A slate of Tuesday primary elections set the stage for what promises to be a consequential, contentious midterm showdown in November. President Donald Trump flexed his dominance over the Republican Party with Indiana state senators who opposed his redistricting push late last year, some of whom were voted out of office. However, one of the president’s picks in Ohio could spell trouble for the Buckeye State. Notably, the president has remained curiously silent in a heated Senate primary that could shake up the upper chamber of Congress. Here’s the news.

Indiana

Hoosier State Republican senators earned the president’s wrath in December when 21 of them sided with Democrats to halt a redistricting measure that would have netted the GOP an extra two seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, bolstering the party’s narrow majority. Although the measure was approved in the Indiana House of Representatives, Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray (R) led 20 other Republicans in the Indiana Senate to kill the bill, suggesting that the GOP just needed to campaign harder to win the Democrat-held districts, such as the 7th Congressional District, which encompasses nearly the whole of Indianapolis and has been awarded a Cook Partisan Voting Index rating of D+21.

Trump and his allies vowed revenge, and conservative-aligned political action groups started funding primary challenges against Republican senators who voted against redistricting. On Tuesday, six of the Republicans who voted against redistricting lost their primary bids to Trump-backed challengers: Senators Dan Dernulc, Rick Niemeyer, Linda Rogers, Travis Holdman, James R. Buck, and Greg Walker were defeated. Senator Greg Goode is so far the only incumbent who survived his primary challenge. Incumbent Senator Spencer Deery is, at the time of this writing, statistically tied with challenger Paula Copenhaver; Deery has a three-vote lead with over 95% of the vote counted.

While many of the incumbents touted their “conservative” records and endorsements from Second Amendment and pro-life organizations, according to The New York Times, Trump’s endorsement ultimately carried the day — almost across the board. Indiana Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith (R), who backed Trump’s redistricting push along with Governor Mike Braun (R), said, “It’s not that anyone is less or more pro-life,” further explaining, “It’s really that, do you understand the battle we are in, and do you understand the role Indiana plays in that battle on a national stage?”

Braun and Beckwith largely sided with Trump, endorsing the same primary challengers against the GOP senators who killed the redistricting provision, but former Republican officials, including former Indiana governors Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence, Trump’s own former vice president, opposed the redistricting push and backed incumbent senators in most cases. “Historic night for Indiana as Republicans stood with me and President Trump to nominate some great America First conservatives,” Braun stated in a social media post late Tuesday night. “I look forward to winning big in November and serving Hoosiers with this team in the statehouse!”

Ohio

The Buckeye State also held primary elections, with Democrats choosing former U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown as their nominee and Republicans sticking with incumbent U.S. Senator Jon Husted, who ran uncontested. The state’s gubernatorial primary, however, saw Republicans choose former presidential candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and State Treasurer Robert Sprague withdrew from the primary last year, while Genius Garage owner Casey “the Car Guy” Putsch was eliminated in Tuesday’s primary, after having positioned himself as more of an “America First” candidate than Ramaswamy, who was endorsed by Trump after having been rejected for a planned role in the administration early last year.

Despite the GOP’s control of both chambers of Ohio’s legislature and the governor’s mansion, in addition to a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+5, multiple polls show Ramaswamy vastly underperforming against Democratic gubernatorial nominee Amy Acton in a state Trump won in 2024 by double digits. The RealClearPolitics polling average has Ramaswamy trailing Acton by nearly half a point. According to journalist and podcast host Matt Forney, early campaign analytics predicted that Putsch would beat Ramaswamy and win the nomination. However, Putsch “largely ruined his chances through his narcissism and ego,” Forney reported. “He refused to take his campaign’s advice, refused to moderate his presentation to appeal to Ohio voters … steadfully [sic] refused to fundraise, and was habitually abusive to his workers to the point where he had a revolving door on personnel.”

The Putsch campaign was initially planning “to use a mix of positive press from sympathetic journalists … and trolling” mainstream media outlets to raise the candidate’s profile, before positioning the entrepreneur and automotive engineer as “a normal Christian candidate.” (Ramaswamy is a Hindu, who recently denied the divinity of Christ at a campaign event.) Instead, Putsch turned against Trump in a host of social media posts, including burning his “Make America Great Again” hat and spent his time on social media chasing endorsements from dissident-right online influencers like Nick Fuentes. “Casey chose to hobnob with a bunch of influencer freaks that were poison to the voters he needed to win. Casey himself was obsessed with getting an endorsement from Nick Fuentes despite his staffers telling him this was a terrible idea,” Forney related, based on interviews with Putsch campaign staffers. “Casey largely checked out of his own campaign at the end of February in favor of trolling on social media and focusing on his YouTube channel. By that point, his remaining staffers had determined he could not win.”

In December of 2024, shortly before Trump returned to the White House, Ramaswamy was slated to join tech billionaire Elon Musk as one of the heads of the Department of Government Efficiency, but the position was rescinded after Ramaswamy made social media posts criticizing Americans as “lazy,” alleging that the U.S. culture celebrates and encourages “mediocrity,” while calling for an increase in H-1B work visas for foreigners. Acton later capitalized on the posts, writing in her own social media post, “Vivek Ramaswamy told us how he really feels when he said that Ohioans aren’t succeeding because they’re lazy and mediocre and watching too much TV.” She continued, “That couldn’t be further from what I’m seeing on the ground every day. Ohioans are working harder than ever, they’re doing everything right, and they just can’t get enough breathing room. Ohio needs a governor who listens, understands, and who is ready to bring down costs on day one.”

Texas

While Trump endorsed a number of primary challengers in Indiana and Ramaswamy in Ohio, he has remained curiously silent on the U.S. Senate primary in Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is challenging incumbent Senator John Cornyn (R). Neither candidate received a majority of the vote in the original primary earlier this year, prompting a runoff election between the two at the end of May. While Cornyn led Paxton in the initial primary by just over one point, the latter was expected to gain many of the voters who had backed U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt (R) in the primary, as both Hunt and Paxton branded themselves as “America First” candidates, casting Cornyn as a moderate and an establishment pawn.

According to a new poll, that prediction was correct: Paxton is now leading Cornyn, with the runoff vote less than three weeks away. The University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs conducted a survey of likely Republican voters and found that 48% prefer Paxton, compared to 45% who plan to back Cornyn, while 7% are undecided. The survey also found that Texas GOP voters are most concerned with immigration and border security (33%), inflation and the cost of living (25%), and election integrity (22%) when deciding who to vote for.

Notably, Trump has not made an endorsement in the race, despite pledging to back one of the two candidates. According to CNN, Trump was persuaded by allies and supporters not to throw his weight behind Cornyn, who Trump-adjacent figures criticized as a RINO (Republican in Name Only) who could not be trusted to deliver on the president’s “Make America Great Again” agenda. Partly at issue is the SAVE America Act, a crucial piece of immigration and election integrity legislation currently stalled in the Senate. While Cornyn was reportedly hesitant to push for the legislation early on, he later vocally supported abolishing the longstanding filibuster in order to pass the bill, in a seeming effort to win favor with Trump and possibly secure an endorsement.