NEW YORK (AP) — A nascent rebellion is underway against President Donald Trump's handpicked chairman at the Republican National Committee, and it’s already getting ugly.
Some members are calling for a forensic audit of spending decisions, including hair and makeup services for Trump and other officials, as well as the hiring of the daughter of Trump's former chief of staff. Feuding Republicans are leaking emails and opposition research on rival factions. The White House is threatening to cut off fundraising assistance if the rebels don’t fall in line.
The emerging fight, which will shape the 2028 presidential nominating contest, represents a rare challenge to Trump's dominance, even after the party's worst midterm performance in a generation. Despite the broad losses, Republican leaders across Washington have shown little desire to move past Trump and have largely stood behind his most unpopular policies.
But inside the Republican National Committee, an organization of 168 members elected from every state who oversee the party’s national political operation, a small and growing collection of concerned Republicans are backing an attempt to depose Joe Gruters. Trump wants to keep him in charge.
The dissidents are rallying behind Kentucky’s KC Crosbie, the RNC's second-in-command. She launched her bid just two days after the Nov. 3 election in a letter that drew the fury of both the White House and Gruters' allies.
Crosbie remains a vocal Trump supporter who backs his “Make America Great Again” agenda, but her opponents view her gambit as a direct challenge to the president and his power.
“Our job is to elect Republicans broadly, not to support one man all the time," said RNC member Oscar Brock of Tennessee, who is supporting Crosbie’s candidacy. He said that requires a change in leadership because “there’s so much frustration that Chairman Gruters didn’t pull his weight in this election.”
In her letter, Crosbie described the midterms as “a serious setback" and called for the RNC to provide “an honest account” of what went wrong.
Crosbie declined to be interviewed.
The leadership election will be held in January at the RNC’s winter meeting in Arizona.
Some would-be Crosbie supporters privately acknowledge they're worried about a backlash from the White House, especially with Stephen Miller taking over as Trump's chief of staff. Others believe in the committee's tradition of having presidents pick their own party chiefs.
Gruters also has vocal backers.
Lauren LePage, an RNC member from Maine, praised Gruters' leadership and efforts to help her father, Paul LePage, flip a congressional seat — a rare bright spot for Republicans this cycle.
“From my perspective, as chairman, he did his job," she said, adding that Trump's endorsement is “something that the committee should take very seriously.”
The Republicans who have lined up behind Crosbie insist a leadership change is needed to send a clear message that the party will do things differently after losses even in Republican strongholds like Texas, South Carolina and Mississippi.
Patti Lyman, an RNC member from Virginia, said it would be “catastrophic” and “insulting” to the party’s base “to keep the same leadership and pretend that we don’t need to do anything different, that we don’t need new players and a new plan.”
Sue Cienki, an RNC committee member from Rhode Island, predicted that Crosbie would have the backing of at least two members from 10 states — a total of 20 — at the committee's January meeting. That's the minimum required for a successful nomination.
Trump and senior White House officials were livid about Crosbie’s Nov. 5 letter and the fact that they were given no heads-up. The president soon released a lengthy statement on his Truth Social social media platform hailing Gruters as a “MAGA Warrior” and giving him his “Complete and Total Endorsement.”
Trump is expected to play a central role in picking the party's next presidential nominee.
Allies of Gruters say a leadership change now would put the RNC at a severe disadvantage heading into the next presidential cycle because a new team would need time to get up to speed. They say friction between the president and the committee's leadership would curtail their ability to organize and raise money.
They also reject Crosbie's call for a postelection review, which they said would do little more than consume six months rehashing the past and put all their grievances on paper.
Gruters spent much of this week holding private phone conversations with committee members. Those who participated in the calls said Gruters listened to their grievances, but said little about what he would do differently.
The opposition to Gruters has focused on the RNC's spending decisions under him. Republicans had a massive fundraising advantage and still had deep losses.
“There’s clearly a groundswell of support for a forensic audit,” said Brock, the RNC member from Tennessee.
In a letter to RNC members sent Thursday night and obtained by The Associated Press, Gruters acknowledged concerns about spending and other issues.
Gruters defended a $22,500 expenditure for hospitality space at the Presidents Cup, a golf event, saying the space was offered to major donors and "resulted in $2.5 million in renewed contributions to the RNC.”
He also addressed “a brief contract” between the RNC and Caroline Wiles, a longtime Republican consultant, who is the daughter of Susie Wiles, Trump's former chief of staff. Gruters said she was hired by his predecessor at the committee, Michael Whatley.
“While I have no reason to doubt Caroline Wiles’s value to the RNC or Chairman Whatley’s reasons for bringing her on, this was a brief six-month engagement that ended when I was elected Chairman,” he wrote.
Gruters also defended the RNC's decision to pay for “hair and make-up services” for senior White House officials, including Trump, Vice President JD Vance and former press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“This was a request made of us so that the expense did not fall to taxpayers,” Gruters wrote, adding that the beneficiaries “generously gave so much of their limited time and energies to help the RNC this cycle” and “did not ask for much of us in return, so we felt this was a request we could accommodate.”
President Donald Trump speaks after signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
FILE - Chairman Joe Gruters speaks at the Republican convention, Sept. 9, 2026, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Israeli forces killed a top commander of the militant Hamas group in an overnight airstrike on southern Gaza, Israel said Sunday.
In Jordan, three men were sentenced to death for a deadly shooting last month at a Greek Orthodox Church. In Yemen, the Houthis said they freed around 600 detainees captured in the latest escalation of fighting, even as they consolidated their grip on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
Here is the latest news from the Middle East on Sunday. Read our full coverage here.
Israel said it killed a top Hamas commander in an airstrike on southern Gaza just after midnight. A Hamas statement confirmed the killing of Samir Mahmoud Hassan Abu Younis and said a funeral would be held for him later Sunday.
The Israeli military said Abu Younis had been directing plans “to advance and carry out terror attacks.” Two months earlier, an Israeli strike killed his predecessor.
The military said it targeted other Hamas militants in Sunday’s strike but provided no details.
Jordan’s State Security Court on Sunday sentenced three men to death for a deadly shooting at a Greek Orthodox Church last month, state-run Al Mamlaka TV said. The men were charged with “carrying out terrorist acts.”
The Oct. 23 attack was one of the deadliest on Jordan’s Christian minority in decades, with nine people killed and dozens wounded. The attackers targeted mourners attending a funeral at St. George’s Church in Hamoud, a village south of the capital, Amman.
The three defendants — two brothers and their brother-in-law — were arrested three days after the attack following a shootout with security forces. Jordanian authorities described the men as followers of an extremist ideology but said they were not affiliated with an organized group.
The Iran-backed Houthis on Sunday freed some 600 detainees captured in the latest escalation of fighting, the largest unilateral release of detainees in the country's 12-year civil war, said Abdul-Qader al-Murtaza, a Houthi official on prisoners' affairs.
Also Sunday, a group allied with the Saudi-backed Yemeni government said its fighters pulled out from areas along the Bab el-Mandeb Strait amid relentless attacks by the Houthis.
The Southern Armed Forces said they would now focus on securing Yemen's southern city of Aden, held by the internationally recognized government, as well as trying to break the Houthi siege of the crucial city of Taiz.
The move has allowed the rebels to consolidate their grip on the strait, in a setback to the Saudi-backed efforts to dislodge them from the strategic coastal territories on the Red Sea.
In Aden, an Associated Press journalist heard sounds of explosions Sunday evening. Local media reported that the Houthis fired two ballistic missiles on the district of Buraiqeh on Aden’s western coast.
Clashes were reported between the Houthis and government forces in an area in Yemen's southwestern province of Lahj, which has key supply routes close to the Bab el-Mandeb strait.
The Houthis said they fired ballistic missiles on government forces’ positions in the Kharaz area, which is home to a refugee camp sheltering thousands of African refugees.
The U.N. refugee agency warned Sunday that the clashes hindered its efforts to offer protection and aid to about 9,600 refugees.
Israel’s military said it apprehended a stringer for Agence France-Presse in the occupied West Bank very early on Sunday on suspicion of “terror ties,” adding that he was transferred to the security forces for more questioning.
The French news agency called for Israel to provide evidence in the detention of Mohammad Ateeq, a video journalist who has contributed to AFP for three years.
His wife said that Israeli forces blindfolded him and took him away from his home in a town near Jenin, according to AFP.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed early on Sunday that it struck a radar system at an American helicopter base in Bahrain, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.
The U.S. military’s Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, did not immediately comment. On Friday, CENTCOM had said it intercepted two Iranian drones headed toward Bahrain and denied an Iranian claim at the time that it had struck a U.S. early-warning radar system there.
Bahrain’s military said Sunday its air defense systems intercepted a number of Iranian projectiles before they reached their targets.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, on Sunday rejected Germany’s demand that Tehran halt uranium enrichment, saying the country has a right to enrich uranium as a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Baghaei also criticized the U.N. nuclear watchdog — the International Atomic Energy Agency — for what he described as “nontechnical speculation” about a possible new uranium enrichment facility in the central Iranian city of Isfahan. He claimed Iran had not suspended its safeguards obligations.
This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge.
This story was corrected earlier to say that the shooting in Jordan took place in the village of Hamoud in the Karak governorate, not in the city of Karak.
Mourners carry the bodies of Palestinians whose remains were recovered from the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli strikes in northern Gaza, during their mass funeral, in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
An elderly woman who fled Al-Sabihah in Lahj province sits inside a livestock enclosure where she is seeking shelter in the Bir Ahmed area of Al-Buraiqeh district, Aden, Yemen, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdulnasser Alseddik)
Palestinians walk through a tent camp housing displaced people amid buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza City, Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Jordanian security personnel stand guard outside the State Security Court, which sentenced three men to death Sunday for an Oct. 23 shooting that killed nine people at St. George's Greek Orthodox Church in Hamoud village in Karak governorate, in Amman, Jordan, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Raad Adayleh)
Jordanian security personnel stand guard outside the State Security Court, which sentenced three men to death Sunday for an Oct. 23 shooting that killed nine people at St. George's Greek Orthodox Church in Hamoud village in Karak governorate, in Amman, Jordan, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Raad Adayleh)
Jordanian security personnel stand guard outside the State Security Court, which sentenced three men to death Sunday for an Oct. 23 shooting that killed nine people at St. George's Greek Orthodox Church in Hamoud village in Karak governorate, in Amman, Jordan, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Raad Adayleh)
Women sit on a bench overlooking cargo ships anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)
Displaced Palestinian children repair tents damaged by heavy rain in Gaza City, Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
