Cassidy ousted in Louisiana GOP primary, Letlow leads runoff to June

Bill Cassidy’s defeat in Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary underscored how costly it remains for a GOP incumbent to break with Donald Trump. The two-term senator, who voted to convict Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack and chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, finished third with 99,479 votes, or 24.8 percent, after 99 percent of ballots were counted.

Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow led the race with 179,876 votes, or 44.8 percent, and state Treasurer John Fleming followed with 113,428 votes, or 28.3 percent, forcing the contest into a runoff in late June. Cassidy’s loss made him one of the clearest examples yet of the shrinking space for ideological independence in Republican primaries, especially for senators who have tried to maintain distance from the former president.

The political blow landed with added force because Cassidy had also become a high-profile skeptic of Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Letlow benefited from Trump’s endorsement, support from Gov. Jeff Landry, and a reported $1 million commitment from the Make America Healthy Again PAC. The result was the first time a previously elected senator lost a primary since 2012, a sign that party loyalty still outweighs institutional seniority in much of the modern GOP.

While Louisiana Republicans were sorting out a runoff, the World Health Organization was confronting a different kind of emergency. On May 17, the agency declared Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda a public health emergency of international concern, saying the outbreak met that threshold but not the criteria for a pandemic emergency.

As of May 16, the outbreak had produced eight laboratory-confirmed cases, 246 suspected cases and 80 suspected deaths in Ituri Province, across at least three health zones: Bunia, Rwampara and Mongbwalu. Two confirmed cases, including one death, were reported in Kampala, Uganda, within 24 hours of each other among travelers from the Congo. The WHO said it had already delivered more than 14 tonnes of emergency health supplies and 2,000 doses of the Ervebo vaccine to help protect contacts and frontline workers.

The Congo’s latest outbreak is the country’s 16th since 1976, and its most recent before this one was in 2022 in Beni, North Kivu. The contrast is hard to miss: even as a major international health alarm unfolded in Central Africa, American political attention remained fixed on a primary fight that punished a senator for stepping out of line with Trump.