The Journal report (paywall) came out just before 6 p.m. The lede says the board is “preparing to oust CEO Jensen Huang, its founder and chief executive after he had two extramarital affairs, including one with a suspected Chinese spy. The board is preparing to meet as soon as today to determine his future, people familiar with the matter said.”
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Put a fork in ‘er. Cindy Hyde-Smith is done and Scott Colom is the next senator from Mississippi, according to CNN.
I’ve been watching the results all day and I was going to do a post saying essentialy the same thing. Half a percentage point, approaching 5,000 votes. Simply too big a lead to overcome. They didn’t want to pick another protein.
If you’re hungry for news about the final stages of the vote counting in Mississippi, this liveblog from the Mississippi Free Press seems to be quickest and closet to the action.
There’s a para-news topic I’d like to discuss with you. It has to do with how scandals do or don’t develop, what catches fire and what peters out. We know that one of the constant themes of the last two years was that anti-bromide “nothing matters.” A mammoth scandal is uncovered. A few pieces are written about it. And then … nothing. It just falls under the waves. There is a key structural reason for this that gets far too little attention. It turns on the incentives reporters, publications and readers have to pay attention.
The standard scandal reporting progression goes something like this:
Reporters unearth scandal details. Attention shakes free more information and the momentum builds. Eventually public officials announce hearings or law enforcement agencies begin investigations. Sometimes it’s both. Those actions both validate the reality of wrongdoing and create new stories to cover. It’s both the existence and progress of these investigations and the new information they generate. There are things that criminal or legislative investigators — with warrants and subpoenas — can pry loose that reporters almost never can. Eventually you might have resignations or indictments, perhaps reforms.
This is the free, weekly edition of The Backchannel.
I’ve been going back and forth in my head about posts to write about the rapidly expanding scandal tied to NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and presumed Chinese spy Alice Huang (no relation). High-end processors, export controls, NVIDIA’s complex and bubbly investments in its customer companies … these are all highly technical topics where my knowledge is limited. (A parenthetical: I’m being immensely helped by email guidance from TPM readers in these fields, so keep those emails coming.) But I know a lot about the dynamics of political scandals. And if you do, you know that this one is very big because the essential elements are all visible from the beginning.
What are those essential elements?
We have two stories this morning on how the possibility that Mississippi might elect a Black man to the Senate fits with the state’s history.
First, Layla A. Jones writes about the last Democratic senator to represent the state, John C. Stennis, a dixiecrat who was himself deeply involved in the state’s history of white supremacy. Mississippi hasn’t elected a Black senator since the 19th century.
Second, Josh Kovensky speaks with Dennis Dahmer, whose father, Vernon Dahmer, a Black activist in Forrest County, was murdered by the KKK for his efforts to help his community vote. Dennis describes what a Scott Colom victory, secured by Black voters in the state and the backlash to the Supreme Court’s Callais decision, would mean for him.
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Mississippi prosecutor Scott Colom has officially defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in a contest that shocked outsiders, captured national political attention and made history.
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