[Posted 4:30 PM ET, Friday]
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Edition 1,386
The historic shutdown is over, leaving no winners.
Democrats didn’t get the health insurance provisions they demanded added to the spending deal. Republicans, who control the levers of power in Washington, didn’t escape blame, according to polls and some state and local elections that went poorly for them.
According to a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released this week, around 60% of Americans say Trump and Republicans in Congress have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of responsibility for the shutdown, while 54% say the same about Democrats in Congress.
The fallout of the shutdown landed on millions of Americans, including federal workers who went without paychecks and airline passengers who had their trips delayed or canceled. You had an interruption in nutrition assistance programs, with long lines at food banks, and just a lot of added stress going into the holiday season.
—
To set the record straight, this week President Trump, in defending his handling of the economy, said costs are “way down” across the board.
“So are you ready? Costs are way down,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News Monday. “Gasoline is going to be hitting $2 pretty soon, or around $2. Gasoline is at $2.70 now and it was at $4.50 under Biden, under sleepy Joe. When gasoline comes down, when energy comes down – and everybody agrees energy is down – we drill, you know, drill, baby drill. We’re going like wild.”
Well, U.S. production is indeed up, as I note in the Street Bytes segment, and that’s adding to a global surplus, which is holding prices down.
But…the facts are the average price of regular at the pump in America, according to AAA, is $3.08 today…the exact same price it was a year ago.
Last week I focused on the price of diesel and its importance to the economy and cost of goods at the grocery store, for one, and diesel is 21 cents higher than a year ago!
Well, the president posted on the topic again on Truth Social Friday morning:
“Cost, and INFLATION, were far higher under the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration, than they are now. In fact, costs under the TRUMP ADMINISTRATION are tumbling down, helped greatly by gasoline and ENERGY. Affordability is a lie when used by the Dems. It is a complete CON JOB. Thanksgiving costs are 25% lower this year than last, under Crooked Joe! We are the Party of Affordability!”
The 25% refers to Walmart’s annual Thanksgiving basket, which changes year-to-year. The basket this time has six less products than last year’s, the biggest reason for Walmart to say it is 25% lower. And the company is just trying to present affordable alternatives.
—
Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, came under massive attack last night, numerous high-rise apartment buildings hit, at least six killed, one of many large-scale strikes across the country this week.
And as I wrote last time in my open, again, not a word from President Trump. Truly pathetic…and sad.
—
So the longest government shutdown in history ended Wednesday.
It was last weekend, after Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) kept the Senate in session instead of heading home for the Veterans Day recess, that we had the key breakthrough, with eight centrist Democrats voting with almost all Republicans to advance legislation to reopen the government, clearing the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster and teeing up a final vote.
The eight Democrats were Sens. Angus King (Maine), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), John Fetterman (Pa.), Tim Kaine (Va.), Dick Durbin (Ill.) Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.) and Jacky Rosen (Va.).
Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) was the lone Republican to vote against the measure.
The Senate vote was to open debate on a House-passed bill that would be amended to include three full-year spending bills funding military construction, veterans’ affairs, the Department of Agriculture and the legislative branch, along with a continuing resolution to fund the remaining parts of the government through Jan. 30.
It includes a reversal of the layoffs that the Trump administration has conducted during the shutdown and guarantees backpay for federal workers who have been furloughed or forced to work without pay.
Importantly, the deal also includes a promise for a vote in mid-December on a Democrat proposal to extend expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies for one year.
The overwhelming majority of Senate Democrats voted against the bill, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), noting the legislation doesn’t take steps to lower health care costs and the deal only includes a promised vote on health subsidies but no guarantee they will be extended.
“America is in the midst of a Republican-made health care crisis – a crisis so severe, so urgent, and so devastating for American families that I cannot support a continuing resolution that fails to address it,” Schumer said in a post on X.
“This was a very, very bad vote,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a video on X, calling out the eight Democratic colleagues who voted for the bill.
“I’m voting no on the continuing resolution that would double healthcare premiums for 20 million Americans, kick 15 million people off Medicaid & allow 50,000 Americans to die unnecessarily every year,” Sanders wrote in another post. “All to give $1 trillion in tax breaks for billionaires.”
The legislation then still needed a final vote in the Senate before it went to the GOP-controlled House, which has been out of Washington for seven weeks.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) preemptively declared his opposition to the deal before the Senate voted, saying House Democrats won’t support legislation that doesn’t extend the ACA tax credits.
“House Democrats have consistently maintained that bipartisan legislation that funds the government must also decisively address the Republican health care crisis,” Jeffries said in a statement.
Representative Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) went a step further, saying that Sen. Schumer “is no longer effective and should be replaced.”
“If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for,” he said in a social media post.
But asked what finally persuaded enough Democrats to break with their party, Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats and helped negotiate the deal, offered a simple answer: the harm was growing too acute.
“I think people were saying, ‘We’re not going to get what we want,’” on the health subsidies, King said. “But in the meantime, a lot of people are being hurt.”
“We must extend the A.C.A. enhanced premium tax credits, but that can’t come at the expense of the millions of Americans across our country impacted by a shutdown,” Sen. Cortez Masto said in a statement.
The Senate then formally passed the spending bill Monday night, 60-40.
President Trump signaled support for the bill, saying Monday that “we’re going to be opening up our country very quickly.”
Sen. Schumer’s critics blamed him for not keeping his caucus in line and allowing eight of his members to vote for the proposal without a provision to extend the ObamaCare subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year.
House leaders expected all the members to be back in Washington by Wednesday, with a vote on the spending bill that day….and it passed, 222-209. Six Democrats voted for the bill and two Republicans opposed the package.
President Trump then signed it into law later Wednesday night. Shutdown over…but it was going to take many days to get government functioning regularly again, including when it comes to air traffic.
Trump said Wednesday night that voters should remember the shutdown when they’re going to the polls next year and punish Democrats.
“So, I just want to tell the American people you should not forget this when we come up to midterms and other things,” the president said. “Don’t forget what they’ve done to our country.”
Editorial / Wall Street Journal
“Sen. Schumer and friends are playing to their base that didn’t want a deal while also benefiting politically from reopening the government. Then again, you almost have to feel for Sen. Schumer as he is forced to endure struggle sessions with the party’s Mamdani Red Guards. Every Democrat even considering a run for the 2028 nomination pandered to the never-compromise crowd. This is now the party’s dominant wing.
“As for Republicans, they deserve credit for holding firm against the Democratic demand to extend pandemic-era ObamaCare subsidies. Republicans gave Democrats a promise to hold a roll call vote on extending the subsidies, which passed in 2021 with no GOP support.
“The stopgap measure runs through Jan. 30, which avoids another funding cliff at Christmas when everyone wants to leave town fast. The deal’s inclusion of full-year funding through Sept. 30 for a few parts of the government, including Agriculture and Veterans Affairs, lowers the risk of a big, ugly spending bill in January. The next GOP priority should be a spending bill for the U.S. military, which urgently needs the certainty of an appropriation to upgrade technology and equipment.
“The end of the shutdown should ease President Trump’s pressure on Republicans to break the 60-vote filibuster rule to pass legislation. Over the weekend Mr. Trump focused instead on ObamaCare, calling it a ‘SCAM’ that enriched insurers while ‘Health Coverage only gets WORSE.’ This is a far better use of his political energy than targeting the filibuster, which is a bulwark against ever-more entitlements.
“Democrats will still try to exploit ObamaCare’s ever-upward prices to convince Mr. Trump and Republicans to bail out the law. Yet the lesson of the shutdown for Republicans is that they don’t have to be healthcare hostages. They can propose their own ideas to help more Americans get a better insurance product than ObamaCare.
“The lesson for Democrats is one the GOP knows from hard experience: Futile shutdown gestures are usually self-defeating.”
—
Meanwhile, the administration returned to the Supreme Court on Monday in a push to keep full payments in the SNAP federal food aid program frozen, after days of back and forth between the administration, federal courts and the states.
Lower courts have ruled that the government must keep full payments flowing, and the Supreme Court asked the administration to respond after an appeals court ruled against it late Sunday.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday then extended an order blocking full SNAP payments until midnight Thursday. But then the government reopened, restarting the program, though it is likely to take days in some states to resume full payments.
States were faced with uncertainty since November 1st over whether they can – and should – provide full monthly benefits during the ongoing legal battles, but then the Senate bill now funds SNAP benefits through 2026.
—
President Trump on Truth Social Sunday morning:
“People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS! We are now the Richest, Most Respected Country in the World, With Almost No Inflation, and a Record Stock Market Price. 401k’s are Highest EVER. We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion. Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place. A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people) will be paid to everyone.”
After this post was issued, Treasury Secretary Bessent was asked about the accuracy of it and he looked foolish in trying to defend the plan.
Editorial / Wall Street Journal
“President Trump has a big tariff problem: His border taxes are raising prices on tariffed goods, they’re unpopular with voters, and the Supreme Court might rule that his ‘emergency’ tariffs are illegal. His latest response: Promise voters a $2,000 tariff rebate.
“That was his Hail Mary pass Sunday as he declared on social media that ‘People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS!’ He went on to promise various benefits from tariffs, including ‘taking in Trillions of Dollars’ that will soon pay down the national debt.
“And the kicker: ‘A dividend of at least $2,000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.’
“This is a teaching moment for a high school logic class. Start with the contradiction that Mr. Trump can both pay a tariff rebate and pay down the national debt. The annual federal budget deficit is roughly $1.8 trillion even with tariff revenue, so paying a rebate would add to the national debt, not reduce it.
“Mr. Trump’s claim of a revenue benefit from tariffs also belies what his Solicitor General, John Sauer, told the Supreme Court on Wednesday. In arguing that tariffs aren’t really taxes and are mainly a tool of foreign policy, Mr. Sauer said ‘these tariffs, these policies, it is clear that these policies are most effective if nobody ever pays the tariff. If it never raises a dime of revenue, these are the most effective use of these – of this particular policy.’
“He added later that ‘So they’re clearly regulatory tariffs, not taxes. They are not – they’re not an exercise of the power to tax.’
“But wait. If tariffs are most effective if no one ever pays them, then how are they going to raise the revenue Mr. Trump needs to pay those rebates? The truth is tariffs are taxes, but Mr. Sauer didn’t want to admit this lest the Court conclude that Mr. Trump is usurping a core constitutional power of Congress. Which he is.
“Mr. Trump is essentially promising to repay Americans $2,000 of the border taxes they’re paying in higher prices. But if tariffs are a free economic lunch, and their benefits abound, why offer a rebate? Shouldn’t voters be thrilled about tariffs even without a rebate? ….
“We’ve advised Mr. Trump from the beginning that tariffs would do economic harm, and so they are. They’re also doing political damage to the GOP, which is why he’s floating rebates that contradict his other tariff claims. One other suggestion, Mr. President: It’s never a good idea to call the voters ‘fools.’”
Thursday, the administration said import taxes on coffee and bananas will be lowered as part of trade deals with four Latin American countries.
The agreements with Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador and Ecuador come as President Trump faces scrutiny over his handling of the economy and concerns about affordability.
As part of an initial framework, a reciprocal tariff of 10% will stay on goods from Guatemala, Argentina and El Salvador, as will a 15% tax on imports from Ecuador into the U.S. But the deals will exempt products that cannot be produced in the U.S. “in sufficient quantities,” such as coffee.
The U.S.-Argentina deal also addresses beef producers’ access to foreign markets.
The four agreements with Latin American trading partners are expected to be signed within the next two weeks.
Gee, I guess tariffs increase prices! Wow, if you’ve listened to the president and Treasury Secretary Bessent, you wouldn’t have thought this was possible.
Wall Street and the Economy
I get into the air traffic mess below, which doesn’t necessarily end with the end of the shutdown as there remains a severe shortage of air traffic controllers overall in the system.
The Thanksgiving holiday, for example, could still be chaotic and as White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation”:
“Thanksgiving time is one of the hottest times of the year for the economy…and if people aren’t traveling at that moment, then we really could be looking at a negative quarter for the fourth quarter,” he said.
According to a poll of economists by Reuters, 80% of them expect the Fed to again lower its benchmark interest rate in December, despite clear disagreement among Federal Open Market Committee members on whether the economy needs another reduction this year, especially in the absence of key data.
Witness Thursday’s mini-bloodbath as odds for a December rate cut suddenly fell below 50%. Boston Fed President Susan Collins – a voting member of the FOMC this year – said Wednesday there should be a “high bar” for further easing. Other Fed governors have weighed in with similar thoughts.
Even if the Bureau of Labor Statistics cancels some October releases, it would likely still include October statistics in the November releases.
Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist for Oxford Economics, said that based on her experience, she believes the agencies could combine the releases of some October and November data. But she does expect to see complete data – eventually.
That doesn’t mean, however, it will arrive before the Dec. 9-10 FOMC meeting.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Thursday that regarding the October jobs report, “The household survey wasn’t conducted in October, so we’re going to get half the employment report. We’ll get the jobs part, but we won’t get the unemployment rate, and that’s just be for one month.”
Hassett also told reporters that it’s possible the September jobs report, which was due Oct. 3, comes out next week*. Data collection for that report was completed by the time the shutdown began on Oct. 1.
We should also receive September retail sales, and the personal consumption expenditures price index.
*As I go to post, the BLS did just say the September jobs report will be released Thursday. We will receive other reports next week and expect wild swings in the market and with sentiment over the coming month as we finally get the data that matters and get back to normal on the reporting front.
The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow barometer for third-quarter growth is stuck at 4.0% until data starts flowing through again. In fact, this afternoon they said they were suspending their reading until the Bureau of Economic Analysis releases its first estimate of third-quarter GDP growth.
Freddie Mac’s 30-year fixed-rate mortgage ticked up again to 6.24%.
—
Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta president Raphael Bostic announced he was stepping down from this role at the end of February, creating another vacancy in the top ranks.
Bostic’s departure is the latest as the central bank faces intense pressure from the White House to lower interest rates. His colleague Adriana Kugler resigned in August from her role as a member of the Fed’s board of governors, giving President Trump an opportunity to replace her with one of his top economic advisers, Stephen Miran, though Miran’s term as a Fed governor officially ends in January.
Trump has tried to oust another governor, Lisa Cook, over allegations that she committed mortgage fraud before joining the Fed. The Supreme Court is allowing Cook to remain in her role while the case is litigated and announced this week it would hear arguments on Jan. 21.
Trump won’t get to choose Bostic’s replacement, as the heads of the 12 regional Reserve Banks are selected by their respective boards of local business leaders.
But Bostic’s decision to depart the end of February is notable because that is when the board is set to vote to approve the reappointment of all 12 policymakers, a process that occurs every five years.
The proceeding ordinarily occurs without controversy and produces the same result: The regional bank chiefs are reappointed by a majority of the Fed’s Board of Governors in Washington.
But now with Bostic’s surprise retirement, all eyes are on whether this presents another challenge to the central bank’s independence, as President Trump seeks more influence over interest rates and other policies.
Trump is just weeks away from nominating his own choice to run the entire Federal Reserve, with current Chair Jerome Powell’s term set to expire in May.
Three of the current seven members of the Fed’s Board are appointees of former President Joe Biden and three are Trump appointees, including Miran.
Europe and Asia
Eurostat released a flash estimate for third quarter GDP in the eurozone, up 0.2% compared with the previous quarter, up 1.4% from the third quarter of 2024.
Q3 2025 vs. Q3 2024
Germany 0.3%, France 0.9%, Italy 0.4%, Spain 2.8%, Netherlands 1.6%
Growth in the UK slowed to 0.1% in the third quarter, the government reported this week in its flash estimate, as car production slumped, a blow to Chancellor Rachel Reeves – who has repeatedly said growth is her top priority – less than two weeks ahead of the Budget in which she is widely expected to raise taxes. Compared with a year ago, GDP increased 1.3%.
Separately, industrial production in September compared with August in the EA20 was up 0.2%, 1.2% year-on-year. [Eurostat]
Turning to Asia….
China’s consumer prices unexpectedly increased in October, 0.2% over September, and 0.2% year-over-year, as holidays during the month boosted travel, food and transport demand – a pick-up many economists saw likely as fleeting.
Producer prices in October fell 2.1% Y/Y.
China has faced deflationary pressures in recent months, including declining prices in August and September, and a Bloomberg News analysis of almost 70 everyday products and services from multiple sources showed prices dropped more sharply than the headline Consumer Price Index indicates.
Thursday, the government then released key statistics for the month of October and it revealed the weakest pace of growth since August 2024.
Industrial production was up 4.9% year-over-year, retail sales rose only 2.9% and fixed-asset investment (big projects like airports, trains, roads) fell 1.7%. The October unemployment rate was 5.1%.
And the 70-city housing price index was down 2.2% in October from a year ago.
Japan’s October producer price index was up 0.4% vs. September, 2.7% from a year earlier.
Street Bytes
–Wall Street was dealing this week with AI valuation fears and the growing pushback among members of the Federal Reserve for cutting interest rates again in December.
But in the end the major indexes were mixed, the Dow Jones up 0.3% to 47147, after hitting a new closing high of 48254 earlier. The S&P 500 gained 0.1%, Nasdaq down 0.5%.
Walmart didn’t help the Dow today, the shares falling fractionally after it announced CEO Doug McMillon was stepping down after over a decade in the role, effective Feb. 1. John Furner, current chief executive of Walmart U.S., will succeed McMillon. Furner began his career as an hourly associate in 1993 and has held multiple leadership roles.
McMillon, 59, has led Walmart through a period of fast growth, remaking the company to focus more on ecommerce sales in the face of competition from Amazon.
Next week, aside from finally beginning to get some key jobs and inflation data, we have Nvidia’s earnings, Wednesday, as well as reports from Walmart and Home Depot.
—U.S. Treasury Yields
6-mo. 3.82% 2-yr. 3.61% 10-yr. 4.15% 30-yr. 4.75%
The yield on the 10-year rose six basis points on the week. But with data emerging, finally, next week, let’s see where we are next Friday.
—Oil had a tough week, crude futures falling over 3% Wednesday after three straight sessions of gain, as OPEC revised its outlook to show a supply surplus in the third quarter. The group now estimates global supply exceeded demand by about 500,000 barrels per day, reversing its prior deficit forecast.
The revision reflects stronger-than-expected U.S. production and higher OPEC output.
The International Energy Agency also warned that the oil market is increasingly unbalanced, with global inventories rising and an even larger surplus expected. The agency raised both demand and supply forecasts, now seeing demand up by 788,000 barrels per day this year and 770,000 next, but supply growing faster, by 3.1 million and 2.5 million barrels per day.
But then crude rallied Friday on the Russia-Ukraine situation and Ukraine hitting a major Black Sea oil refinery and port from which Russian exports oil, after Moscow had launched a huge attack on Kyiv.
In the end, oil ended up largely unchanged on the week, $60.
—Gold had a strong week on the growing expectations of a Federal Reserve rate cut in December, despite policymakers’ efforts to downplay the likelihood of such a move, but then pulled back Friday to nonetheless close at $4088, though it had hit $4200.
Silver, for the same reasons, surged back over $50 to $54, but ended the week at $50.75.
—Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. reported slowing growth in monthly revenue, highlighting uncertainty over the sustainability of the AI boom even as industry behemoths including Nvidia chase more chip supplies.
The company posted a 16.9% rise in sales for October, the slowest pace since Feb. 2024. Analysts on average are expecting sales to increase 16% in the current quarter.
Industry executives remain buoyant about AI-driven growth as major tech firms are accelerating investments in data centers. The TSMC revenue gain also covers just a single month of business, offering investors less insight.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited Taiwan last weekend and Taiwanese media reported that Nvidia’s orders could require TSMC to boost production at sites in Taiwan by as much as 50% a month.
Huang said Saturday Nvidia is experiencing “very strong demand” for its state-of-the-art Blackwell chips, as its appetite for wafers from TSMC grows.
“Nvidia builds the GPU (graphics processing units), but we also build the CPU (central processing units), the networking, the switches, and so there are a lot of chips associated with Blackwell,” Huang told reporters.
–Meanwhile, SoftBank Group Corp. said it sold its entire stake in Nvidia Corp. for $5.83 billion to help bankroll AI investments, even as investors question the amount of capital (expected to surpass $1 trillion in coming years) pouring into a technology with uncertain returns.
Founder Masayoshi Son has been unwinding positions to pay for a plethora of AI projects, from Stargate data centers with OpenAI and Oracle Corp. to robot manufacturing sites in the U.S.
SoftBank also has investments in Arm Holdings and Taiwan Semi.
Son’s bet on OpenAI has been lucrative so far – SoftBank’s quarterly net profit more than doubled, helped by the revaluation of its OpenAI stake and its shares have more than doubled this year. Son has said he expects OpenAI to go public within the next few years.
—AMD shares soared 8% Wednesday after the chipmaker said its data center revenue increased 60%, up from $16 billion in 2025, as the company pushes deeper into the AI space and works to steal share from rival Nvidia.
The outlook comes after AMD CEO Lisa Su said the company sees the total addressable market for AI data centers increasing to the now commonly used figure of $1 trillion over the next five years during AMD’s Financial Analyst Day in New York Tuesday. That number includes everything from GPUs and CPUs to networking equipment.
According to the company, overall revenue will jump 35% over the next five years from $34 billion in 2025. The majority of that revenue will come from AMD’s data center business.
It’s that 35% figure that the Street loved to see.
AMD is riding a wave of big data center announcements, including a 6-gigawatt deal with OpenAI and a plan to provide Oracle with 50,000 chips. Both projects will kick off in 2026.
Analysts, however, have raised questions about how companies will be able to power their AI data center plans and whether OpenAI will be able to pay for AMD’s GPUs.
Su replied that she wouldn’t bet against the AI giant.
“This is a very unique moment in AI, and we shouldn’t be shortsighted in thinking about, ‘Hey, are you going to see returns in a couple of quarters, or are people going to be interested in financing it?’ If the AI usage grows as much as we expect, I think there’s going to be plenty of financing,” Su added.
—CoreWeave reported better-than-expected revenue, but its shares tumbled 16% after executives said a developer partner is behind schedule in data-center development.
The company reported an adjusted earnings per share loss of 22 cents for the September quarter late on Monday, which compared with the Street’s estimate for a loss of 40 cents.
Revenue came in at $1.36 billion, above analysts’ expectations of $1.29 billion.
On a conference call with analysts and investors, CoreWeave said AI demand “far exceeds” available capacity and the company remains in a supply-constrained environment. However, it expects revenue for 2025 to come in a range of $5.05 billion to $5.15 billion, below the Street’s consensus of $5.287bn.
Management said a third-party data center developer was temporarily behind schedule due to pressures from supply chains.
In an interview with Barron’s after the earnings call, CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said most of the delay in data center capex spending would be over by the first quarter of next year.
Intrator reiterated there are extreme pressures on the data center supply chain to meet the rising demand from “pouring concrete” to getting the necessary electric transformers plugged in. “Building the power shell [of the data center] is the most challenging part of delivering infrastructure in the short term,” he said. Intrator doesn’t believe the availability of power will be an issue for the next few years, but it may become a problem later on.
Founded in 2017, CoreWeave provides large-scale access to graphics processing units via the cloud.
—Sunday marked the worst day of travel disruptions since the shutdown began, with 11,212 delays, many of 2-3 hours, and 2,954 cancellations within, into, or out of the United States.
Monday, owing in no small part to a snowstorm that hit Chicago, we had 9,646 delays and 2,422 cancellations.
President Trump, Monday morning, posted on Truth Social:
“All Air Traffic Controllers must get back to work, NOW!!! Anyone who doesn’t will be substantially ‘docked.’ For those Air Traffic Controllers who were GREAT PATRIOTS, and didn’t take ANY TIME OFF for the ‘Democrat Shutdown Hoax,’ I will be recommending a BONUS of $10,000 per person for distinguished service to our Country. For those who did nothing but complain, and took time off, even though everyone knew they would be paid, IN FULL, shortly into the future, I am NOT HAPPY WITH YOU. You didn’t step up to help the U.S.A. against the FAKE DEMOCRAT ATTACK that was only meant to hurt our Country. You will have a negative mark, at least in my mind, against your record. If you want to leave service in the near future, please do not hesitate to do so, with NO payment or severance of any kind! You will be quickly replaced by true Patriots, who will do a better job on the Brand New State of the Art Equipment, the best in the World, that we are in the process of ordering….”
[Reminder, Mr. President. You don’t just become an air traffic controller with a week or two of training.]
When asked later in the day where he would get the $10,000, Trump said he didn’t know, but he’d “get it from somewhere.”
But the situation did improve the balance of the week, though with the government reopening, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was unsure of how long it would take airports to get back to normal operations. He said the agency has relied on data modeling to decide how many flights to cut so far and would rely on the same system to decide how soon to bring back flights.
—TSA checkpoint numbers vs. 2024
11/13…117 percent of 2024
11/12…96
11/11…76
11/10…94
11/9…125
11/8…78
11/7…102
11/6…128
–October marked the 10th straight month of decline in the number of Canadian travelers to the U.S. Air travel from Canada to the U.S. dropped nearly 24%, while car travel fell more than 30% when compared to the same period last year, according to data released this week by Canada’s statistics office.
Overall, the U.S. has seen a 3.2% drop in international spending in the country, driven primarily by fewer visitors from Canada, according to the U.S. Travel Association, a nonprofit group representing the American travel industry.
Thank you, President Trump.
—In another sign of a soft labor market, a report from job-placement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas showed through October this year large companies have announced plans to hire 372,520 seasonal workers, compared with 660,150 at the same point last year.
—Tesla’s sales in China dropped to 26,006 vehicles in October, their lowest in three years, as the EV maker struggles with tepid demand in the hyper-competitive market.
Sales fell 35.8% from a year earlier, down from September’s figure of 71,626 when Tesla began deliveries of the Model Y L, a longer-wheelbase and six-seat version of its best-selling Model Y SUV until now only available in China.
It’s exports of China-made vehicles rose to a two-year high of 35,491 units last month, however, data from the China Passenger Car Association showed on Monday.
Tesla’s share of China’s EV market shrank to just 3.2% in October, down sharply from 8.7% the previous month.
Tesla’s poor performance in the world’s largest auto market follows dismal sales last month in European countries such as Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and the Nordics, in the latest sign that it continues to struggle on the continent.
Meanwhile, Chinese EV maker BYD aims to sell up to 1.6 million vehicles abroad next year, doubling down on overseas expansions with high double-digit growth from 2025, Citi said in a report on Tuesday.
BYD’s sales at home, though, have fallen in recent months as it faces stiffer competition in China from local rivals such as Geely and Leapmotor.
BYD has built at least eight mega factories across China in the past five years. The company has been building overseas factories for local assembly in countries including Hungary and Brazil and is planning a third plant for Europe with Spain as the top candidate, according to reports.
—Cisco Systems stock rose 4% Thursday after the networking company reported better-than-expected financials for its latest quarter.
Cisco reported fiscal first-quarter adjusted earnings of $1 a share on revenue of $14.88 billion, with analysts at 98 cents on revenue of $14.78bn.
Cisco’s first-quarter networking revenue – the segment that brings in the most revenue for the company and includes gear used in AI data centers – was $7.77 billion, above expectations.
Cisco also provided a strong financial forecast. The company said it expects second-quarter earnings to be between $1.01 and $1.03 a share on revenue between $15 billion and $15.2 billion, above the Street’s forecast of 98 cents and $14.62bn.
For the full year, Cisco also guided a bit higher than expectations.
Cisco said on Wednesday that AI Infrastructure orders taken from hyperscaler customers totaled $1.3 billion, “reflecting a significant acceleration in growth.”
“The widespread demand for our technologies highlights the critical role of secure networking and the value of our portfolio as customers move quickly to unlock the potential of AI,” CEO Chuck Robbins said in the earnings release.
—Walt Disney shares fell 8% Thursday after the company missed Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue as ongoing weakness in its cable TV unit overshadowed solid growth in streaming and theme parks.
Disney posted adjusted earnings per share of $1.11 for its fourth quarter ending in September, a 3% decline from a year earlier but 6 cents above the average estimate.
Profit rose in Disney’s theme parks unit, partially from an expansion of the U.S. cruise ship business and growth at Disneyland Paris.
Earnings at its streaming business surged 39% to $352 million. Disney said it added 12.5 million subscribers to Disney+ and Hulu during the quarter, reaching a total of 196 million.
Box office smash “Lilo & Stitch” debuted on Disney+ during the quarter and racked up 14.3 million views in its first five days.
Disney has been remaking itself to adjust to the industry-wide decline of traditional broadcast and cable TV. It has invested in new theme park attractions and cruise ships and worked to lure subscribers to its streaming services.
CEO Bob Iger undertook aggressive cost-cutting when he returned to Disney in 2022. His current contract expires at the end of 2026, and Disney has said it will name Iger’s successor early next year.
In the just-ended quarter, Disney’s revenue was comparable to a year ago at $22.5 billion but shy of the $22.75bn analysts’ forecast.
The experiences unit that includes theme parks posted operating income of $1.88 billion, up 13% from a year ago. Part of the growth came from more passenger days on Disney cruise ships, the company said.
–The Wall Street Journal reported that Verizon Communications is planning to cut roughly 15,000 jobs, looking to reduce costs as it contends with increased competition for both wireless service and home internet customers.
The cuts, the largest ever for the carrier, are set to take place in the next week, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The company had about 100,000 employees as of February, according to securities fillings.
In the most recent quarter, Verizon lost a net 7,000 postpaid phone connections, while Wall Street analysts had forecast a gain of 19,000. AT&T and T-Mobile have both been growing those subscriber counts.
–In a letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders published on Monday, the outgoing CEO Warren Buffett announced that he would no longer write an annual letter or speak at the company’s annual meeting.
Berkshire’s letter to Berkshire shareholders, published in February, was his 60th edition.
At Berkshire’s annual meeting in May, Buffett ended it by announcing his recommendation that the company’s board support vice chair Greg Abel as his successor. Abel is set to take the reins as CEO on Jan. 1, 2026.
“I will no longer be writing Berkshire’s annual report or talking endlessly at the annual meeting,” Buffett wrote on Monday. “As the British would say, I’m ‘going quiet.’”
Buffett, who turned 95, said on Monday he is now the longest-lived member of the Buffett family.
Buffett added that he will continue to publish an annual Thanksgiving message and that he plans to keep in touch with some individual Berkshire shareholders.
As he has in recent years, he also praised the American capitalist system, telling investors, “Remember to thank America for maximizing your opportunities. But it is – inevitably – capricious and sometimes venal in distributing its rewards.”
Concluding his letter on Monday, Buffett encouraged investors to “Choose your heroes very carefully and then emulate them.”
He added: “You can never be perfect, but you can always be better.”
–There are a few companies I find more important than others in telling the story of the American consumer and the state of the economy…like Campbell’s Soup, FedEx, Delta and United Airlines, Ford Motor, McDonald’s, Domino’s Pizza, Home Depot and Walmart…to name a few…and Tyson.
Tyson Foods reported earnings this week and the company expects high beef prices to persist into next year as the nation’s cattle shortage continues to squeeze the meatpacking industry’s profits.
Arkansas-based Tyson, a bellwether for the American meat industry, said its beef prices rose 17% during its most recent quarter, while beef sales volumes fell 8%.
The lowest U.S. cattle supply since the 1950s is driving costs to record levels for meatpackers. Slaughterhouse operators have racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in losses as a result.
Tyson said its cattle costs for its 2025 fiscal year rose by almost $2 billion, compared with a year ago.
Losses in its beef business over the next year could outstrip those from the last 12 months, Tyson said. On an adjusted basis, the company reported a loss of $426 million from its beef business for the year.
“The beef segment remains our only soft spot,” said Tyson CEO Donnie King on a call with analysts.
The results also come as President Trump takes aim at rising beef prices for consumers. On Friday, he said the Justice Department is launching an investigation into meatpacking companies and whether they are engaging in collusion to drive up prices. Retail ground beef prices were at a record high in September, up almost 12% from the prior year, according to government data.
Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill and National Beef process about 85% of the country’s beef.
Industry officials have said that the rising prices are the result of a shortage of cattle. Ranchers thinned the size of their herds, following financial losses during the Covid-19 pandemic, years of severe drought conditions and rising costs.
And you have restrictions on Mexican cattle imports – due to a flesh-eating parasite spreading throughout the country’s livestock – and tariffs on Brazilian beef imports have helped keep U.S. prices elevated.
Tyson did say some ranchers are starting to rebuild their herds in the upper Midwest and northern U.S., though not in the western and southern states. Earlier this year, Tyson said it expected the U.S. cattle herd to expand by 2028.
Tyson produces one of out of every 5 pounds of beef, pork and chicken in the U.S.
Ah yes, chicken. Processors such as Tyson have benefited from cheaper livestock feed – the top expense when raising poultry – due to falling grain prices. Higher beef and pork prices have turned more consumers toward chicken nuggets and wings, helping lift Tyson’s chicken sales volumes 4% in the fiscal fourth quarter.
Overall, Tyson’s profit fell 87% in the latest quarter to $47 million.
Adjusted earnings were $1.15 a share, higher than what the Street expected, with quarterly sales up 2% to $13.86 billion.
The shares rose over 2% as the company also gave guidance that was better than expected by analysts.
—October was a dismal one for Hollywood, with just $428 million in domestic revenue, the lowest October since 1997.
But November is off to a better start with films such as “Bandlands,” which came in better than forecast for its first weekend.
Last weekend’s domestic box office sales bring the year-to-date total to $7.17 billion, or 3.1% higher than the $6.06 billion Hollywood brought in by this time last year, according to Comscore.
Hopes are high for Universal Pictures’ “Wicked: For Good” and Sony Pictures’ “Sisu: Road to Revenge,” both opening Nov. 21, and Disney’s “Zootopia 1” opening on Nov. 26, the day before Thanksgiving.
Foreign Affairs
Russia/Ukraine: A Russian drone slammed into an apartment building in eastern Ukraine early Saturday while many were sleeping, killing three people and wounding 12 others.
The attack in Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, was part of a large Russian missile and drone barrage across the country that targeted power infrastructure. It also killed a worker at an energy company in Kharkiv, farther north.
Russia fired a total of 458 drones and 45 missiles, including 32 ballistic missiles. The Ukrainian Air Force said 25 locations were struck, even as it shot down and neutralized 406 drones and nine missiles.
Russia said its forces repelled a “massive” nighttime strike on energy facilities in the southern Volgograd region, two days after Ukraine said that it hit a key oil refinery there with long-range drones.
And then overnight Thursday, Russia unleashed a massive combined attack on Kyiv, sparking fires and scattering debris across many districts of the capital, Ukrainian authorities said.
At least six were killed, 35 injured as emergency crews responded to multiple strikes.
Russia launched 430 drones and 18 missiles in attacks across the country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
He said the attack, which struck other regions of the country, was targeting Kyiv.
“A specially calculated attack to cause as much harm as possible to people and civilians,” Zelensky said in a post on Telegram.
He added the Azerbaijan embassy was damaged by fragments of an Iskander missile.
“The Russians are hitting residential buildings There are a great many damaged multi-story apartment buildings, in practically every district,” Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, wrote on Telegram.
Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up its attacks on Russia’s oil infrastructure, with drone strikes on one of its biggest export terminals in Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea coast.
A state of emergency was declared and Reuters reported that oil exports were suspended.
President Zelensky said Ukraine had fired long-range “Long Neptune” cruise missiles during its attacks on Russia overnight, without specifying what they targeted.
–But the fighting for the strategic city of Pokrovsk has reached a key stage, with both Kyiv and Moscow vying to persuade President Trump that they can win on the battlefield.
Pokrovsk is part of what has been dubbed the “fortress belt” of Donetsk, a line of heavily fortified cities crucial to Ukraine’s defense of the region.
Russia’s defense ministry maintains that both Pokrovsk and the nearby town of Myrnohrad were encircled. It also said Russian forces surround Ukrainian defenders in Kupiansk, a key railway hub in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
Days of heavy fog have aided Russia’s advance, obscuring the visibility needed to carry out aerial reconnaissance.
By Wednesday, Ukraine conceded there may now be 300-500 Russians inside Pokrovsk, and army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said the situation on the front line in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region has “significantly worsened,” with the loss of three settlements.
—Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Saturday that work has begun on President Putin’s order to prepare plans for a possible Russian nuclear test, according to state news agency Tass.
—Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a Trump ally who has long urged the European Union to repair ties with Moscow, secured a yearlong exemption from recent U.S. sanctions targeting major Russian oil producers after a meeting at the White House last Friday.
While most of the EU’s 27 member states sharply reduced or halted imports of Russian fossil fuels after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Hungary and Slovakia have maintained their pipeline deliveries. Hungary has even increased the share of Russian oil in its energy mix.
—The International Atomic Agency said that Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is an area under Russian control, has been connected to the power grid with a second transmission line.
The plant is not in service, but it needs reliable power to cool its six shutdown reactors and spent fuel to avoid any catastrophic nuclear incidents. Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the facility has lost external power and had to rely on emergency diesel generators on 10 occasions as a result of the fighting.
—Two of Ukraine’s top ministers resigned on Wednesday amid allegations of corruption in the country’s energy sector, and the fallout is becoming a challenge for President Zelensky.
The National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine, known as NABU, alleges the ministers and other Zelensky allies schemed to demand kickbacks from companies that held contracts with Energoatom, the country’s atomic-energy agency.
NABU didn’t mention Zelensky in relation to any of the allegations made in its investigation.
Israel/Gaza: Israel received the body of a hostage after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was expecting the remains of a soldier killed in 2014 to be returned.
Earlier, Netanyahu said Israel was due to receive the body of Hadar Goldin, a soldier who was killed in an ambush by Hamas during a previous conflict in 2014 and whose body has been held in Gaza since then.
Hamas’ armed wing also said on Sunday that it would hand over Goldin’s body. The terror group has now returned 24 out of 28 deceased hostages under the first phase of a ceasefire deal.
Iran: The International Atomic Energy Agency has not been able to verify the status of Iran’s near weapons-grade uranium stockpile since Israel and the U.S. struck the country’s nuclear sites in June, according to a confidential report by the UN’s nuclear watchdog circulated to member states and seen Wednesday by the Associated Press.
The IAEA said that the status of the near weapons-grade material “needs urgently to be addressed.”
IAEA director general Rafael Grossi has warned in a recent interview that the stockpile could allow Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs.
The report also said Iran still has not granted the IAEA access to sites affected by the war.
Separately, Tehran is facing an unprecedented drought this autumn, with rainfall at record lows and reservoirs nearly empty. Officials are pleading with citizens to conserve water as the crisis deepens.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has warned that if there is not enough rainfall soon, Tehran’s water supply could be rationed. But he said that even rationing might not be enough to prevent a disaster.
“If rationing doesn’t work,” Pezeshkian said, “we may have to evacuate Tehran.”
His comments have prompted criticism in Iranian newspapers and on social media. Former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi called the idea “a joke” and said “evacuating Tehran makes no sense at all.”
Iran’s meteorological officials say no rainfall is expected over the next 10 days. I went on weather.com and I don’t see any rain in the forecast either.
The manager of the Latian Dam, one of Tehran’s main water sources, says it now holds less than 10% of its capacity.
“I have never seen this dam so empty since I was born,” an elderly local resident told Iranian state TV.
The manager of the nearby Karaj Dam said rainfall has plummeted dramatically.
“We had a 92% decrease in rain compared to last year,” he said. “We have only eight percent water in our reservoir – and most of it is unusable and considered ‘dead water.’”
Syria: Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa made his visit to the White House on Monday, the first such visit by a Syrian president.
Syria’s inclusion on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism is likely to end next month after more than 40 years, as Trump works to lift all sanctions on the country.
Last Friday the State Department announced that it would lift the terrorist designation for al-Sharaa, along with Syrian Interior Minister Anas Hasan Khattab.
Monday, Trump did waive some sanction on Syria, the latest effort to throw his support behind the former rebel leader.
“We want to see Syria become a country that’s very successful, and I think this leader can do it,” Trump said. “People say he’s had a rough past? We’ve all had rough pasts. But he has had a rough past, and I think frankly if he didn’t have a rough past, you wouldn’t have a chance.”
But there were signs of the administration’s apprehension over a leader with a rough past. Al-Shara was not given the usual pomp and circumstance that comes with a foreign leader visiting the White House. Trump did not greet him outside the White House upon his arrival, and al-Shara entered their meeting through a side door.
Despite the subdued greeting, Trump praised al-Shara after the meeting.
“I like him; I get along with him,” he said. “We’ll do everything we can to make Syria successful, because that’s part of the Middle East.”
The remarks were probably welcomed by al-Shara, seeing as a recent World Bank report estimated the cost of Syria’s reconstruction at $216 billion.
China: Beijing criticized Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi for “seriously damaging bilateral ties and challenging post-war international order” over her remarks last week that Japan could deploy its military in the event of a contingency involving Taiwan.
Takaichi told the Japanese parliament that a Taiwan contingency involving the use of military force could be interpreted as a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, which could allow Tokyo to engage in military action alongside U.S. forces.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian on Monday blasted Takaichi’s assertion, saying it “constitutes a blatant interference in China’s internal affairs, seriously violates the one-China principle” and that Beijing had lodged a protest with Tokyo.
“What signal does the Japanese leader intend to send to ‘Taiwan independence’ forces with these remarks?” Lin continued.
Related to the above, Taiwan’s military is facing a worsening manpower crisis as the numbers volunteering to serve continue to shrink.
The trend has raised concerns that the shortfall could undermine combat readiness even as the government plans record levels of defense spending in response to U.S. lobbying and the growing strength of mainland China’s military.
According to a report from Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan’s Budget Centre, the ratio between authorized and actual troop numbers fell from 88.6 percent in 2020 to 78.6 percent in 2024. By June this had dropped further to 75.6 percent, the lowest in recent years.
It its recent review of the military’s 2026 budget plan, the centre warned that although defense spending was set to hit a new high next year, allowing the armed forces to buy more weapons, “advanced weaponry can only deliver expected effectiveness when operated by well-trained personnel.”
But the report noted: “The voluntary force’s fill rate has kept falling, and many frontline units receiving combat-duty pay still remain below 80 percent staffing.”
Venezuela: The U.S. military killed six people on Sunday in two more strikes on boats suspected of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Monday.
The Pentagon on Wednesday then announced another attack that killed four.
The latest strikes raised the death toll in the campaign to 80 people in 20 attacks in the Pacific and the Caribbean Sea since early September.
The Navy’s largest aircraft carrier entered the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility Tuesday after setting sail from the Mediterranean on Nov. 4, according to the Navy.
The USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group joins eight other Navy vessels in the area.
There are roughly 6,000 personnel stationed aboard the eight vessels. The Ford hosts another 4,000 sailors, dozens of tactical aircraft, and various expeditionary and amphibious forces.
Secretary Hegseth then posted on social media that the military’s war on drugs is “Operation SOUTHEN SPEAR,” which “defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people. The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood – and we will protect it.”
A Reuters/Ipsos poll published today shows that just 29% of Americans support the U.S. military killing drug suspects without the involvement of a court or judge. More than half openly opposed the killings (51%), including 27% of Republicans polled in a survey of 1,200 adults.
And just 21% of Americans supported a war to depose Venezuela’s leader, Maduro, vs. 47% who are opposed.
Separately, the British military has paused intelligence-sharing with the Pentagon regarding the alleged drug-trafficking boats “because it does not want to be complicit in U.S. military strikes and believes the attacks are illegal,” CNN reported Tuesday. The halt in sharing began “over a month ago,” British officials told reporter Natasha Bertrand.
CNN reported: “Several boats hit by the U.S. have either been stationary or were turning around when they were attacked, undermining the administration’s claim that they posed an imminent threat that could not be dealt with through interdiction and arrest.”
Additionally, Canada “has made clear to the U.S. that it does not want its intelligence being used to help target boats for deadly strikes, the sources told CNN.”
And Colombia said it would stop sharing intel with the U.S. over the strikes, President Gustavo Petro announced Tuesday on social media.
Thailand/Cambodia: Thailand said it is suspending the implementation of its “peace deal” with neighboring Cambodia over a disputed border – just two weeks after Donald Trump presided over its signing.
Thailand’s announcement came after soldiers were injured in a landmine explosion near the Cambodian border, a government spokesman said.
Cambodia has said it remains committed to the deal, which was supposed to bring a lasting peace following border clashes which left more than 40 dead in July.
The two sides signed the agreement – which Thailand has refused to call a peace deal – in October during a ceremony with Trump in Malaysia.
But on Monday, Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told a news conference on Monday that he agreed with the decision taken by the country’s defense chiefs, saying the “security threat…has not actually decreased.”
According to the Bangkok Post, the soldiers were injured while on patrol – one of whom lost their foot.
India/Pakistan: This week’s bombings in the capital cities of India and Pakistan, claiming at least 20 lives, were just a day apart. They were nearly identical in damage and impact.
There was nothing to directly connect the attacks, and it’s not known who was responsible for the attack in India. A faction of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in Islamabad.
But tensions between the two nations are already running high and the fear is that the explosions have been enough to raise worries that the two neighboring nuclear powers could again start a cycle of escalation.
Random Musings
–Presidential approval ratings….
Gallup: 41% approve of President Trump’s job performance, while 54% disapprove. 33% of independents approve (Oct. 1-16).
Rasmussen: 44% approve, 54% disapprove (Nov. 14).
A poll released Wednesday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 32% of Republicans disapprove of the way Trump is managing the government, up from 19% in March. His approval rating among independents fell from 38% to 25%.
Trump’s overall approval rating was a meager 33%, a 10-point drop from March.
The survey was conducted after Democrats’ major electoral victories but before the Senate passed a funding bill to end the shutdown.
—Kimberley A. Strassel / Wall Street Journal
“Here’s what time it is: Time for a GOP gut check. Time to set aside the play-it-by-ear triumphalism of the past year – and come up with a plan.
“Not that Republican leaders are voicing this conclusion from [last] Tuesday night’s no-silver-lining election. The official party line is that the GOP’s double-digit losses in Virginia and New Jersey were unremarkable and expected, a function of historical trends and blue-state geography. Public regrets – there are a few – are directed toward the shutdown, the hangover of Joe Biden’s economy, Winsome Earle-Sears or (bizarrely, and courtesy of Donald Trump) the failure of the GOP to end the Senate filibuster. ‘I don’t think the loss last night was any reflection about Republicans at all,’ House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday. With a straight face.
“Don’t buy it, because even those mouthing it don’t. The political pros know blue-state dynamics don’t explain embarrassing GOP losses in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Mississippi. Or the party’s lackluster performance even in red counties. The excuses don’t account for the erosion of hard-won gains among independent and minority voters… The quiet part was instead said out loud by Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. ‘We got our asses handed to us.’
“Mr. Ramaswamy went on to say the lesson for Republicans is that they need to ‘focus on affordability.’ He might have stopped after the first word. The Trump team is moving at a a furious pace – and doesn’t the country’s overloaded brain know it. On any given day, voters are pummeled with 50 noncohesive headlines about Medicaid fraud, National Guard deployments, college compacts, indictments of Trump adversaries, sovereign wealth funds, DEI, Venezuelan baddies, vaccine recommendations, crypto, deportations, rescissions, transgenderism, beef quotas, and something called Humphrey’s Executor. Gold stars for vigor. But even if some – or all – of this is great or overdue, how does any of it translate into lowering the average person’s grocery bill? No Republican has an answer.
“Even this White House’s trademark initiatives – the things it talks about with some relative regularity – roll out like a drunk exiting a kegger. Tariff uncertainty has been a hit to the economy. But try keeping track of what to like or dislike, much less process merit. Would that be the 35% levy on Canada of a Friday? Or the 45% of a Saturday, after the president watched a commercial? ….Maybe it’s just easier to believe – as many a shopper or small business now does – the left’s simple premise that all this is costing you money.
“This day-by-day approach to governance extends to the Republican Congress. In part because the majority is slim, it remains more focused on the art of the possible than on a plan. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act accomplished the important task of forestalling a crushing tax hike, though voters rarely appreciate being saved from something they didn’t experience… Just as there is no overarching plan – after a seven-year mental hiatus – for how to deal with the mess that is ObamaCare. As there is no overarching plan for how to cut spending – with dates and targets – rather than just wax on about it.
“Republicans are 100% correct when they say Mr. Biden did terrible damage to the economy, that we dodged one in Kamala Harris, that Democratic policies are responsible for rising healthcare costs and much more. And? Now what? Their prize of 2024 was owning it all. A remarkable 74% of Americans describe the economy as fair or poor. The overwhelming majority of Tuesday voters cited the economy, taxes and healthcare costs as their biggest worries; immigration and crime were afterthoughts….
“This GOP doesn’t lack for energy, to its (and Mr. Trump’s) credit. Rather, it’s failing to channel that ambition into meaningful end goals that are meaningfully explained. What time is it? Time for a plan.”
–Yes, Republicans came away from the elections with a clear takeaway: focus on the high cost of living or risk big losses in next year’s midterms.
President Trump isn’t convinced. The president has said that Republicans aren’t talking enough about his administration’s successes, and he dismissed questions on voters’ concerns regarding the economy. Most prices are on the downswing, he argued.
“Our energy costs are way down. Our groceries are way down. Everything is way down. And the press doesn’t report it,” Trump said. “So, I don’t want to hear about the affordability. Because right now, we’re much less.”
In the Oval Office last Friday, Trump lashed out at reporters who pressed him on the cost of living. “We are much better than Biden,” he said. “We are the victors on affordability.”
—The Supreme Court on Monday decided not to revisit its landmark ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, leaving undisturbed a decade old decision that some conservative justice oppose but that LGBTQ+ couples have relied on to legalize their relationships and create families.
The court rejected an appeal from Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who drew international attention when she refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses despite the 2015 decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, due to her religious beliefs.
Her appeal led to speculation about whether the court – which has become more conservative since it narrowly struck down same-sex marriage bans – would take another look at it.
—President Trump has granted pre-emptive pardons to Rudy Giuliani and others accused of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to an official familiar with the matter.
According to reports, those pardoned include John Eastman, a lawyer who advised Trump’s 2020 campaign, and Sidney Powell, a conservative pundit who was briefly a public face of his campaign.
The presidential pardons, which would apply in federal court, are largely symbolic. None of those named are currently facing federal charges, and the pardons cannot shield them from ongoing state-level prosecutions.
—Editorial / Washington Post
“A new era of class warfare has begun in New York, and no one is more excited than Generalissimo Zohran Mamdani. Witness the mayor-elect’s change of character since his Tuesday election victory.
“Mamdani ran an upbeat campaign, with a nice-guy demeanor and perpetual smile papering over a long history of divisive and demagogic statements. New Yorkers periodically checking in on politics could understandably believe that he simply wanted to bring the city together and make it more affordable That interpretation became much harder after his victory speech.
“Across 23 angry minutes laced with identity politics and seething with resentment. Mamdani abandoned his cool disposition and made clear that his view of politics isn’t about unity. It isn’t about letting people build better lives for themselves. It is about identifying class enemies – from the landlords who take advantage of tenants to ‘the bosses’ who exploit workers – and then crushing them. His goal is not to increase wealth but to dole it out to favored groups. The word ‘growth’ didn’t appear in the speech, but President Donald Trump garnered eight mentions.
“People’s lives, in Mamdani’s world, can be improved only by government. ‘We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.’ The crowd cheered, of course, but a thinking person might wonder whether it’s good for the institution that has a monopoly on violence to insist that nothing is beyond its purview.
“Such crass appeals have real support in New York, where overpriced housing is a real problem. But it’s important to recognize that high rents are a function of too much government rather than too little. Temporary relief because of the rent freeze he promised for 2 million housing units will inevitably lead to less investment, driving up costs in the long run.
“In the days since winning, Mamdani’s favorite word has become ‘mandate.’ He won decisively and now wants to pursue his agenda, from the rent freeze to ‘free’ child care and buses. Yet as mayor of New York, his control over taxes and transportation is limited. He needs approval from the state to raise taxes. His transition team includes several New York political insiders who understand how to pull the levers of power, as well as diehard ideologues such as Lina Khan, the former Federal Trade Commission chair.
“Mamdani was the first New York mayoral candidate to garner more than 1 million votes since John Lindsay in 1969. One reason he will be so constrained is that Lindsay’s mayoralty was such a disaster for the city’s finances that the state imposed these financial controls to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.
“More interesting will be how Mamdani interprets class struggle in the context of law enforcement and public education, where his powers are more sweeping. He says he wants to keep Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch, who is respected by officers and competent at fighting crime. Will he give her deference? Will he order that prostitution laws stop being enforced, as he has suggested? Will subway stations become dangerous social experiments where vagrants are welcomed in to receive services?
“On schools, Mamdani has done nothing to suggest he’ll take the side of children over union bosses when their interests conflict. New York schools make it too difficult to discipline misbehaving kids, which makes classrooms less safe and hurts everyone. Mamdani has also said he wants to phase out gifted-and-talented programs for elementary school students.
“Exit polls showed that the New Yorkers most skeptical of these utopian promises are those who were born in the city and don’t have college degrees. Mamdani fared best among newcomers and people with advanced degrees. Apparently, living in New York for decades – and witnessing what does and doesn’t work when it comes to running a city – offers more wisdom than grad school.”
—America’s Roman Catholic bishops on Wednesday rebuked the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign in a rare and near-unanimous statement that framed the immigration crisis in starkly moral terms.
Without mentioning the president by name, the context was clear. The bishops said they “oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people” and “pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.”
“We as Catholic bishops love our country and pray for its peace and prosperity,” the statement said. “For this very reason, we feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.”
The bishops showed a united front in standing behind Pope Leo XIV, the first pope from the United States, who has spoken out for immigrants and urged U.S. bishops to do the same.
—House Democrats on Wednesday released emails in which Jeffrey Epstein wrote that President Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s victims, suggesting the convicted sex offender believed Trump knew more about his abuse than he has acknowledged.
The president has emphatically denied any involvement in or knowledge of Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.
But Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said the emails raised new questions about the relationship between the two men. In one of the messages, Epstein flatly asserted that Trump “knew about the girls,” many of whom were later found by investigators to have been underage.
The release of the documents came hours before Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) was sworn in to fill her late father’s seat more than seven weeks after she won a special election to serve for the rest of the term.
Grijalva on Wednesday became the critical 218th signature on a discharge petition to force a vote in the House on releasing the files the federal government has obtained on Epstein.
The petition has received signatures from all House Democrats and four House Republicans – Reps. Thomas Massie (Ky.), Marjoe Taylor Greene (Ga.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.) and Nancy Mace (S.C.).
President Trump shook down Boebert and Mace earlier in the day, trying to get them to remove their signatures from the petition before it reached the requisite number, which is allowable, but once the 218 figure was reached, you aren’t allowed to do so.
Speaker Johnson said he would hold a vote next week.
If passed, the measure would still need to pass the GOP-controlled Senate before going to Trump for his signature or veto.
Trump on Truth Social, Wednesday:
“The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects. Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap. The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country, while at the same time putting many at risk – and they should pay a fair price. There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”
Trump on Truth Social, Friday morning:
“Now that the Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans, to try and deflect from their disastrous SHUTDOWN, and all of their other failures, I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him. This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats. Records show that these men, and many others, spent large portions of their life with Epstein, and on his ‘Island.’ Stay tuned!!!”
In an earlier Truth post Friday, Trump wrote of “Some Weak Republicans have fallen into [the Democrats’] clutches because they are soft and foolish,” referring to the likes of Boebert, who was taken to the Situation Room in the White House this week for her ‘lecture’.
Editorial / Wall Street Journal…prior to Trump’s posts today….
“As is so often the case, Mr. Trump has been his own worst enemy here. As a candidate he fanned the expectations of the Epstein conspiracy theorists who think government is protecting the rich and powerful. Once in power, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel teased explosive findings but later said there’s nothing to see.
“Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has resorted to his usual default that it’s all a ‘hoax,’ even as he strong-arms Republicans to oppose the discharge petition. He looks like he has something to hide even if he doesn’t.
“What Ms. Bondi should have done long ago is call a press conference, explain why she doesn’t want to release more files than she already has, and take the media heat. There are good reasons of privacy and unfair guilt by association not to dump hundreds of thousands of pages of raw FBI investigatory files into the public arena. Some victims who so far may not have been publicly identified could also be hurt.
“Democrats want to keep the Epstein story going because it embarrasses Mr. Trump, and maybe the files will cough up something worse. Republicans don’t want to get cross-wise with that part of the MAGA base that thinks everything is a deep-state conspiracy. This is what passes these days for doing the people’s business in Washington.”
—Congratulations to Blue Origin for successfully launching its orbital rocket for the first time with cargo and landing the rocket’s booster.
The Jeff Bezos-owned company launched its New Glenn rocket from a pad near Cape Canaveral, Fla., Thursday. It deployed two National Aeronautics and Space Administration science satellites that will fly to Mars and study the red planet’s atmosphere.
About 10 minutes into the flight, Blue Origin landed the booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean, doing what SpaceX has been able to pull off for the first time. Good for them.
—Quite a little cold snap this week, thankfully brief, for the Southeast, with some daily records “absolutely shattered,” said meteorologist Scott Kleebauer, including a low of 28 degrees Tuesday at the airport in Jacksonville, Florida, which broke the previous record low of 35 degrees set in 1977.
And we had falling Iguanas, who begin to “freeze” and fall from trees when temperatures dip to 40 degrees or below.
Communities along the Great Lakes and inland in Pennsylvania and New York had the first significant snowfall of the season.
–And the U.S. Mint stamped its last penny at the Philadelphia U.S. Mint during an event on Wednesday, part of an effort to retire the coin that now costs more to produce than it is worth.
The penny was first authorized by the Coinage Act of 1792. It “remains legal tender and will retain its value indefinitely,” according to the Treasury Department, which said in a statement that there are currently an estimated 300 billion pennies in circulation – “far exceeding the amount needed for commerce.”
Try telling that to retailers who can’t find any of the 300 billion.
–Lastly, don’t forget the premiere of Ken Burns’ “The American Revolution,” Sun. on PBS.
George Will / Washington Post
“History’s gears are lubricated by gore. Witness America’s Revolutionary War, whose continuing reverberations have done more to improve the course of human events than any other event in history….
“So says a new telling of America’s origin story, which is a tapestry of suffering, viciousness, selflessness and nobility. Beginning Sunday, in six two-hour episodes on PBS, ‘The American Revolution’ will immerse viewers in an often bewildering, sometimes dismaying, but ultimately exhilarating documentary by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt….
“And always, more gore. In the middle of an operation to amputate (without anesthesia) a soldier’s leg, a cannonball removed the other.
“In his preface to the film’s companion book, Burns says Americans today are detached from the war’s ‘sometimes difficult truths.’ There is, however, ‘comfort in complication,’ when ‘the distractions’ of myths and nostalgia are replaced not by ‘unforgiving revisionism’ but by unblinking comprehension of the always winding, often violent, course of human events.
“Consider this documentary the unofficial beginning of our 250th birthday party. Given today’s pandemic of crankiness, the party might trundle downhill from here. But for six nights, the view from the hilltop is riveting.”
—
Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.
Slava Ukraini.
God bless America.
—
Gold $4088
Oil $60.06
Bitcoin: $94,447 [4:00 PM ET, Friday…awful week, now down from $125,000 high on Oct. 5]
Regular Gas: $3.08; Diesel: $3.76 [$3.08 – $3.55 yr. ago]
Returns for the week 11/10-11/14
Dow Jones +0.3% [47147]
S&P 500 +0.1% [6734]
S&P MidCap -1.2%
Russell 2000 -1.8%
Nasdaq -0.5% [22900]
Returns for the period 1/1/25-11/14/25
Dow Jones +10.8%
S&P 500 +14.5%
S&P MidCap +2.7%
Russell 2000 +7.1%
Nasdaq +18.6%
Bulls 56.63
Bears 15.1
Hang in there.
Brian Trumbore
