On the Tucson investigation: @KevinPosobiec: Media from across AZ is here, but officials have given almost no updates. It took 10 days just to get the footage. They’ve had the forensics tent up, but it looks like they’ve got nothing. Sheriff Nanos says it’s under control, yet the public is still in the dark.
On the latest jobs report: @RealEJAntoni: It’s hard to find bad news. Manufacturing, which had been contracting since Jan 2023, finally had an uptick. Construction was up over 30K jobs as investment pours into U.S. factories, a positive sign for more manufacturing ahead. Wage growth is outpacing inflation. Real purchasing power is up 2% in Trump’s first year after falling 4% under Biden. We have the fewest federal bureaucrats since 1966, and all net job growth went to native-born Americans while foreign-born workers lost jobs. Labor force participation is rising, employment jumped by several hundred thousand, and the U6 rate fell sharply. Good news from top to bottom.
JENKS: End the OPT program. It’s the pipeline from U.S. universities to tech jobs to H1Bs, with tax breaks for hiring foreign grads over Americans. Break that pipeline, you slow the flow. Even a $100K H1B fee isn’t enough. Employers save 30% in wages and keep workers for decades through green cards. Make hiring a foreign worker more expensive than hiring an American.
BANNON: Trump has a long relationship with Erdogan and thinks highly of him. Qatar will finance Gaza’s redevelopment, Turks handle security, others assist. People I talk to say it’s a fantasy. But Turkey’s foreign minister says low-enrichment talks are real, and no one in D.C. has countered it.
Boasberg wants U.S. taxpayers to bring suspected gang members back from Venezuela. KELLY: The ACLU doesn’t even know where these 137 illegals are. Some left Venezuela, some are in third party countries. Boasberg wants taxpayers to fly them back, hold Zoom hearings from Venezuela, and let them file new asylum and habeas claims challenging their Alien Enemies Act designation. They’re not in U.S. custody. They’re not under our constitutional protections. Yet he wants them back on American soil.
BANNON: Every politician says “protect American workers.” Dems say it. MAGA Rs say it. Behind the scenes the donors want H1Bs. Tech saves 30% on wages, boosts margins, boosts stock price. That’s the incentive. Cheap, malleable labor backed by the political class.
TEJ GILL: We shouldn’t go into Iran. Maybe you get away with a strike once, but how many times can you do it cleanly? China and Russia are already intertwined with Iran. This won’t be Venezuela. It gets dirty fast, risks boots on the ground, refugee waves to the West, and feeds the endless war machine. Tons of risk, little upside.
ANTONI: Under Biden, BLS published “great” jobs numbers every month, then quietly revised them down over the next two months, consistently and by increasingly large amounts. Not a one off. The errors were getting worse. The latest benchmark showed a 900K job overcount in one year. Add it up and the Biden admin overestimated initial job figures by well over 2M. We said for years the numbers didn’t make sense. Now the revisions have closed the gap. The survey of businesses caught down, exactly as predicted.
BANNON: Rosemary Jenks’ fight to end phony work visas just got more urgent. The tech oligarchs don’t want H1Bs gone because cheap labor + AI = higher margins. They live in fortified enclaves. They don’t deal with the social breakdown.
BANNON: These aren’t mass deportations. These are the first bad hombres removed under Trump’s Article II powers. And now a federal judge wants them back. Why hasn’t the House even opened impeachment hearings on Boasberg?