Julia Letlow Election Denial Voting Rights Louisiana

In 2021 Julia Letlow Backed Censuring Bill Cassidy for Convicting Trump. In 2026 She Took His Seat.

Before she was even sworn in, Letlow said she'd have joined the January 6 objection and endorsed her party's censure of Cassidy. Five years later Trump recruited her to end his career — and she calls Trump 'the greatest president this country has ever had.'

MAGA Report Cards · Aug 09, 2026

In 2021 Julia Letlow Backed Censuring Bill Cassidy for Convicting Trump. In 2026 She Took His Seat.

On February 13, 2021, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana voted to convict Donald Trump at his second impeachment trial, for inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6. He was one of seven Republicans who did. The executive committee of the Republican Party of Louisiana voted unanimously to censure him the same day.

Five weeks later, in March 2021, a first-time candidate named Julia Letlow sat for an interview with CNN before winning the special election for Louisiana's 5th District. CNN's account of what she said:

"Letlow told CNN she would have joined the majority of the House Republican Conference in objecting to the certification of the presidential election on January 6, and she supports her state party's decision to censure GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy for his vote to convict Trump in his impeachment trial earlier this year."

She had not yet cast a single vote in Congress. She had already taken a position on both: she'd have voted to throw out certified electoral votes, and the senator who voted to hold Trump accountable deserved to be punished by his own party.

Five years later, she finished the job

In January 2026, Trump recruited Letlow to run against Cassidy. The reason wasn't a secret. As CNN put it, "The president's bid for vengeance in Louisiana came after Cassidy voted in 2021 to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial."

In the May 16 primary, Letlow took nearly 45%. Fleming, the state treasurer, took 28%. Cassidy finished third with almost 25% and was eliminated — a two-term incumbent senator knocked out before the runoff.

On June 27, Letlow beat John Fleming in the runoff, 56.9% to 43.1% — 180,002 votes to 136,591. In a state Trump has carried by more than 18 points three times, that nomination is the seat.

Cassidy is one of two Republican senators Trump drove out of office this spring, along with Texas's John Cornyn.

What she said when she won

Letlow's victory speech thanked Trump for his endorsement and called him "the greatest president this country has ever had."

Trump had held a telephone rally for her three nights earlier. In it, he praised her vote for his tax and spending bill, praised her support for his immigration enforcement, and told Louisiana voters she would back his elections bill — the one that would broadly ban mail-in voting and impose new voter identification requirements nationally.

That is the thing worth sitting with. The through-line from March 2021 to June 2026 is not that Letlow changed. It's that she didn't. She endorsed censuring a senator for an impeachment vote before she was sworn in, and she is going to the Senate having promised to vote for a national rollback of mail voting.

What this means for Louisiana

Senators are supposed to be the check. The Senate's specific constitutional jobs — confirming nominees, ratifying treaties, trying impeachments — exist because the framers assumed a chamber willing to tell a president no.

Cassidy told a president no once, on the narrow question of whether inciting an attack on Congress was an impeachable offense. That vote, and essentially that vote alone, is why he is no longer a senator. Letlow's own stated position, from the beginning, was that he should have been punished for it.

Her record in the House is consistent with that. She voted to block the bipartisan effort to release the Jeffrey Epstein files in July 2025 — the 211–210 procedural vote — and only voted for release in November, after Trump gave House Republicans permission. She voted for the Rescissions Act locking in DOGE's first round of cuts, which passed 214 to 212. On the votes where a single Republican defection would have changed the outcome, she was never the defection.

Louisiana just traded a senator who broke with Trump once for a senator who has never broken with him at all, and who said so out loud before she'd been sworn into anything.

We deserve better.