Michael Barbaro

So this was a rare moment where Republicans out in the world said no to President Trump in the Indiana state legislature.

Not important to Indiana voters.

Shane, give me one example of an Indiana state lawmaker who Trump has decided to go after and the opponent that he, as you said, handpicked in order to try to take that lawmaker out in these races.

Right.

And I just want to make clear to listeners why, even though this is, of course, a bunch of state lawmakers, this has huge impact on who controls Congress.

We just had a Supreme Court decision weakening the Voting Rights Act that has unleashed a new wave of redistricting battles across the country.

And Trump is basically saying to future state Republican lawmakers who might think twice about complying with his desire to redistrict, if you do that, I will take you out, which I'm going to guess means that in any of the states that the president now wants to redistrict ahead of this year's midterms, Republicans are going to see what's happening in Indiana and they're going to be very likely to redistrict.

exactly the way the president wants and make this a structurally harder election for Democrats than it might have been before.

So what is the next race we should talk about where revenge is on the ballot and Trump is trying to exercise his power in these primaries?

Calls him a loser, a disaster.

I mean, it's very unsparing the way Trump talks about Congressman Massey.

Right.

In fact, I spoke to him about this on The Hill during the Epstein documents release.

He would like to make the point that there can be, should be, and will be a space to criticize this president, and he wants to be the guy there holding that umbrella up in the air.

Okay, finally, on the Republican side, there's the president's efforts to oust a foe in Louisiana.

Shane, can you quickly tell us what's happening there?

And from where I sit, this race seems important because the Senate has been, and this is all relative, the last holdout when it comes to unconditional loyalty to Trump as an institution.

Now, that doesn't mean it hasn't backed a lot of his agenda, but it has counseled him at times to drop a nominee.

It has put up some resistance here and there.

And so I wonder if taking out Cassidy does help us understand what seems inevitably to be the complete magnification of not just the House, which has gone very far to the right, but also eventually the Senate.