Bill Cassidy’s Demise Signals MAHA’s Rise

In Louisiana primary, Senator Bill Cassidy is defeated, proving that MAHA has come of age as a political force

The MAHA movement came into its own as a major force in American politics on Saturday, taking its first scalp by helping to defeat United States Senator Bill Cassidy in his run for re-election in Louisiana.

The moment wasn’t lost on Tony Lyons, president of MAHA Action, which supported Cassidy’s chief rival, Louisiana Rep. Julia Letlow.

“This is a powerful indication that MAHA is a gift to the Republican Party,” Lyons told The MAHA Report on Sunday. “Candidates who accept that gift will be rewarded in the midterms. Senator Cassidy defended Big Pharma and the broken medical establishment against the health and welfare of American families. Voters across the country are joining the MAHA rebellion because they are fed up with the corruption that allowed companies to poison their children. They just won’t accept it anymore.”

MAHA Action supported Letlow with significant financial backing and grassroots mobilizing.

“We worked very hard to ensure that Julia Letlow dominated the primary,” Lyons said. “In addition to spending $750,000 of the $1,000,000 total pledged, we encouraged thousands of MAHA influencers to support Letlow on their platforms. This group of MAHA influencers represents more than 200,000,000 followers.”

MAHA Action also produced two effective short video ads — one against-Cassidy, the other pro-Letlow.

Cassidy is the senator who held up the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services, forcing him to commit to giving Cassidy unprecedented say over hiring and policymaking in the agency. Cassidy also firebombed Kennedy’s pick for CDC director, Dave Weldon, and his pick for Surgeon General, Casey Means. And he held up hearings at which he knew Kennedy would be attacked by former CDC employees, while initially denying the secretary an opportunity to testify in his own defense.

Cassidy also fought against Kennedy’s plan to reduce the high number of childhood vaccines. Despite Kennedy and others like Aaron Siri presenting strong evidence that many of the vaccines on the CDC schedule of recommended childhood vaccination carry serious risks of harm and even death, Cassidy, a physician, continued to insist that they are perfectly safe.

“Regarding vaccines, Mr. Kennedy has been insistent that he just wants good science and to ensure safety,” Cassidy said on the Senate floor before voting to confirm Kennedy as Secretary of HHS in February of 2025. “But on this topic, the science is good. The science is credible. Vaccines save lives. They are safe. They do not cause autism. There are multiple studies that show this. They are a crucial part of our nation’s public health response.”

In Louisiana on Saturday, Cassidy’s political career came to a sudden end as he was defeated in the Republican primary, coming in third after Rep. Julia Letlow – now a congresswoman representing Louisiana’s 5^th Congressional District who was endorsed by President Trump – and John Fleming, the Louisiana state treasurer who was deputy chief of staff for part of the first Trump administration.

Trump endorsed Letlow even before she announced she would challenge Cassidy, writing on Truth Social in January: “I know Julia well, have seen her tested at the highest and most difficult level and she is a total winner. Should she decide to enter this race, Julia Letlow has my complete and total endorsement, run Julia, run.”

Cassidy is the first sitting U.S. Senator to be defeated in a primary since 2012, when longtime Indiana Senator Richard Lugar was defeated in his by Richard Mourdock.

Letlow was the clear leader on Saturday, winning 45 percent of the vote, compared to 28 percent for Fleming and 25 percent for Cassidy – a paltry showing for a two-term United States Senator.

John Fleming

The two highest vote getters – Letlow and Fleming – will now face off in a June 27 runoff, with the winner facing the Democratic nominee in November.

Aaron Siri, writing on X, noted that Cassidy’s loss comes two years after another U.S. senator faced a tough re-election battle for the opposite reason. In 2021, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin broke away from the pack and held his own hearings in rooms in the Senate office buildings to give a voice to people who’d been injured by the Covid-19 vaccine. These were non-official hearings that he and his staff live-streamed and to which he invited his Senate colleagues. None came. Johnson alone among U.S. senators listened to the stories of the vaccine-injured and worked to hold the CDC and FDA accountable for failing to warn the American public of the possibility of side effects from the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna. When he ran for re-election to the Senate in 2024, powerful interest groups poured millions into the race to try to bring him down. It didn’t work.

“So, Senator Ron Johnson bravely and vigorously supported medical liberty, the vaccine injured, and vaccine safety (which the media said would tank his reelection campaign) yet he won his reelection bid, while U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy did the opposite (which the media widely hailed, praised, and supported) yet he didn’t even win his primary. A lesson for all elected officials,” wrote Siri in a post on X on Sunday.

Cassidy, who was running for election to a third term, far outspent his rivals.

Federal Election Commission records show he had $8,650,205 in contributions as of April 26, and total receipts of more than $13 million. Letlow had far less – just $795,696 in contributions and $4.4 million in total receipts.

Cassidy had significant backing from the pharmaceutical industry, including contributions from political action committees connected to Pfizer, Merck, Sanofi, Abbott Laboratories, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Takeda and Glaxo Smith Kline. Contributors also included the National Community Pharmacists Association PAC, the National Confectioners Association of the United States Inc. (known as CANDY PAC), the Health Industry Distributors Association PAC, and the Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding PAC.

FEC records also show a $1,000 contribution from Stanley Plotkin, known as the “godfather of vaccines” and who has become infamous after admitting under oath in a deposition with attorney Siri that dozens of infants were killed to develop vaccines and that participants in many of the vaccine safety trials he supervised were only followed for a few days or a few weeks, too short a time for any participant to be diagnosed with a chronic disease like autism or asthma.

Why else did Cassidy lose? Certainly not just because of President Trump’s endorsement of Letlow, as medical freedom activist Sayer Ji points out in a Substack post on Sunday.

“MAHA was not acting as Trump’s instrument,” he writes. “It was acting on its own political logic – the logic of a movement that watches who chairs one-sided hearings against the official they sent to Washington to reform captured health agencies, and responds accordingly.” Cassidy will continue to serve in the U.S. Senate until next January, when his Senate term expires. It’s not known, however, whether he will continue to serve as chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, or whether another chairman will be appointed.

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, also a physician and the chairman of the new MAHA Caucus in the U.S. Senate, may be next in line for the job.

Marshall gave one of the strongest endorsements of Kennedy during his confirmation hearings in January of 2025, telling him he is “the” person for the job and that God has a divine purpose for him as Secretary of HHS.”