Pennsylvania Democrats Just Won a Big Election—and It Deserves Your Attention

Pennsylvania Democrats secured a huge victory in Tuesday night’s special election, which will allow them to maintain control of the state House of Representatives.

Democrat Jim Prokopiak defeated Republican Candace Cabanas in the state House race in Bucks County, just north of Philadelphia. Prokopiak leads with 85.9 percent of the vote, according to early returns.

The win comes at a time when Democrats are hoping for another major victory on the national stage, with former Democratic Representative Tom Suozzi seeking to return to the House of Representatives to take over George Santos’s seat in New York’s 3rd congressional district.

While that race is understandably receiving a lot of attention—given that it could dramatically shrink Republicans’ already razor-thin majority in Congress—what’s happening in Pennsylvania has just as much significance.

With Prokopiak’s victory, Democrats will control the state House by 102–100, thus maintaining their grip on the majority they have defended in four special elections in the past year.

Prokopiak will replace former Democratic state Representative John Galloway, who resigned in December after winning a district court judge seat in Bucks County. That left the state House split 101–101. Last week, Republican Representative Joe Adams also resigned, shifting the balance of power back to Democrats—before Prokopiak further solidified it Tuesday.

Much like other Democrats in the state’s special elections, Prokopiak ran on a promise to protect abortion access in Pennsylvania. The national Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee poured more than $80,000 into the race in support of his campaign.

The victory will cement Democratic control of both the state House and the governor’s office. That means Democrats will not only be able to successfully block any Republican bills—including on abortion, guns, school vouchers, or voter ID laws—that may arise from the GOP-controlled state Senate. It also means they can start crafting legislation of their own.

During his campaign, Prokopiak said his goals included more funding for K-12 education, safeguarding access to abortion, and raising the minimum wage.

“What I heard from voters is that Bucks County residents need help supporting their families, want control over their own bodies, and [to] ensure they have the ability to chart their own paths in life,” Prokopiak said in a statement Tuesday night. “I’m committed to taking my conversations with voters to Harrisburg and making their dreams a reality.”

Local elections matter—and in Pennsylvania, Democrats can finally move forward on making their campaign promises a reality.

The Supreme Court appears to be wasting no time making a determination over Donald Trump’s presidential immunity claim in his January 6 trial, giving special counsel Jack Smith until next week to respond to Trump’s attempt to stay a lower court’s ruling that flatly rejected the immunity argument.

The court announced the deadline on Tuesday, just one day after Trump appealed to the Supreme Court.

Legal experts commented that the hairpin turnaround could only mean one thing.

“What that says is actually good because that means that the Supreme Court is expediting whatever decision they’re going to make,” former Manhattan District Attorney Catherine Christian told MSNBC.

“And I suspect that the special counsel already has their response ready to go. Remember, Monday is a holiday, Presidents Day. So (the) Trump team met their deadline yesterday, and then, the next morning, the Supreme Court and the chief judge says: Respond by next Tuesday, (which) is a good sign that whatever decision the Supreme Court makes, it will hopefully be expedited,” Christian continued.

Trump’s appeal to the Supreme Court is very likely a delay tactic, but so far, it doesn’t seem like the court is wholly entertaining it.

“I think frankly, it’s nakedly about delay. What the former president is hoping to do is have his cake and eat it too. He does not want the court, really, to get to the merits. He wants more and more process, and that’s what he’s hoping for here,” former federal prosecutor Temidayo Aganga-Williams told the network.

“[The Supreme Court] is appearing to move quickly here, which from my vantage point is heartening, and I hope that they will resist his request to slow this down even further.”

If the court rejects Trump’s request, the case will return to Judge Tanya Chutkan, who would set a new trial date.

Smith has been urging the court to expedite the process for months, even asking SCOTUS to circumvent the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in reviewing the immunity claim, though the high court denied the attempt.

“This Court’s immediate review of that question is the only way to achieve its timely and definitive resolution,” Smith wrote in a December filing. “The Nation has a compelling interest in a decision on [Trump’s] claim of immunity from these charges—and if they are to be tried, a resolution by conviction or acquittal, without undue delay.”

Surprise, surprise: The GOP is being disingenuous about impeachment again.

Just a few years after crying foul at the “witch hunt” impeachment of then-President Trump (and then crying foul again), Republicans are pursuing the nakedly partisan impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. The House is expected to vote again on Tuesday evening on whether to impeach the DHS secretary, the second such attempt in a week.

There’s only one problem: They still can’t explain how Mayorkas has failed to uphold his constitutional duty.

On Tuesday, Republican Representative French Hill announced the party’s bald-faced political motivations for impeaching Mayorkas. On a panel hosted by Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo, Hill laid out the case against Mayorkas (or lack thereof).

“We need to shut the border.… The president could take executive action to do it today—doesn’t need more money. It needs action, and this is what’s disappointing to people, and that’s why Mayorkas is gonna pay this public relations price by being impeached for the first time since 1876,” Hill said.

Notably absent from Hill’s explanation was any description of high crimes and misdemeanors committed by Mayorkas. Hill all but admitted that, with the impeachment, Republicans are aiming to make Mayorkas the face of their anti-Biden, anti-immigrant campaign, despite his having not committed impeachable offenses.

With his “1876” comment, Hill was referring to the last (and only) time a Cabinet member was impeached, when Secretary of War William Belknap was acquitted. It was not the last time a Cabinet member’s impeachment was voted on, however. That would be just last week, when House Speaker Mike Johnson failed to ensure he had enough votes to successfully impeach Mayorkas the first time and three members of his party voted against the effort.

Two of those Republicans—Representatives Ken Buck and Tom McClintock—did so on the grounds that the impeachment crusade is a political sham and in violation of the Constitution. (So far, there’s no indication they’ll change their votes this time around.)

House Republicans have mooted impeaching Mayorkas since Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was in charge. He too pledged to impeach Mayorkas. But then, as now, there was one glaring issue: They didn’t know why they were doing it. That’s never stopped them before, and it won’t now.

One would think Republicans are taking their do-over more seriously than their first try. But it’s hard to imagine giving away the game so openly was part of the game plan.

Texas Republican Representative Chip Roy may have stirred up disunity in the GOP earlier this year with his threats to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson, but he’s in lockstep with the rest of his party on one thing: Democrats want to “end Western civilization” with open borders.

In an interview with Fox News’s Harris Faulkner on Tuesday, Roy was asked about the Senate’s passage of a $95 billion foreign aid package, which dedicates assistance to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

The Freedom Caucus member accused Democrats of not “[having] any interest in sitting down at the table” to discuss border security—less than a week after Republicans killed a bipartisan bill that included border funding alongside the foreign aid package, at the urging of Donald Trump.

Roy went on to baselessly claim that Democrats, who he snidely called “colonizers,” “want to flood the zone” with “the chaos created by wide-open borders.”

“It’s not just political,” said Roy. “They want to remake America. They want to end Western civilization.”

Roy also complained about the number of “foreign-born” people in the United States.

The demographic conspiracy espoused by Roy, a variant of the explicitly white supremacist “great replacement theory,” is becoming an increasingly popular talking point in the GOP. What was once confined to the hinterlands of white nationalist message boards has been adopted whole cloth by the Republican mainstream and is now repeated by lawmakers like Roy on television.

Roy also took the opportunity to take a potshot at same-sex marriage, accusing Democrats of “trying to force their beliefs” on “countries in Africa who dare to say that marriage is between one man and one woman.”

Roy’s was not the only mention of the threat to Western civilization by the global right this week; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his own Fox News interview, called the bombardment of Rafah part of a “battle of the forces of civilization against the worst forces of barbarism on the planet.”

Roy’s and Netanyahu’s comments are emblematic of a global right obsessed with conspiratorial ideations of civilizational decline and collapse. For Fox, it makes for a good segment.

A gubernatorial candidate in Missouri is arguing against abortion access for rape victims on the basis that it would technically allow babies to gain access to the medical procedure.

Republican Missouri State Senator Bill Eigel took the draconian (and idiotic) stance during a debate last week, over an amendment to the state’s already restrictive abortion ban. Missouri has only allowed abortions in the event of medical emergencies since shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. The new amendment, proposed by Democratic state Senator Doug Beck, would permit abortions for children aged 12 and under if they are victims of rape or incest, raising health concerns for child rape victims if their pregnancies were carried to term.

“You want to bring back the institution of abortion so that kids can get abortions in the state of Missouri. A 1-year-old could get an abortion under this,” Eigel said, according to the St Louis Post-Dispatch.

The uneducated response immediately called for a fact-check from Beck.

“I don’t know that a 1-year-old could get pregnant, Senator,” he retorted, before asking if Eigel was “OK” with the “forced birth of a child being raped.”

“I don’t support the institutions of rape or of incest. But your amendment doesn’t address those,” Eigel replied.

But Eigel isn’t alone in his condemnation of the bill. Another Republican, Missouri State Senator Sandy Crawford, claimed the incest and rape provision shouldn’t pass because “God is perfect.”

“God does not make mistakes. And for some reason he allows that to happen, bad things happen,” Crawford said. “I’m not gonna be able to support the amendments because I am very pro-life.”

Also last week, GOP representatives in the state unanimously voted down another amendment to the ban, proposed by Senator Tracy McCreery, which would have legalized abortion in all cases of rape or incest.