EXCLUSIVE — Despite facing a rough political environment, Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters remains optimistic the GOP will successfully defend its slim Senate and razor-thin House majorities in this year’s midterm elections.

“I think we’re on track. I still think that we have a chance to defy history and win the midterms,” Gruters said this week in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital.

Republicans — as the party currently in power — were already up against traditional political headwinds that lead to a loss of congressional seats. Add to that the challenging climate fueled by persistent inflation, rising gas prices tied to what polls show is an unpopular war with Iran, and President Donald Trump’s underwater approval ratings.

“I know it’s all doom and gloom out there, but we have the best messenger in President Trump that’s ever existed in the party.”

The GOP is facing a low-propensity problem: MAGA voters who don’t always go to the polls when Trump’s name isn’t on the ballot.

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The RNC chair, a longtime Trump ally who the president picked last summer to steer the national party committee, said Trump will be “barnstorming the country” later this year, adding, “I think what he’s doing is rallying people. I think he could deliver these low propensity voters over and over again.”

The RNC currently holds a massive fundraising and cash-on-hand advantage over the rival Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Gruters, who was a certified public accountant (CPA) before taking over the RNC and who still serves as a Florida state senator, touted his party’s “superior resources.”

“If we focus on what’s important to us, and that’s the making sure we have the resources, making sure we have good candidates, following the president and his messaging, I think we will be successful,” he predicted.

Deep concerns over inflation boosted Trump and Republicans to sweeping victories at the ballot box in 2024, as they won back the White House and Senate and kept their House majority.

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But Democrats say their decisive victories in November’s 2025 elections, and their overperformances in special elections and other ballot box showdowns last year and, so far this year, were fueled by their laser focus on affordability amid persistent inflation.

The latest Fox News national poll indicates that just 28% of voters give Trump a thumbs up on handling inflation, which voters rank as the most pressing issue. The survey also says Democrats have an eight point advantage over Republicans when it comes to handling high prices.

During his first year back in the White House, Trump regularly touted lower gas prices when asked about his administration’s efforts on affordability.

But the surge in gas prices – the national average for regular is hovering slightly above $4 per gallon – due to the Trump-ordered attacks on Iran, has given the Democrats plenty of political fuel.

“Donald Trump started a war that no one wanted, and now Americans are paying the price. Gas prices are soaring and families who were already struggling in Trump’s economy are forced to stretch their budgets even further while footing the bill for this war,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement.

Martin charged that Trump “stuck everybody else with higher costs with no relief in sight. Americans literally can’t afford the Trump presidency.” 

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But Gruters told Fox News Digital, “This conflict is temporary. I think the President knows exactly what he’s doing…I think by the time we hit November, I think we’re going to be in stride.”

Democrats are energized, thanks to their ballot box victories and overperformances.

“Nearly every week, we’re seeing red districts go blue with historic, game-changing victories up and down the ballot,” Martin emphasized. “We have momentum on our side, but we refuse to take a single day for granted. Democrats are all hands on deck ahead of November, because it’s time to send the Republicans packing.”

Gruters isn’t buying the Democrats’ messaging.

“These special elections are special for a reason,” he said. “The Democrats are motivated because of anger, because every time the president does something good, they get they get angrier.”

And the RNC chair predicted “by the time we hit the midterms, I think we’re going to be in full stride. We have great candidates, we have the right messaging, and I think we’ll be successful.”

All eyes are on Florida next week, as it is likely the final battleground in the high-stakes fight between President Donald Trump and Republicans versus Democrats over congressional redistricting.

A special session of the Florida legislature, called earlier this year by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to redraw the right-leaning state’s U.S. House districts, kicks off on Tuesday.

At stake is which party will control the House of Representatives during the final two years of Trump’s second term in the White House.

Republicans and Democrats over the past nine months have been redrawing the House district maps in states they control to gain partisan advantages heading into this year’s midterm elections, when the GOP will be defending its razor-thin congressional majority.

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Lawmakers in the GOP-dominated Florida legislature are meeting one week after voters in Virginia narrowly passed a referendum that, if it clears legal hurdles, will give the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature — rather than the current nonpartisan commission — temporary redistricting power through the 2030 election. It could result in a 10-1 advantage for Democrats in Virginia’s congressional delegation, up from their current 6-5 edge.

The vote in Virginia put more pressure on DeSantis to deliver a new map in Florida that could create between three and five more right-leaning congressional districts.

“Florida has the right and the intention to do it. And my view is that they should,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Wednesday when asked if Florida’s maps should be redrawn in time for the midterms.

A Florida-based Republican in the governor’s wider political circle who asked for anonymity to speak more freely told Fox News Digital, “Gov. DeSantis is under tremendous pressure to deliver an answer to Virginia for Trump and Speaker Johnson.”

The road ahead for DeSantis is not easy: the governor already pushed through a new House map four years ago, which helped secure the GOP’s current 20-8 majority in Florida’s U.S. House delegation. Redrawing the map again just four years later is harder.

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There are also legal hurdles DeSantis faces: It is illegal under Florida’s constitution to redraw maps for partisan gain, known as gerrymandering. Democrats have vowed lawsuits against any new map that may come out of Tallahassee.

U.S. House Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries last week took aim at what some are dubbing “dummymander,” a play on words of “gerrymander,” and argued that redrawing the maps in Florida — where the GOP suffered setbacks earlier this spring in special legislative elections — would harm Republican members of Congress.

“Our message to Florida Republicans is, ‘F around and find out,’” Jeffries told reporters as he referenced next week’s redistricting legislative session. Jeffries said the redistricting move would lead Democrats to increase their target list of vulnerable Florida House Republicans.

He warned DeSantis and Republicans that “the electoral tide is turning in Florida.”

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Pushing back, DeSantis said “Please. Be my guest. I will pay for you to come down to Florida to campaign.”

“I’ll put you up in the Florida governor’s mansion. We will take you fishing,” the governor added.

DeSantis has argued that the last U.S. Census was full of flaws and claimed that it robbed Florida of an extra congressional seat. And the governor has also pointed to the major influx of new residents this decade who moved to Florida from other states in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

Not all Florida Republicans are on board with the effort, due to concerns it may backfire.

A Florida-based GOP strategist told Fox News Digital some Florida members of Congress “don’t want this.”

And pointing to the legislature, where there are some grumblings, the strategist, who asked to remain anonymous to speak clearly, said “some don’t want to do it, but their hands will be forced.”

Florida has already moved the filing deadline for congressional candidates back from April to June, but for candidates already running for Congress, the late-in-the-game map redraw brings plenty of complications.

“Changing the map changes the race. Candidates have been interview for a job description that just got a requirement change,” veteran Florida-based GOP donor and bundler Dan Eberhart told Fox News Digital.

Eberhart noted that “these candidates are going to have to call an audible really soon – changing districts and probably new competitors.”

Florida may be the final battlefield in a political war that started a year ago.

Aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterms, Trump last spring first floated the idea of rare, but not unheard of, mid-decade congressional redistricting.

The mission was simple: redraw congressional district maps in red states to pad the GOP’s fragile House majority to keep control of the chamber in the midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.

When asked by reporters last summer about his plan to add Republican-leaning House seats across the country, the president said, “Texas will be the biggest one. And that’ll be five.”

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas called a special session of the GOP-dominated state legislature to pass the new map.

But Democratic state lawmakers, who broke quorum for two weeks as they fled Texas in a bid to delay the passage of the redistricting bill, energized Democrats across the country.

Among those leading the fight against Trump’s redistricting was Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.

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California voters in November overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, a ballot initiative that temporarily sidetracked the left-leaning state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission and returned the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democratic-dominated legislature.

That is expected to result in five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts in California, which aimed to counter the move by Texas to redraw their maps.

The fight quickly spread beyond Texas and California.

Republican-controlled Missouri and Ohio and swing state North Carolina, where the GOP dominates the legislature, have drawn new maps as part of the president’s push.

In blows to Republicans, a Utah district judge late last year rejected a congressional district map drawn by the state’s GOP-dominated legislature and instead approved an alternate that will create a Democratic-leaning district ahead of the midterms.

Republicans in Indiana’s Senate in December defied Trump, shooting down a redistricting bill that had passed the state House. The showdown in the Indiana statehouse grabbed plenty of national attention.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s campaign hit back at Republican attacks Friday after the state GOP demanded answers from the Democratic gubernatorial front-runner on her past work with the federally-indicted Southern Poverty Law Center.

Benson is a former volunteer and later board member of the SPLC, which was indicted Tuesday on 11 counts over accusations it fraudulently paid members of extremist groups like the KKK and those tied to the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the SPLC paid members of these extremist groups so it could create a “work product that reported on these activities.”

“Jocelyn Benson regularly touted her experience as a leader of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a group that the Department of Justice says secretly funneled money to the KKK and other hate groups they were purportedly tracking,” the Michigan Republican Party posted on its official X account on Friday.

“What did Jocelyn know, and when did she know it?”

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After her 2004 graduation from college in Massachusetts, Benson moved to Alabama to work for the SPLC where she aided investigations of hate groups and hate crimes, according to the Harvard Law Review.

She also visited the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma where civil rights figures like the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., marched and were badly beaten by law enforcement.

An official with the Benson campaign confirmed she served as a volunteer researcher for the SPLC after college and later served on the Montgomery-based group’s board from 2014-2018.

But when pressed on what Benson knew about the allegations in the DOJ’s indictment, her campaign pushed back on the Republican Party’s attacks.

“Jocelyn Benson has spent her career advancing the unfinished work of the civil rights movement and expanding economic opportunity, including helping dismantle white supremacist and neo-Nazi extremist networks responsible for hate crimes across the country,” the campaign told Fox News Digital on Friday.

“And while Donald Trump is trying to use his Justice Department to distract from his reckless economic policies that are driving up costs for Michiganders, Jocelyn remains focused on lower costs, raising wages, and protecting the rights and freedoms of the people in this state.”

Republicans continued to press Benson for answers.

MIGOP chairman Jim Runestad told Fox News Digital that Benson’s tenure on the SPLC board coincided with the timeframe in which the DOJ alleged the group began “paying the KKK and other extremist groups.”

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“Benson owes an explanation to the public in what she knows about the SPLC’s alleged criminal behavior, considering the criminal activity started around the same time Benson was named to the Board,” Runestad said.

Benson has previously described her early work at the SPLC as focused on investigating extremist groups.

In a 2025 interview with “Keen on America,” Benson recounted researching groups “claiming to be the reincarnation of [Adolf] Hitler,” saying she once sat alone in a hotel room in Spartanburg and feared those people “were going to find out who I was and come and kill me and no one would ever know about it and all the rest.”

“And that was an act of courage, small and no one saw it, but it helped me build a bravery muscle that and several other points throughout my life so that 20 years later, 25 years later, when I’m standing up to the president of the United States, it wasn’t the first time I’ve had to take on those harrowing fights,” Benson went on in the interview.

In prior comments, an SPLC official named Penny Weaver described Benson as coming to Montgomery “straight out of college as an unpaid intern, then worked for us.”

“Benson worked as a waitress to support herself so she could continue to volunteer at the center,” Weaver said, adding that Benson begged to be able to volunteer for the SPLC.

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The SPLC is a longstanding left-wing nonprofit that claims to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement about them with the goal of dismantling the groups. SPLC’s CEO, Bryan Fair, addressed the probe in a video message posted online, arguing the Trump administration has “made no secret who they want to protect and who they want to destroy.”

“We are reviewing the charges,” a subsequent statement from Fair sent to Fox News Digital added. “However, after today’s Department of Justice press conference, we are outraged by the false allegations levied against SPLC – an organization that for 55 years has stood as a beacon of hope fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice to create a multi-racial democracy where we can all live and thrive. Taking on violent hate and extremist groups is among the most dangerous work there is, and we believe it is also among the most important work we do. To be clear, this program saved lives.”

The complete list of these groups, according to a Justice Department press release, includes the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, Unite the Right, National Alliance, the National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, National Socialist Party of America (American Nazi Party), and the American Front.

Blanche and FBI Director Patel also argued Tuesday that the SPLC tried to hide its payments to groups the SPLC told its donors it was trying to combat, leading to several of the charges in the indictment.

Fox News Digital’s Alexandra Koch and Alec Schemmel and Fox News’ Jake Gibson and David Spunt contributed to this report.