NEW YORK (AP) — Atlanta outfielder Jurickson Profar faces a 162-game suspension by Major League Baseball for a possible second failed test for a performance-enhancing drug, a person familiar with the issue told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the process, first reported by ESPN, was ongoing.
Profar intends to ask the players' association to file a grievance to appeal any discipline to baseball’s independent arbitrator, Martin F. Scheinman, a second person familiar with the process said, also on condition of anonymity, because no announcement had been made.
Because this would be Profar's second infraction, an appeal would take place after a suspension was announced.
An All-Star in 2024, Profar was suspended for 80 games last March 31 following a positive test for Chorionic Gonadotrophin (hCG), a hormone that helps production of testosterone. He issued a statement then saying: "I would never willingly take a banned substance, but I take full responsibility and accept MLB’s decision.”
His agent, Dan Lozano, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Profar homered in his return from suspension on July 2 and finished with a .245 average, 14 homers, 43 RBIs and a .787 OPS in 80 games. He batted .280 in 2024, when he set career highs with 24 homers, 85 RBIs and an .839 OPS.
Profar said at the start of spring training that he had sports hernia surgery in November, requiring a six-week recovery time. He has appeared in four spring training games this year, going 3 for 10 with three RBIs.
A native of Curaçao, Profar had been set to play for the Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic.
Under the suspension, he would be ineligible for the postseason.
Profar would lose his $15 million salary for this year as part of a $42 million, three-year contract through 2027. He lost half his $12 million salary in 2025 due to the initial suspension.
He would be the seventh player suspended 162 games for a second PED infraction after New York Mets pitcher Jenrry Mejia (July 2015), Cleveland outfielder Marlon Byrd (June 2016), free agent catcher Cody Stanley (July 2016), Houston pitcher Francis Martes (February 2020), Mets second baseman Robinson Canó (November 2020) and Milwaukee pitcher J.C. Mejia (September 2023).
Mejia received a lifetime ban in February 2016 after a third positive test, the only player to be given a permanent ban since drug testing with penalties started in 2004.
Four players have been suspended previously this year for positive tests, including free agent outfielder Max Kepler for 80 games under the major league program following a positive test for Epitrenbolone.
Following the offseason signing of left fielder Mike Yastrzemski to a $23 million, two-year deal, Profar had been targeted to be the Braves’ primary designated hitter.
When catcher Sean Murphy returns from a hip injury, perhaps in May, 2025 NL Rookie of the Year Drake Baldwin could fill in at DH when not behind the plate.
With Yastrzemski, Michael Harris and Ronald Acuña Jr. in the outfield, Eli White could be a DH option. The Braves also are without projected starting shortstop Ha-seong Kim due to a finger injury. Mauricio Dubon, expected to serve a utility role, is scheduled to open the season as the starting shortstop.
The loss of Profar could create an opportunity for Dominic Smith, who signed a minor league deal on Feb. 17.
AP Sports Writer Charles Odum contributed to this report.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
Atlanta Braves Drake Baldwin is greeted by Jurickson Profar after hitting a solo home run in the third inning of a spring training baseball game against the Minnesota Twins in North Port, Fla., Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
The midterm elections officially begin on Tuesday with primaries in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas. 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 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:
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.
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.
He’s been a fiery and high-profile ringleader of GOP revolts that bucked the party when he thought legislation wasn’t conservative enough.
Now Roy wants to return to Texas, where the attorney general’s office has become a driver of the conservative legal movement. He’s running to replace three-term incumbent Ken Paxton, nearly six years after Roy urged his onetime boss to step down after Paxton’s top aides accused him of corruption.
Roy has clashed at times clashed with Trump and other Republicans in Congress over federal spending bills. And he drew Trump’s ire when he was willing to certify the 2020 election results.
Roy is in a crowded Republican field that includes two state senators, Joan Huffman and Mayes Middleton, and former Paxton senior aide Aaron Reitz.
Republicans redrew Texas’s 38 congressional districts in hopes of giving the GOP five more winnable House seats in the state. Republicans in Missouri and North Carolina followed suit, hoping to pick up one more seat each.
But in November, California voters approved a plan championed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to give his party five additional winnable seats there, seeking to cancel out Texas’ redrawn map.
President Trump pushed mid-decade redistricting to help Republicans preserve their slim House majority. But Democrats have shown they can win in tough places ahead of the primary, including a stunning special election victory in a Texas state Senate district that Trump carried by double-digits.
U.S. Senate campaigns are usually expensive affairs given the number of television markets in the ninth-largest state. More than $300 million was spent in the 2020 race that ultimately came down to Thom Tillis vs. Cal Cunningham.
That amount could be easily surpassed should Democrat Roy Cooper and Republican Michael Whatley win their primaries Tuesday. The North Carolina seat is considered a pickup opportunity for Democrats trying to retake the Senate.
Both Cooper and Whatley have deep ties to state and national party donors, and outside groups will seek to influence the outcome with their own spending.
How much could be ultimately spent? Some pundits say $1 billion isn’t out of the question. That would blow past $515.5 million spent overall on a U.S. Senate race in Georgia in 2020 ultimately won by Democrat Jon Ossoff. That’s from Open Secrets, which tracks political spending.
So far, Cooper’s campaign has raised $21.1 million through mid-February compared to $6.3 million by Whatley.
Like many Democrats, Talarico is targeting Trump over affordability concerns.
“I don’t know what world the president is living in, because here in Texas life is more unaffordable than it’s ever been before,” he told the Associated Press on Sunday. “People are struggling with the high price of groceries but also struggling with the high price of housing, the high price of childcare the high price of prescription drugs.”
In particular, Talarico noted that, if Trump has to tell people it’s getting better, it might not be.
“You can either believe the president or you can believe your own pocketbook,” he says.
The state attorney general was just six months into the job in 2015 when he was indicted on felony securities fraud charges, threatening to sink his political career just as it was taking off.
Top Paxton aides later reported him to the FBI over accusations of corruption, leading to his historic impeachment in 2023 before his acquittal in the state Senate.
But past challengers who went after Paxton over his legal troubles found no success with voters — he won reelection twice while gaining popularity with conservative activists.
Supporters point to a record that includes leading Texas lawsuits seeking to restrict immigration, abortion access and transgender rights.
Critics say he’s untested on a big stage and his nomination would put GOP control of the Senate at risk in November.
The final day of voting in the Texas primary was mostly smooth, with no major problems reported.
In El Paso County, the election department said on its Facebook page that several voting sites had experienced problems with the electronic voter check-in system. That caused delays and forced some polling sites to do a “manual check-in” for voters. Glitches with electronic poll books occur to some degree in most elections around the country.
The Associated Press left messages for the El Paso County Elections Department seeking additional information.
The election department reminded voters that they can vote at any polling location within their county.
The Democratic candidate’s campaign has spent $15 million, and Talarico told the Associated Press that “we have more people contributing to this campaign than any other in the state.”
“Our momentum is undeniable,” he said while campaigning in San Antonio’s Historic Market District on Sunday. “I can’t tell you have come up to me whispering that they’re not a Democrat. I can’t tell you how many young people have said it’s the first time that they’ve ever voted. I am just so proud.”
In his case, Talarico said, the money means people.
“We have had more than a quarter million people donate to our campaign,” he says, “And that is proof of the movement we are building in Texas.”
Voters don’t register by party in the state and can cast a ballot in either the Republican or the Democratic primary, regardless of how they lean politically.
The Texas Republican Party has sued in a bid to change that before the 2028 elections, seeking a closed primary system that would allow only Republicans to vote on the GOP ballot.
Republicans have dominated Texas politics for a generation. Still, GOP activists claim that Democrats have tried to sabotage their primaries with “crossover” votes to try to get moderate or weak candidates to the general election.
Texas is one of 14 states that has open primaries.
A court has not ruled on the lawsuit.
State Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat running for U.S. Senate, was set to make appearances across eastern Texas Tuesday as the 2026 midterm election cycle kicked off.
The lawmaker was scheduled to make stops in Houston, in Waco, at Prairie View A&M University and end at an election night watch party in Dallas. Accompanying her on some of the stops is U.S. Rep Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat.
“I’m on the move all day because this fight is bigger than one stop, one speech or one person,” Crockett posted on social media.
The two-term Democrat from Dallas built a national profile ahead her Senate campaign by publicly answering personal insults and castigating Republicans.
Crockett, who previously was a public defender and civil rights attorney, says her background as a trial lawyer allows her to be quick on her feet.
She was elected to the Texas House in 2020 and then to Congress two years later.
Her profile rose in 2024 thanks to a viral video of an exchange during a committee hearing with then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Greene suggested Crockett’s “fake eyelashes” kept her from reading legislation, and Crockett responded by saying Greene had a “bleach-blond, bad-built butch body.”
Crockett has acknowledged that she can be edgy but says voters want a fighter, and that she delivers for her district.
The boyish-looking Texas House member from the Austin area is studying to be a Presbyterian minister, and that’s been a key part of his appeal as he runs for the U.S. Senate. He won his legislative seat in 2018.
The former middle school teacher has excited Democrats nationwide by talking openly about his Christian faith and how it informs his liberal views.
He has often recalled Jesus’ command for people to love their neighbors and appeals to potentially disaffected Republicans troubled by the divisiveness of American politics.
But Talarico has also cited the biblical account of an angry Jesus driving commerce out of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem as he calls for fighting the influence of billionaires in politics.
If Democrats are going to retake control of the U.S. Senate, they’re likely going to need to win in North Carolina.
Democrat Pam Rehbock of Raleigh voted early and said she favored Cooper as her party’s nominee. She said a lot of people “are just tired of all that’s going on” with Trump and don’t see prices going down like he promised.
“Stop the lies,” she said.
Republican Gary Grimes of Wake Forest chose Whatley in his party’s primary. Grimes said Democratic control of Congress could lead to more impeachment efforts against Trump that would be costly to taxpayers.
“They can’t see anything except getting Trump, at any cost,” Grimes said.
Election officials in North Carolina said Tuesday about 25% more people cast early voting ballots this year than the last midterm primaries in 2022.
About 714,000 ballots were cast early in 2026, North Carolina State Board of Elections Executive Director Sam Hayes said.
Only isolated issues with precincts have been reported Tuesday and those have been addressed, Hayes said.
A poling place in Warren County did catch fire Monday, but the state sent a mobile voting unit to the site and voting started normally Tuesday morning, officials said.
That’s because an Arkansas father accused of killing his daughter’s alleged abuser is running for sheriff while awaiting trial for murder.
Aaron Spencer, an Army veteran and farmer, is running as a Republican against Lonoke County Sheriff John Staley, whose department arrested Spencer in October 2024. A third Republican, David Bufford, also is on the ballot in that race.
Spencer’s trial was scheduled to start in January, but was delayed after the presiding judge was removed from the case.
And he argues that scenario is especially plausible if he doesn’t win the GOP primary in Texas.
“Republican voters are going to need to decide, do we want to win? Do we want to keep Texas red? If the Attorney General (Ken Paxton) is the nominee, that risks everything we’ve been working on for decades in Texas, with Republican leadership and conservative policies making Texas the envy of the nation,” Cornyn said on Fox News on Tuesday morning.
Cornyn faces a crowded field in the party primary, drawing challenges from Paxton, U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt and five others.
Tanu Sani, a Democrat, said she had been undecided on who to vote for but ultimately chose state Rep. James Talarico, saying he “really spoke to me in the way he tries to unify.”
Andrew Kern, who said he leans Democrat, said he went the same way. Kern said he feels Talarico “is taking an approach that’s bridging some of the divisiveness.”
Sen. Tom Cotton was unopposed in his 2014 and 2020 primaries, and Sanders and Republican U.S. Sen. John Boozman won their 2022 primaries with 83% and 66% of the vote, respectively.
Cotton faces two challengers this year. Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is seeking a second term, is running unopposed in the primary.
The state’s Republican lieutenant governor, attorney general, auditor and treasurer also face no primary challengers in their reelection bids.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said in January that the state should seize control of elections in Harris County, which includes Houston and is a key battleground.
His comments continued years of Republican criticism over how elections are run in the county of more than 5 million, where Hispanic and Black residents make up a majority. Democrats have controlled the county since 2018.
Abbott signed laws that eliminated Harris County’s independent elections administrator and banned drive-thru voting in Houston. And last year he waited nine months to hold a special election to fill a U.S. House seat representing Houston, saying the county needed extra time to prepare for a vote without any problems.
Democrats accused Abbott of delaying that election to help Republicans maintain their razor-thin margin in the House.
Republican incumbents, including U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, are heavy favorites to win their primaries in Arkansas.
Cotton, who is seeking his third term in office, will face Jeb Little, an Arkansas State Police trooper, and Micah Ashby, a minister from Bradford.
Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as President Donald Trump’s press secretary during Trump’s first term, is seeking her second term in office. She did not draw a Republican opponent.
Arkansas hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide since 2010, and Sanders and Cotton will be heavy favorites to win reelection in November.
Polls have now opened for voters in El Paso and Hudspeth counties, an area of about 1 million people on the western tip of Texas in the Mountain Time Zone.
Polls in Arkansas are open from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., and voters are required to show photo identification before voting.
About 2,600 sites opened statewide at 6:30 a.m. ET and will close at 7:30 p.m. ET. Some ballots have already been cast by mail or during an early in-person voting period that ended Saturday.
There’s an open race for a seat in the U.S. Senate because Republican Sen. Thom Tillis decided not to seek reelection after clashing with Trump. Former Gov. Roy Cooper is seeking the Democratic nomination, while former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley is running to represent his party.
Voters are also picking nominees for U.S. House seats, including the Republican choice to challenge Democratic Rep. Don Davis in the 1st District. That district became more Republican as state legislators redrew it during Trump’s redistricting effort to help his party maintain control of the House.
People vote on primary election day at the West Gray Metropolitan Multi-Service Center in Houston, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (Raquel Natalicchio /Houston Chronicle via AP)
People vote during a primary election day at the West Gray Metropolitan Multi-Service Center in Houston, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (Raquel Natalicchio /Houston Chronicle via AP)
A man wears an "I voted" sticker outside a polling location Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Spring, Texas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
A voter makes his way into a polling location, Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Spring, Texas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
FILE - An election judge arranges "I Vote, I Count" stickers on a table in the Marion County Clerks office as voters cast early ballots in Indianapolis, Oct. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
