US sub sinks Iranian ship by torpedo in Indian Ocean, 1st such attack since WWII

(TEXAS) — The Texas 23rd Congressional District race is projected to head to a runoff, as incumbent Rep. Tony Gonzales, who was accused of having an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide, and conservative activist Brandon Herrera both failed to receive more than 50% of the vote.

With 94% of the expected vote reporting Wednesday morning, Herrera holds just about a 1-point advantage over Gonzales (roughly 43% to 42%).

Gonzales and Herrera previously went head-to-head in the 2024 Republican primary and similarly advanced to a runoff. Gonzales ultimately won by just 400 votes. 

Tuesday’s primary election came as Gonzales battles calls from some House Republicans to resign amid allegations that he engaged in an extramarital affair with a congressional aide who died by suicide last fall. Gonzales has denied the allegations of the affair with the aide, Regina Santos-Aviles.

Asked recently if he had an extramarital affair with Santos-Aviles, Gonzales said “what you have seen is not all the facts.”

Text messages, provided to ABC News by Santos-Aviles’ widower, appear to show Gonzales pursuing a relationship with the former staffer. ABC News has reached out to Gonzales for a request for comment on the text messages.

In February, Gonzales told ABC News that “Ms. Santos-Aviles was a kind soul who devoted her life to making the community a better place.”

ABC News has also confirmed that Gonzales has been under investigation by the Office of Congressional Conduct, which has already completed its probe. Due to its rules, the OCC can’t transmit a report against a member of Congress 60 days prior to an election.

The runoff election is scheduled for May 26, which is more than 60 days away from the primary election.

On Wednesday, the House Ethics Committee announced that it started an investigative subcommittee to look into the allegations against Gonzales.

Gonzales has notably lost many endorsements in his bid for reelection as calls for his resignation continue. He said last month that he is “not going to resign.”

President Donald Trump had endorsed Gonzales prior to the allegations. Since then, the White House has not responded to ABC News’ questions about whether the president still supports Gonzales.

In a post on X reacting to the news of a runoff, Gonzales began by thanking the president and looking forward to a “victorious May.”

In a reply to Gonzales post, Herrera retorted: “Are you seriously congratulating yourself for not winning your primary?”

Herrera, a Second Amendment activist and social media personality, has also faced his share of controversy, including accusations that his YouTube videos allegedly featured Nazi-related imagery. In response, Herrera wrote in a social media post that “I am not, nor have I never been a neo-Nazi.”

Both candidates have sought to align themselves closely with the president.

ABC News’ Lauren Peller contributed to this report.

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(TENNESSEE) — As protesters accused them of racial gerrymandering, Tennessee state lawmakers passed into law on Thursday a new congressional map that could allow Republicans to flip the state’s lone Democratic-held seat, notching the GOP another win in the mid-decade redistricting scramble.

Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill into law Thursday afternoon.

The session was interrupted by chaotic scenes with lawmakers shouting over protesters’ voices and at one point forcing police clear the balcony above the House floor before it voted on the new map.

The new map breaks up the state’s current 9th Congressional District, which is primarily made up of Memphis, and the state’s only majority-Black district. The district is currently represented by Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen.

The legislature also passed bills on Thursday that will allow the state to legally redistrict outside of the normal once-a-decade cycle, as well as providing funding to help implement the new map in time for the 2026 elections.

Impact on the midterms and representation in Congress

With the map passed, it paves the way for President Donald Trump and Republicans to gain an additional House seat in the next Congress, increasing their chances of maintaining control of the House as they continue their redistricting battle across the country.

Tennessee Democrats will likely not have any representation in Congress next year if Republicans flip the seat and the map will dilute the Black vote by breaking up Memphis.

But legal challenges against the map are expected.

Cohen said Thursday he will file a lawsuit against the new map.

Cohen posted on X after the vote “[President Donald] Trump knows he HAS TO rig the game to keep his majority in November. And the TN GOP was willing to go along with it. It’s shameful. Next stop is the courts.”

Cohen had said earlier this week on CNN that the Republicans’ redistricting effort was a foregone conclusion, adding that he hopes the new congressional map can take effect in 2028 rather than 2026. 

The speed at which the process occurred was remarkable — it was only last week that the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, dealing a blow to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. 

And just one day after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, Trump posted on Truth Social that he spoke with Lee and that the governor said he would work to redraw the state’s congressional maps in order to net another GOP seat for Tennessee in the House. Lee called a special session the next day, April 30, to review the state’s congressional map.

Potential redistricting efforts are also currently underway in Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina, although each state has different procedural or legal barriers to overcome.

With Tennessee’s new map, Republicans potentially could flip 14 Democratic-held seats in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida. Democrats could pick up 10 from new maps passed in California, Utah and Virginia.

Acrimonious debate and protests in the state capitol

The proposed congressional map underwent much acrimonious debate and protest inside the legislature on Thursday before it was passed.

On the House floor, Democratic representatives condemned the map, saying it would dilute the Black vote in the state. At one point, chants of “our house!” started in the House gallery.

As the vote came up for the new map on the House side, chaos erupted in the room. A trooper was asked to clear out the balcony above the House floor as people protested.

Earlier, Democratic State Rep. Justin Pearson, who is running for Congress in the 9th District that will be broken up on the new map, said that “what is happening here is immoral and wrong.”

“This is about attacking, targeting and cracking District 9 into pieces for more political and racial dominance and white supremacy in the state of Tennessee. And we need to realize that the Callais decision that you all are basing your decisions off of that gutted the Voting Rights Act, that that Voting Rights Act was paid in blood,” Pearson said.

Pearson later confronted law enforcement officers, ABC affiliate WKRN reported, as they worked on clearing the House gallery of protestors. Pearson later said his brother KeShaun Pearson was arrested.

After the House passed the bill and it was taken up in the Senate, Republican state Sen. John Stevens spoke in support of the new map over audible protests and yelling.

“Tennessee is a conservative state, and I submit its congressional delegation should reflect that. The proposed map ensures that,” Stevens said.

He later said, “This bill represents Tennessee’s attempt to maximize our partisan advantage and allow Tennesseans to support a national Congress to be a Republican majority.”

But Democratic state Sen. London Lamar, who is Black, slammed the new map during debate as an attack on Black voters and said it “diminishes Memphis.”

“This map does not reflect Memphis. It diminishes Memphis. It slices our city into pieces and stretches our communities hundreds of miles away to places of different needs, different economies, different histories and different lived realities,” she said. “You cannot take a majority-Black city, fracture its voting power and then tell us race has nothing to do with it. Racism does not become less racist because it’s called partisan.”

Later, chants of “Hands off Memphis!” rang out and another lawmaker soon unfurled a banner that read “NO JIM CROW 2.0 – STOP THE TN STEAL.”

The Senate passed the map soon after.

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(WASHINGTON) — Senators at last agreed via voice vote early Friday morning to approve a funding package that funds the Department of Homeland Security besides Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and part of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — a critical step toward ending most of the 42-day long DHS shutdown.

Agencies that would be funded by the Senate’s approved package include TSA, FEMA, The Coast Guard and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The vote was called by Sen. Bernie Moreno, who was presiding over the chamber just after 2 a.m. ET on Friday morning. The bill will now head to the House where it will need to be approved. If passed, it will then head to the desk of President Donald Trump who would need to sign it for it to become law.

In remarks on the Senate floor early Friday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he was proud of Democrats who “held the line” on their objection to funding ICE and CBP without reforms.

“Democrats held firm in our position that Donald Trump’s rogue and deadly militia should not get more funding without serious reforms and we will continue to fight for those reforms,” Schumer said.
The package the Senate approved does not include funding for ICE and parts of CBP, though those agencies will continue to receive funds due to the influx of cash in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill.

Also absent from the package are any of the reforms to ICE’s operating procedures that Democrats have been repeatedly demanding since the debate over DHS funding began.

Majority Leader John Thune lambasted Democrats on the floor for what he framed as their refusal to negotiate in good faith. He said Democrats could have secured some of their desired reforms if they hadn’t complicated negotiations.

“We could be standing here right now passing a funding bill with a list of reforms if the Democrats had made the smallest effort to actually reach an agreement. But they didn’t, because it’s now clear to everyone, Democrats didn’t actually want a solution, they wanted an issue, politics over policy, self-interest over reform, pandering to their base over actually solving a problem,” Thune said. “It’s an appalling commentary on the state of the Democratic Party.”

Schumer was asked by reporters about how Democrats would get reforms from this point going forward.

“We’re going to continue to fight hard for reforms, there’ll be opportunities,” Schumer said, though he provided no detail.

Though there was an effort by Republicans tonight to unanimously pass annual funding for ICE, it was blocked by Democrats.

Republicans are vowing to work on a package later this year to approve even more funding for ICE and CBP, saying they aim to do it using reconciliation — a budget tool that, if successful, would allow them to sidestep Democratic objection and pass the bill without any Democratic support.

Republicans are already warning that that bill will be a much harsher and Sen. Eric Schmitt vowed it would “supercharge deportations.”

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