View in browser   PRESENTED BY BANK OF AMERICA   Axios AM By Mike Allen · Nov 24, 2023 🛍️ Happy Black Friday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,174 words ... 4½ mins. Edited by Natalie Daher.  Black Friday guide by Axios' Kelly Tyko.     1 big thing: Subscription everything  Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios   The number of products and services we sign up for is ballooning as almost every industry latches onto the subscription business model, Axios' Erica Pandey reports:  Car washes are doling out memberships. Pet toys and treats come in recurring bundles. More of us are subscribing to meals, as the market for food delivery boxes grows. The personal care and grooming market has pivoted to subscriptions: Razors, makeup and personalized hair-care products arrive monthly in the mail. Even Taco Bell offers a subscription service — $10 a month for a taco a day. What's happening: Businesses can make more money up-front and over time by selling subscriptions and building loyalty. They can also mine subscribers for data to tailor their services — just like streaming services collect information on what you watch and use it to suggest new titles. 🥊 Reality check: The average consumer spends $219 on subscriptions every month, per C+R Research. But we're only aware of about 40% of that spending. Customers' forgetfulness when it comes to subscriptions can boost companies' revenues by up to 200%, according to economists at Stanford and Texas A&M. 🤦 Now there are app services that track and clean up your subscriptions for you — and offer their own premium tiers ... as a subscription. Share this story.         2. ⚡ Hostage release begins  An aid truck arrives at Gaza's Rafah border crossing from Egypt today. Photo: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters Hamas began the process of freeing the first group of Israeli hostages, hours after a four-day pause in Gaza fighting began, Axios' Barak Ravid reports. The hostages include 13 Israeli women and children and 12 Thai nationals. Israel is expected to release 39 Palestinians from Israeli prisons later Friday as part of the deal with Hamas. The pause in the fighting in Gaza started this morning. Hamas agreed to free at least 50 women and children over the four days. Israel is set to release 150 Palestinians, primarily women and children, held in Israeli prisons. Israel will allow hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid and additional fuel to enter Gaza each day during the pause.  At least four trucks of fuel and four trucks of cooking gas entered Gaza not long after the pause began. Get the latest.         3. 🏠 Stat du jour  Data: National Association of Realtors, FactSet. Chart: Axios Visuals Home sales are at their lowest since the Great Recession housing bust, Axios' Matt Phillips writes.  What's happening: The housing market is still struggling to adjust to an interest-rate surge that pushed the 30-year fixed mortgage rate to about 8%. That drastically changed the cost calculus for most homebuyers. Go deeper.         A MESSAGE FROM BANK OF AMERICA A new approach to mental illness and homelessness     Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital combines psychiatric and medical care with outreach.  Learn how Bank of America is supporting the city’s only public acute care hospital in its goal to deliver holistic mental health and addiction care to hard-to-reach populations.     4. 📷 = 1,000 words  Photo: Peter K. Afriyie Human ornaments decorated a Christmas tree float in the 97th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. See all 25 balloons.         5. 🇳🇱 Far right buoyed by Dutch upset Geert Wilders speaks to the media today in The Hague, Netherlands, during a break in negotiations to form a coalition government. Photo: Carl Court/Getty Images A surprise, massive victory by anti-Islam, anti-EU populist Geert Wilders in the Netherlands provided powerful jumper cables to Europe's hard right: Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV) more than doubled its seats in parliament to tower over mainstream parties that long marginalized him, AP reports. Now Wilders, 60, is trying to form a coalition to become prime minister. Why it matters: There's new energy for nationalist conservative populists — with European Parliament elections coming up in June. Wilder's victory came three days after Argentina elected "anarcho-capitalist" Javier Milei, who was congratulated by former President Trump.  🖼️ The big picture: The far right now hopes for bigger gains on a continent with war in Ukraine, chaotic and deadly migration, and spreading poverty because of inflation. "The winds of change have arrived!" crowed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a favorite of the hard right.  🇫🇷 Like Wilders, Marine Le Pen in France has been dreaming of grasping power for more than a decade, and now has a powerful ally with a similar loathing of the EU.  Wilders has called for a "Nexit" referendum — a Dutch version of Brexit. But he'd need the support of other parties — unlikely, given the Netherlands' economic reliance on Europe. Go deeper: Profile of the "Dutch Donald Trump."         6. 🔎 FBI ends bridge-explosion probe Still image from video: Saleman Alwishah via Reuters The FBI announced a quick end to its investigation of the fiery Thanksgiving eve car wreck on the U.S. side of the Rainbow Bridge crossing between Ontario, Canada, and Niagara Falls, N.Y.: "A search of the scene revealed no explosive materials, and no terrorism nexus was identified," the statement said.  Why it matters: The explosion added to travel tension and security jitters during the pre-Thanksgiving rush. The indictment prompted the closure of four border crossings, the suspension of border train service and heightened security at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. Video showed the car racing through an intersection, hitting a median and going airborne, before slamming into a line of booths and exploding. A husband and wife in the car were killed. A border agent in the booth was injured. Video of the car careening out of control ... Share this story.          7. 🏛️ Remembering Charlie Peters     Charlie Peters — who challenged both left and right as founder of The Washington Monthly, and editor-in-chief from 1969 to 2000 — died at 96 at his home in Washington on Thanksgiving. James Fallows — who, like so many of today's most famous bylines, began his career at The Monthly — announced the death with a piece called "Why Charlie Peters Matters": He "directly influenced several generations of journalists and people in government and public life." The future stars in his low-paying training newsroom "marveled at his insights and resented his quirky or imperious demands [and ]rolled their eyes during his animated editorial-guidance pep talks known as 'rain dances,'" Fallows writes. "He matters," Fallows continued, "in the ideals he has set for his country: That it should be patriotic but not jingoistic, that it can respect the military without being pro-war, that it can celebrate ambition and entrepreneurship without forgetting those left behind, that it should be skeptical of government failures precisely because effective government is so crucial to America's success." 💭 Classic Peters on "The culture of bureaucracy": "This magazine was started by a group that worked with me in the evaluation division of the Peace Corps," he wrote in 2019, when he came out of retirement to re-up his "Tilting at Windmills" column in The Washington Monthly:  Vietnam revealed "a classic bureaucratic tendency: softening bad news as it travels from the bottom to the top of an organization ... This tendency is strengthened by the knowledge that the people at the top rarely want to hear the bad news." Go deeper: "The Charlie Peters School of Journalism: Reporters often cover government's failures. He taught me to also cover government's successes," by James Fallows (2019).         8. ✈️ 1 for the road  Photo: Mike Allen/Axios  This was my window-seat view of the National Mall as I flew out of DCA on Tuesday night to spend Thanksgiving (and eat deep-fried turkey) with my brother, Scott, and his wife, Sheri, in the Raleigh area. A post-pie Cranium double-header revealed that I should stick to typing and not try to launch a second career in humming or charades. (I was the most turbocharged "hammock" ever to rock and roll on a kitchen floor.)