The power of Donald Trump’s endorsement will be put to its latest test on Saturday, when Louisiana holds primary elections in which the US senator Bill Cassidy, who voted to impeach the president following the January 6 insurrection, then tried to make amends by casting the pivotal vote to confirm Robert F Kennedy Jr as health secretary, stands a chance of losing his party’s nomination.

An incumbent Republican running for a third term representing a deeply Republican state, Cassidy would normally be a shoo-in for re-election. But in January, Trump abruptly said that the US representative Julia Letlow should run against Cassidy and offered his endorsement, underscoring his continued willingness to seek revenge against anyone in the Republican party who has crossed him.

The president’s campaign to oust a senator of his own party – the sort of thing that was unheard of in previous administrations, but not under Trump – may have achieved the desired effect. Letlow promptly jumped into the Republican Senate primary, as did state treasurer and former representative John Fleming. An Emerson College poll released last month showed Cassidy in third place among likely Republican voters, with Fleming and Letlow neck and neck for the lead.

“This is a primary that is mostly about Trump,” said Robert Hogan, a Louisiana State University political science professor, adding that the president’s spurning of Cassidy was probably the “death knell” for his time in the Senate.

Should he indeed lose re-election this year, Cassidy would join a growing list of Republicans whose political careers have ended at Trump’s hands. Earlier this month, five of the seven Republican Indiana state senators who halted a Trump-backed effort to gerrymander the state in Republicans’ favor lost their primaries. In North Carolina, Republicans are in a high-stakes battle to keep hold of one of their Senate seats because Thom Tillis has opted to retire, after breaking with Trump last year over his top domestic policy bill.

A gastroenterologist who co-founded a clinic serving uninsured patients in Baton Rouge, Cassidy served in the House of Representatives before beating the Democratic senator Mary Landrieu in 2014. During Trump’s first term, he was an architect of the failed Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

His relationship with the president soured following the assault on the Capitol by the president’s supporters, after which Cassidy and six other Republicans voted to convict Trump in the Senate, but the effort came up short. Cassidy later supported a fruitless attempt to establish an independent commission investigating the insurrection, and called on Trump to end his 2024 re-election bid after his indictment for allegedly possessing classified material.

Louisiana’s Republican party censured Cassidy in 2021 for his vote in Trump’s trial, and the senator’s political peril intensified when Trump returned to the White House last year.

Cassidy cast the deciding vote to advance vaccine skeptic Kennedy’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services out of the Senate health committee, which he chairs. The decision flew in the face of the senator’s training as a physician and his stated support for immunizations, and was widely seen as an attempt to smooth things over with the president.

Trump’s endorsement of Letlow made clear the senator’s effort was insufficient. Cassidy has meanwhile criticized some of Kennedy’s policies as secretary, and opposed Trump’s attempt to have the wellness influencer Casey Means confirmed as US surgeon general, leading Trump to blame the senator for having to withdraw her nomination.

In Louisiana, changes to the primary system probably worsened the prospects for Cassidy’s political career. In 2024, the Republican governor, Jeff Landry, a prominent Trump supporter, worked with the legislature to change the rules of the state’s US Senate primaries so that candidates are nominated only by party members and unaffiliated voters. Ron Faucheux, a veteran political strategist in Louisiana, said he suspected the changes were intended to ensure that Republicans like Cassidy who fall out of favor with Trump have no avenue to remain in office.

“The new primary system is geared to help staunch, conservative, pro-Trump candidates get elected, because it’s geared to nominate them on the Republican side and putting them in the runoffs against Democrats, [who] nobody thinks can win,” he said.

Cassidy’s campaign has acknowledged the difficulty of this year’s re-election campaign, and said their goal is for the senator to finish in the top two of the primary, and advance to a runoff election scheduled for next month.

“The mission is pretty simple. It’s to go out, get as many votes as we can on Saturday and position ourselves well for the runoff election to come in June,” campaign consultant Mark Harris told reporters this week.

Both of Cassidy’s challengers have sought to convince voters they are the president’s choice, with Letlow noting her endorsements from both Trump and Landry, and Fleming’s campaign distributing photos of him posing with the president.

Cassidy has meanwhile focused on criticizing Letlow, saying that the race was hers to lose. Dubbing her “Lib Letlow”, his campaign has seized on comments she made in support of campus diversity programs while interviewing to lead the University of Louisiana at Monroe. Letlow has since publicly repudiated those initiatives.

If there’s a saving grace for Cassidy, it could be unaffiliated voters, whose views have not been captured in polls, Faucheux said. But even if Cassidy makes it to a runoff, the president’s opposition will present a significant headwind.

“My guess is that a runoff would be tough for Cassidy, because even though there’s a lot of personal animosity between Letlow and Fleming in the campaign, I think a lot of their voters would tend to be pretty strongly pro-Trump voters,” he said.

Updated: Friday, May 15, 2026

ANNAPOLIS, MD — Governor Wes Moore today made the latest stop on his statewide “Delivering for Maryland” tour in Harford County, highlighting investments to support military infrastructure and small business revitalization. During his tour, the governor participated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Maryland Army National Guard’s new Combined Support Maintenance Shop and toured downtown Havre de Grace to underscore the administration’s commitment to investing in Maryland’s local economies.

“We cannot build a thriving state without investing directly in our communities and the men and women who protect them,” said Gov. Moore. “From upgrading century-old facilities for our citizen-soldiers to breathing new life into our Main Streets, our administration is committed to delivering real results for Harford County.”

The governor began the day at the Havre de Grace Military Reservation, joining state and local leaders to cut the ribbon on the Maryland Army National Guard’s new $45 million Combined Support Maintenance Shop. Built on an 11-acre parcel, the new 68,000-square-foot complex replaces century-old structures to provide advanced maintenance capabilities for Maryland’s inventory of military vehicles and equipment. The State of Maryland contributed nearly $20 million toward the $45 million construction project, which greatly expands maintenance capacity, increases efficiency, strengthens readiness for the more than 80 Army National Guard units dispersed throughout Maryland, and improves safety for the 63 full-time personnel stationed at the facility.

“We live in a world of advanced technology and electrical systems, so we are grateful to the state and federal partners who ensured our soldiers have a modern facility that will keep our force always ready to respond to any mission that will arise,” said Maj. Gen. Janeen L. Birckhead, Adjutant General of Maryland. “The phenomenal team who works in this new maintenance facility will be the architects of victory.”

Following the ribbon-cutting, Governor Moore joined Havre de Grace Mayor Bill Martin for a tour of the city aboard the Tide, Maryland’s first-of-its-kind low-speed electric vehicle transit service. The tour launched from the STAR (Sports, Theater, Arts, Recreation) Centre, which received more than $930,000 in grant funding awarded to the city through the Maryland Energy Administration’s Fiscal Year 2026 Local Government Energy Modernization Program. The funding will support a new rooftop solar array and vital energy efficiency measures, allowing the facility—and the city’s all-electric transit trolleys charged there—to rely fully on solar power.

The trolley tour concluded at the Vineyard Wine Bar, kicking off a walking tour of Havre de Grace, a Designated Main Street community through the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development’s Main Street Maryland program. Governor Moore, alongside Mayor Martin and members of the Havre de Grace city council, visited a number of local businesses that have benefited from funds provided to the City of Havre de Grace Department of Economic Development & Tourism through the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development’s State Revitalization Programs.

The City of Havre de Grace’s Façade and Interior Program, provides matching funds to local businesses to encourage building renovation, business attraction, historic preservation and to improve the economic vitality of the downtown business district. During the walk, the governor met with owners of several grant recipient businesses, including JoRetro, the Havre de Grace Visitor’s Center, and the Vineyard Wine Bar.

“Hosting Governor Moore today was a wonderful opportunity to showcase the full scope of our state-local partnership,” said Havre de Grace Mayor Bill Martin. “From the more than $930,000 state grant to bring solar power and energy efficiency to the STAR Centre, to the State Revitalization Programs helping our Main Street businesses renovate and thrive, we deeply appreciate the Moore-Miller Administration’s investment in Havre de Grace’s future.”

The governor’s visit to Harford County follows his “Delivering for Maryland” tour in Talbot County yesterday. In Talbot County, Governor Moore celebrated expanded broadband access at the 19th Annual Talbot County Business Appreciation Summit, honored local public safety personnel at the Easton First Responders Celebration, toured the construction progress for the new University of Maryland Shore Regional Medical Center, and highlighted state investments in community facilities following a tour of the St. Michaels Community Center.

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