September 26, 2026

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Warmest of welcomes. Hidden Valley is releasing its first-ever seasonal product—a black Spooky Ranch salad dressing that comes in a glow-in-the-dark bottle. The company said that the creamy white dressing was turned black using fruit juice and cocoa.

Your move, blue cheese.

—Molly Liebergall, Matty Merritt, Dave Lozo, Sam Klebanov, Adam Epstein, Holly Van Leuven

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

US mortgage rates topping 7%
The nor’easter pummeling the East Coast
A juicy AI book scandal

Markets

Nasdaq

27,068.72

+0.48%

S&P

7,743.41

+0.51%

Dow

51,828.62

+0.93%

10-Year

5.184%

+2.0 bps

Bitcoin

$83,989.57

-0.44%

Costco

$922.76

+2.93%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 4:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: Stocks swung up yesterday, with the Dow in particular rebounding as investors were hopeful once again that a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could be coming. Elsewhere, Costco was thanking God it was Friday after it spiked on the news of an earnings beat.

FOR SALE? MAYBE NOT

Mortgage rates are soaring, with little relief in sight

Collage showing a simple tall house on the right juxtaposed next to an upward arrow and 7%

Illustration: Shannon May, Photo: Adobe Stock

Home financing costs are doing the part of the Cha-Cha Slide where they bring it to the top like they’ll never ever stop. Amid ongoing inflation, economists are wondering how high average 30-year US mortgage rates will go after topping 7% this week for the first time since early 2025, according to Freddie Mac.

The surge comes after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates last week for the first time in three years, a decision that markets saw coming: Before the rate hike, mortgage rates and Treasury bond yields—which generally move in tandem—spiked in anticipation.

Forecast: “There’s no reason to think that the rout [in bonds] couldn’t continue, and rates get closer to 8%, or even higher,” the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics told Barron’s. But…

This worst-case scenario—as another economist characterized it to Barron’s—would require “significant deterioration” in the US dollar’s safe-haven status and a continued Treasury bond sell-off.
Those factors hinge largely on the Iran war and its inflationary impact on the prices of energy and general goods. Alongside rising federal debt, this has rattled investors’ appetites for government bonds (and not just in the US).

Researchers thought this year would go differently

Mortgage rates fell below 6% in February for the first time since 2022, giving housing experts hope that market activity might return to normal this year…until the Iran war started, and the spring home-selling season flopped.

Now, economists expect that mortgage rates surpassing the psychologically significant 7% threshold will have a chilling effect on home sales. For context, homeowners who locked in ~3% rates during the pandemic could pay thousands of dollars more per month if they moved and got a new mortgage for the same amount.

Already…high mortgage rates contributed to a 2% month-to-month dip in existing home sales last month, according to the National Association of Realtors. They’re also leading some borrowers to opt for riskier, adjustable-rate loans.—ML

Sponsored By Zoom

When context breaks down, work breaks down

Knowledge workers now spend 57% of their time on communication (email, chat, and meetings). That leaves just 43% for the work they were actually hired to do. The problem is context that doesn’t travel with the work.

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how connecting context across the tools and systems your teams already use reduces the manual effort that slows work down
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Build momentum instead of reconstructing the past. Read the guide.

World

Tour de headlines

Huge wave crashing onto shore lined with row of houses

David L. Ryan/Getty Images

🌀 A powerful nor’easter is battering the East Coast. Per NBC News, coastal flood alerts are in effect for 33 million people along the Eastern Seaboard, including the New York metro area. Heavy wind and rain are expected to hit states ranging from Virginia to Rhode Island throughout the weekend, intensifying as it moves north. The severe weather could cause power outages and travel delays: A number of major US airlines have already waived change fees for the weekend. The rain could continue into next week, but the wind is likely to weaken as the tempest spins away from the coast on Monday.—AE

🤖 Microsoft announced sweeping changes to Copilot. The tech giant is repositioning its flagship chatbot as the “AI built for work,” rather than trying to continue competing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude as a personal consumer bot. Accordingly, Microsoft is turning Copilot into a unified “super app” that will host Office products, like Excel and Word, directly inside of it. For instance, users can now ask the chatbot to modify a Word document without leaving the Copilot platform. Microsoft’s strategy shift comes as Meta’s new Muse personal assistant has surged to the top of app charts.—AE

🎥 Trump bans CNN from Air Force One, reviving hostilities with press. Yesterday, the weeklong standoff between the White House and the Washington press corps seemed to end when the former let CNN film an event with President Trump and Xi Jinping at the National Archives, and the TV press pool resumed its coverage. But last night, a CNN spokesperson said that the network had been barred from joining Trump on Air Force One to cover an event in Tennessee today. An email sent by the White House last night outlined details of the trip but did not name a primary TV press pool representative, according to the New York Times, making it unclear if the other pool members would participate today or resume their boycott. On Thursday, a federal judge ordered CNN journalists’ credentials to be restored immediately.—HVL

A BOOK OR BOT

Is AI behind a celebrated French book?

Joel Saget/Getty Images

A French novel published earlier this year about a Haitian refugee fleeing to Canada was headed for top literary prizes in France until an anonymous X account claimed its writer committed a bigger sin than overusing similes: using AI.

Thélyson Orélien’s debut novel, C’était ça ou Mourir (which translates to It Was That or Dying), was taken off the longlist yesterday for the Prix Goncourt, one of France’s most prestigious awards, because of the allegations.

Quel scandale: The accusations came from a small anonymous account that claimed to have fed random passages of the novel into the AI detection program Pangram, which determined the selected passages were 100% AI generated based on patterns in the writing. Academics subsequently using similar programs also found high percentages of AI-generated content in Orélien’s book.

Orélien has denied the accusations, saying that his writing style uses Haitian and Caribbean repetition and rhythms. He told news outlets he is preparing a file to prove his innocence. While AI software detection programs have been criticized for casting too wide a net and being trained primarily on European text, Pangram’s founder, Max Spero, claims the program has a false-positive rate of 1 in 24,000.

Like any mystery that starts on the internet…online sleuths are digging in, and they claim to have found examples of plagiarism in a past essay and novella written by Orélien.—MM

Reader Poll

How do you feel about authors using AI?

They shouldn’t use it at all.
It should only be used for research, not writing.
They can use it however they want.

This week’s question

What’s a place you visited that was much more pleasant than you imagined?

Sam’s answer to get the juices flowing: “I recently went to a barbecue in Staten Island and realized it doesn’t deserve the reputation of New York’s forgotten borough. Its slower pace, tight-knit communities, quiet beaches, and magnificent city skyline views make it seem like a great place to live.”

Submit your response here.

recs

The 100 best TV shows of the 21st century.
Press this button to blow bubbles in someone’s Florida backyard.
Six of the best scents to wear this fall, according to perfumers.
A nifty clip-on accessory pack to carry your things on a hike.**

309 lbs → 190 lbs in seven months. No meds. No calorie counting. That’s just one person’s story with the Simple app. So far it’s helped people lose millions of pounds.*

Midterm elections are coming up, and the results could impact trade, supply chains, and tax policy. Our recent article offers insights on how leaders can prepare.*

^{*A message from our sponsor. **This is a product recommendation from our writers. When you buy through this link, Morning Brew may earn a commission.}

Play

Brew Crossword: Our big puzzle this week is called “Take it back,” which itself is a clue to something going on in the puzzle. Play the Crossword here.

Open House

Welcome to Open House, the only newsletter section seriously considering heading west for gold. We’ll give you a few facts about a listing, and you try to guess the price.

Ivan Coffman

Today’s property is a four-acre, riverfront California resort town (technically a “census-designated place”) called Belden Town, originally established in the early 1900s. Only 15 people live in Belden, most of them employees of the resort you would own. Amenities include:

Seven cabins, 18 hotel rooms, and 16 RV spaces
Luxurious owners’ quarters
A general store

How much to own the entirety of Belden?

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Answer

$4.75 million

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: tempest, meaning “a violent windy storm.” Thanks to Harry from Florida for the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.

✳︎ A Note From United States Tungsten

This is a paid advertisement for United States Tungsten Corp’s Regulation Crowdfunding offering. Please read the offering circular at invest.unitedstatestungsten.com.

Written by Adam Epstein, Molly Liebergall, Matty Merritt, Dave Lozo, Sam Klebanov, and Holly Van Leuven

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