By Paul Bean
Leaked texts show New York Young Republican leader Gavin Wax conspired with a Democratic Politico reporter to sabotage his own party’s members, including Vermont State Senator Sam Douglass, who resigned Friday with pressure from Vermont GOP leaders and amid threats to his wife and newborn baby.
It was all over a bitter power struggle. The text messages below show Gavin Wax’s correspondence with Politico journalist Jason Beeferman since September 2025. They show how Wax conspired with a Beeferman, a registered Democrat, to tarnish the reputations of his fellow Republicans over a seemingly petty internecine political dispute. These messages were obtained and shared by AF Post on X.
After sharing his phone number, Wax named Douglass as ”obviously having the most to lose.”
Reports have emerged Wax’s potential motives in turning on his own party stem from losing the Young Republican National Federation chairmanship to Peter Giunta in 2024, allegedly using the chat logs to extort members and undermine Giunta’s pro-Trump faction. These reports have been confirmed by an anonymous source within the YR community.
Allegedly his demands were unmet, Wax provided the 2,900-page chat log to Politico, leading to a major scandal and resignations within the organization.
In the October 14 article by Politico, Douglass said in reference to a chat about an obese Indian girlfriend of one of the other YR participants, ‘she just didn’t bathe often.’ The comment was included with many other explicitly anti-semitic and bigoted statements made by other participants in the chat.
Facing bipartisan calls to resign—including from Gov. Phil Scott—Douglass, 26, a mental health counselor and real estate agent, stepped down to protect his family from ensuing threats.
”We just had a baby. Our first. We struggled with fertility for years and we were lucky,” wrote Douglass in a statement issued Friday evening (10/17). “I was on paternity leave as of last week and I was just returning to legislative work when this story broke. So, we’re still trying to put our house back together and catch up on sleep. Yet, I have received some of the most horrific hate one could imagine. Between calling my wife a “wh*re” and others including phrases like, “we wiped you nazi trash out once and we will again you doublechin, no jawlined incel f*ckface”, “Your baby would be better off dead”, “I hope your baby gets r*ped”, “This world is better off without you.”, and “You’re wife is a fat ugly pig and needs to be muzzled like a dog.” Many of these were made by Vermonters. We’ve even heard about an online petition circling to have our baby taken away from us. Just today we were sent nasty items in the mail.”
These kinds of comments towards Douglass are reflected on social media.
In response to a 7 Days News article on Douglass’s resignation posted to Facebook, a Central Vermont Medical Center (CVMC) speech-language pathologist on social media targeted Douglass, proposing he be “stripped naked” and have “entrails thrown at him” as punishment.
Lakshmi Joshi Boyle, a speech-language pathologist and supervisor at CVMC’s University of Vermont Medical Center affiliate, posted the comment.
“What a jerk,” writes Boyle. “Any expectation of accountability? His punishment should be to be stripped naked and to have entrails thrown at him as he walks through the street of all 251 zip codes. He shames this great State,” she wrote, garnering six likes and replies decrying the rhetoric.
Boyle, who specializes in geriatric, neurologic, and trauma-related communication disorders, has contributed to professional publications, including an article on speech pathologists’ role in trauma survivor recovery for the Trauma Survivors Network newsletter.