POLITICO Playbook: Takeaways from the biggest primary night of the year  —  With help from Eli Okun and Garrett Ross  —  DRIVING THE DAY  —  LATEST FROM THE OZ-MCCORMICK NAIL-BITER — “McCormick and Oz neck-and-neck in Pennsylvania as Fetterman gets Dem Senate nod,” by Natalie Allison, Zach Montellaro & Ally Mutnick

Knife-Edge Pennsylania GOP Senate Race May Come Down to Party-Despised Mail-In Votes  —  FULL CIRCLE  —  When 2 million mail-in ballots carried Joe Biden over the line in Pennsylvania in the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump was the first to cry foul.

Primaries Show Limits, and Depths, of Trump's Power Over G.O.P. Base  —  The tumultuous start to the Republican primary season, including a down-to-the-wire Senate race that divided conservatives in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, has shown how thoroughly Donald J. Trump has remade his party in his image …

Don't Read Too Much Into Madison Cawthorn's Defeat  —  The GOP isn't turning the corner.  —  Come next January, Democrats won't have Madison Cawthorn to kick around anymore.  The freshman North Carolina congressman lost his primary tonight in a close race—33 to 32 percent, as of this writing—to a state senator.

The Putin Show  —  How the war in Ukraine appears to Russians  —  When vladimir putin was first elected president of Russia in 2000, he changed little in the office he inherited from Boris Yeltsin.  Yet in place of a pen on the desk, Mr Putin put a television remote control, one visitor noted.

Pope Francis Is Dangerously Wrong About Ukraine  —  Sending weapons to help Ukraine fight off a Russian invasion is not “madness.”  —  Since Vladimir Putin's renewed war of conquest in Ukraine in late February, Pope Francis has offered perfunctory condemnations of the “violent aggression against Ukraine.”