Scott Colom's path to a historic U.S. Senate upset ran through the Mississippi Delta — where Emmett Till was abducted, Fannie Lou Hamer fought for the ballot and the blues became an American art form.

Why it matters: Nearly 150 years after Reconstruction, Mississippi sent a Black American to the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1881. The votes pushing Colom toward that milestone came from communities where Black residents spent generations fighting for the ballot.

Driving the news: The Associated Press projected the race for Colom on Wednesday, handing Democrats a historic upset over Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

By the numbers: An Axios analysis of AP county returns found Colom ahead in 16 of the 18 counties in the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area.

• Colom collected roughly 100,000 votes to Hyde-Smith's 62,000 — a 38,000-vote advantage.
• In 2020, Democrat Mike Espy carried 15 of those counties by about 25,000 votes, according to Mississippi's certified county returns. Colom's share of the two-party vote climbed from about 56% to 62%.
• Statewide, Colom led Hyde-Smith by about 4,700 votes out of more than 962,000 counted when the AP called the race Wednesday — a margin of roughly half a percentage point.

What they're saying: "Mississippi voters made history because they refused to be intimidated, discouraged, or counted out," NAACP president Derrick Johnson said in a statement.

• Johnson said Mississippi voters showed up despite efforts to remove voters from the rolls.

Zoom in: Colom's electoral map traces some of the most painful and defining chapters of Black American history.

• Coahoma County: Home to Clarksdale and the famed crossroads associated with the legend that bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. Colom led with about 4,700 votes to 1,300.
• Leflore and Tallahatchie counties: Emmett Till was abducted near Money in Leflore County in 1955. His body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River in Tallahatchie County, where an all-white jury acquitted his killers. Colom led by about 4,200 votes in Leflore and 1,300 in Tallahatchie, according to AP returns.
• Sunflower County: Fannie Lou Hamer, who lived in Ruleville, challenged Mississippi's racist voting restrictions. As late as the spring of 1965, only 155 Black residents had registered to vote in the county, according to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Colom led with about 5,300 votes to 1,700.
• Washington County: Robert F. Kennedy visited Greenville during his 1967 tour of Delta poverty. 29.4% of Washington County is still in poverty per the Census Bureau's 2020–2024 estimate. Colom led with about 8,700 votes to 2,400.

Zoom out: Colom didn't suddenly turn the Delta blue. Espy won most of it in 2020. But Colom widened the Democratic margin.

• In DeSoto County, which falls within the heritage area but outside the Delta's historic heartland, Colom led by about 3,300 votes. Hyde-Smith won there by roughly 12,100 in 2020.
• Colom also swept the Golden Triangle counties of Lowndes, Oktibbeha and Clay, his home region in northeastern Mississippi. He won all three by double-digit margins and improved on Espy's 2020 performance.

Between the lines: The historical symbolism stretches beyond the Delta.

• Colom led with about 12,100 votes to 9,700 in Forrest County, named for Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Ku Klux Klan's first grand wizard.
• Hyde-Smith faced criticism during her 2018 race against Espy after saying she would sit in the front row if invited to a public hanging. She later apologized to those offended.

The bottom line: The region where Black Mississippians fought some of America's fiercest battles for voting rights helped elect the state's first Black U.S. senator in 145 years — and raised a new question.

• Can political representation finally bring economic change to the Delta?

President Trump is turning the federal government into an investor in dozens of private companies, and some Democrats are considering following his lead as their party emerges emboldened from the midterm elections.

Why it matters: Democrats are gaining new power to scrutinize Trump's corporate investments, even as his approach gains traction within their own party.

• They're looking at investments and aid for clean energy and other priorities, like support for energy infrastructure.

State of play: The Trump administration's investments in energy, critical minerals and other industries are already drawing calls for congressional investigations.

"The Trump administration has widened the aperture for industrial policy," Jennifer Granholm, who served as President Biden's Energy Secretary, said at a gathering of energy and climate experts Axios attended in Berkeley, Calif., last month.

• "You're not going to have state ownership of enterprises," Granholm told Axios in an interview afterward. "But maybe you do take a little bit of an ownership slice" for national security or global competitiveness reasons, she said.
• Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has also expressed openness to federal ownership stakes, while raising concerns about the Trump administration's lack of transparency and accountability, he told Semafor.

Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) has argued that the U.S. needs to consider a more aggressive industrial policy to compete with countries like China, while warning against direct government ownership.

• "We are long overdue for having a conversation about, 'should the United States even have an industrial policy?'" Casten said at a recent University of Chicago event. "For a long time, we viewed industrial policy as something that socialists do."
• Casten said he would support the U.S. ensuring domestic manufacturing of certain parts of supply chains, like electronic control systems that operate energy infrastructure, and even pursuing "smart tariff policy" to have competitive markets.

The big picture: The Biden administration spent billions subsidizing clean energy and semiconductor manufacturing. Trump has taken government intervention a step further by acquiring ownership stakes in companies ranging from Intel to critical mineral producers.

• It's been a striking reversal for a president who has repeatedly criticized Democrats for government overreach.

How it works: The Trump administration has announced more than $30 billion in investments across nearly 50 deals involving government ownership and related financial arrangements, according to a Council on Foreign Relations tracker.

• The investments span semiconductors, critical minerals and energy — strategically important industries where high costs and long development timelines can make private financing difficult.

Flashback: Washington has taken ownership stakes in private companies before, including during the 2008 financial crisis. But those investments were intended as temporary measures to rescue struggling businesses, unlike Trump's national security-focused investments.

What they're saying: "Equity from the U.S. government can act as patient capital that helps derisk an investment with a long time horizon or technological risk that would otherwise not attract sufficient private investment," said Jonathan Hillman, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow behind the tracker.

• Hillman said the deals announced since January 2025 have also mobilized $28.5 billion in private capital.

Yes, but: Some politicians and energy leaders warn that direct government ownership could open the door to political favoritism and market distortions.

• "Government is not a venture capital fund. It's not a private equity fund. It's not well suited to pick winners and losers in the marketplace," said Tim Pawlenty, former Republican governor of Minnesota who now leads the Solar Energy Industries Association, at the same University of Chicago event.
• "If it starts to go down the slippery slope of 'it's just the flavor of the day company because we like it' or they're well connected or whatever, then you got problems."

Threat level: "Buying stakes in public companies is so, so, so dangerous," Casten said.

• "I have no idea how a future president unwinds our stake in Intel without totally tanking Intel stock," he added, referring to the administration's roughly 10% stake in the semiconductor giant.
• To avoid such concerns, Hillman suggests creating a federal chief investment officer to oversee investments and eventual sales.

The other side: The White House defended the investments as a way to rebuild American manufacturing and secure critical supply chains, emphasizing that companies participate voluntarily, spokesman Matthew Middleton said.

What we're watching: Democrats could spend the next two years scrutinizing Trump's investments — while debating whether a future Democratic administration should make similar deals of its own.

Newly elected Democrats from ruby red states are leading a charge to take on corporate health care and some business practices that they say drive up health care costs.

Why it matters: Democrats may not be anywhere close to agreement on Medicare for All, but they're relatively united around confronting Big Health Care after campaigning hard on the populist theme.

Driving the news: While expanding Medicare, reversing GOP Medicaid cuts and reviving enhanced Obamacare subsidies are getting most of the attention, there's a subtle shift in rhetoric and policy positions toward blaming big health companies for the affordability crisis.

• It reflects the reality that a substantial expansion of the federal government's role in health care isn't in the cards while President Trump is in office, but populist themes could unite the rank-and-file and even draw in some Republicans.
• Even candidates who didn't constantly rail about drugmakers or insurers have adopted policy ideas that, until recently, were confined to left-leaning think tanks.

Case in point: Incoming Texas Sen. James Talarico ran on breaking up big health care companies and "stop[ping] hospitals and insurance companies from overcharging patients." (He also supports allowing Americans under 65 to join Medicare.)

• South Carolina Sen.-elect Annie Andrews ran on limiting insurer profits per enrollee, expanding the number of drugs subject to Medicare drug price negotiations and banning private equity-owned hospitals.
• Incoming Kansas Sen. Adam Hamilton supports expanding Medicare drug price negotiations and extending the negotiated prices to private health plans, as well as addressing Medicare Advantage overpayments from the federal government.
• Other targets include medical debt, pharmacy benefit manager practices and caps on out-of-pocket drug costs.

Many of these ideas already have buy-in from more-senior progressives.

• Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has sponsored the Break Up Big Medicine Act, which is co-sponsored by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, which would prohibit common ownership of health plans and providers.
• Incoming Michigan Sen. Abdul El-Sayed, an avid Medicare for All supporter, ran on support of the Warren-Hawley bill, as well as expanding Medicare drug price negotiations.
• The House's health care working group, made up of both progressives and moderates, pitched capping "excessive" hospital prices and enacting site-neutral payments.

The big picture: Voters have made clear that they want lower health care costs. So while a broad overhaul of the health system may not immediately be on the table, Democrats are looking for ways to deliver.

• Powerful health industry groups are poised to push back, arguing that the populist policies would threaten patient care and access in some communities.
• But the ideas under discussion could gain favor with some Republicans.

What they're saying: When asked at an Axios event on Tuesday whether Congress should address ownership ties between insurers, PBMs and pharmacies, Rep. Morgan Griffith — the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce's Health Subcommittee — said, "I've only heard the case for breaking them up."

• "There's just something in your gut that bothers you when your pharmacy, your PBM and your insurance company are all owned by the same people," he added.

What we're watching: Forcing drugmakers to lower prescription drug prices could be a particularly compelling target, given Trump's demonstrated interest in the topic.

• He has previously called on Congress to codify the "most-favored-nation" deals he made with pharmaceutical manufacturers that require the companies, in some cases, to offer Americans prices on a par with what's paid abroad.
• The Senate Finance Committee's top Democrat, Ron Wyden of Oregon, told reporters this week that he's open to a deal codifying those agreements in exchange for an expansion of the number of drugs Medicare can negotiate on, according to InsideHealthPolicy.

The bottom line: It was only four years ago that Democrats struggled to find enough votes for the modest drug price negotiations that exist today, marking the first successful legislative attempt to directly lower health care costs in any sector by either party.

• Now, they're more willing to push for change and confront big industry players.

There was an unusually sharp partisan mood shift in the wake of the midterms, according to sentiment data from Morning Consult that was shared exclusively with Axios.

Why it matters: While big partisan swings in consumer sentiment are typical after a presidential election, they have been much smaller in midterm races.

• The latest numbers show just how tightly Americans' views on the economy are now intertwined with politics.

By the numbers: Democratic consumer sentiment rose 6.5 points in the five days after the election compared with the week before, while Republicans' mood fell 6.4 points.

How it works: Morning Consult's index considers survey responses from approximately 5,000 U.S. adults.

• They're asked five questions, including on people's personal finances and financial outlook, as well as their views on overall business conditions.

Zoom in: The biggest shifts in sentiment were in respondents' feelings about the future.

• Republicans' outlook across all five metrics fell after the election. Their confidence in business conditions over the next five years plummeted 12 percentage points.
• Democrats, meanwhile, had a jump of 9 percentage points in confidence about business conditions (although they remain negative about it) and an even bigger increase — 12 percentage points — in optimism that their own finances would improve over the next year.
• Of note: Both sides were more negative about their own finances compared with a year ago.

Zoom out: Overall sentiment, which includes Independents, barely moved — ticking up less than one point, per Morning Consult. The opposing partisan shifts appear to have canceled each other out.

Reality check: It's early days, and sentiment could shift quickly.

Between the lines: Consumer sentiment was once a telling measure of how people would actually spend their money: Good vibes meant more spending.

• Lately, it's looked more like a political measure.
• "Sentiment matters because it's vibes," says Eli Yokley, a U.S. politics analyst at Morning Consult.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is shaking up her team for the second time in the past few months as she prepares to make the biggest decision of her political life.

Why it matters: The overhaul comes as the democratic socialist leader is debating whether to run for president in 2028 — or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's seat, which is up the same year.

Zoom in: Ocasio-Cortez has parted ways with her longtime digital fundraising firm, Middle Seat, according to three people familiar with the decision.

• At the same time, sources said, she's brought on Aisle 518 Strategies — the company led by Democratic strategist Tim Tagaris, who oversaw Bernie Sanders' record-breaking online fundraising strategy in his two presidential campaigns.
• Middle Seat has been key to Ocasio-Cortez's operation. Over the past two years, she has paid the firm more than $6 million — about a quarter of her operation's disbursements during that period.
• AOC is close with Sanders, and if she decides to run for president, progressives say, she would be able to quickly staff up with his former advisers.

But Ocasio-Cortez's latest move doesn't necessarily signal that she's leaning toward a presidential run or a Senate bid.

• Tagaris' firm has helped power the small-dollar fundraising operation for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who's widely expected to run for the White House.
• It also has worked with other Democrats who are potential contenders for president — Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to the company's website.
• Middle Seat, the firm AOC is leaving, has Sanders roots as well: It was founded by alumni of the Vermont senator's 2016 campaign.

Flashback: Ocasio-Cortez's reorganizing follows several changes she made to her staff this year, as Axios previously reported.

• They included parting ways with her longtime campaign manager and creative director, as well as bringing aboard a few former aides.
• The Washington Sun reported this week that AOC had hired Freeland Ellis, a Sanders alum, as a communications aide.

What they're saying: A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez declined to comment.

• Tagaris declined to comment, and Middle Seat partner Kenneth Pennington did not respond to a request for comment.

Homicides fell 15.2% across major U.S. police jurisdictions through the first nine months of 2026, extending a retreat from pandemic-era violence that began under President Biden and continues under President Trump.

The big picture: A new Major Cities Chiefs Association report found declines in all four major violent-crime categories among 66 reporting U.S. large law enforcement agencies from January through September, compared with the same period last year.

• Homicides dropped 15.2%.
• Robberies fell 9.1%.
• Rapes declined 3.5%.
• Aggravated assaults decreased 3.4%.

State of play: Combined, the four categories fell 4.9% — or 13,822 fewer reported offenses.

• Fifty-one of the 66 agencies reported overall declines.
• Homicides dropped in 49 jurisdictions, increased in 15 and remained unchanged in two.

Zoom in: Some of the nation's largest cities recorded striking homicide declines.

• Memphis: Homicides plunged 36.5%, from 156 to 99.
• San Antonio was down 36.5%, Indianapolis down 33.6%, Philadelphia down 21.2%, Aurora, Colorado down 65.2% and Newark, New Jersey down 59.1%.

The other side: New York City was a major outlier and reported more violent crime in all four categories, including 24.5% more homicides and 14.2% more robberies. Its combined violent crime total was up 5.1%.

• San Diego reported 45.2% more homicides and Las Vegas recorded a 23.4% jump.
• Washington, D.C., saw homicides fall 29.9%, but robberies surged 41.1%, pushing its combined violent-crime total up 9.7%.

The caveat: The figures remain preliminary. Houston reported no data because of a records-system transition, and Tulsa recently transitioned to a new crime reporting system, the report notes.

Jensen Huang's potential ouster from Nvidia has plunged the AI industry into uncharted territory — a corporate earthquake that dwarfs even the chaos unleashed by Sam Altman's temporary firing from OpenAI in 2023.

Why it matters: Nvidia is the backbone of the global AI economy, with its chips, investments and financial guarantees sustaining an entire ecosystem of companies worth trillions of dollars.

• At the center of that vast financial flywheel is Huang, who spent 33 years making himself synonymous with Nvidia — and Nvidia synonymous with the AI revolution.
• "This is no ordinary CEO. This is no ordinary company. This is no ordinary sector. This is no ordinary time," economist Mohamed El-Erian wrote on X, warning of contagion across the AI industry.

Zoom in: As recently as two weeks ago, the notion of Nvidia without Jensen was unthinkable.

• Even after his affair with a suspected Chinese spy came to light, President Trump and Nvidia's board stood behind him, Silicon Valley's elite rallied to his defense and betting markets suggested he would survive.
• It took revelations of a second affair — this time with an executive who reported directly to Huang — to shatter that consensus and bring his storied reign to the brink of a stunning end.

Driving the news: After that second affair came to light Wednesday night, Nvidia's board reportedly met to settle Huang's fate, though there was still no decision as of early Thursday morning. The White House was read in.

• The market reaction has been brutal. Nvidia had already shed more than $1 trillion in market value since the initial scandal erupted, and shares plunged further in after-hours and pre-market trading overnight.
• One of Wall Street's most prominent voices on tech, analyst Dan Ives, said Nvidia was worth 25% less without Huang.

Zoom out: Huang's rise was the stuff of Silicon Valley legend: The Taiwanese immigrant went from cleaning toilets at a Kentucky boarding school and waiting tables at Denny's to building one of the most valuable companies in history.

• Huang and two fellow engineers hatched the idea for Nvidia at a Denny's booth in 1993, launching a chipmaker that would revolutionize gaming, transform modern computing and ultimately power the AI revolution.
• Clad in his trademark black leather jacket, Huang became a global AI rock star — with a cult of personality that drew adoring crowds, calmed markets and commanded the attention of world leaders.

The big picture: Huang's apparent downfall comes amid mounting anxiety over the AI industry's future, as new financial, political and regulatory risks threaten one of the largest infrastructure buildouts in history.

• The timing is especially fraught for Anthropic, whose historic IPO — backed by a $10 billion commitment from Nvidia — looms as a referendum on Wall Street's faith in the AI trade.
• Huang spent years defending the industry's soaring valuations and dismissing warnings of a speculative frenzy. Now his own scandals could help burst the bubble he insisted didn't exist.

What to watch: The blast radius could extend far beyond Silicon Valley and Wall Street, threatening to engulf the Trump administration in a scandal over its handling of sensitive technology exports to China.

• Huang forged a close alliance with Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who loosened restrictions on chip sales even as other officials raised concerns about Chinese espionage and smuggling.
• Top Senate Democrats are already demanding that Lutnick and other senior officials preserve records of their dealings with Nvidia and Huang, laying the groundwork for a sweeping investigation.

The bottom line: As veteran China watcher Bill Bishop wrote after Huang acknowledged his first affair: "There is rarely just one lie."