Morning Report

Cassidy takes fire over Trump’s surgeon general swap

by Jared Gans - 05/01/26 6:53 AM ET

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by Jared Gans - 05/01/26 6:53 AM ET

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In today’s issue:

- Cassidy takes MAHA blame

- Most DHS funding restored

- Hegseth debates war powers limit

- Nebraska’s Medicaid work requirements

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) is facing the fury of President Trump and his MAHA allies after the president blamed him for having to withdraw his controversial surgeon general nominee, Casey Means.

Cassidy was already in the fight for his political life, facing two prominent primary challengers on his right. He has been on the outs with Trump and his base ever since he voted to convict the president in his second impeachment trial tied to his conduct surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

Means’s nomination had been stuck in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), which Cassidy chairs, amid concerns about her views on vaccines and lack of an active medical license.

“For months, Senator Bill Cassidy (of the GREAT State of Louisiana!), a very disloyal person whose ‘TRUMP’ Endorsement got him elected, but later voted to impeach ‘President Trump’ on what has now proven to be a total Hoax and Scam, has stood in the way” of Means’s nomination, the president said in a post on Truth Social.

“Hopefully all of the Great Republican People of Louisiana, which I won, BIG, three times, will be voting Bill Cassidy OUT OF OFFICE in the upcoming Republican Primary!” Trump wrote in another post.

The president’s rage against the two-term senator comes at a particularly critical point for Cassidy. Early voting opens in the state for his Senate race on Saturday, and the primary will be two weeks after that.

Polling has shown him in a tough battle for the Republican nomination against Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.), who has Trump’s endorsement, and state Treasurer John Fleming.

An Emerson College poll released Thursday showed Fleming narrowly ahead with 28 percent support, followed by Letlow with 27 percent and Cassidy with 21 percent. Just over 20 percent said they were undecided.

Louisiana election law sets that the top two candidates advance to a runoff in June if no candidate receives a majority of the vote, which seems likely. Even if Cassidy makes the runoff, winning a majority of the GOP electorate will be an uphill battle with the president reviving calls to oust him.

Cassidy told CNN’s Manu Raju on Thursday that he had “no response” to Trump’s comments attacking him. He maintained that Means did not have the votes to advance out of committee and wouldn’t say if he would have supported Means’s nomination.

He said he doesn’t think Trump’s opposition will cause him to lose his Senate seat.

Cassidy also noted that he has not expressed his view on Means, a prominent vaccine skeptic seen as a key figure in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.

But that isn’t stopping some of the president’s most ardent supporters in the MAGA and MAHA movements from directing their ire directly at the HELP chair.

Means blamed “three disgruntled senators” on the committee for her nomination failing, telling The Washington Post that the White House pulled her nomination because of “that act of aggression against this movement.”

Calley Means, a White House senior adviser and Casey Means’s brother, wrote a lengthy message on the social platform X laying the blame at Cassidy’s feet.

“At every step, Casey’s message of hope and empowerment was thwarted by Bill Cassidy,” Calley Means said. “Bill Cassidy is a mindless avatar for his donors and a blind defender of the status quo system that is profiting from American sickness. At every turn during Casey’s confirmation, Bill Cassidy worked to delay her and smear her.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been a major proponent of Casey Means, accused Cassidy of sabotage, alleging he “did the dirty work for entrenched interests seeking to stall the MAHA movement.”

Letlow also went after the incumbent senator, saying he betrayed the president and Louisiana Republicans.

The X account for the HELP Committee Republicans thanked Means for her appearance and said it looks forward to considering Trump’s new nominee, Nicole Saphier.

Saphier is a radiologist and Fox News contributor whom Kennedy called a “long-time warrior for the MAHA movement.”

That may blunt some of the MAHA anger in the long-run, but it isn’t sparing Cassidy at the exact moment he needs to coalesce as