Top 5 US news stories
November 21 2025
Fox News Poll: Voters Rate Economy Negatively, Blame Trump For Price Pain
Weary Middle Class 'Buckling' Under Five Years Of Persistent High Prices
Dakota Access Pipeline Company Takes Legal Fight Against Greenpeace To North Dakota Supreme Court
Big Ten Commissioner's $100M-Per-School Private Investment Deal Paused After Michigan Pushback
Trump Administration Drafts Ukraine Peace Plan Calling For Major Territorial Concessions, Drops Demands For Peacekeeping Force
Fox News Poll: Voters Rate Economy Negatively, Blame Trump For Price Pain
Unhappy with the economy. Pain with prices. Unsure about Trump administration policies. It adds up to high disapproval among the president’s loyal constituencies. Here are six takeaways from the latest Fox News national survey.
— Some 76% of voters view the economy negatively. That’s worse than the 67% who felt that way in July and the 70% who said the same at the end of former President Biden’s term.
— Large numbers, overall and among Republicans, say their costs for groceries, utilities, healthcare and housing have gone up this year.
— Voters blame the president. About twice as many say President Donald Trump, rather than Biden, is responsible for the current economy. And three times as many say Trump’s economic policies have hurt them (they said the same about Biden’s last year). Plus, approval of how Trump is handling the economy hit a new low, and disapproval of his overall job performance hit record highs among core supporters.
— After the government shutdown, the GOP and the Democratic Party have lower favorable ratings, and roughly 6 in 10 say the president and lawmakers on both sides don’t care about people like them.
— Voters think Republicans have a better plan for border security, immigration and crime, while Democrats are seen as better on affordability, wages, healthcare and climate.
— Views are divided on Trump’s peace deals making the world safer and the administration’s strategy for dealing with alleged drug-traffickers.
Trump’s job performance drew career-high disapproval among men, White voters and those without a college degree. Eighty-six percent of Republicans approve, down from 92% in March. Among all voters, 41% approve of the job Trump is doing, while 58% disapprove. Only once have his ratings been lower and that was during his first term, 38-57% in October 2017. Two months ago, it was 46-54%. For comparison, Biden’s marks were a bit better at the same point in his presidency: 44% approved and 54% disapproved in November 2021. Forty percent of voters rate their personal finances as excellent/good, while 60% say only fair/poor, which is about where things stood a year ago. Ratings are notably bad (roughly 70% negative), among non-college voters, Hispanics, Blacks, independents and those under age 45. For those with household income below $50,000, fully 79% rate their finances negatively.
Fox News
Weary Middle Class 'Buckling' Under Five Years Of Persistent High Prices
After nearly five years of high prices, many middle-class earners thought life would be more affordable by now. Costs for goods and services are 25% above where they were in 2020. Even though the inflation rate is below its recent 2022 high, certain essentials like coffee, ground beef and car repairs are up markedly this year. The American middle class encompasses a broad cross section of workers that includes white-collar office employees, nurses and plumbers, although there is no universally accepted definition. Pew Research Center defines the middle class broadly as having a household income between about $66,666 and $200,000, depending on where they live. Perpetual sticker shock is making many within the group feel worse about both their own finances and the future of the country. They are hunting for bargains and spending more carefully. Cost-of-living issues also pushed voters this month toward candidates who promised to address what many now see as an affordability crisis. Similar issues dogged Joe Biden’s re-election campaign last year and have recently weighed on President Trump’s approval ratings. The frugality of the middle-class customer figures as a recurring theme in recent corporate earnings reports. Fast-food restaurant Wingstop said this month that middle-income diners have now joined lower-income ones in dialing back purchases. Target reported slumping sales and said customers are spending cautiously on discretionary items such as home decor and apparel. Walmart, meanwhile, posted strong sales as consumers from all income groups flocked to the retailer’s value.
WSJ
Dakota Access Pipeline Company Takes Legal Fight Against Greenpeace To North Dakota Supreme Court
The yearslong court battle over a controversial pipeline — a fight so aggressive, it’s threatening to bankrupt Greenpeace USA — has taken a strange legal twist. Energy Transfer, the company that won a nearly $670 million judgment against Greenpeace earlier this year over protests against its Dakota Access Pipeline, is mounting a full-court press with its latest strategy. The pipeline company and its allies are exhorting North Dakota’s Supreme Court to block a countersuit from an international branch of Greenpeace in the Netherlands. In other words, Energy Transfer is asking judges in North Dakota to stop a lawsuit filed under the laws of a different country. The details of its efforts at the state’s Supreme Court haven’t been previously reported.
NYT
Big Ten Commissioner's $100M-Per-School Private Investment Deal Paused After Michigan Pushback
Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti had spent recent days frantically pushing schools to accept an unprecedented $2.4 billion private investment that would have given the country’s richest athletic conference unrivaled financial clout. Under the terms of the deal, each of the conference’s 18 members would have collected at least $100 million for a stake of future earnings on their media rights. That windfall would help defray the soaring expenses of college sports, which now include up to $20.5 million a year for athletes along with the sky-high salaries schools already pay coaches. But as most of the conference schools appeared close to approving the deal, pushback by the University of Michigan instead brought it to a screeching halt. Regents at the school said that Petitti had failed to make the case for it or fully inform Big Ten boards about the details. The commissioner had gone as far, they said, as threatening to plow ahead with the deal—whether Michigan agreed or not. He also threatened to punish Michigan for holding out, according to Mark Bernstein, chair of the school’s board of regents, by reducing its share of Big Ten revenue or even kicking it out of the conference altogether. The proposed deal was to be made with UC Investments, an arm of the California pension system, which would have taken 10% of the conference’s future media-rights earnings. On Monday afternoon, UC Investments issued a statement announcing that the deal had been paused.
WSJ
Trump Administration Drafts Ukraine Peace Plan Calling For Major Territorial Concessions, Drops Demands For Peacekeeping Force
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration has drafted a 28-point peace plan that calls for Ukraine to make major territorial concessions to Russia and drop demands for a peacekeeping force to deter future attacks by Moscow, U.S. officials said, resurfacing ideas that Kyiv has already rejected. The administration is attempting the same approach it used to achieve a U.S.-brokered cease-fire in Gaza last month—draft a multipoint outline and then push the warring parties to accept it, officials said. But the blueprint, which was worked out by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner in consultation with Kremlin confidant Kirill Dmitriev, is likely to run into strong opposition in Kyiv and from European governments, according to a European official. President Trump supports the new plan, which materialized after he told aides to craft new proposals that include incentives for the two sides to reach a deal, officials said. To catalyze an agreement, Washington is counting on Russia’s desire for revived economic relations with the West and Ukraine’s need for reconstruction funds.
WSJ
November 21 1877: “Scientific American” announces Thomas Edison’s “wonderful invention”—the phonograph
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