Two Democratic senators are launching an investigation into whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lied to Congress about his reason for a 2019 trip to Samoa after The Associated Press and The Guardian published documents in August refuting his testimony. The new inquiry is one of a vast array of investigations planned into the Trump administration after Democrats regained control of the House and Senate from Republicans in the midterm elections.
Democratic nominee Scott Colom has defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s closely contested U.S. Senate race after a prolonged ballot-counting process, giving the state its first Black U.S. senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction.
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The senior soldier, who was arrested in the U.K. on suspicion of spying for Russia, is expected to be charged in Britain in the coming days, a U.S. official said.
After U.K. charges are filed against Lt. Col. Brandon Tyner, expected Sunday or Monday, the intention is to then prosecute him under the U.S. military justice system, the official said.
A second U.S. official also confirmed his name and said he had been deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq and Qatar.
Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.
Tyner was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service and obtaining or disclosing protected information. He had been assigned to a NATO unit at a base near Gloucester, England.
— Emma Burrows and Konstantin Toropin
Dr. Brian Monahan is no longer serving as the attending physician for the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court, two U.S. senators said Thursday.
Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California confirmed Monahan’s departure but provided few other details. The Navy didn’t offer a public comment when asked about the departure.
The Navy, which assigns doctors to the office, has launched an investigation, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter.
Monahan held the top job in the Office of the Attending Physician for nearly 18 years. The office is responsible for providing emergency medical assistance to members of Congress and the Supreme Court as well as congressional staff and visitors.
Monahan was sometimes in the news for discussing matters such as Sen. Mitch McConnell’s health and for administering a COVID-19 vaccine to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
— Ben Finley, Konstantin Toropin and Lisa Mascaro
Smith, who is best known for his commentary on ESPN and has been critical of the president, said they discussed last week’s midterm elections.
“He believes that it was about others and not himself,” Smith said of Trump’s message on Republicans’ midterm trouncing.
Smith joined comedian Bill Maher last month for dinner with Trump at the White House.
Smith had toyed with the idea of running for president, but announced in September that he was ruling out a run because it would lead to an end of his broadcasting career.
Sen. Raphael Warnock said he and Colom spoke by phone Wednesday evening.
“This is a realignment,” said Warnock, who won his own milestone election six years ago in Georgia.
“After last night’s victory, what we saw in South Carolina, what we saw in North Carolina, we now have proof of concept,” Warnock said about the Democrats’ sweep of Southern states.
“When LBJ passed the Civil Rights bill into the law, he said to one of his advisors, I think I’ve signed the South away for a generation,” Warnock recalled. “Well, I think we’re on the other side.”
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer says Congress must demand answers from Jensen Huang and others at Nvidia about how they may have put U.S. national security at risk.
Schumer says the Trump administration also must answer for what it did once it learned about Huang’s relationship with a suspected Chinese spy.
Among the questions that need to be answered is what the president knew when he personally invited Huang aboard Air Force One on a state visit to Beijing earlier this year, Schumer said in his social media post on X.
“Americans deserve to know that those at the highest levels of power are putting America first, not their bottom line or their personal friendships,” Schumer said.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said Thursday he received a letter from a U.S. attorney informing him he’s being investigated for conducting a congressional inquiry.
Blumenthal, who is set to chair the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations when the Democratic majority takes control of the Senate next year, said the implied investigation is baseless.
In his own letter to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Aaron Reitz, Blumenthal said the public has a right to know under what circumstances corporations donated millions of dollars to projects Trump supports. He directed Reitz to preserve records and correspondence with the White House and senior Justice Department officials related to Reitz’s letter.
“I will not be intimidated,” the senator wrote.
A message seeking comment from Reitz’s office was sent Thursday.
The development comes days after Attorney General Todd Blanche said Democrats could not “go around threatening” companies and the administration with investigations.
It shows once again how “this administration has repeatedly undermined the free market economy,” said the Democratic leader, who is on track to become the House speaker when the new Congress convenes in January.
“This is just another example of Donald Trump weighing in on behalf of his views connected to corporate America, as opposed to focusing on working class America,” Jeffries said.
The House has passed its second veterans bill in two days that’s designed to boost the compensation for roughly 58,000 retired, combat-injured veterans.
The measure is focused on helping those who retired based on a disability with less than 20 years of service. They currently lose some of their military retirement pay when they also receive disability compensation through the Department of Veterans Affairs. The bill would allow them to collect all their retirement and disability pay, which the Congressional Budget Office has estimated would boost total compensation by an average of about $1,450 a month.
The House passed a more comprehensive measure the day before on Veterans Day, but that Republican-led effort would pay for the income boost by changing how the department rates tinnitus or sleep apnea, lowering disability compensation for some future veterans. Democrats and some veterans groups strongly opposed that offset.
The Senate can consider either bill now, or the legislative process will start over next year with the new Congress.
The House Democratic leader is demanding a classified briefing for all members of Congress about the Nvidia situation.
He said Huang’s resignation was the “right thing” to do.
Jeffries said to the extent that national security may have been compromised, Americans deserve answers.
The top Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs and House Intelligence committees, Rep. Greg Meeks and Rep. Jim Himes, are digging into what happened, he said.
In a social media post, photos show Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pinning the award and shaking hands with the service member. Hegseth’s post says, “We love soldiers. We love standards. Well done, Specialist.”
A Pentagon official says Hegseth welcomed the soldiers of the Old Guard — the unit that guards the tomb at Arlington National Cemetery — to the Pentagon and awarded the soldier the Joint Service Commendation Medal “for the execution of his duties at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on November 11, 2026.”
The soldier, who was only identified as Spc. Iglesias, reprimanded Hegseth and his staffers when a loud laugh was heard after they took photos at the site following a Veterans Day ceremony.
The Joint Service Commendation Medal is considered to be one of the higher awards in the military and isn’t typically issued to junior enlisted service members.
The Trump administration says it has returned more than $12 billion, almost 99%, of the revenue obtained from the sales of Venezuelan oil to the nation since the administration ousted former President Nicolas Maduro in January.
In a report released Thursday by the State Department, the accounting firm KPMG said the sales of Venezuelan crude, along with minor amounts of gold, minerals and fertilizer, produced $12.26 billion, almost all of which has been returned to Venezuela under the terms of a broad energy deal concluded with the interim authorities in Caracas earlier this year.
The report said that as of Sept. 30, the end of the 2026 U.S. budget year, only $168.6 million remained in an escrow account managed by the U.S. Treasury.
Under the terms of the deal, Venezuelan crude is sold on the open market with proceeds going into the U.S.-managed account. Venezuelan officials then seek approval for those funds to be returned to the country to pay for infrastructure and humanitarian needs.
He thanked law enforcement responding to the shooting in Washington.
“The Capitol complex as we understand it is safe,” Jeffries said at a weekly news conference.
Five people were shot, one fatally, on Thursday in a Washington, D.C., neighborhood within walking distance of the White House, police said, and the suspected gunman later shot and killed himself as a swarm of officers responded to a nearby apartment building where he was barricaded.
Two Democratic senators are launching an investigation into whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lied to Congress about his reason for a 2019 trip to Samoa after The Associated Press and The Guardian published documents in August refuting his testimony.
The new inquiry is one of a vast array of investigations planned into the Trump administration after Democrats regained control of the House and Senate from Republicans in the midterm elections.
Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., said in a letter Wednesday to Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit group known for anti-vaccine activism that was formerly chaired by Kennedy, that they were starting an investigation.
The lawmakers asked the group for a broad range of documents related to Kennedy’s Samoa travel, his 2024 presidential campaign and his Senate confirmation process.
Lawmakers are insisting they still want a briefing from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang despite his resignation Thursday so he can answer questions about his interactions with a Chinese businesswoman who reportedly was also acting as a spy for Beijing.
They also want to ask about the company’s security protocols against foreign adversary espionage as well as other topics.
Rep. Brian Mast, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said the committee was in contact with Huang’s team as recently as Wednesday night about the interview. Lawmakers had made their initial request for the interview Nov. 5. He also said Huang would receive a subpoena if necessary to compel his appearance.
“They made their offer for what they would like to do, and we said, like in any negotiation, ‘no, this is what we’ll accept or your subpoena comes for the day after,’” Mast said.
Mast said Huang has indicated a willingness to appear for the interview and that the committees involved in the inquiry wanted to see him “sooner rather than later.”
President Trump has reacted to the resignation of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang by saying Huang “has done a fantastic job,” and adding, “There is only one man to take his place — TIM COOK of Apple.”
“A Legend replaces a Legend!” Trump wrote on his social media site of Cook, who is Apple’s former CEO.
Huang, who, like a lot of top tech CEOs, was close with Trump, left his post Thursday after his extramarital affair raised national security concerns. Huang faced growing calls to resign after his affair with an alleged Chinese spy.
Late Wednesday, media reports also said Huang had another extramarital affair with an Nvidia employee who reports to him. The FBI is investigating Huang’s affair with an alleged Chinese government agent.
Party leaders hailed the senator-elect’s triumph, with nods to the South’s emerging status as a political battleground after other victories from North Carolina and South Carolina to Georgia and Texas.
“Scott ran the campaign of a lifetime and re-imagined what’s possible for Democrats in the South,” Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of New York posted online.
Former President Bill Clinton, a native Arkansan who campaigned with Colom days before the election, addressed the senator-elect on social media, saying he won “because you believe in the promise of your state’s people. And they believed in you right back.”
The company named Colette Kress as interim CEO. She’s the current executive vice president and chief financial officer.
Huang faced growing calls to resign after his affair with an alleged Chinese spy. Late Wednesday, media reports said Huang had another extramarital affair with an Nvidia employee who reports to him.
Shares of Nvidia, one of the largest companies in the world, plunged 10% in premarket trading Thursday.
Because of the Black population and its alignment with Democrats, Mississippi’s general elections have been closer for years than those in neighboring Southern states. Trump won by double digits in each of his three presidential contests, but in 2023, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves managed to win reelection by a margin of just 3 percentage points.
Colom and other Black party leaders and strategists insisted throughout 2026 that he could narrow the gap with strong Black turnout, Republican discontent and an uptick in Democrats’ usual share of the white vote in Mississippi.
Results showed strong turnout in the Mississippi Delta, which has a concentration of majority-Black counties. But nearly all of the state moved leftward from the 2024 election, when Trump carried Mississippi by nearly 23 points.
The contest was a latecomer to the national spotlight, finally drawing attention and money months after Black senators, including Georgia’s Raphael Warnock and Maryland’s Angela Alsobrooks, first urged donors and party leaders to see it as winnable.
The son of a onetime Republican who worked for President Ronald Reagan, Colom produced one of the year’s most widely circulated ads. After Hyde-Smith seemed to brush off high beef prices by saying consumers could choose other proteins, Colom cut a 30-second spot depicting incredulous voters saying they’d “pick another senator instead.”
When Trump came to Corinth, Mississippi, in late October to rally with Hyde-Smith, Colom walked the line of Trump supporters as they waited to enter. He introduced himself and asked about their concerns.
President Donald Trump’s administration wants to sell public lands to states, tribes and local governments as part of an effort to “decrease the size of the federal estate,” according to a new plan presented by the Interior Department.
Agency officials said the sale of federal property would allow the government to focus resources on “nationally significant” lands, which were not defined. They offered no details on what parcels could be sold, nor the scope or location of potential sales.
The proposal drew quick pushback from some lawmakers, including Trump’s former Interior secretary, Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, showing it faces strong headwinds in Congress even before Democrats assume the majority in January.
The Interior Department’s five-year strategic plan also calls for land transfers and exchanges to support greater energy production, a centerpiece of the administration’s pro-fossil fuel policies. It reflects the Trump administration’s view of most public lands as assets to be used, rather than to be set aside for preservation.
Democratic nominee Scott Colom defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith on Wednesday in Mississippi’s closely contested U.S. Senate race after a prolonged ballot-counting process, giving the state its first Black U.S. senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction.
Colom’s narrow victory is a seismic shift in Mississippi, which has been controlled mostly by white conservatives for generations despite having the largest share of Black residents of any U.S. state. The outcome adds to a decisive midterm rebuke of President Donald Trump, whose party suffered defeats in several Republican-controlled states, and it will bolster some Democrats’ argument that their future runs through the American South.
“All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this,” Colom told a crowd of hundreds who gathered at Tougaloo College for his victory party. “I had the courage to believe in Mississippi. I had the courage to understand that we can show the country that Mississippi matters.”
