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Top 5 US news stories

December 2 2025

Greg Loving

02 Dec 2025 • 7 min read

“Before, a customer would get two pies, wings, garlic knots and soda, all of the extras,” Mr. Carollo said.Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Stalled Pizza Sales Flash Warning Sign for Broader U.S. Economy

Hegseth Ordered a Lethal Attack But Not the Killing of Survivors, Officials Say

Trump Rallies GOP Support in Tight Tennessee Special Election Today

Installment Payment Services See Surge During Cyber Week Sales

Putin to Host Trump Envoys in Moscow for Ukraine Peace Talks Today

1. Stalled Pizza Sales Flash Warning Sign for Broader U.S. Economy

For much of this year, business at Prima Pizza Kitchen in Somerville, N.J., was booming. On most Fridays, as many as 325 pizzas would fly out its doors, with customers frequently adding drinks and side orders. But in recent weeks, orders began to change, the owner, Jerry Carollo, said. “Before, a customer would get two pies, wings, garlic knots and soda, all of the extras,” Mr. Carollo said. “Now, they’re just doing the pizzas.” To varying degrees, those sentiments are being echoed across the country by large pizza chains and small independent restaurants. Pizza, with its gooey cheese, sometimes topped with crisp, glistening rounds of pepperoni or bright strips of green peppers, has long played a quintessential role in American households. It is a comfort food for uncomfortable times that traditionally could feed an entire family relatively inexpensively. But now, as the national average price of a large cheese pizza has crept up to nearly $17, according to Slice, an online ordering platform for pizzerias, sales are slowing. Competition from other restaurants on popular delivery apps and shifting eating habits are partly responsible, but it is also an indicator that some consumers are struggling. For now, pizza chains, which make up two-thirds of the nearly $50-billion-a-year industry, have seen basically flat sales since 2023, according to Technomic, a research and consulting firm for the food industry. In October, executives at Papa John’s said customers in the most recent quarter were trading down from large to medium pizzas and adding fewer toppings. Pizza Hut, the dominant player in the 1980s that hosted children’s birthday parties and Little League Baseball celebrations, has had eight consecutive quarters of declines in same-store sales. Its parent, Yum! Brands, is weighing its options, including a possible sale of the chain.

NYT

2. Hegseth Ordered a Lethal Attack But Not the Killing of Survivors, Officials Say

The Trump administration on Monday defended the legality of a Sept. 2 attack on a boat in the Caribbean Sea as calls grew in Congress to examine whether a follow-up missile strike that killed survivors amounted to a crime. The lethal attack was the first in President Trump’s legally disputed campaign of killing people suspected of smuggling drugs at sea as if they were combatants in a war. It has started coming under intense bipartisan scrutiny in recent days amid questions about the decision to kill the initial survivors and what orders were issued by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. At the White House on Monday, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, read a statement that said Mr. Hegseth had authorized the Special Operations commander overseeing the attack, Adm. Frank M. Bradley, “to conduct these kinetic strikes.” She said that Admiral Bradley had “worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.” According to five U.S. officials, who spoke separately and on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter that is under investigation, Mr. Hegseth, ahead of the Sept. 2 attack, ordered a strike that would kill the people on the boat and destroy the vessel and its purported cargo of drugs. But, each official said, Mr. Hegseth’s directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish all of those things. And, the officials said, his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast. Admiral Bradley ordered the initial missile strike and then several follow-up strikes that killed the initial survivors and sank the disabled boat. As that operation unfolded, they said, Mr. Hegseth did not give any further orders to him. The officials clarified the sequence of events amid the political and legal uproar that has followed a report in The Washington Post last week. It said that Admiral Bradley ordered the second strike to fulfill a directive by Mr. Hegseth to kill everyone. The reaction has included questions about whether Mr. Hegseth specifically ordered an execution of shipwrecked sailors in violation of the laws of war.

NYT

3. Trump Rallies GOP Support in Tight Tennessee Special Election Today

President Trump pushed voters to cast a ballot for the Republican House candidate in a Nashville-area special election that has become uncomfortably tight for the GOP in recent weeks. Democrats are framing the contest between Democrat Aftyn Behn and Republican Matt Van Epps as a referendum on Trump’s second term, as the president faces slumping poll numbers, particularly in his handling of the economy. Early voting ended Nov. 26 with more than 84,000 ballots already cast, and voting wraps up Tuesday evening. “The whole world is watching Tennessee right now, and they’re watching the district,” Trump said at a rally for Van Epps on Monday morning. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) was at the event and held his phone to the microphone so the crowd could hear the president.

WSJ

4. Installment Payment Services See Surge During Cyber Week Sales

From spreading out payments to dodging impulse purchases, holiday shoppers this year took a more judicious approach to spending over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday sales weekend, recent data shows. Underscoring this trend, “buy now pay later” services such as Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay and PayPal Pay Later are increasingly popular among consumers of all income levels — whether shoppers are looking for convenience or seeking to spread out their budget, according to David Tinsley, a senior economist at the Bank of America Institute. Most customers are “light users,” he said, meaning they have about one to four transactions in their account, he added. The services drove $747.5 million in online spending on Black Friday, an almost 9 percent increase over last year, according to Adobe Analytics. That’s about 6 percent of what Americans spent online that day. And usage was already ramping up throughout November. In the first 23 days of the month, it was up more than 10 percent year over year, equating to a $600 million boost.

Washington Post

5. Putin to Host Trump Envoys in Moscow for Ukraine Peace Talks Today

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is set to host Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy, and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, in Moscow on Tuesday, as the United States pushes for an end to the war in Ukraine. Mr. Witkoff is expected to present Mr. Putin with a U.S.-backed peace proposal that was revised by American officials after recent negotiations with Ukrainian diplomats. The initial version of the plan that emerged last month was seen by Ukraine and its European allies as echoing the maximalist demands Russia has made since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Mr. Witkoff’s visit to Moscow, his sixth since January, is to take place two days after American and Ukrainian delegations met in Miami to discuss the details of the potential peace plan, parts of which Ukraine has sought to soften. Both sides called those talks constructive but said more work was needed, without detailing the unresolved issues.

NYT

December 2 1823: Monroe Doctrine declared

During his annual address to Congress, President James Monroe proclaims a new U.S. foreign policy initiative that becomes known as the “Monroe Doctrine.” Primarily the work of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, the Monroe Doctrine forbade European interference in the American hemisphere but also asserted U.S. neutrality in regard to future European conflicts.

During his presidency, Donald Trump repeatedly signaled a revival of the long-dormant Monroe Doctrine, restoring a 19th-century vision of the Western Hemisphere as a strategic sphere where outside influence should be limited. His administration explicitly cited the doctrine in pressuring Cuba and Venezuela, but the approach extended more broadly. Trump officials warned against China’s expanding footprint in Panama following the Panama Canal handover—framing it as a direct challenge to U.S. dominance in the hemisphere—and even floated purchasing Greenland from Denmark as a way to block growing Chinese and Russian activity in the Arctic. These episodes, unusual by modern diplomatic standards, underscored how Trump repositioned the Monroe Doctrine from a historical relic into an active geopolitical tool aimed at countering rival powers close to U.S. shores.

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