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Rep. John James of Michigan Announces Bid for Governor

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Rep. John James of Michigan Announces Bid for Governor

Representative John James, Republican of Michigan, announced on Monday that he would run for governor, jumping into an increasingly crowded, high-profile contest.

In a post on social media, Mr. James tied himself closely to President Trump while criticizing recent Democratic leadership of Michigan as “radical” and “out-of-touch.”

“It’s time to get Michigan’s government out of fantasyland and back to common sense,” Mr. James wrote.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat elected in 2018, is term-limited, which has set up a competitive 2026 race to determine her successor in the battleground state. On the Republican side, Mr. James joins Aric Nesbitt, the minority leader in the State Senate. Two prominent Democrats in Ms. Whitmer’s administration, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II and Jocelyn Benson, the secretary of state, have also announced runs for governor.

Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary and 2020 Democratic candidate for president who is often mentioned as a likely 2028 presidential contender, said last month that he would not enter the governor’s race, nor would he run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Gary Peters, a Democrat who is retiring.

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The governor’s race could be further complicated by the candidacy of Mayor Mike Duggan of Detroit, a longtime Democrat who announced last year that he would run as an independent, an effort to distance himself from the Democratic Party brand after Mr. Trump flipped the state back to the Republican column in the presidential race last November.

Closely divided Michigan has seesawed between the two parties in recent years, with voters narrowly electing Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, to an open Senate seat while at the same time backing Mr. Trump for the presidency.

Mr. James, 43, has represented a competitive district in the northern Detroit suburbs since 2023, after previously losing two bids for the Senate. A businessman and former Army helicopter pilot who served in Iraq, he would be Michigan’s first Black governor.

In his announcement post, Mr. James underscored his credentials and suggested he would help to reverse a decline in manufacturing jobs in Michigan. “Our state has suffered long enough,” he wrote.

In a statement, Sam Newton, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association, dismissed Mr. James as a right-wing politician who supports policies that would harm Michiganders. “John James has spent his time in Congress putting his own extreme partisan politics first, and now he’s running to bring the chaos and dysfunction of D.C. to Michigan,” Mr. Newton said.

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Biden special counsel’s ‘runaway train’ scooped up sensitive lawmaker info: ‘Abuse of power’

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Biden special counsel’s ‘runaway train’ scooped up sensitive lawmaker info: ‘Abuse of power’

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Former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump swept up text messages from nearly 50 members of Congress, bypassing a required review process in what one victim alleged is a direct constitutional violation.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the situation is more proof Smith’s probe was a “runaway train” of abuses of power, and the elder statesman and Senate Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., jointly released their filings Tuesday evening.

Grassley and Johnson’s findings were from a full-scale probe of Operation Arctic Frost, the code name for Smith’s endeavor to investigate Trump for alleged corruption and election malfeasance, an operation top Senate Republicans call “worse than Watergate.”

LEGAL WAR ON TRUMP’S AGENDA GAINS FIREPOWER AS FEDERAL LAWYERS DEFECT TO DEMOCRATS

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Jack Smith, former U.S. special counsel, arrives for a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., Dec. 17, 2025. (Getty Images)

Forty-four members of Congress had the contents of their text messages obtained and reviewed by Smith’s team in a way that bypassed protocol. A “filter team” was tasked with reviewing millions of documents in the case and should have had first crack at determining whether such messages were relevant or potentially violated statute or ethics.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., one of the lawmakers whose texts were swept up in this way, said Tuesday such reviews amounted to clear violations of the Constitution’s speech and debate clause that protects lawmakers from being questioned in “any other place” than the Capitol for legislative acts.

Internal communications have been historically included in that clause in the courts as technology has advanced.

SUPREME COURT JUSTICES HEAD TO CAPITOL HILL FOR FIRST CONGRESSIONAL APPEARANCE SINCE 2019

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Stefanik said in a statement that the new records prove Smith’s team “unlawfully and unconstitutionally accessed my private text messages, along with 43 other Members of Congress, in clear violation of the Constitution.”

She said she long suspected there had been “unconstitutional spy[ing] on members of Congress.”

The records were provided by the Trump Justice Department to Grassley and Johnson, which the chairmen said indicated Smith’s team had “circumvented its own filter review process.” The process is additionally meant to protect attorney-client privilege, they said in a statement.

OBAMA-APPOINTED JUDGE TORCHES TRUMP ADMIN IN LATEST COURTROOM SHOWDOWN, REFERS ATTORNEY FOR BAR REVIEW

Former special counsel Jack Smith says the Pledge of Allegiance before he prepares to testify during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill Jan. 22, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Al Drago/Getty Images)

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The news also complicated some of Smith’s prior depositions under oath, including an excerpt in which he answered “no” to a question from a congressional counsel whether records he requested from congresspeople included text messages.

Johnson called the situation a “grotesque example” of Biden-era “weaponization” of the executive branch.

“Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes,” Grassley added Tuesday.

“Based on the information that’s been produced to me and Senator Johnson, Biden DOJ and FBI investigators apparently ignored their own routine investigative protocols to obtain and review work-related messages from me and dozens of my Republican and Democrat colleagues who were outside the scope of the government’s investigation.”

Grassley added that he hopes Democrats caught up in the otherwise bipartisan text tranche will finally discard their partisanship and recognize the severity of the alleged violations by Smith.

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He also indicated he planned to recall Smith before Congress to “hold him accountable.”

Of the 44 members swept up in the text reviews, several were Democrats, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington.

Grassley, Johnson and Stefanik were also swept up in the situation, along with top figures like senators Mike Lee, R-Utah; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska; Rand Paul, R-Ky., former Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; and the late Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

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Former House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was one of the victims, along with current House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as well as House Freedom Caucus member Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin of New York, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins of Georgi, and prominent Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

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Several lawmakers sounded off on the news soon after Grassley announced his findings, including Hawley, who called for “everyone involved [to] be prosecuted.”

“Joe Biden’s DOJ not only tapped my phone; I just learned they illegally obtained my texts with members of President Trump’s administration,” the Missourian fumed.

Paul called the allegations a “blatant abuse of power and exactly what our Founders warned about,” while citing Smith’s past denial under oath.

Fox News Digital reached out to a representative for Smith for comment.

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After lawsuit, ICE pauses construction of Bay Area detention facility

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After lawsuit, ICE pauses construction of Bay Area detention facility

The federal government agreed to temporarily hold off on construction of a planned Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Northern California.

The voluntary pause until Sept. 9 comes after the California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Santa Clara County officials sued the Trump administration last month to block the facility from being developed near Gilroy. The lawsuit remains ongoing.

“This pause in the construction, demolition, and development at the site of the challenged ICE facility is a significant step towards protecting our people, our communities, and our environment while the case remains ongoing,” Bonta said in a statement Monday night.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

State and local officials believe the facility will be used for short-term detention of up to 150 people at a time, though ICE denied that it would be a detention center.

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Community members and advocates for immigrants swiftly opposed the project. ICE has consistently looked to increase its detention capacity in California, where eight detention centers can now hold a combined 9,000 people, though the state has long been a thorn in the agency’s side.

The halt is part of a compromise between both sides involved in the legal action. After the state and county submitted a request for the court to temporarily halt the project, a hearing was set for Oct. 7.

Now, state and federal officials jointly requested that the court move up the hearing by at least a month. The agreement also extends how much time the federal government has to respond.

A federal judge signed off on the agreement Monday night.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San José, alleges that the leased land is zoned exclusively for agricultural use and that the federal government violated laws requiring state and county notification, as well as procedural steps before beginning construction.

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Why Supreme Court Justices Are Asking for More Security

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Supreme Court justices are asking lawmakers on Capitol Hill to increase their 2027 budget, with most of the additional funding earmarked for security. Ann E. Marimow, a New York Times reporter, explains why the justices say these measures are necessary to protect them from rising threats.

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