Billionaire DNA is coursing through the U.S. election system like never before, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: In an election that both sides see as existential, the guardrails for political spending are vanishing. Today's billionaires are shredding populist taboos, driving news cycles and increasingly shaping the terms of American democracy.

🖼️ The big picture: 150 billionaire families have spent a total of $1.9 billion in support of presidential and congressional candidates this cycle, according to a report by Americans for Tax Fairness released one week before the election.

• That's $700 million (58%) more than the $1.2 billion spent by more than 600 individual billionaires during the 2020 election, according to the group's analysis.
• A Financial Times analysis published this week found that billionaires had contributed at least $695 million, or 18%, of the total funds raised by the presidential candidates and allied groups.
• At least $568 million of that has gone to former President Trump's campaign and allied groups, compared to about $127 million to support Vice President Harris.

🔎 Between the lines: Those figures likely underestimate the true totals, given the extent to which some mega-donors choose to conceal their identity when funding political causes.

• Bill Gates privately revealed recently that he had donated $50 million to the main super PAC supporting Harris, after decades of strategically steering clear of politics, the N.Y. Times reports.
• Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, also quietly donated $50 million to the dark money arm of the same super PAC, Future Forward, according to The Times.

🔬 Zoom in: Of the more than 800 billionaires in the U.S., none has invested as much time, money and personal credibility into electing one candidate as the world's richest man, Elon Musk.

• Musk, who obsessively promotes Trump on his X platform, has poured over $118 million into a super PAC that has effectively taken over Trump's ground game in key swing states.
• That includes Pennsylvania, where Musk has drawn legal scrutiny with his $1 million daily giveaways to registered voters in the prize battleground state.
• Musk has massive interests with the federal government — both through contracts and regulatory probes of his companies — and is eyeing a role as head of Trump's proposed "government efficiency commission."

🔭 Zoom out: The entrenched influence of billionaires in the U.S. election goes beyond just cash donations.

• Trump himself is, of course, a billionaire — one whose new business ventures over the last four years will create a tangled web of conflicts if he's re-elected president.
• His running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), is a protégé of right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, who bankrolled Vance's 2022 Senate run and lobbied Trump to put him on the Republican ticket.
• The billionaire owners of the Washington Post (Jeff Bezos) and L.A. Times (Patrick Soon-Shiong) ignited controversy by blocking their newspapers from endorsing Harris.

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Lost in the U.S. election drama: The next commander-in-chief will inherit new, alarming and worsening global threats.

• North Korean troops arrived near the Russia-Ukraine border, a major Chinese hack rattled U.S. intelligence agencies, Israel expanded its war in Lebanon and Canada accused India's second-most powerful man of ordering an assassination.

Why it matters: Major wars are raging on multiple continents, with adversaries moving closer together and key allies seemingly going rogue.

• National security officials and experts from both parties are worried about the tightening of the anti-U.S. "axis" involving China, Iran, North Korea and Russia.

🔎 Zoom in: President Biden's most immediate foreign-policy goal in recent weeks has been reining in an ally rather than contending with adversaries.

• The Biden administration is warning that new laws Israel passed this week to limit coordination with the UN will exacerbate Gaza's already horrific humanitarian crisis.
• Israel expanded the scope of its operations in Lebanon this week.
• The U.S. is hoping to land ceasefires in both conflicts. But the wars are highly likely to continue well beyond the election.

Then there's the frightening fact that Chinese "Salt Typhoon" hackers reportedly used their access to U.S. telecom networks to target former President Trump, Sen. JD Vance and associates of Vice President Harris — an operation that has raised major alarm bells for U.S. intelligence.

• "It is much more serious and much worse than even what you all presume at this point," a top congressional Democrat told reporters yesterday. "It is one of the most serious breaches in my time on the Intelligence Committee."

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Former President Trump heads to Albuquerque today to court Latino voters, push his plans to stop illegal immigration — and once again pitch his ideas with a state he's unlikely to win as the backdrop, Axios' Russell Contreras and Sophia Cai write.

• Why it matters: Trump's Halloween visit to the nation's most Hispanic state — where violence marked two of his rallies in previous campaigns — reflects his push to capitalize on Republicans' slight gains recently among Latinos, especially men.

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Trump tried to capitalize on President Biden's "garbage" gaffe by wearing a safety vest throughout his visit to Green Bay, Wis., yesterday — even while speaking at this rally.

The Dodgers overcame a five-run deficit against the Yankees last night to clinch their eighth World Series title in franchise history with a 7-6 win, in Yankee Stadium in Game 5.

• Why it matters: The Dodgers were one of the most star-studded teams in recent memory, and had gone on an unprecedented $1.25 billion spending spree last offseason that included a deal with Shohei Ohtani, the sport's biggest star.

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The stock market is soaring. The largest share of Americans on record believe the run will continue, Axios' Courtenay Brown writes.

• Why it matters: When it comes to the stock market, consumers believe high stock prices beget even higher stock prices.

The Conference Board, a business research group, asks consumers whether they expect stock prices to increase in the coming year.

• In October, slightly more than half said yes — the highest reading in the survey's history.

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"Presidents do not have to be saints and we hope that a second Trump presidency would avoid disaster," The Economist writes in an editorial endorsing Vice President Harris this morning. "But Mr Trump poses an unacceptable risk to America and the world."

• "It is hard to imagine Ms Harris being a stellar president, though people can surprise you. But you cannot imagine her bringing about a catastrophe."

Richard Stengel — a former top editor of TIME, and collaborator on Nelson Mandela's memoir, "Long Walk to Freedom" — is helping launch a new school of leadership dedicated to the South African freedom fighter.

• The project is a joint effort with the UN, the Mandela Foundation in Johannesburg and the City College of New York.

The Nelson Mandela Center for Social Change at CCNY, located in Manhattan, is "designed to create a new generation of leaders who, like Mandela, can solve problems and rifts that seem intractable," Stengel says.

• Stengel taped some 70 hours of interviews with Mandela in the 1990s that he turned into an audiobook. Stengel later served as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy during the Obama administration.

Stengel says Mandela "cared deeply about fostering young leaders, and the Colin Powell School, with almost 4,000 students, half of whom are immigrants, 70% of whom are first-generation college students, 80% of whom are students of color, is the place to do it."

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That panda bear ... is First Lady Jill Biden!

• President Biden and Jill Biden hosted trick-or-treaters at the White House for the last time, spending an hour handing out candy.

The theme was once again "Hallo-READ!" — highlighting "famous literary tales and characters, ghost stories and the spooktacular thrill of reading."

• The White House said the first lady's panda costume was meant to be a "welcoming gesture" for the two bears that arrived in D.C. earlier this month.

Above: Biden jokingly bites the leg of a baby dressed as a chicken.

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