Democrat Conor Lamb has been declared the apparent winner in the special election for Pennsylvania’s conservative 18th congressional district to replace Republican Rep. Tim Murphy. Lamb beat Trump-endorsed Republican Rick Saccone, a far right wing Christian extremist, who is a state representative.

The vote was so close it had to be decided by absentee ballots. The final tallies have yet to be declared, but networks including MSNBC and CNBC have called it for Lamb.

Trump won the district barely more than a year ago by nearly 20 points. Lamb was recently projected to win, and was up about six points in the final polls.

The president, the Vice President, and the president’s eldest son all endorsed and campaigned in Pennsylvania for Saccone.

“Outside GOP groups have spent $10.7 million supporting Rick Saccone,” Axios on Tuesday reported.

Lamb is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney and a former Marine.

Saccone, already down in the polls, made news late Monday night when he told supporters at a rally that Democrats hate God, America, and Donald Trump.

Lamb supports ObamaCare and a woman’s right to choose (although he personally is against abortion, but says a right is a right.) He has called for stronger background checks but no new gun control laws.

Former Rep. Tim Murphy resigned after it was revealed he had urged his mistress to get an abortion. Murphy is a “pro-life” “family values” Republican.

“I don’t think there’s any way around the fact that this [PA-18] election is all about President Trump.” https://t.co/FLYaGp7mCT pic.twitter.com/LOK0vPlI6b

— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 14, 2018

Last month The Washington Post reported “Republican-allied groups have dramatically outspent their Democratic rivals 17-to-1 in the first congressional race of 2018, a special election in Pennsylvania that both parties have cast as a potential bellwether for the November midterms.”

This is the second major special election in a row in which the Democrat won a seat previously held by a Republican. Many political analysts believe these results reflect how even GOP voters feel about President Trump.

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President Vladimir Putin says Russia has developed a new “invincible” nuclear missile that can “reach anywhere in the world,” according to the BBC.

Claiming the U.S. missile shield that covers Europe and Asia can not stop the new warhead, Putin described it as “a low-flying, difficult-to-spot cruise missile with a nuclear payload with a practically unlimited range and an unpredictable flight path, which can bypass lines of interception and is invincible in the face of all existing and future systems of both missile defence and air defence.”

The Russian Federation leader made his remarks in a campaign speech 17 days before an election which he will win. He faces seven challengers, and his main opponent, Alexei Navalny, was declared ineligible to run.

Putin told the Russian Parliament the West has nothing comparable to this new nuclear missile, and he had it developed “in response to the U.S. withdrawal from a Cold war-era treaty banning missile defenses and U.S. efforts to develop a missile defense system,” CBS News adds.

“No one has listened to us,” Putin, complaining about the U.S., told Russian lawmakers. “You listen to us now.”

The Tennessean reported Thursday that country music fans and industry heavyweights blasted the anti-gay Republican’s appointment to the board of the CMA’s charity arm as “grossly offensive.”

Jason Owen, the co-president of Monument Records and owner at Sandbox Entertainment, said Huckabee “speaks of the sort of things that would suggest my family is morally beneath his and uses language that has a profoundly negative impact upon young people all across this country.”

“What a terrible disappointment to see (the CMA Foundation’s) mission clouded by the decision to align with someone who so frequently engages in the language of racism, sexism, and bigotry,” Whitney Pastorek, a CMA member and manager of the popular country band Sugarland, wrote to the association prior to Huckabee’s resignation.

“While Gov. Huckabee’s tenure in Arkansas may have resulted in valuable education reform over a decade ago, I find his choice to spend the past ten years profiting off messages of exclusion and hatred (not to mention the gun lobby) to be disqualifying,” Pastorek continued in her condemnation of the former GOP candidate for president.

Image by Daniel Huizinga via Flickr and a CC license