Congress
Georgia GOP Senate hopefuls trail Ossoff in money race
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff continues to hold a massive fundraising advantage over the Republicans vying to unseat him in Georgia.
Ossoff raised more than $12 million from July through September, he disclosed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission, a haul that is more than double what his three main Republican challengers raised during the same period — combined.
GOP Rep. Mike Collins raised $1.7 million through the end of September, according to his filing Wednesday with the FEC, while ex-football coach Derek Dooley reported raising $1.87 million.
Georgia Rep. Buddy Carter disclosed Wednesday that he raised $939,579 during the third quarter.
Carter has the largest war chest of the three Republican candidates jockeying for the nomination. He had $3.9 million left in the bank at the end of September, compared to Collins’ $2.3 million and Dooley’s $1.7 million.
The gulf between the eventual Republican Senate nominee and Ossoff will likely narrow after the primary in May as donors and prominent party members coalesce around one candidate.
For now, the money race is another proxy battle for President Donald Trump’s attention.
Trump has not yet endorsed in the GOP primary, but fault lines have emerged among some prominent Georgia Republicans. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp endorsed Dooley in the race, while Collins has won the endorsement of several state legislative leaders
The Georgia Senate race is likely to be among the expensive 2026 contests. Ossoff is the most vulnerable Democratic candidate running for reelection next year in a state that Trump won in 2024. He will need a robust war chest as he braces for what will likely be a strong Republican push to unseat him.
Sen. Ron Johnson blocked the Senate from passing a bill Wednesday to restore $810 million in federal funding President Donald Trump nixed Friday without Congress’ consent and stop him from using the controversial budget tactic again.
Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Patty Murray of Washington asked on the Senate floor to swiftly pass a measure that would nullify Trump’s latest move to unilaterally cancel money Congress appropriated and prevent similar attempts by blocking the president from sending requests to claw back federal dollars less than 90 days before the cash expires.
While objecting to passing the bill, Johnson said he supports the president doing “whatever it takes” to reduce federal spending.
“Personally, I wish it was a lot larger,” the Wisconsin Republican, who chairs the Budget Committee, said of the sum Trump canceled Friday. “That money doesn’t have to be spent, and it shouldn’t be spent.”
Merkley, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, argued that Trump’s move is akin to exercising “a line-item veto” and taking “a wrecking ball” to the vision of the country’s founding fathers.
While Johnson objected to passing the bill, several prominent Republican lawmakers have slammed the Trump administration’s latest move to cancel federal funding and are discussing ways to head off another attempt.
Those Republican calls to stop Trump from employing the funding maneuver are a turnabout after more than a year of resistance to taking action. Democrats have repeatedly attempted to use funding bills to defend against this kind of eleventh-hour clawback but were rebuffed by Republicans.
“Time after time, they have shot down our attempts to stop this administration from defying Congress and robbing our constituents,” said Murray, who described Trump’s latest cancellation as “theft from the American people, plain and simple.”
Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz blocked an effort from Sen. Marsha Blackburn to pass her bill on the chamber floor Wednesday afternoon that would allow people to sue over artificial intelligence “deepfakes” — the latest episode in a long-running public rift between the two Republicans over AI legislation.
Blackburn of Tennessee argued the measure, the NO FAKES Act, would guarantee protections against the “proliferation harmful AI-created deepfakes” while ensuring artists and creative work are not impeded.
“Our bill would establish clear guardrails that protect our creators in Tennessee and across the entire country, in addition to establishing a federal intellectual property right in every American’s voice and visual likeness,” she said in a floor speech.
Blackburn sought to advance the bill by unanimous consent, a process that does not require a roll call vote but does permit any single senator to show up in person to object. That person Wednesday was Cruz, who argued the bill was not ready for primetime.
The Texas lawmaker said he had free speech concerns about the legislation as currently written — for example, would the AI-generated photos and videos like the ones frequently promoted on President Donald Trump’s social media accounts be deemed out of compliance? The same could end up being true for news parody websites like The Onion, Cruz added.
Blackburn said that free speech would not be jeopardized by her proposal, and that the bill instead targets online scamming activities that would certainly be illegal if conducted offline. Cruz was not convinced.
“I am happy to work with you,” Cruz ultimately told Blackburn. “But at least as of now, I object.”
Cruz and Blackburn have been at odds on the issue for some time, dating back to when a five-year deal to block states from enacting their own AI rules and regulations collapsed during One Big Beautiful Bill Act negotiations in 2025.
While Cruz voted for the NO FAKES Act in the Senate Judiciary Committee over the summer, he was unable to help broker a larger agreement with Blackburn and the White House to include it as part of a package of bills addressing preemption of state AI regulations and kids online safety issues.
Cruz also undercut Blackburn’s efforts during an Oval Office meeting over the summer, where he told Trump the package had no chance of moving in the Senate. The president ultimately held off on an endorsement.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a NO FAKES co-sponsor, emphasized the broad support from the creative industry that lawmakers have worked to build.
“This is the most baked, ready-to-go AI-related bill there is,” Coons said as he walked onto the Senate floor Wednesday. “We’ve done hearings, we’ve done technical assistance, we’ve done markups. It’s broadly bipartisan.”
Cruz, who objected Tuesday to an attempt to pass an AI safety bill by unanimous consent, countered that his bill making it a crime to knowingly publish sexually explicit images on the internet without the subjects’ consent — real or AI-generated — is the only major AI bill to become law in the 119th Congress.
Ohio Democratic Senate nominee Sherrod Brown said Sunday that a “technical glitch” with Facebook’s advertising platform caused around half of his campaign ads on the site to suddenly “go dark with no notice.”
“For the past 48 hours, half of our ads have been unable to reach grassroots supporters and voters,” Brown said in a post to his Substack that both detailed the snafu and served as a fundraising appeal. Brown estimated the issue was costing his campaign “thousands and thousands of dollars — and potentially thousands of votes.”
Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Facebook parent Meta, confirmed in a statement that “an error over the weekend impacted the delivery of ads for several advertisers, including the Brown campaign.”
“All of the Brown campaign’s ads have since been restored,” Stone said. “We apologize for the error.”
Neither Brown nor Stone immediately responded to followup questions about whether the Brown campaign would receive a reimbursement for the glitch.
A tally of Meta advertising data for Brown’s political account shows he has spent over a half-million dollars with the company across multiple campaigns. Brown, a former senator, is mounting a comeback against Republican Sen. Jon Husted.
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