Trump keeps promising cash to voters. Will he deliver?

Plus: El-Sayed-Rogers debate  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Richard Hall | October 22, 2026     Hello there. We’ve written a lot in The Brief about the rapid development of drone technology in Ukraine. Today, we are sharing another first: a video of the Ukrainian military carrying out a dramatic front line rescue of an injured soldier by aerial drone. We also have a rundown of the highly contentious second Michigan Senate debate between Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers. IN TODAY’S BRIEF Why older adults love Meta’s new AI Trump’s campaign cash promises Don’t sleep on chair yoga Michigan’s Senate candidates clash $25 billion penalty Drone airlift         READ THIS FIRST Meta's Muse AI is winning over older adults. Privacy experts are worried Andrej Sokolow—Picture Alliance/Getty Images Millions have adopted Muse, Meta’s new AI agent, since its September launch. Muse—which comes with a cuddly avatar—was designed by Meta to be beginner-friendly, and to win over people unfamiliar with AI. As a result, many older adults who may have only had glancing interactions with AI have become avid users. Early data suggests Muse may be finding a particularly receptive audience among older adults. The analytics firm Apptopia estimated in September that Muse’s U.S. user base skewed older than any other AI chatbot, with 46% of its users aged 46+.  This dynamic has excited technologists—and raised serious concerns from privacy experts. Meta has long been criticized for its data privacy practices, and on Wednesday, a New Mexico judge ordered the company to pay $25 billion for violating the state’s consumer protection laws. “A cute AI agent can bring levity to the serious business of providing access to personal data, making older adults let their guard down,” says S. Shyam Sundar, the director of Penn State’s Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence. “This is worrisome because the technology has gotten so good lately in maintaining a credible interaction.” —Andrew Chow Read the full story here.         SPONSORED BY TIGERDATA You're Running Three Databases. You Only Need One. Events in one database, embeddings in another, analytics in a third. That's three systems and the pipelines between them, for one app. TimescaleDB does all three in Postgres: hypertables, pgvector, continuous aggregates. One system, no pipeline, no drift. Get $1000 Credit         THE CONTEXT Trump keeps promising cash on the campaign trail Kent Nishimura—AFP/Getty Images President Donald Trump is betting that the promise of more money in Americans’ pockets will translate into support at the ballot box.  At a Kansas rally on Monday, Trump announced that the Administration is offering an $8 billion aid package to help American farmers offset higher diesel costs this harvest season. Diesel has remained above $6 per gallon since mid-September, per the American Automobile Association, as oil prices have been pushed up by the war with Iran, which Trump started in late February.   Trump’s efforts to woo voters with offers of cash gained attention in September, when he explicitly promised a Dallas crowd that his Administration would dole out a $5,000 dividend to every American adult if the GOP maintains its majorities in Congress. What to know: Trump has a spotty record of delivering on pledged payouts. He has repeatedly floated the idea of giving a $2,000 stimulus check or tax rebate to most Americans, supposedly funded by revenue from the global tariffs, but such dividends have yet to materialize.  The same is true of his idea to pay Americans with money saved by DOGE cost-cutting, and a 2020 promise that his Administration would send $200 discount cards to 33 million older Americans on Medicare to help them pay for prescription drugs. —Chad de Guzman         HEALTH CHECK What chair yoga can do for your body Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source Image: MementoJpeg/Getty Images) At first glance, chair yoga might seem like a workout just for older adults with mobility issues. But experts say chair yoga shouldn’t be pigeonholed, because anyone can benefit. “It is a practice that meets you where you are,” says Divya Balakrishnan, a yoga instructor in New York City. “You’re still using your strength and flexibility, just in other ways.”  A yoga teacher named Lakshmi Voelker first began adapting some yoga poses to a chair in 1982 to make the practice more accessible for a student with arthritis. Since then, numerous instructors have found ways to use a chair for adapted versions of a surprising number of traditional yoga movements, like lunging warrior poses and standing-to-lying sun salutations.  While students typically crouch, sit, and lie down on a mat in traditional yoga classes, the chair, in a way, brings the floor closer. —Jennifer Heimlich Read the full story here.         SPONSORED BY GURU 2026 Become an email marketing GURU! GURU Conference, powered by Constant Contact, returns November 12–13, 100% free and virtual. Leave with proven tactics to boost opens, clicks, and deliverability. Grab Your Spot         IN FOCUS Final debate in Michigan’s tight Senate race turns testy over identity Robin Buckson-Pool/Getty Images The emotion was raw in the suburban Detroit television studio Wednesday night as former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers nakedly hinted his Democratic rival Abdul El-Sayed had questionable loyalties that involved potential ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed, who would become the nation’s first Muslim Senator, again harnessed outrage that he has to defend his faith and family, a tactic that has become a viral hallmark of a campaign that could decide the balance of power in Washington. Their final debate was a snapshot of a race that has been acrimonious and expensive. “If you are going to go to the United States Senate, we need to know: Are you for America, or are you for these terrorist groups overseas?” Rogers said. Countered El-Sayed: “To bring into question my commitment to the Constitution is really beneath you.” That dueling messaging continued through to closing statements, when Rogers said “we cannot afford Abdul El-Sayed’s policies and we cannot risk his ideology” and El-Sayed professed his loyalty to the United States. “I love this country. I love the Constitution and what it protects for all of us,” said El-Sayed, a former public health official. Polling shows a tight race to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat. Republicans are defending a narrow majority, and defending Michigan is a first-tier priority. Democrats have been eyeing the state with apprehension after Washington’s preferred recruit, Rep. Haley Stevens, did not win her primary against El-Sayed. But many have fallen in line, and a steady stream of Democratic heavies have headed to Michigan to boost El-Sayed. Still, the biggest surrogate in politics right now, President Donald Trump, is due in the state this weekend to aid Rogers—a fact that El-Sayed tried to turn against his opponent in almost every answer. “Right now, the cost of gas, cost of groceries, it all really goes back to this war in Iran. We need a war powers resolution rather than a Senator who is going to stand hip to hip with Donald Trump on this war that made no sense when it started and certainly makes no sense now,” El-Sayed said at the top of the hour-long session. But it really has been faith that has been a central issue to a campaign in a state facing deep economic woes. Both candidates have turned to their own versions of identity politics in a bet it turns out their base. In his closing remarks, Rogers, who is Christian, asked for support from “Jewish Democrats who are afraid for their children.” El-Sayed confronted a question from a Republican operative about his faith head-on: “I’m running for the U.S. Senate,” he said at that Oct. 17 town hall, “and happen to be Muslim.”  Since then, El-Sayed has been running ads centered around his own faith without explicitly saying what that faith is. “Faith is a thing there’s just too little of in Washington,” says El-Sayed in one ad. “So, yeah, we need a few more people of faith in Washington.” Election Day is Nov. 3. —Philip Elliott         ONE NUMBER $25 billion A New Mexico judge on Wednesday ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in civil penalties for misleading users about their data, including its response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. SOURCE: REUTERS         A VIRAL MOMENT Drone rescue This remarkable video from Ukraine shows the evacuation of a wounded soldier from the front line by a heavy-lift aerial drone. A member of the brigade’s drone unit who helped plan the mission called it “historic.”         SPONSORED BY WISPR FLOW Stop typing AI prompts. Start talking. You think 4x faster than you type. So why are you typing prompts? Wispr Flow turns your voice into ready-to-paste text inside any AI tool. Speak naturally, tangents and all, and Flow cleans it up. Available on Mac, Windows, iPhone, and Android. Try Wispr Flow Free       Linked In this addictive word-association game, find the steps that will unite two seemingly unrelated words in just four moves. PLAY NOW       ALSO WORTH YOUR TIME POLITICS Here Are 7 Key Governor Races to Watch in the Midterms ADVICE  What to Say When Someone Cuts in Line in Front of You       More Newsletters from Click to sign up. 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