Plus, the trouble for Trump this Thanksgiving weekend |

 

Tuesday, November 25, 2025


Lindsey Pipia: Bad numbers

President Donald Trump talks more about how he’s doing in the polls than any other president, but as a recent batch of them shows, he doesn’t have much to brag about.

Over the weekend, Trump falsely claimed on social media that he has the “highest poll numbers” of his “political career,” but recent polling shows he’s at or near the lowest approval rating of his second term. 

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week found that Trump’s approval rating had fallen to 38%, the lowest of his second term in that poll.

A closer look at those numbers shows that Trump is facing headwinds on multiple fronts, including his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and the recent federal government shutdown. But the ongoing problems with the economy appear to be the president’s biggest pain point.

Read Lindsey Pipia’s full analysis here.

 

TODAY’S QUESTION

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Did grocery prices affect your Thanksgiving plans?

An outbreak of bird flu on turkey farms and ongoing effects of tariffs have led to higher prices for many Thanksgiving staples, although some stores are offering discounts to get customers in the door. 

VOTE HERE

 

 

TRUMP’S WEEK IN REVIEW

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Here are some highlights of the president’s actions over the last seven days:

  • Disbanded the so-called Department of Government Efficiency initiative after eight months in operation
  • Accused Democratic lawmakers of “seditious behavior, punishable by death” for encouraging members of the military to disobey illegal orders
  • Released a peace plan that would require Ukraine to surrender territory, reduce its army and relinquish some weaponry
  • Moved billions of dollars of grant programs from the Department of Education as part of a plan to eventually shut it down
  • Threatened to have the Federal Communications Commission investigate ABC over a journalist’s question

 

THE CHALLENGERS

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The news can feel overwhelming. But each week, we pause to highlight a person, organization or movement sticking up for their principles or their fellow Americans. This week’s challengers are congressional Republicans, sort of.

This section of the Project 47 newsletter is dedicated each week to someone who challenged the president in some way, to show that the give-and-take of our democracy is still in action. But this week we want to highlight the congressional Republicans who cleared the lowest possible bar. When Democratic lawmakers who have served in the military made a video reminding the troops of their duty to disobey illegal orders, Trump called it “treason” and suggested the death penalty. Speaker Mike Johnson said he did not think the video was a crime punishable by death: “The words that the president chose are not the ones I would use.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a former judge advocate general in the Air Force, agreed: “I don’t agree with the president [that] they should be put in jail.” And Sen. Rick Scott said Trump’s words were “hypothetical.” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt later said the president did not actually want to execute members of Congress. Learn more.

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

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187 million

That’s how many people are expected to go out and shop this Thanksgiving weekend — a new record. This holiday, Americans could spend an estimated $1 trillion on everything from gifts to parties to traveling to be with friends and family. So even with consumer sentiment sinking to near record lows and people saying the economy, affordability and high prices are their biggest issues, Americans keep on spending. For the Trump administration, that means it now faces the same challenge that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did in the election: It can’t tell people the economy is great and inflation is coming down (which it isn’t no matter how many times the current administration says so, most recently this weekend) when people know how much they’re paying, In the end, it’s not about the rate of inflation, it’s about prices. They’re high. And the only way they’re likely to come down across the board is if there’s a recession. And that’s something no one wants. Learn more.


— Stephanie Ruhle, host of “The 11th Hour”

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