u/fortune

642.4k post karma · 34.3k comment karma · joined Sep 2022

fortune 8 points · 12h ago

Defeated Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro and his family have landed in Miami after fleeing Brazil.

The stunning move comes after 48 hours in which Bolsonaro refused to concede to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and then threatened to attempt to annul the election result.

Bolsonaro’s father, Jair Bolsonaro, also fled to Florida after losing the 2022 presidential election to Lula. On Monday, the U.S. said that it would grant visas to Flávio Bolsonaro and his family. Bolsonaro, a Trump ally, visited the White House in May.

fortune 174 points · 1d ago

The Pentagon is developing a requirement that every major military installation in the continental U.S. be able to sustain essential operations on its own for at least 90 days, Fox News Digital reported Oct. 25, citing internal planning documents. The requirement falls under an initiative called FORTRESS, short for Federal Operations for Resilience, Troop Resources, Energy, Supply, and Survivability.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled FORTRESS in his Sept. 30 “State of the Force” address. He pledged that every major installation would generate its own power, independent of the civilian grid. A follow-up memo laid out plans for a dedicated program office. The 90-day standard goes further than that original goal, extending self-sufficiency beyond electricity to water, fuel, and communications.

The plan envisions portable nuclear reactors, large-scale battery storage, and microgrids that can disconnect bases from civilian power networks. The Army has already moved in that direction: In August it announced up to $2.2 billion in awards to build nuclear microreactors at five bases, including Fort Bragg and Fort Hood.

fortune 1 points · 1d ago

Prior to Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery of penicillin 100 years ago, almost half of all deaths were caused by infections. Fleming’s petri-dish experiments and the resulting development of modern antibiotics have added an average of 23 years to human life expectancy and are estimated to save millions of lives each year.

Sandoz, the Swiss pharmaceuticals company, is one of the last producers of this vital medicine in Europe. Its €150 million ($168 million) factory in the Alpine town of Kundl, Austria, is the continent’s only fully integrated antibiotic manufacturing facility, capable of producing the active ingredients and turning it into medication ready for patients.

However, Sandoz faces strong competition from China. Last year, 86% of EU imports of penicillins and their derivatives came from China, up from 44% in 2019, according to Eurostat. China is now the largest exporter of antibiotic ingredients in the world.

Losing the ability to produce antibiotics in Europe raises questions about security and sovereignty, according to Richard Saynor, the CEO of Sandoz. “We’re now the last remaining penicillin manufacturer left in the Western world,” he says. “Do you really want to be in a world where all of your antibiotics come from Asian suppliers? I don’t think you do.”

fortune 1 points · 2d ago

Minami Maeda, CEO of Rakuten Medical, hopes he can get doctors to stop using their scalpels and try something more science-fiction instead.

“We’re essentially asking surgeons to put down their knives, and pick up this lightsaber,” he tells Fortune, referring to the company’s new technology that uses light as a way to treat cancer.

Rakuten Medical, the biotech offshoot of Japanese tech conglomerate Rakuten, is putting about 95% of the company’s resources into cracking the U.S. market. The San Diego-headquartered firm is already using its signature photoimmunotherapy treatment to treat head and neck cancers in Japan; it’s now running Phase 3 clinical trials in the U.S. and gunning for a 2028 FDA submission.

“The U.S. is the world’s biggest market, and it’s also where a lot of capital is deployed,” Maeda tells Fortune. “We want to be able to treat all solid tumors, rather than stop at just head and neck cancers—that means we need significant capital to be invested into R&D.”

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/26/biotech-firm-cancer-cure/?utm_source=reddit/

fortune 42 points · 5d ago

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) breached federal law by sharing sensitive government data with the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to a federal judge.

In a 39-page ruling released on Tuesday, Judge Denise Cote said OPM violated the Privacy Act of 1974, a post-Watergate law which prohibits the disclosure of certain records and outlines requirements for safeguarding others, and subsequently disobeyed its own cybersecurity practices.

OPM failed to provide a credible reason for why DOGE would need access to personally identifiable information (PII) of tens of millions of federal employees, as well as applicants and retirees, according to Cote.

Musk assembled DOGE in the first days of President Donald Trump’s second term, claiming the special advisory would root out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. While DOGE claims to have saved the government $215 billion in cancelled contracts and the reduction of approximately 300,000 government workers, former federal employees, including former IRS acting Commissioner Douglas O’Donnell, have warned the sweeping cuts will have lasting impacts on the government’s ability to increase efficiency through updated technology.

fortune 17 points · 5d ago

Just over a decade after Elizabeth Holmes threatened him with lawsuits and tried to kill his reporting, author John Carreyrou has become a perhaps unlikely fan of You Can See Everything, a new documentary exploring the disgraced founder’s home life as she prepares for prison. In fact, he’s seen it twice.

Carreyrou is the author of the 2018 book Bad Blood, in which he reports on Theranos’s collapse and Holmes’s downfall in a captivating narrative that topped the New York Times’ bestseller list.

The new documentary, in which comedian Nathan Fielder lived in the guesthouse of the home Holmes shared with her partner, Billy Evans, and her two children for 34 days before she went to prison, has thrust Holmes, and indirectly, Carreyrou, back into the spotlight, while also earning rave reviews and an estimated $15 million during its first weekend—the second-biggest opening for a documentary ever.

Carreyrou, for his part, told the New York Times’ Hard Fork podcast that he saw the film twice: the first time during a virtually private screening with his wife at the Manhattan offices of A24, the studio behind the film.

In a post on X, Carreyrou went even further, saying the documentary deserved a best picture award. But he warned it doesn’t cover the full story.

“The film is a great piece of art, but let’s not confuse that art with the underlying facts,” he said in a statement to Fortune.

fortune 1 points · 6d ago

President Donald Trump’s political groups have spent more than one-quarter of a billion dollars to bolster Republicans in the final stretch of this year’s midterm elections, an unprecedented amount for a sitting president that underscores the stakes on Nov. 3.

In total, Trump’s flagship super PAC, MAGA Inc., has reported spending nearly $277 million since the beginning of September, according to new federal campaign finance filings. That includes major transfers to two affiliated groups that have been spending millions on advertising: $200 million to No Going Back PAC Inc. and $25 million to Safety & Affordability PAC Inc.

“It’s more than any president has ever spent, by far, on the midterms,” said Corry Bliss, a GOP Senate and House campaign strategist who was the executive director of the Congressional Leadership Fund, House Republicans’ super PAC in the 2018 campaign.

Trump had been under intense pressure to help Republican candidates as his party struggles to hold onto its slim majorities in the House and Senate. While the party in power almost always loses seats in midterm elections, Republicans are facing an especially challenging climb after Trump helped defeat several of the party’s longtime incumbents and as he has been mired in low approval ratings amid deep voter frustration over persistently high costs and the unpopular war with Iran.

One bright spot for Republicans has been their huge financial advantage over Democrats this election cycle, aided by billionaires such as Elon Musk.

fortune 0 points · 6d ago

There are a few occasions when requesting time off is warranted: The birth of a child, a much-needed staycation, a once-in-a-lifetime concert. Maybe you’ve exaggerated being sick to enjoy some time at the beach or a last-minute museum day.

Or maybe you’ve skipped work to play the year’s most hotly-anticipated video game.

Workers are booking time off for the Nov. 19 release of Grand Theft Auto VI, and one widely shared estimate cited by the International Business Times put the cost to the U.S. economy at $1 billion in a single day. But is the country really going to lose that much economic output because of a video game?
Victor Matheson, an economist at the College of the Holy Cross who studies sports and major events, disputes that number. “But even if it were true, it’s not necessarily a bad thing if people are happier,” he said. “And it’s pretty tiny in the big picture anyway.”

The broader point is that estimates about lost productivity—whether from the Super Bowl, or the latest Star Wars movie, or the next Sony Playstation console—are probably bogus: these events are merely rearranging when workers take their vacation. And Matheson points to the simple age-old phenomenon economists love to point to: the substitution effect. When some event changes spending or productivity, it won’t simply be removed from the economy so much so it’ll shift when that spending or productivity occurs.

fortune 3 points · 7d ago

Just two years ago, ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the use of AI in political ads was nearly unheard of. Today, it’s a nine-figure budget line.

A new report from the Wesleyan University-based research group Wesleyan Media Project found more than $137 million in spending on 220 campaign videos made at least partly with AI through Oct. 11, ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. By comparison, the group detected less than $50,000 in spending on AI-generated ads in 2024 campaigns.

The magnitude of funding being poured into AI ads is not just evidence of how consequential this election cycle is, but also how pervasive artificial intelligence has become in content creation. The use of AI can range from a replacement for stock footage like a handshake to the likeness of a candidate. But the broad use of AI without much restriction or regulation has raised concern among both candidates and researchers about the spread of misinformation from the ads.

More than 70% of AI campaign videos did not contain a disclaimer or disclosure that they were generated by or contain AI, the report found.

fortune -6 points · 7d ago

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance are set Tuesday to announce a $25 million program to encourage the public to blow the whistle on suspected fraud in the federal government as they ramp up an existing effort to end the abuse of federal programs and dollars.

Under the Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program, or WHIP, anyone who submits a tip to fraud.gov that leads to a fraud conviction or a significant federal enforcement action is eligible to receive up to $30,000, the White House said. The Justice Department will administer the program.

The Republican president has undertaken an aggressive effort to eliminate fraud throughout the government. Trump established a task force on the topic in March and put Vance in charge of it.

fortune 3 points · 7d ago

President Donald Trump is hoping that $5,000 checks can juice Republican turnout in November’s midterm elections — but even some of his devoted fans are doubting that government payouts would arrive.

“I mean, I guess it’s good for some people. I really don’t care,” said Jamie Alvarez, who attended Trump’s recent Alaska rally in a red, white and blue outfit. “I don’t feel like your vote should be bought. I feel like you should vote for who you feel is going to do the best job.”
Joseph Eatherton was attending that same rally and said he was “not sure if it’s necessary.” When asked whether Trump could deliver on the promised money, he said, “I don’t know, and I hate being an armchair quarterback.”

The offering of government checks has become a go-to tactic for Trump when he faces a political jam. He’s previously endorsed $2,000 in dividends from tariff revenues and large refunds from spending cuts achieved by the Department of Government Efficiency, neither of which materialized.

The latest example could reveal how much voters still trust Trump as they decide control of Congress in the midterm elections on Nov. 3.

However, many voters are already embittered by his economic leadership. His critics see a president who failed to tame inflation and keep America out of overseas conflicts, and whose agenda has fueled higher prices as the war with Iran appears to be at a stalemate.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/20/trump-5000-checks-midterms-supporters-doubt/?utm_source=reddit/

fortune -8 points · 9d ago

One thing was for sure when you were a kid sneaking in some late-night TV on basic cable: you were going to get an ad for back pain relief. Maybe some car insurance. Maybe some candy or soda, and absolutely a few pairs of shoes. And more likely than not, you were going to see one person in those Icy Hot, The General, Nestle Crunch, Pepsi, and Reebok ads: the 7-foot-1-inch self-described “Big Aristotle” mononymously known as Shaq.

Over the years, Shaquille O’Neal has sold part of his name for more than $100 million, appeared in ads for everything from printer ink to car (and car insurance) commercials, and owns the logo on hundreds of millions of sneakers. And yet, he still says he has never had a job.

“I really respect people such as you guys who have to do real jobs. I’ve never had a real job,” O’Neal told Fortune on the sidelines of the Brand Innovators Marketing Leadership Summit at Paramount’s New York headquarters.

O’Neal was there with Leonard Armato, the agent who signed him out of Louisiana State University, to promote Armato’s new book, Maximize: 7 Keys to Unlock Greatness in You, out in November from Sports Business Journal Publishing, an imprint of Amplify Publishing Group. O’Neal wrote the foreword. The book lays out the plan the two made in 1992: O’Neal would own his name and logo outright, and other companies would pay to market it.

“He owned his own brand, and then we had to find companies to help build value in his brand by using it in their marketing in creative ways,” Armato told Fortune. “Basically it’s called OPM. You build your brand using other people’s money.”

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/19/shaq-ads-personal-brand-wealth/?utm_source=reddit/

fortune 18 points · 9d ago

Last month’s announcement from the Dutch central bank that it was moving gold from North America to Europe added to the trend of a global redistribution of reserves.

The New York Fed has long served as the custodian of the gold on behalf of the U.S. government, foreign governments, other central banks, and official international organizations. Much of it arrived during and after World War II as countries sought to keep their gold reserves in a safe location.
The stockpile reached a high in the early 1970s but began a gradual slide after the U.S. took the dollar off the gold standard and is now about half of its peak.

U.S. custodianship continues to decline. France removed all of its gold from the New York Fed between July 2025 and January 2026.

Then the Dutch central bank, known as the De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), moved more than 78 tons of gold in New York and seven tons in Canada to London, citing “increasing geopolitical unrest” and the need to improve its “crisis preparedness.”

The bank’s governor pointed out that London’s status as the world’s largest trading hub for bullion means gold stored at the Bank of England would be more accessible.

Despite rising global tensions recently, central banks around the world have been reshuffling their gold holdings for years while also adding to their holdings.

fortune 5 points · 9d ago

Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto VI doesn’t come out for another month, but Miami is already starting to look a lot like Vice City.

The hype around the game is hard to overstate. It arrives Nov. 19 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S after two delays, and eight years after Rockstar’s last major release, Red Dead Redemption 2. Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar’s parent company, has never disclosed what the game cost to make, and it declined to confirm a figure to Fortune earlier this year. But a ranking compiled by gaming platform Zero1 Gaming puts its combined development and marketing budget at roughly $2 billion, making it the most expensive video game ever made.

Beyond the virtual Vice City, Rockstar’s marketing push is aimed squarely at the real city that inspired it. Not everyone in Miami-Dade County government is happy about that.

On June 29, Miami-Dade officials submitted a pitch deck to Rockstar outlining potential promotional activations on county property, according to documents obtained by The Miamian through a public records request. The concepts included a “Vice City Airport” arrival experience at Miami International Airport, Metromover cars wrapped in Vice City branding, a mural at PortMiami, custom manhole covers in downtown Miami and Brickell, and a car-culture festival at Tropical Park.

Other county leaders pushed back hard. On Sept. 3, Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz and Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez issued a joint statement urging the county to reject using public resources to promote the game.

“We should be promoting the Miami-Dade we have worked so hard to build, not a fictional version of our community defined by crime and violence,” Bermudez said. Cordero-Stutz called Grand Theft Auto “a video game franchise built around criminal activity.” The release ended bluntly: “Miami-Dade County is not Vice City.”

fortune 19 points · 12d ago

As Democrats and Republicans argue over high prices and the Iran war, they’re also having a food fight over who’s the most red-blooded carnivore.

The latest example came this week in Mississippi, where Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom released a video with a snippet of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith saying that if consumers are upset over high beef prices, “you know you have so many proteins to choose from.”

The video cuts to a man grilling burgers who says, “Pick another protein? I’d rather pick another senator instead.”

The Mississippi race is somewhat unusual because it’s the Democrat hammering the Republican over beef. Elsewhere, Republicans have branded Democrats as vegans or otherwise opposed to meat, trying to show that they’re culturally out of step with voters, hostile to local cattle industries or just not manly enough.

Democrats have hammered on meat as well, but mainly just as one of the staples that cost more under Trump, squeezing voters’ pocketbooks. Trump has tried to lower prices by opening U.S. markets to beef imports, especially from Argentina, which is governed by a close Trump ally.

However, those moves have angered U.S. producers as prices have remained stubbornly high, creating a potential weakness in Republican-leaning states where Democrats hope to gain ground this year.

fortune 11 points · 12d ago

While it’s an iconic line from her career-making film Legally Blonde, it’s also a mantra Reese Witherspoon lives by. The actress turned media company owner has long had the grit required to ideate, found, and sell a near-billion-dollar company that flipped Hollywood’s script on its head. (And this week, she bought it back.)

So Witherspoon set out on what she called a “listening tour,” visiting the heads of all seven major studios with a single question: How many movies are you developing right now with a female lead? The answer, for the most part, was none. One executive even told her the studio had already made one movie “with [a] woman at the center of it” that year, and couldn’t make a second.

With that, Witherspoon set out on her journey to develop Hello Sunshine, a company “made by and for the next generation of women” with the mission of putting female stories at the center of film, television, podcasts, books, and other media.

Five years later, Witherspoon is taking her company back. She and European studio Mediawan are acquiring Candle Media’s majority stake in Hello Sunshine, the companies announced Oct. 13, bringing it into a Mediawan portfolio that also counts Chernin Entertainment and Plan B Entertainment.

fortune 3 points · 12d ago

Italy’s air traffic capacity was fully restored on Friday after overnight problems hit the data transmission network supporting air traffic control services nationwide, air navigation company ENAV said.

ENAV ruled out a cyberattack and said flight operations remained safe.

The company said it had switched to a secondary satellite network, allowing capacity to increase steadily. Earlier in the morning, the disruption had forced ENAV to cut the number of aircraft that could be handled in Italian airspace by up to 50%.

The disruption caused delays at airports across the country, including Rome’s Fiumicino airport and airports serving Milan and Bergamo.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/16/italys-air-traffic-restored-disruption/?utm_source=reddit/

fortune 55 points · 13d ago

Sometime after Netflix’s 2001 layoffs, Patty McCord told Reed Hastings she was having a blast.

The company was broke and couldn’t hire. The people left were doing twice the work. Nobody was arguing or complaining.

Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder, gave McCord an assignment: “Go figure out why.”

Her answer was “talent density,” the idea that a small group of exceptional colleagues will outwork a bigger team. It became the foundation of Netflix’s culture, and of the “keeper test” its managers still use to decide who stays.

Twenty-five years later, Netflix is cutting again. The company is eliminating roughly 1,000 jobs, about 6% of its workforce, in a restructuring announced Wednesday. The cuts fall largely on its product, technology, legal and human resources teams. McCord ran human resources.

This time, the company has plenty of money and a growth problem. Netflix is still expanding, just not as fast as its leaders or its shareholders want. Its stock is down 22% this year and 42% over the past 12 months.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/14/netflix-layoffs-talent-density-keeper-test/?utm_source=reddit/

fortune -17 points · 13d ago

It’s not just Britain’s billionaires voting with their feet and taking $160 billion with them to the likes of Switzerland and Monaco. Nearly 70,000 workers decided to leave the U.K. last year—a record. But it’s not just to save money on tax.

Around 69,300 taxpayers filed P85 forms, the paperwork used to tell HMRC you’re leaving the U.K. permanently, in the 2025/26 tax year.

That’s up 32% from 52,000 the year before, according to analysis of HMRC data by accountancy group UHY Hacker Young, as reported by The Telegraph.

The true number is likely higher, since many people who leave don’t file one.

It’s no secret that there’s been a wave of wealthy residents quitting Britain, with the biggest TK occurring after the Conservative government announced the end of the non-dom regime in March 2024, months before handing over the reins to the Labour party.

Higher Stamp Duty on rental properties, VAT on private school fees and rises in Capital Gains Tax, Inheritance Tax and employers’ National Insurance contributions have also added to the squeeze on households’ finances.

fortune 1 points · 16d ago

Yuriy Ryzhenkov is that rare individual—a chief executive who has led his firm of 33,700 people during a never-ending war. He is the CEO of the largest steelmaker in Ukraine, Metinvest. More than 8,000 of his employees are fighting Russian forces. Factories are under constant bombardment. Hundreds of Metinvest colleagues have been killed.

Amid the flames and destruction, Ryzhenkov says that this period of the war is as tough as anything the company has seen since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago.

“The blockade of the seaports is more severe now than it was in 2022,” Ryzhenkov, who became CEO in 2013, tells me. “We’ve been hit numerous times. Our facilities have been hit over the last four and a half years, and even though we were restoring them after every hit, you lose. You get weaker with every such attack.

Now there is another threat to the future of steelmaking in Ukraine, and it doesn’t come from the East, but from the European Union. In July, new tariffs were applied to all EU steel imports in an effort to protect the continent’s industry from cheaper foreign competition. The key steel tariff-rate quota for Ukraine from July 2026 was cut by 60%, and is expected to reduce steel imports from Ukraine to the EU by 1.3 million metric tons per year, according to the GMK Center, a Ukrainian think tank.

“If you compare the quotas that were allocated to Ukraine this year to what was supplied last year, it’s minus 60%, and that’s at the time when the ports were already closed, and we literally have no other alternative,” Ryzhenkov says.

fortune 2 points · 16d ago

The Jessica Chastain horror “Other Mommy” topped the North American box office this weekend with a bigger audience than expected, while “The Social Reckoning” got off to a lackluster start.

“Other Mommy,” released by Universal Pictures, earned $27.5 million in its first few days in 3,365 theaters, according to studio estimates on Sunday. The movie, about a sinister supernatural creature that terrorizes a young girl who thinks it’s her mother, got dismal reviews from both critics and audiences. It also joins the ranks of “Megalopolis” and “Hereditary” with a D+ CinemaScore.

But with a production budget of around $19 million, it’s also another win for the horror genre and producer Blumhouse Atomic Monster, which was behind “Backrooms” and “Obsession.” “Other Mommy” opened in 50 international markets as well, boosting its global debut to $45.2 million.

“The Social Reckoning,” the weekend’s other big release, was not as lucky, earning an estimated $5.5 million from 2,606 North American theaters. Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed the film about a Facebook whistleblower who leaked incriminating documents to a Wall Street Journal reporter.

Sixteen years ago, “The Social Network,” which Sorkin wrote and David Fincher directed, opened to over $22 million and went on to gross over $224 million worldwide, receiving eight Oscar nominations and winning three. A similar fate might be a stretch for “The Social Reckoning,” which stars Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong and received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics. Audiences gave it a B- CinemaScore.

fortune 1 points · 16d ago

Politicians all over the world have been grappling with how to deal with low voter turnout, as it keeps falling in recent decades even as the number of countries holding elections (and the voters voting in them) has grown, according to International IDEA. Some jurisdictions have implemented paid holidays from work while political campaigns increasingly offer rides to the polls. Then the president of the United States recently began toying with another, arguably more enticing initiative: offering cash.

Should the GOP sweep the midterms come November, President Donald Trump promised every American adult a $5,000 check in their mailbox. It’s not the first time the noted dealmaker offered such a deal, but what is fresh is new details of who will actually get the check, which seemingly change with every passing day as the election draws closer.

As a result, voters are taking Trump’s word with a grain of salt. An Economist and YouGov poll from September found that only 21% of registered voters think Trump would “definitely or probably would” issue that $5,000 dividend if Republicans retain control of Congress, while more than half (57%) said he probably or definitely would not. Even among Republicans, less than half (45%) think Trump will follow through.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/08/trump-changing-5000-dividend-21-voters-pay/?utm_source=reddit/

fortune 25 points · 16d ago

President Donald Trump says his administration will make one-time payments of $90 per person to help more than 20 million Medicare enrollees pay for their Part B premiums. It will cost about $2 billion.

Less than one-third of all Medicare recipients are eligible for the payments, which are expected to be sent out this week. Not eligible are roughly 35 million Medicare Advantage enrollees, millions of other people with disabilities and low-income Medicare recipients.

The election-year promise that the Republican president made over the weekend comes as the Nov. 3 midterms are fast approaching, with the cost of living and healthcare expenses among the top issues for voters.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/07/trump-medicare-90-rebate/?utm_source=reddit/

fortune 28 points · 19d ago

Millions of Americans who buy cheap drugs from Canada could soon lose access when a customs rule goes into effect later this month, a change that has sparked opposition from Democrats and some Republicans with the cost of living a top issue for voters ahead of midterm elections.

The rule applies to a swath of goods beyond drugs and is intended to collect tariffs and prevent illegal drugs from coming into the U.S. It comes as President Donald Trump has made lowering drug prices a top target in addressing soaring healthcare costs, and critics say the rule will hurt patients seeking affordable medicine.

“The issue is a matter of life and death for me,” said Susan Hooper, a 75-year-old Toledo, Ohio, resident who has been on oxygen for 14 years and takes two daily medications purchased through a Canadian pharmacy that are not available in the U.S.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection rule targets the de minimis exemption, which previously allowed shipments valued under $800 to pass through customs more easily. As of Oct. 22, that exemption will be indefinitely suspended, and medications mailed from outside the U.S. will require additional data and a bond guarantee.

And while the rule doesn’t specifically target Canadian drugs — it applies to international mail generally — the practical consequence could be delays, refusals or substantially more difficulty getting their medications delivered.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/08/trump-canada-cheap-drugs-rule/?utm_source=reddit/

fortune 1 points · 19d ago

President Donald Trump’s administration announced Thursday it was suspending Microsoft and several other firms from a program allowing foreign workers to apply for green cards as it also lashed out at universities that bring international students to the U.S. on exchange programs.

The announcement by Vice President JD Vance marks the latest swing from the Trump administration at employers and universities that welcome foreign students and workers into the country.

Such programs have frequently been targeted by some Trump supporters who argue they undercut American students and workers. Supporters say they allow the U.S. to attract the best talent from around the world and fill important hiring gaps.

The announcement came hours before Trump was scheduled to award the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, part of an event at which he is granting some of the nation’s most prestigious science and technology awards to his tech billionaire allies.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/08/trump-admin-green-card-microsoft-domestic-workers/?utm_source=reddit/