For listeners and watchers of The TPM Show, because of the holiday the show will come out this week on Thursday rather than our regular Wednesday time slot.

A few thoughts on Chuck Schumer and whether he’ll continue as leader in the Senate. One important detail. Senate leadership works differently from House leadership. Majority Leader isn’t a constitutional position. So unlike the House where it’s a public vote and you need a majority of the body, in the Senate, it’s a secret ballot and Schumer needs only a majority of his caucus. So a handful of defections won’t settle this.

I said multiple times over the last two years that while I think highly of Schumer, he’s not characterologically or generationally suited to the moment. The big question that faces us today isn’t ideological, “centrists” vs. progressives, it’s fight vs. accommodation. Or, put differently, are we in a normal period of American history in which regular order should prevail or are we in an ongoing national emergency? Schumer thinks in terms of the first and not the second.

With Jim Jordan elected GOP leader, let’s remember that Jordan is part of a longstanding coverup of sexual abuse of student athletes at Ohio State by Dr. Richard Strauss. The story got a lot of attention a few years ago and it briefly seemed possible that it might derail Jordan’s position in the House GOP caucus. But he stonewalled, refused to credibly address the allegations and eventually his colleagues and conservative media gave him a pass. He’s never come clean about any of it. As recently as last year there was a whole new documentary about it. Multiple ex-wrestlers and even a ref describe how Jordan knew about it, turned a blind eye and has been lying about it ever since. “To say that (Jordan) knew nothing, that nothing ever happened, it’s a flat out lie,” said former Ohio State Wrestler Dan Ritchie in the documentary. You’d think House Republicans would be stung enough by Donald Trump’s main character status in the Epstein Files. But memories are short. Jordan was never the caucus leader until now. Democrats need to be certain everyone knows that his colleagues know about his stonewalling and the coverup and are fine with it.

The Information is reporting (paywall) that regardless of what multiple investigations unearth about NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s affair with a suspected Chinese spy, the scandal is likely to spur Congress to impose tighter export controls on the advanced processors used in AI data centers. There’s been a big bipartisan push for this in Congress for a while but it’s largely been headed off by White House resistance. That resistance seems to center on Trump himself and the small coterie of Silicon Valley advisors who run AI policy at the White House. As I noted in this post, the argument for tight export controls seems pretty strong to me, certainly if we’re operating on the premise that U.S. superiority in AI development is a critical national security interest.

The Times’ Maggie Haberman is currently appearing on CNN to discuss the Jensen Huang story. She confirms that, according to Times reporting, Trump was first briefed on Huang’s relationship with suspected Chinese spy Alice Huang (no relation) late last year. She said about this time last year. So the key details here have been known and seemingly ignored for a whole year.

It’s hard to know how seriously to take the Pete Hegseth impeachment vote in terms of its eventual outcome. Are we actually going to have a trial? Will he resign? Now outgoing Speaker Johnson says he may not send the impeachment article to the Senate? What stands out most is what’s not happening. There’s no real defense from the White House or anyone else in the GOP/MAGA sound machine. The White House posted a couple videos on social media. Obviously they’re on record saying they don’t support it. But that’s really about it. You can imagine the thermonuclear (maybe literally) response to anything like this at almost any point in the last two years. But now? The vibe here is something like “rough what happened to Pete. I guess not everyone makes it after a rough midterm like that.” Oh well …

If you missed it this weekend, check out my piece on the remarkably part-time, almost non-existent Cindy Hyde-Smith campaign. Quite stunning.

Last month I had a conversation with a high ranking AI executive who told me that the fundamental reason for the U.S. lead over China in AI development was U.S. access to high-performance NVIDIA processors. The Biden administration placed export controls on those chips targeting China back in 2022. The Trump administration sort of loosened those controls though, for a variety of reasons, that shift in policy hasn’t translated into that much actual change in practice. This struck me at the time: this is a wildly anti-China administration; it’s a wildly pro-AI administration which premises everything on the need to maintain a strategic AI edge over China; but it’s more open to allowing China access to these chips that are central to U.S. dominance in AI? How can that possibly make sense?

This conversation has been on my mind for the last couple weeks as we’ve learned more and more about the spy scandal enveloping NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang. To bring you up-to-date, yesterday, NVIDIA’s board announced that it would investigate Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang (no relation), who U.S. intelligence believes is a Chinese spy. This came shortly after Jensen Huang admitted in an email to NVIDIA employees (immediately made public) that he had carried on an extramarital affair with Alice Huang.

Some thoughts on the 2026 midterm from TPM Reader TS (Theda Skocpol) …

After two or three days of stupor and disorientation Donald Trump has reverted to form, as predicted, and has reacted to his historic repudiation by leaning into the powers of the presidency to reassert power and dominance. So far, they are mostly assertions and visual, thin performances not so much of power but of aggression, which seem more risible because the power is so clearly draining out of him. Trump appointed Stephen Miller as his new White House chief of staff. Today he has offered the press secretary position to Dana White, CEO of UFC, the mixed martial arts promotion company, who Trump lauds as “the Great Dana White, a violent Fighter and Warrior.” Trump is asking him to take on the press secretary role with a series of MMA fighter “assistants,” one or more of whom is associated with a Chechnyan warlord. We say “offered” because Trump seems to have offered White the job and then asked him via Truth Social to accept the job.