Three days after an election that turned on the war with Iran, the war returned to the front of the day. United States officials have reportedly warned Gulf allies to prepare for new strikes, while a senior Iranian lawmaker told Euronews that the standoff in the Strait of Hormuz “is not sustainable” and that the American blockade is the obstacle to talks. In Moscow, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council met President Vladimir Putin and reportedly carried a message from the supreme leader about ending the war. The signals point in opposite directions, and both are reports rather than decisions. The election decided control of Congress. It did not decide the war, which remains the president’s to conduct. Separately, in New York two days after the result, the market produced a broad decline, with the S&P 500 down 4.36 percent and every S&P sector lower.

The administration and the rule of law

The Federal Register’s two-day window carried 191 documents: six presidential documents, twenty-one rules, sixteen proposed rules and 148 notices. The presidential documents are one proclamation of policy, one week designation and four continuations of national emergencies.

Proclamation 11079, “The American Declaration of Freedom in Space”, was signed November 3 and printed this morning. It proclaims that the solar system and all space beyond Earth are “the province of all humans” and open to exploration, development, use and a permanent American presence. It sets goals that include returning to the Moon by 2028 and putting an American on Mars first. It names no agency, assigns no task and sets no deadline. The register carries no abstract for it, and its text confirms the reason: it is declaratory. “Anti-Communism Week, 2026” is the week designation. The four continuations keep in force for another year the emergencies on Iran, on Nicaragua, on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and on securities investment in certain Chinese companies.

Three of the rules are substantive, and all three take effect in January, in the first weeks of the Congress the election chose. The Medicare hospital outpatient final rule with comment period, CMS-1850-FC at 91 FR 70284, sets 2027 payment rates for hospital outpatient departments and ambulatory surgical centers, expands prior authorization to additional botulinum toxin injection services and permits accrediting organizations to assess certain EMTALA administrative requirements during surveys; it takes effect January 1. A Homeland Security interim final rule on foreign importers of record takes effect January 5, with full compliance required by May 6. A Labor Department final rule on Registered Apprenticeship, 84 pages at 91 FR 70164, removes what it calls “the onerous and legally questionable affirmative action requirements” and simplifies sponsors’ nondiscrimination obligations; it takes effect January 5. The Securities and Exchange Commission amended the “small business” and “small organization” definitions used in its Regulatory Flexibility Act analysis. Among the notices was a long run of trade administration, with determinations in cases on steel, aluminum, shrimp, pipe and chemicals from China, Korea, Mexico, Oman, Vietnam, India, Indonesia and Laos.

The courts

The Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit opinion feeds recorded nothing in the window, as they had the day before. The district court in Washington recorded eighteen new entries on November 5. Six of them pair a transparency organization or an individual requester with a federal agency: the Freedom of the Press Foundation against the Department of Justice, Judicial Watch against the Department of Defense and against the Department of Justice, Walczak against the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Project on Government Oversight against the United States Marshals Service and the Human Rights Defense Center against the Bureau of Prisons. Others name Munoz Alvarez against Mullin, Begawala against Rubio, Cayuga Medical Center against Kennedy, Public Citizen against the Treasury and Save Long Beach Island against the Commerce Department. The pack carries captions and docket numbers, not complaints, so this report can say who sued whom and not what the suits allege.

Of the five watched dockets, two moved. D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior, the East Potomac golf case, recorded three entries on November 5, numbered 138 through 140. The consolidated Epstein-files appeal, Phang v. Blanche, recorded one in the D.C. Circuit. Beatty v. Trump, the Kennedy Center matter, Phang v. Blanche in the district court and MSW Media v. Department of Justice were silent.

Markets

Equities fell hard at the close on November 5. The S&P 500 finished at 7,353.73, down 334.89 points or 4.36 percent; the Nasdaq Composite at 24,314.997, down 1,421.516 or 5.52 percent; the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 51,523.06, down 1,833.06 or 3.44 percent. All eleven S&P 500 sectors closed lower, Reuters reported. The sector story behind that breadth belongs to a beat this report does not carry, and the omission is deliberate; the record here is the size and breadth of the move.

This morning the VIX was 26.78 at 06:59 CT, down 1.40; the ten-year Treasury yielded 4.859 percent at 06:59, up 2.2 basis points; front-month WTI crude was $91.01 at 06:50, up 49 cents; gold was $4,077.40, down $36.10; and the dollar index was 102.00 at 07:00, up 0.453. Those are morning prints, not closes.

Treasury’s curve for November 5 ran 4.46 percent at two years, 4.84 at ten and 5.25 at thirty, a 2s10s spread of +0.38 against +0.32 the day before. The short end fell twelve basis points and the thirty-year three, a bull steepening.

Total public debt outstanding was $40,550,230,047,609 on November 4, up $2,826,476,624 from November 3. Of that, $32,765,175,912,226 was held by the public and $7,785,054,135,384 was intragovernmental.

The economy

No new month entered the BLS series; September remains the newest reading in all three. The all-items consumer price index was 336.940 on the 1982-84 base, 1.96 points above August, a monthly rise of 0.59 percent. Unemployment was 4.2 percent, a tenth above August and July. Total nonfarm payrolls were 159,044 thousand in September, a gain of 29 thousand after August’s 133 thousand. The reading remains prices firming while hiring slows, and nothing published since the last edition has changed it.

Elections and the midterms

Both chambers are decided; the margins are not. AP’s ledger, as displayed by the tracker at Votelect, had the House at 249 Democrats to 156 Republicans with 30 races uncalled as of 5:44 p.m. PT on November 5, and the Senate at 54 to 44 with two uncalled. AP is the authority for every call and count here, and the page named is where its numbers were read.

Mississippi is the closer of the two. AP’s count at 6:17 p.m. ET on Thursday had Scott Colom at 49.04 percent and Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith at 48.85, a lead of 1,813 votes out of 951,744 counted, with more than 95 percent of the vote reported. About 3,600 mail ballots were outstanding, and an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 provisional ballots required eligibility checks. Counties must certify by November 13; no recount is available, and a plurality decides. No final result is expected before next week.

Alaska will not be settled by the first-choice count. As of Wednesday afternoon, November 4, Mary Peltola led Senator Dan Sullivan 102,962 to 102,325, a margin of 637 votes, with about a quarter of the ballots still out; neither had a majority. Ranked tabulation begins November 18. Both campaigns say they will win.

The markets have made up their minds. Polymarket had Peltola at 97.8 percent on $679,968 of twenty-four-hour volume against Sullivan at 2.1 percent on $320,415, and Colom at 98.3 percent on $306,129 against Hyde-Smith at 1.6 percent on $383,286. The contract asking which of seven swing states Republicans will win put none at 97.6 percent on $170,847, a board on Republican Senate seats put 44 at 96.1 percent on $28,116, and the next majority leader contract put Chuck Schumer at 81.0 percent on $38,250. Those are the venue’s prices, not this report’s view, and a price is not a count.

The world

Outside the United States, the day’s sharpest development was in the war that decided the midterms. Manouchehr Mottaki, an Iranian member of parliament and former foreign minister, told Euronews that the Hormuz standoff “is not sustainable” and that “the immediate obstacle to moving beyond this situation is the blockade,” which he called illegal. Iran has imposed a competing blockade, permitting vessels from China, India, Iraq and Qatar to pass while blocking ships from countries it considers aligned with Washington; Mottaki said the Revolutionary Guard’s navy had spent ten days trying to reduce unauthorized transit to zero. Tehran says the strait will reopen only after Washington accepts seven conditions, among them ending the naval blockade, lifting oil sanctions and unfreezing Iranian assets. The strait carries about one-fifth of global oil supply.

The day also carried the other direction. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, met Putin in Moscow and reportedly carried a message from Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei about ending the war, and an Iranian army spokesman said Tehran had bought Russian Su-35 fighter jets. The Financial Times reported that Russia agreed in 2024 to supply Iran with 90 advanced missile launchers, though Al Jazeera could not confirm delivery. On the American side, Euronews carried reports that US officials had warned Gulf allies to prepare for new strikes. A negotiation and a bombing campaign are being prepared at the same time, and the day gave no evidence of which comes first.

Sources

Market, yield, debt and prediction-market figures were collected at 06:00 CT on November 6, 2026 from CNBC’s quote service (the November 5 close for the equities, and morning prints for the VIX, the ten-year, gold, crude and the dollar), the U.S. Treasury daily yield curve (November 5), FiscalData (November 4) and Polymarket’s Gamma API (twenty-four-hour volume). The BLS public API supplied the three series named above. Federal Register counts and document descriptions were read from the register’s own API. The courts section draws on CourtListener’s RECAP search and its watched-docket feeds. The election counts draw on AP’s race calls as displayed by Votelect, on CNBC for Mississippi and on Alaska’s News Source for the first-choice count; the account of the Iran war draws on Euronews and Al Jazeera, and the market close on Reuters.

PRH | huffmanwrites.org | © Philip Huffman