Mississippi Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom has flipped Forrest County, a once reliably Republican County named for Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest.

The measure says students in elementary, middle and high school who want to join girls’ athletics must first submit statements from their healthcare providers verifying their “biological sex”. Opponents have raised alarms the measure may force girls to endure “invasive and extreme” genital exams to participate in school sports.

Several tanker ships linked to Iran have been loitering over subsea Internet cables in the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz—a possible indication that the Iranian government is preparing to attack such undersea infrastructure in response to any renewed US and Israeli strikes.

The movements of three sanctioned tankers and an Iranian fishing boat have been tracked near major undersea cables by the maritime intelligence firm Windward in October, according to the Financial Times. Six active cables currently cross through the contested Strait of Hormuz, linking the Middle East to Europe, Africa and Asia, with two more cables having segments under construction in the region.

Even just days leading to the general election, it was reported that ICE paid an astonishing $495 million for a decaying and vacant prison site in ++Appleton, Minnesota++  that only asked for $75 million from the state last year. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is now demanding Congress investigate this deal, which involves the transfer of “almost half a billion [tax dollars] to a Trump donor for a prison worth just $75 million.”

Maria Teresa Kumar on ++PBS News++said,“Latinos are not a monolith until you come for our families. And that’s basically what we saw last night [in Texas]. It was a repudiation of the ICE raids that have been happening. I can tell you that I can go around the country and there’s not a Latino, whether they work in Wall Street or they work in the fields, that don’t know someone that’s been caught in the dragnet.”

European leaders have firmly rejected any attempt by the United States and Russia to reshape the continent’s security architecture without their involvement, following President Donald Trump’s suggestion that Washington could be nearing a sweeping agreement with Moscow extending beyond Ukraine to encompass all of Europe.

The remarks, made by Trump on Thursday, have raised fresh concerns among Washington’s European allies that the US administration could be moving towards a security arrangement that accommodates Russian President Vladimir Putin’s long-standing demands at the expense of European interests.

Democratic challenger Scott Colom expanded his narrow lead over Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in the Mississippi Senate race on Friday afternoon.

As of 5:30 p.m. ET, Colom led Hyde-Smith by 2,498 votes, out of a total of 953,222 counted, with an estimated 97% of the votes in, according to the Associated Press.

That was 685 votes more than Colom’s lead over Hyde-Smith when the day began.

Anti-AI activists in Amsterdam flooded onto an unfinished Microsoft data center campus on Friday as part of a massive demonstration against big tech.

The protest, first reported in the US by The Verge, saw around 100 activists scale the site’s fences and block construction, while hundreds more demonstrated against the AI industry outside. At one point, a handful of protestors even scaled a massive construction crane, lighting off smoke bombs and affixing a banner to the side declaring “fck AI.”

Democrat Scott Colom is overperforming among affidavit votes in the race for U.S. Senate in several North Mississippi counties that have completed counting those ballots. Between Alcorn, Chickasaw and Itawamba counties, incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith netted just 71 votes with affidavit ballots, despite holding substantial overall leads in two of those counties.

Hyde-Smith needs significant gains to overcome Colom’s 2,010-vote lead statewide.

they both need to be replaced pronto

BEIRUT (AP) — From Michigan to the Middle East, Arabs are celebrating Abdul El-Sayed’s election win and delighting in his introduction of Arabic terms like “habibi” and “inshallah” to the American political lexicon.

After being the target of Islamophobic rhetoric on the campaign trail, the rising political star who will be the first Muslim American U.S. senator has mocked his critics on the right while championing the Palestinian cause and leaning into his faith and Egyptian heritage.

Election Day brought a big blue earthquake of anti-Trump sentiment that rumbled as far inland as Kansas and shook GOP ground in the Carolinas and Texas. By the time late victories rolled in on Tuesday night, there had been so many wins that subsequent Democratic pickups had begun to feel more like aftershocks, even in states that haven’t voted blue since Bill Clinton was in the White House.

Florida narrowly missed the quake, with Republicans winning all the major statewide races by the thinnest of margins.

SAN JUAN, Texas (AP) — Latino voters moved sharply to the left in the midterm elections, propelling Democrats to an improbable electoral sweep in Texas and in battleground House races from coast to coast.

It’s a remarkable pivot for a demographic that had shifted toward President Donald Trump just two years ago.

SAN JUAN, Texas (AP) — Latino voters moved sharply to the left in the midterm elections, propelling Democrats to an improbable electoral sweep in Texas and in battleground House races from coast to coast.

It’s a remarkable pivot for a demographic that had shifted toward President Donald Trump just two years ago.

not nearly as bright though

The GREAT WHITE WORM shall PREVAIL!!!

Warren argued Democrats succeeded in midterm contests across the country “by being populist economic fighters who were unafraid to call out the corrupt politicians and corporate interests who have rigged the system at the expense of everyone else.”

“Now, Democrats must deliver,” the progressive senator wrote, urging her party to push Trump to live up to his vow to work with Democrats in the new Congress. “We should force him to do that on the affordability and corruptionissues that drove this election—or call his bluff.”

“Bob Dylan, Robert Zimmerman…” - David Peel

While Trump repeatedly projected confidence in his party’s prospects ahead of the Nov. 3 election, his most important advisors knew what was coming, according to the Thursday report in The Times by Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, and Shane Goldmacher, which described a call held by six of the president’s most important strategists a week ahead of the election.

“I’m getting my affairs in order. I suggest everybody else do the same,” top adviser James Blairreportedly quipped, sparking laughs.

On Tuesday, Trump told us to vote as if he were on the ballot. And that is exactly what the American people did.

Together, we stood up to authoritarianism and a president who does not believe in the Constitution or the rule of law. And we won.

With Democratic control over the Senate and the House, we will now—finally—be able to hold Donald Trump accountable.

The American people have had enough. They are demanding real change and bold policies that will dramatically improve their lives.

That is a big deal. But as important as it is, it is not enough. We have got to do more.