Monday, May 18, 2026

Cassidy Goes Down: Trump Just Did Something No Sitting President Has Done in 14 Years

Sen. Bill Cassidy is finished. Saturday night in Baton Rouge, the two-term Louisiana Republican — one of seven GOP senators who voted to convict Donald Trump in 2021 — was knocked out of his own primary, finishing third in a three-way race that sends Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow and former Trump White House official John Fleming to a June 27 runoff.

Cassidy is now the first elected Republican senator to lose renomination since Richard Lugar in 2012 — and the first sitting senator Trump has successfully helped oust. Five of the seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump in 2021 are now gone: four retired rather than face primaries, and Cassidy was driven out by the voters themselves.

Speaking to supporters in Baton Rouge, Letlow drove the message home: "This is not my seat, it's the people's seat. Unfortunately, I believe [Cassidy] forgot that when he took that vote that he should not have, and Louisiana did not forget." Trump celebrated on Truth Social: "His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of a legend, and it's nice to see that his political career is OVER!"

Every Senate Republican who ever wondered whether crossing this president carries a real political price got the answer Saturday night. Cassidy didn't lose because he was a bad senator — he chaired the powerful Senate Health Committee and brought home billions for Louisiana. He lost because in February 2021 he picked the cable-news consensus over the voters who sent him to Washington, and they remembered. Five years. Twenty-two million dollars. Didn't matter. Letlow is now the heavy favorite to win the seat in November in deep-red Louisiana — meaning Trump didn't just retire a critic, he replaced him with an ally.

[Read the full story at Fox News]

Massie on Deck: Kentucky Votes Tuesday, and Trump Has Already Loaded the Cannon

Forty-eight hours after burying Bill Cassidy, the president has turned his sights on Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky — the libertarian-leaning four-term congressman who has been a thorn in Trump's side since 2017. The Kentucky primary is tomorrow, Tuesday, May 19, and Trump made his closing argument Saturday night within minutes of Cassidy's concession speech.

Posting on Truth Social, the president wrote that "Tom Massie, a major Sleazebag, is even worse" than Cassidy, and urged Kentucky voters to "get this LOSER out of politics in Tuesday's Election." Massie has voted against Trump-aligned legislation more than almost any other House Republican and was one of just a handful of GOP "no" votes on the FY26 reconciliation bill earlier this spring.

Cassidy was supposed to be the harder kill — a sitting senator with a massive war chest, in a state where the new closed primary actually helped the incumbent's argument. He still lost by a country mile. Massie is in a much rougher position: a House member, a much smaller money advantage, and a primary electorate that's been hearing about him from Trump for eight straight years. If Massie survives Tuesday, he survives as a marked man. If he doesn't, the message to every Republican in Congress is unmistakable.

[Read the full story at The Hill]

"Annihilation" Threats and a Frozen Conflict: Where the Iran War Stands This Morning

The Iran ceasefire that began April 8 is now in its sixth week of slow-motion collapse. Last Thursday, Trump warned Tehran to reach a deal or face "annihilation," saying his patience had run out. The president's two days in Beijing produced no breakthrough on the Strait of Hormuz — Xi told him to keep talking but offered no leverage with Iran. Negotiations remain stalled at what one former Biden energy advisor called "a frozen conflict — no war, no oil, no straits."

Trump's strategy is now clear: maximum economic pressure, maximum military readiness, zero begging. The administration isn't asking China for help, isn't accepting Iran's framework, and isn't lifting the blockade. Defense officials say Trump is "more seriously considering a resumption of major combat operations" than he has been in weeks. The longer Tehran stalls, the more global energy markets tighten — and the more leverage the U.S. accumulates. That's not a stalemate. That's a slow squeeze.

[Read the full background on the 2026 Iran war]

Oil Pushes Toward $111 Brent, Markets Wobble, and the Inflation Bill Comes Due

Markets are opening this morning to a brutal energy picture and the first real cracks in equities since the Beijing summit. WTI crude is sitting at $103.24 after gaining nearly 10% last week, and Brent has pushed up to $110.95. The S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,408 — down 1.24% on the day — and Dow futures are pointing lower for Monday's open as drone attacks in the Gulf weekend rattled Asian markets overnight.

Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said last week the oil market won't normalize until 2027 if the Strait stays blocked past mid-June. That's the consumer cost of letting Iran's nuclear program drift another six months — pump prices that don't come down, grocery bills that keep climbing, and a 10-year Treasury yield at a 1-year high as inflation expectations re-anchor. American producers are running flat-out to fill the gap (U.S. crude exports are at a record), and that's keeping the lights on globally — but the math is simple: every week Hormuz stays closed, the energy tax on American families gets bigger. This is the economic case for finishing the job in Iran, and it gets stronger every Monday.

[Read the latest crude oil market data]

In 72 hours Donald Trump returned from Beijing, watched a sitting U.S. senator who voted to convict him get demolished by a 45-point margin, and pivoted to putting Thomas Massie in the crosshairs for Tuesday morning. Cassidy outspent his Trump-backed opponent two-to-one and finished third in his own primary — proof that voters in deep-red states care a whole lot more about loyalty to the president than about committee chairmanships and bipartisan infrastructure votes. Meanwhile Iran continues to stall, oil is grinding higher, and the press is still trying to convince you that Trump came home from China empty-handed. The political graveyard tells a different story — and the headstones keep going up. That's not spin. That's just the truth.