White House tells 3,000 conservative groups it is monitoring their statements

Memo follows election defeats that prominent Republicans blamed on Trump’s policies

The White House Office of Public Liaison sent a memo to more than 3,000 conservative organizations on Thursday that laid out a list of President Trump’s accomplishments in office and pledged to prevent newly ascendant Democrats from reversing them. The memo concluded with a sentence highlighted in yellow: “As always, we are monitoring statements, press releases, and media engagements from your organizations.” Leaders of two prominent conservative organizations confirmed that they had received the memo.

The message went out two days after voters rebuked Trump and his party in the midterm elections, in which Republicans lost the House and Senate. 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 was not a threat and was part of a larger effort to mobilize outside supporters. She said the Office of Public Liaison has sent out messages with similar language in the past. Previous emails from the office reviewed by The Wall Street Journal encouraged grassroots organizations to share their pro-Trump messaging with the White House but did not include language about monitoring the groups’ statements. An Oct. 1 email to conservative groups read: “As always, please continue to flag any statements of support, press releases, op-eds and media engagements on the topics outlined above.”

The memo followed a wave of public blame from Republican leaders and well-known conservatives after the election results. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, laid the blame for the losses squarely on the president. “This midterm, no question, was a rebuke of the president and the Congress by Democrats, independents and some Republicans that crossed over,” DeSantis told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz described the losses as “a Watergate-level repudiation” in a social-media post, writing that Trump’s “tariffs have made everything too expensive” while “the Iran war has dragged on too long.”

Some conservative groups blamed the losses on what they described as Republican abandonment of longstanding conservative principles. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, wrote in a postelection memo: “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.” She cited the administration’s lack of action on abortion as one reason religious voters did not turn out for Trump’s party.

The Taxpayer Protection Alliance, a conservative group focused on limited government, blamed Trump’s embrace of economic populism, particularly his use of tariffs, for driving up costs for voters and driving down Republican support. “These tariffs were a self-inflicted political wound that alienated voters,” the organization wrote in a postelection memo.

Some on the right argued that the results should push the party back toward what Sen. John Curtis of 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.”

Trump has shaped the Republican Party since he rose to power a decade ago, elevating his preferred candidates and redefining its stances on issues such as trade and foreign policy. The election has left that influence under public challenge from within the party. As Republicans look toward the 2028 presidential election, they will have to decide whether to continue embracing Trumpism or chart a new path.

On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance, widely considered a leading Republican presidential contender in 2028, took the first steps toward articulating a worldview that differs from Trump’s. Vance and Trump agree that the war was at least in part to blame for the party’s losses. But while Trump has said he would not 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.”