Congressional panel flags Webull as a Chinese national security risk, stock craters

A bipartisan House Select Committee on China has found that trading platform Webull is linked "in structural ways" to the People's Republic of China, a conclusion that sent the company's stock down nearly 30%. The committee's report, shared exclusively with CNBC, alleges that Webull's ownership architecture, technical workforce, technology infrastructure, cross-border data routing, corporate financing, and compliance frameworks are all tied to Beijing — and that Chinese law can compel firms to cooperate with the government, including through forced data transfers.

The panel says national security concerns have escalated since October 2025, when Webull began carrying customer cash directly. The committee calls that a "structural exposure of billions of dollars in American capital." Its core charge: Webull's software development, data pipelines, and core engineering operations rely on infrastructure subject to Beijing's legal reach.

Webull disputed the findings, saying the report contains "significant inaccuracies" and "unsupported conclusions" and that the committee never sought clarification from the company. Investors and regulators will be watching whether the report triggers formal government action — and whether Webull's retail customer base, and its access to U.S. capital markets, survives the scrutiny.

President Trump announced a $3.7 billion investment by defense technology company Anduril to build nuclear submarine components at a Baltimore-area shipyard, framing the deal as the dawn of a new "golden age" of American shipbuilding. The announcement signals continued federal momentum behind domestic defense manufacturing at a moment when the Pentagon is pressing to expand submarine production capacity. For investors and defense contractors, the Anduril commitment underscores how private capital is flowing into next-generation weapons platforms, and how shipyard infrastructure is becoming a strategic priority as the U.S. competes with China's naval buildup.

Ken Griffin, founder of Citadel, has given $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon University — the largest donation in the history of U.S. higher education — with $2 billion earmarked for a new campus in Miami. The gift arrives as universities face demographic decline, reduced public funding, and Trump administration pressure to cap international undergraduates at 15%, a ceiling that would hit Carnegie Mellon hard given that foreign students made up 19% of its enrollment in 2024-25. How much freedom the Miami campus gets to operate as a genuinely new model will determine whether the money reshapes the sector.

The Department of Homeland Security has proposed requiring universities to pay a $70,000 fee for each international student entering the Optional Practical Training program, which lets students work in jobs related to their field of study during or after school, plus a $30,000 renewal fee. The rule would directly raise costs for colleges that depend on overseas tuition revenue and for tech and STEM employers that hire OPT participants. NAFSA, which represents international educators, warned the change would damage American innovation, economic growth, and global competitiveness.

President Trump signed an executive order allowing anyone to purchase red-dyed diesel, a tax-exempt fuel normally reserved for agricultural and off-road equipment. Regular diesel carries a federal tax of roughly 24 cents per gallon, so broader access to the dyed variant could cut costs for some truckers. The catch: using red-dyed diesel in highway vehicles remains prohibited under IRS rules, limiting the order's practical reach for the long-haul trucking industry that would most benefit from lower fuel costs.

Brighton City Council voted to impose a one-year moratorium on new data centers, doubling the original six-month pause, on the same night a developer withdrew an application for a 155-acre, 2.5-million-square-foot data center campus near the city's border with Lochbuie. Residents raised concerns about water and power consumption, noise, backup generators, and air quality. The vote is a signal to the industry that community opposition to large-scale data center development is translating into concrete regulatory action at the local level.

Super PACs connected to Anthropic, OpenAI, and Palantir spent more than $3.5 million supporting four Republican federal candidates in Texas primary races this year, federal campaign finance records show. The spending, which has since declined ahead of the midterms, came as Congress faces growing calls to regulate AI and the data centers powering it. Critics argue the industry is buying political protection rather than accepting oversight, a dynamic that will shape the legislative environment for AI regulation in the next Congress.

The Senate Majority PAC, the principal outside spending vehicle for Senate Democrats, raised $151 million in the third quarter and entered October with nearly $112 million in cash — both records for the group. Combined with an affiliated nonprofit arm, the total third-quarter take reached $202 million. Despite the record pace, Democrats face a structural disadvantage: Republican super PACs and party groups have outspent Democratic counterparts by more than $400 million in Senate races, buoyed by Trump-aligned MAGA Inc. and a super PAC linked to Elon Musk. That spending gap is most acute in Texas, where the race is drawing the heaviest outside investment.

Republican outside groups enter the final month of the midterm campaign with roughly $1 billion available, led by the Trump-aligned MAGA Inc.'s nearly $416 million cash position as of late August. But campaign officials privately say the money arrived too late: by waiting until September to book advertising, Trump-connected groups are paying rates more than five times what earlier reservations would have cost. With Trump's approval ratings weighing on candidates and Democratic Senate contenders polling ahead in several traditionally Republican states, the financial edge is proving less decisive than Republicans had anticipated.

The Senate Leadership Fund is committing $5 million to South Carolina to protect Sen. Darline Graham, who was appointed this summer to fill the seat of her late brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham. Trump is tentatively scheduled to campaign in the state ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms. The spending is described as an insurance policy rather than a sign of distress, as Republicans remain confident in their chances, though the investment reflects broader GOP caution about holding seats they expected to be safe.

Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers is running a 30-second ad in Michigan directly calling for an end to Trump's tariff war with Canada, saying "Canada is not our enemy" — a clear reference to the president's 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion in Canadian imports. Rogers did not name Trump in the spot. The ad marks the most explicit anti-tariff stance Rogers has taken and is part of a growing pattern of competitive GOP candidates distancing themselves from Trump's trade policy in states with deep economic ties to Canada.

As U.S. Treasury checks for $500 — intended to help cover health insurance costs — reach millions of mailboxes, polling shows Americans do not broadly trust Republicans on health care, and experts doubt the payments will shift voter sentiment. One recipient profiled by NPR, an advocate for affordable health care in West Virginia, called the checks a "political stunt." The Trump administration also announced $90 checks for 20 million Medicare enrollees. The payments come after Congress let enhanced ACA premium subsidies expire, leaving many consumers with sharply higher out-of-pocket costs.

SNAP enrollment has fallen by more than 5 million people since President Trump signed the Republican tax and spending bill in July of last year, according to USDA data, as stricter work requirements, higher state cost-shares, and error-rate penalties take effect. States including Arizona are reporting severe administrative backlogs, with applicants waiting months for decisions and struggling to reach caseworkers. The disruption affects seniors and families with children and has pushed recipients toward food banks, with states caught between federal mandates and growing demand for assistance.

France's borrowing costs have surged in the global bond rout, triggering a selloff in the euro as investors assess the risk that French fiscal stress could spread to other eurozone economies. Angel Ubide, head of Economic Research for Fixed Income and Macro at Citadel — which manages $76 billion in assets — told Reuters that France "has no room for mistakes" and that market pressure should sharpen political focus in Paris on spending restraint ahead of next year's presidential and parliamentary elections. Ubide stopped short of calling France a systemic risk to Europe, but warned that if it became one, the problem would be continental in scale. For fixed-income investors, that framing sets a high-stakes watch on French fiscal policy through both election cycles.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva warned Wednesday that wealthy and low-income countries alike must accelerate debt reduction and address rising inequality as their economies contend simultaneously with the AI boom, heavy borrowing, and war-related shocks in the Middle East and Ukraine. Speaking ahead of IMF-World Bank meetings in Bangkok, Georgieva singled out the U.S., Japan, and Germany as countries burdened by excessive debt, and flagged risks from rapid data center buildout tied to AI. Finance ministers and central bank governors from 191 member countries will convene next week to assess strategies for financial stability.

Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said at Milken Institute's Asia Summit that Trump is not "completely wrong" in arguing that Asian economies — which depend heavily on energy shipped through the Strait of Hormuz — should bear more responsibility for keeping the waterway open. Balakrishnan nonetheless stressed that freedom of navigation through international waterways is a matter of international law and, for Singapore, "an existential question." The comment adds a significant regional voice to the debate over how U.S. allies should share the costs of maritime security as Washington reassesses its role in the Persian Gulf.

Australia's High Court has upheld a decision blocking MACH Energy's bid to extend its Mount Pleasant coal mine in New South Wales through 2048 and double production, in the first climate case to reach the country's top court. The court found that regulators failed to adequately consider conditions to minimize greenhouse gas emissions — including scope 3 emissions, which represented 98% of the mine's total footprint. The ruling is expected to raise the bar for fossil fuel project approvals in New South Wales and could set a precedent for how downstream, export-related emissions are weighed in future decisions.

Spain's UGT and CCOO unions announced a nationwide general strike for November 11, the first joint general strike by the country's two largest unions in 14 years, citing an acute housing crisis marked by rising rents and evictions. The action falls weeks before a snap election called by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez after parliament rejected decrees aimed at curbing evictions and limiting rent pressures. Spain faces a deficit of roughly 750,000 homes, projected to exceed one million by 2028, making housing costs a central issue in the campaign and a material risk for investors in Spanish real estate and consumer sectors.

Defense startup Covenant says it will mass-produce its Anthem heavy-payload, long-range cruise missile at a new factory in eastern Germany, positioning the weapon as a key element of European deterrence. The announcement comes as NATO allies work to replenish depleted precision-strike weapons inventories. The facility adds to a growing roster of defense manufacturing investments in Europe as governments accelerate spending on munitions and the continent seeks to reduce reliance on U.S. weapons supply chains.