Another point which comes out of last night’s result. It now seems quite possible, perhaps even probable, that the outcome of the midterms will come down to high stakes GOP redistricting wins that came right at the end of the cycle in NY, FL and OH. I don’t say that to bum anyone out or to predict that Democrats can’t win the House. It is only to note how close it seems likely to be and that those extra seats could well be in the margin.

I’ve just seen it noted that it now appears that in all five post-Dobbs special elections to the House Democrats have improved on Biden’s 2020 performance by at least 2 percentage points. The story from 2020 was that Biden did well enough to beat Trump by a decent margin. But Democratic congressional candidates didn’t do as well as he did. So they’re improving on 2020, which suggests a very different midterm environment than we’ve been hearing about for months.

A bit more on last night’s result in NY-19, which I discussed here. The only minor update is that it didn’t even turn out to be a virtual tie. Democrat Pat Ryan appears to have won with 52% of the vote — a clear if close win. Ryan will only serve for four months. He’s on the November ballot in the new adjoining 18th district. Republican Molinaro will also be on the ballot in a redrawn 19th district against Democrat Josh Riley. The takeaway is the same as last night. Molinaro was and is a first-rate recruit in what the Cook Report calls a dead-even district. The fact that Republicans couldn’t notch a solid win here strongly suggests the governing assumptions about the 2022 midterm are simply wrong.

[ed.note: Since I wrote this post, all the networks have called this race for Democrat Pat Ryan.]

A fascinating story is unfolding in NY-19 — a result that looks very promising for Democratic prospects this fall in the House.

This is a special election to fill a seat vacated by Rep. Antonio Delgado (D), who became Lt. Gov. In itself the race is almost meaningless. The term is only for the rest of this year. But as an indicator of the political climate it’s much more significant. In a strong GOP year this is a district Republicans should take fairly comfortably. Cook calls it a dead even district. What’s more, the Republican, Marc Molinaro, is judged by pretty much everyone to be a perfect GOP recruit for the district. So there’s no excuse. The Republicans should be winning this.

As I write it’s too close to call. In a way, though, the final result doesn’t matter that much. It will essentially be a tie. And New York state election laws allow a week for postmarked absentee ballots to arrive. So we might not know the answer for a week. The key is that this result is not consistent with a GOP wave election, not even a mid-range one.

No big surprises so far tonight in a lightish primary night. Alt-right performance artist Laura Loomer got pretty close to knocking off an incumbent in Florida. But close isn’t enough. Maxwell Frost, a Bernie-backed 25 year old, won his primary against a bunch of veteran Democrats.

New York, which closes at the top of the hour, should provide some drama.

Just a little note to say that I think the Democrats, paradoxically, are resting a bit on their laurels after a couple weeks of solid news and very encouraging prospects in the Senate. Anger, outrage and motivation coming off the Dobbs decision is high and will remain high. But there are limits on how much that energy will translate into electoral outcomes if no specific, promised and quantifiable outcome is on the ballot, which is to say, Roe and Reform: Add two senators and hold the House and Democrats will make Roe the law of the land in January 2023. The opportunity is closing.

Let me just start out by saying this pair deserves each other — truly a dynamic coupling.

We’re covering this in other pieces today. But I want to zoom in on the issue of executive privilege, which Trump’s lawyers have repeatedly invoked in their latest court action. The filing has been mocked, rightly, for various reasons. But I want to zoom in specifically on this issue. Trump claims that many of the documents seized from his estate must be returned to him because they are covered by executive privilege.

This is not how executive privilege works or what it is. Let’s discuss.

A recent Marquette University Law School found that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) may not be as safely re-electable as he was ahead of his last reelection in 2016.

The poll was released last week, showing RonJohn is trailing a bit behind his Democratic rival — Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has a 7-percentage point lead over Johnson with 51 percent of the vote compared to his 44 percent.

Rich Lowry, Editor of The National Review, has a guest opinion piece in the Times today, the gist of which is that Republicans are right to be “paranoid” about the search of the President’s Florida estate. We hear about Democratic criticisms of the Whitewater investigation, James Comey’s mishandling of the Hillary’s emails affair, etc. etc. All par for the course. But what I wanted to note is the central role of the Russia probe. It now serves as the baseless investigation, the hoax, the prosecutorial abuse that justifies everything from the Trumpian right that comes later.

This is no surprise from Trump himself: If Trump doesn’t like something, it’s a hoax. But here we see Trump’s relative success defining it as such not only for almost everyone on the right side of the political spectrum but in much of the journalistic world and even among many Democrats.

It’s political canon that the president’s party does poorly in the Midterms — especially if it’s said president’s first term. But the Senate minority leader is tossing bits of that conventional wisdom out the window as we get closer to the general election. And it’s not even the first time Mitch McConnell has preemptively winked in the direction of things not going super well for Republicans this fall — at least when it comes to control of the Senate.

During an event in Kentucky on Thursday McConnell suggested that it was far more likely that Republicans are able to flip the House than take back the Senate. That’s because the Senate is “different.”