It’s like clockwork: whenever California votes, Republicans start circulating conspiracy theories about fraud, so I did some explaining at New York:

Now we know why so many leading California Democratic elected officials — notably Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta — made such a big deal out of the need for Golden State voters to fill out and send in their mail ballots as early as possible this year. Sure enough, on Thursday, as overwhelmed California election officials were still working to tabulate California primary ballots, the president of the United States raised his familiar cry of “vote fraud!” in two posts on Truth Social:

“The Dumocrats are at it again! They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS.”

And:

“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California. Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Why the vote counting DELAY??? President DJT”

Since Trump has been demagoguing California voting procedures for many years, you have to suspect that he knows the answer to his questions. There are “massive numbers” of mail ballots because this is the principal way that voters in California — and also in Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia — vote. There is vote-counting “DELAY” because it takes longer to process and count mail ballots, which have to be opened, signature-verified, examined for improper marking, then scanned. The very measures necessary to avoid “fraud” slow down the process.

Many “votes are all tied up” because of a phenomenon known as “the pig in the python,” as the San Francisco Chronicle explained at about the same time Trump was disingenuously freaking out:

“[T]he pig is the quarter of voters who hang onto their mail-in ballots until the very end, dropping their sealed and signed envelope off to election offices or drop boxes on, or just before, Election Day. … The election workers, who only have so much time, space and hands, are the snake. They swallow the surge in ballots whole, creating an immediate chokepoint.

“Mail-in ballots are more work to count thanks to a mix of logistical steps and state law. Workers verify signatures, separate ballots from envelopes, and if stray marks or other odd hand-filled ballots prompt an adjudication, that process is run by a jury of two people to determine a voter’s intent. The tasks stack up fast.”

To hear some Republicans, the big problem is California’s practice (along with 13 other states and the District of Columbia) of allowing ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if received later (up until June 9 in this case). Indeed, the RNC has sued to ban this procedure in a case that is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. But according to the Public Policy Institute of California, only about 5 percent of the ballots cast in 2024 were received after Election Day; this grace period simply expands the size of the python in the pig.

So why do Trump and other Republicans so often allege fraud in California without a shred of specific evidence? It’s simple, and simple-minded: Because the full count takes days and even weeks, it can change who’s ahead or behind over time. And because of a much-noted “blue shift” phenomenon in states with long periods for voting by mail, Republicans tend to do better in early returns and then lose ground later on. There’s no reason to assume anything sinister is going on; it’s mostly a matter of younger voters who skew Democratic often being the last to turn in their ballots, which are then the last counted. This year in California the “blue shift” was definitely accentuated by Democratic voters who held on to their mail ballots for strategic reasons because they feared the large and diffuse Democratic gubernatorial field might produce a GOP lockout (i.e., Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco finishing first and second and excluding Democrats from the general election).

Nobody should be surprised, then, at the relatively strong performances in early vote counting by Republican candidates like Hilton and Los Angeles mayoral aspirant Spencer Pratt or by the gradual erosion of their numbers as later-cast ballots are counted. It’s just logical.

But now, CNN reports, allegedly suspicious prosecutors are looking into this inexplicable fading away of the enormous GOP election night victory:

“The Justice Department sent one of its attorneys to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles Friday morning, the county’s elections office told CNN, after President Donald Trump claimed earlier this week the US Attorney’s office there was investigating the vote counting. …

“’The individual arrived this morning, was provided an overview of the public observation program, and participated in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations,’ the spokesperson, Mike Sanchez said in an email, noting that ballot processing in the county is open to public observation.”

There’s no mystery involved in the process, other than why these claims of voter fraud pop up every time Republicans lose an election in California, which is every time there’s an election. If wily Democratic election officials wanted to rob Steve Hilton and Spencer Pratt of a victory, surely they would steal votes from them on Primary Night instead of waiting around for prosecutors to show up to catch them in the act!

This sort of calumny has become regular for Republicans who somehow believe Election Night counts are sacrosanct; it was the foundation, in fact, of Trump’s fateful challenge to his defeat in 2020 after he “won” the election in early vote counting. So GOP voices will be uninhibited in alleging fraud, particularly if Hilton and Pratt fail to finish first and second and don’t make the general-election ballot (unlikely, but not impossible).

Is there something California (and other all-mail-ballot states) can do in the future to accelerate vote counting and put the lie to all the conspiracy theories? It could, of course, spend a lot more money on election-office staffing at the state and local effort to basically build a bigger python that the pig of late mail ballots cannot choke. Part of the problem now is that county personnel who are processing incoming mail ballots can’t be deployed to count the ones already received, which requires a “pause” in ballot counting the very day after the election. So campaign operatives and political junkies with their tongues lolling out for quick and definitive results are sitting on the sidelines frustrated as vote totals stay frozen awaiting “updates” from the counties and the state. To outsiders, it looks like election officials are taking hours and whole days off when it’s really anything but that. A lot more staff could help solve the problem and keep conspiracy theorists at bay.

California could also make it less of a priority to give last-minute voters a ton of options (putting ballots in the mail, placing them in drop boxes, or going to a voting center to have them scanned) and lots of time to “cure” inadvertent errors like stray marks on ballots. But “convenience voting” and measures to promote ballot security (allegedly a big concern of Republican critics) aren’t entirely compatible with a fast count.

What is very clear is that the president himself will be satisfied only with a system that guarantees that he and his party’s candidates never lose. Any victory by “Dumocrats” has to be the product of fraud or disinformation from the “radical left” media. Unfortunately, that means slow vote counts will be grist for the mill of his incessant innuendos and slurs. Jurisdictions controlled by Democrats should probably make speeding up these counts an urgent priority, lest MAGA folk convince themselves and others that voting itself is an unnecessary scam that should just be discarded.

Will Democrats take the Senate majority win November? That’s the big political question right now, and it makes sense to check in with one of the top analysts to see what he is thinking in his latest post, “The Races That Made the Senate Majority: A Three-Cycle Story” at The Center for Politics. As Kyle Kondik writes:

Because of the cyclical nature of the Senate, in which only a third or so of the body is contested every two years, it can be hard to get a handle on the races that truly “decided” the majority.

This is easier in the House, because all of the seats are on the ballot every two years, so one can just look at the closest races and determine how close (or not close) the minority party was from winning the majority. In 2024, Republicans won a 220-215 majority, and that included winning three races decided by about a point or less. Had those races gone the other way, Democrats would have won the majority. But Democrats actually did better in the closest races, winning four of the five races decided by less than 0.7 points. So it would not have taken much for Republicans to have won a bigger majority.

The Senate, ultimately, is similar: Had a few close-ish races gone differently over the last three election cycles, Democrats could conceivably hold the majority. However, Democrats have also been likelier to win the nailbiters than Republicans have, so one could also say that the GOP majority could be bigger than it is now.

This makes sense given the overall structure of the Senate. As we’ve discussed previously, 2024 represented a turning point in the Senate, as Republicans eliminated Democratic Senate representation from red states: Republicans now hold all 50 Senate seats in the 25 states Donald Trump won all three times he was on the ballot. Democrats hold 37 of the 38 in the 19 states that never voted for Trump: The lone exception is Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who has trailed leading opponent Graham Platner (D), although negative stories about the newcomer Platner mount. And Democrats hold 10 of the 12 seats in the six states that voted at least once for each party in the last three presidential elections (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin).

Map 1 shows the current Senate breakdown. The bottom line is that there are just more red states than blue states, giving the Senate map an overall GOP skew even as Democrats have done well in the true battlegrounds.

What follows is a look at the 100 Senate seats, categorized by how each voted in its most recent election, either in 2020, 2022, or 2024. Some of these seats were on the ballot more than once over the last three cycles: For instance, Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA) won special elections in the 2020 cycle and then regular elections in 2022, and both did better the second time than the first time (we used those more recent regular results in this analysis). If there was a runoff, as there was in both of Warnock’s victories, we used the runoff results.

More here.

The June 4 primary in Iowa showed that Donald Trump’s endorsement magic doesn’t always work, as I noted at New York:

Donald Trump has been a powerhouse in 2026 midterm primaries, purging alleged RINOs like Bill Cassidy in Louisiana and stubborn rebels like Thomas Massie in Kentucky. But the president’s late intervention in Tuesday’s Republican gubernatorial primary in Iowa didn’t work. Trump’s endorsed candidate was the long-time front-runner, U.S. representative Randy Feenstra. He managed to get over the 35 percent needed to avoid a nominating convention in Iowa. But unfortunately for Feenstra and the White House, his hard-core right-wing rival Zach Lahn won slightly more. Lahn had 37.8 percent of the vote to Feenstra’s 37 percent, with 99 percent reporting, per NBC News.

Lahn appealed to a very grumpy Iowa-primary electorate by running as an abrasive outsider hostile to elites in both parties, much as Trump did in 2016. Like a lot of conservative extremists running for state offices this year, Lahn wants to abolish property taxes (which would, of course, demolish local governments and public schools). He also shrewdly came out for banning foreign ownership of Iowa farmland. He’s hardly hostile to Trump, but ran as more MAGA than the official MAGA candidate (he was endorsed by the PAC MAHA Action, probably because he’s a serious anti-vaxxer).

Feenstra ran an overcautious campaign; he dodged debates and didn’t secure Trump’s backing until very late in the day. And who knows, there may have been some lingering right-wing resentment of him for giving racist congressman Steve King the heave-ho in a 2020 primary.

In any event, Lahn’s victory could be good news for Democratic gubernatorial nominee (and state auditor) Rob Sand. Aside from his extremist views, the new GOP nominee’s habit of hopping between residences and careers in both Iowa and Kansas could be an issue for proud Iowans. And in general, Iowa Democrats are feeling their oats this year after a dreadful stretch of election losses dating back to 2014. It’s notable that despite the red-hot GOP gubernatorial contest nearly as many Democrats as Republicans participated in the primary (notably lifting Josh Turek to a comfortable win over Zach Wahls for the U.S. Senate nomination).

Trump won Iowa by 13 percent in 2024, his third and largest victory in the state. But his tariff policies and inability to get a grip on living costs has battered his popularity in Iowa and other heartland locales. As Feenstra’s demise illustrates, Republicans aren’t off to a good start in the Hawkeye State heading toward the November midterms.

From “Rare rebuke for president as four House Republicans side with Democrats to pass war powers resolution. Vote sends resolution to the US Senate, where the chamber must promptly take up the measure under law – key US politics stories from Wednesday, 3 June at a glance” by Guardian Staff at The Guardian. “The US House of Representatives delivered a stunning rebuke to Donald Trump over his war on Iran on Wednesday, as representatives backed a move to force him to seek approval from Congress or withdraw US forces…The House voted 215 to 208 in favor of the war powers resolution, as four Republicans voted with Democrats. The dissident Republicans were Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Warren Davidson of Ohio and Tom Barrett of Michigan…Wednesday’s vote came nearly two weeks after House Republicans cancelled an earlier scheduled vote, on the grounds that they lacked the votes to defeat it…The vote sends the resolution to the Senate, where the chamber must promptly take up the measure under the war powers law. A handful of Senate Republican defectors joined Democrats last month to advance a similar resolution forcing Trump to seek congressional approval after four Republican senators rebelled and voted with the Democrats…The latest vote comes as efforts aimed at reaching a negotiated settlement to the three-month conflict have yet to bear fruit, despite repeated claims by Trump and his most senior officials that an agreement is almost negotiated, and that Iran is “desperate” to reach a deal.” More here.

In “Attitudes toward same-sex marriage and transgender issues are shifting, Gallup poll shows,” Geoff Mulvihill ands Amelia Thomson Deveaux write at apneas.com: “Acceptance of same-sex marriage and relationships in the U.S. has flattened after more than two decades of steadily increasing support, with an ongoing decline among Republicans, according to a new Gallup poll…About 65% of U.S. adults believe same-sex marriage should be legal, down slightly from 71% in 2022 and 2023…Most of the change is due to dropping acceptance among Republicans. In the new survey, which was conducted in May, only 37% of Republicans say same-sex marriage should be legally valid, while 35% say gay and lesbian relations are “morally acceptable.”…The views of Democrats and independents are largely stable in the findings released Wednesday, with most in both groups saying same-sex marriage should be legal and that gay or lesbian relations are moral…The widening partisan divide is also reflected in policy around LGBTQ+ issues across the U.S., particularly regarding transgender people, and a rising push in some states to ban same-sex marriage…The downtick in support for same-sex marriage, while slight, is still striking because of how dramatically American views on the issue have shifted over the past few decades…According to Gallup’s trend data, only 27% of U.S. adults supported legal same-sex marriage in 1996. Since then, support for same-sex marriage rose steadily until a few years ago, when it peaked with around 7 in 10 U.S. adults saying same-sex marriage should be legal…Opinion about the morality of same-sex relationships followed the same pattern. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults said same-sex relations were morally acceptable in 2001. That increased nearly 30 percentage points over the next two decades.” More here.

Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman report on “Rating Changes in Iowa Following Tuesday’s Primary” at The Center for Politics: “In Iowa, Rep. Randy Feenstra (R, IA-4), who got a late endorsement from Donald Trump, lost a gubernatorial primary to Zach Lahn, an anti-establishment newcomer…Regardless of who the GOP picked to run against state Auditor Rob Sand, the Democratic nominee for governor, we have been considering moving the race to Toss-up—and we are making that change today…We are also bumping both Iowa’s Senate race and the contest for the state’s 2nd District from Likely Republican to Leans Republican…With the Supreme Court allowing Alabama to use a 6-1 Republican map, mid-decade redistricting may be coming to a close, at least for 2026…In Vermont, popular Gov. Phil Scott (R) announced at the last minute that he’d seek a sixth term; his decision means that the GOP will almost certainly keep the state’s governor’s mansion for at least 2 more years…With virtually all votes reporting, Lahn leads Feenstra by a 37.8% to 37.0% margin. One early indicator that Feenstra was in trouble was that he was clearly weak at home (he is from the Sioux City area). In 2020, three counties that occupy the state’s northwestern corner—Lyon, Sioux, and Plymouth—collectively gave Feenstra close to three-quarters of the vote against King; yesterday, that area was a draw, as Feenstra won them by about 90 votes out of the 10,000 they cast…The Lahn campaign’s spending strategy, from these returns, appears clear: it focused on the two most populous markets, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids/Waterloo—while the latter was close, the former made up just under 40% of the statewide share and also gave Lahn just under 40% of its vote. Meanwhile, Feenstra tended to do better in the markets that were less centrally-located: he carried Davenport while Omaha represented his best substantially-sized market—curiously, while many of those Omaha-area counties are in his district, he has less of a personal history there than he does in the Sioux City area, where he seemed to underwhelm.” More here.

Political prognosticators should take a look at “Black and Latino voters face an affordability gap before the midterms,” in which Keon L. Gilbert, Gabriel R. Sanchez, and Rashawn Ray write at Brookings: Despite the Trump administration’s claims of a thriving economy, data show inflation, stagnant wages, and rising costs are hitting middle- and lower-income Americans—particularly Black and Latino communities—the hardest…Latino and Black voters who shifted toward Trump in 2024 over economic concerns are now among the most likely to reconsider their support ahead of the midterms…The party that can credibly promise to lower the cost of daily living will have the advantage this fall, and that race remains wide open…Affordability is a top issue for Americans and will be a key component in the 2026 midterms. Racial and ethnic minorities will be a crucial voting bloc in future elections, and given that they are some of the most vulnerable communities bearing the brunt of economic downturns, their opinions on the economy shouldn’t be overlooked. Lower-income Americans are widely understood to face tremendous challenges with daily-cost-of-living expenses, but recent reports point to middle-class Americans also struggling with affordability across every state…Below, Brookings scholars from the Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative (RPII) discuss the affordability crisis in America, and find a harsher reality than what President Trump has consistently described throughout his second term. From his State of the Union address claiming Americans are “thriving” to his mid-May assertion that he does not “think about Americans’ financial situation” when negotiating with Iran, we analyze the disconnect between the administration’s messaging and the lived experiences of Americans…Recent polling suggests that a majority of Americans (57%) believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, contradicting the Trump administration’s messaging of a “thriving nation.” Perhaps most telling, a net 76% of Americans describe current economic conditions as fair or poor…While President Trump inherited a strong economy,  many Americans believe there is a cost-of-living crisis and are uncertain about when or how conditions will improve. Many also believe the Trump administration has deepened the affordability crisis through rising prices and its geopolitical actions, contributing to inflation outpacing wages for the first time since May 2023 and reaching 3.8% this past April. Although no single government agency controls the economy, many Americans across the political spectrum believe government should help manage the costs of daily living—from health care, medications, and groceries, to child care, housing, and utilities, and gas. These rising costs are leading many households to fall behind on bills such as rent, mortgage, car payments, and utilities. Middle- and lower-income households—and Black and Hispanic households in particular—will continue to bear the greatest burden if wages remain stagnant and economic conditions don’t improve.” More here.

At Semafor, Nicholas Wu reports that “Emanuel dings Democrats for missing corruption messaging ‘gem,’” and writes:

For Rahm Emanuel, it’s more than the economy, stupid.

The likely 2028 presidential candidate, who served as House Democratic campaigns chief during the party’s successful 2006 midterms, told Semafor that Democrats should sharpen their arguments about President Donald Trump’s self-dealing while in office — by hitching them to affordability-focused messaging.

“This is a gem sitting there. I think the Democrats … have been episodic in touching it, rather than front and center,” Emanuel said. “Corruption as part of the affordability narrative is more chess, where affordability alone is more checkers.”

Many Democratic candidates have homed in on inflation and affordability-focused messaging this cycle, especially after some in the party chalked up their 2024 losses to voters punishing them for the post-pandemic spike in inflation.

With polling generally showing cost-of-living issues rank among voters’ top concerns, Democrats are confident they can turn this fall’s midterm elections into a referendum on Trump and Republicans’ handling of the economy.

Top Hill Democrats contend that they’re already pairing the arguments together. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has targeted Trump’s $1.8 billion fund of taxpayer money for people allegedly victimized by the government and has singled out purple-district Republicans like Reps. Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania and Mike Lawler of New York for alleged ethical issues.

“Vulnerable Republicans have destroyed the economy and raised costs on almost everyone, all while self-dealing and lining their own pockets,” said DCCC spokesperson Viet Shelton. “Republicans will lose the House majority, because the DCCC and House Democrats are exposing their shameless corruption and failure to deliver on their central campaign promise to lower the high cost of living.”

More here.

In “James Talarico has an obligation to win. Ken Paxton is a terrible candidate, but don’t take anything for granted,” Matthew Yglesias writes at slowboring.com: “Ken Paxton defeated incumbent John Cornyn last week to become the G.O.P. nominee for a Texas U.S. Senate seat…This was one of those races where I wasn’t sure which outcome I was hoping for. Operatives at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Senate Majority PAC could hardly contain their enthusiasm for the Paxton win since he is clearly the weaker candidate…On the other hand, the two candidates are really not the same on the merits…Cornyn is a conservative Republican. I don’t agree with him on public policy issues and I would not vote for him. But Texas is a conservative state, and it is what it is. Paxton, by contrast, is an election denier who tried to help Donald Trump stay in office after he lost in 2020. Beyond that, Paxton is an actual criminal. He simultaneously claimed three different homes as a primary residence on mortgage documents and, as we’ll see below, that’s not even the main financial scandal that got him in trouble. He’s the kind of Bible thumper who ended up in a messy divorce after it came out that he was cheating on his wife…But the real scandal there wasn’t the affair so much as the fact that Paxton got his affair partner a job working for a guy named Nate Paul so that she could move to Austin. Paul and Paxton also jointly had a secret Uber account that was used for Paxton’s assignations. ” More here.

Dustin Guastella’s “If Democrats are to win Texas, James Talarico must win blue-collar voters” at The Guardian puts the big Texas race in perspective. As Guastella writes, “Texas could become the hottest battleground state in the country, if the results of both Republican and Democratic primaries are anything to go by…Democrat James Talarico, a progressive Presbyterian seminarian, will face off against Trump’s favored candidate, the scandal-plagued attorney general, Ken Paxton. The matchup has liberals salivating. Paxton, dogged by corruption charges, impeachment hearings and an affair that left his marriage in tatters, is considered by some in his own party as “the worst possible top-of-the-ticket” candidate. Meanwhile, Talarico, a fresh-faced, clean-cut millennial, who quotes scripture to justify his progressive beliefs, seems like the perfect foil, at least according to Democratic party leaders…No wonder, then, that Talarico pulled in a massive fundraising haul immediately after Paxton won his party’s nomination. This combined with his already impressive war-chest of about $27m is a good indication that Democratic donors are betting big on Talarico to turn Texas blue. But the reality is that blue-collar voters, not blue-blooded donors, will decide the outcome of the race. And Talarico has a lot of work to do to win over working-class Texans…It’s true that a bevy of early polls show Talarico slightly ahead. But if you dig into the results you’ll notice that these surveys skew toward highly engaged and highly educated voters. Consider a recent poll from Public Policy Polling that has Talarico leading Paxton by seven points; only 22% of voters sampled have less than a college education. Or a recent University of Texas poll which has Talarico up eight points; only 27% of respondents lack a degree. Polls like these could be giving Democrats a false sense of confidence by overrepresenting college-educated voters who increasingly skew liberal.” More here.

Marc Caputo reports at Axios that the “Trump admin plans to drop “weaponization” fund“: “The Trump administration plans to drop its controversial $1.8 billion “weaponization” fund the president sought to compensate alleged victims of prosecutorial conduct under his predecessor, two senior administration officials told Axios…”It’s dead for now,” one of the sources said…Why it matters: Bashed as a political slush fund that could be tapped by those convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Trump’s proposal has drawn bipartisan pushback in the GOP-led House and Senate…Zoom in: The plan for the fund came about as part of a settlement between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service…Trump and his business had sued the IRS for $10 billion over the leak of his 2019 and 2020 tax returns by a former contractor…Last month, they reached a settlement in which Trump dropped the lawsuit in exchange for a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for government abuse claims for his administration to use with virtually no oversight…The settlement also included broad immunity for Trump from IRS audits…The plan was widely criticized on Capitol Hill, drawing backlash even from some Republicans loyal to the president. House Speaker Mike Johnson planned to raise the issue of the fund in a White House meeting with Trump, two sources said…Driving the news: The White House’s discussions about dropping the fund came after two federal judges weighed in against the fund on Friday…U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia halted the disbursement of money from it…U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in the Southern District of Florida announcedshe would launch an inquiry…Williams was the judge in charge of the original lawsuit Trump and the Trump Organization brought against the IRS for the unauthorized disclosure of tax information.” More here.

In “How can Dems win the White House in 2028? This think tank says move to the middle. Forget Mamdani, Bernie and AOC. A recent conference in Nevada embraced the controversial hypothesis that centrism — and not progressivism — will win the day,” Kate Reynolds and Isabella Aldrete report on the centrist confab at The Nevada Independent, and write: “The presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) got a jolt of energy in 2020 from its early win in Nevada’s Democratic presidential caucus…The caucus system was phased out the following year, replaced with the primary system used by most states. That means 2028 will be the Democrats’ first competitive presidential primary in Nevada since the 1980s, when caucuses were introduced, besides an easy primary win in 2024 for former President Joe Biden… But a group of moderate Democratic strategists who hope to retake the White House in 2028 say Sanders’ win was a one-off and that voters in swingy Nevada want pragmatism, not progressivism…That was one of the key themes at a daylong event hosted earlier this month in Las Vegas by the moderate Democratic think tank Third Way. The group was in Nevada urging Democrats to shed unpopular policies on cultural issues and focus on economic woes as the party seeks to reconnect with working-class voters…”One of the reasons we wanted to do this in Vegas was, you’re in a whole new world now. This is a completely different ball game,” said Matt Bennett, Third Way’s executive vice president of public affairs, in an interview with The Nevada Independent…Third Way is speaking to voters, strategists and candidates in key swing states as it seeks to empower the centrist wing of the Democratic Party. Formed in 2005, many of the group’s leaders are alums of the administrations of former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both Democrats.” More here.

From “77 percent say Trump policies increased cost of living: Survey” by Sarah Davis at The Hill:

A majority of Americans blame President Trump for heightened consumer costs, according to new polling.

A new CNN survey released on Tuesday found that 77 percent of U.S. adults believe the president’s policies have increased the cost of living in their communities. Eight percent said his administration has decreased costs, while 16 percent believe these policies have had “no effect.”

When asked specifically about which policies have had a negative impact on their financial situations, 75 percent selected the Iran war, 65 percent said Trump’s tariffs, 46 percent said artificial intelligence (AI) technology and 41 percent said changes to tax laws.

Inflation increased to 3.8 percent in April, the Labor Department said in a Tuesday report. The 0.6 percent spike in consumer prices from March to April was driven primarily by rising energy costs amid the Iran war.

Affordability is expected to play a central role in the midterm elections, with Democrats looking to take back control of the House by running on economic platforms.

However, 57 percent of people in the CNN survey indicated there were political issues that mattered “at least as much as the economy” for the midterms. Americans were split on how this upcoming election could impact their pocketbooks, with 49 percent saying their financial situation would likely be unchanged by the results and 50 percent saying it would have a “big effect.”

Trump’s war with Iran has placed a strain on the global energy markets, and U.S. consumers have felt the pinch at the gas pump. The average price of standard gas was just above $4.50 per gallon on Wednesday, up from around $3.16 a year ago, according to AAA.

These increased fuel prices have particularly impacted low-income families, according to a New York Federal Reserve analysis published last week. The report found that households earning less than $40,000 a year increased their spending the least out of all income bracket groups.

More here.

When California’s nonpartisan top-two primary concludes on June 2, there will be a lot of national media interest in how well reality star Spencer Pratt does in his over-the-top challenge to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. At New York, I explain why Pratt’s candidacy isn’t that serious:

In its initial phases, the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral contest was as low-key (bordering on boring) as the parallel California gubernatorial race. Mayor Karen Bass has had persistently low job-approval numbers, dating back to her shaky handling of the Palisades Fire early last year. But several potential big-dog rivals (including her wealthy 2022 opponent, mall developer Rick Caruso) gave the race a pass. It seemed L.A. would give the incumbent a second term, as it’s done many times in the past.

But then two significant challenges to Bass emerged. In January, exactly one year after his Pacific Palisades home burned down, reality TV star Spencer Pratt announced a mayoral run during a “They Let Us Burn” rally, in which protesters expressed frustration at the slow pace of rebuilding in the afflicted area. A month later, L.A. councilmember Nithya Raman, a progressive ally of the mayor’s, surprised observers by jumping into the race.

Now, with voting due to conclude on June 2 (all registered voters have been sent mail ballots, but some may elect to turn them in at drop boxes or Election Day polling centers), polls have increasingly confirmed that this is a three-way race, with two tickets to the November election up for grabs. The latest, from UC Berkeley–L.A. Times, shows Bass with 26 percent, Raman with 25 percent, and Pratt with 22 percent among likely voters. That’s consistent with earlier polls showing the incumbent treading water and her two opponents — one running to her left, one to her right — gradually gaining strength.

It’s Pratt whose campaign appears to have gone viral nationally as well as locally. A notorious heel on the 2000s reality show The Hills with a big social-media following, Pratt embodied Palisades Fire victimhood (he is still more or less living in an Airstream trailer on his burned-out lot). But his campaign has quickly morphed into a populist-outsider attack on the city’s problems and their mismanagement by the powers that be. He’s raised a surprising amount of money, and his over-the-top ads are a constant topic of discussion. His most famous ad deployed AI to depict himself as Batman and Bass as the Joker, surrounded by various famous Democrats.

The ad shows Pratt’s appeal as a bomb thrower in a city suffering from chronic problems and poor morale, but also his limitations. It’s a very MAGA-coded message that focuses as much on mocking Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris (both of whom racked up huge vote margins in Los Angeles in recent elections) as in demonizing Karen Bass. Since Pratt is a Republican and has received an enthusiastic shout-out from President Trump (a profoundly unpopular person in Los Angeles), it’s likely his rise in the polls represents a consolidation of the small but very real conservative minority in the city (Trump himself won 26 percent of the vote there in 2024). So there’s likely a pretty firm ceiling on Pratt’s vote that’s well south of a majority.

Meanwhile, Nithya Raman is seeking to undermine progressive support for the incumbent. Her ethnicity (she was born in India and was the first South Asian American member of the Los Angeles City Council) and past backing from the Democratic Socialists of America has led to some comparisons with Zohran Mamdani. She’s tried to moderate her message during the current contest and could benefit from concerns among Democrats generally about how well Bass has handled her reelection campaign. But she has to worry about a rival to her own left in tenant-rights advocate Rae Chen Huang, who had 9 percent in the UC Berkeley–LAT poll.

The same poll included general-election trial heats that showed Bass leading Pratt by 47 percent to his 29 percent, but Raman leading Bass by 32 percent to 28 percent (it’s a less likely scenario, but Raman leads Pratt by 45 percent to 28 percent). Both Bass and Pratt have personal unfavorability ratings of 57 percent in this poll, showing that Pratt’s abrasive ads and attention-grabbing campaign have probably offended as many voters as they have attracted.

The irony, then, is that Spencer Pratt’s candidacy may be the best thing that could have happened to Karen Bass. If he edges out Raman for a general-election spot, and even if he thrills conservatives everywhere by running first, he’s almost certainly toast against a Democrat in a general election (much like Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton). A Bass-versus-Raman general-election contest would, for obvious reasons, be quite different in tone and the outcome far less clear. But there’s no question backers of the incumbent may privately cheer if it’s the former reality star posing in front of his trailer on primary night boasting of a ticket to November.

Read Anthony Flaccovento’s “Working People Everywhere Need A Rural New Deal” at Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. Here’s a teaser:

A Rural New Deal is urgently needed to help revitalize small towns and rural communities. That should be good news enough. But the added good news is that the policies and actions contained in the Rural New Deal will help working people in cities and suburbs as well. We’ll explore the particulars in a moment, but first some important background.

For most of the past five decades, small towns and rural communities have witnessed a steady erosion of their economies, along with a sharp increase in health problems, addiction, housing shortages, and the loss of population, including many young people looking for opportunities elsewhere. This didn’t just happen. It’s been a bipartisan, four-decade long betrayal of working folks, enabled by investor-driven trade deals like NAFTA, trickle-down tax and economic policies, and the near-abandonment of antitrust enforcement. Taken together, these policies—along with disinvestment in rural communities and one-time factory towns—have concentrated wealth and pulled the rug out from under workers, farmers, community banks, and small businesses. Recent trends, like the buying up of housing stock, land, and local physicians’ practices by private equity giants, is only accelerating the extraction and transfer of wealth from those who actually produce it to those who make money from trading, downsizing, or even eliminating the businesses.

The need for investment in infrastructure as well as local leadership and capacity is particularly critical to create good jobs and strong businesses in rural and working-class communities. While some characterize rural communities and red states as the primary beneficiaries of federal dollars, this is only partly true and overlooks key investment gaps in these places. Rural communities tend to receive more net federal dollars for two reasons: In general, they have more low-income people and more older people than cities and suburbs. As a result, higher per capita levels of federal money, in the form of Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicare, and Social Security flow to these regions. More disability funds, whether Black Lung or Social Security Disability payments, are also transferred to people in these communities, but that’s in large part because the jobs available skew toward the physically demanding and, too often, the dangerous and debilitating.

Where former factory towns and rural communities lack substantial and sustained investment is in the things that help them build long-term prosperity and higher levels of self-sufficiency: value-adding infrastructure (for example for food, fisheries, forest, and fiber enterprises), broadband, workforce development that meets emerging demands, and individual and organizational capacity to secure investment and drive bottom up, locally based solutions to their needs and problems. Studies from the Kellogg Foundation, USDA, and others document the dramatically lower levels of per capita investment of this sort in rural America as compared with urban investments.

More here.

Putting Paxton’s primary run-off victory in perspective, he got less than 886 thousand votes, compared to more than a million votes that Jame Talarico got in his Democratic primary. Adam Wren and Irie Sentner write in “James Talarico’s theory of victory in Texas” that “Recent internal polling from a pro-Talarico PAC shows the Democrat has a 7-point lead against Paxton…But Talarico faces a Texas-sized challenge to finally deliver on Democrats’ long-held fantasy of flipping the state, just two years after Trump won it by 14 points…Talarico said Tuesday night that to win in November, he must convert supporters of Sen. John Cornyn — a conservative by almost any metric, except Trump’s. After Cornyn conceded, Talarico thanked the four-term incumbentfor his service and told his supporters “you have a place in our campaign.”…“I have a legislative record that I think has a lot to offer supporters of Senator Cornyn. Ken Paxton has a criminal record. I have a legislative record,” Talarico told POLITICO (Paxton struck a deal in 2024 where he paid restitution and securities fraud felony charges were dropped). He emphasized his history reaching across the aisle “to cut property taxes and raise teacher pay and lower the cost of housing and child care and prescription drugs,” and touted his willingness to break with Democrats on issues including energy and the border that are important in Texas.” More here.

“A combination of factors including bad weather, tariffs and a dwindling cattle herd are already pushing up grocery prices at an above-average pace,” Mark Niquette and Lauren Rosenthal write in “Americans Are About to Pay Even More at the Grocery Store” at Bloomberg, via Yahoo Finance. “In April, they rose by the most in nearly four years, and economists say the impact of the Iran war and a potential El Niño weather pattern will only add to pressures into 2027…The hit to US household finances from higher grocery bills is set to intensify just ahead of the November midterm elections, amplifying affordability as a defining issue. And to a greater extent than the surge in gas prices, the slower-moving food shock will be difficult to reverse quickly because the size of autumn harvests is determined by planting decisions made in the spring…“It’s going to be a challenging year,” said Ricky Volpe, an agribusiness professor at California Polytechnic State University who previously worked at the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. “Food is going to become less affordable, and consumers should be prepared for it.”…The latest USDA food price outlook, published Friday, projected a 3.2% advance in grocery prices this year, while Volpe said he expects inflation more on the order of 4% to 4.5%…Then there’s the war, which has brought a massive shock to global fertilizer markets due to the Middle East’s role as a major supplier of inputs…Prices of fertilizer are up 20% since the war began, according to a Green Markets index for North America. That will likely mean higher prices come harvest time, and if farmers decide to scale back applications, that would also leave crops less able to withstand heat, drought or flooding…At the same time, household debt is rising, the personal saving rate is falling, and real average hourly earnings fell in the 12 months through April for the first time in three years. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York published data Wednesday indicating a “meaningful” increase in measures of food insecurity between October 2025 and February 2026.” More here.

Forward Blue has an e-bast message entitled “The Flippable Five,” in which they write “there are FIVE Republican-held seats where Democrats can win. Right now, with the right resources, the right organizing, and enough people coming together to fuel the fight, Democrats will WIN…Here’s the plan:

🔴 FLIP North Carolina: Roy Cooper is one of the most popular Democrats in the South. He built a coalition that wins in a state Republicans have taken for granted for a decade. This race is winnable.

🔴 FLIP Maine: Graham Platner is running hard in a state where Democrats have been closing the gap. Independent voters are reachable here. We just have to show up.

🔴 FLIP Ohio: Sherrod Brown won Ohio three times as a Democrat. He knows how to talk to working-class voters, union households, and small towns the party has written off. Republicans know this race scares them.

🔴 FLIP Alaska: Mary Peltola has already proved the skeptics wrong once. She’s a proven winner in a state that shouldn’t be competitive. It is. She’s proof.

🔴 FLIP Texas: James Talarico is running hard, raising real money, and building the kind of ground game that turns “longshot” into “wait, did we just flip Texas?”

Republican super PACs already know these races are prime targets for us. They are not waiting. Right now, dark money groups are pulling together tens of millions of dollars to bury every single one of these candidates before Election Day. The infrastructure is already being built to poison these races before Democrats have a chance to define them…We are not going to let that happen without a fight…But here’s the honest truth: spring and summer are when these races are won or lost. June ad buys cost half what they cost in October, registration drives launched now reach the voters who actually decide close elections, and organizers hired this summer have six months to build the relationships that turn out the people who only vote when someone they trust asks them to…If we wait until fall, we are handing Republicans a six-month head start. That is not a gap we can close with October money. Here is their contributions page.

In “Trump Blurts Out Plot to Rig Midterms after Humiliating Fox Poll Hits,” Greg Sargent writes at The New Republic: “Donald Trump just got hit with an absolutely crushing poll from Fox News. Disapproval of his handling of the economy is at an all-time high. His ratings on inflation are staggeringly awful. Historically friendly voter groups—whites, rural Americans, the working class—are all turning away from him in surprising numbers. It’s no accident that on Thursday, Trump let out a rambling diatribe, demanding Republicans pass his onerous voter suppression legislation. Critically, Trump said straight out that if they do, Democrats will “never be elected again.” Trump admittedthat the whole point of his bill is to ensure one-party rule in perpetuity, in the GOP’s favor—exactly why he wants it passed before the midterms. We talked to MS NOW opinion editor James Downie, author of a piece on Trump’s deepening unpopularity. We discuss why Trump is losing his base and the new voters he won in 2024, what opportunities that offers Democrats, whether the bottom is really falling out for good, and why Trump can’t cheat his way out this time. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.”