Am sure Republicans will claim Spencer Pratt was fraudulently excluded from the general election in the L.A. mayor's race. But how will they explain Steve Hilton beating Tom Steyer for a general election spot (as appears likely) in the gubernatorial race? Did Democrats forget to steal that one?

Conspiracy theorists are howling as Spencer Pratt's lead over Nithya Raman in Los Angeles melts. Who do they suppose is rigging the vote? Incumbent mayor Karen Bass? That's insane: her hold on the office will be in serious peril if Raman makes the general election.

I mean, seriously: why are we supposed to think the first votes counted are authentic, and all the rest are suspect? If I'm a Radical Left Vote Fraud expert, I'd want to make sure Steve Hilton never had a lead and Spencer Pratt finished fourth. nymag.com/intelligence...

NYM updated and reposted my explainer on California vote-counting and "fraud" because the conspiracy theories are running wild. It's so stupid. If California Democrats were able to just steal votes from Hilton and Pratt they would have begun on primary night, right? nymag.com/intelligence...

So Department of War will no longer recognize Unitarian-Universalists as faith community with chaplaincy privileges. UUs can claim 4 U.S. presidents, which is four more than the dominionist cult to which Pete Hegseth belongs. www.military.com/dod-official...

The root problem with GOP claims that changes in result patterns means ballot-box stuffing is the belief that the first votes cast and counted are somehow more authentic or reliable than those cast and counted later. A vote's a vote. nymag.com/intelligence...

Feel like I've done this a dozen times or more, but here's a response to Trump's incessant and unsupported conspiracy theories about vote counts in states like California with extended mail voting periods that guarantee shifts in results. nymag.com/intelligence...

I thought I understood the vote-counting process in California, and have defended the slow count in the past. But I somehow didn't realize that in much of the state they stop counting for a whole day on the Wednesday following the election. Here I was waking up at 5:00 AM for nothing.

Think California politics is strange now? In 1976 elections 50 years ago, celebrity incumbent senator John Tunney struggled in a primary against Chicago 7 defendant and Jane Fonda spouse Tom Hayden then lost general election to semanticist S.I. Hayakawa, a weirdo of the highest order.

Like an awful lot of California voters, finally filled out my ballot with grim determination yesterday and dropped it off. Long time since I've cast a vote with any great enthusiasm in a California election.

Folks are flipping out about Spencer Pratt's meteoric mayoral candidacy in Los Angeles. But getting real about it, his pitch is far too MAGA-coded to work in a place like L.A. If he makes the general election, he'll just ensure Karen Bass's reelection. nymag.com/intelligence...

Might as well address the superstitious fear of Texas Democrats that Talarico is Beto 2.0. What's hard to assess is the GOP effort to make this a religious referendum on liberal Christianity, on behalf of a Republican who is devilish according to any theology. nymag.com/intelligence...

Nobody quite expected a Paxton landslide. And the big night for Texas extremism was capped off by a narrow Bo French win over Railroad Commissioner "Jihadi Jim" Wright. Now Texas' sacred oil and gas industry can be safe from Sharia Law. nymag.com/intelligence...

The race to the fringe in the Texas GOP is a sight to behold: nymag.com/intelligence...

Trump used to have a sort of animal cunning about public opinion that made him formidable and saved his party from its most unpopular impulses. That seems to be fading as he approaches his 80th birthday. nymag.com/intelligence...

Cannot understand why Ken Martin chose to release this hamburger job full of staff notes undermining everything it says. nymag.com/intelligence...

The NAACP went right for the heart--and the wallet--of the white conservative South in its counter-offensive to the partisan gerrymandering frenzy. nymag.com/intelligence...

Important sign from yesterday: participation in Georgia's Dem primary more than a hundred thousand votes higher than in GOP primary, even though nearly all the fireworks were on the GOP side. Now Republicans have two vicious and expensive runoffs while Dems are set. nymag.com/intelligence...

Going to be fun watching the people who paid for all those Cornyn ads denouncing Paxton as a corrupt serial adulterer ponying up to rehabilitate him for the general election. nymag.com/intelligence...

I'm not remotely a fan of John Cornyn, but there was something almost sadistic about Trump waiting until the very last minute to blow up his reelection campaign. nymag.com/intelligence...

Trump spending a lot of political (and for that matter, financial) capital enforcing an iron grip on the GOP that might be better spent on the general election. nymag.com/intelligence...

OK, Lee Drutman, I'm a convert now. Proportional representation won't be easy to enact, but nor will any of the other "fixes" for gerrymandering and the "two-party doom loop." nymag.com/intelligence...

In the long list of present and future calamities attributable to the Callais decision, one of the worst is that it ensures the nasty political discourse of the Trump Era will continue even as its master moves on. nymag.com/intelligence...

A little history about California's top two primary, and the other jungle primary models, as political observers freak out about it and talk resumes of getting rid of it in 2028. nymag.com/intelligence...

GOP is going to pay a high price for a long time for its neo-Jim Crow self-indulgence in the South right now: nymag.com/intelligence...

Kinda comical: Republicans created this itty-bitty "skinny" reconciliation bill to protect ICE money from every crazy right-wing demand that could have complicated it, but then had to add in Trump's biggest vanity project. Who's going to tell POTUS it's a problem, though? nymag.com/intelligence...

My original headline idea for this post was "Ten Days That Shook the Midterms." Kinda sums up the big picture here: nymag.com/intelligence...

Probably like a lot of you, I've always marveled at people who were "too busy to do their jobs." That's Donald Trump for sure right now. He's got so much on his plate, but nothing's on the menu to deal with the affordability concerns that are killing him politically. nymag.com/intelligence...

Bad as it was, the Big Beautiful Bill had some snacks for swing voters alongside the banquet for rich folks and MAGA ultras. Reconciliation 2.0 is all for the base, and 3.0 will be worse. nymag.com/intelligence...

Originally pitched this post under the headline of "White Out," but my editors aren't college football fans and didn't get it. What's happening in the South right now isn't funny, though. Majority-Black districts that have been in place since the 1970s being dismantled. nymag.com/intelligence...

An early, tentative look at what Democrats could do to reverse or mitigate the damage the Supreme Court inflicted on voting rights, assuming they gain their own trifecta in 2028. nymag.com/intelligence...

Who won the shutdown? Hard to say. Dems got to blast ICE and prove they could stay united while allegedly "fighting Trump." Republicans got to reject guardrails on ICE and will soon stuff it full of even more money. Ending this without a recorded vote seems appropriate. nymag.com/intelligence...

Quite the anticlimax: nymag.com/intelligence...

As the months passed with no decision on Callais, a lot of us figured that might at least mean little or no impact on the midterms. Now that the horrible decision has dropped, MAGA types are frantic to implement it right away to save Trump's failed gerrymandering campaign. nymag.com/intelligence...

At NYM we're live-blogging Callais and the fallout. Plenty of good stuff on a very bad day. nymag.com/intelligence...

We knew this was coming. Doesn't make it any easier to accept. nymag.com/intelligence...

For the record, I oppose making excuses for the WHCD shooter, and I continue to deplore political violence unconditionally. Beyond that, Trump's alleged "unity" moment predictably gave way almost immediately to the usual partisan weaponization. nymag.com/intelligence...

Bottom line for many progressives is that Steyer is an ideologically acceptable candidate whose money makes him the best bet to eliminate the threat of a Republican lock-out. nymag.com/intelligence...

Non-Californians may not appreciate Steyer's promise to hold a special legislative session to revive the "split-roll" property tax proposal that was narrowly defeated in 2020. It would remove commercial property from Prop 13 caps on rates. Huge deal revenue-wise. nymag.com/intelligence...

Any way you look at it, Tom Steyer's wealth is becoming a central issue in California's gubernatorial campaign. nymag.com/intelligence...

Once again, the question is whether Trump is too distracted, or too disinterested, or even too devious, to do some serious ass-chewing of House Freedom Caucus types who keep blowing up leadership plans on ICE and DHS. nymag.com/intelligence...

Talk of Republicans making 2026 a "choice, not a referendum" election sure sign they don't feel like Trump has a record they can win on. Grasping at straws, really. nymag.com/intelligence...

People seem to be getting excited about Xavier Becerra's recent surge in the California governor's race. But unless his surge continues, or someone else emerges as red-hot, the threat of a Republican lock-out isn't going away. nymag.com/intelligence...

With Lori Chavez-DeRemer's resignation under duress, the number of women in Trump's Cabinet has now dropped from 5 to 2. That's like a Republican Cabinet of the 1980s, which should please the misogynist wing of the MAGA Movement. nymag.com/intelligence...

Trump exaggerating the length of the Vietnam War may seem relatively minor compared to thousands of his other falsehoods, but it annoyed me nonetheless: nymag.com/intelligence...

Republicans may have finally tired of spending a fortune to save Cornyn with the likelihood that they'll then have to spend a fortune to save Paxton. Will Trump deliver the coup de grace to the incumbent? nymag.com/intelligence...

A sort of strategic guide to CA Democrats' options in a suddenly wild and messy gubernatorial primary: nymag.com/intelligence...

Headline of this piece says it all: nymag.com/intelligence...

So putting aside the individual issues involved, if Trump can't or won't crush opposition to the Thune effort to end the DHS shutdown and the adjacent focus on ICE outrages, there's little hope for the GOP getting its act together for the midterms. nymag.com/intelligence...

I am not a fan of libertarians like Chase Oliver (you could look it up), but this tweet made my day: x.com/ChaseForLibe...