Politics and views in the United States

Mississippi Democrat confident in Senate contest, Trump doubles down on Iran War, and Michigan Jews hang with El-Sayed.

Transcript

Welcome to 2026 Talks, where we're following our democracy in historic times.

This is the beginning of a new direction for our state.

We are going to win this.

We have already showed the country that Mississippi matters, y'all.

Now we're just going to finish the job by doing our part to protect the process.

I'm very confident about where we are, and I'm very confident that we're going to win.

Mississippi's Democratic Senate candidate, Scott Colom, expressed confidence that he would prevail in the close contest with Republican incumbent Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith.

As results came in throughout the night, the race in the Magnolia State tilted between Tossup and Lean Republican.

At the time of this recording, Cologne leads Hyde-Smith by nearly 140 votes.

If Cologne prevails, he would be the first black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction and the first Democratic senator since 1989.

In Alaska, former Democratic Representative Mary Peltola leads incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan by 0.3%.

The race remains too close to call.

Meanwhile, 51 House seats remain uncalled at the time of this recording, with Democrats leading in 24 of those races.

President Donald Trump made his first appearance after the decisive results yesterday to show reporters' progress on his White House ballroom.

I'll get along probably with the Democrats, unless they want to be destructive, but they have the power of the veto.

They've already called, and they want to talk about things.

It'd be a rad thing we had to do, and we continue to do it.

Pennsylvania Democrats won trifecta control of the governor's mansion and the state legislature for the first time in over 30 years.

The wins are a major boon for Governor Josh Shapiro, who dedicated time and resources to ensuring Democratic wins in congressional and state legislative races.

But University of Pennsylvania political scientist Matthew Levandusky warns that such a dominant showing in the state and across the country is frustration with Trump policies rather than a Democratic realignment.

I think this is much more a repudiation of Trump and the policies that have been enacted in the second Trump administration than it is an embrace of Democrats.

You know, we see factors like the cost of gas, food, just the cost of prices generally going up.

Michigan Democratic Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed was attacked throughout his campaign for his views on Israel and in part his Muslim faith.

El-Sayed's primary opponent, Representative Haley Stevens, even endorsed his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, over the issue.

But those attacks have seemed to fall short of convincing Michigan Jews to vote for his opponent instead.

An analysis by millions of Michiganians found Democratic support remained relatively steady in 72 Michigan precincts with large Jewish populations.

The group says El-Sayed received 60% of the vote in those precincts.

Levi Tidal, with the group, says El-Sayed's vote share was just 1% lower than Democratic Senator Alyssa Slotkin, Michigan's first Jewish woman to be elected to the Senate, who won just two years earlier.

The results of our analysis shows that despite the millions of dollars that were spent by APAC and Republican groups to try to move Jewish voters towards Rogers, it didn't really work out.

I'm Zamone Perez for Pacifica Network and Public News Service.

Find our trust indicators at publicnewsservice.org.