Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky lost to a primary challenger backed by President Donald Trump on Tuesday, denying the libertarian rebel an eighth term in Congress and reaffirming the president’s dominance of the Republican Party. The Associated Press declared Ed Gallrein the victor shortly before 8 p.m. when he held an almost eight-point lead over the incumbent. Massie was first elected to represent his northern Kentucky district in 2012 at the height of the Tea Party movement and conservative discontent with President Barack Obama’s fiscal policy. The Kentucky lawmaker has distinguished himself as a stubborn, libertarian figure in Congress, consistently voting against large spending packages and challenging multiple administrations’ authority to conduct military operations. During the second Trump administration, Massie has bucked the party line in defiance of Trump on key votes.  He voted against the July 2025 “big, beautiful bill” which extended Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, arguing it would worsen budget deficits. Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie pushed back on criticism from President Trump and GOP leadership ahead of a costly and closely watched primary against former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, telling CBS News’ @edokeefe the race has become a referendum on party loyalty, foreign… pic.twitter.com/8ebYn3t7Ob— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 19, 2026  Massie has also voted to deprive Trump of the emergency authority he previously used to impose tariffs and has introduced resolutions challenging Trump’s use of force against Venezuela and Iran. He butted heads with Trump as the author and principal Republican advocate of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, legislation which compelled the Department of Justice to release its files on now-deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump was initially opposed to releasing the files before ultimately calling for the passage of the legislation and signing the bill into law after Congress approved it almost unanimoulsy. Trump endorsed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL, in October 2025, and rallied with him in March 2026 in Hebron, Kentucky. Massie’s primary came on the heels of Trump targeting several Republicans he believes slighted him in the past.  In early May, the majority of the Indiana state senators who rejected Trump-backed redistricting lost their primaries.  More recently, on May 16, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., the last remaining U.S. senator who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, came in third place in his primary.  Just hours before polls closed in Kentucky, Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his primary challenge against incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn, saying Cornyn “was not supportive of me when times were tough.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth criticizes Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) at rally for his challenger, Ed Gallrein: "President Trump does not need more people in Washington who are trying to make a point, especially from his own party." pic.twitter.com/cBgAReZ8fi— CSPAN (@cspan) May 18, 2026 Cornyn previously expressed skepticism about Trump running in 2024. Massie’s 2026 House primary was the most expensive in American history, with over $32 million spent on ads. On Monday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth campaigned on Gallrein’s behalf against Massie. White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller also urged Kentucky voters to oppose Massie. There were a few Republicans who campaigned for the incumbent.  Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Victoria Spartz of Indiana, and Warren Davidson of Ohio all campaigned in Kentucky for Massie.  All were relatively immune from political consequences for their decision, as Davidson and Spartz had already won their primaries and the Colorado filing deadline had already passed, protecting Boebert from a primary challenge. Trump called on Saturday for a primary challenger to take on Boebert, saying he would then withdraw his endorsement from the representative, whom he called “weak minded.” Yes, I saw the President’s post. No, I’m not mad or offended. I knew the risks when I agreed to stand by my friend Thomas Massie. I was, and will be, America First, America Always, and MAGA. Onward — Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) May 16, 2026 Boebert stated on X that she was “not mad or offended” and that she remains “America First, America Always, and MAGA.” The primary race quickly turned into a debate over whether Massie’s record in the House is genuinely conservative or not. Massie told The Daily Signal in a statement before primary day, “I will win this race because my constituents know I am consistently America First. I backed the SAVE Act, voted to secure the border by funding the wall and DHS, and I will never stop fighting to drain the Swamp. Whether on the campaign trail or in Congress, I don’t hide from my record, I show up, I explain my votes, and I answer directly to the people I represent.” However the opposing campaign had a different view, highlighting Massie’s rifts with the president, as well as Trump’s  endorsement of Gallrein. Gallrein senior adviser Tim Murtaugh told The Daily Signal in a statement, “President Trump has given Ed Gallrein his strongest endorsement in this race while Thomas Massie has made it his business to stick his finger in the president’s eye at every opportunity. Massie has aggressively tried to derail the America First agenda, voted against major legislative priorities of the administration, speaks about Iran like he wants the mullahs to win, and has become The New York Times’ favorite Republican.” Murtaugh added, “It is far too late for Massie to try to return to the fold now and it’s a pity that he’s chosen to end his career this way. … The only person Thomas Massie serves is Thomas Massie.” In the closing act of the campaign, Massie argued he was being targeted by donors offended by his opposition to foreign aid to Israel, whom he referred to as “the Israeli lobby.” Related PostsMassie Primary to Test His Popularity, Trump’s EndorsementSoon, the Republican Party will hold a critical primary that could demonstrate the power of President Donald Trump’s endorsement. On May 19, Republicans in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District will decide whether they want Rep. Thomas Massie—who frequently bucks the party line—to remain in Congress. Massie, a Republican with a stubborn libertarian streak, was one of…Republican Sen. Cassidy, Who Supported Trump Impeachment, Loses Re-Election BidMay 16 (Reuters) — Two-term Republican U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy lost his bid for re-election in Louisiana’s primary on Saturday, as Trump-backed challenger Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming advanced to a June runoff to choose the party’s nominee after a closely fought three-way battle. Cassidy, a physician who first earned the president’s ire by…Massie’s Primary Race Breaks Spending RecordsRep. Thomas Massie’s, R-Ky., reelection bid on May 19 has become the most expensive Republican primary in history, with more than $32 million spent on advertising, as the congressman faces criticism over his remarks against the United States’ involvement in Israel. “I’m the main event,” Massie told MS NOW at the U.S. Capitol last week….

The Senate GOP is taking the next steps to pass legislation to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security this week. Thanks to pro-family GOP senators, key legislation to protect children will be included in the long-awaited Reconciliation 2.0. Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced that the Secure America Act will “hopefully” be voted on this week. The bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection passed out of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Tuesday and included legislation pushed by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Tim Tebow, to protect the exploitation of children online. “This will be a tremendous step forward to be able to do something very tangible and very immediate to help children who have been harmed in the worst possible way by the online world,” Hawley said in a press release. Proud to partner with a faithful Christ follower like @TimTebow as we fight to rescue trafficked kids. Our provision to do so just passed committee. Let’s get this done pic.twitter.com/S27rYVNtgP— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) May 19, 2026 Committee member Hawley saw his continued advocacy for the Renewed Hope Act pay off. The Renewed Hope Act of 2026, originally introduced in January by Rep. Laurel Lee, R-Fla., has been championed by Hawley in the Senate. The language in the Secure America Act, Rec. 2.0, will provide DHS with a “generational investment” to hire 200 child exploitation investigators and forensic analysts. The department currently has funding for only seven roles to investigate the hundreds of thousands of cases in which children are in danger online. Earlier this year, Hawley hosted Tebow, the former NFL football player and founder of the Tim Tebow Foundation, to testify before Congress on the urgent need to pass the Renewed Hope Act and provide adequate resources. “Our country’s most precious and vulnerable lives have been forgotten. Every day, these children lose hope, and it’s not the fault of law enforcement that these children wait. They need more resources, plain and simple,” Tebow told the Daily Signal ahead of the March hearing. EXCLUSIVE: @TimTebow to Expose Child Trafficking Crisis in Capitol Hill Testimony Tim Tebow, NCAA football legend, broadcaster, and philanthropist, will be on Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and…— Virginia Grace McKinnon (@virginiagmck) March 3, 2026 Tebow testified that in less than a year, 338,000 unique IP addresses downloaded or shared child-rape images portraying nearly 90,000 unidentified children in the United States. Because of the lack of funding, many of these cases go uninvestigated or unsolved. Led by Homeland Security Investigations under DHS, the bill provides $108.5 million to hire the new staff. Specifically, the bill provides for 40 forensic analysts and 30 child exploitation investigators at the Victim Identification Laboratory within the Child Exploitation Investigations Unit, as well as 130 additional analysts and investigators. It also establishes a victim identification training program for federal, state, and local law enforcement to better coordinate efforts. “This legislation gives our nation the opportunity to build a stronger rescue team of analysts and investigators so that children who are suffering can be identified and protected,” Tebow continued in his March comment. Because of Democrats’ historic temper tantrum, we will be funding Border Patrol and ICE for the full remainder of President Trump’s term.We are going to pass the Secure America Act, and with it, we are going to end this conversation about defunding the police. pic.twitter.com/jXazSLdWMI— Leader John Thune (@LeaderJohnThune) May 19, 2026 “This week we’re going to vote on the Secure America Act, which is a piece of legislation that will fund ICE and CBP not only for this year but through the entirety of the Trump administration,” Thune told reporters. Chairman Rand Paul said the committee’s markup of the bill, along with back-and-forth communication with the Senate parliamentarian, included 57 amendments to the final bill and was passed by an 8-5 vote. The DHS funding bill, which Thune referred to as the Secure America Act, will allocate nearly $23 billion to fund ICE and CBP. This is down roughly $50 billion from the first proposal package presented by the Senate Homeland Security and Judiciary committees, which included $1 billion for the security project at the White House East Wing.

These are the remarks Tyler O’Neil plans to deliver before the House Judiciary Committee in his opening statement Wednesday morning. The text may change between publication now and the testimony then. Chairman [Jim] Jordan, Ranking Member [Jamie] Raskin, members of the committee, I am honored to testify before you today. I will argue that the Southern Poverty Law Center does not merely track hate—it systematically inflates it, profits from it, and, according to a federal indictment, may even have helped create it. The first thing to know about the SPLC is that it has nothing to do with poverty. The “Poverty Palace” has an endowment of $822 million. That’s more than three times the assets of the national YMCA, and almost twice the sum of Planned Parenthood. That’s why former employees have suggested mocking mottos for the SPLC, such as “Making Hate Pay.” How did the SPLC become so wealthy? Co-founder Morris Dees set up a lucrative fundraising engine by suing the Ku Klux Klan into bankruptcy. When the SPLC ran out of grand dragons to slay, the center needed to find more “hate” to justify the fundraising. It has a financial incentive to juice the numbers. The SPLC began to publish a “hate map” that plots mainstream conservative and Christian groups alongside Klan chapters. The map includes Moms for Liberty, PragerU, Turning Point USA, and even Focus on the Family. The SPLC says the map reveals the “infrastructure upholding white supremacy.” The “hate map” kills two birds with one stone: it silences conservative dissent from the SPLC’s agenda, and it exaggerates “hate” to keep the money flowing. The map also includes groups that barely exist, like a Confederate memorabilia shop and a convent. In 2023, I analyzed the map and found that it exaggerated hate by at least 267% by including mainstream conservatives, double-counting groups, and mentioning defunct organizations. Given this track record, is it really so far-fetched to think the SPLC might be propping up some of the very white supremacist groups it claims it exists to oppose? A federal grand jury indicted the SPLC on fraud charges because it had funneled $3 million to members of the Klan. The SPLC didn’t deny the payments but said it was funding “informants” who would tip the center off to violent threats before they happen. But that’s not what happened in Charlottesville in 2017. According to the indictment, the SPLC paid an organizer—and directed this person’s “racist postings.” This so-called informant didn’t prevent Charlottesville from happening. In fact, the indictment suggests the SPLC made Charlottesville larger than it otherwise would have been. After Charlottesville, the SPLC’s annual fundraising doubled. Social media companies volunteered to start silencing hate groups. CNN plastered the hate map on its website. Charlottesville was a payday for the SPLC, and this so-called informant may have been the SPLC’s most cunning investment. Of course, if it became known that the SPLC had paid a Charlottesville organizer, that would be a massive scandal. No wonder the SPLC allegedly lied to a bank, setting up shell companies to fund these “informants.” Why does this matter? SPLC staff have briefed DOJ prosecutors. Big Tech companies have used the SPLC to blacklist conservative nonprofits. School districts across the country have adopted the SPLC’s curriculum. Hundreds of companies systematically exclude conservatives from their charity programs because of the SPLC. The SPLC also has offshoots that engage in similar efforts against conservatives. The Change the Terms coalition banded together to pressure Big Tech to deplatform conservatives, and former SPLC staff have founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. If an organization can inflate threats, influence federal policy, and conceal its role in allegedly fueling the very extremism it condemns, then Congress has a duty to investigate it and its offshoots.

Georgia endured a chaotic primary day, as a court intervened to resolve a dispute over which election officials would have access to the state’s election reporting center, which some call the “bunker.” Three Georgia candidates asked a state court for an emergency motion requiring Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to allow State Election Board members to be present to observe statewide election night results aggregation. This occurs at an emergency operations center, where the totals are uploaded to Georgia’s election reporting system. Actual ballots are not counted at the center. Raffensperger is himself a candidate for governor in the Republican primary. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville imposed a temporary restraining order requiring Raffensperger to allow the board members access to observe the election results aggregation, according to the plaintiffs. BREAKING: We have secured a TRO from Chief Judge Glanville.Bipartisan members of the State Election Board and poll watchers WILL be allowed inside Secretary Raffensperger’s “bunker” to observe tonight’s process.Transparency wins. The people of Georgia deserve honest,… pic.twitter.com/BVOLnrt9Ic— Senator Greg Dolezal (@DolezalForGA) May 19, 2026 However, later that same day, he rescinded the order, writing that plaintiffs did not follow the state’s law requiring them to notify the attorney general’s office of their legal challenge involving a state official. Attorney General Chris Carr is also a Republican candidate for governor. Judge Glanville wrote in a one-page opinion: “This matter comes before the Court on the Order Granting Temporary Restraining Order (the ‘TRO’) entered this morning in this matter after an ex parte hearing. Because Petitioners did not comply with O.C.G.A. § 9-10-2 when seeking expedited injunctive relief against Respondent in his official capacity, the TRO is legally and procedurally void. Accordingly, the TRO is hereby voided, vacated, and dissolved.” The plaintiffs who filed the legal action on Monday were 11th District U.S. congressional candidate Chris Mora; state Sen. Greg Dolezal, who is running for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor; and Keli Gambrill, a Cobb County Commission candidate. After the judge’s initial order, Dolezal posted on X, “Bipartisan members of the State Election Board and poll watchers WILL be allowed inside Secretary Raffensperger’s ‘bunker’ to observe tonight’s process.” In a statement to 11Alive News Monday, before either ruling, Raffensperger said, “The real fight to safeguard the ballot box happens at the local level — inside county election offices and tabulation centers across Georgia.” The statement was from the Raffensperger campaign, not the secretary of state’s office. “But facts clearly aren’t getting in the way of Dolezal’s desperate search for press attention and votes. So buckle up, Greg,” Raffensperger continued. “This isn’t my first rodeo. You are about to join Stacey Abrams, Joe Biden, and the New Georgia Project on the long list of people who sued me and lost.”

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal.    The recent Chinese-American Summit, as I’ve spoken elsewhere, has raised anxieties that there is a tension between an establishment United States and a rising power, China. And a lot of people who I would call declinists say, “Well, China’s gonna replace us.”  A lot of people on Wall Street are afraid of that, a lot of people in the military, a lot of people on the Left, a few people on the Right, but we’re not looking at it empirically.   So there are two things to be cognizant of. Number one, there’s about eight or nine ingredients that allow a society to flourish, to advance, to expand, that are critical to this argument.  And they cross time and space. They’re ancient. One is fuel. The United States is the largest producer of gas and oil in the world right now. Another one is food. The value of our agricultural products is at an all-time high. We’re completely self-sufficient in food, and we’re, in terms of the value of the exports, the biggest exporter of food.  So food and fuel. How about education? The Times Educational Supplement that studied the top 50 universities in the world—if you look at the United States, 90% of them are here in the United States, especially in the so-called STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are at the top in the world.  So in higher education, we’re there.   Fertility—we’re not at 2.0 anymore, but we’re much better than Europe at 1.3 and much, much better than China at 1.0, which is a shrinking and aging society. We’re not at 1.7. It’s about as good as you can get in the Western Hemisphere.  In terms of the military, we’re going to spend the largest amount of money we ever have in real dollars and the largest in many years as a percentage of our budget. We invented the aircraft carrier. We’ve got 11 carrier groups. We have the most sophisticated weapons in the world.   As far as space goes, we have a NASA program and then we have SpaceX, and SpaceX on its own is superior to most space programs elsewhere in the world.  So by any fundamental evaluation, the United States is not in decline. So why do people say that? Usually they say it because they’re unhappy with the other party.   So most of this is now coming from the Left. If you’d watched MSNBC, which I’m forced to do sometimes to get a different view, and CNN, they’re all saying that the summit was a disaster.  Xi had all the cards. Trump was played. That’s not true. I just explained why it isn’t. But Western declinism is kind of intrinsic in general to Western societies that are paranoid about decline, and particularly in the United States.   And let me just finish by giving you a few examples.  During the Great Depression, which started in 1929 with the stock market collapse and continued all the way to 1940, unemployment was 25% at some point across the United States.   People said, Look at Europe. There is a new paradigm. Fascist Italy, fascist Germany. They have wonderful infrastructure programs. Hitler is building autobahns. Mussolini is building rail tracks. They didn’t suffer the Depression like we did.  They have a new formula. They’re rearming. By 1939 and ’40, Charles Lindbergh said we couldn’t win a war against Germany. The Luftwaffe is invincible compared to our decrepit forces. In fact, at the outset of 1939, when the war broke out in Europe, our army was smaller than Portugal’s, 19th in the world.  So everybody said, Our system doesn’t work. We had a Depression. Now we’re unprepared. And four years later, we destroyed all of our enemies, and the U.S. economy was larger than all of the economies of the belligerents in the war put together.  And the U.S. Navy was the largest navy in history, and it was larger than the Russian Navy, what was left of the German, Japanese, Italian navies, and the British Navy all together—the U.S. Navy, one navy.  So that was just a passing paranoia, but it was typical.   The next thing happened after World War II. Our ally, the Soviet Union, suddenly switched sides. It became an enemy even after we supplied 25 to 30% of its Lend-Lease effort to win the war.  And yet they started the Cold War, and then people got very scared because they said this totalitarian command economy is very, very efficient. It’s better than ours. Look what’s happened. They’re ahead of us in the space race. They ignited a hundred-megaton bomb, the biggest in history. There was something called the missile gap.  They have twice the missiles that we do pointed at us. That’s what John Kennedy got elected on. It really didn’t exist, but that’s what he was about to convince people about. So the Soviet Union, in the words of Nikita Khrushchev, “We will bury you.”  And what happened? It imploded two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then we found out that it was completely overrated. It was a rotten system. The CIA estimates of its military power and its economic vitality were all wrong. It was a pathological society, and it broke apart.  That didn’t stop the declinists. Then they said by the 1980s and the 1990s, right after the Soviet collapse, Well, we have a new problem. Our capitalist free-market democratic society is not as efficient as what’s going on in Japan.  They called it Japan Inc. Look what Japan has done. They’ve got more money than we do. Their cars—the Honda, Toyota, Lexus—are all better than our cars. GM is through. Ford is through. American Motors is through.  And then what happened? An aging, shrinking Japanese population backed by unwise government and corporate policies went into a period of about 15 years of destructive deflation.  And today it’s a strong economic power. We’re friends with it, but no one in their right mind thinks Japan Inc. is going to replace the United States.  And then at the millennium, we were told the European Union was the new paradigm. Four hundred fifty million people, one continental nation-state. But it wasn’t a nation.  And today, the EU with 450 million people has an economy about 65% the size of ours, and no one thinks the EU is going to take over. In fact, we’re worried that Europe is in rapid decline.  I say all this because what we are saying now about China is not new. It’s an old phenomenon of pessimism and declinism in Western civilization, particularly in the United States.  China is not the new rival that’s going to replace us. It is the new version of Germany and Italy and Japan and the Soviet Union and Japan Inc. and the EU—the pseudo threats that we’ve all seen before.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.