President Trump has never made a secret of his plans for retribution. He has loudly and repeatedly called out Republicans who display any independence, and this month he has fought to get them out of office in a series of party primaries.
Here are some of the fellow Republicans whom Mr. Trump has worked to defeat in 2026:
First Up: G.O.P. State Lawmakers in Indiana
After a group of Republican state senators in Indiana defied the president’s pressure to draw a new gerrymandered congressional map to help the party in the midterms, Mr. Trump took the unusual step of getting involved in a statehouse race. The president recruited challengers to run in the Republican primary, and they ousted five of the Republican lawmakers who had crossed him. One Trump-aligned ad likened a Republican lawmaker who had voted against the map to toilet paper and called him “soft, weak, liberal.”
Second Target: Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana
Mr. Cassidy earned Mr. Trump’s enmity when he voted to convict him during his second impeachment trial after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. He was one of just seven Republican senators who did so. Mr. Cassidy tried to make amends, including by backing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to become health secretary. (It was not an easy decision for Mr. Cassidy, a physician who had led a vaccination campaign in Louisiana.) It didn’t put him back in the president’s good graces. Mr. Trump supported a challenger, and Mr. Cassidy, a two-term Republican, finished third in a primary there on Saturday. Mr. Cassidy will not advance to the runoff on June 27.
Third Up: Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky
Mr. Massie, who represents northern Kentucky, has been an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump over the war in Iran, aid to Israel and the handling of the Epstein files, among other issues. Mr. Trump made taking him down a priority. Mr. Trump supported a challenger, Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy SEAL, and held a rally in March in the district where he took aim at Mr. Massie, saying, “We’ve got to get rid of this loser.” The race became the most expensive House primary in recent history, and when it was over, Mr. Massie had lost.
Fourth Target: Brad Raffensperger, in Georgia
Mr. Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, enraged the president after the 2020 election when he refused to help him “find” votes to reverse Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the state. This year, as Mr. Raffensperger ran for Georgia governor, Mr. Trump backed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a candidate opposing Mr. Raffensperger. It worked: Mr. Raffensperger came in a distant third in the primary on Tuesday.
Next Week’s Target: Senator John Cornyn of Texas
Mr. Trump stunned many in the political world this week by backing Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, who is challenging Mr. Cornyn as he fights for re-election to a fifth term. Republican leaders in the Senate said they were livid at Mr. Trump’s intervention in the race just one week before the runoff election. Several said they believed that if Mr. Paxton, who has been haunted by accusations of scandals, becomes the Republican nominee, the party is at risk of losing the seat to James Talarico, a Democrat who has been extremely successful at fund-raising. On social media, Mr. Trump wrote Mr. Paxton had been “extremely loyal to me and our AMAZING MAGA MOVEMENT,” complained that Senate Republicans had not advanced parts of his agenda and claimed that Mr. Cornyn “was not supportive of me when times were tough.”
