Galveston County Republican Party

The Republican Party of Galveston County (RPGC) is the county-level Republican chapter in Galveston County, Texas, operating from a headquarters in League City with Patrick J. McGinnis listed as chairman (Galveston County Republican Party). What makes this small local chapter notable beyond its county lines is a story it documented itself: the RNC-to-Smithsonian arc of its delegate Trisha Hope — and what happened next. The party’s site still celebrates Hope’s May 2025 donation of her J6-themed convention items to the Smithsonian Institution, even though in September 2026 that same delegate told Politico’s The Playbook Podcast that Donald Trump is “a fraud and a liar” and said she would walk the halls of Congress in support of his impeachment (Galveston County Republican Party; Primetimer).

The chapter

The party’s website identifies its headquarters at 1401 W. League City Parkway, League City, TX 77573, open Thursdays from 10AM to 2PM, with phone number 281.554.8888 and a mailing address of P.O. Box 1423, League City, TX 77574 (Galveston County Republican Party). The site links to Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages, collects donations through the Anedot platform, and runs an active news blog — its archives list 23 posts in 2024, 16 in 2025, and 13 so far in 2026 (Galveston County Republican Party). The site lists info@galvestoncntygop.com as its contact email, and its footer identifies the site as a political advertisement of the RPGC PAC (Galveston County Republican Party). No independent press coverage of the chapter itself was found in the sources read for this profile; its public record is essentially the site it maintains.

The 2019 chairwoman scandal

The one episode of independent major-press coverage the chapter has drawn came in November 2019, when county chairwoman Yolanda Waters faced pressure to resign after the Galveston Daily News reported on a months-old text exchange in which she used a racist slur about her local State Republican Executive Committee member J.T. Edwards, who is Black (The Texas Tribune). Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Texas GOP chairman James Dickey and Land Commissioner George P. Bush all urged her to step down, and sixteen Galveston County precinct chairs signed a statement calling for her immediate resignation (The Texas Tribune).

Waters told the newspaper she had made an “unfortunate typo,” could not remember what she had meant instead, and apologized in a Facebook post to “anyone who took my typo in offense” — adding that she intended to keep her position in the upcoming election (The Texas Tribune). Edwards said in a statement that the news “shook me to my core” (The Texas Tribune). The text exchange, from March 2019, was with Alicia Youngblood, the county GOP’s secretary (The Texas Tribune).

The Trisha Hope–Smithsonian story

According to the party’s own account, while serving as a delegate to the 2024 Republican National Convention, Hope was approached by a Smithsonian representative who asked about her hat and earrings — designed, the party says, “to highlight and support J6ers” — and asked whether she would consider donating them for a display in a future exhibit on the Republican National Convention (Galveston County Republican Party). She then worked with Claire Jerry of the National Museum of American History, described as the Curator for the Division of Political History, and on May 20, 2025 “permanently placed her hat and earrings into the pantheon of American history” (Galveston County Republican Party).

The items honor four named people: Master Sergeant and Green Beret Jeremy Brown, former NYPD 9/11 first responder Sara Carpenter, and Texans Mark and Jalise Middleton, who ran a nonprofit assisting J6ers (Galveston County Republican Party). Hope was quoted saying of Brown and Carpenter, who met her at the Smithsonian: “I couldn’t help but notice the pride they felt, it had been a long time coming. Just months prior both were wrongly incarcerated due to a corrupt DOJ who denied every J6er due process” (Galveston County Republican Party). Suzzanne Monk, founder of the J6 Pardon Project, had joined the Middletons on a prior visit to Hope in Galveston, and Monk’s book — How to Pardon the J6ers: A Comprehensive Strategy Guide for President Donald J. Trump — was the inspiration for the hat (Galveston County Republican Party). The party closed its post by calling the donation “this great honor” and invoking a 1961 Ronald Reagan quote, whose text does not appear in the page’s rendered body (Galveston County Republican Party).

The reversal

Hope is a Texas-based self-declared January 6 activist and a realtor from League City, and her 2024 RNC delegate role was also noted by WNYC Studios, per Primetimer’s account (Primetimer). In 2018 she published Just the Tweets: President Donald J. Trump’s Historical Collection of Tweets Volume I, a collection of Trump’s tweets from his first year in office, sold for $35, with proceeds helping fund her travel to rallies — she later joined the “Front Row Joes,” the traveling group of die-hard rally attendees, in 2018 (Primetimer).

Sixteen months after the Smithsonian donation, Hope publicly broke with Trump. On the September 28, 2026 episode of Politico’s The Playbook Podcast — titled “‘Front Row Joes’ take a backseat,” a 24-minute episode (radio.net) — she called Trump “a fraud and a liar,” saying her trust broke during a July 8, 2025 cabinet meeting when a reporter asked about the Epstein Files and Trump responded, “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” (Primetimer). She described the moment as “like a dagger in my heart,” a light switch going on and “a veil lifted,” adding, “You can’t believe anything that he says, and that’s scary to have a president that you can’t believe” (Primetimer). She said that if Republicans lose the midterms and Trump is impeached again, “I will be walking the halls of Congress in support of that impeachment” (Primetimer).

The contrast with the party’s celebration is stark: Trump himself had praised the Front Row Joes at a July rally in Georgia, saying “I love these people” — and the county party still features its congratulations to Hope for the Smithsonian honor on its site (Primetimer; Galveston County Republican Party). As of Primetimer’s September 29, 2026 report, Trump had not responded to her remarks (Primetimer).

What this profile does not claim

This profile rests on the party’s own website, one third-party entertainment-press report, and a 2019 Texas Tribune report on the county chair; it does not claim the chapter has received any other independent coverage. It does not report any response from the party to Hope’s September 2026 remarks — the site still displays its celebration of her, and no statement from the chapter about the break was found. A Galveston-area event listing for the Galveston Pachyderms named a different chairman, Brad Boney, but that listing was undated and the party’s current site names Patrick J. McGinnis; this profile follows the first-party source and does not assert a succession timeline. It does not claim Hope is currently a party officer or that she retains any chapter role — only that the party documented her as its 2024 RNC delegate and congratulated her 2025 Smithsonian donation. The quotes about Trump are attributed through Primetimer’s reporting of the Playbook podcast episode, not to a transcript this profile read directly.