The RNC elects a new chairman

For all the nauseating drama and coverage of the DNC’s leadership squabbles this year, there has been shockingly little written on what’s happening just two blocks away at the Republican National Committee.  

The RNC leadership has been a game of musical chairs since the departure of Ronna McDaniel, the party’s longest-serving chairperson in history. After helming the committee from 2017 to 2024, she eventually fell out of favor with Donald Trump and was replaced by North Carolina GOP chair Michael Whatley and co-chair Lara Trump (the RNC’s woke gender policies require there to be a co-chair of the opposite sex). Lara Trump then departed less than a year later to host a show on FOX News, and Whatley now has officially stepped aside to challenge former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper in his home state’s hotly contested U.S. Senate race next year. 

That means Republicans needed to elect a new RNC chairman, and last week they convened in downtown Atlanta for their regularly scheduled summer meeting to do the deed. For such a high-profile, consequential role, one would think there would be a number of candidates vying in a competitive election, but as it turns out, the fix was already in: Donald Trump had hand-picked his preferred candidate via a Truth Social post back in July. That anointed candidate, who was elected unanimously by committee members on Friday, was a Florida State Senator named Joe Gruters. Here’s what you need to know about him:

Longtime Trump Support

Gruters isn’t exactly some random newcomer scooped out of Tallahassee obscurity, he’s been in Trump’s orbit since the very beginning. As far back as 2015, he was one of the first elected officials in Florida to publicly endorse Trump’s long-shot presidential campaign. Even as fellow Floridians Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio were mounting presidential campaigns widely considered more viable, Gruters was out front for Donald, helping organize Trump rallies and drumming up grassroots support in Sarasota and beyond. That early loyalty has paid dividends ever since, with Trump elevating his stature within the party apparatus. 

Chairmanship of the Florida GOP

In the Trump era, Florida has essentially become the GOP’s mothership and center of political power, and Gruters built his career as one of the state party’s chief mechanics. He served as chair of the Republican Party of Florida from 2019 to 2023, overseeing record registration gains among conservative voters and cultivating deep ties with the state’s donor class. But his chairmanship wasn’t without some controversy, as he developed an adversarial relationship with the state’s Republican Governor, Ron DeSantis. 

Florida Man Scandals

Gruters’ rise to power and conflicts with some in Florida politics have contributed to a few recent oppo-dumps. In April, for example, an anonymous source went to British tabloid The Daily Mail with a detailed review of who he was following on his personal Instagram account. The result was this headline published by the paper: “Married GOP official's cringe response after being busted for following 60 OnlyFans models and dating accounts.” According to the Mail, Gruters was a prolific follower of dozens of female OnlyFans models, while populating his own feed with typical wholesome family photos. 

More seriously, in 2021 Gruters reportedly faced a formal complaint from a former male staffer alleging sexual harassment after an evening at a bar in Tallahassee. He denied wrongdoing, and after the Republican Party of Florida conducted an independent investigation, no accuser with firsthand knowledge of the incident was willing to come forward. 

Will remain in State Senate

In an unusual move, Gruters has announced that he will continue serving in the Florida State Senate while simultaneously chairing the RNC. The logic is that he wants to maintain his roots in Florida politics, where much of the Republican movement’s energy still resides. But it also raises practical questions about how effectively he can run the national party apparatus while juggling legislative duties in Tallahassee. The most obvious angle of the decision is that it signals a kind of hedging strategy: as long as he holds elected office, he has a fallback if (or perhaps when) Trump’s whims turn against him.

Steering the Party’s Post-Trump Future

Most importantly, Gruters could be one of the key figures responsible for shepherding the RNC into its post-Trump future, managing the party’s 2028 primary calendar, debates, convention, and nominating process. At the same time, he’ll no doubt have to dodge attacks and threats from the soon-to-be former president, who will be closely monitoring his every move for any sign of disloyalty.

It’s an unenviable job: tasked with organizing the mechanics of the party’s post-Trump identity, while also working under the constant threat of being undermined by Trump himself. Regardless, I think his tenure may ultimately tell us less about his own leadership and more about how and whether anyone can truly control the machinery of the Republican Party while Donald Trump is still watching over it.

Watch: Another Democratic populist for Congress

Last week, I wrote about the Democrats’ “midterm manosphere blueprint” - a trend of kind of gruff, populist dudes running for office while promising to take on the oligarchy. Yesterday, that cohort grew even larger with the announcement that Bob Brooks, a firefighter and union leader from Bethelehem, Pennsylvania, will run for a swing-district Congressional seat in the Lehigh valley against first term Rep. Ryan Mackenzie. Watch his campaign launch video below:

Charted: The top political podcasts in August

Here’s a snapshot of this week’s political podcast charts: Crooked’s Pod Save America has been climbing on both Apple and Spotify, while Democratic influencer Brian Tyler Cohen and anti-MAGA media company Meidas Touch are in top positions on the YouTube charts. I’ve Had It, a progressive political talk show hosted by Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan, has been growing at a rapid clip and is rising in the charts on Apple. At the same time, little-known right-wing talker named DeVory Darkins has surged on YouTube, jumping from zero to over 1 million subscribers in the past year.

Republicans’ big beautiful ad campaigns

Whenever either party is fortunate enough to pass a massive piece of legislation through Congress, the next step is actually trying to sell it to the American people. We saw this happen with Democrats’ “Inflation Reduction Act” in 2022, and it’s happening now with Republicans’ recent passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Since most DC organizations lack any semblance of creativity, the majority of that “selling” occurs via old-school television and digital advertising - slick narrated pieces or digital billboards telling The General Public a laundry list of things that their new legislation will do for them. That’s being done right now online at a massive scale by allies of Donald Trump, who are spending millions of dollars to promote his signature legislation in the feeds of swing state voters. 

In the past 30 days (July 25-August 23), on Facebook and Instagram, the American Prosperity Alliance has spent $2.9 million on ads targeting battleground Republican members of the House and Senate thanking them for their support of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity spent $402,595, and One Nation spent $293,916 on the same platforms. 

On Google and YouTube in the past month, One Nation has spent $1.25 million on similar ads, and American Action Network spent $698,500.

More things you should read or watch this week:

• Struggling to figure out how to repair their damaged brand, Democrats are considering hosting a rare midterm party convention to highlight rising stars and energizing candidates ahead of next November. 

• Last night, a Democrat flipped a Republican-held Iowa State Senate seat in an upset special election win, breaking the GOP’s supermajority in the state’s upper chamber. Read all about it at The Downballot here. 

• So much attention has been (rightly) paid to the mid-decade redistricting fights underway in Texas and California as a result of MAGA Republicans’ unprecedented attempt to steal the midterm elections. But on Monday night, congressional redistricting in another state stole the spotlight: In Utah, a court ruled that the state legislature had inappropriately set aside a ballot measure prohibiting partisan gerrymandering when drawing its current congressional map, paving the way for a new map in 2026 that will give Democrats a prime pickup opportunity. 

• In media news, the Onion is now one of the largest print newspapers in the United States (the 13th largest!), if you’re wondering how the print newspaper publishing industry is doing. 

• You’ve probably read about it by now, but it's difficult to overstate the extent of the Democratic Party’s voter registration crisis. Here’s a detailed look from Shane Goldmacher at the New York Times. 

• Did you suddenly start getting Substack emails from former DNC chair Jaime Harrison? Apparently, he mass-imported his campaign email list into the newsletter platform. When asked about the move by POLITICO, he said, “For me, knowing email stuff and all that other stuff, I don’t follow this stuff.”

• Many of us agree that Democrats often lose because they often don’t speak like normal human beings. One centrist think tank took that theory to the next level by releasing an actual list of words and phrases that they believe Democrats should no longer say. 

• The New York Times published a look at how Tiffany Trump’s husband, Michael Boulos, has been cashing in on the Trump family for years.

• It was only a matter of time, but now our new AI Overlords are getting into politics, forming new political action committees to support their chosen candidates with hundreds of millions of dollars.

One last thing: Still fighting the oligarchy

Sen. Bernie Sanders continued his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour last weekend in the midwest, turning out thousands in Kalamazoo, Michigan for a rally with Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate running in a competitive Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. This weekend, he’ll appear alongside oysterman and U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner in Portland, Maine. 

That’s it for today - thanks for reading! This issue was sent to 12,668 subscribers. If you enjoyed reading it, feel free to throw a few bucks in the tip jar or consider upgrading your subscription (if you haven’t yet). If you have questions, feedback, tips, or ideas for a future newsletter, just send me an email: [email protected]