America’s top tech moguls have been making a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of President-elect Trump, hoping to repair a rocky relationship and curry favor with the incoming administration.

Last week, it was Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook making the trek from California to Palm Beach. Before Thanksgiving, it was Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. And this week, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will have dinner with Trump.

Meanwhile, Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman said they were each contributing $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund last week.

It’s not unusual for CEOs to cozy up to an incoming administration. The White House sets policies that will have major impacts on their companies, and they want to make sure their interests are being heard.

Still, for the tech industry in particular, it’s a notable attempt to thaw out a relationship that had been contentious:

• Facebook suspended Trump’s account following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
• Amazon and other top companies said they would stop donating to GOP lawmakers who objected to President Biden’s victory in 2020.
• Trump was a frequent critic of Jeff Bezos for negative coverage in the Washington Post, which Bezos owns.

The tune has changed. Take Salesforce CEO and Time magazine owner Marc Benioff, for example. A prominent Democratic tech donor during Trump 1.0, his magazine just awarded Trump “Person of the Year,” and said on Thursday it was “a time of great promise for our nation.”

They’re also playing catch-up to Elon. Musk has established a bromance with Trump after helping get him elected, and other CEOs might be wary that Musk could wield that influence to punish business rivals.

Altman, who is one of those rivals, said at a recent conference he believes “Elon will do the right thing.” He added that “it would be profoundly un-American to use political power, to the degree that Elon has it, to hurt your competitors and advantage your own businesses.”—NF

New Jersey senator says drone sightings are “almost certainly planes.” Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) spent a night drone chasing with local police in the Garden State, and while he did say he saw some drones in the sky, he concluded that “most of the possible drone sightings that were pointed out to me were almost certainly planes.” The FBI concurred: “Many of the reported drone sightings are, in fact, manned aircraft being misidentified as drones.” Investigations into the sightings that began in November have found no illegal activity and no evidence of any wrongdoing by foreign adversaries. But Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and other frustrated officials are demanding answers—he called for the Department of Homeland Security to deploy technology that can track the drones back to their landing spots.

ABC News will pay $15 million to settle defamation suit with Trump. In a concession to the president-elect, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit he brought against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos. Trump sued for defamation after Stephanopoulos inaccurately said on-air earlier this year that Trump was found liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll (a jury found him liable for sexual abuse). Media experts noted that ABC News could have fought the lawsuit and won—Trump has lost previous defamation challenges against the NYT, Washington Post, and CNN.

Luigi Mangione hires a prominent NY lawyer to represent him. The suspected shooter of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has retained Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a high-powered, well-connected NYC attorney who was once the top assistant to former Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance. The evidence against Mangione is extensive—fingerprints, surveillance footage, a matching gun, and more—so it’s likely Mangione’s only viable defense is to claim “extreme emotional disturbance,” legal experts told The Guardian. Interesting fact: Friedman Agnifilo is married to Marc Agnifilo, the lawyer representing Sean “Diddy” Combs against sex trafficking charges.

Friday night, President-elect Trump wrote on Truth Social that he wants to end daylight saving time—which maximizes sunlight in the summer evenings—and will work with Republicans to make standard time permanent when he takes office.

With his post calling daylight saving time “very costly to our Nation,” Trump waded into the seemingly never-ending debate over the benefits and drawbacks of switching the clocks twice a year.

• Consumer spending: The conventional wisdom is more people spend money after work with more sunshine available in the evening. But with online shopping on the rise, that benefit may be on the decline.
• Energy: Daylight saving time is intended to make your electric bill cheaper, but there’s no agreement on whether it lowers energy use. Energy consumption patterns have shifted since DST became federal law in 1966 (Hawaii and Arizona do not observe it), blunting the possible cost savings from late-day natural light.
• Sleep and health: Standard time aligns with humans’ circadian rhythms and provides for a better night’s sleep, leading health groups say. More morning sunlight can also have positive effects on mental health and be safer for kids going to school in the AM.

Americans say just pick one: More than six in 10 Americans want the clocks to stop falling back and springing forward altogether, according to a Monmouth University poll.

Attempts were made in 2022 and 2023 to make daylight saving time permanent (the opposite of what Trump wants), but both bills stalled out in Congress.—DL

If you’re planning on buying Hot Wheels for a gift this holiday season, you won’t get any points for originality. The collectible cars are the bestselling toy in the world, according to market research firm Circana, and their popularity shows no signs of hitting the brakes 56 years after their introduction. Mattel sells 22.5 Hot Wheels cars per second, translating to 709 million cars sold per year, the Washington Post reported. Last year, Hot Wheels sales grew 14% annually to $1.43 billion.

“The demographic capture is incomparable,” UBS Investment Bank analyst Arpiné Kocharyan said. “You can target a kid that’s 3 years old all the way to a collector that’s 60 years old.” Starting as low as $1.25, the cars actually cost less than they did in 1968, when they sold for 69–89 cents (around $6 to $8 in today’s dollars).—DL

The Fed will cut rates in its final meeting of the year. Nothing in this world is a given, but confidence is extremely high that the Fed will give us one final quarter-point rate cut when JPow and friends convene this week. The Fed’s rate path for 2025, however, is the big question mark: Inflation is proving to be more stubborn than anticipated, and President-elect Trump’s economic policies (e.g., tariffs) could complicate the picture even more. A Bloomberg survey of 50 economists resulted in median estimates of three rate cuts in the coming year.

MrBeast comes to Amazon and Mufasa hits theaters. On the entertainment calendar, MrBeast’s “Squid Game”-inspired competition show “Beast Games” hits Amazon Prime Video on Thursday, offering a grand prize of $5 million. Mufasa: The Lion King, the prequel to 2019’s live-action Lion King, arrives in theaters on Friday. If you’re looking for more awards-worthy fare, The Brutalist is also in theaters on Friday. The Adrian Brody-starring Oscar contender is 98% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

Everything else…

• The University of Vermont will play in its first-ever championship game—in any sport—when the Catamounts take on Marshall for the men’s soccer title tonight.
• The first round of the College Football Playoff begins on Friday night when Indiana visits Notre Dame. Three more first-round games will happen on Saturday.
• The Kennedy Center Honors will air on Sunday.
• Winter officially starts on Saturday with the winter solstice.