The Latest: Democrat Scott Colom wins election to US Senate from Mississippi
Democrat Scott Colom won election to the U.S. Senate representing Mississippi, defeating Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith on Wednesday. Colom will be Mississippi’s first Black senator since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.
Gearing up for the loss of GOP control in Congress next year, the White House warned Democrats that planned investigations of Trump could cross into criminal conduct. House Democrats are preparing a vast oversight agenda to look at how Trump and his family have become wealthier since he returned to office, though Trump and his administration have long denied any wrongdoing.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, observed Veterans Day at Arlington National Cemetery. His appearance there came a day after nine Kennedy family members asked a judge to block Trump’s plan to build a towering memorial arch, saying the 250-foot structure would cast a shadow over their relatives’ grave sites at the cemetery.
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Biden nominated Colom, a local prosecutor, to become a U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of Mississippi.
Colom had backing from Mississippi’s senior senator, Republican Roger Wicker, and from former Gov. Haley Barbour, a national GOP power broker and former Republican National Committee chairman.
Hyde-Smith, however, invoked her “blue slip” power. That’s Senate lingo for a senator invoking the traditional, unwritten privilege of single-handedly blocking federal court nominees from their home state.
That kind of move has bitten Democrats before, too.
In 1986 then-Alabama Sen. Howell Heflin cast the deciding committee vote — so, technically not a blue slip maneuver — against President Ronald Reagan’s district court nomination of a young U.S. attorney from Alabama named Jeff Sessions.
Ten years later Sessions won a Senate election to succeed Heflin when he retired. In 2017 he became Trump’s first attorney general; Trump later fired him.
“The people of Mississippi have realized their power and there’s no going back. Scott, welcome to the fight. Let’s get to work,” the Georgia senator posted on social media, along with a photo of himself and Colom campaigning together this fall.
Warnock was elected in a January 2021 runoff to become the first Black U.S. senator from Georgia.
With Colom’s election, there will be three Black U.S. senators from Deep South states in the 120th Congress. The third is Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.
Warnock was among the early national figures to advocate for Colom and Mississippi as Democrats considered their best opportunities to flip Republican seats and win control of the Senate.
Scott, meanwhile, served as chairman of Senate Republicans’ campaign committee this cycle as Democrats, including Colom, flipped eight GOP-held seats so far. Alaska, where votes are still being tallied, could become the ninth.
“The power is with the people, and the people of Mississippi are with Scott,” the former vice president wrote on social media.
Harris, the first woman and second Black person to hold nationwide office, campaigned for Colom in October and helped him raise money several times during the campaign.
“I saw firsthand when campaigning with him in his hometown that he is a brilliant leader and dedicated public servant who will work tirelessly to serve every Mississippian with pride,” Harris wrote.
One of Colom’s Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity brothers is cheering him on at his victory party.
“He’s a servant, and he’s a leader,” said Tony Howard, who has known Colom for 25 years. He went from “a guy in college sitting around a student table, to now looking at him, that he’s running the world now,” Howard said.
Colom, a Millsaps College alumnus, often would recognize members of the Divine Nine, the historically Black fraternity and sorority organizations in the U.S., at his campaign events.
The organizations have friendly rivalries but come together for civic engagement and philanthropy.
Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Morehouse College alumnus, also is an Alpha Phi Alpha member.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, a Howard University alumna, is in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Her sorority sisters from campuses across the country often wear their colors — salmon pink and apple green — to her events.
“I am here to celebrate being on the right side of history,” said Vera Finley, as she awaited Colom’s remarks at his victory celebration in Jackson.
“I am here to celebrate my parents and my grandparents. I am not one generation out of the cotton fields,” Finley continued. “Both of my parents picked cotton. And my great grandmother was sold here as a slave from Virginia to here. So I am so excited to be on this side of history.”
Finley said Colom’s backers “voted for change” and are “so excited about actually seeing that our votes matter.”
She said she hopes his election yields more unity.
“I hope that justice comes out of it,” she said. “I hope that love comes out of it.”
Chinese leader Xi Jinping is expected to attend the Group of 20 summit in Florida next month, the State Department said, offering the first confirmation of the visit.
Trump travels to China next week to attend an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, where the two leaders also are expected to meet.
In a phone call Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi discussed Trump’s “upcoming travel to the APEC summit in China” and Xi’s “upcoming visit to Florida to attend the G20 summit,” the State Department said.
The Chinese foreign ministry’s readout only said the leaders would support each other in hosting the summits.
The State Department said Rubio and Wang also agreed on the importance of the presidents discussing peace and denuclearization, “including at any potential trilateral leaders meeting with Russia.”
The 67-year-old Republican spoke for two minutes, seated next to an American flag.
“While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters,” she said. “I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous responsibility of representing our great state.”
Hyde-Smith, a former state agriculture commissioner, was first appointed to the Senate in 2018. She won a special election and then a full term in 2020.
She said in the video she’s most proud of helping farmers and veterans, opposing abortion rights and securing federal money for Mississippi.
“While my time in the United States Senate may be coming to an end,” she said, “my love for Mississippi and my determination to stand up for what is right never will.”
The AP on Wednesday declared Colom the winner in the race for U.S. Senate in Mississippi after several counties reported updated results — including those of last-to-count provisional ballots.
Colom led Hyde-Smith, the Republican incumbent, by 43 votes following the final election night update in Mississippi, which arrived at 3:03 a.m. from Pike County.
Not only has Colom’s lead grown larger as counties in Mississippi have completed their vote count and reported on the outcome of their review of provisional ballots in the days since, but he’s won the vast majority of these final updates — in every region of the state and in all but the most Republican counties — by a large margin.
The AP called the race for the Colom after officials in Jackson County updated their vote count with an additional 2,173 votes.
The update put Colom up by 4,669 votes out of 962,237 counted, or 0.5 percentage points. To come back and take the lead, Hyde-Smith needed to win these final vote updates in GOP-leaning counties such as Jackson. Instead, Colom won the update in Jackson by just over 1 percentage point.
A spokesman for the Mississippi Republican confirmed that she has called her Democratic challenger to concede and congratulate him.
Hyde-Smith has been quiet through more than a week of local officials counting absentee and provisional ballots.
She and her advisers previously had not ruled out legal action if the Colom was declared the winner.
Colom’s victory is a seismic shift in Mississippi, which has been controlled mostly by white conservatives for generations. The outcome adds to a decisive midterm rebuke of Trump, whose party suffered defeats in several Republican-controlled states.
The Associated Press called the contest Wednesday in Colom’s favor after local elections officials spent several days processing absentee and provisional ballots.
The last time Mississippi chose a new Democratic senator was 1947, and the winner then was a staunch segregationist. Colom, a 43-year-old prosecutor, capitalized on the state’s large Black population, discontent with the economy and incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith’s missteps as she sought a second full term.
Colom said during the campaign that he could represent all of Mississippi, a state where racial divisions have long defined its politics and society.
Democrat Scott Colom won election Wednesday to the U.S. Senate representing Mississippi, defeating Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith.
Colom will be Mississippi’s first Black senator since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.
Colom’s victory also offers Democrats an unexpected boost in their effort to win control of the Senate.
A local prosecutor, he waged an aggressive campaign to take advantage of a tough national environment for Republicans and the fact that Mississippi has a larger share of Black voters than any other state.
Hyde-Smith, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, was trying to win her second full term. She was first appointed to fill a vacancy and then won a 2018 special election.
The Associated Press declared Colom the winner at 5:58 p.m. EST.
The Trump administration wants to sell public lands to states, tribes and local governments as part of an effort to “decrease the size of the federal estate,” according to a new plan presented by the Interior Department.
Agency officials said the sale of federal property would allow the government to focus resources on “nationally significant” lands, which were not defined.
They offered no details on what parcels could be sold, nor the scope or location of potential sales.
The proposal drew quick pushback from some lawmakers, including Trump’s former Interior secretary, Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, showing it faces strong headwinds in Congress even before Democrats assume the majority in January.
The Trump administration is planning to make it harder to get food aid through the federal government’s grocery assistance program that serves about 1 in 10 Americans.
The administration says the proposed rule would close a loophole by no longer allowing some people who receive benefits under the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to automatically qualify for the separate Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
About 6.3 million people could lose eligibility for SNAP by the 2029 fiscal year if the proposed change takes effect, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program. That is on top of 5.5 million people who already have lost SNAP benefits over the past year.
Trump said on Veterans Day that the towering arch he wants to build would be dedicated to the U.S. military and those who served, saying “They’ve been waiting for it for 200 years.”
But arch discussions didn’t include veterans until late in the process, said Jimi Shaughnessy, the veterans program manager with the National Parks Conservation Association.
“It’s a strange position to take when the administration did not consult veteran groups or military organizations at the start,” said Shaughnessy, a veteran. “They brought these groups in at the tail end when there was opposition.”
The arch is embroiled in multiple lawsuits from groups challenging its construction.
The plaintiffs now include three Vietnam veterans, an architectural historian, the District of Columbia and Virginia, and members of the Kennedy family.
A soldier guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier issued a verbal reprimand to a group of advisers and staffers with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.
Video shows Hegseth taking photos on the empty steps in front of the tomb with his wife, Jennifer, chief of staff Ricky Buria, deputy chief of staff Patrick Weaver and senior adviser Tami Radabaugh.
As the group broke from taking photos, a loud laugh can be heard, and the soldier guarding the tomb shouted that “all visitors will maintain an atmosphere of silence and respect at all times.”
“The Secretary and the entire Department have always honored — and will always honor — the sacrifices our military men and women have made to keep America safe,” chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement. “While commemorating this solemn day, a soldier correctly and respectfully reminded everyone to maintain decorum.”
Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, told Fox Business on Wednesday that there “will likely be subpoenas” for Huang to appear on Capitol Hill if the co-founder of the computer chip company doesn’t respond by day’s end to a request to meet with lawmakers.
Moolenaar, House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Brian Mast and House Intelligence Committee chair Rick Crawford sent a letter last week to Huang, requesting a closed-door briefing on Nvidia’s security protocols and Huang’s interactions with a businesswoman accused of spying for China.
Moolenaar told Fox Business that the Republican lawmakers wanted to know if Beijing was able to access “privileged information” and if it was able to influence U.S. national security policy.
“I think transparency is very important for him at this point,” Moolenaar said.
Nvidia didn’t immediately respond to an AP request for comment.
More than a week after Election Day, Colom leads Hyde-Smith by about 3,800 votes, though Republican-leaning counties like Lee and Jackson have not yet released their final results.
Further updates are expected on Thursday, Nov. 12.
If Colom wins, Democrats will hold 55 seats in the Senate, and will have made the party’s largest midterm gain since 1986, during Ronald Reagan’s second term.
Rep. Robert Garcia, who will likely chair the House Oversight Committee when Democrats take over next year, said Trump “is clearly hiding something” after the White House issued a warning about their planned probes.
“He needs to understand that Congress is a coequal branch of government,” Garcia told reporters outside the Capitol.
GOP Rep. James Comer, the committee’s current chair, said the committee is “very independent” when asked about the White House’s attempt to limit its authority.
“Regardless of who is in the White House, there’s always going to be a strong desire for the Oversight Committee to be a check and balance on the executive branch, regardless of the political scenario,” Comer said.
Trump has told veterans gathered in the amphitheater that service members “are indeed our protection in battle.”
He says military families “are amazing” and are “among the very best of our nation.”
Trump is also recognizing individual veterans and asking them to stand, including a 103-year-old who served in World War II.
It’s business as usual for Trump’s deportation offensive despite the repudiation of voters in a Republican elections wipeout.
In Los Angeles, armored and masked immigration officers blocked a hospital emergency room driveway in a heavily Latino neighborhood. In Alabama, twin 19-year-olds from Venezuela were arrested while driving back to college. And an 8-year-old Haitian boy was taken away from his uncle in San Diego.
After Democrats trounced the GOP, Trump told CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Friday that his crackdown may have been “too tough” and said “I’d love to do something on immigration” with the rival party. But then he announced Stephen Miller, the architect of his hard-line immigration agenda, as his new chief of staff.
“Deportations will continue,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin posted the day after the election. “This includes on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Election Day.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was forced to relocate to a military base over concerns for his safety after spending months executing a massive economic campaign against Iran aimed at severing all of Tehran’s remaining financial ties around the world.
A person familiar with the matter, who spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details, said the relocation was partly due to media reports that helped identify Bessent’s home address. The relocation was earlier reported by The New York Times.
Other top Trump administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, live on military bases.
— Farnoush Amiri and Ben Finley
The president laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown soldier to honor the nation’s veterans. He’ll also deliver remarks at the amphitheater.
Trump’s motorcade took a different route to the revered burial ground instead of traveling over Memorial Bridge and around a traffic circle where he wants to build a triumphal arch.
Trump’s appearance at the cemetery comes a day after nine Kennedy family members joined several lawsuits seeking to block construction, saying the towering 250-foot (76-meter) arch would cast a shadow over their relatives’ grave sites there.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had a positive and constructive phone talk with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday, Chinese state media reported.
Trump is set to travel to Asia next week and meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Wang told Rubio that China is willing to strengthen communications and cooperation with the U.S. and properly handle differences and sensitive issues.
The State Department didn’t immediately release a readout of the call.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent extolled the U.S.-China bond as “one of this century’s most consequential relationships” at a Tuesday night gala in New York with Chinese ambassador to the U.S. Xie Feng.
Democrat Scott Colom was about 3,000 votes ahead of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith on Wednesday with 98% of the votes counted.
Tuesday was the deadline for receiving mail-in absentee ballots. Counties are required to submit their certified election results — including tallies of provisional ballots — to the state by Friday. It is unclear exactly how many ballots are left to count.
Unlike in some other states, there is no central vote reporting system for Mississippi, and few counties release election results online. Instead, Associated Press journalists and analysts communicate with each of the state’s 82 counties directly for the latest available information on vote counts.
The state will certify its results on Dec. 3.
The AP may declare a winner if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.
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