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|  |  | Friday, December 5, 2025 | |  | | Photo by Eric Lee/Getty Images | Good morning, Quartz readers! It’s Shannon Carroll with the Daily Brief. Today, Big Tech is rewriting the White House checkbook, Meta is rewriting its $70 billion metaverse dream, OpenAI is rewriting ChatGPT as its own snitch, and In-N-Out is rewriting the burger map
east of the Mississippi. | | HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW | Trump could torch his own trade deal. His trade ambassador says the U.S. might exit or even split the Canada–Mexico pact, forcing companies to rethink supply chains they thought were finally settled. | Baby bonds are the Street’s latest battleground. Banks and brokerages are vying to manage millions of $1,000, government-seeded “Trump
account” balances now — to be first in line when those kids start making real money. | Discounters are crushing it for
grim reasons. Dollar General’s cleaner stores and better inventory helped drive a 44% EPS pop, but the backdrop is a K-shaped economy pushing millions toward the lowest-price aisle. | Layoffs are jumping while hiring hits a 15-year low. Challenger’s latest report shows 1.17 million job cuts so far in 2025 and sharply
weaker hiring plans — a chilly read on the labor market while official data is still delayed. | | | SPONSORED |  | The Quiet Cost of Staying Put | As the year winds down, many of us keep our money where it’s always been, and most banks count on that.
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| | A PAY-LATIAL UPGRADE? | President Donald Trump’s dance card is filling up with Big Tech, and Congress wants to know what song they’re hoping will play. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Dave Min are leading a group of Democrats pressing Nvidia, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon to explain sizable donations to the president’s ballroom renovation project, warning that the money could pave the way for favorable treatment from the U.S. government. In letters to the CEOs, the two write that the donations “create the potential for a quid-pro-quo
exchange of a contribution to the ballroom for regulatory or other favors from the federal government;” they say that if the money was meant to sway decision-making, “it could run afoul of federal bribery law.”
Lawmakers want the timeline of each donation, a rundown of the companies’ business interests before the federal government, any conversations with Trump aides about the contributions, and whether the firms expect tax benefits in return. Nvidia told the Wall Street Journal, “As
an American company, our support for the United States is paramount, and independent of any business interests” — a careful line for a group of companies that spend plenty of time in Washington’s inbox, including Amazon, as it fights a monopoly lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission.
All of this drama orbits a very literal tear-down. Trump has knocked down the East Wing to build a ballroom, pitched as part of a privately funded White House overhaul that Warren and other critics
say “allows for open corruption.” The same tech giants that rely on the federal government for approvals, contracts, and mercy are now helping underwrite the president’s showpiece room. Warren and Min’s letter is asking whether those ballroom checks are really just for décor, or whether they’re down payments on something much less visible. Quartz’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig has more on the tech logos on the donor wall of Trump’s new ballroom. | | | RECOMMENDED READING | The
future of tech, decoded.
Semafor Technology unpacks the ideas, innovations, and power shifts redefining the global tech landscape. From AI and machine learning to the startups and policies shaping
the industry, each briefing delivers clarity and depth on the tech transforming our world
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| | | REALITY BITES | Mark Zuckerberg has spent the better part of the 2020s trying to turn a sci-fi thesis into Meta’s north star; now, he’s pricing it like an experiment that didn’t pan out. According to Bloomberg, Meta is weighing cuts of
up to 30% to its metaverse budget starting with its 2026 plan, after strategy sessions at Zuckerberg’s Hawaii compound mapped out a slimmer future for Horizon Worlds, Quest, and the rest of Reality Labs. Layoffs could start as early as January, and investors sent the stock up about 4% on the idea that the $70 billion ghost town might finally get a smaller line item.
Under the hood, the split is stark. Reality Labs — home of the headsets, virtual conference rooms, and Ray-Ban Meta
glasses — has piled up more than $60 billion in operating losses since 2021, including a recent quarter where it burned $4.4 billion to bring in around $470 million in revenue. The social apps that still fund the experiment — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp — keep doing what they’ve always done: siphoning attention, selling ads, and throwing off cash.
The replacement story is pure 2025: colossal AI capex and a cleaner business case. Zuckerberg is guiding $70–$72 billion in 2025
spending toward data centers, custom chips, and the Llama model family, complete with a new Superintelligence Lab. AI infrastructure comes with partners, customers, and spreadsheets that actually balance; the metaverse comes with floating torsos and engagement charts that don’t. The ghost town isn’t being bulldozed, but it is being demoted to R&D while the real construction happens behind the scenes — in the servers powering your feed and whatever “personal superintelligence” Meta thinks that, this time, you’ll actually use. Quartz’s Shannon Carroll has more on why Meta’s future looks less like Legoland and more like a data center. | | | SPONSORED | | The Quiet Cost of Staying Put | As the year winds down, many of us keep our money where it’s always been, and most banks count on that.
While you’re earning less than 1% on your savings, they’re lending and investing that same cash at much higher rates. That becomes their profit instead of yours.
Raisin helps you change that. It’s a free, all-in-one platform that connects you with top savings
accounts from 75+ FDIC- and NCUA-insured institutions.
Right now, you can lock in a 4.25% APY* introductory rate with NexBank — plus up to $1,600¹ in bonuses when you open your first account with promo code GIFT. A $50,000 deposit could earn roughly $2,000+ in interest over a year, plus quarterly bonuses through all of 2026.
End the year with a better rate — and start the next one earning more. | | *APY means Annual Percentage Yield. APY is accurate as of December 3, 2025. Interest rate and APY may change after initial deposit depending on the terms of the specific product selected. Minimum opening deposit is $1.00.
¹See site for bonus details |
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