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- By THOMAS BEAUMONT and WILL WEISSERT - Associated Press
- Updated
DALLAS (AP) — Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn is trying to hold on for a fifth term in Tuesday's GOP primary, while Democrats will choose whether to send Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett or state Rep. James Talarico to a November general election where the party once again hopes it has a chance.
Texas is one of three states kicking off this year’s midterm elections with primaries that come as the U.S. and Israel are at war with Iran. At least six U.S. service members have been killed in a growing regional confrontation that sent oil and natural gas prices soaring. President Donald Trump, who campaigned on an “America First” agenda and hasn't sought congressional authorization, faces mounting questions over its rationale and an exit strategy.
Races in North Carolina and Arkansas also mark the first primaries of the 2026 midterms as Democrats look to break the GOP’s hold on Washington and derail Trump.
Cornyn faces a challenge from MAGA favorite Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt in a contest expected to advance to a May runoff. The three Republicans campaigned on their ties to Trump, who has not endorsed in the race.
Crockett and Talarico each argue that they are the stronger general election candidate in a state that backed Trump by almost 14 percentage points in 2024 and where a Democrat hasn’t won a statewide race in over 30 years.
Voting was extended for two hours in some parts of the state — particularly in Dallas County, after voters there and in Williamson county, outside Austin, reported being turned away and directed to different voting precincts.
People previously had been allowed to cast ballots anywhere in their county since 2019. But for this primary, the Republican parties in Dallas and Williamson counties opted against countywide voting. State law says both major parties have to agree to the countywide system for it to be in effect.
The races also featured new congressional district boundaries that GOP lawmakers — urged on by Trump — redrew to help elect more Republicans.
Cornyn fights to hold seat
Cornyn is hoping to avoid becoming the first Republican senator in Texas history not to be renominated.
His cool relationship with Trump is part of what makes Cornyn vulnerable. He and allied groups have spent at least $64 million in television advertising alone since July to try stabilize his support.
Paxton began campaigning in earnest only last month. He's made national headlines for filing lawsuits against Democratic initiatives. He remained popular in Texas despite a 2023 impeachment trial on corruption charges, of which he was acquitted, and accusations of marital infidelity by his wife.
On Tuesday evening a man wearing a camouflage hat, sunglasses and a mask covering his mouth and nose entered the Uptown Marriott hotel in Dallas, where Paxton was expected to address supporters later. He was asked to leave, and it was not clear whether his presence was connected to Paxon's event. The man was later detained by police, who removed ammunition magazines and shotgun shells from his vehicle. Paxton's campaign declined to comment.
All three Republicans have run ads boasting of their coziness with Trump. But Senate GOP leaders, who are backing Cornyn, worry that Paxton's liabilities would make it harder to defend the seat if he is the nominee — and require significant spending that could be better used elsewhere.
“Republican voters are going to need to decide, do we want to win?” Cornyn told Fox News Channel.
Hunt's entry into the race in October made it trickier for any primary candidate to win at least 50%, the threshold needed to avoid a May 26 runoff.
Stylistic opposites vie for Democrats' Senate nomination
Crockett and Talarico have waged a spirited race as Democrats look for their first Senate win in Texas since 1988.
Talarico, a seminarian who often references the Bible, has held rallies across the state including in heavily Republican areas. Crockett has built a national profile for zinger attacks on Republicans and has focused on turning out Black voters in the Dallas and Houston areas.
Tanu Sani, who cast a Democratic ballot in Dallas, said she'd been undecided until recently but opted for Talarico because he “really spoke to me in the way he tries to unify.”
Andrew Kern, another Democratic voter in Texas, explained his support of Talarico similarly, describing “an approach that’s bridging some of the divisiveness.”
Tomas Sanchez, a voter in Dallas County, said he supports Crockett because “she cares about immigrants, she cares about the American people in a way that a lot of the Republicans have proven they haven’t.”
Talarico had outspent Crockett on television advertising by more than four to one as of late February. He got a burst of attention — and campaign contributions — last month from CBS' decision not to air his interview with late-night host Stephen Colbert, who said the network pulled the interview for fear of angering Trump's FCC.
Key House primaries
Texas Republicans' mid-decade redistricting was aimed at helping the GOP pick up Democratic-held seats and maintain its threadbare House majority in Washington. The result matched several Democratic incumbents in primary fights and set up new general election battlegrounds.
In the 34th District, former Rep. Mayra Flores is attempting a comeback. Flores made history in a 2022 special election as the first Republican to win in the Rio Grande Valley in 150 years, but lost her bid for a full term later that year. She faces Eric Flores, a lawyer endorsed by Trump, for the nomination to run against Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez.
In the 23rd District, Rep. Tony Gonzales is considered vulnerable after an alleged affair with a staffer who killed herself. He's being challenged by gun manufacturer and YouTube influencer Brandon Herrera, who calls himself “the AK guy.” The district includes Uvalde, site of a deadly 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School.
Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw is challenged in the 2nd District by state Rep. Steve Toth, who was endorsed by Sen. Ted Cruz.
Former Major League Baseball star Mark Teixeira is running as a Republican to succeed Republican Chip Roy in southwest Texas’ District 21. Roy is running for attorney general.
Democrat Bobby Pulido, a Latin Grammy winner, is running in South Texas' 15th District against physician Ada Cuellar. The nominee will face two-term Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz.
In the 33rd District, Democratic Rep. Julie Johnson faces former Rep. Colin Allred, a former NFL linebacker and 2024 Senate nominee.
Democratic Rep. Al Green also is fighting to stay in office after his Houston-based 9th District was drawn to be lean Republican. Green, 78, is now running in a newly drawn 18th District against Democratic Rep. Christian Menefee, 37, who won a January special election for the current 18th District.
Easy win for Abbott, likely to face Hinojosa
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott easily won his primary and is expected to face Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa.
Roy is seeking the GOP nomination for state attorney general, with Paxton running for Senate. Roy has been a prominent member of the conservative Freedom Caucus.
Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Sara Cline and Jamie Stengle in Dallas and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed.
- By SARA CLINE, ALI SWENSON and NICHOLAS RICCARDI - Associated Press
- Updated
Voters in two major Texas counties were turned away at polling locations and directed to different precincts Tuesday, after a recent change in how the primary is conducted created confusion and frustration.
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 County, north of Austin, said they succeeded in getting two precincts to stay open late.
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.
The campaigns of the two Democrats running in the primary for U.S. Senate denounced the effect of the change on voters.
“Both Dallas and Williamson county voters have grown accustomed to countywide voting, including on election day,” U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett 's campaign said. “This effort to suppress the vote, to confuse and inconvenience voters, is having the intended effect as people are being turned away from the polls.”
The campaign of James Talarico, a state lawmaker, said it was “deeply concerned” about the reports of voters showing up at polling locations and being sent elsewhere.
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.
Associated Press writer John Hanna contributed.
- By The Associated Press
- Updated
U.S. President Donald Trump said “someone from within” Iran’s government might be best suited to take power once the U.S.-Israeli war on the country ends.
His remarks came four days into a war that has killed hundreds, nearly all of them in Iran, as well as many of the country’s top leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Although Tehran has kept up its retaliatory missile and drone strikes against Israel and across the Gulf — disrupting travel and driving up oil prices — the pace of Iranian attacks appears to be slowing. However the conflict has also spread to Lebanon, where Iran-backed Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel, prompting Israeli strikes in Beirut and additional troop deployments to southern Lebanon.
The spiraling nature of the war has raised questions about when and how it would end, and the Trump administration has given various objectives.
Here is the latest:
Israeli strike kills 4 in Lebanon, state-run media says
At least four people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a residential complex in the Lebanese city of Baalbeck, state-run media reported.
The strike early Wednesday also wounded six others, the National News Agency said.
Israel says Hezbollah fire intercepted
Israel’s military said Wednesday that Hezbollah fire targeted the country, with much of it intercepted.
Loud explosions in Tehran, Iran state TV reports
Iranian state television reported loud explosions around the capital, Tehran, as dawn broke Wednesday.
Israel says its air defenses activated
Israel said its air defenses were activated due to incoming missile fire from Iran.
US State Department authorizes non-emergency personnel, family members to evacuate Oman
The U.S. State Department said early Wednesday it had authorized non-emergency American government personnel and family members to evacuate Oman should they choose due to the war.
Oman, long an intermediary between the West and Iran, has repeatedly come under attack by Iran.
House Speaker says US not in the business of nation-building in Iran
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said after an all-member briefing at the Capitol that “no one can yet determine with any degree of certainty” how the conflict with Iran will turn out.
The Republican leader, a close ally of Trump, said it’s up to the Iranian people to “seize this moment of opportunity” for their country, and not necessarily depend on the U.S.
“We have no ability to get into the nation-building business,” he said.
“America has enough trouble of our own.”
Child killed in attack on Kuwait
An 11-year-old girl was killed after shrapnel fell in a residential area in Kuwait City, health authorities said Wednesday.
The Kuwait army said in a statement the shrapnel fell over a house and left casualties while forces were intercepting “several hostile aerial targets” over the country.
The Health Ministry said in a separate statement that the child died of her wounds at the hospital.
The child’s mother and three other relatives were injured and being treated at the hospital, it said.
US military commander says ‘we’ve just begun’ in Iran operation
The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East said American forces have struck nearly 2,000 targets in Iran since the operation against the Islamic Republic began.
Adm. Brad Cooper, head of Central Command, said in a video posted on X Tuesday that the U.S. military has “severely degraded Iran’s air defenses” and taken out hundreds of ballistic missiles, launchers and drones.
The video showed missiles and jets launching from U.S. ships, and targets exploding on the ground.
Cooper noted that Iran has launched over 500 ballistic missiles and more than 2,000 drones in retaliation.
But he said the U.S. is “hunting” Iran’s last remaining mobile ballistic missile launchers to eliminate their “lingering launch capability.”
Cooper said the operation has involved more than 50,000 troops, 200 fighter jets, two aircraft carriers and bombers, and “more capability is on the way.”
“We’ve just begun,” Cooper said.
Vessel hit in Gulf of Oman
A vessel was hit by a projectile early Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman off the United Arab Emirates, an agency of the U.K. military said.
There were no reported casualties.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre said the vessel was struck 8 miles east of Fujairah, one of the UAE’s seven emirates.
The attack damaged the vessel’s steel plating.
No fire or water intake was reported, it said.
Slain soldier was days away from returning home
Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, was just a few days away from coming home to her husband and two children when she was killed.
The last month had been a state of “constant concern,” her husband said.
“You could see it in the movements. She knew something was coming, she just didn’t know what scale,” Joey Amor said.
Amor was moved off-base to a shipping container-style building a week before the drone attack. The building had no defenses, Joey Amor said.
“They were dispersing because they were in fear that the base they were on was going to get attacked and they felt it was safer in smaller groups in separate places,” he said.
The couple exchanged messages about two hours before she was killed, joking back and forth. “She just never responded in the morning,” he said.
Palestinians anxious about the impact of Iran war on them
In a tent camp in Gaza’s southern area of Khan Younis, Palestinians have been closely following news about the widening war and growing increasingly worried about its potential impact on their lives.
“We are fed up with wars and the horrors of wars,” Ibrahim Atta, who was displaced from Rafah, said on Tuesday.
Palestinians in the camp were preparing simple meals to break their fast during the second week of the holy month of Ramadan. Haunted by memories of scarcity last year during months of Israel’s blockade, many fear that border crossings could again close.
“This will affect us economically, and affect the crossings,” said Rami Abu Arida, who also was displaced from Rafah. “Food and water, how can they enter?”
Israeli military spokesman says building where clerics will meet to select new supreme leader struck in Qom
The Israeli military spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said Tuesday that Israel struck a building in Qom where clerics were expected to meet to discuss the selection of a new supreme leader. He said the army was still assessing whether anyone was hit.
“We’re not going to let this regime rehabilitate its command and control capabilities.,” he said.
Kaine sees ‘troubling’ pattern of military operations without congressional approval
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., says there’s a “troubling pattern” of the Trump administration launching military operations — from Venezuela to Nigeria and to Iran — without involving Congress.
The Trump administration has made a habit of not seeking authorization, providing no advanced notice and then holding a classified hearing that restricts lawmakers’ ability to talk about it publicly, Kaine said Tuesday.
Kaine said he brought up his concerns during the administration’s closed-door briefing on Tuesday to senators on the military operation in Iran. He said his point was not refuted.
“It’s convinced many of us in the room that you’ve decided that you will never come to Congress,” Kaine told reporters at the Capitol after the briefing. “You don’t think you ever have to come to Congress for war authorization.”
Pentagon releases names of troops killed in drone strike in Kuwait
The Pentagon has released the names of four of the six service members who have been killed in the Iran war, saying they died in a drone strike in Kuwait.
All four Army Reserve soldiers were killed Sunday when a drone hit a command center in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait. That was just a day after the U.S. and Israel launched its military campaign against Iran, which has launched retailatory strikes.
All were assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command in Des Moines, lowa.
Killed were Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; and Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, lowa, who was posthumously promoted from specialist.
Reports of Iran launching missiles targeting Israel, Qatar continue overnight Tuesday
Qatar’s Ministry of Defense said early Wednesday that Iran launched two ballistic missiles against it and one hit Al-Udeid Qatari Base, though it didn’t cause casualties.
The other missile was intercepted by air defense, the ministry said.
Israel also said Iran had launched multiple missiles targeting the north of the country overnight with no reports of casualties there either.
Sen. Hawley said Iran operation is ‘rapidly evolving’ following closed-door briefing
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO, said after Tuesday’s closed-door briefing on the Iran operation that he would still vote ‘no’ on a war powers resolution, “unless they were to introduce ground troops.”
He added: “I didn’t hear in there any prediction of ground troops.”
“Personally, I would hope for a very swift conclusion, but I don’t know if that’s going to be the case,” he said.
Hawley said he learned more about the scope of the operation, which he said was “quite large” and “rapidly, rapidly evolving.”
“The briefers emphasized this, it’s really almost changing by the hour,” he said.
Commercial flight planned from Dubai to Sydney to repatriate 24,000 stranded Australians
A commercial flight is planned from Dubai to Sydney to start repatriating 24,000 Australians stranded in the United Arab Emirates by the Iran war, Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong says.
Wong said the flight was scheduled to leave Dubai on Wednesday.
“This is a consular crisis that dwarfs any that Australia has had to deal with in terms of numbers of people,” Wong told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
She and Australian Prime Minister Anthnony Albanese had spoken to United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is also the UAE’s deputy prime minister.
“The best way to get people out is to get commercial flights started. I asked if they could look at commercial flights restarting. Obviously it’s very unpredictable and I understand there is a flight scheduled from Dubai to Sydney. Obviously we would say to people on the ground you need to ensure you stay in contact with your airline in relation to that flight if you are on it. Flights have been cancelled and changed at short notice,” Wong said.
She did not identify the airline.
Health officials say 50 killed, more than 300 wounded in Israeli strikes in Lebanon
The death toll over the past two days in Lebanon has risen to 50, with 335 wounded, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Tuesday evening.
On Monday, Hezbollah launched missiles toward Israel for the first time in more than a year, and Israel responded by bombarding southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut with strikes. No casualties have been reported from the Hezbollah attacks in Israel.
It is not clear how many of those killed in Lebanon were civilians, but the health ministry said earlier Tuesday that they included seven children. Officials with Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group were also killed.
First government evacuation plane from Jordan lands in Prague
The first government evacuation plane landed in Prague late Tuesday. The airbus that belongs to the Czech military has a capacity for some 40 passengers and was flying from Jordan.
Another two government planes are expected to arrive during the night. One of them will fly from Egypt to take home Czech nationals who traveled there by buses from Israel. The other one will transport people from Oman.
“It was perfect. We saw everything we wanted to in Jordan,” said Zdenek Viktorin, who was traveling with his family of four. He said that he didn’t expect the war could start during their stay. “When the politicians say one day that the talks are fine and the other day (the war) begins, that’s hard to comprehend.”
In neighboring Slovakia, the first two evacuation planes sent by the Slovak government to Jordan landed in the Slovak capital Bratislava on Tuesday with 127 people on board. The government plans at least 10 such flights from the Middle East.
US and Israel have ‘superiority’ and control nearly all Iran's airspace, Israeli diplomat says
“I’m sure we will be able to show that superiority in the next few days,” Israeli ambassador Danny Danon told reporters at the United Nations.
He cautioned, however, that while U.S.-Israeli attacks have degraded Iranian capabilities and it’s harder for them to launch missiles, “they put missiles underground, in caves, in secret locations.”
He said Israel has told its own citizens and people in the region, “give us some more time” to further degrade the Iranian military and achieve its objectives: “no nuclear weapons, no missile threat, no terror infrastructure.”
“It will not continue forever,“ Danon said.
UAE says it has been attacked by 1,000 Iranian drones and missiles so far
The United Arab Emirates said Tuesday on X that it retains the right to self-defense, insisting that the Gulf monarchy is not part of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran and that it hasn’t authorized the use of its territories for attacks against Iran.
The UAE Defense Ministry also released a breakdown of its missile and drone interceptions. It said Iranian drones struck within its territory 57 times out of more than 800 detected, while only one of 186 ballistic missiles managed to hit. All eight Iranian cruise missiles were intercepted, the ministry said. It was not possible to independently very those figures.
Venezuelan government supporters hold a solidarity march for Iran
Dozens of Venezuelan government supporters on Tuesday marched in the capital in solidarity with Iran and mourning Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the war.
Demonstrators wore T-shirts with the photo of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom the U.S. military captured from the capital Caracas in a stunning operation two months ago.
Two women at the head of the demonstration carried photos of Khamenei and of late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who orchestrated Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution and ruled as supreme leader for a decade.
“We are here to give our support to the Iranian diplomatic representation in Caracas,” Yoser Quijada, an engineer, said. “We are here with our presence telling them that the people of Venezuela, the heart of the Venezuelan people, is together with the heart of the Iranian people.”
Rubio pushes back in a testy exchange at the Capitol
The secretary of state insisted that Trump made the decision to attack Iran because this past weekend presented what he called a unique opportunity for the mission to be successful.
“The president is determined we were not going to get hit first. It’s that simple,” Rubio said ahead of a closed-door briefing for lawmakers.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to reporters as he arrives for an intelligence briefing with top lawmakers on Iran, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Mar. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to reporters as he arrives for an intelligence briefing with top lawmakers on Iran, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Mar. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rubio was revisiting his remarks from a day earlier that have generated fierce blowback. At the time, he said Trump believed Israel was determined to act and wanted the U.S. to go first with a pre-emptive strike on Iran to prevent any retaliation on American bases and operations in the region.
“We are not going to put American troops in harm’s way,” he said.
Amid the administration’s shifting reasons for the war with Iran, Rubio also returned to Trump’s initial rationale. “There is no way in the world that this terroristic regime was going to get nuclear weapons, not under Donald Trump’s watch,” he said.
Iranian drone hits near US consulate in Dubai
An Iranian drone slammed into a parking lot outside the U.S. consulate in Dubai, sparking a small fire, according to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Although the pace of Iranian missile and drone strikes has slowed, Tuesday’s near-miss shows that Iran is still able to get munitions past American interceptors.
Rubio told reporters at the U.S. Capitol that all of the consulate personnel in Dubai had been accounted for.
“We began drawing down personnel from our diplomatic facilities in advance of this,” Rubio said.
Satellite imagery shows Iran’s presidential complex destroyed
Before-and-after images published by the Colorado-based satellite company Vantor on Tuesday showed the domed roof of Iran’s presidential complex destroyed, aligning with Israel’s earlier claims of an overnight strike.
Numerous munitions were dropped on what Israel’s military said was among the most heavily secured sites in Tehran. Iranian officials and state media have not yet acknowledged the damage or reported casualties from the strike.
UN official says humanitarian fallout in Middle East escalations is ‘increasingly daunting’
In a statement Tuesday, U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher warned about the impact the ongoing conflict in the Middle East is having on civilians in nearly a dozen countries in the region just days after U.S. and Israel began to attack Iran.
“First, civilians are paying the price across the region. Civilians must be protected - full stop. Yet strikes are hitting homes, hospitals, and schools,” Fletcher said. “Civilians and civilian infrastructure have been under attack in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and beyond.”
Fletcher added that while contingency plans across Iran and other nearby countries have been activated, the already limited presence by international organizations inside the Islamic Republic have made aid workers’ challenges much greater. Beyond the countries now involved in the wider regional conflict, Fletcher said the impacts on the civilians will worsen already dire humanitarian situations in places like Afghanistan and the occupied Palestinian territories.
Trump pitches a plan to protect oil and other trade moving through the Persian Gulf
Trump said on social media he ordered the United States’ development finance arm to provide political risk insurance for tankers carrying oil and other goods through the Persian Gulf “at a very reasonable price.”
Political risk insurance is a type of coverage intended to protect firms against financial losses caused by unstable political conditions, government actions, or violence.
He said that, if necessary, the U.S. Navy would escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. About a fifth of the world’s oil passes through the strait. The disruption to that traffic caused by the war has pushed oil prices higher.
The Navy has at least eight destroyers and three smaller littoral combat ships in the region. These ships have previously been used to escort merchant shipping in the region and in the Red Sea.
Israel says it destroyed Iran’s reconstituted secret nuclear headquarters
Israel’s military says it destroyed what it calls Iran’s secret nuclear headquarters, and claims Iran moved work into hidden bunkers, known as Minzadehei.
On Tuesday, an Israeli military spokesman said the site supported research tied to a key component for nuclear weapons. Israel does not say Iran enriched uranium there.
There was no immediate public comment from the U.S. or Iran about the site Israel named.
Israel says Iran tried to rebuild and hide parts of its program after last year’s strikes. The United States said as recently as last week that those strikes destroyed Iran’s nuclear program.
U.S. officials also accuse Iran of trying to restart parts of the program but do not say Iran was restarting enrichment.
Turkey’s top diplomat criticizes Iran’s ‘flawed strategy’ of attacking Gulf states
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Tuesday accused Iran of attacking Gulf neighbors that had worked to prevent war, calling it a strategy of “If I go, I will take the region with me.”
He called Iran’s strikes on countries mediating between Tehran and Washington an “incredibly flawed strategy” and warned the conflict could widen if Gulf states retaliate.
In an interview with state broadcaster TRT, Fidan said Gulf states, including Qatar, had pushed for diplomacy until the last hour before the U.S.-Israeli war began Saturday.
“I believe that if the Iranians had better understood the pressure President Trump was facing and given him something in advance, the pressure from Israel might not have been so effective,” he said.
- By The Associated Press
- Updated
Most polls are closed in primary elections in three states, in a vote that marks the official beginning of the midterm elections. Voters cast ballots in North Carolina, Arkansas and Texas, where confusion at some polling locations prompted an extension in voting hours in three counties.
As war with Iran breaks out, Democrats and Republicans are figuring out who they want to lead their party into November’s general election, when control of Congress and statehouses around the country will be up for grabs. The results of Tuesday’s elections could offer a hint of broader voter sentiment. The most hotly contested races of the day are in Texas, with fierce competition on both sides of the aisle for U.S. Senate nominations. It’s possible that the Republican campaign will continue into a runoff.
Here's the latest:
GOP Sen. Tom Cotton cinches nomination for 3rd term in Arkansas
The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee faced two little-known challengers in the GOP primary. Democrats in Arkansas are not expected to mount a significant challenge for the seat in November.
Dallas police say man detained earlier was arrested for traffic violations
The man was detained outside Republican Ken Paxton’s election night watch party and police say he was taken to headquarters for further investigation.
A brief police statement made no mention of Paxton’s event and it remained unclear whether the incident was linked to it.
Police said the vehicle had no license plate and officers found ammunition while searching it. The man was not identified.
Voting extended in 3 Texas counties
Democratic polling locations in Dallas and Williamson counties stayed open late because of confusion caused by the county Republican parties refusing to hold a joint primary with Democrats. That forced voters to go to local precincts to cast ballots rather than countywide facilities they usually use.
The polls stayed open an extra two hours in Dallas. In Williamson, which includes the suburbs north of Austin, two precincts were allowed to stay open until 10 p.m. local time.
Voting also was extended for an additional hour in El Paso due to a problem with the county’s voter check-in system. — This post replaces a previous post that incorrectly stated that voting had not been extended in Williamson County.
Roy Cooper and Michael Whatley win North Carolina Senate nominations
Former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and ex-Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley each won their party’s U.S. Senate nominations in North Carolina, setting the bout for a fall campaign that could determine control of the chamber.
Both clinched their elections in crowded fields to replace retiring Sen. Thom Tillis. He isn’t seeking a third term.
Cooper’s entry lifted Democratic hopes for regaining Senate control of the chamber. Whatley ran after receiving the endorsement of President Donald Trump.
Police detain man and remove ammunition magazines from car outside Paxton’s party
The man was detained outside Republican Ken Paxton’s watch party in Dallas and ammunition magazines and shotgun shells were removed from a car parked outside the venue.
The man was placed in the back of a Dallas police cruiser and later taken away. It was not immediately known whether the incident was connected to the Paxton event.
Paxton, who is running for U.S. Senate, is holding his primary night watch party at a Marriott hotel. Attendees were starting to arrive when the man was detained. The Dallas Police Department and the Paxton campaign did not immediately comment.
Alex Muse, one of the attendees, said a man wearing a camouflage hat, sunglasses and mask covering his mouth and nose entered the hotel and was immediately instructed to exit the property. Muse said the man was also carrying a camouflage rucksack.
“I think it alarmed everyone that he was all in camo, had a rucksack on, face covering,” Muse said.
Crockett says voting irregularities could affect the outcome of Democratic primary
She says irregularities in Dallas County, her home base, could be determinative in an extremely close election.
“If one person has the right to vote and they weren’t allowed to cast their vote, we should all be standing together — Democrats, Republicans — and we should all be raising hell,” she said at a news conference shortly after a judge extended voting hours in Dallas County.
“So I am asking you, I am begging you, to make sure that you go ahead and figure out where it is that you are supposed to vote,” she added. “Stand in line, wait in line.”
Voting hours in primary extended in Dallas
A Dallas judge ordered the polls to stay open an extra two hours until 9 pm local time.
The extension follows chaos in the county and a suburban one outside Austin because the local Republican parties refused to hold joint primaries with Democrats. That meant that rather than voting at countywide vote centers as has been done for years in Texas, voters in those two counties needed to find their own precincts to cast ballots.
Hundreds were unable to vote, Dallas Democrats said. Democrats asked a judge to extend poll hours. Rep. Jasmine Crockett said the extended hours only apply to Democratic primary sites because the GOP did not make the request as well.
Primary election polls have closed in North Carolina, except for 1 precinct
North Carolina law says the voting sites close at 7:30 p.m. ET and that anyone in line at the time can still cast a ballot.
But one of the roughly 2,600 sites statewide is staying open for an hour longer. The State Board of Elections gave voters extra time in a rural Halifax County precinct because workers had a problem with electronic poll books and didn’t use any backup measures to let people vote.
The state board said the delay means it won’t be releasing vote totals publicly until 8:30 p.m., when the Halifax County precinct closes. During the delay, counties can count votes and report the results internally to the state.
North Carolina voters are choosing Democratic and Republican nominations for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Thom Tillis and for U.S. House seats. Voters also are choosing primary winners for state legislative, judicial and local races.
Talarico campaign calls for extension of voting hours
The Talarico campaign says it’s “deeply concerned” about reports of voting troubles in two major Texas counties.
The campaign called for voting hours to be extended but did not say whether it would file a lawsuit asking a judge to intervene.
Some voters in Dallas and Williamson counties are being turned away at polling locations and directed to different voting precincts.
North Carolina county election boards expected to follow state on results delay
The head of the association for North Carolina county elections directors says she doesn’t believe colleagues elsewhere in the state will release their countywide primary election results until the State Board of Elections starts doing so at 8:30 p.m. ET.
Results usually start getting released by the state board shortly after polls close statewide at 7:30 p.m. But the state board delayed that because members agreed earlier Tuesday to extend voting by an hour at one Halifax County precinct.
Association president Leigh Anne Price, who is also the Johnston County elections director, said her office is “going to follow what the state board has directed us to do.”
Elections boards in the state’s three largest counties — Wake, Mecklenburg and Guilford — also plan to do the same, officials said.
Jasmine Crockett sees problems in her home county as voter suppression
The Democratic congresswoman and U.S. Senate candidate from Dallas blamed
local Republicans, as well as Republicans in the Austin area, for the confusion of voters who were being turned away from polling locations in Tuesday’s primaries.
The GOP in both Dallas County and Williamson County in the Austin area opted to have voters cast ballots only in their home precincts instead of countywide. Crockett’s campaign said that forced Democrats to do it, too.
Her campaign saw Republicans’ goal as suppressing the vote and said her campaign is working with Democratic officials on possible responses, including extended voting hours.
“Texans don’t appreciate having their votes suppressed and we won’t take it lying down,” her campaign said in a statement.
Some Texas voters report confusion after being turned away from voting locations
Tomas Sanchez was one of the voters in Dallas County who showed up at a voting location, ready to cast his ballot in the Democratic primary, and was turned away for being at the wrong precinct.
Sanchez, a student at Dallas College, planned to vote at a location on the campus. But instead was told he had to vote at a location closer to his neighborhood.
The 22-year-old said he was under the “mistaken impression” that he could vote anywhere in the county, which has been the case since 2019. But for this primary Election Day, the Dallas County Republican Party opted not to allow countywide voting locations. The decision affects all area voters, who now much cast ballots at their assigned precinct.
Top Republicans didn’t want Rep. Wesley Hunt to run for Senate. He did anyway
Hunt made his jump into politics after serving in the Army as an Apache helicopter pilot in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. He flew combat missions in Iraq.
The lifelong Houston resident and father of three lost his first race for Congress in 2020. However redistricting created a solidly Republican district two years later, and he won the seat easily.
He’s now positioning himself as an alternative to two older career politicians in the primary, four-term incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Senate GOP leaders opposed Hunt’s run, believing it could prevent Cornyn from fending off Paxton’s challenge. But he argued that voters wary of Paxton needed a choice other than Cornyn.
Reporting of North Carolina vote results to be delayed
The release of voting results in North Carolina will be delayed an hour Tuesday night because state officials agreed to keep a precinct in one county open late after workers couldn’t get some equipment working at the start of the day.
Workers at a precinct in rural Halifax County could not get the electronic poll books synchronized for 90 minutes and didn’t use any backup measures to let people vote, according to testimony at an emergency meeting Tuesday afternoon of the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
Election officials said counties can go ahead and count votes when their polls close and report the results internally to the state. But the state isn’t releasing vote totals publicly until 8:30 p.m. when the Halifax County precinct closes.
The precinct was in Littleton, a small community about 60 miles (96 kilometers) northeast of Raleigh.
Dallas Republicans scrapped plans to count ballots by hand
They’re sticking with voting machines in one of the nation’s largest counties.
The reversal by the Dallas County Republican Party came after chairman Allen West, a former Florida congressman, spent months laying the groundwork for a massive hand-count. Voting machines have been at the center of a web of conspiracy theories pushed by some Republicans after the 2020 election, with false claims that they were manipulated to steal the presidency from Donald Trump.
A large, labor-intensive hand count is slow, expensive and prone to human error. And it would have required more polling locations and workers.
West abandoned plans for a hand count in December, saying officials were “woefully short” of the number of people needed to pull it off.
Change in primary voting rules leads to voters being turned away in 2 Texas counties
Some voters in two major Texas counties are being turned away at polling locations and directed to different voting precincts, causing confusion and frustration. The problems were hitting voters in Dallas County and Williamson County, which includes the suburbs north of Austin.
“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,” Nic Solorzano, a spokesperson for the Dallas County Elections Department, told the AP.
Since 2019, area voters have been allowed to cast their ballot anywhere in the county. But for this primary, the Republican parties in both counties opted not to allow countywide voting locations. Because both major parties have to agree on how to conduct the primary, the decision affects all voters. That meant that on Tuesday voters could cast ballots only at their assigned precinct. Adding to the confusion is that voting locations also might be specific to someone’s party affiliation, Solorzano said.
Paxton’s ad blitz included the late Charlie Kirk praising him
State Attorney General Ken Paxton not only has the endorsement of Turning Point USA, the conservative group founded by Kirk, but has played up Kirk praising him before the conservative activist was assassinated.
Paxton’s ads down the stretch of his Senate bid included one with clips of Kirk calling him “one of the best attorney generals in the country.”
Kirk also says Paxton is an “amazing, Constitution-loving Texan attorney general who is doing a great job.”
Paxton made appearances sponsored by Turning Point USA on five college campuses last fall, and last month his campaign was endorsed by the influential group, which is aimed at mobilizing young conservatives.
Kirk was assassinated in September while speaking on a college campus in Utah.
No Trump endorsement in heated Republican Senate primary
The president has stayed out of the campaign in an uncharacteristic show of restraint from someone with a tendency to want to throw his weight behind important races.
Trump has endorsed congressional candidates and a long list of state lawmakers, including those who helped deliver on his demands for redrawn U.S. House maps that boost the GOP’s chances of picking up more seats from the state in November.
But in the Republican Senate primary, the biggest race in Texas, Trump has declined to endorse Sen. John Cornyn, state Attorney General Ken Paxton or U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.
Trump has said he supports all three. But things could change if there’s a runoff, when it might be harder for him to stay on the sidelines once there’s a leader in a head-to-head race.
John Cornyn, a fixture in Texas politics for decades, fights to hang on
The four-term Republican senator is in the fight of his political career in his heated primary against state Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt. That’s new territory for Cornyn, 74, who has never before faced a significant GOP challenger.
His campaign to hang on comes barely a year after he narrowly lost a bid for Senate majority leader in 2024.
Some Texas conservatives remain angry about Cornyn’s work as the GOP’s negotiator on gun restrictions after the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde killed 19 students and two teachers. Others are not happy about Cornyn being dismissive of Trump’s debunked claims of widespread election fraud.
The three-way race raises the likelihood that neither Cornyn nor Paxton will get the 50% needed to avoid a May 26 runoff.
Michael Whatley’s political past and future are linked closely to Trump
Whatley received Trump’s endorsement in North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race last summer, weeks after Republican Sen. Thom Tillis announced he wouldn’t seek reelection after facing criticism from the president.
The 57-year-old is his party’s highest-profile candidate in the party, and he’s repeatedly pledged to defend Trump’s agenda in the Senate if he’s elected.
Trump’s endorsement highlighted Whatley’s work as Republican National Committee chairman during his 2024 reelection campaign. Whatley also previously served as state party chair in North Carolina, whose electoral votes Trump won all three times that he ran for president.
Whatley has never run for public office until now. He’s spent a lot of time accusing Cooper of going soft on crime as governor, which Cooper denies.
Rep. Henry Cuellar got Trump’s pardon but not his support
The president accused the congressman of disloyalty for not leaving the Democratic Party after Trump pardoned him and his wife in a federal bribery and conspiracy case.
Cuellar doesn’t have a high-profile primary opponent in his district on the Mexico border. But he stands to face Republican Tano Tijerina — whom Trump endorsed — in the general election.
Cuellar is a moderate Democrat who kept his seat in 2024 even though Trump carried his district. Last year’s Republican redrawing of the state’s congressional map sought to make his heavily Hispanic district more winnable for the GOP.
In January a federal grand jury indicted his brother, Martin Cuellar, on charges of misusing public funds during the COVID-19 pandemic while he was sheriff in Webb County, home to Laredo. Martin Cuellar’s attorney has called the charges baseless.
How the AP calls races
In almost all cases, races can be called well before all votes have been counted. The AP’s team of election journalists and analysts will call a race as soon as a clear winner can be determined.
In competitive races, AP analysts may need to wait until additional votes are tallied or to confirm specific information about how many ballots are left to count.
Competitive races in which votes are actively being tabulated — for example, in states that count a large number of votes after election night — might be considered “too early to call.” A race may be “too close to call” if a race is so close that there’s no clear winner even once all ballots except for provisional and late-arriving absentee ballots have been counted.
The AP’s race calls are not predictions and are not based on speculation. They are declarations based on an analysis of vote results and other election data that one candidate has emerged as the winner and that no other candidate in the race will be able to overtake the winner once all the votes have been counted.
Collecting the vote
The AP’s vote count brings together information that otherwise might not be available online for days or weeks after an election or is scattered across hundreds of local websites. Without national standards or consistent expectations across states, it also ensures the data is in a standard format, uses standard terms and undergoes rigorous quality control.
The AP hires vote count reporters who work with local election officials to collect results directly from counties or precincts where votes are first counted. These reporters submit them, by phone or electronically, as soon as the results are available. If any of the results are available from state or county websites, the AP will gather the results from there, too.
In many cases, counties will update vote totals as they count ballots throughout the night. The AP is continually updating its count as these results are released. In a general election, the AP will make as many as 21,000 vote updates per hour.
A mess in Texas? What to watch in Tuesday’s primaries
The 2026 midterm season begins in earnest Tuesday with two of the nation’s most consequential Senate primaries playing out in Texas, a political behemoth Democrats have been fighting to flip for decades.
Is this the year? Republican leaders in Washington openly fret that a victory by conservative firebrand Ken Paxton over four-term incumbent Sen. John Cornyn would give Democrats a rare shot of winning the seat come November. The contest has already cost Republicans tens of millions of dollars, and there will be much more spent ahead of a May 26 runoff if no one gets 50% in the three-way primary that also includes Rep. Wesley Hunt.
Democrats, meanwhile, are picking between two rising stars with conflicting styles. There’s U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who made a name for herself through confrontation, and state Rep. James Talarico, a former middle school teacher who’s working toward a divinity degree.
Why the AP calls races
The United States doesn’t have a nationwide body that collects and releases election results. Elections are administered locally, by thousands of offices, following standards set by the states. In many cases, the states themselves don’t even offer up-to-date tracking of election results.
The AP fills this gap by compiling vote results and declaring winners in elections, providing critical information in the period between Election Day and the official certification of results, which typically takes weeks.
- By MORGAN LEE - Associated Press
- Updated
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Prosecutors began presenting never-before-seen video depositions of Meta executives at a trial in New Mexico on Tuesday to bolster accusations that the social media conglomerate failed to disclose what it knows about harmful effects to children on its platforms, including Instagram.
New Mexico prosecutors are billing depositions from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram leader Adam Mosseri as centerpieces of the state's case against Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Prosecutors have accused Meta of violating state consumer protection laws.
Prosecutors say the dangers of addiction to social media as well as child sexual exploitation on Meta's platforms weren’t properly addressed or disclosed by the company.
Meta attorney Kevin Huff pushed back on those assertions during opening statements on Feb. 9, highlighting efforts to weed out harmful content from its platforms while warning users that some content still gets through its safety net. He said Meta discloses the risks.
On Tuesday, the New Mexico jury watched a video in which prosecutors peppered Mosseri with questions about Meta's approach to safety, corporate profits and social media features. They also asked him about policies for young users that might contribute to sleep deprivation, unwanted communications with adults and negative effects of cosmetic beauty filters.
Counsel for state prosecutors repeatedly asked whether Instagram should do everything it can to keep teens safe.
“I think we should do what we can," Mosseri said. "I think that there’s over 2 billion people on Instagram, which means there are millions of teens on Instagram. So when you say everything, I want to be clear that we are a large enough platform that sometimes some things will — so for instance, problematic content will be seen.”
Under deposition, Mosseri also said that at Meta “we will prioritize safety over profits.” Prosecutors juxtaposed that assertion with the company's internal audits, emails and messages about proposed social media features that might change the compulsive use of Instagram by teens or interrupt negative social comparisons, and weren't always adopted.
Pressured about a decision by Instagram to continue recommending connections with teen accounts to adults amid concerns about child sexual exploitation, Mosseri described the company's belief in “proportional risk mitigation.”
“We carved out a subset of adults that we thought might be more likely to be problematic,” he said. “We basically tried to identify a subset of adults that might be risky and then remove them from ... accounts you should follow."
Mosseri also talked about the positive powers of social media to connect people, including his own relatives living on different continents. But he also acknowledged that Meta platforms may offer unwanted recommendations — in one instance, content about babies to a woman after miscarriage — and cited Instagram's “recommendations reset” as a creative solution.
The New Mexico case and a separate trial playing out in Los Angeles could set the course for thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies.
Zuckerberg testified last month in Los Angeles about young people’s use of Instagram and has answered questions from Congress about youth safety on Meta’s platforms.
During his 2024 congressional testimony, he apologized to families whose lives had been upended by tragedies they believed were caused by social media. But while he told parents he was “sorry for everything you have all been through,” he stopped short of taking direct responsibility for it.
Mosseri testified at the California trial that he disagrees with the idea that people can be clinically addicted to social media platforms — an opinion repeated in the New Mexico courtroom by deposition.
“I’m not a scientist, but I don’t believe the latest science suggests that social media platforms are addictive,” Mosseri said.
Election 2026 Senate Texas
- Eric Gay - AP
- Updated
A supporter of Texas state Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, wears a Texas state flag in their hat during a primary election watch party Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Austin, Texas.
- AP
- Updated
DUNEDIN, Fla. (AP) — Max Scherzer says the note his daughter composed asking the Toronto Blue Jays to re-sign the three-time Cy Young Award winner arose as his kids were writing letters to Santa Claus in December.
After Scherzer agreed last week to a $3 million, one-year contract to return to the Blue Jays, his wife posted on Instagram the handwritten note from their 8-year-old daughter, Brooke.
“It’s the cutest thing you can possibly imagine when you read that, how much it meant to her to be in Toronto,” Scherzer told reporters Tuesday after his deal was finalized.
Scherzer said his kids were writing letters expressing what they wanted from Santa when Brooke approached him and his wife, Erica May-Scherzer. The 8-year-old asked for a stamp and then put it on a sealed envelope that she handed to her parents.
After Brooke went to bed, her parents opened the letter to see what she had written.
“Dear Blue Jays,” the note began, “I am so sorry that you didn’t win the World Series. I hope that you win next time. I hope my dad is back on the team. My whole family loves spending time in Toronto with our dad. We loved the aquarium, the (CN) Tower and of course the stadium. I am looking forward to come back next season. Love, Max Scherzer daughter."
Scherzer noted he and his wife didn’t send the letter to the Blue Jays.
“That’s a bad negotiating tactic,” Scherzer said with a laugh.
Scherzer, 41, wanted to return to Toronto after the Blue Jays came so close to winning the World Series last season. The Blue Jays led in the ninth inning of Game 7 before falling 5-4 to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 11th.
“Obviously we came as close as you possibly can to winning the whole thing - something you can never get over, forget or anything of that nature,” said Scherzer, who won World Series rings with Washington in 2019 and Texas in 2023. “That was a huge reason why I wanted to come back. This team can win. I wanted to be a part of it.”
Scherzer said he’s right on schedule for the start of the season after dealing with a thumb injury for much of last year.
“I feel healthy,” Scherzer said.
Scherzer went 5-5 with a 5.19 ERA in 17 regular-season starts last year. He also was the winning pitcher in Game 4 of the AL Championship Series with Seattle and made two starts in the World Series.
He wanted to return to Toronto but understood the uncertainty that comes with being a free agent. His deal with the Jays includes $10 million in available performance bonuses for innings,
“Free agency is a weird animal,” Scherzer said. “I’ve been through it many times. You think it’s going to go one way and it goes another way. I kind of knew not to get my hopes up, but like I said, I was going to be picky about where I went. I wasn’t just going to sign with anybody. There was only a couple of teams I’d sign with at this point in time, and obviously Toronto was one of them.”
Blue Jays sign Mantiply to minor league deal
The club signed left-handed pitcher Joe Mantiply to a minor league contract and invited him to spring training.
The 35-year-old played for the Arizona Diamondbacks the past six seasons. Arizona designated him for assignment on May 15 after Mantiply allowed 17 earned runs in 9 2/3 innings. He signed a minor league deal with the Blue Jays, and had a 3.45 ERA in 14 appearances with Triple-A Buffalo.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
- By THOMAS BEAUMONT and WILL WEISSERT - Associated Press
DALLAS (AP) — Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn is trying to hold on for a fifth term in Tuesday's GOP primary, while Democrats will choose whether to send Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett or state Rep. James Talarico to a November general election where the party once again hopes it has a chance.
Texas is one of three states kicking off this year’s midterm elections with primaries that come as the U.S. and Israel are at war with Iran. At least six U.S. service members have been killed in a growing regional confrontation that sent oil and natural gas prices soaring. President Donald Trump, who campaigned on an “America First” agenda and hasn't sought congressional authorization, faces mounting questions over its rationale and an exit strategy.
Races in North Carolina and Arkansas also mark the first primaries of the 2026 midterms as Democrats look to break the GOP’s hold on Washington and derail Trump.
Cornyn faces a challenge from MAGA favorite Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt in a contest expected to advance to a May runoff. The three Republicans campaigned on their ties to Trump, who has not endorsed in the race.
Crockett and Talarico each argue that they are the stronger general election candidate in a state that backed Trump by almost 14 percentage points in 2024 and where a Democrat hasn’t won a statewide race in over 30 years.
Voting was extended for two hours in some parts of the state — particularly in Dallas County, after voters there and in Williamson county, outside Austin, reported being turned away and directed to different voting precincts.
People previously had been allowed to cast ballots anywhere in their county since 2019. But for this primary, the Republican parties in Dallas and Williamson counties opted against countywide voting. State law says both major parties have to agree to the countywide system for it to be in effect.
The races also featured new congressional district boundaries that GOP lawmakers — urged on by Trump — redrew to help elect more Republicans.
Cornyn fights to hold seat
Cornyn is hoping to avoid becoming the first Republican senator in Texas history not to be renominated.
His cool relationship with Trump is part of what makes Cornyn vulnerable. He and allied groups have spent at least $64 million in television advertising alone since July to try stabilize his support.
Paxton began campaigning in earnest only last month. He's made national headlines for filing lawsuits against Democratic initiatives. He remained popular in Texas despite a 2023 impeachment trial on corruption charges, of which he was acquitted, and accusations of marital infidelity by his wife.
On Tuesday evening a man wearing a camouflage hat, sunglasses and a mask covering his mouth and nose entered the Uptown Marriott hotel in Dallas, where Paxton was expected to address supporters later. He was asked to leave, and it was not clear whether his presence was connected to Paxon's event. The man was later detained by police, who removed ammunition magazines and shotgun shells from his vehicle. Paxton's campaign declined to comment.
All three Republicans have run ads boasting of their coziness with Trump. But Senate GOP leaders, who are backing Cornyn, worry that Paxton's liabilities would make it harder to defend the seat if he is the nominee — and require significant spending that could be better used elsewhere.
“Republican voters are going to need to decide, do we want to win?” Cornyn told Fox News Channel.
Hunt's entry into the race in October made it trickier for any primary candidate to win at least 50%, the threshold needed to avoid a May 26 runoff.
Stylistic opposites vie for Democrats' Senate nomination
Crockett and Talarico have waged a spirited race as Democrats look for their first Senate win in Texas since 1988.
Talarico, a seminarian who often references the Bible, has held rallies across the state including in heavily Republican areas. Crockett has built a national profile for zinger attacks on Republicans and has focused on turning out Black voters in the Dallas and Houston areas.
Tanu Sani, who cast a Democratic ballot in Dallas, said she'd been undecided until recently but opted for Talarico because he “really spoke to me in the way he tries to unify.”
Andrew Kern, another Democratic voter in Texas, explained his support of Talarico similarly, describing “an approach that’s bridging some of the divisiveness.”
Tomas Sanchez, a voter in Dallas County, said he supports Crockett because “she cares about immigrants, she cares about the American people in a way that a lot of the Republicans have proven they haven’t.”
Talarico had outspent Crockett on television advertising by more than four to one as of late February. He got a burst of attention — and campaign contributions — last month from CBS' decision not to air his interview with late-night host Stephen Colbert, who said the network pulled the interview for fear of angering Trump's FCC.
Key House primaries
Texas Republicans' mid-decade redistricting was aimed at helping the GOP pick up Democratic-held seats and maintain its threadbare House majority in Washington. The result matched several Democratic incumbents in primary fights and set up new general election battlegrounds.
In the 34th District, former Rep. Mayra Flores is attempting a comeback. Flores made history in a 2022 special election as the first Republican to win in the Rio Grande Valley in 150 years, but lost her bid for a full term later that year. She faces Eric Flores, a lawyer endorsed by Trump, for the nomination to run against Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez.
In the 23rd District, Rep. Tony Gonzales is considered vulnerable after an alleged affair with a staffer who killed herself. He's being challenged by gun manufacturer and YouTube influencer Brandon Herrera, who calls himself “the AK guy.” The district includes Uvalde, site of a deadly 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School.
Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw is challenged in the 2nd District by state Rep. Steve Toth, who was endorsed by Sen. Ted Cruz.
Former Major League Baseball star Mark Teixeira is running as a Republican to succeed Republican Chip Roy in southwest Texas’ District 21. Roy is running for attorney general.
Democrat Bobby Pulido, a Latin Grammy winner, is running in South Texas' 15th District against physician Ada Cuellar. The nominee will face two-term Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz.
In the 33rd District, Democratic Rep. Julie Johnson faces former Rep. Colin Allred, a former NFL linebacker and 2024 Senate nominee.
Democratic Rep. Al Green also is fighting to stay in office after his Houston-based 9th District was drawn to be lean Republican. Green, 78, is now running in a newly drawn 18th District against Democratic Rep. Christian Menefee, 37, who won a January special election for the current 18th District.
Easy win for Abbott, likely to face Hinojosa
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott easily won his primary and is expected to face Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa.
Roy is seeking the GOP nomination for state attorney general, with Paxton running for Senate. Roy has been a prominent member of the conservative Freedom Caucus.
Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Sara Cline and Jamie Stengle in Dallas and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed.
- By SARA CLINE, ALI SWENSON and NICHOLAS RICCARDI - Associated Press
Voters in two major Texas counties were turned away at polling locations and directed to different precincts Tuesday, after a recent change in how the primary is conducted created confusion and frustration.
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 County, north of Austin, said they succeeded in getting two precincts to stay open late.
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.
The campaigns of the two Democrats running in the primary for U.S. Senate denounced the effect of the change on voters.
“Both Dallas and Williamson county voters have grown accustomed to countywide voting, including on election day,” U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett 's campaign said. “This effort to suppress the vote, to confuse and inconvenience voters, is having the intended effect as people are being turned away from the polls.”
The campaign of James Talarico, a state lawmaker, said it was “deeply concerned” about the reports of voters showing up at polling locations and being sent elsewhere.
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.
Associated Press writer John Hanna contributed.
- By The Associated Press
U.S. President Donald Trump said “someone from within” Iran’s government might be best suited to take power once the U.S.-Israeli war on the country ends.
His remarks came four days into a war that has killed hundreds, nearly all of them in Iran, as well as many of the country’s top leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Although Tehran has kept up its retaliatory missile and drone strikes against Israel and across the Gulf — disrupting travel and driving up oil prices — the pace of Iranian attacks appears to be slowing. However the conflict has also spread to Lebanon, where Iran-backed Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel, prompting Israeli strikes in Beirut and additional troop deployments to southern Lebanon.
The spiraling nature of the war has raised questions about when and how it would end, and the Trump administration has given various objectives.
Here is the latest:
Israeli strike kills 4 in Lebanon, state-run media says
At least four people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a residential complex in the Lebanese city of Baalbeck, state-run media reported.
The strike early Wednesday also wounded six others, the National News Agency said.
Israel says Hezbollah fire intercepted
Israel’s military said Wednesday that Hezbollah fire targeted the country, with much of it intercepted.
Loud explosions in Tehran, Iran state TV reports
Iranian state television reported loud explosions around the capital, Tehran, as dawn broke Wednesday.
Israel says its air defenses activated
Israel said its air defenses were activated due to incoming missile fire from Iran.
US State Department authorizes non-emergency personnel, family members to evacuate Oman
The U.S. State Department said early Wednesday it had authorized non-emergency American government personnel and family members to evacuate Oman should they choose due to the war.
Oman, long an intermediary between the West and Iran, has repeatedly come under attack by Iran.
House Speaker says US not in the business of nation-building in Iran
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said after an all-member briefing at the Capitol that “no one can yet determine with any degree of certainty” how the conflict with Iran will turn out.
The Republican leader, a close ally of Trump, said it’s up to the Iranian people to “seize this moment of opportunity” for their country, and not necessarily depend on the U.S.
“We have no ability to get into the nation-building business,” he said.
“America has enough trouble of our own.”
Child killed in attack on Kuwait
An 11-year-old girl was killed after shrapnel fell in a residential area in Kuwait City, health authorities said Wednesday.
The Kuwait army said in a statement the shrapnel fell over a house and left casualties while forces were intercepting “several hostile aerial targets” over the country.
The Health Ministry said in a separate statement that the child died of her wounds at the hospital.
The child’s mother and three other relatives were injured and being treated at the hospital, it said.
US military commander says ‘we’ve just begun’ in Iran operation
The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East said American forces have struck nearly 2,000 targets in Iran since the operation against the Islamic Republic began.
Adm. Brad Cooper, head of Central Command, said in a video posted on X Tuesday that the U.S. military has “severely degraded Iran’s air defenses” and taken out hundreds of ballistic missiles, launchers and drones.
The video showed missiles and jets launching from U.S. ships, and targets exploding on the ground.
Cooper noted that Iran has launched over 500 ballistic missiles and more than 2,000 drones in retaliation.
But he said the U.S. is “hunting” Iran’s last remaining mobile ballistic missile launchers to eliminate their “lingering launch capability.”
Cooper said the operation has involved more than 50,000 troops, 200 fighter jets, two aircraft carriers and bombers, and “more capability is on the way.”
“We’ve just begun,” Cooper said.
Vessel hit in Gulf of Oman
A vessel was hit by a projectile early Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman off the United Arab Emirates, an agency of the U.K. military said.
There were no reported casualties.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre said the vessel was struck 8 miles east of Fujairah, one of the UAE’s seven emirates.
The attack damaged the vessel’s steel plating.
No fire or water intake was reported, it said.
Slain soldier was days away from returning home
Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, was just a few days away from coming home to her husband and two children when she was killed.
The last month had been a state of “constant concern,” her husband said.
“You could see it in the movements. She knew something was coming, she just didn’t know what scale,” Joey Amor said.
Amor was moved off-base to a shipping container-style building a week before the drone attack. The building had no defenses, Joey Amor said.
“They were dispersing because they were in fear that the base they were on was going to get attacked and they felt it was safer in smaller groups in separate places,” he said.
The couple exchanged messages about two hours before she was killed, joking back and forth. “She just never responded in the morning,” he said.
Palestinians anxious about the impact of Iran war on them
In a tent camp in Gaza’s southern area of Khan Younis, Palestinians have been closely following news about the widening war and growing increasingly worried about its potential impact on their lives.
“We are fed up with wars and the horrors of wars,” Ibrahim Atta, who was displaced from Rafah, said on Tuesday.
Palestinians in the camp were preparing simple meals to break their fast during the second week of the holy month of Ramadan. Haunted by memories of scarcity last year during months of Israel’s blockade, many fear that border crossings could again close.
“This will affect us economically, and affect the crossings,” said Rami Abu Arida, who also was displaced from Rafah. “Food and water, how can they enter?”
Israeli military spokesman says building where clerics will meet to select new supreme leader struck in Qom
The Israeli military spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said Tuesday that Israel struck a building in Qom where clerics were expected to meet to discuss the selection of a new supreme leader. He said the army was still assessing whether anyone was hit.
“We’re not going to let this regime rehabilitate its command and control capabilities.,” he said.
Kaine sees ‘troubling’ pattern of military operations without congressional approval
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., says there’s a “troubling pattern” of the Trump administration launching military operations — from Venezuela to Nigeria and to Iran — without involving Congress.
The Trump administration has made a habit of not seeking authorization, providing no advanced notice and then holding a classified hearing that restricts lawmakers’ ability to talk about it publicly, Kaine said Tuesday.
Kaine said he brought up his concerns during the administration’s closed-door briefing on Tuesday to senators on the military operation in Iran. He said his point was not refuted.
“It’s convinced many of us in the room that you’ve decided that you will never come to Congress,” Kaine told reporters at the Capitol after the briefing. “You don’t think you ever have to come to Congress for war authorization.”
Pentagon releases names of troops killed in drone strike in Kuwait
The Pentagon has released the names of four of the six service members who have been killed in the Iran war, saying they died in a drone strike in Kuwait.
All four Army Reserve soldiers were killed Sunday when a drone hit a command center in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait. That was just a day after the U.S. and Israel launched its military campaign against Iran, which has launched retailatory strikes.
All were assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command in Des Moines, lowa.
Killed were Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; and Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, lowa, who was posthumously promoted from specialist.
Reports of Iran launching missiles targeting Israel, Qatar continue overnight Tuesday
Qatar’s Ministry of Defense said early Wednesday that Iran launched two ballistic missiles against it and one hit Al-Udeid Qatari Base, though it didn’t cause casualties.
The other missile was intercepted by air defense, the ministry said.
Israel also said Iran had launched multiple missiles targeting the north of the country overnight with no reports of casualties there either.
Sen. Hawley said Iran operation is ‘rapidly evolving’ following closed-door briefing
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO, said after Tuesday’s closed-door briefing on the Iran operation that he would still vote ‘no’ on a war powers resolution, “unless they were to introduce ground troops.”
He added: “I didn’t hear in there any prediction of ground troops.”
“Personally, I would hope for a very swift conclusion, but I don’t know if that’s going to be the case,” he said.
Hawley said he learned more about the scope of the operation, which he said was “quite large” and “rapidly, rapidly evolving.”
“The briefers emphasized this, it’s really almost changing by the hour,” he said.
Commercial flight planned from Dubai to Sydney to repatriate 24,000 stranded Australians
A commercial flight is planned from Dubai to Sydney to start repatriating 24,000 Australians stranded in the United Arab Emirates by the Iran war, Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong says.
Wong said the flight was scheduled to leave Dubai on Wednesday.
“This is a consular crisis that dwarfs any that Australia has had to deal with in terms of numbers of people,” Wong told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
She and Australian Prime Minister Anthnony Albanese had spoken to United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is also the UAE’s deputy prime minister.
“The best way to get people out is to get commercial flights started. I asked if they could look at commercial flights restarting. Obviously it’s very unpredictable and I understand there is a flight scheduled from Dubai to Sydney. Obviously we would say to people on the ground you need to ensure you stay in contact with your airline in relation to that flight if you are on it. Flights have been cancelled and changed at short notice,” Wong said.
She did not identify the airline.
Health officials say 50 killed, more than 300 wounded in Israeli strikes in Lebanon
The death toll over the past two days in Lebanon has risen to 50, with 335 wounded, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Tuesday evening.
On Monday, Hezbollah launched missiles toward Israel for the first time in more than a year, and Israel responded by bombarding southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut with strikes. No casualties have been reported from the Hezbollah attacks in Israel.
It is not clear how many of those killed in Lebanon were civilians, but the health ministry said earlier Tuesday that they included seven children. Officials with Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group were also killed.
First government evacuation plane from Jordan lands in Prague
The first government evacuation plane landed in Prague late Tuesday. The airbus that belongs to the Czech military has a capacity for some 40 passengers and was flying from Jordan.
Another two government planes are expected to arrive during the night. One of them will fly from Egypt to take home Czech nationals who traveled there by buses from Israel. The other one will transport people from Oman.
“It was perfect. We saw everything we wanted to in Jordan,” said Zdenek Viktorin, who was traveling with his family of four. He said that he didn’t expect the war could start during their stay. “When the politicians say one day that the talks are fine and the other day (the war) begins, that’s hard to comprehend.”
In neighboring Slovakia, the first two evacuation planes sent by the Slovak government to Jordan landed in the Slovak capital Bratislava on Tuesday with 127 people on board. The government plans at least 10 such flights from the Middle East.
US and Israel have ‘superiority’ and control nearly all Iran's airspace, Israeli diplomat says
“I’m sure we will be able to show that superiority in the next few days,” Israeli ambassador Danny Danon told reporters at the United Nations.
He cautioned, however, that while U.S.-Israeli attacks have degraded Iranian capabilities and it’s harder for them to launch missiles, “they put missiles underground, in caves, in secret locations.”
He said Israel has told its own citizens and people in the region, “give us some more time” to further degrade the Iranian military and achieve its objectives: “no nuclear weapons, no missile threat, no terror infrastructure.”
“It will not continue forever,“ Danon said.
UAE says it has been attacked by 1,000 Iranian drones and missiles so far
The United Arab Emirates said Tuesday on X that it retains the right to self-defense, insisting that the Gulf monarchy is not part of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran and that it hasn’t authorized the use of its territories for attacks against Iran.
The UAE Defense Ministry also released a breakdown of its missile and drone interceptions. It said Iranian drones struck within its territory 57 times out of more than 800 detected, while only one of 186 ballistic missiles managed to hit. All eight Iranian cruise missiles were intercepted, the ministry said. It was not possible to independently very those figures.
Venezuelan government supporters hold a solidarity march for Iran
Dozens of Venezuelan government supporters on Tuesday marched in the capital in solidarity with Iran and mourning Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the war.
Demonstrators wore T-shirts with the photo of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom the U.S. military captured from the capital Caracas in a stunning operation two months ago.
Two women at the head of the demonstration carried photos of Khamenei and of late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who orchestrated Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution and ruled as supreme leader for a decade.
“We are here to give our support to the Iranian diplomatic representation in Caracas,” Yoser Quijada, an engineer, said. “We are here with our presence telling them that the people of Venezuela, the heart of the Venezuelan people, is together with the heart of the Iranian people.”
Rubio pushes back in a testy exchange at the Capitol
The secretary of state insisted that Trump made the decision to attack Iran because this past weekend presented what he called a unique opportunity for the mission to be successful.
“The president is determined we were not going to get hit first. It’s that simple,” Rubio said ahead of a closed-door briefing for lawmakers.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to reporters as he arrives for an intelligence briefing with top lawmakers on Iran, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Mar. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to reporters as he arrives for an intelligence briefing with top lawmakers on Iran, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Mar. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rubio was revisiting his remarks from a day earlier that have generated fierce blowback. At the time, he said Trump believed Israel was determined to act and wanted the U.S. to go first with a pre-emptive strike on Iran to prevent any retaliation on American bases and operations in the region.
“We are not going to put American troops in harm’s way,” he said.
Amid the administration’s shifting reasons for the war with Iran, Rubio also returned to Trump’s initial rationale. “There is no way in the world that this terroristic regime was going to get nuclear weapons, not under Donald Trump’s watch,” he said.
Iranian drone hits near US consulate in Dubai
An Iranian drone slammed into a parking lot outside the U.S. consulate in Dubai, sparking a small fire, according to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Although the pace of Iranian missile and drone strikes has slowed, Tuesday’s near-miss shows that Iran is still able to get munitions past American interceptors.
Rubio told reporters at the U.S. Capitol that all of the consulate personnel in Dubai had been accounted for.
“We began drawing down personnel from our diplomatic facilities in advance of this,” Rubio said.
Satellite imagery shows Iran’s presidential complex destroyed
Before-and-after images published by the Colorado-based satellite company Vantor on Tuesday showed the domed roof of Iran’s presidential complex destroyed, aligning with Israel’s earlier claims of an overnight strike.
Numerous munitions were dropped on what Israel’s military said was among the most heavily secured sites in Tehran. Iranian officials and state media have not yet acknowledged the damage or reported casualties from the strike.
UN official says humanitarian fallout in Middle East escalations is ‘increasingly daunting’
In a statement Tuesday, U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher warned about the impact the ongoing conflict in the Middle East is having on civilians in nearly a dozen countries in the region just days after U.S. and Israel began to attack Iran.
“First, civilians are paying the price across the region. Civilians must be protected - full stop. Yet strikes are hitting homes, hospitals, and schools,” Fletcher said. “Civilians and civilian infrastructure have been under attack in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and beyond.”
Fletcher added that while contingency plans across Iran and other nearby countries have been activated, the already limited presence by international organizations inside the Islamic Republic have made aid workers’ challenges much greater. Beyond the countries now involved in the wider regional conflict, Fletcher said the impacts on the civilians will worsen already dire humanitarian situations in places like Afghanistan and the occupied Palestinian territories.
Trump pitches a plan to protect oil and other trade moving through the Persian Gulf
Trump said on social media he ordered the United States’ development finance arm to provide political risk insurance for tankers carrying oil and other goods through the Persian Gulf “at a very reasonable price.”
Political risk insurance is a type of coverage intended to protect firms against financial losses caused by unstable political conditions, government actions, or violence.
He said that, if necessary, the U.S. Navy would escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. About a fifth of the world’s oil passes through the strait. The disruption to that traffic caused by the war has pushed oil prices higher.
The Navy has at least eight destroyers and three smaller littoral combat ships in the region. These ships have previously been used to escort merchant shipping in the region and in the Red Sea.
Israel says it destroyed Iran’s reconstituted secret nuclear headquarters
Israel’s military says it destroyed what it calls Iran’s secret nuclear headquarters, and claims Iran moved work into hidden bunkers, known as Minzadehei.
On Tuesday, an Israeli military spokesman said the site supported research tied to a key component for nuclear weapons. Israel does not say Iran enriched uranium there.
There was no immediate public comment from the U.S. or Iran about the site Israel named.
Israel says Iran tried to rebuild and hide parts of its program after last year’s strikes. The United States said as recently as last week that those strikes destroyed Iran’s nuclear program.
U.S. officials also accuse Iran of trying to restart parts of the program but do not say Iran was restarting enrichment.
Turkey’s top diplomat criticizes Iran’s ‘flawed strategy’ of attacking Gulf states
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Tuesday accused Iran of attacking Gulf neighbors that had worked to prevent war, calling it a strategy of “If I go, I will take the region with me.”
He called Iran’s strikes on countries mediating between Tehran and Washington an “incredibly flawed strategy” and warned the conflict could widen if Gulf states retaliate.
In an interview with state broadcaster TRT, Fidan said Gulf states, including Qatar, had pushed for diplomacy until the last hour before the U.S.-Israeli war began Saturday.
“I believe that if the Iranians had better understood the pressure President Trump was facing and given him something in advance, the pressure from Israel might not have been so effective,” he said.
- By The Associated Press
Most polls are closed in primary elections in three states, in a vote that marks the official beginning of the midterm elections. Voters cast ballots in North Carolina, Arkansas and Texas, where confusion at some polling locations prompted an extension in voting hours in three counties.
As war with Iran breaks out, Democrats and Republicans are figuring out who they want to lead their party into November’s general election, when control of Congress and statehouses around the country will be up for grabs. The results of Tuesday’s elections could offer a hint of broader voter sentiment. The most hotly contested races of the day are in Texas, with fierce competition on both sides of the aisle for U.S. Senate nominations. It’s possible that the Republican campaign will continue into a runoff.
Here's the latest:
GOP Sen. Tom Cotton cinches nomination for 3rd term in Arkansas
The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee faced two little-known challengers in the GOP primary. Democrats in Arkansas are not expected to mount a significant challenge for the seat in November.
Dallas police say man detained earlier was arrested for traffic violations
The man was detained outside Republican Ken Paxton’s election night watch party and police say he was taken to headquarters for further investigation.
A brief police statement made no mention of Paxton’s event and it remained unclear whether the incident was linked to it.
Police said the vehicle had no license plate and officers found ammunition while searching it. The man was not identified.
Voting extended in 3 Texas counties
Democratic polling locations in Dallas and Williamson counties stayed open late because of confusion caused by the county Republican parties refusing to hold a joint primary with Democrats. That forced voters to go to local precincts to cast ballots rather than countywide facilities they usually use.
The polls stayed open an extra two hours in Dallas. In Williamson, which includes the suburbs north of Austin, two precincts were allowed to stay open until 10 p.m. local time.
Voting also was extended for an additional hour in El Paso due to a problem with the county’s voter check-in system. — This post replaces a previous post that incorrectly stated that voting had not been extended in Williamson County.
Roy Cooper and Michael Whatley win North Carolina Senate nominations
Former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and ex-Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley each won their party’s U.S. Senate nominations in North Carolina, setting the bout for a fall campaign that could determine control of the chamber.
Both clinched their elections in crowded fields to replace retiring Sen. Thom Tillis. He isn’t seeking a third term.
Cooper’s entry lifted Democratic hopes for regaining Senate control of the chamber. Whatley ran after receiving the endorsement of President Donald Trump.
Police detain man and remove ammunition magazines from car outside Paxton’s party
The man was detained outside Republican Ken Paxton’s watch party in Dallas and ammunition magazines and shotgun shells were removed from a car parked outside the venue.
The man was placed in the back of a Dallas police cruiser and later taken away. It was not immediately known whether the incident was connected to the Paxton event.
Paxton, who is running for U.S. Senate, is holding his primary night watch party at a Marriott hotel. Attendees were starting to arrive when the man was detained. The Dallas Police Department and the Paxton campaign did not immediately comment.
Alex Muse, one of the attendees, said a man wearing a camouflage hat, sunglasses and mask covering his mouth and nose entered the hotel and was immediately instructed to exit the property. Muse said the man was also carrying a camouflage rucksack.
“I think it alarmed everyone that he was all in camo, had a rucksack on, face covering,” Muse said.
Crockett says voting irregularities could affect the outcome of Democratic primary
She says irregularities in Dallas County, her home base, could be determinative in an extremely close election.
“If one person has the right to vote and they weren’t allowed to cast their vote, we should all be standing together — Democrats, Republicans — and we should all be raising hell,” she said at a news conference shortly after a judge extended voting hours in Dallas County.
“So I am asking you, I am begging you, to make sure that you go ahead and figure out where it is that you are supposed to vote,” she added. “Stand in line, wait in line.”
Voting hours in primary extended in Dallas
A Dallas judge ordered the polls to stay open an extra two hours until 9 pm local time.
The extension follows chaos in the county and a suburban one outside Austin because the local Republican parties refused to hold joint primaries with Democrats. That meant that rather than voting at countywide vote centers as has been done for years in Texas, voters in those two counties needed to find their own precincts to cast ballots.
Hundreds were unable to vote, Dallas Democrats said. Democrats asked a judge to extend poll hours. Rep. Jasmine Crockett said the extended hours only apply to Democratic primary sites because the GOP did not make the request as well.
Primary election polls have closed in North Carolina, except for 1 precinct
North Carolina law says the voting sites close at 7:30 p.m. ET and that anyone in line at the time can still cast a ballot.
But one of the roughly 2,600 sites statewide is staying open for an hour longer. The State Board of Elections gave voters extra time in a rural Halifax County precinct because workers had a problem with electronic poll books and didn’t use any backup measures to let people vote.
The state board said the delay means it won’t be releasing vote totals publicly until 8:30 p.m., when the Halifax County precinct closes. During the delay, counties can count votes and report the results internally to the state.
North Carolina voters are choosing Democratic and Republican nominations for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Thom Tillis and for U.S. House seats. Voters also are choosing primary winners for state legislative, judicial and local races.
Talarico campaign calls for extension of voting hours
The Talarico campaign says it’s “deeply concerned” about reports of voting troubles in two major Texas counties.
The campaign called for voting hours to be extended but did not say whether it would file a lawsuit asking a judge to intervene.
Some voters in Dallas and Williamson counties are being turned away at polling locations and directed to different voting precincts.
North Carolina county election boards expected to follow state on results delay
The head of the association for North Carolina county elections directors says she doesn’t believe colleagues elsewhere in the state will release their countywide primary election results until the State Board of Elections starts doing so at 8:30 p.m. ET.
Results usually start getting released by the state board shortly after polls close statewide at 7:30 p.m. But the state board delayed that because members agreed earlier Tuesday to extend voting by an hour at one Halifax County precinct.
Association president Leigh Anne Price, who is also the Johnston County elections director, said her office is “going to follow what the state board has directed us to do.”
Elections boards in the state’s three largest counties — Wake, Mecklenburg and Guilford — also plan to do the same, officials said.
Jasmine Crockett sees problems in her home county as voter suppression
The Democratic congresswoman and U.S. Senate candidate from Dallas blamed
local Republicans, as well as Republicans in the Austin area, for the confusion of voters who were being turned away from polling locations in Tuesday’s primaries.
The GOP in both Dallas County and Williamson County in the Austin area opted to have voters cast ballots only in their home precincts instead of countywide. Crockett’s campaign said that forced Democrats to do it, too.
Her campaign saw Republicans’ goal as suppressing the vote and said her campaign is working with Democratic officials on possible responses, including extended voting hours.
“Texans don’t appreciate having their votes suppressed and we won’t take it lying down,” her campaign said in a statement.
Some Texas voters report confusion after being turned away from voting locations
Tomas Sanchez was one of the voters in Dallas County who showed up at a voting location, ready to cast his ballot in the Democratic primary, and was turned away for being at the wrong precinct.
Sanchez, a student at Dallas College, planned to vote at a location on the campus. But instead was told he had to vote at a location closer to his neighborhood.
The 22-year-old said he was under the “mistaken impression” that he could vote anywhere in the county, which has been the case since 2019. But for this primary Election Day, the Dallas County Republican Party opted not to allow countywide voting locations. The decision affects all area voters, who now much cast ballots at their assigned precinct.
Top Republicans didn’t want Rep. Wesley Hunt to run for Senate. He did anyway
Hunt made his jump into politics after serving in the Army as an Apache helicopter pilot in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. He flew combat missions in Iraq.
The lifelong Houston resident and father of three lost his first race for Congress in 2020. However redistricting created a solidly Republican district two years later, and he won the seat easily.
He’s now positioning himself as an alternative to two older career politicians in the primary, four-term incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Senate GOP leaders opposed Hunt’s run, believing it could prevent Cornyn from fending off Paxton’s challenge. But he argued that voters wary of Paxton needed a choice other than Cornyn.
Reporting of North Carolina vote results to be delayed
The release of voting results in North Carolina will be delayed an hour Tuesday night because state officials agreed to keep a precinct in one county open late after workers couldn’t get some equipment working at the start of the day.
Workers at a precinct in rural Halifax County could not get the electronic poll books synchronized for 90 minutes and didn’t use any backup measures to let people vote, according to testimony at an emergency meeting Tuesday afternoon of the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
Election officials said counties can go ahead and count votes when their polls close and report the results internally to the state. But the state isn’t releasing vote totals publicly until 8:30 p.m. when the Halifax County precinct closes.
The precinct was in Littleton, a small community about 60 miles (96 kilometers) northeast of Raleigh.
Dallas Republicans scrapped plans to count ballots by hand
They’re sticking with voting machines in one of the nation’s largest counties.
The reversal by the Dallas County Republican Party came after chairman Allen West, a former Florida congressman, spent months laying the groundwork for a massive hand-count. Voting machines have been at the center of a web of conspiracy theories pushed by some Republicans after the 2020 election, with false claims that they were manipulated to steal the presidency from Donald Trump.
A large, labor-intensive hand count is slow, expensive and prone to human error. And it would have required more polling locations and workers.
West abandoned plans for a hand count in December, saying officials were “woefully short” of the number of people needed to pull it off.
Change in primary voting rules leads to voters being turned away in 2 Texas counties
Some voters in two major Texas counties are being turned away at polling locations and directed to different voting precincts, causing confusion and frustration. The problems were hitting voters in Dallas County and Williamson County, which includes the suburbs north of Austin.
“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,” Nic Solorzano, a spokesperson for the Dallas County Elections Department, told the AP.
Since 2019, area voters have been allowed to cast their ballot anywhere in the county. But for this primary, the Republican parties in both counties opted not to allow countywide voting locations. Because both major parties have to agree on how to conduct the primary, the decision affects all voters. That meant that on Tuesday voters could cast ballots only at their assigned precinct. Adding to the confusion is that voting locations also might be specific to someone’s party affiliation, Solorzano said.
Paxton’s ad blitz included the late Charlie Kirk praising him
State Attorney General Ken Paxton not only has the endorsement of Turning Point USA, the conservative group founded by Kirk, but has played up Kirk praising him before the conservative activist was assassinated.
Paxton’s ads down the stretch of his Senate bid included one with clips of Kirk calling him “one of the best attorney generals in the country.”
Kirk also says Paxton is an “amazing, Constitution-loving Texan attorney general who is doing a great job.”
Paxton made appearances sponsored by Turning Point USA on five college campuses last fall, and last month his campaign was endorsed by the influential group, which is aimed at mobilizing young conservatives.
Kirk was assassinated in September while speaking on a college campus in Utah.
No Trump endorsement in heated Republican Senate primary
The president has stayed out of the campaign in an uncharacteristic show of restraint from someone with a tendency to want to throw his weight behind important races.
Trump has endorsed congressional candidates and a long list of state lawmakers, including those who helped deliver on his demands for redrawn U.S. House maps that boost the GOP’s chances of picking up more seats from the state in November.
But in the Republican Senate primary, the biggest race in Texas, Trump has declined to endorse Sen. John Cornyn, state Attorney General Ken Paxton or U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.
Trump has said he supports all three. But things could change if there’s a runoff, when it might be harder for him to stay on the sidelines once there’s a leader in a head-to-head race.
John Cornyn, a fixture in Texas politics for decades, fights to hang on
The four-term Republican senator is in the fight of his political career in his heated primary against state Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt. That’s new territory for Cornyn, 74, who has never before faced a significant GOP challenger.
His campaign to hang on comes barely a year after he narrowly lost a bid for Senate majority leader in 2024.
Some Texas conservatives remain angry about Cornyn’s work as the GOP’s negotiator on gun restrictions after the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde killed 19 students and two teachers. Others are not happy about Cornyn being dismissive of Trump’s debunked claims of widespread election fraud.
The three-way race raises the likelihood that neither Cornyn nor Paxton will get the 50% needed to avoid a May 26 runoff.
Michael Whatley’s political past and future are linked closely to Trump
Whatley received Trump’s endorsement in North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race last summer, weeks after Republican Sen. Thom Tillis announced he wouldn’t seek reelection after facing criticism from the president.
The 57-year-old is his party’s highest-profile candidate in the party, and he’s repeatedly pledged to defend Trump’s agenda in the Senate if he’s elected.
Trump’s endorsement highlighted Whatley’s work as Republican National Committee chairman during his 2024 reelection campaign. Whatley also previously served as state party chair in North Carolina, whose electoral votes Trump won all three times that he ran for president.
Whatley has never run for public office until now. He’s spent a lot of time accusing Cooper of going soft on crime as governor, which Cooper denies.
Rep. Henry Cuellar got Trump’s pardon but not his support
The president accused the congressman of disloyalty for not leaving the Democratic Party after Trump pardoned him and his wife in a federal bribery and conspiracy case.
Cuellar doesn’t have a high-profile primary opponent in his district on the Mexico border. But he stands to face Republican Tano Tijerina — whom Trump endorsed — in the general election.
Cuellar is a moderate Democrat who kept his seat in 2024 even though Trump carried his district. Last year’s Republican redrawing of the state’s congressional map sought to make his heavily Hispanic district more winnable for the GOP.
In January a federal grand jury indicted his brother, Martin Cuellar, on charges of misusing public funds during the COVID-19 pandemic while he was sheriff in Webb County, home to Laredo. Martin Cuellar’s attorney has called the charges baseless.
How the AP calls races
In almost all cases, races can be called well before all votes have been counted. The AP’s team of election journalists and analysts will call a race as soon as a clear winner can be determined.
In competitive races, AP analysts may need to wait until additional votes are tallied or to confirm specific information about how many ballots are left to count.
Competitive races in which votes are actively being tabulated — for example, in states that count a large number of votes after election night — might be considered “too early to call.” A race may be “too close to call” if a race is so close that there’s no clear winner even once all ballots except for provisional and late-arriving absentee ballots have been counted.
The AP’s race calls are not predictions and are not based on speculation. They are declarations based on an analysis of vote results and other election data that one candidate has emerged as the winner and that no other candidate in the race will be able to overtake the winner once all the votes have been counted.
Collecting the vote
The AP’s vote count brings together information that otherwise might not be available online for days or weeks after an election or is scattered across hundreds of local websites. Without national standards or consistent expectations across states, it also ensures the data is in a standard format, uses standard terms and undergoes rigorous quality control.
The AP hires vote count reporters who work with local election officials to collect results directly from counties or precincts where votes are first counted. These reporters submit them, by phone or electronically, as soon as the results are available. If any of the results are available from state or county websites, the AP will gather the results from there, too.
In many cases, counties will update vote totals as they count ballots throughout the night. The AP is continually updating its count as these results are released. In a general election, the AP will make as many as 21,000 vote updates per hour.
A mess in Texas? What to watch in Tuesday’s primaries
The 2026 midterm season begins in earnest Tuesday with two of the nation’s most consequential Senate primaries playing out in Texas, a political behemoth Democrats have been fighting to flip for decades.
Is this the year? Republican leaders in Washington openly fret that a victory by conservative firebrand Ken Paxton over four-term incumbent Sen. John Cornyn would give Democrats a rare shot of winning the seat come November. The contest has already cost Republicans tens of millions of dollars, and there will be much more spent ahead of a May 26 runoff if no one gets 50% in the three-way primary that also includes Rep. Wesley Hunt.
Democrats, meanwhile, are picking between two rising stars with conflicting styles. There’s U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who made a name for herself through confrontation, and state Rep. James Talarico, a former middle school teacher who’s working toward a divinity degree.
Why the AP calls races
The United States doesn’t have a nationwide body that collects and releases election results. Elections are administered locally, by thousands of offices, following standards set by the states. In many cases, the states themselves don’t even offer up-to-date tracking of election results.
The AP fills this gap by compiling vote results and declaring winners in elections, providing critical information in the period between Election Day and the official certification of results, which typically takes weeks.
- By MORGAN LEE - Associated Press
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Prosecutors began presenting never-before-seen video depositions of Meta executives at a trial in New Mexico on Tuesday to bolster accusations that the social media conglomerate failed to disclose what it knows about harmful effects to children on its platforms, including Instagram.
New Mexico prosecutors are billing depositions from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram leader Adam Mosseri as centerpieces of the state's case against Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Prosecutors have accused Meta of violating state consumer protection laws.
Prosecutors say the dangers of addiction to social media as well as child sexual exploitation on Meta's platforms weren’t properly addressed or disclosed by the company.
Meta attorney Kevin Huff pushed back on those assertions during opening statements on Feb. 9, highlighting efforts to weed out harmful content from its platforms while warning users that some content still gets through its safety net. He said Meta discloses the risks.
On Tuesday, the New Mexico jury watched a video in which prosecutors peppered Mosseri with questions about Meta's approach to safety, corporate profits and social media features. They also asked him about policies for young users that might contribute to sleep deprivation, unwanted communications with adults and negative effects of cosmetic beauty filters.
Counsel for state prosecutors repeatedly asked whether Instagram should do everything it can to keep teens safe.
“I think we should do what we can," Mosseri said. "I think that there’s over 2 billion people on Instagram, which means there are millions of teens on Instagram. So when you say everything, I want to be clear that we are a large enough platform that sometimes some things will — so for instance, problematic content will be seen.”
Under deposition, Mosseri also said that at Meta “we will prioritize safety over profits.” Prosecutors juxtaposed that assertion with the company's internal audits, emails and messages about proposed social media features that might change the compulsive use of Instagram by teens or interrupt negative social comparisons, and weren't always adopted.
Pressured about a decision by Instagram to continue recommending connections with teen accounts to adults amid concerns about child sexual exploitation, Mosseri described the company's belief in “proportional risk mitigation.”
“We carved out a subset of adults that we thought might be more likely to be problematic,” he said. “We basically tried to identify a subset of adults that might be risky and then remove them from ... accounts you should follow."
Mosseri also talked about the positive powers of social media to connect people, including his own relatives living on different continents. But he also acknowledged that Meta platforms may offer unwanted recommendations — in one instance, content about babies to a woman after miscarriage — and cited Instagram's “recommendations reset” as a creative solution.
The New Mexico case and a separate trial playing out in Los Angeles could set the course for thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies.
Zuckerberg testified last month in Los Angeles about young people’s use of Instagram and has answered questions from Congress about youth safety on Meta’s platforms.
During his 2024 congressional testimony, he apologized to families whose lives had been upended by tragedies they believed were caused by social media. But while he told parents he was “sorry for everything you have all been through,” he stopped short of taking direct responsibility for it.
Mosseri testified at the California trial that he disagrees with the idea that people can be clinically addicted to social media platforms — an opinion repeated in the New Mexico courtroom by deposition.
“I’m not a scientist, but I don’t believe the latest science suggests that social media platforms are addictive,” Mosseri said.
Election 2026 Senate Texas
- Eric Gay - AP
A supporter of Texas state Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, wears a Texas state flag in their hat during a primary election watch party Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Austin, Texas.
- AP
DUNEDIN, Fla. (AP) — Max Scherzer says the note his daughter composed asking the Toronto Blue Jays to re-sign the three-time Cy Young Award winner arose as his kids were writing letters to Santa Claus in December.
After Scherzer agreed last week to a $3 million, one-year contract to return to the Blue Jays, his wife posted on Instagram the handwritten note from their 8-year-old daughter, Brooke.
“It’s the cutest thing you can possibly imagine when you read that, how much it meant to her to be in Toronto,” Scherzer told reporters Tuesday after his deal was finalized.
Scherzer said his kids were writing letters expressing what they wanted from Santa when Brooke approached him and his wife, Erica May-Scherzer. The 8-year-old asked for a stamp and then put it on a sealed envelope that she handed to her parents.
After Brooke went to bed, her parents opened the letter to see what she had written.
“Dear Blue Jays,” the note began, “I am so sorry that you didn’t win the World Series. I hope that you win next time. I hope my dad is back on the team. My whole family loves spending time in Toronto with our dad. We loved the aquarium, the (CN) Tower and of course the stadium. I am looking forward to come back next season. Love, Max Scherzer daughter."
Scherzer noted he and his wife didn’t send the letter to the Blue Jays.
“That’s a bad negotiating tactic,” Scherzer said with a laugh.
Scherzer, 41, wanted to return to Toronto after the Blue Jays came so close to winning the World Series last season. The Blue Jays led in the ninth inning of Game 7 before falling 5-4 to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 11th.
“Obviously we came as close as you possibly can to winning the whole thing - something you can never get over, forget or anything of that nature,” said Scherzer, who won World Series rings with Washington in 2019 and Texas in 2023. “That was a huge reason why I wanted to come back. This team can win. I wanted to be a part of it.”
Scherzer said he’s right on schedule for the start of the season after dealing with a thumb injury for much of last year.
“I feel healthy,” Scherzer said.
Scherzer went 5-5 with a 5.19 ERA in 17 regular-season starts last year. He also was the winning pitcher in Game 4 of the AL Championship Series with Seattle and made two starts in the World Series.
He wanted to return to Toronto but understood the uncertainty that comes with being a free agent. His deal with the Jays includes $10 million in available performance bonuses for innings,
“Free agency is a weird animal,” Scherzer said. “I’ve been through it many times. You think it’s going to go one way and it goes another way. I kind of knew not to get my hopes up, but like I said, I was going to be picky about where I went. I wasn’t just going to sign with anybody. There was only a couple of teams I’d sign with at this point in time, and obviously Toronto was one of them.”
Blue Jays sign Mantiply to minor league deal
The club signed left-handed pitcher Joe Mantiply to a minor league contract and invited him to spring training.
The 35-year-old played for the Arizona Diamondbacks the past six seasons. Arizona designated him for assignment on May 15 after Mantiply allowed 17 earned runs in 9 2/3 innings. He signed a minor league deal with the Blue Jays, and had a 3.45 ERA in 14 appearances with Triple-A Buffalo.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
Michael Wolfe
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