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Is the AI Bubble Finally Popping? Wall Street Wipes Out $2 Trillion Before Lunch
One day. That’s how long Wall Street’s post-election party lasted. On Wednesday the Dow soared more than 1,500 points, its best day since April of 2025. Today it gave all of it back and then some. The Dow plunged nearly 1,700 points. The S&P 500 fell about 4%. The Nasdaq dropped more than 5% into correction territory, down over 10%from last month’s record. It took the Nasdaq six minutes after the opening bell to erase its entire post-election rally.
This was an AI selloff, pure and simple. Nvidia fell 8%. AMD lost 15%. SanDisk cratered 19% Microsoft and Amazon dropped too. Roughly $2 trillion in market value vanished in a morning. Analysts say investors fear a Democratic Congress will slow the data center building spree, and one Morgan Stanley strategist said there were already “visible cracks in the AI ecosystem” before the vote.
When an entire economy is propped up by a handful of chip stocks and a speculative mania, this is what fragility looks like. Working people didn’t get rich off the AI boom. But their pensions and 401(k)s will pay for the bust.
Republicans Beg Trump to Change Course After the Midterm Drubbing. Will He Listen?
The morning after voters handed Democrats both the House and the Senate, Republicans are pointing fingers, mostly at the White House. Reuters reports GOP allies and strategists are urging Trump to clean out his staff and dump the policies they blame for the wipeout, namely the Iran war and the tariffs. Veteran strategist John Feehery called it a huge disaster and said Trump needs to clean house. Even JD Vance publicly blamed the Iran war for the losses. And Trump? He told Fox News, “I don’t view it as a hit on me.” He admitted the war hurt Republican candidates, then defended launching it anyway. Then he toured his White House ballroom construction site, the very project focus groups in Michigan and Iowa said they couldn’t stand, and called it relaxing. The White House posted a photo captioned PSA, Trump is still your president. A senior official told Reuters that internal polling warned of this six weeks ago and Trump changed nothing. Aides expect resignations, Cabinet shakeups, and a flood of Democratic investigations. Trump’s answer is reportedly a stack of executive orders. When the voters say no, he plans to govern around them. That’s the test democracy faces for the next two years.
Bernie Sanders Throws Down the Gauntlet. Pass Medicare for All and Dare Trump to Veto It
Bernie Sanders isn’t wasting a minute. On CNN Wednesday night, Anderson Cooper asked how much Democrats could really get done with Trump still in the White House. Sanders flipped it. He said the new majorities should pass Medicare for All and put it on Trump’s desk. “If that’s what the American people want, let’s do it!” He cited polling showing well over 60% support, and said if Trump wants to veto it, that’s his right. But he’s not so sure Trump would. He called Trump a politician, not an ideologue. In a video posted afterward, Sanders laid out the rest. Repeal the roughly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act that he says will throw 15 million Americans off their coverage. Restore the ACA tax credits so 20 million people don’t get hit with premium spikes. And he warned the new majority can’t go back to the same old establishment politics. Ed Markey and Ro Khanna are already on board. For 30 years the Democratic establishment has said Medicare for All is too heavy a lift. Voters just handed them the biggest majority in a generation. If not now, when?
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Did Trump’s DOJ Just Launch a Criminal Hunt for the Person Who Warned America About Dobbs?
Remember May 2nd, 2022? That’s the night Politico published Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, nearly two months before the Court made it official. Chief Justice John Roberts called it a “singular and egregious breach of that trust” and ordered an internal investigation. Eight months and 97 sworn affidavits later, it came up empty. Now, the New York Times reports, Trump’s Justice Department has made it a criminal investigation. Grand jury subpoenas have gone out to people who worked at the Court in 2022. And the person running it is Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News host Trump installed as US Attorney for Washington. Here’s the catch. There’s no federal law that makes leaking a Supreme Court draft a crime. Prosecutors may instead try to charge someone with lying to the Court’s original investigators. The Times has also reported that some justices were quietly negotiating a compromise that might have preserved part of the right to abortion, and the leak ended that effort. Think about the priorities. This Justice Department drops cases against the president’s friends, and now it’s hunting whoever told the American people what their highest court was about to do to them. That tells you whose interests it serves.
Voters in Nevada, Virginia and Missouri Slam the Door on Abortion Bans
Abortion rights went three for four on Tuesday night. In Virginia, about 62% of voters approved Question 1, which writes a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” into the state’s Bill of Rights. In Nevada, voters approved Question 6 for the second straight election, as state law requires, locking abortion into the state constitution with roughly 63%. Opponents barely showed up. Their two PACs raised less than $70,000 combined. Missouri is the big one. Two years ago Missouri became the first state to overturn an abortion ban at the ballot box, by a slim 51.6%. Republican lawmakers answered with Amendment 3, a repeal that would have made Missouri the first state with an abortion ban written into its constitution. They bundled it with a ban on gender transition care for minors to juice turnout. Voters rejected it, 55.5 to 44.5. The lone loss came in Idaho, where Proposition 1 failed and the near-total ban stays. Since Dobbs, abortion has been on the ballot in 17 states, and the message never changes. When the Supreme Court took this decision away from the people, the people took it back, state by state. Politicians who keep trying to overrule them are learning what it costs.
Democrats Put Billionaires Back on the Menu. Will Trump Really Veto a Tax on the Rich?
Rich people are back on the menu in Washington. That’s how Politico put it, and with Democrats holding both chambers come January, taxing the wealthy has gone from a slogan to a plan. Senator Chris Van Hollen is pushing a surtax on incomes over $1 million, and nearly half the Senate Democratic caucus has signed on, including moderates Mark Kelly and Angus King. Chuck Schumer wants to quadruple the tax on stock buybacks. Ron Wyden, set to chair the Finance Committee, says billionaires will pay their fair share. Richard Neal wants to cap the giant retirement accounts the rich use as tax shelters. Yes, Trump is promising to be Mr. Veto. Van Hollen says bring it on. If Trump vetoes it, he said, “it will just show people that he’s on the side of billionaires.” There are hurdles. A federal wealth tax faces constitutional questions, and nobody knows how the new Democrats from Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina will vote. Moderates killed every such tax in the Biden years. But the politics have changed. The deficit is $2 trillion, Social Security is headed for insolvency, and voters just said they’re done subsidizing the richest people in human history. That’s a fight Democrats should welcome.
And that’s the way it is, Today Thursday, November 5, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
