this wasn’t just some group of teenagers who didn’t know any better. First off, these aren’t kids; most of these young men are in their 20s, and some are in their 30s and even 40s, just a few years younger than the vice president. Secondly, they are supposed to be the next generation of political leaders for the Republican Party — a few were in important government jobs or leadership positions. One was a state senator from Vermont (who has since resigned). 

Third, the entire premise is laced with hypocrisy. Rümeysa Öztürk is a 30-year-old graduate student who was snatched up off the street by ICE and detained for writing a milquetoast pro-Palestine op-ed. Is she a kid? She’s younger than some participants in the group chat, and she was arrested and detained for a run-of-the-mill political opinion piece. 

Lastly, appropriate consequences don’t have to ruin lives. The vice president, of all people, should be able to hold these young Republicans to the same standard the board of directors of their own organization does. But alas, he was incapable of doing even that. 

Just this month, I wrote about the Jay Jones text messages, and I called on him to drop out of his race. My argument in that case was simple: Let’s make calls for political violence, even if they can be excused as jokes, so taboo that both sides start to weed this behavior out of their ranks. We have to police our own groups and communities, and my appeal to Democrats was to take the high road, sacrifice Jones, and then try to hold Republicans to the same standards.

Now it’s the GOP’s turn to exercise those standards. Republican senators just showed how easy it was with Ingrassia: A few said they’d vote no, and now his nomination is dead. There wasn’t some uprising from the base and there was no downside to setting this standard; it just made them look like decent and reasonable people. The board of directors of the National Young Republicans also did a good job with the participants of the group chat: They condemned the texts in plain language and then called on every member of the chat to immediately resign whatever positions they held, and many of them have. 

Which all brings me to my final point: For the most part, Republicans have actually handled these two scandals precisely as they should have. With the prominent exception of the vice president and the small selection of members of Congress, most of the party condemned these behaviors for what they were. Plenty of news outlets, including Politico, have framed this story as the GOP being split on how to navigate the texts, but I’m not really buying that. Politico came up with exactly two Republican members of Congress who tried to defend or distract from the messages. I’m sure there were a few more, but I think the party generally condemned these actions for what they were — so framing this as a division is an overstatement.  

Sure, you can find plenty of people on X defending the young Republicans (though nobody really came to Ingrassia’s defense), but that reaction isn’t representative of the Republican Party as a whole. Repercussions are being delivered across the country, the Young Republicans organization itself has staked out a hardline condemnation, and almost every Republican at the state and national level has rejected this language outright and called for clear repercussions.

This is an encouraging signal about the norms we’re all still willing to enforce and live by. Republicans should keep it up, and Democrats should remember it the next time they have an opportunity to draw lines on what’s acceptable and what’s not. 

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Your questions, answered.

Q: Would it make any difference if Congress stopped getting paid during a shutdown? And why, when the government shuts down, do I still pay taxes?

— Jodie from Seattle, WA

Tangle: We’ve actually gotten some version of this question a lot this week — some readers have wondered if members of Congress get paid during the shutdown (they do), if any have publicly declined their salaries (some have pledged to), and if Congressional staffs are getting paid (they are, but are subject to furlough). 

Those are questions with straightforward, factual answers — as is your second question. Congress is getting paid because Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution defines the pay of federal legislators, stating in part that “Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.”

Your first question is more of an opinion question, one that strongly divided our editorial team. We should start by saying that several bills have actually been proposed that would achieve this goal: the “Make America Govern Again Act” (introduced yesterday, ironically during the shutdown) would bar members from collecting salaries during a shutdown, and the “No Budget, No Pay Act” introduced in January goes a step further and would forbid members from collecting a salary until Congress approves a budget. Those all sound like good motivators, so why wouldn’t they make a difference?

Some of us, like Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, think such laws wouldn’t make a difference. Ari notes that wealthier members of Congress make plenty of side money from speaking fees (and have for years), and now make so much in stock deals that it’s become almost a joke. Cutting their pay might feel right, but without other reforms it would just draw them towards other “economic opportunities.” 

Others of us, like Executive Editor Isaac Saul and Associate Editor Audrey Moorehead, strongly disagree. They stress that very few members of Congress actually make a lot of money off book deals or trading stocks. Remember: Congress has over 500 members. For the vast majority, losing their pay would be a huge deal — and this camp thinks this consequence would increase the pressure on the majority of Congress to find a deal in a way that could actually be pretty productive. 

Meanwhile, Social Media Manager Russell Nystrom agrees that the loss of pay would be significant to many representatives but disagrees that such a policy would be beneficial. Instead, he finds it more likely that the threat of lost pay may incentivize some representatives to support just any budget bill, instead of doing proper due diligence and ensuring that the budget Congress passes is the right one.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

On Monday, Colombia recalled its ambassador to the United States, Daniel García-Peña, amid rising tensions between the countries over U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the United States of “murder” for a strike in September that he claims killed a fisherman whose boat was adrift due to engine failure. In response, Trump alleged that Petro was encouraging drug production in Colombia and announced he would cut off U.S. aid to the country. The Hill has the story. 

Numbers.

• 2,900. The approximate number of pages of chats among Young Republicans leaked to POLITICO. 
• 28,000. The approximate number of text messages in the leak. 
• 1932. The year the Association of New York State Young Republican Clubs was established. 
• 18–40. The age range of those eligible to join the club. 
• 145. The number of days between Paul Ingrassia being nominated to lead the Office of Special Counsel and his withdrawal. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered Donald Trump’s visit to McDonald’s.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the start of construction on the White House ballroom.
• Nothing to do with politics: Why childhood shyness can actually be a strength.
• Yesterday’s survey: 3,732 readers responded to our survey on the government shutdown with 55% saying Republicans are more to blame. “They control all three branches, and are proving themselves incapable of governing,” one respondent said. “Democrats are literally the ones who last-minute decided not to vote to pass the CR. How is this a question?” said another.

Have a nice day.

Jeff Robertson became a local celebrity for his house’s Halloween decorations in 2020, and he decided to use some of that attention to help others. Robertson launched Skeletons for St. Jude, a national campaign that encourages families to decorate their homes for Halloween and raise awareness (and funds) for children’s cancer research. Roughly 600 homes are already participating this year, and Robertson says the number could reach 1,000 by Halloween. The effort has raised $977,792 for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital since 2020. Good Good Good has the story, and you can check out the Skeletons for St. Jude website here.