What’s Up With Cyber Monday?

On its 20th anniversary, let’s see how this became a thing

Did you know that Cyber Monday officially began in 2005? The National Retail Federation coined the term 20 years ago to describe the surge in online shopping when everyone returned to work the Monday after Thanksgiving. Productivity took a hit, but those digital carts got loaded up before lunch.

The NRF promoted the term to encourage consumers to shop online using faster internet connections at the office, providing a less hectic digital alternative to Black Friday’s chaotic in-store shopping. The term stuck, and the day has since evolved into the global online shopping phenomenon we know today.

Of course, in those early days it was all about burgeoning e-commerce platforms like eBay, Walmart and Amazon. But now, Cyber Monday’s online extravaganza has eclipsed Black Friday as in-person traffic has slowed and every brand and retailer has expanded their online presence. Most analysts see the two retail shopping events as blending together into one long weekend of discount codes and deals.

Maybe it’s our human instinct around “saving the best for last” but we tend to think that Cyber Monday brings the biggest discounts. And even today, most will wait until the last minute to grab those bargains. Last year, the most shopping activity took place between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Cyber Monday, during which consumers spent roughly $15.8M per minute.

Despite wider economic uncertainty hovering above this year’s holiday season, shoppers turned out in big numbers for Black Friday—spending billions of dollars both in stores and online. Despite spending more overall, Salesforce found U.S. shoppers purchased fewer items at checkout on Black Friday (down 2% from last year). Order volumes also slipped 1%, the firm noted, as average selling prices climbed 7% thanks to tariffs. Still, it stands to reason that this will be the biggest Cyber Monday ever. Until next year, that is.

Get Shopping:

Looking for real value this Cyber Monday? We’ve done the digging so you don’t have to. Check out our vetted list of deals before they disappear.

Lawmakers on Follow-Up Boat Strike: Is It a War Crime?

Trump says Hegseth told him he didn’t order killing of boat crew

Lawmakers from both parties said Sunday they support congressional reviews of U.S. military strikes against vessels suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, citing a published report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order for all crew members to be killed as part of a Sept. 2 attack.

The remarks came in response to a Washington Post report on Friday that said that Defense Secretary Hegseth had given a verbal order to kill everyone aboard boats suspected of smuggling drugs, and that this led a military commander to carry out a second strike to kill those who had initially survived the first attack. Hegseth on X dismissed the reporting as “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory.”

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has “great confidence” that the Defense Secretary did not give a kill order, saying that Hegseth told him “he did not say that, and I believe him, 100 percent.” But House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (the Republican from Alabama) and Ranking Member Adam Smith (the Washington Democrat) issued a joint statement Saturday vowing “rigorous oversight” of the strikes. The Defense Department’s Law of War Manual uses shooting shipwrecked survivors as an example of a clearly illegal order that service members are obligated to refuse.

Meanwhile:

This analysis from the Washington Post says that in times of crisis, Trump falls back on rants rather than unity.

In Other News

Trump Says He’ll Release MRI Results

But added that he doesn’t know what part of his body was scanned

President Trump said Sunday that he’ll release the results of his “perfect” October MRI scan. “If you want to have it released, I’ll release it,” the president said during an exchange with reporters on Air Force One as he traveled back to Washington from Florida. It was a photo of the president at Mar-a-Lago, sitting slack-jawed with his eyes closed, that has renewed concerns about Trump’s health.

Leading the charge is Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, with whom Trump has traded barbs in recent months. Walz claimed on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday that the president is “fading physically” and questioned his “mental capacity” while responding to questions about Trump singling him out in a Friday night post on immigration and Minnesota’s Somali community. “Here we got a guy on Thanksgiving where we spent time with our families, we ate, we cheered for football,” said Walz. “This guy is apparently in a room ranting about everything else. This is not normal behavior. It’s not healthy.”

When a reporter asked Trump what part of the body the MRI was looking at, Trump replied, “I have no idea. It was just an MRI … It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test and I aced it—which you would be incapable of doing.” Nice. And one has to wonder if this will be like the tax returns that he’s consistently promised to release.