Top party strategists may hate seeing one of their candidates gutted by a brutal ad. But they can still admire the hit.

💰 Why it matters: A record $11.6 billion has plastered political ads across screens of every size in the country. Only a handful of those earned the grudging respect of operatives on both sides.

📺 Zoom in: Multiple Republican strategists singled out the "brutal" series of ads attacking Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kans.) over lawsuits against patients with overdue medical bills — some of whom were later arrested. Against the advice of his own team, Marshall released a self-directed ad answering the attacks.

• In Nebraska, an ad highlighting a past vote by former Gov. Pete Ricketts to pardon a man convicted of rape was singled out by both parties as one of the cycle's most damaging. Ricketts is expected to win re-election to the Senate.
• In Maine, an upbeat jingle hit Democratic nominee Troy Jackson for having children with his second cousin. "If he'll f**k his own family, he'll f**k yours too," the radio ad said (among other things). Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) called for the ad to be taken down.
• And in Florida, Rep. María Salazar (R-Fla.) turned on her own party leader, criticizing President Trump over ICE's aggressive enforcement tactics, saying some immigration policies had "gone too far."

The intrigue: Even hardened operatives are dealing with a new frontier: AI-generated attack ads that can make up scenarios and put words in an opponent's mouth.

• In Michigan, a Republican-aligned super PAC used AI-generated imagery to depict Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed in a fabricated family photo and playing a game with cards referencing "Death to America" and 9/11.
• In Texas, GOP Senate nominee Ken Paxton's team used AI to depict Democratic candidate James Talarico defacing a Bible with a crayon and saying: "In the beginning God was non-binary, and he wasn't a Christian. And God said, 'let there be six genders,' and there were."

🤺 Between the lines: An attack ad helped spark this weekend's blowup in the Michigan Senate race.

• Rep. Haley Stevens' (D-Mich.) shocking decision to withdraw support from El-Sayed grew out of their public dispute over an ad she called antisemitic.
• El-Sayed ultimately disavowed the ad but said Stevens wasn't welcome at his events, and she endorsed former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) on Sunday.

The other side: It's hard to imagine a bigger backfire than Vivek Ramaswamy's (R) ad featuring the estranged mother of his opponent for Ohio governor, Amy Acton (D).

• It could prove fatal for his gubernatorial bid, and Republicans worry it could hurt Sen. John Husted's (R) re-election chances too.
• The ad sparked immediate bipartisan backlash. Ramaswamy doubled down before pulling it off-air. One internal GOP poll had Acton's lead grow by 6 points after the ad ran.

— Stef Kight

Sen. Steve Daines' audacious scheme to handpick his successor is on the verge of paying off.

Why it matters: On a night when Republicans are worried about even the reddest states, there isn't a whiff of concern about holding their Senate seat in Montana, where competitive midterm elections are common.

• Strategists in both parties expect Republican Kurt Alme to prevail over the two quasi-Democrats in the race: independent Seth Bodnar and Democratic nominee Alani Bankhead.

Flashback: Minutes before Montana's 5pm filing deadline on March 4, Daines announced his retirement.

• It was one of Washington's best-kept secrets.
• Alme, Daines' chosen replacement, had had a few hours to make his decision and file his candidacy papers.
• He filed eight minutes before the deadline. Daines then withdrew, announced his retirement in a slick video and endorsed Alme. Endorsements from Sen. Tim Sheehy (R) and President Trump quickly followed.

Democrats howled at the chicanery. Republicans basked — and then bragged — about their strategy.

• "My goal here was to try to make this race as least expensive as possible, given there's a lot of expensive races on the map," Daines told Semafor at the time.
• "This was all about preventing this race from escalating into another $200-300 million race."

The other side: Bodnar, the former president of the University of Montana, accused Daines of denying Montana Republicans a meaningful opportunity to choose their nominee.

• But Daines and his team could hardly have envisioned how well their plan would work.
• National Democrats wanted to clear the field for the "independent" Bodnar, but the candidate who won the actual Democratic primary, Bankhead, had other plans.
• "I can't be bought or bullied out of this race. But the back room tried," she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.

— Hans Nichols

• Go deeper.

— Andrew Pantazi