Kentucky’s liberty-minded, MIT-educated congressman has some local foes—but supporters, and even some protégés, are easier to find on the ground.
This is part one of a two-part series on the congressmen who defied their parties over the recent funding bill. Part two will focus on Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who supported the continuing resolution to fund the government despite opposition from all other House Democrats.
COVINGTON, Ky.—After Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) signaled opposition to the recent Republican-led continuing resolution funding bill, President Donald Trump vowed to “lead the charge” against the lawmaker in next year’s primary election.
“The people of Kentucky won’t stand for it, just watch. Do I have any takers?” Trump wrote on social media on March 10, days ahead of the vote in which Massie broke with all other House Republicans to oppose the six-month funding patch.
Massie said he could not back the continuing resolution because it generally maintained spending levels set under former President Joe Biden. On the social media platform X, he wrote that the deal “locked in a large portion of the Biden agenda for the first nine months of Trump’s presidency.” He later said he had received hundreds of thousands in donations after publicly opposing the measure.
Who wants to tell them?
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 12, 2025
By continuing 2024 appropriations into 2025 with a “Continuing Resolution,” Congress just locked in a large portion of the Biden agenda for the first nine months of Trump’s presidency. https://t.co/uj6NcsP2q1
The latest clash looked a lot like the dust-up between Massie and Trump in March 2020, when the libertarian-leaning congressman tried to force a recorded vote on a multi-trillion-dollar COVID-19 relief package, a maneuver that party leaders on both sides blocked.I’ve received an amazing outpouring of support since I was attacked for voting No on the Biden-$-level CR.
— Thomas Massie for Congress (@MassieforKY) March 12, 2025
In fact, we just hit $205,000 from 2500 grassroots donors!
Can you help me send a “huge” message by reaching $250,000 before the 48 hour mark?https://t.co/AgJY01IWPL https://t.co/cqS9qtflvz
At that juncture, just three months out from Massie’s primary, the president encouraged Republican leaders to kick him out of the GOP. Massie said he sought a recorded vote “to make sure our republic doesn’t die by unanimous consent in an empty chamber.”
State Rep. Steven Doan, one of several Republican state lawmakers tightly aligned with Massie as part of the Kentucky Liberty Caucus, told The Epoch Times that Massie “is the purest of the pure in terms of conservatism.” The president, by contrast, “is a populist.”
“Those two things don’t always go together,” added Doan, who also runs a law firm.
Some in Kentucky’s conservative Fourth District hope to see Massie ousted, though a few of them didn’t want their names in print.
One former state representative said Massie “is absolutely ripe to be challenged and possibly defeated” if the right opponent materializes.
