Daily Briefing: Thursday, November 5, 2026

Texans cast nearly 9.9 million votes in the U.S. Senate race, with all 254 counties reporting in the Texas Secretary of State’s unofficial returns. Preliminary state data put turnout at 51.6 percent of a record 19 million registered voters, the most voters in a Texas midterm since at least 1970 but below the 53 percent of 2018, The Texas Tribune reported. The Tribune reported that border counties and the largest urban counties posted the biggest gains over 2022.

Attorney General-elect Nathan Johnson said he will not continue suing doctors in other states who mail abortion medication to patients in Texas, according to The Texas Tribune. “I will not pursue the judicially absurd position that Texas law has extra territorial effect. I can honor other states’ shield laws,” Johnson told the Tribune. Texas’s abortion law itself stays in place; changing it is up to the Legislature.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard argument Wednesday in Guerrero v. Johnson, No. 25-1003, Texas’s appeal in the capital case of Dexter Johnson, according to the Court’s docket. The question is whether a claim rests on a “previously unavailable” new constitutional rule under the 1996 federal habeas law when the prisoner could have raised it in an earlier petition; the Fifth Circuit held a claim was available only if it had “some possibility of merit,” per the question presented.

Joshua Wong was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in prison for colluding with foreign forces under Hong Kong’s national security law, the BBC reported. Wong, who had already spent six years in jail and was due for release in January, pleaded guilty in September; two months and two days of the new term run concurrently with his current sentence, the BBC reported.

Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP) caucus voted Wednesday, along party lines, to endorse new provincial riding boundaries and put them into a bill, CBC News reported. Justice Minister Mickey Amery expects the bill to pass by the end of the year, ahead of the October 2027 provincial election; the Official Opposition says it believes the new map is “rigged” in the UCP’s favor.

The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet acted on the federal government’s application to lift the order blocking border wall work in Big Bend, No. 26A560; the last filing was the government’s reply on October 30, according to the docket.

On Friday, November 6, Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) volunteers in Caldwell County hold a 5 PM clipboarding event at Lockhart City Hall, per the TNM event listing. On Saturday morning, November 7, the Llano County team sets up an information table on the courthouse square in Llano, its TNM listing shows.