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Scott Colom on Cusp of Historic Senate Upset in Deep-Red Mississippi, Fueled by Surge of Black Turnout
Even on a night when Democrats clobbered the GOP up and down the map and won decisively in states as red as Texas, South Carolina, Kansas, and Iowa, very few analysts believed Mississippi—where President Donald Trump won by nearly 23 points in 2024—would be competitive, let alone a nail-biter that dragged into the next day.
But NBC election analyst Steve Kornacki explained Wednesday morning that with thousands of votes left to count in overwhelmingly Democratic Hinds County, “Colom could absolutely win this.”
In a 5-4 decision that now looms large, the US Supreme Court shot down Republican efforts to stop the counting of mail-in ballots postmarked on or before Election Day that arrive afterward. Those ballots, which can continue arriving until November 10, may ultimately decide the election.
Even if Colom falls short, his strong showing was evidence of what the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, described as "historic voter turnout" in Black communities, in response to Republicans' attack on the Voting Rights Act.
Following the Supreme Court's Louisiana v. Callais decision earlier this year, several GOP-controlled states, including those in the Deep South, moved to redraw congressional and state legislative districts in ways that voting rights advocates warned would dilute Black voting power.
On the campaign trail, Colom described Callais as "a threat to our democracy" and said Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, who proposed legislative maps that would have drawn Black lawmakers out of their districts, was seeking to stop Black voters from "being able to pick leaders they want."
When the court’s conservatives kneecapped the Voting Rights Act, they inspired a fierce backlash among Black voters across the South," explained reporter Jim Saksa in an analysis for Democracy Docket. "Massive Black turnout helped Democrats coast to victory in Georgia and made the Senate races in Mississippi and Louisiana the tightest seen in decades."
Voter turnout in Mississippi is on pace to be about 40% higher than in the last midterm election in 2022. In majority-Black Hinds County, which contains Jackson, unofficial results showed nearly 76,500 votes for the two leading US Senate candidates alone, about 44% more than the total number of ballots cast four years ago.
"The story of this election is not just about who won," said Dominik Whitehead, chief of field for the NAACP. "It's about the Black wave of voters who understood what was at stake and made their voices heard."
Democratic US Senate candidate Scott Colom of Mississippi stands outside the home of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, in a video posted on November 1, 2026. (Screenshot from a video by Scott Colom)
Colom didn’t have to water down his platform much to achieve tremendous gains, even in a deep-red state. As political strategist Paul Hilder explained, he “ran on a ‘commonsense’ economic populist platform aimed at daily life: gas, groceries, healthcare, and closing hospitals, plus Medicaid expansion.”
In the nation’s poorest state, where nearly 1 in 5 residents rely on Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, this message was potent. It was especially effective against Hyde-Smith, who has comfortably won her previous elections and was relentlessly criticized for dismissing voters’ concerns about high prices.
For example, in DeSoto County, which Trump carried by 24 points in 2024, Colom led Hyde-Smith by more than six points in early returns.
"[Colom] won many switchers, and the Republican vote collapsed," Hilder said. "Swing voters are more volatile than ever, especially when they’re economically hard-pressed. They respond to common sense, and they’ve decided Trump and the Republicans are not on their side."
Mississippi has not elected a Democrat to the US Senate since Sen. John C. Stennis, a conservative segregationist, won his seventh term in 1982. And although it has the highest proportion of Black residents of any US state, Mississippi has not sent a Black senator to Washington since Reconstruction, when Republican Blanche K. Bruce, who was born into slavery, was elected by the state Legislature.
Colom told NPR last week he’s always believed change was possible and that it has failed to materialize only because of neglect by national Democrats, who have long written the state off as unwinnable.
"The reality is, Mississippi has never been a lost cause," he said. "We've been a betrayed cause."
Incoming House Oversight Chair Has Two Words for 'Trump Crime Family' and Their Allies: 'Lawyer Up'
“They are going to need to plant new forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
Democrats are expected to aggressively probe the depths of what Garcia (D-Calif.) called “an unprecedented amount of corruption” by the “Trump crime family.”
Trump has added billions of dollars to his personal wealth during his second term. Garcia said Democrats plan to examine Trump’s cryptocurrency empire and whether foreign governments and businesses have used it to purchase political favors.
He said Democrats intend to investigate Donald Trump Jr.’s personal investments and his involvement with companies that have received government contracts. The business dealings of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has been accused of using foreign diplomacy to line his own pockets, will also be investigated.
Responding to voter concerns about the cost of living, which fueled Democratic wins across the map on Tuesday, Garcia said “any CEO that has been ripping off the American public” should prepare to face scrutiny, particularly those whose companies have engaged in price gouging, abused government contracts, or financially benefited from their relationships with Trump.
Punchbowl News noted several powerful executives and officials who could be under the gun:
Expect the tech executives closest to [Trump], including SpaceX’s Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, to be early targets for House Oversight, [the House Energy and Commerce Committee], and [the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee]. Democrats will also want to grill OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei about their [artificial intelligence] products.
“Anyone who has been in bed with the Trumps” is going to have “no choice but to respond to our questions,” Garcia said of businesses alleged to have gotten favorable treatment due to their relationship with the president’s family.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) will also face scrutiny over its handling of the investigation into the late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein. A report last month by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee said the DOJ “appears to be covering up” evidence of Trump’s relationship with the billionaire predator and laid out accounts involving 11 women who connect Trump to Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking operation—five of them have accused the president of sexual assault in Epstein’s presence.
Garcia said Tuesday that in contrast to the closed-door hearings conducted under Republican control, he plans to hold “real public hearings” that “center the survivors” of Epstein’s abuse.
Abuses by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will also be examined.
At least 62 people have died in ICE custody since Trump returned to office, while federal immigration agents have opened fire on people in at least 32 incidents, killing nine and injuring 15, including US citizens and immigrants who appeared to pose no threat. Agents have also been documented committing widespread civil rights violations, using excessive force, and engaging in racial profiling.
“Oversight Democrats have documented hundreds of incidents of abuse and misconduct by DHS immigration enforcement agents, and every single one of them deserves a full investigation,” Garcia said in April in a statement with Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.).
Then-US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on March 3, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Garcia has stressed that "it can't just be the agents" who face accountability, but anyone “involved in the abuses of ICE."
“The agents are taking direction in some cases from others, and policy is being written to encourage that level of activity and that level of elimination of due process,” he said, adding that he wants “accountability at all levels, and that starts at the top.”
Garcia signaled that top DHS officials, including former Secretary Kristi Noem and her top aide Corey Lewandowski, could face scrutiny over a $220 million taxpayer-funded advertising campaign featuring Noem and allegations that she and Lewandowski used their positions for personal gain. The DOJ was reported in October to have opened a criminal investigation into Lewandowski over whether he personally profited from his government role.
Garcia will likely oversee only a fraction of the inquiries into Trump and his allies’ conduct launched by a Democratic Congress.
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the incoming chair of the House Armed Services Committee, is expected to dig into Trump’s decision to launch an unauthorized aggressive war against Iran, as well as its financial cost, attacks on civilians, and the administration’s shifting justifications for the now eight-month-old conflict.
He also said he would examine the legality of Trump's unauthorized strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, which have killed at least 243 people and have been described as illegal extrajudicial assassinations by human rights groups. He also called for more transparency surrounding the Trump administration's regime change operation and commandeering of oil in Venezuela, and its crippling blockade and threats to invade Cuba.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth during a ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, on September 11, 2026. (Photo by Finn Gomez/Getty Images)
Smith, who has served in Congress for nearly three decades, described Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as less transparent than anyone who previously held the position.
"Since I became ranking member, I have had the cellphone number of every single secretary of defense," he told The Washington Post earlier this week. "Hegseth does not speak to me."
He has said, "There are Republicans who would support impeaching Hegseth who might not support doing it to Trump."
But that doesn't mean Trump is safe. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday that he would not rule out pursuing a third impeachment of Trump, though he cautioned that Democrats would have to weigh it against their other priorities.
Raskin, who managed Trump’s historic second impeachment, called it "one of the people's major instruments of constitutional self-defense against a president who continues to act like a king or an emperor."
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