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April 3, 2026

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Trump-backed wife of RNC chair launches bid for Congress as GOP defends slim House majority

Politics 3 Mins Read

A week after President Donald Trump urged Sydney Gruters to run for an open GOP-held congressional seat in Florida, the former executive director of the state’s New College Foundation and wife of Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Joe Gruters declared her candidacy.

“As a working mother of three, I see firsthand how much pressure rising prices are putting on families across Southwest Florida,” Sydney Gruters said as she launched her campaign on Thursday. “From groceries and gas to housing and insurance, too many families, seniors and veterans are being stretched thin. I’m running for Congress to protect our conservative values and fight for the people of this district and give them a strong voice in Washington.”

With Trump’s support, Gruters is considered the clear frontrunner to succeed retiring longtime GOP Rep. Vern Buchanan, her former boss, in Florida’s right-leaning 16th Congressional District, which stretches from Tampa’s eastern suburbs south to Bradenton. Republicans currently control the House 218-214 and will be defending their fragile majority in this year’s midterm elections.

Trump, in a social media post on March 24, emphasized that Gruters would “fight tirelessly.”

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“Should she decide to enter this Race, Sydney Gruters has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, SYDNEY, RUN!” the president declared.

While her husband, a Florida state senator and top Trump supporter in the Sunshine State, is well known nationally as he steers the RNC, the 44-year-old Sydney Gruters is well known in her district and very familiar with Congress.

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Gruters served as Buchanan’s operation director for a decade (2007-2017) and later as district director to GOP Rep. Greg Steube (2019-2023) in the neighboring 17th Congressional District.

In-between her two congressional stints, she served in Trump’s first administration as state director for Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Department of Agriculture.

Prior to launching her congressional campaign, Gruters finished up her tenure as vice president of advancement and executive director of the New College Foundation.

Gruters took her position at the smaller liberal arts state college in Sarasota soon after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis installed a conservative board of trustees at the school. The one-time progressive-minded college subsequently created a classical education curriculum, which emphasizes liberal arts and Western teachings. Last autumn, the college was among the first to sign on to Trump’s education compact, which offers schools federal funding for backing his education priorities.

As she launches her congressional bid, Gruters is also backed by Maggie’s List, a political group that works to elect conservative women to Congress.

Three other Republicans, as well as three Democrats, are also running to succeed Buchanan.

Joe Gruters, in a statement to Fox News Digital, said he’s “incredibly proud of Sydney as she launches her campaign, and it’s an honor to see her earn President Trump’s support. As always, the RNC remains neutral in Republican primaries, so any support I offer will be purely in my personal capacity.”

Trump won 57% of the vote in the district in his 2024 presidential election victory. And Buchanan grabbed nearly 60% of the vote as he won re-election. But the seat may be refigured ahead of this year’s midterms, as the GOP-dominated Florida legislature meets in a special session later this month to deal with congressional redistricting in the red-leaning state.

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Business

Republican leaders announce two-track plan to end the DHS shutdown

Business 3 Mins Read

WASHINGTON — House and Senate Republican leaders jointly announced a plan Wednesday that they said would end the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security that caused major airport delays.

“In the coming days, Republicans in the Senate and House will be following through on the President’s directive by fully funding the entire Department of Homeland Security on two parallel tracks: through the appropriations process and through the reconciliation process,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in a statement.

The two leaders were vague about the exact plan, but it appears to closely resemble the Senate’s preferred path from Friday.

Johnson and Thune heavily implied that it would be for the Senate to, once again, pass a bill it approved unanimously last week, which it could try to do as early as Thursday.

It would fund all of DHS except ICE and Customs and Border Protection, which Democrats won’t agree to fund without reforms to immigration enforcement operations. Those two agencies already have separate funding.

House Republican leaders trashed that bill and rejected it Friday, but they now appear ready to back down and accept the Senate plan. They would have to vote to pass it through the House.

GOP leadership had no immediate comment on the timing for a vote. Both chambers are scheduled to be on recess until April 13.

Then Republicans would fund ICE and CBP in a separate party-line “budget reconciliation” bill that could bypass a filibuster and get approved without any Democratic votes. The timing for that is even less clear.

Johnson and Thune said the “two-track” plan would “fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited.”

A White House official told NBC News that the administration supports the Johnson-Thune plan.

Earlier Wednesday, President Donald Trump called on Republicans to pass the party-line bill “no later than June 1st.” He threw the earlier plans to reopen DHS into chaos last week when he declined to comment on the Senate bill, which led House Republicans to reject it.

DHS has been shut down for more than a month, with employees for the TSA, FEMA and other agencies going for weeks without pay. Trump signed an executive order last week to pay TSA employees, but the legality and length of that plan are murky. Thousands of civilian Coast Guard employees and other DHS workers are still not being paid.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., slammed Republicans for having “derailed a bipartisan agreement” for days, “making American families pay the price for their dysfunction.”

“Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered. We were clear from the start: fund critical security, protect Americans, and no blank check for reckless ICE and Border Patrol enforcement,” he said Wednesday. “We were united, held the line, and refused to let Republican chaos win.”

On Friday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said, “House Democrats are prepared to support the bill to end the Trump-Republican shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, make sure TSA agents are paid, stand up for FEMA and for the Coast Guard, for our cyber security professionals, and stop inconveniencing Americans.”

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