FREDERICKSBURG, Texas — When Gillespie County Republicans abandoned voting machines and hand-counted ballots in the 2024 primary election, it took until 4 a.m., required corrections in nearly every precinct, and fractured the local Republican Party. And in 2026, they did it again.

On Tuesday, election workers once again gathered in this Hill Country county to tally Republican primary votes by hand. This time, the counting and tallying stretched until nearly 3 a.m., and county election officials did not send their report to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office until after 5 a.m. Whether the results are accurate may not be clear for days.

Research shows hand-counting ballots typically takes more workers and time than machine tabulation and produces more discrepancies, though both methods can be accurate. Supporters say it increases transparency and confidence. Republicans here — and in Eastland County, which also hand-counted its primary ballots this year — opted into the more laborious process amid mistrust of voting machines in the wake of claims by President Donald Trump and others that they manipulated votes in the 2020 election. No evidence has emerged to support that......

Amid a fiercely fought primary for U.S. Senate, along with more than 40 other contested races, just under 3,000 ballots were ultimately hand-counted — far fewer than in 2024, when more than 8,000 ballots were counted entirely by hand. Everyone involved — including county officials — said things went more smoothly this time, with fewer of the reconciliation errors that made the 2024 canvass frustrating for all involved.

Even so, the process stretched nearly as late as it did in 2024.

Some precincts began counting Tuesday morning. By 11 p.m., most of the county’s votes had been reported. But results from the final precinct — Precinct 5, in Harper — did not arrive at the central elections office until 2:47 a.m.

“Sorry to keep y’all waiting,” a bleary-looking Neill Northington, the Harper precinct’s chair, said as he sat down with county election officials to review his paperwork. He and his teams finished counting around midnight, but completing the form and checking the math kept him there for longer.

The House Ethics Committee will investigate allegations that Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) had an affair with a former staff member who later died after setting herself on fire, the committee said Wednesday, ensuring that the scandal that has dogged Gonzales through his bitter primary race will continue to factor heavily as he heads into a runoff.

An investigative subcommittee will look into allegations that Gonzales “engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual employed in his congressional office” and “discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges,” Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest (R-Mississippi) wrote in a letter Wednesday.

Under House rules, lawmakers are not permitted to engage in sexual relationships with staff members.

Gonzales, a married father of six, has been accused of having an improper relationship with a then-aide, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, who died in September after lighting herself on fire in her backyard. Her death was ruled a suicide.....

Under House rules, the Ethics Committee has up to 90 days to release the OCC’s report — unless it creates an investigative subcommittee, as it has this time, in which case it must release the OCC’s findings within a year. Members of the investigative subcommittee have not been selected yet, Guest said Wednesday, suggesting that findings of the investigation will not be made public very soon. There is no timeline for Ethics Committee investigations, which can take months.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris announced on Wednesday that she would back Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D) in the Senate race for Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-Texas) seat after her preferred pick, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), lost the Democratic primary.

“I congratulate James Talarico for his win, and the inspiring campaign he continues to build. I appreciate that he is making the case for the kind of civic renewal our country needs,” she said in a statement through her office. “I offer him my full support in the months ahead.”

She lauded Crockett’s campaign, saying the Texas Democrat “waged this campaign with the trademark fierceness that has defined her career so far,” adding that “she has a bright future.”

Talarico was declared the winner of the Texas Senate Democratic primary early Wednesday morning, according to Decision Desk HQ. Crockett said in a statement on Wednesday that she conceded the race and called Talarico to congratulate him on his victory.

“Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person. This is about the future of all 30 million Texans and getting America back on track,” Crockett wrote.

There was a very real possibility that scandal-plagued Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales’ career was going to be derailed on Tuesday. That didn’t happen, at least it hasn’t yet: The incumbent congressman received roughly 42% of the vote in his primary, trailing far-right internet personality Brandon Herrera’s 43%, but since neither candidate topped 50% support, they both advanced to a May runoff.

But while Gonzales might’ve been relieved by the results, the day after the primary delivered a fresh round of devastating news. For one thing, one of his own GOP congressional colleagues filed a censure resolution against the Texan. For another, this soon followed by related news about the ethics probe he’s facing. CNBC reported:

The House Ethics Committee on Wednesday announced an investigation into Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican who has come under fire for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a staffer who died by suicide last year.

The committee said it would investigate whether Gonzales ‘engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual employed in his congressional office,’ or ‘discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges.’

.....In theory, Donald Trump, who officially endorsed Gonzales, and House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana could intervene and show the congressman the door, but in light of the Republicans’ vanishingly small majority in the chamber, MS NOW reported last week that many party officials see Gonzales as effectively “untouchable” because his party can’t afford to see him step down.....

While these allegations against the Texas Republican have come up before, the Express-News reported that a second former aide to the congressman came forward to say Santos-Aviles told him about the relationship. That same aide (who asked not to be named by the Express-News, citing a fear of retaliation) provided a text message from Santos-Aviles in which she said she “had an affair with our boss.” (He shared the same evidence with The New York Times.)

Last week, a lawyer for Santos-Aviles’ husband disclosed additional sexually explicit text messages that the GOP congressman allegedly sent to his former aide. While MS NOW has not independently verified the authenticity of the texts, they were reviewed in detail by the Times, the Express-News, The Wall Street Journal, NBC News, Politico and The Texas Tribune.

Gonzales, meanwhile, hasn’t said much about the allegations, though he recently accused his primary rival and Santos-Aviles’ husband of trying to blackmail him.

The primary runoff is in 12 weeks. Watch this spa

The House Ethics Committee announced a new subcommittee to investigate Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) over allegations that he may have “engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual employed in his congressional office” and “discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges.”

The committee, led by Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.), will announce which members will serve on the new panel once they are chosen.

The matter is almost certainly about Gonzales’ alleged affair with a staffer, Regina Santos-Aviles, who died by self-immolation last September. Another former aide to Gonzales told the San-Antonio Express-News last month that Santos-Aviles spiraled into a depression after her husband discovered the affair and Gonzales cut her off, which led to her taking her life.

Gonzales has denied the allegations of an affair.

The House panel’s action comes a day after Gonzales fell short of winning outright in his primary election. He's now heading into a runoff election against Brandon Herrera, a far-right gun activist and YouTube personality.

A US judge has ordered that the Trump administration halt a key step in the tariff payment process in order to make any refunds simpler after the US Supreme Court struck down the president’s global levies.

In an order on Wednesday, Judge Richard Eaton, who sits on the federal trade court in New York, ordered Customs and Border Protection to stop calculating President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs on importers’ customs paperwork. He also questioned why the government was continuing to do so after the Supreme Court ruled the tariffs illegal.

Eaton also ordered officials to recalculate certain duties that had passed that step of the customs process, removing Trump’s contested tariffs. The judge confirmed that he has been assigned to handle all of the thousands of refund lawsuits filed in the trade court to date.

“The law is clear,” Eaton said during a hearing, adding later that he believes the refund process can be carried out “pretty smoothly.”

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court last month found that Trump unlawfully used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to impose so-called reciprocal tariffs on goods entering the country. Since then questions have swirled around when and how importers may get refunded more than $100 billion in IEEPA tariffs.

FBI Director Kash Patel has spent much of his first year in office battling a string of insider accusations that he has jeopardized criminal probes with his inexperience, misused an FBI jet for joyriding and has run a “rudderless ship” as head of the bureau.

In key moments when he has faced public glare, Patel has chosen to fire sets of FBI agents and staff, an MS NOW analysis found.

The result has often been the regeneration of headlines. This time, however, they have been about the firings themselves, which Patel’s critics say appears designed to ingratiate him with President Donald Trump.

MS NOW found that in four key instances, Patel’s decision to fire FBI agents and staff came within hours or days of unflattering accounts emerging about him and his competency to run the FBI. The serial purges that followed, according to the FBI Agents Association, were unjustified, illegal and weakened the bureau, which has long been considered the world’s premier law enforcement agency.

“You know he has a trend, when he gets jammed up on something he literally fires people right after,” former FBI agent and MS NOW contributor Rob D’Amico said.......

But a similar pattern has played out several times when fresh accounts have raised questions about Patel’s conduct and ability to lead the bureau, MS NOW found. Inside the FBI, staff and agents have been tracking this pattern and growing concerned that Patel is jeopardizing the FBI’s mission as a byproduct of trying to eliminate his bad press and shore up support with Trump, according to multiple FBI sources who spoke to MSNOW.

“The FBI workforce is very intelligent and their job is to put together connected events,” D’Amico said. “They have noticed. They see it for what it is, actions of a selfish and insecure person.”

The day after a series of closely watched elections in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas, Donald Trump published a seemingly endless series of items to his social media platform, highlighting candidates who won primaries after receiving presidential endorsements. It led him to conclude: “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!”

As it happens, the words “virtually” and “almost” were doing a lot of work in those sentences. The Texas Tribune noted that the president’s backing “isn’t a silver bullet.” From the report:

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.

.....The problem, of course, is that plenty of Trump-backed GOP candidates have fallen short, including in Republican primaries, whether the president can think of them or not.

To be sure, most of the Texas Republicans who received Trump endorsements fared well on Tuesday, but many of them ran literally or effectively unopposed, allowing the president to pad his totals. Some, however, either lost or are poised to lose, despite his public support......

Except, as we’ve seen many times, that’s not true — which should send a message to Republicans everywhere about the need, or lack thereof, to kiss his ring.

GOP officials and candidates are supposed to tremble in fear at the very idea of losing favor with him because his all-powerful endorsement is the key to unlocking electoral success. It’s the kind of thinking that keeps congressional Republicans in line, too afraid of what he’ll do to their careers if they dare to defy him.

But what the party needs to understand is that the myth isn’t true, no matter how many times he pretends otherwise. The more GOP officials and candidates acknowledge that reality, the less they’ll feel the need to sacrifice their dignity to satisfy Trump’s whims.

President Donald Trump made it known on Wednesday that he wants to take a major election decision away from Republican voters in Texas — and the internet had serious reactions to his comments.

Trump has threatened to interfere in elections before, or flat out cancel them, but after a tight primary race in the Lone Star state between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the president promised an endorsement — but only on the condition that the loser of his choice drop out. A GOP runoff election was slated for May 26, as neither candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote.

"The Republican Primary Race for the United States Senate in the Great State of Texas, a State I LOVE and won 3 times in Record Numbers (the HIGHEST vote ever recorded, by far!!!), cannot, for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer," Trump posted Wednesday. "IT MUST STOP NOW!"....

"Good thing there's nothing dictatorial-sounding about that," progressive political activist Carol Norris wrote on Bluesky.

"Sure, why have people vote?" Retired Professor Emeritus of Immunology and Genomic Medicine, Jim Hagman, Ph.D., wrote on X.