College Republicans Convention to Host White Nationalist Nick Fuentes

A national convention of college Republicans is excitedly welcoming vicious antisemite and racist Nick Fuentes as a headliner.

The event is being hosted later this month by College Republicans United, a group that, according to its website, has been committed to “spreading America First across college campuses since January 2018.” Among its “values” are planks like “opposition to immigration and multiculturalism.”

“Republicans United’s sole focus is to support America First Policies and Christian Nationalism across the country,” an organization flier reads.

After this article was published, the original venue for the conference, the Hassayampa Inn, announced that the “event will no longer be held” there anymore. Now, the College Republicans United website ambiguously says the conference will be held in downtown Prescott, Arizona. “This year’s convention promises to be bigger, better, and more impactful than ever before,” the organization assures, noting that the actual location will be “made public July 28th.

Fuentes was previously banned from social media outlets for violent rhetoric about people of color, women, Jewish people, immigrants, LGBTQ people, Covid-19, and much more. He has also proudly said he’s “just like Hitler” (whom he has also called “a pedophile … also really fucking cool”), and that “Catholic monarchy, and just war, and crusades, and inquisitions” are much better than democracy.

Not to be outdone, also speaking at the event is January 6 rioter Jake Chansley. Known as the QAnon Shaman, Chansley has long been active in trying to spread the QAnon conspiracy theory, even attending a Black Lives Matter protest to try his luck. After the 2020 election, he focused his efforts on challenging the election results, specifically in Arizona, culminating in his participation in the January 6 attack on the Capitol (and in a photo of him with his fist raised as he stood on the dais on the Senate floor).

Recently expelled Arizona state Representative Liz Harris will also appear alongside former state Representative John Fillmore, who is now the leader of the far-right Patriot Party of Arizona. Harris was expelled from the state House for encouraging conspiracy theories and defamation on the House floor.

These are the people College Republicans United has laid out the red carpet for. Meanwhile, the official Republican Party in three Arizona counties (Pima, Maricopa, and Yavapai) are all backing the event.

Notably, the event has gone through several iterations of speakers and sponsors, as more and more people have come to learn of it. Originally, State Senator Justine Wadsack, neo-Nazi streamer and January 6 rioter “Baked Alaska,” and Congressman Eli Crane were all set to appear at the event.

Meanwhile, former Arizona Representative David Stringer was listed as both a speaker and sponsor. Stringer resigned after refusing to cooperate with an ethics investigation into previous charges against him for sexually molesting two boys. Specifically, Stringer allegedly paid two boys under the age of 15—one who was developmentally disabled—$10 each to have sex with him. One of the boys told police Stringer had requested to have sex with him at least 10 additional times afterward.

Stringer also once complained at a campaign event that “there aren’t enough white kids to go around,” as he discussed integration in schools and was recorded saying he doesn’t “like to demonize” sex trafficking. He said he doesn’t think there is much child sex trafficking but there are “a lot of 15-year-old prostitutes.” He laughed after saying that.

State Senator Wadsack has been removed from the event and is now pretending to play ignorant about the whole thing.

National Republicans were punished in 2018, lost in 2020, fizzled in 2022, and have lost swaths of referendums and special elections throughout that time period. Now, into 2024, their college counterparts seem to be leaning even further into the kind of politics that is both incredibly dangerous for the nation and phenomenally damaging electorally. If the future of your party is in the hands of students who are somehow so alienated that they think this kind of event is good … good luck, Republicans.

This article has been updated.

California Governor Gavin Newsom ripped into his Republican counterparts on their apparent disregard for human life during a weekend interview.

Newsom has previously made clear he isn’t afraid to call out Republicans for their hypocritical policies on issues including gun control, health care, and child welfare. His interview, which aired on MSNBC Sunday, included some of his most forceful comments yet about the policies they push “in the name of freedom.”

He first took aim at Texas Governor Greg Abbott. “One of the worst crime and murder rates in America and one of the worst mental health records of any governor in America?” Newsom said. “I’m not so convinced about the merits of his leadership.”

But Newsom pointed out that the problems go beyond Texas. “Eight of the top 10 murder states are Republican states,” he said. “Seven of the top 10 dependent states …  are red states.”

“The life expectancy in the South, and they’re not expanding Medicaid and prenatal care and providing child care? It’s jaw-dropping,” Newsom continued.

“Infant mortality? You care about life, and you look at life expectancy? You care about life, and you’re getting kids that are gunned down by weapons of war? Spare me. All in the name of freedom, as you’re banning books?”

“With all due respect, we should not be on the defensive as the Democratic Party. The Republican Party should be on their heels, not us,” Newsom added.

Newsom is no stranger to taking Republicans to task. In January, while visiting victims of the tragic Monterey Park shooting, he told he told CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell that the Second Amendment, which many Americans believe guarantees them unfettered access to guns, is “becoming a suicide pact.”

“Nothing about this is surprising. Everything about this is infuriating,” he said of the Monterey Park attack. Hours later, while still visiting, he then received reports that there had been another shooting, this time in Half Moon Bay, which killed seven people and injured one more.

More recently, during a June interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Newsom again highlighted the major discrepancies between Democratic- and Republican-led states. Newsom pointed out that blue states make up a much stronger portion of the U.S. economy, meaning they essentially subsidize red ones.

As Ron DeSantis’s campaign continues to plummet, it seems the junior varsity fascist has gotten all the more desperate to keep those fundraising dollars coming in and maintain the illusion that he stands a chance. He’s now even begging for donations in the wee small hours of the morning.

According to several users on Twitter, his campaign sent out a fundraising text around 2:30 a.m. ET on Monday.

Of course, there’s nothing with perhaps trying to connect with those who may be awake at nonconventional hours—workers with different or later schedules, individuals with different sleeping patterns, and those who maybe just have trouble falling asleep. But given DeSantis’s war on practically every subgroup of people under the sun, one may not be off-the-mark to imagine this fundraising text as unintentional.

This instance alone doesn’t indict the DeSantis campaign as incompetent. But taken in tandem with his disastrous Twitter campaign launch alongside Elon Musk, his immediately subsequent signing of a bill that would protect Musk if his rockets explode and kill workers, his sharing of a viciously homophobic and downright odd campaign video, and numerous reminders of his generally nonrelatable demeanor, the sum of it all perhaps explains why DeSantis is not built to win a presidential primary, let alone a general election.

And these campaign bugs don’t even get into DeSantis’s actual policies, like his infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill, one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country, or the rollback of gun safety laws while the country is awash in practically daily mass shootings that have radicalized people from Tennessee to Texas.

Elon Musk has decided that the only way to determine which billionaire tech bro can reign supreme is to have a literal dick measuring contest.

You read that right.

Musk is fuming over Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg’s newest platform, Threads. The Twitter competitor came out of the blue and has been a runaway hit, amassing more than 100 million downloads in its first week of existence. People are leaving Twitter in droves for Threads.

And Musk, who bought Twitter in October for $44 billion and promptly ran it straight into the ground, will not stand for it. “Zuck is a cuck,” he tweeted Sunday night. “I propose a literal dick measuring contest.”

Musk also sued Meta last week for allegedly poaching former Twitter staff to create the “copycat” site. Those former staffers would be among the nearly three-quarters of all Twitter employees that Musk fired when he took over.

Meta’s response was short and to the point: “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee—that’s just not a thing.”

Zuckerberg had not responded to Musk’s call for a dick measuring contest as of press time.

Musk seems determined to duke it out with Zuckerberg, one way or another. He has also challenged the Facebook founder to a cage match. And if that wasn’t enough toxic masculinity on display for you, misogynist influencer Andrew Tate—who has been charged in Romania with rape, human trafficking, and forming an organized crime group to sexually exploit women—has offered to train Musk for the fight.

George Santos has taken many identities, finding his inspiration, personality, and even personal background from the lives of others. His latest model? Rosa Parks.

Santos compared himself to the civil rights leader during a bamboozling interview on conservative talk show host Mike Crispi’s Unafraid podcast last week, during which he appeared live from the back seat of a vehicle and went on a rant about how his party is apparently not intersectional enough for far-right Latino gay men.

“Come for me, I go right back for them because they think for far too long they’ve gotten away with getting along to get along. So no, it’s not going to stay that way anymore. I’m going to call them out. You want to call me a liar, I’ll call you a sellout,” Santos spitted.

“I mean, Mitt Romney: The man goes to the State of the Union of the United States wearing the Ukraine lapel pin, tells me a Latino gay man, that I shouldn’t sit in the front, that I should be in the back,” the fake volleyball all-star and vet charity scammer continued.

“Well guess what, Rosa Parks didn’t sit in the back and neither am I gonna sit in the back. That’s just the reality of how it works. Mitt Romney lives in a very different world. And he needs to buckle up because it’s gonna be a bumpy ride for him,” finished the congressman under investigation for potential criminal activity both here and abroad.

It’s unclear why Santos brought up Romney’s wearing of a Ukraine pin as an apparent pejorative or contrast to his identity as a Latino gay man. But Santos’s typically odd sentences pale against him—a member of Congress and possibly serial financial criminal—likening himself to a Black woman risking her life to make a stance against systemic racism and discrimination.

From Martin Luther King Jr. to now Rosa Parks, one wonders which other civil rights leaders Republicans may try to co-opt next!