.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he speaks to members of the media on board Air Force One en route from Scotland, Britain, to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., July 29, 2025. REUTERS Evelyn Hockstein

Political columnist Ed Kilgore tells New York Magazine's Intelligencer that President Donald Trump is tightening his grip on state Republicans — and that grip is threatening to strangle them.

“The depth of Trump’s party takeover didn’t become completely clear until he suddenly decided the GOP needed a better midterms landscape, if he was to maintain his governing trifecta,” said Kilgore, describing Trump’s bid to use unprecedented mid-decade gerrymanders to boost the “low odds” that Republicans hang on to their slim margin of control in the U.S. House.

Trump is not only pressing local Republicans to gerrymander democracy out of existence in their home states: He’s also willing to threaten the jobs of those that don’t get on board. Trump is putting the heat on New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) and threatening to back a primary challenger against her if she continues avoiding a redistricting effort in her state.

“The base is onto this. If you are a Republican perceived to be in the way of Republicans, there could very well be consequences,” one national Republican official told Politico anonymously, adding that the White House expects every GOP state that can redraw maps to preserve Trump’s Congressional power to do so.

“This is an unprecedented White House intervention in a function that has long been a prized prerogative of state legislators. And it comes with risks for the state parties Trump is bullying, since GOP underperformance in 2026 and/or demographic changes soon thereafter could makes some if not all these gerrymanders backfire sooner or later,” Kilgore said.

Trump’s hold on local Republicans is nearly complete, but Trump’s job-approval ratings “began to decline almost immediately after he took office,” said Kilgore. With Trump’s approval among centrist and independent voters hollowing out, polls suggest it is primarily right-wing voters and politicians who appear to be backing Trump with any kind of passion.

Naturally, local GOP politicians can expect to see a rift in approval open between their voters and the president — especially if Trump continues to fail to deliver the economic improvement he promised during his campaign.

“But it’s a sign of a trend that was underway even before Trump came along: an ideological sorting out of the two major parties that has increased both polarization and intraparty unity. Add in the 47th president’s cultlike hold on both the party base and national leaders and you get a White House grip on elected officials sharing the party brand that even the most powerful presidents of the past — FDR, LBJ, Ronald Reagan — never had,” said Kilgore. “It’s just our luck as Americans that this powerful centripetal pressure has worked to the benefit of a narcissist-in-chief, who doesn’t need much encouragement to lord it over his serfs.”

Read the Intelligencer report at this link.