Kalshi Politics — Mispricing Audit (Anchor, NO-side structural)

One pick, 37 logged rejects, $124.96 deployed (5.0% of capital), $2,375.04 (95.0%) held in cash.

The Stage-0 allowlist (120 series, 702 open markets) yields only 37 markets closing inside the 45-day horizon, and the market has already priced the status quo to 95¢+ on nearly all of them. After the mechanical cuts (volume, spread, 5¢/95¢ edges, 7-day rule, continuous-number and Mentions filters) three markets reached Stage 2: the Bank of Canada October hike leg, the Bank of Canada hold leg, and the Lisa Cook "try to fire" rung. Kimberly Guilfoyle's resignation today (Oct 13) settled the Greece-ambassador market in fact but at 96/97 it is in the deep-favorite band.

The single survivor is NO on "Will the President try to fire Lisa Cook before Nov 1, 2026?" at 88¢, a status-quo thesis anchored on the President's own calendar: the Oct 7 memorandum fixes the committee hearing for Nov 5, four days after this rung closes. It sits in the 85–89¢ thin-favorites band, so it deploys at half size. The edge is thin (about 2¢) and is stated as such.

Trump tries to fire Fed Gov. Lisa Cook before Nov 1, 2026?

YES condition. For YES to pay, between this rung's issuance (Oct 8, 2026 19:43Z) and Nov 1, 2026 15:00Z the President must sign a termination document, direct an official to terminate Cook, publicly state he has fired or decided to fire her, have the White House announce termination, send her a termination letter, or initiate formal legal proceedings for removal, as judged by Kalshi. Success of the attempt is irrelevant.

Thesis. Status quo: the President's own committee hearing on Cook is set for Nov 5, four days after this rung closes, so a YES needs Trump to blow up his own SCOTUS-mandated process before his own hearing.

Probability. 10% pre-market → 10% final for YES (book 12/14). Fair NO ≈ 90¢; fillable NO 88¢ for 1,902 contracts.

Vehicle and calendar (primary sources). whitehouse.gov, Presidential Memorandum of Oct 7, 2026, "Establishment of a Committee of Inquiry to Investigate Allegations of False Statements by Lisa DeNell Cook": the committee (Hassett, Sonderling, Lucas) "shall, on November 5, 2026, conduct an in-person hearing" at the White House of no more than four hours; Cook may file a post-hearing statement by Nov 10; the committee then reports findings and "shall recommend whether there is cause to remove." The Supreme Court's June 29, 2026 ruling in Trump v. Cook requires notice and a hearing before removal (CNBC Oct 9; PBS Oct 9). Cook's counsel (Lowell, Eisen) said they are "engaged with the White House to evaluate whether the process proposed has a possibility of being a genuine one." No step of this process lands before Nov 1.

Precedents consulted. KXTRYFIRECOOK-27JAN01-26OCT01 (settled NO Oct 1, 2026): "the clock starts at each rung's own issuance, so a pre-issuance action never pays"; the Oct 7 memo pre-dates this rung's Oct 8 issuance. KXTRYFIRECOOK-27JAN01-26SEP01 (settled NO): "monthly TRYFIRE rungs after a court loss are status-quo NO until the President has a lawful path; the process steps (memo, hearing) land on dates you can read off whitehouse.gov." Edge note on the Oct 1 rung: Cook's counsel cite Trump's "repeated statements that he has already decided to fire" her, yet no such statement resolved the Sep 1 or Oct 1 rung, so the resolver's bar for the "decided to fire" clause is above Trump's rhetoric.

Resolver profile and risk pricing. Resolver is Kalshi applying an enumerated list; the market closes early on a qualifying act. Deductions: (a) Kalshi retroactively reads the Oct 7/9 memorandum as "initiating formal legal proceedings," ~3 pts (the market has traded five days and 32k contracts on Oct 11 without an early close, and the sister Dec 1 rung trades 38/45, which it would not if the memo paid); (b) an ambiguous "she'll be gone" remark read as "decided to fire," ~3 pts; (c) impulsive on-record firing statement before the hearing, ~4 pts. Total ≈ 10 pts, under the 15-pt reject line.

Cleanest tail. A new discrete event: Trump posts or says on camera that Cook is fired or that he has decided to fire her before Nov 5, abandoning the due-process cure his own lawyers built after losing at the Supreme Court. This is not a trend continuing; the trend (process, hearing, report) runs past the deadline. Priced in the 10%.

48h move and book. YES spiked to 40–53¢ on Oct 10 and ran 16–40¢ on Oct 11 (32k contracts) as traders debated whether the memo's Oct 9 publication qualified, then settled to 12–14¢ on Oct 12–13 once no early close came. Specialist-dense book (vol24h 17,117; OI 59,589), which is why size is held to the half-size band cap rather than the depth cap (1/3 of 1,902 = 634).

• Max loss $124.96 (5.0% of capital) if Trump makes a qualifying attempt before Nov 1. Max win $17.04.
• Concentration. One leg, one cluster, one resolver. No correlation with the existing live pick (diesel export ban).
• Horizon. 19 days to close; the rung does not straddle any scheduled step of the removal process.
• Resolver risk ≈ 10 pts, dominated by Kalshi's reading of "decided to fire" rhetoric and of the memorandum. No dated clarification in rules_secondary as of Oct 13.
• Thin edge. Honest fair value is 89–91¢ against an 88¢ fill; after fees this is a 1–2¢ carry. If the NO ask moves to 89¢ or above, do not chase.

• Buy NO at a limit of 88¢ (equivalently sell YES at 12¢ against the resting 1,902-contract YES bid). Do not pay 89¢+: at 89¢ the thin-favorites band is still open but the edge is gone.
• Order size 142 contracts is well inside the 1/3-of-visible-depth cap (634); a single order should fill.
• The market closes early on any qualifying attempt; there is no exit to manage, only the Nov 1 settlement.
• Watch items that would change nothing unless they occur: a Truth Social post about Cook; any whitehouse.gov document moving the hearing earlier; a Kalshi clarification appended to rules_secondary.

• Universe. targets.json generated 2026-10-13T16:36Z: 120 series (74 Tier 1, 46 Tier 2). Public API lists 702 open markets across them; 37 close by Nov 27, 2026. Tier 1 was worked first; the tier-1 slate is entirely 95¢+ status-quo rungs or sub-500 volume.
• Just outside the horizon (not candidates, not researched): KXKASHOUT Dec 1 (5/7), KXHEGSETHOUT Dec 1 (15/19), KXIPOANTHROPIC Dec 1 (59/61), KXTRYFIRECOOK Dec 1 (38/45), KXGUILFOYLEOUT Dec 1 (99/100). The election-day ballot-measure series close in Nov 2027 and fail the close-after-expiration rule.
• Data. DB schema read from /api/db/schema; market list cross-checked against the public API (the DB join returned 44 rows, the live API 37 open within horizon). Prices from *_dollars fields; history from the candlesticks endpoint; books from /orderbook (orderbook_fp).
• Bank of Canada work, for the record. Sep 2 statement held at 2.25% (seventh hold since Oct 29, 2025) with "prepared to adjust monetary policy as needed"; Sep 16 deliberations summary flagged elevated near-term inflation and risk of spillover; Macklem Sep 21 (Halifax) "nor do we want to be too slow to respond"; Statistics Canada Oct 9 LFS −68k jobs, unemployment 6.5%; BlueGamma CORRA OIS Oct 13: hold 73%, hike 27%; Sep CPI due Oct 19 08:30 ET, inside the window. Kalshi prices the hike at 14/16 (below OIS), so the only priced-in edge is on the YES-hike side, which Anchor does not take.
• Precedent writeback. None this run: Guilfoyle's market is not yet settled and the Cook/BoC facts above concern open rungs. precedents.json written empty.