UF College Republicans recently hosted James Fishback, a GOP gubernatorial candidate in the state who has embraced popular online antisemitic slang on the campaign trail.

By Andrew Lapin, JTA

Another group for young Republicans is in hot water over revelations that its members have engaged in antisemitic activity.

The University of Florida disbanded its College Republicans chapter over the weekend following social media posts in which two members reportedly made Nazi salutes, among other actions.

In response, the group sued the university, accusing administrators of violating its First Amendment rights.

“The University of Florida punitively deactivated and shut down the UFCR, in response to alleged viewpoints expressed by a member of UFCR, and in an effort to silence the club and chill its future speech,” the lawsuit reads.

The chapter is being supported in its efforts by a national umbrella College Republicans organization, whose president said he supported the students’ “right to free speech.”

UF has 6,500 Jewish undergraduates, the most of any university in the country, according to Hillel International.

The revelations concerning its College Republicans group come weeks after a similar controversy involving Florida International University’s chapter, and followed leaked antisemitic group chats among leaders of several statewide Young Republicans chapters, including New York, last year.

In a statement explaining its move to disband the group, UF said members of the College Republicans “engaged in a pattern of conduct that violated its rules and values, including a recent antisemitic gesture.”

Photos posted online by pro-Israel activists appeared to show members of the chapter flashing Nazi salutes, as well as posing with antisemitic influencers Nick Fuentes and Myron Gaines.

Other reports of the leaked material describe group chats stating that Hitler “didn’t do enough.”

The UF statement continued, “The University of Florida has emphatically supported its Jewish community and remains committed to preventing and addressing antisemitism and other forms of discrimination and harassment that are threatening and disruptive to our students and to the teaching, research and expressive activities of the campus community.”

UF College Republicans recently hosted James Fishback, a GOP gubernatorial candidate in the state who has embraced popular online antisemitic slang on the campaign trail.

In its lawsuit and on X, the College Republicans group suggested the two events were linked.

“48 hours after we hosted James Fishback (@j_fishback) at the largest Candidate event at UF in nearly 10 years, @UF terminated our organization,” they wrote on X. The lawsuit claims, “UF likely further deactivated Plaintiff because UFCR hosted republican gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, a critic of Israel, at a March 11, 2026, event attended by 500 students.”

Fishback himself criticized the university for disbanding the group, likening it to the school’s decision to disband an anti-Israel group in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks.

“It is disgraceful for Florida’s taxpayer-funded universities to punish student groups for their protected speech,” he wrote. “In 2023, it was Students for Justice in Palestine. Today, it’s College Republicans.”

Also supporting the chapter was College Republicans of America, an umbrella organization, although its website does not include UF as a listed chapter.

“We support our students’ right to free speech, even if their endorsements don’t match our own at the national level,” CRA’s president, William Branson Donahue, wrote on X.

“I’m aware they’ve retained counsel and we will support them in reinstating the chapter.” The group’s recently appointed political director, Kai Schwemmer, is a streaming partner of Fuentes.

The university had claimed it was following the lead of a different College Republicans umbrella group in disbanding its chapter, the Florida Federation of College Republicans — a more moderate organization that condemned antisemitism after the FIU scandal.

UF College Republicans says it has no relation to the Florida Federation of College Republicans.

A Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for further comment to College Republicans of America was not immediately returned. The student who joked about Hitler in the group chat told the New York Times he had not intended to be antisemitic and also claimed he was not affiliated with the UF College Republicans.

Anthony Sabatini, the attorney representing UF College Republicans, is also representing FIU students who were exposed in that school’s recent College Republicans antisemitic group chat controversy.

On X, Sabatini shared a notice from FIU’s general counsel that one of the students, who had been placed under investigation by the university, had been “re-instated.”

The president of that school’s Turning Point USA chapter recently stepped down over his involvement in the chats.

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The group helps recruit and mobilize young conservatives on college campuses and often supplies doorknockers and organizers to Republican campaigns coordinated with the Republican National Committee.

By Corey Walker, The Algemeiner

The largest Republican youth organization in the United States has named as its new political director a far-right social media personality and streamer with strong anti-Israel views and ties to antisemitic podcaster Nick Fuentes.

The move has fueled ongoing concerns that young Republicans are increasingly embracing antisemitic conspiracy theories and turning against Israel, the closest US ally in the Middle East.

College Republicans of America on Thursday announced that it tapped Kai Schwemmer to serve as the group’s next political director.

The announcement was met with immediate backlash by many observers who have previously accused Schwemmer of advancing antisemitic and anti-Israel narratives.

Despite the controversy, College Republicans of America President Martin Bertao defended the decision to hire the firebrand on X.

“Over the last day I have done a lot of reflecting on my decision to appoint Kai as CRA’s political director. And in that reflection I have came to the decision that I would like to apologize … to absolutely NOBODY, CRA will never back down to the WOKE mob!” he posted.

In the two and a half years following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, Schwemmer has established a reputation online as a staunch critic of the US relationship with the Jewish state.

Schwemmer has appeared in and hosted various online debates over the US-Israel alliance.

In January, Schwemmer appeared in a debate hosted by popular right-wing commentator Michael Knowles, in which he argued that the so-called Zionist wing of the Republican Party (GOP) is not “concerned with what’s best for America.”

He argued that the pro-Israel coalition within the GOP advances policies which strangle free speech to suppress dissent around Israel.

During another January debate against pro-Israel commentator Cam Higby, Schwemmer cast more doubt over the US relationship with Israel, claiming that “Jewish” and “Zionist” defense contractors benefit from striking lucrative arms deals with the Jewish state.

“And so you see a kind of collection of, you know, the contracts going back to Zionists in America who no matter what are going to be supportive of, whether it’s just militarily or monetarily, they’re going to support US involvement and US support for Israel, and so I think there’s a problem in in you know coalescing all of that funding into the same interests,” Schwemmer said.

“Are you telling me that the Jewish CEOs of Boeing, Raytheon, and other defense contractors are not looking out for Israeli interests? And do you think that’s not a part of their calculus?” Schwemmer asked during the debate.

He has also provoked criticism over his connections with Fuentes, an avowed antisemite and Holocaust denier.

Schwemmer has complimented Fuentes multiple times, claiming that he agrees with his views and calling the white supremacist and 27-year-old self-described virgin as “cool.”

Schwemmer has been spotted wearing a blue baseball cap emblazoned with the slogan “America First.” The cap and slogan were created by members of Fuentes’ fanbase to signal support for the antisemitic “Groyper” movement.

In 2022, Schwemmer appeared as a featured speaker at Fuentes’s white nationalist “America First PAC.”

His presence at a Turning Point USA debate regarding Israel, hosted at the University of Delaware, drew protests over his connection to Fuentes.

“Schwemmer is a disciple of Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust-denying white nationalist who was a key leader of both the deadly ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville and the January 6 insurrection,” a flyer passed out at the event read.

In June 2025, Schwemmer criticized Israel’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear program and suggested that conservatives should sympathize with Tehran.

“There’s something extremely unsettling about all the conservative influencers saying things like ‘God Bless Israel today and in the coming days’ after seeing Israel’s preemptive strike on Iran. What should God be blessing them for? Starting a war?” he posted on X.

College Republicans, one of the oldest youth organizations affiliated with the Republican Party, plays an important role in the GOP ecosystem, serving primarily as a pipeline for future political staffers and campaign volunteers rather than a driver of party policy.

The group helps recruit and mobilize young conservatives on college campuses and often supplies doorknockers and organizers to Republican campaigns coordinated with the Republican National Committee.

Several prominent Republican figures, including former House Speaker Paul Ryan and longtime strategist Karl Rove, got their start in the organization, underscoring its role as a training ground for the party’s next generation of operatives.

Schwemmer’s ascendance comes as the GOP continues to reckon with a perceived rise in antisemitism among its youngest cohorts.

Last month, for example, a survey by Irwin Mansdorf, a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, and Charles Jacobs, president of the Jewish Leadership Project, found that 45 percent of Republicans under the age of 44 said Jews pose a threat to the “American way of life.”

In December, the Manhattan Institute, a prominent US-based think tank, released a major poll showing that younger Republican voters are much less supportive of Israel and more likely to express antisemitic views than their older cohorts.

According to the data, 25 percent of Republicans under 50 openly express antisemitic views as opposed to just 4 percent over the age of 50.

Startlingly, a substantial amount, 37 percent, of GOP voters indicate belief in Holocaust denialism. These figures are more pronounced among young men under 50, with a majority, 54 percent, agreeing that the Holocaust “was greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe.”

Among men over 50, 41 percent agree with the sentiment.

Last week, the Miami Dade County Republican Party came under fire after leaked group chats revealed extensive racism and antisemitism throughout membership.

The local GOP, Turning Point USA, and College Republicans casually said “ni—er,” denounced women as “whores,” and spoke rapturously about Adolf Hitler.

Ian Valdes, the president of Florida International University’s chapter of Turning Point USA, wrote, “I would def not marry a Jew lmao.” Other participants referred to Jews as “k—kes.”

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