Trump forces out Rep. Thomas Massie in Kentucky primary loyalty test

President Donald Trump demonstrated his dominance over the Republican Party on Tuesday as voters in northern Kentucky ousted Rep. Thomas Massie, a maverick incumbent, in favor of the president’s handpicked challenger.

Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy SEAL and farmer recruited by Trump, defeated the seven-term incumbent in a primary election in Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District. Allies of the president framed the contest as a test of whether dissent can still exist within today’s Republican Party.

“It’s not a retribution campaign, it’s a send a message campaign,” a senior White House adviser told CNN. “This is basic political management of a party. You have to keep everybody on the reservation. Occasionally you have to shoot a hostage. The next one is Thomas Massie.”

Massie, a libertarian-leaning conservative, repeatedly broke with the president on issues including military action against Iran, government spending, and the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. He had insisted for months that Kentucky Republicans value independence over obedience, but voters in the deeply conservative district appeared to decide that loyalty to Trump mattered more.

The Kentucky primary was part of the biggest primary night of the year so far, with voters in five other states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama, Oregon, and Idaho — also casting ballots to determine their nominees for the November general election.

Massie now joins a list of Republican officials — including Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Jeff Flake, and Mitt Romney — who were either ousted or chose to retire as the party fell in line behind Trump.

Over the weekend, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who voted to convict Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection, lost his primary after the president endorsed challenger Julia Letlow.

President Trump has endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the state’s Republican primary, boosting Paxton’s challenge to incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.

In a social media post Tuesday, Trump praised Paxton, a hardliner who has positioned himself as a warrior for the Make America Great Again movement, calling him an “America First Patriot.”

The Republican primary for Georgia governor will go to a June runoff between Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and healthcare billionaire Rick Jackson, locking out Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a longtime Trump adversary who was on track to finish a distant third.

The Republican race to challenge Sen. Jon Ossoff remains unresolved. Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms won the Democratic gubernatorial primary outright.

Primaries across Pennsylvania on Tuesday clarified key battlegrounds for November’s midterm elections.

Sixteen of Pennsylvania’s 17 U.S. representatives are seeking reelection, and Democrats are targeting four districts they see as essential pickup opportunities to retake the House.

The Senate voted Tuesday to advance a war powers resolution aimed at forcing President Trump to end the war in Iran unless he receives congressional authorization to continue.

The 50-47 vote marked the first time the chamber has advanced such a measure, the eighth attempt since the conflict began in February.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, who recently lost a primary in Louisiana after Trump endorsed his opponent, voted to take up the resolution.

The Justice Department quietly added a provision Tuesday barring the IRS from auditing President Trump’s tax returns, amending a widely criticized agreement that creates a secretive and loosely controlled $1.776 billion fund to compensate allies of the president.

The two teenage assailants who carried out a mass shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego rushed toward the mosque “fully armored” with handguns and rifles, authorities said. The FBI reported that the shooters had met and been radicalized online.

The NAACP on Tuesday launched a campaign urging Black athletes, their families, alumni, and fans to boycott athletic programs at public universities in states that “have moved to limit, weaken or erase Black voting representation.”

A federal judge in New York has banned U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from arresting immigrants in or around three federal courthouses in lower Manhattan, where confrontations have escalated since the start of Trump’s second presidency.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a rare public rebuke of the nation’s highest court, declaring that it “can and should be better” following a series of controversial rulings by its conservative supermajority.

Catching up? Here’s what happened on May 18.