So I was thinking what’s going on and how ::after renders absolute element on top of the actual button and thought what would happen if I add pointer-events: none to it. And it actually helped - both active state triggers on mouse down and inspector now selects the button.
But this made me realize, there’s another issue with UDT - Dev Tools elements doesn’t show pseudo-elements, which also makes UI development more difficult.
I’m marking this post as a solution, because it kinda makes sense, but it doesn’t explain why it used to work