Supreme Court Leaves Self-Described Antifa Member Jailed Before Trial
The Supreme Court this week turned down an emergency request to let Kyle Wagner, a 37-year-old self-described Antifa member from Minneapolis, out of jail before his trial. Wagner is charged in federal court in Michigan with one count of cyberstalking and one count of transmitting interstate threats.
Kyle Wagner
Both counts stem from his dealings with a man identified in court documents as J.S., a pro-ICE social media figure. Prosecutors say that on Jan. 29 Wagner doxxed J.S. – posting his name, phone number and address, along with what he believed were his parents’ details, and wrote, “we can all knock on strangers doors.” According to the Solicitor General’s filing opposing release, which quotes the Sixth Circuit’s account of the record, the posts around it were far broader: he declared that Minneapolis was “kill or be killed,” told followers to “hunt” ICE and lamented that protesters had not marched on the Whipple federal building “with guns.” The same account says he raised between $10,000 and $15,000 from followers to help him evade detection, and that Instagram deleted his account before he resurfaced under a new handle.
Wagner’s lawyers say the record shows a protester, not a plotter – noting that he has no violent criminal history, owned no weapons and advocated nonviolent protest, and Courthouse News reports he offered limits on his movements and internet use. His lawyers argued he is “being detained not on the basis of a history of violence, but rather based on his speech.”
A magistrate judge in Minnesota first ordered him held, citing the posts, his lack of stable work or housing and his stated desire to evade law enforcement. U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood then revoked that order, though she acknowledged the government had made “a very strong argument” on public safety. She released him to his mother’s home in Minnesota with GPS monitoring, a ban on social media posting and limits to two approved devices. On Aug. 12, a divided Sixth Circuit panel reversed her. Judges Hermandorfer and Norris held that no set of conditions would protect J.S. and the public, and Judge Bloomekatz dissented.
It gets better…
Wagner faces additional charges for conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers in a separate case. Federal prosecutors claim Wagner and others engaged in coordinated efforts to disrupt federal operations during Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities.
A different judge ordered Wagner to be released on those charges, however, leaving him in detention solely based on the cyberstalking case. -Courthouse News
The Sixth Circuit’s own opinion, as the government’s brief quotes it, gives Wagner some ground. It conceded that he has no violent criminal history, a factor it said weighed “slightly against dangerousness,” and it ruled for the government anyway. The majority leaned on the threats, on his alleged willingness, in a Signal chat two days before his arrest, to entertain a request to help “kill” a former senior government official, and on a record of missed state court dates that included an “absconder” listing and an active Iowa warrant. It also held that Judge Hood’s remark that public protection depends on “what side of the street you’re on” had no bearing on the question. Prosecutors say Wagner shoved and spat at the arresting agents and flashed his middle fingers in his booking photo, saying it was “for the judge.” Bloomekatz read the “barrel of a gun” post as describing followers being threatened, and said the Signal exchange weighed only slightly toward dangerousness.
The Supreme Court was not asked to decide whether the posts were threats. Wagner wanted a stay while the justices consider his Sept. 18 petition, which asks whether appeals courts must defer to a district judge’s release decision or review it from scratch. The Solicitor General answered that this is no emergency. The government says the dispute becomes moot when trial opens Jan. 12, 2027, after Wagner himself delayed it four times. The postponements ran from April to July, September, November and now January, and the brief says he admits the aim was to keep the issue alive. It also noted the Court turned down the same standard-of-review question in 2022. The reports on Tuesday’s order did not address the petition itself.
The prosecution arrived with an announcement. In a Feb. 5 statement the Epoch Times quotes, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said the man “allegedly doxxed and called for the murder of law enforcement officers” and “proudly claimed affiliation with the terrorist organization Antifa.” The Justice Department announced the arrest in a release. Courthouse News notes that Antifa is a decentralized movement with no official organization, though President Donald Trump designated it a domestic terrorist organization by executive order last year.
As we reported, that September order told agencies to investigate and dismantle the group and anyone acting on its behalf, and what we called the first Antifa terrorism case ended with five guilty pleas over an attack on a Texas detention center. The Michigan charges against Wagner are a different kind of test: they rest on what he wrote and posted online, not on an attack.
I remind you once again: history is a trickster. Sometimes things turn out, and sometimes they just turn, and these days they’re turning hard. Get this: Russia is not our mortal enemy anymore. This is not 1956 or even 1986. It is no longer the so-called Free World against the wicked Hammer and Sickle.
Russia is no longer a weird political science experiment acting in defiance of human nature – that is, of people striving to make good lives for their families. No more sacrificing everyone’s happiness to prove Karl Marx’s cockamamie theories. No more trying to foist all that on the rest of the world. Russia gave up on that project and opted to become a normal nation, with the full kit of normality: commerce, shopping, banks, enterprise. Things have changed.
Things have gotten strange, too. You see every indication that, for now, Europe has become something of adversary, if not exactly our enemy, yet. Europe has lost its mind. Now, it is Europe’s turn to destroy itself in pursuit of idiotic theories – such as: nations don’t matter. . . you can have a high standard of living without productive industry. . . carbon is destroying the world.
Europe is now tyrannized by the unelected EU commission, much as the old Soviet Union was tyrannized by its politburo. An Orwellian switcheroo has occurred. When history plays tricks, it plays doozies. So, now you’ve got the grandmotherly Ursula von der Leyen dictating what all the countries in Europe may do and not do with their farms and factories and the daily lives of their people, just like Joseph Stalin in 1937. And you have the grotesquely weak leaders of France, Germany, and the rest submitting to this.
And outside the EU – which it voted to exit in 2016 – you have our so-called “mother country,” Great Britain (the United Kingdom) committing suicide in the most extravagant way, turning over prime ministers like they were jacks in a game of whist, jailing their own people for impure thoughts, while allowing the wholesale rape of its womenfolk by foreign invaders. Most extraordinary, as Dr. Watson might have observed to old Sherlock. Meanwhile, they have the ragged remnant of their old empire to defend, and it’s not going so well.
That remnant is all that’s left of Britain’s economy: its banks, its Wall Street, which they call The City of London, a square mile of hideous skyscrapers by which Britain desperately seeks to maintain financial flows into an economy that increasingly produces nothing. Which is to say, all that’s left of Britain’s vast imperial power is a matrix of nefarious financial rackets – just as, in the USA, all that’s left of the old Democratic Party is its matrix of rackets.
These days, Britain’s political apparatus is working hard to scare-up a war with Russia as a last-ditch attempt to salvage its hopelessly wasted economy. Britain’s leadership apparently thinks it can summon a war economy and even draft an army of foot-soldiers as if this were 1914 or 1939. It’s an insane project, based on an age-old wish to capture the vast natural resources of Russia. They’ve been at it, like, forever. (France and Germany tried it, too. Didn’t work.)
Now we, here in the USA, in our own hemisphere of the globe, far across the salty seas from Europe, had been enlisted in this project to mess with Russia since 1991, and that’s not working so well anymore, either. First of all, there is the NATO problem. We’re still entangled in that anachronistic treaty, despite Russia having opted to be normal thirty-five years ago. So, you see, the way to get Russia was to stir up a war between it and Ukraine.
And they used us to do it – because the EU+ NATO lacked the mojo for the job. They got our Anglified State department and its NeoCon errand boys, along with our intel cowboys and their “Five-Eye” pardners, to stage the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Kiev, kick out the Russia-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych and, after running through a couple of puppet presidents, installed the former comedian Zelenskyy in the job (who had played a buffoonish Ukrainian president on TV previously, another great prank by our friend, history).
The next gambit was to try to shoe-horn Ukraine into NATO, which everybody knew would provoke Russia to move against Ukraine, which it did in 2022. Russia did not want NATO military bases on its border. That, Mr. Putin declared, loudly enough to be heard in Berlin, Paris, London, and Brussels, was a “red line.” Voila, war! And the USA being the backbone and the bank account for NATO, got dragged into backing Ukraine by the feckless “Joe Biden” – years on Ukraine’s bribery payroll, and too out-of-it to not be punked into playing along. Yeah, he said, you can join NATO. The blue and yellow flags busted out all over our land. Slava Ukraini, the useful idiots shrieked.
President Donald Trump, having survived the Ukraine phone call impeachment gambit and many other attempts to put him out of business, was wise to the game, and one of the first things he did returning to power in 2025 was to confab with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Against all odds, Mr. Trump has maintained that working relationship despite having to pretend to support NATO. He apparently realizes that the tricks of history have placed the USA in greater alignment with Russia than with our former World War Two allies, most particularly a desire to avoid the World War Three that NATO is now pushing for.
The President has made it clear that he is done with the weaselly Zelenskyy and all his machinations – his visits to suck-up with King Charles, his nefarious dealings with NATO, his monstrous money-laundering. If Mr. Trump has not yet secretly withdrawn America’s remaining support for Ukraine via NATO, he will do so soon, explicitly, and in a way that is liable to be an end to NATO, which trickster-history has managed to turn into a warmonger. The EU and NATO do not have the money to keep that war going. It’s as simple as that.
Now, Iran. Americans are badly exercised by this operation, which has so far claimed around twenty lives. Well, there’s an election on, and you can be sure that a lot of this discontent is being generated by 1) the desperate Democratic Party and 2) the various characters in what’s being called “Woke MAGA.” The peeved apostates, such as Tucker, Candace, MTG, and company, might be acting under, shall we say, foreign influence, but they also seem plumb crazy. In the case of Tucker and Candace, of course, the ideas they’ve been retailing seem garishly insane. Tucker babbles about literal infestations of Satan-sent demons, and sneers Goebbels-like against the Jews, while Candace follows her cuckoo Charlie Kirk vengeance project.
Get this: Iran has lost this war, and badly. And for a good reason: being that they were determined to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles to deliver them, and President Trump made the reasonable decision that it better not happen. Iran, being run by a lunatic Jihad faction, the IRGC, refuses to come to reasonable terms. The few weeks left before the US midterm election make this an especially delicate period. The Iranians well know this, and are playing it for all it’s worth in hopes that a flip of the US Congress will improve their position. It’s a bad bet.
The president has made it pretty clear, and consistently so for months. The Iranians can either agree to become a normal nation, even prosperous, happy one, but with no nukes and no more jihad, or we are going to put them out of business – whichever way the midterm election goes. In other words, what you’re seeing now in that corner of the globe is not the final disposition of things.
The Europeans apparently have an incentive to do whatever they can do keep feeding the flames in Ukraine and Iran, though they are not advertising it overtly. Our interests have diverged. The Europeans are maneuvering in such a way as to make themselves an adversary to the USA, a very unwise move. It also happens that their countries are going up in flames at the moment. Their citizens are not happy, and they are further belabored by a large force of invading savages. The leaders in charge of those countries might not be in charge a whole lot longer. Think about recalibrating your expectations about where all this is going. And don’t be so glum. The odds are in our country’s favor, and these wars can be resolved favorably.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.
Cocoa Grindings Crush Estimates, Chocolate Stocks Rise: Is Hershey A Buy?
A new Bloomberg survey found that third-quarter cocoa processing in Asia and Europe exceeded estimates, signaling a potential demand recovery as lower bean costs improve processing margins. The rebound follows a period of record-high cocoa prices that sparked demand destruction among consumers.
Asian processing soared 29% in the third quarter to its highest quarterly level since 2011, according to the Cocoa Association of Asia. In Europe, grindings rose 3.2% from one year ago, marking the region’s first quarterly year-on-year increase since 2024, according to the European Cocoa Association.
New York cocoa futures rose .5% on Thursday to about $5,762 a ton, roughly 157% above this year’s low of $2,243. Despite the rebound, prices remain more than 50% below the $12,000 levels reached at the height of the cocoa shortage in late 2024
“The market was already trending in a bullish direction and this will add to the sentiment,” said Daryl Kryst, senior vice president of OTC commodities at StoneX, adding that weather and supply risks in West Africa linger.
Chocolate stocks have also rallied over the past five days, led by Nestlé and Barry Callebaut, up 6.62% and 6.60%, respectively. Mondelez gained 5.71%, Lindt rose 5.38%, and Hershey added 3.61%.
“Some chocolate companies have been saying that they intend to rebuild volume sales and to focus on volume sales growth,” said Rabobank analyst Oran van Dort. “And if that’s the case, then this increase in European grindings could be an element of that in preparation.”
Lower bean prices this year have improved margins and encouraged activity after the 2024 price spike forced chocolate makers to change recipes and consumers revolted against expensive candy bars. Still, CoBank economist Billy Roberts pointed out that the rebound partly reflects weak comparisons following earlier declines.
Processing strength has yet to translate into a sustained recovery in chocolate demand. A key test will be the “October/Halloween” period, which Deutsche Bank consumer staples analyst Steve Powers highlighted as an important demand signal for Hershey.
“September consumption and share trends were softer than expected, raising the importance of October/Halloween performance in assessing both near-term holiday prospects and the credibility of HSY’s expected volume/share improvement into FY27,” Powers wrote in a note on Wednseday.
Oil Prices Extend Gains Amid Possible Saudi East-West Pipeline Hit, Russian Refinery Outage
Update(1240ET): Iran state IRIB reports a new thermal anomaly detected near an oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu region, suggesting Saudi East-West oil pipeline has been targeted once again.
However, any further information or confirmation has not been forthcoming. Regarding the Ukraine war, Russia’s Ryazan oil refinery, about 200 km southeast of Moscow, was hit again overnight and is reportedly on fire.
Oil prices extend gains.
US CRUDE FUTURES RISE OVER $2 TO CROSS $100 PER BBL ON PERSISTENT MIDDLE EAST SUPPLY CONCERNS, RUSSIAN REFINERY OUTAGE
Images of Russian oil refinery fire, amid Trump-Zelensky standoff over Ukraine’s ongoing strikes on Russian oil and diesel infrastructure…
🇺🇦🇷🇺 Ukraine struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Ryazan region Thursday, triggering a fire, regional governor Pavel Malkov said, Reuters reports. The Rosneft facility southeast of Moscow accounts for nearly 5% of Russia’s refining throughput. Earlier Thursday morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced an end to Kyiv’s pause on refinery strikes after Russia continued attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure despite Trump’s Sunday announcement of an “energy ceasefire.” “The block [on attacking refineries] is out. We’re done,” he told the Financial Times. Zelensky said another pause would require additional U.S.-made Patriot interceptors in return, calling that the “minimum” acceptable condition. 🎥 Video: Sueta
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Friday once again affirmed his country is not ready to give in to force, no matter how much military pressure or sanctions it faces from Washington.
He issued the words from Yerevan, Armenia, on the sidelines of the Leaders’ Summit on Biodiversity. Pezeshkian said US-led sanctions “are beyond humanitarian frameworks and [US] attacks in recent months are unjustifiable and inhumane.”
“Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons, and we consider the destructive propaganda against our country to be lies,” he added, as quoted by Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim News Agency.
Latest Friday announced tanker fire, via Iran state media
Pezeshkian then stressed: “We have always been ready to talk. They think they can make us surrender, but we will not give in to force.”
During an interview with Newsmax on Thursday, President Trump reiterated some of his key rationales for going to war, and Iran’s leader seemed to be directly responding to some of what Trump had to say.
“We want to make it so that they will never have a nuclear weapon, because if they had it, they would use it, in my opinion, instantaneously,” Trump had said, but also again claimed the conflict would be over soon. There was also this interesting exchange with the Newsmax journalist in reference to the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb or MOAB, ‘Mother of All Bombs’ in Iran:
“Well, the mother of all bombs is not nuclear,” Trump said.
Host Rob Finnerty asked, “Not tactical nuclear?”
“No, it’s not nuclear at all. This is just an extremely large bomb,” Trump said. “It’s like a tiny nuclear bomb. The mother of all bombs is one big bomb, but it’s not nuclear.”
Trump did not say whether he had authorized the weapon’s use, nor did he identify a potential target.
“The Iran war will be over very soon. It’s going to end very soon,” he said, while asserting that Iran is currently negotiating with the US. This seems merely a reference to messages being passed through mediators.
According to @CNN, Trump is considering using MOABs against Pickaxe nuclear site. I would not be dismissive of the idea as CSIS expert was on Thursday’s Erin Burnett. The rationale of using a MOAB is that the blast is so violent that it can overcome typical blast traps of tunnel entrances. It is like a small nuke; it is difficult to engineer entrances to withstand that level of a blast. The goal may be the confirmed closure of known access routes at Pickaxe, creating a monitored condition. Reopening is an observable change requiring action. That can be valuable even when the condition of the underground chambers would remain unknown. Moreover, MOABs would destroy surface support structures and utilities. Monitored closure, with lack of information about activities inside, has been the situation for months at Esfahan Mtn complex and the underground Natanz enrichment plant. So MOABs could put Pickaxe in the same condition as the other two nuclear sites. Note: Fordow was destroyed by earth penetrators, GBU-57s, reaching the underground halls via crashing through ventilation systems. While we have discovered probable ventilation shafts at Pickaxe, it is uncertain how they reach the main underground halls. But a MOAB on a ventilation shaft may be worth trying, if there is one to spare. The huge blast would be on the surface. Pickaxe is an isolated site, so neighboring communities would be unlikely to be affected by the blast.
That’s when Trump threw out the following dubious line: “They’ve asked us to please stop. And we do, because we’re negotiating with them.“ He also noted that he does not foresee sending US ground troops into Iran, despite some Congressional leaders expressing concern over an extended quagmire.
But as for ramped-up Iranian attacks on international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, this certainly hasn’t stopped, but instead has reached record levels this month.
In the latest Friday incident, Iran’s navy has announced an oil tanker “caught fire” after trying to cross a “restricted area” in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian navy surveillance teams “discovered and identified a violating oil tanker that had caught fire in the restricted area,” state TV said. It described the tanker “turned off its tracking systems and attempted to cross the prohibited area in the Sea of Oman.”
The navy “emphasizes that the consequences of uncoordinated movements in prohibited routes and areas are creating insecurity and many dangers for other vessels,” the statement said.
Another tanker is burning in the Gulf of Oman. Iranian Navy: the vessel had shut off its tracking systems and was moving through a prohibited area east of the Strait of Hormuz when monitoring teams spotted it. Tasnim. https://t.co/meouGpzngL
Ultimately, the situation still looks stuck and stalemated, but the big question will remain whether Trump has the stomach to take some kind of military action before and not after the November midterm elections (which he has threatened).
Iranian attacks on shipping have now surpassed two dozen instances just half-way through the month of October alone, but there’s yet to be a direct US military response, other than occasional attacks on ‘illicit’ Iran-linked shipping in the same waters.
The way automated vehicles (AVs) drive frustrates many motorists sharing the road with them, leading to more dangerous driving and possibly road rage.
A line of Waymo robotaxis drives through North Beach in San Francisco, Calif., on July 7, 2026. Heather Diehl/Getty Images
That is one way to interpret the findings of researchers at Chinese universities in a newly released paper that aims to gauge the effects of integrating AVs into car fleets worldwide.
“Automated vehicles drive safer but induce riskier behavior in human drivers in car-following scenarios” is the title of the new paper, published in the journal Communications Engineering in October.
Researchers Yueying Chu and Peng Liu from Zhejiang University, and Ying Gao and Zhigang Xu from Chang’an University, sought to answer two questions using available AV driving data: Will AVs drive more safely? And will AVs make nearby human drivers drive safer?
The answer to the first question was yes.
“Our evidence clearly shows that AVs drive safer and smoother as compared to their human counterparts in car-following,” the researchers reported.
The answer to the second question was complicated, and potentially deadly.
Cars following AVs tend to drive more slowly because that is what drivers most often do when a slow car is in front of them. In that sense, the behavior of human-driven vehicles was coded as safer.
The reason AVs tend to be the slower cars is that they are programmed to obey all traffic laws and treat speed limits as an upper bound, not a suggestion.
Yet following behind AVs also led human drivers to engage in behavior that the researchers coded as risky. Human-driven cars followed AVs more closely, which is another way of saying they tailgated them.
The Chinese researchers examined several reasons why this might be the case. Their best answer was that because AVs in the lead do not tend to vary their speed, human drivers are more comfortable leaving a smaller gap.
“So, ironically, AVs’ better velocity and acceleration management might, unconsciously or implicitly, lead their human followers to maintain a shorter distance and create higher tailgating potentials,” they write.
The paper did not examine passing.
On a road with multiple lanes in both directions, passing is relatively safe behavior. Statistically, on two-lane roads, it is much more dangerous because it can lead to collisions with oncoming traffic, sideswipes, or other damaging, often fatal, outcomes.
More tailgating wasn’t the only potentially dangerous finding in the paper. It also found that because AVs tend to leave more distance than humans would between themselves and the lead car, other human-driven cars are more likely to “cut in” to that gap, which can lead to accidents, the Chinese researchers found.
That AVs leave significant room and that humans tend to tailgate them is consistent with other findings involving AVs and accidents.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called safety “critical” to the success of the AV industry.
Duffy wrote in an introduction to a September report that AVs “don’t drive drunk, they don’t get tired, and they can’t get distracted by an incoming text message or notification – all significant contributors to crashes today.”
The Department of Transportation said it is preparing for “both human-driven and automated vehicles coexisting on public roads” for the foreseeable future.
The safety record of AVs is usually better than that of human drivers, studies have shown.
A July study released by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that the L4 class of Waymo’s AV taxis crash at “police-reportable” rates that are 68 percent lower than those of comparable human drivers traveling the same roads under the same conditions.
“Waymo’s rate of rear-ending another vehicle was 91 percent lower; its vehicles’ rate of being rear-ended was 40 percent lower,” the study found.
The Blue Wave Trade: JPMorgan’s “Democrat Factor” Soars 20% As Wall Street Prices A Sweep
Prediction markets aren’t the only place where traders are betting on a Democratic sweep.
Over the weekend, we laid out Goldman’s case that gas prices are steering the midterms, with Polymarket pricing a roughly 65% chance that Democrats take both chambers, a number the bank’s own historical work suggests is too high.
But for those who prefer their political bets with a ticker and a prime broker attached, there is another, far more lucrative gauge of how Wall Street sees November 3: JPMorgan’s Democrat Factor (JP9DEMP Index on Bloomberg), a beta-neutral long/short equity pair built to move with the Democrats’ odds, and nothing else.
It has done exactly that. Since August, the pair is up roughly 20%. Over the same period the S&P 500 rose 2.6%. Scaled up to a 6% volatility target, JPMorgan’s Delta-One desk calculates that the Democrat Factor has generated ~170% annualized, a return that would make even the most die-hard AI longs green with envy (although lately that would be red).
In other words, the blue wave is already a trade, and a crowded one at that.
Read on as we explain what is inside JPMorgan’s election factor, why it has been tracking Polymarket tick for tick, and why the S&P 500, which is sitting just shy of record highs, has priced almost none of the outcome that BofA’s Michael Hartnett says would send it 10% lower.
What Is The “Democrat Factor”?
The construction was laid out by JPM’s Delta-One strategist Manish Sinha in the bank’s “US Election Series – Midterms: September 30, 2026” note (available to pro subs). The idea predates this election: JPM first built the framework during the 2024 presidential race, and dusted it off for the midterms. The process, as JPM describes it, is to score a universe of roughly 3,000 US stocks by how each reacts to changes in Polymarket’s odds, assign each one an “Election Score” for its sensitivity to Democratic versus Republican chances, then optimize the results into two liquid long/short pairs:
The Republican pair (JP9REPP) and Democratic pair (JP9DEMP) are designed to be beta-neutral, aiming to capture election-related idiosyncratic movements. The model also allows us to evaluate a portfolio’s direct exposure to Democratic versus Republican factors ahead of the midterm election. This provides a framework to hedge anticipated election uncertainty and to reduce overall risk and directional exposure.
The Democratic pair goes long JP9DEML and shorts JP9DEMS; the Republican pair is the mirror image (long JP9REPL, short JP9REPS). Here is how the two looked at the end of September, overlaid on Polymarket’s Senate odds for each party: the Dem factor up 19.45% as Democratic Senate odds jumped above 60%, the Republican factor down 14.57% as GOP odds collapsed.
The more important point is what the factor doesn’t contain. JPM’s attribution shows that the move is almost entirely idiosyncratic, i.e., stock-specific, with “limited explanatory power from traditional risk factors.” The green “Factors” line in the chart below has barely moved since March; virtually all of the August-September surge comes from the red “Idiosyncratic” line.
Translation: this is a pure election bet, unaffected by the AI trade, by momentum, by rates and by beta, and that is precisely why the desk has been pitching it to institutional investors in size.
Tracking Polymarket Tick For Tick
On October 7, with markets digesting what JPM called non-consensus risks in Res Vol and Momentum, Sinha flagged one factor that had held up no matter what:
Regardless of shifting conditions, our Democratic factor (JP9DEMP Index) has continued to show strength as we move closer to the mid-terms. It’s up ~20% since August, and that move appears broadly neutral to Beta, Momentum, and other factors.
TRADE – A tactical long in (JP9DEMP Index) could add alpha into the election—especially if Polymarket’s continues to trend in Democrats’ favor.
The chart that accompanied the note shows why: since the summer the factor (black, right axis) and Polymarket’s Democratic Senate odds (orange, left axis, last at 65%) have been nearly indistinguishable, with the factor up 21.9% from its July trough.
A day later, in a JPM S&T factor risk note, that recommended buying protection into year-end and earnings given a negative equity risk premium, Sinha slotted “Long Democrat Pair JP9DEMP” right next to his hedges, noting it “has been tracking Polymarket odds” and “could be a tactical election trade if Polymarket odds keep moving toward Democrats.” By this morning’s JPM Market Intel briefing the pitch had become a scoreboard: a 6-vol Democrat Factor strategy has generated ~170% annualized returns since August, compared to ~15% annualized for the ~15%-vol S&P, which Sinha says “suggests a meaningful shift in where alpha is being realized, likely driven by election dynamics.”
Some napkin math: both numbers describe the same ~20% move. 20% in roughly ten weeks annualizes to the high-100s, and the 6-vol scaling just puts it on the same risk footing as the index. Impressive, but nobody should read it as an eight-bagger in four trading days.
Which brings us to the obvious problem with a factor whose only input is a probability.
From 23% To 64%… And Possibly Back To 58%
The Democrat Factor has worked because the odds have moved, and they have moved a lot. In August, just 23% of fund managers in BofA’s FMS expected a Democratic sweep; 47% expected the “GOP Senate & DEM House” split. By Sep 4, Kalshi had a sweep at 47% (as we noted in “Democrat Sweep? Here Are JPMorgan’s Midterm Trades – And Why Gridlock Pays”), and three days later we flagged that Polymarket’s odds had hit a record:
By Sep 29, Goldman’s average of Kalshi and Polymarket hit ~65% on Oct 8, and in his latest “Midterms, Bidterms, Skidterms” Flow Show (available for pro subs), Hartnett had Polymarket at 64% for a sweep, up from 49% in September, against 28% for the GOP Senate/Dem House split and just 9% for a GOP sweep:
Put the snapshots side by side and the shift is stark: a sweep went from a 1-in-4 fringe call among fund managers to the market’s base case in under two months.
The last bar is where it gets interesting for anyone long the factor. As we detailed yesterday, in the bank’s “US Election Monitor: October 8 Update” (also available to pro subs) Goldman’s Alec Phillips found that in past midterms (2002, 2006, 2010, 2018, 2022), prediction markets “have tended to overstate the challenging party’s sweep odds at this point in the cycle”, with the average fade from early October to Election Day about 5 points:
Apply the average fade to Goldman’s 63% (exhibit above) and a sweep drops to the high 50s. Still the favorite, but if JP9DEMP keeps tracking Polymarket the way it has, a 5-point slide in the odds is a meaningful drawdown for what is now a 20% winner, and potentially a winning arb.
And the risk is lopsided. The odds can’t go above 100%, while the polls behind the Senate math are anything but solid. Goldman notes that midterm polls “tend to understate Democrats in Democratic-leaning states and Republicans in Republican-leaning states”, consistent with red-state voters “coming home” late, and the Senate majority runs right through Alaska, Texas, Ohio, Iowa and Kansas. Meanwhile, CNN’s Harry Enten found that Republicans hold their best party registration position in a midterm year in at least 20 years in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, a metric he called “pretty gosh darn good” for the GOP.
Put differently, the trade that worked because the odds went from coin flip to base case now needs the odds to go from base case to lock.
What Exactly Is Wall Street Long?
JPM doesn’t publish the constituents of JP9DEML and JP9DEMS. But the bank’s Delta 1 thematic team (Kaitlyn Bowman and Priyanka Thapa) does spell out what a Democratic Congress would mean at the policy level in its scenario basket JPMDC26P, which we first discussed in early September: long ACA exchange-exposed managed care and hospitals (enhanced premium tax credits get extended) and low-end consumer spending (affordability support); short SMID-cap defense, capital-markets-exposed names (oversight and investigations replace deregulation), energy permitting beneficiaries and anything riding on the CLARITY Act.
That last short has already had a dress rehearsal. When the Senate killed the crypto market-structure bill in mid-September, every Democrat voted no, and we made the obvious extrapolation:
Senators voted 49-50 to reject the so-called Clarity Act Every Democrat voted against the measure. Three Republicans – Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Jerry Moran of Kansas – also voted against the measure. If Dems sweep, data centers are next.
Hartnett makes the same point with a broader brush: a Democratic sweep “signals electoral shift from populist capitalism to populist socialism” and means “next big direction in tax & regulation up not down (EPS negative).” His preferred hedge, as we first reported on Sep 5, is short financials and the US dollar, which overlaps neatly with JPM’s short capital markets leg.
Gridlock Is Good… Unless It’s A Sweep
So the election trade is crowded in prediction markets and in the factor space. What about the index? Here the sell-side splits into two camps.
Camp one says relax. JPM’s Andrew Tyler argues that even a Blue Wave would fall well short of the two-thirds majorities needed to override a presidential veto, so the result would be gridlock “similar to Biden’s last 2 years, Trump 1.0’s last 2 years, and Obama’s last 2 years”, which markets “typically react favorably to.”
His conclusion: “Any dip creating around the election, we would be buyers” and history is on his side. Per JPM, the S&P has rallied on average 5.4%, 11.4%, 12.5% and 14.7% at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months after midterm election days since 1990, and all 19 midterms since 1950 showed positive returns 6, 9 and 12 months out.
Goldman’s IBD team calls the midterms a potential “clearing event”, noting that stocks have historically underperformed into the vote (a median 3.5% decline in the month before since 1974) and outperformed after (a median 6.5% gain over the following four months). Tony Pasquariello made the same point back in August with Ben Snider’s analog: 12 of the last 13 midterms saw the market higher from Election Day through the end of February.
Camp two says the base case is the bear case. Hartnett’s scenario map: a Democratic sweep is “big risk-off”, with “stocks skid >10%”, the dollar and yields falling into year-end and international stocks outperforming. A GOP Senate/Dem House split is risk-on (stocks +5%, “Gridlock = Goldilocks”), and a GOP sweep would be the most bullish surprise of all. Goldman’s custom basket head Louis Miller is in the same camp, warning earlier this month that “midterms beckon and the result probably won’t be risk positive.”
Note the problem: the average historical outcome bakes in plenty of gridlock, while the outcome now priced at roughly two-in-three is precisely the one Hartnett says breaks the pattern. In August, when the FMS expected the split, the two camps agreed. Now they don’t, because the market’s base case has moved from Hartnett’s “risk-on” scenario to his “risk-off” one.
And yet the index hasn’t blinked. US stocks are up 13.4% YTD per Hartnett’s scoreboard, and JPM’s own chart shows the S&P up just 2.6% since August while the Democrat Factor ripped 20%. The election risk has been isolated, packaged into a beta-neutral pair, and traded as alpha, and the rest of the tape (held up, as Miller put it, by the AI trade) has been left to assume gridlock.
Bottom Line
Sinha’s summary of the trade is hard to argue with:
Where is the market’s alpha headed into the midterm? A 6-vol Democrat Factor (JP9DEMP Index) pure-alpha strategy has generated ~170% annualized returns since August. … This suggests a meaningful shift in where alpha is being realized, likely driven by election dynamics.
Our take is less enthusiastic. The Democrat Factor has been a spectacular way to monetize the odds moving from a coin flip to the base case, but with Polymarket at 64%, Goldman’s history pointing to a ~5-point fade, red-state polls that have historically flattered Democrats, and a gas price that could break either way (Trump has already ruled out striking Iran before Nov 3), the easy money in the factor has been made. The bigger mispricing sits on the other side of the ledger: an index that has priced a sweep in prediction markets and in a pair trade, but not in the S&P itself.
If Hartnett is right that a sweep means a 10% skid, the cheapest election hedge on the board is downside protection on an index that still trades as if the split is the base case. Then again, with 22 days to go, it may be that the only thing the market truly believes in is gridlock = goldilocks… and gas below $4.
The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit against California and two election officials, seeking to prevent approximately 20,000 potentially ineligible voters from having their ballots counted in November’s midterm elections until their citizenship status can be verified.
The Justice Department alleges that California is knowingly allowing noncitizens to participate in federal elections, raising concerns about election integrity just weeks before voters head to the polls.
“State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.
“If found responsible in a court of law, the State of California will have seriously undermined confidence in our electoral system and violated laws that protect our nation’s representative system of government,” Blanche added.
According to the lawsuit, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators identified potentially ineligible voters using federal immigration records and information from the Social Security Administration and State Department.
The Justice Department previously sent Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan a password-protected drive containing more than 20,000 voter records, demanding citizenship verification within 48 hours.
Logan responded that his office would follow applicable federal and state election laws while maintaining accurate voter registration records.
The administration is now asking a federal court to prevent ballots associated with those voters from being counted until their eligibility is established.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, condemned the lawsuit, accusing President Donald Trump of attempting to suppress voters ahead of the election.
“This is a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day,” Newsom said.
Similar federal efforts to identify noncitizens on voter rolls in Nevada, Pennsylvania and New Jersey have previously raised questions about the accuracy of government data.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has confirmed that he and the City Council speaker have agreed to phase out carriage horse rides in Central Park, a win for animal rights activists who have long opposed the rides.
The mayor said he would make sure workers and owners are protected as the rides wind down, with an end date of June 1, 2028.
“I think that we have a civic responsibility to ensure that we are not leaving anybody out to dry,” Mamdani said at an unrelated press conference Oct. 14. The City Council announced it will vote on the bill ending carriage rides on Oct. 22.
The Transport Workers Union, which represents the carriage drivers, denounced the text of the bill as noncommittal, with “no meaningful economic relief for workers.” The bill does not require the city to compensate the 68 owners for their city-issued license or medallion.
Mamdani said the city’s plan will become more explicit and options are still being discussed. The mayor said he would make sure owners and workers won’t be made to pay “for the sunsetting of an industry.”
However, drivers say they feel they have been treated poorly, and that the City Council has no solid justification for the ban.
In a statement, the union denounced City Council Speaker Julie Menin for what it described as using “the tragic death of a tourist to contrive a public safety crisis.”
On June 17, Romanch Mahajan, 18, a tourist visiting from India, was thrown from a carriage after the horse spooked and bolted during a ride with his family. Mahajan hit his head and died. After his death, Menin announced her support for the ban in a video on X.
Carriage horse drivers argue the issue is not public safety. Mahajan’s death is the first in more than 160 years of horse-drawn carriages operating under the union in Central Park, compared to as many as 28 deaths related to bikes, e-bikes, and scooters on New York streets in 2026 alone. Menin and Mamdani have yet to set new safety measures on e-bikes and scooters.
Animal rights groups have long sought to end the carriage horses in Central Park, launching social media campaigns whenever there is a horse-related incident, such as the death of a carriage horse named Deniz on June 9 after he ate Japanese yew growing in the park.
Animal rights group New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, and Safe Streets (NYCLASS) reacted on X to the ban.
“For decades, NYCLASS fought to end cruel and dangerous horse carriages,” it wrote. “It took the extraordinary courage, compassion, and unwavering leadership of Speaker Menin.”
Drivers say that the horses are well-treated and that extensive city rules govern their feeding schedule, what time of day they can work, as well as the temperature range during which horses are not allowed to work (18 degrees or colder, 90 degrees or warmer). The city also mandates an eight-hour workday and five weeks of vacation time for the horses every year.
‘No Way!’
Carriage license owner Ahmet Bilici, who trained as a veterinarian in Turkey before coming to the United States in 2001, became a carriage driver to support himself as he was learning English. The job stuck, and he’s been a driver for 23 years. He said that if the City Council wanted to work with carriage drivers, drivers would be amenable, but that City Council just wants a ban.
“When you take this carriage from me, I am going to lose my quarter century! No way!” he said. “I trusted the city because the city licensed the medallion, and now you are shutting down? No way!”
Bilici said the ban will hurt 300 families if you count support staff, which includes stable workers, blacksmiths producing horseshoes, and craftsmen making saddles.
“This is my small business, my investment. It’s like my house. You’re burning my house!”
Bilici said that if the city shuts down the carriage rides, it must compensate drivers.
“There’s no way we can accept this,” he said.
Another driver, Danielle Slot, also said she was extremely disappointed. She thinks there is no solid justification for the ban.
“Our City Council is supposed to look out for people and represent people, and they’re supposed to see through these things,” said Slot, referring to the long-term campaign of NYCLASS head Steven Nislick to ban carriage horses, which dates to 2008.
Slot previously worked with horse-drawn carriages on Michigan’s Mackinac Island, a 4-square-mile island in Lake Huron that never welcomed automobiles and still relies on horse-drawn carriages.
“I’ve just completely lost faith in the government here, which is very sad,” said Slot. “It feels like they’re capitalizing on sensationalism.”
Slot said she voted for Mamdani.
She said City Council members are unaware of the realities of the equine industry, thinking as if a new home can easily be found for horses where they won’t need to work. The proposed ban requires owners to make sure horses are not sold off to other carriage drivers out of state.
“It’s a really nice thought that there would be some magical sanctuary. But it’s just not realistic,” said Slot, who added that caring for horses costs thousands of dollars a year. She said those on the City Council supporting the bill either don’t know, or they don’t care.
Slot moved to New York to work as an actor and is still pursuing her career in the performing arts. She said she came to New York in part “because this is a place where I feel like people are protected, people can be who they want to be,” but she said her experience with the ban on horse-drawn carriages makes her feel the political system is compromised.
Trump Unloads On Zelensky In Lengthy Interview Tirade: ‘He’s Not A Good Guy’
In a rarity, President Trump spent a good amount of time in a fresh Newsmax sit-down interview lambasting Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, a longtime Washington ally who has been the recipient of billions in US arms and funds.
At a moment Zelensky has resisted Trump’s call to stop striking Russian oil refineries, Trump bashed the Ukrainian leader as “not a good guy for (the US) to deal with.” Watch Trump put Zelensky on blast…
.@POTUS: “Zelensky is not a good guy for us to deal with… If they’re going to end up with a settlement of some kind, they’re not going to do it with him. He doesn’t want to settle. He says he wants to settle, but he doesn’t.” https://t.co/jVbg0jRJg0
He lamented that the Ukrainian president does not want to help bring an end to the war, now it its fifth year.
“He says he wants to settle, but he doesn’t. I’m not a big fan of Zelensky. They’ve destroyed that country,” the US president said, ultimately laying blame the blame also on the prior Biden administration.
Trump said it is the Ukraine war – and not the Iran war which he started with his Operation Epic Fury – that is driving up global energy prices.
“Now, if you tell me that Zelensky is again shooting at refineries, all he’s doing is making the world oil price higher,“ Trump stated.
“Well, I think that’s a disgrace. There’s plenty of other targets… There are a lot of targets that you can hit,” the president continued.
Trump goes after Zelensky extensively in the interview, not holding back:
Trump: “I watched an interview of a young woman the other day from Ukraine. And she said, ‘President Zelenskyy has destroyed our country. President Zelenskyy has taken our men away from us. Our men have no legs, no arms. Our men in many cases in mental institutions or they’re dead.'”
“But when you shoot at diesel refineries where you make, you know, diesel oil and we need that and the world needs that, then he’s not doing a good service for the world” – Trump said further of Zelensky.
The American president again went so far as to say it’s time for a new Ukrainian leader, and that fresh elections must be held.
“I think you need an election because there’s nobody that’s telling me that the people of Ukraine are satisfied having missiles hitting their apartment building,“ Trump said.
Concerning the admitted ongoing difficulty of getting the two warring sides to the negotiating table, Trump described, “As you know, Putin hates Zelenskyy, and Zelensky hates Putin. And when you have that kind of hatred, it’s very hard to get something settled.”
Trump has engaged in plenty of prior public critiques of Zelensky, but again – it’s unusual for him to sit down with a conservative outlet and offer lengthy commentary on how Zelensky is failing.
Show host Rob Finnerty looks briefly shocked when Trump bluntly says “I find Zelensky to be more difficult to deal with than Putin”…
Trump on Zelensky: I find Zelensky to be more difficult to deal with than Putin. https://t.co/7i8H2yDFHR
This week there are signs that the US may be cutting back intelligence-sharing with Kiev, also amid Ukrainian outrage at the diesel deal with Putin announced last week. Ukraine has continued refinery strikes, also with Zelensky saying that Trump’s prior proclaimed ‘energy ceasefire’ was “news to me”.
Another Mass Shooter Stopped By Armed Citizen In Oregon
Three children and one adult are dead following an active shooter situation at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Oregon on Thursday afternoon. The suspected active shooter is also dead after an armed civilian chased the shooter into the school and killed him.
The shooter was reportedly a 16-year-old boy, though no details on identity or motive have been releases yet. He was armed with a long gun; an anonymous law enforcement source told the Associated Press it was a pump-action shotgun purchased legally by his mother.
Police responded to the school at about 12:59 p.m. after receiving a report that an unknown man had shot into a car. Deschutes County 911 dispatchers received multiple calls reporting that someone had entered the school and started shooting. By the time they arrived, the assailant was already dead.
Unfortunately, three children (ages 5, 8, and 11) and one teacher were killed before the shooter was stopped. A 7-year-old child and a 54-year-old teacher were also critically injured. Both were transported to St. Charles Medical Center in Bend.
Victim names have not been officially released.
While the identity of the shooter is still under wraps, commenters are already suggesting that the attack might be yet another case of a transgender lunatic on a rampage. It should be noted that the state of Oregon has one of the highest rates of teens and children undergoing transgender treatments in the US.
If this is the case, then the incident may be buried by the establishment media. It might also be sent down the memory hole because of the successful intervention of an armed citizen. The narrative for decades within the media was that armed civilians rarely if ever stop violent crimes.
The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) has repeatedly examined the definitions used by the FBI to categorize civilian interventions in violent crimes, and they found significantly higher numbers of such cases than the FBI had reported. In other words, the FBI was suppressing the actual data on civilians saving the day, often with their own firearms.
One recent CPRC count identified 615 active shooter incidents from 2014–2025 and concluded armed citizens stopped 225 of them (about 36.6%). When limited to locations where civilians are legally allowed to carry (i.e., excluding gun-free zones), the rate rises to roughly 52–53% (and higher in some recent single-year examples).
CPRC attributes the gap to the FBI missing or overlooking numerous incidents and occasionally misclassifying civilian interventions (for example, listing private armed citizens or volunteer church security as professional security guards). They argue their expanded list still uses the FBI’s core definition and that media coverage tends to under-emphasize successful civilian interventions.
While gun control advocates often cite mass shootings as a reason for banning of weapons (or outright confiscation), these incidents account for only 2% of all gun deaths in the US on average. The majority (around 60%) are suicides, and 35% are homicides.
Around 20% of US counties account for 90% of all homicides in the country. Of these counties, the vast majority are controlled by Democrats. Among the worst 1% of US counties (about 31 counties, holding ~20% of the population and ~41% of murders in recent data), the CPRC lists political leanings as 21 Democratic strongholds, 6 leaning Democratic, and 4 swing or Republican-leaning.
In other words, the counties with the most aggressive gun control advocates and laws in the US are also the places with the most gun violence. Perhaps it’s because law abiding citizens in these places are far less likely to carry, which emboldens criminals to commit more violence.
