Michael Barbaro: From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily. In primary elections across the country, starting over the next few weeks, the Republican Party will test its voters' appetite for revenge, while the Democratic Party will test its voters' appetite for change. Today, Shane Goldmacher, Lisa Lerer, and Reid Epstein on how to understand key elections from Michigan to Kentucky.

Michael Barbaro: Lisa, Reid, Shane, welcome to the first midterm election round table of 2026. Okay, we're bringing you three together for this conversation because arguably the most intense phase of the primary season is about to get underway. Over the next few weeks, literally starting today, Democratic and Republican voters will start to pick their nominees in races all the way up and down the ballot. And on both sides, the contests are going to start to tell us a bigger story about where the two parties are as they seek to control the country's direction in the second half of the second Trump presidency. Where do you want to start this conversation?

Lisa Lerer: Well, I think it's helpful to get a sense of the overall landscape now that we're less than 6 months out from these midterms. And I think it's helpful to start with Republicans because really when you look at these races, it's not a question of whether these midterms will be bad for Republicans. It's a question of how bad they will be.

Michael Barbaro: Levels of badness.

Lisa Lerer: Levels of badness. And that is because the president is deeply unpopular. He's waging a war that is deeply unpopular. And on economic issues, which was really a central reason why voters elected the Trump administration, we have no indication that voters feel better about the cost of living of basic goods. In fact, there's tons of economic data that shows they feel worse about things like housing and groceries and gas. That's for the general election. Before we get to that point, how the general election dynamics shake out and the degree of badness will be shaped by what happens in these primaries that we're now about to enter the heaviest period of.

Reid Epstein: I mean, look, when I've been talking with Republican strategists, what they say about this sort of really bad moment for the party, the best thing is that it's still May, that there are many months until October and then November when the voters actually cast ballots for whether it's a Democrat or a Republican this fall. Their frustration has been that Donald Trump has not been focused on turning the tide on the issues that are going against the Republican party.

Shane Goldmacher: Instead, what he's focused on in the upcoming elections in these primaries is a revenge tour. When you look at a suite of races in May, I mean, these are a pretty remarkable set of primaries where President Trump has laid out one singular criteria. Will you be loyal to him? And if you have crossed him before and not done his bidding, he wants you out and he wants people in, some of whom he has personally recruited, who he believes once in office will vote lock step with him into the future. And you can see that represent best in three states: Indiana, Kentucky, and Louisiana.

Shane Goldmacher: I think you should start with the races that are on Tuesday in Indiana. And this is really an unusual level of campaign for a president to be involved in. We're not talking about congressional primaries or US Senate primaries. We're talking about more than a half dozen state senators in Indiana whom Donald Trump is trying to get out of office. And the reason he is opposed to them is that they refuse to go along with his effort to redistrict to the state and carve up two Democratic seats last fall. And in his frustration, he said everyone who opposed this needs to be voted out.

Donald Trump (audio): You had one gentleman, the head of the Senate, I guess, Bray, whatever his name is. Uh, I heard he was against it. He probably lose his next primary, whatever that is. I hope. I'll certainly support anybody that wants to go against it.

Reid Epstein: Just to remind folks what happened that was so offensive to Trump in Indiana, he asks the Indiana state legislature to redraw that state's maps in order to pick up a couple more Republican seats, which inevitably means delete Democratic seats. And under normal circumstances, Republican controlled legislators have performed that role for Trump. Indiana was one place where the Republican leaders in the state senate resisted Trump's effort to do. They objected on political and moral grounds. They didn't want to be seen taking orders from Donald Trump in Washington.

Lisa Lerer: Part of the reason they said no, is that redistricting was unpopular with their voters, including with Republican voters. What voters said is they would prefer that their representatives focus on cost of living issues. Now they're caught in these very expensive races against the president over this issue that voters didn't really want in the first place. Normally a state house race, you're talking $200,000 maybe. We're now seeing millions of dollars flood into these races.

Reid Epstein: Well, the next race is in Kentucky where the primaries in a couple weeks and one of the incumbent congressman named Thomas Massie has been a bit of a thorn in Trump's side for a while. He's a very conservative Republican, but he has opposed Trump on things like the Epstein files, now in the Iran war and Trump and his political team recruited an opponent for him in the primary, a former Navy Seal named Ed Gallrein. Trump calls him a loser, a disaster. I mean, it's very unsparing.

Shane Goldmacher: I mean, Massie really stands alone among Republicans running for reelection being vocally critical of Donald Trump. He votes with them 90% of the time, but he's like mocking him. He sees his race as an opportunity for others in the party to maybe step out when they do disagree with Donald Trump. It's about: will the party continue to side with Trump even when they quietly disagree with him.

Michael Barbaro: Finally, on the Republican side, there's the president's efforts to oust a foe in Louisiana. Shane, can you quickly tell us what's happening there?

Shane Goldmacher: This is Senator Bill Cassidy. Cassidy is running for reelection despite having voted to convict Donald Trump of impeachment in 2021. But the original sin of voting to convict is not something that the president has forgotten. And so he has endorsed a primary challenger to Cassidy, a congresswoman named Julia Letlow. I wonder if taking out Cassidy does help us understand what seems inevitably to be the complete magnification of not just the House, but also eventually the Senate.

Lisa Lerer: Well, look, Democrats came out of their 2024 defeat with a real sense that they were a party in crisis. Large swaths of Democratic voters saying that they don't like their own party. They don't know what their party stands for. And this is a party that really is in the wilderness. There's debates over generational change. I think there's a real sense in the party grassroots that they need new leaders. There's real divides over how to oppose every single element of this Trump administration.

Michael Barbaro: And I think that identity crisis just exploded in Maine where you had this primary between Governor Janet Mills, the establishment candidate, and she was facing a very fierce challenge from Graham Platner, who's a total political unknown. He's an oyster man. He's fashioning himself as a working-class candidate who understands authentically the kind of economic struggles.

Lisa Lerer: The news broke that Janet Mills was dropping out of the race. But there was also a sense that he was unbeatable for her. Democratic leaders are very anxious about Graham Platner. This is someone who has a pretty long documented history of very controversial comments online. It also was revealed that he had a tattoo of a Nazi insignia, which he said he didn't know what it was at the time. But the fury at the party establishment is so great that Democratic voters in Maine appeared willing to take a chance on this untested candidate.

Reid Epstein: And that has been the Schumer MO for almost 20 years. And what we are hearing from voters is that they don't want this anymore. Schumer is in his 70s and he certainly does not present as somebody who is a man of the moment, right? He famously carries a flip phone. He's not somebody who fits the moment that Democrats believe requires maximum opposition to what Trump is doing.

Michael Barbaro: Just to wrap up this conversation, it feels like the universal theme across all these primaries is anger. Trump's got his anger at his opponents. Democrats are trying to figure out how to handle the anger among their voters. So, how are you thinking about which of these angers might prevail?

Shane Goldmacher: Betting on Donald Trump's anger, aligning with the anger of voters has been a good bet in Republican primaries for a really long time. There's not a record of this level of anger in Democratic primaries. For years, Democrats looked up to Nancy Pelosi. They're not happy with the leadership now. Is tapping into the voters' anger at what's happening in the country actually the way to win this year?

Michael Barbaro: Well, Lisa, Shane, Reed, thank you very much.

Michael Barbaro: Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, the 4-week old ceasefire in the Middle East appeared to falter. Shortly after the United States announced it had guided two American ships through the straight of Hormuz, Iran launched missiles and drones against American warships and commercial vessels. The US said it sank six Iranian speedboats. It's unclear for now whether the Iranian attacks mean that the war has now resumed.