The White House is warning conservative organizations that officials are watching what they say as Republicans turn on one another following brutal midterm election losses. The message is plainly menacing, even if Donald Trump’s rapidly weakening political position makes the implied threat look increasingly hollow.

Republicans suffered devastating defeats amid Trump’s failing presidency, and the results have triggered a familiar outbreak of finger pointing across the party. With Democrats newly in control of Congress, prominent conservatives are openly wrestling with who deserves blame for the electoral disaster.

White House officials evidently would prefer that none of those fingers point toward the Oval Office. According to The Wall Street Journal, the White House delivered a warning to conservative groups on Thursday that carried an unmistakable message: Officials are watching them.

The White House Office of Public Liaison sent a memo to more than 3,000 conservative organizations. That office works with outside groups, and its message listed Trump’s claimed accomplishments while pledging to stop newly ascendant Democrats from reversing them.

The memo saved its sharpest language for the conclusion, where one sentence was highlighted in yellow. “As always, we are monitoring statements, press releases, and media engagements from your organizations,” the memo said.

A White House spokesperson confirmed to the Journal that the memo was authentic but denied that its language was intended as a threat. According to the official explanation, the communication was simply another effort to encourage organizations aligned with the White House to keep promoting Trump.

That explanation runs into an awkward problem. The White House Office of Public Liaison had sent similar memos in the recent past, but those earlier communications did not include the monitoring language that suddenly appeared in this version.

The ominous wording was new, and its timing was difficult to overlook. It was added two days after Democrats easily won control of Congress, delivering a crushing rebuke to Republicans and accelerating the party’s internal blame game.

The phrasing was hardly subtle, but the memo left one important matter unexplained. It did not say what would happen if White House officials discovered statements, press releases or media appearances that Trump and his team disliked.

That omission matters because the election stripped Trump of meaningful legislative power. Any agenda he might have envisioned for the final two years of his tenure collapsed Tuesday night when Democrats captured Congress.

Trump is now the lamest of lame ducks, a deeply unpopular incumbent who led his party into the political wilderness. At the same time, Republican discussion about the need for different leadership is growing louder as the party processes the scale of its defeat.

The White House can monitor conservatives and take note of anyone who refuses to follow Trump’s preferred line. Its warning can still sound authoritarian, but sounding frightening is not the same thing as possessing the power to enforce obedience.

The unanswered question is what Trump could actually do to punish conservative groups or figures who break ranks. He could publish angry posts or deny them invitations to a White House holiday party, but the memo identified no concrete consequence for disobedience.

That makes the warning resemble an attempt to project power precisely when that power is evaporating. The administration wants conservative organizations to behave as though Trump remains unquestionably in command, even as election results and growing Republican unrest point toward a fractured movement.

Trump expects to remain the leader of the Republican Party and the broader conservative movement indefinitely. He may soon discover that yellow highlighting and bureaucratic monitoring cannot preserve influence that is already slipping away.