Comment on De Blasio’s latest flagrant pay-to-play outrage

This article is part of The D. C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. Ken Block jokes that he could have been talking to me from the height of luxury. Instead, he was in his Rhode Island office, between calls with clients who know his bluntness is his biggest strength.

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North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R) is officially staying in the race for governor after the midnight deadline for him to drop out of the race passed, WRAL reports. Robinson was pressured from members of his own party to drop out of the state’s gubernatorial race, following a CNN report that said he made lewd and divisive comments on a pornographic website. Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball shifted its race rating to likely Democratic.

Kamala Harris outspent Donald Trump “by 20 to 1 on Facebook and Instagram in the week surrounding their debate, capitalizing on the moment to plaster battleground states with ads and to hunt for new donors nationwide,” the New York Times reports. “The lopsided spending — $12.2 million to $611,228 on Meta’s platforms, according to company records — was hardly an outlier.

“Rep. Matt Gaetz attended a drug-fueled sex party in 2017 with the 17-year-old girl at the center of the alleged sex trafficking scandal, according to legal documents filed to a Florida federal court shortly before midnight Thursday, which cite sealed affidavits from three eye-witness testimonies,” NOTUS reports. “The minor, who was a junior in high school at the time, arrived in her mother’s car for a July 15, 2017 party at the Florida home of Chris Dorworth, a lobbyist and friend of Gaetz’s.”

“The House is expected to vote Friday to pass a bill bolstering Secret Service protection for major presidential and vice presidential candidates, a move that comes in the wake of two apparent assassination attempts targeting GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump,” CNN reports. “The bill directs the Secret Service director to apply uniform standards for protection of presidents, vice presidents and major presidential and vice presidential candidates.”