The Frontier

Trip Mikkel says Nvidia’s 10-member board was weighing whether co-founder Jensen Huang should leave the CEO role and the company. Huang founded Nvidia in 1993, and the board had no prepared succession plan.

Trip Mikkel reports that Huang had an intimate relationship with Kimberly Powell, a medical and health care executive who had worked at Nvidia since 2008 and reported directly to him. Nvidia’s code of conduct says employees should avoid conflicts involving personal relationships and that the company investigates misconduct reports.

According to Trip Mikkel’s reporting, Nvidia security asked a person who photographed an affectionate moment between Huang and Powell at a San Jose conference to sign an NDA. Mikkel says the board learned of the relationship after the Times approached the company for comment.

Trip Mikkel says Huang’s earlier relationship with Alice Wong, an executive at supplier Megape, was a separate alleged breach of conduct. U.S. intelligence determined Wong was a Chinese spy who funneled information to Beijing; after Huang called the relationship normal business to Bloomberg, he later told Nvidia employees he had been unfaithful to his wife.

Trip Mikkel says Nvidia’s leadership structure centers on Huang, with 60 direct reports and no clear successor. Huang set the company’s pace, drove product innovation, and sold its chips to customers, helping Nvidia reach a 90% share of the AI chip market.

Trip Mikkel says removing Huang could weaken Nvidia’s case for selling chips to China. Huang argued that sales would let U.S. chipmakers earn revenue and compete with Chinese rivals, while many members of Congress and Trump administration officials favored restricting China’s access to the technology.

Trip Mikkel says Nvidia’s chips underpin the AI systems of companies including OpenAI and Anthropic, and help sustain the U.S. lead over China in AI. Nvidia also invested in startups, funded data-center construction, and backed financiers supporting those projects.

Trip Mikkel says Nvidia could face leadership disruption because its organization was built around Huang, even though business partners described its leadership ranks as strong enough to maintain chip production. A new CEO would still need to reorganize the company’s structure.

Trip Mikkel says the board hired a lawyer from Wachtell Lipton to investigate Huang and would need to arrange interim leadership and search for a permanent CEO. Nvidia named CFO Colette Kress interim chief executive until a successor is chosen.

Trip Mikkel says a U.S. government investment could reassure Nvidia investors that Washington would support the company through a leadership change. The episode cited Intel as a precedent: the government owned a stake after committing funds for U.S. manufacturing plants.

Trip Mikkel reported that an analyst cut Nvidia’s price target from $400 to $200 as Huang’s position weakened; the new target was $27 above the stock’s trading price. Nvidia’s valuation had fallen from nearly $6 trillion to $4 trillion, and its shares dropped about 11% after Kress was named interim CEO.

Trip Mikkel argues that Huang’s possible removal could become a risk to the wider AI boom because Nvidia financed startups and data-center expansion. He names leadership disruption as another possible trigger for an AI downturn, alongside startups failing, AI agents going rogue, and data-center construction being blocked by policy.

The episode reports that Democrat Scott Cologne won Mississippi’s U.S. Senate seat after more than a week of counting, defeating Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. Cologne became the state’s first Black senator in nearly 150 years, and Democrats gained a 55-seat Senate majority after wins in Texas, Iowa, and Kansas.

Sarah Mervosh says K-12 public enrollment fell in 30 states over the decade after about 2014. Los Angeles enrollment dropped 20%; Houston and Chicago 17% each, Dallas 13%, and Philadelphia 10%.

Public school funding generally follows student counts, but expenses do not fall at the same pace: a smaller school still needs teachers, a principal, and a functioning building. Districts have cut bus routes, substitute teachers, and central-office staff before turning to school closures.

School closures force districts to decide which students and neighborhoods bear the disruption. Because American schools remain segregated by race and class, closure plans also determine whose needs the district prioritizes.

Pittsburgh public schools have lost about a quarter of their enrollment over the last decade. Mervosh links the decline to population loss, fewer births, more charter and homeschool options, and families leaving after prolonged pandemic-era school closures.

The national fertility rate peaked in 2007, and the cohort born that year graduated high school in 2025. As those students leave public schools, districts face smaller incoming classes alongside the enrollment losses already underway.

Pittsburgh's closure plan also redraws school boundaries and changes grade configurations to address inequity. The district serves a student body that is about two-thirds economically disadvantaged, roughly half Black, and about one-third white.

Pittsburgh plans to eliminate elementary magnet schools and sharply reduce them at the middle-school level. Magnet schools use lotteries to admit students from across the city, often around specialties such as languages, arts, or science and technology.

Supporters say magnets give families choice and bring students from different neighborhoods together; critics see them as a way for families to avoid neighborhood schools. Abigail Folds argues magnets also let children cross neighborhood and income boundaries instead of having their ZIP code determine their school.

Pittsburgh's school board approved 12 closures in May by a 6-2 vote, with one member abstaining; the changes take effect after the current school year. Public hearings drew intense opposition, including from white parents who appeared in disproportionate numbers before a majority-Black board.

School board president Gene Walker says consolidating under-enrolled schools would reduce building costs and let the district offer stronger programs. He points to a middle school unable to offer eighth-grade algebra, which can limit students' access to advanced high-school math and college preparation.

Walker says the district wants every elementary school to offer art, music, STEM, physical education, and a foreign language beginning in third grade, with eighth-grade algebra available at every middle school. The plan asks families to trust that resources removed from closed buildings will reach schools that remain open.

Parents describe small schools as places where teachers know their children, provide food, and support students with disabilities or behavioral needs. They worry that moves to larger schools could disrupt relationships, overwhelm students, and leave staff less prepared to support individual needs.

Families also doubt that added programs alone will improve instruction or preserve academic rigor. SciTech parents fear that merging its selective science-and-technology magnet with neighborhood enrollment could weaken the curriculum, while families question whether incoming students will get enough support.

Several hundred students, primarily from families with greater financial means, left Pittsburgh public schools during the current school year, though Mervosh says the reasons are unclear. One parent moved a third grader to private school early; the school's class size had doubled since the prior year, and the parent plans to move a second child.

Some parents plan to stay because they value public education and want their children to learn alongside peers from different backgrounds; others say their children's needs come first. Many describe the district as on probation and say lost trust makes leaving feel more possible.

Mervosh says Pittsburgh is betting that raising the floor for vulnerable students will strengthen the system, while risking the departure of higher-achieving and wealthier families. Across the country, districts have delayed enrollment decisions until they must choose between closures and unpopular staff reductions.

The Daily reported that House Republicans voted 211-204 to send impeachment articles against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to a committee, slowing consideration of eight charges, including an allegation tied to the Iran war. Representative Thomas Massie was the only Republican to oppose referral.