The Morning Briefing: November 1, 2026

Here is what to know on Sunday morning, November 1, 2026: the midterm campaign enters its final two days, Ukraine reports a heavy week of Russian strikes while its drones hit another Russian refinery, and talks over the Strait of Hormuz pick up speed even as warnings of renewed fighting grow.

Midterms enter the final two days

President Donald Trump returns to the campaign trail on Sunday with rallies in Iowa and Kansas, two days before midterm elections that will decide control of Congress. Thirty-five Senate seats and all 435 House seats are on the ballot on Tuesday. Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority and a narrow edge in the House. More than 52 million Americans had already voted in person or by mail by Saturday, according to the University of Florida Election Lab, a record for a midterm and up from nearly 46 million before Election Day in 2022.

Reuters reported that the White House has spent months preparing for a possible Democratic takeover of Congress, with senior officials working since April to identify executive actions on immigration, tariffs, housing costs and federal spending that Trump could pursue without congressional approval. The legal fights around the vote continued into the weekend: the administration said on Saturday it would likely take its fight over thousands of California mail ballots to the Supreme Court, and federal prosecutors are investigating whether aides to Alaska Democratic challenger Mary Peltola helped recruit a namesake candidate against Republican Senator Dan Sullivan. In Michigan, it was unclear whether Representative Haley Stevens would attend a Detroit event on Sunday with Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat she lost the Senate primary to.

Ukraine counts a heavy week of strikes

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces launched more than 3,560 munitions at Ukraine over the past week: 1,940 attack drones, more than 1,580 guided aerial bombs and 44 missiles, 36 of them ballistic. Energy facilities in Dnipropetrovsk, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytskyi came under attack overnight, Zelenskyy said, as Russia targets substations, transformers and power lines that supply homes. Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia launched 168 strike drones on October 31 and 122 were neutralized, with debris falling on a Kyiv shopping center and injuring a 12-year-old girl.

Ukrainian drones struck the Lukoil refinery in Kstovo, in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, overnight into November 1, according to Ukrainian media reports. The NORSI refinery is Russia’s fourth-largest and its second-largest gasoline producer. Zelenskyy met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on October 31, where the two discussed the Black Sea, a grain corridor and Turkish supplies of generators and energy equipment. The U.S. State Department approved a possible $2.1 billion sale of 500 PAC-3 MSE missiles for Ukraine’s Patriot systems on October 30, though delivery will take years. Trump said the United States is near an agreement to end the war, and Kyiv has said it is ready for trilateral talks with Russia and the United States in Abu Dhabi, while the Kremlin has pulled back from its earlier acceptance of a meeting there. The evacuation of residents from occupied Oleshky was completed this week under a local ceasefire.

Iran says Hormuz could reopen in two days

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Saturday that a plan discussed with Qatari mediators could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within two days if the United States meets Tehran’s conditions. Araghchi told Al Jazeera that Iran has no immediate plans to meet directly with American officials, and that mediators are still consulting on the conditions. Trump said negotiations are going fine and that the war will end soon, while also saying he is in no hurry for a deal because the United States has knocked down Iran’s navy, air force and air defenses.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Trump had rejected Iran’s earlier seven-day roadmap and is privately skeptical that Iran would meet his demandsand told aides he expects a renewed bombing campaign after the midterm elections. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Trump has not decided whether to resume strikes. Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei warned on Saturday that any new attack would be answered without geographic limits. U.S. officials have warned Gulf allies to prepare for possible renewed strikes after Tuesday’s vote.

October ends as the worst month for stocks since March 2025

Wall Street closed October with its sharpest monthly slide since March 2025 as investors questioned the cost of the artificial intelligence buildout. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.86 percent on Friday to 25,437, its biggest daily drop since June, and ended the month down 7.8 percent from its closing high on October 6. The Nasdaq 100 fell 3.5 percent on Friday, near a correction, defined as a 10 percent drop from a recent high. The S&P 500 fell 1.82 percent to 7,580 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 572 points, or 1.09 percent, to 51,770.

Intel shares fell 29 percent on Friday, their worst day since 1974, after a weak fourth-quarter forecast. Alphabet fell about 12 percent on Thursday after disappointing search advertising results and a surge in cash burn tied to AI spending, wiping out more than $500 billion in market value. Amazon reported negative free cash flow of $42.4 billion over the past twelve months after spending $94.8 billion on property and equipment, much of it on AI. Capital Economics said the four largest cloud companies account for more than a third of all capital spending by current S&P 500 companies over the past year.

Valkyries win the WNBA title in Game 7

The Golden State Valkyries beat the Atlanta Dream 68-63 on Saturday night in San Francisco to win their first WNBA championship in just their second season as a franchise. It was the first Game 7 in WNBA Finals history. Gabby Williams scored 30 points and was named Finals MVPwith 28 of them in the second half, the most in any half of a postseason game in league history.

Williams scored 15 straight points across the third and fourth quarters and hit the go-ahead three-pointer with just over two minutes left. Golden State led 8-0 early and held Atlanta without a field goal on its first 10 attempts, but the Dream led 30-24 at halftime before Williams took over after the break. Full coverage of the Valkyries’ Game 7 win is here.

Riot police surround Poland’s top court

Riot police surrounded Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal as Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government moved to strip the court’s president and vice-president of immunity, in the latest round of a long fight over the court’s independence. Poland’s president entered the tribunal building as the standoff unfolded. The dispute is one of several in Europe where elected governments and top courts are testing the limits of each other’s power.

That is the morning roundup for November 1. We will update this page through the day as the midterm campaign closes and results from the weekend’s sports and world news come in.