Sen. Bill Cassidy loses the Louisiana GOP primary to Trump-backed Letlow and Fleming

Five and a half years ago after he voted to acquit President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial, GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was sent packing by Republican voters as he ran for re-election.

Trump-backed lawyer. Julia Letlow and Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming topped Cassidy in Saturday's GOP primary, according to the Associated Press.

With no candidate receiving 50% of the vote, Letlow and Fleming will advance to the next round of the Republican nomination. And Cassidy becomes the first elected senator to lose the nomination since Son. Richard Lugar of Indiana in 2012.

Despite not being on the ballot, Trump won, as the primary in a red state was the latest test of his endorsement of the GOP nomination and the president's massive hold on the Republican Party.

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The Louisiana primary was held a week and a half after the Indiana primary, where Trump's opponents expelled five state Republicans who joined last December and joined with Democrats to defeat the president's push to redistrict Congress in the GOP-dominated Midwest state.

Letlow was endorsed by Trump even before he entered the race in January.

“Not only did he encourage me to enter the race, but to get a full and complete endorsement was, wow, the honor of a lifetime,” Letlow told Fox News Digital the night before the school's premiere.

Trump's support in the nomination race weighed heavily in his 22-point lead in the 2024 election.

“It's the strongest endorsement in the world,” Letlow said, adding that Louisiana Republicans are “big fans of the president.”

Letlow is also backed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, a key Trump ally.

Republican Representative Julia Letlow of Louisiana, a Republican Senate candidate, speaks to Fox News Digital on the eve of the state's first congressional hearing, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on May 15, 2026. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)

After running for re-election six years ago, Cassidy was one of only seven Senate Republicans who voted in early 2021 to impeach Trump after he was impeached by the House for his role in the Jan. 6 in the US Capitol by supporters who intended to raise congressional certificates of victory for former President Joe Biden in the 20th election. Trump was acquitted by the Senate.

But since the start of Trump's second term, Cassidy has consistently supported the president's agenda and his appointees, including voting to confirm Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

But Kennedy and his Make America Healthy Again movement wanted revenge.

This is because Cassidy, who is a doctor, has been questioning Kennedy's campaign to change the country's health policies, including Kennedy's efforts to reduce vaccination recommendations.

And Kennedy's allies accused Cassidy, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, of helping to sink the nomination of surgeon Casey Means, a close Kennedy ally and senior MAHA attorney, after Cassidy did not bring the committee's vote.

Meanwhile, Trump criticized the senator as “very dishonest” and on the eve of the first meeting, the president took to social media to praise Letlow as “America's Most Honorable First Lady.”

Cassidy highlighted his record over two terms in the Senate by giving Louisiana, one of the poorest states in the country. And he has shown his support for Louisiana's large oil and gas industry, which comprises 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 that I wrote or negotiated,” the senator said in an interview with Fox News Digital on Friday. “We continue to work together, of course.”

And Cassidy pointed out that he is “a caring congressman who delivers.”

Cassidy and the combined PAC have spent more than $20 million on ads, according to AdImpact, a national ad tracking firm. That total was more than Letlow and Fleming, combined, were dismissed.

Some of those ads hit Letlow on his past support of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs during his tenure at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Cassidy argued that Republican voters were “concerned about his change of position on DEI. He was running for DEI.”

Defending his record, Letlow told Fox News Digital that “back in 2020 whenever DEI was introduced to us, we didn't know what it was back then, and I saw it immediately. I was studying in higher education at the time. I immediately saw that the left is completely male, and I turned it into this teaching of our Marxist leftist children. So, when I came to Congress for five years I fought against it.

Letlow also faced scrutiny from his rivals for his failure to disclose more than 200 stock and bond trades within a 45-day reporting deadline for members of Congress.

He said “it was a reporting error on the part of my financial advisor. And when I realized that had happened, I corrected it immediately. It hasn't happened since.”

And Letlow charged that his criticism of Cassidy and Fleming about DEI and the stock trading was “a baseless attack, a baseless attack.”

Letlow won her congressional seat in 2021, after her husband, Luke Letlow, died six days after he was sworn into the US House after winning the 2020 election to the position he now holds.

Fleming, who was White House deputy chief of staff during Trump's first term, has revealed that he was the most active person in the GOP Senate primary.

“They see MAGA well,” Fleming told Fox News Digital, speaking to Louisiana Republicans. “I worked throughout his first administration in various positions. I was one of the first congressmen to endorse him in 2016.”

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Meanwhile, Fleming said Letlow “wasn't the epitome of Trump approval. He's too much of a Democrat.”

The winner of the Republican primary will be considered the favorite in the general election to keep the Senate seat in the hands of the Republicans.