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Trump called out Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R- S.C.) on Aug. 17 for their criticism of his leadership. Here are 4 other politicians Trump has targeted on Twitter. (Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)

President Trump went on the offensive Thursday against two Republican senators, attacking them for their recent criticisms of his divisive governing style and response to the violence in Charlottesville.

In a morning tweetstorm, Trump lambasted Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.), calling Graham publicity-seeking and Flake toxic and endorsing a primary challenger to Flake in his reelection bid next year. Flake recently published a book that was highly critical of Trump.

Trump appeared to throw his support behind former Arizona state senator Kelli Ward, whois already mounting a primary challenge against Flake.

Flake wrote in his book that Republicans abandoned their principles in the face of Trump's unorthodox campaign and surrendered to the politics of anger. The party gave in to the belief that riling up the base can make up for failed attempts to broaden the electorate, Flake wrote in Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle. These are the spasms of a dying party.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) says the Republican president in the White House is not displaying the conservatism his party should be embracing. In his new book, "Conscience of a Conservative," Flake says populism and protectionism are as threatening to the GOP now as the New Deal was in 1960. (Dalton Bennett,Kate Woodsome/The Washington Post)

Ward is an osteopathic physician who unsuccessfully challenged Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2016, using the senator's advanced age against him. This time, Ward is hoping to use Flake's opposition to Trump to her advantage.

Jeff Flake has been unable to effectively serve the people of Arizona. Thats the big story, she said in an interview last week. Thats why he has such dismal job approval ratings. Hes been there almost 20 years and has accomplished really nothing. His values dont align with his constituents and its time for him to be sent back home and send somebody to Washington, D.C. who can accomplish the America First agenda that the president put forth but that the American people embraced across this entire country.

Ward said that she's especially upset with Flake's recent words and actions on health care and taxes even though he voted for the GOP health-care bill and is supportive of attempts to overhaul the tax code.

So where has Flake gone wrong?

On taxes, he's already come out with his opposition, Ward claimed. Rather than saying 'Im looking forward to what Donald Trump puts forward so that we can accomplish the goal of lowering taxes across the board and making sure that our American economy thrives,' he puts a negative spin on it from the beginning.

And on health care, she said she's upset with his behavior I'll call it his behavior on Obamacare.

When the bill was over in the House, Jeff Flake was over in the Senate telling reporters that there just was no appetite for full repeal of Obamacare in the Senate. He was whispering to his donors in the hospital corporations and the insurance industry not to worry.

Ward specifically cited a Washington Post story from May that included Flake telling constituents that he had a hard time believing that the Senate would vote to pass health-care legislation before the August recess.

Flake's campaign spokesman responded in a statement, You don't serve Arizona by cutting backroom deals in Washington, D.C. That's why Senator Flake will always fight for the people of our state.

McCain tweeted a defense of Flake.

Trump also slammed Graham, who was among the Republicans who criticized Trump for failing to offer a full-throated condemnation of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. The president waited two days before denouncing the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan groups that organized the Unite the Right event, only to reverse course Tuesday to again blame both sides for the violence that left a counterprotester, Heather Heyer, dead. Two police officers also died in a helicopter crash.

[Trumps isolation grows in the wake of Charlottesville]

In going after Graham, Trump suggested the senator, who also ran for president in 2016, was still smarting from his loss to Trump in the Republican primaries.

Graham responded with a statement in which he said Trump's handling of the Charlottesville violence was being praised by some of the most racist and hate-filled individuals and groups in our country. For the sake of our Nation as our President please fix this. History is watching us all.

Trump's tweets made clear that the president is willing to challenge fellow Republican lawmakers and potentially imperil their reelection chances if they criticize him. The GOP holds a narrow 52-48 margin in the Senate, though most political analysts say it will be difficult for Democrats to win back the chambers in 2018 because ofthe election map favoring Republicans.

But Trump also needs to maintain party loyalty to help pass his legislative agenda, including upcoming efforts at tax revision and, perhaps, infrastructure. McCain, for example, cast a crucial vote against the GOP's effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, prompting Trump to attack him repeatedly including yet again on Tuesday during his heated news conference in New York.

President Trump's relationship with Congress has become more and more strained as he struggles to find legislative wins. Now he's going after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a key leader in his own party. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

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Deepening GOP split, Trump attacks Republican senators Graham, Flake as 'publicity-seeking,' 'toxic' - Washington Post

After President Trump's rhetoric on the Charlottesville violence inflamed more criticism, many Republicans stayed silent. A handful criticized Trump directly while some issued broad statements against racism, but very few came to Trump's defense. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Congress is in recess, but Republicans are in hiding, apparently unsure how to answer questions about President Trump's response to last weekend's violence in Charlottesville and unwilling to try.

We invited every single Republican senator on this program tonight all 52, Chuck Todd said on MSNBC's MTP Daily on Wednesday. We asked roughly a dozen House Republicans, including a bunch of committee chairs, and we asked roughly a half dozen former Republican elected officials, and none of them agreed to discuss this issue with us today.

That's about 70 rejections altogether, and other news anchors had the same experience on Wednesday even on Fox News.

Our booking team and they're good reached out to Republicans of all stripes across the country today, Shepard Smith told his viewers. Let's be honest: Republicans often don't really mind coming on Fox News Channel. We couldn't get anyone to come and defend him here. Because we thought, in balance, someone should do that. We worked very hard at it throughout the day, and we were unsuccessful.

Trump a day earlier had doubled down on his position that both sides white supremacists and counterprotesters were responsible for the violence, and again seemed to draw a moral equivalence between the groups.

On CNN, Wolf Blitzer and Kate Bolduan recounted their bookers' struggles to line up interviews with Republicans. Blitzer came up empty; Bolduan landed one out of 55 requests.

There are two ways to view Republicans' shyness. It is significant that they are refusing to stand up for the president, ostensibly the head of their party. Yet it is also notable that so few, even those who have issued critical statements, are unwilling to elaborate in an interview setting.

A poll published Wednesday by NPR, PBS and Marist College offers insight into possible reasons. While a majority of Americans said the president's response to Charlottesville has not been strong enough, only 19 percent of GOP votersexpressed that view; 59 percent of Republicans said Trump's words have been sufficient.

By a 40-pointmargin, Republican voters are generally satisfied by the way Trump has handled Charlottesville. Republican politicians risk alienating those voters, if they come down too hard on the president.

The politically safe move, it appears, is to run for cover.

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Republicans are even avoiding Fox News when asked to talk about Trump and Charlottesville - Washington Post

AUSTIN, Texas Signs of a fractured Republican Party in Texas have Democrats hoping to seize an opportunity to gain some ground.

They say Hillary Clinton won 10 Texas districts in 2016 that Republicans currently hold. Progressive Texas groups, which call their collective One Texas Resistance, told state leaders Wednesday to "respect us or expect us."

"We will not allow them to harm our communities, our kids, or rob us of our rights and our basic humanity," said Emmitt Shelling of the Transgender Education Network of Texas.

They called Gov. Greg Abbott's conservative special session agenda "distracting and destructive." They're fighting against the so-called sanctuary cities law lawmakers passed this session and that's facing a court challenge.

Leaders also said they plan to challenge several abortion restrictions passed this summer.

"We know that these laws do absolutely nothing to protect our lives," said Amanda Williams of the Lilith Fund.

Rep. Cesar Blanco, D-El Paso, said Hillary Clinton won at least 42 percent of the vote last November in 20 districts that Republicans control.

"In 10 of those districts, Hillary Clinton won," he said. "Our message today to Republicans is that if you're not representing the values of hardworking Texans, we are coming after you."

State Republican Party Chair James Dickey says he's not at all worried.

"Republicans in Texas are happy with the progress that we've made just in the last few weeks and want to see more progress."

Dickey said the Legislature accomplished half of the ten priorities Republicans laid out last year. There's one priority, however, that seems to keep dividing House and Senate lawmakers: property taxes.

"We didn't see major progress on that," he said.

The stalemate led to flurry of GOP in-fighting that One Texas Resistance hopes to seize.

Lawmakers could be forced to come back to redraw congressional maps. A federal court called out two districts Tuesday for being discriminatory. That includes Lloyd Doggett's district, which spans from Austin to San Antonio.

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Texas Democrats to Republicans: Respect us or expect us - Spectrum News

President Donald Trump addresses the 2016 American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C. Following the president's remarks on violence in Charlottesville, AIPAC urged officials to "reject moral equivalence." | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Jewish Republicans rejected Donald Trumps comments in response to violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, but it doesnt appear the president is facing further consequences from the small but vital GOP constituency over what they saw as a failure to adequately denounce crowds that shouted anti-Semitic chants and hoisted Nazi flags last weekend.

The Republican Jewish Coalition in a statement called for Trump to show greater leadership after he seemed Tuesday to equate neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan demonstrators with those protesting them. Matt Brooks, executive director of the RJC, would not say whether members plan any further steps to warn the president.

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"People are scared and frightened and disgusted by the events of Charlottesville," Brooks told POLITICO on Thursday. "It's incredible in this time and place in our American history that we're dealing with the scourge of vile neo-Nazis and white supremacists. It's just intolerable."

Brooks also would not disclose any conversations with Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson, who sits on the RJC's board but has not personally weighed in.

Still, some Republican strategists are nervous about turning off a group that regularly votes, raises money and donates to candidates. Trumps daughter Ivanka and her family are Jewish, as are several of the presidents top aides. But his statement that there were very fine people amid those protesting the planned removal of a Confederate statue who chanted, among other things, Jews will not replace us shocked supporters and critics alike.

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"Getting this right is life and death for the Republican Party. You can't have a Republican Party that people believe is a racist party," said Rick Tyler, a Trump critic and former communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz, who aggressively courted Republican Jews in his own 2016 presidential bid. "The Republican Jewish community provides a lot of support for the Republican Party, particularly financial support."

The RJC which asked Trump to provide greater moral clarity in rejecting racism, bigotry, and antisemitism was more direct than the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which issued a statement Thursday urging all elected officials to reject moral equivalence between those who promote hate and those who oppose it.

But AIPACs statement was nonetheless a striking rebuke given the groups past praise of Trumps hawkish stance on Israel and as-yet-unfulfilled vow to move the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Tennessee Rep. David Kustoff, one of two Jewish Republicans in Congress, called on "White Supremacists, the KKK, neo-Nazis and all groups that preach hate" to be "explicitly condemned." The other, Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, followed Trump in placing blame on both sides for violence that culminated in the death of a woman after a car plowed into a crowd of counter-protesters.

But Zeldin added: "These two sides are not equal. They are different."

Nonpartisan Jewish groups, like the Anti-Defamation League, have been more direct in criticizing Trump's rhetoric.

It's not the first time Trump has angered the American Jewish community. Many were baffled and offended when his White House put out a statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day that made no mention of the Jews who were killed.

Fred Zeidman, a member of the RJC board of directors and a former George W. Bush appointee to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, praised his group's leadership for taking a stand after the Charlottesville violence.

"We know the issues that evolve from remaining silent, and we can't remain silent," he told POLITICO on Thursday. "We know what happens when we remain silent."

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Jewish Republicans reject Trump's take on Charlottesville violence - Politico

Republican lawmakers this weekend took President Donald Trump to task over what they deemed a weak response to white supremacist groups and violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, the latest sign that Trumps grip on the party may be weakening.

The outspoken group included past Trump antagonists such as Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida, but it also included prominent conservative voices who aren't known as fierce critics of the administration, such as Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Cory Gardner of Colorado.

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The Republicans joined civil rights leaders and Democrats who reacted angrily when Trump said Saturday he condemned "this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides on many sides. His repetition of many sides struck critics as seeming to equate the white supremacist groups who organized the rally with counterprotesters, though the White House later sought to recast his statement to be more critical of hate groups.

One woman was killed and more injured Saturday when a car plowed into a group of counterprotesters. Police later charged a man who had been photographed holding a symbol of one of the groups that organized the Charlottesville event, The Associated Press reported.

This isn't a time for innuendo or to allow room to be read between the lines. This is a time to lay blame, Gardner, who is considered a rising star in the party, said on CNN on unday.

This president has done an incredible job of naming terrorism around the globe as evil, Gardner continued. He has said and called it out time and time again. And this president needs to do exactly that today.

"We should call evil by its name," Hatch wrote on Twitter Saturday.

The rift over Trump's response to the Charlottesville violence was just the latest example of members of his party starting to carefully take on a president whose words and actions many chose to overlook after his surprise 2016 victory. Those schisms including criticism of his treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his recent public berating of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could make it harder for the White House to work with its counterparts on a slew of policy priorities this fall.

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The critical tweets and television interviews do not mean Republicans are turning on the president just yet. And Republicans have criticized Trump before. After the release of the Access Hollywood video in which Trump boasted about grabbing womens genitals without their consent, many lawmakers said they could no longer support him; Gardner said he would not vote for him. Still, Republicans worked with Trump anyway after he took the White House.

The Republican politicians still fear the Trump base in their own districts and states, said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, located in Charlottesville. When he goes down to where Nixon and Truman were, in the mid- to low 20s in the polls, then they will start waving bye-bye to him.

But the reactions to Trumps recent actions have evolved from earlier in the administration. For example, after Trump in May fired FBI Director James Comey, who was leading an investigation into Russias role in the 2016 election, Republicans on Capitol Hill tried to avoid reporters' questions rather go on the record criticizing his decision.

By midday Sunday, the White House released a statement that attempted to clarify the presidents earlier remarks on Charlottesville, though the president himself has not spoken again.

"The President said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry, and hatred. Of course that includes white supremacists, KKK Neo-Nazi and all extremist groups. He called for national unity and bringing all Americans together, an unnamed White House spokesman said in a statement.

The president condemned the violence and didn't dignify the names of these groups of people, but rather addressed the fundamental issue," White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert told CNN.

That was after waves of criticism, including from Trumps 2016 campaign rivals such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who urged the Department of Justice to investigate the events in Charlottesville, which it promised to do late Saturday evening. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who ran for president in 2016 and whose daughter works in the West Wing, and 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney also denounced racial prejudice.

Fissures between Republicans and Trump have been showing up with greater regularity, as the president faces a low approval rating and no major legislative accomplishments.

GOP lawmakers chafed when Trump publicly admonished Sessions for recusing himself from the Justice Departments investigation into Russias role in the 2016 campaign. Sessions said it was necessary given his role in Trumps presidential campaign, but Trump said he would have picked a different attorney general if hed known the recusal was coming.

Republican lawmakers and a bevy of conservative groups, from law enforcement advocacy organizations to tea party advocates to the Family Research Council, rushed to the defense of the former senator.

More recently, Trump broke standard party protocol by publicly criticizing McConnell for failing to pass legislation eliminating the 2010 Obamacare law. Trump even suggested that McConnell should step down from his leadership post something the president has no control over if McConnell does not deliver the votes to pass tax reform or an infrastructure package.

The party had already fractured over its attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare. Trump offered little support or cover for both House and Senate lawmakers to take what many deemed tough votes. The effort died in the Senate due to three no votes by Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska over concerns about the secretive process during which the health care bill was written and the cuts it would make to Medicaid.

When lawmakers return from vacation in September, they will face a bevy of thorny challenges raising the nations debt ceiling, approving a budget for the federal government, and tackling tricky policies like tax reform. While its premature to assume the Republican rifts will sink any of those efforts, the insistent paper cuts for the fledgling administration could imperil them and further erode Trumps diminished political base.

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Republicans stand up to Trump over Charlottesville comments