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October 25, 2026 – From My Inbox

A roundup of what arrived in the inbox over the last day, drawn from newsletters, Substacks and digest emails.

midterms election Ukraine Starlink Meta Netanyahu business Wiles Zacharia polling Wedgewood scandal Republicans spending campaign security national Henderson House vote

Canadian News

Three Canada items surfaced today, all tied to the November 3 United States midterms.

  • The Trump administration has accused Canadian officials of trying to sway the midterm elections toward Democrats. Prime Minister Mark Carney says the claims have no merit. (NYT Global Update)
  • Trump adjusted tariffs on some Canadian goods, a move announced by Senator Susan Collins as she faces a difficult re-election fight in Maine. (NYT Global Update)
  • Alberta’s independence referendum produced a clear result, but Premier Danielle Smith managed to alienate voters on both sides of the sovereignty question, leaving her political future unsettled. (NYT Global Update)

US News

Coverage of the midterms and the Trump White House dominated the US newsletters. The Ukraine Starlink story appeared in two separate publications, and a second fake-polling scandal drew comparisons to one from earlier this year.

  • Trump called Elon Musk and urged him to lift restrictions Musk had placed on Ukraine’s Starlink service. The EconLog blog took up the same story to argue against Paul Krugman’s view that “billionaires should not be making decisions critical to national security,” noting that Musk’s Starlink also helped Ukraine in 2022. (Status News; EconLog, via Substack)
  • The White House counsel sent POLITICO a letter demanding retraction of three stories about chief of staff Susie Wiles, calling them “fanciful fiction.” POLITICO stood by two of the stories but corrected a third, concerning press secretary Katie Zacharia’s interview on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program. (Status News)
  • A second fake-polling scandal, involving a firm called Wedgewood Polls, rattled midterm coverage after the outlet FiftyPlusOne spent about $900 to expose its data as fabricated. Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr warned broadcasters over airing “fake polls,” and Trump tied the episode to his defamation suit against The New York Times. (Status News)
  • Melania Trump said she had brokered a ceasefire in a besieged Ukrainian town and assigned the pro-Trump outlet Newsmax to document it. Separately, Jared Kushner threatened to sue Vanity Fair over a forthcoming book excerpt, and Elon Musk’s midterm campaign spending has grown to nearly $450 million. (Status News)
  • The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser previewed what she calls a possible “repudiation” of Trump at the polls, and Barton Gellman profiled state officials, including Utah’s Deidre Henderson, who say they are resisting administration attempts to control the vote. A separate piece called the Republicans’ midterm campaigns “remarkably bad,” citing Vivek Ramaswamy’s widely criticized attack ad. (The New Yorker)
  • Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is broadening her coalition ahead of a possible future run, and former President Obama sharply criticized Trump and Republicans at a rally in Ohio. (The Wall Street Journal, The 10-Point)

Finance and Markets

Markets newsletters flagged concentrated AI exposure in corporate earnings and fresh fiscal strain in Europe.

  • A Meta-led selloff hit technology stocks on Wall Street amid investor concern over the industry’s AI spending plans. Meta also created a new share class after Mark Zuckerberg threatened to leave California over a proposed tax on billionaires. (Status News)
  • Spotify shares jumped 11 percent after the company added more paid subscribers than expected, reaching 788 million monthly users. Comcast’s earnings showed continuing broadband subscriber losses ahead of its NBCUniversal spinoff, though Peacock posted a second straight profitable quarter. (Status News)
  • Analysts expect S&P 500 third-quarter earnings to rise 30 percent from a year earlier, but roughly ten companies tied to the AI trade account for about two-thirds of that growth. (The Wall Street Journal, The 10-Point)
  • France has become what one columnist calls the “poster child” for fiscal strain in Europe, with net debt projected to reach 111 percent of GDP and ten-year bond yields above 5 percent for the first time since 2002. (The Wall Street Journal, The 10-Point)
  • Credit card issuers including Chase, Citi and American Express are cracking down on so-called points junkies who chase sign-on bonuses and rewards. (The Wall Street Journal, The 10-Point)

International News

Israel’s general election and the war in Ukraine were the leading international threads, each covered from more than one angle.

  • Israelis vote this week in a general election that one newsletter lays out as four possible outcomes, depending on whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc or Gadi Eisenkot’s “change bloc” finishes ahead, including a unity-government scenario. Netanyahu also floated a national cryptocurrency, drawing criticism from rivals and the Bank of Israel. (It’s Noon in Israel, via Substack)
  • The New Yorker profiled the “political upstarts” who may decide the Israeli election, and a separate report noted Netanyahu is trying to recast himself as “Mr. Security” after two years of war. (The New Yorker; NYT Global Update)
  • Israeli forces raided Hebron in the West Bank after Palestinian gunmen killed two soldiers, displacing Palestinian families from the area. (NYT Global Update)
  • A group of American executives said they quit an Alaska natural-gas startup after learning it was secretly backed by the Russian gas giant Novatek. Washington has turned to exiled opposition figure Dinorah Figuera to help negotiate a transition in Caracas, Kyiv is bracing for a harsh winter of Russian strikes on its power grid, and Saudi Arabia’s new Riyadh Air has halted most flights after Houthi missile strikes. (The Wall Street Journal, The 10-Point)
  • A federal judge ordered Trump to sit for a videotaped deposition by December 11 in his $10 billion defamation suit against the BBC, warning the case could be dismissed if he fails to comply. (Status News)

Media News

Two separate newsletters covered Meta’s new terms of service for publishers, and the POLITICO correction was the week’s most discussed media story.

  • POLITICO corrected a story about Susie Wiles and Katie Zacharia’s Fox News interview after White House pressure. Attorney Ted Boutrous rejected the idea that the outlet had published the story in bad faith, even as POLITICO acknowledged the error. (Status News)
  • CNN anchor Bianna Golodryga is leaving the network after nine years and is reportedly in talks with CBS News and POLITICO. The New York Times named Pui-Wing Tam its next business editor and hired Evan Halper to cover climate policy. (Status News)
  • Axel Springer chief Mathias Döpfner reportedly discussed joining a bid for TikTok’s European business, and Elon Musk invested roughly $1 billion in David Ellison’s Skydance, raising new disclosure questions for CBS News and CNN. (Status News)
  • CBS News named Jon Tower permanent executive producer of “CBS Mornings,” anchor Tony Dokoupil launched a new podcast, and Axel Springer’s Telegraph began layoffs while moving toward what the company calls an “AI-powered” media business. Christianity Today has lost about half its 79 staffers over the past 14 months. (Status News)
  • Meta delayed, until November 20, new commercial terms that legal experts say are “broad enough to drive a truck through” and could let the company scrape news sites to train its AI products, after pushback from publishers and lawmakers in the United States, Britain and Germany. (Nieman Lab)
  • The Wall Street Journal’s new “Doppler” AI tool has analyzed 25 million TikTok videos and 500,000 podcasts to forecast midterm issues, even as a separate report found that 40 percent of chatbot answers to election questions contained at least one factual error. (Nieman Lab)

Sports News

Hockey, baseball, basketball and college football all made the sports newsletters.

  • The Winnipeg Jets’ Connor Hellebuyck has been traded to the New Jersey Devils, ending a lengthy suspension saga. (The Athletic)
  • The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays again in Game 2 of the World Series, their seventh comeback win of the postseason, while the WNBA Finals are tied 2-2 after the Golden State Valkyries’ road win over the Atlanta Dream. (The Athletic)
  • Texas Tech, ranked eighth in the country, was blown out by Cincinnati, and a busy Saturday of college football upsets included UCF over BYU, Indiana over Michigan, Texas over Ole Miss and Wisconsin over USC. NC State fired head coach Dave Doeren. (The Athletic)

Other

One newsletter raised a broader alarm about the internet’s underlying security.

  • A wave of AI-powered hacking has hit the internet this month, including critical vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language that prompted a National Security Agency advisory. Some technologists are now discussing offline, air-gapped backup networks for critical infrastructure. (Noahpinion, via Substack)
  • Apple’s iPhone Duo, priced above $2,000, is set to go on sale, with early reviewers calling it exciting but flawed. (Status News)

Sources

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