The 2026 campaign kicked off Tuesday with high-profile primary elections in Texas, where Republican Sen. John Cornyn is heading toward a runoff vote against state attorney general Ken Paxton. Democrats chose state Rep. James Talarico over U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett to be their candidate.  For all the focus on Texas, elections in North Carolina could have a bigger impact on which party ultimately wins the Senate majority in the fall.   In the first election since President Donald Trump joined Israel in launching dramatic attacks on Iran, there were also contests in Arkansas. view article

LUFKIN — Tuesday’s Republican primary election marks a new era for East Texas, as several of the powerhouses who have long championed the region at the Capitol won’t appear on the ballot for the first time in decades. view article

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Last spring, the Texas Legislature passed a bill that allows school districts to add a period dedicated to prayer and reading the Bible or other religious texts in public schools. Now, school districts are nearly at the end of their deadline to vote on whether or not they’ll do so.  While Senate Bill 11 doesn’t require prayer in all public schools, it allows school districts to “adopt a policy requiring every campus of the district or school to provide students and employees with an opportunity to participate in a period of prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious text on each school day.” view article

Magnolia ISD has become one of the first school districts in the Houston area — and only the second known so far in Texas  —  to approve a daily period of prayer under a new state law.  Several other area districts, including Houston, Conroe, Cypress-Fairbanks and Katy ISDs, have declined to establish a new prayer period, citing logistical challenges and that students are already allowed to express their faith under state and federal law. Last year, state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 11, which tasks school boards with voting on whether to establish a district-wide period of prayer and “reading of the Bible or other religious text on each school day” for students and employees. view article

Early voting in person runs from Feb. 17-27. This guide explains your rights at Texas polls.  Voting for the 2026 primaries starts Tuesday. Texas Republican and Democrat voters will pick which candidate they want to represent their interests and their party on the ballot for the November general election.  Before you head to the polls, you should know you have rights as a voter and there are certain rules in place at voting locations about what you can bring and wear. You also need an approved photo ID to vote in person. view article

Texas families will soon be able to access $1 billion in taxpayer dollars through education savings accounts, also known as school vouchers, to pay for private school tuition, tutoring, transportation and several other education-related costs.  Passed during the 89th legislative session, the state is calling the universal program Texas Education Freedom Accounts. Families can start applying Wednesday, Feb. 4.  The application portal closes March 17 with selected families getting funds for the 2026-27 school year. State officials estimate the first year of TEFAs will serve about 100,000 families, with awards averaging about $10,000. view article

The application period will close March 17. If demand exceeds the $1 billion available, the state will prioritize students based on family income and whether they have a disability. view article

A “student-led” walkout on Feb. 20 at Olathe Northwest High School to protest immigration enforcement ended in a violent altercation between students and multiple arrests, and the district is refusing to answer questions.  The Sentinel asked Olathe Superintendent Brent Yeager and Olathe Northwest Principal Chris Zuck if the district condoned the walkout and if any action to prevent the walkout was taken. Yeager and Zuck were also asked if district staff participated and if there would be any disciplinary action taken against participants for leaving school grounds during school hours.  As of publication, there has been no response.  The district sent out notices to parents affirming the students’ “right to protest.”  But a note from Yeager noted this was only the latest such walkout. view article

State Rep. James Talarico won the Texas Senate Democratic primary, defeating Rep. Jasmine Crockett and giving party leaders the candidate they had quietly seen as the stronger option to flip the ruby-red state.  The race was defined by questions of electability and simmering racial tensions, as Talarico and Crockett worked to reassemble the party’s fractured multiracial coalition. That carried over through Tuesday, with both candidates raising concerns that voters had been disenfranchised in Crockett’s home base of Dallas County, which includes a large number of Black voters. view article

Tuesday was primary Election Day across the state of Texas, and in Angelina County some races were settled while one is headed to a May runoff.   State Rep. Trent Ashby won the Republican nomination for District 3 state senator Tuesday evening, defeating former state Republican committeewoman Rhonda Ward. The former Lufkin ISD board president has represented Angelina County in the state Legislature since 2013 and will take on Democratic nominee Bobby Tillman in November’s general election to succeed the retiring Robert Nichols, who has represented East Texas since 2007. view article

Nate Sheets defeats three-term incumbent Sid Miller in GOP primary for Texas agriculture commissioner view article

A Muslim parent is suing Texas for excluding certain Islamic private schools from the state’s new school choice program.  The federal lawsuit alleges constitutional violations for religious discrimination and attempts to refute claims that the excluded schools have terrorist ties.   Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA) allow families to use taxpayer-funded accounts to pay for private school tuition, homeschooling expenses, and other educational services—up to $10,000 per student per year.  The program was enacted by the Texas Legislature in 2025. Applications for the 2026-27 school year opened in February and the deadline is March 17.  In December 2025, Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock requested Attorney General Ken Paxton’s legal opinion on whether certain private schools may be barred from participating in the program due to potential ties to terrorist organizations or foreign adversaries. view article

Texas’ Republican primary race for attorney general will head to a runoff between State Sen. Mayes Middleton and U.S. Rep. Chip Roy. Middleton led Roy by roughly 10 points at the time of publication, with neither candidate surpassing the required 50 percent threshold. view article

The conservative state representative is set to replace the incumbent congressman.  Republican State Rep. Steve Toth of The Woodlands has defeated U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw in the Republican primary for Texas’ 2nd Congressional District.  As of publication, with 63 percent of the vote in, Toth leads 57.6 percent to Crenshaw’s 39.2 percent. view article

The most expensive Senate primary of all time is going into overtime. view article

The most expensive Senate primary of all time is going into overtime. view article

State Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, D-San Antonio, attended a Judson ISD school board meeting Thursday night after she said she recieved multiple complaints from constituents. “I’m looking for other jobs just in case,” Gervin-Hawkins said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen if you guys continue to meltdown, things are not gonna go well for any of us.” view article

Both parties are contemplating the notion of Brandon Herrera, a gun-loving YouTuber with a history of provocative comments, as the GOP nominee. Herrera says he can win in November. view article

Ken Paxton, Texas attorney general and US Senate candidate, has called for public school students to recite the Lord’s Prayer, specifying the King James Bible version. In a statement on September 1, 2025, Paxton said, “In Texas classrooms, we want the Word of God opened, the Ten Commandments displayed, and prayers lifted up.” He criticized liberals for trying to “erase Truth” and claimed America was founded on “Biblical Truth.” view article

Huntington ISD trustees voted Monday to take no action on a Senate Bill 11 resolution that would have created a daily period of prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious texts on each campus, while also approving the 2026-27 school calendar and several state-required policy items. view article

A deluge of spending and attack ads are suddenly raining down on two San Antonio-area state legislative races that previously weren’t getting much attention.  Campaign finance reports covering Jan. 23 through Feb. 21 were due Monday, detailing money raised and spent by campaigns and outside groups in the month leading up to early voting.  They showed state and national PACs pouring money into a GOP primary on the South Side, where Republicans are choosing between a school voucher architect and a trial lawyer as their nominee to replace state Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio). view article

EASTLAND, Texas — On Monday, a group of four people spent more than an hour at a table inside a Realtor’s office, hand-counting the results of two races on 100 sample ballots. It was only a week before Tuesday’s primary election, and for this small group, it was their first time practicing to tally votes by hand.  They counted in batches of 25 and used different colored markers to keep track of where one counted batch ended and a new one began. They also used laminated tally sheets, which allowed them to erase and remark them if they made any errors. The group twice marked a vote for the wrong candidate, an error that meant they had to go back and start over and correct their laminated sheets. view article

The Texas Democratic primary race for U.S. Senate between Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico has been heavily shaped by social media influencers. Online creators on platforms like TikTok, X, and SubStack are driving viral moments and amplifying allegations against both candidates. The conversations are being framed as a broader debate over identity, electability, and the future of the Democratic party in Texas. Kayla Guo, reporter for The Texas Tribune, discusses the rising influence of these social media pundits and the changing landscape of political discourse. view article

A growing number of House Republicans have called for Gonzales’ ouster — though he has yet to explicitly lose the support of any members who endorsed him. view article

The Texas constitution generally prevents lawmakers from holding other paid public offices.  The Texas Attorney General’s Office is investigating State Rep. Stan Kitzman over questions surrounding his paid work for a local governmental entity while serving in the Legislature.  The inquiry follows a report by Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, which raised concerns about Kitzman’s role with the Brookshire-Katy Drainage District.  According to documents highlighted in that report, Kitzman—through a private firm—has been performing administrative and management services for the district under an agreement reportedly worth more than $11,000 per month. The responsibilities listed in the contract include overseeing district operations, supervising employees, preparing budgets, and recommending tax rates.  view article

Candidates Middleton and Reitz differentiate themselves in the field of four.    Republican candidates for Texas attorney general were asked in a recent debate whether the state GOP should be allowed to close its primaries to all but affiliated Republicans and what role the attorney general should play in the process.     U.S. Rep. Chip Roy gave the briefest remarks of the bunch, saying that the primaries should be closed and that the attorney general should enforce the law. view article

A federal judge temporarily banned Houston Independent School District (HISD), Katy Independent School District (Katy ISD), and Plano Independent School District (PISD) from enforcing sections 3,7,24, and 27 of Senate Bill 12 (SB 12). view article

More than 100,000 families have applied for the Texas private school voucher program as of this week, meaning the state will officially use a lottery process to determine which are first in line.  Republicans say hitting the milestone just two weeks after the application portal opened is a sign that their signature education policy, which sends state dollars to families for private tuition, books, therapy and more, is popular with the public   t also means the applicant pool likely exceeds the program’s available funding, set at $1 billion for the first year. The Texas comptroller’s office will need to run a complex lottery system to determine which applicants' families will ultimately receive the limited state dollars, and which families go on a waitlist.  view article

Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales of San Antonio on Thursday claimed he was being blackmailed by the husband of a former staffer who died by suicide. Earlier this week, the San Antonio Express-News reported that the staffer had confided in a colleague that she had an affair with the congressman while they were both married.  “I WILL NOT BE BLACKMAILED. Disgusting to see people profit politically and financially off a tragic death,” Gonzales wrote in a social media post on X. He shared a screenshot of half of an email, which seems to indicate a lawyer for the staffer’s husband is requesting a settlement of up to $300,000 from Gonzales in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement.   The email, which is not dated or timestamped, is signed by Robert Barrera, an attorney who is representing the staffer’s husband. view article

Katy ISD trustees indicated Monday that they plan to reject a state-authorized daily school prayer policy, saying the district already protects religious expression and does not want to impose restrictions that could limit when or how students pray.  PROPERTY TAXES: A homeowner’s guide to 2026 deadlines in Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties  The board introduced a resolution affirming students’ right to voluntary, student-initiated religious expression while declining to create a district-run daily period for prayer allowed under Senate Bill 11. Trustees are expected to take a vote next wee  k ahead of the March 1 state deadline. view article

Trustees from a handful of Tarrant County districts recently voted not to create a daily period for voluntary prayer in public school classrooms stressing that students already have religious rights.  Lake Worth, Hurst-Euless-Bedford, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw, Mansfield and Castleberry join a growing list of Texas districts declining the option in a vote a new state law requires of every Texas public school board by March 1. So far two area districts — Keller and Aledo — adopted the prayer period. view article

San Angelo ISD trustees unanimously voted against adopting a resolution that would have required every campus to provide a daily period for prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious text during the board’s regular meeting Monday. The meeting was held the evening of Feb. 16 at the SAISD Administration Building. Trustees took up an agenda item calling for a record vote on whether to adopt a statutory resolution outlined in Senate Bill 11 (SB11) from the 89th Texas Legislature. view article

    The former Texas governor chairs the Lone Star Freedom Project, a group that has already spent almost $18 million boosting Cornyn against Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt. view article

Crenshaw, fighting to remain in his Houston-area congressional seat, has drawn criticism from right-wing media and a challenge from Toth, among the most conservative members of the Texas House.    Crenshaw, fighting to remain in his Houston-area congressional seat, has drawn criticism from right-wing media and a challenge from Toth, among the most conservative members of the Texas House. view article

All four candidates are vying to prove they are the heir apparent to Paxton, who has solidified the office as a juggernaut in the conservative legal movement.   At a debate that hit all the major GOP talking points, the four Republicans vying to be Texas’ next attorney general sought to differentiate themselves and their vision for running one of the state’s most powerful offices.    All four candidates are conservative, with little ideological daylight between each other and current Attorney General Ken Paxton. At the debate, they echoed calls to use the agency to go after the “Islamification” of Texas, wrest immigration enforcement authority from the federal government and stop the flow of abortion pills into the state.    As the apparent frontrunner, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy took the most arrows, as the other three candidates hope to keep him below 50% of the vote to force a runoff. Roy, a fourth-term congressman from Austin, previously served as chief of staff for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and the top deputy to Paxton when he was first elected attorney general.    view article