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Good evening. Scott Colom has done what almost no one thought was possible. He has defeated Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and become Mississippi’s first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction. He did it in a state Trump carried by double digits two years ago, and he even flipped a county named for the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. The forecasters wrote off the South. The South answered.
On Veterans Day, a soldier guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier had to tell Pete Hegseth’s group to show some respect, just hours before Trump stood up and praised Hegseth’s “fantastic job.” Trump also declared victory in Iran, even as Tehran refuses to give up its uranium and Americans in the Northeast face a 70% jump in heating oil costs this winter.
And one more thing: the Epstein files are coming back to the House floor. Today, a petition to force a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act II hit 218 signatures. That means the House will vote on a bill that lets survivors and state attorneys general take the Justice Department to court for hiding the files.
I want you to know something. I have never let this story go, and I never will. While others moved on, I kept the Epstein files front and center: every withheld document, every redaction, every excuse from the Justice Department. Survivors have waited long enough, and the American people deserve the truth, no matter whose names are in those files.
That work doesn’t happen by accident. I’m working around the clock, tracking every vote, every filing and every attempt to bury this story. I don’t have a network or a corporation behind me. I have you.
If you want someone who won’t stop until every Epstein file is released, please become a paid subscriber today. Your support is what keeps this story alive and keeps the pressure on. And if you can’t subscribe right now, share this newsletter with someone who needs to know what’s happening.
Here’s the news:
Scott Colom Defeats Cindy Hyde-Smith, Becoming Mississippi’s First Black Senator Since Reconstruction
Democrat Scott Colom has defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, one of the biggest upsets of the 2026 midterms. Colom, an attorney, held a narrow lead through a count that stretched past the deadlines for provisional ballots and for mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day. His win makes him the first Black U.S. senator from Mississippi since 1881, during Reconstruction. It’s a stunning result in a state Donald Trump carried by double digits just two years ago. Hyde-Smith had stayed optimistic even as she trailed in the count. In the end, Mississippi voters chose to send a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in decades.
Colom won by posting huge swings in places Republicans had long taken for granted, including a county named for the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. He flipped Forrest County, named for Confederate general and first KKK grand wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest, winning it 54% to 44%, according to the Mississippi Free Press. That’s a 29-point swing toward Democrats in a county Trump won 58% to 40% in 2024. Forrest County includes Hattiesburg, where civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer was killed by the KKK in 1966 for helping Black residents register to vote. A monument to Dahmer near the county courthouse carries his words: “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.” Colom also outperformed among affidavit ballots across the state, the Mississippi Free Press reports, a pattern that helped him hold his lead as the count went on.
Colom’s win is a rebuke to the forecasters who wrote off Democrats in the South. Major forecasters, including the Cook Political Report, rated the race “solid Republican” for much of the campaign. “At some point, we have to talk about ... ‘prognosticators’ who had me and other southern candidates labeled as solid R for much of the campaign cycle,” Colom wrote. “They made it much more difficult to fundraise and are part of the reason the South has been neglected for so long.” His victory caps a historic election for Southern Democrats, who also flipped Senate seats in Texas and South Carolina and won the governor’s race in Georgia. In January, Colom will join a Democratic Senate majority ready to challenge Trump on the Iran war, the cost of living and corruption.
Hegseth Reprimanded at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Veterans Day as Trump Praises His “Fantastic Job”
A soldier guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier publicly reprimanded Pete Hegseth and his advisers on Veterans Day. After a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday, Hegseth posed for photos in front of the tomb with his wife, Jennifer, and senior aides, including chief of staff Ricky Buria, CNN reports. Some in the group began laughing and talking near the memorial, and the sentinel on patrol stopped, turned to face them and called out, “All visitors will maintain an atmosphere of silence and respect at all times!” The tomb is one of the most sacred war memorials in the country, and soldiers from the Army’s Old Guard have guarded it around the clock since 1948. CNN asked the Pentagon for comment. The rebuke came just a day after House Republicans shelved the effort to impeach Hegseth, which he and his allies claimed as vindication.
A Miami Republican official is attacking the soldier who reprimanded Pete Hegseth at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Angie Wong, a Miami Republican committeewoman, defended Hegseth after the sentinel guarding the tomb called out his group for laughing and talking near the memorial on Veterans Day. “You have the war secretary lay a wreath on Veterans Day and then to be yelled [at],” Wong said, adding that Hegseth is “the most effective War Secretary that we’ve had.” Her criticism is aimed at a soldier from the Army’s Old Guard, which has guarded the tomb around the clock since 1948 and is charged with keeping silence and respect at the site.
Trump praised Hegseth at the Veterans Day event, a day after Republicans killed the impeachment effort. “He’s done a fantastic job,” Trump said, as the crowd applauded. “He loves you, and he protects you. He’s all about you.” Trump added, “I had a feeling that was going to happen,” apparently referring to Tuesday’s vote. The president has stood by Hegseth throughout the impeachment fight and vowed to keep supporting him. Trump himself faced criticism in 2024 for filming a campaign video at Arlington National Cemetery.
Days earlier, Hegseth accused the military’s war colleges of resisting Trump and ordered 33 changes to how future commanders are trained. Speaking at the Naval War College in Rhode Island on Monday, he claimed some faculty were trying “to wait out President Trump’s term in office” and preserve “false and sinister progressive frameworks.” He described “an undercurrent of passive-aggressive institutional resistance” and warned that “toxic and destructive ideas” from universities had “crept into our war colleges.” The 33 directives would replace long research papers with competitive, AI-assisted war games and tighten oversight of faculty. “Exploration of ideas and freedom of debate exist not for their own sake, but for finding ways to outthink and outkill our enemies on the battlefield,” Hegseth said. Critics argue the overhaul imposes ideology on the military and stifles academic freedom, and it comes as at least 20 senior military and civilian officials have been fired, forced out or have left under Hegseth.
Epstein Files Petition Hits 218 Signatures, Forcing a New House Vote
A petition to force a House vote on releasing the rest of the Epstein files has the 218 signatures it needs. Democratic Rep. John Garamendi of California added the 218th and final signature on Wednesday, Politico reports. That clears the way for a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, likely later this month, without needing approval from House Republican leaders. Rep. Thomas Massie launched the discharge petition over the summer to get around Speaker Mike Johnson. Every Democrat signed it, along with four Republicans: Massie, Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. It’s the second time lawmakers have used this maneuver to force the Epstein files into the open over leadership’s objections.
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The new bill would let survivors, state attorneys general and members of Congress sue the Justice Department to force the files’ release. It’s a follow-up to the original Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna pushed through Congress in November 2025. After that law passed, the Justice Department released a large batch of documents, but lawmakers and survivors called the release late and incomplete. The new bill gives the original law teeth, letting survivors and state attorneys general take the department to federal court if it doesn’t comply. It would also let members of Congress demand unredacted files. In other words, the Justice Department could no longer simply ignore the law without consequences.
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Massie accuses the Justice Department of illegally withholding more than 3 million Epstein files. “The Department of Justice continues to unlawfully withhold over 3 million Epstein files that should be released to the public,” Massie said in a July statement. “In addition, the DOJ is unlawfully maintaining heavy redactions on the files it is releasing.” He has accused the department of “flagrantly and consistently” ignoring the law’s disclosure requirements. CBS News has also reported on documents suggesting classified material is missing from the files. The petition comes just a day after Massie’s effort to impeach Pete Hegseth was shelved, showing that the outgoing Kentucky Republican is still forcing fights his own party wants to avoid.
Alina Habba Mildon Faces a Bar Complaint and Loses Her $50 Million Contract
Former Trump lawyer Alina Habba Mildon is facing possible discipline from New Jersey’s attorney ethics office over her role in a sexual harassment settlement at Trump’s golf club. The complaint involves Alice Bianco, who was a 21-year-old server at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster in 2021 when, she said, a manager began harassing her. According to the complaint, Mildon, a club member, persuaded Bianco to drop her lawyer and then arranged a $15,000 settlement that included a nondisclosure agreement, which is illegal under New Jersey law. The ethics office accused Mildon of “demonstrably divided loyalties,” saying she never disclosed her financial relationship with the club, and it said she acknowledged in a June interview that her actions violated conflict-of-interest rules. Trump formally hired Mildon less than a month after the settlement, and Bianco later sued and won a $400,000 settlement from the club and Mildon. Possible penalties range from a warning to disbarment, and Mildon’s lawyer called the filing “the first step in a long process.”
Mildon was also fired from a $50 million contract with a family company that hired her weeks before Trump pardoned the family’s patriarch. Concord Partners terminated her in a Nov. 4 letter citing a “failure to perform duties,” The New York Times reports. The company is run by the daughter of Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan billionaire banker who had faced felony bribery charges before Trump granted him a full pardon weeks after Mildon started the job. His daughter had donated $3.5 million to a super PAC tied to Trump. Trump himself erupted after the Times disclosed the deal, calling it “totally obnoxious and outrageous” and saying, “I don’t want her paid.” Mildon, who denies any role in the pardon, keeps the $6.5 million she was already paid plus an $8 million signing bonus, and a person close to her says she plans to sue.
Mildon’s legal troubles keep piling up, and her new husband is now under scrutiny too. A person close to the Herrera family told the Times that her priorities shifted after she started dating Turhan Mildon, a 25-year-old Turkish investor she married in September. The Times found he has made misleading or disputed claims about his businesses, his influence and even his age. Mildon had accused Trump ally Richard Grenell of skimming money from a $17.6 million donation she said came from her husband, but a White House review found the money actually came from a government account in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Courts have already ruled that Mildon served unlawfully as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor during Trump’s second term. She and Trump are also asking the Supreme Court to overturn nearly $1 million in sanctions for legal claims an appeals court called “indeed frivolous.”
Trump Claims Victory in Iran as Tehran Refuses to Give Up Its Uranium and the War’s Costs Mount
Trump used his Veterans Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery to declare that the U.S. has already won the war with Iran. “We fought back. And we seriously fought back. And we won,” Trump said. “Just a question of when we want to end it.” He added that he wants “a total victory, not a 93% victory,” and claimed it would “take them 25 years to rebuild back what we have destroyed.” Trump also insisted that “America did not start a war with Iran,” arguing that “Iran has been waging war on America since 1979.” As he has for months, he said the conflict would be over soon. But more than eight months after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, there’s still no deal, and Iranian forces keep attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz every day.
Peace talks appear stuck after Iran vowed never to give up its enriched uranium, which is the Trump administration’s top demand. Mohsen Rezaei, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Tehran “will not remove even a single particle of enriched nuclear material from the country.” That cuts against a central U.S. goal, since the administration wants any deal to include Iran giving up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Iran’s lead negotiator, parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, told Al Jazeera that the ball is in Washington’s court and that the U.S. must “make and announce” a decision on Iran’s latest proposal. He also demanded that the U.S. accept a new arrangement for the Strait of Hormuz that Iran worked out with Oman. Oil prices rose about 1% after Iran rejected the uranium transfer, with Brent crude settling at $92.76 a barrel.
Iran is threatening to strike U.S. bases in Europe and is disputing Pete Hegseth’s claims about its military. “If American aircraft take off from an American military base, even one located in a European country... to bomb Iran, we will strike those bases as well,” Rezaei told Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen TV. Hegseth claimed this week that the U.S. had struck 13,000 targets and destroyed more than 80% of Iran’s nuclear industrial base, saying Iran’s “navy sunk, their air force grounded.” Iran’s Defense Ministry dismissed those numbers as “deceptive figures fabricated by Trump and the defeated Pete.” CBS News notes that neither side has offered evidence for its claims. Despite Hegseth’s assertion that the U.S. controls the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said two more oil tankers hit mines there on Wednesday.
The war’s costs are hitting Americans at home and U.S. allies abroad. Households that rely on heating oil, mostly in the Northeast, are expected to pay $2,977 this winter, up 70% from last year, because the Iran war has driven up prices. The insurer Allianz Trade estimates the war will cause more than $200 billion in physical damage to Persian Gulf nations, most of them close U.S. allies, with economic losses reaching $790 billion by 2030. More than 80 energy facilities in the region have been hit, mostly in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain. In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Patriot missiles his country needs to stop Russian attacks are “going to the Middle East” instead. “What do we have? Empty Patriot systems and Russian ballistic missiles that, in most cases, we have nothing to shoot down with,” he said.
Other news:
A new poll finds most Americans see Trump and MAGA as the biggest losers of the midterms, and many of his own supporters agree. In a Politico survey of 2,000 adults conducted Nov. 7-10, 62% named Trump as a loser of the election and 59% said the same about the MAGA movement. Another 51% named moderate Republicans, and 48% named Elon Musk, who poured nearly $500 million into GOP campaigns. Among self-identified MAGA Trump voters, 45% called their own movement a loser of the midterms, though only 34% put Trump himself in that category. Far fewer Americans counted moderate Democrats (14%) or progressive Democrats (10%) among the losers. After first congratulating Democrats, Trump questioned on Monday whether the elections were “honest.”
Another senior woman in Trump’s White House is reportedly on her way out after the midterm losses. White House Cabinet Secretary Meghan Bauer, the aide who serves as the link between the president and his Cabinet, is expected to follow former chief of staff Susie Wiles out the door, MSNOW first reported. Trump has “grown increasingly frustrated” with Bauer in recent months, according to the outlet, and her role could be absorbed by new chief of staff Stephen Miller. A White House official called Bauer a “valuable part of the team” who would “continue to work in a new role.” She joins a growing list of high-ranking women who have been fired or left, including Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Tulsi Gabbard and press secretary Katie Zacharia. “I think some of the men are not being held to the same standard,” said Sarah Matthews, a former Trump deputy press secretary, pointing to Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel, who have kept their jobs through repeated controversies.
Joe Biden says he wouldn’t have run for a second term if he had known he had cancer. “If I had known that I was feeling lousy because I had cancer, I would’ve not gone forward,” Biden told People magazine ahead of the release of his memoir. “I don’t think an 80-year-old man with cancer should be running” for president, he added. Biden was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer months after leaving office in 2025. He still insisted his disastrous June 2024 debate “wasn’t consequential” and that he was “the best-equipped person to do the job.” He also defended pardoning his son Hunter, saying of Trump, “If I hadn’t pardoned... anyone who’s dealt with me, he would go back and try to do harm to them.”
World leaders at the COP31 climate summit warned that “the world we know is over” without urgent action, and Trump didn’t show up. “Our response to the threat of overshoot must be overwhelming, or the world we know is over,” said Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, describing bright coral near her home that had bleached white within months. Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley warned that the world is on track for 2.6 to 2.8 degrees Celsius of warming, calling overshoot “a debt of heat, borrowed against our children’s future.” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for a windfall tax on the profits oil and gas companies have made from the Iran war, declaring, “The dinosaurs did not have a lobby. Fossil fuels do.” Trump and China’s Xi Jinping were among the major leaders who skipped the summit in Turkey. Scientists described a darkening mood, with climate scientist Bill Hare saying, “People talk about feeling as though things have gone backwards.”
A complaint to the IRS claims a FIFA-paid worker was secretly serving as Gianni Infantino’s personal housekeeper in Miami. The complaint, seen by The Guardian, alleges the worker “performed domestic work exclusively” for the FIFA president and his wife at their Miami home while being paid through a “Fifa-affiliated entity.” If the IRS investigates and the claims are proven, FIFA could lose its tax-exempt status in the U.S. “The costs of any domestic staff are met by the Fifa president personally,” a FIFA spokesperson said, and the organization accused critics of a “concerted and ongoing effort” to undermine Infantino. A spokesperson for Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said the committee is “looking closely” at the developments as Democrats prepare to scrutinize Infantino’s ties to the Trump White House. Infantino’s predecessor, Sepp Blatter, called him a “dictator,” mocking his decision to give Trump a peace prize shortly before Trump launched the war on Iran.
Nvidia stock rebounded on Wednesday as its investigation into Jensen Huang’s relationship with an alleged Chinese spy got underway. Shares rose 3.8% in early trading, cutting the company’s loss in value since Friday to about $272 billion. Nvidia has hired the elite law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz for a “thorough and independent” investigation led by Joon Kim, the former acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan. Kim previously led the investigation into sexual harassment allegations against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Analyst Dan Ives expects the probe to take four to six weeks and puts the chance that Huang is removed at roughly 15%. Nvidia says Huang will keep running the company “without interruption” in the meantime.
The driver who crashed into pedestrians outside a Los Angeles Metro station has been arrested for DUI and murder. Police identified the driver as 61-year-old Ihor Demianenko, who was booked early Wednesday on suspicion of driving under the influence and three counts of murder. His bail was set at just over $6 million. The minivan crash in North Hollywood killed three women and critically injured two others, including food vendors, at a busy intersection during rush hour. “We don’t know if this was done intentionally [or] if it was done by accident,” LAPD Capt. Warner Castillo said. Investigators are going through video of the crash frame by frame.
Ohio State has suspended a fraternity after a viral video showed two pledges being set on fire. In a 911 call released by police, a woman said members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter “put gasoline on him and lit him on fire, and then just kind of stood there and laughed.” The 35-second video shows a hooded man with his pants in flames lunging at another, as a ring of people watches. Both students were treated for second- and third-degree burns, according to a Columbus police report. Ohio State placed the fraternity on interim suspension, and its national CEO said it is “committed to holding those responsible accountable.” The chapter has been sanctioned at least seven times since 2001, according to the student newspaper The Lantern.
ESPN analyst and former NFL coach Rex Ryan has been arrested on charges that he hit two pedestrians in Nashville and drove away. Police say the two people were crossing a downtown street with the right of way last week when Ryan turned on a red light and ran over their feet. The pedestrians, who suffered minor injuries, say they flagged him down at the next light, where he got out to argue with them, and they photographed him and his license plate. Ryan turned himself in on Wednesday and faces six misdemeanor charges, including leaving the scene of an accident and failing to render aid. He was released ahead of a court date next month. “We are aware and are in touch with Rex,” ESPN said, adding that no decision on discipline has been made.
See you soon.
— Aaron
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