Republican Rep. Byron Donalds had just strode into a waterfront yacht club in Naples, Florida, last month when his phone wouldn’t stop vibrating. As the host of a fundraiser for Rep. Andy Barr, he tried to ignore the relentless stream of calls and texts as he mingled with donors and noshed on hors d’oeuvres. But then he heard a special ring reserved for one person: Donald Trump. When Donalds slinked into a backroom to answer, the President told him the news. Trump had just endorsed him to be Florida’s next governor. This was a game-changer for Donalds. There was only one complication. He hadn’t announced he was running yet.
His political team moved quickly, filling out paperwork and booking him on Fox News a few nights later to formally declare his candidacy. “It's the biggest endorsement in politics,” he tells TIME, knowing he had to capitalize on the momentum.
He also had to keep up with Trump. The President is only a few months into his second term but is not wasting any time shaping the future composition of the Republican Party. Sources familiar with Trump’s thinking say he’s strategically intervening in 2026 primaries early, with an eye toward bolstering young upstarts who will keep the GOP molded in his image when he exits the scene.
Donalds, 46, isn’t alone. Last month, Trump also endorsed the biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, 39, to become Ohio’s next governor, making him the odds-on favorite to replace Gov. Mike DeWine. At the same time, some of Trump’s closest allies are laying the groundwork for other MAGA up-and-comers. Vice President J.D. Vance has encouraged the 44-year-old software executive Nate Morris to run for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky, sources familiar with the matter tell TIME. Since then, Morris has gotten a boost from Trump’s eldest son, Don, Jr., who hosted him on his podcast earlier this month. While Trump Jr. refrains from endorsing candidates before his father, his embrace has often been a prelude to GOP hopefuls securing Trump’s backing. In past cycles, he was highly influential in encouraging Trump to support young MAGA insurgents such as Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana, Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio, and Vance.
For Trump and his inner circle, it’s a matter of establishing the kind of permanent imprint on his party that has eluded his predecessors. “President Trump is going to do what Obama and Bush failed to do, and that is cementing a lasting legacy through building up the next generation of leaders who share his vision for our country,” says Alex Bruesewitz, the CEO of X Strategies and a Trump adviser and family friend.
Of course, Trump has long intervened in primaries. By building a social and political movement that gave him coercive power over the GOP, he’s been able to punish heretics and elevate loyalists committed to advancing his agenda and interests. The strategy hasn’t always worked. A handful of his picks lost critical races across the country in the 2022 midterms. But Trump’s grip over the Republican base is as strong as it's ever been. The upshot is that he’s now cultivating the class of Republicans he hopes will sustain MAGA as a political force in the post-Trump era.
Donalds has been on Trump’s radar for years. After winning a U.S. House seat in 2020, he was among the lawmakers who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election win in January 2021. Donalds then became one of Trump’s most vociferous defenders in Congress and endorsed him for President in April 2023, shortly after his first indictment. Over time, the two became close. On the campaign trail, Trump often invited Donalds to travel with him on his private plane, dubbed Trump Force One. They strategized over how to win young Black voters, a group Donalds targeted as a Trump campaign surrogate. (Trump doubled the share of votes he won with Black men under 45 compared to 2020.) In November, after the election, Donalds visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago to tell him he planned to run for governor and asked for his endorsement. Trump made no promises. “Obviously, he was busy with transition and inauguration,” Donalds tells me. But then, something made Trump speed up his decision: Ron DeSantis.
The President still begrudges his former protégé for challenging him in the 2024 election. When he learned that the governor’s wife, Casey DeSantis, was preparing to run as his replacement, Trump chose a moment of maximal humiliation to undercut the duo, according to multiple Trump aides. He was planning on supporting Donalds anyway, but posted his endorsement of Donalds on Truth Social when DeSantis and his wife were flying to Washington D.C. for a Republican Governors Association meeting, where they would see Trump in a few hours.
Trump has moved just as swiftly with other MAGA darlings like Ramaswamy, who often defended and praised Trump during a longshot presidential bid that raised his national profile. Last month, Trump endorsed Ramaswamy on the same night he launched his campaign for Ohio governor. It echoed an evening in January 2024 when Ramaswamy ended his presidential bid and endorsed Trump. It was around that time that they formed a bond. Together, Trump and Ramaswamy brainstormed future options for the millennial firebrand. “We had a lot of different possibilities that were floated,” Ramaswamy tells TIME.
Initially, he was going to co-chair the Department of Government Efficiency with billionaire Elon Musk. But Ramaswamy left after Trump decided to fold the cost-cutting commission into the executive branch, replacing the United States Digital Service; he would have been legally prohibited from running for office while serving in the federal government. Early polls had Ramaswamy leading any of his potential competitors by far, with 61% of Republican respondents ranking him as their first choice, according to a Bowling Green State University survey. Trump’s stamp of approval further solidifies his glidepath toward clinching the GOP nomination.
With Trump and Musk taking a chainsaw to the U.S. government, Ramaswamy argues that governors will be emboldened in the years to come. “It is the idea of devolving federal power to the states,” he says. “The center of gravity of changing the country starts now in Washington, D.C., but if you skate to where the puck is going to be in a couple of years, it's going to be the states that, from education to health care, are going to have to set policy and lead.”
Trump’s allies are still setting their sights on Congress. Vance and Trump Jr. have spearheaded efforts to identify and promote young Trump-aligned national populists. Thus far, for 2026, they are mainly focused on Morris, a Louisville businessman and prolific Republican donor. When he was 23, Morris raised $50,000 for George W. Bush’s reelection campaign. He’s a friend and supporter of Sen. Rand Paul, a libertarian who has clashed with Trump on his tariffs. But he also counts Vance as a confidant and was a major donor to Trump’s 2024 campaign. Sources tell TIME he’s preparing to run for outgoing Senator Mitch McConnell’s seat, as Vance has urged him to do. Morris has made other powerful allies. He caught Trump Jr.’s attention after recently castigating McConnell, a former Senate Minority Leader and Trump World villain, for voting against the nominations of Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard. Shortly thereafter, Trump Jr. amplified Morris on social media and hosted him on his popular right-wing podcast.
Morris’ moves come as Trump is looking for a candidate to replace McConnell. Trump has told his inner circle that he doesn’t want to support former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who has already entered the race. Trump endorsed Cameron for governor in 2024, but Gov. Andy Beshear defeated him handily. “He lost by five points in a state Trump carried by 30,” one of the President’s aides tells TIME. “He knows he’s not the guy.”
For Trump, that’s the other part of the equation—finding candidates he thinks can win. Part of his path back to power, after all, was engineering the ousting of GOP critics on Capitol Hill like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and supplanting them with disciples. “You have to understand where the President's mind is and what he’s trying to accomplish,” Donalds says. “And you support that.”Trump’s lieutenants are also committed to the project. Donalds’ campaign includes several close Trump aides: pollster Tony Fabrizio, communications consultant Danielle Alvarez, and political operative Ryan Smith. On Friday, Donalds plans to officially launch his campaign in Bonita Springs, a seaside community in Trump’s home state, where he has taken a particular interest in leaving an enduring influence. “He’s very deliberate here about lasting legacy,” a source close to Trump says. “He uses the word ‘young’ a lot when talking about the moves he’s making.”
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