Voters headed to the polls in primaries across six states on Tuesday, and in Kentucky the biggest question was whether Donald Trump still commands the Republican Party when he targets one of its own. The answer runs through Thomas Massie, a congressman the president called the “worst and most unreliable Republican Congressman in the history of our Country” and urged voters to “vote the bum out on Tuesday.”
Massie had defied Trump on several fronts. He voted against the president’s signature tax and spending cuts bill, helped force the Justice Department to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, and insisted on congressional oversight of military actions in Venezuela and Iran. That made the Kentucky contest a direct test of Trump’s influence over a party he has increasingly tried to shape in his own image, with Ed Gallrein running as the Trump-endorsed challenger.
The primary mattered for another reason in Kentucky: Republican voters also chose their candidate to replace Mitch McConnell, who is retiring. Andy Barr and Daniel Cameron were the frontrunners on the Republican side, while Charles Booker and Amy McGrath were again vying for the Democratic nomination. McGrath lost a Senate race in 2020, and Booker lost one in 2022, giving the party’s rematch a familiar cast even as the wider midterm map keeps shifting.
Tuesday’s voting was not limited to Kentucky. Voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama, Oregon and Idaho also headed to the polls ahead of November’s midterm elections, with Election Day 2026 Pa brings four House fights and statewide primaries underscoring how the day stretched well beyond one intraparty fight. The primaries offered an early read on how energized the parties are for the next phase of the campaign and whether Trump’s backing still decides the outcome in tough Republican races.
Elsewhere in the live political feed, South Carolina lawmakers held a first full airing Monday of an effort to reshape the state’s congressional districts. Trump also asked the attorney general and Justice Department to investigate mail-in voting in Maryland, alleging the state had sent out 500,000 illegal mail ballots and blaming Gov. Wes Moore for allowing it. Pelosi endorsed San Francisco supervisor Connie Chan in the race to fill the seat she will vacate at the end of her term.
Outside the campaign trail, police were investigating a deadly shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego as a hate crime after 3 people were killed and 2 dead suspects were identified near the scene. Trump also announced that TrumpRx.gov would add a catalog of generic drugs, saying it would increase the number of drugs available on the site by nearly seven times and add over 600 affordable generics. At the same time, he moved to dismiss a $10bn lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, while the administration created a $1.776bn anti-weaponization fund that Democrats blasted as a slush fund for the president’s allies.
For now, the clearest read from Election Day 2026 is that Trump is still trying to settle scores inside his party, and Kentucky is one of the few places where the fight is being forced into the open. Massie has long been one of the very few senior Republicans willing to break with him, and the primary will show whether that independence still has a political price.
