Trump’s revenge tour is just beginning. Here’s who’s next on his list

President Donald Trump got the first major political scalps of his second term on Tuesday when five state legislators in Indiana who resisted his push to redraw the state’s congressional map lost their primaries.

It’s the latest example of Trump exacting revenge on Republicans whom he sees as crossing him. He’s already pushed Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) out of Washington and into retirement. Many of the Republicans who voted to impeach or convict him either lost their primaries or preemptively retired to save the embarrassment.

A defining trait of the second Trump administration has been his push for vengeance. The Justice Department indicted former FBI Director James Comey, and when a judge threw out the case, it indicted Comey again. He publicly gloated about the death of Robert Mueller, Comey’s friend and the former special counsel who led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

And May represents the perfect opportunity to make two Republicans who criticized Trump in the past pay.

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The first comes in Louisiana. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) always faced an uphill battle after he voted to convict Trump for the president’s actions on January 6. But Cassidy had just been re-elected in 2020, meaning he was on borrowed time.

Now the bill comes due. Trump made Cassidy, a gastroentrologist, bend the knee when he nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who had spent years promoting lies about public health, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Cassidy relented and voted to confirm Kennedy, spending much of his time since trying to avoid questions about Kennedy.

That did not work. Instead, Trump endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.) in the Louisiana primary. In addition, Cassidy faces former Rep. John Fleming in the primary.

To boot, Louisiana also changed its law. Previously, Louisiana had an open “jungle primary,” wherein the top two vote-getters advanced into a runoff regardless of party affiliation.

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On May 16, each party has a primary and then the top two vote earners advance to a June 27 runoff if neither candidate wins a majority.

This puts Cassidy at a structural disadvantage. A former Democrat, he can no longer rely on crossover voters who might admire him for standing up to Trump or his work with Joe Biden on the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Even then, he probably lost plenty of goodwill by saddling up to Trump as much as he has.

Cassidy seems to understand Republicans back home don’t like him. Hence why he offered a limp opposition to Kennedy when the secretary testified on the Hill last month.

The second state where Trump seems more than get his pound of flesh comes in Louisiana’s neighbor Texas. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is not as Trump-critical as Cassidy.

But he did vote to certify the 2020 presidential election results, negotiated a bipartisan gun control bill and when Trump ran again in the 2024 cycle, said Trump’s time had “has passed him by.”

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Cornyn is running against ultra-MAGA Attorney General Ken Paxton–whom despite being impeached and acquitted by fellow Republicans and his wife divorcing him after multiple alleged affairs–earned enough votes to go into a runoff later this month in March.

A University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs poll showed that Paxton narrowly beats Cornyn 48 percent to 45 percent with only seven percent of respondents saying they are unsure. That’s a stunning number for a four-term incumbent senator, former attorney general and former Texas Supreme Court justice like Cornyn. But it’s a sign of where the party has moved in Texas.

Moreover, Trump has withheld his endorsement of Cornyn, despite the fact Trump knows that Paxton opens the door for James Talarico, the telegenic baby-faced Bible-quoting seminarian Democrats chose as their nominee, winning the seat in the Lone Star State. Trump’s brain might know Cornyn is the right choice. But his heart is with Paxton.

Lastly, there’s Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Massie has been the biggest thorn in Trump’s side in the lower chamber. He led the charge to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein, voted against the One Big, Beautiful Bill last summer and opposed making Mike Johnson speaker. Trump has endorsed former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein in the race.

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But so far, it looks like Massie pull it off. Plenty of voters in the district like the fact he is idiosyncratic like his fellow Kentuckian Sen. Rand Paul.

And cutting loose Republicans could have unintended consequences.

Trump excommunicating Tillis turned out to be an own-goal since former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper leads Trump-endorsed former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley in North Carolina’s open Senate race. And Tillis helped push out Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary and forced the Department of Justice to–at least temporarily–back off of its probe into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

And Cassidy already has shown quiet signs of rebellion, as Trump blamed Cassidy for sinking the nomination of Trump’s pick for surgeon general Casey Means, an ally of Kennedy.

Trump has shown a stunning level of party discipline. And he’s a transformational figure in the Republican Party. But doing so will have consequences that will reverberate long after he leaves.

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