A Second Affair Revelation Rocks Nvidia, and a Democrat Wins Mississippi in a Major Senate Upset

From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracey Mumford. Today's Thursday, November 12th. Here's what we're covering. The Times has learned that NVIDIA's board of directors is weighing the future of its CEO, Jensen Huang. It comes after he admitted he had an affair with a woman who U.S. intelligence has identified as a Chinese spy. And then yesterday, revelations that he also had an affair with an NVIDIA executive who reports to him. The company's board met to discuss, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, but has not made any announcement and did not respond to requests for comment. Any potential change in NVIDIA's leadership would open an uncertain chapter for the world's top maker of AI chips and would have widespread ripple effects. Jensen Huang is the key man at arguably the most important, important AI company in the world. 90% of the chips in the AI industry, which has become a massive part of the global economy, come from NVIDIA. Ryan Mack covers tech for The Times. Huang is something of a CEO king. You know, he's become a celebrity who is sporting a leather jacket. He's out there doing events like a rock star. And he's seen as this global leader who has taken this company to a multi-trillion dollar business. In Silicon Valley, we've seen these kind of tech leaders who have become larger-than-life figures. You know, we all remember Steve Jobs, for example. Jensen Huang is now, in many ways, the face of his company and the face of his industry in the same way. So what that all means is that he is essentially NVIDIA. He is so tied up in the company that he is what Wall Street calls the key man. And there's a lot of key man risk when someone like that has a misstep or causes a problem within the company. While questions about Huang's future at NVIDIA were already swirling in light of his relationship with the Chinese executive, the scrutiny on him intensified yesterday when my colleagues reported on the additional affair with a vice president at NVIDIA. Under NVIDIA's code of conduct, employees are told to, quote, avoid situations where our actions create conflict, including personal relationships. When reached by phone by The Times, Huang said, I don't think you should be talking to me directly and hung up. NVIDIA's stock price plummeted in after-hours trading. Yesterday, one of the last Senate races still up in the air was called in Mississippi for the Democrats. God bless y'all. God bless y'all. Thank y'all. According to the Associated Press, Scott Colombe has secured a seat many didn't even think his party had a chance at. Mississippi hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982. Colombe is also the first Black man to represent Mississippi in the Senate since the 19th century. God didn't want us to get it the easy way. He wanted us to get it the Mississippi way. The race took more than a week to call because the margin was razor thin, with Colombe in the lead by just a few thousand votes. In terms of how he pulled it off, Colombe's experience as a prosecutor, helped insulate him from attacks that he was too liberal for the historically red state. And he was able to build a diverse coalition. He tapped into frustration among Black voters over Republican efforts to dilute their voting power through redistricting. And more broadly, he appealed to voters fed up with rising prices and the Trump administration. He was also boosted by one of the most viral ads of the whole midterms, which skewered his Republican opponent for brushing off the high price of beef. Pick another protein? Shit, I'd rather pick another senator instead. With Mississippi now blue, Democrats will soon hold at least 55 seats in the Senate. And officials are still counting ballots in Alaska, where the Democrat there, Mary Peltola, currently has a narrow lead. Meanwhile, even as Democrats have notched another win, there's been finger-pointing inside the party this week, after an effort to impeach Trump. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth collapsed. It happened after 11 House Democrats missed a vote on the impeachment, with varying explanations. Traffic, a personal emergency. Nancy Pelosi's staffers said she was in California receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award. The lawmakers' absence boosted Republicans' efforts to sink the impeachment. What do you say to those 11 Democrats who didn't show up to vote tonight? You should show up and do your job. Other Democrats are now ripping into them for it, saying there was no excuse for missing the vote. People should have gotten their raggedy selves up the steps to vote. On social media, Representative Pat Ryan of New York said he'd just had back surgery the day before, but had, quote, checked myself out of the hospital this morning to make sure I voted. Overall, the lawmakers' absences and the infighting muddled a chance for the newly empowered Democrats to demonstrate their ability to challenge the Trump administration, and has raised questions about. about party leadership as Democrats prepared to take control of Congress in January. Earlier this week, I was in downtown Moscow at the offices of Novaya Gazeta, Russia's most daring newspaper. They were doing the final packing of boxes, plastic wrapping, and saying farewell to an office that. that had been their home for decades. Valerie Hopkins is a reporter in the Times' Moscow bureau. She's been covering the last days of the legendary Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. For decades, the paper investigated corruption, shined a light on political machinations, and worked to cover the war in Ukraine, despite increasingly strict government censorship. Sometimes that meant even publishing front pages with the word war blurred out. But now, the paper has been. forced to close, amid the Kremlin's ever-tightening grip over the country. Over the more than 30 years of its existence, Novaya Gazeta faced the murder of six of its colleagues. Their printing presses were seized. Their media license was revoked. The co-founder, Dmitry Muratov, who won the Nobel Prize in 2021 for defending press freedom, he was violently attacked with acid. This is a newspaper that has seen and lived through so much. And. The Novaya Gazeta represented one of the last bastions of free and independent speech in Russia. And with that gone, it's a tremendous loss for Russian society, and it's a tremendous loss for anyone who actually wants to try to understand what's happening inside Russia. Valerie says that, according to Novaya Gazeta, the paper could no longer go on after its landlord refused to renew its lease after nearly 30 years, and after banks in Russia, would no longer agree to process payments from readers. No space, no funding. The paper's co-founder called it, quote, A spokesman for the Kremlin described it as normal turnover, saying that, quote, Every year, some media outlets close, and new ones take their place. And finally, last night, 22 nautical miles off the coast of Destin, Florida, spectators aboard a flotilla of boats gathered to watch the intentional sinking of the SS United States, one of the greatest ships of the 20th century. The United States will carry 2,000 passengers, and if she's ever needed as a troop ship, she'll accommodate an entire division. Known as the Big U, the passenger ship was a monument to American ambition in the years after World War II. It was longer than the Titanic, and so fast that its top. Top speed was a Cold War state secret. On its first-ever transatlantic round trip in 1952, it set a speed record that still stands today. To her passengers, she's not a machine, but a grand hotel. Through the 50s and 60s, the luxurious ship ferried presidents, royalty, immigrants, and vacationers between New York and Europe. Even the Mona Lisa got a ride when the painting was brought to the U.S. for temporary exhibitions. Its reign on the high seas. was relatively short-lived, though, because air travel picked up speed, and the ship was eventually mothballed. It ended up tied to a Philadelphia pier where it sat for decades, and there was a range of failed plans to give it a new life as a hotel or an entertainment complex. Instead, its final chapter went down in Florida, where a local county bought the ship for a million dollars to add it to an underwater ship graveyard the county's been building as an artificial refuge. The ship was set up in a special reef for both fish and divers to explore. Getting the ship ready to sink was a months-long process that involved pumping out the ship's massive fuel tanks and making the whole thing more diver and sea life friendly by cutting extra holes in the vessel. The original designer of the SS United States used to brag that you couldn't set her on fire, you couldn't catch her, and you couldn't sink her. He was right, up to a point. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, more on the questions swirling around what's next for NVIDIA and Jensen Huang. He's been on a rocket ride the past three years. He could literally do no wrong until all of a sudden, all this problematic behavior spilled out into public view. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the Friday News Quiz.