President Donald Trump is flexing his endorsement power in the 2026 midterm election cycle, with Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) the latest incumbent to fall to the president’s ire and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) in the president’s sights.
Cassidy, a two-term senator who has served on Capitol Hill for over 17 years, placed third in Louisiana‘s Senate primary on Saturday, bucking his reelection campaign before he could even make it to a primary runoff. The result does not bode well for other incumbents, such as Massie, who have earned themselves a challenge from Trump-backed candidates.
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Cassidy’s 2021 vote to convict Trump on his impeachment charges in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol spawned his fall from grace and Trump’s bid to oust him. Trump endorsed Cassidy’s challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA), who ultimately placed first in the general primary election.
Letlow garnered 44.8% of the vote, state Treasurer John Fleming placed second with 28.3% of the vote, and Cassidy came in third with 24.8% of the vote. Letlow and Fleming will now head to a runoff election for the Republican nomination on June 17.
In Louisiana, a deep-red Bible Belt state that voted 60.2% for Trump in 2024, it’s not surprising that a Trump endorsement could dramatically swing a primary election. Cassidy’s prior election results had given him a large buffer — he won in 2020 with 59.3% of the vote — but this year, Trump’s finger tipped the scale enough to eliminate Cassidy’s margins and his entire reelection bid.
Massie is the next GOP incumbent to face off in a heated primary from a Trump-backed challenger, former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein. Massie, an eight-term congressman who has won every primary challenge since entering Congress with over 70% of the vote, just fell behind Gallrein in the most recent election poll.
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The Massie-Gallrein primary will be one of the most closely followed primary elections in the country this year, as pundits see if Massie’s resolute conservative-libertarian stances can make up for the times he’s bucked Trump.
“I think it’s hard to get motivated to go vote for nobody against somebody, but I think it’s easier to be motivated to go vote for somebody you believe in. Like nobody really believes in my opponent,” Massie told the Washington Examiner this week.
Massie has earned the ire of Trump because of stances such as his vote against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and his campaign for the full, public release of the Epstein files.
“Bad Congressman Tom Massie voted against Tax Cuts, the Border Wall, our Military and Law Enforcement. Actually, he voted against almost everything that is good. The Worst Republican Congressman in History. Kentucky, vote the bum out on Tuesday,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday.
Following Cassidy’s ouster, Trump used the opportunity to put a spotlight on a similar race in Kentucky against Massie. But Trump leveled it up and called Massie an “even bigger insult to our Nation” than Cassidy, slamming him as “a major Sleazebag.”
“Vote for Ed Gallrein, a successful Kentucky farmer, and American War Hero, who only ran because he thought that Massie was so disloyal and disrespectful to your President, ME!” Trump wrote.
The Trump endorsement effect also rocked Indiana, where Trump’s crusade to back primary challengers for incumbent State Senators who voted against a GOP redistricting measure in the state reshaped the state’s upper chamber. Five of the seven candidates whom Trump endorsed ousted incumbent state Sens. Dan Dernulc, Linda Rogers, Travis Holdman, Jim Buck, and Greg Walker, who all blocked the redistricting measure.
Indiana is also generally less red than Kentucky. The Hoosier State gave Trump 58.6% of the vote in 2024, while the Bluegrass State voted 64.5% for Trump.
The final stretch of the race has been tough for Massie, who argues the pro-Israel lobby and outside billionaires have spent millions of dollars in negative ads to fuel his ouster. The incumbent faced allegations in the last days of the primary from an ex-girlfriend who claims Massie offered her thousands of dollars to drop a workplace wrongful termination complaint against his political ally, Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN). Massie denies the allegations.
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The race itself has sparked tangential anger from Trump, as he threatened on Saturday to primary Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) after she campaigned for Massie.
As early voting in the bluegrass state wraps up, voters will hit the polls in person on Tuesday for the general primary election.