Trump targets Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana GOP Senate primary Saturday

BATON ROUGE, La. — After firing five Indiana state senators who opposed his congressional push for redistricting, President Donald Trump’s next target will be Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trial five and a half years ago, is fighting for his political life in a competitive race in Saturday’s GOP Senate primary in the deep-red southern state against two major rivals, one of whom is backed by the president.

Trump and his allies, including Republican Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, are supporting GOP Rep. Julia Letlow in the Senate primary. Also in the race is former Rep. John Fleming, the state treasurer. If no candidate receives 50 percent of the primary votes, the top two candidates will face each other in the second round of elections to be held on June 27.

The primary is the latest test of Trump’s support in the GOP nominating races and the president’s outsized influence over the Republican Party.

DEMOCRACY ’26: STAY UPDATED WITH FOX NEWS ELECTION CENTER

Cassidy, who sought re-election six years ago, was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump in early 2021 after he was impeached by the House of Representatives for his role in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by his supporters seeking to overturn congressional 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 nominees, including the endorsement of Surgeon General Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

But Kennedy and the Make America Healthy Again movement seek revenge.

That’s because Cassidy, a physician, is skeptical of Kennedy’s efforts to reform the nation’s health policies, including efforts to scale back vaccine recommendations.

And Kennedy allies accused Cassidy, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of helping to drop the surgeon general nomination of Casey Means, a close Kennedy ally and leading proponent of MAHA, after Cassidy failed to bring the issue to a committee vote.

Trump, meanwhile, called the senator “a very disloyal person.”

And on the eve of the primary, the president praised Letlow on social media as “America’s Most Honorable First Congresswoman.”

Further complicating Cassidy’s re-nomination climb, Louisiana will now hold separate party primaries in the Senate race, replacing the system in which all candidates were in a single forest primary. This ensures a more conservative and pro-Trump electorate for the GOP nomination.

Cassidy highlights his record serving Louisiana, one of the nation’s poorest states, during two terms in the Senate. And he showed support for Louisiana’s massive oil and gas industry, which makes up about 15% of the state’s workforce.

“When people ask questions like can you work with President Trump, I point out that he signed four bills that I wrote or negotiated,” the senator said in an interview with Fox News Digital on the eve of his debut. “In the meantime, we continue to work together.”

And Cassidy praised himself as a “conservative senator who delivers.”

Cassidy and an allied super PAC spent more than $20 million on ads to avoid being unseated in the primary to become the first elected Republican senator in almost fifteen years, according to AdImpact, a national ad tracking firm. This total is more than Letlow and Fleming spent combined.

Some of these ads undid Letlow’s past support for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs during his tenure at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Cassidy said Republican voters were “concerned about his changing stance on DEI. He was all for DEI.”

LETLOW ANNOUNCES HIS PAST SUPPORT FOR DIVERSITY PROGRAMS

President Donald Trump stands with Representative Julia Letlow during the Congressional Ball at the White House Grand Foyer on December 11, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Defending her record, Letlow explained in an interview with Fox News Digital on Friday: “When DEI was introduced to us in 2020, we had no idea what it was at the time, and I witnessed it immediately. I was in higher education at the time. I quickly witnessed the left completely hijacking it, turning it into Marxist left teaching for our children. And so, when I came to Congress for the last five years, I was fighting against that.”

And he claimed that Cassidy and Fleming’s criticisms of him on DEI were “completely unfounded attacks, desperate attacks.”

Letlow won the congressional seat in 2021 after her husband, Luke Letlow, died six days after being sworn in to the U.S. House of Representatives following his 2020 election victory for the seat he now holds.

He was supported by Trump even before entering the race.

“Not only did he encourage me to enter this race, but to have his complete and total support, wow, it’s been the honor of a lifetime,” Letlow said.

Letlow targeted Cassidy for her bipartisan efforts in the Senate; This included his vote for the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill, 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 brought $13.5 billion to Louisiana for roads, bridges and high-speed internet, creating a lot of good-paying jobs along the way. My opponent opposed this bill.”

Fleming, who served as deputy chief of staff in the White House during Trump’s first term, argued that he was the most conservative candidate in the GOP Senate primaries.

“They clearly see me as MAGA,” Fleming told Fox News Digital, referring to Louisiana Republicans. “I served in various capacities throughout his first administration. I was one of the first members of Congress to support him in 2016.”

Fleming claimed that Letlow “is not the prototype of Trump support. She is more like a Democrat.”

Fleming apparently became a threat to Letlow when the super PAC supporting the congresswoman began running ads attacking her.

But Trump’s support in the nomination race outweighs a state he carries by 22 points in his 2024 election victory.

“This is the strongest support in the world,” Letlow said, adding that Louisiana Republicans are “big fans of the president.”

And the Louisiana primary took place a week and a half after the Indiana primary, in which Trump-backed opponents unseated five state senators who challenged the president over his redistricting effort.

The political world was watching Indiana’s primary closely because it was the first in a series of major tests this month of Trump’s approval strength in the GOP nomination races, and the president easily cleared his first hurdle.

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD FOX NEWS APPLICATION

Voters in Louisiana will also vote on five proposed state constitutional amendments, as well as in primaries for the state Supreme Court, the Civil Service Commission and the state school board.

But primaries for U.S. House seats were postponed by Landry after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the state’s current congressional district map.

Republican state senators in Louisiana on Thursday advanced a plan to eliminate one of the state’s two majority-black seats in Congress ahead of midterm elections. The Louisiana State House will likely vote on the map next week. US House primaries are being postponed until November.