NEW YORK — As vote counting continues in some states Saturday, Republicans seem prone to take again the Home of Representatives — albeit by a slim margin — whereas Democrats secured management of the Senate.
Republicans are nonetheless in need of reclaiming the Home however want to select up fewer of the remaining seats than Democrats to safe a majority.
Whereas preelection polls pointed to a Republican landslide, leads to many states turned out to be disappointing for the GOP as Democrats pushed again.
Asian People are a fast-growing and more and more influential bloc of voters, with the potential to swing the end result of native congressional elections. The outcomes of the midterms additionally will have an effect on U.S. financial and overseas coverage towards Asian international locations.
Entries embrace materials from wire providers and different sources. Listed below are the newest developments:
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Saturday, Nov. 12 (New York time)
10:40 p.m. U.S. President Joe Biden says he was “extremely happy” with the turnout within the U.S. election after Democrats clinched management of the Senate, a significant victory for the president as he seems to his subsequent two years in workplace, in response to Reuters.
Talking to reporters in Cambodia forward of an East Asia Summit, Biden stated the turnout was a mirrored image of the standard of candidates his occasion was fielding.
9:50 p.m. The Related Press stories that Democrats saved management of the Senate on Saturday, as Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s victory in Nevada gave Democrats the 50 seats they wanted to maintain the Senate.
8:50 a.m. The Related Press stories that in Nevada, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto was operating barely behind Republican Adam Laxalt. With the remaining tens of 1000’s of uncounted ballots primarily coming from the state’s city cores, her marketing campaign expressed optimism she may overtake her challenger. Laxalt, in the meantime, has steadily predicted he’ll keep within the lead because the depend drags on.
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Friday, Nov. 11
11:25 p.m. Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly wins his bid for reelection in Arizona, a essential swing state, defeating Republican enterprise capitalist Blake Masters to place his occasion one victory away from clinching management of the chamber for the following two years of Joe Biden’s presidency.
As of now, Republicans and Democrats each maintain 49 seats within the 100-seat Senate. If the Democrats attain 50, the liberal occasion may have management of the higher chamber as a result of Vice President Kamala Harris holds the tiebreaker vote.
Of the 2 states that do not have a transparent winner but, Nevada continues to be counting votes. Georgia is about to carry a runoff on Dec. 6.
Wednesday, Nov. 9
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9:53 p.m. Republicans inched nearer to a slim Home majority, whereas management of the Senate hinged on a number of tight races, The Related Press stories.
Both occasion may safe a Senate majority with wins in each Nevada and Arizona — the place the races had been too early to name. However there was a robust risk that, for the second time in two years, the Senate majority may come all the way down to a runoff in Georgia subsequent month.
Supporters cheer U.S. Home Republican Chief Kevin McCarthy at a late occasion on Nov. 9 in Washington.
Within the Home, Republicans on Wednesday evening had been inside a dozen seats of the 218 wanted to take management, whereas Democrats saved seats in districts from Virginia to Pennsylvania to Kansas and lots of West Coast contests had been nonetheless too early to name.
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5:21 p.m. U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to reporters on the midterm elections, saying that Nov. 8 was “a great day, I believe for democracy, and I believe it was a great day for America.”
“Whereas the press and the pundits [were] predicting an enormous pink wave, it did not occur,” he stated.
On operating once more in 2024, Biden stated that his intention is to however that he hasn’t made a ultimate resolution but. “My guess is it would be early subsequent 12 months we make that judgment,” he stated.
Aside from the election, when requested whether or not he would inform Chinese language President Xi Jinping at a potential assembly this month that he’s dedicated to defending Taiwan militarily, Biden stated that “what I need to do with him once we discuss is lay out what … every of our pink strains are, perceive what he believes to be within the essential nationwide pursuits of China, what I do know to be the essential pursuits of the USA, and to find out whether or not or not they battle with each other.”
“The Taiwan doctrine has not modified in any respect from the very starting,” he added.
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U.S. President Joe Biden pauses as he discusses the 2022 U.S. midterm election outcomes throughout a information convention on the White Home in Washington on Nov. 9.
4:20 p.m. Wall Avenue ends sharply decrease as Republican good points in midterm elections seem extra modest than some anticipated. Preliminary information exhibits roughly 2% losses for the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Common and Nasdaq composite.
“I believe we had been in a novel scenario the place the extra the Republicans received, the higher off the market would have been,” says Jay Hatfield, CEO of Infrastructure Capital Administration in New York. “Not less than there would have been some shares strongly rallying, like protection and vitality shares.”
Clear vitality shares — which generally profit below Democratic management — rose, with the Invesco Photo voltaic ETF up for the day.
2:30 p.m. Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Republican challenger Herschel Walker will meet in a Dec. 6 runoff after neither reached the overall election majority required below state legislation, Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger confirms, in response to the BBC.
The U.S. Senate race in Georgia between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker will go to a Dec. 6 runoff.
Except both the Democrats or the Republicans sweep the 2 remaining tight U.S. Senate races — in Arizona and Nevada — the runoff election will determine which occasion controls the Senate.
1:10 p.m. Sen. Ron Johnson is projected to win reelection in Wisconsin, beating Democratic challenger Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes in a hotly contested race, in response to The Related Press. Johnson’s win bolsters Republicans’ hope of successful again management of the Senate.
10:15 a.m. Voters in conservative Kentucky reject a poll measure that will have established that the state’s structure doesn’t shield or acknowledge a lady’s proper to an abortion.
Voters in Michigan, California and Vermont assist poll initiatives enshrining abortion rights of their state constitutions.
Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer celebrates her reelection in Detroit.
9 a.m. Democrats win elections for governor within the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, enabling them to defend towards Republican-dominated state legislatures on points resembling abortion rights and truthful elections.
Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Tony Evers of Wisconsin are reelected, whereas Josh Shapiro will succeed an outgoing Democratic governor in Pennsylvania, Edison Analysis tasks. The three states served as a “blue wall” that helped President Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump in 2020, when Republican officers tried to overturn these outcomes.
8 a.m. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wins her bid for a full time period towards Lee Zeldin, a Republican member of the U.S. Home. The Democrat’s victory comes after American semiconductor agency Micron Know-how stated in October it might make investments as much as $100 billion to construct a brand new plant in central New York.
3 a.m. In an enormous victory for Democrats, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman defeats Trump-backed Mehmet Oz to seize Pennsylvania’s Senate race, flipping a seat that had been in Republican palms.
Fetterman, 53, suffered a near-fatal stroke in Might, and returned to campaigning months later with hesitant, altered speech.
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Supporters attend an election evening occasion for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman in Pittsburgh.
11:09 p.m. Republicans proceed to hunt for the one-seat acquire wanted to manage the U.S. Senate, however neither occasion has flipped a seat to date.
J.D. Vance retains Ohio’s open Senate seat in Republican palms, defeating Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan in a race that featured anti-China rhetoric. Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet wins reelection in Colorado, whereas Republican incumbent Chuck Grassley of Iowa additionally wins one other time period.
10:30 p.m. Republicans aimed to flip three Home districts in Virginia thought of bellwethers for the nation, however look prone to accept one — an final result that portends vital Republican good points however not a tsunami.
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Democratic Rep. Jennifer Wexton defeated Republican Hung Cao within the tenth District, seen because the hardest of the three for the Republicans to flip.
Republican Jen Kiggans ousted Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, a former Navy commander, within the 2nd District, seen as the best for Republicans to take.
Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer, narrowly leads Republican Yesli Vega within the seventh District with 95% of the vote counted.
10:28 p.m. Georgia is perhaps dealing with one other U.S. Senate runoff. Republican Herschel Walker leads Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock 49.5% to 48.6% with almost 70% of the vote counted. But when neither reaches 50%, the 2 main candidates advance to a runoff in December. Warnock received a runoff in January 2021 for the ultimate two years of the Senate time period.
9:23 p.m. Democratic Legal professional Basic Maura Healey has been elected governor of Massachusetts, making historical past because the nation’s first brazenly lesbian governor, AP stories.
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9:21 p.m. A decide in Arizona’s Maricopa County rejects a Republican request to maintain polls open previous their traditional closing time of seven p.m. after digital vote-counting machines malfunctioned at some precincts. The decide says Republicans offered no proof {that a} voter was unable to forged a poll due to the machine issues and famous that the lawsuit was filed late within the day regardless of the problems being identified because the morning.
9:01 p.m. Democrat Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky and Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut are among the many U.S. senators to win reelection. Duckworth was born in Bangkok and speaks Thai and Indonesian. In 2004, she was deployed as a helicopter pilot to Iraq, the place she misplaced each legs in a crash.
8:43 p.m. Republican Anna Paulina Luna, a U.S. Air Pressure veteran, flips Florida’s thirteenth Congressional District seat, beating Democrat Eric Lynn, a former Obama administration official. This suburban Tampa district is certainly one of a number of Democratic-held seats in Florida that Republicans are prone to choose up, because of a brand new district map backed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Republicans want solely a internet pickup of 5 seats to take management of the Home.
8:10 p.m. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis wins a second time period in Florida by defeating Democratic challenger Charlie Crist in what was extensively seen as a precursor to a DeSantis presidential run in 2024 — which may put him in a major battle with Donald Trump.
DeSantis has been on the forefront of various the nation’s partisan fights, bucking COVID-19 restrictions whereas backing a legislation limiting dialogue of LGBTQ points in colleges.
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8 p.m. A number of extra states shut their polls together with Michigan, the place a high-profile contest for governor is underway, and Pennsylvania, the place Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Republican rival Mehmet Oz are locked in what is anticipated to be a good Senate race.
7:18 p.m. Information shops together with The Related Press undertaking that Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina will win reelection and that Rep. Peter Welch will win the Senate race contested in Vermont, maintaining that seat in Democratic palms. Each victories had been anticipated.
7 p.m. Polls shut in Georgia — the place a vital Senate seat is up for grabs –South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia and the remainder of Indiana and Kentucky.
A voter casts his poll for midterm elections at a polling station in Marietta, Georgia.
6 p.m. The primary U.S. polls shut in components of the states of Kentucky and Indiana, the place districts are anticipated to announce outcomes quickly.
4:30 p.m. Donald Trump, posting on his Reality Social platform, tells folks to protest in Detroit, apparently referring to a software program glitch that instructed some in-person voters that that they had already requested an absentee poll.
“The Absentee Poll scenario in Detroit is REALLY BAD. Persons are displaying as much as Vote to be instructed, ‘sorry, you’ve gotten already voted,’” he writes. “Protest, Protest, Protest!”
3:45 p.m. Issues with dozens of digital vote-counting machines within the battleground state of Arizona are sparking false claims of proof of election fraud.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer instructed reporters early Tuesday that about 20% of the machines within the state’s most populous county had been malfunctioning, and that technicians had been being deployed to repair them. All votes will likely be counted, stated Richer, who anticipated that election deniers would “exploit” the difficulty.
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“Stories are coming in from Arizona that the Voting Machines should not correctly working in predominantly Republican/Conservative areas,” former President Donald Trump stated in an announcement. “Right here we go once more? The folks is not going to stand for it!!”
Voters wait in line to forged their ballots within the midterm elections in Phoenix, Arizona.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who has echoed Trump’s false claims of a stolen 2020 election, additionally seized on the machine issues, issuing a “voter alert” on her Twitter account.
Barricades have been erected across the county’s elections workplace in central Phoenix in anticipation of potential protests.
3:20 p.m. Asian People concern additional violent assaults towards them nationwide as candidates from each events intensify their anti-China rhetoric.
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Tim Ryan, the Ohio Democratic candidate for the Senate, has repeatedly attacked Beijing for job losses and rising costs within the U.S. In late September, he tweeted, “Unhealthy commerce offers have screwed Ohio. China is successful. Employees are dropping.”
Ryan’s Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, has expressed comparable sentiments.
“We’re actually not in an amazing place in Ohio by way of this race,” stated Jona Hilario, a member of the Asian American Midwest Progressives advocacy group.
In the meantime, U.S. Rep. Michelle Park Metal — a California Republican and a Korean American — has labeled her Taiwanese American Democratic opponent Jay Chen as a communist and “China’s alternative” in a closely Vietnamese neighborhood.
2:20 p.m. Former President Donald Trump predicts a “nice evening” for Republicans, whereas the present occupant of the White Home, Joe Biden, warns that Democrats face a “powerful” battle as midterm voting continues.
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10:40 a.m. Underneath strain from a Republican lawsuit, Philadelphia officers determine to deliver again a time-consuming vote-counting course of meant to forestall double voting.
Philadelphia metropolis commissioners voted at a particular assembly to reinstate a course of referred to as “ballot e book reconciliation.”
The choice will delay the vote depend in one of the hotly contested battleground states, the place Democratic candidate Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Republican rival Mehmet Oz are locked in a good Senate race.
9:45 a.m. Officers are seeing no credible threats towards U.S. voting machines or ballot books throughout the elections, Reuters stories, citing a senior federal cybersecurity official. “We see no particular or credible risk to disrupt election infrastructure,” the official tells reporters throughout a scheduled briefing simply as election day was starting.
The official, who briefed journalists on situation of anonymity, says that didn’t imply there can be no hiccups. Officers in New Jersey’s Mercer County say there are “points with voting machines” there and that ballot employees are readily available to assist voters, Reuters stories.
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a rally to assist Republican candidates forward of the midterm elections in Ohio on Nov. 7.
10:50 p.m. Former President Donald Trump says he’ll make a “massive announcement” subsequent week, probably teasing one other presidential run on the eve of the midterms.
“I’ll be making a really massive announcement on Tuesday, Nov. 15, at Mar-a-Lago,” Trump tells a crowd in Ohio throughout a rally, AP stories. Explaining the wait, he provides, “We would like nothing to detract from the significance of tomorrow.”
Trump has stated in current days that he would “very, very, very most likely” run once more.
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4:20 p.m. Wall Avenue ends sharply increased as traders see a possible win for the Republican Get together within the Home of Representatives within the U.S. midterm elections. Republican management of the Home would threaten Biden’s legislative agenda with gridlock, dooming tax hikes. The Dow Jones Industrial Common completed 1.3% increased than final Friday.
With Republicans favored take management of the Home within the U.S. midterm elections, traders noticed a higher probability of tax hikes not occurring.
6:53 a.m. Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin says he has interfered in U.S. elections and can proceed doing so — “rigorously, precisely, surgically and in our personal manner, as we all know the right way to do” — the primary such admission from somebody implicated by Washington. His remarks are available in response to a request for remark from a Russian information website.
Prigozhin, often known as “Putin’s chef” as a result of his catering firm operates Kremlin contracts, has been formally accused of sponsoring Russia-based “troll farms” that search to affect American politics. He has been hit by U.S., British and European Union sanctions.
Sunday, Nov. 6
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7:44 p.m. President Joe Biden, visiting New York’s suburban Westchester County to marketing campaign for Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, warns {that a} Republican win in Tuesday’s midterm elections may weaken U.S. democracy.
Former President Donald Trump, at a rally in Miami, recycles lots of his unfounded claims about 2020 election fraud and hints that he could announce one other presidential bid quickly.
Republicans have hammered Biden for top inflation and elevated crime within the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Democrats face grim prospects regardless of fulfilling Biden’s guarantees to spice up clean-energy incentives and rebuild crumbling roads and bridges.
Supporters of former U.S. President Donald Trump anticipate him to talk throughout a rally in Miami on Nov. 6.
5 p.m. Here is some recommendation for anybody following the U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday: Be prepared for a protracted evening and possibly days of ready earlier than it is clear whether or not Republicans or President Joe Biden’s Democrats will management Congress.
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All 435 seats within the U.S. Home of Representatives are up for grabs, as are 35 U.S. Senate seats and 36 governorships. Republicans want to select up 5 seats for a Home majority and only one to manage the Senate. Nonpartisan election forecasters and polls recommend Republicans have a robust probability of successful the Home, with management of the Senate prone to be nearer fought.
4 p.m. The U.S. authorities has warned of potential makes an attempt by Russia and China to undermine voter confidence and widen rifts in American society forward of Tuesday’s midterm elections.
“What they try and do is create instability in our home surroundings after which present that again dwelling — , ‘That is what democracy brings you: instability, riots, January sixth, race hatred,’” stated Scott White, an affiliate professor at George Washington College with a specialty in cybersecurity.
Saturday, Nov. 5
4 p.m. Asian People have been the fastest-growing group of voters over the previous 20 years, and they’ll play an essential position as Democrats and Republicans battle for management of Congress within the midterm elections.
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“The final feeling is that we do not match properly into both the Republican or the Democratic occasion,” stated Angela Hsu, president of the Georgia Asian Pacific American Bar Affiliation. “I believe to a big diploma, it is very a lot swing votes.”
11 a.m. U.S. Democrats and Republicans seem extra divided than ever, however the events have not too long ago discovered widespread floor on China.
Many congressional incumbents from each events tout the CHIPS and Science Act, designed to assist the U.S. compete with China in know-how, in addition to the strict chip export ban on China introduced in October. The tech business has principally given up hope for a U-turn on U.S.-China relations, and now seeks authorities assist that might mitigate the value it’s paying for decoupling.
10 a.m. North Carolina officers have registered 14 cases of potential intimidation or interference with voters and election employees forward of Tuesday’s elections, data offered to Reuters present. These cases wherein election employees have been focused occurred throughout early voting.
In a number of different states, aggressive canvassing ways by Republican-aligned teams have raised voter intimidation considerations amongst election officers and voting rights attorneys.
Each weekend for the past few months, Mike Ignatowski has gone to one of two Tesla dealerships in Austin, Texas, to protest Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive and the most famous transplant to the state’s most left-leaning city.
Not too long ago, Mr. Ignatowski, a 67-year-old computer engineer, was an admirer of Mr. Musk — before Mr. Musk aligned himself with President Trump. Now Mr. Ignatowski waves a “Fire Elon” sign during the protests, even as he conceded he’s not quite mad enough to part with the blue Model 3 Tesla that he bought “before we knew Elon was crazy,” as his bumper sticker attests.
That’s how it goes in Texas’ capital, where Mr. Musk’s sharp rightward shift has been received with a mix of anger and hair-pulling agony. Austin’s conflicted feelings reflect both the billionaire entrepreneur’s economic influence on the city and the city’s broader transformation from a medium-sized college town arranged around the State Capitol to a tech-fueled metropolis with a glass-and-steel skyline and a changing image.
Tie-dyed T-shirts still urge residents to “Keep Austin Weird,” mostly in hotels and tourist shops. But a different kind of counterculture has taken root amid an influx of decidedly right-of-center figures (including Mr. Musk), self-described freethinkers (like the podcasters Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman), and conservative entrepreneurs (like Joe Lonsdale). Already in town was Austin’s resident conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, and his far-right Infowars. There’s even a new, contrarian institution of higher learning looking to compete with the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Austin.
Weird, perhaps, but not in the way of the old bumper-sticker mantra.
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“If you say ‘Keep Austin Weird’ to somebody under the age of 40, they would think of that as an antique-y slogan, like Ye Old Shoppe,” said H.W. Brands, a historian at the University of Texas. “It doesn’t have any resonance for their lived experience of Austin.”
The city’s transformation followed a deliberate, decades-long project to attract technology companies to its rolling hills.
“I’m one who thinks it has changed for the better,” said Gary Farmer, who helped attract new businesses as the founding chairman of Opportunity Texas, an economic development group. “The culinary arts, the performing arts, the visual arts, the music scene — it’s all better.”
At the same time, housing prices have skyrocketed, and the population — already the whitest among big cities in Texas — has shed some of its diversity.
In 2023, more people moved out of Austin’s Travis County than moved in, and the share of Hispanic residents in Austin declined even as across all of Texas, the Hispanic population has grown to become a plurality. Black families have also been leaving Austin, said Lila Valencia, the city’s demographer.
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The biggest increase in new residents has been among households making more than $200,000 a year, which grew by 70 percent from 2019 to 2023, Ms. Valencia said. The share of households making below $100,000 a year declined.
Austin now has about 100 accredited private schools, more than double the 39 it had two decades ago. Enrollment in the city’s public schools has been falling.
For years, locals resisted development, to no avail.
“They were building a lot of freeways in Houston and Dallas, and Austin turned away that money,” said Tyson Tuttle, the former chief executive of Silicon Labs, who moved to Austin in 1992. “They were saying, if we don’t build it, they won’t come. And they came anyway.”
Many in Austin’s new elite have chafed at the progressive policies in city and county government over issues such as homelessness and policing. Last year, some of them, including Mr. Musk, backed a primary challenger to the local Democratic district attorney, José Garza. In a companywide email, Mr. Musk encouraged Tesla employees to vote in support of the challenger.
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Mr. Garza won the primary by a two-to-one margin.
“If an asteroid fell from the sky and hit a Democratic candidate for office in Travis County and killed that person, that person’s corpse would still beat a live Republican,” said Evan Smith, a former leader of the Texas Tribune, an Austin-based nonprofit news site.
Still, the city’s demographic transformation has led many to lament its fading identity as a place of street buskers and a cross-dressing, homeless mayoral candidate. The Austin Chronicle, an alternative weekly newspaper, even sells a shirt that reads “R.I.P. Old Austin.”
Earlier this year, passers-by stopped to listen to an impromptu street performance on Congress Street, like old times, except the guitarist was the Trump-friendly Ted Nugent, and his appearance had been organized by hard-right Republicans.
Almost as common are complaints about the complainers.
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“I’m not one of those naysayers about Austin who say it was all better in the old days,” said Terry Lickona, who for 50 years has produced “Austin City Limits,” a public television showcase for local and national musicians. He added, “Austin has always attracted outsized characters,” including Willie Nelson and Michael Dell, the computer maker.
The struggles at Tesla, where profits have dropped sharply since Mr. Musk began closely aligning himself with Mr. Trump, could directly affect the city. At the same time, Austin is set to be the proving ground for his next big venture: self-driving Tesla taxis, which Mr. Musk promised for June.
Mr. Musk did not respond to an interview request.
“Having Tesla here is a huge benefit to the city,” said Mr. Tuttle, who has recently founded an artificial intelligence startup. “I wish that Elon would come home and focus on his business.”
The arrival of Mr. Musk and Tesla five years ago was a key moment for the city, punctuating a yearslong transformation that was accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Many people, including celebrities and dissatisfied Californians whose politics were shifting amid the lockdowns, sought out the relative openness of Texas.
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“It’s, like, most of the good stuff and very little of the bad stuff,” Mr. Rogan said during a 2021 interview with Mr. Adler, months after moving there.
The result has been a slight moderation of the city’s politics and tensions over Mr. Musk between those who hate his actions in Washington and those who love his role as a technology entrepreneur.
The city “attracts people that are on all sides of issues,” said Joshua Baer, the founder of the Capital Factory, which helps finance and nurture technology startups. “My world is generally Elon fans and supporters.”
On a recent evening, more than two dozen Austinites convened in a church meeting room adorned with colorful messages of inclusivity for a gathering of Resist Austin, which organizes protests against Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump at Tesla dealerships.
“Our mission is lawful nonviolent resistance of authoritarians,” Ian Crowl, an organizer, said to the group, which included retirees, tech workers and graduate students. “If you want to throw a rock at a Tesla,” he added, “that’s not what we’re doing here.”
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Such tensions have been on the mind of Tesla drivers in Austin as well. Vikki Goodwin, a Democratic state representative, said she tries to be “invisible” when driving around in hers. When a car rammed into her at a stop light recently, she worried it might have been intentional.
“Oh my God,” Ms. Goodwin said she thought, “is it anger that caused him to drive into my car?”
The driver, in fact, was using his wife’s gas-powered car, Ms. Goodwin said he told her, and he assumed it would slow down quickly when he took his foot off the gas pedal — like his Tesla does.
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The volatile market for small US initial public offerings is “booming” thanks to a surge of Chinese listings on New York’s Nasdaq as companies race to beat a rule change that blocks the smallest deals.
The surge in listings kicked off late last year with 42 small offerings in the last three months of 2024, followed by 41 in the first quarter of this year — the two busiest quarters in records back 15 years, according to equity capital markets group Capital Markets Gateway (CMG). This was up from 20 in the second quarter of 2024 and 29 in the third.
Fifty-three of the past two quarter’s listings were from China and Hong Kong, with only 18 from the US, and all but nine on Nasdaq. CMG’s data excludes special purpose acquisition vehicles, which raise money in order to take over a private business.
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“The microcap IPO market is booming,” said Matthew Kennedy, a senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, citing small Chinese companies in sectors from pharmaceuticals to construction. “It’s a highly speculative area,” he said, with many investors losing out because most of the stocks eventually fall far below their initial offer price.
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The IPOs came ahead of a raft of policy changes enacted by Nasdaq, effective as of April 11, which include requiring companies listing on its lowest rung under certain standards to raise at least $15mn. The Securities and Exchange Commission said Nasdaq’s new rules would “promote fair and orderly markets” and “protect investors and the public interest”.
Daniel McClory, head of equity capital markets and China at US underwriter Boustead Securities, said he had “30 IPOs in process right now and more than a third are for [companies in] south-east Asia and Greater China”.
The market for large-cap listings has meanwhile disappointed hopes of a revival under Donald Trump. Waves of market volatility around the president’s tariff announcements led bankers to postpone several hotly anticipated tech IPOs while other large listings received a cool reception.
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This has not stopped a flurry of sub-$50mn deals since tariffs shook markets in April. Small IPOs have continued despite Nasdaq raising the bar last month — with eight further deals since the rule change.
“Explosive returns” from companies such as Hong Kong-based Diginex, an ESG data group, and Chinese group EPWK Holdings, a crowdsourcing platform, “can fuel interest from traders hoping for quick gains”, said Kennedy.
Shares in Diginex have climbed 1,375 per cent since it listed in January. Last Tuesday, it said UAE royal Sheikh Mohammed bin Sultan bin Hamdan Al Nahyan had struck a $300mn deal giving him the right to buy 6.75mn of its shares before the end of the year.
EPWK had risen 470 per cent in the months after its February market debut, but plunged 75 per cent last Monday.
The market for these small offerings is dominated by amateur traders, who are often more willing to jump on perceived bargains in the stock market during times of disruption when big money managers stay away.
The US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in 2023 warned investors about “unusual price increases on the day of or shortly after the IPOs of certain small-cap issuers, most of which involve issuers with operations outside the US” and “IPOs raising less than $25mn”.
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The average value of money raised in the small IPOs tracked by CMG in the six months to March was around $9mn.
Brokers say there could be more small IPOs if market conditions improve. “If the market settled down and co-operated we could do an IPO a week,” McClory said. “As it is, we’re targeting about one a month.”
The two most prolific underwriters in the space — Dominari Securities and RF Lafferty — have each taken seven companies public this year, including Chinese “machine vision” company Lianhe Sowell and Hong Kong hotpot chain MasterBeef.
RF Lafferty is headquartered in the Trump Building in New York’s Financial District. Dominari Securities, which acted as lead underwriter for Diginex’s IPO, is a subsidiary of Dominari Holdings, a fintech group based about four miles north in Trump Tower.
Shares in Dominari Holdings rose 580 per cent in the six weeks before a February 11 filing revealing that the president’s sons Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump had joined its advisory board, the Financial Times reported last month.
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Dominari and RF Lafferty did not respond to requests for comment.
The rush of smaller Chinese IPOs comes as concerns swirl among some investors over whether Trump will delist some Chinese stocks from US exchanges amid trade tensions with Beijing.
One banker at a small US broker said some Chinese companies listing in the US recently had “inverted their corporate structure” to obscure where they carry out the bulk of their business. He said that Chinese companies with an overseas subsidiary were converting their operating company into the parent company “to sanitise the Chinese nature of the listing”.
McClory said he expected that any Trump ban would probably target large state-owned enterprises and sensitive industries rather than small companies. He dismissed concerns that Chinese IPOs in the US were taking investment dollars that would otherwise benefit US entrepreneurs.
“Virtually all of these Asian IPOs were full of investors from Greater China, or Chinese-American investors in the US and outside of China,” he said. “It’s not like they come to the US and take money from American widows and orphans.”
A Kansas City Chiefs fan, ChiefsAholic, poses for photos while walking toward Empower Field at Mile High before an NFL football game between the Denver Broncos and the Chiefs,on Jan. 8, 2022, in Denver.
David Zalubowski/AP
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TULSA, Okla. — A Kansas City Chiefs superfan known as “ChiefsAholic” was sentenced Monday in an Oklahoma courtroom to serve 32 years in state prison for robbing a Tulsa-area bank, a sentence that will be carried out after he finishes serving time in federal prison.
Xaviar Babudar, 30, appeared in a Tulsa courtroom and apologized to the court and to the victims of the December 2022 robbery of the Tulsa Teachers Credit Union in Bixby, Oklahoma, said Babudar’s attorney, Jay-Michael Swab.
“He expressed sincere remorse and took full responsibility for his actions,” Swab said.
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Babudar already was serving more than 17 years in federal prison for a string of 11 bank robberies across seven states where he stole nearly $850,000 to finance his social media stardom. Swab said the robberies also were the result of a gambling addiction.
Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler had sought life in prison for Babudar.
“He is a serial robber who traumatized these victims and numerous other victims across this country,” Kunzweiler said in a statement.
Tulsa County District Judge Michelle Keely ordered Babudar’s 32-year sentence to run concurrently to his federal sentence, which means after he is released from federal prison he will be transferred to state custody to serve his remaining 14 years.
Babudar developed a following on his @ChiefsAholic account on the social platform X after attending games dressed as a wolf in Chiefs gear. His avid support of the Chiefs became well known on social media.
