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Four states are poised to cancel their 2020 GOP presidential primaries and caucuses, a move that would cut off oxygen to Donald Trump’s long-shot primary challengers.

Republican parties in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas are expected to finalize the cancellations in meetings this weekend, according to three GOP officials who are familiar with the plans.

The moves are the latest illustration of Trump’s takeover of the entire Republican Party apparatus. They underscore the extent to which his allies are determined to snuff out any potential nuisance en route to his renomination — or even to deny Republican critics a platform to embarrass him.

Trump advisers are quick to point out that parties of an incumbent president seeking reelection have a long history of canceling primaries and note it will save state parties money. But the president’s primary opponents, who have struggled to gain traction, are crying foul, calling it part of a broader effort to rig the contest in Trump’s favor.

“Trump and his allies and the Republican National Committee are doing whatever they can do to eliminate primaries in certain states and make it very difficult for primary challengers to get on the ballot in a number of states,” said former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), who recently launched his primary campaign against the president. “It’s wrong, the RNC should be ashamed of itself, and I think it does show that Trump is afraid of a serious primary challenge because he knows his support is very soft.”

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The South Carolina Republican Party appeared to violate its own rules on Saturday when the party's executive committee voted to cancel next year's primary election.

The executive committee voted nearly unanimously to cancel the primary, state party chairman Drew McKissick said, because President Trump had drawn "no legitimate primary challenger."....

The rule that governs South Carolina's presidential preference primary allows the state party to cancel the primary only by a vote at the state party convention, within two years of the subsequent primary.

South Carolina Republicans did not vote to cancel the primary at either of its last two conventions.

The rule gives the state Republican executive committee power to reverse a convention's decision to cancel the primary if "circumstances surrounding the presidential election shall have substantially changed such that a primary would be deemed advisable."

But it does not give the executive committee the opposite power -- the power to unilaterally cancel the primary.

"This shady backroom deal where a small group of party insiders makes a big decision that stops thousands of voters from participating in the process appears to violate party rules and is precisely the kind of thing that turns people off to politics," said Rob Godfrey, a former state Republican Party communications director and a former top advisor to then-Gov. Nikki Haley.

"Bad for the party, the process and the president," Godfrey told The Hill.

McKissick said in a statement there was "no rationale to hold a primary" because a Republican incumbent is seeking re-election. He pointed to 1984 and 2004, when Republican incumbents did not face primaries, and 1996 and 2012, when the state Democratic Party canceled their primaries and renominated incumbent presidents.

Asked about the rule governing presidential primaries, state Republican Party communications director Joe Jackson pointed to a separate rule.

That rule reads: "These Rules shall be interpreted and applied so as to substantially accomplish their objectives. All records and lists required by the Rules shall be in writing. The spirit and not the letter of each Rule shall be controlling. Substantial compliance with a Rule shall be sufficient."

The potential rule violation could open up the state party to legal challenges from Trump's opponents.

"This isn't North Korea. This isn't Russia. In America, a President shouldn't be able to just cancel elections," former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), one of Trump's challengers, tweeted on Saturday.

Trump's campaign has worked with several state Republican parties to stymie the possibility of a primary challenger in recent months, and to install pro-Trump leaders in state party roles.

Those efforts appear to be paying off for Trump, even at the expense of voters who would be overwhelmingly likely to support him in a primary. The Kansas Republican Party said Friday it would not hold caucuses next year, and at least two other state parties are considering ending their caucuses rather than opening Trump to a potential challenge.

The last several presidents who have faced primary challenges from within their own parties, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, each lost their subsequent elections.