by Ja'han Jones | Nov 13, 2026 | Business, Civil Rights, Congress, Opinion, Sports, White House
The Democrats’ midterm election tidal wave may have washed away any hope for the oppressive college sports bill some lawmakers and corporate lobbyists have been trying to get signed into law.
The dubiously named Protect College Sports Act, or PCSA — which would place a host of restrictions on the amount of money college athletes can make and on their ability to collectively bargain or switch schools — has seemed to die and come back to life on multiple occasions. The bill would grant antitrust exemption to college sports conferences while placing restrictions on players’ opportunities to earn money and their ability to transfer schools. In September the Senate passed it with help from Democrats who disregarded opposition from player representatives and civil rights groups. But several people who have been involved with the bill told The Athletic last week that the legislation is basically on life support, with Democrats primed to take over Congress in January.
According to the outlet:
The Athletic spoke to 10 people who have been involved in some way with the PCSA to assess its prospects following the midterm elections, and most agreed with [one observer’s] general assessment: The PCSA, which has survived a few near-death experiences to get this far, is definitely not dead, but the odds are stacked against it passing into law. “The energy for this bill mostly came from the Republicans,” said one person involved in the process, speaking on condition of anonymity for a candid assessment of the situation.
Republicans are frantically trying to ram through many of President Donald Trump’s judicial and Cabinet nominations and other measures before Democrats take control of both
by Allison Detzel | Nov 13, 2026 | Congress, elections, News
Back in the Columbus High School gym where he once played basketball, Mississippi’s Democratic Sen.-elect Scott Colom sat down with MS NOW’s Symone Sanders Townsend to reflect on the hard-fought campaign behind his historic win and revealed where he stands on Chuck Schumer’s bid for Senate majority leader.
On Wednesday, more than a week after Election Day, The Associated Press officially declared Colom the winner in what was perhaps the midterm’s most stunning upset. Although Schumer said he personally recruited Colom, the underdog’s victory against Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith came despite a noticeable lack of support or major financial investment from the national Democratic Party.
Following his victory, Colom told Sanders Townsend he spoke to Schumer and “thanked him for his part in making this happen.” He said he believed Schumer understood the importance of Democrats securing viable candidates in the South, but he pushed back on the suggestion that the senator personally recruited him to run.
“There’s steps forward, but there’s also potential for steps back. And we got to make sure we don’t take more steps backwards than we do forward,” Colom said.
“It’s not accurate to say he recruited me, though, because the people of Mississippi recruited me,” Colom said. “You think I was listening to somebody that lives in Brooklyn when I was deciding to run for United States Senate? No, I listened to the people of Mississippi.”
When Sanders Townsend asked Colom about whether he believed Schumer or other national Democrats should be “taking credit” for his win, the senator-elect said he had to be “careful about talking too much about the past.” There’s “no benefit to it,” he
by Mychael Schnell | Nov 13, 2026 | Congress, News
Sen. Chris Van Hollen is launching a bid for Senate majority leader, the Maryland Democrat announced Thursday evening on MS NOW’s “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
“I am planning to run for the Senate majority leader, and let me tell you why,” Van Hollen told Psaki in a wide-ranging interview.
Become an MS NOW Member here to watch Jen’s full, exclusive interview with Sen. Chris Van Hollen live tonight at 9 p.m. ET in the MS NOW app.
“This is not about any one individual, but it is about answering the call of the American people,” he said. “We saw a huge outburst of democracy on Election Day — red states, blue states, purple states — and it wasn’t only a rejection of Donald Trump and his corruption and his wars and his cruelty, it was also about a call for a larger change to take on a broken economic system that’s rigged in favor of the very wealthy against working people, led by a corrupt political system.”
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Strategist says Sanders announcing he won’t support Schumer for Majority Leader is ‘seismic’
November 10, 2026 / 07:34
Voters, Van Hollen said, sent a message on Election Day to “reject the status quo and to reject business as usual.”
“And to do that, I think we need new leadership,” he said.
The bid sets up a direct challenge to Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a Capitol Hill institution who has led Senate Democrats for nearly a decade and has held a position in the party’s leadership for more than three decades. The election will take place in December.
Asked what had changed from last weekend, when Van Hollen suggested he was not particularly
by Ja'han Jones | Nov 13, 2026 | Civil Rights, Congress, Opinion, White House
Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., has developed quite a reputation for flaying Donald Trump’s nominees during their confirmation hearings.
Catherine Eschbach, Trump’s pick for general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, just made the list, which also includes Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Assistant Health Secretary Brian Christine.
Trump wants Eschbach, currently the EEOC’s acting general counsel, to be the agency’s top lawyer. The EEOC is designed to uphold civil rights in the workplace, but Trump allies have perverted it into a vehicle for their bigoted and baseless conspiracy theories about systemic workplace discrimination harming white men.
At her Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, Eschbach repeatedly deflected Alsobrooks’ questions about one of her direct reports: an EEOC lawyer who essentially became a men’s rights activist after receiving a 2½-year suspension from Catholic University following a fellow student’s allegation of sexual assault.
The lawyer, Benjamin North, has denied the allegation and said the encounter was consensual. In 2017, he filed a lawsuit against Catholic University that ended with a stipulated dismissal.
Alsobrooks, a former prosecutor who specialized in domestic violence cases, asked Eschbach whether she knew about North’s school suspension and whether it’s appropriate for someone credibly accused of sexual assault to lead cases at the EEOC.
The nominee didn’t seem to want to address either question head-on. Instead, she repeatedly asserted that, in obtaining his law license, North had proved to the Virginia State Bar that he was of “good moral character.”
This is certainly par for the course for an administration led by someone who was found liable for sexual assault as well as defaming his victim. And yet again, it was Maryland’s junior senator
by Steve Benen | Nov 12, 2026 | Congress, Maddowblog, White House
For congressional Democrats interested in pursuing the many controversies surrounding Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., there’s a foundational challenge: where to start.
That said, two Democratic senators are moving forward with an investigation into whether Kennedy lied to Congress about his reason for a 2019 trip to Samoa, and there’s reason to believe they’re pulling on a worthwhile thread. The Associated Press reported:
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. The letter also requested all communications between the group and federal government officials since President Donald Trump’s second term began in January 2025. The senators gave the group a deadline of Dec. 4 to comply.
Note, Wyden and Alsobrooks are currently seeking the group’s voluntary cooperation with their inquiry. If, however, Kennedy’s former organization declines to provide the requested information, it’s likely to face a congressional subpoena early next year, when there’s a Democratic majority.
The underlying controversy has been simmering for a while. In fact, MS NOW reported early last year on the difficult and painful questions surrounding Kennedy’s efforts in Samoa years before he became a powerful White House Cabinet secretary. Hawaii’s Democratic governor, Josh Green, a former emergency medical physician, said before Kennedy’s confirmation that he’d treated Samoan measles patients in 2019 and blamed Kennedy personally for preventable deaths.
During that confirmation fight, Kennedy repeatedly
by Amy Goodman | Nov 12, 2026 | 2026 Elections, 2026 midterms, Chuck Schumer, Congress, Democratic Party, Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries, Interview
With Democrats set to take control of both chambers of Congress in January, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders says he will not support Chuck Schumer for another term as the Democratic Senate leader, calling for the party to move in “a new and bold direction.” Michigan Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin has said she will not support Schumer unless he presents a plan to govern differently…
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