It appears some behind-the-scenes tinkering by the Senate Republican campaign arm helped spur progressive firebrand Rep. Jasmine Crockett to declare her candidacy this week in Texas’ high-stakes Senate race.

The campaign launch by Crockett, a two-term lawmaker who represents a Dallas-area district and who is known as a vocal critic and foil of President Donald Trump, quickly shifted the political spotlight off of the Republican nomination race, where incumbent GOP Sen. John Cornyn is involved in a divisive primary with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt.

The GOP boosting of a preferred primary opponent comes in a race with extremely high stakes, as it’s one of a handful across the country that will likely determine if Republicans hold their Senate majority in next year’s midterm elections.

As the race in Texas was heating up this past summer, Crockett, a rising Democratic Party star who enjoys a large social media footprint, was not among the list of Democrats widely considered as contenders for the party’s nomination.

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But Republican strategists viewed Crockett as a more beatable opponent in the 2026 general election than either former Rep. Colin Allred, who until Monday was making his second straight Senate bid, state Rep. James Talarico, another rising party star who launched his campaign in September, and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Rep. Joaquin Castro, who at the time were mulling bids.

So the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) released a poll in July that indicated Crockett with a double-digit lead over the rest of the field of actual and potential Democratic Senate contenders.

The poll quickly grabbed plenty of national attention.

Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville spoke about Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s bid for the Senate in Thursday’s episode of his podcast, arguing she tends to break a key rule of politics. 

“Politics War Room” podcast co-host Al Hunt argued Crockett throwing her hat into the ring for the Texas Senate is good news. He argued that the most likely Democratic candidate to win would be state Rep. James Talarico, saying, “If he ends up running against Ken Paxton, I like those odds.” 

Carville said he feels more optimistic about Texas than he has in a long time. 

“I’ll address the issue of Jasmine Crockett,” Carville said. “First of all, it seems like she’s well-educated. It seems like she’s got a lot of energy. But she, to me, she violates the first rule of politics, and that is, in politics, you always make it about the voters and never about yourself.

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“You listen to her talk. It’s a lot more about herself than it is the voters.”

He warned that Crockett lives in a district that favors Democrats by 24 points, arguing it would be far better for her to try to rally Democrats in districts that slightly favor Republicans.

“You can stay in Congress as long as you want,” Carville suggested. “You can get all the hits. You can get all the clicks. You can get on all of the TV shows. You can get in as long as you’re polemic, but you’re not helping very much.”

He went on to argue that a perfect example of Democrats making unforced errors would be Tennessee’s 7th district, where Aftyn Behn was considered a poor choice of candidate in an election where Republicans were unusually vulnerable.

Carville joked that it was as if Democrats had “gone into a lab” to “design the worst candidate that we could possibly run in Tennessee 7.

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“We would pick somebody who said they didn’t like country music. We could pick someone that said they don’t even like where they live. We could pick someone that said they wanted to pay for gender-affirming surgery for prison. We could pick someone that said, ‘We want to defund the police.’ Actually, we picked that person. We actually did. And even there, she cut the margin from 22 to nine.

“But we know what wins elections,” Carville concluded. “We just do. And what wins elections is not sitting there talking incessantly about yourself. Winning elections is not how many clicks you get or how much overnight fundraising you do. Winning elections is being part of framing issues and understanding where people are coming from, and I don’t think Congressman Crockett is very good at that. I’ll be very frank.”

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Fox News Digital reached out to Behn and Crockett and did not receive an immediate response.

The executive director of Black Lives Matter (BLM) Oklahoma City (OKC) has been charged with wire fraud and money laundering after federal prosecutors say she diverted more than $3.15 million in returned bail checks into her personal bank accounts over a five-year period, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday.

Tashella Sheri Amore Dickerson, 52, of Oklahoma City, is accused of routing money intended for the group’s bail fund and social justice programs into accounts she controlled between June 2020 and October 2025. 

The indictment says Dickerson used the money “for her personal benefit,” including travel to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, “tens of thousands of dollars in retail shopping,” more than $50,000 in food deliveries, a vehicle and six real properties.

According to a Department of Justice (DOJ) press release covering the indictment, BLM OKC raised more than $5.6 million beginning in 2020, including major grants from the Community Justice Exchange, the Massachusetts Bail Fund and the Minnesota Freedom Fund.

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Those organizations routed most of the money through the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ), which served as BLM OKC’s fiscal sponsor and required that all funds be used for tax-exempt purposes permitted under Section 501(c)(3). AFGJ also prohibited real estate purchases without its approval and required BLM OKC to fully account for expenditures upon request.

Prosecutors say Dickerson instead deposited at least $3.15 million in returned bail checks into her personal accounts “rather than into BLMOKC’s accounts” and used interstate wires to submit two annual reports to AFGJ that “did not disclose” her personal use of funds. Those reports said the organization’s money had been used only for tax-exempt purposes.

Dickerson served as the group’s executive director beginning in at least 2016 and had access to BLM OKC’s bank, PayPal and CashApp accounts, according to the indictment. 

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Prosecutors allege the misconduct began during the period when national bail funds allowed BLM OKC to retain portions of returned bail money to build a revolving bail fund or support its stated mission. 

In 2022, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, a separate national organization not affiliated with BLM OKC, came under scrutiny after New York Magazine reported that it had purchased a $6 million California property using donor funds.

Internal memos showed senior leaders discussing how to manage questions about the house, which the group said was intended to serve as creative and community space. The reporting ignited debate at the time over financial transparency and oversight within national BLM-associated organizations.

When contacted about Dickerson’s charges, a Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation spokesperson said BLM practices a “model of decentralized leadership.”

“The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation operates independently from local chapters, and the local chapters operate independently of the Foundation. The Foundation remains committed to transparency and integrity, and disrupting what philanthropy looks like in service of Black people,” the spokesperson said.

A federal grand jury returned a 25-count indictment Dec. 3 charging Dickerson with 20 counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering. She faces up to 20 years in federal prison for each wire fraud count and up to 10 years for each money-laundering count, along with potential fines of up to $250,000 per charge.

All charges are merely allegations and Dickerson is presumed innocent unless proven guilty. The case was investigated by the FBI’s Oklahoma City Field Office and IRS Criminal Investigation.

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Fox News Digital has reached out to Black Lives Matter OKC and the Alliance for Global Justice for comment.

Fox News correspondent David Spunt and Fox News Digital’s Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.