The Miami New Times reports that chatroom discussion of the Florida International University chapter of Turning Points USA (TPUSA) show members of the group making racist and alt-right tinged comments. “Members joke about watching underage cartoon pornography, deporting Latina women, and, in the most repugnant case, share racist ‘Pepe the Frog’ memes showing Syrian men raping a white Swedish woman at gunpoint,” the New Times observes. In other chats, a senior TPUSA member advises peers to “avoid using the n word and don’t reference Richard Spencer too much and don’t Jew hate ... all the time.”
TPUSA is a non-profit whose mandate is to promote conservative ideas on campus. It has been closely affiliated with the Trump administration, particularly because of the friendship of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son.
This is not the first time TPUSA has run into problems growing out of racist members. In December 2017, The New Yorker reported that Crystal Clanton, a national director at TPUSA, texted “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all . . . I hate blacks. End of story.” Clanton was fired in the wake of this text becoming known to The New Yorker. Gabrielle Fequiere, a former TPUSA employee, told The New Yorker that speakers at a event organized by the group “spoke badly about black women having all these babies out of wedlock. It was really offensive.”
Aside from the history of racism, TPUSA has been accused of conducting partisan political activities that violate its charitable status. According to The New Yorker’s 2017 story, internal documents and interviews “suggest that the group may have skirted campaign-finance laws that bar charitable organizations from participating in political activity. Former employees say that they were directed to work with prominent conservatives, including the wife of the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in aid of Republican Presidential candidates in 2016.”