Slog AM: Mississippi Elects First Black Man to Senate Since Reconstruction, American Honors Veterans with Deportations, AI Mogul Resigns in Disgrace Despite Trump’s Support

Blue wave crests in Mississippi. The AP has called a 55th Senate seat for Democrats, NPR reports. Winner Scott Colom will be the first Black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction and the white supremecist voter suppression that followed.

If you will it, it is no dream. In Georgia, columnist Charles Blow’s dream to reverse the Great Migration and reconcentrate Black voters in the South feels like it paid off. (Many have written about this but Atlanta Magazine has a more recent look summarizing Blow’s book The Devil You Know). Black residents make a few more percentage points of the population in Atlanta now than in 2020 when he moved there. Of course, so did my Italian and Puerto Rican relatives from New York City, and they are also running up the score for Democrats. The state became a majority-minority state last year. 

Alaska is still looking blue. Democrat Mary Peltola is beating both Dan Sullivans in the latest vote count, according to the Hill. She could be on track to win 50 percent of the vote, avoiding the complication of ranked choice voting. If she wins, Democrats will caucus with a 56-44 majority. Ballot counting is expected to continue into next week, as overseas ballots continue to add to the outstanding vote totals until Nov. 18.

Seattle’s City Council is moving faster than normal to pass the city budget and could do so by Friday, PubliCola reports. The vote was originally planned for Monday—which is also earlier than the Council usually votes on the budget—but Budget Chair Dan Strauss moved it up.

BREAKING: Jensen Huang resigned today from Nvidia following an affair that threatened US national security. The suspected spy who shagged Huang was a Chinese tech CEO whose company was investigated for smuggling regulated Nvidia AI chips to China, and the New York Times has a liveblog on the aftermath. The NYT previously reported that Huang had been “affectionate” in a hotel with a younger VP who was his direct report. Huang called it quits Thursday despite a strong defense from Donald Trump, a fellow philanderer and Nvidia shareholder. The President feigning ignorance about the scandal is a reminder that he doesn’t care much about national security, The Atlantic Daily observes.

Why are we still calling this a ceasefire? Israel bombed another hospital in Gaza. Al Jazeera reports the air strike killed six Palestinians including a surgeon. Israel claimed it was targeting a Hamas commander holed up in the hospital. Even the Jerusalem Post acknowledged that Hamas hasn’t killed any Israelis in a while. 

Veterans and their loved ones are still fighting against deportations. I covered so many veteran and spouse deportations carried out by Trump administrations that they don’t really count as news any more. But in honor of Veterans Day yesterday, here is the latest example from an 80-year-old Vietnam War veteran in San Diego whose wife was detained by ICE after living in the US for 25 years: “It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense,” Elton Stovell told CBS 8 San Diego. “I’m a senior citizen now. At least let my wife stay with me until I croak.”

They’re deporting the squirrels’… owner. The German man who protested against New York officials when they killed his pet squirrel, Peanut, is in immigration jail after allegedly overstaying his visa, the AP reports. Not only is this guy not the wurst of the wurst, but he was actually a political rallying cry for JD Vance during the campaign: “The same government that doesn’t care about hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant criminals coming into our country doesn’t want us to have pets. It’s the craziest, the craziest thing,” Vance said in 2024.

A Bellevue man is suing Kalshi under a Washington law that bans online gambling. He’s asking a judge to hit Kalshi for his sports betting losses totalling over $300,000, Ars Technica reports. Addiction is a bitch, right? So is civil litigation. That opens a new can of worms for gambling site Kalshi, which claims prediction market betting isn’t gambling. Washington State officials are already suing the company for violating its state online gambling laws. I’m hoping the court will at least return the $90,000 in fees they made off the guy over his many sports bets. 

Will Seattle host the Women’s World Cup? We’re in the mix for hosting some games in the 2031 tournament, the Seattle Times reports. Atlanta is already promised to host the final, but semifinal games might come to Lumen field, the paper says.

Outbreak alert: A dairy worker died after contracting bird flu amid a Yakima Valley outbreak, according to a United Farm Workers BlueSky post. The union says that “It is clear that most workers are not being informed of the risks of handling sick cattle and infected milk. They are being given no information on flu shots or avian flu testing.”

You can recycle electronics in SoDo on Saturday, Nov. 14. Friendly Earth Int’l is taking items at their Seattle Warehouse at 1560 1st Ave S from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., I learned from a post in West Seattle Blog. Friendly Earth claims to dispose of e-waste without letting it end up in a foreign landfill and doesn’t use child or prison labor. It’s the little things. 

Washington, you are relatively so hot right now. Major cities around the Puget Sound broke heat records relative to this time of year on Wednesday, KING 5 reports. It was 66 degrees at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, breaking the 1990 record high of 65 degrees. It’s a reminder that this winter’s weather is gonna be whacky.

R.I.Peanut.

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