[Posted 4:30 PM ET, Friday]
Note: StocksandNews has significant ongoing costs and your support is greatly appreciated. Please click on the GoFundMe link or send a check to PO Box 990, New Providence, NJ 07974.
Every little bit helps, folks.
Edition 1,389
Last Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) was asked by anchor Jonathan Karl what he thought about the U.S./Russia/Ukraine talks and Vladimir Putin’s negotiator, Kirill Dmitriev, telling Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner in the initial talks in Miami that produced the 28-point plan, that U.S. companies might “tap the roughly $300 billion of Russian central bank assets, frozen in Europe, for U.S.-Russian investment projects and a U.S.-led reconstruction of Ukraine. U.S. and Russian companies could join to exploit the vast mineral wealth in the Arctic,” as the Wall Street Journal reported.
Bacon: “We saw that Wall Street Journal article yesterday that many people around the president are hoping to make billions of dollars – these are all billionaires in their own right – from…Russia, if they get a favorable agreement with Ukraine. That alarms me tremendously,” the former Air Force one-star told Karl.
“It really was a surrender document that would’ve left Ukraine weak and vulnerable to Russia for decades to come. I do think that agreement has shifted a little more back towards the middle. But I would like to see the president be a stronger advocate for the free country, the sovereign country of Ukraine that wants to be a democracy, wants to be allied with us, and have a little more clear-eyed view of who Putin is…that Putin’s the invader, he’s the dictator. He’s murdered all his opponents.
“But I just don’t see that moral clarity coming from the White House,” Bacon said. “I want to see America be the leader of the free world, standing up for what’s right, not for who can make a buck. I don’t want to see a foreign policy based on greed. I want to see it based on doing the right thing.”
Later in the show, Jonathan Karl asked Chris Christie, ABC News contributor, what he thought about Bacon’s harsh words towards the Trump administration.
Christie: “You know, Jon, the last book I wrote was entitled, ‘What Would Reagan Do?’, kind of an analysis of how would Ronald Reagan deal with these times?
“If Ronald Reagan saw what’s happening with Russia, Ukraine, the United States, he would get violently ill is what he would do because this violates every post-Cold War principle that we’ve had as a country that our allies have relied upon, that the rest of the world who are aspiring allies have relied upon, which is aggressive military conduct like Russia’s engaged in will not be rewarded.
“And yet that 28-point plan was nothing but a reward to Russia. And if – if there turns out that there’s a profit-making motive behind it, it would be both disgusting and not the least bit surprising.”
Today, Friday, speaking to a Russian journalist, Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov praised Jared Kushner as potentially playing an important role in ending Russia’s invasion. Ushakov took part in Tuesday’s talks at the Kremlin.
“If any plan leading to a settlement is put on paper, it will be the pen of Mr. Kushner that will lead the way,” Ushakov said.
Oh gawd. This is super…just freakin’ super….
Much more below.
—
Wall Street and the Economy
On the economic data front, we had the ISM readings for November, with manufacturing at 48.2, less than expected (50 the dividing line between growth and contraction), with the service sector reading at 52.1, also less than forecast.
Without official government data on employment for another ten days, we’ve been relying on other sources, such as from ADP, which said private businesses in the U.S. shed 32,000 jobs in November, following an upwardly revised 47,000 gain in October, and compared to forecasts of a 10,000 rise.
But the hit in November was from small businesses, as mid-size companies added 51,000 jobs, and large companies created 39,000. According to economist Nela Richardson of ADP, the question is ‘is small business the canary in the coal mine….’
The ADP report added to the sense the Fed is sure to cut interest rates next week.
Thursday, we had a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas announcing 71,321 layoffs among U.S. companies for November, as workers stressed about the state of a sluggish job market.
The cuts were up 24% from the nearly 58,000 planned layoffs announced in November 2024, and amounted to the highest total for the month since 2022.
The data comes on the heels of last month’s brutal Challenger, Gray report, which detailed the worst October for layoff plans since 2003, amid a rash of cuts from major employers like Amazon. Layoff announcements last month were at 153,074 and roiled the markets at the time.
On the other hand, the Labor Department’s weekly initial jobless claims figure unexpectedly fell to their lowest level in three years for the week ending Nov. 29…191,000.
Then today we had long-delayed September data on personal income, up 0.4%, and spending, up 0.3%, as well as the key personal consumption expenditures price index (PCE), which was almost exactly as expected; 0.3%, 2.8% vs. a year ago, and ex-food and energy (core), 0.2% and 2.8%. This last figure, the Fed’s preferred inflation barometer, was down a tick from August and consensus.
So, no surprises and the markets rallied further. We now await the Fed decision on interest rates next Wednesday, and Chair Powell’s comments after.
The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow barometer for third-quarter growth is at 3.5%.
Freddie Mac’s 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is 6.19%, lowest since Oct. 30.
Donald Trump said he’s decided who will be the next Federal Reserve chair after making clear he expects his nominee to deliver interest-rate cuts. “I know who I am going to pick, yeah,” Trump told reporters, without naming his choice. Trump’s current economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, is seen as the most likely to succeed Jerome Powell.
But there’s no guarantee a Chairman Hassett can just go in and lower rates. It’s a committee decision. If inflation remains sticky, he’ll get a lot of pushback from the board.
As we start out the holiday shopping season, Adobe Analytics, which tracks e-commerce, said U.S. consumers spent a record $11.8 billion online Black Friday, marking a 9.1% jump from last year.
Consumers also spent a record $6.4 billion online on Thanksgiving Day, per Adobe. Top categories that saw an uptick in sales across both days included video game consoles, electronics and home appliances.
Software company Salesforce estimated that Black Friday online sales totaled $18 billion in the U.S. and $79 billion globally. And e-commerce platform Shopify said its merchants raked in a record $6.2 billion in sales worldwide on Black Friday.
Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks in-person and online spending, reported that overall Black Friday sales excluding automotive rose 4.1% from a year ago. The retail sales indicator, which is not adjusted for inflation, showed online sales jumped by double digits (10.4%), while in-store purchases inched up 1.7%.
In-store traffic has dwindled over the years. Initial data from RetailNext, which measures real-time foot traffic in physical stores, found that U.S. Black Friday traffic fell 3.6% compared to 2024. Still, the firm noted that was “notably better” than a sharper 6.2% decline it saw in the days leading up to Thanksgiving.
Sensormatic Solutions, which also tracks store traffic, found that in-store retail visits dipped 2.1% – but said that was in line with expectations and trends already seen this year.
In terms of e-commerce, Adobe expected U.S. shoppers to spend another $5.5 billion Saturday and $5.9 billion on Sunday – before reaching an estimated $14.2 billion peak on Cyber Monday, which would mark yet another record.
Adobe said Tuesday the Cyber Monday then came in at $14.25bn, pushing total online sales over the Thanksgiving weekend to $44.2 billion.
Spending rose 7.7% during the so-called Cyber Week – the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday – compared with an 8.2% increase to $41.1 billion last year, Adobe added.
Rising prices can be contributing to some of those numbers, with President Trump’s barrage of tariffs on foreign imports that have strained businesses and households alike over the last year.
Reminder, the National Retail Federation estimates U.S. shoppers will spend at more than $1 trillion for the first time this year in November and December, but the rate of growth is estimated to be 3.7% to 42%, compared to 4.3% in 2024’s holiday season.
A new Gallup poll, released Thursday, found that its Economic Confidence Index (ECI) fell seven points to -30 in November, which is the lowest since its -24 reading in July 2024.
Just 21% of Americans described economic conditions as “excellent” or “good,” a slight drop from the 24% who said the same in October. Another 40% rated the economic conditions as “poor,” a 3-point jump from October.
Europe and Asia
We had the November PMIs for the eurozone, courtesy of S&P Global/Hamburg Commercial Bank…the composite 52.8 (30-month high), with manufacturing 49.6, services 53.6.
Germany: manufacturing 48.2; services 53.1
France: mfg. 47.8; services 51.4 (15-mo. high)
Italy: mfg. 50.6 (32-mo. high); services 55.0 (31-mo. high)
Spain: mfg. 51.5; services 55.6
Ireland: mfg. 52.8; services 58.5 (highest since May 2022)
Netherlands: mfg. 51.8
Greece: mfg. 52.7
UK: mfg. 50.2; services 51.3
Dr. Cyrus de la Rubia, Chief Economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank:
“The service sector in the eurozone is showing clear signs of recovery. The strong performance in the service sector was even enough to more than offset the weakness in the manufacturing sector, meaning that economic output in the eurozone grew slightly faster in November than in the previous month. We therefore expect the growth rate in the final quarter of the year to show a slight acceleration….
“The inflation rate in the service sector, which the ECB [European Central Bank] is monitoring with particular attention, has weakened significantly again in terms of sales prices. At the same time, cost inflation is higher, which is likely to be related to wage growth that is slowing but still above average. All in all, the ECB is likely to feel supported in its clearly communicated line of leaving interest rates unchanged at the upcoming central bank meeting.”
Speaking to this last point, Eurostat released a flash estimate on November inflation in the EA20 (soon to be the EA21 when Bulgaria joins the currency union formally in January), 2.2%, up from 2.1% in October. Ex-food and energy it’s 2.4%, unchanged from the month prior.
Headline inflation….
Germany 2.6%, France 0.8%, Italy 1.1%, Spain 3.1%, Netherlands 2.6%, Ireland 3.2%.
With inflation edging up on headline, the European Central Bank’s view that there’s little reason to lower borrowing costs further is bolstered.
A final report on third-quarter GDP in the euro area had it rising 0.3% over Q2; up 1.4% compared with the same quarter of the previous year.
2025Q3 vs. 2024Q3….
Germany 0.3%, France 0.9%, Italy 0.6%, Spain 2.8%, Netherlands 1.6% [Eurostat]
Separately, industrial producer prices in October increased by 0.1% in the euro area over September, while falling 0.5% year-on-year. [Eurostat]
October retail sales in the eurozone grew 0.1% compared with September; up 1.5% from a year ago. [Eurostat]
The euro area unemployment rate in October was 6.4%, stable with September and up from 6.3% in October 2024.
Germany 3.8%, France 7.7%, Italy 6.0%, Spain 10.5%, Netherlands 4.0%, Ireland 5.0%. [Eurostat]
—
China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported the official government manufacturing PMI for November was 49.2, the 8th straight month of decline in factory activity. The service sector reading was 49.5, down from 50.1 prior.
The private RatingDog (sic, formerly Caixin) manufacturing PMI was 49.9 for November, down from 50.6 prior. The services reading was 52.1 vs. 52.6 in October.
Japan’s Nov. manufacturing PMI was 48.7, services 53.2.
October household spending fell 3.5% over September, -3.0% year-over-year, both well below consensus and marking the steepest decline since Jan. 2024, underscoring persistent cost pressures heading into year-end. The Internal Affairs Ministry pointed to softer household spending on food, entertainment, and automobiles as the main drivers of the decline.
But, the Bank of Japan has hinted at a rare rate-hike later this month, Dec. 19.
A BOJ rate-hike is indeed uncommon, as is the impact from another central bank on U.S. markets. The country had negative interest rates for almost a decade before finally bringing official borrowing costs to 0.5% in January.
Ultra-low rates in Japan have encouraged the country’s heavyweight investors to look for returns globally with a popular “carry trade,” where they borrow yen at low rates to invest in higher-yielding U.S. Treasuries.
Higher Japanese rates threaten to lure investors back home, seeing them sell Treasuries and push U.S. bond yields higher, as was the case on Monday.
The Japanese 10-year bond closed the week at 18-year highs, 1.93%.
South Korea’s November manufacturing PMI was 49.4, unchanged from October. Taiwan’s was 48.8, up from the prior 47.7.
Street Bytes
—December is normally a terrific month for stocks, the Dow and S&P 500 gaining an average of 1.3%, with Nasdaq notching a 1.5% rise on average.
A year-end rally is something of a tradition – the S&P 500 rises 72% of the time in December, the highest percentage of any month.
And the first week of Dec. 2025 was no exception to the rule, the Dow Jones up 0.5%, the S&P 0.3% and Nasdaq 0.9%.
—U.S. Treasury Yields
6-mo. 3.68% 2-yr. 3.56% 10-yr. 4.14% 30-yr. 4.79%
As we await the Fed’s decision on rates next Wednesday, Treasuries kicked off the week on the wrong foot as Japan’s benchmark yields hit their highest levels since 2007 on signs the nation will boost interest rates, which spooked our Treasury market a bit.
And so while the PCE data added to bets on a rate cut, the yield on the 10-year rose 13 basis points this week.
—OPEC+ will stick with plans to pause production increases during the first quarter, amid growing signs of a surplus in global oil markets.
Key members led by Saudi Arabia confirmed the three-month supply pause, first announced at the start of this month, following a set of video conferences on Sunday. They reiterated in a statement that the decision reflected expectations for weaker seasonal market conditions.
While the pause on output hikes indicates some caution by the alliance after it rapidly revived oil production earlier this year, it still leaves world markets on track for a significant excess in early 2026, which is likely to put further pressure on prices. The International Energy Agency in Paris predicts a record glut in 2026, while Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase see crude prices heading lower.
—OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman told employees in an internal memo that the company was declaring a “code red” effort to improve the quality of ChatGPT and delaying other products as a result, as reported by the Wall Street Journal and others.
Altman said OpenAI had more work to do on the day-to-day experience of its chatbot, including improving personalization features for users, increasing its speed and reliability, and allowing it to answer a wider range of questions.
The memo is the biggest indication yet of the pressure OpenAI is facing from competitors that have begun to narrow the startup’s lead in the AI race, ChatGPT turning three years old this week. Google is the prime concern today, with its new version of its Gemini AI model receiving broad praise; industry benchmark tests showing it surpassed OpenAI, sending parent Alphabet’s stock sharply higher.
Gemini’s user base has been climbing since the August release of an image generator, Nano Banana, and Google said monthly active users grew from 450 million in July to 650 million in October. OpenAI also faces pressure from Anthropic, which is becoming popular among business customers.
OpenAI has committed hundreds of billions of dollars in future data-center investments, but there are concerns about its timeline to turn those investments into meaningful revenues which have sent tremors through the stock market in recent weeks. Its fortunes are also tied with those of Nvidia, Microsoft and Oracle, among others.
–In a challenge to Nvidia and Google’s new custom chips, Amazon said its newest AI Trainium 3 chips are now available. Amazon has focused on developing its own chips to avoid becoming too dependent on costly hardware from Nvidia.
Amazon said UltraServers powered by up to 144 of its in-house Trainium 3 AI chips offer more than four times the computing performance to train larger AI models faster and serve more users at a lower cost than its previous generation.
AI start-up Anthropic said it expects to be using more than one million Trainium 2 chips by the end of 2025.
Nvidia is battling AI challengers on multiple fronts, but CFO Colette Kress said it is “absolutely not” losing market share to the Tensor Processing Units developed by Alphabet’s Google. Instead, Nvidia’s customers are staying on its platform and most Nvidia chips are going into new data centers, she said.
–Appearing at a New York Times DealBook Summit, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, one of the leading companies behind the AI boom, said the industry was dealing with considerable risk as it spends hundreds of billions of dollars on the data centers that power artificial intelligence.
“On the economic side, I have my concerns that even if the technology is really powerful and fulfills all its promises, I think that with some players in the ecosystem, if they get it off by a little bit, bad things could happen.”
“It’s a real dilemma with how the economic value will grow and lag time on the data centers that drives it,” Amodei said. “I think it’s genuine uncertainty and a genuine dilemma, which we as a company try to manage as responsibly as we can.”
—Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is looking to reduce the budget for the metaverse unit by as much as 30%, according to Bloomberg. The stock popped 3% on the news.
Zuckerberg famously changed the name of his company from Facebook to Meta in 2021 as part of his full-throated support for plans to create a collection of interconnected virtual worlds where users would meet, chat, work, and play as digital avatars.
But the metaverse concept didn’t take off. Meta’s Reality Labs segment has lost billions of dollars over the years, including $4.4 billion in its most recent quarter. It generated just $470 million in sales during the period.
Virtual reality headsets haven’t caught on among consumers as much as other tech products, such as smartphones.
Zuckerberg’s order comes as Meta continues to pour money into its artificial intelligence efforts, including data centers across the country.
—Salesforce Inc. gave an outlook for revenue in the current period that topped analysts’ estimates, suggesting the software company is persuading customers to buy its AI tools.
Revenue will be $11.1 billion to $11.2 billion in the period ending in January, the company said Wednesday, with current consensus at $10.9 billion.
The revenue forecast includes 3 percentage points of growth from Informatica, a data integration software maker that Salesforce acquired last month in an $8 billion deal.
The largest maker of software to track customer relationships is trying to push adoption of Agentforce – its AI tool that can complete tasks such as sales development and customer service without human supervision. Still, use has been largely limited to experimentation, in part due to customer confusion over pricing and disorganized data.
In the fiscal third quarter, Salesforce reported that revenue increased 8.6% to $10.3 billion. Profit, excluding some items, was $3.25 per share, with the Street at $2.86.
—Warner Bros. Discovery has entered into an agreement to sell its studios and HBO Max streaming business to Netflix, a combination that would reshape the entertainment and media industry. The $72 billion cash-and-stock deal was announced early Friday after the two sides entered into exclusive negotiations.
Warner’s move comes after the latest round of bids for the media company known for Superman and the Harry Potter movies and hit TV shows such as “Friends.” Paramount had sought to buy the entire company, including cable networks such as CNN, TNT and TBS, while Comcast was pursuing the studios and HBO Max streaming business.
All three companies came in with sweetened offers this week.
“Our mission has always been to entertain the world,” said Ted Sarados, co-chief executive of Netflix. He added that the combination of the two entertainment giants together “can give audiences more of what they love and help define the next century of storytelling.”
Warner Discovery CEO David Zaslav said, “By coming together with Netflix, we will ensure people everywhere will continue to enjoy the world’s most resonant stories for generations to come.”
Warner Discovery is continuing with plans to split itself into two separate companies, one compromising the studio and streaming assets and the other containing its global cable network operations, before closing a potential deal with Netflix.
The deal is a blow to Paramount CEO David Ellison’s ambitions of bringing together two famed entertainment brands. Ellison took control of Paramount earlier this year.
Opposition to the merger is lining up, including from the White House, Larry and David Ellison being big supporters of Donald Trump, and, coupled with antitrust concerns, this is far from a done deal.
–Investors who are tracking Michael Saylor’s grand Bitcoin experiment, Strategy Inc (MSTR), are paying a heavy price with the collapse in the price of Bitcoin.
Strategy Inc. – the company once hailed for wrapping crypto exposure into a public stock – has seen its shares plunge 60% from recent July highs, amid the rout in Bitcoin.
But many investors have been playing exchange-traded funds that track Strategy’s volatile stock, such as MSTX and MSTU, which offer double the daily return and have dropped more than 80% this year.
Shares of American Bitcoin, the Bitcoin miner co-founded by Eric and Donald Trump Jr., plummeted 35% Tuesday on unusually high trading volume, thanks to the expiration of the lock-up period on shares sold in a private placement in June, that expired Tuesday, meaning early investors were able to sell their stakes.
—Airbus delivered 72 aircraft in November, fewer than many analysts had previously expected and bringing the total for 2025 so far to 657.
It is targeting “around 820” deliveries for the year, meaning it would have to reach a record performance of more than 160 jets in December.
The record for the final month of the year was 138 in 2019.
How many you deliver has everything to do with revenue and cash flow as airlines pay much of a plane’s value on delivery.
Meanwhile, Airbus said it had discovered an industrial quality issue affecting fuselage panels of several dozen A320-fmaily aircraft, industry sources said on Monday.
The suspected production flaw is delaying some deliveries but there are no immediate indications that it has reached aircraft in service.
This is on top of the software bug that forced the weekend recall of jets, most of which were out of service only about two hours, but if it was your plane and flight, not good.
—Boeing Co. expects to generate cash again in 2026, a significant reversal in the planemaker’s finances as it prepares to boost monthly production rates and pushes ahead with certification for the much-delayed 777X jetliners.
The company expects positive free cash flow to reach the “low-single digits” next year, reversing the $2 billion cash burn seen for 2025, said CFO Jay Malve, in his first solo presentation at an investor conference since being named to the post in August.
The shares rose 9% Tuesday on the outlook, with Malave citing a steadily improving production cadence in Boeing’s factories, especially for its 737 MAX and 787 Dreamliner jets, and the reduction of its inventory of undelivered aircraft as reasons for optimism, alongside improving profitability at its defense division and steady growth for its services operations.
—It was a mess at our nation’s airports last weekend, weather playing a major role, with nearly 2,000 cancellations and 9,000 delays on Saturday, and another 1,000 cancellations and 13,000 delays Sunday.
Then Monday there were 10,000 delays, and another 8,800 Tuesday, but at least with fewer cancellations.
—TSA checkpoint numbers vs. 2024
12/4…115 percent of 2024
12/3…93
12/2…79
12/1…94
11/30…111…Sunday, 3.133 million, a record….
11/29…113
11/28…154
11/27…57
—Ford’s November U.S. sales took a slight hit as its EV sales slide continued, a trend that also has rivals suffering.
Ford reported November sales dipped 0.9% to 166,374 units compared with Nov. 2024, with SUVs like the Explorer and pickups like the Ranger and Maverick leading sales. However, EV sales tumbled 60.8%, accelerating the same trend seen in October as consumers sour on EVs, at least at the moment, following the expiration of the EV tax credit at the end of September.
Sales of Ford’s volume EV, the Mustang Mach-E, slid nearly 50% to just over 3,000 units sold; meanwhile, sales of the F-150 Lighting EV pickup shed over 70% to just over 1,000 trucks sold.
Hyundai’s November sales dipped, with purchases of its once-popular EVs like the IONIQ5 and IONIQ6 dipping over 50%.
Kia continued its strong run in 2025, posting its best November sales month ever, with a 3% gain. However, EV sales slid by more than half.
Honda’s sales for the month dipped nearly 17% in November, with the company blaming the Nexperia chip crisis as a drag on supply. Sales of the Honda Prologue EV and its twin, the Acura ZDX, each tumbled over 80%.
–Wednesday, President Trump threw the weight of the federal government behind vehicles that burn gasoline rather than electric cars, gutting one of the country’s most significant efforts to address climate change and thrusting the automobile industry into greater uncertainty.
Flanked by executives from major automakers in the Oval Office, Trump said the Transportation Department would significantly weaken fuel efficiency requirements for tens of millions of new cars and light trucks. The administration claimed the changes would save Americans $109 billion over five years and shave $1,000 off the average cost of a new car.
The Biden administration’s stricter efficiency standards were designed to get more Americans to go electric. But Trump said they “forced automakers to build cars using expensive technologies that drove up costs, drove up prices, and made the car much worse. This is a green new scam, and people were paying too much for a car that didn’t work as well.”
The plan announced on Wednesday would require automakers to achieve an average of 34.5 miles per gallon for cars and light trucks in model year 2031, down from the standard of 50.4 miles per gallon set by the Biden administration.
The Biden administration rule, finalized in June 2024, assumed that manufacturers would comply by increasing their sales of electric vehicles, which use no gasoline and would help boost the average fuel efficiency across their product lines.
—Amazon is considering ending its long-standing contract with the United States Postal Service and building out its own competing nationwide delivery network, according to the Washington Post.
The current agreement between the e-commerce giant and the USPS expires in October 2026. The two sides have spent months negotiating what the next version of the contract would look like, but those negotiations have been complicated by President Trump’s push to privatize the USPS, the Post reports.
Under the current agreement, Amazon pays the USPS billions of dollars annually to distribute packages, accounting for roughly 7.5% of the agency’s revenue in 2025.
—Kroger Co. lowered the top end of its full-year sales forecast, sounding a note of caution that competition is intensifying among food sellers for increasingly discerning consumers.
The nation’s largest supermarket operator said in a statement that it now expects comparable sales to grow between 2.8% to 3%, minus fuel, versus the guidance of a 2.7% to 3.4% increase.
Interim CEO Ron Sargent said the company is seeing “a split across income groups,” with continued spending power among higher-income households and increased pressure on middle-income shoppers.
Lower- and middle-income households are making smaller, more frequent trips while pulling back on discretionary purchases.
Even for essentials like food, consumers are searching for ways to stretch their budgets by buying more store brands on sale. They’ve curtailed spending on other products and services and are being choosy due to the uncertain economic environment.
Kroger is cutting costs across its operations to help lower prices for cash-strapped shoppers, Sargent said.
The company’s shares fell nearly 5% on the news.
—Dollar Tree, Inc. posted solid third-quarter fiscal 2025 results, wherein both the top and bottom lines surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate and increased year over year.
Dollar Tree’s adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations jumped 12% year over year to $1.21, beating consensus of $1.09. Net sales increased 9.4% to $4.75 billion, a little above the Street’s estimates. Same-store sales grew 4.2% from a year ago, though this was largely a result of price increases. As you know, Dollar Tree a while ago became $1.25 Tree and is rapidly heading to $1.50 Tree (many of its standard products already at that level). I know this from experience.
Frankly, there are fewer reasons to go to Dollar Tree as there were, say, 18 months ago.
DLTR shares rose over 3% on the earnings news.
—Zootopia 2 sold a whopping $156 million domestically over what’s considered the 5-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and another $400.4 million internationally, for an estimated $556.4 million global opening. The animated film was the highest global debut of 2025 and Disney’s highest-ever global opening, Comscore said.
Universal’s Wicked: For Good sold another $93 million to take second place in its second weekend. Its domestic cumulative total through Sunday is $270.4 million, and globally it is $393.3 million.
But Hollywood still has some work to do to achieve its $9 billion goal for 2025. Sales for October were unexpectedly weak, but studios have a packed release calendar.
Before the pandemic, Hollywood was raking in about $11 billion a year at the domestic box office, with the record being $11.9 billion in 2018. Hollywood sold a total of $8.7 billion at the box office last year amid the writers’ and actors’ strikes, and $9 billion in 2023.
Through last weekend, the 2025 total is $7.8 billion.
–We learned Wednesday how well the NFL did ratings wise with its Thanksgiving Day games. Green Bay at Detroit, the early contest, averaged a record 47.7 million viewers for Fox, making it the network’s biggest regular-season game ever, and the most watched Thanksgiving game on record in the early broadcast window.
In the late afternoon window, CBS drew a massive 57.23 million viewers for Kansas City at Dallas – the largest audience ever, on any network, for an NFL regular season game, according to Nielsen.
–I just saw the obituary of Burt Meyer, who died on Oct. 30 at the age of 99, but we just learned of his passing about ten days ago.
Meyer was the inventor of toys like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots and Mouse Trap.
Meyer worked at the most prominent toy-design firm of his era, Chicago-based Marvin Glass & Associates.
Meyer and Marvin Glass found inspiration in an arcade for a boxing game that Meyer began sketching out.
Then, in March 1963, Davey Moore died after a televised prize fight with Sugar Ramos. Pope John XXIII denounced boxing as barbaric. Bob Dylan wrote a protest song about Moore’s death. Meyer and Glass concluded it was the wrong time to release a boxing toy.
But then Meyer came up with the idea, why not let robots (or what passed for robots in the 1960s) do the bashing? He devised a game involving two plastic robots, controlled by levers. The winner would be whichever player managed to knock the head off the other player’s robot.
By late 1964, Kmart stores were advertising Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots for $7.97. The game, now produced by Mattel, is still on the market.
Personally, I didn’t have this toy, but loved playing it at friends’ houses. I did get Mouse Trap one Christmas, Dad hiding it for last in the basement, knowing I wanted it badly and I didn’t get it, or so I thought. He could see the disappointment in my face, and then he said, go to the basement.
Yup, it was my Ralphie/Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle moment.
Foreign Affairs
Russia/Ukraine: After two days of meetings in Florida over the weekend between Ukrainian and U.S. negotiators, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Moscow with Jared Kushner on Tuesday to meet with Vladimir Putin, who claimed Monday that Russian troops had taken the city of Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region in a video announcement posted by the Kremlin.
After the weekend sessions, President Zelensky posted on X that the talks were “very constructive” but there are “some tough issues that still have to be worked through.”
Putin has signaled an openness to talks, saying last week that Trump’s proposals for ending the war could be “the basis for future agreements,” while adding that no final version exists yet.
The seizure of Pokrovsk, a defensive hub that’s been the focus of intense fighting for more than a year, would potentially open up the path for Russia to threaten the larger cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. It would offer Moscow a symbolic victory as Putin continues to insist that Ukraine must surrender the entire Donetsk region under a deal to end the war.
Ukraine previously acknowledged that Russian troops had entered Pokrovsk though it rejected Moscow’s claims that Kyiv’s forces in the city had been encircled.
President Zelensky has said Kyiv’s priorities in peace talks to end the war with Russia are maintaining Ukraine’s sovereignty and securing strong security guarantees.
Zelensky said “the territorial issue is the most difficult.”
However Trump’s latest push to end the war pans out, Europe fears the prospect of a deal – sooner or later – that will not punish or weaken Russia as its leaders had hoped, placing the continent’s security in greater jeopardy.
Europe may even have to accept a growing economic partnership between Washington, its traditional protector in the NATO alliance, and Moscow, which most European governments – and NATO itself – say is the greatest threat to European security.
While Ukraine and Europe were able to push back against parts of the original 28-point plan to end the fighting that was seen as heavily pro-Russian, any deal is still likely to carry major risks for the continent.
But Europe’s ability to influence the deal is limited.
It had no representatives at talks between the U.S. and Ukrainian officials in Florida and had to watch from afar as Witkoff and Putin met on Tuesday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Europeans will be involved in discussions about the role of NATO and the European Union in any peace settlement.
But European officials say just about every aspect of a deal would affect Europe – from potential territorial concessions to U.S.-Russian economic cooperation.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said last week that Europeans no longer know “which alliances we will still be able to trust in the future and which ones will be durable.”
European officials say they see no sign that Putin wants to end his invasion of Ukraine. But if he does, they worry that any deal that does not respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity could embolden Russia to attack beyond its borders again.
And these same officials fear that ending Russia’s isolation from the Western economy will give Moscow billions of dollars to reconstitute its military.
“If Russia’s army is big, if their military budget is as big as it is right now, they will want to use it again,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters on Monday.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who met with Zelensky in Paris on Monday, praised the efforts of the Trump administration to end the conflict, but added:
“Now we are waiting for the Russian answer: are they ready to stop fighting and make peace? I want to point out that for three, four times the Russians have said no. So they don’t seem in a rush.”
Sunday, on his way back to Washington, Trump told reporters on Air Force Once: “I think Russia would like to see it end. I know Ukraine would like to see it end. Ukraine’s got some difficult little problems.”
Ukraine has “a corruption situation going on, which is not helpful,” Trump said. “But I think there’s a good chance we can make a deal.”
Tuesday’s talks in Moscow then lasted five hours, but the two sides failed to achieve a breakthrough on securing a peace deal; Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner flying home that night.
Russian officials said the talks were “constructive” and “very useful,” but “no compromise” was reached over territorial concessions for Ukraine, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters in Moscow. “Some American proposals seem more or less acceptable, but they need to be discussed. Some of the wording we’ve been offered isn’t acceptable, so the work will continue.”
A possible meeting between Putin and President Trump “will depend on what progress is being made,” Ushakov added. Russia received four documents from the U.S. in addition to the original peace proposal and both sides expressed willingness to continue working, he said. “There is a lot of work left to do both in Moscow and Washington,” he said.
Asked if it would be correct to say that Putin had rejected the U.S. proposals, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it would not.
“A direct exchange of views took place yesterday for the first time,” Peskov said. “Some things were accepted; some things were marked as unacceptable – this is a normal working process of finding a compromise.”
Peskov said that Russia was grateful to Trump for his efforts but that the Kremlin would not be giving a running commentary on discussions with the United States as publicity was unlikely to be constructive.
“Work is currently being carried out at a working expert level,” Peskov said. “It is at the expert level that certain results should be achieved that will then become the basis for contacts at the highest level.”
Earlier, Putin, alluding to NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels to discuss the ongoing talks, said Europe’s peace deal demands were “not acceptable,” adding: “We are not going to fight with Europe, but if Europe wants to fight with us, we are ready right now.”
Ahead of the Kremlin meeting, Putin threatened strikes on ships of countries supporting Ukraine if a surge in attacks on Moscow’s tanker fleet in the past week doesn’t halt. “What the Ukrainian armed forces are doing now is piracy,” he told reporters.
President Zelensky said that some things “still need to be worked out” in the draft peace plan but that “now more than ever, there is a chance to end this war.”
Russian state media then quoted Putin as saying he sees “no point in making any serious compromises” about ending the war.
Russia launched a drone attack overnight Tuesday that killed two people in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
President Trump said he was told the talks in Moscow were “reasonably good,” but added that it was too soon to say what would happen because “it does take two to tango.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia must “end the bloodshed,” and accused Putin of “wasting the world’s time.”
Wednesday, when asked by a reporter whether Witkoff and Kusher believed Putin genuinely wanted to end the war, Trump said: “[Putin] would like to end the war. That was their impression.”
Thursday evening, Steve Witkoff met with Ukraine’s national security council chief, Rustem Umerov, for talks in Miami.
Earlier in the day, Putin told India Today TV, before he landed in New Delhi for a state visit, that the five-hour talks Tuesday with Witkoff and Kushner were “necessary” and “useful,” but also “difficult work,” and some proposals were unacceptable.
Putin refused to elaborate on what Russia could accept or reject, and none of the other officials involved offered details of the talks.
Putin emphasized that Russia will fulfill the goals it set and take all of the eastern Donetsk region.
“All this boils down to one thing: Either we take back these territories by force, or eventually Ukrainian troops withdraw,” he said.
Bret Stephens / New York Times
“If Putin were interested in peace and prosperity between Russia and the west, he would have pursued both over his quarter-century in power. But Putin does not want coexistence. He wants dominance, even at the cost of the one million casualties his forces have reportedly suffered so far. His role models aren’t Bill Gates or Konrad Adenauer. They’re Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible.
“That’s not going to change. Putin is 73, sees himself as a world-historical figure and has thus far mainly succeeded in getting his way against adversaries he despises as weak, vain and corruptible. By sending two developers to negotiate with him, President Trump merely ratified Putin’s attitude.
“The significant danger now is that Putin will agree, conditionally, to some sort of Trump-endorsed ‘peace plan,’ putting unbearable diplomatic pressure on Kyiv to accept it. Among other effects, this will fracture Ukrainian politics, fracture the NATO alliance, rescue Russia’s economy, strengthen pro-Russian voices in European politics and give Russia time to recover its military strength. In exchange, Ukraine will get the kind of paper promises it got back in 1994, when it gave up its nuclear weapons for nonbinding security guarantees – another reminder that disarmament is as often a road to war as it is to peace.
“A question for Marco Rubio: How good will U.S. security guarantees for Kyiv be in 2029, when he’s a private citizen, JD Vance is president and Putin is hungry again for another choice cut of Ukraine? …
“The larger warning here is for free nations everywhere, particularly in Europe. The era of Pax Americana may soon be drawing to a close. From then on it will be every region, or country, for itself, against emboldened and avaricious adversaries. For a sense of how to fight, look no further than the Ukrainians whom we abandon at our peril and to our shame.”
Editorial / Wall Street Journal
“Another schlep to Moscow by President Trump’s envoys has produced another Vladimir Putin rejection of another plan to end his war with Ukraine. Maybe it’s time to conclude that Mr. Putin doesn’t want peace. He wants Ukraine.
“Kremlin officials called five hours of talks with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner ‘constructive,’ but also said the root causes of the war still haven’t been addressed. By root causes, the Kremlin means that Ukraine is still free of Russian control.
“For months Mr. Putin has refused Mr. Trump’s proposals for even a temporary cease-fire along the current battle lines, which Ukraine accepted. The Administration put Ukraine over a barrel with its 28-point draft peace plan, and Kyiv is trying to discern the worst deal it can tolerate and still survive as a free country.
“Where are Mr. Putin’s concessions? The Russian wants to swallow the entire Donbas in Ukraine’s east and deny Ukraine the military and the security allies to protect itself in the future. Mr. Putin wants to look like he’s negotiating, and the Witkoff meetings help him maintain that veneer, while he tries to drive a wedge between Mr. Trump and Europe.
“Moscow is also working hard to persuade the world it’s winning the war. The Donbas will soon be theirs anyway, the Kremlin says. Yet Ukraine’s defeat isn’t inevitable or imminent.
“ ‘When I’m with’ Ukraine’s ‘corps commander units and I’m watching them in action,’ retired U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery said on a call this week, ‘I don’t believe they’ll lose this on the ground on their own.’ But the U.S. isn’t keeping up its weapons support, and selling arms to Europe isn’t making up the difference.
“Mr. Putin won’t negotiate seriously as long as he thinks he has the upper hand, and our hope has been that the White House would eventually figure this out. No such luck so far. A pivot would mean snatching Mr. Putin’s frozen assets; ramping up sanctions to include China; and delivering long-range missiles and other weapons to Ukraine.
“But the Trump Administration is stuck in a view of Mr. Putin’s motives that is contradicted by events: That commerce and cultural exchange among Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. will be insurance against war.
“That misplaced optimism is familiar from liberal internationalists who think the world is prospering toward peace and whom Mr. Trump derides as ‘globalists.’ What negotiations need is an injection of Mr. Trump’s instinct for American primacy in the world – and realism about the man in the Kremlin.”
—Last weekend, Russian launched a massive drone and missile strike on Kyiv, killing at least three and causing widespread power outages. President Zelensky wrote on X that about 36 missiles and almost 600 drones were fired, with “The main targets of the attack…energy infrastructure and civilian facilities, with extensive damage and fires in residential buildings.”
Ukrainian strikes hit oil export infrastructure on Russia’s Black Sea coast, with extensive damage reported. Ukrainian naval drones also struck two oil tankers from Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” as they travelled through the Black Sea, Ukrainian officials said.
–Bloomberg reported that the U.S. has lobbied several countries in the European Union in an effort to block EU plans to use frozen Russian central bank assets to back a massive loan to Ukraine, according to European diplomats familiar with the matter.
U.S. officials argued to member states that the assets are needed to help secure a peace deal and should not be used to prolong the war, said the diplomats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Washington has been eyeing the Russian assets as part of its proposals to enable peace talks, and had suggested they could be used to fund U.S.-led postwar investments.
But European leaders have been adamant that how to use the assets is a European matter as the frozen funds are mostly held in Europe.
There is “no possibility of leaving the money we mobilize to the U.S.,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Thursday. “The American government knows this… This money must flow to Ukraine – it must help Ukraine.”
—–
China/Taiwan/Japan: Japan’s position on Taiwan remains unchanged, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said on Wednesday, referring to a 1972 commitment that led to the normalization of ties between Beijing and Tokyo.
“The Japanese government’s basic position regarding Taiwan remains as stated in the 1972 Japan-China joint statement, and there has been no change to this position,” Takaichi told the Japanese parliament.
According to the 1972 statement, “the government of the People’s Republic of China reiterates that Taiwan is an inalienable part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China” and the Japanese government “fully understands and respects this stand.”
Takaichi’s comments come nearly a month after she told the parliament that an attack on Taiwan by the PLA could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” – one that could allow Tokyo to engage in military action.
It was the most explicit statement by a sitting Japanese prime minister on how Tokyo might respond to a Taiwan contingency and marked a departure from the country’s long-held strategic ambiguity over the issue – a position the U.S. has also maintained, and plunged bilateral relations to a record low.
More than 1,900 flights from China to Japan scheduled for December have been canceled, according to Chinese state media reports, amid the political dispute between the two over Taiwan, and Beijing issuing a travel warning on November 14. We’ll see if Takaichi’s latest comments improve the situation.
Israel: An impending crisis over conscripting ultra-Orthodox Jews into the Israeli army is threatening to undermine Israel’s government and split the country.
Public opinion on the issue has shifted dramatically in Israel after two years of war, and this is now perhaps the most explosive political risk facing Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Lawmakers are currently considering a draft bill to end the exemption granted to ultra-Orthodox men enrolled in full-time religious study, established when the State of Israel was declared in 1948.
That exemption was ruled illegal by Israel’s High Court of Justice almost 20 years ago. Temporary arrangements to continue it were formally ended by the court last year, forcing the government to begin drafting the community.
Some 24,000 draft notices were issued last year, but only around 1,200 ultra-Orthodox – or Haredi – draftees reported for duty, according to military testimony given to lawmakers.
The ultra-Orthodox population has more than doubled its share of Israel’s population over the past seven decades, and now accounts for 14%. What began as an exemption for several hundred religious students became, by the start of the Gaza war, a cohort of some 60,000 men left out of the draft.
Opinion polls suggest support for ultra-Orthodox conscription is rising. A survey in July by the Israel Democracy Institute think tank found that 85% of non-Haredi Jews – including almost three-quarters in Netanyahu’s own right-wing Likud party – supported sanctions for those who refused a draft order, with a firm majority in favor of withdrawing benefits, passports, or the right to vote.
“It makes me feel there are people who live in this country without giving anything back,” one off-duty soldier in Tel Aviv explained.
“I don’t think, however religious you are, [it] should be an excuse not to go and serve your country,” said Gabby, a young woman also in Tel Aviv. “If you’re born here, I find it quite ridiculous that you want to exempt yourself just to study Torah all day.” [BBC News]
–Meanwhile, the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire is nearing the finish line as Hamas has handed over the remains of all but one hostage taken from Israel.
There are few signs of progress on the next steps of the ceasefire brokered by President Trump in October, including a call for Hamas to cede power and disarm, and the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, which Netanyahu has said he won’t allow.
Venezuela: President Trump spoke by phone last week with Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, and discussed a possible meeting between them, according to multiple sources, even as the U.S. was threatening military action.
The New York Times in October reported that Maduro had offered the U.S. a significant stake in the country’s oil fields, along with a host of other opportunities for American companies, in an effort to defuse tensions. But Maduro also sought to remain in power, and U.S. officials cut off those discussions.
On Saturday, President Trump said that commercial airlines should consider Venezuelan airspace closed, increasing pressure on the country’s leadership.
“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“Venezuela will not accept orders, threats, or interference from any foreign power,” the Maduro government said in an Instagram post on Saturday afternoon. “No authority outside the Venezuelan institutional framework has the power to interfere with, block, or condition the use of national airspace.”
Random Musings
–Presidential approval ratings….
Gallup: 36% approve of President Trump’s job performance, while 60% disapprove. 25% of independents approve (Nov. 3-25). New lows for Trump’s second term.
Rasmussen: 43% approve, 55% disapprove (Dec. 5); down from a 47-51 split last week.
—GOP candidate Matt Van Epps defeated Democrat Aftyn Behn on Tuesday night to fill the vacant House seat in a Nashville-area district, after national Republicans mounted an 11th-hour effort to shore up turnout.
With about 95% of the vote counted, Van Epps had 54%, compared with 45% for Behn.
Democrats framed the close competition with Republicans as a win.
“However this Tennessee race turns out, this is an unbelievable change over Trump’s 22 pt. victory a year ago,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) on X as results came in. “Are any Republican colleagues ready to join us to vote to bring health care premiums down?”
–In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik (NY), a prominent ally of President Trump, criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson, calling him an ineffective leader who is losing control over the GOP conference headed into the midterm elections.
“He certainly wouldn’t have the votes to be speaker if there was a roll-call vote tomorrow,” said Stefanik, who is running for governor. “I believe that the majority of Republicans would vote for new leadership. It’s that widespread.”
In the interview, Stefanik painted Johnson’s standing with Republicans as in a state of collapse. She cited matters ranging from members criticizing his decision to keep lawmakers in their home districts during the government shutdown, to weak showings in special elections and to what she casts as his failure to address the expected jump in healthcare costs if the party doesn’t reach an agreement with Democrats soon.
“It’s all bubbling over,” said Stefanik.
—The Supreme Court handed President Trump a major win in the national redistricting battle on Thursday, as the Supreme Court restored a new congressional map that Texas lawmakers passed earlier this year that aims to give the GOP up to five additional seats in next year’s midterm elections.
The majority ruled that a lower court likely erred when it threw out the map as a racial gerrymander and “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”
—The end-of-year deadline for expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies is rapidly approaching and GOP leaders are facing pressure over how, or whether, they will extend the ACA benefits for millions of Americans.
Some centrist Republicans want to keep the subsidies, while making some changes to reduce spending, while others, who have been calling for years to repeal the ACA, would rather see them sunset entirely on Jan. 1.
GOP leadership, including Speaker Johnson, faces a no-win decision: Either they endorse a law they believe to be toxic, or they allow health insurance costs to skyrocket for more than 20 million Americans.
The White House, last week, reportedly planned to propose a two-year extension of the subsidies, buying the GOP time until after the midterms to come up with a better solution. But that was scrapped following criticism from conservatives.
Trump has said he prefers a system of directly giving cash to patients.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Thursday that he will force a vote next week on a Democratic proposal to extend the expiring subsidies for three years.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune promised a vote on extending the subsidies as a condition of Democrats voting to end the government shutdown. But there has never been a guarantee that the bill would get enough GOP support to pass – or that Johnson would bring a vote in the House.
—Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing bipartisan scrutiny over his reported order to strike a boat in the Caribbean a second time, killing two survivors who were clinging to the ship’s wreckage on Sept. 2.
The Washington Post reported last Friday that Hegseth issued an order to “kill everybody” after the initial strike, the first of what is now more than 20 such attacks, did not immediately kill all 11 of the people on board the vessel, leading the Special Operations commander overseeing the attack to order a second strike.
Some Democrats and a senior Republican said Sunday the strike was a possible war crime. The GOP chairs of the House and Senate armed services committees are promising “vigorous oversight” of the incident.
“We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question,” Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the chair of the House committee, and Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said in their statement.
“The Committee has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to the circumstances,” said Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the Senate committee chair, and Jack Reed (D-R.I.).
Hegseth rejected the Post’s story as “fake news,” emphasizing the attacks are intended to be “lethal, kinetic strikes.”
“The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization,” he said in a post on X.
But then the administration defended Hegseth, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling reporters Monday that Hegseth authorized the strikes, but Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley ultimately ordered the second strike in early September. The White House denied that Hegseth issued a verbal order to “kill everybody” prior to the strikes.
“Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” Leavitt said Monday.
Leavitt told reporters that Hegseth spoke with lawmakers who were concerned about the report, in an apparent attempt at damage control.
Hegseth, Monday evening, called Bradley a “hero” for ordering the death of the two survivors, which would seem to contravene Section 5.4.7 of the Defense Department’s Law of War Manual. “Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support,” Hegseth wrote on his personal social media account. “I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made – on the September 2 mission and all others since.”
But is the administration setting Bradley up to be the fall guy?
Trump said on Sunday he believes Hegseth’s denial that he ordered Bradley to “kill everybody” aboard the vessel on Sept. 2, adding that he would not have ordered a second strike.
Fox’s Brit Hume in a Monday evening post seemed to convey that Bradley was being set up.
“How to point the finger at someone while pretending to support him.”
Secretary Hegseth then said Tuesday, speaking at the president’s marathon cabinet meeting, that he did not see two survivors after an initial strike on the alleged drug boat, but praised Bradley for making the “correct decision” to sink the vessel.
Hegseth, who on Sept. 3 told Fox News he watched the operation live, stated Tuesday that he witnessed the first strike, but left the room ahead of the second strike for another meeting, only learning of it about an hour or two later.
Moments earlier, President Trump said he still had not been briefed on the second strike, adding that he relies on Hegseth to update him on such situations. “Pete is doing a good job,” Trump said.
George Will / Washington Post
“Forty-four days after the survivors were killed, the four-star admiral who headed the U.S. Southern Command announced he would be leaving that position just a year into what is usually a three-year stint. He did not say why. Inferences are, however, permitted.
“The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself. As the recent ‘peace plan’ for Ukraine demonstrated.
“Marco Rubio, who is secretary of state and Trump’s national security adviser, seemed to be neither when the president released his 28-point plan for Ukraine’s dismemberment. The plan was cobbled together by Trump administration and Russian officials, with no Ukrainians participating. It reads like a wish-list letter from Vladimir Putin to Santa Claus: Ukraine to cede land that Russia has failed to capture in almost four years of aggression; Russia to have a veto over NATO’s composition, peacekeeping forces in Ukraine and the size of Ukraine’s armed forces. And more.
“Rubio, whose well-known versatility of convictions is perhaps not infinite, told some of his alarmed former Senate colleagues that the plan was just an opening gambit from Russia – although Trump demanded that Ukraine accept it within days. South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, a precise and measured speaker, reported that, in a conference call with a bipartisan group of senators, Rubio said the plan was a Russian proposal: ‘He made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives. It is not our recommendation. It is not our peace plan.’ Hours later, however, Rubio reversed himself, saying on social media that the United States ‘authored’ the plan.
“The administration’s floundering might reflect more than its characteristic incompetence. In a darkening world, systemic weaknesses of prosperous democracies are becoming clearer…..
“Two weeks ago, the chief of staff of the French army said: ‘We have the know-how, and we have the economic and demographic strength to dissuade the regime in Moscow. What we are lacking…is the spirit which accepts that we will have to suffer if we are to protect what we are. If our country wavers because it is not ready to lose its children…or to suffer economically because the priority has to be military production, then we are indeed at risk.’
“Putin has surely savored the French recoil from these words. And he has noticed that, concerning Ukraine and the attacks on boats near Venezuela, the Trump administration cannot keep its stories straight. This probably is for reasons Sir Walter Scott understood: ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave,/ when first we practise to deceive!’ Americans are the deceived.”
At week’s end the heat on Hegseth picked up further. His response is always to blame the press.
Admiral Bradley, in a classified briefing on Thursday, testified that he and local commanders concluded that the two survivors of the initial attack were still trying to deliver drugs and therefore were lawful targets, adding there was no “kill them all” order from Secretary Hegseth.
But questions and concerns remain, even as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said as he exited the briefing that Adm. Bradley “was very clear that he was given no such order, to give no quarter or to kill them all.”
“The order was basically: Destroy the drugs, kill the 11 people on the boat,” said Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. Smith, who is demanding further investigation, said the survivors were “basically two shirtless people clinging to the bow of a capsized and inoperable boat, drifting in the water.”
The Pentagon announced another strike Thursday on an alleged drug boat in the Pacific, four killed, bringing the toll to 87 in 22 strikes.
Editorial / Wall Street Journal
“(It’s) notable that Mr. Hegseth has spent the past few days saying he wasn’t in the room when the second strike happened – even as he declares his full and total support for Adm. Bradley. It smacks of an attempt to shift scrutiny to a military officer who can’t defend his decisions in public.
“The message to other officers is that they’ll be alone in a foxhole if some mission runs into trouble. The buck for the strike and its consequences rests with Secretary Hegseth and President Trump, and standing by Adm. Bradley means producing a factual record for Congress and the public to inspect.
“One reason this episode has mushroomed is that the Administration isn’t explaining the aims of its war in the Caribbean. Americans are open to getting tougher on drug cartels, and the President’s powers to conduct foreign policy deserves a wide berth.
“But the Administration will have to start explaining why it is asking men and women like Adm. Bradley to open fire.”
–Related to the above, last Friday President Trump granted “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.
The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans, but also to the authorities in the United States who had built a major case and won a conviction against Hernandez. He was accused of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquin Guzman, “El Chapo,” the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, and of running his Central American country like a narco state.
The judge in his case, P. Kevin Castel, had called Hernandez “a two-faced politician hungry for power” who masqueraded as an antidrug crusader while partnering with traffickers. And prosecutors had asked the judge to make sure Hernandez would die behind bars, citing his connections to violent traffickers and “the unfathomable destruction” caused by cocaine.
A Drug Enforcement Administration agent, who worked on the investigation into Hernandez and spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, called the pardon “lunacy.”
Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations at the DEA, also reacted with disbelief to the news of the pardon. Vigil said the move imperiled the reputation of the United States and its international investigations into drug trafficking.
“This action would be nothing short of catastrophic and would destroy the credibility of the U.S. in the international community,” Vigil said last weekend.
Trump’s pardon totally contradicts his campaign to unleash the might of the American military on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that his administration claims, without evidence, are involved in drug trafficking. Sure, these appear to be boats running drugs, but not once has Sec. Hegseth produced evidence to back up the strikes.
Editorial / Wall Street Journal
“ ‘Why would we pardon this guy and then go after Maduro for running drugs into the United States?’ Sen. Bill Cassidy wrote on social media. ‘Lock up every drug runner! Don’t understand why he is being pardoned.’
“Mr. Hernandez pleaded for clemency in a sycophantic letter to Mr. Trump that is dated Oct. 28. ‘I have found strength from you, Sir, your resilience to get back in that great office notwithstanding the persecution and prosecution you faced, all for what, because you wished to make your country Great Again,’ the Honduran wrote. ‘Like you, I was recklessly attacked by radical leftist forces.’
“The White House denied that Mr. Trump saw this fawning message before he announced the pardon late last week, but the letter was reportedly passed along to him by Roger Stone, the Beltway gadfly whom Mr. Trump pardoned in the first term after a conviction for lying to Congress.
“Meantime, the results of Sunday’s presidential election in Honduras remain too close to call. Mr. Stone had argued on his blog that a ‘well-timed pardon’ for Mr. Hernandez could help to prod the election in a direction favorable to American interests.
“What a strange turn of events. Perhaps Mr. Trump thinks he’s playing geopolitical chess, but he has a long record of high susceptibility to flattery, and his pardon without explanation undermines the rule of law and the prosecutors who put Mr. Hernandez away. Which convicted criminals will be the next to discover that praising Donald Trump’s magnificence is a get-out-of-jail-free card?”
Meanwhile, in the presidential election in Honduras, where Donald Trump has claimed fraud without providing evidence, a race between two centrists, the Trump-backed rival Nasry Asfura pulled narrowly past Salvador Nasralla in the latest voting I saw.
The National Party’s Asfura held 40.25%, nearly 23,900 votes ahead of the Liberal Party’s Nasralla, who had 39.39% with a third-party candidate well behind in an election held last Sunday. Eighty-seven percent of the votes had been counted and around 17% of the tally sheets have inconsistencies and will be reviewed, according to the country’s electoral authority.
—The administration formally halted immigration applications from 19 countries deemed to be a high risk for producing terrorists and other national security threats – with reports the list could grow to 30 nations or more. The 19 were previously singled out by President Trump for travel restrictions in a June 4 proclamation and include Afghanistan, Burma, Burundi, Chad, Cuba, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, and Yemen.
–The percentage of unemployed Americans over 25 with a four-year college degree is 25%, a record high.
—The director of the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine division said in a memo to agency staff on Friday that a review had found that at least 10 children had died “after and because of” getting a Covid vaccination.
Dr. Vinay Prasad, the director, suggested in the memo that the deaths were related to myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle.
The memo, obtained by the New York Times and not publicly released, did not provide details such as the ages of the children, whether they had other health problems or how the agency determined the vaccine-death link. Nor did it disclose the maker of the vaccines involved.
“This is a profound revelation,” Dr. Prasad wrote in a memo to staff members. “For the first time, the U.S. F.D.A. will acknowledge that Covid-19 vaccines have killed American children.”
Yet another sharp U-turn by federal authorities under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., longtime vaccine critic who has frequently described the Covid vaccines as unsafe.
And then this morning, the vaccine advisory panel voted to no longer universally recommend the first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns within 24 hours of birth.
One day after tabling the vote during a contentious meeting, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended “individual-based decision making” for parents of babies born to mothers who test negative for hepatitis B. For parents who decline the birth dose, the panel recommended the first shot be delayed to “no earlier than two months of age.”
Committee members who supported the change emphasized the panel still recommended newborns get vaccinated at birth when born to a mother with hepatitis B.
—The Supreme Court announced today that it would hear a landmark dispute over the constitutionality of President Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship.
The court has not announced a date to hear oral arguments, but the justices will most likely hear the case in the next few months. A decision would then be expected by the end of June or early July.
—The FBI made an arrest on Thursday in its nearly 5-year-old investigation into who placed pipe bombs in Washington on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The arrest marks the first time investigators have settled on a suspect in an act that had long vexed law enforcement, spawned a multitude of conspiracy theories and remained an enduring mystery in the shadow of the dark chapter of American history.
Attorney General Pam Bondi identified the suspect as Brian Cole Jr., 30, of Woodbridge, Virginia. He was charged with use of an explosive device and there will inevitably be more charges.
Great police work.
—Last Friday President Trump said he was revoking all executive orders former President Biden signed with an autopen, escalating his battle over the use of the signature proxy device.
“I am hereby canceling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally,” Trump wrote on social media on Friday. “Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury,” Trump added without providing evidence of his claim.
I’m not wasting any of my time on this.
—The death toll from the floods in South and Southeast Asia is over 1,600.
—The latest death toll from the horrific Hong Kong apartment complex fire hit 159 and could still rise further.
This being China, the local government warned against “foreign forces, including anti-China media organizations” that sow discord, making “malicious attacks” and “slanderous remarks.”
The city’s leader, John Lee, also warned against crimes that “exploit the tragedy.”
What China can’t deal with is the people mourning such an immense tragedy and calls by the locals for accountability and better safety measures.
—Bear Lake, in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, south of Traverse City, picked up more than 25 inches of snow last weekend, much of that stemming from days of lake-effect snow. Lake-effect snows also piled up 25 inches in Westmoreland, New York, east of Syracuse.
And now we have record cold across the eastern half of the United States. Heating costs will soar. Ugh.
—
Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.
Slava Ukraini.
God bless America.
—
Gold $4234…Silver $58.34…new all-time high! It’s the Burl Ives trade….
Oil $60.06…Nat Gas $5.28…multi-year high and not good (unless you own UNG)….
Bitcoin: $89,313 [4:00 PM ET, Friday]
Regular Gas: $2.97 (yippee!); Diesel: $3.71 [$3.03 – $3.53 yr. ago]
Returns for the week 12/1-12/5
Dow Jones +0.5% [47954]
S&P 500 +0.3% [6870]
S&P MidCap +0.4%
Russell 2000 +0.8%
Nasdaq +0.9% [23578]
Returns for the period 1/1/25-12/5/25
Dow Jones +12.7%
S&P 500 +16.8%
S&P MidCap +6.4%
Russell 2000 +13.0%
Nasdaq +22.1%
Bulls 50.0
Bears 18.2
Hang in there. Don’t text and drive….
Brian Trumbore
