Fourth & Democracy | Billions on Black Friday, a Disappointing Gaming Season, & Dear Leader’s Disposition

Welcome to another edition of Fourth & Democracy.

Black Friday spending shattered records, the Department of Justice is quietly collapsing from the inside, the holiday gaming season somehow feels more lifeless than the economy, and the president is spiraling into a dangerous phase as his health deteriorates. This week in Fourth & Democracy, we’re breaking down the billions Americans spent to survive the holidays and how they afforded rising prices, the legal mountain Democrats will inherit in 2029, and the corporate decay hollowing out entertainment for young men. All of this happens while our president’s paranoia is escalating into something dangerous for both the American people and foreign populations. It’s a lot – but it’s the world we live in.

So let’s get to it:

1st & 10: Black Friday Brings in Billions

According to new data from Adobe Analytics, Americans just set a new all-time record for Black Friday shopping, and the numbers are surprising.

Adobe reports that $11.8 billion was spent online on Black Friday alone, a 9% increase from last year and the single largest online shopping day in U.S. history. Thanksgiving wasn’t far behind, bringing in $6.4 billion in online sales.

Put together, Americans have already spent tens of billions in the early stretch of the holiday season, and projections show that total online spending from November 1st through December will surpass $253 billion – the first holiday season to ever cross into the quarter-trillion mark.

But when you look into the details, the story gets more complicated:

• Mobile shopping is king.

Adobe says that more than half of all online purchases happened on phones for Black Friday. In terms of traffic, nearly three out of every four visits to online retailers came from a smart phone – not being out shopping with the public.

• Buy now, Pay later is bigger than ever.

Buy Now, Pay Later options will reach roughly $20 billion this holiday season – up double digits from last year. This is a sign of economic strain that shows people are stretching purchases across months to make Christmas happen in 2025.

• The average shopper is buying fewer items – and paying more for them.

Adobe’s pricing data shows that while discounts were widespread, the overall selling price is still higher than a year ago. Trump’s inflation, tariffs, and supply chain issues are being baked into the final costs. So while spending is up – so are the price tags.

The State of the American consumer

If you look at the record numbers – $11.8 billion – Trump will paint a picture of a booming, confident consumer base.

But Adobe’s own data tells the true story. People are buying fewer items. They’re leaning heavily on financing and buy now, pay later options. They’re being pushed along by AI-shaped deals and aggressive mobile checkout designs to bully impulsive consumers into spending what they don’t have. And the bulk of the spending is happening online, where it’s easier to spend money you don’t fully feel when it leaves your wallet.

This is not a thriving middle class throwing around money. It’s escapism for a stressed out American public trying to keep holiday traditions alive in an economy where prices climb faster than wages.

Why it matters

Black Friday raking in billions of dollars doesn’t mean the working class is doing well. It means Americans are adapting, and sometimes contorting themselves, to keep up. Adobe Analytics’ numbers capture the country as it actually is: emotionally exhausted, financially stretched, digitally pushed to the limit, and quietly carrying the holiday season on credit and installments while saying we’ll figure it out later.

2nd & Long: The Mountain Waiting for the Next DOJ

In the Army, they call it the 5 P’s – or the 6 P’s if you want to get cute: Prior preparation prevents piss-poor performance.

Democrats in 2021 believed institutional norms and guardrails would guarantee accountability. They were wrong.

If they manage to take back the White House in 2029, the hardest job in Washington won’t be President.

It’ll be the Attorney General.

The first Trump administration damaged the Department of Justice by hollowing it out. The second one is destroying it. And whoever inherits the department from the second Trump regime, is going to face a legal and institutional disaster unlike anything in modern American history.

We’ve already seen the warning signs. According to reports, nearly two-thirds of the DOJ’s Federal Programs Branch – the division that defends major federal policies in court – has resigned since Trump returned to power. Veteran attorneys walked out after saying they could no longer defend policies which they viewed as unconstitutional and politically motivated. Divisions like Civil Rights, Public Integrity, and Voting Rights have been gutted by the regime. One investigation found that the Public Integrity Section may now have as few as two lawyers.

This isn’t neglect. It’s demolition. And while the DOJ is being hollowed out, the list of crimes keeps growing.

You’ve got the pay-to-play White House ballroom, a $300 million corporate-funded showpiece where access to the administration looks like a product for sale. Even Wall Street got spooked. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said publicly that the bank didn’t donate because of how “the next DOJ” might interpret the contribution. It was a stunning admission that business leaders now view this administration’s grift with criminal exposure.

You’ve got Trump labeled crypto outfits and sovereign wealth funds getting sweetheart access and inside information. Foreign leaders giving lavish gifts and planes at the exact moment they’re seeking regulatory favors. Contracts and concessions lining up neatly with television and media mergers.

And then there’s the Venezuela Caribbean boat strikes – covert military action carried out without congressional authorization under orders to “leave no survivors,” and ending with eleven dead. That’s no longer the realm of political scandal. That’s outright war crimes.

Add it all up, and the next administration won’t just inherit a broken DOJ. They’ll inherit a crime scene with investigative tools removed from the area.

That’s why Democrats cannot wait until 2029 to start planning. Restoring DOJ after Trump’s first term took years – and even then, it wasn’t enough. Merrick Garland’s caution and pace of play drove the public crazy while SCOTUS helped create the legal gray area for Trump to walk back into the Oval Office. The next team won’t get the luxury of time, patience, or “institutional norms.”

They’ll need:

• A pre-vetted bench of prosecutors experienced in public corruption, financial crime, crypto, and national-security law.

• A plan to rapidly rebuild gutted DOJ divisions with thousands of career staff.

• Independent structures ready to launch – special counsels, inspector general reinforcements, evidence-preservation.

• A political mandate not just to “restore the rule of law,” but to actually enforce it.

Because this time, the job won’t be restoring an institution. It’ll be untangling a web of corruption so convoluted that even corporate America is openly admitting they’re worried about future prosecution for optics involved with the president.

In 2029, the question won’t be whether the DOJ can handle it – but whether Democrats spent any prep time ensuring the next Department of Justice is capable of confronting the truth.

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3rd & Short: A Disappointing Gaming Season

There was a time – not too long ago – when the fall gaming cycle felt like the Super Bowl of entertainment for guys. New Madden. New NBA 2k. New Call of Duty. New Battlefield. Midnight releases with lines around the block outside of GameStop. Sleep schedules torched by all nighters and controllers worn out by Christmas day.

Now? It feels like checking a box on a corporate spreadsheet. A rubber stamp of profits.

Madden 26 launched with the excitement of a DMV appointment and all the innovation of last year’s updates with a new year slapped on the cover. Players have called it one of the most bare-bones releases in the franchises’ history. The physics of the game recycled, the animations nearly the same, the bugs are still incessant – and to be honest, the frustration is recycled too.

Black Ops 7 hasn’t fared much better with a rating under 4 stars. The campaign, which was lazily done as an online co-op, feels like it was assembled by AI and a diet of cut scenes. The multiplayer maps are limited, recycled, and catered toward sweaty 13-year-olds who mash buttons while geeked on Prime Energy.

And Battlefield? Another display of how far a legendary franchise can fall. A campaign that barely scratched 12 hours and an obvious attempt to prioritize quarterly earnings ahead of a merger over the quality of their release.

But maybe more damning than any of the titles from this season is what didn’t come out. This used to be the window where studios dropped their biggest titles, their major swings – new IP, new worlds, new risks. Now the holiday lineup looks like it was produced on an old assembly line as Grand Theft Auto 6 was just pushed back another 6 months.

The through-line here: late-stage capitalism is squeezing the soul out of gaming.

The games aren’t broken or bad because developers can’t innovate or aren’t creative. They’re broken because executives are demanding annualized releases, predictable revenue, and microtransactions that double as rent payments for your entertainment. The result ends up being a gaming season that feels less like the events of past and more like just another subscription fee – something you endure rather than enjoy.

Gaming used to be an escape, but this year’s lineup felt more like a reminder: nothing is safe from the grips of late-stage capitalism.

4th & Democracy: As the Body Fails, the Regime Fights

Following the shooting of two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C. by an Afghan national, the president didn’t hesitate – he said he was locking the country down. Trump immediately branded the incident a “terrorist attack” and used it to justify a sweeping halt on asylum decisions, a pause on visas from “poor countries,” and the threat of mass deportations of people already here.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro charged Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national who reportedly worked with U.S. intelligence during the Afghanistan war, with first-degree murder after PFC Sarah Beckstrom died of her injuries. Her Fellow Guardsman Andrew Wolf remains in critical condition, “fighting for his life,” according to Trump’s Thanksgiving call with troops.

But the questions around this case have only multiplied – and FBI Director Kash Patel isn’t answering any of them.

Why would Lakanwal travel 2,700 miles from Bellingham, Washington to carry out a random shooting in D.C.?

Why was the guard posted at that location the day before Thanksgiving?

How was a teenage Afghan national who reportedly worked with the CIA “vetted” by the Trump administration only to carry out this attack?

And if the threat was so grave, why did the Trump administration itself vet and admit Lakanwal under humanitarian measures in 2024?

Instead of transparency, we’re getting Trump’s instincts. Paranoia masquerading as strength. And that paranoia is being fueled by something Trump can’t control: his failing body.

For weeks, his public appearances have been reduced to him slumped behind oversized conference tables in decaying Mar-a-Lago meeting rooms, straining to project the authority he thinks he commands. The gait is slower. His voice is weaker. The insults toward women reporters – “stupid,” “quiet, piggy,” – are more frequent and feral. This isn’t a strategy. It’s the regression of an aging strongman leaning back into the only tools he trusts: cruelty, fear, and brute force.

Which brings us to Venezuela.

On Saturday, Trump declared that the airspace around Venezuela “should be considered closed in its entirety.” No briefing. No interagency press conference. No explanation. Just a one-line escalation thrown into the global arena like an errant match. National security officials were blindsided, allies most likely stunned, and markets will react come Monday.

But this has become a pattern. A president cornered by the only opponent which remains undefeated: Father Time. His shrunken stature takes him back to the unathletic teenage boy who couldn’t keep up. As his control starts to dwindle, he lashes out at migrants, women, foreign governments of “shit hole countries,” searching for any dopamine hit through threats to strike and enemies to purge.

The danger isn’t theoretical. It’s accelerating. As he sees his health begin to fail him and losses mount in courts that won’t carry out his revenge tour against foes like James Comey and Letitia James – his instinct for domination fills the vacuum where presidential strategy should be.

And nowhere is that instinct more visible than in the Caribbean.

What dropped last week makes clear how real this escalation has become: the U.S. military, under Pete Hegseth, allegedly executed a “double-tap” missile strike on a “narco terror” vessel in the Caribbean – then ordered a second strike when survivors were seen clinging to the wreckage. Sources told the Washington Post that Hegseth gave a verbal order to “kill everybody” aboard the boat. The first strike killed multiple people and after the survivors were spotted and a second missile was launched – eleven people died in total.

This isn’t just a crackdown. It’s a scorched-earth policy that experts inside and outside the military warn that the people being targeted pose no imminent threat. And because the U.S. is not at war with them, the strike could be considered a war crime or outright murder.

Psst … No makeup chairs in ADX Florence, Pete.

This is what happens when an authoritarian feels himself slipping – the leash breaks. The impulses take over. The people around him – the ones hoping to impress him, inherit the MAGA movement, or prove their loyalty – start acting out his internal monologue and playing to his worst impulses. Trump doesn’t need to say “kill them all.” Pete Hegseth will finish the sentence for him.

Meanwhile, Dear Leader sits in Mar-a-Lago, smaller than ever, angrier than ever, and more convinced than ever that only brute force can restore the image of strength that is now slipping away from him. His failing body, his shrinking stature, his staggered gait – all of it pushes him toward a single conclusion: the only path back to relevance is through violence.

We are dealing with an authoritarian leader whose own body is abandoning him. And as he weakens, he reaches deeper into his darkest impulses, searching for that one last spectacle of cruelty he believes will resurrect the image of dominance slipping from his grasp. Every strongman fantasizes about a final, purifying strike – a moment of vengeance and strength so fierce it restores their place in the world.

Trump is drifting toward his.

And the truly terrifying part?

We don’t know whether he intends to unleash it on Venezuela …

Or on the American people.

(Sources: The Washington Post, The Guardian, Reuters)

What to Watch:

The Abandons (Netflix)

A western drama from director Kurt Sutter, The Abandons, is set in 1850s Washington Territory and examines two families: one born of privilege and the other outcasts. They become entangled by crime, secrets, and a forbidden piece of land that only makes the clash grow in size.

Holiday Rom-Coms (Netflix, Anywhere)

Alright boys, listen up. This is the season to stop playing it safe. The girl you’ve had a crush on but keep calling “just a friend”? The one whose number you got but haven’t worked up the courage to text?

Here’s the secret:

Women love holiday rom-coms.

Call her. Invite her over. Put something festive on Netflix and actually pay attention to her. It’s the perfect low-pressure first step toward your holiday dreams coming true and you’ll score points for doing something she genuinely enjoys.

Just don’t forget the hot cocoa. And candy. Trust me.

What to Read:

Notes on Being A Man by Scott Galloway

Young men are less likely to graduate from high school. They are less likely to graduate from college. They are more likely to commit suicide. And they have a lack of opportunities right now in the United States. Your opinion of why that is happening may differ – but the problem remains. Scott Galloway, NYU professor, wrote Notes on Being A Man to explore why this group has fallen faster than any before… and it’s a worthwhile read.

Rewiring Democracy by Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders

AI is rewiring democracy and it will go far beyond political deepfakes and automated answers. It will create risks and opportunities that have the ability to destroy entire democracies with the sophistication of supercomputers. Schneier and Sanders examine this problem and how our future depends on what we do now. (Schneier and Sanders recently joined Lincoln Square executive editor, Susan Demas, for a discussion on their book.)

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