As America prepares for its election, the standing committee of China’s legislature convened in Beijing for a highly anticipated session. The economic stimulus measures that it approves over the five-day meeting, which began on Monday, will reveal much about the mindset of China’s leaders.

The committee is expected to sign off on a package that may recapitalise banks, refinance local-government debt and, perhaps, offer help to households. Investors want to see if policymakers grasp the severity of China’s economic problems—and are willing to spend enough to fix them. The size and nature of the package should provide an answer.

But there is another big question on investors’ minds: what will China do if Mr Trump is elected? He has threatened tariffs of 60% on Chinese goods. These could cut 2.5 percentage points from China’s growth over the subsequent year, says UBS, a bank. If that came to pass, a bolder stimulus would be needed.

Hundreds of lawsuits have already been filed over tomorrow’s elections in America. Cases brought by Democrats generally seek to expand voting options, while Republican ones tend to limit them, arguing that there is an epidemic of non-citizens casting ballots.

A few decisions have gone Republicans’ way. North Carolina has ruled that the state university’s digital IDs were not a valid way to confirm students’ and employees’ identities. And Virginia has been allowed to remove 1,600 purported non-citizens from its rolls despite a federal prohibition on systematic purges within 90 days of an election. But Democrats are winning most battles—including those over other voter purges and mail-in ballots.

Donald Trump, who often says Democrats only win by “cheating”, has for weeks been priming audiences to mistrust the results. If the outcome is close or if Mr Trump loses to Kamala Harris—by any margin—America’s courts could soon be swamped with even more cases.

On Monday Palantir reports its first quarterly earnings since joining the S&P 500 in September. Another bumper quarter could lift the data-analytics firm’s valuation above $100bn, a huge feat considering how recently it joined America’s benchmark index. Revenue growth is expected to exceed 27% year on year. Investors are keen to see how much Palantir’s artificial-intelligence platform has boosted AI adoption among the firm’s private-sector clients. A victory by Donald Trump in tomorrow’s presidential election could also provide a tailwind. The company does work for American national-security agencies and its founder, Peter Thiel, has been a big backer of the Republican candidate.

But beware the bears. Analysts on Wall Street question whether its valuation—which at around 100 times predicted earnings is almost five times the average of the S&P 500—is justified. Investors have made big bets recently on its shares falling. If today’s results are disappointing, the bears will make a meal of it.

The next stage in selecting members of the European Commission begins on Monday. All of the EU’s 27 member states except Germany nominated candidates. Ursula von der Leyen, the freshly re-appointed president for the commission’s new five-year term, then negotiated with member states over their portfolio. Now the European Parliament will grill the candidates for a week.

These examinations can be tough. Since 2004 the parliament has rejected at least one nominee in each slate. This time two look especially insecure. Hadja Lahbib, Belgium’s former foreign minister, is up for commissioner of humanitarian aid. She will face scrutiny over a Russian-funded junket to occupied Crimea she took as a journalist in 2021. And Hungary’s nominee for health and animal-welfare commissioner, Oliver Varhelyi, backed the admission of democratically dubious countries aligned with Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, while commissioner for EU enlargement last term. MEPs are unlikely to forget he once called them “idiots”.

Few things get Donald Trump more excited than talking about transgender issues. As the presidential campaign ends, more of the Republican candidate’s advertising budget is being spent on attacking Kamala Harris’s support for transgender rights than on any other subject, according to Politico, a news outlet. Recent polling by YouGov shows that Trump supporters are more familiar with the former president’s policy on women’s sports than with his policy on abortion.

Republicans hope that outrage over what Mr Trump calls “trans insanity” will bring voters out, as abortion has done for Democrats. Republican strategists claim it can help swing undecided voters. But polling shows that social issues are low on Trump voters’ priority list, and within social issues transgender health care sits at the very bottom. Mr Trump’s lines are a sure-fire way of getting a rally audience to its feet. But there is little evidence that the issue will recruit many voters.