Headed into this week, Pennsylvania’s state House was evenly divided, with each major party holding 101 seats. With this in mind, a special election just outside of Pittsburgh drew quite a bit of attention, since it would tip the scales.
The result wasn’t especially close: Democrat Dan Goughnour — a retired police officer, Teamster and local school board member — easily prevailed, restoring the party’s narrow majority in the state legislative chamber.
But it was the results of the other special election in the Keystone State that will raise eyebrows far outside Pennsylvania. The Hill reported:
Democrat James Malone has won an open Pennsylvania state Senate seat in a major upset in a district that comfortably voted for President Trump in November, Decision Desk HQ projects. Malone, the mayor of East Petersburg, is projected to defeat Republican Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons to represent Senate District 36 for the remainder of former state Sen. Ryan Aument’s (R) term.
Anytime a party manages to flip a district, it tends to generate some attention, but the closer one looks at this contest, the more dramatic the results appear: This is a district that Donald Trump carried by 15 points last fall.
What’s more, as an analysis in The Downballot noted, “Since taking its present form in Lancaster County 40 years ago, the district has always been held by the GOP, and the county as a whole has gone for a Democrat at the presidential level just once since 1856 (Lyndon Johnson just barely won it in 1964).”
This is not, in other words, a district where a Democrat is supposed to be competitive. And yet Malone prevailed by running on a notable platform. From The Downballot’s analysis: “Malone focused his message heavily on education and cuts to the federal government that he’s had to deal with as mayor of a small town, specifically calling out Musk for slashing ‘benefits for veterans, retirees, and students.’”
These results come just eight weeks after a Democrat in Minnesota won a state legislative special election, giving the party a majority in the state Senate, which coincided with a state Senate special election in Iowa in which Democrat Mike Zimmer narrowly defeated his Republican rival.
The Iowa race generated some national coverage because of the broader circumstances: This special election was held in a district thought to be a GOP stronghold. Indeed, Trump won this district by 21 points. Then a Democratic candidate managed to flip the state Senate seat from red to blue anyway.
The Iowa and Minnesota contests came on the heels of a couple of closely watched state legislative special elections in Virginia, held a few weeks earlier, which Democrats also won. The contests were, as an NBC News report put it, “an early test of the political environment.”
To be sure, the news comes with some rather large caveats. Legislative special elections tend to be low-turnout affairs, and drawing sweeping conclusions about the meaning of their outcomes is unwise.
That said, in the aftermath of Election Day 2024, the conventional wisdom suggested not only that Republicans had entered an era of electoral dominance, but also that Democratic voters were demoralized, disheartened and prepared to withdraw from civic life for a while.
So it’s notable that the party has put together some victories, undermining some of the assumptions from November.
The conventional wisdom will be put to the test again in just six days, with a closely watched state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin and two congressional special elections in Florida on tap for April 1. Watch this space.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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Given how deeply divided Americans are on so many issues, it’s heartening to see there are still some issues that can bring people with different beliefs and values together. Take Jan. 6 pardons, for example.
A Washington Post-Ipsos poll released last month found lopsided results on one of Donald Trump’s signature issues: “The president’s least popular action is his decision to pardon all those convicted of crimes in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. More than 8 in 10 oppose the pardons for those who were convicted of violent crimes.”
By most measures, 83% of Americans don’t agree on much, but they agree that pardoning violent criminals who clashed with police and attacked their own country’s Capitol was not a good move.
The Republican not only continues to brag about his Jan. 6 pardons, he’s apparently exploring new ways to give rioters additional benefits. Last month, for example, Trump’s Justice Department said that the president’s clemency for Jan. 6 criminals covered unrelated crimes that were discovered during FBI searches.
Around the same time, Trump made Ed Martin, a Republican lawyer with Jan. 6 clients, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., and he proceeded to launch a “special project,” to be known as “Project 1512,” that means to review the prosecutions of Jan. 6 rioters.
Is there anything else the president can do for those who attacked the Capitol in his name? Evidently, yes. Politico reported:
President Donald Trump on Tuesday floated the possibility of financial compensation for people who were prosecuted for taking part in the riot at the Capitol in 2021. Speaking to Newsmax on Tuesday night, Trump said he had taken ‘care’ of his supporters who attempted to overturn his 2020 election loss and added there is ‘talk’ about compensating them.
In response to a question about a “compensation fund” for Jan. 6 rioters who were held accountable for their crimes, Trump talked about the idea as if it were under serious consideration.
“There’s talk about that,” the president said. “A lot of the people that are in the government now talk about it because a lot of the people in government really like that group of people.”
The Republican didn’t elaborate on the details, but taken at face value, he appeared to be describing what would effectively be reparations for Jan. 6 felons, presumably to be financed by taxpayers.
In other words, there’s “talk” in the White House about transferring money from your wallet to rioters’ wallets — not because they earned it, but because Trump is open to the idea of rewarding them for committing crimes that he approved of.
I can’t wait to see how well this polls.
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About a month after Election Day 2024, Donald Trump received a “Patriot of the Year” award from Fox News and attended a network gala that was apparently designed to celebrate the Republican and his victory. As part of his remarks, Trump vowed to pursue changes on elections policy, adding, “We’re going to do things that have been really needed for a long time.”
Trump didn’t go into a lot of detail at the time, though he did specifically talk about “proof of citizenship” as one of his priorities.
Keep that in mind when reading about the president’s latest executive order. NBC News reported:
President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a sweeping executive order attempting a major overhaul of American elections, requiring people to prove their citizenship when they register to vote. The order — which also includes an array of other changes, from mail-in ballot deadlines to election equipment — could risk disenfranchising tens of millions of Americans. Election law experts questioned whether Trump had the authority to make the changes, saying the order is all but certain to be met with legal challenges.
Last year, congressional Republicans tried to advance legislation called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (or SAVE Act), that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. The bill did not, however, pass the Senate or become law.
Months later, Trump apparently decided that he can just create the policy anyway through presidential fiat. It’s an approach rooted in a fundamentally ridiculous governing vision: When Congress fails to pass a bill, presidents can simply implement laws anyway, without legislative approval.
But that’s not all the latest executive order does. From the NBC News report:
The executive order makes a number of other sweeping changes, including prohibiting certain election equipment that uses QR codes. Those changes would force states to buy and install new election equipment at significant cost. The order also requires that all ballots must be received by Election Day, an attempt to override states that allow mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day to be received afterward. It also asks the Department of Government Efficiency and federal agencies to hunt through state voter rolls in pursuit of ineligible voters.
A Washington Post report summarized the problem succinctly: “The U.S. Constitution designates the power to regulate the ‘time, place and manner’ of elections to the states, with the proviso that Congress can step in and override those laws. It gives no specific power to the president to do so. Election experts said that Trump was claiming power he does not have and that lawsuits over the measure were all but guaranteed.”
There’s a term for efforts by presidents to assert authority that they do not have: They’re called power-grabs.
Trump has already lost a great many court fights since starting his second term; this executive order will almost certainly keep the streak going.
