Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who defied President Donald Trump's calls to help overturn the 2020 presidential election results in his state, on Wednesday announced he'll run for governor of Georgia in 2026.

“I’m a conservative Republican, and I’m prepared to make the tough decisions. I follow the law and the Constitution, and I’ll always do the right thing for Georgia no matter what,” Raffensperger said in an announcement video.

The secretary of state will likely face an uphill battle to receive party support as he still draws ire from Trump’s MAGA base for refusing to follow the president’s orders to “find” the votes necessary to overturn the presidential election in 2020.

Raffensperger’s entry into the race to succeed Gov. Brian Kemp sets up a potentially competitive contest, as state Attorney General Chris Carr and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones are also vying for the GOP’s nomination. Jones clinched Trump’s endorsement earlier last month.

Top Democratic public affairs firm SKDK has cut short its contract with the Israeli government, for which it promoted Israel’s perspective on the conflict in Gaza.

The firm’s work initially included media efforts to raise the profile of the tragedy of the Bibas family, three members of which were killed while in captivity in Gaza. SKDK then changed its focus to pitching guests for news shows to hear Israel’s side of the war in Gaza. The $600,000 contract with the Israeli government — first reported by POLITICO in March — was supposed to run from April of this year through March.

SKDK has worked for several pro-Israel efforts over the years, but this was the first time it represented the Israeli government itself. It collaborated with Havas, a European advertising and PR firm, on behalf of Lapam, the Israeli government advertising agency, with the ultimate client being the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“SKDK stopped this work on Aug. 31 and has begun the process of de-registering,” a spokesperson for SKDK said in a statement. The spokesperson declined to comment on why it was ending its work, saying only that the work “had run its course.”

SKDK’s announcement came one day after the investigative news outlet Sludge reported that one aspect of its work was setting up a bot program “to amplify pro-Israel narratives on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other platforms.” The story linked to a Foreign Agents Registration Act filing that showed that Stagwell, the parent company of SKDK, agreed to perform such work.

But SKDK and Stagwell both said they did not work on a bot initiative. “Our work focused solely on media relations and nothing else,” the SKDK spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment. Havas and Lapam also didn’t respond.

Full Interview with Sen. Amy Klobuchar | POLITICO AI & Tech Summit

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Klobuchar calls Section 230 'a problem for our democracy'

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) defended constitutional protections for hate speech in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of conservative organizer Charlie Kirk.

In an interview with POLITICO’s Rachael Bade, Cruz said people who engage in hate speech are not “immune from the consequences of your speech,” expressing support for companies that have taken disciplinary action against employees for speaking negatively of Kirk.

"The First Amendment absolutely protects speech,” Cruz said Tuesday at POLITICO’s AI & Tech Summit in Washington. “It absolutely protects hate speech. It protects vile speech. It protects horrible speech. What does that mean? It means you cannot be prosecuted for speech, even if it is evil and bigoted and wrong.”

At the same time, Cruz endorsed “naming and shaming” as “part of a functioning and vibrant democracy,” citing English philosopher John Stuart Mill’s famous axiom that free and plentiful expression is the best antidote to undesirable speech.

"We have seen, as you noted, across the country, people on the left — not everybody, but far too many people — celebrating Charlie Kirk's murder,” Cruz said. “We've seen teachers in high schools and elementary schools posting online, celebrating. We've seen university professors posting. In my view, they should absolutely face the consequences for celebrating murder."

The senator lauded Kirk, who he described as a friend, for being willing to engage in civil debate.

Numerous individuals have been targeted online for making disparaging posts about Kirk, leading to firings in higher education, media and other industries. The Pentagon has also vowed to discipline service members who “celebrate or mock” Kirk’s killing.

Cruz also defended Attorney General Pamela Bondi, who said law enforcement would “absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” Cruz said those comments had been “misconstrued.”

In a Tuesday morning statement posted to social media, Bondi clarified that “hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment.”

Cruz said while he was glad to see social media companies attempt to block the video of Kirk’s killing but added that the companies should “allow free speech,” echoing earlier comments by Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr who told POLITICO’s Alex Burns that the government should not crack down on social media posts about Kirk.

Full Interview with FCC Chair Brendan Carr | POLITICO's 2025 AI & Tech Summit

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Sessions: DOGE still 'an active component in the government'

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Krishnan: 'We don't want California to set the rules for AI across the country'

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President Donald Trump announced late Monday he was launching a $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times in his latest attack on a major media company over its reporting and commentary on him.

The suit, filed in a Florida court, accuses the Times of being “a fullthroated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party” and cites a series of articles, including the paper’s front-page endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the lead-up to the 2024 election.

Trump said in a post on Truth Social the “degenerate” Times had “engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole.”

“The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!” he added.

Trump’s suit names The New York Times Company, four of the publication’s reporters — Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, Peter Baker and Michael S. Schmidt — and Penguin Random House, which published a book titled “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success,” written by Craig and Buettner, that the legal filing calls “false, malicious, and defamatory.”

The suit alleges the reporting had harmed Trump’s “unique brand” and business interests, including his media company’s stock value, causing “reputational injury” worth “billions of dollars.”

Trump threatened only last week to sue the Times for reporting allegations he authored a sexually suggestive note in 2003 to disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in a New York jail cell in 2019. Trump has vigorously denied he wrote the note.

The Republican leader has launched a flurry of lawsuits against publications and media companies he has accused of being unfriendly and defamatory, including The Wall Street Journal, ABC and Paramount, the parent of CBS News.

In July, Paramount agreed to settle a $20 billion lawsuit filed by Trump over an interview with former Vice President Harris on CBS news program "60 Minutes" that the president said was deceptively edited, paying him $16 million.

The socialist brand is on the rise, according to recent polling, fueling the left flank of the Democratic Party to argue its ideology is becoming more mainstream.

Shortly after Gallup released data showing Democrats and independents are cooling toward capitalism, a progressive organization is out with a poll finding that more than half of likely Democratic voters prefer socialist-aligned figures like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani to establishment politicians like Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jefrries and Nancy Pelosi.

Democratic voters also view elected officials who describe themselves as democratic socialists about as positively as those who identify as Democrats, and they prefer democratic socialism to capitalism when written definitions of each are read aloud to them, according to the poll conducted by Data for Progress and shared first with POLITICO.

“What the mainstream of the party wants is both democratic socialism as a value system and democratic socialist politicians,” said Gabe Tobias, executive director of the Democratic Socialists of America Fund, a political nonprofit organization that funded the survey with the magazine Jacobin and the Berlin-based democratic socialist group Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Though Democratic voters are warming to socialism, the ideology is toxic to most Republicans and many independents, making it difficult for socialists to win in battlegrounds. Even within the Democratic Party, some voters are skeptical about the electability of democratic socialists in swing areas, a reality Sanders faced during his two unsuccessful presidential runs.

Democrats find themselves in turmoil after the national drubbing they took last year, and have been tussling for months over how to rebuild their party. Progressives and moderates alike have sought to shape the debate through polling, memos and in-person gatherings as they bicker over the path out of the wilderness.

This survey marks the first formal poll the DSA Fund has released — the latest example of the left seeking to professionalize its operations and create infrastructure to build on its recent electoral victories. The organization said it plans to share its findings with hundreds of socialists elected around the country.

Fifty-three percent of Democratic voters said they preferred politicians described as similar to Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani, while 33 percent favored those similar to Schumer, Jeffries and Pelosi. Fourteen percent didn’t choose.

Though Democratic voters reported viewing elected officials who describe themselves as Democrats or democratic socialists roughly equally, independent and Republican voters saw the socialists far more negatively. Both types of hypothetical politicians were described as having the same affordability-focused agenda.

The results help explain why socialists and progressives have found success in blue seats and cities — underscored by Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary in June — but have struggled to appeal to swing voters in battleground areas.

In the poll, democratic socialists were defined as believing “that the government should take a more active role to improve Americans' lives. They generally support higher taxes on corporations and high-income earners, support regulations that protect workers and consumers, and want more public ownership of key industries like housing, health care and utilities.”

The survey described capitalists as believing “that the private sector is best equipped to make improvements to Americans' lives. They generally support lower taxes, oppose government regulations of businesses, and want the private sector to own key industries like housing, health care and utilities.”

After hearing each description, 74 percent of likely Democratic voters said democratic socialism comes closest to their viewpoint, while 16 percent said the same of capitalism. A plurality of independent voters and a majority of Republicans said they preferred capitalism.

The survey of 1,257 likely voters nationwide, conducted from Aug. 22 to 24 using web panel respondents, had a 3-point margin of error.