Good morning. In today’s edition:

• 📝 Unpacking the new Department of Government Efficiency
• 🏈 A mysterious billionaire’s wife + the #1 football recruit in the nation
• 🦃 Record Thanksgiving travel?

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.81-minute read (1,282 words).

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"The world only exists in your eyes – your conception of it. You can make it as big or as small as you want to."

–Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Shortly after his victory in the 2024 election, President-elect Trump named Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The logistics: According to Trump, the new initiative “will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” Musk, the world’s richest person, and Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and former GOP presidential candidate, were both tapped to serve as co-chiefs.

• Despite its name, DOGE technically isn’t a new government “department,” but rather an outside advisory commission that’ll work with the White House Office of Management and Budget to implement its recommendations.
• Since DOGE will operate outside the federal government, Musk and Ramaswamy won’t be required to divest their business holdings.

The game plan for DOGE

In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Musk and Ramaswamy laid out their vision for the new commission they’ve been tasked to lead.

• Eliminating regulation: The two leaders say they’ll work with legal experts to cut federal regulations in compliance with recent Supreme Court rulings, which suggest many existing regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted federal agencies and should be scrapped.
• Reducing the federal workforce: With fewer regulations in place, Musk and Ramaswamy say federal agencies won’t need as many employees, resulting in “mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy.” They also say DOGE aims to help the affected workers find positions in the private sector.
• Cutting government spending: The DOGE co-chiefs say they plan to challenge a 1974 law preventing the White House from reducing spending approved by Congress, and will also attempt to cut a large portion of “the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended.”

Looking ahead… Trump gave Musk and Ramaswamy a deadline of July 4, 2026, to complete their work at DOGE.

📊 Flash poll: In general, do you support the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency?

• Yes
• No
• Unsure/other

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🌍 Countries at COP29 reached a delayed agreement on climate financing. As part of the new deal, which was finalized early Sunday after negotiations ran 33 hours late, richer countries (twelve, including the US) promised to increase funding to help poorer countries fight climate change from $100 billion/year to $300 billion/year by 2035. The agreement drew criticism from developing countries, who had been seeking $1.3 trillion/year. The countries’ request is reflected in the COP29 deal as a non-binding call to meet that level of financing by 2035, using both public and private sources.

✂️ MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is taking a pay cut. Per The Ankler ($): The Rachel Maddow Show host will receive $25 million/year over the next five years, down from $30 million/year previously, amid a ratings decline. The network’s viewership is down 40% year-over-year, according to Nielsen data (despite Maddow being “ratings Viagra,” as one exec put it). Maddow’s deal, reportedly agreed to earlier in the fall, also comes as MSNBC parent-company Comcast is spinning off its cable assets – which, along with MSNBC, include CNBC, USA, E!, and the Golf Channel (but no NBC News).

🍿 “Glicked” powered the pre-Thanksgiving box office to its best performance in over a decade. At $55.5 million, Gladiator II marks Denzel Washington’s biggest domestic opening of his career, beating out American Gangster ($43.5 million) – while Wicked’s $114 million domestic opening marks the highest debut of a Broadway adaptation in cinematic history. The only other movie musicals to debut above $100 million were 2018’s Beauty and the Beast and 2019’s The Lion King, which both ended up grossing $1+ billion worldwide. Overall, the domestic box office generated $205 million, its best pre-Thanksgiving weekend figure since 2013 – which, since there’s usually carryover, bodes well for theaters this upcoming Thanksgiving weekend.

University of Michigan football has its own Keyser Söze pulling strings behind the scenes – and her name is Jolin Ellison.

On Thursday, the nation’s #1 football recruit in the 2025 class, QB Bryce Underwood, flipped his commitment from LSU to Michigan. And she may have been the deciding factor.

What happened: Michigan’s NIL collective, the Champions Circle, recently extended a reported offer of $10+ million over four years to Underwood – exceeding the reported $1.5 million/year LSU was offering. Underwood, who committed to LSU in January, took a secret visit to Michigan early last week before ultimately deciding to don the maize and blue.

Behind the offer: The Champions Circle put out a statement the day after Underwood flipped, personally thanking “Jolin and Larry Ellison who were instrumental in making this happen by providing Champions Circle with invaluable guidance and financial resources.”

Larry Ellison, billionaire cofounder of software company Oracle and top-five richest person in the world (net worth ~$235 billion), is well known. His apparent wife, Jolin, is not.

• Ellison divorced his fourth wife in 2010; it’s not publicly known whether he has remarried.
• Scant trace of Jolin exists online – though Champions Circle cofounder Roger Ehrenberg told Front Office Sports: “Jolin is a Michigan alumna who is super passionate about the University of Michigan Athletics and was critical support for the recruitment effort.”

🤑 Big money + college sports: With the deal, the Ellisons join other billionaires becoming involved in college athletics in this new, anything-goes NIL era.

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• ☝️ Red Bull’s Max Verstappen earned his fourth consecutive F1 World Driver's Championship (!) with a fifth-place finish at the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix early Sunday; Mercedes’ George Russell won the race, with his teammate Lewis Hamilton placing second.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Pique

• 💰 US markets rose last week (S&P: +1.7%; Dow: +2.0%; Nasdaq: +1.7%); the Dow ended Friday at a record high. | 🪙 Bitcoin is trading near $100,000, though it has yet to break the mark.
• 🤖 Amazon is investing another $4 billion into OpenAI rival Anthropic; it brings the tech giant's total investment to $8 billion. | 📡 DirecTV ended its deal to buy Dish TV over a failed debt swap.
• 🍔 McDonald's is expanding its US value menu starting January 7, 2025, as it continues to try and win back price-sensitive customers; its $5 meal deal will also be extended.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎶 Mustaaaaaaaaard: Kendrick Lamar released a surprise 12-track album called GNX; it’s his sixth studio album, and first official release since the chart-topping “Not Like Us” in May.
• ⚾🏆 MLB MVP Awards: Los Angeles Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani and New York Yankees' Aaron Judge both unanimously won the 2024 NL and AL MVPs, respectively.
• ⚽ The Orlando Pride beat the Washington Spirit 1-0 to win their first National Women's Soccer League championship. | ⚽ WNBA star Caitlin Clark joined an ownership group seeking to bring a National Women’s Soccer League team to Cincinnati; the effort is led by the MLS’ FC Cincinnati.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Paleovalley

• 🤏🍝 Introducing – nanopasta: Chemists at University College London created the world’s thinnest spaghetti, which is ~200x slimmer than a human hair; it demonstrates a technique to create tiny fibers, with applications in medicine and electronics.
• 🔫 Alderaan beware: Chinese scientists say they’ve created a Death Star-like microwave weapon that combines several high-powered electromagnetic waves into an energy beam.
• 🚀🌕 NASA began stacking the first stage of its Artemis II Moon rocket; the mission, which aims to send astronauts around the Moon for the first time since 1972, will launch September 2025 at the earliest.

*From our partners: 😋 New Salted Caramel flavor of Paleovalley Bone Broth Protein: Packed with collagen to support skin, gut, metabolism, and healthy aging. Made from grass-fed cows raised on pesticide-free pastures. Save 30% on subscriptions or 20% on single purchases at Paleovalley here.

MISCELLANEOUS

• 🏛️ President-elect Trump finalized his list of Cabinet nominations, including Scott Bessent for Treasury Secretary, Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (OR) for Labor Secretary, and Dr. Marty Makary for FDA chief.
• 🦠🥩 A four-state listeria outbreak that’s killed one infant and sickened 10 adults is connected to ready-to-eat meat products from Yu Shang Food, per the CDC.
• 🇱🇦 Six tourists in Laos died last week – including a US citizen – due to suspected poisoning from alcohol cut with methanol. | 💥 Israel launched a series of airstrikes into Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, that killed at least 29 people; it prompted large-scale airstrikes from Hezbollah in retaliation, with ~20 injuries and no deaths reported across Israel and Palestine. | 🕵️ Wired tracked nearly 200 visitors to Epstein Island, using cellphone location data from a controversial broker with ties to the US Defense Department. (Video)

CLICKBAIT

• 🇺🇸😋 The 25 Most Important American Recipes of the Past 100 Years.

🦃 Stat of the Day: Those traveling this Thanksgiving may end up fighting their way through crowds like Chris Hemsworth in Extraction 2. A record 79.9 million travelers will head 50 miles or more from home during the period between Tuesday, November 26 and Monday, December 2, according to estimates from AAA. That figure is 1.7 million more people compared to last year, and 2 million more than in 2019. The transpo breakdown: 71.7 million Americans are expected to travel by car, 5.84 million by air (within the US), and 2.3 million by bus, train, etc. For those driving – here are the best and worst times to leave each day, according to data from transportation analytics firm Inrix. And beware of bad roads: forecasters are calling for rough weather across the US this week, with rain and/or snow on the radar for California, the Midwest, and the Great Lakes region.

Meanwhile, the TSA expects to screen a record 18.3 million airline passengers over the same time frame, up 6% year over year. International flight bookings are up 23% compared to last Thanksgiving.

🤔 Did You Know? Actor Danny Trejo holds the record for most on-screen character deaths across movies and TV shows, at 91.

📰 Worth a Read: At 17, he bought a sandwich shop for $125,000 – he renamed it Jersey Mike’s and just sold it for $8 billion → (CNBC)

Monday: Presidential turkey pardon

Tuesday: National Cake Day

Wednesday: Moana 2 hits theaters

Thursday: Thanksgiving Day

Friday: Black Friday

On Friday, we covered negotiations at the UN’s COP29 climate conference, where poorer, developing countries were pushing for richer, developed countries to pay them a larger annual sum to help fight climate change than the current $100 billion/year arrangement.

❓ Our question to you: In general, do you think developed nations should pay more or less money to developing countries to help them fight climate change?

• Pay more money: 42%
• Pay less (or no) money: 39%
• Unsure/other: 19%

Click here to read more of the most thoughtful longform responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 2,535 votes and 271 longform responses.

Carol Ansbro, Marion Bamforth, Susan Morris, and Mary Helliwell are a quartet of best friends who all went on vacation together in 1972 to Devon, England.

Over 50 years later, the women returned to their vacation spot to recreate their favorite photo of the trip – even buying new outfits as close to their originals as they could find.

• “It truly was an emotional moment," Marion shared with Good News Network. "I still can’t believe it actually happened.”

Guess the definitions of the following Greek/Latin root words.

1. Cochl
2. Cosm
3. Fact
4. Grav
5. Ment

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1. Cochl = Shell (e.g., cochlea)
2. Cosm = Universe (cosmic)
3. Fact = Make (factory)
4. Grav = Heavy (gravity)
5. Ment = Mind (mentality)