More than two dozen Republican leaders in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District are publicly urging former President Donald Trump to reconsider his endorsement of Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good’s primary opponent.

Rick Buchanan — chair of the 5th District Republican Congressional Committee and a Good supporter — spearheaded the open letter, which was signed by 24 other Republican leaders in the district, to “strongly urge” Trump to reconsider his endorsement of state Sen. John McGuire.

“We hope President Trump reconsiders his ill-advised endorsement and stands with the Grassroots America First supporters of Congressman Bob Good,” the Republicans wrote.

The primary in the deeply red district will take place June 18. It’s grown increasingly contentious, with some polls suggesting Good could be in trouble.

And while Good has been campaigning in the district with members of the Freedom Caucus and other allies, he also has House GOP colleagues from multiple corners from the conference campaigning against him.

Trump endorsed McGuire late last month and has continued to take swipes at Good, releasing a new video this week in which he called the Virginia Republican “someone who will stab you in the back like he did me.” Good and Trump’s camps also got into a recent back-and-forth over the former using yard signs that invoke the latter’s name.

Good first supported Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid in the GOP primary. He subsequently endorsed Trump after DeSantis, a former House Freedom Caucus member, ended his presidential bid.

But the 25 Republicans also wrote that the former president’s endorsement of McGuire “may, in fact, hurt the strong support of conservatives for President Trump in the Fighting 5th that he will need in November.”

House Republicans on Wednesday sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Hunter and Jim Biden — a high-profile step that spins out of their largely stalled Joe Biden impeachment effort.

Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel David Weiss alleging that the president’s son and brother made false statements to Congress and recommending the DOJ bring charges. They also specifically accused Hunter Biden of committing perjury.

“Hunter Biden and James Biden made provably false statements to the Oversight Committee and the Judiciary Committee about key aspects of the impeachment inquiry,” the three Republicans wrote in the letter.

Paul Fishman, Jim Biden’s attorney, called the criminal referrals a “baseless partisan action” and a “transparent and cynical attempt to distract from and retaliate for Donald Trump’s recent criminal conviction.”

Jim Biden “testified earlier this year and has always maintained that Joe Biden never had any involvement in his business dealings,” he added. Hunter Biden’s legal team didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Speaker Mike Johnson called for quick action on the referrals, saying in a statement Wednesday: “If the Attorney General wishes to demonstrate he is not running a two-tiered system of justice and targeting the President’s political opponents, he will open criminal investigations into James and Hunter Biden … and he will announce it immediately.”

Johnson’s decision to single out Garland comes as House Republicans are gearing up to hold a vote next week on holding the attorney general in contempt for refusing to hand over recordings of former special counsel Robert Hur’s interview with Joe Biden. It’s not yet clear that they have the votes locked down, with several members publicly on the fence or hoping the two sides can cut a deal and de-escalate the standoff.

Wednesday’s criminal referrals to the Justice Department are non-binding, meaning the DOJ doesn’t have to do anything with them, despite Johnson’s overture for quick action. But House Republicans have increasingly touted those types of efforts as a landing spot for their months-long inquiry, which has largely focused on the business deals of Joe Biden’s family members.

Though Republicans unanimously formalized the inquiry late last year, actually impeaching Joe Biden has long seemed out of reach because even some House Republicans say they haven’t found clear evidence that the president committed a crime or an impeachable offense.

And while GOP lawmakers have openly acknowledged it’s unlikely the criminal referrals will gain traction with the DOJ this year, they view them as an investigative trail that former President Donald Trump’s Justice Department could pick up if he wins in November.

Republicans, as part of the allegations included in their criminal referral, are accusing Hunter Biden of lying to Congress when he said during a closed-door interview that an infamous WhatsApp message Republicans highlighted was actually sent to the wrong person. Hunter Biden said it was an “indication of how out of my mind I was at this moment in time.”

House GOP investigators said Hunter Biden was lying about accidentally sending a message meant for Raymond Zhao to an unrelated Henry Zhao, according to documents obtained by the Ways and Means Committee. Hunter Biden had sent it to Raymond Zhao, a Chinese business partner, and invoked his father’s presence with him as he wrote the messages, Republicans allege in the criminal referral letter. (An IRS whistleblower also characterized the message as going to Henry Zhao.)

In addition to telling House investigators earlier this year that he sent it to the wrong person, Hunter Biden also said that he was not sitting next to his father, despite the contents of the message saying otherwise, and that his father had no knowledge of the message.

Republicans, in their letter to the Justice Department, also said Jim Biden gave false testimony about not being at a “meeting” in 2017 with Hunter Biden, Joe Biden and Tony Bobulinski, a former Hunter Biden associate who has been critical of the Bidens for years and attended a 2020 presidential debate as a guest of Trump’s campaign.

Hunter Biden separately told the committee that he and Jim Biden were at a hotel bar with Bobulinski, where he met Joe Biden. Hunter Biden said the two talked about an ill family member of Bobulinski’s, but denied that they had a “meeting.”

Republicans in Congress raged against Attorney General Merrick Garland for hours on Tuesday, but after a heated day-long inquisition they extracted no narrative-shifting information to use against him.

Republicans spent hours sparring with Garland over former special counsel Robert Hur, special counsel Jack Smith and the state-level prosecutions of Trump — but got little new information out of the attorney general on any of those fronts. Republicans, on multiple occasions, accused him of either refusing to answer, not knowing the answer and, in one instance, whining a lot.

Garland, for his part, delivered an uncharacteristically pointed defense of the Justice Department’s independence and accused Republicans of trying to hold him in contempt for political purposes.

“These repeated attacks on the Justice Department are unprecedented and unfounded,” Garland told lawmakers. “I view contempt as a serious matter. But I will not jeopardize the ability of our prosecutors and agents to do their jobs effectively in future investigations. I will not be intimidated.”

The hearing marked the latest episode in Republicans’ escalating vows to go after the DOJ and state-level prosecutors for investigating Trump, particularly after his 34-count conviction. Earlier that morning, Speaker Mike Johnson touted his “three-pronged” plan to rein in the DOJ, touching on spending bills, separate legislation and oversight work.

Yet all three of those fronts come with nearly insurmountable obstacles. Republicans’ single-digit control of the chamber remains an inconvenient reality, and the House GOP has already repeatedly failed in its attempts to make sweeping changes to the justice system this term using Johnson’s three prongs: going after DOJ funding, spotlighting oversight hearings and long-running pursuit of President Joe Biden’s impeachment that has delved into the DOJ but flatlined.

Even if the House could pass spending bills to rein in the DOJ, they’re unlikely to go anywhere with the Democratic-controlled Senate. This week’s Delaware trial of Hunter Biden poses its own separate problem for the party’s argument, forcing Johnson to publicly swat down a question Tuesday about whether that prosecution refutes his and Trump’s claim that the courts are targeting Republicans.

Despite the low chances of tangible success, the speaker is pushing ahead anyway — even as some Republicans have acknowledged that their best shot is hoping Trump wins in November. According to three Republicans in Tuesday morning’s private GOP conference meeting, Johnson talked up Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) proposals to use the power of the federal purse to rein in Trump’s prosecutors at both the federal and state levels. Conservatives pushed similar ideas in the last spending cycle, but the House GOP’s DOJ funding bill unraveled amid party infighting.

Johnson’s own members acknowledge they’re not sure whether anything can get enough GOP votes to pass the House this time around, either: “That’s going to be always a challenge in the moment,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), who leads the conference’s largest internal caucus.

Even as Garland clashed with Johnson’s members over their push to obtain audio of former special counsel Robert Hur’s interview with Biden, it’s not clear when House GOP leadership will be able to call a floor vote on holding the attorney general in contempt for refusing to release that audio.

Asked about the Garland contempt vote on Tuesday, Johnson told POLITICO that “a decision hasn’t been set.”

Garland also rebuffed pro-Trump Republicans’ questions about the state-level prosecution of the former president in New York. He called false claims that the DOJ controlled that investigation a “conspiracy theory” and an “attack on the judicial process itself.”

Johnson signaled on Tuesday that he’s becoming more open to using the government funding bills to go after the DOJ, but it still won’t be enough for many conservatives. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said she asked Johnson during Tuesday’s closed-door meeting if he would be willing to shut down the government to strip out that DOJ funding.

“I don’t know if he’s willing to do that. So it’s just more talk,” she said after the gathering concluded. “Unless he’s willing to go and fight for legislative action that we actually take and pass in the House, then it means nothing. And that’s how the people see it.”

Greene is also threatening to trigger a vote as soon as this week on impeaching Biden. Republicans are far short of the votes to actually recommend booting the president, and it’s possible that leadership would table her maneuver or send it to committee — but a failure to move forward would likely still irk an already frustrated pro-Trump base.

Greene isn’t the only one skeptical that Republicans’ DOJ funding dreams will turn into a reality. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said he would “love to see” funding bills that defund Trump’s prosecutors, but he laughed when asked if he thought it would actually happen.

“I don’t know. I have no idea. I think a better question is, what are the odds we’re actually going to get approps bills,” Biggs said.

GOP leadership has an ambitious — and unrealistic, some Republicans say privately — plan to pass all 12 government funding bills on the House floor by the end of July. Last year, they managed to pass only seven before punting the rest because of GOP infighting.

And while lawmakers float dozens, if not hundreds, of policy ideas to attach to funding bills, very few of them actually make it into the final product.

“People have been wanting to use the appropriations process for policy things for a long time. … We’ll see. It’s a long process,” said Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), chair of the powerful appropriations subpanel that funds the Pentagon.

Republicans have already taken one stab at FBI-related spending: Cutting off federal funds for a new FBI headquarters. The GOP’s first draft of a fiscal year 2025 financial services funding bill, spearheaded by Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio), rejects a $3.5 billion proposal to build a new FBI headquarters.

It also withholds prior funding until lawmakers receive a plan to “continue operation of the current headquarters or to identify another existing, federally-owned DC building to serve as the headquarters.”

Still, conservatives pushed that same goal last year before it was ultimately stripped out of Congress’ final spending bills. Even if they managed to pass that provision again this time, FBI changes won’t meet the high bar that conservatives have set for more sweeping DOJ cuts.

Asked more broadly about using the appropriations bills to target funding for Trump’s prosecutors, Joyce pushed back: “I’ve never been a fan of those types of things. We fund operations. Just because you don’t like the operation doesn’t mean you don’t fund it.”

Some centrist Republicans would rather keep focusing elsewhere. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), a Biden-district Republican, argued that instead of the fight with the DOJ the election will be decided by issues like the border and Biden’s foreign policy decisions.

“The speaker obviously is putting forth a plan with respect to looking at oversight of how the Department of Justice and our justice system has been used for political purposes. We’ll see what comes of that,” he added.

Caitlin Emma contributed reporting.

The FBI has reinstated the security clearance — and authorized 27 months of back pay — for an official once suspected of misconduct related to investigations of Jan. 6 defendants.

Marcus Allen drew scrutiny within the bureau for allegations he withheld “relevant information” related to an investigation of Jan. 6 defendants. Then, shortly before Allen testified to a House GOP committee investigating the Justice Department’s probes, the bureau indicated it had revoked Allen’s clearance altogether.

“My decision to reinstate your security clearance is based upon a determination that the original security concerns have been investigated and have been sufficiently mitigated,” FBI Executive Assistant Director Timothy Dunham wrote in a May 31 letter reviewed by POLITICO.

Allen, who joined a panel of FBI agents last year who described themselves as “whistleblowers,” protested the FBI’s decision to revoke his clearance and sought a review from Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz. The IG recently raised concerns about the way officials handle security clearance suspensions, particularly for officials who claim “retaliation” from their superiors.

“This is total vindication for Marcus,” said Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight, which represented Allen and others who have claimed whistleblower status to testify to Congress. “The FBI has completely backed down and provided everything that we had asked for on behalf of Marcus. It’s clear from the evidence and the FBI’s capitulation there was absolutely no truth to their accusations.”

The FBI acknowledged the settlement in a statement but said it couldn’t comment on the specifics of the agreement.

“[B]oth parties agreed to resolve this matter without either admitting wrongdoing,” the bureau said in a statement. “Any allegation that the Director lied to Congress is false. The FBI takes seriously its responsibility to FBI employees who make protected disclosures under whistleblower regulations, and we are committed to ensuring they are protected from retaliation.”

CLARIFICATION: This post has been updated to specify Allen’s role at the FBI. He was an operations specialist.

Democrats are using a contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Merrick Garland to try and defang GOP talking points about Donald Trump.

New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the panel, asked Garland in the Tuesday hearing about the former president’s accusations that a use-of-force authorization during the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago was actually an attempt to “take me out with deadly force.”

“I’m just saying that the allegation is not true. This is our standard use-of-force policy, which limits the use of force that agents can use. It is used as a routine matter in searches,” Garland said.

He added that the standard limit on the use of force “was part of the package for the search of President Biden’s home as well.”

President Joe Biden hasn’t yet unveiled his planned executive order on border security, but the reviews from his party are already in on Capitol Hill: Democrats are painfully divided between frustrated progressives and party leaders on the defensive.

Many Congressional Hispanic Caucus members have criticized the Biden administration’s decision to strengthen restrictions for those seeking asylum restrictions, openly chiding him for failing to pair it with any policy that could offer certain undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship.

“I’m disappointed that this is a direction that the President has decided to take. We think it needs to be paired with positive actions and protections for undocumented folks that have been here for a long time,” Hispanic Caucus Chair Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) told reporters Tuesday morning.

Progressives are also openly dissatisfied with Biden’s embrace of a core provision of the bipartisan border deal that former President Donald Trump encouraged Republicans to kill earlier this year.

“It’s disappointing and I’ve made that clear to the White House as well. It does not solve the problem at the border,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Monday night.

“It makes it so that we have bought into sort of this idea that you can fix the border without fixing the legal immigration system. What you need is more resources, more legal pathways, modernization of the system — none of those things are happening with this,” Jayapal added.

Congressional Democratic leaders on both sides of the Capitol were left to defend the administration’s move as the only step left open to the president given lawmakers’ inability to act on a Senate bill that many in the GOP effectively abandoned after one of their own helped to negotiate it.

“The president is left with little choice but to act on his own,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a Tuesday floor speech. “Republican intransigence forced the president’s hand.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Tuesday morning: “It’s important that President Biden is planning to take decisive action given the fact that extreme MAGA Republicans have decided to try to weaponize the issue of the challenges at the border as opposed to solving the issue legislatively.”

Other Hispanic Caucus members withheld immediate criticism of the order before its release.

“I would hate to see folks who are seeking refuge, including in our state, uniting with other family members, be prohibited from doing so,” said Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.). “I’ll be analyzing it, but I have concerns right now.”

Biden did get some lukewarm backup from centrists for his attempt to address spiking migration at the southern border.

“I’m just thankful that something has happened,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) on Monday. “Anything is an improvement to what we have.”

And a group of centrists known as the New Democrats praised the order as reducing “the burden on Customs and Border Protection, immigration courts and the immigration system, and the communities we represent.” They added, however, that it was still up to Congress to pass border and immigration legislation.

Republicans gave Biden no credit for taking the steps, as expected, arguing that the order is coming months too late.

“Why did you wait until now if you were serious about [the border]?” asked Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a contender to be the next Senate GOP leader. “The simple answer is, he’s not serious about securing the border.”

“Too little, too late,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) warned Biden, calling the order a “superficial gesture” that is “not going to save your political life.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he spoke to Trump ahead of Biden’s announcement and indicated that the former president told him of the executive order: “This is a scam, and people will see through it.”

The House passed the first of a dozen appropriations bills on Wednesday largely along party lines, an early victory in Speaker Mike Johnson’s ambitious summer funding pursuit.

The bill funding the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction projects passed in a 209-197 vote. It’s the first of many hurdles House appropriators must overcome to fulfill their goal of moving all 12 spending bills through the chamber by the August recess, an aggressive timeline ahead of the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. But final passage of bipartisan spending measures is likely a long way off, since congressional leaders are expected to punt final negotiations until after control of Congress and the White House are decided in November.

The package — loaded with controversial riders on abortion and other social issues — is almost certainly dead on arrival in the Senate but offers a preview of other appropriations bills to come in the House.

Adding to the partisanship, the speaker is promising to use the funding bills in a three-part strategy to overhaul the criminal justice system in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s 34-count felony conviction.

Similar to last year, the House GOP loaded several spending bills with restrictions on abortion rights and gender-affirming care and other contentious provisions putting swing-district Republicans in a tricky position ahead of Election Day.

House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) has said he will “work hard from a pro-life position” on abortion-related riders, but has tempered expectations, saying the bills will ultimately have to be bipartisan to make it through the Senate.

The bill passed Wednesday would block the VA from implementing rules that would expand access to abortion, restrict access to gender-affirming care and bar the VA from processing medical claims for undocumented people and from flying Pride flags over its facilities.

Democrats have hammered the legislation for limiting veterans’ reproductive rights and have argued that including the controversial riders is a “waste of time.” The White House has said it would veto the bill.

Four Democrats — Reps. Jared Golden of Maine, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Mary Peltola of Alaska and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington — voted with Republicans. Two Republicans — Reps. Tom McClintock of California and Matt Rosendale of Montana — voted against the bill.

The funding: The measure allocates $147.5 billion across VA and Pentagon programs, with the vast majority going to the VA. Democrats opposed the bill for funding military construction at levels lower than the status quo, although the legislation goes beyond the Biden administration’s request. The bill offers $113 billion for veterans’ medical care, in line with the Biden administration’s request but also lower than fiscal 2024 levels.

Split screen: The House action comes as the Senate is set to vote on legislation guaranteeing access to birth control. Ahead of the November elections, Democrats are attempting to use reproductive rights issues to their advantage.

Amendments: In a 290-116 vote Tuesday, lawmakers tacked on an amendment aimed at ensuring that veterans can take part in states’ medical marijuana programs. It would lift a directive that bars VA medical staff from recommending veterans participate in them.

In a 211-193 vote, lawmakers added a controversial amendment from Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) that prevents the VA from using funds to submit beneficiaries’ names to an FBI list of those prohibited from having firearms if the agency has appointed a fiduciary for them.

In a vote with some Democratic support, the House adopted an amendment from Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) that would prevent the VA from giving bonuses to senior executives in its central office after the agency has come under scrutiny for doling them out to top officials.

The chamber also overwhelmingly voted in favor of amendments from Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) aimed at bolstering the use of artificial intelligence at the VA.

Jennifer Scholtes and Caitlin Emma contributed to this report. 

Senators gavel in Wednesday with the Hill’s focus on a mid-afternoon vote to advance legislation aimed at enshrining contraception protections into federal law.

“It is unacceptable — simply unacceptable — for Americans to even question whether or not access to birth control should fall at risk,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor Tuesday. Almost all members of the Senate Democratic caucus are co-sponsors of the legislation.

Prior to that vote, the chamber will vote on two local D.C. judicial nominees at about noon.

House lawmakers will have an even earlier day. Votes are expected around 10 a.m., when the chamber will vote on the first appropriations bill of the year — the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act.

The White House said in a statement of administration policy that it “strongly opposes” the bill and would veto it if it reaches the president’s desk.

Lawmakers are expected to break for the week after votes Wednesday to allow members to travel to France in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

The House has passed legislation aimed at sanctioning the International Criminal Court for pursuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials in his government.

The vote was 247-155, with 42 Democrats supporting the bill and 2 Republicans voting present. It amounts to a congressional rebuke to the court as the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues without a clear end in sight.

“The International Criminal Court has overstepped its authority and set a dangerous precedent,” House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said on the floor. “The case against Israel is baseless.”

The measure is unlikely to become law. The Biden administration said in a statement that it “strongly opposes” the bill and believes “there are more effective ways to defend Israel” but did not expressly threaten a veto.

Several Democrats ultimately supported the legislation even as they expressed concern with its drafting and questioned whether it had any chance of clearing the Democratic-controlled Senate.

“I would have preferred that the Republicans worked with us more closely to make it bipartisan, but this is just the first step in the process,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.). But, she added, “the ICC certainly needs to be held accountable. It is outrageous and egregious.”

Rep. Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, spoke against the legislation in the party’s closed-door caucus meeting Tuesday morning. He said in a brief interview that the bill was “dangerous stuff” because it could lead to sanctions on the leaders of countries allied with the United States.

Senate Foreign Relations Chair Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said House and Senate lawmakers had been working on a bipartisan effort to push back on the ICC and that the legislation passed by the House would hurt that push.

“Obviously it’s gonna be much more challenging now for us to reach a bipartisan agreement,” he told POLITICO in a brief interview.

Republicans are moving to head off a long-term war between Larry Hogan and former President Donald Trump’s allies, including the RNC, as Hogan faces one of the toughest ticket-splitting efforts in modern politics.

Hogan’s request for Americans to respect the verdict of Trump’s criminal trial — before the conviction was even announced — elicited harsh criticism from RNC co-chair Lara Trump, raising the specter of a long-term rift between top rungs of the party and the GOP’s star recruit in Maryland, a state where Republicans haven’t won a Senate race since 1980.

Hogan generally makes no bones about his dim view of Trump, an absolutely necessary stance in the blue Old Line State — but one that can also draw out Trump’s defenders. And Republicans smarted at their own central party organ dissing their star recruit.

“It’s a horrible mistake. I think they should back off,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), no stranger to rifts in her own party after surviving a Trump-backed challenge two years ago.

Lara Trump said on CNN over the weekend that Hogan “doesn’t deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party at this point, and, quite frankly, anybody in America.” Trump’s campaign also pilloried Hogan for turning off Republicans.

“We’re all on the same team here. [The criticism] doesn’t help the cause,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.).

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) first joked that the whole episode is “a conspiracy designed to build [Hogan] up in Maryland. How’s that for a theory?” But he grew more serious about the viability of a long-term conflict.

“It’s completely unnecessary. I don’t know why they would feel the need to come to Donald Trump’s defense in a state he’s not going to win while we have a Senate candidate that could,” Cramer said. “It’s time to be done with it.”

Hogan, a popular two-term governor, is probably the only Republican who can truly put the state’s Senate race in play. And any public tussle with Trump will likely boost Hogan’s standing with the independent and Democratic voters he needs to win.

But crossing Trump also risks turning off the GOP base, which Hogan will need to win handily. Unlike his two midterm gubernatorial runs, however, he’ll have to share the ballot with Trump in November.

A senior campaign official with the RNC, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said “Hogan will need to bring together a diverse coalition to win Maryland but it begins with President Trump and the Republican base. Both internal and public polling show that Americans voters know the Biden trial was rigged and a sham.”

The path ahead for Hogan may be the trickiest in the country, even more so than red-state Democratic Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, whose states aren’t quite as challenging for Democrats as Maryland is for Republicans. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines’ assessment: “Larry Hogan is running for Senate in Maryland, not Mississippi.”

“We’ve got to give him some latitude and some slack to do what he needs to do to succeed there. I would hope that at every level folks let him do that,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), who believes that message will be conveyed to the RNC in time.

Hogan’s path to victory means he can’t afford to lose many voters in either the pro-Trump or anti-Trump bloc — a mission similar to that of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who split tickets to an extraordinary degree in 2020 as Trump lost Maine. Maryland, though, is numerically even more challenging.

Collins said, from what she could tell, “most Republicans are rallying around” Hogan. Hogan’s campaign declined to comment.

“What we don’t want to do is have a scenario where we win the White House and then we don’t have a majority in the Senate. That would make no sense at all,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

If there’s any solace for Republicans after Lara Trump’s interview in which she declined to earmark financial support for Hogan, it’s that the Maryland Senate race is unlikely to rely much on the RNC’s money. It’s not a competitive presidential state, so the NRSC and Senate specific groups will be far bigger players than the RNC.

Asked about the imbroglio Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Whether you’re Mike Lee or Susan Collins, we need more Republicans in order to set the agenda. So I support all of the Republican candidates, and certainly Gov. Hogan would be among them.

Daniella Diaz contributed to this report.