Welcome back to the Morning Brief——brought to you by one of America’s largest independent newspapers—The Epoch Times. 

It’s Friday November 6th, and I’m Keegan Billings.

Let’s jump right in.

Good morning! It’s Friday. Here are today’s top stories.

• A sell-off in tech stocks has pushed the Nasdaq composite index into correction territory.

• Senate races in Mississippi and Alaska remained too close to call on Thursday night as Democratic challengers clung to slim leads. 

• California Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to commute the death sentences of all 548 inmates on death row in his state.

• President Donald Trump met with Russian ⁠President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, Trump suggested that a deal between Moscow and Kyiv could be reached soon. 

• A former student leader of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement was sentenced to 10 years in prison. it follows his second conviction under a Beijing-imposed national security law that has been used to arrest those who are critical of the CCP.

• 🍵 Health: Rebounding is a low-impact workout that may support balance, bone strength, and pelvic floor function.

NOW, BACK TO OUR TOP STORY:

Nasdaq Plunges Into Correction Territory, Dow Drops More Than 1,800 Points

The tech-fueled Nasdaq index dropped by 5.52 percent on Thursday. That left the index at a point more than 10 percent below the record closing high it set last month, meeting Wall Street’s definition of a correction. 

The index is still up by approximately 5 percent year-to-date.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average—a 30-stock blue-chip index—lost 3.44 percent. The broad-market S&P 500 fell by 4.36 percent

Both leading benchmarks remain up, by 7 percent and 7.4 percent, respectively, this year.

The Russell 2000—an index of 2,000 small-cap companies—dropped by more than 4 percent.

President Donald Trump blamed the midterm election results for one of the worst days in the U.S. stock market’s history.

the president posted on  Truth Social saying

“Such a sad thing to watch!” “It took so much work to get us to a level that no one has ever seen before, and then this. Your 401(k)s have, therefore, dropped.”

The sell-off follows a post-election rally a day earlier, when investors welcomed political certainty and divided government. The Dow posted its best day since April 2025, soaring by more than 1,500 points.

Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Euro Pacific Asset Management, said on X.

“Yesterday’s stock market rally in the face of the Democratic landslide made no sense. In contrast, today’s sell-off makes perfect sense. Expect more days like today,” 

Stocks linked to the artificial intelligence trade largely contributed to the sell-off. Other sectors—consumer staples, energy, healthcare, and utilities—held steady.

Investors may be concerned that a federal- and state-level blue wave that swept through midterm elections could threaten the AI boom. A chorus of lawmakers has argued for more AI regulation, and some have gone as far as to call for a moratorium on data-center construction. (More)

Shares of chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices, Broadcom, Nvidia, and Qualcomm slumped. The widely watched iShares Semiconductor ETF—a popular index composed of chipmakers—fell by about 12 percent.

Neocloud companies—CoreWeave, IREN, and Nebius, for example—also plummeted. The industry—cloud computing providers built for immense AI workloads—has been beaten in recent weeks over concerns that these companies will be unable to borrow money to fund their infrastructure buildout.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla Motors, meanwhile, both suffered steep losses.

Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer for Northlight Asset Management said 

The market narrative has ostensibly shifted from “AI changes everything” to “Blue wave means data centers will never be built again in this country,”.

Zaccarelli told The Epoch Times in an emailed note.

“We do agree that sentiment has shifted and building data centers will become more difficult, but if there is a productive business case for building them, then they will get built—and Artificial Intelligence will continue to be a more important part of the technology solutions that businesses use every day,” 

he added. The situation is a lot more “nuanced” than the market’s behavior, 

NOW, OVER TO POLITICS:

• Senate races in Mississippi and Alaska remained too close to call on Thursday night as Democratic challengers clung to slim leads. 

In Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom has a narrow lead over incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, an unexpected development in a reliably red state.

The razor-thin margin surprised political experts as Mississippi has long been a Republican stronghold. It came alongside other surprising Democratic wins in the American South.

As of Nov. 5, Colom held a 1,145-vote lead on Hyde-Smith, according to the Associated Press, with 96 percent of the vote counted.

That’s in a state President Donald Trump won in 2024 with 60.9 percent of the vote

Matthew Dallek, a political science professor at George Washington University, told The Epoch Times that the economy, the war in Iran, and high gas and grocery prices contributed to the tight race.

Dallek said the switch was a perfect storm where black voters supported Democratic candidates in Mississippi while Latino voters came out in full force to elect Democrats in Texas after members of the two demographics helped elect Trump in 2024.

For Alaska’s Senate race Democratic challenger Mary Peltola hangs on to a 637-vote lead over Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan, according to The Associated Press, with 74 percent of ballots counted.

In Alaska, if neither candidate gets 50 percent or more of the votes, rules call for a ranked-choice tabulation, where voters would rank their choice in order of preference.

The trending results are a far cry from the incumbent Sullivan’s previous run in 2020, when he won his second term by more than 12 points over nonpartisan candidate Al Gross.

• California Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to commute the death sentences of all 548 inmates on death row in his state.

The move is the largest clemency action in state history. 529 are men, and 19 are women.

The term-limited Democratic governor, who leaves office in January 2027, made the announcement in an open letter to Californians on Nov. 5.

Newsom wrote.

“After nearly 30 years in public office, I have come to understand the limits of what government can justly accomplish,” 

“I take this action because I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes each of us. I know we cannot execute people in our imperfect legal system and remain true to our core values, first among them justice and human decency.”

Newsom wrote that although some have said he should not grant clemency to those who committed the “worst of the worst” crimes, he has spoken to victims harmed by these crimes, and “each experiences their loss as the worst of the worst.”

Most of the commutations cannot take effect until the California Supreme Court acts. Under the California Constitution, the governor may not commute the sentence of a person who has been convicted of more than one felony unless the state high court recommends the commutation, with at least four justices concurring.

In a filing with the court, Newsom said that 382 of the prisoners have more than one felony conviction, and he asked the justices to issue their recommendation by the end of the year so that he may act before his term ends.

Newsom declared a moratorium on executions in March 2019, soon after becoming governor. The last execution in the state took place in 2006 when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, was in office.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has awarded U.S. First Lady Melania Trump a state honor for her humanitarian support for Ukraine and her efforts to help children and other civilians affected by the war.

The first lady received the Order of Princess Olga, 1st Class, Kyiv’s highest civilian honor for women, by presidential decree dated Nov. 2.

The award follows Melania Trump’s key role in brokering a localized ceasefire in the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky, which Kyiv and Moscow praised as a success.

The localized ceasefire in Oleshky, which started on Oct. 27 and concluded on Nov. 1, was brokered by the first lady to provide humanitarian aid to the region and evacuate some civilians. The first lady said in an X statement on Nov. 1 that almost 800 people were evacuated from the area during the ceasefire.

According to the decree, she was bestowed the award for “significant personal contribution to humanitarian support for Ukraine, active human rights and charitable activities aimed at saving Ukrainian children, citizens affected by Russian aggression, illegally deported and forcibly displaced from the territories of Ukraine temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation.”

The honor is named after Olga of Kyiv, a 10th-century ruler of Kyivan Rus who is venerated as a saint in the Orthodox Church as one of the first members of its ruling dynasty to convert to Christianity.

• President Donald Trump met with Kirill Dmitriev, Russian ⁠President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, following First Lady Melania Trump’s White House meeting with representatives from both Russia and Ukraine that commemorated the end of the Oleshky  ceasefire. The president suggested that a deal between Moscow and Kyiv could be reached soon. 

While Trump confirmed that he met with Dmitriev on Thursday, he did not elaborate on the contents of the discussion. 

The president also confirmed on Thursday that he did not meet with the Ukrainian delegation that was at the White House for the first lady’s event. During the event, First Lady Melania Trump called for a more lasting peace

Trumps  comments came ahead of trilateral negotiations between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine, which are scheduled to take place next week.

On Nov. 10 and Nov. 11 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The negotiations will be the first trilateral peace talks to take place since the three countries held talks in Geneva, Switzerland, in February.

AND MORE ON POLITICS:

• A top Department of Justice official, Harmeet Dhillon, said on Nov. 5 that she is resigning and that she was asked to wait to step down until after the midterms.

Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote in a post on X on Nov. 5 that he accepted Dhillon’s resignation and said that she “has defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor.”

“The Department is grateful for her dedicated public service,” he wrote, “and we wish her every success in her future endeavors.”

Confirming her departure to Fox News, Dhillon said that she “wasn’t asked to resign.” She had served as the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.

she said, 

“I resigned three weeks ago, and Susie asked me to please wait until after the midterms,” referring to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.

Dhillon said in a Fox interview that she told Wiles three weeks before the midterm elections that she “accomplished everything” she set out to do in the agency and wanted to return to her private law practice.

Before she was confirmed in the Senate to join the DOJ, she founded the Dhillon Law Group and the Center for American Liberty. She is also a former vice chair of the California Republican Party and Republican national committeewoman for California.

In her tenure as the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Dhillon sought to reorient it to focus on protecting the rights of gun owners as well as ending diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, at universities and other organizations.

• Voters in eight states on Tuesday backed ballot measures that sought stricter election rules, approving voter ID and U.S. citizenship requirements.

In West Virginia, South Dakota, Kansas, Alaska, and Arkansas, voters approved measures affirming that only U.S. citizens can vote in state elections. All but Alaska’s were constitutional amendments, while Alaska’s was a ballot initiative.

Voters in Ohio and Nevada approved constitutional amendments requiring photo ID to vote in person. North Carolina voters approved an amendment extending the state’s photo ID requirement, already in its constitution for in-person voting, to mail ballots.

Voters in California and Colorado rejected measures that would have tightened voter ID rules. California’s Proposition 39 would have required voter ID, and Colorado’s Amendment 84 would have required an ID number for mail-in ballots.

In Arizona, a measure that would require voter ID and prohibit foreign contributions in elections was trailing but hadn’t been called.

Other voting-related measures were on the ballot in several states.

Massachusetts voters approved a measure allowing same-day voter registration on Election Day. In Alaska, preliminary results showed voters narrowly rejecting a measure that would have repealed the state’s ranked-choice voting system, open primaries, and some campaign finance disclosure rules.

• Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) says Republicans won’t “stand idly by” if incoming congressional Democrats seek to reverse GOP measures following their midterm wins.

Thune also said Senate Republicans were able to “put up a strong record of accomplishment that’s created safer streets, more money in Americans’ pockets, and new opportunities for families and businesses to get ahead.”

he said.

“After fighting Democrat obstruction at every turn, we prevented the largest tax hike in American history, secured our border in an unprecedented way, confirmed the president’s Cabinet at the fastest pace in two decades, and put strong conservative judges on benches across the country faster than we have since the Reagan administration,” 

Some conservative critics, however, disagreed. In an interview with The Epoch Times’ Jan Jekielek, historian and conservative writer Victor Davis Hanson said he believes Republicans in Congress accomplished little over the past two years or so, including confirming Trump’s picks for the judiciary.

The SAVE America Act, a key voter ID provision, was not passed, Hanson said, adding that Republicans also could not “really repeal” the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

he said.

“Even the judicial nominations were pretty slow,” 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said in an interview with Fox News Wednesday evening that he also believes the GOP-led Congress wasn’t able to codify Trump’s executive orders.

“Why haven’t we done immigration, shut off H-1B visas? Why haven’t we codified Trump’s immigration executive orders? Why haven’t we stripped jurisdiction from the federal courts over deportation cases?” he asked. “There’s so many things that could have been done. They didn’t even attempt it.”

• President Donald Trump signed a proclamation preserving two of the White House’s historical rooms. The document declares the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room as national monuments, under the authority of the Antiquities Act. Congress members will next consider ratifying the order.

If lawmakers vote in favor, the law would prevent major modifications by future presidents without consulting Congress.

“So if they want to say let’s not have an oval anymore, let’s make it square, what happens is they have to go back to Congress, and hopefully … the people in Congress will be smart enough not to let that happen,” Trump said.

The Oval Office was not included in the original White House, completed in 1800. Earlier presidents chose a room in the main house to make their office, with Thomas Jefferson occupying the State Dining Room.

President William Howard Taft oversaw construction of the Oval Office in 1909. Architect Nathan C. Wyeth designed the historic oval-shaped room to symbolize the power of the presidency.

According to the White House Historical Association, President George Washington favored oval rooms for hosting guests.

• City Councilmember Nithya Raman has defeated incumbent Karen Bass in the Los Angeles mayoral race. Raman, 45, who is of Indian origin, was elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 2020 with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Bass’s defeat marked the first time in two decades that a Los Angeles mayor lost a reelection bid. She pledged to ensure a smooth transition.

• A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plan to build a triumphal arch near the District of Columbia, hours after the project received commission approval.

The National Capital Planning Commission, which is the federal government’s planning agency for the Washington area and consists mostly of people appointed by Trump, in an 8-4 vote gave the green light for the structure on Thursday. Construction could begin as soon as Friday. But the proposal has sparked three lawsuits, which have been combined into one case.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a two-page order late Thursday, barring any construction-related work on the project for 14 days.

The order bars the administration from carrying out “any construction, excavation, demolition, land-disturbance, utility-installation, or roadway-closure activity, or any other construction-related activity at or near Memorial Circle” in Washington related to the triumphal arch.

Chutkan also ordered that the administration must continue to comply with prior notice obligations.

One of the parties that have sued is a group of veterans and a historian, represented by public-interest law firm Public Citizen Litigation Group. They filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block construction, arguing that the arch would interfere with the historic sightline between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House, among other concerns.

The U.S. State Department offers a reward of up to $50 million for information leading to the arrest of the top three leaders of Tren de Aragua.

The offers are part of the Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program in coordination with the FBI, DEA, and Justice Department. Tren de Aragua is a violent Foreign Terrorist Organization, which was designated in 2025 by the Trump administration.

The reward for Yohan José Romero, also known as “Yohan Petrica,” increased from up to $4 million to up to $20 million. For Giovanni Vicente Mosquera Serrano, also known as “Giovanni” and “El Viejo,” the reward increased from up to $5 million to up to $15 million. And Juan Gabriel Rivas Núñez, also known as “Juancho,” is the subject of a new offer of up to $15 million.

Court documents name Romero as the present-day leader of Tren de Aragua. He leads the group’s operations, which include narcotrafficking, illegal gold mining in Venezuela, and murder.

Mosquera Serrano and Rivas Núñez are each second-in-command to Romero. Mosquera Serrano directs operations in the United States, Colombia, and Central America, while Rivas Núñez leads operations in Venezuela. Mosquera Serrano is one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and has directed multiple acts of violence involving robbery, extortion, and kidnapping.

A superseding indictment, which was filed on July 29 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, charged Romero, Mosquera Serrano, and Rivas Núñez with conspiracy to provide, providing, and attempting to provide material support to a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

​​NOW MOVING ONTO WORLD NEWS:

• Hundreds of thousands of people marched across France on Nov. 5 in a nationwide strike for higher wages and pensions that brought together left-wing unions, students, retirees, and “yellow vests,” the largest turnout since far-left high school protests in September grew into the country’s most serious social unrest in years.

The Interior Ministry reported 575,000 demonstrators nationwide on Thursday, including 65,000 in Paris, down from an initial estimate of 600,000. That was higher than the 550,000 recorded on Oct. 17, when riots and looting broke out, and more than twice the 256,000 counted on Oct. 6, at the height of the student protests. The CGT, France’s largest union confederation, put the turnout at 1.6 million.

The U.S. Embassy in Paris had issued a security warning to Americans ahead of the protests. In a Nov. 4 alert, it cited recent violence, property damage and looting, warning that curfews could be imposed without notice and that protests could spread beyond planned routes. The Eiffel Tower was closed for the day.

448 Arrests, 53 Officers Injured

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez deployed some 70,000 police officers and gendarmes, backed by armored vehicles, drones, and helicopters, for what he had called a “sensitive day,” promising “a response of extreme firmness” to any violence.

By evening, the ministry reported 448 arrests and 53 police officers and gendarmes injured nationwide. Nuñez said on Thursday evening that the marches unfolded “in a context where, once again, violence was widespread.”

The worst violence was in Lyon, where several hundred black-clad rioters at the head of a 30,500-strong march damaged shops and set fire to a car, according to the prefecture, which reported 40 people injured, among them 34 police officers and gendarmes, and 24 arrests.

Schools were targeted again from the early morning. Near Toulouse, about 30 hooded individuals fired fireworks mortars at staff of a high school in Tournefeuille and set fire to its student affairs office. In Lille, a high school was evacuated after its gate was set ablaze.

In Paris, a teacher was assaulted when fights broke out outside the Lamartine high school after outsiders joined a blockade, leading the school principal to condemn scenes of “extreme violence,” according Le Figaro.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced Thursday evening that he would meet with unions and employers on Monday to discuss wages and the cost of living. Labor Minister Jean-Pierre Farandou said raising the minimum wage was an option. The CGT union is calling for a 10 percent increase, while the CFDT wants an extra 100 euros a month, about $112.

• Joshua Wong, a prominent former student leader of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, was sentenced to nine years and 10 months in prison, following his second conviction under a Beijing-imposed national security law that has been used to arrest many of the city’s prominent activists critical of the Chinese communist regime. 

Joshua Wong, 30, pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy to collude with foreign forces to endanger communist China’s national security.

He first rose to international prominence in 2014 for his role in Hong Kong’s mass pro-democracy protests, known as the Umbrella Movement. That year, Time magazine named him one of the world’s 25 most influential teenagers.

Wong cofounded a Hong Kong political party, Demosisto, in 2016, with fellow young activists Nathan Law and Agnes Chow. However, the party disbanded shortly after the regime’s national security law took effect in 2020.

In 2018, then-U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers nominated Wong, Law, Chow, and the entire pro-democracy Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2021, Wong was among 47 activists charged under the national security law over their involvement in an unofficial primary election that involved candidates not vetted by Beijing. The case drew international criticism of the Chinese Communist Party’s interference in Hong Kong’s governance. Wong was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison in November 2024 and was originally expected to be released in January 2027 for that charge.

On Nov. 5, Hong Kong High Court Judge William Tam handed down the new 10-year sentence against Wong.

According to a press release, Tam characterized Wong’s offense as of “grave nature.”

MAIN

Rebounding: A Low-Impact Way to Build Balance and Strength

Hi, it’s Helen Billings and for our Friday health story, I’ll be talking about how jumping on a trampoline can be a good low impact way to build balance and strength.

So For this topic we interviewed Yonuh-tin  Whitten. He told us that when he started grade school, his parents made him jump on a mini trampoline every morning.  That’s because Doctors had told his parents  that his body had trouble moving lymph,—the fluid that carries waste and immune cells through the body—and so they hoped that the daily bouncing would help.

Now Four decades later, Whitten is a chiropractic functional neurologist who focuses on movement for pain relief, and he posts follow-along trampoline workouts on YouTube. He enjoys dissecting clinical evidence to share what rebounding is good for and being honest about what’s less clear. He believes mini trampolines benefit nearly everyone.

Whitten told us “It’s something that takes up very little space. It takes very little time to get big benefits from, and it can be used by almost anybody because it’s so low impact.”

If we Look at the Research, it suggests that a mini trampoline, also called a rebounder, may improve balance in older adults. It may also benefit body weight, bone strength, and pelvic floor health.

Jumping exercises build strength, power, balance, coordination, and bone density.

Yet jumping can be hard on the body, which is why most adults shy away from it. Every landing sends the ground’s force back through muscles, joints, and tendons, and one bad landing can mean weeks away from workouts.

But A trampoline offers a workaround.

The trampoline makes the landing easier. The mat and its springs absorb the force.

Now a soft landing does not mean a passive workout. The mat’s suspension mimics uneven ground outdoors, so your core, feet, and ankles must constantly adjust.

That matters because balance depends on several systems working together.  Your Vision, the fluid-filled organs of your inner ear, and the muscles, joints, and nerves in your feet. Together they give us our sense of where our body is and how it is moving.

Bradley Kendall, who’s an associate professor of kinesiology kih-knee-see-ology told us that

“By using those systems a little bit every single day, you’re really keeping them sharp,”

Becca Robinson, a certified rebound instructor, told us Beginners should choose a trampoline that’s gentle on the joints with a smooth bounce.

And If you have a choice, choose bungees over springs.

Robinson also recommends a model with a safety bar, even if you do not think you need it, because it lets you try more challenging moves while helping you stay stable.

Once you get started, jump in short segments. So Set a timer, 

Because Excessive jumping can cause plantar fasciitis Whitten said.

He said You’ve got to work your way up to longer workouts. 

Alright Now I want to thank you for listening and I hope you have a healthy weekend.

And before we leave, here are some words of wisdom to start the day…Today’s quote was written by

“Perhaps a man’s character is like a tree and his reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” 

—Abraham Lincoln