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BATON ROUGE, Louisiana. — After eliminating five Indiana state senators who opposed his congressional redistricting initiative, President Donald Trump's next target is Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.
Cassidy, who five and a half years ago voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trial, is fighting for his political life in a competitive race against two major rivals, including one backed by the president, in Saturday's Republican Senate primary in the solidly red southern state.
Trump and his allies, including Republican Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, are backing Republican Rep. Julia Letlow in the Senate primary. Also in the race is former Rep. John Fleming, who is the state treasurer. If no candidate achieves 50% of the votes in the primaries, the top two finishers will compete for the nomination in a second round on June 27.
The primaries are the latest test of Trump's support in the GOP nomination races and of the president's immense control over the GOP.
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Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana fist bumps a supporter during a campaign stop at a gun store and shooting range in Baton Rouge, La., Friday, May 15, 2026, on the eve of the state Senate primary. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
After reaching re-election six years ago, Cassidy was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted in early 2021 to convict Trump after the House impeached him for his role in the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters seeking to overturn Congress' certification of former President Joe Biden's 2020 election victory. Trump was acquitted by the Senate.
But since the start of Trump's second term, Cassidy has supported the president's agenda and his nominees, including voting to approve Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
But Kennedy and his Make America Healthy Again movement are out for revenge.
That's because Cassidy, a doctor, has been skeptical of Kennedy's push to reform the country's health policies, including Kennedy's efforts to scale back vaccine recommendations.
And Kennedy allies blamed Cassidy, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, for helping to scuttle the surgeon general nomination of Casey Means, a close Kennedy ally and leading supporter of MAHA, after Cassidy failed to bring it to a committee vote.
Meanwhile, Trump has criticized the senator, calling him a “very disloyal person.”
And on the eve of the primary, the president took to social media to praise Letlow as a “highly respected first American congresswoman.”
Making Cassidy's rise to the reappointment even more difficult, Louisiana will now hold separate party primaries in the Senate race, replacing a system in which all candidates appeared in a single jungle primary. That guarantees a more conservative and pro-Trump electorate for the Republican Party nomination.
Cassidy highlights his record during two terms in the Senate on behalf of Louisiana, which is one of the poorest states in the country. And he has shown support for Louisiana's large oil and gas industry, which makes up about 15% of the state's workforce.
“When people ask things like, can you work with President Trump, I point out that he has signed four bills into law that I wrote or negotiated?” the senator said in an interview with Fox News Digital on the eve of the primaries. “By the way, we continue to work together.”
And Cassidy touted that he is “a conservative senator who delivers.”
To try to avoid becoming the first elected Republican senator in nearly a decade and a half to be unseated in a primary, Cassidy and an allied super PAC have spent more than $20 million on advertising, according to AdImpact, a national advertising tracking company. That total is more than Letlow and Fleming have spent combined.
Some of those ads have criticized Letlow for her past support of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs during her tenure at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.
Cassidy argued that Republican voters are “concerned about her changing position on DEI. She was all for DEI.”
LETLOW EXPLAINS HIS PREVIOUS SUPPORT FOR DIVERSITY PROGRAMS
President Donald Trump with Representative Julia Letlow during the Congressional Ball in the Grand Foyer of the White House in Washington, DC, on December 11, 2025. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Defending his record, Letlow explained in a Fox News Digital interview on Friday that “in 2020, every time we were introduced to DEI, we had no idea what it was back then, and I quickly witnessed it. I was in higher education at the time. I quickly witnessed how the left completely hijacked it, turned it into this leftist Marxist indoctrination of our children. And so, when I came to Congress for the last five years, I've been fighting against that.
And he charged that Cassidy and Fleming's criticisms of DEI are “all baseless attacks, desperate attacks.”
Letlow won her congressional seat in 2021, after her husband, Luke Letlow, died six days after being sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives following his 2020 election victory for the seat she now holds.
Trump supported her even before entering the race.
“Not only did he encourage me to run this race, but having his full and complete support has been, wow, the honor of my life,” Letlow said.
Letlow has targeted Cassidy for his bipartisan efforts in the Senate, including his vote for the bipartisan 2021 infrastructure bill, which was a signature domestic achievement for then-President Joe Biden.
When asked about his criticism, Cassidy said, “People want someone who can deliver for Louisiana. The Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act has brought $13.5 billion to Louisiana for roads and bridges and high-speed Internet, and along the way it has created many good-paying jobs. My opponent opposed that bill.”
Fleming, who served as White House deputy chief of staff during Trump's first term, has argued that he is the most conservative candidate in the Republican Senate primary.
“They clearly see me as MAGA,” Fleming told Fox News Digital, referring to Louisiana Republicans. “I served throughout his first administration in various capacities. I was one of the first congressmen to endorse him in 2016.”
Fleming said Letlow “is not the prototypical Trump supporter. She looks much more like a Democrat.”
And Fleming has apparently become a threat to Letlow, as a super PAC supporting the congresswoman began running ads attacking him.
But Trump's endorsement in the nomination race weighs heavily in a state he won by 22 points in his 2024 election victory.
“It's the most powerful endorsement in the world,” Letlow said, adding that Louisiana Republicans “are big fans of the president.”
And the Louisiana primary comes a week and a half after the Indiana primary, where Trump-backed rivals unseated five state senators who had challenged the president over his redistricting initiative.
The political world was watching the Indiana primary closely because it was the first in a series of major tests this month of Trump's endorsement power in the GOP nomination fights, and the president cleared his first hurdle with ease.
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Louisiana voters will also vote in primaries for the state Supreme Court, Public Service Commission and state school board, along with five proposed state constitutional amendments.
But Landry postponed the primary for U.S. House seats after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the state's current congressional district map.
Republican state senators in Louisiana on Thursday unveiled a plan to eliminate one of the state's two majority-Black congressional seats before the midterm elections. The Louisiana State House will likely vote on the map next week. The US House of Representatives primaries are postponed until November.
