Democrats Sweep Congress; Dow Posts Best Day Since April 2025

Wall Street delivered a thunderous verdict on Tuesday's midterms, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 3 percent for its best single-day performance since April 2025. Investors celebrated as Democrats decisively swept both chambers of Congress, ending months of political uncertainty. Broader indexes surged alongside the blue-chip benchmark. Energy markets moved in the same direction, with oil prices falling as traders reassessed the geopolitical outlook.

The momentum showed signs of cooling by the next session, with stock futures signaling a mixed open as analysts debated the rally's durability. Optimists argued that a clear electoral outcome, expectations of fresh federal spending and the prospect of tighter AI regulation had given equities a new narrative. Skeptics countered that the surge reflected relief rather than conviction, noting that a Democratic Congress must still govern alongside a Trump White House.

The electoral map is not fully settled: Mississippi's Senate race is headed for an extended count and a possible ballot battle, with Democrat Scott Colom leading a Republican incumbent. Whoever prevails, Democrats will control the congressional agenda for the first time since Trump returned to office. Party leaders, speaking to NPR, credited mid-decade redistricting efforts with expanding their opportunities. They now confront the harder task of translating a midterm rout into a governing program.

Oil Prices Slide as Vance Repudiates the Iran War

Oil prices fell sharply on Wednesday after Vice President JD Vance publicly repudiated the administration's Iran war, breaking with a conflict marked by renewed American strikes on Iranian territory. Traders interpreted the vice president's remarks, reported by Politico, as a step toward de-escalation, and crude shed its recent risk premium. The drop compounded a broader market rally triggered by the Democrats' midterm sweep.

The rupture is remarkable on several levels. Vance, widely seen as an heir to the administration's political movement, has effectively disowned a military campaign just days after voters delivered a stinging rebuke at the ballot box. Oil markets have been on edge throughout the fighting, with Gulf supply routes under threat and importers across Europe and Asia quietly building reserves. Any credible move away from escalation, analysts say, could unwind weeks of war-driven price spikes.

The repudiation raises a consequential question: who now controls Iran policy? A newly empowered Democratic Congress may push to constrain presidential war powers, while regional partners recalculate their own positions. Energy analysts caution that one speech does not end a conflict, but traders are plainly pricing in a changed trajectory. What remains unclear is whether the rest of the administration follows Vance's lead.

Native American Women Shatter Barriers in New Mexico, Minnesota

Tuesday's midterms delivered two groundbreaking firsts for Native American women. In New Mexico, former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland won the governorship, becoming the first Native American woman elected to lead a U.S. state. Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota won her Senate race, making her the first Native American woman ever to serve in the chamber.

The wins came amid a broader wave of firsts. Abdul El-Sayed, elected to the Senate from Michigan, told the Associated Press that voters rejected a "hateful, spiteful campaign" built on attacks against his Muslim identity, and he will become the nation's first Muslim U.S. senator. Americans also chose a record five Black governors — four new winners plus one reelected incumbent — the largest such group in U.S. history.

For Haaland, moving from managing federal lands to running a state rich in them gives her sweeping influence over energy development, water rights and tribal consultation. Flanagan brings a direct voice on child welfare, missing and murdered Indigenous women and treaty obligations to a chamber that has rarely heard them. Together the results reshape the Democratic bench ahead of 2028 and suggest that identity-based attacks, tried in Michigan and elsewhere, failed to move voters this year.

Kyiv Says Video Shows Russian Double-Tap Strike That Killed 40

Ukraine has released bodycam footage that it says documents a Russian "double-tap" strike on a village, an attack on Monday that killed at least 40 people. Officials fear another 30 victims may still lie beneath the rubble, and search efforts have been complicated by the tactics themselves. The so-called double-tap — a second missile timed to land as rescuers arrive — has become one of the war's most notorious methods of attack.

The footage, apparently recorded from a first responder's camera, captures emergency crews converging on the site after an initial strike. A follow-up munition then slammed into the same location, according to Kyiv, burying rescuers and survivors alike. Ukrainian officials circulated the video as evidence in their long-running effort to document what prosecutors describe as deliberate attacks on civilians and rescue workers.

The attack adds to a growing war crimes dossier as international investigators pursue cases stemming from strikes far from the front lines. It also sharpens Kyiv's urgent appeals for air defense systems, with officials arguing that villages and their volunteer rescue crews remain defenseless against missiles and drones. With no ceasefire in sight, aid groups warn that double-tap tactics are deterring emergency responses and raising the toll of every strike.

Hackers Tried to Boil France's Blood Plasma Reserves

French blood banks were targeted by a cyberattack that attempted to destroy blood plasma reserves by manipulating refrigeration systems, pushing storage temperatures past the boiling point. The sabotage aimed at the unglamorous industrial equipment that keeps medical supplies viable,

• Democratic midterm victories triggered a massive stock rotation that hammered AI and chip sectors while boosting other global markets. Nvidia plummeted 9.3% today, continuing a brutal monthly slide of 23.5%. Bloomberg →
• Meta's leadership warns that the recent election results will complicate the construction of critical AI data centers. This regulatory anxiety contributes to a broader tech sell-off, with the QQQ dropping 6.5% today. The Wall Street Journal →
• Qualcomm shares tumbled following a lackluster profit forecast attributed to rising component costs. Higher supply expenses are continuing to squeeze margins for the smartphone processor giant. Bloomberg →
• Canadian banks faced a sharp synchronized decline today, led by BNS which dropped 4.4%. The GSPTSE fell 2% as financial heavyweights including TD and CM saw losses exceeding 3%. [Price Snapshot]
• JetBlue is hiking checked baggage fees for a second time this year to offset stubbornly high jet fuel prices. These increases arrive just as the Thanksgiving travel rush begins. Associated Press →
• Lockheed Martin reached a $30 million settlement with the administration to resolve DOJ bias claims. A portion of the agreement allocates $7.5 million directly to affected employees. Newser →
• Zillow is seeing a drop in user traffic as elevated mortgage rates freeze the residential housing market. Rental demand has provided a necessary offset to the slump in home sales. The Wall Street Journal →
• A White House panel has pushed back the hearing for Fed Governor Lisa Cook to December 14. This delay follows a long-standing legal battle regarding President Trump's attempts to remove her. CNBC →

Last Night's Scores

The Raptors

• Toronto dropped its last outing in a 128-109 loss to Denver.
• The team has struggled for consistency lately, posting a 2-3 record over their last five games.
• Toronto faces the Milwaukee Bucks tonight at Fiserv Forum.
• Tip-off is scheduled for 8:00 PM ET, airing on MyMi and the Bucks App.

Next game: TOR @ Milwaukee Bucks — Friday Nov 6, 8:00 PM ET — at Fiserv Forum — TV/stream: MyMi, Bucks App

Around the NBA

• Golden State dominated Miami in a 120-100 victory.
• Phoenix handled Orlando with a 117-104 win.
• Victor Wembanyama posted a historic 52 points, 24 rebounds, and eight blocks to lead San Antonio past Dallas.
• Dalton Knecht impressed in his New York Knicks debut, scoring 10 points during a 135-105 rout of Chicago.
• Los Angeles relied on its defense to secure a 116-103 win over Sacramento despite a struggling offense.

Property and Ownership

Consider an ordinary morning. You unlock a phone, ride a bicycle, perhaps notice a neighbour's fence creeping over the boundary line. Each small act rests on ownership — an invisible web of rights determining what you may use, what you may withhold from others, and what you may pass on. Property is so thoroughly woven into daily life that we rarely pause to ask what it actually is. Philosophers have paused, and their answers have shaped constitutions, tax codes and revolutions.

Strip away the legal machinery and a deceptively simple question remains: what does it mean to own something? Most theorists treat ownership as a bundle of rights rather than one single claim. The owner of a bicycle may ride it, lend it, sell it or bequeath it — and may forbid anyone else from doing the same. Which rights belong in that bundle, though, is contested. One school insists genuine property must be possessable: a physical thing you can touch, hold or occupy, like a watch or a field. On this view, your bank balance or a patent is not really property at all. A broader tradition stresses alienability — a right's capacity to pass from one person to another through sale, gift or inheritance. If a right can become someone else's, it counts as property. Your right to vote, which cannot be sold or given away, fails both tests.

Ambitious thinkers built entire political systems on these foundations. John Locke argued that we come to own things by mixing our labour with them: gather apples from a common tree and they become yours, so long as enough is left for others. Because each of us owns ourselves, Locke reasoned, we own our effort, and governments exist to protect the resulting rights rather than to create them. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel took a different path, seeing property as the way a person's will takes shape in the external world; without objects to claim, shape and trade, he believed, an individual could scarcely become a full self. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon answered both with his famous 1840 provocation, "property is theft" — a slogan aimed at the idle owner collecting rent from wealth that others produced.

A quieter quarrel runs beneath the loud one: is ownership a natural fact or a human arrangement, and what does justice demand once holdings grow wildly unequal? That dispute still divides political philosophy, splitting those who would subject property to fairness from those who would let holdings stand so long as they arose from voluntary exchange.

The digital age sharpens the puzzle in unexpected ways. We "buy" e-books that vanish when a retailer folds, lease software we can never hold, and generate data whose value we can see but never touch. If the old test of ownership was possession, the new economy fails it daily. Which leaves open a genuinely unsettled question: can something be fully owned when we can neither grip it in our hands nor reliably pass it on to the people we love?

Want to go deeper? Read the full Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Property and Ownership →

• Sales of Nintendo's flagship Switch 2 plunged 41% in its fiscal second quarter, a steep decline that followed price hikes the company rolled out as memory costs soared. The figures point to mounting pressure on Nintendo's hardware business heading into the holiday quarter. CNBC →
• Apple has removed the waitlist for its AI-powered Siri features in iOS 27, according to an updated support document, opening the upgraded assistant to all users at once. A lone exception allows Apple to reinstate queuing during periods of "high demand." 9to5Mac →
• Developers can now show retention messages to subscribers attempting to cancel, using a new App Store feature Apple introduced this week. The tool gives app makers a chance to pitch discounts or plead their case at the exact moment of cancellation, a shift that could make quitting subscriptions noticeably harder. MacRumors →
• The tech industry's memory shortage has spread to Nintendo's cartridge supply chain, raising the prospect of more expensive physical Switch games. Higher costs for the storage inside game cards would compound the pricing pressure Nintendo is already absorbing on console hardware. Ars Technica →
• CISA has added Apple vulnerability CVE-2024-27834 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog after hackers were caught exploiting the already-patched flaw to deliver info-stealing malware. The pointer authentication bypass affects Apple devices, and the catalog listing puts federal agencies on a tight remediation timeline. The Hacker News →
• Researchers have unveiled AutoDNA, an AI-native laboratory that autonomously runs multi-objective biomolecular experiments across a range of instruments. Described in Nature, the system is built so the AI and the automation platform co-evolve within an end-to-end framework serving multiple users, a concrete step toward self-driving scientific research. Nature →
• Google Maps has been updated to run fully on the iPhone Duo, with the app's interface on Apple's dual-screen handset now closely resembling the iPad version. Plenty of other iOS apps remain unoptimised for the device, which has been shipping for a little while now. GSMArena →