Evening Brief, Monday 2 November

Final polling gives Democrats leads in Michigan, Kansas, Texas, Maine and Ohio before Tuesday’s midterm elections, with narrower advantages in Alaska and Iowa. Voters will decide control of the House, Senate, governors’ offices and state posts for the last two years of Donald Trump’s presidency. The House map looks tighter by design: Reuters cited analysts saying only 40 to 50 of 435 seats are truly competitive, and Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats for a 51-49 majority.

Michigan added a late Democratic mess. Haley Stevens, who lost the Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed by less than one percentage point in August, endorsed Republican Mike Rogers after months of friction over Israel and campaign access. The El-Sayed campaign said it raised $2.4m on Sunday from more than 65,000 donors, with an average gift of about $37. The state party expelled Stevens, several staffers resigned and Chuck Schumer called the move a betrayal.

Donald Trump enters the vote with approval in the mid-30s, according to one analysis, and has promised adults more than $5,000 each if Republicans keep both chambers. His mail-voting restrictions remain blocked for now by the Supreme Court, and he continues to attack voting machines without the evidence cited in the reports. Since the second world war, the president’s party has lost House seats in 18 of 20 midterms.

Bart De Wever went to the royal palace on Monday morning and offered his resignation to King Philippe after emergency budget talks inside Belgium’s five-party coalition broke down overnight. The Arizona coalition, made up of N-VA, CD&V, Vooruit, Les Engagés and MR, had taken seven months to form after the election. It now faces a budget deadline almost as awkward as its arithmetic.

The fight centres on €10bn in spending cuts and tax increases through 2029. De Wever and the N-VA, backed by MR, want most savings from public spending, including healthcare. Vooruit, CD&V and Les Engagés want more revenue from levies on high incomes and wealth. Belgium’s deficit reached 5% last year, above the EU’s 3% limit, and public debt exceeds €735bn, more than 110% of GDP. Bond yields have already risen since talks collapsed, which makes the state’s borrowing more expensive.

The king can accept the resignation, refuse it or hold it in abeyance while parties try once more. Belgian governments have often kept working after a first audience with the monarch, and earlier crises have left the state running on temporary budgets. Reports cited by ABC said the king was not expected to accept the resignation immediately and could send the parties back to the table. Demonstrations and strikes against the cuts were already scheduled for November.

Attackers appear to have remotely seized supermarket refrigeration systems across Belgium, Sweden, Luxembourg, Estonia and Ireland, pushing food storage equipment far above safe levels. Belgian reports said temperatures in several outlets rose to 15C, and Swedish stores said some fridges and freezers had been set to 50C. Delhaize staff rushed to shops and used refrigerated trucks to limit losses in fresh and frozen products.

The counts differ by source and hour, but the footprint is broad. Europa Press reported incidents at no fewer than 60 Belgian supermarkets, including at least 40 Delhaize stores. Carrefour Belgium said 15 of more than 700 stores were hit, Coop reported six affected stores in central Sweden, and Irish broadcaster RTÉ reported suspected attacks on refrigeration systems at 13 SuperValu stores. Estonia’s Kitman Coldtech said it answered one attack within minutes and saw no significant damage.

Delhaize said distribution centres kept working and deliveries continued. Its spokesperson described the store-level effect plainly.

The method resembles attacks that hit France on 12 October, where reports put affected stores in the hundreds or at about 150, depending on the source. No link has yet been established between those cases and the Belgian incidents. The European Commission said the events show cyberattacks can interrupt services and affect daily life, and it is coordinating with member states through CYCLONe.

Iran said it could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within two days if Washington accepts its conditions, shortening an earlier seven-day plan. Esmail Baghaei, the foreign ministry spokesman, called the faster timetable a sign of good faith and said messages still pass through mediators. Tehran wants the US naval blockade lifted, oil sanctions eased and frozen assets released before it reopens the strait.

Qatari mediation continues after Iranian negotiators left Doha on 1 November with a draft proposal circulating for comments. Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Washington must accept a route agreed between Iran and Oman, and he added that no direct US-Iran talks are currently planned. Qatar is also trying to unfreeze more than $6bn in Iranian assets, according to reports. Oil prices fell on Monday, with Brent down 3.2% to $109.75 a barrel after ending October at a six-month high (eb46443d-1d4f-8f56-5083dc908c43).

Israel is pushing in the other direction. Benjamin Netanyahu urged Donald Trump in a tense call on Saturday to resume military operations against Iran after the 3 November midterms, according to people familiar with the discussions. Trump said he had a very good conversation with Netanyahu, but a US official said he was “not there yet” on renewed hostilities. The dispute still turns on sequencing: Tehran wants earlier commitments honoured first, while Washington wants the nuclear programme addressed from the start.

Binance restarted withdrawals on Sunday after an attack drained more than $6.3bn in digital assets, a theft the FBI attributed to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group. The exchange said it would use company funds to cover users and recover about 95% of the stolen assets, up from an earlier 90% estimate. The stolen assets included bitcoin, ether and stablecoins, and the FBI published about 500 Ethereum addresses for exchanges and analysts to block.

Company data relayed by CNBC showed $4.649bn in withdrawals and $1.01bn in deposits between 08:00 and 17:30 Greek time on 1 November. The net outflow of about $3.64bn equals 2.1% of the $171bn in assets Binance reported at the end of October. Binance disputed a higher DefiLlama estimate of $5.81bn, saying it wrongly counted internal transfers to new company wallets. Founder Changpeng Zhao said most of the net outflow came in the first two hours after withdrawals resumed.

Circle, the issuer of USDC, said it froze more than $1.1bn in tokens linked to the attack, above the $800m figure its chief executive had cited on Friday. The FBI expects more laundering through DeFi services and instant exchanges. Binance says the company, not users, will absorb the loss, though covering a loss is different from recovering stolen funds.

Donald Tusk accused President Karol Nawrocki of choosing a forced confrontation over Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, deepening a crisis that began when five judges elected by the current Sejm said they had taken control of the court. Anna Korwin-Piotrowska declared herself acting president and suspended Bogdan Święczkowski, the tribunal’s president, and his deputy for one month. Święczkowski rejected the order and said he remains in charge.

Police entered the tribunal grounds on 30 October after Korwin-Piotrowska warned of threats to judges and staff and a risk of disorder. Nawrocki cut short an official trip to Africa and gained access to the building, with reports describing a scuffle at the entrance involving a female judge. The Warsaw district prosecutor’s office said five notifications about the events of 30 and 31 October had arrived by Monday afternoon. They include claims against Korwin-Piotrowska, claims that Nawrocki forcibly entered the tribunal, and claims of an assault on the president. No charges have been reported.

The legal position is murky and the court is barely functioning. Nawrocki has refused to swear in several judges elected by the Sejm, while legal experts also question the basis for Korwin-Piotrowska’s suspension order. The tribunal has nearly 1,000 pending cases, some more than a decade old, and this year its judges could not even adopt the court’s own 2027 budget. In December 2025 the European Court of Justice found the tribunal neither independent nor impartial because of flaws in judicial appointments.