Midterm elections 2026: all the news
The 2026 midterm elections will determine the scope of President Donald Trump’s power in his final two years in office, and signal what voters care about going into the 2028 presidential election. While this year’s races are expected to be most broadly defined by affordability issues, there’s several topics impacting the tech industry that appear to be on voters’ minds.
Among them are concerns about data centers, and whether voters will have to bear the burden of higher energy costs, AI safety, and the rapid expansion of surveillance technology through Flock. There’s also the question of how to tax billionaires’ wealth in California, a topic that has driven heavy tech spending and creative stock class structures meant to keep tech executives from fleeing the state should a ballot measure pass.
The next Congress is likely to continue grappling with how to regulate AI, and stem the data center backlash, among other issues. How that conversation shapes up, and which tech CEOs are hauled to testify on Capitol Hill, will be shaped by the outcome of November 3rd.
- Prop 45 in California could be hiding a loophole for data centers
- Another election year, another tech company war room.
- Voters in Texas agree: They hate data centers
- Data center backlash is uniting America
- Republican politicians have embraced anti-Indian racism — and it’s costing them votes
- Meta made a deal to keep Mark Zuckerberg from leaving California over its billionaire tax.
- Trump is giving Nick Shirley $10,000 and launching a $25 million fraud bounty program
- Democrats think cracking down on AI could give them an edge
- Tech billionaires have reportedly donated over $340 million to fight a wealth tax in California.
- Elon Musk has donated over $276 million to Republican midterm efforts
- The midterms are going to be a data security nightmare
- Democrats preview how they’d go after the Ticketmaster settlement if they regain power
- AI backlash is coming for elections
Apple is all in on AI — its own and everyone else’s
Apple's latest earnings show how it's continuing to capitalize on the AI boom without busting its budget on the infrastructure spending consuming its competitors.
Overall, Apple posted its best-ever fiscal year for revenue and earnings per share. iPhone and Mac sales continued to grow strongly in the fourth quarter. iPhone revenue rose 17.5% from a year earlier to a September quarter record of $57.6 billion while Mac revenue climbed 24% to $10.8 billion, its highest level in four years. Shares nevertheless fell in premarket trading Tuesday after Apple warned that rising memory costs would squeeze its profit margins in the holiday quarter.
…GTA VI’s download will need up to 212GB of hard drive space
You're going to need a lot of extra storage space on your console if you're planning to play Grand Theft Auto VI later this month. Rockstar Games confirmed on Tuesday that the pre-load file will require up to 212GB "depending on your device."
Rockstar says you can start pre-loading the game on the PlayStation 5 on Tuesday, November 10th at midnight in your local time zone, while users on Xbox Series X | S devices can start pre-loading on November 10th at 12AM GMT. The company says to "make sure you've got ample space to begin pre-loading as soon as possible." Rockstar also posted a support page with more information about pre-loading the ga …
The Elder Scrolls VI officially has a name: Sentinel
Bethesda is officially confirming today that the next Elder Scrolls game will be called The Elder Scrolls VI Sentinel. The confirmation came in a less than 10-minute video celebrating 40 years of Bethesda game studios.
It's been more than eight years since Bethesda officially announced the existence of the sixth game in its Elder Scrolls series, and studio chief Todd Howard made the announcement today and called it the "perfect time" to fully name the game.
Bethesda isn't sharing any more details on The Elder Scrolls VI Sentinel today, though. The Xbox Wire press release on the name is literally just a picture of the logo.
OpenAI is quietly renaming data centers ‘compute campuses’
People hate data centers. They're loud, resource-hungry eyesores that are so profoundly unpopular they have managed to achieve the near-impossible in today's polarized political landscape: genuine bipartisan opposition. But what about "compute campuses"? Those sound lovely, right?
OpenAI seems to be gambling that a quiet rebrand could be all it takes to defuse the growing political backlash that threatens to derail the infrastructure fueling the AI boom.
OpenAI debuted the new terminology on Monday in an announcement launching its new "Grid Protectors Program." The initiative, starting with an upcoming site in Effingham County, Georgia, ai …
A truck-sized NASA space telescope is about to crash to Earth
Almost 22 years after it was launched, NASA's Swift Observatory is now about to fall back to Earth on Wednesday after attempts to push it back into a higher orbit failed. NASA announced that the aging space telescope is anticipated to re-enter Earth's atmosphere at approximately 3:30AM ET (give or take 11 hours), and that it expects most of the spacecraft to burn up, but some components will likely survive re-entry.
The observatory weighs around 3,200 pounds and measures in at 5.6 meters (18.4 feet) high and 5.4 meters (17.7 feet) wide, though much of the latter includes its deployable solar arrays. The risk of surviving components causing …
Peak Design expands its collection of wireless charging accessories
Peak Design, best known for its backpacks and travel bags packed full of useful features, announced it's expanding its collection of chargers and charging accessories with new devices that focus on pairing premium materials with innovative functionality. "Somewhere along the way, we accepted that the electronics we use every day should be cheap, disposable and just good enough," says Peter Dering, Peak Design's CEO and founder. "We didn't set out to make another collection of chargers and cables. We set out to show just how much better these everyday products could be."
The $99.95 Peak Design Wireless Kickstand Travel Battery, available in …
Bambu’s nine-nozzle H3C foretells the future of 3D printing
Three years ago, I told you how home 3D printers had evolved for speed, producing parts in minutes that used to take hours or days. Now, the next evolution is here: printers that can swap between materials on the fly, mix different colors to produce nearly the full rainbow, mix soft and hard materials, and even mix different sizes of nozzle and different diameters of filament so you can switch between high speed and fine detail in a single print.
Today, Bambu Lab is announcing its most advanced 3D printer yet, the $2,499 H3C, which can do all of that mixing goodness - by loading nine different rolls of filament into nine different print hea …
The 2026 iPad Mini is a terrific tiny tablet — for a big price
The iPad Mini sometimes feels like a trap. It is, in some ways and for some people, the perfect iPad: meaningfully larger than my phone's screen but still small and light enough to use for reading in bed or gaming on the subway. As most of the rest of the iPad line has tilted ever closer to laptop territory, the Mini might be the most iPad-y iPad left. I've taken a Mini everywhere with me since the very first one. But Apple only updates the Mini sporadically, and those updates sometimes feel like someone inside Apple Park picked its specs by closing their eyes and clicking randomly in an Excel sheet. The Mini is always a little underpowered, …
Adobe’s Premiere mobile app is adding licensed music from ‘leading artists’
Adobe is teaming up with Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group to add a library of licensed music clips to the Premiere mobile video editing app. No specific musicians have been announced with this partnership, but Adobe said it will include "popular songs" from "leading artists," and enable Premiere mobile users to quickly jump on "the latest trend."
"By bringing licensed music from UMG artists into Adobe Premiere mobile, we're giving creators new ways to build their stories around the songs they love for the first time, while helping our artists and songwriters reach new audiences," Universal Music Group's Bryan Stone said in the a …