stain”, he says. “That’s not life…you make a decision based on facts and you move on.” Two years ago Louisiana’s legislature changed the rules so that voters can only take part in their own party’s primary. Then, a fortnight before election day, the governor suspended the other congressional races on the May ballot to redraw the map after a new Supreme Court ruling. Both moves will shrink turnout and make the electorate more hardline. That hurts Mr Cassidy, who has limited appeal beyond country-club, Economist-reading Republicans (who should count double). His response has been to court Democrats instead, calling on them to switch their registration to “no party” and vote for him. At an event in St Mary’s Parish in early April he reportedly claimed that 6,000 people had done so. But Democrats have little reason to rescue a conservative who, in their view, abandoned his principles to become a “yes man”, says Robert Mann, a political historian in Louisiana. Liz Cheney tried something similar in Wyoming four years ago. It failed. Mr Massie’s predicament is completely different. The northern Kentucky congressman is an MIT-trained engineer who lives off the grid on a cattle farm and has built his political brand around being a maverick. His snubbing of Mr Trump is both more recent and more persistent. In the president’s eyes his worst offence was leading the charge that forced the government to release a trove of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex-offender and a former buddy of Mr Trump’s. But Mr Massie was a thorn in the side of the Republican leadership before that too, voting against last summer’s “Big Beautiful Bill” so as not to add to the deficit and introducing a bipartisan war-powers resolution to try to block the administration from striking Iran without Congress’s approval. What makes him different from his Republican colleagues, he says, is that he reads the fine-print and votes against bills he thinks are unconstitutional. Mr Trump, who has called Mr Massie both a “smart cookie” and a “third- rate grandstander”, responded by recruiting and endorsing Ed Gallrein, a failed state-Senate candidate and navy SEAL, to run against him. On March 11th, less than two weeks into the war in Iran, Mr Trump left Washington to
campaign against Mr Massie in Hebron, Kentucky, a town of 6,000 people. “Massie is a complete and total disaster as a congressman and frankly, as a human being,” he told loyalists in red-white-and-blue outfits. So far the best ad in the race is an AI-generated video that depicts a traitorous Mr Massie in a “throuple” with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Ilhan Omar, two left-wing Democrats. The president’s top donors have poured $14m into attacks like it to oust the congressman, helping to make it the most expensive House primary on record. Mr Massie has a clearer message and, perhaps, a weaker opponent than Mr Cassidy, giving him better odds of surviving Mr Trump’s ire. At a Boone County Republicans meeting in the town’s red-brick courthouse one week before election day, he was received as though he were the party’s messiah. But after he had rattled off a list of wonky policy accomplishments, an older man stepped up to the microphone and asked why voters should back him over “the one person in the whole United States, and maybe the world, that understands everything”, referring to Mr Trump. Mr Massie asked what information the president had that made him reverse course and keep the Epstein files sealed after promising not to during the campaign. The man insisted that Mr Trump must have had good reasons that he couldn’t share. “I don’t give anyone but God that kind of trust,” the congressman said firmly. The crowd roared. Conservative supporters of both incumbents reckon that Mr Trump has better things to do than “punch down”. Sarah Longwell, a political strategist, says that in focus groups Trump-voting independents are fed up with the president’s inattention to prices, something he posts about less than his personal vendettas these days. Although Mr Trump has not yet tapped into his $330m MAGA INC war-chest, party operatives worry that his revenge tour is taking donor money that could be used down the line to help Republicans beat Democrats in actual swing districts. “They’ve piled up $30m of Republican money and burned it here in northern Kentucky,” Mr Massie says. “I think there is going to be a hangover after this race. Whether I win or lose they’re gonna be like, wow, was the blood-letting worth it?” The good news for Republicans is that it is only May, and the party still has time to refocus before the general election. Getting down to business on Capitol Hill and passing policies for everyday Americans should help.
But if the president wins this week’s battles that could soon become harder, too. Republicans need Mr Cassidy’s vote in the Senate, and if he loses re- election he will have no incentive to continue placating the president or the party before his term ends in January. That is perhaps why months ago John Thune, the chamber’s majority leader, tried to persuade Mr Trump not to endorse against precious incumbents. Too bad he didn’t listen. ■ Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//united-states/2026/05/13/donald-trumps-midterm-strategy- purge-the-republican-party
Lessons for Democrats from a candidate who sings and shoots It’s good to be charming and unconventional. It’s really good to be famous May 14th 2026 Usually when a politician speaks to an auditorium full of children, neither party wants to be there: the kids can’t vote, and listening to an adult drone on is boring. But when Bobby Pulido, the Democratic nominee for Congress in Texas’s 15th district, showed up at Beethoven Elementary, the children cheered and held up his picture. The school’s teachers, caretakers and lunch ladies filled out the sides of the auditorium and lined up for selfies after the speech. That was not because they were wonks or ardent Democrats. Before Mr Pulido entered politics, he won two Latin Grammy awards. In the Rio Grande Valley (rgv), Texas’s southernmost tip, he is so famous that walking with him from a restaurant’s front door to a table takes a while
because of all the people who stop him. Polling is scant, and Donald Trump won this district by 18 points in 2024. But even if Mr Pulido loses (as our forecast model strongly suggests he will), a good showing in TX-15 would offer lessons for future Democratic candidates. First, candidate and district match well. Mr Pulido was born, brought up and still lives in Edinburg, one of the rgv’s bigger cities. Like most of his constituents, he is Latino and bilingual, and lacks a college degree; like many of them, he does not have health insurance, and must cross the border to see a doctor. His two uncles were long-serving local elected officials. This biography affords him an advantage in a region where politics is less partisan than personal: people already know him. His opponent, Monica De La Cruz, tried to dismiss him for it, saying in March that the race “isn’t about who you want performing at your niece’s quinceañera”. Since then, in a nifty bit of political jiujitsu, Mr Pulido has performed at dozens of quinceañeras (girls’ 15th birthday parties) in his district, taking payment in earned media: hundreds of family members have livestreamed and posted his performances. Mr Pulido’s moderation also helps. He is an avid hunter and competitive long-distance shooter who has “lost count” of the number of guns he owns. He believes Democrats’ focus on social issues rather than economics cost them the district. “Down here,” he says, “people don’t consider themselves poor, they consider themselves broke…they think, you know, I’m gonna make it tomorrow. I don’t think people here want charity, they just want an opportunity.” This echoes the leading Latino presidential hopeful, Ruben Gallego, Arizona’s senior senator, who says that Latinos want a troquita, or “big-assed truck”—they want a pathway to material success. The rgv may be ancestrally Democratic, but it is also conservative: gun ownership is common and church attendance is strong. Barbecues feel like parties anywhere else in rural Texas, with lots of beer, boots and guns, except that everyone speaks both English and Spanish. Mr Pulido says the most effective political ad in 2024 was the one claiming “Kamala is for they/them; Trump is for you.” The message worked: in 2024 Mr Trump won all four of the rgv’s main counties.