Trump-backed Navy SEAL vet delivers major blow to Massie in fiery GOP primary

This article is thanks to Ricepaddydaddy! 

Trump called Massie the 'worst Republican congressman in history' and Hegseth campaigned for Gallrein as race came to close

President Donald Trump on Tuesday scored another victory in his revenge campaign against GOP critics, further flexing his grip on the Republican Party after a string of primary wins in recent weeks. 

Trump-backed Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL and Kentucky farmer, defeated the president’s longtime antagonist, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., according to The Associated Press. 

Gallrein’s victory represents a major win for Trump’s political operation and pro-Israel allied groups, who spent aggressively to unseat the sitting lawmaker.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., left, is vying for an eighth House term, but Trump-backed GOP challenger Ed Gallrein, right, threatens to derail those plans. 

Trump repeatedly unleashed on Massie in unusually personal terms in the final days of the primary contest, while spotlighting his endorsement of Gallrein, who he recruited into the race.

The president called Massie, who has frequently opposed parts of his legislative agenda, the "worst ‘Republican’ congressman in history" on Monday.

Gallrein echoed the president’s attack in an interview with Fox News Digital on Monday.

"My opponent, he's running against President Trump and the agenda that has been put forward by the Republican Party," Gallrein said.

But Massie fired back that Trump’s endorsement of Gallrein was not an insurmountable challenge due to support among the conservative grassroots for his maverick politics. 

"I've got the groundswell here, like my events. I've got 100–200, sometimes 300 people show up," Massie told Fox News Digital. "My opponent had to cancel events because he couldn't get enough people, you know, to fill up a Dairy Queen, half a Dairy Queen." 

"We've been able to match them to go toe-to-toe with them on TV using grassroots donors, and it's really galvanized the nation," he continued.

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Massie also charged that Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to campaign for Gallrein on Monday showed Trump’s political operation believed Massie was "up in the polls."

"They wouldn't be sending the Secretary of War to my congressional district if I weren't," he added.

Trump also personally campaigned against Massie in his solidly Republican district in March, calling him "disloyal" to the Republican Party and the United States.

A libertarian-minded lawmaker, Massie was one of a handful of Republicans to vote against the president’s landmark tax cut and spending law, citing its impact on budget deficits. He also helped engineer the legislative effort compelling the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files over the vigorous objections of the White House, which later endorsed the effort.

As of late, Massie has emerged as one of the fiercest Republican critics of Trump’s war with Iran and has repeatedly voted with Democrats to curtail the military campaign.

That policy stance — combined with his votes against military aid to Israel and resolutions denouncing antisemitism — drew pro-Israel donors allied with Trump into the race to defeat Massie.

"Here's the thing, I've got nothing against Israel. I just have never voted for foreign aid," Massie told Fox News Digital. "When I said America First, I meant it. I don't vote for foreign aid to Egypt, to Syria, to Ukraine. I've got a flawless record on this, and I'm not going to ruin it by sending foreign aid to one country."

The Kentucky primary contest comes after a string of closely watched GOP primary contests where Trump’s endorsement power proved consequential.

Ed Gallrein, Republican congressional candidate for Kentucky, greets U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on stage during an America First Workers Special Event in Hebron, Ky., on May 18, 2026, one day before Kentucky's primary election. 

The president celebrated unseating five Indiana GOP lawmakers earlier in May who helped block the state from redrawing its congressional map to benefit Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections. Another win for the president came Saturday after Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., was shut out of the runoff election for a third Senate term.

The defeated senator notably voted to convict Trump following his second impeachment in January 2021.

Massie successfully fended off primary opponents in 2022 and 2024, though Gallrein posed the most formidable challenge to the incumbent since Massie first won election to the House in 2012. 

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-backed-navy-seal-vet-delivers-major-blow-massie-fiery-gop-primary

Ketanji Jackson doubles down on attacks against fellow members of U.S. Supreme Court

She claims OTHER justices are looking partisan with their decisions

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, March 23, 2022.

Ketanji Jackson, the Joe Biden-nominated Supreme Court justice who made her political agenda clear by aligning with LGBT activists and refusing to define "woman" during her confirmation hearings, has followed her leftist ideology in her written opinions, demanding birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens and insisting that states he ordered to keep their race-based congressional districts.

But it's the majority, whose members have routinely been agreeing on the meaning and impact of the Constitution in various cases, who are making the public think the court is partisan, she has charged anew.

Jackson repeatedly has billed herself as a star in American jurisprudence, boasting about her authority to tell people what she thinks in court decisions, distracting court watchers by her participation in a Broadway show, offering untoward condemnation of other justices and more.

Jackson now is warning that the majority on the court, nominated by multiple presidents over many years, is making the public think it's partisan because of a recent ruling limiting one section of the Voting Rights Act.

The majority ruled that states do not have to set aside congressional districts for black voters to have a black representative in Congress.

The Daily Mail described her comments as a "stinging swipe" at conservative justice, as the tensions in the court atmosphere "exploded."

She's repeatedly gone public with demands that the rulings need to bend to her will since the Voting Rights Act decision came in a Louisiana case.

It essentially allowed Louisiana Republicans the power to redraw the congressional map and dismantle a majority-black district before the November midterms. And they are being allowed to do it right away, as the court made a decision not to withhold that ruling for a month.

"It is so important for the public to perceive us as neutral, nonpartisan," Jackson claimed at a meeting of the American Law Institute in Washington Monday. "We know that public confidence is really all the judiciary has."

Jackson continued, "It's incumbent upon us to do things, to act in ways that shore up public confidence."

It was just the latest blast Jackson has delivered to other justices, who have defended their rulings.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, for example, said, "I think the casual reader about the Supreme Court or its decisions might have the impression we're just kind of up there, politicians in robes. That's not how the court functions."

She said the criticism the court is politicized isn't correct.

"We're living in a very politically divided time. It's harder for people to come together," she said.

Jackson not only lashed out at a ruling lifting previous orders to have congressional districts based on race, she fumed over the court's decision to release the ruling right away.

She claimed that was "unwarranted and unwise.'

Jackson's diatribes in dissent have become so virulent that other justices openly are correcting and rebuking her.

In a response to her attack in the Louisiana case, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, charged, "The dissent in this suit levels charges that cannot go unanswered."

He pointed out Jackson's two stated reasons for keeping to a waiting period before releasing a decision are trivial and baseless.

Alito responded to Jackson's claim the majority was "unprincipled" by saying that was a "groundless and utterly irresponsible charge."

"It is the dissent's rhetoric that lacks restraint," he said.

Jackson, who was appointed by Biden in 2022, repeatedly has gone over the edge. In a presidential immunity case she fumed the court lit "a five-alarm fire that threatens to consume democratic self-governance."

This over a decision that a president could not be prosecuted for his official acts in office.

When the high court curtailed nationwide injunctions by low-level judges, she said it signaled "our collective demise."

At that time, Justice Amy Barrett responded that Jackson's opinion was "at odds with more than two centuries' worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself."

Jackson also claimed other justices are "overly sympathetic to corporate interests" and her extremism even has caused other liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, to leave Jackson to her own devices much of the time.

She has insisted the court "be really, really careful in this environment when we're dealing with issues that have a political overlay. … It is so important for the public to perceive us as neutral, nonpartisan. We know that public confidence is really all the judiciary has."

She's also considered to be a key advocate for Democrat-driven plans to "pack" the court, simply adding four more justices – all leftist and liberal – who then could overrule the six-justice conservative majority now and give leftists what they want.

https://www.wnd.com/2026/05/ketanji-jackson-doubles-down-attacks-against-fellow-members/

WEAK ALLY: US Freezes Joint Defense Board With Canada Over Ottawa’s ‘Lack Of Progress’ on Military Commitments

Trump’s US criticizes Carney’s Canada’s ‘gaps between rhetoric and reality’.

The Canucks are not doing their homework.

Ever since Donald J. Trump’s first presidential mandate, he has been insisting that NATO allies must spend much more and develop their militaries.

Trump has criticized the ‘paper tigers’ for over-relying on US military protection.

One of the most criticized is Canada.

The Great White North struggled to get to a 2% GDP defense spending when other allies such as Poland are already breaking 4,5%.

Today, it arises that the US has frozen participation in a joint defense board with Canada ‘that dates back to the Second World War’.

“Canada just hit the NATO 2% defense spending target for the first time in decades — but it’s mostly creative accounting, not real military muscle. Carney’s government is counting these toward the target:

• Veterans pensions & benefits (past service, not current readiness).
• Massive military pay raises and personnel costs.
• Canadian Coast Guard operations (unarmed civilian vessels now under Defence).
• Aid and military assistance to Ukraine.
• Other “whole-of-government” items like base infrastructure and loosely related spending across departments.
• Result? Canada claims ~$63B / 2% of GDP, but analysts say much of it doesn’t build new combat capability or deployable forces.

It clearly hasn’t satisfied U.S. demands for genuine burden-sharing under Trump.

Prioritizing pensions, Coast Guard, and foreign aid over tanks, fighters, and Arctic patrol ships raises questions about whether it’s real defense or just number-padding.

Canada still lags in key NATO metrics for equipment and readiness.”

Canadian defense spending is about ‘creative accounting’

The Telegraph reported:

“In the latest escalation of tensions with the longstanding ally, the Pentagon accused Canada of failing ‘to make credible progress on its defense commitments’.

[…] On Monday, Elbridge Colby, the US undersecretary of defense, said that the Pentagon would halt its involvement in the Permanent Joint Board on Defense while it reassesses the forum’s value to American security interests.

‘We can no longer avoid the gaps between rhetoric and reality’, Mr. Colby said. ‘Real powers must sustain our rhetoric with shared defense and security responsibilities’.”

“The board was established in 1940, a year before the US entered the Second World War. Established under the Ogdensburg Agreement, it has functioned for decades as a key forum for military cooperation and regional security coordination across North America.

It helped provide a framework for continental defense during the Second World War and then the Cold War, provided advice on the implementation of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and was also involved in setting up early warning systems using radar stations.”

Read more:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/05/weak-ally-us-freezes-joint-defense-board-canada/