The history-making outcomes of the 2026 midterm elections are almost too many to count.
For the first time since 1932, the state of Kansas will send a Democrat to the Senate: Adam Hamilton. Senator-elect Annie Andrews will be the first Democratic senator for South Carolina in nearly three decades. Senator-elect Troy Jackson of Maine has ended the three-decade political career of outgoing Sen. Susan Collins, and James Talarico will be the first Democratic senator to represent Texas since the 1980s.
Then, there may be the biggest shocker of all in Mississippi, where Scott Colom is on track to unseat Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.
To quote the late, great Nina Simone, in a very different context, “Mississippi Goddam.”
Colom would be the first Black senator elected in that state since 1875, and he’s already flipped a county named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate General, slave trader and founder and first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. His emotional, must-watch closing ad showed him visiting the home of Medgar Evars, the assassinated civil rights activist.
If Colom wins, and it’s looking increasingly likely, it will be important to study what helped lead to his victory beyond the nationwide rebuke to Donald Trump.
A former prosecutor, Colom had been on track to be nominated for a federal judgeship in 2023, but Hyde-Smith blocked his nomination. Colom is now on the cusp of unseating her, and one of his party’s most recognized leaders, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, reportedly recognized from early on that Colom could secure that outcome. There are likely several reasons for that, including Colom’s talent, nationwide backlash to the Iran War, and a referendum on the corruption of Trump, his family and his enablers.
On the legal front, Colom hammered one issue repeatedly on the campaign trail: Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional tariffs.
Check out a video breakdown about how Colom seized upon voter outrage about the second-order effects of Trump’s tariffs on Legal AF’s All Rise News playlist.
Paid subscribers can watch it — and other videos — ad-free below.
Other videos below the paywall:
* The real meaning of the “hush-money” case.
* Legal expert Dave Aronberg unpacks the coming legal pain for Trumpworld.
* Trump promised “mass pardons” before the midterms. Are they on their way?