President Joe Biden has pardoned his son, Hunter Biden.  |
- President Joe Biden has pardoned his son, Hunter Biden.
- The president departed the White House on Sunday evening for a three-day trip to Angola in Africa.
- Americans spent more money this year on Black Friday sales compared to 2023, indicating a strong holiday shopping season.
- A top Canadian official confirmed the country will strengthen the security of its border with the United States after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with President-elect Donald Trump, who had threatened a 25-percent tariff if nothing is done.
- There is deep wisdom in what the Stoics taught, and many of those lessons are useful for life in the 21st century. Story after the news.
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Good morning. It's Monday. Thank you for reading the Morning Brief. Send me a line. |
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| Ivan Pentchoukov
National Editor |
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President Joe Biden (L) walks out of Nantucket Bookworks with son Hunter Biden, grandson Beau, and daughter-in-law Melissa Cohen Biden in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on November 29, 2024. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images) |
President Joe Biden on Dec. 1 issued a full and unconditional pardon to his son, Hunter Biden. |
- The broad pardon covers the tax and gun cases against Hunter Biden and all other crimes Hunter Biden committed or may have committed in the past decade.
- The younger Biden faced sentencing in the tax and gun cases in the coming weeks.
- The president had previously vowed not to pardon his son.
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In a statement accompanying the pardon, the president said the prosecutions against his son were politically motivated and that charges are rarely brought against others in similar circumstances. "I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice—and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further," the president said. "I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision." (More) More Politics |
- President-elect Donald Trump nominated Chad Chronister, sheriff of Hillsborough County, Florida, as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
- Massad Boulos is Trump's pick for senior advisor on Arab affairs. His son, Michael Boulos, is married to Tiffany Trump, the president-elect's youngest daughter.
- Anonymously sourced reports claiming that Trump would immediately discharge all transgender-identifying people from the military are just speculation, according to Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.
- A second Democrat-appointed federal judge has rescinded a decision to create a new judicial vacancy in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump's election victory.
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Americans spent more money this year on Black Friday sales compared to 2023, indicating a strong holiday shopping season, according to Mastercard. |
- U.S. retail sales, excluding automotive, rose 3.4 percent this Black Friday compared to last year, the company said in a Nov. 30 statement.
- Online sales rose 14.6 percent compared to last year. In-store sales increased marginally by 0.7 percent.
- Spending was higher than expected in Colorado, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia, during the two weeks ending on Black Friday.
- Among the top gifts for the holidays were apparel, jewelry, and electronics, with stronger apparel sales online.
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Shoppers are "more strategic in their shopping" though, prioritizing promotions that they believe hold the greatest value—opening their wallets, but with more intentional distribution," said Steve Sadove, senior adviser for Mastercard. (More) |
There's an international effort to overthrow the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency. Doing this would break a key part of the U.S.-led world order, since it could disable America's ability to use sanctions. This effort is mainly being pushed by Beijing. Watch ➞ |
Threats of mass shootings. Bomb detonations. Systematic hacking. At a rate of roughly one every two days over the past two months, threats in Chinese have been directed to the inboxes of journalists, theaters, the police, and local lawmakers, mostly based in the United States and Taiwan. The threats have one goal: to stop the screening of a film called "State Organs." |
- The documentary, now a contender in the 2025 Academy Awards, follows the journeys of two families in search of their missing loved ones against the backdrop of communist China's grisly state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting.
- "State Organs" has screened in 15 Taiwanese cities since October as well as in San Francisco, New York City, and Japan.
- "You better think before you act," one email shared with The Epoch Times read.
- The sender claimed to have obtained the personal information of staff members at four theaters in Taiwan. The theaters had scheduled viewings of "State Organs" and received threats that their staff's information would be released if the screenings went ahead.
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To director Raymond Zhang, whose name was directly mentioned in one harassment email, it feels like certain elements of the film are playing out in real life. "Coverup, threats, and intimidation ... this is how Chinese authorities treated the victims' families. This is what is now happening [in the United States]," he told The Epoch Times. The film production team said it plans to collect all the threats and submit them to U.S. law enforcement. (Full Story) More World News: |
- The United States will not return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that the country gave up following the dissolution of the Soviet Union decades ago, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday.
- Taiwan President Lai Ching-te arrived in Hawaii on Nov. 30, his first foreign visit since being elected, to promote "values-based diplomacy," reiterating Taiwan's commitment to peace amid China's growing aggression in the region.
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"Early Autumn" by Gheorghe Popa. Courtesy of The 11th International Landscape Photographer of the Year |
The Stoics were an ancient group of philosophers who developed a school of thought about living. |
- Their goal was to devise a system for pursuing happiness that could withstand the harsh realities of the world and consistently lead to a better life—no matter one's circumstances.
- The writings of the Stoics endure today—thousands of years later. In recent years, their influence has spread even further through blogs and podcasts explaining and expanding upon their work.
- Celebrities like Tom Brady and J.K. Rowling have spoken of the usefulness of the Stoic teachings in their own lives and lines of work.
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Did the Stoics get everything right? Of course not. No human philosophy could ever reach that level of perfection or apply to all people across all times and cultures. However, there is deep wisdom in what they taught, and many of those lessons have been useful for 21st-century life. READ: 7 Stoic Pathways to Intentional Living |
In the age of social media, where public and private boundaries crumble, privacy is a precious resource. (Biba Kayewich) |
We could all learn something about holding back. Holding back, reticence, keeping a curb on one's emotions: Call it what you will, but discretion and its cousin, privacy, seem in short supply these days. |
- From tell-all talk shows to lurid celebrity best-sellers, from our own posts on social media to the strangers on the bus who recount unsolicited details of their divorces, ours is the age of confession.
- Meanwhile, our machines are keeping an eye on us. The books we check out at the library, our credit card purchases at the grocery store, and our visits to the doctor all leave behind an electronic trail.
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Yet before chopping down all the hedges protecting our private life, however, it would be prudent to consider what we stand to lose. |
- To share our hopes, fears, and eccentricities with family and close friends is an act of love and trust.
- To share those same emotions and events with strangers, as so many do online, is an act of consumption.
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The private arena is that place where we are most free; where we can remove the masks we so often put on in public. It's the place where creature comforts are not just food, drink, and entertainment, but love and understanding and even solitude. Read the full article by our colleague Jeff Minick here. |
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Thanks for reading. Have a wonderful day. |
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