After more than a week of counting votes, the very likely outcome Khaya previewed last week is now official: an election denier, Jim Marchant, won the Republican primary for Secretary of State in Nevada. This comes after Vernon Jones, who also disputes the results of the 2020 election, advanced to a June 16 runoff for the same job in Georgia.

Outright election deniers seeking to win offices in which they’ll oversee elections at the local or state level is a story we’ll be following this year, as we have (unfortunately!) every election year for the better part of a decade now.

From TPM Reader JU …

I just listened to your post-election day podcast about Graham Platner. I agree with your much of what you said, but want to share a slightly different take. In my view, Mainers aren’t shrugging off Platner’s baggage because Trump set so low a bar. I think Mainers are hungry for public servants who are not obviously and shamelessly full of shit.

(About me: I am a women, 67, Jewish, and have lived in Maine for 40 years. I have/had all the reservations about Platner you would expect. I did not rank him first, but I am not sorry he prevailed. Like most Dems, I will vote for him in November regardless.) 

A very odd nugget from Barak Ravid of Axios. Here’s the key passage in the lede …

CIA Director John Ratcliffe told President Trump and other senior officials that intelligence gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies raised serious doubts about Iran’s willingness to make the nuclear concessions the U.S. is seeking in any final deal, according to three sources familiar with those discussions.

We again have a possible ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran presented by President Trump as a deal to end the war he started back in February. It is a great victory, he claims. What we really have is a replay of a core feature of the spring and summer of 2026, as commentators and countries try to strip away the packaging and relentless razzmatazz from the White House and see what is really included in this deal. How much skepticism will the White House face since observers have been through maybe 1o or 20 cycles of this over the last four months?

And what’s in the deal this time?