The hour turned on three threads: the eve of the US midterms, a sharp judicial rebuke of the Justice Department, and markets trading on Iran diplomacy. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui threw out the case against former FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, who were accused of lying to Congress about the Hunter Biden investigation. He called it weaponization and a 'rush job' steered by Donald Trump and Kash Patel ^1,2, though the Justice Department may still seek a grand jury indictment ³. On the campaign trail, Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers over Democrat Abdul El-Sayed ^4,5. More than half her campaign staff resigned , and Hakeem Jeffries said she had isolated herself from the caucus . Forecasts still lean Democratic: Thomas Miller's model gives Democrats a 90% chance of at least 51 Senate seats, with Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall's odds down to 43.9% ⁶, and Nate Silver read final NYT/Siena polling as a 'blue tsunami' ⁷. The administration is fighting on the legal front, asking the Supreme Court to set aside 20,000 California ballots ⁸, while Trump demanded prosecutions over Alaska's two Dan Sullivans on the ballot ⁹, an affair federal agents are now investigating ¹⁰. On Iran, Tehran's delegation left talks in Qatar after a tense weekend amid fears Israel is pushing for new strikes ¹¹, even as its foreign minister described intensive shuttle diplomacy through Qatari and Pakistani mediators ¹². Oil tumbled on hopes of US-Iran peace talks ¹³, and Brent fell to around $106 after Monday's diplomatic headlines, even as Goldman raised its December Brent forecast to $105 from $90 ¹⁴. In AI, Anthropic's amended IPO filing showed $17 billion in third-quarter revenue, but growth slowed to about 47% and rising compute costs pushed it to a $567 million operating loss. The filing also lists roughly $895.4 billion in spending commitments ¹⁵ and warns its models may soon reach an AI progress threshold that could bring scrutiny and delays ¹⁶. Separately, Marvell agreed to buy Lumentum for $115 billion ¹⁷, and Oracle plans $20 billion in stock and bond sales to fund AI data centers ¹⁸. Easy to miss but significant: supermarket chains in at least seven European countries reported fridge and freezer temperatures spiking overnight in a suspected cyberattack ¹⁹. It resembles October's incident at around 700 French supermarkets, though no link is confirmed ²⁰. A Yakima County, Washington resident exposed at a dairy with infected cattle became the first US bird flu death of 2026 ²¹. And customers pulled about $6 billion from Binance once withdrawals resumed after a 45-hour freeze that followed a $6.3 billion theft ²².