Anonymous Coward
Nov 6, 2026, 10:34 pm EST
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RE: White House Warns Conservative Groups It Is ‘Monitoring’ Their Statements
WASHINGTON—The White House delivered a warning to conservative groups on Thursday: We’re watching you.
Two days after voters rebuked President Trump and his party, the administration moved to hold together a coalition that was beginning to splinter.
The White House Office of Public Liaison, which works with outside groups, sent a memo to more than 3,000 conservative organizations that laid out a list of Trump’s accomplishments in office and pledged to prevent newly ascendant Democrats from reversing them. The memo concluded with a sentence that was highlighted in yellow.
“As always, we are monitoring statements, press releases, and media engagements from your organizations,” the memo said. Leaders of two prominent conservative organizations confirmed that they had received the memo.
The memo came after Republican leaders and well-known conservatives publicly blamed Trump’s policies for the election outcome. A White House official said the memo was meant to keep the conservative coalition unified during the final two years of Trump’s presidency.
Asked for comment, a White House spokeswoman said the email wasn’t a threat and was part of a larger effort to mobilize outside supporters. The spokeswoman said the Office of Public Liaison has sent out messages with similar language in the past.
Previous emails from the liaison’s office reviewed by The Wall Street Journal encourage grassroots organizations to share their pro-Trump messaging with the White House, but don’t include language about monitoring the groups’ statements.
“As always, please continue to flag any statements of support, press releases, op-eds and media engagements on the topics outlined above,” reads an Oct. 1 email to conservative groups.
After Republicans lost the House and Senate, several conservatives made pointed statements about the scale of the GOP defeat.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, laid the blame for the losses squarely on Trump’s shoulders. “This midterm, no question, was a rebuke of the president and the Congress by Democrats, independents and some Republicans that crossed over,” he told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz described the losses as “a Watergate-level repudiation” in a social-media post, writing Trump’s “tariffs have made everything too expensive” while “the Iran war has dragged on too long.”
Some conservative groups were quick to blame the losses on what they saw as Republicans abandoning longstanding conservative principles.
“Republican consultants got the campaign they wanted, and the defeat they earned. You cannot spend years telling your base to sit down and shut up, then act surprised when they don’t stand up for you on Election Day,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser wrote in a memo after the election, citing the administration’s lack of action on abortion as one reason religious voters didn’t turn out in support of Trump’s party.
The Taxpayer Protection Alliance, a conservative group focused on limited government, blamed Trump’s embrace of economic populism, particularly the use of tariffs, for driving up costs for voters and driving down GOP support. “These tariffs were a self-inflicted political wound that alienated voters,” the organization wrote in a postelection memo.
Some on the right now argue that Tuesday night’s election results ought to force the GOP to return to what Sen. John Curtis (R., Utah) described in a social-media post as “principled conservative values.”
“After the Biden era, Americans wanted an economy that worked for them,” Curtis wrote on Tuesday night. “Instead, they received a hastily executed war, headline after headline of scandals, a ballooning $40 trillion debt, and unpredictable tariffs.”
Since he rose to power a decade ago, Trump has long been a kingmaker in Republican circles, elevating his preferred candidates and redefining the party’s stances on issues such as trade and foreign policy.
The president emerges from the election weakened, with his influence in the party under threat. As Republicans look to the 2028 presidential election, they will have to decide whether to continue to embrace Trumpism or chart a new path for the party.
On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance, who is widely considered a leading Republican presidential contender in 2028, took the first steps toward articulating a worldview that differs from Trump’s.
He and Trump agree that the war was at least in part to blame for Republicans’ drubbing on Tuesday. But while Trump has said he wouldn’t do anything differently, Vance suggested in a lengthy social-media post that the political fallout from the war was worth discussing.
“If you would like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so,” Vance said. “Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest.”
Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the November 6, 2026, print edition as 'Trump Seeks to Keep Coalition United'.
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