About a dozen of RNC Chairman Reince Priebus’s most loyal allies who hold seats on the 112-member Rules Committee are working to extinguish the anti-Trump efforts. The existence of the whip team, which includes prominent party figures like Henry Barbour, a party official from Mississippi who is the nephew of former RNC Chairman Haley Barbour, was confirmed by three sources who’ve been briefed on it.
The efforts are extensive enough that the whip team has drafted a map, obtained by POLITICO, of the committee’s seating arrangements that marks where each of the pro-Trump members are sitting and demarcates lines around which committee members each whip is responsible to lobby.
The push to reject Trump at the party’s convention comes to a head on Thursday and Friday, when the influential Rules Committee decides whether to allow delegates to unbind themselves from their states’ primary results and instead vote their conscience…

The RNC is now adding to that operation, with a closed-door meeting of party brass and Trump whip teams scheduled on Wednesday night at the Westin hotel, just a few blocks away from the convention center, on the eve of the rules panel meeting.

Over the past few days, the RNC’s whips have been systematically reaching out to fellow members to ensure they’re in line and not about to bolt from Trump.