Reminder that all the "pardons" granted to Jan6ers whose convictions were still pending were auto-pen pardons.

Morning Digest: The Downballot rings in its first anniversary today! We're celebrating with a special 25% off sale for our readers

Somehow, we're already celebrating The Downballot's first anniversary today! It's been *quite* the year, and our fiercely loyal readers have made it all possible.

We're also marking the occasion with a special 25% off sale! If you haven't upgraded yet, check out all the perks you'll unlock →→

The media lost its MIND when Obama tried to make some small changes to the press pool system. Now Trump is quite openly rendering it into a North Korea-esque state-media system and ... has a single journalist or outlet stood up to protest?

Liberals keep grip on Wisconsin Supreme Court despite Musk onslaught Susan Crawford's win ensures a 4-3 majority for at least three years

Dane County Judge Susan Crawford has defeated former state Attorney General Brad Schimel in Tuesday's pivotal election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, ensuring that liberals will retain the majority they first won two years ago.

Democrats flip deep-red Pennsylvania district in special election shocker No Democrat had ever won this ancestrally Republican seat, but it's now the second Democratic pickup of the year.

HOW IT HAPPENED: James Andrew Malone, the mayor of a town of 5,000, ran on education, abortion rights, and opposing Elon Musk—in a district that had *never* voted Democratic.

Until tonight.

Our complete write-through of his astonishing special election win in Lancaster County →

This is especially true because it flies in the face of the roughly 39 million fundraising texts and emails I've received since 1/20.

Every one tells me they need my money to "fight Trump."

First fucking thing they teach you as a law student in Contracts is that a contract made under duress is not valid, and this here fancy-ass law firm is like, “Sign us up!”

These are the members of the Senate Democratic caucus who just voted to pass the GOP's Trump-backed budget bill, along with the year that they next go before voters—including primary voters.

If it’s illegal, then they weren’t fired.

(To be clear: I do not take issue with the QT at all, I’m grateful that she shared this news. But workers affected by these illegal actions should go to court, stat.)

The Army Corps did not respond to questions about whether it will keep all its California reservoirs at flood control capacity going into the future. If so, that could have a major impact on how much is available for irrigation. “A decision to take summer water from local farmers and dump it out of these reservoirs shows a complete lack of understanding of how the system works and sets a very dangerous precedent,” said Dan Vink, a longtime Tulare County water manager and principal partner at Six-33 Solutions, a water and natural resource firm in Visalia. “This decision was clearly made by someone with no understanding of the system or the impacts that come from knee-jerk political actions.”

They are just pouring water out of a reservoir for no goddamn reason other than Trump thinks that there's a magic valve that was stopping California from fighting wildfires.

In writing about Trump in the first term I kept coming back to the idea of trying to talk a drunk driver out of the keys. It's maybe not the best metaphor, although it's not wrong. Anyway he is most definitely not just driving but doing 75 in a 35 now. Feels like there are fewer options now.

The throughline that I keep returning to is:

-they collectively decided that Musk’s takeover of Twitter went *great*.

-so they’ve taking that same approach to the entire federal bureaucracy.

-instead of server crashes and error messages, medicaid breaks and a plane full of kids crashes.

RFK Jr even getting a hearing for this job is failed state shit

Trump deported 200 Colombians. None were criminals, Colombian officials say. Among the deportees who arrived back home Tuesday in Colombia were two pregnant women and more than 20 children.

Gosh I’m stunned.

Brutal exchange between RFK Jr. and Sen. Bennet:

Bennet: Did you say Lyme disease is a highly likely militarily engineered bioweapon?

Kennedy: I probably did say that.

Why, why, oh holy fuck WHY does the American MAGA right insist on using the least masculine dudes on earth to be their voices for masculinity?

For fucks sake, Matt Walsh could get his ass kicked by a middle schooler.

Seems like some mistakes were made along the path that brought us here, I'm saying.

PA's Austin Davis on electing more LG's like him Listen now | And Virginia Democrats advance amendments to protect abortion, marriage, and voting rights

Our guest this week on The Downballot podcast is PA Lt. Gov. Austin Davis (@lgaustindavis.bsky.social), who's also the new chair of the @demlgs.org. We dive deep into the importance of the LG job and Davis' efforts to elect more Democrats like him. Listen here!

The sanewashing and corruption washing and Nazi washing define why legacy media will not survive this era.

What an adorbs and funny way for Trump to say that Stephen Miller is a white supremacist.

That he has empowered.

Huh. Odd, that.

Burning down the pentagon is a weird goal for the guy who runs the pentagon

Sober is the new Woke

It’s funny Zuck says “I started building social media to give people a voice” when in fact, he started building social media to publicly rate the hotness of undergrads.

There are still some votes to be counted, but right now, NoVA Dems are running slightly ahead of Harris while a Republican in a safe red seat is running well behind Trump in tonight's special elections docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

When speech online is just endless cacophony and only the oligarchs have agency and opinions that matter to affect the political process, the freedom of speech these so called beneficent overlords granted us is shown for what it is, a fool's freedom.

Meta is not "bending the knee." They're seizing an opportunity.

ME: oh, cool, so you’ll stop classifying any LGBTQ content as ‘sexual’ and throttling it.
FB: oh not those restrictions.
ME: what restrictions, then?
FB: oh, you know the ones.

Streaming in 2010: You can watch an entire catalog of amazing movies and TV shows for a reasonable monthly fee

Streaming in 2025: our library is Batman movies and 28 seasons of a Tim Allen sitcom, it costs $159/month. We just destroyed the last piece of evidence that Mister Rogers ever existed

Column: California is growing again. Hurrah! Or ho-hum? The state's recent population growth comes with caveats, but hopefully will put an end to the premature death notices and hyperbolic takeaways. At the least, it should end the groundless talk of mass ...

NEW: California is growing again. Reason to cheer, or yawn?
Talk of a mass “exodus” was always overblown, rooted in partisan animus.
Will the population bump be taken as validation of the California Way?
Nah.
But at least it might quiet the haters for a little bit.

www.latimes.com/politics/sto...

Scott Van Pelt has some thoughts on Russell Wilson's post-game comments 👀