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U.S. President Donald Trump scored another win Tuesday against a Republican rival, dislodging Rep. Thomas Massie in Kentucky’s primary and knocking out one of his most outspoken critics on Capitol Hill.
Massie has been a particularly difficult thorn in Trump’s side. He pushed for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, opposed the war with Iran and voted against Trump’s signature tax legislation last year. He lost to Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein following the most expensive U.S. House primary in history.
Massie was entrenched in his deep-red Kentucky district before his feud with Trump exploded, cutting short a congressional career that began in 2012.
“He was a bad guy. He deserves to lose,” Trump told reporters following Massie’s defeat, another sign of Trump’s enduring grip on the Republican base.
Still, Massie will remain in Congress until his term ends in January, and without a Republican primary on the horizon, he now has a freer hand than ever to antagonize Trump.
Massie in a speech Tuesday night criticized unwavering fealty to Trump in Congress: “If the legislative branch always votes whichever way the wind is blowing, then we have mob rule,” he said. But if lawmakers follow the Constitution, “we have a republic.”
The result showed the president’s persisting influence over the most committed Republican voters, even as a series of polls in recent weeks with a wider cross-section of Americans have showcased plunging numbers for Trump, who is in his second term as president, due to the unpopular Iran war and his handling of the economy.
Gallrein joins a growing number of Trump-backed primary challengers who have defeated Republican lawmakers who angered the president, including Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana last weekend and several Indiana state senators who defied him on redistricting.
Also in Kentucky on Tuesday, Republicans chose Rep. Andy Barr as their nominee to replace Mitch McConnell, the longtime Senate leader.
In a contest representing a generational changing of the guard for the party, Barr, who was endorsed by Trump, bested Daniel Cameron, a former state attorney general who leaned into his Christianity on the campaign trail.
Trump picks advance in Alabama, Georgia
Elsewhere, Trump-endorsed Rep. Barry Moore advanced to a June runoff for the Republican nomination for Senate in Alabama. He is a three-term congressman and member of the House’s conservative Freedom Caucus who has said Alabama deserves a “Trump conservative” in the Senate.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and former navy SEAL Jared Hudson, meanwhile, remain in a tight race for the other runoff slot, which is too early to call.
On the Democratic side, business owner Dakarai Larriett and lawyer Everett Wess are heading to a runoff, but either of them would face an uphill climb in deep-red Alabama.
In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who resisted Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat, lost decisively in the race for Georgia governor. Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and billionaire Rick Jackson, a health-care tycoon, will battle in a Republican runoff on June 16.
Jones or Jackson will go up against Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Atlanta mayor who received an endorsement from former president Joe Biden after having once served in his administration.
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Senate endorsement in Texas
Trump’s power to endorse will get perhaps its most significant test after he backed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the May 26 Republican primary for the Senate, disappointing several Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Although the four-term Sen. John Cornyn has largely backed Trump’s agenda in Washington, Paxton pitched himself as a political warrior for the Make America Great Again movement.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota expressed his disappointment at the development.
Cornyn “is a principled conservative. He is a very effective senator for the state of Texas,” said Thune. “But I don’t, none of us, control what the president does.”
“I’m sad, I’m actually sad,” said Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, adding that she believed Cornyn had a better chance of winning the general election against the likely Democrat to emerge, James Talarico.
Paxton comes with considerable baggage, having been acquitted in a 2023 impeachment trial on corruption charges. He also reached a deal in 2024 to end a long-running securities fraud case.
Cornyn suggested in 2023 that Trump could not win the presidency again and that his “time has passed him by.”
Trump, in his social media post endorsing Paxton, said Cornyn was “a good man,” but “he was not supportive of me when times were tough.” He complained, “John was very late in backing me in what turned out to be a Historic Run for the Republican Nomination.”