President Donald Trump encouraged Rep. Julia Letlow (Louisiana) on Saturday night to challenge Sen. Bill Cassidy (Louisiana) in the Republican primary, threatening the political future of one of the three Republicans still in the Senate who voted to convict him in his second impeachment trial.
“Should she decide to enter this Race, Julia Letlow has my Complete and Total Endorsement,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “RUN, JULIA, RUN!!!”
Letlow has not said whether she plans to run for the Senate seat, but wrote in a social media post Saturday night that she was honored to have Trump’s endorsement.
The intervention could alienate Cassidy, who has voted overwhelmingly with the Trump administration in the Senate and was key to confirming the president’s health secretary despite Cassidy’s objections to his vaccine skepticism.
Cassidy is already facing John Fleming, the Louisiana state treasurer and a former congressman, in the April 18 primary, but Letlow running with Trump’s endorsement would complicate his road to reelection. The primary would go to a May 30 runoff if no candidate receives a majority of the vote.
Cassidy is just the latest senator from Trump’s own party whom the president has undermined publicly.
He castigated Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), Todd Young (R-Indiana) and Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) earlier this month after they voted to advance a war powers resolution to block him from taking further military action in Venezuela, writing that the lawmakers “should never be elected to office again.”
He has also criticized Sens. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) and Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), helping to persuade Tillis not to run for reelection in his purple state.
Trump has not endorsed the reelection bid of Collins, a moderate who has occasionally broken with him. He has also refused entreaties from Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) to back Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who is facing two primary challengers.
Republicans face little risk of losing the Senate seat in November no matter who wins the primary. Trump won Louisiana by 22 points in 2024 and Democrats are not seriously targeting the seat.
Letlow was elected to Congress in a special election in 2021 after her husband, Luke Letlow, died of complications from covid-19. Luke Letlow had won the seat but died days before he was set to take office.
Cassidy, who is seeking a third term, has taken heat from Trump’s base over his vote to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Four of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump retired; Murkowski won reelection in 2022 even though Trump endorsed a challenger.
Cassidy, a physician and the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, voted last year to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary despite misgivings about Kennedy’s skepticism of vaccines. He has repeatedly criticized Kennedy’s changes to vaccine policy, citing his experience as a physician who treated hepatitis patients.
But Cassidy has not defied Trump by voting to undo his tariffs or limit his war powers as some other Republican senators have.
Cassidy wrote Saturday night on social media that he was “running for reelection as a principled conservative who gets things done for the people of Louisiana.”
“If Congresswoman Letlow decides to run I am confident I will win,” he wrote.
Liz Goodwin contributed to this report.
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