MS NOW's special 'We The People' primary coverage of elections in Texas and North Carolina

Summary

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The Rachel Maddow Show

MS NOW's Special 'We The People' Primary Coverage: Texas & North Carolina Election Night
Date: March 4, 2026
Host: Rachel Maddow
Panelists: Chris Hayes, Jen Psaki, Ali Velshi, Michael Steele, Simone Sanders Townsend, Stephanie Ruhle, Eugene Daniels, Others
Key Guests: Evan Smith (The Atlantic), Paul Adams (Dallas County Elections Administrator), On-the-ground reporters (Rosa Flores, Jacob Soboroff)

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Episode Overview

This special episode of The Rachel Maddow Show provided live, in-depth primary coverage from Texas and North Carolina—the first major primary night of the 2026 midterm cycle. The core focus: a dramatic voting rights and administration crisis unfolding in Dallas County, Texas, as legal interventions and administrative confusion threatened to disenfranchise voters in one of the state’s largest, most Democratic counties. Simultaneous attention was given to close, high-stakes races in both states, spotlighting threats to electoral trust, shifting party dynamics, and the mechanics of American democracy in action.

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Major Themes & Segments

1. Breaking News & Dallas County Voting Crisis

Key Segment:

• [01:02–03:12]
  Rachel Maddow broke the news about the chaotic Texas Democratic Senate primary, specifically the unfolding crisis in Dallas County, where technical, legal, and partisan decisions had upended normal voting operations.

Key Developments:

• Republican officials denied countywide voting, requiring voters to cast ballots at assigned precincts for the first time in years.
• Voters were turned away; widespread confusion reigned, especially in heavily African-American and Democratic precincts.
• Dallas County judge ordered polls to remain open until 9pm instead of closing at 7pm.
• Attorney General Ken Paxton (a GOP U.S. Senate primary candidate) petitioned the Texas Supreme Court to block the extension.
• The Supreme Court issued a stay, requiring votes cast after 7pm (by those not already in line) to be "segregated," casting doubt on whether those votes would count.

Quotes:

• Evan Smith ([02:01]):
  “This throws a monkey wrench into the vote count in Dallas County. Whether those votes are gonna count or not, we have no idea...goodness, this is a mess, Rachel. It was already a mess. It's more of a mess now.”

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2. Analysis: What Went Wrong and Why

Key Segment:

• [04:41–14:11]
  Panel dissection of the crisis, focusing on strategy, impact, and underlying intent.

Key Points:

• The refusal for countywide voting created logistical chaos, voter confusion, and, for many, disenfranchisement.
• The legal intervention by a candidate (AG Paxton) is seen as a uniquely partisan act impacting a race in which he is running.
• This is described as setting a narrative and legal precedent for November, not just about the outcome tonight.

Quotes:

• Jen Psaki ([07:30]):
  “No one did anything wrong. There was confusion. So, like, you should always default to what will allow the most amount of actual legitimate voters to cast votes in an election...as a matter of principle, you should intervene on behalf of the maximal amount of voters...”
• Michael Steele ([07:34]):
  “The three dimensional chess is tonight isn't that important. It's November. So as soon as they're starting to cause chaos and mistrust now...when they're disastrous in November, it's like, well, we saw this coming.”
• Simone Sanders Townsend ([08:20]):
  “They're setting up Texas to flip in November because they are systematically pissing off the voters there. At the end of the day...there are more Republicans who are voting tonight in the Republican column who are looking at this, just saying, well, why are you doing this?”

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3. Voices from the Ground & Candidate Reactions

Key Segment:

• [12:18–14:11; 23:48–24:55]

• Jasmine Crockett's Campaign (via Eugene Daniels):
  “Intense frustration…they are talking to the lawyers and figuring out how to fight back.”

• Talarico Campaign:
  Expressed desire for all voters' voices to count, “All voters should be able to vote. And I think we are going to hear from a lot of the Democrats in Texas…they didn't think it was going to happen so early…these are the warnings that they've been given.” ([12:18], Eugene Daniels)

• Jasmine Crockett (live statement, [24:18]):
  “Unfortunately, this is what Republicans like to do. And so they specifically targeted Dallas county...I have no idea of when we're going to get results. And I fully anticipate it won't be until tomorrow.”

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4. The Logistics: Ballot Segregation, Counting, and Legal Impact

Key Segment:

• [35:26–42:05; 44:26–46:14; 80:04–91:08]

• Huge portions of the vote (most “day-of” ballots, particularly in Dallas) remained untallied well into the night.

• Confusion compounded by recent GOP-led redistricting—many voters were given wrong precinct info online as official maps weren’t updated on Texas’s Secretary of State website ([46:14]).

• Legal uncertainty: Ballots cast after 7pm would be reviewed by county ballot boards starting Monday, but whether they’d be counted depended on board decisions and ongoing legal rulings ([44:26]).

Quotes:

• Paul Adams, Dallas County Elections Administrator ([85:56]):
  “Technically feasible? Yes…the ballots that would be cast that's ordered by a court when a location has to stay open is going to vote by provisional ballot…you would make a notation that it is because of a court order…those already have mechanisms where they can be easily sequestered.”
• Rosa Flores ([28:16]):
  “All those ballots that were cast…between 7pm and 9pm…will be, quote, separated and kept. Now, the big question is, will they be counted?...about 350 [voters] had been turned away [at one location]...just gives you a sense of how many people were out in Dallas County trying to figure out where to vote.”

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5. Broader Political Context: Senate & House Race Results

Key Segment:

• [15:11–16:59; 55:52–58:56; 59:39–61:51; 74:01–76:09]

Texas Democratic Senate Primary:

• Too close to call, with James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett neck-and-neck.
• 50% threshold needed to avoid a May runoff.
• Much of the “day-of” vote (especially in Dallas) missing, meaning the result remained uncertain late into the night.

Texas Republican Senate Primary:

• Only projection of the night: Incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and AG Ken Paxton headed for a runoff.
• Cornyn barely led after pouring resources into the race.
• Panelists discussed the irony and challenge of attacking Paxton’s corruption/personality given the Trumpified GOP landscape.

Competitive House Races:

• Several high-profile, competitive races for both parties in Texas, including:
  • Bobby Polito, Grammy winner, projected Democratic nominee in a deep-red border district (TX-15) ([98:30–99:41]).
  • Incumbents Dan Crenshaw (TX-2) and Tony Gonzalez (TX-23) trailing or narrowly leading.
• North Carolina: State Senate president Phil Berger led by just two votes in his MAGA-laced primary ([92:53]).

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6. Democratic Strategy & Warnings for November

Key Segment:

• [21:35–22:38; 37:34–42:05; 77:36–78:23]

• Panelists stressed the importance for Democrats to recognize the stakes: this is about “democracy itself,” not just individual races.

• Calls for unified Democratic messaging: both Crockett and Talarico should “act together...make a unified front...in defense of both these candidates” ([21:55]).

• Danger that legal, administrative, and narrative chaos sown now is a "test run" for bigger voter suppression efforts in the general election.

• Echoed by donors and strategists: “[Democrats] need to get their game on and bring the right weapons to this fight…this is about democracy.” ([78:11], Michael Steele)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• Rachel Maddow ([03:12]):
  “This is a pause of the vote extension in Dallas County. Are people being stopped from voting right now?”
• Jen Psaki ([05:57]):
  “It’s pretty insane to have a candidate who’s on the ballot being the litigant who gets to decide…the state's attorney general…getting to weigh in.”
• Simone Sanders Townsend ([09:25]):
  “When that confusion sets in, when voters are bemused and don't know and they show up at the wrong polling place—see, we told you there was corruption. Shut it down.”
• Jasmine Crockett ([24:18]):
  “Unfortunately, this is what Republicans like to do. And so they specifically targeted Dallas county.”
• Paul Adams ([90:49]):
  “All of the election workers...are your family, your friends, your neighbors...that’s what helps ensure the integrity of our system.”
• Ali Velshi ([15:11]):
  “Nicole talked about endless morass of litigation. That could be Ken Paxton's tagline...That's actually what he does in Texas.”
• Chris Hayes ([67:47]):
  “Electability...is all in the eye of the beholder...Cornyn is a Washington character. They didn’t care about that.”

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Timeline of Key Moments

• [01:02] — Breaking news from Texas; Dallas County confusion begins.
• [02:01] — Evan Smith explains the origins of the Dallas mess and vote suppression concerns.
• [03:25–04:25] — Supreme Court stay of Dallas vote extension; practical chaos for voters and administrators.
• [10:10] — Panel details how GOP refusal enabled confusion; linking to Trumpian election denialism.
• [12:18, 13:37, 24:18] — Direct reports from the Crockett and Talarico campaigns; Crockett publicly addresses supporters, previewing results delay.
• [15:11, 16:59] — Ali Velshi breaks down statewide vote tallies, highlighting missing day-of votes and potential impact.
• [28:16, 29:35, 31:00] — Rosa Flores from Dallas: voter stories, hundreds turned away, votes cast but not necessarily counted.
• [35:26] — Ali Velshi: discusses lack of day-of vote reporting across Texas; structural flaws exposed.
• [44:26] — Eugene Daniels on the role of ballot boards for segregated votes; timing for final tallies.
• [80:04–91:08] — Dallas County Elections Administrator Paul Adams answers for the night’s chaos, explains mechanics of provisional voting, affirms the integrity and “family” nature of Dallas’s poll workers.
• [92:53] — Near-tie in pivotal North Carolina state Senate race—votes and every-vote-counts theme.
• [98:30] — Evan Smith: TX-15 potential Democrat breakthrough with Bobby Polito.
• [102:48] — Episode wraps; context set for the coming weeks/months of electoral legal war.

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Conclusion & What Comes Next

• The episode chronicled, almost in real time, a pivotal and chaotic primary night—revealing structural weaknesses and deliberate actions that threaten voting rights and democratic faith in Texas and beyond.
• Huge questions linger: Will all Dallas votes be counted? Can Democrats effectively unify and fight narrative/structural suppression ahead of November? How do breakdowns in election administration and sharp partisan weaponization of process shape the broader national race?
• With major Senate and House primaries in limbo, and with North Carolina shifting as well, this night set the tone for an anxious and contentious 2026 election cycle.

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For Listeners: Key Takeaways

• Dallas County’s voting chaos was largely engineered by GOP officials’ refusal for a countywide primary and compounded by redistricting, administrative delays, and last-minute court interventions—all with direct implications for voter turnout and public trust.
• Legal and logistical machinations can shape not just one night’s outcome, but the political narrative and voter confidence for the general election.
• The importance of unified response, clear communication, and defense of democratic norms is a running prescription from the hosts, especially in the face of escalating, open partisan interference.

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Listen for candidate and election official voices. Stay tuned as these contested and unresolved primaries likely shape, and are shaped by, the challenges facing American democracy in 2026.

Transcript

[Rachel Maddow]

Mom, dad, I'm not throwing shade, but

[Chris Hayes]

the whole New Year's resolution thing, kinda slippin. No offense.

[Rachel Maddow]

Anyway, my best friend Jenny's dad crushing it. He uses Blue Apron.

[Chris Hayes]

He says he ordered one pan assemble

[Rachel Maddow]

and bake meals and these things called meal kits. They're all super easy to make. He keeps yelling, protein and fiber, baby. Also the food. We tried it. So good, so maybe check it out or whatever.

[Ali Velshi]

Blue Apron.

[Rachel Maddow]

Get $50 off your first two orders,

[Ali Velshi]

plus free shipping with code STIR50.

[Rachel Maddow]

Terms and conditions apply.

[Chris Hayes]

Visit blueapron.com terms for more Ms. Now

[Ali Velshi]

presents the chart topping original podcast, the Best People with Nicole Wallace. This week, Eddie Glaude, Mitch Landrieu, and Tom Nichols.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

I don't want to lose sight of

[Ali Velshi]

the fact that the American spirit still

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

is one of fundamental decency in so many people.

[Rachel Maddow]

And that's what you're seeing out there.

[Ali Velshi]

The Best people with Nicole Wallace.

[Rachel Maddow]

Listen now.

[Ali Velshi]

For early access and free listening and bonus content, subscribe to Ms. Now Premium on Apple Podcasts.

[Rachel Maddow]

Got a little bit of breaking news out of Texas as we continue to watch the Democratic U.S. senate primary there. As you see, this is what we've got right now, 45% of the vote in. James Talarico leading Jasmine Crockett right now 53 to roughly 46%, but again, less than half the vote in. And one of the things we've been watching closely all night since we first sat down at this desk is the question of Dallas County. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett represents a district in Dallas, and Dallas county has had problems with the administration of their election today. We've been explaining that over the course of the night. I'm gonna go right now to Evan Smith, who's the host of Overheard with Evan Smith on Austin PBS. He's a veteran observer of Texas politics. He's got 30 years experience doing that. And Evan, I'd like you to explain to us again what had happened earlier today in Dallas county, why things have been chaotic there. And now this new report about a judge's order about the extension of voting there.

[Evan Smith]

Right. So as we talked about earlier, Rachel, the Republican Party in Dallas county decided they did not want to have countywide elections. They wanted to make people go to their assigned polling place locally. And if the Republicans say you can't have countywide, then the Democrats can't have countywide. So Democratic voters showed up thinking they were going to be able to vote at the places around the county they had voted, and they were turned away. And there was a big push to try to extend voting in Dallas county as a result of that, to give those people an opportunity to vote. After all, a Dallas judge ordered the polls open until 9. Well, Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the Texas Supreme Court within the last couple of hours to overturn the Dallas judge's ruling. And according to reporting from my former colleague Eleanor Klibanoff of the Texas Tribune, the Texas Supreme Court has just temporarily blocked that judge's order to keep the polls open until 9, ordering the county to separate out the votes from people who were not in line at 7 o'. Clock. This throws a monkey wrench into the vote count in Dallas County. Whether those votes are gonna count or not, we have no idea what's gonna happen. It's a temporary ruling, but goodness, this is a mess, Rachel. It was already a mess. It's more of a mess now.

[Rachel Maddow]

This is a pause of the vote extension in Dallas County. Are people being stopped from voting right now?

[Evan Smith]

What I know is that the county is being told you have to take the votes that were cast in the last two hours. It's coming up upon that 9 o' clock hour central here in Texas right now. You have to take the votes that were cast by people who were not in line at 7 o', clock, push them to the side, and the fate and the status of those votes is now unknown. And of course, if you're Jasmine Crockett, you're thinking, this is terrible for you because this is the county where you're gonna hopefully roar back into contention in this race.

[Rachel Maddow]

And this is, as you said, it was a Dallas judge who ordered the extension of voting in Dallas County. And then it was US Senate candidate and sitting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who asked for an individual state Supreme Court judge to weigh in and essentially overturn that other judge's ruling.

[Evan Smith]

Ask the Supreme Court of Texas if they would come in and temporarily block that Dallas judge's order. And the Supreme Court came back and said, yes, we temporarily block it.

[Rachel Maddow]

Do we know, is it multiple judges on the Texas Supreme Court or is it one judge's ruling?

[Evan Smith]

I mean, I would have to. I don't know whether it was one judge or multiple, but my sense is that the court institutionally, as opposed to one assigned justice individually. But that's something we'll determine here in the course of the report.

[Rachel Maddow]

Yeah. This is crazy stuff.

[Evan Smith]

Yep.

[Rachel Maddow]

Evan Smith, keep talking to your sources and do what you can to help us understand this. I think we'll be coming back to you. I can tell you, for all the lawyers who are listening to me, Right now who are going to understand what I'm about to tell you. This is from the Supreme Court of Texas. Orders pronounced. A stay is issued in the following petition for writ of mandamus in re State of Texas from Dallas County. The district court's order granting emergency petition to extend voting hours issued today in cause number styled Cardell Coleman in his capacity as Dallas County Democratic Party chair versus Paul Adams in his official capacity as as Dallas County Elections administrator in the 162nd District Court, Dallas County, Texas is stayed, meaning the earlier ruling that was in place that extended Dallas county voting, that order is stayed. And then here's the money quote. Voting should occur only as permitted by Texas election code section 41 032. Votes cast by voters who were not in line to vote at 7pm local time should be separated. Note the petition for writ of mandamus remains pending before this court. Chris Hayes, what do you make of this?

[Jen Psaki]

Well, I mean, at one level it's pretty insane to have a candidate who's on the ballot being the litigant who gets to decide. I mean, you know, he's the state's attorney general, but getting to weigh in, I, you know, I don't know if there's a particular valence to those, those votes at that hour for him. I think it's mostly about the Democratic primary. It also feels a little bit to me like if the calculation of the Republican establishment is that Crockett's an easier candidate to beat, that this goes against that, but like he's just doing it for love of the game, you know what I mean? Like, he's just super committed to making it hard for people to vote as just a deeply held view and you know what I mean?

[Rachel Maddow]

And making it hard to vote in Dallas.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Yeah.

[Rachel Maddow]

So in a big purple slash red slate, you take the cities that are very blue and you say those places have terrible voting, look, what a mess.

[Jen Psaki]

And so there's not like 3D chess here. It just seems like I don't like the fact that they extended voting hours because there's confusion. I want them to take that back.

[Michael Steele]

But Chris, the three dimensional chess is tonight isn't that important. It's November. So as soon as they're starting to cause chaos and mistrust now things are messy. Things are messy. When they're disastrous in November, it's like, well, we saw this coming.

[Jen Psaki]

Yeah, yeah. No, and that's an important thing to keep in mind, right? I mean, also this idea that you're gonna segregate out these ballots based on who's online at 7 o', clock, you can. And I generally just wanted to take a step back because we can get in the weeds. There is no reason to think that anyone. That there's any illegitimate or fake votes in the entire pool. Yes, there's no reason to think any of that.

[Rachel Maddow]

No voter did anything wrong.

[Jen Psaki]

No one did anything wrong. There was confusion. So, like, you should always default to what will allow the most amount of actual legitimate voters to cast votes in an election. Again, whoever it is, whether that would benefit a Republican candidate or Democratic candidate or the candidate you want or the candidate you don't like. Just as a general principle, and one of the things that's crazy about the world we live in, it is increasingly going to be the case that there are going to be places in which lower voter turnout would probably help Democrats and Republicans. And it's still the case that as a matter of principle, you should intervene on behalf of the maximal amount of voters being able to vote.

[Michael Steele]

But doesn't this even hurt voter turnout? And the fact that if these people are standing in line waiting to vote, at some point, a lot of them just say, forget about it.

[Rachel Maddow]

I gotta go home.

[Michael Steele]

I gotta feed my kids dinner, I gotta feed the cat. At some point, people are like, it's not worth it.

[Jen Psaki]

They do.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

But I would bet that's a smaller percentage of the people standing in line, number one. Number two, again, Republicans, using the boniest part of their head right now in looking at this, are not understanding what they're doing. They're setting up Texas to flip in November because they are systematically pissing off the voters there. At the end of the day, there are, as we've already indicated tonight, there are voters who are moving out of the Republican column to vote in the Democratic primary because they do not like what the Republicans are doing. There are more Republicans who are voting tonight in the Republican column who are looking at this, just saying, well, why are you doing. First off, what does this have to do with the Republican primary?

[Jen Psaki]

This.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

How does this impact Ken Paxton? Right. There is no impact on Ken Paxton. To your point, Chris, this is a maximalist impact that they can bring to bear on what they want to label as corruption. To your point, it sets up the argument and the narrative that they want to put in place this November across the country.

[Rachel Maddow]

Yes.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

When that confusion sets in, when voters are bemused and don't know and they show up at the wrong polling place. See, we told you there was corruption. Shut it down.

[Rachel Maddow]

Well, and the narrative, let's be Specific about it. Right. The narrative from Trump and the Republicans, from Trump in particular from the Trump movement, is you can't trust votes that come from Democratic strongholds.

[Jen Psaki]

Yes.

[Rachel Maddow]

So you can't trust votes from cities. You can't trust votes from places that have lots of people of color. So they're trying to make, I mean, it makes sense to fit the political narrative to try to make the Dallas votes, and I'm sure they hope the Houston votes or any votes, any other votes that fit that narrative seem as unknowable as possible so as to create a pretext for being able to exclude them from the totals from that state.

[Jen Psaki]

And if we go upstream causally, the whole reason we're here. Right. Is because the Dallas, the county gop, refused to co sign a memorandum of understanding to allow countywide voting. They had a demand for paper ballots, which again, like, has nothing to do with anything. There's no reason to think that they're better. Right. That's a Donald Trump obsession. That's an election denier obsession. Like, the whole reason, the whole causal chain that created the confusion that led to the necessity of opening the election earlier was the Republican, local, Republican county party doing this.

[Rachel Maddow]

And to that point, because it's really important to make that logistical point about what went wrong here. So now we've got this order from the supreme that says, what's the remedy here? Well, we've paused the extension of the voting hours and votes cast by voters who were not in line to vote at 7pm local time should be separated. But is that feasible to do at one big county voting location in Dallas County? Probably not. Is it feasible to do at every individual precinct voting location in Dallas county because there is no central Dallas county voting location? Absolutely not. You're talking about all of those locations, all needing to do this arcane, if not impossible.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

And what's important about what you just said is that I can assure you, I can assure you that election officials were not standing outside once they got the clearance to keep the polls open. Right. They knew where. Like Jacob was there at that, at that appointed hour. He was with the last person who was identified in the line at the appointed hour. They didn't do that at the original polling time because they got the clearance to extend it.

[Jen Psaki]

You don't know who's online.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

So you don't know who's online.

[Rachel Maddow]

Yeah, they didn't mark them with a chalk line.

[Eugene Daniels]

Thank you.

[Jen Psaki]

But that's why this quarter is so boneheaded.

[Chris Hayes]

But their goal isn't that, which is

[Michael Steele]

knowable Their goal is an endless morass of litigation.

[Rachel Maddow]

So the goal isn't to actually know who the person was that was the last person online at 6:59. You know, want to know what I want to know? I want to know what the Jasmine Crockett campaign thinks of what has just happened in Dallas County. Our colleague Eugene Daniels has just spoken to the Jasmine Crockett campaign. Eugene, what are they telling you?

[Eugene Daniels]

Yeah, I've talked to a couple officials in there and there is, as you can imagine, an intense frustration with what just happened. They felt like they were finally going to get some answers out of Dallas County. They're talking to the lawyers and figuring out how to fight back. Was the language that both of those folks used when we spoke. What fight back looks like we're not sure. I also talked to the Talarico campaign, multiple folks over there, and they are supportive of whatever ends up of voters voting right. They are not. One person said to me, it's late night, so I feel like this is okay. Paxton sucks. That's bad. All voters should be able to vote. And I think we are going to hear from a lot of the Democrats in Texas. What you're going to hear from Talarico and Jasmine Crockett is that this is the shenanigans that they have been saying could happen in Texas. They didn't think it was going to happen so early. They thought it would happen as it got closer to November. But these are the warnings that they've been given. And on the first night of this big primary season that we're going to have. It's also a possible telltale signs for the shenanigans that might happen in other states and other elections as we move forward.

[Rachel Maddow]

Eugene, you said we're going to hear from Talarico and hear from Crockett on this matter. Do you expect that we actually might see the candidates behind microphones and in front of cameras on this matter anytime soon?

[Eugene Daniels]

I think that's probably more likely with Jasmine Crockett. I think Talarico might kind of let it play out. The team, someone told me the team is still trying to figure out what the best way to operate in this is. They haven't done this kind of and dealt with this kind of thing before. I think it's more likely Jasmine Crockett gets out front because this will impact her. We've been saying all night that Dallas is where her biggest numbers are going to come from. If she is going to win, she's going to have to over over perform in Dallas. And so it is incumbent upon her and her team to get out in front and say what her team is saying to me right now on background.

[Jen Psaki]

Yeah.

[Rachel Maddow]

And again, let's just bottom line this here, that this is the chaos that was created in Dallas county was created because the Dallas County Republican Party refused to do what they have done in previous election years and what almost every other county in the state has done, which is allow for everybody voting in that county to vote anywhere in that county, which makes for very simple election administration compared to what they've ended up with in Dallas county, which is that people need to vote in their individual precincts. Things that something that hadn't been done in previous elections in that county and that people didn't know to expect, expect. It created a lot of confusion. And that is what brought about that judicial order that extended voting in Dallas. Again, that extension has been paused after a request to the Texas Supreme Court from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. This is still ongoing at this point. Ali, can we go to you right now just in terms of talking about the stakes right now? What we're seeing in terms of the statewide race in Texas.

[Ali Velshi]

Nicole talked about endless morass of litigation. That could be Ken Paxton's tagline. Right. That's actually what he does in Texas. We got 48% of the vote.

[Eugene Daniels]

The.

[Ali Velshi]

The gap is staying about the same. Talarico has 53% to Jasmine Crockett's 45%. And again, we're waiting to see what happens in the Jasmine Crockett stronghold of Dallas. We, by the way, just have results. In the first results From El Paso, 59% of the vote is in, and Talarico is winning that 62 to 35 for Jasmine Crockett. The lead in Houston, in Harris county is shrinking. For Harris, it's 53 and a to 45. But take a look at this. I want to just break out. See, there's nothing here in election day vote. This is all early vote. It's 96% early and in person. I'm now going through the state and I'm looking at places like that. Bexar county, which is San Antonio. Take a look at that same thing. 95%. There's no early vote coming in in a lot of these places, not just Dallas. Obviously, we know Williamson county doesn't have that. We don't have. I'm sorry, we don't have election day vote in a lot of these places. So this is a really big deal. What's just happened in Dallas county, because an overwhelming number that we're if we're looking at the whole state at 48%. The rest is is today vote. And we, we are not counting that in a lot of places, including some of these highly populated areas like Dallas. So this is the the problem we have. I want to show you one other thing, by the way. I want to go to the House primary just outside of Houston. I want to show you an interesting story is right here. Texas 2, 58 of the vote in Dan Crenshaw. Steve toth is at 57%. Dan Crenshaw, the incumbent, is only at 39%. Again, it's 58% of the vote. We're not able to call this. But this is interesting to your point, Rachel, that you made earlier, that tonight is proving to be a difficult night for a lot of incumbents.

[Rachel Maddow]

Yeah. And it may be for yet more of them as we start to get more results in across Texas and throughout every place that's facing primaries tonight. Let me just ask the control room right now. Do we have Jacob Soborough available to us right now? All right, let's just go to Jacob right now. He's actually right now at James Talarico's election watch party. Jacob, what are you hearing from the campaign? What are you hearing from people who have turned out there to support Talarico as the results come in? Rachel, they are feeling very, very good

[Jen Psaki]

here at Telarico headquarters, and I Predict in about 30 seconds you're going to hear a massive cheer because they are watching us and it's on a slight delay, but they have been glued to every minute of every update that is coming in. They were watching Allie Belshee's reports just in the last couple of minutes. What I will say is, though, the issues around what's happening in Dallas county, and I have asked the campaign for

[Rachel Maddow]

a comment about what they are going

[Jen Psaki]

to do and when they are going to do it. We haven't heard yet if the Talarito

[Rachel Maddow]

campaign is going to respond, but I

[Jen Psaki]

will also say we have been watching

[Rachel Maddow]

very closely the results coming here out

[Jen Psaki]

of Travis county as well here in the Austin area. And as we've watched Ali do the reporting over the course of the last several hours, there have been questions about why the early vote numbers are coming as quickly as we might have anticipated.

[Rachel Maddow]

When I met Doug Greco on the

[Jen Psaki]

line at UT Austin earlier this evening,

[Rachel Maddow]

the chairman of the Travis County Democratic

[Jen Psaki]

Party, we didn't talk about this.

[Rachel Maddow]

I didn't know about that the results

[Jen Psaki]

were going to be delayed. But here's what he Told me, I

[Rachel Maddow]

checked in about these results being delayed. He said, yes, they are delayed.

[Jen Psaki]

The absentee results, the early voting results, excuse me, are delayed coming out of

[Rachel Maddow]

Travis county because the Republican Party here asked for that in the primary election contract. It isn't new, but it's the reason

[Jen Psaki]

why the votes are delayed. The tradeoff is that they were able to negotiate countywide vote centers like we

[Rachel Maddow]

have been talking about all night. And that's why what's happening here is not what's happening in Dallas or Williamson county, where you can only vote in the precincts.

[Jen Psaki]

But the results are trickling in here slower than they normally would because of

[Rachel Maddow]

an agreement between the Democratic and Republican parties.

[Jen Psaki]

I will say, though, that everyone here

[Rachel Maddow]

at the Talarico headquarters is feeling very optimistic this evening. We expected him to speak, or expected

[Jen Psaki]

him to speak not long after the

[Rachel Maddow]

Dallas county results were in. That has now been thrown into question because of the status of the vote count and the Texas Supreme Court's decision.

[Jen Psaki]

But all in all, Rachel, I can

[Rachel Maddow]

tell you that this is an enthusiastic crowd, a very eager crowd to see what's going to happen. And they're watching us on Ms. Now here Tellarivo. Head covers. James Jacob, I'm a little bit worried that you're going to. You're going to be mobbed in just a moment. All that's going to be left is a little tuft of hair in your glasses. From the way that that room sounds right now, I will tell you, I'll give you a reporting assignment right now. If you can get us any further reaction from the Talarico campaign in terms of this dramatic move from the Supreme Court of Texas, pausing the extension on the voting in Dallas County. We do have some reaction from the Jasmine Crockett campaign that we got through our friend Eugene Daniels. If you can get anything from the Talarico side in terms of their reaction to what happened with the Texas. The Supreme Court, we're all ears. We just love to hear it. So good luck, my friend.

[Ali Velshi]

Thank you.

[Jen Psaki]

Rachel, forgive me, but I am just

[Rachel Maddow]

checking my phone to see if the campaign's responded to my latest. Not yet.

[Jen Psaki]

So as soon as.

[Rachel Maddow]

As soon as I'm able to go try to sneak my way backstage.

[Jen Psaki]

Let me just give you a little look at what we're looking at here, Rachel. This is. This is what they're looking at. Just so you know, I'm going to try to sneak back here, see if

[Rachel Maddow]

I can find him, see if I

[Jen Psaki]

can find someone from the campaign to

[Rachel Maddow]

let us know their reaction to what's happening out of Dallas County.

[Jen Psaki]

We'll get back to you a little bit.

[Rachel Maddow]

All right, Jacob. Jacob, thank you very much. Go ahead.

[Chris Hayes]

Well, we talked earlier in the night about how whatever happens on the Republican

[Michael Steele]

side, because there are three, it's likely to not be known tonight.

[Chris Hayes]

And to go to a run up, you know, who benefits if the Democratic side is sort of tied up in

[Rachel Maddow]

litigation, uncertainty, whomever is interested in that

[Michael Steele]

person not having the night or the head start.

[Rachel Maddow]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

I also think that if you're Ken Paxton, I'm just gonna go to the dark place here. And the Republicans, what you want is for somebody to win the Democratic primary and for them to continue to be divided. It was quite a contentious primary. These are two stars. But it has been a contentious primary. And if James Tallarico wins, he needs to pull in Jasmine Crockett supporters, a large base of African American voters in Texas. The Republicans would love nothing more in Dallas county specifically. And in Dallas county, the Republicans would love nothing more than for a conspiracy to float out there that. That things were stolen from her, that the vote didn't come across. That's not what has happened here. But I think that there's a darkness here that could be part of their theory.

[Rachel Maddow]

But the narrative. I was just gonna say, if the Democrats were really thinking strategically right now and thinking about small D Democrats as well as capital D Democrats, Talarico and Crockett would respond together to what's happening

[Chris Hayes]

in Dallas and both go out and speak. They would both go out. Talarico would go out and speak, and they both would. And do it in a coordinated way.

[Rachel Maddow]

They would act together. They would act with the state Democratic Party chairman and they would make a unified front on this in defense of

[Michael Steele]

both of these candidates. That's really hard to do. Both of them put it on the line. Ran a really hard race to say I need to do. I need to put party before self. I need to focus on it. That's hard to do because Ken Paxton to the dark point. This is a test run. This is a test run for how can he get voter suppression operations working like Democrats tomorrow in Texas. Better get ready for voter suppression hijinks from now until November.

[Rachel Maddow]

Not just getting warmed up. Yeah, Michael, I cut you off there.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

No, no, no. I'm just going to say to the point, to the staying in the dark place for a moment.

[Chris Hayes]

Sorry.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

But it's a good place to be in this context because I think the important narrative for the Democrats is not to get lost in the weeds of lawsuits and conspiracy theories. But tonight was stolen from us by the Republicans because the Republican attorney general running in this race asked a judge to intervene and take away your vote. Yeah, that wasn't Jasmine. That wasn't Telorico. That was Paxton. And I think the narrative is there to both of your points to make it a little bit easier for them to come together. Right. Which you're right. Candidates, when they've been in a fight, don't want to do that. But the more important battle is the small D point that you made, Rachel, that they need to focus on because tonight the vote of a lot of voters is being stolen for them after

[Rachel Maddow]

7pm well, let's go to Dallas right now. Let's bring in our own Rosa Flores, who is at a polling location in Dallas, Texas. Rosa, I said we would be, we'd be back with you. I didn't know it would be in exactly these circumstances or as we're watching so much legal drama unfolding. What's your understanding of what's, what's happening and the response in Dallas county thus far?

[Michael Steele]

Well, Rachel, I just got off the phone with Dallas county, and what they explained to me was that what this means is because the Texas Supreme Court.

[Rachel Maddow]

Rosa, I have to interrupt you. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. I just. We're going to come back to you to that point. Jasmine Crockett has just taken the stage. Let's go live to that. If it comes in and I'm losing that, then we know kind of where this thing is going to. So, so that's my news is that we're not going to have election results

[Stephanie Ruhle]

tonight, in my opinion, based upon what specifically is taking place in Dallas County. Unfortunately, this is what Republicans like to do. And so they specifically targeted Dallas county.

[Rachel Maddow]

And I think we all know why.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

So I want you to enjoy yourselves. But I won't be back tonight because

[Rachel Maddow]

I have no idea of when we're

[Stephanie Ruhle]

going to get results. And I fully anticipate it won't be until tomorrow.

[Rachel Maddow]

So I love y', all, too.

[Jen Psaki]

Thank you so very much for being here.

[Rachel Maddow]

Love you down. I love you down.

[Jen Psaki]

Dallas.

[Rachel Maddow]

Jasmine Crockett speaking live in Dallas right now. We got to that as soon as we realized she was up at the podium there. But you heard the nut of what she said. She said they are not expecting to have results tonight. She said this is what Republicans like to do. They specifically targeted Dallas County. She asked her supporters to stay and enjoy themselves, but she did not expect that there would be election results. Results of any definitive sort tonight, specifically because of what's happening in Dallas. Meanwhile, we're going to go back to Rosa Flores, who is in Dallas county right after this from Ali Velshi, because while Jasmine Crockett was saying that, we actually did get in a bunch of votes.

[Ali Velshi]

Well, a lot of votes. We're now up to 59% in the state. And the lead, Talarico's lead has narrowed. It's now 51.8 to 46.9. And a lot of that is because we finally have got some votes in from Dallas. And a lot of them that, that vote just dumped 61%. We went from zero all night to 61%. Jasmine Crockett has got a lead there. It's 60 to 38. It's significant. But this is, this is early vote. This is, this is not day of vote. Obviously, the big issue right now is what that day of vote is going to be. So we're sort of stuck in a lot of places at the 60ish point. There's some smaller counties that were easy to count and the numbers are much higher. But generally speaking, in major centers where in this area, look at Travis county, which is Austin. This is 60%. This is Talarico's home. He's at 76 to Jasmine Crockett's 23. Let's go to Houston, where Jasmine Crockett was expected to do very well with two thirds of the vote in. Her lead is narrowing 53 and a half to 45 for Talarico in Fort Bend, three quarters of the vote, 77% of the vote is in 60 to 36. So again, this really is anybody's game right now. This is a jump ball. It is unclear what's going on. Clearly, Jasmine Crockett believes this will not conclude tonight, as she just said. And we may be believing the same thing. I want to just quickly jump over to the Senate contest there. The GOP Senate contest, again, 43% is where John Cornyn, the incumbent, is at. Ken Paxton is trailing with 40%. He's behind a lot of what just happened in Dallas county for reasons that are not clear. Wesley Hunt is staying at 13%. He's been at 13% all night. I just want to go to Dallas county and show you this. This is the Republican Senate contest in Dallas County. Look how far behind Ken Paxton is. He's involved in these shenanigans in Dallas County. His vote and Wesley Hunt's vote do not add up to John Cornyn's vote in Dallas County. I don't know whether that's relevant to why Ken Paxton went to court tonight to shut down the votes of those who were in line after 7pm but it is a place where Ken Paxton is not doing well.

[Rachel Maddow]

All right, I want to go right back to Dallas county right now. Rosa Flores standing by. Rosa, I very, very rudely interrupted you while you were starting to tell us about your communications with Dallas County. I'm very. I only did that because we had that live feed to take from Jasmine Crockett. Please start over again. Tell us about your communications with the county, what happened in those communications tonight.

[Michael Steele]

Yeah, so how they explained it to me is because the Texas Supreme Court struck down the lower court ruling which extended voting for the Democratic primary from 7pm to 9pm Central Time. All those ballots that were cast, Rachel, between 7pm and 9pm Those will be, quote, separated and kept. Now, the big question is, will they be counted? And I can tell you from talking to voters who had gone to multiple polling places trying to find the right polling place, one woman who was in tears earlier today and a woman that I literally interviewed moments before the polls closed because this Texas Supreme Court ruling came down, they were all worried about their vote counting and they were all talking about how this was, quote, voter suppression because they were really trying to vote and they just couldn't vote. Like I said before, I'm a data girl, Rachel, and just to give you a sense, as I mentioned earlier Here at about 5:30pm Central Time, 388 people had voted at this polling place. And according to the election judge, again of the Democratic Party, about 350 had been turned away. That just gives you a sense of how many people were out in Dallas county trying to figure out where to vote and trying to vote.

[Rachel Maddow]

Rachel, that's just remarkable. That's a remarkable sort of snapshot of what was happening there, Rosa. But just to be clear, what the county told you is that votes cast after a specific time are going to be cast, but they didn't necessarily say they're going to be counted or it's not clear at this point whether they will be counted. They'll just be somehow preserved and segregated from the vote that came in earlier today.

[Michael Steele]

You're absolutely right. And I followed up with that, Rachel, because I was very curious about what that meant. Does that mean that they keep them just for now? And the individual from the spokesperson from the county, she didn't go into specifics because, of course, that's a lot of legalese. She was like, I can't speak for the Democratic Party because this is a challenge that the Democratic Party is, is putting forth. But she did say that they will be kept. But from talking to all of the voters today, I can tell you that what they were worried about was their vote counting, especially because they had gone through, in essence, in essence through all these hoops to try to vote, trying to figure out, okay, wait, where do I vote? The, even the website crash, Rachel. So people who were trying to figure out where can I vote, they couldn't even find out where to vote because the website crashed. So there were just so many hurdles that these voters had to go through just to cast their ballot today.

[Rachel Maddow]

Rosa Flores for us in Dallas County, Texas. Rosa, I know we will be back with you. Keep reporting whatever we can learn about how this is going to be worked out, what's going to be the dispensation of those ballots. Ballots, how voters can, if they can be reassured about how this has been administered in Dallas county. It's all really, really important. Thank you. We're grateful for you being there. The last polls of the night have closed. North Carolina, Arkansas, Texas. We are watching this sort of remarkable litigation play out in Texas in terms of votes counting and being cast. We as yet may get full developments tonight in either side of the Texas Senate race, either on the Republican side or on the Democratic side. It's just, it's all happening all at once. We'll be right back. Stay with us.

[Eugene Daniels]

Pancetta, mushroom tortellini. You can eat smart, still fit in your bikini. I ordered Blue Apron. I been happy ever since they sent pre portioned meals. I don't make no measurements. Saute the pancetta then I add the mushrooms, large skillet cause you can't have too much room. Garlic pesto, tomato paste, calabrian chili, season to taste. Order Blue Apron today.

[Ali Velshi]

As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda. Follow along with the MSNow newsletter Project 47.

[Rachel Maddow]

You'll get weekly updates sent straight to

[Ali Velshi]

your inbox with expert analysis on the

[Rachel Maddow]

administration's latest actions and how they're affecting the American people.

[Chris Hayes]

The American people are basically telling the President that they are not okay with any of this.

[Ali Velshi]

Sign up for the Project 47 newsletter at Ms. Now Project 47.

[Rachel Maddow]

Just coming up on 10:30 Eastern Time as we are covering the first big primary night of the 2026 midterm elections. Now at this hour, at this moment, there are only two precincts in one county in Texas where vote officially is still coming in, where polls are still open. It's two precincts in Williamson county, which is just north of Austin, Texas. There has been litigation tonight, a ruling from an order, excuse me, a ruling from a judge in Dallas county ordering that in Dallas county the vote had to stay open for longer because there had been mass confusion after the Republicans from Dallas county refused to allow to come to an agreement to allow people to vote county wide in Dallas County. People were showing up expecting to be able to vote in Dallas county and being told they needed to go to a specific precinct location they'd never had to go before. Because of that confusion, there was a judge's order to extend voting in Dallas County. Dallas county is huge, second largest county in the state. The Attorney General of the state of Texas, Republican Ken Paxton, who is a candidate for the U.S. senate primary on the Republican side tonight. He then went to the Texas Supreme Court and secured an order from the Texas Supreme Court to stop that extension of the voting in Dallas county, which in logistical terms is a chaotic sort of thing to order because people were voting, their votes were cast in Dallas County. They will essentially to segregate those votes, to separate those votes and set them aside. This is a temporary matter. The overall writ, the overall question is still before the Texas Supreme Court. As far as we know right now at this hour, Dallas is, among other things, an important stronghold for Texas Democratic Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who was in a hot, hot battle with James Talarico, a state representative in Texas for the Democratic U.S. senate primary. There. That is where we stand right now. Let me give you one other little wrinkle here. And this is something that Ali Velshi has been noticing. We just got a little bit of specific reporting on it from Jacob Sobroff as to how this is playing out in Austin, specifically in Travis County. But, but we're noticing that there's one big category of vote that really just doesn't seem to be factoring into the vote totals we are getting out of Texas almost across the board. Ali, can you explain that to us?

[Ali Velshi]

Almost across the board. Okay, so this is the total vote in right now is 60%. Talarico is at 51.8 and Jasmine Crockett's at 46.94. Here's the thing. I can touch this and tell you where this vote comes from. Of that vote, more than 50% in each case is from early in person votes. Voting about 2% is early by mail voting. 2% is election day. So we've got no election day count in most of these places. I'm going to go all across the state and show you no Election Day votes in El Paso, San Antonio, Bayard county, no Election Day votes. Austin. We haven't even broken it out. Corpus Christi. I've gone all through the state. This is the only place I can find with any significant election day vote. It's 18% of the vote with 71% counted. So we just don't have election day votes anywhere. And to your point about Dallas county, this business about sequestering votes, this isn't sequestering military ballots or mail in ballots, things that you can actually sequester because they're in a different bucket or a different bag. Someone just decided, judge decided that anybody who wasn't in line at 7 o' clock doesn't get to vote. But they didn't make any line. They didn't sequester those votes. So this has thrown the whole thing into disarray. But across the state, we are just not seeing early vote day of vote anywhere. So when we're looking statewide at the fact that we've got 60% of the vote in, we're talking about 30,000. There are fewer than 30,000 election day votes having been counted so far and reported in Texas. So this 40% that we're missing in most case is today's vote. So when you look at, when you say the Associated Press is saying this is too early to call, they mean it. It's really too early to call. There's a, there's a good spread between Talarico and Crockett, but we're missing 40% of the vote right now. And we're hoping that this all comes in fairly quickly. We are still waiting on more stuff from Dallas. We're waiting from Williamson county, which has reported zero votes at the moment. Two precincts have, are staying open till 11pm Eastern there, so we won't get that for a while. That's north of Austin. We're expecting Talarico to do well there. And El Paso county, we have now got 60%, 59% of the vote in, and Talarico is winning that 62 to 35. But a lot of vote missing in Texas right now.

[Rachel Maddow]

Okay, Ali, thank you for breaking that down for us. Simone Sanders Townsend, you have been all over this in terms of anticipating some of these problems in these specific counties. What do you understand about the way this has played out over the course of the night and the reaction to what's happened with the Texas courts?

[Stephanie Ruhle]

So I talked to a number of people on the ground from the Texas Democratic Party because again, the parties are the administrators of the elections in a primary, this does not apply for the general. So in the general, the state is in charge of the election. So if people think, oh, are we going to have this particular issue come November? No, could be a different issue, but not this one. Lawrence and I were chatting in the green room and he said, does this also affect the Republicans? I thought it was a very good question. I asked the chair of the Texas Democratic Party and the chair said it is their understanding that the judge's order is specific to the Democratic primary because, again, they didn't do a joint primary. So it is only the Democratic votes in Dallas County. The particular law that is being cited, Texas Democrats are at large. They if we look at the lawsuit, the lawsuit that was filed, was filed by the Democrats, Dallas County Democrats, not the Texas Democratic Party. I say that because there are people, there are factions within the Texas Democratic Party that say Texas law is very, very strict and it's very strict about when people can vote. Texas law, A law from 1985 says that the voting in Texas is from 7am to 7pm there's only been one time in our recent history since that law has 40 years. Law is older than me. It's only been one time in our history in May of 2024, that an extension has been given, and that was very specific. In Dallas County, a judge said there was a disaster because power was out in polling places in May of 2024. And because the power was out in about 100 polling places, they needed to extend the voting in those polling places. And that voting was extended for that very particular reason. But tonight, what we are seeing to, the conversation you all were having earlier is the first time that this 1985 law has been challenged directly in this way. And yes, it is the Ken Paxton who is a candidate on the ballot. But again, this doesn't affect them. It's just about the Democrats. They are weaponizing a law that has been on the books for 40 years to throw chaos into what is happening in the Democratic Party. The last point I'll make is this. There are a lot of votes out there. No one's going to count their chickens before they hatch or their eggs, if you will. We have not heard from the. I've reached out to people within the Talarico campaign. They are not saying whether or not yet. They are of the belief that Jasmine Crockett, that we will not know tonight. They are reserving their comment. So if they have some comment, I'll come back. I know Eugene is also talking to them, but I think that we are in a place now where, come tomorrow, there will be some people that will say, ah, Jasmine Crockett lost this race because of what Republicans did. And then there'll be some people that say, oh, I think she just lost this race because she didn't run a good campaign. Either way, the narrative on this is now up in the air because of what. What the Republican in Texas decided to do to play in the race.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

I was gonna say that, to me, is the most important part of this. I don't wanna get lost in the weeds here, people. I really don't. This is an orchestrated, coordinated effort, period. It has been from the very beginning.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

But it is the law. That is the point I wanna make here. It is the law.

[Ali Velshi]

It is the law.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

But we've already seen now in Texas and across this country how the law can be weaponized and used to full effect when you want to move the needle in a certain direction, if you want to stop something. And so I just find it. Why does Paxton care whether or not Democrats, given the confusion that was wrought in this situation, want to vote for an extra two hours? Doesn't change his numbers, right? Doesn't change what's happening on the Republican side. So what do you care for? It's not about what we're standing up for the law. Well, you're reaching back 40 years plus to stand up for a law that no one's had to invoke before. So, you know, I just think we need to understand what's going on here very much to what Stephanie was saying before and what a lot of us who've been in working in this space and hearing on the ground that this is the. All of these things are storylines that are being created that will be used later on. And we just need to understand how they're going to be used now so we recognize it when they're used later.

[Rachel Maddow]

There is one other element of what's going on here, as being reported out by the Dallas Morning News, that some of the confusion, some of the chaos, some of voters being told to go the wrong place, may be the fault or may be attributable to the fact that Texas Republicans just changed all their congressional district boundaries right before this election, and they maybe didn't follow through on all the logistical work you need to do to make sure that people still get to vote in the right place after you've done that. We've got more reporting on that. That coming up. We're going to take a quick break. We didn't expect it to be amazing in this exact way, but this is turning out to be a pretty amazing night. It was going to be amazing. It was going to be amazing. I wasn't thinking this way. We'll be right back. With verbo care.

[Chris Hayes]

Help is always ready before, during and after your stay. We've planned for the plot, the twists

[Ali Velshi]

so support is always available because a

[Chris Hayes]

great trip starts with peace of mind.

[Eugene Daniels]

Pancetta mushroom tortellini. You can eat smart still fit in your bikini. I order Blue Apron. I've been happy ever since they sent pre portioned meals. I don't make no measurements. Saute the pancetta then I add the mushrooms large skillet cause you can't have too much room. Garlic pesto, tomato paste, Calabrian chili season to taste Order Blue Apron today. Simone Sanders Townsend and I have known each other for more than a decade.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

We're friends and colleagues and on our new podcast, Ms. NOW presents Clock It. We are positioning ourselves at the intersection of culture and politics.

[Eugene Daniels]

Clock it is where we talk about what we see and hear in the news. So you can start to clock it too.

[Ali Velshi]

Ms. NOW presents Clock It. Listen now. New episodes drop Thursdays for ad free listening and bonus content. Subscribe to Ms. Now premium on Apple Podcasts.

[Rachel Maddow]

Welcome back to our coverage here on Ms. NOW of the first big primary night of the 2026 midterms. It's turning out to be a super interesting one. Let's bring back our colleague Eugene Daniels who has some new reporting as we are following this developing story out of Texas. Eugene, what do you hearing?

[Eugene Daniels]

Yeah, Rachel, my biggest question was what can happen next? What are the things on the table for the Crockett campaign as they're dealing with what the Texas Supreme Court said? I Talked to a 25 year veteran of election law in Texas who said the key is that every county has a ballot board. Each county has their own and the ballot board will meet. The first meeting in Dallas is going to be on Monday. Now that ballot board will kind of get together and they will in fact vote for to accept the pre or and post 7pm vote. So this is up to this ballot board because as we all know, and I think Simone has stated a couple of times, the elections are run by the parties in Texas. And so when the when the polls closed at 7 o', clock, this person says that person was noted. If it was a guy in a black shirt and black jeans, that person was noted. And when they voted, that was made clear that that was the person who was in line at 7pm now, it's easy to track, it's electronic, they say, but the post 7pm vote is the question. So the Supreme Court, what they essentially said was keep this group in a pack over here and we'll look at it. Now when the board meets on Monday, they may decide that it may not matter. They may see the amount of votes that happened after 7pm and say there are not enough votes here to change the election. And so this will happen on Monday. These are people who are Democrats, so a lot of these. And there won't be any Republican shenanigans allowed here. It is going to be interesting to see how this shakes out. Williamson county will also have the same thing. It's unclear when their next board meeting is, but this is kind of how these things are going to actually shake out as we move forward. And as you said, amazing and chaotic to say the least.

[Rachel Maddow]

Yeah, Eugene, that's really helpful. The ballot boards in each county appreciate that, Eugene. And again, keep us surprised as you learn more. I know you're continuing to work the phones and talk to your sources in Texas. I mentioned before the break that the Dallas Morning News has some interesting reporting saying that some of the I mean, you've got to sort of think about this as a couple different things that have happened in Dallas County. Number one is people turned up to vote in Dallas county and were told you're not allowed to vote here, you need to vote someplace else. You weren't expecting to have to vote. And that is suppressive, right? It's, it's inconvenient enough and difficult enough and time consuming enough and confusing enough and off putting enough that that is suppressive of the vote itself. Then you get this separate issue later on in the day when after that happened all day long, that was the cause for a Dallas judge saying, okay, let's keep things open a little longer in Dallas County. And then that that extension of the voting hours in Dallas county is what was overruled by the Texas Supreme Court, which has led to all of this stuff about the voters before 7pm and voters after 7pm and all those things. But that vote, that ruling from the Texas Supreme Court and the issue of how difficult and complicated and confusing it was for people to vote all day long in Dallas County. Those are kind of two separate but related things. And on that first point about how difficult it was for people to vote in Dallas County, Dallas Morning News is reporting that this confusion about the Dallas County Republican Party saying, no, you're not allowed to vote countywide, you have to Vote for your specific precinct. And that being new for this election season and people not knowing that was going to happen and that being confusing. That was compounded because the Texas Secretary of State's votetexas.gov website was not updated with Dallas County's new precinct maps after they were changed in December after the state did this new redistricting, the state redistricted in Texas at the insistence of Donald Trump. It was a late and out of time, sort of not the right time to do it, redistricting. One of the logistical consequences of that, according to the Dallas Morning News, is that the precinct Matters weren't updated again at the Secretary of State's website. So what that means is that some voters in Dallas county who were searching for their doing the right thing, doing their research, looking it up, searching for their particular polling place on the state's websites. Some voters in Dallas county checking the state's website, were then given the wrong information about where to vote because their precinct mapped, their precinct map changed when they redistricted. By Tuesday afternoon, the state website was directing voters to use the county election search tool instead because the state search tool was not working right because they had the wrong maps. And of course, as we know, the Dallas county election search tool then crashed as everybody in the county, again, the second most populous county in the state, tried to use that county tool in order to figure out where to go. So you can understand why a judge might have ruled that maybe things should be kept open a little later to account for this sort of mistakes, particularly because, because some of these mistakes appear to have been on the part of the state of Texas. But now the Texas State Supreme Court has stopped them from having extended those hours?

[Jen Psaki]

Lauren, how aware was the Republican Party in Dallas county of this mismatch? How aware were they when they said, no, no, no, you have to go to your precinct? How aware were they that no one would be able to find their precinct? Did they know that, that when they were forcing that choice?

[Rachel Maddow]

Yeah. And what can Democrats do Right now at 10:47pm Eastern Time at 9:47 in most of Texas? What can Democrats, both in the party machinery and party activists and party operatives and the two campaigns of James Tallarico and Jasmine Crockett do right now to mitigate the harm that has been done to the confidence of the people of Texas that it is worth going out and voting for a Democratic candidate because you like them? And what can they do to try to mitigate the reputational harm to Texas elections that Republicans will try to develop out of this in order to problematize the overall Texas urban vote for every election from here on out, Most importantly, the November general election.

[Jen Psaki]

Well,

[Stephanie Ruhle]

if this were a normal election with everybody, we knew who their campaign manager was and their senior advisors, the campaign managers at this point would be talking and they would develop a plan that would be approved by their respective candidates. Up until even right now, there's confusion actually among Democratic party circles about who Jasmine Crockett's campaign manager actually is. If I were in my former life, if I was still a Democratic strategist, I would advise that Talarico and Crockett get on the phone and they speak directly.

[Jen Psaki]

I think also there's a clear from behind the veil of ignorance, which is to say not knowing what the outcome is here. The principal position is that the Democratic party believes in as many people voting as possible. The principal position, independent of the outcome, is that all the votes should be counted. I think it doesn't matter where the

[Rachel Maddow]

ship fall, where they may.

[Jen Psaki]

I don't even think that's a close call. It also seems to me that the correct things, just on first principles is that that be a shared consensus view from any candidate in the race that all those votes should be counted. It sounds also in this case, I mean, the history of election law about primaries is very fascinating and very weird because it is both basically a private club electing its leader and also a state function and has a really interesting long record in front of the Supreme Court. In this case, it sounds like that ballot board made the ultimate call as opposed to the judge. I don't know. But it certainly seems like if it is the ballot board and there is consensus on this from the Democratic Party that like, that is the clear position.

[Chris Hayes]

I mean, I think what they're failing at right now is there's a huge vacuum of information to state the obvious.

[Rachel Maddow]

Right.

[Chris Hayes]

So we're all trying to navigate what the ballot board is. Why are they meeting on Monday? Can that be moved up? I think there's a couple things. Talarico should come out now before anyone calls a race, if there's even a race called and we don't know that it would be, and say every vote should be counted. Yeah, that is something that's a value and it should be counted in Dallas County. It should be counted everywhere. Then he can come back in. He could even give out a printed. It can be a written statement. It doesn't even have to be in person. The local county Democratic officials should come out publicly on camera and say, we are going to do everything possible to ensure every vote is counted. We have lawyers, we're gonna move this up. And here's how this process works. Because right now what's happening online is the conspiracy theories are feeding and it's

[Jen Psaki]

on the Internet, really, you never know.

[Chris Hayes]

But people do look at that and people tell their neighbors and it's like, oh, something was stolen here. This. So I think there is more saying a little bit is better than saying nothing. And there are a couple people who would be saying more right now, in

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

my view, and to all the points, because the parties are the ones who are basically running these primaries, which goes back to when I was chairman. I advocated that we abolish primaries. But that's a whole nother conversation because of stuff like this, because you have biased political actors setting the terms of engagement in and out, right off and on and can at a whim, decide you get to play or you don't get to play. Play how you get to play. But this is something, this opens up a door for conversations downstream. In this moment, though, I think to both Simone's and Chris's point, I don't care who her campaign manager is. I don't care who his campaign manager is. This is a principle to principle conversation.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

It is correct.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

This is what both of them, between the candidates, they get on the phone and go every vote. To your point, which is a core tenet of what Democrats believe. If you cast a ballot, dammit, it will get counted. Right? And so it doesn't matter if you were in line at 7 o' clock this morning or 7pm this evening if it's extended, and my sister, my cousin, your uncle shows up at 7:30, that vote gets counted. That's the case. They need to make, to your point of avoiding the conspiracy nonsense sense, the two of them, this has nothing to do with the outcome. This has everything to do with every vote getting counted. And so that's the conversation I'd like to see the two principals have get off your high horses, stop being the candidate and be the next U.S. senator in this moment.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Can I just say, I do think that if we just look at how this race has played out, there has, I think it has been a lot more contentious online than it has actually been for the voters and in person.

[Eugene Daniels]

That's right.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

But I do think that between the two candidates there is a mutual respect there. But I do think that the Crockett campaign and the congresswoman herself feels some type of way, for lack of a better term, about how some of these things have Transpired. I think it's notable that Congresswoman Crockett came out and she put her stake on the ground, put her cards on the table to essentially box the Talarico campaign in. Now they are in a position where they need to respond or not respond. Jasmine Crockett has spoken. Do I think they should have told. Talked together first and done something to avoid confusion for the voters? Because at the end of the day, this is about the voters, the people being able to cast their ballots and for it to count. So we'll see. I know they're all watching because people texting me, get it together. We done told y' all what we think should happen. Let us know. Call us. Come on tv.

[Rachel Maddow]

I need to jump in here. We do have a projection to make in the Texas Senate primary on the Republican side.

[Jen Psaki]

There you go.

[Rachel Maddow]

John Cornyn, the incumbent Republican U.S. senator from Texas, and Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, will both advance to a runoff election, which will be held on May 26 in Texas, in order to simply pick which Republican candidate will represent the party on the U.S. senate line of the ballot in November. This is a remarkable situation for. For an incumbent US Senator to be in, as far as I know. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think Cornyn has ever lost by anything smaller than double digits. He's never not won by double digits in Texas. He, again, as Jen Psaki was noting earlier this evening about a year ago, was very close to being elected Senate Majority Leader in the United States Senate. And now in. Is paddling for his life in terms of this runoff.

[Chris Hayes]

And I think it's important to just remind people that he won this barely or has a couple points ahead of Paxton by spending a boatload of money, a lot of money from outside groups. He really battled to get that 43% to 40.4%. And the difference now between them and I saw somebody quoted saying this, you love voters because they say things you're like, that sticks with me. Who said, I like John Cornyn. He's not bad. But Ken Paxton, I'd rock across hot coals for that guy.

[Rachel Maddow]

Right.

[Chris Hayes]

And if Ken Paxton has. I know he's corrupt. I know all the things about him. But if he has the fire in the belly of his supporters, John Cornyn still has a huge problem here.

[Rachel Maddow]

And if you think that John Cornyn spent a lot to get here, just wait. How much gets spent in the next 12 months?

[Stephanie Ruhle]

How many million in ads?

[Rachel Maddow]

Yeah.

[Jen Psaki]

I mean, they're gonna put Donald Trump in, like, a Truman show. Compartment so that he can't intervene in the race at all. I mean, I'm telling you because I mean he again, he is dispositive here, right? Like if he comes down either way, all of this is directed about dealing with the big guy.

[Rachel Maddow]

Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Many more results to come. Stay with us. We're coming up on 11pm Eastern Time on what is turning out to be a really interesting, interesting first big primary night of the 2026 midterms. This is a look at the status in the Texas Democratic U.S. senate primary. This is too early to call per our partners at the Associated Press. You see James Talarico, just over 50%, Jasmine Crockett, just under 50%. 50% is the magic number in terms of whether or not this is going to go to a race, excuse me, to a runoff in which these two will have have to face off again at the end of May. If either of them gets over 50%, they will win outright and they will be the Democratic nominee for Senate in November. On the Republican side, we do have a projection that in the Senate race in Texas, the Republican race will go to a runoff. That will be incumbent Republican U.S. senator John Cornyn in a runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. I will just share this with with you. John Cornyn, reacting to the news that he will be going to the runoff against Ken Paxton. Cornyn said this, quote, Texas Republican primary voters will learn more about Ken's indefensible personal behavior and failures in office. Quote, judgment Day is coming for Ken Paxton. Thank you all. That's going to be a lot of fun. Ali. So we've obviously been very focused on these Senate races, but let's talk about some of the House races that you've been working watching as well.

[Ali Velshi]

Okay. This one, this one's a gift for you. In Texas 15 this is just moments ago been called. Bobby Pido is going to represent the Democrats in the election. 88% of the vote in. Bobby Pido is a as a musician, a Grammy Award winning Tejano artist and he has defeated Ada Cuellar, which is an interesting race. But to your point about Cornyn and struggling incumbent struggling tonight. There are a lot of incumbents struggling. I want to go to District 18 in Texas. This is an interesting story. There were two incumbents, two Democratic incumbents running against each other, Christian Menefee and Al Green. Christian Menefee has been in Congress for about three weeks or something. Al Green had his district redistricted. So 18 even though even though Menifee has just been there for a few weeks, it's more his district than it was Al Green's district. They're running against each other. 70% of the vote is in. I do want to remind you again, virtually none of the same day vote is in in 2, 5, 3% and but there's a difference of two and a half thousand votes. So it's not decided. But Menifee is, is winning there. Let's go to Dallas. Right there. Texas 33. This is an interesting story. Colin Allred was the incumbent. Julie Johnson is the incumbent. They worked together. This has not been a very friendly campaign. Calling on with 61% of the vote, Colin Allred is winning there 45, 0.5% to 33.9% for Julie Johnson. Remember, Colin Allred stepped out to run for the Senate last time and now he's back in. Let's go to GOP primaries. I want to go to. Let's go to. Hold on. Where am I looking here? All right, well I was going to show you. Here we go. Let's go to Gonzalez. District 23. You were talking about this earlier. Tony Gonzalez, who beat his challenger Brandon Herrera by about 400 points last time around is now still ahead. It's 58% of the vote in and he's at 44 to 40% for, for Brandon Herrera. Again this was a super, super close race last time and there's still, there's still 42% of the vote to come in. But at the moment, Tony Gonzalez, despite all the scandals surrounding him and it is a lot is still ahead head.

[Rachel Maddow]

That is remarkable. Chris, go ahead.

[Jen Psaki]

I just wanna react to John Cornyn's statement. One of the things that's so sort of fascinating and sort of grimly comedic about watching these sort of battles in the era of Donald Trump is like Donald Trump is the President United States. You're gonna attack a Republican because what he did, he was corrupt, he self deal, he stole from the public till he acted terribly in his private life with women. Does that work anymore? I mean, I mean there is this sense that like maybe it does. Maybe there's a different set of rules for Donald Trump and you can still run a campaign against your opponent. A Republican primary in which you basically say this person is of such low character you should not vote for him. But that has been a tougher and tougher and tougher sell in the era of Donald Trump who, who basically occupies the status of anti hero in the imagination of Republican primary voters. And the more that you talk about about him in his character. The more they're like, that sounds great to me.

[Rachel Maddow]

And let's just to set the table in terms of what's going on with Paxton. So Cornyn has been running ads against Paxton in this primary calling him a wife cheater and fraud. He's noting that Paxton's wife filed for divorce from Paxton on, quote, biblical grounds, which, as we noted earlier, was not about, you know, it was not about like the, you know, being shellfish. The shellfish restrictions in Leviticus. Exactly. He then explicitly says in the ad, Paxton then has since started sleeping with a married mother of seven. I mean, we're really getting into the nitty gritty in terms of what's in these ads. Paxton was overwhelmingly impeached by Texas Republicans in the state legislature. They impeached him by overwhelming numbers in 2023. That was him allegedly abusing his office in order to conceal an affair. He's also been under federal investigation for bribery allegations. DOJ only declined to prosecute those bribery allegations in early 2025. He also was under state securities fraud investigation and had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle those claims with his alleged fraud victim.

[Jen Psaki]

And it's a two and a half point race tonight.

[Ali Velshi]

Right.

[Jen Psaki]

So, I mean, but it isn't. There's 12 points, 13 points that Wesley

[Rachel Maddow]

Hunt has as of right now. And that's what this next stage is

[Ali Velshi]

going to be about.

[Jen Psaki]

It's going to be about going after those. And in the generally the way it works with an incumbent like this, when you have a chance to vote against

[Rachel Maddow]

the incumbent, you make your best pick

[Ali Velshi]

in voting against the incumbent.

[Jen Psaki]

That Wesley Hunt vote easily could have gone to Paxton. Paxton's a much bigger candidate.

[Rachel Maddow]

They chose not to.

[Jen Psaki]

There's something about those voters that they don't want to go for. The wife cheater and fraud. And Rachel, the most interesting thing about

[Rachel Maddow]

that ad against Paxton is that Cornyn

[Jen Psaki]

didn't pay for it. All of the Republican members of the Senate paid for it in their Republican NRSC ads.

[Ali Velshi]

That's so good.

[Jen Psaki]

So every single Republic Republican who you, Ken Paxton, would like to join in

[Ali Velshi]

the Senate has already paid to tell Texans that you are a wife cheater and fraud.

[Jen Psaki]

That's in their ad against him.

[Ali Velshi]

Well, and to Chris's point, this is that term we used to hear about moral authority, which was big on the moral majority in the Christian right, and it's all been shredded. And then there's something else beneath that, which is this anger at the Epstein class. And part of that has been exposed to be bipartisan. And you can look at some of that and there's been accountability efforts on that. But a lot of it is Donald Trump, from being someone who partied with Epstein and hung out with him and sent him a vulgar birthday card, to being a president whose DOJ fought against any transparency or accountability for the Epstein class. And so it's beyond ironic. It's ridiculous that Donald Trump ever rode the wave of any of that. And yet it does seem like there's some comeuppance because. Because there are people who are angry about that stuff and the wider elitism and the idea that these rules that have been subjected to everyone but the people making them is a powerful double standard argument. And so it's like if you should get a second chance, cuz you had a marijuana offense in college and still be able to get a job, a lot of people say second chance. These people would say, no, not if you're a regular worker or you're from a marginalized community. And they would lecture and they would talk about welfare queens. And then they're the same people that want to keep Howard Lutnick who lied about going to Epstein island on Trump's cabinet. So I don't know when it'll all get sorted out, but it's a problem for them.

[Jen Psaki]

Okay, but the curious thing to me is like, which way that cuts in this race, Right? Because I think the polling we have is people who are sort of self identified as super conservative are the ones who are leaning for Paxton, people who self identify as more moderate or early and for corporations in I don't know which the way that sort of cuts. And you ever know like how much do people create a separate set of rules for Donald Trump than anyone else? The other question to me and Jen, I'd be curious to hear your, your feedback on this. You know, Democratic voters got very into like strategic voting. They're really who can win. Who is the most electable. Republican voters have really eschewed that. You know, that's why you had the Mark Robinson situation in North Carolina. I do wonder if they start to think more strategically a little bit now. It's not a year ago in the heady days of vibe shift. Donald Trump will rule a thousand years. There's a lot of like obvious and evident discontent around you. Everywhere you look, he's polling at 39%. You do wonder whether in a Republican primary you can make an argument now that you couldn't make last year or in previous ones of like this guy might Actually lose if you elect him.

[Chris Hayes]

Well, but electability and the question is all in the eye of the beholder.

[Rachel Maddow]

Right?

[Chris Hayes]

So it's like some people in Texas may think Ken Paxton is much more excited.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Totally.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

That's a word.

[Rachel Maddow]

Well, I mean, look, he's biblically excited.

[Chris Hayes]

And there is clearly a group of 40% of people who voted in this primary who felt that way or who chose him over. Because the vote that would make the most sense is John Cornyn. He may not have won the leadership battle, but he is very high ranking in Washington. He's very powerful. He can make calls. He can return things to the people of Texas. They didn't care about that. And so I think, yes, the Epstein thing, but I actually think. I think it's an anti Washington, anti creature of Washington. Cornyn is a very Washington character. And it's interesting to me, and you may be right about this group of voters and who he can get, but he's doubling down on his closing ad strategy, essentially, with this statement. I mean, this is like Judgment day

[Rachel Maddow]

is coming for Ken Paxton. Texas Republican primary voters will learn more about Ken's indefensible personal behavior and failures in office. Because.

[Chris Hayes]

Because that message crushed it in the closing ads. I mean, that's what he has right now. So he's making a bet he can pick up those people. Maybe he can, maybe he can't. We'll see.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

I'm just amused by the thinking here, because in the midst of all of this about Ken Paxton and Trump, you have in a congressional district, one Representative Gonzalez, who himself is a creature of Washington, who himself has all kinds of dirty laundry that has been exposed. Exposed. And yet he's winning his seat totally. And so this is the Republican Party. This is my party in this hour, at this moment, which is why it needs such an incredible political enema unlike

[Jen Psaki]

any we've ever seen.

[Eugene Daniels]

Any.

[Chris Hayes]

We've seen quite a visual. Thank you for that.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

Thank you very much.

[Jen Psaki]

A biblical one.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

A biblical one.

[Rachel Maddow]

We're gonna go to Rosa Flores, who is at this polling location in Dallas, Texas, from which we joined her a little while ago. Rosa, I understand you've been in communication with the Dallas county judge who was involved or who issued the initial ruling that that the polling places in Dallas county should be kept open. What can you tell us?

[Michael Steele]

So I just talked to the election judge that's in charge of the Democratic primary of the polling place here, Here, Rachel, where I am, that I've been following all day long, where there's been a lot of very frustrated Voters trying to go to the right polling place, trying to check where they needed to vote to make sure that their. That their ballots were cast. I have bad news, Rachel, because I just talked to him, and he tells me that his understanding, and he told me like this was, I am not. I am not an attorney. But here's his understanding, because the Texas Supreme Court struck down that lower court ruling. He says that the provisional ballots that were cast between 7pm and 9pm Central Time might not count is how he put it. And I'm a data girl, so I asked him about the numbers for this particular precinct. Just as a slice of what is happening in Dallas County. He said that today, 495 people voted here at this poll. Over 400 voters were redirected to another polling place because they were at the wrong polling place. Now, between 7pm and 9pm 18 provisional ballots were cast at this polling place. Those are the ballots that. He says those might not count. Again, his name is David Fisher. He says, rose, I am not an attorney, Rachel. I spoke to one of the those people who cast their provisional ballots. It was a woman in that had an injury on her foot. She had gold sneakers. She had rhinestones on her crutches because she was so enthused about voting and determined to vote. She said that she had gone to a different polling location earlier in the day, but she wanted to vote. And I haven't talked to her yet. I'm hoping to call her here pretty soon to get a reaction to the fact that her vote might not count. And that's exactly what she told me. Her fear was that because she was redirected throughout the day and because the website wasn't working, that her vote might not count. I'm gonna call her. I'm gonna deliver the news to her that and get her reaction because her vote might actually not count, Rachel.

[Rachel Maddow]

And it may as yet be undecided. We may not know as the. This as litigation continues, it may be that the provisional ballots are not counted now, but at some point in the litigation process, they may be counted. And it seems like it's still contingent at this point. But regardless of how it's ultimately decided, the rigmarole and the runaround that voters like her have had to deal with today in Dallas county is itself a scandal. Regardless of whether or not. Regardless, I think the ultimate dispensation of how those votes are handled. Rosa, thank you very much again. And interrupt us. Let us know as you learn more. We're really interested in continuing to follow this throughout the course of the evening as the story continues to develop. All right. We've got much more ahead here. We're going to check in on a couple of key House races. We were just talking about the Tony Gonzalez race. We're also going to look at the Dan Crenshaw race. We're also going to look at a key race where there's an endangered incumbent in North Carolina. Lots of more to come, including further results in the Texas Democratic Senate primary. Stay with us. Welcome back to our special coverage here on Ms. Now of the first big primary night of the 2026 midterms. We are still watching results come in in Texas in that very important Democratic U.S. senate primary between Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico, the state representative there. Continuing to watch that. But we've also had eyes on a bunch of interesting House primaries. It's very unusual for an incumbent member of Congress to lose his or her seat in a contested primary, but it does happen. And there's a number of House incumbents who are looking down that kind of a barrel tonight. Ali, what are you looking at?

[Ali Velshi]

There's at least three tonight and maybe more than that. Texas 23, which is in the far west of Texas. This is the one in which Tony Gonzalez is the incumbent. He is ahead marginally at the moment by a thousand votes at the moment, but it's 61% of the vote in anything can happen here. Tony Gonzalez ran against Brendan Herrera, his challenger last time around. Herrera came within 400 votes of defeating Gonzalez. And since then, Gonzalez has become sort of scandal prone and involved in a lot of nasty stuff. He's still leading in Texas 23. So we're going to keep an eye on that. Want to go to Houston for a moment and take a Look at this. 62% of the vote in Dan Crenshaw. The, the incumbent is, is, is, is pretty far behind. He's 39 to Steve Toth's 57 and a half. Steve Toth feels that Dan Crenshaw doesn't represent the America first movement. Crenshaw is a military veteran. That's how he, he lost his eye. He's a supporter, for instance, of up Ukraine. Steve Toth thinks that's not an American priority. Dan Crenshaw has often said that he'd like things to be a little bit more civil in Congress. So he's at the moment losing to Dan Crenshaw to Steve Toth. Let's go to North Carolina in the Democratic primaries here. There's an interesting story here that Jen was talking About a little earlier, we now have 94% of the vote in, but it's so close that it's not been called yet. This is NC4. Valerie Fouche, the incumbent, is literally leading by 1,682 votes. It's 49.4 to 48.3. Nita Alam is the challenger here. This one at night, it's very rare that you have 94% of the vote in and you're not actually able to call a race. So this one we're watching very closely,

[Rachel Maddow]

and that's a really interesting race. Again, one of those generational competitions. Fouche is 69 years old. Alam is 32 years old. Alam has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders, Injustice Democrats. She's really good at social media. Democratic Party figures like David Hogg have campaigned for her. Valerie Fouche, not a particularly controversial Democratic member of Congress, not a particularly conservative Democratic member of Congress, but facing some of those other sort of wins, really, in terms of the way that the Democratic Party's evolving.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah, I mean, they're both for Medicare for all. They're pretty progressive on a range of things. What's also very interesting about this race that I think a lot of Democrats are going to be talking about is there was a. And kind of an anti AIPAC PAC that spent a lot of money on behalf of Nita Alam. And what they accused the incumbent of is basically her ties to AIPAC. Now, she has not taken money from AIPAC since 2024. She took some in 2024 and before that, but she has basically said, I'm not taking money from them. And she hasn't. But still, there's no question, I would say that that is a factor here in how close close this race is. And I think other Democrats are gonna talk about that, and it's gonna be a factor.

[Michael Steele]

Stefan, during my time off, I spoke to three big Democratic donors and we were talking who's doing well, who's not doing well. They didn't wanna talk about anyone's names. All they wanted to talk about was Ken Paxton. And they said, tomorrow, Democrats need to wake up and realize this isn't about policy, this isn't about platform, this is about the United States. We cannot depend on the fact that we have free and fair elections. And all three donors that I spoke to said Democrats need to get their game on and bring the right weapons to this fight that we are now in for. Like, it's not even about. Is it James Talarico? Is it gonna be Jasmine Crockett? It's do we have free and fair elections? And based on what we're seeing tonight, these three donors said, we don't feel that way. And I said, well, that means somebody's asking you for a big, big check tomorrow.

[Rachel Maddow]

And they all said, yeah, we know.

[Michael Steele]

But it's amazing to me that, like, no one had any answer interest in talking about any of these individual candidates. And they are so thrown and bothered by what's happening tonight vis a vis

[Rachel Maddow]

can pax, which actually, I mean, as much as you're saying it's not a politics thing, it's such a political opening for Democratic candidates and Democratic Party people who can recognize that that's where the fuel is here, standing up for American small D democracy as a small d Democrat right now is. Is the best thing you could probably do for your political prospects.

[Michael Steele]

Yes. But I think the point they were trying to make is stop thinking small Democrats. Stop being kind and nice and considerate. This is the fight of your lifetime because it is about democracy.

[Rachel Maddow]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

Can I just. On this point, I was saying this during the break, but Greg Kazar, who's a progressive, he's chair of the Progressive Caucus, He's a Texas Democrat, Rising star Young. He tweeted or xed or whatever we're calling it these days, basically saying, james Talliego, we have not called this race. Race is the future of the Democratic Party. And Jasmine Crockett is fantastic and great and can't wait to see what she does. Essentially, I'm paraphrasing. But why I think this is interesting is because there's a recognition among leading Democrats who love Jasmine Crockett and love James Tailorico that this is gonna be a problem unless there is some type of unified front and kind of unified effort. So that was quite telling to me. And I think it's part of what freaking people out, because they're looking at this and they're like, this seems chaotic.

[Rachel Maddow]

Chaotic.

[Chris Hayes]

They're messing with us. What are we doing with how they're messing with us?

[Jen Psaki]

We should also just note, I just want to say, like, just for the point of mathematical rigor here, that, like, we just don't know a what the margin might end up being and what the margin of the votes that are in that window are. And the reason I say that is not to say, like, well, it's fine. It doesn't matter. It's not outcome determinative. No, it does matter on principle grounds. But it fundamentally, I think when you're thinking about, like, what the outcome of the election is if the election is won by six or seven points or five points or four point. I mean it, it does matter a tremendous amount in terms of what happens in the rest of the night and the rest of the vote counting.

[Chris Hayes]

I think this is so important and this is for these Democratic election officials. If they could share how many of these votes. I know we got some information from

[Rachel Maddow]

excellent reporting that was great reporting are

[Chris Hayes]

out there that would help provide at least some clarity and some information.

[Rachel Maddow]

May I interject with something that may be a constructive addition to this conversation on the phone right now is Dallas County Elections Administrator Paul Adams who can hopefully help us through some of the details here. Mr. Adams, thank you very much for taking time to join us tonight.

[Paul Adams]

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

[Rachel Maddow]

So first of all, can you tell us what your job is and what you are responsible for so we understand your remit and what your day has been like? This smart.

[Paul Adams]

So I'm the Dallas County Elections Administrator, so I oversee elections administration in all of Dallas County, Texas.

[Rachel Maddow]

Okay. And today Dallas County, Texas has had some trouble in its elections administration which we've been following from here in New York. Looking at this from the outside and now seeing this grave consternation that it's causing, particularly in Democratic Party circles, worrying that something wrong has happened in, in Dallas county that might not only affect the outcome of these crucial Senate primaries, but that might signal that something has been sort of messed with in terms of people's ability to cast their votes and have them counted as they were cast. What should we understand about what's happened today in Dallas county and the kind of chaos that has been reported?

[Paul Adams]

So I think what's important to know is that for the last handful of years, Dallas county voters have been used to voting at vote centers where, where they can go to any location in the county and cast their ballot. They were able to do that for early vote, which we had all the way up until this past Friday. And then because the political parties were not able to enter into a joint election here in Texas, if you, if both political parties agree to a joint election in the county, then there can be countywide voting. So that would continue. That had previously been the case. There was nothing, not a joint primary this time. So that forced us to go back to precinct based voting, which has not happened in Dallas county in quite some time, I believe back to 2018. So then voters who had been used to going to any location, maybe close to work, maybe close to school, now were forced to go to precinct based voting, like I said, has not happened here in nearly a decade. And that created quite a bit of confusion on a lot of Election Day

[Rachel Maddow]

in terms of the legal process that has played out over the course of this afternoon and into this evening. We initially saw an order essentially that because of a lot of voters experiencing the kind of confusion that you're describing and for the reasons that you're describing, there was an order that polling places should be held open longer than they otherwise would be in Dallas County. And then, then that order was suspended effectively during the extended polling times by an order of the Texas Supreme Court. First, let me ask you if I got all that right, if I said that correctly, and if I did, can you tell us what that has meant in practical terms in your county?

[Paul Adams]

So yeah, you got that right. You've been paying attention in terms of the practical matter practically when you're dealing with with massive changes in election rules this quickly, which is not unheard of in elections. But when it's happening and you're dealing with the thousands of workers that we have out in the field in order to properly shift them to make sure everybody is on the same page can be a monumental task. And this kind of whiplash of going from 6 o' clock to approximately 6 o', clock, all the poll workers expecting all right, we're going to close at 6,7 to then shortly after that being notified, no, we're going to stay open until 9 because of the order. But it only applied to the Democrats because I had mentioned this was a non joint primary, so it didn't apply to the Republicans. So there's this message going out that the Republicans are still going to close at 7, Democrats will stay open until 9 and then this goes to the Texas Supreme Court. That then stays the decision, which we got sometime about 8:30 and now a message has to go then back out to the workers in the field to then accommodate that change that had happened because of the stay. So a lot of complex pieces happening all within a very, very quick amount of time for all of our poll workers to be able to adjust to and have to then explain to the voters that are in line of what is going on.

[Rachel Maddow]

And if I'm understanding you correctly, all those poll workers are in myriad different locations because this is pre. And so it's not like they're all in one place where they can all collectively get together physically in the same place and talk about how this is going to be done. Right. This is disparate locations.

[Paul Adams]

That is correct. These are hundreds of locations throughout the county that were selected by the political parties. So some of them are same places where you have Democrats, Republicans, other ones where there weren't. In this non joint primary, when you go back to this precinct based voting, it allowed them to the political parties to choose all these different locations. But we are, we do have a communication tool to communicate with them. But once again, depending on, you know, how busy they are, various things that are going on, we need to make sure that they're paying attention to their messages and making sure that they're fulfilling each section of these requirements. As they came down relatively quickly when

[Rachel Maddow]

the Supreme Court ordered that votes cast after 7pm, which was the initial closing time before it was extended extended, that votes cast after 7pm should be essentially sequestered, that they should be kept, but kept separate from the other votes that were cast over the course of the day. Is that something that was technically feasible at all locations?

[Paul Adams]

Technically feasible? Yes, that they can sequester them. Any of the ballots that would be cast that's ordered by a court when a location has to stay open is going to vote by provisional ballot. So you would cast a provisional ballot, you would make a notation that it is because of a court order to be held after or that was cast after 7 o' clock, that you were not in line by 7 o'. Clock. Those already have mechanisms where they can be easily sequestered.

[Rachel Maddow]

Okay, and is this still a live issue? As I was reading the Supreme Court ruling? I'm not a lawyer and I'm not necessarily good at ratings reading specific stuff like this, even when I'm pretending to be a lawyer, but it seemed to me that there was an indication that this is still a live issue, that this was essentially a stay that the Supreme Court had issued, but that this was a matter that was still going to be further under further consideration. Is it still a live issue and is that how and when it will be decided whether those provisional ballots are in fact counted?

[Paul Adams]

Yeah. So at this point, it is my expectation that this is a stay for the time being. There will be continued litigation potentially upon this and then we'll see what happens. So I do not anticipate that this is the end of this particular situation. I anticipate that there will be further litigation about what has happened this evening,

[Rachel Maddow]

not just in Dallas county, but around the state of Texas. We have been noticing that Election Day votes haven't been tallied at a pace that's keeping up with other forms of vote. Early vote in particular and mail vote. When do you expect Election Day votes will be counted in Dallas county and those results reported.

[Paul Adams]

I would imagine because of that initial stay that bumped back the processing time. I anticipate it may not be until well into the early morning hours that we will have final numbers. At this point, we're still waiting on a handful of locations to report back. This is a geographically large county, not just large in population, but large in geography. So some of these places that have been open land later, even when that court ruling, when the stay came down, if you had anybody in line that had been there at 7 o' clock and was in line, they were still allowed to vote a regular ballot. And we do know that there were a few locations in the county that had lines that had been that long. So there were cases to where people were still voting up until relatively recently. So we expect it's going to be a little while before those returns came. Come in.

[Rachel Maddow]

Dallas County Elections Administrator Paul Adams. I'm just going to ask you one last question before we let you go. And I really appreciate you giving us this time tonight, helping us understand this with such clarity to our audience. As we've been talking about this so long tonight, there are going to be a lot of people who are having a lot of feelings about what has happened in Dallas county tonight. We're already seeing people sort of theorizing and coming up with relatively elaborate speculation, speculation in terms of who done it and why this happened and who was behind it and whose fault it is and whether or not the election results from Dallas county and therefore from Texas should be trusted. I just wanted to put that to you as Dallas county elections administrator and just ask what you would say to the voters of Dallas county and other people looking in on your county from outside, around the state and around the country right now who are having those sites of sort of dark feelings about what's happened here.

[Paul Adams]

Well, I would say two things. I would say that first, I think that's one of the reasons why I support countywide vote centers to allow voters to vote at any location where they have had previously in the county. I think it's convenient. I think it is helpful to the voters to vote that way. The other thing I would say, you know, people are looking for, okay, well, who's behind what's going on? As I mentioned previously, all of the election workers that are here in the county, you know, these are not people that have been brought in from someplace else. These are your family, your friends, your neighbors, community members that step up and volunteer to put on this process. And that, to me, is what helps ensure the integrity of our system is that we have people, people that are just from every walk of life that are stepping up, serving basically as volunteers to make sure that our system of democracy works well.

[Rachel Maddow]

Paul Adams, you expected to be approaching the end of what I know has been a very busy season and a very long day and a long night already. I dare say that you are just at the beginning. So good luck to you and your colleagues in Dallas County. And again, we really do appreciate your spending this time with us to help us understand what's happening there. Good luck to you, sir.

[Paul Adams]

Thank you.

[Rachel Maddow]

All right. I should say that in Texas, we are seeing some counties starting to post their day of vote. We're going to be checking in on one very big one next right after this break. Much more ahead. Stay with us. Welcome back to our coverage of the first big primary night of the 2026 midterms. Here's a really interesting, interesting race. This is not something that we would typically be talking about at the national level, but there is a state Senate race in North Carolina where it is the state Senate Republican leader. His name is Phil Berger. And he's been the most powerful Republican in North Carolina for like 15 years. And he was facing a primary challenge this year tonight from a very popular, very MAGA local county, a local sheriff, a local elected sheriff. This state Senate leader in North Carolina then decided out of the goodness of his heart that he would definitely force through redistricting in North Carolina to Democrat to benefit the Republican Party and then miraculously, after doing so, got the president of the United States to endorse him in his state Senate race rather than the North Carolina in North Carolina rather than the Mac MAGA sheriff. Who was this guy? The MAGA sheriff guy was like the head of sheriffs for Trump in 2016. And he was Trump's North Carolina chairman in 2020, I think. So it's been this incredibly interesting race where there's this very MAGA guy who's very like, who's very like Trump's favorite kind of guy, like wears a cowboy hat and the whole thing against this guy who did Trump a real solid and who is a very powerful North Carolina Republican figure and got the endorsement

[Jen Psaki]

in exchange for it and did get

[Rachel Maddow]

the endorsement from Trump as of right now in that race. This is the North Carolina state Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger. There's 99.09% of the precincts have reported at this point. And the distance between them is 50.00% to 50.00%. It is literally two votes between them. Out of 26,000 votes cast, Phil Berger has 13,075 votes. And the sheriff who's primary him has 13,077 votes. Wow. Which is just, I mean, hey, everybody, every vote counts.

[Simone Sanders Townsend]

Every vote counts.

[Rachel Maddow]

So presumably that will be going to a recount or a runoff.

[Jen Psaki]

Kind of interesting too though, because there's a little bit of this, like there's the Trump endorsement and then it's like we really know who you support.

[Ali Velshi]

You know what I mean?

[Jen Psaki]

With like Republican primary, you can get him, someone could put the phone in front of him and he can do the like, his like. But like we know who Donald Trump wants to win. It's like there's only so much out there.

[Rachel Maddow]

You can tell from the costume. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Ali, what do we got right now in terms of some of these things we've been watching with House races? I'm also curious as to the, whether the election day, same day vote is coming in in Texas, Senate, Democratic.

[Ali Velshi]

We are getting some of that. But since Stephanie's here, my old friend, I have a little pop quiz for you.

[Rachel Maddow]

Stop calling me old.

[Ali Velshi]

What do what, what do the Texas Rangers, the Atlanta Braves, the Los Angeles Angels and the New York Times have in common?

[Rachel Maddow]

New York Times, New York Yankees, thank you very much. To say baseball, Baseball

[Ali Velshi]

player. A particular, but a particular player. Mark Teira is a, has played for all of those teams with 75% of the vote. And in Texas 21, which is an interesting district because it's sort of a suburb of Austin and a suburb of San Antonio and a whole lot of Texas, he's, he has been called as the winner. And that was 61% of the vote. Mark Teixero, endorsed by Greg Abbott, endorsed by Donald Trump. And he will be the Republican candidate there in that district. Nice, Stephanie.

[Eugene Daniels]

You win.

[Ali Velshi]

All right, Texas wide, 68% of the vote is in. Talarico has 51, 52% to Jasmine Crock. It's 47% again. You can see the day of vote is still scant 8 to 10% of the vote. But let's go to Talarico, rico's backyard, Austin, Texas. 72% of the vote is in there. He's got 76% of the vote so far. And you can see that of the day of vote, he's, he's performing about 17% of the total vote is day of for him, 16% for Jasmine Crockett. So the percentages are very similar around there. Going through the state. You can still see Harris County, Houston, virtually No election day vote there. We already know that Dallas has no day of vote there. Fort Worth, Worth, again, very little. So there's still a lot of day of vote to come in Bear county, which is San Antonio, has very little. Corpus Christi, Nueces County, 78% of the vote in, you can see there. We're seeing this in some Texas counties where it's more than a quarter, sometimes 30 or 40%. But generally speaking, we're still missing a lot of day off vote here. But at the moment, 68% of the state is in. And as we are describing it, it's too early to call because there are just a lot of votes that we don't have there. In order for Jasmine Crockett to pull ahead, by the way, we'd have see her overperform in Dallas. There are a lot of votes in Dallas. That's where she is likely to do the best. And she'd have to perform very well. She'd have to over perform her mail in and advance ballots on the day of day of voting. But it's entirely possible that she did. We just won't know.

[Rachel Maddow]

And to be clear, the sort of breaking news that we just reported in conversation with the Dallas county elections administrator, I asked him directly when he thinks the day of votes for Dallas county will be counted. He said he doesn't think until at least the early morning hours. So we're going to be looking at a long trail in terms of when those votes are coming in in Texas. All right. We got still much more ahead tonight. The night is young. We'll be right back. Stay after this. One of the races that we've been watching is at a potentially interesting House race is Texas 50 congressional district. Now this is a race that really shouldn't be within Democrats grasp in normal times. This is a district I say that because Trump won this district by 18 points. It's represented by a Republican named Monica De La Cruz. This is a South Texas district, but we do now have the results here. And this is a candidate who Democrats think might have an unusual sort of shot at the top here. Bobby Polito has been projected as the winner in Texas, Texas 15th congressional district, which means that he will be the Democratic nominee for this seat in the fall. He's a Latin Grammy winner, a very famous Tejano musician. He's running as a moderate Democrat. Again, this is an this is a Trump +18 district. So it's interesting. But Democrats sort of are putting real high hopes on him.

[Chris Hayes]

Jen, let's bring in Evan Smith, a Veteran observer of Texas Politics with 30 years of experience and he's now with the Atlantic. So I've mentioned this race a little bit earlier. I think he's such an interesting candidate because he's not a traditional political candidate. But you are an expert. Tell us a little bit about this district and about why he could give Democrats a shot. If you think that's the case.

[Jen Psaki]

Case.

[Evan Smith]

It's a huge out outcome for the Democrats. He was a heavily recruited candidate. He speaks to a number of people in rural, heavily Hispanic communities who might not traditionally vote or they may have been the folks who voted for Trump and the Republicans last time after a long history of voting Democratic previously. To the degree that part of the Democrats calculation here is winning back Hispanic voters, they lost. They think Bobby Polito is their secret weapon. Again, rural, liberal, conservative Hispanic voters respond to this guy because of his non traditional background. He's been able to have conversations with people who never would have talked to a Democratic candidate, might never have seen a Democratic candidate in this district. Monica De La Cruz, the incumbent is one of those people who the Republicans thought they'd be able to get reelected pretty easily if the Democrats just took a pass on this race. But they actually have a real candidate it now as their standard bearer. And this will be a real race in the fall and it could be the difference for Democrats as they try to get the majority back in the U.S. house. This is one of those seats they could win. They have to win. And in a Trump midterm they may win.

[Chris Hayes]

I followed this race a little bit, but I think it's interesting too because his positions don't seem to be all aligned traditionally with progressive Democrats or Democrats from Washington. He's been a little bit apolitical. But can you tell us a little bit more about his candidacy? Because it's not like an anti Trump in an anti Trump year. It's a lot more complex than that.

[Evan Smith]

He is not a culture war Democrat at all. He's talking about the economy, kitchen table issues, affordability. He's talking about public education. School vouchers passed in the last Texas legislative session. So for the first time now, school vouchers are the law of Texas. He has been campaigning against school vouchers for public education. He's making his whole candidacy about economic opportunity. And again, the economy was one of the reasons that many of those conservative Hispanic voters in the last election switched from Democrat to Republican. He is taking back that issue on behalf of the Democrats, on behalf of his campaign. And so he is not running a traditional national Democratic Party playbook. He is staying very close to, to home. He's speaking to the things that matter to the district. And it's really, it begins and ends with the economy.

[Chris Hayes]

Are Republicans also nervous about this race?

[Evan Smith]

Oh, I talked to Republican consultants who are completely worried that Polito is going to be the nominee in this race. Ada Cuellar, who is an emergency room physician, by all accounts a really good person and was a strong candidate in this race, the one who finished in second, they thought they were going to run and get, they were very worried about Polito possibly winning this race. And he did. He won handily and because of his name ID in these communities among people, again, who don't traditionally vote, when he shows up in these rural counties, he draws enormous crowds. He did during the primary. They're worried about Bobby Polito.

[Chris Hayes]

Evan Smith, interesting race to watch. Thank you so much.

[Rachel Maddow]

I gotta say, it's been great to have Evan here and Rosa and Jacob and everybody you'll be talking to from Texas to have Eugene and Simone talking to their sources in Texas. It's been really fascinating. So we continue to watch those Senate, Democratic, Senate, Senate, Democratic primary results come in from Texas. I should also tell you that a state senator apparently just came out at Talarico headquarters in Texas and told people who are still there waiting on results that they should not go home. We don't know exactly what that means, but somebody just came out there and told people not to go home for us. We're not going home. Our coverage continues on Ms. Now. Stay with us. The US Military deployed on the streets of America. Whole communities targeted for removal. There was tremendous anxiety as they saw neighbors and friends being taken. And when accountability finally came knocking, the Burn order to cover it all up. I never believed that America would be doing this. A stain on this country. One that we said we would never repeat.

[Ali Velshi]

Rachel Maddow presents Burn Order.

[Rachel Maddow]

All episodes available now.