Story Highlights
- Trump has endorsed former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein against Rep. Thomas Massie in Kentucky’s May 19 primary
- Trump backs Rep. Julia Letlow against Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana’s May 16 primary
- More than $28 million has been spent on attack ads in Louisiana’s Senate race alone
What Happened
President Donald Trump’s yearslong revenge tour against select members of his own party faces big tests in May as Trump looks to oust multiple Republican lawmakers who have crossed him in the past. Primaries in Kentucky, Indiana, and Louisiana are the president’s best chances at beating Republican apostates on issues from redistricting to the Jeffrey Epstein files to impeachment, as he looks to further tighten his stranglehold on the GOP.
Few people fit the description of Trump opponent more than Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who is in the toughest fight of his political career: a primary against Trump-backed Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL. Massie suggested the effort to take out lawmakers who oppose the president has a chilling effect on GOP lawmakers in Congress, noting that Republicans who might be inclined to vote against Trump are afraid to become the president’s next target. “They tell me that. I mean, they’ll tell me to my face while we’re voting,” Massie said. “They’re like, ‘Well, you’ve got the right vote here, but, you know, this is not a hill I’m going to die on.'”
Next, on May 16, Sen. Bill Cassidy will fight for the GOP nomination for his seat against Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming. Cassidy is one of seven GOP senators who voted to convict Trump during his 2021 impeachment after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Four of those seven have since left the Senate.
Massie has been among the members of Congress who frustrated the president by pressing for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein case files, challenging Trump for taking military action in Iran without congressional approval, and voting against the party’s sweeping tax-and-budget bill. “I vote with the Republican Party and this president 90% of the time, and the 10% of the time that I’m not voting with the party or the president, I’m keeping the promises that the president and I campaigned on,” Massie recently told Kentucky’s PBS affiliate.
The long-standing feud between Trump and Cassidy dates back to the Louisiana senator’s vote to convict him during his second impeachment trial over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. More recently, Trump blamed Cassidy for blocking his surgeon general pick, Casey Means, and forcing him to withdraw her nomination.
Why It Matters
The Massie and Cassidy primaries represent a different category of challenge than the Indiana state senate races. These are sitting members of the United States Congress with significant national profiles, established fundraising operations, and deep ties to their constituencies. Republican strategist Jay Townsend noted that Massie’s and Cassidy’s races are not “done deals,” explaining that Kentucky and Louisiana are politically different from Indiana and that both incumbents have their own resources and ability to fight their own messages.
The seven-term Massie incumbent faces a primary challenge that will tell observers a great deal about the president’s influence over the electorate. The unshakably conservative voters of northern Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District sent Massie to Congress 14 years ago because he promised to stick to his principles under pressure from Washington. There is deep irony in the fact that a politician elected for his independence is now targeted for exercising exactly that quality.
Trump doesn’t seem to have any second thoughts about purging his party of dissenters. In Louisiana, Letlow, Cassidy, and other campaign organizations have plowed more than $28 million into attack ads. That level of spending in a Senate primary reflects the national importance being attached to the race by both sides — and the significant resources being diverted from potential use against Democrats.
Marc Short, who worked for former Vice President Mike Pence, said it wasn’t clear that Trump’s involvement would help Republicans’ chances in November. “There’ve been questions before, when he engages in these inner-party contests, will they work out as well when we get to the general election?”
Economic and Global Context
The resources being consumed by intraparty primary battles are drawing attention because of the broader electoral environment Republicans face. In any normal midterm year where the president had an approval rating sinking into the mid-30s, you’d see lawmakers tripping over themselves to create some distance from him and trying to adjust the party’s political course. Instead, Republicans are doing the opposite — spending tens of millions attacking their own incumbents at a time when they need every seat in both chambers.
Cassidy has a particularly complex record relative to Trump. He voted to convict during impeachment but has subsequently supported much of the president’s second-term agenda, including advancing controversial cabinet nominations. His predicament illustrates the no-win dynamic facing Republicans who once opposed Trump but have since attempted reconciliation.
The cumulative cost of Trump’s revenge primaries across Indiana, Kentucky, and Louisiana now exceeds $40 million when all sources are tallied. That figure represents a significant opportunity cost for the party — dollars that could have been directed at defeating Democratic incumbents or defending vulnerable Republican seats in competitive general election districts.
Implications
The results from Indiana will likely bolster Trump’s confidence heading into upcoming Republican primaries. Indiana’s primary also ratchets up the pressure on Republican lawmakers in other states to move aggressively to redraw congressional district boundaries before the November elections.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, since the start of Trump’s second term 15 months ago, has been supportive of the president’s agenda and nominees. If no candidate cracks 50% of the primary vote in Louisiana, the top two finishers will face off in a June 27 runoff election. That possibility adds further weeks of spending and distraction to the Republican Party’s midterm preparation.
For Massie, the calculus is different. Grassroots Republicans may pull the plug on the libertarian iconoclast precisely because he insists on keeping his commitment to principle, because Republicans now define independence not as courage, but as disloyalty to Trump. The cultural shift within the party’s base is at the heart of what these primaries are really measuring.
If Trump succeeds in ousting both Massie and Cassidy, the message to every Republican lawmaker will be unambiguous. The era of principled dissent within the GOP conference will effectively be over, and the party’s direction — on trade, foreign policy, spending, and governance — will rest almost entirely with one man heading into what could be a very difficult November.
Sources
“Trump aims to defeat dissident Republicans in key May primaries”
