NEW: The GOP mess in the Louisiana Senate race

IN THIS EDITION

Louisiana Senate GOP primary gets loopy

How Congress could weigh in on Iran deal

It’s reconciliation 2.0 time

Havana Syndrome victim sues State amid Hill probe

THE TOP

Louisiana Senate GOP primary gets loopy

Happy Friday morning.

The Republican Senate primary in Louisiana has become a mess.

The two-term incumbent senator is at risk of not even making the primary runoff, and he’s fuming at the Senate Republican establishment for not helping him enough.

President Donald Trump’s hand-picked candidate has been unable to convert that golden-ticket endorsement into a definitive lead.

And a third candidate who said he ignored entreaties to drop out from people close to Trump has emerged as a real threat to win.

The uncertainty and chaos within just five weeks to the May 16 primary has caught the White House, Trump allies and the Republican establishment by surprise, throwing a wrench in what was supposed to be a low-drama contest. Republicans aren’t going to lose the Louisiana Senate seat, but it’s definitely not going the way GOP power players thought it would.

Let’s get into it.

Former Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), a co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus, is pulling a significant chunk of the vote in public and private polling, muddying what should’ve been a glide path to the Senate for the Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.).

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) voted to convict Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which was always going to be a problem in a Republican primary. Cassidy and his allies have been dumping money on TV ads hitting Letlow.

It’s highly unlikely any candidate will clear 50% in the GOP primary, meaning this race is headed to a June runoff. Polling shows all three relatively close together. Letlow has a lead in two recent independent polls.

At this point, Republican insiders believe any of the three candidates could advance.

Yet those same Republicans are convinced that either Letlow or Fleming would beat Cassidy in a runoff.

“You know we’ve led — not by a lot, it’s a tight race, right — but we’ve led the entire time,” Fleming told us.

State of race. Cassidy is furious at the NRSC and Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s political machine because he feels they haven’t fully supported his reelection bid. Thune fundraised with Cassidy in January in Baton Rouge, raking in over $650,000 at the event. The NRSC has also cut video ads featuring Cassidy.

But in a tense call with the NRSC, Cassidy said the committee wasn’t spending enough on his behalf during the primary. NRSC Executive Director Jennifer DeCasper, in a response that included profanity, shot back that Cassidy shouldn’t have voted to convict Trump, according to multiple sources familiar with the call.

The NRSC and Cassidy’s campaign both declined to comment.

Cassidy isn’t short on funds. The HELP Committee chair and his allied groups began the year with a collective $26 million in the bank. They’ve blanketed the airwaves with a slew of ads slamming the 45-year-old Letlow, accusing her of failing to properly disclose her stock trading while in office and pursuing DEI policies as an official at a Louisiana university. “Liberal Letlow” and “Pelican State Pelosi” have become go-to lines for Cassidy.

Cassidy has spent $5.1 million on ads, per AdImpact. His super PAC, Louisiana Freedom Fund, has spent a whopping $10 million on ads so far.

Many of Cassidy’s ads depict him as close to Trump, a clear attempt to obscure the reality that he voted to convict the president.

Letlow has spent $2.5 million on ads and has her super PAC, The Accountability Project. Letlow and her allies have been touting the Trump endorsements. Her team believes once they educate more voters that she is Trump’s pick, Letlow will surge.

“Julia Letlow has a commanding lead in this race despite the nearly 10 million dollars spent against her by Trump-impeacher Bill Cassidy,” Letlow spokesperson Katherine Thordahl said. “At this point, the only question is whether Bill Cassidy, who is consistently polling in third place, will even make the runoff.”

Louisiana moved to close its primaries in 2024, a change that doesn’t help Cassidy.

For years, the state had a jungle primary that pooled candidates from all parties into one race. That benefited Cassidy because liberal and moderate voters could join Republicans in supporting him, making the politics of his impeachment vote easier. Now, each party holds its own primary.

Plenty of GOP voters are ready to ditch Cassidy. Letlow’s problem is that despite having Trump’s backing, she’s sharing the anti-incumbent voting bloc with Fleming. Case in point: her super PAC is airing an ad hitting Fleming on immigration in order to bring down his vote share.

Letlow also waited months to launch her Senate run, doing so only in January. Fleming entered the race in December 2024. Fleming is currently Louisiana’s state treasurer.

Fleming factor. Fleming, 74, said he was repeatedly contacted in late January and mid-Febuary by figures “in Trump’s orbit” to see what it would take to get him out of the race.

“I was contacted twice by a high-level person at the White House, again, asking if there’s anything they could do, anything they could offer that would get me to drop out. And I said no, of course, diplomatically said no,” Fleming told us.

Fleming said Louisiana GOP voters see Cassidy and Letlow as “too Washington” when compared to him. Fleming served in the House from 2009 to 2017. He ran for Senate in 2016 but finished well back in the Republican primary.

The White House denies that they made any offer to Fleming. Fleming was asked if he was prepared to stay in the race after Letlow got in and had the president’s endorsement. Fleming said yes, according to a Trump source familiar with the conversation.

The White House’s view, at least now, is that they simply want Cassidy out of the Senate. They don’t care if it’s Letlow or Fleming who does that.

– Ally Mutnick, John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman

WASHINGTON X THE WORLD

How Congress could weigh in on Iran deal

If President Donald Trump can find a diplomatic off-ramp for the war with Iran, he may have no choice but to face congressional scrutiny over it.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has publicly made the case on X for congressional review of any potential peace deal with Iran. Graham’s call could have a statutory underpinning thanks to a decade-old law that allows lawmakers to vote on any nuclear-related agreement the U.S. reaches with Tehran.

“Fair and challenging questions with a full opportunity to explain, and a healthy dose of sunlight is generally the right formula to understand any matter,” Graham said this week.

Then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) was one of the original co-sponsors of the Senate version of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act when it was introduced — and passed unanimously — 11 years ago. Now, as secretary of state, Rubio is part of an administration that could be beholden to pieces of it.

Aides from both parties say the 2015 law could apply if there’s an explicit nuclear component of an eventual U.S.-Iran peace deal. But there’s an exceedingly high threshold that Congress would need to clear in order to actually block any diplomatic pact. Plus, depending on the finer details, the White House could try to sidestep a formal submission to Congress altogether.

Under INARA, any lawmaker could force a vote on a joint resolution of disapproval. These would require a simple majority in the House, but would be subject to cloture — 60 votes — in the Senate. Trump could veto the resolution, but Congress can override him with a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers.

A disapproval vote over former President Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal fell short of 60 votes, despite a handful of Democratic defections.

At what cost? The politics of such a vote could be incredibly difficult for many vulnerable Republicans. Hawkish GOP lawmakers may find a reason to oppose a diplomatic deal simply because they believe the United States should continue pummeling Iran in order to topple the regime for good and eliminate the country’s nuclear capabilities via military means.

Some lawmakers and aides also interpreted Graham’s call for congressional review as a slight toward Vice President JD Vance, who’s been charged with helping lead the peace talks during what has now become a very fragile two-week ceasefire. Vance has long opposed American adventurism abroad — something that put him at odds with his former Senate GOP colleagues. He also was against this war, per the New York Times.

Many Republicans are skeptical that a diplomatic agreement can be reached. In some ways, Republicans have boxed themselves in by previously declaring that any deal with Tehran can’t allow uranium enrichment.

“If the agreement allows enrichment, it will be very difficult for Republicans to vote for it,” a senior GOP aide said.

There’s also still the question of what will happen to the existing stores of enriched uranium that Tehran possesses. At the outset of U.S. military operations, the administration documented the current stockpiles Iran has. This includes some 10,000 kilograms of enriched uranium that — while none was enriched at the weapons-grade threshold of 90% — put Tehran within reach of restarting its military nuclear aspirations.

— Andrew Desiderio and Briana Reilly

THE SENATE

It’s reconciliation 2.0 time

Senate Republicans need to pull off an incredibly tricky attempt to pass a reconciliation bill in the coming weeks so they can finally end the 55-day Department of Homeland Security shutdown.

Their sprint to unite around a party-line package funding ICE and CBP begins today. Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso are going to the White House to plot out the reconciliation bill.

The stakes. President Donald Trump has gone hot and cold on the Senate’s plans to end the DHS shutdown. It’s going to be crucial that Republican leaders make sure the president sticks with the latest plan, which is to fund ICE and CBP for at least three years in a party-line reconciliation bill. Trump’s help would go a long way to getting the bill done and keeping it from ballooning into something too sprawling to pass. Currently, DHS employees are getting paid thanks to a Trump executive order.

House Republicans across the conference are revolting against the idea of breaking off ICE and CBP funding and passing the rest of the DHS spending bill on a bipartisan basis. The House Freedom Caucus wants to shove all funding for DHS into reconciliation. That would be an even bigger blow to appropriators and harder to pull off for the GOP.

Fiscal hawks could also try to force offsets for the new spending, which may make the effort too politically toxic for GOP moderates. Republican leaders’ argument that annual appropriations are not paid for could be convincing enough.

Another crucial choice that the White House and GOP congressional leaders have to make is how much money to give ICE and CBP. Graham has said he’s considering three to 10 years of funding for the agencies. Those figures could look vastly different and could change the calculus for conservatives on whether they demand offsets.

What comes next. The Senate will return to Washington on Monday night, giving GOP leaders a chance to socialize and lock in reconciliation plans.

Leaders of the reconciliation effort will want to move extremely fast. Trump set a June 1 deadline for getting the bill to his desk. The Senate Republican leadership is aiming to put a budget resolution with reconciliation instructions on the floor by the end of April.

The reconciliation process involves numerous procedural steps, including adopting the budget resolution, vote-a-ramas and the “Byrd Bath.” So Trump’s deadline is already bearing down. Remember that Senate committees can hold markups during the reconciliation process, but they’ve often skipped that step in recent years.

— Laura Weiss

THE COURTS

Havana Syndrome victim sues State amid Hill probe

A federal judge denied the State Department’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit from a Havana Syndrome victim who alleges the government retaliated against him for testifying to Congress, allowing the case to go to trial.

The lawsuit nominally targets Secretary of State Marco Rubio — ironically one of the top defenders of Havana Syndrome victims and a critic of the intelligence community’s handling of the crisis during his time leading the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The lawsuit from Mark Lenzi — a senior foreign service officer who was afflicted with the mysterious illness while serving in China in 2018 — comes a month after a joint “60 Minutes”-Der Spiegel investigation uncovered further evidence that the Russian government is responsible for the attacks on U.S. diplomats.

At the heart of Lenzi’s lawsuit is his claim — first reported by Punchbowl News — that the department forced him out of his diplomatic posting in Helsinki when he sought to testify on Capitol Hill. The lawsuit, which was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, also alleges disability discrimination.

Lenzi has since testified to the House Intelligence Committee and has long sought to blow the whistle on efforts by intelligence officials to downplay Moscow’s nexus to the attacks, which use pulsed microwave energy that causes permanent brain damage. The committee is investigating the intelligence community’s handling of the matter.

Lenzi was a beneficiary of the HAVANA Act, a 2021 law authorizing funding for treatment. That effort was spearheaded by Rubio, who during his Senate tenure, was skeptical of the CIA’s efforts to downplay Russia’s involvement.

Yet Rubio is named as the defendant in Lenzi’s lawsuit due to his position as secretary of state.

Here’s what Lenzi told us:

— Andrew Desiderio

AND THERE’S MORE

Battleground fundraising scoops. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-Pa.) raised more than $900,000 for his reelection campaign in the first quarter of 2026. The Pennsylvania Republican, who is defending one of the most at-risk House seats in November, ended Q1 with almost $2.5 million cash on hand.

Republican Jay Feely, the former NFL kicker running in Arizona’s open 1st District, will report raising $742,000 in Q1. Feely will also speak at a Turning Point Action rally next Friday in Phoenix where President Donald Trump is expected to be the headliner.

On the airwaves. Senate Opportunity Fund, a group affiliated with Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, launched a $750,000 ad campaign touting Sen. Susan Collins’ (R-Maine) work to protect funding for rural hospitals. The campaign includes digital, streaming and radio ads, as well as text messages.

— Laura Weiss and Ally Mutnick

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