As President Donald Trump focuses his energy on bringing food costs back down, he’s taking his messaging to the people who serve food to millions of Americans for a living each day: McDonald’s franchise owners, operators, and suppliers. Trump is set to address an audience of McDonald’s franchisees in Washington, D.C., on Monday evening as the White House does a full-court press on economic issues, Axios reported. “The Biden administration started the affordability crisis, but President Trump will end it so all Americans can achieve economic prosperity,” a White House official told Axios. Trump is scheduled to speak at 6:00 p.m. ET. The “Impact Summit” will also feature a slate of Democratic speakers, including New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. It’s a venue where Republicans and the Trump administration want to make their presence known as the economy comes back to the forefront of the political conversation. The summit will give Trump a chance to double down on his administration’s efforts to address the economy and food prices. McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski warned earlier this month that inflation was continuing to place “pressure on the industry.” “It’s still a difficult environment, and inflation is proving to be sticky,” Kempczinski said, according to Fox Business. “I mean, we’re expecting to see there’s going to be above-average inflation next year. … We’re seeing very, very high inflation around beef prices versus what we’re used to historically, and so I think all of that just keeps putting pressure on the industry.” McDonald’s executives have said that higher overhead costs have forced the company to raise prices, which has driven away many low-income customers. Year-over-year inflation has gone down from where it stood during most of former President Joe Biden’s term, but has hovered around 3% during the first eight months of Trump’s second term. McDonald’s prices have also risen in recent months, with the average price of the chain’s signature Big Mac jumping to $6.01 as of July, which was up from $5.69 at the same time last year, according to The Economist’s “Big Mac Index.” Ground beef, overall, has risen 13.5% from last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Trump has argued that high food prices are leftover effects from the Biden administration, which saw inflation rise to 9.1% in June 2022. The Trump administration has taken more steps recently to address high prices and point out where prices have fallen. “Since Day One, the Trump Administration has been on a mission to tame Biden’s inflation crisis, stop the sky-high Biden price increases, and lower costs for everyday families — and while it can’t happen overnight, evidence shows the trend is in the right direction,” the White House said on Friday. Trump also removed tariffs on hundreds of food imports on Friday, marking a major pivot in the president’s trade strategy. Trump’s tariff rollback is aimed at lowering prices for Americans and will apply to food items that are not grown or produced in the United States in “sufficient quantities,” including beef, coffee, tea, bananas, oranges, tomatoes, and tropical fruits and fruit juices. McDonald’s is a personal favorite of Trump’s. The president made a pit stop at a McDonald’s location in Pennsylvania during the 2024 campaign, where he ran the fry cooker and served food to customers. He has also served McDonald’s food to special guests in the White House.

After decades of snubs, actor Tom Cruise was awarded an Academy Honorary Award at the Governors Awards on November 16. Despite being nominated several times for Oscars in the past, including for his work on “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989), “Jerry Maguire” (1996), “Magnolia” (1999), and “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022), the 63-year-old movie star has never won. His fans believe he was being unfairly shunned by the Academy. “The cinema, it takes me around the world,” Cruise said during his emotional acceptance speech. “It helps me to appreciate and respect differences. It shows me also our shared humanity, how alike we are in so, so many ways. And no matter where we come from, in that theater, we laugh together, we feel together, we hope together, and that is the power of this art form. And that is why it matters, that is why it matters to me.” He added, “So making films is not what I do, it is who I am.” “My love for cinema began at a very early age, as early as I can remember,” Cruise said. “I was just a little kid in a darkened theater, and I remember that beam of light just cut across the room, and I remember looking up, and it seemed to be just exploded on the screen. Suddenly, the world was so much larger than the one that I knew.” He went on to say that, for him, films “sparked a hunger for adventure, a hunger for knowledge, a hunger to understand humanity, to create characters, to tell a story, to see the world.” Cruise said, “It opened my eyes. It opened my imagination to the possibility that life could expand far beyond the boundaries that I then perceived in my own life. And that beam of light opened a desire to open the world, and I have been following it ever since.” The award was presented by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who is directing Cruise in an upcoming movie coming out next year.

An alleged illegal immigrant terrorist was working as a truck driver in the United States using a Pennsylvania-issued commercial driver’s license, the Department of Homeland Security revealed Monday. Local authorities pulled over Uzbek national Akhror Bozorov, 31, on Nov. 9 when it was discovered that he had an Interpol warrant for allegedly distributing terrorist propaganda calling for jihad online and recruiting fellow terrorists, federal law enforcement sources told The Daily Wire. Immigration and Customs Enforcement later took him into custody. Bozorov crossed the California border illegally in 2023 and was swiftly released into the country when the Biden administration was pushing Border Patrol to move people out of custody as quickly as possible. His warrant was issued the year before he came to the United States, but border agents didn’t find any such red flags because they didn’t have enough time to properly vet him, sources said. “Not only was Akhror Bozorov — a wanted terrorist — RELEASED into the country by the Biden administration, but he was also given a commercial driver’s license by Governor Shapiro’s Pennsylvania. This should go without saying, but terrorist illegal aliens should not be operating 18-wheelers on America’s highways,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a Monday statement. “Biden and Mayorkas allowed countless terrorists to come into our country. President Trump and Secretary Noem unleashed ICE to target these national security threats,” she added. Under the Biden administration, ISIS-tied smuggling networks helped hundreds of illegal immigrants from Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries cross into the United States, CNN previously reported. In 2024, the Biden administration handed Bozorov a work permit, which likely opened the door for his trucking license. The Trump administration recently commenced a crackdown on states issuing commercial driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, with the worst offender being California, after a series of fatal collisions. Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons recently issued a dire warning that the issue has increased the potential for a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “We don’t know what they’re carrying across state lines in an 18-wheeler, terrorists will stop at nothing to harm the United States, and it is well within the realm of possibility that some of these trucks … could be carrying toxic chemicals, bombs, or God knows what,” Lyons said.

'The jury saw only the tip of the iceberg of available defense evidence'

'We have to train our people how to make chips'

President Donald Trump did not rule out using ground troops to “take care of” Venezuela, he told reporters Monday in the Oval Office. Trump said he won’t “rule out anything” among his options for dealing with Venezuela when asked by a reporter about the possibility of sending in ground troops. The U.S. has an unprecedented […]

drag us all backwards