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Thursday Afternoon News Updates - 12/4/25
It's early — but there's already a whole lot to report. Catch up with me.
By Ben Meiselas
As I watched the news unfold this morning, it became impossible to ignore the accelerating deterioration of both the American economy and the conduct of the man currently occupying the Oval Office. New data shows layoffs surging past 1.17 million for the year, the highest since the 2008 crash and the early months of the Covid crisis. Yet Donald Trump, instead of confronting this reality, spent his morning shouting into social media about the “poisoning of America” and promoting his golf course in Scotland.
Let’s dive in.
The 71,000 job cuts reported in November alone bring the total for 2025 to nearly 1.2 million, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. It is a staggering figure, and one made worse by the fact that much of the underlying economic data is now coming from private sources because the Trump administration has stopped publishing key federal indicators. Even conservative financial commentators have been forced to acknowledge parallels to past recession years. One analyst on Bloomberg noted that job cuts above 70,000 in a single month have happened only twice since the financial crisis. Meanwhile, Fox “News” has begun floating the idea that this wave of layoffs is somehow “good news” for Trump, defining economic suffering as politically useful rather than sounding the alarm for millions of households being pushed into crisis.
The consequences of Trump’s policies reach beyond the labor market. Major companies, including Constellation Brands, Wingstop, Colgate-Palmolive, and PepsiCo, report significant sales declines in heavily Latino neighborhoods, where fear caused by Trump’s mass deportation agenda has driven consumers out of stores, bars, and restaurants. Latino customers make up a substantial portion of these companies’ revenue. When a government terrorizes communities, business collapses. This is not theoretical. It is happening today.
Health care costs are soaring as well, devastating families already struggling to stay afloat. A report on the front page of the Boston Globe documented families facing annual premiums nearing or surpassing ten thousand dollars, with increases of four to five thousand more on the horizon. For households earning $60,000, $80,000, even $160,000 a year, these numbers are unsustainable. Trump ran on the claim that he would make health care more affordable, that a new plan was always just two weeks away. Years later, the country is still waiting.
Pressed on these crises, Speaker Mike Johnson responded that Americans simply need to “relax.” He assured reporters that relief will come “next year” when what he calls the “Beautiful Bill” fully kicks in. But Johnson’s assurances ring hollow for families already crushed by the affordability crisis, workers losing their livelihoods, and businesses seeing revenues collapse. Telling Americans to relax while the bottom falls out of the economy is not a policy. It is contempt.
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But as dire as the economic picture is, the moral and legal crises emanating from this White House may be even more alarming. Members of Congress were recently shown unedited video of a September 2 operation off the coast of Venezuela that resulted in the killing of two survivors stranded on a destroyed fishing boat. Representative Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the footage “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” describing individuals in “clear distress” who “were killed by the United States.” These comments came after weeks of shifting explanations from Trump officials, many of whom have alternated between claiming the killings were justified and insisting similar operations occurred under past presidents.
I invited Rep. Himes to join me on the MeidasTouch Podcast today to discuss what he saw. Stay tuned and keep a lookout for my interview with him.
The minimization of such actions among Trump’s allies is jarring. Some lawmakers attempted to compare the operation to unrelated policies under President Obama. Others dismissed concerns entirely, offering rhetoric that dehumanized the victims rather than reckoning with the profound legal and ethical questions raised by the footage. Even basic inquiries into the intelligence behind the operation have been met with evasions from senior Republicans, raising further concerns about oversight and truthfulness.
At the same time, Trump has escalated his hateful rhetoric inside the Oval Office, referring to Somali immigrants as “garbage” and prompting nothing more than nervous laughter and silence from the aides and officials around him. Their refusal to confront this behavior is not incidental. It reflects a broader complicity that has enabled the administration’s pattern of cruelty, corruption, and institutional degradation. The normalization of hate, the disregard for life, the dismantling of economic safeguards, and the abandonment of transparency form a single, devastating pattern.
What is unfolding is not a series of isolated missteps. It is a systematic unraveling of democratic norms and economic stability under a president increasingly unable or unwilling to carry out his basic responsibilities. Americans deserve better than to be told to “relax” while their jobs disappear, their health costs skyrocket, their communities are terrorized, and their government becomes a vehicle for cruelty.
This moment demands accountability, honesty, and urgency.
Let me know your thoughts, and make sure you are subscribed as we continue reporting the facts, no matter how inconvenient they are for the regime.
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JUST A FEW COMMENTS:
Just be patient, relax? Yeah, tell that to my landlord, electric company, car insurance, etc.
MAGA Mike needs to be turned out by his own caucus. He is a total clown, and has done nothing but harm “we the people.” The GOP are in moral collapse.
Does it matter? They will just put up another yes man....
It has been expressed by Dt and the Republicans that "On Day One" when Dt is the president (twice) things will improve, and patience is requested. So sad and our nation voted for this idiot… TWICE!
So many people make less than $65,000 a year. A person making $35,000 has to choose what to pay.
i am among that low portion even lower only $12k/yr
Oh my God, wow I feel for . How do you afford groceries? I saw once on Social Security. The average person makes $1400 a month average that’s half of everyone on Social Security is making less than $1400 I’m just Shocked, but our senior citizens are barely surviving. God bless you cause I don’t know how you do it
The average SS payment is just over $2,000. https://www.bankrate.com/retirement/average-monthly-social-security-check/#:~:text=Key%20takeaways,well%20as%20the%20maximum%20benefit.
They must have changed it the last I saw it a few years back it was 1400. I can see it went up a little bit, but that’s a big change. Maybe we’re reading two different things.
This is what I've been seeing for 2025, but it must vary depending on how long people have worked, etc. https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/social-security/average-monthly-social-security-check
SS depends on your salary while you were working then subtracts Medicare so average payment is very misleading I was getting less than $600 a month until Biden signed the bill that gave me back all of my SS starting in Jan I am now taking home $852 while wife SS take home is $644 I am 75 wife is 74. Rent while our fully paid for house is being built electric, city water/sewer/garbage car insurance and groceries come out of our total income Thankfully we have other income from defined retirement and VA disability, which means no Medicare advantage needed for either of us I seriously doubt my our SS is out of line with a lot of other people
Alabama just published in 2026 to live comfortably in Alabama you have to make $80,000 a year and tightly budget.
Trump calls people from Somalia "garbage." I wonder if he knows millions of us consider him to be the very definition of that word. He literally stinks in every way possible, kind of like rotting garbage in the hot sun.
Dear Trump, Thune, Johnson, Maga. I'm 68, retired but responsible for health insurance for my wife and two sons. That cost of our 3 bronze plans was $19,000 in 2025 and is now $31,000 in 2026. $31,000 for the lowest level of coverage already so don't tell me to go from a silver to bronze plan! Where am I supposed to come up with that money? Your idea of $2,000 toward HSAs deductables does nothing to help people afford insurance in the first place. I know you struggle to relate to your lower and middle class constituency. Let's make this simple. Pass universal healthcare, restore subsidies .. or we'll take the same insurance you have.
Trump's escalating erratic, hateful behavior is a hallmark sign of dementia. His staff and Cabinet humor him because their jobs and income (not to mention their legal liabilities) depend on it... the big question is: what will it take for them to invoke the 25th and install Vance? There's a breaking point somewhere, and the longer he's allowed to continue in this Alzheimer's spiral the worse it will be for them in the end, when they have to answer as to why they let it go on so long.....
We are a group of people that understand our untenable state. Dementia donnie (sir naps a lot) and his despicable ilk called cabinet members and the dingle balls that hang around by association need to be removed and imprisoned. We see this, we know this. I hope anyone that supports this machine gets what they deserve. I miss my America.πΊπΈ
We could add to that Sir Lies A Lot! Sir Farts A Lot! It’s endless.π
I liked this one: "his body odor sets off car alarms."
Yes. Funny. it would REALLY be hilarious if we weren't dealing with who/what we're dealing with..........
I just watched a video (literally a minute ago)on the potential impacts of AI on the future of the US and more importantly, the world. So many of the decisions DJT is making are hard to make sense of. It left me feeling like maybe he is being used as a TOOL by the wealthiest tech bros to test aspects of AI on the US population. Like firing so many employees, partnering with Putin, closing things like USAID and the weather service, and potentially FEMA. Having Elon Musk and JD Vance, so influenced by Peter Thiel, in such influential adjacency. Makes one feel like they are losing their mind!
Even more frightening is that the companies are borrowing big time to support OpenAI--similar to what was described in Andrew Ross Sorkin's Book "1929."
....and guess which party was in charge in 1929?????????????????
The economy usually suffers when they're in. This year we've had 1.2 million people lose their jobs.
Um.....are you sure it's ONLY that many???? (No, I'm not offending you although I know it seems like it............!) Thanks for your reply!
Not offended at all. That's actually quite a lot. "In 2025, approximately
1.17 million job cuts were announced in the US, which is the highest level since 2020 when the pandemic caused widespread business closures. This figure is considered high because it's significantly more than the previous year and marks the fifth-highest number of layoffs since 1993"
I appreciate it! Thanks for your reply!
Cheeto And His Billionaire Robber Barons
In Vanessa Williamson’s Power of Taxation in American History(https://bit.ly/44Hswxp) she makes the point that cuts through the myths surrounding taxation and democracy, spotlighting how fiscal choices reveal who a country is actually built to serve Does it serve WE the People or does it serve the wealthy?
What becomes unavoidable is the way taxation functions not as an accounting exercise but as an architecture of democracy—one that is deliberately weakened when authoritarian movements want to keep public institutions too poor to challenge private dominance
The history she interrogates shows that when opponents of democracy fear the public’s voice, they don’t just suppress votes; they drain the revenue that makes self-government real This is at the heart of Project 2025 Render the federal government nonfunctional so that the wealthy class can rule through a dictatorship This has always been the Republican Nazi playbook since Reagan in the 1980’s Get the wealthy to replace the "social safety net" BUT by their rules
One such example is Michael Dell of Dell Computers making a “donation” to kids of low income families to the tune of $6B (yes that’s with a “B”) to fund what will be called “Trump accounts” Of course this is not out of the generous heart of Dell He’s been cajoled to make a Republican Nazi “business deal” donation for Cheeto so he can make good with his “Trump accounts” or baby accounts(https://bit.ly/4oDh2T1)
It is now clear how the Nazi party wants to implement Project 2025 Create programs that businesses will support but can pull at any time at their own discretion leaving WE the People holding nothing Classic counterparty risk and no accountability
I can’t believe there’s only an uproar about the two men killed by an illegal order. The whole operation is illegal! There’s no war declaration. No proof that any of the seventy + people were involved with drugs. People should have been screaming for months.
It goes back all the way to 2015. There is something very wrong with this country that it will not deal justly with a criminal like the dictator. Despite running a campaign full of shocking revelations about who he is, in 2016 we elected simply the most unqualified, most dangerous person we could ever have come up with to the highest office in the land. 4 years of sheer insanity made worse by a once-in-a-hundred-years pandemic failed to dissuade 75 million from voting for him in 2020. He capped that off by leading an insurrection against the United States government on live television. After a brief stop in the nation’s doghouse, having lost the election in 2020, he began to rise again from the ashes. In the 4 years after his defeat, we dawdled, hedged, contemplated, dragged our feet and generally avoided the issue of holding him accountable for the crimes he committed in his first regime. He was convicted of 34 counts of fraud and deceit in New York but in the eyes of tens of millions, that didn’t qualify him as a real criminal. Then we decided to dismiss 8 years of his lies and criminal behavior, and believe him when he said he would reduce the price of eggs on day 1 if we re-elected him to the Oval Office in 2024. And so here we are, killing innocent fishermen in the Caribbean and chalking it up to just another day in the insanity of this criminal who we just can’t seem to quit. People should have been screaming about him for a decade, but I get your point. All the talk about this not being who we are is a lie. This is exactly who we are. We’ll stay with him until he croaks.