Meet the young Republicans who want to deport Zohran Mamdani

I was about half an hour late for a media workshop on an early July evening hosted by the New York Young Republicans Club on the campus of Lehman College in the Bronx. (The New York subway is not plagued by crime, contrary to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s claims. But it often runs late.) Even so, I was the first person to make it to the studio.

When the other attendees filed in, there were about a dozen-odd people there, ready to learn the secrets of defeating the liberal media in the marketplace of ideas. That count includes the employees at the studio as well as the organizers from the club.

The modest attendance offered a hint: Despite the headlines and social media buzz New York’s young Republicans have generated for hosting MAGA-era superstars like Steve Bannon or calling for the deportation of Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, the NYYRC may not quite be the deadly political weapon it cosplays as in online spaces.

In the waiting area, one club member discussed late-night drinking downtown, while two others discussed their views that progressives were the “Stalinists of the 21st century.” Another joked about doing an episode in “Italian Brainrot,” a so-dumb-it’s-hard-to-explain meme, as a way to appeal to the kids.

The Lehman event on July 2 was billed as a crash course in “media takeover,” but could more accurately be described as an introductory course in using the City University of New York’s resources to make a public access TV show. It concluded with a live taping of “Banned in the Bronx,” an in-house show of the NYYRC’s Bronx caucus.

As the show’s nu-metal intro music blared and attendees signed waiver forms authorizing their appearance on camera, host Chris Reid — who also chairs the Bronx caucus — announced with a wry smile that this week’s show was all about “the N-word,” which here, apparently, refers to “narrative.”

No one present acknowledged the obvious irony of using a public university’s freely available resources to create a TV program claiming that the government wants to censor conservatives. To state the obvious, “Banned in the Bronx” is not, in fact, banned in the Bronx or anywhere else.

The legend of the Trump-era NYYRC begins in 2019, when the club’s former president and current chairman, Gavin Wax, got a bunch of his conservative friends together and staged a takeover of what was then a semi-dormant organization. While that internal coup has been described as contentious in some media accounts, Wax told Salon that any animosity between his contingent and the former leadership only arose after the fact. When the club held its elections in 2019, Wax said, he ran unopposed, and former leaders didn’t put up much of a fight.

That was a turning point of sorts. There have been many iterations of youth-oriented Republican organizations in New York City, dating back all the way to the party’s origins in the 1850s. But prior to the Trump era, the NYYRC been a relatively small and generally quiet organization of moderate Republicans, the sort of people the club’s current members would probably describe as “liberals.” (New York, in fact, has a long tradition of moderate and liberal Republicans — pretty much an extinct breed today — including such legendary figures as Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in the 1940s and Sen. Jacob Javits in the 1970s.)

Wax transformed the club into a Trump-loving red-meat right-wing organization for New York Republicans under age 40. He told Salon that he and his followers found the club as an organization of just 30 to 40 dues-paying members and left it a club of around 1,800.  Each pays $75 a year if they’re under 40, and $375 for “associate” membership if they’re older. You can buy a lifetime membership for $10,000.

Intriguingly, the club has no official affiliation with either the city or state Republican party organizations. In fact, Wax— whose name has been floated as a potential FCC commissioner under the Trump administration — described the relationship with local Republican officials as “hostile.” Spokespeople for the NYC Republican Party didn’t respond to a request for comment.

All of this contributes to the club’s self-created myth as a fearless band of rebels, boldly airing conservative opinions in an overwhelmingly liberal city. This flattering creation narrative was solidified during the COVID pandemic, when right-wing complaints over social distancing, mask requirements and other health and safety initiatives led to what current members remember as acts of resistance.

The marquee event for the young Republicans is their yearly gala, which have featured speakers as illustrious as Donald Trump himself, as well as Bannon and now-disgraced former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida.

In Trump’s 2023 address to the club, Wax introduced him as a “hometown hero” and as the “45th, the 46th and the 47th president of the United States” before Trump took the stage and the crowd listened to Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American” in full. In his remarks, Trump dunked on then-rival Ron DeSantis and defended his infamous comments promising not be a dictator “except for day one.”

A defining event for the modern club, however, was its “forbidden gala” in 2020, which took place across the Hudson River in Jersey City. That evening saw 100 or so members gather to hear Gaetz  — at the time, a MAGA superstar — deliver a keynote speech.  The event drew criticism from elected officials and the media for flouting public health regulations, while simultaneously greatly raising the profile of the club and cementing its self-image as a band of rebels in the big city.

Stefano Forte, the NYYRC’s current president, told Salon that he sees it, the club as “revolutionary,” apparently for its enthusiastic support of a 79-year-old billionaire who has twice been elected president.

“We’re cultivating a cool social movement,” Forte said. “That’s what makes this club so special. It’s cool to be a Republican in New York City. Everybody is a Democrat. Everybody is a hive mind. And when they see a group of young people that think differently, it’s cool. It’s revolutionary.”

Members of the club’s more political core membership are quick to discuss what they see as their influence in both local and national conservative politics. As they see things, the club has become real power broker in New York City Republican politics.

Members take credit for elevating Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa to the GOP nomination in the 2021 mayoral race, elevating candidates like City Council Member Inna Vernikov and defeating the “cabal of ex-Democrats” that allegedly steer city Republican politics. (Sliwa is once again the nominee in this year’s highly contentious race, with little or no chance of winning.) It’s not uncommon for members of the club who have run for office themselves to boast about getting more votes than any Republican in their district in recent history, even though in nearly all cases they still lost handily.

According to club leadership, its power comes down to the club’s ability to mobilize a volunteer force for canvassing purposes. According to one member of leadership, Trump even told them personally that their efforts in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, tdelivered the state to him in 2024.

But amid all this, the 2020 “forbidden gala” still stands as the quintessential act of resistance from the club, bucking oppressive Democratic rule in New York City and the surrounding region. But perhaps most of all not as a brave act of rebellion but because it gave a bunch of right-wing 20-somethings an excuse to hang out and discuss their support for decades-old conservative policies.

The NYYRC’s Aperol Spritz-themed Fourth of July social, billed as the “Stars, Stripes, & Spritz Annual Independence Day Rooftop Bash,” was well attended with around 120 people packed into the third floor of Bella Union, a chic rooftop bar on the East Side of Manhattan. Based on an assortment of interviews with attendees, this sort of thing was exactly why they joined the club.

The overall vibe was less like a Trump rally than one of the “Make America Hot Again” social events lovingly covered in publications owned by billionaire Rupert Murdoch.

There were certainly die-hard Trump lovers and aspiring political operatives on hand, along with a larger proportion of people who espoused vaguely conservative worldviews but told Salon they were mostly there to meet people and hang out. Perhaps more surprisingly, almost no one at the event seemed to know what the club was up to politically.

Joshua Shu said that he had been a member for two years, but was “not really hyper-political.” The Trump administration, he added, was “a little more extreme” than he had expected. When asked, Shu said that he wasn’t aware of the club’s recent call to have Mamdani deported under the Communist Control Act, a 1954 law that bans members of the Communist Party from serving in certain elected offices and government jobs. (Mamdani is not, needless to say, a member of the Communist Party, whose existence at this point is nominal.)

“I don’t want him to be mayor,” Shu said, but calling for actual deportation was going “too far.”

Daniela May, who ran for City Council in 2023, told Salon that she had also been a member of the club for the last two years, as well as its Black Caucus. She said she didn’t plan to be politically active in the current mayor’s race and was withholding judgment on the Trump administration, since  she was taking a “political break.”

Another attendee, a young man in a fishnet polo shirt who identified himself only as Brendan, told Salon that he didn’t pay much attention to politics, but had been thinking about Trump’s failure to release new information regarding infamous child-sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

“I think that they are well acquainted,” Brendan said. “I think that all politicians are basically the same.”

“When it came down to this election,” he added, “I thought that Trump was better than Biden, for sure.” (Joe Biden was not on the ballot in 2024.)

When asked what he liked about the Trump administration, Brendan said that he was a fan of the mass deportation policy and that he saw El Salvador and its president, Nayib Bukele, as models for the United States.

Bukele had “locked up every single gang member in the entire country, and now they are the safest country in the Western Hemisphere,” Brendan said. “He locked up people that maybe were not criminals. So I think it’s the same thing, like, having to round up everybody is going to be tough, but at the end of the day, it needs to be done.”

When asked about what he thought of the GOP’s recent “big beautiful” budget bill, Brendan said, “I think that I got to take care of myself in life. I’m trying to like, be a millionaire. So Medicaid doesn’t really affect me. When it comes to the Epstein files, I think that’s very similar to Hillary’s emails, like, they will just have this sort of information and hold it from the public.”

Brendan was not the only young Republican present that evening who was having second thoughts about Trump over the so-called Epstein files.

Though much of the club’s membership seems more interested in aesthetic conservatism than in serious political engagement, there is still a nucleus that sees the club as an incubator for future conservative leadership and as a tool to launch their own careers. Even those more dedicated members seemed inclined to hedge on some of the NYYRC’s more authoritarian positions.

Nathan Berger, the current vice chairman, previously served as vice president under Wax and was one of the members who joined as part of the 2019 takeover. When asked about the apparent lack of support for some of the group’s position, such as calling for the deportation of political opponents, Berger said, “Hyperbole certainly has its place in discourse. It’s a rhetorical vehicle that has its place.”

“But when we look at Mamdani as an individual who has publicly backed certain groups, as Congressman [Andy] Ogles indicated in his letter to the Department of Justice, there’s an open question around exactly what was disclosed when he applied for naturalized citizenship. I think it’s important that every individual who’s applied for naturalized citizenship be scrutinized, and to the extent that their values don’t comport with the interests of this country, that the Department of Justice take appropriate measures accordingly.”

When asked whether deporting Mamdani over his political beliefs might set a dangerous precedent, Berger said, “I don’t look at it as deporting anyone because they’re a political opponent. I think it’s a question of raising the bar for what it means to be a citizen of this country, and applying, in a very strict way, the regulations and laws that are already in place.”

Elizabeth Ruh, the house chairwoman of the club, said she became politically active in the club during the pandemic, attending protests against public health measures and against removing the statue of former President Teddy Roosevelt outside the American Museum of Natural History.

When asked what she thought about the club’s call to deport Mamdani, she said, “That was more tongue in cheek. I don’t think he’s here illegally.”

After about 10 minutes of conversation with Ruh, she asked if she might be able to add a “hot take” to her comments — one which could be seen as indicative of the thought-revolution these young Republicans are selling.

“All right, hot take: The Democrat Party is the party of racists. Always has been, still is,” Ruh said. “They are the party of the Confederate South. They are the party of the Ku Klux Klan. They are the party of Jim Crow, the party that opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. They are the party that wanted redlining, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”