Politics

Bill Cassidy loses Senate primary in another major win for Trump

Published

2 months ago

May 17, 2026

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) just lost his seat — a key victory for President Donald Trump’s revenge tour this cycle.

Rep. Julia Letlow, the Trump-backed candidate, and state Treasurer John Fleming advanced to a runoff in the Louisiana GOP Senate primary on Saturday, with Cassidy finishing in third place.

It’s a remarkable result: Cassidy is the first senator of either party to lose in a primary since 2012. The two-term senator and chair of the powerful Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee failed to even make the runoff, finishing with roughly a quarter of the vote.

Both Letlow and Fleming benefited from MAGA voters’ frustrations with Cassidy for his 2021 vote to convict Trump on impeachment charges related to the Jan. 6 insurrection, and for his skepticism of Trump’s decision to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary.

The president, who has been itching to oust Cassidy, finally got his wish Saturday. The result follows Trump’s successful attempts to oust several GOP state senators in Indiana last month over redistricting clashes.

Letlow, a three-term representative from north Louisiana, jumped into the race with Trump’s endorsement, a huge boost in the deep-red state. Gov. Jeff Landry also endorsed her and worked behind the scenes to help her campaign, and the Make America Healthy Again PAC committed $1 million to supporting her.

Fleming, a former member of Congress and White House aide under Trump, drew deep grassroots support during his campaign and was able to cut into Letlow’s polling lead in the final days of the race.

The runoff will extend an already expensive battle for the GOP nomination to late June. Early polls suggest a tight race between Letlow and Fleming, though Letlow had a clear advantage in the first round of voting.

Politics

The populist trick that turned a soccer shirt into a campaign uniform

Published

7 hours ago

July 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

MAGA-friendly Abelardo de la Espriella’s decision to make Colombia’s national soccer jersey a defining feature of his victorious right-wing presidential campaign has sparked a debate over the political ownership of national symbols.

While the yellow shirt has long been associated with moments of collective celebration, critics argue that its prominent use by a partisan candidate risks recasting it as a marker of political identity. A Bogotá judge even banned de la Espriella from wearing the jersey while campaigning before the June 21 vote.

After hearing from fans in Miami on Saturday night vociferously in support of de la Espriella and his unflinching law-and-order policies, Blue Light News spoke to two experts on Colombian politics who say the episode reflects a broader pattern seen in populist movements, where patriotic imagery is deployed to blur the line between support for the nation and support for a political project.

“In my view, he was very deliberately politicizing the national team’s shirt,” Eduardo Gamarra, professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University, said. “The Colombian jersey is one of the few symbols that can still claim to belong to all Colombians, across region, class and ideology. That is precisely why it is attractive to a populist campaign: it allows a partisan political project to present itself as the nation itself.”

“This is not unique to Colombia. Populist politicians around the world routinely try to appropriate national symbols. In the United States, MAGA politics has turned the American flag and other patriotic symbols into markers of partisan identity. In Venezuela, Chavismo also understood the power of national colors, patriotic imagery and sporting symbols such as the Vinotinto [the national team],” Gamarra added. “De la Espriella’s use of the shirt was effective because it transformed the emotion around the national team into a signal of political belonging.”

“But to me the real surprise is not that de la Espriella tried to use the jersey, or even that it worked. The surprise is how ineffective opposition groups were in defending the shirt as a shared national symbol. They allowed a symbol that should belong to the whole country to be claimed by one political camp,” Gamarra said.

The jersey’s appeal, however, went beyond nationalism — helping to reinforce de la Espriella’s carefully crafted populist image ahead of the election final round that he won in mid-June.

“Abelardo de la Espriella used the national team’s shirt, traditionally a symbol of unity and celebration throughout the country, especially at the time of the World Cup, to associate his campaign with strong patriotism,” said Julian Gerez, assistant professor of criminology, law and society and political science at the University of California, Irvine. “But I think more importantly, it’s about de la Espriella’s own image: he is a multimillionaire lawyer but it is essential to his brand to appear as a man of the people. And as opposed to wearing a suit jacket or other formal attire, which is what might be expected, the jersey and hat play an important role in the way he portrays his image.”

“Ultimately, I think it was an effective tactic, but [leftist candidate] Ivan Cepeda’s campaign ironically made it more effective by coming out against its use, which led to greater awareness of the jersey as linked to de la Espriella’s campaign — and stronger defiance among his supporters in wearing the jersey,” Gerez added.