By Edward Wu, CNN

(CNN) — Early voting data ahead of next Tuesday’s US Senate primaries in Texas suggest a sharp rise in Democratic turnout, pointing to a continuing trend of strong enthusiasm among the party’s base.

Through Tuesday, about 850,000 ballots had been cast in the Democratic primary, according to data from the Associated Press. That’s nearly 60% more than the number of votes cast at the same point in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, the last statewide primary in Texas to feature a major competitive Democratic contest.

It’s also more than the entire advance turnout and over double the number of votes cast on the equivalent day in the 2022 Democratic gubernatorial and 2024 Democratic presidential primaries. Many of the more populous counties exceeded their entire primary turnout for those years with several days of early voting and Election Day remaining.

On the Republican side, advance turnout was about 15% higher than it was at this point in 2022 and slightly trailed turnout one week out from the 2024 primary. It was also slightly ahead of Republican turnout at this point in 2020, when Donald Trump faced only marginal opposition.

There’s growing evidence of a Democratic advantage in motivation to vote since Donald Trump returned to the White House. Through the last year, Democratic candidates have outperformed 2024 presidential margins in House special elections and statewide races, and Democratic voters have consistently been more likely to describe themselves as extremely motivated to vote in CNN’s polling.

Could more votes be cast in Texas’ Democratic primary than the GOP contest?

The surge of voters in the Democratic primary raises the possibility that more Texans will cast ballots in the Democratic primary than the Republican one.

Democrats in Texas have only matched GOP primary numbers in recent years when they have had competitive presidential elections. Democratic turnout was much higher than Republican turnout in the 2008 presidential primaries, and voters split roughly evenly in casting their ballots in the 2020 primaries.

Each year featured a highly competitive race on the Democratic side but less of one on the Republican side by the time Texas voted, which boosted relative turnout in the Democratic primaries. Both the Democratic and Republican Senate primaries are competitive this year.

So far, about 54% of votes cast in this year’s primaries have been on the Democratic side. That ratio far outpaces the Democratic pace of casting votes in 2022 or 2024. Early votes tend to tilt slightly more Democratic than Election Day votes do, and in both of those years, the final electorate (including Election Day ballots) was about 2 points less Democratic relative to the early vote at this point.

If this year’s vote follows the same trend, a narrow majority of Texas primary voters would have cast their ballots in the Democratic over the Republican primary.

Even if the primary surge in Democratic participation holds through next Tuesday, the pattern may not hold in the much higher turnout general election. Primaries tend to attract the most enthusiastic voters, while the electorate expands in general elections. In 2008, the Democratic presidential primary had double the turnout of the Republican primary – and Democrat Barack Obama went on to lose the state to Republican John McCain by double digits.

D

By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

Picture this: You quit your mind-numbing corporate job for an agrarian lifestyle when your deceased grandfather leaves you his cottage on a plot of verdant farmland. Soon you are tending to seasonal crops, petting your pigs and ducks, running a DIY natural wine operation out of a shed, and romancing the locals. The women are compelling and beautiful, among them a fuchsia-haired scientist, woodsy sculptor and psychonaut bartender. There are also charming men, if that’s your thing.

This is the life you lead in Stardew Valley, the pixel art indie game that is celebrating its 10th anniversary and has sold nearly 50 million copies to date, making it one of the biggest-selling video games of all time. It ranks higher than the most successful releases of heavyweight franchises, including Pokémon, The Legend of Zelda and Call of Duty. The 2D farm simulator has also spawned two global orchestra tours of its soundtrack, a cookbook and a board game.

To say that Stardew Valley is an underdog game would be an understatement. Its creator, Eric Barone (known as ConcernedApe), worked on it alone straight out of college, inspired by its 1990s spiritual predecessor Harvest Moon, Nintendo’s cult-classic farming RPG. The computer science graduate had never worked on a video game before, nor did he have any experience making pixel art. It took him nearly five years to feel comfortable enough with his artistic abilities to release the game’s 1.0 version for PC. He now makes updates available for consoles and on mobile, too.

Stardew Valley “has been popular beyond my wildest dreams. It completely changed my life,” Barone said from his office in Seattle, where he’s based. “I was not expecting at all for the game to take off. I thought it would maybe sell a handful of copies with a very niche market.”

Over the course of Stardew Valley’s 15-minute days, you run through chores, unlock Pelican Town’s secrets and (perhaps) save it from the grip of late-stage capitalism with the help of some cute forest spirits. I first played the game in 2018, somewhat skeptical that I would find enjoyment in a farming simulator. I quickly found myself staying up late to design tribute farms to my wives of choice. (First Maru, then Abigail, then Haley, if you care). Since then, I have played some 500 hours, lovingly referring to the state it puts me in as “manic farm mode.” Whenever I have put the game down, I‘ve eventually come back — sometimes in place of therapy, sometimes because new updates have expanded its magical world. Barone recently announced he is releasing a seventh major update.

The game has cultivated a fanbase that is generally kind and patient, increasingly rare qualities in the gaming world, and online more broadly. Barone is grateful that the Stardew Valley community is “uncommonly good,” as he put it. Players — myself included — enthusiastically show off their farms on Twitch, Discord, Pinterest, YouTube and Reddit to largely encouraging feedback, even if their designs are still works-in-progress, to put it kindly.

Celebrities, too, have revealed their ardent love for the game online, including “2 Broke Girls” actor Kat Dennings and comedian Bobby Lee, both of whom enthusiastically agreed to chat all-things-Stardew for this story. “I haven’t been more excited about doing an interview in forever,” said Dennings in a video call from her home in Los Angeles.

Dennings does not consider herself a gamer, but she has also fallen under the spell of Stardew’s charming world, naming her farm’s chickens after the Golden Girls and crediting the game with cultivating her own real-life gardening habit. It may also have brought about her marriage to musician Andrew W.K., she said, laughing, as the in-game character she always chooses to wed bears a striking resemblance to her own husband.

“I can’t seem to marry

CNN

By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

Picture this: You quit your mind-numbing corporate job for an agrarian lifestyle when your deceased grandfather leaves you his cottage on a plot of verdant farmland. Soon you are tending to seasonal crops, petting your pigs and ducks, running a DIY natural wine operation out of a shed, and romancing the locals. The women are compelling and beautiful, among them a fuchsia-haired scientist, woodsy sculptor and psychonaut bartender. There are also charming men, if that’s your thing.

This is the life you lead in Stardew Valley, the pixel art indie game that is celebrating its 10th anniversary and has sold nearly 50 million copies to date, making it one of the biggest-selling video games of all time. It ranks higher than the most successful releases of heavyweight franchises, including Pokémon, The Legend of Zelda and Call of Duty. The 2D farm simulator has also spawned two global orchestra tours of its soundtrack, a cookbook and a board game.

To say that Stardew Valley is an underdog game would be an understatement. Its creator, Eric Barone (known as ConcernedApe), worked on it alone straight out of college, inspired by its 1990s spiritual predecessor Harvest Moon, Nintendo’s cult-classic farming RPG. The computer science graduate had never worked on a video game before, nor did he have any experience making pixel art. It took him nearly five years to feel comfortable enough with his artistic abilities to release the game’s 1.0 version for PC. He now makes updates available for consoles and on mobile, too.

Stardew Valley “has been popular beyond my wildest dreams. It completely changed my life,” Barone said from his office in Seattle, where he’s based. “I was not expecting at all for the game to take off. I thought it would maybe sell a handful of copies with a very niche market.”

Over the course of Stardew Valley’s 15-minute days, you run through chores, unlock Pelican Town’s secrets and (perhaps) save it from the grip of late-stage capitalism with the help of some cute forest spirits. I first played the game in 2018, somewhat skeptical that I would find enjoyment in a farming simulator. I quickly found myself staying up late to design tribute farms to my wives of choice. (First Maru, then Abigail, then Haley, if you care). Since then, I have played some 500 hours, lovingly referring to the state it puts me in as “manic farm mode.” Whenever I have put the game down, I‘ve eventually come back — sometimes in place of therapy, sometimes because new updates have expanded its magical world. Barone recently announced he is releasing a seventh major update.

The game has cultivated a fanbase that is generally kind and patient, increasingly rare qualities in the gaming world, and online more broadly. Barone is grateful that the Stardew Valley community is “uncommonly good,” as he put it. Players — myself included — enthusiastically show off their farms on Twitch, Discord, Pinterest, YouTube and Reddit to largely encouraging feedback, even if their designs are still works-in-progress, to put it kindly.

Celebrities, too, have revealed their ardent love for the game online, including “2 Broke Girl

By Elise Hammond, CNN

(CNN) — June 12, 1991, is a day Tammy Tacho will never forget. It was the last day she ever saw her 12-year-old little brother before he disappeared as she and her mother pulled out of the driveway.

James Hendrickson – known as Jimmy to his family – had reached into the car to kiss his mother goodbye, Tacho recalled.

“To me and my mom, that’s a horror movie to us, because that’s the last peck, or that’s the last kiss, and that’s the last hug, and that’s the last touching his hair that she got to do,” she told CNN.

More than three decades later, Jimmy has never been found, with his missing person case still open and cold.

Jimmy is just one of several people in the Tucson area who have been missing for over a decade without answers.

A more recent disappearance in the area has drawn national attention: that of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” anchor Savannah Guthrie.

Nancy Guthrie vanished from her affluent neighborhood in the Catalina Foothills on February 1, and nearly a month after she disappeared, officials have yet to find the missing woman or charge someone in connection to her apparent kidnapping.

President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social he was “deploying all resources” to find her, and the Pima County Sheriff said he had “over 400 cops out here working every minute of the day” on the case. Her family on Tuesday announced they are offering up to $1 million for information leading to her recovery, and Savannah Guthrie also announced a $500,000 donation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, saying she hopes the attention given to her family will extend to others still in limbo.

As the search for Nancy Guthrie stretches into its fourth week, families like Jimmy’s have been waiting years for any new information about their loved ones.

A ‘mama’s boy’ who loved church and playing outdoors

On that summer day in Tucson, Tacho and her mother were heading to Douglas, Arizona, to meet her then-boyfriend’s family, she said. Jimmy didn’t want to go.

“He was at that age. It was summer, he wanted to be out there playing and doing what boys do, and so he stayed behind,” she said.

Tacho remembers her brother as a “mama’s boy” who loved going to church, playing outside and was usually sporting red sweatpants — his favorite color.

“The worst thing is to drive out and watch him just wave at us,” Tacho said.

They left him with a family friend they had known since they moved to Tucson in 1987, Tacho said, and their two-day trip stretched into three after the car broke down.

When they finally got back into town, that’s when “the nightmare begins,” Tacho said.

Jimmy’s mother filed a police report immediately when she found out her son was missing, but Tacho said the case wasn’t taken seriously right away. She recalled police thought Jimmy was just a runaway, but she said her family knew that wasn’t true. It took several weeks for her brother to be recognized as a missing person, she said.

“It’s been brought up during the initial investigation and subsequent theories, and that was that Jimmy walked away of his own free will and just was a runaway. That’s absolutely not what happened in this case. He didn’t leave his family of his own free will. He had no money to provide for himself, no transportation,” Tucson Police Department Detective David Miller Read more

CNN, INSTAGRAM , SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, FBI, @SAVANNAHGUTHRIE, X , @FBIPHOENIX, Instagram / Savannah Guthrie, Instagram / @savannahguthrie, X / @FBIPhoenix

By Elise Hammond, CNN

(CNN) — June 12, 1991, is a day Tammy Tacho will never forget. It was the last day she ever saw her 12-year-old little brother before he disappeared as she and her mother pulled out of the driveway.

James Hendrickson – known as Jimmy to his family – had reached into the car to kiss his mother goodbye, Tacho recalled.

“To me and my mom, that’s a horror movie to us, because that’s the last peck, or that’s the last kiss, and that’s the last hug, and that’s the last touching his hair that she got to do,” she told CNN.

More than three decades later, Jimmy has never been found, with his missing person case still open and cold.

Jimmy is just one of several people in the Tucson area who have been missing for over a decade without answers.

A more recent disappearance in the area has drawn national attention: that of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” anchor Savannah Guthrie.

Nancy Guthrie vanished from her affluent neighborhood in the Catalina Foothills on February 1, and nearly a month after she disappeared, officials have yet to find the missing woman or charge someone in connection to her apparent kidnapping.

President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social he was “deploying all resources” to find her, and the Pima County Sheriff said he had “over 400 cops out here working every minute of the day” on the case. Her family on Tuesday announced they are offering up to $1 million for information leading to her recovery, and Savannah Guthrie also announced a $500,000 donation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, saying she hopes the attention given to her family will extend to others still in limbo.

As the search for Nancy Guthrie stretches into its fourth week, families like Jimmy’s have been waiting years for any new information about their loved ones.

A ‘mama’s boy’ who loved church and playing outdoors

On that summer day in Tucson, Tacho and her mother were heading to Douglas, Arizona, to meet her then-boyfriend’s family, she said. Jimmy didn’t want to go.

“He was at that age. It was summer, he wanted to be out there playing and doing what boys do, and so he stayed behind,” she said.

Tacho remembers her brother as a “mama’s boy” who loved going to church, playing outside and was usually sporting red sweatpants — his favorite color.

“The worst thing is to drive out and watch him just wave at us,” Tacho said.

They left him with a family friend they had known since they moved to Tucson in 1987, Tacho said, and their two-day trip stretched into three after the car broke down.

When they finally got back into town, that’s when “the nightmare begins,” Tacho said.

Jimmy’s mother filed a police report immediately when she found out her son was missing, but Tacho said the case wasn’t taken seriously right away. She recalled police thought Jimmy was just a runaway, but she said her family knew that wasn’t true. It took several weeks for her br