National News
Mississippi Flips, and the Senate Goes With It
Scott Colom's win over Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith locks in at least a 55-44 Democratic Senate for January, with Alaska still the one seat left to decide the rest.
CBS News projected Colom's win Wednesday after nearly a week of counting mail and provisional ballots in a race that, with 96% of the vote tallied, had been separated by just a few dozen votes before his lead grew. Colom, a prosecutor, will be Mississippi's first Black senator since Reconstruction and the state's first Democratic senator since 1982 — a state Trump carried by more than 20 points two years ago. Hyde-Smith, Mississippi's first woman elected to Congress, hasn't conceded; Colom has publicly pressed her to speak, asking "Where is Cindy Hyde-Smith?"
For Daniel, this is the number that actually settles the bigger argument running since election night: not whether Democrats would control the Senate, but by how much. A state nobody expected to be in play just handed them an eighth seat and turned a narrow majority into a comfortable one.
The White House Tells Incoming Democrats: Investigate Us and We'll Investigate You
White House counsel Will Scharf warned the next House Oversight chair that "abusive" investigative demands could amount to criminal conduct, as the administration quietly adds 15 lawyers ahead of a Democratic-controlled January.
Scharf's letter to Rep. Robert Garcia, who takes over House Oversight when the new Congress convenes, said subpoenas must serve a "legitimate legislative purpose" and accused Democrats of making "abusive and capricious threats." Trump separately called the plans "extortion" and directed the Justice Department to investigate. Garcia didn't back down: "It appears Donald Trump has something to hide," he said, adding that Congress's oversight power comes from Article I, not White House permission.
Attorney General Todd Blanche struck a more measured note than Trump or Scharf: "Congress has oversight authority. It always has, it always will." But the administration plans to fight subpoenas in court and lean on executive privilege, which could delay any real answers for months or years — potentially past the point anyone still cares.
For Daniel, this is the opening skirmish of a fight that's going to define the next two years in Washington: a White House that spent months quietly lawyering up, now daring the incoming majority to actually use the subpoena power it just won.
A Month From a Shutdown, Congress Still Isn't Close to a Deal
The stopgap that's funding the government runs out after December 11, and the outgoing Republican Congress has barely started the appropriations bills it would need to avoid another lapse.
The current stopgap, H.R. 6500, holds most agencies at last year's spending levels only through December 11. As of early November, the House had passed just 3 of the 12 annual spending bills and the Senate none, and most bills need 60 votes to clear the Senate — meaning Republicans need at least seven Democratic votes to pass anything at all. The National Flood Insurance Program and surface-transportation funding expire the same day.
The timing cuts against Republicans: members return November 9, but the new Democratic-controlled Congress is seated January 3. That gives the outgoing GOP majority an incentive to lock in a full-year deal now, while Democrats who are about to gain leverage have little reason to rush. The last two lapses weren't short — a 43-day shutdown in 2025 and a 76-day Homeland Security-only shutdown that didn't end until April of this year.
For Daniel, the pattern here is familiar enough to be almost routine, which is exactly the risk: a deadline that keeps getting treated as background noise until the week it actually arrives.
USDA Moves to Cut Food Stamps for 6.3 Million People
A rule proposed Monday would tighten SNAP eligibility by ending automatic enrollment for households that qualify only through non-cash welfare services — not the cash assistance Congress originally had in mind.
The rule would limit "broad-based categorical eligibility" to households receiving direct cash assistance under TANF, cutting off those who currently qualify through non-cash, TANF-funded services like job training or child care subsidies. USDA says the carve-out drifted far from Congress's original goal of cutting paperwork, and points to a 17.2% payment-error rate in these households versus 6.7% elsewhere, plus cases like a Minnesota millionaire who qualified for benefits under the current rules.
The ripple effects reach beyond the grocery bill: about 1.78 million children would lose automatic eligibility for free school meals, though USDA estimates 97% could still qualify by applying based on income; roughly 28,000 would end up paying full price. Another 42,000 kids could lose Summer EBT benefits, and about 5,500 women, infants, and children could lose WIC eligibility. Public comments are open through December 10, with the rule fully phased in by fiscal year 2029.
For Daniel, this is the kind of rule that won't dominate a single news cycle but will quietly reshape a lot of households' grocery budgets over the next three years — the sort of story that's easy to miss entirely if you're not looking for it.
Financial News
Wall Street Cuts Its 2027 Profit Forecast Nearly in Half
35% → 15% expected S&P 500 earnings growth, 2026 vs. 2027, per LSEG IBES estimatesAnalysts now expect S&P 500 earnings growth to slow from roughly 35% this year — the fastest pace since 2021 — to about 15% in 2027. The main driver isn't a weakening economy so much as brutally tough comparisons: "The bad thing is the comparisons are going to be very difficult next year," said Walter Todd of Greenwood Capital. Higher borrowing costs after September's quarter-point Fed hike are also cooling the debt-fueled AI buildout, and the market's forward price-to-earnings ratio has already fallen from 22 in January to 19.
The clearest pressure point is AI capital spending itself: the five biggest hyperscalers are expected to spend just over $800 billion this year and $1.1 trillion next, but that's a growth rate falling from nearly 100% to 37% — meaning smaller revenue gains ahead for the chipmakers and infrastructure suppliers riding that wave. More than 40% of Russell 3000 stocks have already fallen at least 20% from their highs since June, even with the index itself near records.
For Daniel, Morgan Stanley's Mike Wilson frames it as "a classic mid-cycle transition," and Barclays notes 15% growth would still beat the market's 10% median over the past 35 years — context worth holding onto the next time a slowing number gets reported as a crisis.
Oil Craters on Iran De-Escalation Hopes and a Supply Glut
Crude posted its steepest weekly drop since the pandemic after Trump said he was "highly unlikely" to order fresh strikes on Iran — just as OPEC output and a global surplus were already pushing prices down.
Brent fell $4.57, or 4.65%, to $93.75 a barrel, with WTI down $3.19 to $87.64 — extending a 16% weekly slide, the steepest since COVID-19 began. Traders read Trump's restraint as a step toward de-escalation, even though attacks on shipping near the Strait of Hormuz continued and Iran's senior security official said Tehran won't negotiate until Washington meets seven conditions from a June interim agreement.
The de-escalation story is only half of it. JPMorgan estimates a global surplus of roughly 1.4 million barrels a day in October, and OPEC output has risen 1.38 million barrels a day to 22.87 million — supply simply outrunning demand. The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, meanwhile, has fallen to its lowest level since October 1982, a cushion that's gotten thinner at the same time prices have gotten cheaper.
For Daniel, cheaper oil is the rare story that's straightforwardly good news at the pump — but the unresolved security risk in the Gulf means this could reverse fast if the diplomacy stalls or the shipping attacks escalate.
Snap's Co-Founder Keeps Selling as the Stock Sinks to $5
$5.34 Snap's close Wednesday — down 34% this year, within sight of its 2026 lowCo-founder and CTO Bobby Murphy sold another 4 million shares this week for about $20 million under a prearranged trading plan, bringing his 2026 sales to roughly 14.3 million shares, or $75.7 million, alongside a separate donation of nearly 1.2 million shares to charity. The sales follow a scheduled plan rather than a new signal, but they land just days after a brutal earnings reaction.
The key question is whether Snap can show its North American user base has stabilized.— the read from Snap's Q3 report, Nov. 5
Snap fell more than 14% the day it reported third-quarter results: revenue rose 14% to $1.72 billion but missed estimates slightly, and North American daily active users — Snap's highest-value ad audience — fell 6% to 92 million. The company actually turned a $56 million profit, versus a $104 million loss a year ago, and adjusted EBITDA more than doubled. None of that mattered next to the user decline and guidance that offered no upside.
For Daniel, it's a reminder that a company can genuinely improve its bottom line and still lose the market's confidence if the underlying user numbers are moving the wrong way.
Tech News
Jensen Huang Resigns as Nvidia's CEO
Thirty-three years after co-founding the company, Huang is out, effective immediately, following a national-security scandal over an affair US intelligence linked to a suspected Chinese spy. CFO Colette Kress steps in as interim chief.
Nvidia's board accepted Huang's resignation Wednesday and confirmed it Thursday morning in a regulatory filing titled, simply, "Nvidia Announces CEO Transition." The board praised his "profound" and "immeasurable" contributions but offered no succession plan — Kress will run the company on an interim basis while continuing as CFO, a role she's held since 2013. The board also named its first-ever chair, Harvey Jones, a former Synopsys CEO who's sat on Nvidia's board since 1993.
Nvidia shares have erased more than $300 billion in market value since last Friday alone. With Huang holding roughly 60 direct reports and no clear successor groomed, analyst Gil Luria called it a transition the company simply "is not prepared for."
For Daniel, this is the moment a very personal scandal became a genuine corporate crisis — the company at the center of the entire AI boom just lost the only CEO it has ever had, overnight, with no plan for what comes next.
Anthropic Prices Its IPO at Up to a $1.4 Trillion Valuation
$70–78 per-share price range; trading expected to begin Nov. 19 on Nasdaq as "ANT"The range implies a fully diluted valuation of up to $1.404 trillion — up sharply from the $965 billion the company fetched in a May fundraise, but below the roughly $2 trillion it was reportedly chasing just a couple of months ago. Anthropic is offering 825 million Class A shares, which would raise $57.75 billion to $64.35 billion before a separate $26 billion private placement to AMD, Broadcom, Google, Micron, Microsoft, Nvidia, and TSMC — Google and Nvidia each putting in $10 billion.
Anthropic remains a public benefit corporation; its founders keep 50.1% of the voting power through a special class of stock, and a Long-Term Benefit Trust elects a board majority, so public shareholders will have limited say regardless of share price. The offering is widely seen as the real-world test of investor appetite for AI company valuations at a moment when markets have otherwise gotten jumpier about AI spending.
For Daniel, a trillion-dollar-plus valuation is the headline, but the detail that matters more is the pricing itself landing well under where the company was aiming this fall — a sign even the biggest names in AI are meeting real resistance on price right now.
OpenAI's Revenue Crosses $10 Billion. So Do Its Losses.
Quarterly revenue jumped 50% as enterprise sales overtook consumer subscriptions for the first time — but the adjusted operating loss grew right alongside it, to nearly $11 billion.
OpenAI, Q3
Anthropic, Q3
Per internal documents reported by the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI's enterprise sales roughly doubled from the prior quarter and became its single largest revenue source, overtaking consumer subscriptions, which grew a more modest 20%. Co-founder Greg Brockman credited demand for AI coding tools; CFO Sarah Friar has said OpenAI will be a public company in 2027. The company has cut prices, hired new sales leadership, and signed distribution deals to chase corporate customers.
The two companies' figures aren't directly comparable — different accounting treatments, different disclosure choices — but the shape of the story is the same at both: revenue climbing fast, losses climbing just as fast or faster, and a race to lock in enterprise customers before the music stops.
For Daniel, this is the number that cuts through a lot of AI-hype noise: real revenue, genuinely growing — and a company still losing more money than it brings in, by a wide margin, even as it insists a 2027 IPO is on track.
Sports News
Payton Puts the Broncos' Offensive Line on Notice at the Bye
Denver is 7-2 and resting, but Sean Payton spent the week reviewing film and didn't like what he saw up front — and he's not ruling out changes to the starting five before Las Vegas visits on November 22.
7-2
Nov 22
Speaking on "The Herd" with Colin Cowherd, Payton said the offensive line "didn't block them very well" against Carolina and that the unit "has to improve," pointing to depth at the position as something coaches are examining closely during the break. He stopped short of naming names, but the message was pointed enough to leave the door open to changes at one or more starting spots.
All those little things — we're going to look at them during the bye.— Sean Payton, on the Broncos' offensive line
For Daniel, it's a classic Payton move: a 7-2 team with a bye-week cushion, and the head coach using the quiet week not to celebrate the record but to publicly put his own linemen on notice before a stretch run that includes the Raiders, Steelers, and a Christmas night trip to Kansas City.