“As he shook President Barack Obama’s hand and pulled him in for what he thought was a private aside, Vice President Joe Biden delivered an explicit message: ‘This is a big fucking deal.’ The remark, overheard on live microphones at a 2010 ceremony for the Affordable Care Act, caused a sensation because open profanity from a national leader was unusual at the time,” the AP reports.

“More than 15 years later, vulgarity is now in vogue… Leaders in both parties are seemingly in a race now to the verbal gutter.”

A civil liberties group says the U.S. is showing signs of undergoing a “rapid authoritarian shift” as civic freedoms in the country decline following President Trump’s return to the White House, Time reports.

A new Pew Research poll finds just 17% of Americans now say they trust the federal government to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most of the time” (15%).

Frustration has long been Americans’ dominant emotion toward the federal government and 49% say they feel frustrated. Another 26% say they are angry, and 23% say they are basically content.

“Over the past two decades, developers in New York have converted nearly 30 million square feet of office space into residential living, with the pace of transformation picking up in recent years,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Most office buildings were considered too wide and mechanically complex to repurpose into apartments with kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms. But New York developers are solving those problems with new architectural hacks—cut-through notches, carved light wells, and strategic wall-offs of interior cores that create space for new residential floors.”

A new YouGov poll finds only 11% of respondents said they expected there to be arguments about politics at their Thanksgiving celebration.

Over 30% said they’re at least somewhat likely to discuss politics at their dinner, but for the vast majority of U.S. adults, they don’t expect arguments this year.

Mark Leibovich: “Here’s yet another indication that Washington has been turned upside down in recent years: I saw Rachel Maddow at Dick Cheney’s funeral and didn’t give it a second thought. She was sitting with Anthony Fauci, in the same row as James Carville.”

“Such is life—and death—in the Trump years. You never know who will show up to pay respects at gatherings of this sort, or what odd alliances and strange bedfellows will reveal themselves.”

New polling from the Latino polling group Equis finds that President Trump has lost most of his 2024 gains with Latino voters, but Democrats haven’t won those voters back, Semafor reports.

The survey found 68% of Latino voters disapproving of how Republicans handled the “cost of living.” 

Gallup: “For the second straight year, about one in five Americans say they would like to leave the U.S. and move permanently to another country if they could. This heightened desire to migrate is driven primarily by younger women.”

David Graham: “The nationalization of politics is a familiar story, especially in Congress. As the parties have become more polarized in recent years, voters have become less willing to cross the aisle or split their ballot between Democrats and Republicans—especially because animosity toward the other party is a central part of the polarization.”

“The weakening of local media outlets, especially newspapers, has also left citizens far more informed and invested in national political dynamics than matters closer to home.”

A new Politico poll finds a significant minority of the population — 24% — believes that there are some instances where political violence is justified.

“In a bitterly divided country, pessimism and cynicism reign supreme: Two-thirds of Americans say it is at least probably true that the government often deliberately lies to the people. That distrust cuts across partisan lines: Strong majorities of Donald Trump voters (64 percent) and Kamala Harris voters (70 percent) agree. Nearly half of Americans, 49 percent, say that the best times of the country are behind them, according to the Politico Poll.

“That’s greater than the 41 percent who said the best times lie ahead, underscoring a pervasive sense of unease about both individuals’ own futures and the national direction.”

A new PRRI poll finds 62% of Americans believe the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction, fueled by dissatisfaction with President Trump’s impact on the economy, immigration, race relations and the nation’s global standing.

Even among Republicans, a significant share — nearly 30% — gave Trump low marks on the economy and how the government is functioning.

A new AP-NORC poll found 69% of Americans thought the nation was headed in the wrong direction and 30% in the right direction.

A new Gallup poll finds 62% of Americans say the federal government has too much power, with most of the rest saying the government’s power is about right.

Gallup: “Sixty-two percent of Americans say the federal government has too much power, with most of the rest saying the government’s power is about right. This latest reading, the first in President Donald Trump’s second term, is up from 51% a year ago and is the highest in Gallup’s trend since 2002, by two percentage points.”

“Feeling more anxious? More unsure? Unless you’re heavily sedated, you should be: We’ve never witnessed so many population-wide shifts simultaneously in our lifetime,” Axios reports.

“Three titanic tectonic plates are shifting at once: our technology, our governing and our reality-shaping. Washington, D.C., is the epicenter of all three.”

“You can’t navigate business, politics, social media or life generally without understanding the speed, consequence and interconnectedness of these shifts.”

New York Times: “Though there is no way of determining exactly how many people have faced workplace consequences, The New York Times identified more than 145 such cases through news reports, public statements and interviews with several of those targeted. Those who have faced discipline are professors and health care workers, lawyers and journalists, restaurant workers and airline employees…

“Firings over controversial statements are not new, but they appear to have become more frequent in recent years as online armies seek to identify and assail the employers of people who say things they deem inappropriate. In the wake of Mr. Kirk’s death, Vice President JD Vance urged people to call the bosses of those who celebrated the assassination.”