In the past year, federal, state and institutional decisions have gutted major pillars of America's civil rights protections and racial equity infrastructure, wiping away public data, slashing research funding and erasing Black history, Axios' Delano Massey reports.

• Why it matters: Taken together, these moves amount to an unprecedented rollback of civil rights progress, historians say — the largest since Reconstruction.

Effects are piling up:

1. $3.4 billion in grants for HBCUs, public health research and Black entrepreneurs have been cut or frozen, according to the Blackout Report, from the nonprofit Onyx Impact.
2. 6,769 federal datasets have been deleted, including those tracking maternal mortality and sickle cell disease, which disproportionately affect Black Americans, per the Blackout report.
3. 591 books by Black authors have been banned from Pentagon-run schools and libraries, Onyx Impact notes. The removed titles include works by Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Ibram X. Kendi.
4. The Trump administration is reviewing national museums, including the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History & Culture, after President Trump criticized the museums as being "out of control" and focusing on "how horrible our country is."
5. Government websites have deleted content related to Black history. Some deleted material — including National Park Service pages about Harriet Tubman and Medgar Evers — was restored after public backlash, but researchers say most erasures remain uncorrected.
6. Colleges across the country have shuttered cultural centers, including those that are geared toward Black students, The Washington Post reports.

👀 What we're watching: The cuts and deletions are, paradoxically, drawing more attention to Black history, says National Urban League president Marc H. Morial. "The attempt to erase history has made all of us more cognizant of the need to tell it," he said.

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GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are fast transforming into mainstream treatments more akin to lifestyle accessories, only years after they seemed out of reach for ordinary Americans, Axios' Adriel Bettelheim writes.

• Why it matters: Consumers have already shown they're willing to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket for the treatments, and they may soon see prices drop.

Among the factors bolstering GLP-1s:

• 📉 Lower prices: Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have already reduced prices for the leading GLP-1s in their recent agreement with President Trump in exchange for expanded access to millions of people on Medicare.
• 🔮 "Miracle drug" potential: Medical researchers also continue to find promising new medical uses for GLP-1s, including treatment of addiction, COPD and dementia — though not every application has proven successful.
• 💰 Drug makers surging: Last week, Eli Lilly reached a market valuation of $1 trillion, capping a boost that started two years ago with the launch of its GLP-1, Zepbound.
• 💼 Less red tape: Novo Nordisk and Lilly also took steps to start selling GLP-1s directly to employers next year.
• 💊 Pill form: Manufacturers are continuing to develop pill forms of GLP-1s — like Novo's oral drug Rybelsus — that eliminate the need for injections and are easier to transport and store.

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With the growing threat of a U.S. attack, President Trump posted on Truth Social this morning: "To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP."

Why it matters: Trump has been threatening military action against Venezuela as part of his effort to deter what he calls narco-terrorists.

• The U.S. Navy has built up warships off Venezuela's coast. U.S missiles have been obliterating boats allegedly running drugs in the Caribbean.

💡 Between the lines: Administration officials told Axios' Marc Caputo that Plan A was to pile so much pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro that he'd flee Venezuela. This could be another attempt to ratchet up that pressure — or a sign that threats are about to turn into action. 

On Thanksgiving, Trump told U.S. service members that after deterring Venezuelan drug traffickers by sea, "we'll be starting to stop them by land also ... The land is easier, but that's going to start very soon."

• Last week, the FAA warned airlines of a "potentially hazardous situation" when flying over Venezuela "due to the worsening security situation and heightened military activity in or around" the country.

⚡ U.S. pauses asylum: Continuing the clampdown since the shooting of two National Guard members, Joseph Edlow, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (part of Homeland Security), tweeted last evening that USCIS "has halted all asylum decisions until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible." Get the latest.

The hottest job markets in the country aren't in big cities. Instead, smaller metro areas look mighty at the moment, Axios' Emily Peck reports.

• Why it matters: The labor market is slowing down, particularly for white-collar professionals in tech-heavy cities.

📈 Small metro areas that saw gains had labor markets more weighted toward health care, and leisure and hospitality, says Allison Shrivastava, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab.

• Those two sectors accounted for more than 100% of net job gains in 2025 so far, Bloomberg reported.

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The Trump administration doesn't have enough Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to meet its deportation goals. But it's placed a huge bet that thousands of local cops can help, Axios' Brittany Gibson reports.

• Why it matters: ICE has signed 1,100+ agreements this year for local law enforcement to cooperate on immigration arrests and detentions. The agency is dangling financial incentives from President Trump's "big, beautiful bill."

🤝 By the numbers: Nearly 650 counties now participate in some form of the 287(g) agreement, a formal partnership between ICE and non-federal law enforcement.

• Red states are fueling the surge with new laws requiring cooperation.
• DHS says these partners will also help vet sponsors of migrant children who have lost contact with the government.

ICE is offering to reimburse full salary, benefits and 25% of overtime for "each eligible trained 287(g) officer" — plus bonuses of up to $1,000 based on "successful location of illegal aliens provided by ICE and overall assistance."

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Cigarettes were once unavoidable in the U.S., in restaurants, airplanes, your mom's living room — until health warnings and cultural pressure put out the hype.

• But something's shifted. Young people are glamorizing smoking on social media, and celebrities are casually lighting up on screen, Axios' Herb Scribner writes.

🎬 You'd be hard-pressed to miss cigarettes across pop culture.

• More than half of the top box-office films released in 2024 featured tobacco imagery — marking a 10 percentage point jump from the year before, according to a report from nonprofit Truth Initiative and NORC at the University of Chicago.

📱On Instagram, the account Cigfluencers posts throwback and new photos of celebs — including Charli xcx, Natalie Portman and Leo DiCaprio — taking drags.

⚠️ Experts worry the trend ignores the dangers of addiction.

• Cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of disease, death and disability nationwide, according to the CDC.

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Even in the online age, Americans still rush out for big-screen TVs on Black Friday — including these shoppers at a Best Buy in Houston that opened at 6 a.m.

• Why it matters: Black Friday no longer tempts us to leave the Thanksgiving table for midnight mall runs. But the unofficial holiday still brings more shoppers into stores than any other day of the year, AP reports.

Early birds wait for Walmart to open at 6 a.m. yesterday in Saugus, Mass., where it was 35°.

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Microluxuries like $10 hand sanitizers and $20 lip balms are the latest flex for school kids, Axios' Sami Sparber reports.

• 🎒These pocket-size purchases are being "traded, shown off, and incorporated into personal brand-building," Casey Lewis wrote recently in After School, her newsletter about youth trends.

💅 Teens and tweens say they're drawn to Touchland's candy-colored sanitizer mists (packaged in sleek rectangles) for the aesthetic and because they're less likely than gels to leak in pencil cases and backpacks.

• Young fans similarly flaunt Rhode's Peptide Lip Treatments and Summer Friday's Lip Butter Balms — glossy tubes with names like Strawberry Glaze and Pink Sugar.

🎀 Reality check: While $10 is steep for hand sanitizer, it's cheap compared to what some Labubus go for online.

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