MORNING REPORT

Wednesday, November 11 | By Sarah Fortinsky

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In today's issue:

▪ Congress faces lame-duck test

▪ Nvidia stock slips after probe news

▪ Mississippi Senate race meets deadlines

▪ Russell Brand sentenced to 10.5 years

4 storylines to watch as Congress dives into lame-duck session

Lawmakers returned to Washington this week with a laundry list of legislative items to push through and a myriad battles brewing.

As the lame-duck session gets underway, here are some notable storylines to watch.

Hegseth impeachment

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) filed articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth yesterday, which could potentially force a vote on the Pentagon chief’s fate as soon as this week.

The articles accuse Hegseth of “high crimes and misdemeanors” related to the Iran war and to the deaths of hundreds of civilians in boat strikes in the Caribbean against alleged drug smugglers. Massie first introduced the impeachment articles in September, but Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) adjourned before a vote could come to the floor.

Hegseth will hold a press conference about the effort today at 8 a.m. EST. It will be his first press conference in more than six months.

The impeachment push is gaining steam on Capitol Hill, where even some House Republicans are weighing whether to support the resolution after Democrats triumphed in the midterms last week, with exit polling showing the Iran war was a major factor.

Even if Massie has the votes in the House, GOP leaders may look for a way to avoid a trial in the Senate during this Congress.

Senate leadership

Some Senate Republicans are urging their conference to delay the party’s leadership elections, which are scheduled for today.

Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), a moderate from a key battleground state, joined his conservative GOP colleagues in calling on Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) not to rush into leadership elections without first reflecting on “what went wrong” in the midterms, “how we fix it, what we stand for, and how our agenda must focus on the concerns of the American people.”

The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports for The Hill Insider that Senate Budget Committee Chair Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and other conservatives want to delay the leadership elections to extract more leverage over the GOP lame-duck agenda.

They say that could put them in a better position to push through a reconciliation package and potentially cancel the Thanksgiving recess if necessary.

Permitting reform

The Senate voted yesterday to advance a major bipartisan bill that aims to speed up the construction of energy and other infrastructure projects.

Supporters of the legislation see the lame-duck session as the best shot to pass permitting reform, since they do not expect the next Democratic-led Congress to be able to reach a deal with the Trump administration.

Some Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), have expressed concerns about the bill’s impact on environmental and tribal laws, which could prove to be an obstacle to getting the package through both chambers.

President Trump also tossed an apparent curveball into the process on Monday, saying he opposed a provision of the bill incentivizing wind turbine buildout. Senate passage is not guaranteed, but the 73-25 vote on Monday makes it likely.

House GOP leader race

House Republicans are also gearing up to elect a new leadership team today that will have to navigate the conference’s transition to the minority party, as some GOP members say the election losses last week require a shake-up at the top of leadership.

Sudiksha Kochi has a look for The Hill Insider at how the contests for the some of the top spots are shaping up, with House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) challenging House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) for minority leader.

Republican Study Committee Chair August Pfluger (Texas) has announced a challenge against House GOP Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.), while Republican Reps. Greg Steube (Fla.) and Erin Houchin (Ind.) are challenging current GOP Conference Chair Lisa McClain (Mich.) for her post.

But there has similarly been a push to delay the leadership election on the House side. House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said it’s too soon to make a decision today about the direction of the party, arguing leadership elections should be delayed “until we decide how to hold each other accountable and what our path forward should be.”

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has not endorsed either candidate to replace him, and Trump has said he plans to stay out of the leadership elections.

▪ The Hill: James Talarico, John Cornyn meet in Washington.

▪ The Hill: Hegseth orders major revamp of military education.

Dig into the midterm data yourself

Explore 2026 election results, voting trends and historical comparisons with Decision Desk HQ, available through The Hill Insider Premium.

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3 Things to Know Today

The Supreme Court allowed border barrier construction to continue in and around Big Bend National Park in Texas, in a significant win for the Trump administration. The high court halted a lower court decision to pause the construction as the underlying case played out.
Three-way talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States opened Tuesday in the United Arab Emirates. Trump’s son-in-law and global envoy, Jared Kushner, expressed optimism about potential progress, though expectations for a breakthrough remain low.
Trump downplayed the possibility of renewed military action against Iran but said the U.S. would maintain its wartime posture in the Middle East to protect Arab and Gulf allies. The president’s comments followed a meeting with Iran’s primary interlocutor, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

LEADING THE DAY

TOOK A TUMBLE: Nvidia shares slipped 5 percent after the opening bell yesterday following news that the chipmaker opened an investigation into reports that its CEO, Jensen Huang, was the “target of a foreign intelligence effort.”

Huang acknowledged on Sunday that he had been intimate with a business executive who U.S. intelligence says was spying for China, according to The New York Times. The Chinse foreign ministry denied the allegations as a smear campaign.

Nvidia’s board said it had “no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised,” but said its “inquiry will examine all available information.”

Nvidia is central to the artificial intelligence race, and its chips power many of the data centers and computing systems that train AI models. A spokesperson for the company said Huang will continue to lead the company during the investigation, and Huang said he supports the review and will cooperate fully with it.

Trump defended Huang in brief remarks Sunday evening, telling reporters, “I haven’t heard he’s done anything wrong,” and that “I just know he’s a fine person, but you never know what’s going on.”

The president added that he would “certainly” take Huang on his upcoming trip to China.

▪ The Hill: Who is Jensen Huang, CEO facing probe over affair with alleged spy.

▪ The Hill: Top Dem demands probe into Huang’s affair.

DEADLINE DAY: Mississippi’s too-close-to-call Senate race between GOP incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Scott Colom will come into greater focus today.

Today is the deadline for counting provisional ballots — or “affidavit ballots,” as they’re called in Mississippi — which voters can request when their identities cannot be verified at the polls. Before provisional ballots can be counted in Mississippi, they must be processed and verified. Today is also the deadline to receive absentee ballots by mail that are postmarked by Election Day.

The results must be certified by all 82 counties by Friday, at which point a lawsuit can be filed, since there is no automatic vote recount in close races or path to challenge the results in the state.

Colom leads Hyde-Smith by roughly 2,700 votes, according to Decision Desk HQ’s (DDHQ) tally. Alaska’s Senate race is also too close to call, with roughly 70 percent of the vote in and Democrat Mary Peltola leading Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan by 637 votes in the latest DDHQ tally.

▪ The Hill: Colom calls out election raters for writing off his Senate campaign.

▪ The Hill: Sullivan campaign files motion over rejected absentee ballot lawsuit.

FOURTH DOWN: The Department of Justice lost its fourth top official in the week since the midterm elections, with Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Brett Shumate resigning yesterday, The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch reports.

The Civil Division handles a wide range of cases and has seen departures soar under the Trump administration amid an uptick in caseloads.

Harmeet Dhillon, who led the Civil Rights Division, was the first to depart after the election. U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones, whose South Florida district oversaw the sweeping probe of the investigations into Trump, and John Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for the National Security Division, both resigned Friday.

▪ The Hill: Sonia Sotomayor hopes SCOTUS overturns presidential immunity decision.

WHEN & WHERE

The president holds executive time, a photo opportunity and policy meetings.
The House will convene at 10 a.m.
The Senate will convene at noon.

ZOOM IN

BATTLEGROUND AGAIN? As Democrats swept last week’s elections, including in several GOP strongholds, Florida remained something of an outlier, electing Republicans to the governor's mansion and Senate.

But Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried is pushing back against the narrative that her state’s elections results brought only bad news. Instead, she is taking a victory lap, using the election results to make the case to national Democratic operatives and donors that Democrats are not a lost cause in the state.

In an interview with The Hill’s Amie Parnes, Fried recounts telling Democratic operatives in recent days that “Yes, we could win ... Imagine if we put a little more into Florida.”

Democrats may not have won statewide last week, but they did make significant inroads.

Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) won reelection by nearly 3 percentage points last week — a much narrower margin than when Secretary of State Marco Rubio won his Senate reelection bid by more than 16 points in 2022.

Similarly, Florida Gov.-elect Byron Donalds (R) won his election last week by a little more than 1 point, whereas Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) won by nearly 20 points in 2022.

Fried also noted that Democrats made progress elsewhere in the Sunshine State last week.

Democrats flipped 16 Republican-held state House seats and another in the state Senate, Fried noted. The party also broke the Republican supermajority in the Florida House, and Democratic candidates are on track to hold on to the four congressional seats redistricted to favor the GOP.

Florida Democrats, Fried told Parnes, “created all of this by our sheer grit.”

▪ The Hill: Where all 18 unprojected House races stand.

ELSEWHERE

BRAND BEHIND BARS: Actor Russell Brand was sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison for raping a woman and sexually assaulting three others at a time when his stardom was on the rise.

Brand maintained his innocence throughout the trial and testified that all his encounters were consensual. He was cleared of two counts of rape and one count of attempted indecent assault.

The prosecutor in the case said Brand “abused the influence and power that came with his fame” and “used it to facilitate access to women without which the offending could not have taken place. It also fed his own view that he could commit such offenses with impunity.”

Brand has become an antiestablishment flag-bearer and a prominent figure in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement. After a jury found Brand guilty last week, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly went live on her YouTube page to express her dismay at the verdict.

“I don’t believe the charge... and I don’t have to believe them just because the jury came through with the opposite conclusion,” Kelly said, adding, “I feel indignant that this obvious conservative stalwart has been targeted.”

Elon Musk similarly weighed in on a post mocking Brand’s conviction of a crime more than a decade after it happened, saying the fact that England does not have a statute of limitations for rape or sexual assault is “a crazy legal standard.”

▪ The Hill: White House staff treated Trump like a ‘baby’: Calley Means.

OPINION

Protecting America’s digital infrastructure starts with common sense, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) writes in The Hill.
Democrats must not cede power via permitting bill that would fast-track data centers, Kenny Bruno writes in The Hill.

THE CLOSER

And finally … Former President Jimmy Carter’s family farm in Georgia was sold to The Conservation Fund for $8.5 million, with plans to preserve the land and eventually open it up to the public.

“We’re honored to help ensure this land remains [a] healthy habitat for wildlife, and we look forward to the day it is open to everyone who wants to experience it,” said Stacy Funderburke, the organization’s vice president for the central Southeast region.

The nonprofit plans to transfer the property to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources in 2028. The land could open to the public for hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities as early as 2027.

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