Primaries, Redistricting Reveal American Political Fault Lines

A series of primary races and the national partisan fight over mid-decade redistricting are revealing the deep fault lines dividing both American political parties.

Last week I wrote about the GOP primary in Kentucky’s fourth congressional district which is already the most expensive House race in U.S. history and also how the partisan national fight over mid-decade redistricting might determine control over the U.S. House of Representatives.

Today I want to follow up on that race, the redistricting fight and a couple of other primaries that speak to larger political trends.

Let’s start with the redistricting fight

Did the Supreme Court Change the Odds?

The Supreme Court’s April decision to allow states to re-draw congressional districts without regard to the Voting Rights Act has Republicans hopeful they may still have a slim chance to retain control of the House.

Real Clear Politics did some analysis on post-redistricting House odds:

The result for the moment is nearly a level playing field in the House races. The authoritative Cook Political Report rates 188 seats as solidly Republican and 184 seats as solidly Democratic. It rates 22 seats as leaning or likely Republican and 23 seats as leaning or likely Democratic. That’s 210 seats at least leaning Republican, 207 as leaning or likely Democratic, leaving 18 seats, four currently held by Democrats and 14 by Republicans, as tossups.

So if Democrats win all the tossups, they would control the House 225-210, a net gain of 10 seats — a win, but not the blue wave they’ve been hoping for. If Republicans win half of the tossups, they would control the House 219-216, a net loss of just one seat.

Those numbers are beginning to look familiar. The House was 222-213 Democratic in 2020, 222-213 Republican in 2022, 220-215 Republican in 2024.

But this is May, and the election is in November — early voting starts in September. Republicans entered Trump’s first term with a 241-194 majority and had better numbers at this point in the cycle than they do now, and Democrats ended up with a 235-199 majority in November.

But, as per usual, some Democrats accuse their party of not playing hardball.

With Democrats Like Gov. Spanberger…

The New Republic calls out Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger in particular:

At issue is the Virginia state Supreme Court’s decision to throw out the amended congressional district maps that voters just approved—in a referendum that cost the Democrats some $70 million, as they painstakingly played by all the rules to get it over the line. In the immediate aftermath of the ruling, Spanberger offered a limp proclamation, saying that she was “disappointed” by it but that her “focus as Governor will be on ensuring that all voters have the information necessary to make their voices heard this November.”

But it turns out that Spanberger was missing some vital information of her own: a lawful solution that could save the day and uphold the will of Virginia voters. As Quinn Yeargain at The Downballot reported, the state constitution includes a provision that allows lawmakers to change the mandatory retirement age of state Supreme Court justices. The idea Yeargain poses would be to lower the official retirement age to 54 by placing a modification in the annual budget bill that’s due by June 30, pass the legislation, and replace the hack justices—all of whom are older than 54—with seven new ones picked by Spanberger.

“Democrats might prefer other solutions,” Yeargain concluded, “but if they want to see the will of the voters respected in time for the November elections, there are virtually no other options—and none with as good a chance of success as this one.”

Spanberger isn’t going for it.

I wrote about former CIA agent Spanberger during her campaign, and she is about what I expected as Governor.

Her aversion to bold action in the redistricting fight not even as much as her decision to veto a collective bargaining rights bill that she campaigned in support of.

Her “explanation” is a master class is talking long and saying nothing:

Spanberger said a whole lot of nothing about why she vetoed the collective bargaining bill.

🙄 pic.twitter.com/Gtsg6qK9fS

— Winter (@LeftyWinter) May 15, 2026

Read the transcript and weep:

Gov. Spanberger: In all of my conversations as it relates to the collective bargaining bill, public sector collective bargaining bill, I’ve been clear in my desire to be a governor who signs that bill into law, but also clear in what I consider my mandate, which is to get it right as the chief executive who will be, you know, moving Virginia towards a place where for the first time state employees would have the ability to collectively bargain and where local employees would be able in any community across Virginia to be able to have the opportunity to collectively bargain. There’s certainly many of our communities across Virginia want to have great clarity in terms of what that would mean for them and how they would manage that shift. And it’s a substantial and consequential one. It’s one that I support. But ultimately, it’s going to be about ensuring that I’m signing a bill that is something that I know that my administration can implement, implement well and put into durable policy.

And that includes ensuring that we are proactively answering many of the questions that the localities and those who will be on the, you know, while I might be on the sort of front end of implementation at the state level, that our localities who will be at the front end of implementation at the local level, you know, whether they may be fully aligned or not, at least have all of the information and the parameters necessary to be able to implement that bill. So I look forward to working with a whole array of folks into the future to ensure that when I sign that bill, it is a durable bill that will change the lives of so many Virginians by giving them that collective voice, but also serving the very important shared priorities of continuing to strengthen our schools and our public safety and the function of our local and state governments.

So yea, bet the house on Centrist Democrats bringing butterknives to every gun fight.

Now let’s follow up on the Kentucky primary that’s become the front lines in AIPAC’s battle to maintain absolute control over the U.S. Congress.

The View from the Wall Street Journal

In a GOP primary, it’s always important to watch how Rupert Murdoch’s flagship publication is covering the race. With that in mind, here’s a few samples from the big feature article on the race that the Wall Street Journal dropped yesterday:

When President Trump decides to oust a Republican from office by backing a primary challenger, the most powerful man in the world draws on unusual powers to hit his mark.

In Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie’s case, Trump flew to his district to call him a “complete and total disaster.” Then came billionaires launching attack ads and allies going silent for fear of presidential retribution.…“I’m actually really happy that this isn’t a tepid fight,” Massie said last month after making a two-hour drive from the farm where he lives to campaign in Hebron. Trump, he said, is all in to get him out. “And so if I win, I feel good about it. And if I lose, I fought the biggest fight there was,” he said, the circles under his eyes hinting at fatigue.

Recent polls showing Massie with a modest lead over Gallrein suggest he has a shot at survival, though Gallrein has pulled ahead in at least one new survey. Gallrein has made relatively few public appearances, giving Massie an opening to make his case in person that he has sided with Trump 90% of the time yet also isn’t afraid to cross him, as he did when he voted against Trump’s tax-cut and spending package.…First viewed as a fringe lawmaker, Massie quickly figured out how to wield influence. When conservatives pushed out Republican House Speaker John Boehner, it was Massie who identified the arcane procedural mechanism that made the ouster possible. In 2020, Massie successfully forced a majority of House lawmakers back to the U.S. Capitol in person to vote for a $2 trillion Covid-19 relief package when they had hoped to stay home to avoid contagion. That prompted Trump to label Massie a “third-rate grandstander.”

All along, Massie has been a persistent critic of foreign interventions. He voted against funding for Ukraine and Israel. He was one of a handful of Republicans who voted to stop military action in Venezuela and led an effort to stop Trump from entangling the U.S. in Iran, sponsoring a resolution to force a military withdrawal that narrowly failed this year.

It was Massie’s vote against Trump’s $3.4 trillion tax-cut and spending package that prompted Trump to turn sharply against him and get behind his primary challenger.

The New York Times welcomed Katherine Mangu-Ward, the Editor–in-Chief of the Libertarian Reason.com to support Massie on their op-ed page:

Mr. Massie votes with his party 91 percent of the time. He shares MAGA’s distrust of the administrative state and MAHA’s suspicion that federal health and agriculture bureaucracies are too cozy with the industries they regulate. He was drinking raw milk before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made it cool.

But the overlap has limits, especially on trade, spending and executive power. And above all, Mr. Massie is against being told what to do and refuses to submit to the final test: unquestioning loyalty to the president. Mr. Trump recently called him “disloyal to the United States of America,” but what the president really meant was that he wasn’t sufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump. His independent streak is what makes him so irritating to his party, and so useful to it.

A movement that cannot tolerate a Thomas Massie has become exactly what its critics say it is — a personality cult with principles grafted on after the fact.…The Epstein files were the fight that transformed Mr. Massie from one of Mr. Trump’s occasional Republican irritants into a declared enemy. The issue brought together several things Mr. Trump hates: a Republican acting independently, a procedural maneuver the White House could not easily control and a persistently troubling topic MAGA had promised to resolve before suddenly deciding there was not much to see.

For years, Mr. Massie told me, he thought the Epstein files were probably “an internet conspiracy” he did not have time to investigate. Then the Trump administration released binders that seemed to him to contain nothing much at all. Why are they going to these lengths to pretend they’d released something they hadn’t? he wondered.

The question stayed with him. So did the testimony of Epstein survivors. It “was like a level of evil I hadn’t even contemplated,” he told me.…The Kentucky primary is next week. In 2024, Mr. Trump won the district with 68 percent of the vote. An early April Quantus Insights poll showed Mr. Massie ahead 47 to 38 percent, with 14 percent undecided.

Mr. Massie argues that the race is not really about Mr. Trump, and not only about him. He says the primary challenge against him is also driven by his refusal to support foreign aid and pro-Israel resolutions that he believes compromise the First Amendment or commit the United States to another country’s wars.

The Washington Examiner has a much less subtle take:

The Massie vs. Gallrein battle comes not long after some Indiana state senators found out what happens when opposing the sitting president. Trump has been pushing red states to employ the Democrats’ playbook in blue states and redistrict in an effort to make it more difficult for the Blue Team to take back the House. Most states have heeded the call, led by Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina. The result could be an additional 10 to 12 House seats for the GOP, which may make all the difference.

Some Indiana Republicans, however, resisted the president’s call. Result? Trump called for all five lawmakers to be primaried. All five lost in elections earlier this month.

The same fate may be awaiting Massie, the guy who joined Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The Squad in opposing congressional funding for Israel’s Iron Dome in 2021. If not for that defense system, Israeli citizens and their government would be subjected to constant bombardment from enemies that surround the country. Thousands or more would have been killed. That vote thankfully survived his opposition, however, 420-9.

AIPAC Open About Its Agenda

Based on AIPAC’s pre-victory lap in Politico they are feeling confident about their candidate’s chances:

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other pro-Israel interest groups have uncorked over $9 million in a bid to unseat Republican Rep. Thomas Massie on Tuesday in a competitive primary that has shattered spending records. Prominent pro-Israel GOP donors have funneled millions more into a super PAC stood up by President Donald Trump’s political operation that has spent nearly $7 million on the race. Overall ad spending has topped $32 million, making it the most expensive House primary on record, per tracking firm AdImpact.

Pro-Israel groups got the opening they needed to spend big against the isolationist lawmaker whenTrump decided to front a primary challenger to Massie, presenting the first serious threat to his reelection in over a decade. The Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund and United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s super PAC, have attacked the incumbent for his votes against symbolic measures supporting Israel.

And unlike in recent Democratic primaries where United Democracy Project has used shell PACs to shield its involvement, the powerful pro-Israel group’s political arm is investing directly in taking Massie out.

“He’s the most anti-Israel Republican in the House,” United Democracy Project spokesperson Patrick Dorton said of Massie. “This is a competitive, close primary situation. It’s always hard to defeat incumbents. … But we think there’s an opportunity here.”…

RJC Victory Fund has unloaded more than $4 million on a sextet of ads attacking Massie over his opposition to the joint U.S.-Israel war in Iran and promoting Trump’s endorsement of Gallrein. It’s the most the group has ever spent in a House primary, according to AdImpact. AIPAC, meanwhile, has put almost $5 million behind a trio of spots slamming Massie for siding with progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in rejecting pro-Israel resolutions, including ones reaffirming U.S. support for Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and on the country in 2024. Their combined spending has helped propel Massie’s primary into the record books, eclipsing the more than $25 million in combined ad spending tracked by AdImpact when pro-Israel groups groups successfully targeted Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) in 2024.

We can see their money being put to work in the ad below:

This is the AI-generated ad that Miriam Adelson and the Israel Lobby is running against Thomas Massie — suggesting that he’s engaged in a thruple with AOC and Ilhan Omar.

This level of blatant falsehoods should be illegal. pic.twitter.com/E6m1VAGh6X

— James Li (@5149jamesli) May 18, 2026

Ken Klippenstein has thoughts about Ed Gallrein, Massie’s opponent:

There’s a heated primary election for Congress this Tuesday that is nothing short of a referendum on “national security.” Fittingly, one candidate’s background is almost entirely unknown because, he claims, it’s classified.

His name is Ed Gallrein, a Trump-backed retired Navy captain challenging incumbent Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. The focus of Gallrein’s campaign (and one of the few things he seems willing to talk about) is his claim of having served in SEAL Team 6, the secretive commando group most famous for the killing of Osama bin Laden. He certainly knows how to operate in the shadows: I can count on one hand the number of interviews Gallrein has sat down for, and he’s skipped literally every debate, each attended alone by Massie. Gallrein’s campaign touts endorsements from unnamed military officers, their identities and other supposedly sensitive details redacted to burnish the security theater. He’s even called civilians “sheep.”

The strategy seems to be to let Trump’s endorsement and the SEAL mystique do the work — and to avoid as much public scrutiny as possible. In the few appearances Gallrein has made, his message to voters is consistent: the most important things about him are classified, the president has seen the file, and that should be enough.

And seeing Gallrein in action demonstrates that whoever crafted his debate-ducking, constituent-avoiding strategy has something on the ball:

Thomas Massie challenger Ed Gallrein said of the Iran War, “the president is playing five-dimensional chess.”

Gallrein has now upgraded it to “nine-dimensional chess.”

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) May 18, 2026

For his part, Massie hasn’t been shy about calling out his opposition:

Rep. Massie to Julian Andreone: AIPAC is kind of a proxy for the military-industrial complex. When they used to try to lobby me, they tried to convince me that the aid to Israel would help our country because it would all be spent in gift certificates and sent to local Lockheed… pic.twitter.com/G3OAxm0Cvf

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 15, 2026

We’ll find out the verdict of the voters of Kentucky’s fourth disctrict tomorrow.

Before we close, there are a couple of other primary races that merit a mention.

Louisiana GOP Purges Impeachment Heretic

Louisiana voters decided not to return incumbent Bill Cassidy to the US Senate over the weekend. NBC has some analysis:

Cassidy failed to advance in the Republican primary in Louisiana, as Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming are projected to face off in a June 27 runoff. The winner in the GOP contest will be the heavy favorite this fall in ruby-red Louisiana.…Cassidy’s cardinal sin, in the eyes of Trump and his supporters, was voting in 2021 to convict the then-former president on impeachment charges of inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6.

Trump never forgot it, having waged a largely successful campaign to oust Republicans who voted to impeach or convict him. Just two of the other six GOP senators who voted to convict Trump are still in office: Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. And just two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him are still in office, with only one running for re-election this year: Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif.

They also include this dandy graphic outlining the electoral fates of Congressional Republicans who voted against Trump: