Georgia's Upset, Senate Spending Battles, and a Settlement That Closes a Five-Year Legal Chapter
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Trump's endorsed candidates won Senate primaries in Georgia, Alabama, and Oklahoma, fitting the expected narrative of his grip on Republican primary voters. The exception was significant: political newcomer Rick Jackson, a billionaire who ran outside the Trump endorsement structure, defeated Trump's pick in the Georgia governor's race. In statewide executive races where independent wealth can substitute for party infrastructure, non-establishment candidates can still break through even in heavily Trump-aligned primary environments. A Trump-backed pastor also exited the Oklahoma House race amid a texting scandal, a recurring pattern in which the endorsement raises a candidate's profile, increases scrutiny, and sometimes reveals problems that lower-profile candidacies would have survived.
The Senate moved to freeze Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's travel funds over boat strike footage, invoking a legitimate constitutional tool — appropriations leverage over specific conduct — even if the action reads as partisan in the moment. Defense secretaries historically carry significant travel budgets for military diplomacy, and the footage apparently troubled enough senators to attach funding conditions.
Roy Moore asked the Supreme Court to restore an $8.2 million libel verdict against a Democratic PAC, raising First Amendment questions about whether political advertising about public figures crosses the line into actionable defamation under the actual malice standard from New York Times v. Sullivan — a standard the current Court has shown interest in revisiting. President Trump separately settled the $100 million lawsuit brought by his niece Mary Trump, ending a five-year chapter that began with leaked tax records that fueled a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigation. Settlement terms were not disclosed; neither party receives the public vindication that a trial would have provided.
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to submit a plan for keeping the Kennedy Center operational, pushing back on an unspecified reorganization or defunding proposal. The Kennedy Center's federal charter and federal funding create a specific legal relationship with the executive branch that does not confer unlimited operational authority. Meanwhile, crews began dumping hydrogen peroxide into the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool to combat an algae bloom that reappeared barely a week after a $14.2 million Trump-ordered renovation was completed.