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US-EU Escalation: Trump's New Cold War with Europe (Axios)
The Trump administration is engaged in open hostilities with the European Union, turning long-simmering feuds over free speech, Ukraine and mass migration into official US policy, according to Axios.
The EU's $140 million fine of Elon Musk's X platform lit the fuse on a conflict the Trump administration was already primed for — and which it formalized in a new National Security Strategy that casts Europe as a geopolitical villain.
Russia has welcomed the transatlantic rift, with Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov telling reporters Sunday that "the adjustments we are seeing ... are largely consistent with our vision," Axios reported.
Blue Wave Hits Florida: Democrat Wins Miami Mayoralty, Shaking Trump-Led State Dominance (Bloomberg)
Eileen Higgins won Miami’s mayoral runoff, beating a candidate backed by President Trump while becoming the first woman ever and the first Democrat in nearly three decades to lead the city. Higgins led Republican Emilio Gonzalez by more than 18 percentage points, with all precincts reporting.
Economic Reality Check: Trump Grades His Economy "A+++++" While Most Americans Don't Agree (Axios)
President Trump told Politico on Tuesday that if he could grade his own economy, he'd give himself an "A-plus" — an "A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus."
Polls — and November's blue wave — indicate
that many Americans disagree with that sentiment, even among Trump's voter base, but the president has held firm to the message that his administration's economic policies have been an unqualified success.
Approval of Trump's handling of the economy is at 36% according to the latest Gallup poll. Only 32% classified the economy as good in a CBS News/YouGov survey conducted in mid-November.
Jobless Growth: US Job Openings Rise to Five-Month High, While Layoffs Reach Highest Level Since 2023 (Bloomberg)
US job openings picked up in October to the highest level in five months, though less hiring and more layoffs pointed to a continued slowdown in the labor market.
Meanwhile, the number of layoffs for the month of October rose to 1.85 million, the highest since the start of 2023, according to the JOLTS report. Dismissals picked up in leisure and hospitality, as well as manufacturing. And hiring declined by 218,000 from the month prior to 5.15 million.
Today at the Federal Reserve: Fed Expected to Cut Rates, May Be Last for a While (Bloomberg)
Federal Reserve officials are primed to deliver a third consecutive interest-rate cut today, but the streak may end there. The central bank’s rate decision will be released at 2 PM ET in Washington, alongside a statement from the committee and a new set of economic projections. Powell will hold a press conference 30 minutes later.
Bubble Watch: Wall Street Rides Surging A.I. Valuations, Brushing Aside Dot‑Com Echoes — For Now (New York Times)
Criminal Clemency: Honduras Orders Arrest of Former President Pardoned by Trump (Financial Times)
Honduras’s attorney-general has ordered the arrest of former president Juan Orlando Hernández after the convicted drug trafficker’s shock pardon by President Trump last week.
The move came as the candidate from Hernández’s party — whom Trump publicly backed — extended his lead in the country’s presidential election as a chaotic vote count neared completion, according to the Financial Times.
Hernández
was extradited to the US shortly after leaving office in 2022 and jailed for 45 years for drug trafficking. The conservative ex-president, who is believed to still be in the US, faces money laundering and fraud charges at home.
Mideast Latest: Trump’s Gaza Ceasefire Plan Faces Pitfalls in a Complicated Second Phase (Associated Press)
Fallout in Africa: Congo Conflict Forces 200,000 to Flee Despite Trump Peace Deal (Bloomberg)
More than 200,000 people have fled renewed fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in the past week, according to the United Nations, as rebels continue to advance just days after President Trump
declared peace had been reached in the long-running conflict.
The violence comes less than a week since the presidents of Rwanda and Congo met with Trump in Washington to sign a peace treaty, which M23 was not party to. It is among a number of conflicts that the US leader has claimed to have ended, with little having changed on the ground — this week, Thailand and Cambodia traded artillery fire, two months after signing a Trump-brokered deal.
Digital Screening: US Plans to Mandate Social Media Checks for Visa-Free Visitors (Bloomberg)
The US is proposing that foreign visitors provide their social media history over the last five years to enter the country, including those from Australia, Germany, Japan and the UK who can now enter without a visa. It would apply to travelers from about 40 countries who can stay in the US for up to 90 days without a visa and are screened before travel under an electronic system known as ESTA.
Today in Australia: TikTok and Instagram Ban Hits Under-16s as Australia Enforces Sweeping Child-Safety Reforms with Record Fines (Bloomberg)
Australia’s social media ban for youths took effect today, a landmark move that’s drawn global attention at a time governments are
increasingly enacting rules to shield minors from toxic content and cyberbullying.
The law, passed last year, mandates services such as TikTok and Instagram keep under-16s off their platforms or face fines of up to A$49.5 million ($33 million). Australia becomes the world’s first democracy to undertake such a crackdown in response to growing concerns about social media’s harms.
It’s likely to be the first of many. Policymakers in Indonesia, Denmark, Brazil and other nations are also moving to rein in Big Tech, which counts young users as a key demographic since they are likely to fuel future growth. Additional platforms affected in Australia include Snap Inc.’s Snapchat, Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube, Reddit Inc. and more.
Agentic Alliance: Anthropic, OpenAI, and Block Donate AI Agent Projects to New Linux Foundation Body (Diginomica)
The Linux Foundation has announced the formation of the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), a new home for open source projects that underpin how AI agents connect to tools, data, and each other.
The membership list: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, and Cloudflare are Platinum members. Gold members include Cisco, IBM, Oracle, SAP, and Snowflake.
Anthropic is donating
the Model Context Protocol (MCP). OpenAI is contributing AGENTS.md. Block is contributing Goose. These are direct competitors, and they've each donated core projects to neutral governance, Diginomica reports.
Shawn Edwards, Chief Technology Officer at Bloomberg, frames it in terms of financial services requirements: "MCP provides the essential connective layer required in our work building and deploying agentic AI systems for finance that do far more than simple question-answering."
🎙️ Now Streaming! Catch the latest Daily Read Podcast — your AI-powered briefing on today’s top stories. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Hollywood's
Crown Jewel: Paramount’s Relentless Pursuit of Warner Discovery Amid Trump Factor (Wall Street Journal)
During a visit to Washington in recent days, Paramount CEO David Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner, he’d make sweeping changes to CNN, a common target of President Trump’s ire, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has told people close to him that he wants new ownership of CNN as well as changes to CNN programming.
The fight for Warner has become a battle
between Paramount, the 113-year-old Hollywood institution, and Netflix, the technology startup-turned entertainment juggernaut. With a huge library of classic movies and television shows including “Casablanca” and “The West Wing” as well as HBO, home to “The Sopranos” and “Game of Thrones,” Warner is considered a crown jewel of Hollywood.
Trump has so far avoided publicly backing a bidder.
“None of them are particularly great friends of mine,” he said at a White House roundtable on Monday. A person close to Trump said the president will want Paramount and Netflix to compete for his approval of a deal.
Trophy Stakes: Golden Globe Nominations Confirm the Allure of Warner Bros. (New York Times)
Golden Globes voters made it clear on Monday why Netflix and others want to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, as the famed studio scored 16 nominations across both film and television categories for the first of Hollywood’s annual awards shows.
Warner Bros. received multiple nominations for its two big film contenders: “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another,”
which received the most nominations of any film, with nine. In television, “The White Lotus,” from the HBO division of Warner Bros., dominated with six nominations. Netflix, which
announced its plans to acquire the studio and its streaming business on Friday, pulled in 13 of its own nominations, most notably for “Frankenstein” and “KPop Demon Hunters.”
This year’s show, which will be televised by CBS on Sunday, Jan. 11, and will stream on Paramount+, will arrive as Hollywood is in the midst of a seismic reorganization, prompted by Netflix’s intent to purchase Warner Bros.’ studio and streaming assets.
Art & Migration: Es Devlin’s Acclaimed “Congregation” Illuminates PAC in its Return to the Stage (PAC-NYC)
World-renowned artist Es Devlin’s acclaimed choral installation Congregation has returned to Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC) for a limited time.
Following a critically acclaimed engagement during the Icons of Culture 2025 festival, PAC NYC is thrilled to offer audiences an extended opportunity to experience Devlin’s work with Pay-What-You-Wish reservations starting from $0 during select times through Jan. 4.
Congregation features large-scale chalk and charcoal portraits of 50 Londoners who have experienced forced displacement from their homelands. Presented as a projection-mapped tiered sculpture, the work offers a luminous encounter with those who bring their gifts to a new country.
Visitors can explore curated guides of Congregation as well as a variety of exhibits at PAC-NYC from anywhere by downloading the Bloomberg Connects mobile app.
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