It remained unclear Wednesday whether ballots cast during extended polling place hours in Texas' primary will be counted in two counties that saw mass confusion over voting locations.
Such votes have been set aside in Dallas County after the Texas Supreme Court stepped in Tuesday night, staying a lower court's ruling. As of Wednesday afternoon, county election officials were still waiting for direction on whether the ballots should be included in vote totals.
The same issue affected Williamson County, north of Austin, which had hours extended at two polling places and has since had the last-minute ballots set aside.
But for Democrats in deeply blue Dallas County, the state's second most populous, they say their hopes are dwindling. Terri Burke, executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, said the Supreme Court’s action was expected because it’s hard to get poll hours extended under Texas law.
“In a lot of ways, nobody was surprised by the writ from the Supreme Court last night,” Burke said. She added it’s likely the late ballots won’t be counted.
It is unclear exactly how many ballots were cast during the extended hours. According to data on the Dallas County Elections Department’s website, 2,316 in-person “provisional” ballots were rejected or pending, a number that includes any ballots flagged for a variety of issues as well as those the high court ordered to be segregated. A total of nearly 280,000 people voted in the county's election, based on unofficial figures from the department.
Of greater concern, Burke said, was the chaos unleashed by the precinct-only voting system that Dallas County was forced to use because of a change by local Republicans, who refused to use a system that allowed voters to cast a ballot anywhere in the county, as they had done since 2019. Voters instead could cast ballots only at their assigned precinct. Under state law, Democrats had to use the same method.
Confused and frustrated, some voters were turned away from polling places on Tuesday and directed to other locations.
“There is a case to be made, and we can document it, there were people who were disenfranchised," Burke said.
She said she will attempt to push the legislature to repeal the 2006 law that requires both parties to hold a joint primary to prevent this sort of chaos: “If one party wants to wreck their primary, they should be able to do that but they should not be able to wreck someone else’s.”
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. The extension applied only to Democratic voting precincts.
There was initial concern that it could affect the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate because Dallas is the home base of Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, but she later conceded to James Talarico, a state lawmaker.
The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who advanced to a runoff Tuesday against Sen. John Cornyn for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, challenged the lower court’s ruling. Shortly after, the state Supreme Court stayed both decisions in Dallas and Williamson counties. Its brief orders said ballots cast by voters in both counties who were not in line by the 7 p.m. scheduled close of polls should be separated.
Emily French, the policy director for Common Cause Texas, a voting advocacy group, said it is standard for ballots that are cast during extended poll hours to be set aside. In El Paso, for example, voting was extended for an hour on Tuesday after problems with voter check-in systems earlier in the day. French said she expects them to ultimately be tallied if no one is contesting the extension.
Anthony Gutierrez, the executive director of Common Cause Texas, said the organization is continuing "to monitor this situation and will be weighing all options to ensure every Texan is able to have their vote counted.”
Primary voters line up to cast ballots at a voting center in Dallas, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
Primary voter Allie Davis carries her seven-week-old son Declan as a Dallas County Election Navigator checks her ID before entering a voting center in Dallas, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
A U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship in international waters, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday. In addition to striking Tehran, Israel hit the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, while Iran fired on Bahrain, Kuwait and Israel.
As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran spirals, the U.S. Senate rejected a war powers measure demanding congressional approval before further attacks. A twin House bill faces the same long odds in the Republican-controlled Congress, and Trump would almost certainly veto it anyway.
The war has killed more than 1,000 people in Iran, more than 50 in Lebanon and around a dozen in Israel, according to officials in those countries. The United Nations says 100,000 people fled the Iranian capital in the war’s first two days alone.
Oil prices have soared following Iranian attacks on traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and global stock markets have been hammered over worries that the spike in oil prices may grind down the world economy. U.S. stocks appeared steadier at Wednesday’s opening.
Here is the latest:
Israel said it identified missiles launched toward the country from Iran very early on Thursday morning, and its defensive systems were working to intercept them.
Shortly before that announcement, Israel had said its forces had begun strikes against Hezbollah in Beirut, as the war moved into its sixth day.
The Israeli military says it has launched at least two strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs after issuing an evacuation warning for a building in the Haret Hreik area.
No casualties were immediately reported.
Senate Republicans voted down an effort Wednesday to halt the Trump administration’s war against Iran, demonstrating early support for a conflict that has rapidly spread across the Middle East with no clear U.S. exit strategy.
The legislation, known as a war powers resolution, failed on a 47-53 vote tally. The vote fell mostly along party lines, though Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky voted in favor and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted against.
The war powers resolution gave lawmakers an opportunity to demand congressional approval before any further attacks are carried out. The vote forced them to take a stand on a war shaping the fate of U.S. military members, countless other lives and the future of the region.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said Wednesday she opposed the war powers resolution. Collins said in a statement that it’s important for lawmakers to back the U.S. military because of the threat posed by a nuclear Iran.
“We cannot tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. The Iranian regime’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities, ballistic missile development, and support for terrorist proxies pose serious and longstanding threats to the national security of the United States and our allies,” Collins said.
Senate Republicans voted down an effort to halt Trump’s war against Iran, demonstrating early support for a conflict that has rapidly spread across the Middle East with no clear U.S. exit strategy.
The legislation, known as a war powers resolution, failed on a 47-53 vote tally.
Two near-simultaneous drone strikes hit vehicles traveling in opposite directions along Beirut’s coastal Airport Road on Wednesday, killing three people and wounding six, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
The Israeli military said it targeted a Hezbollah member. The cars burst into flames, with video from the scene showing one wounded man lying on the pavement as bystanders gathered nearby.
Lebanese officials say more than 70 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since the latest escalation with Hezbollah began three days ago. Those include at least one Hezbollah intelligence official and a senior Palestinian militant.
“If Congress wants war, then the speaker should hold a vote to declare it,” said Rep. Thomas Massie, an outlier in the Republican Party.
He joined with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna to push forward a war powers resolution in the House that would halt Trump’s ability to wage war on Iran without approval from Congress.
Khanna during a floor speech called it “a profoundly moral vote.”
GOP lawmakers maintain that Trump is well with his authority to send the U.S. military into combat.
Senate Democrats are trying to underscore the gravity of the moment as they cast votes on legislation that would halt President Donald Trump from carrying out further attacks on Iran.
They have filled the Senate chamber and are sitting at their desks as the vote gets underway. During typical votes, senators stop into the chamber to cast their vote, then leave.
Senate Democrats stood when their names were called to say yay or nay, while the Republican side of the chamber was mostly empty.
Republicans have already signaled they will oppose the measure.
Israel’s Home Front Command said workplaces may reopen and gatherings of up to 50 people will be allowed if there is nearby shelter starting Thursday at noon, although schools will remain closed.
The nationwide shutdown, imposed when the war began Saturday, is being loosened as the Israeli military says incoming missile fire has dropped in recent days.
However, Israelis are still “spending a lot of time in shelters,” acknowledged Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin, a military spokesperson.
At a Pentagon briefing Wednesday, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Gen. Dan Caine, said that the number of ballistic missiles fired off by Iran is down by 86% from the first day of the war, and that there’s been a 23% drop in the last 24 hours.
Republican senators, who hold a majority in the chamber, have almost all said they will vote against the war powers legislation, but the effort has forced a debate on the Iran conflict in the Senate.
It’s also putting senators on the record as they look ahead to midterm elections and the consequences of a conflict that has spread rapidly across the Middle East.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan that attacks on Turkey’s territory are unacceptable and pledged full U.S. support after an Iranian missile headed toward the country was shot down, the State Department said Wednesday.
The Senate is preparing for an afternoon vote on the measure that would prevent Trump’s ability to continue engaging the U.S. military in hostilities against Iran without approval from Congress.
And in the House, which is set to vote Thursday, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries delivered a lengthy speech calling out the Trump administration’s shifting rationale for the attack.
“Why is the president unwilling or unable to make his case directly to the American people?” the leader asked.
“The president has a responsibility to justify plunging America into another war,” Jeffries said.
Both resolutions are expected to fail in Congress, where Trump’s Republican Party holds a slim majority and largely backs the military operation in Iran.
Ibrahim Jawdat woke around 2:45 a.m. Wednesday when a drone exploded beside his family’s home in Irbil, shattering windows and spraying glass across his bed.
Neighbor Hawkar Hadi’s house was also damaged, with broken windows and shrapnel lodged in walls and furniture.
“It’s difficult to be a victim of a war that we’re not part of,” he said. “We’re paying the cost of things we didn’t do.”
Iran and allied Iraqi militias have fired missiles and drones at U.S. bases and the U.S. consulate in Irbil, the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Most have been intercepted, though some have fallen in residential areas.
There have been more than 100 attacks on Irbil since the war began, Gov. Omed Khoshnaw told reporters Wednesday, and he urged Baghdad to compensate residents for damage.
More than 6,400 South Africans have registered on a system opened for citizens to advise the government of their location, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.
The ministry said it was urging its citizens to depart on the limited number of commercial flights that have resumed.
United Nations peacekeepers said Wednesday they observed rockets fired from Lebanon into Israel and Israeli military activity and airstrikes near several villages.
Both sides are in violation of a 2006 U.N. Security Council ceasefire, according to the peacekeeping force, while Israel is also breaching Lebanon’s sovereignty. The 7,500-strong force said it remains on the ground in southern Lebanon.
Israel’s military said Wednesday that its air force had destroyed Iranian ballistic missile sites in the west and central parts of the country, hitting the infrastructure being used to launch projectiles toward Israeli territory.
Iran’s barrages of ballistic missiles toward Israel have slowed and been mostly intercepted, however some have gotten through Israel’s defenses, causing damage and killing around a dozen people. Some experts say Iran may be holding its weapons in reserve to prolong the conflict.
The president opened his remarks at an unrelated White House event on artificial intelligence that the U.S. is “doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly.”
Trump said someone asked him to rate on a scale of 10 how well he thought the U.S. was doing and said, “about a 15.”
The ongoing strikes deepen an “unprecedented state of hostility” with Iran's neighbors in the Gulf, said Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit in a statement Wednesday.
He demanded Tehran stop the attacks, which he called a “strategic mistake,” saying “Iran must come to its senses.”
The Arab League, made up of 22 member states, promotes regional cooperation. However, it is widely seen as toothless and has long struggled to help solve conflicts.
The Israeli military says the strikes on the Iranian capital are targeting “military infrastructure.”
U.S.-Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,000 people in Iran so far.
In his first public address since joining the war, Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem said the Lebanese militant group rejects the government’s plan to disarm its fighters.
“As long as the (Israeli) occupation is present, then the resistance and its weapons are a legitimate right,” Kassem said.
Lebanon’s leaders say Hezbollah’s rocket fire into Israel is illegal and urged the Lebanese army to crack down on groups possessing weapons outside state control.
Lebanon’s cash-strapped military, backed by the U.S. and other governments, has been deploying in recent months across southern Lebanon where Hezbollah has a strong military presence. However, it’s unclear if the army is able or willing to disarm Hezbollah by directly confronting them.
The U.N. refugee agency, basing its estimates on Iranian officials, also said around 1,000 to 2,000 vehicles per day were reported leaving the capital, mostly toward the north.
Geneva-based UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch said the latest reports on Wednesday indicated no increase in cross-border movements linked to the recent conflict “but the situation remains fluid.”
Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares on Wednesday denied that the government had changed its position on supporting the U.S. military operations against Iran, contradicting a White House spokesperson.
“I can refute (the White House spokesperson),” Albares told Spanish radio station Cadena Ser. “The position of the Spanish government regarding the war in the Middle East, the bombing of Iran and the use of our bases has not changed one iota.”
Albares spoke in Madrid shortly after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had said that Spain had changed its position and “they’ve agreed to cooperate with the U.S. military.”
The Israeli military said the two were wounded Wednesday by anti-tank fire while operating in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah says its fighters attacked Israeli troops advancing toward the village of Khiyam and released video showing a missile striking a tank.
Israel said Tuesday its forces were moving deeper into Lebanon to establish “forward defensive positions” to protect northern Israel.
The president’s top spokeswoman pushed back against criticisms that the administration didn’t do enough to ensure Americans could leave the Middle East following the U.S. war in Iran.
Leavitt insisted that “there have been plans in place” and that the State Department has been clear to those in the region to leave immediately.
“We will help every single American who wants to come home if they’re making that request of the State Department,” she said.
Leavitt also said a State Department hotline that told callers not to rely on help from the U.S. government to leave the region has been corrected.
Asked if Trump thinks that Americans support the Israel-U.S. war in Iran — even though Trump hasn’t given a national address to personally make the case — Leavitt said, “I think he does.”
“This was a rogue terrorist regime that has been threatening the United States, our allies and our people for 47 years,” she said. “And the American people are smart enough to know that, and they’re smart enough to listen to the president himself — not just over the past year, in the second term, but during his first term as president.”
Recent polling shows that, prior to the U.S.-Israel strikes that started last weekend, 61% of Americans said Iran was an “enemy” of the U.S., but only about 3 in 10 Americans said they had “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of trust in Trump.
The White House on Wednesday said Spain has agreed to cooperate with U.S. operations in the Mideast after Trump had threatened to cut off trade with Madrid.
“With respect to Spain, I think they heard the president’s message yesterday loud and clear,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “And it’s my understanding over the past several hours, they’ve agreed to cooperate with the US military. And so I know that the US military is coordinating with their counterparts in Spain.”
Trump on Tuesday said he was going to “cut off all trade with Spain,” the day after Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said his country would not allow the U.S. to use jointly operated bases in southern Spain in any strikes not covered by the United Nations’ charter.
Leavitt said she would not take away military options on behalf of the president by ruling it out, saying that leaders in the past take options off the table “without having a full understanding of how things could develop.”
“It’s not part of the current plan, but I’m not going to remove an option for the president that is on the table,” Leavitt said.
Tracer rounds light the sky as people fire live rounds into the air during a televised speech by Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem in Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
A man inspects a damaged house struck by a rocket fired from Lebanon, in Hatzor HaGlilit, northern Israel, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Exposing himself to the danger of unexploded ordnance, a boy tries to climb on an unexploded Iranian projectile that landed in an open field in the outskirts of Qamishli, eastern Syria, Wednesday, March 4, 2026.(AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad)
Shiite Muslims shout slogans during a candlelit protest against the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)
A cleric leads a group of volunteers in prayer next to a police facility struck during the U.S.–Israeli military campaign in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A group of men inspect the ruins of a police station struck Monday amid the U.S.–Israeli military campaign in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
The sun sets behind a plume of smoke rising after a U.S.–Israeli military strike in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, speak during a press briefing at the Pentagon, Wednesday, March 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Konstantin Toropin)
A man carries an Iranian flag to place on the rubble of a police facility struck during the U.S.–Israeli military campaign in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
The rubble of a police facility struck during the U.S.–Israeli military campaign is seen in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Workers remove the rubble of a police facility struck during the U.S.–Israeli military campaign in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A man carries an Iranian flag to place on the rubble of a police facility struck during the U.S.–Israeli military campaign in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Israeli tanks maneuver near the Israel-Lebanon border, in northern Israel, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
An Iranian flag is placed among the ruins of a police station struck Monday during the U.S.–Israeli military campaign in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Firefighters inspect the rubble as smoke rises from a building hit by an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Jewish men covered in prayer shawls pray in an underground parking garage as a precaution against possible Iranian missile attacks, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
A coffin is carried during the funeral of mostly children killed in what Iranian officials said was an Israeli-U.S. strike Feb. 28 at a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)
A man takes shelter in an underground metro station as a precaution against possible Iranian missile attacks, in Ramat Gan, Israel Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
