I’m at the White House today where President Trump has zero public events on his schedule, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will hold a briefing this afternoon.

Trump is monitoring election results closely, but the president and Republicans are already setting expectations.

Though urging voters to turn out for Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, Trump didn’t hit the campaign trail for the candidates, instead phoning in his support.

One former Trump adviser told me Republicans expect to lose the Virginia governor’s race and the California redistricting ballot measure. They’re a little more optimistic about Ciattarrelli’s chances in New Jersey — but also shrugged off a potential loss there, downplaying its significance for 2026 and beyond.

A GOP strategist told me the White House is watching the margins in Virginia and New Jersey to gauge which voters don’t turn out for the GOP nominees so they are better prepared to target them in 2026.

The president and his team are eagerly awaiting results in the New York mayoral race, with the former Trump adviser saying “long-term messaging” will be focused on making Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party in an attempt to label Democrats as “communists.” Mamdani is a self-described Democratic socialist.

Trump endorsed Cuomo at the last minute in that contest, threatening to cut federal funding to the city if Mamdani wins — a move that would certainly spark lawsuits if he went through with it. The White House didn’t respond to questions about whether they were crafting plans to withhold funds from New York or which programs could potentially be affected.

Everything is about the midterms for the president, who has repeatedly mentioned 2026 in recent posts and public comments.

“We’ve had success like nobody, but for some reason, you lose the midterms. I don’t know why,” Trump said late last month at a luncheon with Senate Republicans at the White House. “It doesn’t make sense.”

And this morning, Trump again had the midterms on his mind, urging Republicans multiple times to nuke the Senate’s legislative filibuster, a demand GOP lawmakers rejected during the president’s first term. “The Democrats are far more likely to win the midterms and the next presidential election, if we don’t do the termination of the filibuster,” Trump said in a long Truth Social post.