Thomas Massie is in a close race with Trump-endorsed Ed Gallrein in Kentucky after repeatedly defying the president.
Read more A year after Trump fired a top ethics watchdog, there’s still no leader
Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman who has repeatedly crossed President Donald Trump, is in the fight of his political life to beat back a Trump-endorsed challenger in Tuesday’s Kentucky primary.
Massie’s race against farmer and former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein has become the most expensive U.S. House primary on record, with more than $32 million spent on ads. Trump allies and pro-Israel groups critical of Massie have spent big, testing the president’s grip on the GOP base and ability to oust conservatives who defy him.
Few Republicans in Congress have clashed more bitterly with Trump over the past year than Massie, who has bucked the GOP on key votes and — against Trump’s wishes — led a bipartisan bill that forced the release of the government’s full files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
A victory for Gallrein in Northern Kentucky’s 4th district would send a warning to Republicans already loath to challenge Trump as he and his allies flex their power in primaries.
Two weeks ago, Trump-endorsed candidates unseated several GOP state lawmakers in Indiana who rebuffed Trump’s pressure to redraw the U.S. House map there. And this past weekend in Louisiana, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R) became the first sitting senator to lose a primary in almost a decade after voting to convict the president in his 2021 impeachment trial.
Trump on Monday called Massie an “obstructionist and a fool” on social media, while his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, took the unusual step of campaigning with Gallrein and touting their shared military service.
“When President Trump needs backup, Massie wants to debate process,” Hegseth said at the Monday rally. “When the movement needs unity, especially at the biggest moments, Massie’s willing to vote with Democrats.”
Massie, a 55-year-old farmer first elected in 2012, has suggested that Hegseth and Trump’s attention to the race shows his opposition is “desperate” and “panicked.” Republicans on both sides of the contest expect it to be close — setting up a suspense-filled end to one of the most dramatic primaries of 2026.
“Gallrein has Trump, and Massie has incumbency,” said Tres Watson, a GOP strategist in Kentucky. “It’s hard to beat an incumbent. … If Massie loses, it’s a combination of Trump and just a 12-year compounding of picking up a couple of enemies here and a couple of enemies there.”
Massie has frustrated House GOP leadership, breaking with the party on high-profile votes for which they needed near-unanimity among Republicans, including the president’s signature tax-and-spending legislation, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
He has also long clashed with the pro-Israel wing of his party. Massie has opposed U.S. aid to Israel and was the only House Republican to vote against a resolution condemning antisemitism that he said went counter to the First Amendment. Super PACs affiliated with the Republican Jewish Coalition and the bipartisan American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) are each spending more than $4 million on ads to defeat him, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact.
Trump’s opposition has made this race the toughest of Massie’s career. Trump recruited Gallrein to run against Massie, and top strategists on Trump’s 2024 campaign launched a super PAC, MAGA KY, that has spent nearly $7 million on ads blasting Massie for voting against Trump’s agenda in Congress and playing clips of Trump calling him a “real loser.”
Read more The Nationals love collecting challenge coins so much they made their own
One of the pro-Trump group’s most recent ads suggests Massie is in a “throuple” with liberal lawmakers Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), using artificial intelligence to show Massie holding hands and dining with them.
Massie brags that Trump’s attacks have only helped him raise money.
Massie and his allies have kept the spending war close with more than $13 million in ads, according to AdImpact, questioning Gallrein’s pro-Trump credentials and highlighting Massie’s areas of agreement with Trump.
“I agree with President Trump a whole lot more than I disagree with him,” Massie says in one of his ads.
The spending in Massie’s race has surpassed the previous record for a House primary set in 2024, when Democrat George Latimer beat Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York. Pro-Israel groups also spent heavily in that race to oust the incumbent, a fierce critic of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Massie has tangled with Trump for years. In 2020, Trump said Massie should be thrown out of the GOP after the congressman delayed a $2 trillion bill responding to the coronavirus pandemic and forced his colleagues to return to Washington to pass the bill. But Trump did not back a challenger, and Massie won reelection easily.
This time, Trump has put his full force behind unseating Massie, declaring at a Kentucky rally that he just wanted “a warm body” to challenge the congressman.
When Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) went to Kentucky to campaign with Massie last week, Trump suggested she could be next.
“Is anyone interested in running against Weak Minded Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District?” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social. (Boebert said she “knew the risks” of campaigning with her friend.)
Massie’s many disputes with Trump include his vocal criticism of the U.S. war with Iran. He criticized Trump’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last year as unconstitutional and this year cast the war as out of step with Trump’s “America First” promises.
One of Massie’s campaign ads alludes to the war’s economic impacts. “We’re all feeling it — gas over $4 a gallon,” the congressman says next to a pump.
Other Republicans have assailed Massie’s opposition to the war. One ad from the Republican Jewish Coalition’s super PAC says Massie “stands with Iran and radical leftists in Congress.”
Read more Arsenal on brink of Premier League title with Man City needing to beat Bournemouth
