President Trump established a committee of inquiry to investigate whether Federal Reserve Governor Lisa D. Cook made false statements “in connection with one or more mortgage instruments,” and to tell him whether there is cause to remove her from the Board of Governors. The memorandum, signed October 7 and published this morning at 91 FR 65435, rests on the President’s Article II power to see that the laws are faithfully executed, “including by firing subordinates who cannot be trusted to tell the truth and follow the law,” and asks the committee to report whether cause exists “within the meaning of 12 U.S.C. 242, as construed in Trump v. Cook, 146 S. Ct. 2234 (2026).” The committee will hold a closed, transcribed hearing at the White House on November 5 and last no more than four hours. Cook is to appear and be examined by the committee, its representatives, and Justice Department personnel, may submit a written position statement three days before, and may file a post-hearing statement by November 10. Its members are the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, the Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Director of the Office of Government Ethics. The 10-year Treasury note yielded 5.204 percent at 7:00 a.m. Eastern this morning, and the Treasury’s own curve put the 30-year at 5.56 percent on October 13.

The war in Ukraine supplied the other fact no reader can miss. At least 600,000 people were without electricity this morning after overnight missile and drone strikes on Kyiv and the capital region and on Kharkiv, with three people killed in Kyiv, two days after the President announced that an “energy ceasefire” was in effect.

The administration and the rule of law

The Register’s Tuesday and Wednesday issues together carry 229 documents: 3 presidential documents, 28 rules, 17 proposed rules, and 181 notices. The Cook memorandum is one of the three presidential documents; the other two, the proclamations on energy dominance and Columbus Day, appeared Tuesday and Tuesday’s edition covered them.

The window’s substance was immigration, and it arrived in four documents from the Department of Homeland Security, three of them effective today. Removing 30-Day Refugee Termination Notice is an interim final rule at 91 FR 65077 that shortens the response period to a Notice of Intent to Terminate from thirty days to ten, where the department has determined a person was not a refugee at the time of admission. Removal of Automatic Extensions for Certain Employment Authorization Documents, a final rule at 91 FR 65306, finalizes an October 30, 2025 interim rule ending the practice of extending a work permit automatically for someone who filed a timely renewal in certain categories, so the document now lapses while the renewal is pending. Imposition and Collection of Civil Penalties for Certain Immigration-Related Violations, issued jointly by Homeland Security and Justice and final at 91 FR 65390, completes the June 27, 2025 rule on penalties for failing to depart during a voluntary departure period or after a final removal order, with one change: a late-filed appeal may be accepted where documented mail delays were beyond the person’s control. And Removing Deference to Prior USCIS Determinations of Eligibility proposes to strike 8 CFR 214.1(c)(5), the provision under which the agency gives weight to a prior approval involving the same facts when it adjudicates a request to extend a petition or stay.

Four documents, one direction. Each narrows the time an applicant has to answer, ends a grace period that kept a permit valid, enlarges the penalty machinery, or withdraws the value of a prior approval as evidence for the next one. Each is written as an integrity measure, and the department says as much in its own abstracts. Read together they move the burden further onto the applicant at every stage of a case.

Two trade actions are worth naming. Commerce published guidance to Customs and Border Protection on assessing “U.S. content” for goods of Canada and Mexico that qualify for preferential treatment under the trade agreement, implementing tariffs under Proclamation 11032 of June 1, 2026; it took effect today at 91 FR 65162. The International Trade Commission scheduled full five-year reviews of common alloy aluminum sheet from sixteen countries, and issued determinations on linear hydraulic cylinders from Canada, China, India, Mexico, and South Korea. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission moved to renew the AP1000 reactor design certification by rule and proposed rule at once.

The notices include a cluster of presidential disaster declarations, covering Guam, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Hawaii, Oklahoma, and the Pueblo of Zuni. The remainder is the ordinary traffic of a Wednesday: exchange rule filings from the Cboe and Nasdaq venues, fisheries meetings, airworthiness directives, and information-collection renewals.

The courts

The top of the federal judiciary was silent. Neither the Supreme Court nor the D.C. Circuit filed an opinion in the window.

The district court in Washington took fifteen new matters, all docketed October 13. Government Accountability & Oversight v. Department of Commerce is the group’s third filing this week, after its suits Tuesday against the Department of Energy and against Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The window also carried Doe A v. Rubio, Doe v. Islamic Republic of Iran, Freedom From Religion Foundation v. U.S. Department of the Interior, Gonzalez v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Lima Soares v. Drug Enforcement Administration, and J.V., a minor child, v. CBS Broadcasting Inc.. Three are near-identical employment suits against the same defendant: Anderson, Harvey, and Williams v. Federal Express Corporation. The pack carries case names and docket numbers and nothing about the claims, so this report states the filings and not their substance.

Both watched dockets recorded a filing, after a window in which neither did. Beatty v. Trump, the Kennedy Center case at No. 1:25-cv-04480, reached ECF 104 on October 13. Phang v. Blanche, No. 1:26-cv-01417, reached ECF 58 the same day. The appeal in that dispute, Phang v. Blanche at D.C. Cir. No. 26-5299, recorded nothing.

Markets

Tuesday’s equity session closed lower across the board and barely moved while doing it: the S&P 500 at 7,805.45, down 1.79 points or 0.02 percent; the Nasdaq Composite at 27,204.38, down 0.15 percent; the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 51,670.10, down 180.45 points or 0.35 percent, each as of October 13. The CBOE volatility index stood at 15.34, up 0.46 percent, and the dollar index at 102.249, up 0.07 percent, both as of 7:00 a.m. Eastern; gold was $4,167.20 an ounce, down 0.24 percent, as of 6:50 a.m. Eastern.

Oil is the number that has moved twice in two days. West Texas Intermediate traded at $95.30 a barrel, up $1.16 or 1.23 percent, as of 6:50 a.m. Eastern, against $91.83 at the same hour on Tuesday, a gain of about $3.47 across the two mornings. The 10-year note yielded 5.204 percent, down 1.3 basis points, as of 7:00 a.m. Eastern.

The Treasury’s daily curve has its first new row since October 9, Monday having produced none. It reads 4.79 percent at two years, 5.21 percent at ten, and 5.56 percent at thirty, a two-to-ten spread of 42 basis points, against 4.80, 5.24, 5.60 and 44 basis points on October 9. The long end eased very slightly; the spread narrowed by two basis points.

The federal debt stood at $40,301,480,531,900 on October 9, down $3.84 billion from the prior business day. Debt held by the public was $32.45 trillion, and $7.85 trillion of the total was intragovernmental.

The economy

The window produced no new reading. The consumer price index for all urban consumers was 334.980 in August, against 333.918 in July and 333.952 in June. The unemployment rate was 4.2 percent in September, a tenth of a point above July and August. Total nonfarm payrolls were 159,044 thousand in September, against 159,015 thousand in August and 158,882 thousand in July. The three series carry the months they have carried all week, and nothing in this window changed them.

Elections and the midterms

The midterm board traded harder than it did yesterday, and the prices did not move with it. On Polymarket, the House market held the Democratic Party at 90.5 percent on $160,581 of 24-hour volume, roughly three times Tuesday’s book, with the Republican Party at 9.5 percent on $159,606. The Senate market put the Republican Party at 36.5 percent on $48,042. The balance-of-power market showed a Democratic Senate with a Republican House at 1.1 percent on $288,233, the largest book on the board, and a Republican sweep at 8.5 percent on $109,289.

The conditional market tied to the Strait of Hormuz has repriced against agreement. Who wins the Senate pending a Hormuz agreement by October 23 now gives no agreement 90.7 percent on $178,095, a Republican Senate under an agreement 4.5 percent on $98,569, and a Democratic Senate under one 5.1 percent on $38,893. Tuesday’s reading of the same market put no agreement at 88.8 percent and a Republican Senate at 5.2 percent.

In Texas, James Talarico stood at 62.5 percent on $43,512 and Ken Paxton at 37.5 percent on $85,251, a two-point narrowing from Tuesday. Among governors’ races the board carries Ohio, where Amy Acton is 71.5 percent; Iowa, where Rob Sand is 90.5 percent; Michigan, where Jocelyn Benson is 95.4 percent; and Alaska, where Bernadette Wilson is 22.0 percent. These are the venues’ prices and not this site’s view.

The world

Russia struck Ukraine’s power grid for a second consecutive night. Russian strikes leave 600,000 without power in Ukraine, as Starlink restrictions affect front line, BBC News, reports that at least 600,000 people were without electricity, a figure the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, gave, with critical energy infrastructure hit in Kyiv and the capital region and in Kharkiv. Three people were killed in Kyiv, officials said. Russia’s defense ministry described the strikes as “massive” and said they hit communications and energy facilities used by the Ukrainian military.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 39 ballistic and cruise missiles and 128 drones overnight, and that four missiles and 115 drones were shot down. Russia’s defense ministry said 902 Ukrainian drones were shot down over Russian regions overnight, including over Moscow and Crimea. The BBC reports this is the second night in a row in which ballistic missiles reached targets in the capital without warning, before air raid sirens could sound, a detail that matters because Ukraine depends on American satellite systems to track launches in time to issue the alerts and to intercept.

That dependence is the day’s second thread. Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser to Zelensky, said SpaceX had “implemented overnight a speed limit on Starlink terminals,” set at 100 mph (160 km/h), without telling Ukrainian troops, and that the limits had already caused “the disruption of a number of missions.” He added: “It is clear that this action cannot be a coincidence and is related to the current political situation.” A source in Ukraine’s defense ministry told the BBC that restrictions affecting connectivity above 160 km/h were detected overnight, that the threshold was still being verified, and that the situation was complicating logistics and unmanned-systems operations. SpaceX has not commented. Starlink is the network that lets Ukrainian units control drones and, the BBC notes, is the most effective means Ukraine has for guiding interceptors onto Russia’s newer jet-propelled drones.

The ceasefire the President announced on Sunday is the third thread, and by this morning it existed mainly as a phrase. Trump wrote on social media that day: “Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine. Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!” Zelensky has said since that Ukraine will halt strikes on Russian refineries and other energy facilities if Moscow does the same, and has said Washington threatened to restrict intelligence sharing if he did not agree; the President denied on Tuesday that intelligence was being withheld. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Ukraine does not deserve the “respite” a ceasefire would bring, adding that under any truce Europe could “pump [Ukraine] with new weapons.” Zelensky is due at Downing Street today to meet the British prime minister, Andy Burnham, about accelerating air-defense supplies.

The venues price the wider region as calmer than the fighting suggests. A ceasefire between the United States and Iran continuing through October 31 stands at 80.5 percent on $314,938, a ceasefire with the Houthis through October 15 at 99.5 percent on $192,921, and an Israel-Iran ceasefire through October 31 at 86.5 percent on $215,881. All three are priced as durable, in the same week in which a ceasefire the venues were not pricing came apart in two days.

Sources

Fetched for this edition

Federal Register documents

Court dockets

Market and election prices

Data

  • Bureau of Labor Statistics, public data API, series CUUR0000SA0, LNS14000000, and CES0000000001.
  • The U.S. Treasury daily yield curve, the Treasury’s debt-to-the-penny figures, and the CNBC quote service carry no link in this edition: their endpoints were read by the collector, which did not record a URL for them, and this report does not construct one.

PRH | huffmanwrites.org | © Philip Huffman