Trump's Nvidia pitch, Pope Leo's record, a whale in NYC

Plus: A progressive challenges Schumer  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Richard Hall | November 13, 2026     Hello there. Health insurers are increasingly using AI to evaluate coverage requests and deny claims, so why shouldn’t you use AI to fight back? Today in The Brief, we look at a host of new businesses that have emerged in recent years to help you do just that. Read on to see how they might help you save money. We also have an update on the scandal rocking Nvidia after the company’s CEO, Jensen Huang, resigned amid reports of two extramarital affairs. IN TODAY’S BRIEF Schumer faces challenge Witkoff and Kushner meet Putin Trump’s Nvidia pitch How AI can help with health insurance denials Pope Leo’s record-breaking crowd Whale of a time         READ THIS FIRST Van Hollen challenges Schumer for Senate Majority Leader Tom Williams—CQ Roll Call/Getty Images Chris Van Hollen will challenge Chuck Schumer for Senate Majority Leader in the new Congress, marking the first time in decades that the race will be contested. Announcing his run on Thursday evening, the Democratic senator for Maryland said his challenge was “not about any one individual” but about “answering the call of the American people.” “In this election, the American people called for change. They called for a change from Donald Trump’s disastrous policies — but even bigger than that, a change from the status quo that isn’t working for working people,” Van Hollen said in a statement on social media. “It’s now on us to meet this moment, and to do that we need new leadership.” Van Hollen’s announcement comes amid calls from grassroots groups and several Democratic politicians for a shake-up in the party’s leadership. Detractors have accused Schumer of being too willing to compromise and not forceful enough in confronting President Donald Trump. Others have credited him with the Democrats’ sweeping success in the midterm elections, which saw the party win a majority in both chambers of Congress. In response to Van Hollen’s announcement, Schumer, a senator for New York who has led the Democratic caucus in the upper chamber since 2017, asserted that he has enough votes to win. Senate Democrats are due for a closed-door vote on Dec. 1 on who will be their Senate Majority Leader when the new congress convenes on Jan. 4. The last time the election for Senate Democratic leader was contested was in 1994, when Tom Daschle of South Dakota defeated Chris Dodd of Connecticut in an open race to succeed retiring leader George Mitchell. —Miranda Jeyaretnam Read the full story here.         SPONSORED BY ROKU The holiday streaming season is almost here Are you ready? As revealed in our holiday playbook, Roku Ads Manager lets you easily set up, measure and optimize your self-serve holiday ad campaign. You can even create a shoppable ad unit that lets streamers buy directly from their remote. Set up your campaign today.         IN THE NEWS Trump envoys Witkoff and Kushner meet with Putin in Moscow Vyacheslav Prokofyev—AP U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow Thursday to discuss Ukraine, after two days of U.S.-led talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Abu Dhabi yielded no major breakthroughs. “I think progress was made. I think it was made earlier today,” Witkoff told reporters after the meeting at the Senate Palace of the Kremlin. “People didn't think that we were going to restart trilateral. We’ve restarted it. We’ve set a new meeting. This is what President [Donald] Trump wants to see." He went on to say that a European representative would be present for the next stage of the talks, which are set to look at the continent’s wider security arrangements. “They’re our partners, and it’s important for them to be involved,” he said. Witkoff and Kushner then traveled to Dublin, where they met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for more than an hour. Zelensky is among the dozens of world leaders in the Irish capital for the European Political Community summit. —Tiago Ventura Read the full story here.         VIEW FROM D.C. Trump wants Apple’s Tim Cook to replace Jensen Huang as Nvidia CEO Johannes Neudecker—picture alliance via Getty Images President Trump suggested on Thursday that Tim Cook, former CEO of Apple, should become the leader of chip maker Nvidia following its chief executive Jensen Huang’s resignation over his alleged affairs with multiple women. “NOW THAT Nvidia CEO JENSEN HUANG, who has done a fantastic job, has resigned, there is only one man to take his place - TIM COOK of Apple. A Legend replaces a Legend!” Trump posted on Truth Social. Huang resigned as Nvidia’s CEO on Thursday morning, in the wake of reports that he had allegedly been involved in multiple affairs, including one with a woman identified by U.S. intelligence as a Chinese spy. It is unclear if Trump has reached out to Cook regarding this suggestion.  Huang and the White House have maintained a close relationship since the start of Trump’s second term. During his official visit to China in May, Trump invited Huang to attend the summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The New York Times reported that the President insisted on inviting Huang to join the delegation despite concerns over Huang’s relationship with a woman who is believed to be a Chinese spy. —Philip Wang Read the full story here.         SPONSORED BY TABS Watch on demand: Tabs + PwC break down how finance teams are operationalizing usage-based pricing — without the manual overhead. Watch on demand         IN FOCUS How AI can help you appeal health insurance denials Moor Studio—Getty Images Health insurers are increasingly using AI to evaluate requests for coverage of drugs and medical procedures. But patients, too, are using AI to fight back against denials. Services like Claimable, Fight Health Insurance, Mediloop, and Billyze help people understand their medical bills and push back against what could be improper billing or wrongful denials.  Many Americans have had an experience where their insurance denies a procedure or medication request from a doctor. But very few of them appeal those denials. People often don’t appeal insurance denials for several reasons; it can be intimidating to know what paperwork to file, and the bills can start to pile up, says Sara R. Collins, a senior scholar at the Commonwealth Fund.  AI tools have emerged to offer guidance, usually for a fee. Each of the AI tools available to patients does something slightly different. Claimable helps people appeal insurers’ decisions to deny coverage for drugs or medical care and costs about $40 per appeal. Fight Health Insurance is a free tool that helps patients write letters appealing denials. Billyze helps search hospital bills for possible errors and helps patients question charges that may be erroneous. It costs $79 per report, though for bills over $1,000, it promises to refund the service fee if its analysis finds no billing discrepancies. Mediloop also reviews bills for potential errors and negotiates with providers to reduce what patients owe. It costs $129 to negotiate a bill and also offers an annual household plan.  Using AI to help with medical bills only became realistic in the last few years, says Holden Karau, one of the founders of Fight Health Insurance. Open generative models—AI systems with publicly available code that users modify to their own purposes—only became good enough to help build this kind of system in early 2024, Karau says.  “That’s when the models got good enough that it was like, yeah, we can actually do this, let’s make it available for people to use,” she says.  It can be difficult to build an AI model that helps people appeal denials because the insurer—not the patient—usually has most of the information about why they’re denying claims and what makes them overturn their appeals, say Karau and her co-founder Melanie Warrick. But the two still found data to build into their model, including published information from state regulators about what language they used to overturn insurers’ denials. —Alana Semuels Read the full story here.         ONE NUMBER 3 million An estimated 3 million people lined the streets of Lima, Peru, on Wednesday, to welcome Pope Leo XIV back to the country where he lived for 20 years. The event broke the record for the largest crowd in his papacy. SOURCE: REUTERS         A VIRAL MOMENT ‘BREACH!’ Sometimes it really does seem like New York has all the fun. A humpback whale was spotted in the Hudson River on Thursday, just off Pier 45. Gotham Whale, a citizen science group that catalogs whales in and around NYC waters, shared this video of the whale breaching with the Jersey City skyline behind it.         SPONSORED BY THE DEEP VIEW Stop Drowning In AI Information Overload Your inbox is flooded with newsletters. Your feed is chaos. Somewhere in that noise are the insights that could transform your work—but who has time to find them? The Deep View solves this. We read everything, analyze what matters, and deliver only the intelligence you need. No duplicate stories, no filler content, no wasted time. Just the essential AI developments that impact your industry, explained clearly and concisely. Replace hours of scattered reading with five focused minutes. While others scramble to keep up, you'll stay ahead of developments that matter. 600,000+ professionals at top companies have already made this switch. Join them today, for 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 HEALTH Getting Too Little Sleep Makes You Easier to Scam EDUCATION  America's Best Community Colleges 2027       More Newsletters from Click to sign up. FUTURE PROOF +HEALTH MATTERS +INSIDE TIME +IN THE LOOP +WORTH YOUR TIME + Subscribe to TIME Email us: thebrief@time.com Received this from a friend? Sign up here Connect with TIME   PRIVACY POLICY     © 2026 TIME USA, LLC. All rights reserved. TIME Customer Service, P.O. Box 37508 Boone, IA 50037-0508, United States Unsubscribe