Last year, state Republican lawmakers rankled the president by refusing to redraw Indiana’s congressional map. An updated map that, in theory, would have added multiple Republican-leaning districts to the U.S. House of Representatives, passed the state House before Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray and 20 other Republicans voted with Democrats to kill it in the state Senate.

At the time, the president vowed to back primary challengers to the Republican defectors. Trump made good on that threat earlier this week. As of Tuesday afternoon, Trump had endorsed three primary challengers: state Rep. Michelle Davis, Bluffton City Council member Blake Fiechter, and Tipton County Commissioner Tracey Powell.

The president accused all three of their opponents, state Sens. Greg Walker, Travis Holdman, and Jim Buck, of being RINOs: Republicans in name only.

“Buck and his RINO friends made Indiana, a State I love and have been very good to, the only State in the Country that essentially said they don’t care if Democrats steal Republican House seats to take over the United States Congress,” the president wrote in a statement posted to Truth Social on Monday night. “We could have easily picked up two seats in Indiana, helping Democrat seat theft in Blue States, but instead, Buck, an America Last politician, would rather give away our Majority in the House of Representatives, thereby putting our Country in a very dangerous position that could cost us some of the magnificent gains that we have made over the last year.”

Trump’s endorsements will undoubtedly throw a wrench into the little-watched local elections. One senior Republican official familiar with the inner workings of Trump’s political organization told the Washington Examiner that the president’s endorsements could help funnel major donations to the challenger campaigns. That aide would not say whether Trump planned to devote any of his campaign war chest to the Indiana races. Federal Election Commission records showed that MAGA Inc., the president’s primary super PAC, entered the year with nearly $300 million in cash on hand.

But some Republican operatives privately question whether Trump can afford intraparty fights at a moment when Republicans in Washington face an uphill climb to hold their congressional majorities in November.

“The president’s deportations are sucking up a lot of oxygen right now, and the moves the White House is making seems like a pretty clear admission that they’re worried about how this all plays in the midterms,” one senior Republican official, a veteran of Trump’s last two presidential campaigns, told the Washington Examiner.

An ex-Trump White House aide additionally lamented that the president needs to be “laser focused” on addressing voters’ economic concerns.

“It doesn’t matter if the Democrats are lying about the actual state of the economy,” that person assessed. “What matters is that President Trump promised to fix Joe Biden’s failures, and we just aren’t there yet. We’ve made amazing progress, but the president, [Vice President] JD [Vance], [Treasury Secretary Scott] Bessent, the whole team, needs to be hitting the ground hard, every week from now until November to explain to people exactly how we get from Point A to Point B.”

The president did travel to Iowa on Tuesday to deliver more affordability-focused remarks. White House aides say he, Vance, and other Cabinet officials plan to ramp up their campaign travel in support of Republican candidates ahead of this year’s elections.

Vance himself is the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, and he discussed the president’s midterm election strategies during an exclusive interview with the Washington Examiner last week.

Though the Indiana state races were not specifically raised, Vance downplayed how Trump’s “maverick” endorsements might be taking Republicans’ eyes off the ball.

TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION FOOTING COMES UNSTUCK AS MINNESOTA SHOOTING TURNS INTO ‘OPERATION CLUSTERF***’

“Look, the president has the most powerful endorsement in American politics. That’s why people care so much about it,” he responded when asked if Republicans would be better served by Trump focusing on ousting Democrats rather than primarying sitting Republicans. “Fundamentally, we’re still pretty early in the cycle. I think we’ll see the president make more endorsements over the weeks and months to come. But he’s going to make an endorsement fundamentally on whether he thinks, No. 1, a candidate can win, and, No. 2, if the candidate does win, are they going to do a good job?”

Whether the challengers succeed could offer an early measure of how firmly Trump still controls the Republican Party as he heads into a high-stakes election year.