White House is ‘monitoring’ conservative groups’ statements after midterm losses

With President Donald Trump’s unpopularity front and center after Democrats’ sweeping midterm victory, Republicans are beginning to criticize the president and his policies. 

On Wednesday, Vice President J.D. Vance called out Trump’s war of choice in Iran as the “real reason” for why the GOP lost the election. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has spent the last few days dissecting voter dissatisfaction, which he told The Sage Steele Show includes the crony capitalism of the “Republicans in Washington.” With the GOP seemingly fracturing, the White House is taking steps to rein in potential fallout within the base. 

On Thursday, the White House Office of Public Liaison sent a memo to over 3,000 conservative organizations, which The Wall Street Journal reports, “laid out a list of Trump’s accomplishments in office and pledged to prevent newly ascendant Democrats from reversing them.” The memo ended with one sentence, highlighted in yellow: “As always, we are monitoring statements, press releases, and media engagements from your organizations.”​

When the Journal asked for comment, a White House spokeswoman said the memo “wasn’t a threat and was part of a larger effort to mobilize outside supporters,” insisting that the Office of Public Liaison has sent out similar messages in the past. The Journal didn’t find similar language in a review of previous emails from the liaison’s office to groups encouraging organizations’ advocacy for the president. 

It’s certainly possible that the liaison office did not intend to threaten conservative groups—it is, after all, the job of the office to monitor what allied groups are doing. However, given the administration’s history of tracking and threatening its critics for constitutionally protected speech, the line doesn’t exactly read as a friendly reminder.​

In September, for example, Trump banned several major news outlets from the White House, displeased with their negative reporting. “The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS.” He stated on Truth Social. “It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”​ A district court judge blocked the ban in October, finding that Trump’s own words showed “unlawful viewpoint discrimination.”

The Trump administration has also targeted legal residents for their political speech. Last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student, over his role in pro-Palestine campus protests. Khalil was never charged with a crime. Still, the administration deemed he was “subject to removal” because his “presence or activities…would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” 

Trump isn’t the first president to crack down on disfavored speech. During the COVID-19 pandemic, former President Joe Biden spent much of his time pressuring social media companies to remove content they deemed “misinformation.” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Biden administration officials “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.”

If the Trump White House is threatening these groups, it’s unclear what the consequences of disobeying might be. But one thing is for sure: With the president’s popularity in doubt after the midterms, a memo reminding allies they’re being watched suggests the White House fears its grip on the GOP is slipping.