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 Lair, and Reed Epstein on how to understand key elections from Michigan to Kentucky.

It's Tuesday, May 5th.

Lisa, Reid, Shane, welcome to the first midterm election roundtable of 2026.

Thanks for having me.

Very exciting.

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, Tuesday.

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?

Levels of badness.

In fact, he's been anything but focused, as Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan told us about a week and a half or so ago.

He's pretty actively disinterested.

And Shane, of this suite of Republican primaries you just mentioned, where do you want to begin?

Reid, 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 legislatures have performed that role for Trump.

So this was a rare moment where Republicans out in the world said no to President Trump in the Indiana state legislature.