Daily Briefing: Saturday, October 17, 2026

More than 19 million Texans are registered to vote ahead of the November 3 election, a record, The Texas Tribune reported Friday, citing a release from the Texas Secretary of State. Registrations are up 2.2 percent from November 2024 and 7.7 percent from the 2022 midterm, with Kaufman County up 27 percent since 2022 while Tarrant County has 32,503 fewer registered voters. Early voting begins Monday as county registrars work through a second batch of backlogged records from the state’s online address-change system.

The online retailer Temu agreed to store Texans’ personal data on servers in the United States and to limit access to it from China, settling a lawsuit Attorney General Ken Paxton filed in February, the attorney general’s office announced Friday. Temu will pay the state $3 million and faces an $8 million penalty for each year it violates the data security terms. The settlement also requires annual independent safety testing of products sold on the platform, with refunds to Texas buyers when a product is found to contain harmful substances.

The federal government spent $1.99 trillion more than it took in during fiscal 2026, which ended September 30, up $217 billion from the $1.78 trillion deficit of fiscal 2025, according to the Treasury Department’s Monthly Treasury Statement.

Let Alberta Decide, a group campaigning for Alberta’s independence, scheduled a rally with 10 speakers outside the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton at 3 p.m. Mountain time Saturday, CBC News reported. The group rented 10 buses to bring supporters from outside the capital, and the buses from Calgary and Leduc sold out. Albertans vote Monday, October 19.

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre told a Calgary audience Friday that Albertans should “lock arms” with the rest of the country and vote to stay in Canada, the morning after Prime Minister Mark Carney headlined a rally for keeping Alberta in Canada, CBC News reported.

First Nations and Métis leaders in Fort Chipewyan, an isolated hamlet more than 230 kilometers north of Fort McMurray, accused Elections Alberta of poor preparation after voters found the advance polling station locked Thursday morning, CBC News reported. Elections Alberta told CBC it did not have enough staff to open the station that morning.

The Taylor County team of the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) staffs an information table Saturday, October 17, at the Texas Gun & Knife Show in Abilene, according to the TNM calendar. On Tuesday, October 20, the Wood County team holds a meet and greet at Jalapeno Tree in Mineola at 6 p.m.