Congress
Jim Justice says he has a ‘short’ timeline for deciding on governor run
GOP Sen. Jim Justice said Wednesday that he’ll decide whether to run for West Virginia governor before the end of the year but likely not until after the midterms.
“The timeline is short, because I don’t want to jerk you around,” Justice said. “I don’t want to jerk people around.”
Justice said he initially wanted to make a decision before the Nov. 3 elections, “but, you know, what’s happened is, we’ve been so busy, time just gets away, and now, you know. it may very well be best to wait and go after.”
Blue Light News first reported earlier this month that Justice was considering another governor bid and was viewed as likely to run.
Justice added he was hearing from Republican Party leaders in the state “in only one way, and that’s, please run for governor.”
Justice said he hasn’t spoken to President Donald Trump about whether or not he should run or stay in the Senate. He said he also hasn’t spoken to the sitting Republican governor, Patrick Morrisey.
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.
A close Capitol Hill ally of President Donald Trump is suing the Justice Department and former special counsel Jack Smith for obtaining her phone logs in the course of his investigation into Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) filed suit a day after Smith testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee — on which Blackburn sits — and defended his office’s investigation, including its effort to obtain the records of Blackburn and dozens of other GOP lawmakers who spoke with Trump and his advisers during a four-day period in January 2021.
Blackburn argues that Smith committed a “gross abuse of power” and violated constitutional protections for members of Congress when he subpoenaed her phone logs from Verizon and secured a court order to prevent the company from alerting her. She’s asking a federal judge to declare Smith’s entire probe, as well as his effort to obtain her phone records, was illegal. She’s also asking that the judge order Smith and the Justice Department destroy or return any of her materials.
Smith contended that he sought the phone logs — which don’t include the content of calls or text messages — as part of his probe into Trump’s bid to overturn the election results, even as a mob of his supporters were ransacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump and his aides continued to work the phones that night and encourage lawmakers to derail the transfer of power to Joe Biden.
Smith insisted that his effort to obtain lawmakers’ phone records was cleared by the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section and complied with all department regulations.
But senators said his effort to obtain those call records ran afoul of the Constitution’s speech or debate clause, which provides blanket immunity for lawmakers from being scrutinized by prosecutors for their official business.
Stan Brand, former counsel to the House of Representatives under former Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.), said Blackburn may have a worthy case to test whether members of Congress can win legal relief for violations of the speech or debate clause. That issue is more commonly litigated during criminal cases and before investigators can access members’ records. But in this case, Brand said, the purported violation had already occurred without her knowledge.
“How do you remedy that after the fact?” Brand said. “I think it’s worthy of consideration.”
Blackburn’s lawsuit could put the Justice Department in a bind. Though Trump himself has attacked Smith’s investigation as unconstitutional — and U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon concluded Smith’s appointment was illegal — the Justice Department has never conceded that point. And DOJ has long defended its practice of obtaining secrecy orders from federal courts to prevent telecom companies from disclosing subpoenas to their subscribers.
In 2023, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the way for Smith’s team to access a subset of records it seized from Rep. Scott Perry’s (R-Pa.) phone, though it ruled that courts had to conduct a “fact-specific” inquiry to determine whether some records were “legislative” in nature and therefore off-limits to investigators.
Ken Paxton, the Republican Texas Senate nominee, announced a new $20 million ad buy in the state ahead of November’s crucial election.
The ad — which will begin running Friday in Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio before expanding statewide — is one of the largest-ever single media investments in a Texas Senate race.
“This major media buy is about one thing: making sure every Texan in every corner of this state knows exactly what’s at stake in this race,” said Nick Maddux, senior strategist for the Paxton campaign, in a statement. “We built this campaign to go up early, stay up, and never go dark, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
The Senate race between Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, and Democratic state Rep. James Talarico is quickly becoming one of the most expensive races in the history of the Lone Star state. Earlier this month, AdImpact found collective spending on advertising by the two campaigns and supporting groups totaled more than $153 million.
The Senate Leadership Fund, a top GOP super PAC closely aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, has committed millions to Paxton. Meanwhile, Senate Majority PAC, aligned with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, announced only Tuesday it would begin running ads hitting Paxton, though the PAC did not provide a figure for the campaign.
Still, Talarico has garnered support through other means. He raised a record-breaking $30 million from April to June.
The race remains tight. Recent polls show Talarico up by anywhere from 1 to 6 percentage points over Paxton.
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