Republicans may be favored to win back the U.S. House of Representatives in Tuesday's midterm elections, but that victory is hardly guaranteed. Nevertheless, Republican leaders — and those jockeying to become one — have already begun planning for a GOP House majority, telegraphing their legislative agenda with increased certitude as we draw closer to Election Day.
It is into this atmosphere of growing confidence that one of the conservative movement's most influential unelected figures has allegedly begun wading, with Punchbowl News reporting that Donald Trump Jr. has started urging congressional allies to back Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) as the party's presumptive majority whip. But Trump's involvement in the fight to replace soon-to-be promoted current GOP whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) with Banks may be less about who he likes than who he doesn't: the man seen by many as the strongest contender for the spot, National Republican Congressional Committee chair, Rep. Tom Emmer, of Minnesota.
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While Trump, the elder Carlson, and allies like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) have stood their ground both publicly and in private, Punchbowl's report that Don Jr. has begun actively reaching out to sympathetic lawmakers like Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to whip support for Banks suggests that this fight between a party insider and an energized MAGA constituency has entered a new phase that will ultimately test the Trump camp's efficacy at swaying congressional Republicans on internal matters, even as the party as a whole struggles with whether — and how — to move past the Trumps at all.
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