INSIDE D.C. WITH JOHN GIZZI NEWSMAX WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT
Looking Beyond Grassley • The recent hospitalization of Sen. Chuck Grassley immediately had his fellow Iowa Republicans speculating over what will happen if the state’s most durable politician — at age 90 and after 44 years in the Senate — decides to leave before his present term is up in 2028. Family members insist that predictions the senator’s grandson, state House Speaker Pat Grassley, will succeed him are ungrounded. Pat, they insist, loves serving in the legislature in Des Moines and working the Grassley family farm in New Hartford. Two-term Rep. Ashley Hinson, a former TV reporter and swashbuckling conservative, has made it clear she wants to run for Grassley’s seat when it opens up. But Gov. Kim Reynolds is also reportedly interested in the Senate after she is termed out of the statehouse in 2026. Should Grassley leave before then, Reynolds is likely to appoint a caretaker senator — very possibly Terry Branstad, a former six-term governor and ambassador to China — and then run herself in the resulting special election.
‘Volunteers’ Ready • The rock-solid Republican grip on
42 NEWSMAX | MARCH 2024
Tennessee may loosen a bit if Donald Trump becomes president and names some high-profi le Volunteer State fi gures to his administration. As I previously reported, it is one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington that Sen. Bill Hagerty, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Japan, wants to be secretary of state. Rep. Mark Green, a West Point graduate and U.S. Army veteran, was appointed by Trump to be secretary of the Army in 2017, but promptly withdrew his nomination following the revelation of critical comments he made about the LGBTQ+ community. Assuming Republicans win control of the Senate in November, Green might not have as much diffi culty securing confi rmation to the Army portfolio. Trump is also likely to name Nashville resident Morgan Ortagus, a former spokeswoman for the State Department, as United Nations ambassador.
To the Point • Although the Republican Party has yet to begin drafting its national platform for 2024 or even choose its platform committee to meet at the Milwaukee convention, national party sources insist that the document will be brief — with as few details as possible — but clear about what
the GOP agenda will be if returned to the White House. The platform is expected to endorse the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision on abortion and support the issue being left to individual states. In addition, the party manifesto will have strong language condemning illegal immigration and calling for a hard line in protecting the southern
border. The platform is also likely to repeat the 2016 call by Trump supporters to restore the Glass-Steagall Act (which bans major banks from purchasing community banks) and include more recent Trump-backed proposals, such as building “freedom cities” on federal lands to reopen the American frontier and manufacturing vertical takeoff vehicles to alleviate grueling commutes.
DeSantis Dynasty
• Whatever the post-mortems might be on the unsuccessful presidential campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., his wife, Casey, appears to have emerged from his much-criticized candidacy unscathed. In fact, at a time when GOP political dynasties such as the Bushes and Cheneys appear to be crumbling, a just-completed University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Lab poll shows Florida’s fi rst lady topping the fi eld of GOP contenders for governor in 2026. Casey DeSantis has, according to the survey, 22% support among likely Republican voters, followed by Reps. Byron Donalds and Matt Gaetz, at 9% each, and several statewide elected offi cials in single digits. There is no runoff required for winning the nomination in Florida.
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