Today is
Friday June 05, 2026
ONALASKA (KETK) — An Onalaska Elementary School teacher was arrested on Tuesday night for possession of child pornography and unwanted contact against a juvenile.
Mugshot of Jerry Cobb, courtesy of Angelina County Sheriff’s Office.
According to the Onalaska Police Department, they were notified on Feb. 11 of an incident involving Jerry Cobb, 47, who had made unwanted contact against a juvenile. During the investigation, several adults and juveniles were interviewed.
The police department was able to establish probable cause for warrants of two counts of misdemeanor A assault and one count of a third degree felony of possession of child pornography.
On Tuesday night, the Angelina County Sheriff’s Office located and arrested Cobb. He was booked into the Angelina County Jail with a $15,000 bond.
Cobb is currently on administrative leave and Onalaska ISD released a statement on Wednesday addressing the arrest.
“It is our goal to communicate as fully as possible while not impeding an open investigation, nor violating personnel confidentiality requirements and state law,” the school district said.
The police department said that none of the images Cobb possessed included any juveniles from the Onalaska community. The investigation is still active and has been forwarded to the Polk County District Attorney’s Office for prosecution.
(KETK) – President Trump said the Texas Republican Senate candidate that does not get his endorsement should drop out of the race, announcing on Wednesday that he will throw his weight behind the race “soon.”
In a lengthy TruthSocial post, Trump argued that the GOP primary race in the Lone Star State “cannot, for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer.”
“IT MUST STOP NOW! We have an easy to beat, Radical Left Opponent, and we have to TOTALLY FOCUS on putting him away, quickly and decisively! Both John [Cornyn] and Ken [Paxton] ran great races, but not good enough. Now, this one, must be PERFECT!” he continued.
“My Endorsements within the Republican Party have been virtually insurmountable! It is such an honor to realize and say that almost everyone I Endorse WINS, and wins by a lot, especially in Texas! I will be making my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE! Is that fair? We must win in November!!!” he said.
The party’s Senate primary went to a runoff on Tuesday after neither Attorney General Ken Paxton or Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) were able to win a majority of the electorate. A run off election is scheduled for late May.
According to the latest results on Monday, Cornyn led Paxton 41.9 percent to 40.7 percent.
Trump held off on endorsing in the primary, noting he had good relationships with all of the candidates, including Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas), who did not advance to the runoff.
TEXAS – Texas’ March 2026 primaries were extraordinarily contentious and costly, and many of the biggest battles are going into overtime, teeing up another 12 weeks of bruising attacks and high-dollar spending ahead of the May 26 runoff, according to the Texas Tribune.
The state’s two blockbuster Senate primaries dominated the airwaves. After a record-setting advertising blitz, GOP incumbent Sen. John Cornyn is facing a runoff with Attorney General Ken Paxton, while Austin state Rep. James Talarico defeated U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett for the Democratic nomination.
Further down the ballot, chaos reigned, as big money shifted several races in the final weeks; President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott lined up behind opposing candidates, with mixed results; and several longtime incumbents were unseated or forced into career-threatening runoffs.
The lack of decisive outcomes Tuesday night, for individual races and for dueling wings of the Texas GOP, promises an equally intense runoff season — and a long, expensive eight months until the general.
Here are some top takeaways from an action-packed primary election night.
Money talks
The 2026 March primary will go down as the most expensive in Texas history, setting spending records for several different offices, from comptroller to attorney general, led by a colossal advertising blitz behind Cornyn that set the national high-water mark for a Senate primary.
As Tuesday night’s results showed, money moves the needle.
The GOP Senate brawl was the most expensive primary for the upper chamber in history, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact, which tallied nearly $100 million in ad buys, much of it in support of Cornyn. The fourth-term senator far outraised his opponents and benefited from tens of millions from groups aligned with Senate GOP leadership, who felt the longtime incumbent would be a stronger candidate in a general election than Paxton. More than $71 million was spent in ad buys to support his candidacy, more than any other incumbent in a primary race on record, according to AdImpact.
While Paxton, a favorite of the party’s grassroots, had expressed confidence that he might avoid a runoff, Cornyn not only forced him into an overtime round, but narrowly led the field. In a speech to supporters, Paxton acknowledged the impact of Cornyn’s spending.
“Here’s what we learned tonight: While the money may be on his side, the people are on our side, and in Texas, the people always win,” said Paxton, who benefited from less than $5 million in ad spending between his campaign and a supportive super PAC.
Big money, and big ad buys, also shaped the Democratic Senate primary. Talarico spent over $17 million on ads through his campaign alone, while a pro-Talarico super PAC dropped another $8 million, giving him a nearly five-to-one spending advantage over Crockett. Despite having a lower national profile at the start of the race, Talarico was in position to secure the nomination early Wednesday morning, though the Associated Press had yet to formally call the race in his favor.
Down the ballot, state Sen. Mayes Middleton overperformed expectations in the GOP attorney general race after giving close to $12 million of his oil and gas fortune to his own campaign.
The Galveston lawmaker entered the race at a significant name recognition disadvantage next to the frontrunner, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy of Austin, who has made a national name for himself as a conservative rabble-rouser in Congress. But Middleton’s money bought him a flood of mailers, television and radio ads and text messages, allowing him to get his “MAGA Mayes” messaging in front of voters in the final weeks of the campaign.
He came in first Tuesday night, with Roy in a distant second, teeing up what promises to be a costly runoff for the most important red-state attorney general office in the country.
In the comptroller race, former state senator and businessman Don Huffines won outright after loaning his campaign $10 million to buy mailers and air time. The race was expected to go to a runoff, but Huffines easily cleared the field of acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock and Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick.
Cornyn lives to see another day
In the final days of the race, Paxton repeatedly suggested he could win the primary outright.
That didn’t happen. Cornyn finished narrowly ahead of Paxton, giving him a stronger than expected stature heading into a runoff against the attorney general.
Cornyn disproved a spate of recent polls that put him in second place. And he did surprisingly well in some key parts of the state, nearly beating Paxton in his longtime home base of Collin County.
“Election returns are showing that Senator Cornyn is overperforming recent polling and expectations, and Corrupt Ken Paxton is underperforming,” Cornyn’s campaign manager, Andy Hemming, said in a statement.
Even some Cornyn critics took note of the senator’s performance.
“I voted for Wesley Hunt in the primary and will vote for Ken Paxton in the runoff, but I’m honestly surprised by Cornyn’s first place finish and the Paxton team has to be alarmed,” Rolando Garcia, a member of the State Republican Executive Committee, wrote on X. “Paxton is still slightly favored in a runoff, but it is clearly going to be more difficult than they thought.”
Cornyn’s better-than-expected showing could bolster his case for a Trump endorsement. The president stayed neutral in the primary but has suggested he could get involved in any runoff.
To be sure, Cornyn faces a tough challenge in the overtime round, which is expected to have an even lower turnout featuring voters who are more ideological and could be more drawn to Paxton. Addressing reporters Tuesday night in Austin, Cornyn made his case for why this runoff could be different, suggesting it could have a “robust” turnout due to the number of other primaries heading to runoffs.
Paxton had a simpler — and more confident message — about the runoff on Tuesday night.
“I’ve been in two statewide runoffs,” he told supporters, “and I never won by less than 30 points, and I don’t plan on starting now.”
Trump’s endorsement isn’t a silver bullet
Trump handed out his endorsement generously ahead of the primary, backing over 130 incumbents and candidates for the Texas Legislature, Congress and statewide office.
While most of his endorsed candidates won their primaries outright Tuesday night, a major one — Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller — was poised to lose reelection. And at least three Trump-endorsed candidates for Congress were headed to runoffs, one of them in a distant second place.
While not a wholesale rejection of Trump’s influence, the results showed that his endorsement cannot solve all a candidate’s problems. Miller has long aligned himself with Trump, but he has suffered years of scandal and gotten crosswise of Gov. Greg Abbott, who vocally backed Miller challenger Nate Sheets. Trump did not endorse Miller for reelection until Friday night, after the end of early voting.
Another Trump-backed candidate who did not win outright Tuesday night, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales of San Antonio, also had unique political problems. The early voting period began with fresh revelations that he had an extramarital affair with a staffer who later died after setting herself on fire. Trump had appeared to back off his endorsement of Gonzales in the final days before the primary, but Gonzales continued to highlight it, including at the top of a primary day email to supporters.
“Thank you President Trump and all those #TX23 constituents that support our campaign,” Gonzales posted on X as it became clear he would move to a runoff. “Onward to a victorious May.”
In the primary for the 35th Congressional District, one of the five new districts Republicans redrew in the hopes of flipping, Trump’s preferred candidate, Carlos De La Cruz, finished second en route to a runoff against state Rep. John Lujan. De La Cruz is the brother of Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-McAllen, but Lujan had Abbott’s endorsement and more experience running competitive races in the San Antonio area.
Two Trump-backed state representatives, Reps. Cecil Bell and Stan Kitzman, also lost reelection by decisive margins. Bell and Kitzman were among the more than 100 members of the Texas Legislature who received a blanket endorsement from Trump last year as a reward for voting for Abbott’s priority legislation on school vouchers.
Incumbents got knocked on their heels
Several long-time elected officials may find themselves looking for a new job after Tuesday proved to be a tough night for incumbents.
An unusual mid-decade redraw of Texas’ congressional maps shook up several incumbents’ safe seats, forcing them into contentious primaries. On the Democratic side, Rep. Al Green, pushed out of his district by the new map, challenged Rep. Christian Menefee, who was elected to the newly drawn 18th Congressional District in a special election last month. Green, a party elder who has spent more than two decades representing Houston in Congress, was locked in a close battle with Menefee, a former Harris County attorney, in a race that remained too close to call with nearly all Harris County election day results yet to be reported.
It’s a similar story up north, where Dallas Democratic Rep. Julie Johnson was pushed out of her district and now finds herself facing a likely runoff against her predecessor in Congress, Colin Allred. Allred, who was leading the vote count but remained shy of the 50% threshold, unsuccessfully ran for Senate against incumbent Ted Cruz in 2024 and dropped out of this year’s Senate primary in December.
Across the aisle, U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL and fourth-term congressman from Houston, lost to state Rep. Steve Toth, R-Conroe. Crenshaw faced difficult headwinds — he was the only House Republican running for reelection in Texas without a Trump endorsement — but it didn’t help when his district was redrawn to include more of Toth’s territory in Montgomery County.
Voters also ousted Miller, the agriculture commissioner since 2015, in favor of the newcomer Sheets. And in the comptroller race, pseudo-incumbent Kelly Hancock, who was appointed by Abbott in June, came in a distant second to Huffines.
A legislative power broker struggles to reassert itself
In the policy battle over medical malpractice lawsuits, longtime Republican kingmakers at Texans for Lawsuit Reform suffered a resounding defeat in the Texas House, dwindling hopes of bouncing back from a disappointing legislative session.
In the shadow of the 2025 session, TLR President Lee Parsley called out Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows and several members by name for dooming the group’s priority legislation and suggested its well-funded political operation would go on the offensive in the primaries. As the dust settles from Tuesday, every candidate seeking reelection who was named in Parsley’s letter survived their intraparty challenge or went unopposed — the latest in a string of setbacks for the group that once had virtual carte blanche to reshape Texas’ civil justice system.
Declaring war, TLR PAC backed challenges to Reps. Marc LaHood of San Antonio, Mark Dorazio of San Antonio and Andy Hopper of Decatur. But the group eased off its financial support for those challengers, and all three incumbents — all of whom earned President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott’s endorsements — sailed to their nominations. The LaHood race, which began as TLR’s marquee challenge, was decided by a roughly 3-to-1 margin.
TLR’s candidates struggled in Tarrant County open races, too, even though they were also backed by Abbott. As of early Wednesday morning, businessman Fred Tate was losing to Keller Mayor Armin Mizani, and activist Jackie Schlegel had less than half the vote share of business owner Cheryl Bean. TLR spent at least $2.2 million backing Tate.
For both Mizani and Bean, their victories would be electoral redemption after losing their state House races in 2018 and 2024, respectively.
TLR candidate Sarah Sagredo-Hammond was also poised to lose in a battleground Rio Grande Valley seat, missing the runoff in a distant third. That district, being vacated by Rep. Bobby Guerra, D-Mission, marks one of Republicans’ best chances for a flip in the Texas House. Trump carried it by 1.6 points in 2024.
Where TLR did win, it supported incumbents backed by Trump and Abbott. Additionally, Abbott and TLR combined to back Jorge Borrego, who was poised to win in a battleground open race that Republicans barely held in 2024.
LUFKIN, Texas (KETK) — A man injured in a stabbing in a Lufkin parking lot Sunday evening led to the arrest of one, Lufkin city officials said.
Lufkin police responded around 5:30 p.m. to a report of a stabbing in the 4500 block of South Melford Drive. Officers found the victim, a 32-year-old man, with a wound to his upper back and a woman applying pressure to the injury. Police assisted until emergency medical services arrived.
Surveillance footage from nearby stores showed the victim and a another man, identified as 30-year-old Justin William Benton, preparing to fight. Benton appeared to cut the victim in the back before leaving the scene.
Benton was arrested and booked into Angelina County Jail for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He was released on Monday after posting bail.
AUSTIN (AP) – The first round of primary elections is showing how this year’s midterms will be taking place on shifting political ground for incumbents.
That was particularly true in Texas — the first state to redraw its congressional districts last year — where two incumbent members of Congress have been pushed to a runoff and another has been scuttled from the House altogether.
Democratic Rep. Al Green, an outspoken liberal who has twice been ejected from President Donald Trump’s State of the Union addresses for protesting, and newly elected Rep. Christian Menefee will compete in the May 26 runoff for a Houston-area district.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican and former Navy SEAL with an independent streak, faced attacks from the party’s hard right that he was not in lockstep with Trump, and was the state’s only House Republican not to win the president’s endorsement. He lost to Steve Toth, a Republican state lawmaker who received late backing from Sen. Ted Cruz.
Incumbents also are in close races in Texas and North Carolina that were too early to call early Wednesday.
A look at where things stand after Tuesday’s primaries:
The unusual primary between two sitting Democratic congressmen in Texas was the result of redrawn voting maps that Trump ordered ahead of November’s midterm elections. Green, 78, switched to run in the newly redrawn 18th Congressional District after his current district was redrawn to favor Republicans.
Menefee, 37, was sworn in to Congress only a month ago after winning a special election to fill the remaining term of Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died last year. For some Houston voters, Tuesday’s primary was their third time casting ballots in a congressional race in four months, sowing confusion.
Green, who was first elected to the U.S. House in 2004, is one of his party’s most outspoken Trump critics and filed articles of impeachment during the president’s first term.
The primary is one of the generational competitions among Democrats this year, as younger candidates argue it’s time for a new crop of party leaders. Green has faced concerns from within the party, which is increasingly unwilling to defer to seniority.
Crenshaw ousted by Toth
Crenshaw, seeking his fifth term in Texas’ 2nd Congressional District, was the state’s only House Republican whom Trump didn’t endorse heading into the nation’s first big primary of 2026.
The former Navy SEAL, whose independent streak sometimes clashed with fellow Republicans, spent the primary trying to fend off attacks from the party’s hard right that he wasn’t in step with Trump’s agenda.
Toth, a state representative and member of the GOP’s hard-right caucus in the Legislature, picked up a big endorsement late in the primary from Cruz.
“This campaign has been a referendum on representatives who campaign one way and govern another, and the people have spoken,” Toth said in a statement after his victory.
Crenshaw, who lost his right eye when he was hit with an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2012, had clashed with Cruz over the senator’s support of Trump’s unfounded claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.
He was one of the few Texas Republican candidates for Congress in 2022 who acknowledged that President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was legitimate, a position that occasionally found him at odds with fellow Republicans.
Crenshaw also drew the ire of conservatives when a video clip went viral of him criticizing some Republican politicians as “grifters” and “performance artists” who simply tell conservative voters what they want to hear.
AUSTIN (AP) — James Talarico did not mention Donald Trump when he greeted exuberant supporters at his primary night celebration.
But the newly minted Democratic U.S. Senate nominee in Texas is now a front man for the political opposition to the Republican president, not just in his own state but around the country. With his victory over U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, the state lawmaker from Austin will test whether a smiling message of unity and change is enough to answer voters’ frustrations amid discord at home and now a war abroad.
“We are not just trying to win an election,” Talarico told supporters in the Texas capital early Wednesday. “We are trying to fundamentally change our politics, and it’s working.”
The campaign provided “Love thy Neighbor” signs to people in the crowd.
The question for Talarico as he heads into the general election campaign is whether he can generate enthusiasm from voters who opted for Crockett because they saw her as the more aggressive fighter against Trump. Crockett conceded to Talarico on Wednesday morning, saying that “Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person.”
Talarico was endorsed by Kamala Harris, the party’s 2024 presidential nominee who had backed Crockett in the primary.
Democrats’ long losing streak in Texas
Talarico will need all the help he can get in a Republican-dominated state where Democrats have gone three decades without winning a statewide race. He will face either U.S. Sen. John Cornyn or state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who advanced to a Republican runoff on Tuesday.
Conventional political wisdom has it that Talarico was the stronger Democratic candidate for November, especially if Republicans nominate Paxton, a conservative firebrand who has weathered allegations of corruption and infidelity over the years.
Although Democrats are often choosing between moderate and progressive candidates in primaries, they faced a largely stylistic choice in Texas.
Talarico, 36, is a Presbyterian seminarian who quotes Scripture and rarely raises his voice. Crockett, 44, is an unapologetic political brawler who hammers Trump and other Republicans with acidic flourish.
Both have been reliably progressive votes in their current roles and telegenic faces across cable news and social media. Both represent generational change for a party with aging leadership. Each called for a more equitable economy and society. Each talked about reaching sporadic voters.
But Talarico’s broader argument is one that he could have made regardless of whether Trump was in the White House. Talarico’s campaign, he said often, is about addressing a country whose fundamental divide is not partisan but “top vs. bottom.” He regularly assails the rise in Christian nationalism. A former teacher, he has advocated for public education –- and against Texas conservatives’ policies to restrict curriculum and reshape how U.S. history is taught.
“He’s just a good friend and he’s a serious advocate for the disenfranchised and a serious policymaker,” said Lea Downey Gallatin, 40, an Austin resident who became friends with Talarico when they interned together for a congressman.
Talarico aims to broaden the party’s Texas base
Crockett promised Democrats that she could increase turnout within the party’s base, while Talarico campaigned on the theory that he could pull new people into the party’s tent.
“I can’t tell you how many have come up to me, whispering that they’re not a Democrat,” Talarico said as he campaigned in San Antonio in the closing days of the primary campaign. “I can’t tell you how many young people have said it’s the first time that they’ve ever voted, and that they are participating for the first time.”
As he strolled through the city, Talarico posed for pictures and greeted the singer of a Tejano band playing nearby. He later spoke to hundreds of people at the historic Stable Hall, a 130-year-old circular structure built for showing horses and now a converted event center. Hundreds more, unable to get into the full event, wound around the corner and along the sidewalk for blocks.
Inside, Lori Alvarez, a 39-year-old who works for a disaster relief nonprofit, said she supported Talarico because “he really listens to what we need.”
“I think he’s going to be able to make change in Washington for us,” said the married mother of three young girls.
Yet that was not what attracted so many voters to Crockett.
Crockett’s voters must decide whether Talarico is a fighter
Troy Burrow, a 61-year-old Navy retiree, called Crockett “rugged” and “the only one I see fighting for us.”
He added: “I like how she doesn’t back down from anybody.”
Burrow said some voters probably saw Talarico as more electable because he is more soft-spoken. But, he said, “We’ve got to get into the gutter with these folks, because that’s where they are.”
Unofficial primary returns showed Talarico with a dominating performance around his home base of Austin, including in mostly white areas. He outpaced Crockett across much of rural and small-town Texas, including in the Rio Grande Valley, where Trump made gains in his 2024 presidential victory among Hispanic voters. Crockett was strongest in metro Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, including areas with large concentrations of Black voters.
Crockett is Black. Talarico is white.
A Democratic win in Texas would require stitching together that multiracial and multiethnic coalition, spanning the metro areas and heavily Latino South and West Texas, while limiting GOP margins in whiter rural counties.
In 2018, Democrat Beto O’Rourke came the closest to that mix, losing to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz by about 215,000 votes or about 2.5 percentage points. With both parties holding competitive primaries Tuesday, Democratic primary voters outnumbered Republicans by more than 110,000 out of almost 4.4 million — with some ballots still being tallied. Because Texas does not have party registration and allows voters to choose either party’s primary ballot, Democrats saw their advantage as a sign of enthusiasm beyond the party’s usual base.
Talarico, meanwhile, keeps fighting his own way.
“Tonight, the people of our state gave this country a little bit of hope,” he said Tuesday, “and a little bit of hope is a dangerous thing.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Ethics Committee said Wednesday that it has opened an investigation of Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, over allegations that include having an affair with an aide.
The top Republican and Democratic members on the committee said in a joint statement that an investigative panel would look into whether Gonzales engaged in sexual misconduct toward an employee in his office and whether he discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges.
Gonzales’ office did not immediately reply to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
The congressman, now in his third term, has said he would not step down in response to the allegations, telling reporters at the Capitol recently that there will be opportunities for all the details and facts to come out.
“What you’ve seen is not all the facts,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales, a father of six, first won his seat in 2020 after retiring from a 20-year career in the Navy that included time in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Tuesday, he was forced into a May runoff against Brandon Herrera, a gun manufacturer and YouTube gun-rights influencer who narrowly lost to Gonzales in the 2024 primary.
The San Antonio Express-News reported that it had obtained text messages in which the former Gonzales staffer, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, wrote to a colleague that she had an affair with the congressman.
The AP has not independently obtained copies of the messages. A lawyer for Adrian Aviles, Santos-Aviles’ husband, has said the husband found out about the affair before his wife’s death.
Santos-Aviles, 35, died in September 2025 after setting herself on fire in the backyard of her home in Uvalde, Texas. The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office later ruled her death a suicide.
DALLAS (AP) – Jasmine Crockett on Wednesday conceded the Democratic primary in the Texas Senate race to James Talarico.
The congresswoman called on the party to unify behind the state representative, who clinched the nomination overnight.
“Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person,” Crockett said in a statement. “This is about the future of all 30 million Texans and getting America back on track.”
Crockett’s campaign had previously suggested that she would file a lawsuit over voting challenges in the primary. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a question about those plans.
Talarico will face the winner of the Republican runoff, either Sen. John Cornyn or state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
DALLAS (AP) — The mess in Texas may be just beginning.
Four-term Sen. John Cornyn and his allies spent nearly $70 million to survive the first round of the party’s nomination fight on Tuesday. He was slightly ahead of conservative firebrand Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, with more votes still being counted on Wednesday.
Both now advance to a May 26 runoff election that Republicans fear could be even uglier and more expensive than the first contest.
“It’s judgment day for Ken Paxton,” Cornyn said on Tuesday night.
But whether any level of attacks can stop Paxton — who has long been shadowed by allegations of corruption and infidelity — remains unclear, especially as he fashions himself as the kind of Make America Great Again warrior President Donald Trump needs in Washington.
Paxton was defiant when speaking to a few hundred supporters at a Dallas hotel ballroom, a far different scene than Cornyn’s small press conference.
“We just sent a message, loud and clear, to Washington,” he said. “We are not going to go quietly, and we are not going to let you buy the seat.”
Republicans are sweating the runoff because the 83-day sprint takes place as operatives in both major political parties acknowledge that Democrats have an unusually solid chance of winning a Senate seat in Texas this year, something that hasn’t happened in nearly four decades.
Democrats nominated state Rep. James Talarico, who Republicans immediately attacked as a far-left extremist — even though they privately consider the 36-year-old Christian progressive to be a stronger general election candidate than his primary opponent, Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
The Texas contest is playing out as Trump fights to maintain control of Congress for his final two years in the White House. Republicans are more confident about keeping their majority in the Senate than the House, but a competitive race in Texas could scramble the map, or at least consume resources that the party needs in more competitive states like North Carolina, Maine, Ohio and Alaska.
Republican leaders in Washington insist that Cornyn has the best shot, especially after he finished ahead of Paxton in Tuesday’s primary, with U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt finishing a distant third and conceding. Cornyn’s campaign argued that a runoff wouldn’t even be necessary if it wasn’t for “Wesley Hunt’s vanity campaign.”
“Paxton’s problems aren’t just an issue in a Republican primary; they also threaten to put the Senate seat at risk due to his lack of strength against Democrat nominee Talarico,” a memo from Cornyn’s team said.
But Paxton and his allies are showing no signs of backing down.
“The D.C. establishment has done its job: it rallied around its wounded incumbent, opened the fundraising spigot, and flooded the airwaves. But the results, the data, and the reality on the ground all point to the same conclusion: John Cornyn has no viable path to the Republican nomination,” the pro-Paxton Lone Star PAC wrote in a memo. “Cornyn should suspend his campaign, concede the nomination to Ken Paxton, and refuse to allow another $100+ million in Republican resources to be burned in a race that is already decided.”
The only person who might be able to forestall the intraparty fight, or at least limit its fallout, is Trump. But the president has declined to endorse a candidate in the primary, describing all of them as “great,” and it was unclear if anything would change in the runoff.
Without Trump’s support, Cornyn made it clear that he would make the case himself. He told reporters that Paxton would be “a dead weight at the top of the ticket for Republicans” in November.
“I’ve worked for decades to build the Republican Party, both here in Texas and nationally,” Cornyn said. “I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton to risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build over these many years.”
Cornyn will face intense fundraising pressure, having already spent so much money in the first round of the primary. Aides said he had some small fundraisers planned but nothing in the days immediately after this week’s vote as he returns to Washington.
In addition, Paxton’s allies are confident that the political landscape will tilt in the attorney general’s favor.
“The casual and moderate Republican voters who are most likely to support an establishment incumbent are the least likely to return for a runoff,” said the memo from the Lone Star PAC. “The committed conservative activists who form Paxton’s base are the most likely to show up.”
EL PASO (AP) — A large immigration detention camp in Texas has been closed to visitors and attorneys due to a measles outbreak, a lawmaker said Tuesday.
There are 14 active measles cases at the detention center on the Fort Bliss Army base and 112 people are being isolated, said U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, an El Paso Democrat whose district includes the facility, known as Camp East Montana. It will remain closed to visitors and attorneys until March 19 or March 20.
“While on one hand, it is a good thing that the measles outbreak is being taken seriously, on the other hand, I am alarmed that a preventable crisis has created conditions where detainees can only access their lawyers virtually,” Escobar said in a statement.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The camp opened last year after the Trump administration awarded a contract worth up to $1.3 billion to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a Virginia contractor that had previously not operated an ICE facility. Detainees have described a camp where an average of about 3,000 people per day live in loud and unsanitary quarters, diseases spread easily and sleep is a luxury.
Measles, an easily preventable disease that was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, ripped through Texas communities last year, in part because health departments were starved of the funding needed to run vaccine programs. West Texas was hit especially hard.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Elon Musk is expected to take the stand in a shareholder trial on Wednesday in San Francisco, where he’s accused of making false and misleading statements that drove down Twitter’s stock price before he bought the social media platform for $44 billion in 2022.
The lawsuit was filed in October 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of Twitter shareholders who sold the stock between May 13 and Oct. 4, 2022, a few weeks before Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized. It claims Musk violated federal securities laws by making false, public statements that “were carefully calculated to drive down the price of Twitter stock.”
The billionaire Tesla CEO reached a deal to buy Twitter and take it private in April 2022. On May 13, however, he declared his plan “temporarily on hold” and said he needs to pinpoint the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform. Twitter’s stock tumbled as a result. A few days later, he tweeted that the deal “cannot go forward” and claimed that almost 20% of Twitter accounts were “fake,” according to the lawsuit.
Musk’s May 13 tweet — “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users” — was “false because the buyout was not, in fact, ‘temporarily on hold,’” the lawsuit says. That’s because Twitter did not agree to put the deal on hold, and there was nothing in the merger agreement the two parties signed that allowed Musk to put it on hold, according to the lawsuit.
In the following weeks, Musk continued to try to delay or get out of the deal, which the lawsuit claims he did in the form of false, disparaging statements about Twitter’s business that drove the San Francisco company’s stock down sharply.
In July 2022, Musk doubled down on the bots issue and said he would abandon his offer to buy Twitter after the company failed to provide enough information about the number of fake accounts. That’s even though the lawsuit notes that Musk waived due diligence for his “take it or leave it” offer to buy Twitter. That means he waived his right to look at the company’s nonpublic finances.
The stock closed at $36.81 on July 8, when Musk tweeted he was abandoning the deal over the fake accounts issue. That’s 32% below Musk’s offer price of $54.20 per share.
“To try to renegotiate the price or delay the merger, Musk made materially false and misleading statements and omissions, and engaged in a scheme to deceive the market, all in violation of the law,” the lawsuit says.
The problem of bots and fake accounts on Twitter wasn’t new. The company had paid $809.5 million in 2021 to settle claims it was overstating its growth rate and monthly user figures. Twitter also disclosed its bot estimates to the Securities and Exchange Commission for years, while also cautioning that its estimate might be too low.
Twitter sued Musk to force him to complete the deal, and Musk countersued. On Oct. 4, Musk offered to go through with his original proposal to buy Twitter for $44 billion, which Twitter accepted. The deal closed later that month. In the ensuing months, Musk slashed the company’s workforce, gutted its trust and safety team and rolled back content moderation policies. In July 2023, he renamed Twitter as X.
This isn’t the first time that Musk has been dragged into court to defend himself against allegations of duping investors with his social media posts. Three years ago, Musk spent about eight hours testifying in a San Francisco federal trial about his plans to buy Tesla — the electric automaker that he still runs as publicly traded company — for $420 per share in a proposed 2018 deal that never materialized. A nine-member jury absolved Musk of wrongdoing in that case.
HOUSTON (AP) – Republican challenger Steve Toth defeated U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw on Tuesday night, ousting the only House Republican in Texas who President Donald Trump didn’t endorse heading into the nation’s first big primary of 2026.
Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL whose independent streak sometimes clashed with fellow Republicans, spent the primary trying to fend off attacks from the party’s hard right that he was not in step with Trump’s agenda.
Toth, a state representative and member of the GOP’s hard-right caucus in the Legislature, picked up a big endorsement late in the primary from Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
“This campaign has been a referendum on representatives who campaign one way and govern another, and the people have spoken,” Toth said in a statement after his victory.
Crenshaw, who lost his right eye when he was hit with an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2012, had clashed with Cruz over the senator’s support of Trump’s unfounded claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.
Crenshaw was one of the few Texas Republican candidates for Congress in 2022 who acknowledged that President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was legitimate, a position that occasionally found him at odds with fellow Republicans.
Crenshaw also drew the ire of conservatives when a video clip went viral of him criticizing some Republican politicians as “grifters” and “performance artists” who simply tell conservative voters what they want to hear.
The 41-year-old Crenshaw was seeking his fifth term. His 2nd Congressional District spans the suburbs north and east of Houston.
DALLAS (AP) – A rule change for primary voting in two Texas counties created mass confusion Tuesday that eventually led to a state Supreme Court ruling, threats of more legal action and the potential that an untold number of voters could find themselves disenfranchised.
The chaos had the most direct potential impact on the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. The county with the greatest number of affected voters includes Dallas and is the home base for Rep. Jasmine Crockett, an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump who was in a tight race with state lawmaker James Talarico.
Crockett told supporters Tuesday night that the race can’t be settled without the results from Dallas County.
“I can tell you, people were disenfranchised,” she said.
The unfolding chaos — first over the new voting rules, and then over the court decisions and whether late ballots would be counted — stemmed from a change by local Republicans that is unique to Texas’ primary system, but also hinted at the type of uncertainty that many have feared lies ahead for November’s midterm elections.
The problems in Texas began when voters in two counties — Dallas and Williamson, north of Austin — were turned away at polling locations and directed to different precincts after a recent change in how the primary is conducted.
In Dallas County, a judge ordered polls to remain open for two hours past the scheduled 7 p.m. closing time, citing “voter confusion so severe” that it caused the website of the county election office to crash. The judge was acting on a petition filed by the local Democratic Party in a heavily left-leaning county. Democrats in Williamson said they succeeded in getting two precincts to stay open late.
Later in the evening, the Texas Supreme Court acted on requests by the Texas attorney general’s office and stayed both decisions. Its brief orders said ballots cast by voters in both counties who were not in line by the 7 p.m. scheduled close of polls should be separated. The number of ballots affected could not immediately be determined.
Renea Hicks, a longtime Texas appellate lawyer, said the Supreme Court’s action was preliminary and does not say whether the ballots will eventually be counted. That’s something the court will have to sort out in the coming days, he said.
“That doesn’t mean ‘throw them away.’ It doesn’t meant they won’t count,” he said. “We don’t know what it means.”
In both counties, voters had been allowed to cast their ballot anywhere in their county for years. But for this primary, the local Republican parties opted against countywide voting. State law says both major parties have to agree to the countywide system for it to be in effect.
That meant that on Tuesday all voters could cast ballots only at their assigned precinct.
Both Crockett and Talarico denounced the effect of the change on voters, with Crockett saying it was an “effort to suppress the vote.” Talarico’s campaign aid it was “deeply concerned” about the reports of voters showing up at polling locations and being sent elsewhere. He told supporters later that evening, as ballots were still being tallied, that every vote must be counted.
Adding to the confusion was the fact that voting locations also might be specific to someone’s party affiliation, said Nic Solorzano, a spokesperson for the Dallas County Elections Department.
“We’re seeing a lot of people that are going to their vote centers that they usually go to … and not realizing they can’t do that anymore. They have to go to their precinct-based location,” he said.
The extensions in Dallas applied only to Democratic voting precincts. Voting also was extended for an hour in El Paso County after problems with voter check-in systems earlier in the day.
Texas was one of three states kicking off the 2026 midterm elections Tuesday, along with North Carolina and Arkansas. Voting otherwise went fairly smoothly, except for a problem with electronic poll books in one rural North Carolina county that prompted the state elections board to delay the release of statewide results by an hour.
Tomas Sanchez, a student at Dallas College, was among those who showed up at a voting location on campus to cast his ballot in Texas’ Democratic primary. But he was under a “mistaken impression” and told that he needed to vote at his assigned precinct, a location about 6 miles (about 10 kilometers) away and closer to his neighborhood.
“This is something that we were really concerned about, honestly,” Solorzano said. He added that after nearly seven years of voters being able to cast their ballots anywhere in the county, “then we kind of had to retool our entire operation to go back to precinct-based voting for Election Day.”
The county elections department has been putting up signs, running ads and sending text messages and mailers to make people aware of the change. On Election Day former poll workers were stationed outside voting locations with tablets to help people find the correct place to cast their ballot.
While Solorzano said his department was not keeping track of how many people were been turned away, local Democrats said the number was significant.
Brenda Allen, executive director of the Dallas Democratic Party, said her offices were swamped by hundreds of calls from voters of both parties trying to find their precincts. She noted that congressional districts in the county also were remapped in Texas’ mid-decade redistricting and that new precinct lines were only finalized in December, leaving little time to inform voters.
“Lots of reports of people being turned away, hundreds of people unable to vote. Both parties are affected by this,” Allen said. “It’s not great.”
In Williamson County, the local Democratic Party headquarters was slammed by calls, executive director Madison Dickinson said.
“We’re having significant problems with the precinct-level voting,” she said, adding that, like in Dallas, even Republicans were confused by the change and were calling the Democratic Party for help.
Republicans were less vocal about the changes online, although the Dallas County Republican Party posted a link showing voters where to find their assigned polling places. The Williamson County Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment.