Donald Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump took over the Republican Party as co-chair last week — and immediately announced the shuttering of the Republican National Committee's community centers in neighborhoods of color.
The GOP opened a number of centers in key swing states where they thought they could move Black and Latino voters to support Republican candidates.
Another key decision was canceling a program called "Bank Your Vote," which promoted early voting and voting by mail, both of which Trump has attacked.
According to the Washington Post, both plans have now been rescinded — and the party is claiming it had no plans to kill the programs.
“Despite what you may have heard, we are not closing community centers,” RNC chair Michael Whatley wrote in a statement. “Our Bank Your Vote program will continue educating and empowering voters to feel confident in early voting and voting by mail.”
The report about program cuts came after news that Lara Trump was demanding mass layoffs of people perceived as anti-Trump Republicans.
"Much of the senior leadership has either left in recent weeks or been fired, and dozens of lower-level staffers were asked to reapply for their jobs," according to the Post.
Insiders said earlier this week that the early voting program would be turned into a different effort called "Grow The Vote," focusing on "less likely voters."
"Party officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, said Friday that the shift in announced plans was a result of the fast pace of the takeover of the Republican National Committee at the start of the week," said the Post.
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GOP spokesperson Danielle Alvarez confessed that the goals of the party are to "streamline our joint operations."
There is also an ongoing debate about whether the Republican Party would take over Trump's legal fees and even pay for his judgments in the fraud or defamation cases.
Already Trump's legal woes seem to have taken priority as the Post says the RNC hired "new legal advisers, including veteran GOP attorney Charlie Spies and former One America News host Christina Bobb. She is known for frequently challenging the validity of the 2020 election results and demanding audits in Arizona specifically.
Bobb also champions herself as a "conspiracy theorist," a New York Times report said.
A spokesperson for the Biden-Harris campaign had said of the plan to close community centers: “Donald Trump is officially building the RNC in his own image, and gutting the party’s outreach to voters of color is just the tip of the spear."
