The race for House Republicans’ No. 3 leadership spot next year is already taking shape: It’s Rep. Byron Donalds, one of two Black conference members, versus sitting conference chair Elise Stefanik.

“I think races are healthy,” the first-term Floridian said in an exclusive interview, saying his plan “hasn’t changed” despite Stefanik’s formal confirmation that she’s seeking reelection in leadership after flirting with a bid for whip next year. “Competition is a healthy thing.”

“At the end of the day, the members want us to make sure that the best person can represent the conference at a time where we're up against some of the worst policies this country's ever seen,” Donalds added. “And we have to reverse course immediately, and I think I have a unique ability to help with that.”

Donalds spoke an hour after Stefanik announced she would seek re-election to the conference chair role should Republicans win the majority in November as expected. Her decision — despite a past pledge to conservative skeptics that she’d only serve one Congress — came as no surprise to some in the GOP, given the possibly crowded future battle for majority whip and her potentially blocked path to the Education and Labor Committee’s gavel next year.

And Stefanik now boasts broad support within the conference, winning praise from centrists and conservatives alike for her stewardship of House GOP messaging after leaders anointed her to replace Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). Many House Republicans have said for months that the New Yorker would coast to reelection as No. 3 leader if she chose to run again — which leaves Donalds as an unlikely aspiring spoiler of Stefanik’s recoronation.

The 43-year-old, a member of the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus with a background in banking and insurance, didn’t exactly hide his plans to seek the spot. After POLITICO first reported last month that Donalds was weighing a run for conference chair and then first reported a Thursday reception to kick off his leadership bid, Stefanik’s silence about her own future got scrambled and she confirmed her run.

“It appears that way,” Donalds said when asked if he saw his own moves influencing Stefanik to go public. “My intention wasn't to force a decision by Elise. It's something where there were other members asking me.”

He has hired Nicholas Raineri, a former aide to conservative Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) who’s also advised the centrist GOP Main Street Caucus, as a special adviser to help with member outreach in the conference chair race. Donalds also said he met Monday with former President Donald Trump — whom Stefanik made her name defending during his first impeachment — but declined to discuss the nature of their lunch, beyond the fact that the conference chair race came up.

If Donalds can break through, he’d help the GOP conference make good on its long-held goals of more diverse representation, burnished through active recruitment of candidates of color. But he’s a long shot at best in the race.

Stefanik has powerful allies in her corner, with the entire slate of senior leadership supporting her reelection as No. 3: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), National Republican Congressional Chair Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Conference Vice Chair Mike Johnson (R-La.) are all supporting her second bid.

“I am proud to have unified the entire Republican Conference around our country in crisis message and shattered fundraising records as House GOP Conference Chair raising over $10M for candidates and committees this cycle,” Stefanik said in a Tuesday statement.

And some Republicans aren’t thrilled by Donalds’ decision to challenge her. One senior GOP lawmaker, speaking candidly on condition of anonymity, called it a “needless fight” at a time when the party should be focused on winning enough seats this fall to bring a workable majority to the next Congress.

This senior Republican asked what Stefanik has “done wrong to deserve to be bounced,” adding: “It's really important, before you seek a leadership position, to seek counsel — and to seek wide counsel — to understand the consequences of engaging in conference politics.”

A person close to Stefanik said she has already locked up two-thirds support among the conference, projecting confidence in her victory. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), a member of the House GOP campaigns team, said he’s with her.

“Everybody can run if they want to. But I think Elise has done a tremendous job,” Armstrong said. “I'm really impressed and she's gonna be a big part of why we win back to the majority … I think she deserves the chance to do the majority.”

That leaves Donalds hoping to pick up support among Freedom Caucus members, his fellow Florida delegation members and incoming members-elect. He said Stefanik has "done a good job" but his choice is "not really about Elise," touting his ability to appeal to "people who typically are not Republicans."

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the Freedom Caucus, declined to say how he would vote until he speaks to every candidate but expressed the desire for the pro-Trump group to have more representation in leadership.

Donalds is “special, because he’s in the Freedom Caucus,” Norman said.

Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) declined to say if he would support Donalds but called his leadership bid “very interesting” and “a positive sign for the whole conference.”

Another Freedom Caucus member, Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), said he’s backing Donalds and subtly alluded to past criticism Stefanik took from the right for her history of centrist votes by saying he’d “love to see a conservative” in the role.

Both Stefanik and Donalds would bring their own liabilities to a post that attracts more attention in the House’s majority party.

Stefanik’s stumbles this Congress have included endorsing controversial congressional hopeful Carl Paladino, who lost his primary, and a tweet her aides deleted from the House GOP account that blasted former Trump aide Sarah Matthews for testifying before the Jan. 6 committee — while Matthews worked for a sitting member.

Even so, no members publicly describe those moves as relevant to the conference chair race.

Donalds, for his part, has made controversial arguments, including a CNN interview where he defended his reasons for not getting the Covid vaccine. He and a fellow conservative, Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), also stoked the ire of conference colleagues by claiming that GOP members voted for a bill that would create a vaccine database, despite that legislation's stated safeguards against government tracking.

And while her leadership bid might appear to break her previous term limit pledge, hardly a rare move for an ambitious lawmaker in either party, Stefanik’s team is now denying that she made any such promise after months of declining to comment on the matter.

“She never committed to only running for one term," Stefanik's chief of staff Patrick Hester said in a statement.

Donalds' allies make their own affirmative case for his candidacy, noting that he’s embraced TV appearances on less friendly programs than conservative standards — think MSNBC and CNN — in order to rebut Democrats on issues like critical race theory. Those choices help set him apart, Donalds' backers say, as Stefanik increasingly provides special access to conservative or otherwise friendly media.

But Donalds himself has a simpler pitch for leadership: He talks about converting to the GOP later in his life.

“I found conservatism 14 years ago. And I found it because the policies I saw coming out of Washington were not going to help America. And I think that that perspective and that background can only help our ranks grow as a party,” Donalds said.

“The members know that I'm easily one of the best on Capitol Hill to do it.”

Donald Trump isn’t in office anymore, but Congress is ramping up its oversight machine like it’s 2019 all over again.

Amid a cascade of new investigations into and tell-alls about the former president, top lawmakers are looking to elbow their way into investigations so far dominated by the Jan. 6 select committee and the Justice Department. That’s proven difficult, however, amid ongoing disputes between DOJ and Trump’s lawyers over prosecutors’ access to top-secret records the former president was storing at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Those legal battles have, so far, deprived lawmakers, even at leadership’s highest levels, of briefings on the classified documents the FBI found at Trump’s resort. And it gives those seeking to show off their anti-Trump oversight bona fides little option but an onslaught of letters and requests to various executive branch agencies and departments, even as DOJ fires off binding subpoenas to Trump’s inner circle.

It all adds up to a Congress left in the political dark on a sensitive issue with potentially grave national-security implications — not to mention effects on a future Trump White House bid. Still, some are urging patience.

“As I’ve said to my Republican friends, let’s let the process go through,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.), who raised his hand to form a “zero” when asked how much information his panel has received about DOJ's probe thus far. “I can’t cherry-pick [different] parts of the legal system.”

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a former FBI special agent with a record of occasionally crossing Trump, offered his own gut check on the gulf between lawmakers' oversight goals and the hard road to uncovering relevant details.

"The reality is this: Nobody — nobody in the press, nobody in Congress — knows the answer to the question 'Was it justified or not?'" Fitzpatrick said of the Mar-a-Lago search. "We don't know. We don't have enough information."

Congress faces some clear hurdles in trying to elbow its way into the Trump-related investigations currently underway: sometimes the agencies it’s seeking information from can’t sufficiently answer Hill requests. And, indeed, so far, congressional inquiries since the FBI's Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago have achieved just one victory: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence began a formal review of potential damages to national security stemming from Trump’s mishandling of classified documents at his residence.

But that assessment is already on hold.

Intelligence officials have paused their work, citing a federal judge’s recent ruling in favor of Trump’s request for an independent arbiter known as a special master to review the seized materials for potentially privileged documents.

That same delay is also affecting briefings for the upper rung of congressional and Intelligence Committee leaders often shorthanded as the Gang of 8 — even though that decision seemed to contradict the Justice Department’s position in a recent court filing.

Prosecutors told Judge Aileen Cannon last week that they did not interpret her decision on appointing a special master as barring officials from briefing lawmakers “with intelligence oversight responsibilities regarding the classified records that were recovered” at Trump’s Florida home.

“We have access to all of the most sensitive intelligence … irrespective of any court case or a pending issue. So I just don’t understand why they’d be hiding behind that,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the Intelligence Committee's vice chair. (Rubio signed onto a Warner-led request for the director of national intelligence's review, in addition to full access to the seized documents.)

In the meantime, Warner called on Cannon to “give some clarifications as quickly as possible,” citing the urgent need for a formal briefing. He also vowed to maintain the bipartisan nature of his panel’s request for information, something that other congressional committees can't boast.

That hasn't stopped other panels from jumping into the Trump oversight fray, exploring everything from the former president's handling of records to the allegations of politicization at DOJ that have been featured in the Jan. 6 select committee's public hearings. The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday asked the National Archives and Records Administration to determine whether other presidential records from Trump’s tenure remain unaccounted for.

Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who recently lost her primary bid, noted in writing that Archives officials have indicated to her committee that the agency was “not certain whether all presidential records are in its custody.”

Yet the Archives has already told lawmakers that it's separated itself from the ongoing DOJ investigation, which is looking into potential violations of the Presidential Records Act, the Espionage Act, and obstruction of justice. So it’s unclear whether the agency can even complete the full accounting that Maloney's committee is seeking.

The Oversight Committee is hoping the Federal Protective Service, the security agency overseeing many government buildings, may be able to answer other questions indirectly related to the search. The panel sent a letter Wednesday asking for details on the protection of federal employees amid increased threats in the wake of the passage of Democrats’ health care, climate and tax bill and the Mar-a-Lago search.

On the other side of the aisle, House Republicans are demanding information related to the FBI’s justification for the Mar-a-Lago search. They’re also sowing doubt about the national-security risks of Trump's document handling given the fact that congressional leaders were never informed in advance about the federal investigation.

“We certainly should be told what’s there,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), a member of the Intelligence Committee. “We haven’t seen anything … I just don’t see Donald Trump boxing up all these records himself and carrying these records to his car.”

In addition to the Mar-a-Lago probe, the Senate Judiciary Committee this week launched its own investigation into new claims of undue political interference at Trump's DOJ. In his initial letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) largely cited former U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman’s new book, which detailed allegations of politically motivated prosecutorial decisions at the highest levels of the department.

Much like the Oversight panel's request to the Archives, it's not clear whether Garland will even be able to comply with the Senate given his limited vantage point on his predecessor's operations. Nonetheless, Durbin described what he sees as the seriousness of the claims against Trump and his top deputies.

“We’re back to the enemies list of Richard Nixon,” Durbin said.

Olivia Beavers contributed to this report.

Ken Starr, whose investigation led to former President Bill Clinton's impeachment, has died at 76 after complications from surgery. Starr was also part of former President Donald Trump's legal team for his first impeachment trial.

Starr was best known for heading the investigation that led to former President Bill Clinton's impeachment.

Kenneth Winston Starr, a former US solicitor general who gained worldwide fame in the 1990s as the independent counsel who doggedly investigated President Bill Clinton during a series of political scandals, has died. He was 76.

As Clinton's legal problems worsened, the White House painted Starr as a right-wing fanatic doing the bidding of Republicans bent on destroying Clinton.

Starr’s independent counsel investigation led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

The Texan also defended former President Trump against impeachment.