The Supreme Court stayed a district judge’s injunction against the Big Bend border barrier on Monday, and the order did more than free the construction crews. Writing per curiam, the Court found the government “exceedingly likely to prevail” on its argument that the plaintiffs’ major-questions claim was statutory rather than constitutional, which left the district court without jurisdiction under the immigration statute’s review bar. Mississippi’s Senate count entered its last day, with Scott Colom ahead by 2,574 votes, affidavit voters required to present identification by the end of today and counties required to certify on Friday. In Abu Dhabi, the first trilateral talks on the Russia-Ukraine war since February opened with an American official saying Moscow and Kyiv had shown “a little bit of flexibility, privately” on the future of Ukraine’s east.

The administration and the rule of law

The Federal Register published 206 documents for November 9 and 10: no presidential documents, 26 rules, 17 proposed rules and 163 notices. The absence of presidential documents is a fact about the window, not a gap in what could be read.

The Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network ordered a special measure against MEXC Global, finding the exchange, including its subsidiaries and offices outside the United States, to be “a financial institution operating outside of the United States of primary money laundering concern in connection with Russian illicit finance,” and prohibiting certain transmittals of funds involving it. The order rests on section 9714(a) of the Combating Russian Money Laundering Act and takes effect December 10.

Two proposed rules would narrow the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The first codifies the 2025 reconciliation law’s changes to the three-month time limit for able-bodied adults: which people are excepted, how states qualify for waivers, temporary good-faith exemptions for Alaska and Hawaii, and a revised definition of a homeless individual. The second limits categorical eligibility to households receiving TANF assistance as 45 CFR 260.31 defines it, rather than any TANF-funded non-cash benefit. Both take comment through December 10.

The Housing Department gave notice of its intent to reorganize headquarters and field operations, consolidating administrative functions and eliminating redundancies; the notice says it proposes no office closures or staff relocations. The Trade Representative extended the suspension of its Section 301 action against China over the maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors, two months further, to January 10, 2027, “to allow for further discussion with China.” A separate notice extended the Section 301 investigation of Vietnam’s intellectual property practices by three months. Health and Human Services proposed to strip Medicare and Medicaid regulations it considers obsolete or excessively burdensome, with comments open to January 11, 2027. OFAC sanctions notices ran among the 163, which otherwise carried the usual information collections, advisory-committee meetings and exchange rule filings.

The courts

One item in the window, and it came as an order on an emergency application. In Mullin v. Friends of the Ruidosa Church, No. 26A560, the Court stayed a preliminary injunction from the Western District of Texas that had blocked barrier construction in the Big Bend Sector. The per curiam opinion reasoned that IIRIRA section 102(c)(2)(A) permits only claims “alleging a violation of the Constitution of the United States,” and that the respondents’ claim, however labeled, alleged that the Secretary of Homeland Security had exceeded his statutory authority. Under Dalton v. Specter, the Court said, that is not a constitutional claim. “There is no such thing as a ‘constitutional’ major-questions claim,” the opinion reads. Justice Jackson would have denied the application. The stay holds pending the government’s petition for certiorari and terminates if certiorari is denied.

The D.C. Circuit filed nothing. The district court in Washington recorded twelve new dockets on November 9, among them Oversight Project v. Department of Homeland Security, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility v. Bureau of Land Management and Allick v. Federal Bureau of Investigation, along with a criminal case, United States v. Taylor. The pack carries captions and docket numbers, not complaints and charging documents, so this report can say who sued whom and not what the suits allege.

Four of the five watched dockets moved. Beatty v. Trump recorded one filing, ECF 116; Phang v. Blanche seven, ECF 64 through 66 and four minute entries; MSW Media v. Department of Justice one, ECF 26; and D.C. Preservation League v. Department of the Interior ten, ECF 142 through 147 and four minute entries. The consolidated appeal in the D.C. Circuit recorded nothing.

Markets

Equities closed sharply higher on Monday. The S&P 500 finished at 7,549.94, up 173.08 points or 2.35 percent; the Nasdaq Composite at 25,253.139, up 673.714 or 2.74 percent; the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 52,389.75, up 1,104.02 or 2.15 percent. Those are Monday’s closes, not an overnight move.

The pre-market prints, collected around 06:00 CT on Tuesday: the VIX was 19.99, up 0.07; the ten-year Treasury yielded 4.89 percent, up 0.028 of a point; gold was $4,078.30 an ounce, down $36.20; front-month WTI crude was $85.52 a barrel, down $1.33; and the dollar index was 101.751, up 0.098. Those are morning quotes, and they were taken before the cash market opened.

Treasury’s curve for November 9 ran 4.56 percent at two years, 4.88 at ten and 5.26 at thirty, a 2s10s spread of +0.32 against +0.35 on November 6. Total public debt outstanding was $40,552,751,019,093 on November 6, down $3,369,765,891 from the prior business day; $32,762,925,356,629 of that was held by the public and $7,789,825,662,463 was intragovernmental.

The economy

The monthly series did not move overnight. The all-items consumer price index for September was 336.940 on the 1982-84 base, 1.96 points or 0.59 percent above August. Unemployment was 4.1 percent in October, a tenth below September’s 4.2. Total nonfarm payrolls were 159,293 thousand in October, 165 thousand above September and 225 thousand above August. October consumer prices have not been published yet.

The three readings still say what they said yesterday: prices rose at a pace the labor market does not corroborate. The index gained 0.59 percent in a month while unemployment fell a tenth and payrolls grew by 165,000. The October consumer price figure is the next number that will test whether that divergence is a timing artifact or a trend.

Elections and the midterms

Votelect, which displays AP’s race calls, read 252 Democrats to 165 Republicans in the House with 18 races uncalled, stamped 6:31 p.m. PT on November 9. Four seats that were uncalled at the previous stamp are now called for Republicans. The Senate ledger, unchanged since 12:27 a.m. PT on November 4, read 54 Democrats to 44 Republicans with two uncalled.

Mississippi is one of the two. The tally 16 WAPT displays, updated November 9, had Scott Colom ahead of Cindy Hyde-Smith by 2,574 votes with 97 percent of the expected vote counted. Its newest county update is Holmes County at 5:02 p.m., a batch timestamp the page cautions is not the time the last ballot was counted. Secretary of State Michael Watson said Monday that 75 of 82 counties had reported, that 12,767 affidavit ballots had been processed with about 77 percent accepted, and that an estimated 8,000 affidavits and 2,800 mailed ballots remained outstanding. By Monday evening WLBT reported more than 14,000 affidavits processed statewide, with roughly the same acceptance rate.

The clock on those ballots runs out today. Mailed ballots must reach the circuit clerk, and voters who cast affidavits without acceptable photo identification must present it, by the end of November 10. Counties must certify by November 13, and Mississippi has no recount process. The outstanding affidavits exceed the margin, which is why the race is uncalled.

Alaska is the other. Its ranked-choice tabulation is scheduled for November 18, and the state accepts absentee ballots for fifteen days after Election Day.

Polymarket priced both. Colom stood at 98.8 percent on $22,691 of twenty-four-hour volume and Hyde-Smith at 0.9 percent on $11,647; Mary Peltola at 98.7 percent on $95,100 and Senator Dan Sullivan at 1.0 percent on $147,644. The chamber contracts put Chuck Schumer at 91.0 percent to be the next Senate majority leader and Hakeem Jeffries at 94.2 percent to be Speaker. Those are the venue’s prices, not this report’s view.

The world

The talks on ending the Russia-Ukraine war opened in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, the first trilateral round since Geneva in February; soon afterward the U.S.-Israel war on Iran diverted Washington’s attention and no further discussions were held. The BBC reported that expectations for a breakthrough are low but that a United States official, speaking on the eve of the meetings, said Moscow and Kyiv had shown “a little bit of flexibility, privately” on who would control Ukraine’s eastern regions after the war. In public, the positions have not moved: Russia has demanded that Ukraine relinquish the parts of Donetsk it still holds, and Kyiv wants the contact line frozen where it is.

The official said the territorial question cannot be settled until the parties agree on a postwar security architecture, and that the Americans would propose a wider format bringing the Europeans into the discussion. The framework under discussion includes security consultations, crisis hotlines and reciprocal de-escalation measures, and officials have floated reactivating the NATO-Russia Council, largely paused since 2022.

Jared Kushner, in the American delegation with Steve Witkoff, wrote that the talks would address the “postwar security concerns” of both countries and could at most “build momentum toward the next phase of negotiations.” France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said France, Britain and Germany “will indeed be in the meeting room.” Russia’s delegation includes the Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky, the deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin, the spy chief Igor Kostyukov and the army general Yury Zhigarlovsky; Ukraine’s includes Rustem Umerov, Kyrylo Budanov and Davyd Arakhamiya.

The war did not pause for the talks. The BBC reported that Ukraine is reeling from a Russian strike on a village in Zaporizhzhia last week that killed at least 40 people, and that Russian bombardments and attacks on energy infrastructure have continued.

Sources

Market, yield, debt and prediction-market figures were collected at 06:00 CT on November 10, 2026 from CNBC’s quote service (the November 9 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 9), FiscalData (November 6) 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, and the courts section draws on CourtListener’s opinion search, its RECAP search and the watched dockets’ own feeds. The election counts draw on AP’s race calls as displayed by Votelect, on 16 WAPT for the Mississippi tally, on SuperTalk and WLBT for the secretary of state’s figures and the counties’ review, and on Alaska’s News Source for the ranked-choice schedule. The account of the Abu Dhabi talks draws on the BBC.

PRH | huffmanwrites.org | © Philip Huffman