Trump turns sights on Cassidy and Massie after Indiana rout

Trump's political operation turned its attention to Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky on Wednesday, hours after five Indiana Republican state senators who had defied the president on a congressional redistricting vote lost their seats to his endorsed challengers in the state's primary contests.

The Indiana sweep cost Trump-allied groups a combined $13.5m in races that drew under $1m two years ago, according to AdImpact tracking. Cassidy faces voters in Louisiana's Republican Senate primary on May 16. Massie's primary in Kentucky's 4th Congressional District follows on May 19. Both incumbents have publicly broken with Trump on signature issues, and both are running against challengers the president has personally endorsed.

Cassidy is fighting a three-way contest against Representative Julia Letlow and former Representative and state Treasurer John Fleming. Letlow carries Trump's endorsement. Cassidy was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump after the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack, and his vote in April against surgeon general nominee Casey Means, an ally of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has further strained his standing with the administration. Cassidy this week told reporters the primary was "Letlow's to lose," Punchbowl News reported. A political action committee aligned with Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again movement spent close to $117,000 against Cassidy in the past week, according to Reuters.

Massie, one of the few House Republicans willing to publicly criticise Trump on Jeffrey Epstein documents and on foreign policy, faces former Navy SEAL Team Six member Ed Gallrein, who Trump endorsed earlier this year. Massie raised $2.5m in the first quarter of 2026 and brought in close to $1m in the past week alone, according to filings reported by Fox News, amid an ad blitz that has drawn complaints from his campaign over an AI-generated attack advertisement. NOTUS reported on Friday that Massie's lead has been slipping in private polling.

"This is a big win for Trump," David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth, said on Tuesday night as Indiana results came in. Republican strategist Tim Murtaugh, who is advising Gallrein, said "Republican voters want leaders who will work with President Trump, not actively scheme against him." Joe Gruters, the chair of the Republican National Committee, told reporters that a Trump endorsement now functioned "like a fast pass at Disney World" in Republican primaries.

Trump endorsed primary challengers to seven of the eight Indiana state senators who joined Democrats on December 11 to block his redistricting plan. Of those, five fell on Tuesday, one survived and one race remained too close to call, according to results published by the Associated Press. The president has signalled he intends to apply the same model to congressional incumbents, of whom Cassidy and Massie are the two most prominent on the May 2026 calendar.

A poll by ABC News, the Washington Post and Ipsos conducted from April 24 to 28 put Trump's approval among Republican voters at 85 per cent, with 65 per cent saying the party should follow his lead. The Louisiana and Kentucky primaries on the next two Tuesdays will test whether the president's reach into state legislative contests extends back to federal seats held by his most outspoken Republican critics.