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Six-figure incomes are in 'survival mode'

USA Today -  A six-figure salary doesn’t mean what it once did. That’s the takeaway from a new Harris poll, which suggests a six-figure income in 2025 equates to survival, but not necessarily to success. 

One in three six-figure earners described themselves in the poll as financially distressed. Two in three said six-figure pay is not a sign of wealth. The Harris Poll survey, released Nov. 14, reached 2,109 Americans, including 728 who earn at least $100,000 a year.  

Meanwhile. . .

The Trump administration has released the names of 608 people detained by immigration agents, and whose arrests might have violated a court order, and only 16 of them have been identified by the federal government as a "high public safety risk" because of their alleged criminal histories, according to court documents. 

A new Apple feature allows users to add their passports to iPhones and smartwatches for smoother travel. More

Polls

Newsweek -  The latest YouGov/Economist polling, conducted between November 7 and 10, shows that Trump's support among the oldest voters has fallen sharply since October. Last month, Baby Boomers were evenly split, with 49 percent approval and 49 percent disapproval. In the new November data, approval drops to 42 percent while disapproval climbs to 57 percent—a 15-point net decline in just one month.

13 simple steps to get your home guest-ready for the holidays

Politics

Judge bars Trump administration from cutting funding to University of California 

Roll Call -  Halfway through the 2026 midterm cycle, the fight for the House is remarkably stable, and that’s good news for Democrats’ chances of winning the majority.

Republican efforts to pad their majority through mid-decade redistricting haven’t been as successful as projected thus far, and President Donald Trump’s first year of his second term hasn’t been as popular as Republicans had expected.

Nearly 90 years of history is on Democrats’ side. The president’s party has lost House seats in 20 of the past 22 midterm elections, and the fewest number of seats lost in those cycles was four (1962) and five (1986). 

MS Now -  Since the House Oversight Committee released documents on Wednesday related to the late convicted sex offender, including emails by Epstein that mention Trump by name, Trump has been dodging the press. 

On Friday, Trump had no public events or meetings on his schedule. And instead of engaging with reporters — whom this president typically veers toward — Trump has retreated to social media to launch his counteroffensive on the Epstein crisis. 

Axios -  President Trump pulled his support for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) yesterday, ending a years-long alliance after weeks of Greene publicly breaking with her party, Axios' Kate Santaliz and Alex Isenstadt write.

Greene was once considered one of Trump's fiercest allies and a MAGA brand ambassador. But Trump accused her of veering "too far to the left" and said he'd back a primary challenger "if the right person runs."

Greene has taken positions in recent weeks that have puzzled Republicans, and irritated Trump.

•     She's said her party has "no plan" when it comes to health care.
•     She was one of four Republicans to sign a discharge petition to release the Epstein files, against Trump's wishes.
•     In an interview with Axios last month, she slammed Trump's second-term agenda as "America Last." MORE

NY Times -  On Sunday, Trump granted sweeping pardons to 77 people who helped him attempt to subvert the 2020 election. Last week, Trump pardoned Glen Casada, the Republican former speaker of the Tennessee House, and Casada’s former chief of staff, Cade Cothren. Both men had been convicted of charges including wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

In the same set of pardons, Trump also pardoned Robert Harshbarger Jr., the husband of Diana Harshbarger, a Republican representative from Tennessee. As our newsroom reported, Robert had pleaded guilty to “health care fraud and distributing a misbranded drug, in this case kidney medications, some of which came from China, that were not approved for the purpose by the Food and Drug Administration.”

This is just a partial list of the most notorious and unjustifiable pardons of Trump’s second term so far. MORE

Axios - The Trump administration killed a Biden-era proposal to require airlines to compensate passengers for flight delays or cancellations. The Transportation Department said airlines already have incentives to reimburse passengers voluntarily. Go deeper.

Attorney General Pam Bondi assigned the U.S. attorney in Manhattan to investigate Jeffrey Epstein's ties to prominent Democrats, including former President Clinton. President Trump ordered the investigation on Truth Social. Go deeper. 

Trump regime opens up millions of Arctic land to fossil fuel drilling

RBReich - The Trump regime just killed a rule protecting millions of acres of western Arctic lands from fossil fuel drilling.  It’s yet another giveaway to Big Oil — which spent $450 million backing Trump and Republicans and lobbying Congress last year.

Billionaires

RBReich -  53% of Americans believe billionaires are a threat to American democracy.  Meanwhile, just 100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion on federal elections last year — a 160-fold increase since Citizens United.

Nearly Half of Gen Z Adults Have Never Had Sex

Newsweek - Roughly half of Generation Z adults have never had sex, according to a new report from DatingAdvice.com and the Kinsey Institute.

While across America, one in five U.S. adults said they never had sex, that figure was staggeringly high for Gen Z, of which 48 percent said they were virgins.
Why It Matters

Gen Z—composed of young people born from 1997 to 2012, is seeing its adult sector, ages 18 to 28—having less sex than many of the older generations, marking a shift in many pertaining to views on romance, dating and relationships. 

Donald Trump

NY Times -  President Trump came under pressure this week when Congress released a trove of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails, in which the convicted sex offender mentioned his ties to Trump. The president emphatically denied knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and insisted that anyone suggesting otherwise was perpetuating a “hoax.”

Today, however, Trump demanded that the Justice Department begin an investigation into several other people mentioned in the emails, including former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and the venture capitalist and megadonor Reid Hoffman. Notably, he singled out only Democrats, and his own name was nowhere to be seen.

 Independent UK -  Donald Trump has claimed that London is so dangerous that "people are being stabbed in the ass" as he continued to criticize the city's mayor, Sir Sadiq Khan.

The US president has previously described Sir Sadiq as a "terrible mayor" and made an unfounded claim that Sir Sadiq wants to impose sharia law in London. Sir Sadiq responded by dubbing Mr Trump “racist, sexist, misogynistic,” and “Islamophobic."

"My mother loved London... That was a different London than you have today. Today you have people being stabbed in the ass or worse," Mr Trump claimed in a GB News interview.

Axios -  President Trump pulled his support for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) yesterday, ending a years-long alliance after weeks of Greene publicly breaking with her party, Axios' Kate Santaliz and Alex Isenstadt write.

Greene was once considered one of Trump's fiercest allies and a MAGA brand ambassador. But Trump accused her of veering "too far to the left" and said he'd back a primary challenger "if the right person runs."

Greene has taken positions in recent weeks that have puzzled Republicans, and irritated Trump.

•     She's said her party has "no plan" when it comes to health care.
•     She was one of four Republicans to sign a discharge petition to release the Epstein files, against Trump's wishes.
•     In an interview with Axios last month, she slammed Trump's second-term agenda as "America Last." MORE

NY Times -  On Sunday, Trump granted sweeping pardons to 77 people who helped him attempt to subvert the 2020 election. Last week, Trump pardoned Glen Casada, the Republican former speaker of the Tennessee House, and Casada’s former chief of staff, Cade Cothren. Both men had been convicted of charges including wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

In the same set of pardons, Trump also pardoned Robert Harshbarger Jr., the husband of Diana Harshbarger, a Republican representative from Tennessee. As our newsroom reported, Robert had pleaded guilty to “health care fraud and distributing a misbranded drug, in this case kidney medications, some of which came from China, that were not approved for the purpose by the Food and Drug Administration.”

This is just a partial list of the most notorious and unjustifiable pardons of Trump’s second term so far. MORE

 

 

17% drop in American religion

New Republic -  The 17-point drop in the percentage of U.S. adults who say religion is an important part of their daily life — from 66% in 2015 to 49% today — ranks among the largest Gallup has recorded in any country over any 10-year period since 2007.

About half of Americans now say religion is not an important part of their daily life. They remain as divided on the question today as they were last year.

Such large declines in religiosity are rare. Since 2007, only 14 out of more than 160 countries in the World Poll have experienced drops of over 15 percentage points in religious importance over any 10-year period.

Only a small number of mostly wealthy nations have experienced larger losses in religiosity, including Greece from 2013-2023 (28 points), Italy from 2012-2022 (23 points), and Poland from 2013-2023 (22 points). Other countries, including Chile, Türkiye and Portugal, have seen declines similar in magnitude to the U.S. decline.

Jeffrey Epstein

The Outstanding Question About Epstein and Trump 

NY Times -   This week, Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, revealed that a whistle-blower gave the House Judiciary Committee information about the special treatment that Ghislaine Maxwell is receiving at the minimum-security federal prison she was recently transferred to.

In a letter to Donald Trump, Raskin wrote that Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for her role in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, has had custom meals delivered to her cell. The warden, he said, personally arranged for Maxwell to meet privately with family members and other visitors and even provided snacks and refreshments. According to Raskin, her guests were allowed to bring computers, potentially allowing her unauthorized communication with the outside world.

Maxwell was allegedly taken to the prison’s exercise room after hours so she could work out alone, and “allowed to enjoy recreation time in staff-only areas,” wrote Raskin. An inmate who trains service dogs was reportedly instructed to give her special access to a puppy. Raskin claimed that a top official at the prison said that he is “sick of having to be Maxwell’s bitch.”

Courier - The US House Oversight Committee on Wednesday announced a massive document dump from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, including thousands of emails discussing a wide range of topics, including women, blackmail, and spending the holidays with Donald Trump.

The 20,000 documents come in the form of poorly organized folders with unhelpful labels, screenshots of emails, and heavily redacted spreadsheets. Some of the files are devoid of context, such as a video in the NATIVES folder of a dog playing with plushies of Trump and Hillary Clinton, while others are broken up in confusing ways, like email chains split into several PDFs.

To make this massive data dump more accessible, COURIER has compiled the 20,000 documents from Epstein’s estate into an easily searchable repository via Google Pinpoint. Use the search tool here.

Starbucks Workers Have Launched a Nationwide Strike and Consumer Boycott

• In These Times 

Saving medicine about to be tossed

Nice News - Each year, $11 billion worth of unopened, unexpired prescription medication is thrown away — but one organization is working to redistribute it to low-income communities in the U.S. instead. Sirum, a nonprofit social enterprise, makes individuals and organizations aware of what they can donate and disperses unused medicine to those who need it most. “Getting medications to the millions of people who need it to live a healthy life, saving medicine to save lives — that is something we can do today,” co-founder Kiah Williams said in a 2020 TED video.

Food stamps facts

Pew Researh - In May 2025, nearly 42 million Americans – around one-in-eight – received benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Our updated analysis of federal data answers questions about who uses the program, how much it costs and more.

• Who is eligible for SNAP? | What are the work requirements? | What do we know about recipients? | How much do they get? | Where is usage highest and lowest? | How and where can people use food stamps?

I’m a Psychoanalyst. This Is What Technology Is Doing to Us.

Psychoanalyst Steven Barrie-Anthony -  I increasingly see in my practice how people are beginning to feel that technology has pulled them away, again and again, from what matters most. Perhaps tech has interrupted their creative lives or their emotional growth. A pattern familiar to many of us is how these distractions disrupt connection with others...

Anger often comes first. Then we get to the hurt beneath it. All these moments — not actually unseen, but noticed and ignored — leave this residue of grief...

One constant I’ve found is how technology brings a kind of alexithymic fog — alexithymia being the condition of having difficulty identifying or being able to express one’s emotions. This isn’t universal, and the emotions we’re pushing away aren’t always the same. But it happens in a startlingly consistent way.

When we do manage to feel, it can be difficult to dwell with the feelings. Instead, we move swiftly into action... We toss the phone, delete the app, do a digital detox. These solutions rarely hold. The detox ends. We pick back up the phone. We reinstall the app. Rather than staying with the feeling, we vacillate between immersion in tech and rejecting it entirely. This circuit, moving from feeling to doing, is a key piece of technology’s anesthetizing environment.

Tech encourages the instrumentalization of emotional life, by which I mean that our feelings seem real only if they translate into actions that help us achieve specific goals. Take the avalanche of fitness metrics appearing on devices like Apple watches — resting heart rate, step count, sleep score. These numbers take on lives of their own and come to feel more real than the mind-body states they measure. On social media, similarly, the representations we put forward can take on a kind of hyper reality. With A.I. tools like ChatGPT, the college experience shifts from creative immersion to identifying prompts to achieve a specific aim.

To use the language of Silicon Valley, we are highly incentivized to focus on action in pursuit of external markers of success. The notion of staying with feeling without translating it into action seems pointless. MORE

Worst job market in years for college grads

Axios - College students graduating in the spring will be entering one of the worst job markets in years, The Wall Street Journal reports from a survey of employers.

    Big companies believe they can get by with significantly fewer workers than they've had in the past, so they're hiring less overall. Entry-level applicants are also competing against a large population of recently laid-off workers with a bit more experience.

And AI may eat everyone's lunch before long.

Handshake, a job site catering to people who are early in their careers, says there are an average of 26% more applications per job, compared to the same time last year, per the WSJ.

Over 60% of the upcoming graduating class said they're pessimistic about their careers.

Meanwhile. ..

More than a dozen transgender members of the United States Air Force and Space Force are suing the Trump administration, saying they were forced to separate from active duty service without retirement benefits. Separation means a person is leaving active duty but not necessarily the service entirely. - CBSNews 

Raising kids is too expensive, most Americans say in new survey

Weather

Maps Show November Weather Forecast for Each State

Military takeover of US cities has already cost taxpayers nearly $500M

Independent, UK - President Donald Trump’s decision to send the U.S. military into American cities to bolster local law enforcement has already cost taxpayers $473 million and counting, according to a report.

Data published by the non-partisan research group the National Priorities Project, and reported by The Intercept, based on open-source information, estimates that the occupation of Washington, D.C., which began in August, has been the most costly so far, at $270 million.

The D.C. deployment was called into question from the outset, given that the capital’s falling crime rate entirely contradicted Trump’s claims about crime in the city, and National Guard members were soon reported to have so little to do that they were reduced to clearing trash from the streets.

Jeffrey Epstein

Oversight Committee Releases Additional Epstein Estate Documents

Epstein Called Trump 'Borderline Insane' and Questioned If He Had 'Early Dementia' in Emails Before Death

 

AI crimes

Axkios - AI is rewriting the playbook for crime — from cheap deepfake scams and AI-written ransomware to mass identity hijacks and critical-infrastructure hacks, Axios' Russell Contreras writes. This new class of AI-supercharged crime is endangering lives and financial systems. Police training, laws and cross-border tools aren't keeping up.

Off-the-shelf AI lowers the skill level and cost of carrying out attacks, enabling small crews to execute schemes that previously required nation-state resources.

• Crimes can now hit millions at once with voice clones and account takeovers. Local agencies are trained and funded to chase one case at a time.

AI can create automations to "lock pick" into a system millions of times per second, something humans can't do, futurist Ian Khan tells Axios.

• Once inside, hackers can then use AI to steal identities, pump and dump stocks and cause havoc to utility plants, smart homes and hospitals.

The attacks can come from across the street to the other side of the world, said Marc Goodman, author of "Future Crimes: Inside the Digital Underground and the Battle for Our Connected World."

• Deep fake voices can convince victims to hand over money, or stolen identities could lead to voter fraud, child pornography and false arrests.

Chinese state-backed hackers used AI tools from Anthropic to automate breaches of major companies and foreign governments during a September cyber campaign, the company said yesterday.

• "We believe this is the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention," the company said in a statement.

Beyond large-scale attacks, even petty AI crimes have local law enforcement on edge.

Future robo-dogs could burglarize homes.

• Hacked cars may just drive off by themselves to chop shops, and AI systems could inform a would-be thief the best way to break into a car. Share this story.

Six man football in Texas schools

Nice News - If Friday Night Lights taught us anything, it’s that many Texas communities are completely devoted to their high school football teams. But what happens if the local school is too small to get 11 players on the field? That’s where six-man football comes in: In the town of Gordon (population 500), high schoolers play a downsized version of the sport that brings a significant morale boost to residents.
​
According to coach Mike Reed, it’s no less exciting than the traditional game. “It’d be like watching a basketball game with football pads on,” he told CBS News. “It’s very, very, very fast. It’s very, very high scoring.” Six-man is played on a shorter field, with field goals worth four points, and each player shifts between offense, defense, and special teams. But though the teams are small, they still get the support of cheer squads, drumlines, and enthusiastic fans in the stands.
​
And this setup is gaining popularity in rural Texas: While the state only held around 80 six-man teams in the ’90s, it now boasts more than 230. It gives community members a sense of pride and identity, a lineup of social events, and a reason to set differences aside. “I feel like it’s what brings people together,” said one Gordon spectator. “In a world where it’s so divided, it’s like one thing we can get behind is six-man football, and that’s exactly what we do every week.”

Coffee May Curb the Risk of Irregular Heartbeats

Nice News - Perk up, coffee lovers! Contrary to conventional wisdom, a recent study found that drinking a cup of joe a day may protect the heart against atrial fibrillation, or A-fib, a common irregular heart rhythm condition that can lead to stroke, blood clots, and heart failure.
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“The results were astounding,” first author Christopher X. Wong said in a statement. For the study — ironically dubbed DECAF (Does Eliminating Coffee Avoid Fibrillation?) — researchers followed 200 adults with A-fib over six months. Half of the participants consumed at least one cup of caffeinated coffee or espresso each day, while the other half abstained from caffeine.
​
After monitoring the group via electrocardiograms, researchers found that the java drinkers had a 39% lower risk of recurrent A-fib episodes than those who avoided coffee. While the why is still unclear, senior author Gregory Marcus told NBC News that caffeine might help by stimulating the body’s adrenaline response, since A-fib episodes are often reported during relaxed states when adrenaline levels are low.

Charlotte NC picked as next city for Trump immigration attack

NPR -The Trump administration has selected Charlotte, N.C., as the next city for its immigration crackdown, according to Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden. The sheriff said yesterday that federal officials contacted him and could arrive as early as tomorrow. The development comes as some Border Patrol agents are leaving Chicago, after weeks of aggressive raids there.  

 

Charlotte drew national attention this fall following the fatal stabbing of a Ukrainian woman on public transit, says Nick de la Canal with NPR network station WFAE. The suspect was not an immigrant, but Republicans and the White House criticized the city’s Democratic mayor for the crime. Violent crime is down 20% over the last year, according to de la Canal, but there have still been calls for the National Guard to deploy to the area. It is currently unknown how many agents are expected to arrive in the city, and the community has been reacting with fear to the news, despite advocacy groups urging calm. 

Polls

NBC - A new NBC News poll found 82% of Republicans surveyed say they have a close friend who's a member of the other party, compared with 64% of Democrat

Catholic bishops challenge Trump's immigration policies

The Guardian -  The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a rare condemnation of president Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and advocated for “meaningful immigration reform”.

“We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools,” the bishops said in a special message, the first of its kind in 12 years...

 The message echoes similar critiques made by Pope Leo, who has called for “deep reflection” about the way migrants are being treated in the US under Trump, Reuters reported...

In their message, the bishops expressed concern about what they described as “a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling” and immigration enforcement. They said they were saddened by the debate and vilification of migrants, and opposed “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.”

The bishops also raised concerns about conditions in detention centers, and what they called the arbitrary removal of legal status of some migrants.

“We recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good,” the bishops said.

From MSNBC to MS NOW

The Guardian - "MS NOW: Don’t Worry, You’ll Get Used To It,” that’s how Morning Joe’ co-host Mika Brzezinski put it on 11 October during an onstage appearance at MSNBC’s annual live event for superfans in New York City.

The event, which mostly filled up Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom with a group of eager power-viewers gawking to see their favorite cable news hosts, was the network’s last as MSNBC.

The US’s biggest liberal-leaning network – which has been known as MSNBC since its launch in 1996 – will officially become known as MS NOW. The somewhat forced acronym stands for My Source for News, Opinion, and the World. The “MS” comes from the network’s original partnership with Microsoft back in the 1990s, which ended more than a decade ago. Network president Rebecca Kutler told the Guardian last week that she felt “very strongly” about keeping the letters because of the history of the brand and because it’s how many people refer to the channel anyway.

The change was forced on the network by its parent company, NBCUniversal, which is breaking off MSNBC along with a few other cable networks into a new, separate company called Versant. MSNBC/MS Now is trying to make the best of it, using it as an opportunity to promote the brand anew as a source of patriotic, trustworthy news and analysis.

Justice Department sues to block California redistricting plan

MSNBC -  The Justice Department is suing over California’s redistricting plan, which state voters overwhelmingly approved last week in an effort to redraw their congressional map in Democrats’ favor. The DOJ is joining an existing case brought by California Republicans against Proposition 50, which seeks to give Democrats five additional seats in the U.S. House ahead of the 2026 midterms. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom had touted the measure as necessary to counter Texas’ gerrymandering over the summer at President Donald Trump’s request.