Ken Thomas

This is a setback for Democrats, but I don't think there's an expectation that this decision favors Republicans in the big picture in terms of who will control the House after the November midterm elections.

There are 30 to 35 seats around the country that are considered competitive seats.

And Republicans are in defense on a lot of those seats.

We saw Tennessee's governor sign a new plan this week that will eliminate a seat that's been held around the Memphis area by Democrats.

There are other efforts afoot in South Carolina and Alabama.

We could certainly see Republicans change the map to benefit their abilities of winning more seats in the fall elections.

President Trump had warned that a group of Indiana Republican state senators would face retribution for opposing his redistricting plan in the state.

Tuesday's primaries showed that Trump largely made good on that threat.

Five of the seven Trump-backed Republican challengers won their primaries for state Senate.

Now, all of this stemmed from Trump's push last year for Indiana to conduct a mid-decade redistricting plan, similar to those approved in Texas and North Carolina.

But that ran into opposition from a group of Indiana state senators, which led to the president engineering primary challenges against the Republican incumbents.

In the short term, this is good news for the White House.

Trump will still need to overcome slumping approval ratings and

and concerns from voters over inflation and rising gas prices.

Those will be key to the November midterm elections, when Republicans won't have Trump on the ballot, but will be defending majorities in both the House and the Senate.

But Tuesday's primaries show that despite these headwinds, Trump is still in command of his Republican base, and Republican lawmakers who oppose him

run the risk of seeing an end to their political careers.

It's a law from 1807 that allows the president to use the military for civilian law enforcement purposes on U.S.

soil under a narrow set of circumstances.

It's been used a few dozen times in our nation's history, but it's been exceedingly rare in modern history.