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October 24, 2026: From My Inbox

A roundup of today’s newsletters, Substacks and digests, organized by theme. Stories appearing in more than one newsletter are noted below.

Trump Israel AI Hellebuyck Musk Meta election Alaska midterms Ukraine Starlink Brazil Canada France protests polling tariffs supplements Toronto Zuckerberg

Canadian News

Coverage centered on Ontario’s municipal elections and Canada-US trade.

  • Toronto’s mayoral race between Olivia Chow and Brad Bradford, with a side-by-side look at both candidates’ records ahead of Monday’s vote (Toronto Star, First Up).
  • Ontario Speaker Donna Skelly’s apartment at Queen’s Park, and the return of Stan Cho as a parliamentary assistant three months after an expenses scandal forced his resignation (Toronto Star, First Up).
  • Donald Trump plans to exempt more Canadian products, including packing machinery, plastic boxes and cement, from his 50 percent tariffs, after lobbying from Maine senator Susan Collins (Toronto Star, First Up; The Economist, The World in Brief).
  • Bombardier plans to hire 800 workers in the United States as part of an expansion of its American operations (Toronto Star, First Up).

US News

US coverage centered on the Alaska Senate race, Pentagon scrutiny and rising corruption concerns ahead of the midterms.

  • The Justice Department sued to block certification of Alaska’s close Senate race should Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan lose, citing voter confusion caused by a second candidate with a similar name, Daniel J. Sullivan (The New York Times, The Morning; The Economist, The World in Brief).
  • Senators from both parties are withholding confirmation of Trump nominees until satellite communications used by Ukraine’s military, disrupted by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, are restored (The New York Times, The Morning).
  • House Democrats are weighing impeachment of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth if they retake the House next month, and corruption allegations around the administration are overtaking inflation as voters’ top concern (The Wall Street Journal, The 10-Point).
  • Billionaires including Elon Musk and Michael Dell are seeding children’s investment accounts under the new Trump Accounts program, which critics describe as a political stunt with built-in tax advantages (The Wall Street Journal, The 10-Point).
  • A weekend dispatch covered California’s new AI and child-safety laws, two competitive House primaries in the Sacramento area, and Pete Buttigieg campaigning for Virginia Democrats (Punchbowl News, Readback).
  • Philosopher Kate Manne wrote about “bro code” dynamics in all-male groups, drawing on the Cornell University sexual assault case (The New York Times, Opinion Today).

Finance and Markets

A tech-led sell-off and Mark Zuckerberg’s California tax arrangement were the most widely covered financial stories.

  • Meta shares fell sharply, about 7 percent in one session, on investor concern about AI spending, pulling the Nasdaq and S&P 500 down for the week (Status News; The New York Times, DealBook; El Cronista, El Pulso del Mercado).
  • Mark Zuckerberg reached an arrangement with Meta’s board to cover a new California billionaire tax by creating a new class of shares, in exchange for staying in the state eight more years (The New York Times, DealBook; El Cronista, El Pulso del Mercado).
  • Tesla and SpaceX boards have formed a special committee to explore a merger, which Elon Musk said would need approval from at least half of Tesla’s outstanding shares (The New York Times, DealBook).
  • Argentina’s official dollar rose for a fifth straight session, country risk moved back above 700 basis points and the Merval fell 1.9 percent in dollar terms; Brent crude topped 116 dollars a barrel, its highest since 2022, while gold dropped below 4,000 dollars an ounce (El Cronista, El Pulso del Mercado).
  • Moderna shares fell despite positive cancer vaccine trial results, with a Wall Street Journal columnist warning the stock still assumes further success (The Wall Street Journal, The 10-Point).

International News

Unrest in France, the dispute over Starlink access for Ukraine and Brazil’s election runoff drew coverage across several outlets.

  • France deployed tens of thousands of police officers ahead of a weekend of protests, including a resurgent yellow-vest movement over the cost of living, after rioting the previous weekend; Marine Le Pen’s National Rally holds its party congress in Orleans (The Economist, The World in Brief; The New York Times, The Morning; The Wall Street Journal, The 10-Point).
  • Elon Musk’s restriction of Starlink satellite service to Ukraine remained in dispute; Ukraine said the service was working normally again, while a Substack post argued critics overlook Musk’s 2022 decision to activate Starlink for Ukraine in the first place (The Wall Street Journal, The 10-Point; Status News; I Blog to Differ, Substack).
  • Israeli forces began demolishing homes in a Palestinian neighborhood of Hebron after gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, and Melania Trump said she had brokered a local ceasefire between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the city of Oleshky (The Economist, The World in Brief; The New York Times, The Morning).
  • Brazil holds a closely contested presidential runoff on Sunday between Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro (The Wall Street Journal, The 10-Point; El Cronista, El Pulso del Mercado).
  • Saudi Arabia postponed an investment summit amid security concerns, and a profile examined Gadi Eisenkot, the retired general challenging Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel’s October 27th election (The Economist, The World in Brief).

Media News

Press coverage focused on a correction at POLITICO, a fabricated-polling scandal and the secrecy behind a documentary hit.

  • POLITICO was forced to correct a story about White House chief of staff Susie Wiles after a legal threat from the administration, reigniting tension between the outlet and the White House (Status News).
  • A polling firm called Wedgewood Polls was exposed as having fabricated its surveys, after a rival analysis site spent about 900 dollars replicating one of its polls and found no matching data (Status News).
  • CNN anchor Bianna Golodryga is leaving the network, Elon Musk invested roughly 1 billion dollars in David Ellison’s Skydance, and The Telegraph began layoffs under its new ownership (Status News).
  • Meta delayed, but still plans, a policy letting it scrape news sites for AI training, a move publishers are pressuring the company to drop (Status News; Nieman Lab, The Weekly Wrap).
  • The Wall Street Journal’s AI tool, Doppler News AI, has driven four major midterm election stories this cycle (Nieman Lab, The Weekly Wrap).
  • Three outlets covered the secrecy behind A24’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary, “You Can See Everything”: fewer than 10 A24 staff knew the film existed before its release (The Wall Street Journal, The 10-Point; The New York Times, The Morning; The New Yorker, Daily).

Sports News

Hockey’s biggest trade of the year and a loaded sports weekend led the sports newsletters.

  • The Winnipeg Jets traded goaltender Connor Hellebuyck to the New Jersey Devils, ending a months-long saga, for a return one columnist called underwhelming (The Athletic, Red Light; The Athletic, The Pulse).
  • Formula 1’s United States Grand Prix in Austin could see 20-year-old Kimi Antonelli become the sport’s youngest-ever champion (The Athletic, The Pulse).
  • The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 1 of the World Series behind catcher William Contreras, with Game 2 following Saturday (The Athletic, The Pulse; The Wall Street Journal, The 10-Point).
  • The Indiana Fever’s team president and general manager both departed within hours of each other ahead of a pivotal offseason (The Athletic, The Pulse).
  • The Toronto Raptors beat the Washington Wizards 112 to 102, and Canada’s 60-million-dollar sport investment enters a difficult next phase (Toronto Star, First Up).

Health and Wellness

One newsletter examined supplement safety testing, while another rounded up several wellness topics.

  • Most supplements are not independently verified before sale; FDA data cited found 776 recalled supplement products contained undisclosed drug ingredients, and lab tests found many melatonin and creatine gummies did not match their labels. Buyers were advised to look for third-party certification such as NSF Certified for Sport (Arnold’s Pump Club).
  • Five letters worth writing in a lifetime, based on a new book by letter-writing coach Frish Brandt (The New York Times, El Times, in Spanish).
  • New guidance from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists supports hormone therapy for menopause symptoms for many women, and lifestyle changes may lower Alzheimer’s risk for carriers of the APOE4 gene variant (The New York Times, El Times, in Spanish).
  • Certain common medications can disrupt sleep, repeated Covid infections carry cumulative health risks, and the evidence behind black cumin oil supplements is thin (The New York Times, El Times, in Spanish).

Other

Longer reads examined the stakes of the midterms and the scale of the global chip industry.

  • Susan Glasser assessed what a possible Republican defeat in the midterms could mean for Donald Trump’s next moves, and a separate piece examined how Alaska’s Senate race could hinge on salmon fishing policy (The New Yorker, Daily).
  • An essay described the global semiconductor supply chain as one of humanity’s great collective achievements, alongside reporting on Meta’s efforts to prevent school shootings and new data on testosterone levels in the US military (The New Yorker, Science & Technology).

Sources

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