Congress
Crockett inches toward Senate run
Texas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett is taking further steps toward launching a Senate campaign, including spending significant money on polling and meeting with a potential campaign manager.
Crockett told Blue Light News’s Dasha Burns in an episode of “The Conversation” that she’s “seriously weighing” a bid to replace GOP Sen. John Cornyn and is commissioning polling to see how she stacks up against a potentially crowded primary field.
“I am seriously weighing it, to the extent that I’m about to spend a lot of money to get data,” she said.
Crockett has raised her profile since first entering Congress in 2023 through memorable and divisive attacks on Republican opponents like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott and President Donald Trump — becoming a frequent target of Trump’s attacks in the process.
But Crockett said elevating her profile with Texas voters is only the first step in mounting a serious statewide campaign.
“I don’t think that we have the luxury, especially with us having such an early primary, of actually doing what we normally do, which — we spend about $100 million to get someone’s name ID up,” she said. “But the way that I look at elections is that that’s just first base.”
Crockett said she’s had “multiple conversations” with someone she’d potentially tap to lead her campaign, without naming them. She said they discussed her chances in a general election against the field of Republicans in the primary, noting that Cornyn would be a stronger challenge than Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt.
“I’m going to be flat out with you and tell you that I don’t think that there’s a Democrat that can take out Cornyn,” she said. “For me, I would be making a very last-minute decision because it’s not just about winning the primary. You gotta win the general.”
If Crockett does jump into the race, she’d join state Rep. James Talarico and former Rep. Colin Allred in the Democratic primary. Former Reps. Beto O’Rourke and Joaquin Castro have also left the door open to Senate bids in a race that Democrats will likely need to win to maintain a chance of regaining control of the Senate.
Crockett said she hopes that “by the time we start spending money” in the race, voters will know enough about her to get behind her brand of politics, which she defined as aggressively fighting for “vulnerable” people.
“We don’t necessarily need all this machismo directed at some of the most vulnerable people. What we need is people that are going to be strong and fight for the most vulnerable amongst us,” she said. “And I think that that is the brand that I have set out for myself, is that I want to fight for the American dream.”
Sen. Darline Graham sought to take up her brother’s mantle Tuesday, going after former special counsel Jack Smith for obtaining the late-Sen. Lindsey Graham’s phone data.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the South Carolina Republican told Smith as he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding that the anguish the prosecutor caused her brother “makes me sick.”
Lindsey Graham, until his unexpected death in July, was among the most vocal in his outrage over revelations that Smith secretly collected electronic data from GOP lawmakers as part of the Biden-era investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The late senator was also unapologetic in his support for a provision tucked into a government funding package, which was later repealed, allowing senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 or more if they discover their electronic records were seized without notification — language specifically designed to compensate Smith’s targets.
But Smith replied that Lindsey Graham was not a target of his investigation and was not suspected of wrongdoing — in fact, he considered Darline Graham’s brother “a patriotic public servant” who likely would have been a “witness” in his case against Trump for attempted election subversion.
“Your brother investigated the claims that Donald Trump was making,” Smith told Darline Graham. “He found them to be false.”
The federal government’s internal watchdog told Congress Tuesday that it has concluded President Donald Trump acted unlawfully in unilaterally canceling $810 million in federal funding.
In a letter to congressional leaders obtained by Blue Light News, the Government Accountability Office’s top lawyer panned Trump’s declaration Friday that he is nixing money Congress appropriated through a controversial budget maneuver called a “pocket rescission.”
“The Constitution vests in Congress the power of the purse,” GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez wrote,
adding that “Congress did not cede this important power” by enacting the 1970s impoundment law intended to stop presidents from withholding money Congress approves.
“Any withholding of appropriated funds beyond their date of expiration, regardless of size, subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress’s constitutional power of the purse,” Perez added. “The President may not force the expiration of budget authority Congress has already enacted and did not rescind.”
It is unclear what practical effect, if any, the letter will have on the interbranch funding fight. Outside groups sued the administration last year over a prior pocket rescission, but the Supreme Court issued a preliminary ruling that they did not have standing to challenge the matter. The Trump administration has argued that only the head of the GAO is able to sue under the 52-year-old law governing rescissions.
Sen. Eric Schmitt thought he caught Jack Smith in a lie. Instead, he outed him as a fan of former Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark.
In a quest to frame former special counsel Jack Smith as a liar during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Schmitt asked him if he was in Atlanta on Feb. 3, 2024, for an NBA basketball game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks — amid mounting drama around the Atlanta-based criminal investigation into Donald Trump led by prosecutor Fani Willis.
Smith clarified that he didn’t go to that game. But he did go to a different one on the same day: He was in College Park, Md. to see the Maryland Terrapins women’s basketball team play the Iowa Hawkeyes, led by phenom Caitlin Clark, who dropped 38 points that night in a win over the Terps.
It appeared that Schmitt misinterpreted a text message reference to the “hawks” among Smith’s deputies, who discussed reserving a seat for Smith in the front row.
“What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair,” the Missouri Republican asked, intimating that he was about to get Smith to perjure himself.
Schmitt also tried to connect the NBA game Smith did not attend in Atlanta to Feb. 2, 2024 — the date Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was also investigating Trump, acknowledged a personal relationship with another prosecutor on her team.
“I definitely did not go to a Hawks game. I’m sure of that,” Smith said, as he initially struggled to recall the time frame.
After reviewing the messages more closely, Smith said he recalled going to the Iowa-Maryland game and being flanked in the crowd by U.S. marshals. His testimony prompted Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) to lash out at her colleague’s erroneous attack, saying Schmitt owed Smith an apology.
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