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PARTY CRASHER — When Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel took control of the party in 2017, Republicans had just won the trifecta — the House, Senate and the White House.

But in her three two-year terms since becoming Donald Trump’s handpicked RNC chair, McDaniel has presided over a series of losses — first the House in 2018, and then the Senate and White House two years later.

The 2022 election cycle represented another disappointment: despite historic trends and economic conditions suggesting big Republican gains, the GOP only narrowly won back the House and actually lost a seat in the Senate. Republicans now hold less state legislative chambers than when McDaniel took over, and less governorships.

Even so, it looks like she has a fourth term as RNC chair locked up. To understand why, it helps to know a little about where the party organization has been — and the direction it is headed.

First, McDaniel is a Trump loyalist, and this is still the former president’s party. Trump stacked the RNC with members friendly to him while he was president and they’re not about to ditch his preferred choice for the job. That explains how McDaniel — within weeks of the midterms — was able to secure a commitment from 107 of the RNC’s 168 members that they would vote for her for another term at the committee’s annual meeting in late January. That’s more than enough votes to win.

“We’re in the age of Trump,” says Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party who ran for RNC chair in 2009 and 2011. “You have a very Trumpian centric party at [this] stage again, which benefits [McDaniel].”

In her bid to become the longest serving RNC chair since Mark Hanna, who ran the party for eight years from 1896 to 1904, McDaniel has also managed to walk a fine line. She’s kept Trump on her side — he’s continued to praise her performance — while also convincing those who have lost confidence in his political skills in the aftermath of Nov. 8 that she’ll maintain neutrality in the 2024 presidential primaries.

“Trump put people into the RNC who were explicitly Trump people,” says Erick Erickson, a conservative radio host and writer who has been a prominent critic of McDaniel’s performance. “Even as the Republican Party itself less and less identifies as the party of Trump, you still have the same people there.”

McDaniel has also been effective at one of the most important tasks of a party chairman — raking in the bucks. RNC members value and appreciate that. The RNC enjoyed a fundraising advantage over the Democratic National Committee during Trump’s term and McDaniel can point to record fundraising during her tenure. In a November memo, the RNC reported raising $308 million during the 2022 election cycle, led by a chair “who has traveled 521,000 miles and participated in 333 fundraising events across 37 states and territories for Republican candidates.”

“Republican voters think the RNC is about winning elections,” says Erickson. “The men and women [in the RNC] think the RNC chair [position] is about raising money.”

McDaniel is facing a longshot bid from fellow Trump fan, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. But her most vigorous challenger to date is California RNC member Harmeet Dhillon — who is also a Trump ally. Dhillon has gone after McDaniel for what she says is an “appalling” misuse of funds, and has claimed that McDaniel buys RNC member votes with favors and donor money.

Several members have forcefully pushed back against those claims in emails sent to the full committee.

“Just like the RNC, Chairwoman McDaniel’s decision to run for re-election was member driven. Members of the 168 rallied around the chairwoman because of her unprecedented investments in the grassroots, election integrity, and minority communities, and for taking on Big Tech and the biased Commission on Presidential Debates," said Emma Vaughn, spokesperson for McDaniel's re-elect, in a statement. "Support for the chairwoman has only grown since her announcement and she looks forward to speaking with each and every member to discuss how the party can continue building upon our investments and make the necessary improvements to compete and win in 2024.”

Dhillon is counting on the belief of some members that McDaniel’s support is soft. A number of RNC members have taken the chance to (largely anonymously) sound off against her. The chair of the Nebraska GOP, Eric Underwood, rescinded his endorsement of McDaniel on Monday, instead writing that he will bring the question of who should lead the party to the 166 members of Nebraska’s central committee.

The main argument of McDaniel’s detractors is straightforward — under her leadership, the party has consistently gotten beat. “No RNC chair in the history of the whole party has lasted as long as Ronna McDaniel without seeing at least one winning election season. She took the job in 2017, and the GOP has lost every election cycle since,” Erickson tweeted in early December.

“It is a little mind-boggling [that the RNC might stick with her],” he said.

Still, in the absence of much evidence to the contrary, McDaniel remains the favorite.

As it stands, says Anuzis, “it’s pretty hard to say what the state of the party is other than frustration.”

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SUBPOENA SEASON — Senate Democrats finally have subpoena power, and they’re ready to use it, though their target list is still under discussion, writes Jordain Carney.

Democrats in the upper chamber have made clear that they intend to use their investigative authority — newly acquired thanks to their functional 51st Senate seat — as a counterpoint to House GOP probes of Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

They’re also mulling picking up the baton from House Democrats on two fights: scrutinizing the oil industry’s culpability for climate change and obtaining Trump’s tax returns, according to senators.

The House has been the epicenter of investigations in the current Congress given the deadlocked Senate, but that spotlight will be shared starting next year. Democrats’ loss of the House has created an investigative “vacuum” that party senators intend to fill, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), an investigative-minded former prosecutor and senior Judiciary Committee member.

“There are very definitely investigations that I think now will be possible,” Blumenthal said, referring to Democrats’ inability to issue subpoenas in the current 50-50 Senate because Republicans could block them at the evenly divided committee level.

— DeSantis holds early lead over Trump among GOP primary voters: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis edged out Trump in a poll of primary voters that pits the two Republicans against each other as top contenders for the GOP nomination in 2024. Fifty-two percent of likely GOP primary voters in the poll preferred DeSantis, compared to the 38 percent who favored Trump in a hypothetical primary race for the Republican nomination. The poll also demonstrated DeSantis’ popularity among likely primary voters, with 86 percent saying they view the Florida governor favorably. Trump’s favorability rating came in at 74 percent.

— House set to vote on stopgap funding fix with broader deal still under wraps: The House is expected to pass a stopgap spending bill tonight that would give negotiators an extra week to finish a $1.7 trillion year-end spending package, setting up an all-out legislative sprint before lawmakers leave for the holidays. The temporary funding patch staves off a government shutdown Friday at midnight and extends federal cash through Dec. 23. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate could pass the measure as soon as Thursday, as long as there isn’t “unwelcome brouhaha” — a reference to the ability of any one senator to hold up the funding fix in exchange for concessions or amendment votes.

— U.S. cable warns of major barriers to tracking Ukraine aid: American officials are turning to everything from blockchain technology to Ukrainian soldiers for help as they struggle to track the billions of dollars in U.S. weapons and other aid flowing into Ukraine, according to a State Department cable which described the challenges facing U.S. officials. The cable comes to light as Republicans are increasingly calling for more vetting of the money and weapons flowing to Ukraine. It also comes as Russia ramps up its attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, making it even harder to account for what’s already poured in of the more than $50 billion the United States has committed to Ukraine.

— December spending gloom falls on GOP: Republicans’ post-midterm divisions are running right into Congress’s mad dash toward a year-end government spending deal. Even as congressional negotiators pushed toward an agreement that was broadly unveiled Tuesday night, there’s dissent within the GOP over whether to embrace a deal that would make things easier for a potential Speaker Kevin McCarthy next year — or to push for a delay into next spring when the party has more leverage under divided government. It all adds up to dwindling Republican enthusiasm for a spending agreement that’s taken months to finalize.

IRAN OUSTED FROM UN PANEL — A U.S.-led effort to push Iran off a United Nations panel that promotes women’s rights succeeded today, the latest move in a broader Western effort to punish Iran for its crackdown on widespread protests, writes Nahal Toosi.

The resolution to oust Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women passed with 29 votes in favor and eight against, and overall it is a win for the Biden administration against a long-time adversary.

Yet of the 54 countries eligible to vote, at least 16 abstained — a sign of the wariness about setting a precedent of the U.S. dictating who’s deserving of U.N. panel memberships. Nonetheless, the overall vote was the latest international embarrassment for Iran’s Islamist regime as it has faced an extraordinary challenge to its rule.

Iranians have been protesting across their country since mid-September after the death of a young woman who had been detained by Iran’s morality police for allegedly not properly covering up. Many of the protesters are demanding an end to the Islamist regime that has ruled Iran for more than 40 years. And many of the demonstrators are young, spelling future trouble for the aging clerics who lead the regime.

Iran called the U.S. resolution “illegal,” and it received backing from countries like Russia and China, who warned that such moves undermined the credibility of the overall U.N. system.

Iran’s membership on the decades-old panel is “an ugly stain on the commission’s credibility,” said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She then echoed a prominent slogan used by Iranian protesters: “Let’s do this for women, for life and for freedom.”

BAD BLOOD — The Taylor Swift Ticketmaster debacle is far from the first time the organization has come under fire from manic fans. Buyers for years have been complaining about rapidly rising fees and an unreliable system for purchasing tickets. Before the Taylor tour, for example, there was Barbara Streisand in 1994. Read Mark Dent on Ticketmaster’s economics in online outlet the Hustle.

BELLICOSE BEIJING — Tensions between Beijing and Washington have been steadily increasing for years. But Beijing is also playing a quieter game, using non-military means to propel its push for influence and dominance across the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

In fact, these four moves pose a trickier but no less belligerent set of challenges to the U.S. and its allies than China’s overt military buildup, writes Paul McLeary.

A new kind of military footprint abroad: China has maintained a military base and port facility in the tiny East African nation of Djibouti since 2017. While Beijing has played down suggestions that it is conducting its own military expansion so far from home, Chinese troops have paraded on the facility’s grounds and stepped up military exercises with African nations.

TikTok: U.S. officials have become more and more worried about TikTok’s ability to censor and manipulate information and about the possibility that its China-based parent company, ByteDance, is sweeping up personal data. In fact, ByteDance has already censored content on TikTok, including posts about the treatment of workers in China, and has edited the captions in German videos about Beijing’s oppression of Uyghurs.

An empowered maritime militia: For years, Beijing has used its Coast Guard and massive civilian commercial shipping and fishing fleets as blunt instruments to enforce Chinese territorial claims outside its own internationally recognized waters. Ships working under each branch have bullied civilian cargo and fishing ships across the South China sea using a variety of tactics to force them away from fishing grounds.

A next-generation military-industrial complex: Among the gravest U.S. security concerns is a wide-ranging Chinese government program that aims to meld commercial and government-controlled technology companies in a way that allows Beijing to bolster China’s domestic tech industry while also accessing data on users worldwide.

Read the full analysis here.