The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) uncovered widespread instances of unaccompanied migrant children placed with unvetted sponsors with criminal backgrounds during the Biden administration, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Children who had no parents or legal guardians that were handed over to unvetted sponsors suffered from sexual abuse, forced labor, and neglectful living conditions, ICE stated in a press release in June. The findings stem from a months-long investigation by the agency to ensure the children were safe.

“In February 2025, the Department of Homeland Security and its federal and state partners launched a national child welfare initiative to locate and verify these at-risk kids’ safety,” according to the DHS announcement.

Agents found numerous instances where sponsors had previously been charged with serious crimes such as “hit-and-run, aggravated assault, larceny, counterfeiting, drug trafficking, prostitution and even attempted murder,” according to the release.

In some of the most extreme cases, girls were found to be “pregnant with children fathered by their alleged sponsors,” with some minor being forced into labor, the release stated. Some sponsors also had images of child sex abuse material.

ICE and DHS did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Children’s safety and security is nonnegotiable. The previous administration’s failure to implement meaningful safeguards has allowed vulnerable kids to fall into the hands of criminals. Our special agents are working tirelessly to locate these alien children, ensure their protection, and hold accountable those who have abused the system,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson Laszlo Baksay said in a prepared statement.

ICE agents are “doing what should’ve been done all along: protecting children,” Baksay continued, adding that this “is the responsibility of any government, Republican or Democrat, but it was the Trump administration that insisted on rigorous sponsor screening and biometric verification.”

Currently under the Trump administration, zero illegal immigrants were released from the southern border into the U.S. in May. Activity along the U.S.-Mexico has fallen to historic lows, with only 6,070 encounters being documented in June 2025.

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In a time when Americans face mounting student debt, stagnant wages and increasing job competition, a little-known government program continues to certify hundreds of thousands of permanent jobs for foreign workers, even when qualified U.S. citizens are available, willing and able.

The labor certification process known as “PERM” (Program Electronic Review Management) allows employers to sponsor foreign nationals for green cards only if no qualified U.S. worker is available. According to federal law, employers must first complete a good-faith test of the U.S. labor market, which includes specific recruitment steps such as two Sunday newspaper ads, internal postings and three additional recruitment methods from a Department of Labor-approved list.

But in practice, employers can exploit the outdated list of approved recruitment methods by avoiding major online platforms and even their own company career sites. Instead, they often use limited-access alternatives such as obscure job boards, local or ethnic newspapers, or short-duration radio ads that technically satisfy the rules on paper, but drastically reduce the chances that qualified U.S. workers will ever see or apply for the position.

In 2024, the Department of Labor processed 116,427 PERM applications to hire foreign workers, approving nearly 88% of them. Only 5.4% (6,364) were denied. This means tens of thousands of U.S. jobs were certified for foreign workers without a transparent or fair recruitment process. The Department of Labor publishes quarterly data on employer applications to sponsor foreign workers, including both H-1B and PERM filings, which offers insight into the hiring and immigration practices of U.S. employers and their immigration attorneys.

An analysis of PERM filings from 2020 to 2024 reveals how major U.S. technology companies use the green card sponsorship process to secure foreign labor for high-paying roles, often without conducting genuine or competitive hiring searches. The data show consistent reliance on minimal recruitment efforts, including outdated tactics like requiring U.S. applicants to submit paper resumes by mail.

These methods, previously flagged by the Department of Justice as barriers to American workers, were often used even by large tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Workday.

For example, PERM-required job ads published in the May 9, 2021, print edition of the Mercury News instructed jobseekers to apply via postal mail, despite the fact that these companies already had digital hiring systems in place.

Similar tactics triggered a high-profile federal investigation involving Facebook – now Meta. In 2021, the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor reached a settlement with Facebook after alleging it had intentionally implemented PERM recruitment in a way to deter U.S. applicants. According to the complaint, Facebook did not post PERM roles on its public careers page and it required submission of resumes by physical mail, methods the DOJ concluded discouraged American workers from applying:

“Facebook created a separate hiring process for PERM positions that intentionally discouraged U.S. workers from applying. For example, while Facebook typically accepts applications online, it required that applications for PERM positions be submitted by mail only.”

“Facebook used recruitment methods for PERM positions that were less effective than those it used for other positions, intentionally deterring U.S. workers from applying to positions that the company sought to fill with temporary visa holders.”

As part of its settlement, Facebook was required to change its PERM practices, posting jobs on its public website, accepting electronic applications and using the same hiring processes for PERM roles as for other jobs. The company also agreed to federal oversight, employee training and regular reporting on its hiring activity.

Since then, industry reports on the platform Blind show that Meta has seen a rise in PERM denials, suggesting that when forced to conduct fair recruitment, companies do in fact encounter qualified American candidates.

The evidence is overwhelming that companies like Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Google and others, despite consistently lobbying for more foreign-worker visas on the basis of a so-called “talent shortage,” are fully capable of finding qualified Americans when they are actually required to recruit them.

Indeed, when employers go to such lengths to avoid recruiting qualified U.S. workers, even under a program like PERM that explicitly requires a good-faith labor market test, their own actions contradict claims of a shortage. The evidence suggests it is not that they can’t find qualified Americans, it’s that they are deliberately avoiding them.

If this is happening in a program like PERM, which includes at least some legal safeguards and penalties, the risks are far greater under programs like H-1B and STEM OPT, which contain no such protections for U.S. workers. Without enforcement or accountability, these visa channels allow companies to bypass the domestic workforce entirely, undermining both the integrity of the labor market and the future of American employment.

Topline: State and local governments spent an estimated $770 million in 2023 to incarcerate immigrants who had been in the country for less than three years, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office.

Key facts: The CBO report reviewed the “surge population” of immigrants that began arriving in 2021 and added 4.4 million people to the U.S. population by the end of 2023. “Most” of the immigrants “were not lawful permanent residents” and “were not eligible to apply for lawful permanent residency,” according to the report.

The surge population had a $9.2 billion net cost in 2023. Immigrants who were part of the surge paid $10.1 billion in taxes to state and local governments, but the governments spent $19.3 billion on goods and services for the immigrants, according to the CBO.

That means state and local governments spent roughly $2.10 for every $1 immigrants paid in taxes. The expenses included $5.7 billion for education, $3.3 billion for food and shelter, $2.7 million on border security, $1 billion for Medicaid and similar health programs, and more.

By the end of 2023, an estimated 13,500 “surge population” immigrants were in prison for violating state or local laws. The number does not include those in federal jails for violating immigration law.

The CBO noted that 13,500 is a low number considering just how many people entered the country, and explained that “Research has consistently found that immigrants are less likely than native-born citizens to be arrested, convicted, or incarcerated.”

Still, the $770 million cost of jail time is a result of the mass migration to the U.S. from 2021 to 2023, which the CBO said increased the country’s population by 1.3% more than if immigration levels had remained at historically average levels.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com.

Summary: A responsible government collects more money than it spends, meaning U.S. states must find a way to address increases in immigration without wreaking havoc on their budgets.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

The Department of Homeland Security is advancing its system to share citizenship verification data with state and local election officials, which has prompted “hair on fire” concerns from one legacy media outlet and a legal scholar.

Additionally, one former Biden White House official has alleged the Trump administration is creating a database to include citizens “without telling us.”

The citizenship data has been integrated with Social Security Administration information to give states and localities easier access to the data. It’s a project that the Trump administration twice announced in May and June. The move comes as three states enacted laws requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and Republicans in Congress have pushed a similar idea at the federal level.

President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14248, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” included a provision making the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system accessible to state and local governments. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced in late May that it would share the data with local election officials.

“Integration with the Social Security Administration (SSA) significantly improves the service offered by SAVE [the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system],” USCIS spokesman Matthew J. Tragesser told The Daily Signal Monday.

“Previously, SAVE required user agencies to submit a DHS-issued identifying number, such as an Alien Registration Number (A-Number) or a Certificate of Citizenship number, for each voter registrant,” he continued. He said that most state and local voting offices do not have access to these DHS numbers but they do have access to Social Security numbers.

Multiple state agencies across the United States are signed up for the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.

“Now, all authorized SAVE agencies can submit cases using [a Social Security number], and SAVE will query [Social Security Administration] data,” Tragesser added. “This partnership is a game-changer, and we look forward to implementing more updates. Under the leadership of President Trump and [Homeland Security] Secretary [Kristi] Noem, USCIS is moving quickly to eliminate benefit and voter fraud among the alien population.”

National Public Radio posted a story over the weekend with an alarmist tone more than a month after the administration announced it was making the data available with the headline “The Trump administration is building a national citizenship data system.”

The NPR story quoted University of Virginia School of Law professor Danielle Citron questioning if the data collection was lawful and framing it as a “hair on fire” development.

NPR, which is suing the Trump administration over cuts to its federal funding, further asserted that accessing Social Security information “turned SAVE from a tool that only responded to queries about foreign-born citizens or noncitizens into something that could comb through entire voter lists.”

In response to the NPR story, Justin Levitt, the former White House senior adviser for democracy and voting rights to President Joe Biden, wrote on the Election Law Blog, “We’ve never had a federal government database for identifying all of the citizens in the country. … Congress has never authorized the executive to create one, and has put legal limits in place to prevent the government just up and creating one without telling us.”

Such concerns are “ridiculous” and miss the point of sharing the citizenship data with state and local governments, said Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation.

“The whole purpose of the SAVE system was to make the information available to the state agencies. The data was supposed to be available for welfare benefits. There is no reason it shouldn’t be available to election offices,” von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal. “This would determine who isn’t entitled to benefits or to voting and if they are breaking the law. To oppose that is ridiculous.”

Coordination with the Social Security Administration gives USCIS, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, a great deal of information that the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system has historically not had access to, noted Cleta Mitchell, founder and chair of the Election Integrity Network.

“The ability to upload bulk files, like voter rolls, is also a huge step forward, because the SAVE system historically has been a one-at-a-time system that also requires the alien number—which state voter rolls do not have,” Mitchell told The Daily Signal.

“We are very pleased that Secretary Noem and the team at DHS and USCIS have taken seriously the concerns of election integrity advocates and state election officials to be able to develop a system that, for the first time, can analyze state voter rolls in a manner that can identify potential noncitizens who should be contacted and asked to provide proof of citizenship,” Mitchell said.

“There should be a process for follow up and confirmation to make certain there are not mistakes,” she said. “But this would allow for a systematic review of the voter rolls to enforce the federal law which prohibits noncitizens from registering to vote or voting in a federal election.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]

While Democrat lawmakers have attempted to stump Trump’s cabinet members, they have repeatedly turned tables on their preferred narratives by providing facts that are often not reported on by Democrats or the corporate media. Members of the administration, including Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, gave congressional members reality checks on issues ranging from the riots in Los Angeles, California, or the deportation of alleged MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Pete Hegseth Turns Tables On Minnesota Dem Attacking His Response To LA Riots

During a House Appropriations Committee hearing on June 10, Democrat Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum criticized Trump’s “premature and escalatory” decision to deploy the National Guard and U.S. Marines in light of the Los Angeles, California, riots that broke out over Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) arrests. The congresswoman attempted to contrast Trump’s handling to Democrat Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s response to the 2020 riots; Hegseth reminded her of the chaos that took place in Minnesota under Walz’s leadership at the time.

“Well congresswoman, thank you for the question. You are right, we are both originally from Minnesota and that’s why I recall 2020 quite well, when Governor Walz abandoned a police precinct and allowed it to be burned to the ground,” Hegseth said. “And [he] also allowed five days of chaos to occur inside the streets of Minneapolis. The police precinct, ma’am, was abandoned and burned to the ground and because of that, the National Guard, was eventually, far too late, mobilized.”

WATCH:

While ignoring Hegseth’s statements about Walz, McCollum attempted to make the chairman reclaim her time so that the defense secretary would answer her question “on the budget.”

“Chairman, I have limited time. I asked a budget question, could the secretary please address the budget, thank you,” the congresswoman said.

“You asked about the situation in Los Angeles and whether ICE agents should be allowed to be safe in doing their operations and we have deployed the National Guard and the Marines to protect them in the execution of their duties because we ought to be able to enforce immigration law in our country, unlike what Governor Walz did in 2020,” Hegseth pushed back.

McCollum yielded back her time in an attempt to make Hegseth stop going after Walz.

Purple-Haired Dem Shouts At Pam Bondi As She Dares To Answer Her Questions

Democrat Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro repeatedly shouted down Attorney General Pam Bondi without allowing her to answer questions about the planned merger between the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

DeLauro accused the administration of interfering with ATF agents’ abilities to tackle illegal gun and drug trafficking, including fentanyl. When Bondi attempted to answer, DeLauro accused her of filibustering.

“What I can tell you is not going to be happening is ATF agents will not be knocking on the doors of legal gun owners in the middle of the night asking them about their guns. They are going to be out on the streets, if I can finish—no, no, no, you asked me a question, now allow me to answer it. So they’re gonna be out on the streets working hand in hand with DEA,” Bondi said.

“Mr. Chairman, I’d like an answer to my question,” DeLauro snapped. “And the question is not being answered. How many ATF law enforcement officers and industry operations investigators do you anticipate will be lost to attrition as a result of the funding reduction you are opposing? You are proposing a 26% cut to ATF for Fiscal Year 2026, as well as a 4.4% cut to DEA. So you’re going to merge the two agencies together and then you’re gonna shortchange their resources so neither one will be able to do their job they were assigned to do.”

WATCH:

The exchange grew more heated as Bondi called out the congresswoman’s behavior.

“As I was attempting to answer your question very calmly, unlike you,” Bondi began, before being loudly interrupted by DeLauro.

“Excuse me, Madame Attorney General. Answer, yes or no. Tell me what the numbers are! I don’t want to hear all of your filibuster about this! Go ahead,” DeLauro said. “Please, tell us the numbers.”

Dem Sen Pleads With Hegseth To Tell Her Military Is Not Shooting Protesters In Minute-Long Tangent

Democrat Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin went on a long rant about the U.S. military’s presence at the anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles, California, and during the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020. She continuously asked and then pleaded with Hegseth to deny that he ordered the military to use “lethal force” against the rioters in Los Angeles.

“So your pooh-poohing of this shows you don’t understand who we are as a country, who we are. And all of my colleagues across the aisle, especially the ones that served, should want an apolitical military and not want citizens to be scared of their own military. I love the military, I served alongside [it] my whole life. So I’m worried about you tainting it. Have you given the order? Have you given the order that they can use lethal force against [unarmed protesters]. I want the answer to be no, please, tell me it’s no. Have you given the order?”

WATCH:

“Senator, I’d be careful what you read in books and believing it, except for the Bible,” Hegseth answered.

Slotkin referenced an accusation made by former Defense Secretary Mark Esper from his memoir, “A Sacred Oath,” where he claimed that Trump asked if the military could shoot the rioters and protesters in the legs as they were filling the streets around the White House. These accusations were never confirmed.

Dem Rep Accuses Scott Bessent Of Interrupting Her Because She’s A Woman

Democrat California Rep. Linda Sanchez lectured Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on being a “woman” as he attempted to answer her question on Trump’s tariffs.

After Bessent told Sanchez during the House Ways and Means Committee hearing that President Donald Trump’s tariffs would only cause prices to increase one time, she accused him of talking out of “both sides of [his] mouth” by claiming that prices have already risen. She then accused Bessent of sexism as he tried to correct her.

“No, congresswoman, today we had a 0.1 increase—” Bessent began, before being interrupted.

“Please don’t interrupt me. The time is mine. The time is mine, please don’t interrupt me. I will grant you an opportunity it answer them, but please don’t interrupt me during my time,” Sanchez said. “I know I’m a woman, but please, try to limit yourself to answer my questions.”

WATCH:

Several Republican congressmen then groaned.

“No, I’m sorry, but we get talked over all the time and I don’t want that to happen at this hearing,” Sanchez said.

Without giving a specific citation, the congresswoman claimed that Trump’s tariffs would cost households $3,000 more in good compared to the previous year. Bessent told her that these claims were “incorrect” and continuously questioned her on where she received this information.

“I’m sorry, that’s incorrect and I’m not sure whose estimate [that is]. And that estimate is from whom? That estimate is from whom, congresswoman?” Bessent hit back.

Despite the congresswoman’s warnings about prices, inflation dropped to a four-year low on May 30 after the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 2.3% from April 2024 to April 2025.

Far-Left Rep. Jayapal Attempts To Tell Marco Rubio He Violated Constitution, He Was Not Having Any Of It

Secretary of State Marco Rubio directly told Democrat Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal that he “proudly” revoked the student visas from non-citizens who “stir up problems” during a May 21 hearing.

Jayapal alleged that revoking the visas of non-citizens who have shown sympathies to terrorist groups is a violation of the First Amendment. Rubio repeatedly told Jayapal that no non-citizen has an inherent right to a student visa and that they can be revoked by the U.S. government at any time.

“Where in the Constitution does it say that the Secretary of State can override the First Amendment protections of free speech?” Jayapal asked. “Is there a footnote that I missed somewhere?”

“There is no constitutional right to a student visa. A student visa is a privilege … There’s a statute which says the Secretary of State gets to determine whether someone is a threat,” Rubio said. “We deny visas everyday all over the world and we’ll continue [to do so].”

WATCH:

Rubio revoked the visas of Mahmoud Khalil, accusing him of “activities aligned with Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” Khalil considered himself a “lead negotiator” for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, an organization on the front lines of an illegal encampment that saw protesters occupying the campus in April 2024.

Jayapal claimed that Rubio revoked the visa of Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk, who wrote an op-ed showing clear support for Palestine in Tufts University’s newspaper. At the time of her arrest, Rubio told reporters that anyone who wishes to participate in movements that involved “vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings [and] creating a ruckus” will not be allowed to remain in the U.S.

Kristi Noem Drops Hammer On Eric Swalwell As He Defends Alleged MS-13 Member

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem fired back at Democrat California Rep. Eric Swawell as he attempted to attack the administration for mistakenly deporting alleged MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

During a May 14 hearing, Swalwell repeatedly pointed to an image posted to Trump’s Truth Social account of what some believe is a digitally altered image of Garcia’s hand tattoos to further prove he was a member of MS-13. Noem told Swalwell that he was “vouching” for a criminal and that it was “never a mistake” to deport him back to El Salvador.

“You vouched for [Garcia] when you said he was mistakenly deported,” Swalwell said. “I didn’t vouch for him. In that photo, it’s so telling that you won’t look at the photo.”

“You’re vouching for a man who is a known violent criminal. Sir, I did not say that, he should’ve been deported, absolutely,” Noem responded. “It was never a mistake to deport him and we will not be bringing him back to this country and staying here. If he were brought back to this country, he would be deported right away … This is unbelievable to me that you’re focused on a photo.”

WATCH:

Garcia, who illegally entered the U.S. in 2011, was discovered loitering in a Home Depot parking lot in 2019 wearing “a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents on the separate denominations,” which represents a “good standing” with MS-13. In December 2019, the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed Garcia’s challenge to an immigration judge’s finding that he is “a verified member of MS-13,” according to documents released by the Department of Justice on April 16.

In 2022, police pulled Garcia over in a Tennessee highway and suspected him of human smuggling after local authorities discovered he was transporting eight passengers with no apparent luggage. The car belonged to an illegal immigrant named Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, who was sent to prison in 2020 for human smuggling.

Garcia’s wife also sought out a restraining order against her husband in 2021 and accused him of scratching and punching her eye and leaving her bleeding after throwing her laptop on the ground.

Noem told Swalwell point-blank that he, along with many other Democrats, backed a “criminal,” “human trafficker” and MS-13 member.

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Topline: The City of Los Angeles recently took out a $5 million loan to pay for police overtime during the protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and it’s no wonder why. The city spent a record $1.1 billion on overtime in 2024 and still has not solved a staffing crisis that has bilked taxpayers for years.

Key facts: Last year, five Los Angeles employees outearned the President of the United States’ $400,000 salary just in overtime alone.

Firefighter Nicholas Ferrari earned $644,457 in overtime.

The LAPD spent a record $265.5 million on overtime in 2024, an issue that has skyrocketed in the last few years. Los Angeles Magazine griped in 2022 that 35 police officers had earned $100,000 or more in overtime. In 2024, 867 police employees made that much. Seven of them earned at least $235,000 in overtime, which had never happened before.

The same names continue to crop up at the top of the payroll. In 2010, the LAPD ordered Detective Nathan Kouri to stop working for six weeks because there was no money left to pay his overtime. Kouri was once again the highest-paid police employee last year with a $603,887 salary, including $404,875 in overtime.

Police Chief Jim McDonnell makes $450,000, which is $100,000 more than his predecessor and almost double the police chief salaries in New York and Chicago.

Mayor Karen Bass made $328,394. She was one of 4,114 Los Angeles employees who outearned California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s salary of $242,295.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Background: Some reports have suggested that the staff shortage is due to a negative perception of police following the Black Lives Matter movement, but that doesn’t tell the entire story. LAPD job applications rose by 53% in the last two years, but hiring is down 8% because of the lengthy background check process, according to Police1. Human Resources Director Dana Brown told LAist that the city’s “archaic” civil service rules force applicants to wait six months or more for an interview.

The most recent data from the city controller shows a 17.5% job vacancy rate for the entire city as of December 2023, meaning one in six positions are unfilled.

Summary: The LAPD is spending taxpayer money to keep the city safe and maintain order, but when overtime spending is out of control, it must hire more people.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

The U.S. Agency for International Development has officially closed, marking “the beginning of a new era of global partnership, peace, investment, and prosperity,” according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Starting Tuesday, the Department of State will take over the work of USAID.

In March, Rubio announced that 83% of USAID programs were being canceled and the agency’s remaining work would be folded into the State Department.

“This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end,” Rubio said in a lengthy statement on Tuesday.

“Foreign assistance programs that align with administration policies—and which advance American interests—will be administered by the State Department, where they will be delivered with more accountability, strategy, and efficiency,” Rubio said.

USAID was first established in 1961 and viewed as a form of diplomacy, but over time, Rubio says, “USAID marketed its programs as a charity, rather than instruments of American foreign policy intended to advance our national interests.”

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has sought to implement an “America First” agenda, refocusing foreign aid and tax dollars to serve the primary interests of the U.S. as the Trump administration defines.

“Too often,” Rubio said, the work of USAID “promoted anti-American ideals and groups, from global ‘DEI,’ censorship and regime change operations, to NGOs and international organizations in league with Communist China and other geopolitical adversaries.”

All U.S. aid that is delivered to other countries will now bear the “recognizable symbol” of the American flag, Rubio said. “Recipients deserve to know the assistance provided to them is not a handout from an unknown NGO, but an investment from the American people.”

When the U.S. does provide humanitarian aid to other nations, it will now be “targeted and time limited,” according to the secretary.

“We will favor those nations that have demonstrated both the ability and willingness to help themselves and will target our resources to areas where they can have a multiplier effect and catalyze durable private sector, including American companies, and global investment,” Rubio said.

Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush delivered a farewell address to USAID employees in a video on Monday, The Associated Press first reported. Singer Bono joined the two former presidents in bidding the workers goodbye with a poem.

“Your work has mattered and will matter for generations to come,” Obama told the USAID workers, adding that “[g]utting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy.”

“You’ve showed the great strength of America through your work—and that is your good heart,’’ Bush told USAID staffers, according to The Associated Press. “Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]

The Supreme Court shot down a district court judge’s bid to circumvent an order allowing the Trump administration to resume third-country deportations.

Though the Supreme Court cleared the path June 23 for the administration to quickly deport illegal migrants to countries not specified in their removal orders, Biden-appointed District Court Judge Brian Murphy claimed hours later that one of his orders preventing the deportation of eight migrants to South Sudan remained in effect.

In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court agreed Thursday that Murphy violated its order, noting the “only authority” he cited was the dissent.

“Our June 23 order stayed the April 18 preliminary injunction in full,” the majority held. “The May 21 remedial order cannot now be used to enforce an injunction that our stay rendered unenforceable.”

The Trump administration previously urged the Supreme Court to clarify its order, accusing Murphy of “unprecedented defiance” of the high court’s authority. Murphy’s ruling was “a lawless act of defiance that, once again, disrupts sensitive diplomatic relations and slams the brakes on the Executive’s lawful efforts to effectuate third-country removals,” the administration wrote its June 24 motion.

Even Justice Elena Kagan, who dissented from the original decision, agreed the lower court could not continue to block the deportations.

“I voted to deny the Government’s previous stay application in this case, and I continue to believe that this Court should not have stayed the District Court’s April 18 order enjoining the Government from deporting non-citizens to third countries without notice or a meaningful opportunity to be heard,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a concurring opinion. “But a majority of this Court saw things differently, and I do not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this Court has stayed.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, that the government “may not deport noncitizens to a country where they are likely to be tortured or killed.”

“Given that the majority can muster no more than a sentence of 80-year-old dictum in support of today’s holding, the District Court can hardly be faulted for reaching a contrary conclusion,” Sotomayor wrote. “The District Court, moreover, had only moments to decide the question, for (unlike this Court) it realized that the lives and safety of eight noncitizens were at stake.”

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“Your journey here ends today.”

That was the message one Microsoft employee said she received when her job was abruptly terminated. Another described the experience as “paralyzing, refreshing emails, staring at the screen, heart racing with every ping.” A third added, “There’s been speculation for a while, but the scale of today’s news still hits hard.”

Across social media and professional networks like LinkedIn, thousands of American workers have shared that they’ve been laid off by Microsoft, marking what has become one of the largest workforce reductions in the company’s history.

But their job titles reveal a deeper pattern: Many of the same roles are now appearing in Microsoft’s filings with the U.S. Department of Labor for H-1B foreign workers.

Earlier this week, WorldNetDaily reported that Microsoft announced major layoffs impacting workers in Washington and California, even as the company continued pursuing thousands of new foreign hires through the H-1B visa program. Since then, the number of layoffs has continued to rise, raising concerns that what began as cost-cutting may now reflect an even broader – and troubling – shift in Microsoft’s labor strategy.

As its new fiscal year began on July 1, Microsoft confirmed an additional 9,000 would be laid off companywide, including 830 cuts in Washington state. Combined with earlier waves in May and June, Microsoft has now laid off more than 15,000 workers since spring, including more than 3,100 in Washington, home to its Redmond headquarters. Although the company previously stated the cuts were meant to “flatten management,” publicly available data shows that only 17% of impacted roles in Redmond were classified as managerial.

Lobbying for immigration reforms during workforce reductions

While those layoffs were unfolding publicly, another lesser-known development was playing out in Washington, D.C.

In April, just weeks before the May layoffs began, Microsoft filed a federal lobbying disclosure, reporting $2.35 million in lobbying expenditures, much of it directed at the federal Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security – the very agencies responsible for overseeing visa certifications and employment eligibility. Among the listed priorities: “high-skilled immigration reforms,” a long-standing policy goal often associated with expanding access to the H-1B visa program.

This is not a new strategy for Microsoft. In 2023, the company filed federal WARN Act (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notices disclosing 3,426 layoffs across its California and Washington offices.

During the same period, Microsoft requested 14,020 H-1B visa workers, plus another 708 through third-party staffing firms.

The company also spent $5.09 million lobbying in 2023, $4.52 million of which was aimed directly at the departments of Labor and Homeland Security on issues related to “High Skilled immigration and Immigration reform.”

Demand for foreign workers vs. job creation

Microsoft has consistently maintained that the U.S. does not issue enough H-1B visas to meet labor market demands. On its lobbying blog, the company states: “The number of H-1B visas remains very limited. Congress sets a limit on the number of H-1B visas that can be issued each year. Demand far exceeds supply.”

While it is accurate that U.S. law caps new H-1B visas at 85,000 per year, Microsoft’s own hiring data offers additional perspective. From 2021 to 2024, the company submitted H-1B requests at a staggering rate of 5.17 for every one net new job it created in the U.S.

Based on this pattern, Microsoft’s claims of a lack of available skilled workers appear less about unmet labor needs and more about the company’s inability to replace its existing workforce at scale due to the legal limits imposed by the H-1B visa cap. This imbalance raises further questions regarding how the program is being applied, whether to support innovation or to enable a deeper transformation of the labor force.

While Microsoft continues to press for expanded visa access, the real-time experiences of its displaced American employees offer a revealing counterpoint.

Skilled Americans replaced in their own country

Across social media, laid-off Microsoft employees are responding with resilience, many beginning to network and apply for new jobs within hours of receiving termination notices. Their profiles show years of experience, advanced degrees and a clear readiness to work.

Microsoft has stated that it hires foreign workers to “bring specially-needed skill sets” to their “U.S. operations and to fill roles when qualified American workers are not available.” However, the juxtaposition of recent massive American layoffs and simultaneous H-1B filings paints a more troubling picture. Indeed, a review of Microsoft’s active labor condition applications reveals that many of the job titles match those previously held by recently displaced U.S. professionals, raising questions as to whether competent American workers were truly unavailable for these roles.

The impact of these layoffs and hiring decisions is showing up in the form of disrupted careers and urgent job searchers on the part of many Americans. The pattern is unmistakable: U.S. citizens are being laid off, followed by active company filings for foreign labor certifications. Whether this reflects isolated restructuring or a deliberate global labor strategy for Microsoft, the consequences are being felt across an entire class of highly skilled U.S. professionals.

Whose interests define U.S. workforce and immigration policy?

Microsoft once posed the question in a pro-immigration blog: “[I]sn’t it in America’s best interests to keep the world’s top talent working here in the U.S., using their skills and ideas to invent the breakthrough products of tomorrow that will drive our economy and create jobs?”

For many of the American workers recently laid off by Microsoft, that question likely strikes a deeply personal chord. After all, they are not foreign talent seeking opportunity; they are citizens of this country, whose home, families and economy they have been working to support. They’ve spent years developing the skills, earning the degrees and contributing to the innovations that built companies like Microsoft into global powerhouses.

To these workers, keeping jobs in the hands of Americans is not just in the nation’s best interest, it’s a matter of basic fairness. The decision to replace them with cheaper foreign labor may serve Microsoft’s profit margins, but most people would seriously question how it serves the American people.

Microsoft’s story is not an outlier. It is part of a broader disturbing trend among multinational tech giants: Lay off Americans, lobby for foreign labor, repeat.

For the employees who received the message, “Your journey here ends today,” the impact is immediate and personal. But the broader question now facing America is whether this ongoing cycle of quiet replacement of Americans will continue unchecked – or whether it will finally be confronted.

Follow WND for breaking exclusives, evidence-based investigations and updates on America First immigration news that the mainstream media won’t touch. You can follow us on X @Worldnetdaily/, sign up for our weekly newsletter and visit wnd.com for the latest reports, whistleblower stories and ways you can take action. Let’s keep America first – always!

“President Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill delivers on the commonsense agenda that nearly 80 million Americans voted for – the largest middle-class tax cut in history, permanent border security, massive military funding, and restoring fiscal sanity,” explained White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“The pro-growth policies within this historic legislation are going to fuel an economic boom like we’ve never seen before. President Trump looks forward to signing the One Big, Beautiful Bill into law to officially usher in the Golden Age of America.”

Her comments came minutes after the House of Representatives passed 218-214 the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

“Again and again, Democrats tried to block historic tax relief, increased border security, higher wages, an expanded Child Tax Credit, No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime, No Tax on Social Security, savings accounts for newborns, and so much more — but again and again, President Trump and Republicans fought and won for the American people,” the statement said.

Signing is scheduled for Friday.

A major provision is one that strips “forced taxpayer funding of the Big Abortion industry.”

“Defunding the abortion industry, led by Planned Parenthood, marks the greatest pro-life victory since the Dobbs decision. For the first time in history, Congress is halting forced taxpayer funding of Big Abortion in the Medicaid program for one year. This will save lives and strip over $500 million from Big Abortion’s coffers. Combined with last week’s Supreme Court decision empowering states to do the same, this represents tremendous progress toward achieving a decades-long goal that has long proved elusive,” said SBA Pro-Life America chief Marjorie Dannenfelser.

““For decades, Big Abortion has siphoned off billions in tax dollars to prop up a scandal-ridden industry built on abortion and partisan politics. Planned Parenthood alone commits over 400,000 abortions a year while services like cancer screenings continue to plummet — all while pocketing over $2 million every day from taxpayers.”

“The American people should not have to continue subsidizing the abortion industry – and now, thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, they won’t be,” said Jennie Bradley Lichter, president of March for Life Action. “We joyfully anticipate President Trump signing this landmark legislation, which ensures that Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars are not being used to prop up an industry whose business model is built on ending human lives, misleading pregnant women into thinking that abortion is their only option, and delivering substandard healthcare that they then charge to the government.

“For years the majority of Americans have said they reject this status quo. Women deserve better – America deserves better – and we thank President Trump, Speaker of the House Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader Thune, as well as all of the other pro-life champions in Congress who brought this bill across the finish line.”

VICTORY: The One Big Beautiful Bill Passes U.S. Congress, Heads to President Trump’s Desk pic.twitter.com/d1nbOlL21G

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 3, 2025

The House of Representatives just officially PASSED the One Big Beautiful Bill.

The largest middle-class tax cut in American history — and so much more — is on its way to President Trump’s desk.

MAGA! pic.twitter.com/V3U8xhenrS

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 3, 2025

Carol Tobias, of National Right to Life, added, “We applaud pro-life members in Congress and pro-life leadership, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, for keeping their promises to the American people and delivering a bill that prevents taxpayer funds from subsidizing the abortion industry. For decades, Americans have made it clear that they do not want their tax dollars funding abortion. Today, Congress delivered.:”

Other organizations and groups had specific comments about how they are affected.

Consumer Energy Alliance President David Holt said, “This legislation unleashes affordable, reliable and cleaner energy for families and small businesses across the country, and gives the U.S. the edge in the global AI race by ensuring that always-on, reliable baseload power like nuclear and natural gas can be developed at speed and scale.

“Critically, this bill ensures offshore lease sales for Gulf of America and Alaska, which were intentionally delayed and drowned in red tape under the Biden Administration. That kept money out of the U.S. Treasury and Gulf States, and impeded the ability for companies to appropriately plan future energy development.”

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., said, of the “huge victory, “This legislation addresses many of the legislative priorities that President Trump promised to Americans during his campaign for President. Although the bill is not perfect, as none are, nor does it include several provisions of the original House version, I voted in favor of the largest tax cut in history, ending the Biden-era invasion of our southern border, and reducing wasteful and abusive spending of taxpayer dollars.

“Americans are tired of having a government that they are afraid of, and want a government they can be proud of. This Reconciliation package scales back the size and scope of federal agencies, cuts red-tape, brings more accountability, and cuts fraud, waste, and abuse. This bill is a good start, but Congress still has a lot of work to do; as we must continue to move back to a government that is small in size, limited in scope, and dedicated to preserving the rights and liberties of the American people.

“Last November, voters gave the President and Congress an unprecedented mandate to govern, and to tackle the very challenges that this bill addresses. With this historic legislation, Americans will be keeping more of their hard-earned money and paying less for food and fuel, while enjoying a level of safety not seen in years, as our southern border becomes more secure. With President Trump’s signature, the Big, Beautiful, Bill will usher in the Golden Age of America and put our great country back on the path to prosperity.”

Article III Project founder Mike Davis said, “This is an historic and monumental victory for President Trump—and real Americans in real America. And a major loss for Trump’s opponents and doubters. Trump sealed his standing as one of America’s most consequential presidents. And his second term is just getting started.”

Democrats and other leftists universally blasted it.

“This is a direct attack on the health and well-being of low-income individuals and families,” said Mara Youdelman of the National Health Law Program. “The bill cuts nearly a trillion dollars from Medicaid. It will force states to slash eligibility and services, causing individuals to lose coverage and communities to lose the providers they depend on. And all of this is done to fund tax breaks for corporations and the ultrarich.”

Joseph Geevarghese, of Our Revolution, organized originally by leftist Bernie Sanders, claimed, “Republicans have passed the most dangerous legislation of our lifetimes. This bill hands billionaires and corporations a trillion-dollar tax break, paid for by ripping health care from 17 million people, gutting funding for rural hospitals, slashing clean energy investments, and cutting food assistance for millions of children.”

He charged it is the “largest transfer of wealth from working- and middle-class Americans to the ultra-wealthy in our nation’s history.”

The National Nurses United union went to extremes, claiming, “Lawmakers have effectively signed the death warrants for millions today. It will steal money from safety-net community hospitals and reproductive health care clinics, like Planned Parenthood. It will kick people off their health insurance. It will effectively punish people for getting sick or injured, making us all sicker and less healthy.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed that lawmakers are “delivering on our promise to make America great again.”

Then the legislators voted 218-214 to adopt Senate changes to President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.”

It’s a landmark for tax cuts and spending that includes many of Trump’s priorities. The $3.3 trillion measure installs in America budget priorities and spending – or not spending – points adopted by Republicans.

Trump, on social media, said, “The USA is on track to break every record on growth. Go Republicans, beat the Crooked Democrats tonight! Pro-growth tax cuts never fail.”

The nearly 900-page bill, read aloud on demands from Democrats who were trying to delay, and possibly even derail, the plan, extends the president’s 2017 tax cuts and further eliminates taxes on tips and overtime – a marquee promise that the president pledged repeatedly on the campaign trail.

The child tax credit is doubled and Trump’s new plan for $1000 “MAGA account” for new babies is included.

BREAKING – IT’S OFFICIAL: The Big Beautiful Bill has PASSED the House of Representatives

It now heads to President Trump’s desk for tomorrow’s July 4th signing ceremony

CONGRATULATIONS, 47! pic.twitter.com/45gl5JYavP

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) July 3, 2025

BREAKING: Congress FULLY PASSES President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which will supercharge deportations and launch historic tax cuts.

President Trump supposed to sign it TOMORROW, JULY 4TH.

Talk about a major victory for Trump and MAGA. pic.twitter.com/EnBqoIjjDy

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 3, 2025

The tax cuts alone will cost $4.5 trillion over the next ten years, according to projections from the Congressional Budget Office. To offset the massive price tag Republicans included $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, mainly trimming Medicaid.

Lawmakers used a tactic called reconciliation, so the tax and spending bill did not need 60 votes in the Senate, which had approved the plan 51-50 with the tiebreaker from Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday.

The House originally adopted the plan late in May.

The primary component is the permanent extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts that would have expired this year.

The plan also exempts pay from overtime and tips from federal income taxes – a fulfillment of one of the Trump’s campaign promises.

According to the Daily Mail, “In addition, the bill allows individuals in high-tax states to deduct up to $40,000 per year for half a decade in state and local taxes (SALT) from their federal taxes – a top priority for conservatives in blue states.”

And, it added, “Border security efforts will also be getting a major cash infusion estimated to be around $150 billion for increased immigration enforcement. It includes $46 billion for Customs and Border Patrol to build border wall and enhanced security measures and around $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

Also in the plan is $150 billion for Trump’s “Golden Dome” national defense plan.

Gone are billions of dollars for “green energy” schemes, and cash in federal programs that aided noncitizens.

There also now are work requirements for Medicaid and SNAP plans.

A federal judge cleared the way for the Trump administration to move forward with the deportation process for the family of a suspected terrorist accused of killing an elderly woman.

U.S. District Court Judge Orlando Garcia nixed a prior ruling that blocked the deportation of Mohamed Soliman’s family, according to court documents. Soliman, an Egyptian national, allegedly attacked a pro-Israel demonstration in Boulder, Colorado, on June 1 with Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower while screaming “End Zionists” and “Free Palestine.”

Shortly after the attack, federal law enforcement discovered that not only was Soliman living in the U.S. unlawfully, but so were his wife and five children, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Trump administration began deportation proceedings against his family members, but a Biden-appointed judge quickly blocked those efforts.

Garcia determined Wednesday that he lacked the authority to intervene in the case and that the family’s deportation was not being improperly fast tracked, according to court documents. He stated that the case would need to be reviewed by an immigration judge.

“The Court hastens to remind Petitioners that they still have an avenue for seeking their release from detention while their removal proceedings continue,” Garcia stated. “As alluded to above, the regulations promulgated pursuant to the [Immigration and Nationality Act] prescribe administrative procedures for obtaining relief from discretionary detention.”

The judge’s ruling stemmed from confusion surrounding the timing of the Soliman’s family’s removal from the country, according to court documents. Social media posts following the Boulder attack initially claimed the family was in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody and could be deported as early as “tonight,” but federal officials have since clarified that the family would have the opportunity to petition for their release.

Soliman allegedly targeted peaceful demonstrators who were advocating on behalf of the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre. The attack left several hospitalized, and one 82-year-old woman, Karen Diamond, eventually died from her injuries.

The Egyptian national now faces more than 70 charges, including first-degree murder, first-degree assault and committing a hate crime, according to DHS. The Trump administration praised the judge’s ruling in a public statement.

“This is a proper end to an absurd legal effort on the plaintiff’s part,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said, referring to Soliman’s wife, who sued to block her deportation. “Just like her terrorist husband, she and her children are here illegally and are rightfully in ICE custody for removal as a result.”

“This terrorist will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” McLaughlin continued. “We are investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it.”

The 45-year-old Soliman entered the U.S. in August 2022 under the Biden administration and remained in the country after his visa expired, DHS previously confirmed to the DCNF. He had filed for asylum in September 2022.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

As we prepare to celebrate our nation’s 249th birthday, a good question to ask ourselves is, “Are we really an independent nation in the vision of our Founding Fathers?” Considering that we imported $1.2 trillion worth of goods from other countries more than we exported last year, the answer is unfortunately a solid “no.” We depend heavily on other nations like China for many of our wants and needs.

In light of this fact, there is another question to ask ourselves, and that is, “What can we do to become a more independent nation?” The answer is two-fold. First, we need to buy American whenever possible and practical, and second, we need to support common-sense trade policies like the ones enacted by President Donald J. Trump.

The “Buy American” answer requires the most action, and the good news is that it is easier to do than most people think. And it doesn’t always mean spending more money if you know where to look. For example, only 3 percent of the clothing we buy in America is made in America. But if we arm ourselves with the information to know where to find that 3 percent, we are going to be able to vote with our dollars in the right way. As citizens, we vote in elections once every two or four years. But as consumers, we vote with our wallets or pocketbooks every single day.

But what does it mean to truly buy American? First, it does not mean simply buying a product that is labeled “Made in the USA.” If it did, we would all be satisfied we were buying American if we bought American-made Black Cat fireworks for our July 4th celebrations. Black Cat is owned by Hong Kong-based Li & Fung Limited. Hong Kong, of course, is controlled by China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has severely limited rights there in the areas of free speech and freedom of assembly, as well as political and religious expression. Few people would say we were buying American by purchasing an American-made product owned by a Chinese (or any other foreign-based) company.

Some Black Cat fireworks are assembled in the USA, but the point is, even if we buy products made in or assembled in the USA, we are often still sending our dollars to China and are therefore becoming more interdependent. Our country has a Declaration of Independence, not a declaration of interdependence. Our U.S. Constitution says we are to form a more perfect Union. It does not suggest that we strive to form a more perfect global economy.

The true definition of buying American, in the purest sense of the term, is buying an American-made product from an American-owned company with a high domestic parts content within those products.

Your grocery store is a great place to start buying American. These may be small-ticket items, but since we visit the grocery store frequently, we spend more of our money there than elsewhere on big-ticket items like appliances. Fortunately, many grocery store products are made, canned, or processed in the U.S. The only difference is often the ownership of the company.

Here are a few quick examples:

All brands listed above make many of their products in the USA. Patronizing American-made products helps keep manufacturing and assembly jobs in America, but buying American (owned, made, parts content) products is better. Patronizing the foreign brands above still sends dollars out of the country and rewards foreign owners, foreign investors, and foreign stockholders, who pay taxes to foreign treasuries – not the U.S. Treasury. Only by buying American-owned brands made in the USA can we keep jobs, profits, and tax revenue within our national borders.

We have a vast national debt and will need a lot of revenue to pay it down and keep our country solvent. When we buy an American-owned company’s product (even ones that are made elsewhere) the profits come to or stay in America, and the taxes on those profits are paid to the U.S. Treasury. Alexander Hamilton warned us through his writings in the Federalist Papers that A nation cannot long exist without revenue.

Manufacturing jobs make up about 10 percent of our workforce. The other 90 percent are in positions like engineering, design, research and development (R&D), testing, administration, finance, and advertising. When we buy from an American-owned company, these other jobs will likely be in America.

Although assembled overseas (just like every other cell phone), my iPhone is engineered and designed in the USA. Components like the glass display and audio chips are sourced in America.

You might have seen media reports claiming it would be nearly impossible for Apple to afford to make their phones in the USA without raising prices, but that is not true. I bought a Motorola Moto X phone made in Texas several years ago, and the cost was similar to other cell phones on the market. Despite expectations, Motorola did not command a significant market share and could not take advantage of greater economies of scale (more production results in a lower cost per unit produced). Motorola sold the factory to Chinese-owned Lenovo, which closed the factory in 2014 – yet another example of why we should emphasize supporting American-owned companies.

If a company with the market share of Apple were to produce cell phones in America, it could be profitable at existing prices due to its high sales volume.

Over three-quarters of economic activity is based on consumer spending. Americans can only be as affluent as consumers as they are wage-earners. Consumers must have money in their pockets to be able to spend and keep our economic prosperity going.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, each manufacturing job creates an average of 7.4 other U.S. jobs. Manufacturing jobs in the United States are also high-wage jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the average annual wage for a manufacturing employee is $103,000.

It is a complete fallacy that producing in cheaper labor countries will result in lower prices for U.S. consumers. The auto industry provides the evidence. Until 2021, Toyota made its Tacoma truck in the U.S. and Mexico. Did the Mexican-made Tacoma cost less than the U.S.-made version on the dealer lot? Of course not.

We should not be emphasizing the supposed need for products from cheap labor countries. Republican President William McKinley had a few things to say about the word “cheap:”

I do not prize the word cheap. It is not a badge of honor. It is a
symbol of despair. Cheap prices make for cheap goods; cheap goods
make for cheap men; and cheap men make for a cheap country.

We should, therefore, emphasize founding national values like independence, self-sufficiency, and self-reliance. In many cases, trade with foreign countries is simply not necessary.

President Abraham Lincoln once said, I…would continue (trade) where it is necessary, and discontinue it, where it is not. As instance: I would continue commerce so far as it is employed in bringing us coffee, and I would discontinue it so far as it is employed in bringing us cotton goods.

Note that our sixteenth president did not say to avoid trade where it is not necessary. He said to discontinue it.

Free trade and globalization are not only unconstitutional (the term “free trade” is not mentioned in any founding national document), it is also detrimental to our economy. For example, we lost 845,000 American jobs due to the original NAFTA from 1993 to 2014. And after China joined the WTO, we lost another 3.7 million jobs between 2001 and 2018.

American consumers may think they’re saving money on price by buying products made in China and elsewhere, but the true “cost” to our economy is not worth it. Only American workers pay taxes to America. Workers in China and other countries do not pay taxes to America and do nothing, as President William McKinley put it, to contribute to the support, the progress, and the glory of the nation.

We have to be able to pay for the things that “We the People” have demanded from the use of our tax dollars. At least three-quarters of all federal spending goes to Social Security, Medicare, national defense, education, farm subsidies, highways, parks, roads & bridges, and interest payments on the debt. Polls show most Americans do not necessarily favor more government spending but strongly back these programs. This list does not include funding for Medicaid, our military, or public hospitals and libraries.

We cannot buy products made by workers in foreign countries and still expect to fund and benefit from these taxpayer-funded initiatives.

The best way to obtain revenue through our consumer purchases is to buy American-made products from American-owned companies, since American-owned companies pay up to twice as many taxes to America as foreign-owned companies.

The U.S. consumer has the power to steer the global economy in a direction that best benefits America. Knowing how to find and buy American products is the only thing preventing us from doing that. Once we know how to do that, we will possess the power to truly unleash American prosperity with the consumer dollars we are already spending.

Border czar Tom Homan is praising the “Trump effect” after another drop in illegal-alien encounters at the southern border in June.

“Total Border Patrol encounters for the entire month of June 2025 was 6,070,” Homan wrote on X. “That is less than a single day under [President Joe Biden]. As a matter of fact, the total number of encounters is less than half of a single day under Biden on many days.”

In June 2022, for comparison, the Border Patrol encountered 6,413 illegal aliens a day on average between ports of entry along the southern border, according to Customs and Border Protection.

In addition to the low encounter numbers, none of the 6,070 illegal aliens encountered at the border in June were released into the U.S., according to Homan.

More than 10 million illegal aliens were released into the interior of the U.S. under the four years of the Biden administration, according to CBP.

“President [Donald] Trump has created the most secure border in the history of the nation, and the data proves it,” Homan said. “We have never seen numbers this low. Never. God bless the men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol, and God bless the men and women of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement].”

“The interior arrests and consequences help to drive down illegal immigration,” according to Homan. “The Trump effect keeps America winning.”

Homan, together with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, has spearheaded Trump’s immigration agenda.

Since Trump took office, ICE agents have arrested and deported thousands of illegal immigrants, with a specific focus on apprehending and removing criminal illegal aliens.

However, the Trump administration’s aggressive campaign to remove illegal aliens from the U.S. has led to a nearly 700% increase in assaults on ICE agents, according to Noem.

“If you obstruct or assault our law enforcement, this administration will hunt you down, and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Noem warned in a post on the social media platform X on Monday.

In light of the uptick in assaults on ICE agents, Noem sharply criticized CNN for reporting on a mobile application that allows users to note and view the location of ICE officers.

“This sure looks like obstruction of justice,” Noem said on X in a post sharing CNN’s reporting.

During a tour of a new illegal-alien detention facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades on Tuesday, Noem was asked to respond to claims that CNN should be prosecuted for its reporting on the mobile application.

“We’re working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them for that,” Noem told press. “Because what they’re doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities, operations, and we’re going to actually go after them and prosecute with the partnership of [Attorney General Pam Bondi] if we can, because what they are doing, we believe, is illegal.”

CNN is defending its reporting, stating: “There is nothing illegal about reporting the existence of this or any other app, nor does such reporting constitute promotion or other endorsement of the app by CNN.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]

Border czar Tom Homan reminded NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo on Tuesday how much illegal migrants cost taxpayers under the Biden administration after being pressed about Democrats complaining over the cost of “Alligator Alcatraz.”

President Donald Trump and officials from his administration toured Florida’s new “Alligator Alcatraz” facility Tuesday, located in southern Florida and expected to cost $450 million for 5,000 beds to house illegal migrants and other foreign nationals in detention. While on “Cuomo,” the NewsNation host pressed Homan about the backlash the project’s price tag has received, prompting Homan to reflect on how the Biden administration handled illegal immigration.

“Well, let’s compare it to the last administration, OK? They’re putting illegal aliens in hotel rooms in New York City for like 500 bucks a night. That’s a fact,” Homan said. “Five hundred dollars per alien, per night for a hotel room. Then they had to pay for food, three meals a day. They had to pay for medical care. They had to pay for attorney access. All these other things were added to that 500 bucks a night. So who knows what the cost was, really. I don’t have that number.”

With millions of illegal migrants entering the U.S. and fueling a border crisis under the Biden administration, the president has distributed millions to states and cities dealing with the issue. In August 2024, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security approved more than $380 million for FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program (SSP) in communities across the country.

WATCH:

The payout followed nearly $260 million in SSP grants distributed in April 2024 and over $780 million in 2023 sent to SSP and the Emergency Food and Shelter Program.

“I can tell you the beds here are just under 300, is what I was briefed on. That includes three meals a day, full medical doctors and nurses on site,” Homan added. “So you got food, you got medical. What’s great about this facility is there’s an airstrip right there. So we can also have additional efficiencies on transportation because we have air transport in Arizona. We got in Texas. We got in Louisiana. Having an airstrip in Florida, we have all the East Coast states staging in Florida instead of having numerous, sending some to Louisiana, sending some on to Arizona for a removal of Central America or to Asia.”

With sanctuary cities being used by the Biden administration to house illegal migrants, some, like New York City, spent $1.45 billion on migrants in fiscal year 2023. By 2024, Democrat New York City Mayor Eric Adams began cracking down on the city’s migrant shelters, citing a $12 billion deficit at the time.

“Now we have an airstrip right there in Florida, which not only benefits that facility, because we’re going to have immigration hearings also at that facility in Florida. Which means when they get already deported, and we get a planeload, we can simply load a plane right there and take them to their home country,” Homan said.

“So it’s actually a cost savings on the beds compared to [the] last administration. It’s an extreme cost savings on transportation because you got an airstrip right there that can serve the entire East Coast,” Homan said.

Since Trump re-entered office, his administration has pushed forward with its agenda to crack down on illegal migrants and conduct mass deportations. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, officials have made over 20,000 arrests so far in the 2025 fiscal year.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All Americans’ freedom of speech is protected by the Constitution.

And journalists in America have heightened protections. Because they are journalists, they sometimes get privileged access to information. One corporation even insisted its reporters had a First Amendment “right” to be in the White House, even on Air Force One, a status that ordinary Americans do not have.

But there are limits, and it appears CNN may have crossed into forbidden territory.

That’s according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who responded to a question about the network’s recent promotion of an app that lets phone users learn of the location of agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“We’re working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them for that because what they’re doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law-enforcement activities, operations. And we’re gonna actually go after them and prosecute them … because what they’re doing, we believe, is illegal,” Noem said.

.@Sec_Noem slams CNN for pushing an app to track ICE personnel: “What they’re doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement.” pic.twitter.com/kugEMvDjgC

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 1, 2025

Multiple reports revealed how CNN recently profiled and promoted the ICEBlock telephone app. That alerts anyone using the software that ICE agents are nearby.

A report at Western Journal explained how that could be illegal.

President Donald Trump, on the topic of a prosecution, said, “It’s OK with me.”

He actually cited another reason for CNN to face the music.

“They may be prosecuted also for having given false reports on the attack in Iran,” the president added.

Noem had noted earlier, “This sure looks like obstruction of justice. Our brave ICE law enforcement face a 500% increase in assaults against them. … If you obstruct or assault our law enforcement, we will hunt you down and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

This sure looks like obstruction of justice. Our brave ICE law enforcement face a 500% increase in assaults against them.

If you obstruct or assault our law enforcement, we will hunt you down and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. pic.twitter.com/4ZcfrpyRV1

— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) June 30, 2025

Border czar Tom Homan also noted, “I can’t believe we live in a world where the men and women in law enforcement are the bad guys. It’s already a dangerous job. … This is horrendous that a national media outlet would be out there trying to forecast law enforcement operations. I think DOJ needs to look at this. They’re crossing that line.”

Will Joe Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas ever be held accountable for America’s wide open border during the Biden administration?

President Donald Trump believes the matter should be criminally investigated, and on Tuesday he instructed Kristi Noem, his own DHS secretary, to look into the matter.

During a news conference at “Alligator Alcatraz” in Ochopee, Florida, reporter Julio Rosas of Blaze Media asked Trump: “A couple months ago, I ran into former DHS Secretary Mayorkas and I asked him a couple questions about his disastrous handling of the border. He didn’t like my questions.

“But the number one question that I heard from people in responding to my video is why wasn’t – why hasn’t he been arrested yet? You know, obviously, you guys are clearing up the mess obviously that was deliberately made for the past four years, and so, people want accountability.

“It’s great to see that the border secured and it’s great to see the state-level cooperation, but I would ask you, why hasn’t he been held accountable, or anybody really been held accountable?”

Is the news we hear every day actually broadcasting messages from God? The answer is an absolute yes! Find out how!

Trump responded: “Well, I’d take a look at that because what he did was – it’s beyond incompetence. Something had to be done.

“Now, with that being said, he took orders from other people, and he was really doing the orders and you could say he was very loyal to them, because it must have been very hard for him to stand up and sit up and, you know, talk about what he allowed to happen to this country, and be serious about it, so he was given orders.

NEW: President Trump instructs DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to investigate Biden’s DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and hold him accountable for leaving the border wide open for four years.

Julio Rosas: Why hasn’t former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas been arrested yet?… pic.twitter.com/nZC8Zvvaot

— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) July 1, 2025

“If he wasn’t given a pardon, I could see looking at that. In fact, why didn’t you take a look at it, Kristi? He was impeached? But yeah, it was just a fake impeachment. Why don’t you take a look at it?

“I think he was so bad. They were all so bad. Look, it was the worst president in the history of our country. We’ve had some bad ones, but he was the worst president. But somebody told Mayorkas to do that, and he followed orders, but that doesn’t necessarily hold him harmless. So, take a look at it. Very good question, actually.”

: I ran into former DHS Sec. Mayorkas at the airport.

I asked him how he feels now that the U.S. has a secure border under President Trump. I also asked him if he regrets allowing Tren de Aragua into our country.

He didn’t answer any of my questions. pic.twitter.com/qFpx2xZ6pG

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) April 4, 2025

Mayorkas was in charge of Homeland Security for almost the whole Biden term, allowing a major relaxation in the enforcement of immigration laws, allowing millions of migrants to simply walk across the border.

Republicans in the U.S. House impeached him for misleading Congress and failing to enforce federal laws, but the Senate acquitted him last year.

Follow Joe on X @JoeKovacsNews

President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” a massive document calling for changes to implement some of his agenda items, was approved in the U.S. Senate when Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaker in the 51-50 vote.

And while it addressed the spending, or cutting, of hundreds of billions of dollars of Americans’ tax dollars, there’s one key inclusion that is disrupting the longstanding Democrat agenda to fund abortions.

That issue was one of the key planks of Joe Biden’s tenure on the White House, as he promoted abortion for all, anyway, anytime, all around the globe.

BREAKING: Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill has officially PASSED the U.S. Senate, with JD Vance breaking the tie

It now heads back to the House for a vote on the changes made.

It COULD still hit Trump’s desk by July 4th. pic.twitter.com/qszGm5sAt3

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) July 1, 2025

But the new plan contains a provision to cut off federal tax funding for abortion industry giant Planned Parenthood.

National Right to Life praised the move, which would block tax dollars from going to corporations that do or promote abortion.

“This vote is a monumental step forward for unborn children and their mothers. We thank every pro-life senator who stood firm in defense of innocent human life and voted to direct federal tax dollars away from the abortion industry,” said Carol Tobias, president.

“We are especially grateful to Senate leadership for ensuring this life-saving provision remained intact throughout the legislative process. We thank Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Majority Whip John Barrasso and Chief Deputy Whip Mike Crapo for their leadership on this issue. Their resolve reflects the will of millions of Americans who do not want their hard-earned tax dollars used to subsidize the abortion industry. Women deserve compassionate care that supports both mother and child. This bill is a strong affirmation that we can and must build a culture that supports mother and child and rejects abortion.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, chief of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, added, “Today, Congress took a major step toward ending the forced taxpayer funding of the Big Abortion industry — a crucial victory in the fight against abortion, America’s leading cause of death, and an industry that endangers women and girls.

“Women deserve real health care options like community health centers that outnumber Planned Parenthood 15 to 1 and provide far more comprehensive, life-affirming care. There’s no justification for forcing taxpayers to bankroll a scandal-ridden industry that prioritizes abortion, gender transitions, and partisan politics over prenatal care, cancer screenings, and other legitimate services, which continue to decline.”

The Supreme Court ruled last week that states are also allowed to defund the abortion industry players.

Congressional Republicans say the plan actually reduces the deficit, despite Democrat complaints, because it’s based on extending current policy, and the White House says economic growth will offset expenses.

The core of the plan extends and makes permanent the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from Trump’s first term. If those are not continued, Americans will see massive tax bills exploding in size starting next year.

Included are limited provisions for tax exemptions for tipped income and auto loan interest, as well as a $6,000 deduction for seniors over the age of 65, part of the effort to end taxes on Social Security benefits.

The plan includes nearly $200 billion to beef up illegal immigration enforcement that has been a major focus of the Trump administration, as well as funding for more border wall, immigration detention centers and surveillance tech.

The bill also strips from non-citizens most benefits from the government, such as Medicaid and food stamps.

And it calls for work requirements for childless, able-bodied adults, in order to obtain benefits.

It often begins with a last-minute calendar invite – mandatory, with no explanation.

For many workers in the tech industry, this has become a familiar signal. As the video meeting starts, hundreds of employees log in silently. Soon, human resources and legal representatives appear. The message is read. The decision is final.

Employees are informed their positions are being eliminated.

There is no opportunity for dialogue. Years of service are sometimes brought to an end in just a few minutes.

Many of these employees had stayed late, worked weekends, mentored new team members and remained committed through difficult cycles. The meeting typically ends with a bland, impersonal, standard statement of appreciation.

Executives often describe these actions as necessary for business reasons, with public statements citing over-hiring, inflation, economic uncertainty or the need for cost control. Workers are told the decision is not personal – just business.

Still, for those impacted, the effects are significant. Many support families, carry student loans or are primary earners in their households. They return to a job market where opportunities are limited, especially when layoffs affect entire departments or industries at once.

What many laid-off employees don’t realize is that the roles they once held may not have been permanently eliminated. Instead, those positions are sometimes quietly reassigned, reclassified or reopened, often without notice or transparency.

The reassignment pattern: Layoffs followed by visa hiring

While U.S.-based Microsoft workers have faced multiple waves of layoffs, including a new round expected this week targeting the Xbox division, the company has already cut over 10,000 employees across various divisions, including 6,000 in May alone, and hundreds more in June. In its defense, Microsoft claims its 2025 job cuts affect less than 1% of its global workforce.

Between May and June, Microsoft laid off 2,300 employees in Washington alone, including 817 software engineers, according to official WARN Act filings. But during the same period, Microsoft submitted 6,327 H-1B visa requests for software engineer roles matching the same job titles and location as those affected by the layoffs.

In total, the company filed 14,181 Labor Condition Applications, or LCAs – formal applications required to sponsor foreign workers for temporary employment visas, such as the H-1B – allowing them to work in U.S.-based jobs that are typically held by American workers. This made Microsoft the third-largest filer of foreign labor requests in the U.S., behind only NVIDIA and Amazon.

According to U.S. Department of Labor data, nearly 82% of Microsoft’s new foreign workers were tagged at wage levels well below the median salary for those occupations. Howard University professor Ron Hira, a long-time critic of the program, observed that employers frequently pay the minimum they legally have to when utilizing the foreign guest worker program.

“Prevailing wages are set far below the market price, inviting employers to exploit the program. The result is that most of the roughly 600,000 H-1B workers are paid below market price. This is an unfair outcome for U.S. and H-1B workers alike: U.S. workers’ wages are undercut and H-1B workers are underpaid.”

Hira, author of “Outsourcing America,” co-authored an article documenting why “H-1B wage rules need an overhaul.”

In addition to undercutting wages or laying off Americans to bring in more foreign workers, current U.S. law does not require companies to prove they tried to hire Americans first. They also aren’t obligated to notify laid-off employees if the same jobs are reopened through visa programs. Yet these practices are completely legal under existing immigration rules and occur with little oversight, no transparency and no protection for American workers.

Strategic shifts

The bottom line is that behind every announcement of “strategic realignment” is an American now facing uncertain days ahead, and often with no clear path back. For the American employees on the receiving end of layoff notices, the impact is deeply personal. They’re not just losing a paycheck, they’re losing healthcare, retirement contributions and a sense of security. That’s why Microsoft’s actions, while legal, remain anything but transparent. Most employees aren’t told similar jobs are being filled through H-1B visa requests. For those still employed, the silence only adds to their anxiety. With little information about how decisions are made or who might be next, many are left quietly wondering if they’re just one reorg away from losing everything too.

Alongside its growing number of foreign labor filings, Microsoft has continued to expand operations overseas, especially in India. In January 2025, the company announced a $3 billion investment into India’s AI and cloud infrastructure over the next two years, alongside a plan to train 10 million Indian workers in AI-related skills by 2030.

While Microsoft has laid off thousands of employees in the United States, the country where the company was founded and still earns the majority of its revenue, executives offered a different message abroad. In January 2025, the company confirmed that no layoffs were planned in India. “For all of India, more jobs are being created,” said Puneet Chandok, president of Microsoft India and South Asia, during a January 2025 interview.

As Microsoft expands its commitments to the Indian government and workforce, its 14,181 H-1B visa requests reflect deepening ties with India-based firms. Notably, every single application was filed through Integreon Managed Solutions (INDIA) PVT LTD. This raises serious questions about how many of these roles are being reserved for Indian nationals, especially as American employees are laid off. With little transparency, it becomes increasingly difficult for U.S.-based workers to know whether their jobs are being relocated overseas or quietly filled at the very desks they once occupied.

A shifting workforce

These trends point to a larger shift in how companies like Microsoft manage their workforce. As layoffs hit U.S.-based employees, the company continues to scale up international hiring, infrastructure and talent development, especially in India. At the same time, the number of H-1B visa filings for foreign workers continues to grow, often for roles very similar to those recently cut in the U.S.

All of this remains legal under existing U.S. labor and immigration policies. There are no requirements to prioritize American workers, no obligations to disclose when jobs are offshored and no systems in place to alert laid-off employees that similar roles may be refilled by cheaper foreign workers.

For those affected, the result is a widening gap between where tech jobs are created and where they are lost, between American workers being displaced and foreign labor pipelines quietly expanding. What remains to be seen is whether this pattern will continue unchecked, or if policymakers and the public will reevaluate what it means to protect domestic opportunity in a global economy where American companies are increasingly driven by cost-cutting at any price, quiet partnerships and the abandonment of loyalty to their own countrymen.

Follow WND for breaking exclusives, evidence-based investigations and updates on America First immigration news that the mainstream media won’t touch. You can follow us on X @Worldnetdaily/a>, sign up for our weekly newsletter and visit WND.com for the latest reports, whistleblower stories and ways you can take action. Let’s keep America first – always!

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig stunned CNN anchor Kate Bolduan on Monday by explaining that states could have conflicting birthright citizenship laws following the Supreme Court’s ruling on the limits of nationwide injunctions.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday that lower courts overstepped their authority by halting President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship restrictions nationwide. Honig, on “CNN News Central,” said the ruling would cause chaos because the Supreme Court did not address the constitutionality of the birthright citizenship limits.

WATCH:

“Everyone thought, ‘But wait a second, this was about birthright citizenship,’ right? So the Supreme Court did not rule on the substance of that constitutional question that the president has raised on birthright citizenship,” Bolduan said. “How do you see that legal fight now playing out?”

“Chaotically. Yes, they have not answered the birthright citizenship question,” Honig said. “We could end up in a scenario — there are 22 states that have sued to challenge Trump’s effort to limit birthright — it could be that we have different laws in those 22 states or different judicial holds.”

Bolduan appeared surprised by this possibility.

“Really!?” she exclaimed. “22 different rules on birthright citizenship in 22 different states?”

“Yes, well we could have one set of rules in the 22 states that have sued, another set of rules in the 28 states that have not sued,” Honig clarified.

Bolduan described the possible scenario as “wild.” Honig agreed.

“That is wild. And that’s why this is going to be so chaotic. Ultimately, the Supreme Court is ultimately going to have to decide this, hopefully sooner than later. I actually think they’re going to strike down Donald Trump’s effort to limit birthright citizenship,” he said. “But until they do, we’re going to be in this great unknown. And they’re going to be picking through the rubble here, really, piece by piece. But yeah, we could have a scenario where a child born in New Jersey is a citizen, a child born across the river in Pennsylvania is not a citizen under the exact same circumstances.”

Trump’s Jan. 20 “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” executive order ends guaranteed citizenship for children of illegal aliens or migrants on temporary visas.

The Trump administration had appealed three lower court orders barring the birthright citizenship order from taking effect in April, asking the Supreme Court to limit the power of district court judges to halt policies nationwide through universal injunctions.

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Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy refused to acknowledge on NBC News Sunday any positive impact from President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, despite record-low border crossings.

In May 2025, U.S. Border Patrol encountered about 8,725 illegal crossings, a 93% decrease from the 117,905 encounters in May 2024. During an appearance on “Meet The Press,” host Kristen Welker asked Murphy about the decline in border crossings with Murphy insisting that the drop was the result of the Trump administration’s alleged illegal actions rather than effective policy.

“I don’t give them credit for that because border crossings are low because they’re violating the law every day. So we have a law in this country that says if you are fleeing terror or torture from another country, you can come here and apply for asylum,” Murphy said.

Murphy claimed that the president suspended the asylum process altogether, preventing individuals from seeking refuge as prescribed by U.S. law. He also pointed to bipartisan legislative efforts from 2024 at reforming the asylum process to ensure that only those who qualify are allowed to apply while expediting the review of asylum cases at the border.

WATCH:

“The Trump administration has suspended that law. They are not allowing anybody to come here to apply for asylum. We wrote that bipartisan bill last year to reform the asylum process, to make sure that only the right people are coming in and that we judge those cases expeditiously at the border,” Murphy noted.

In 2024, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill to reform the asylum process, aiming to streamline procedures while ensuring protections for those fleeing persecution.

“It’s true, there are very few people crossing on a daily basis, but that’s because the Trump administration is violating the law. And it should matter to every American that on so many facets, the Trump administration doesn’t care about the law,” Murphy said. “This is becoming a lawless administration. We are on a road to see our democracy after feats of the point that it will be unrecognizable. And the border is just one example of many ways in which this administration doesn’t care about the law anymore.”

Upon returning to the White House, Trump wasted no time implementing a series of executive actions and administrative reforms to secure the southern border. These included declaring a national emergency, prioritizing wall construction, pressuring the Mexican government to deploy its own law enforcement and issuing numerous other directives.

The decline in illegal immigration stands in contrast to the Biden administration’s tenure, which experienced the worst border crisis in U.S. history. This crisis followed several actions taken by the Biden administration to dismantle border security measures established during Trump’s first term.

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Following a years-long surge in illegal immigration, the Trump administration is poised to challenge a longstanding but legally fraught practice: counting illegal aliens in the U.S. census.

President Trump tried to end the practice during his first term, but President Biden overturned his predecessor’s policy before it was implemented. Now, buoyed by red state attorneys general and Republican legislators, the second Trump administration is determined “to clean up the census and make sure that illegal aliens are not counted,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller said last month.

What Miller didn’t mention are the political implications of the administration’s move. It could have significant political implications because the census count is used to apportion House seats, determine the number of votes each state gets in the Electoral College for selecting the president, and drive the flow of trillions of dollars in government funds.

Some immigration researchers project that including noncitizens in the census count disproportionately benefits Democratic states with large illegal alien populations. A recent study counters that, based on 2020 census figures, there would have been a negligible shift to the political map had the U.S. government excluded noncitizens from that count. But looking backward, those researchers found, red states would have benefited under the administration’s desired census counting shift. Had authorities excluded such migrants from the 2010 census, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and North Carolina all would have gained one seat in the House, while California would have lost three seats, and Texas and Florida would have each lost one seat – with the total number of Electoral College votes allotted each state changing accordingly.

Since the first census in 1790, the nation has counted not only citizens but also residents to determine such representation. In addition to citing its long history, defenders of the practice say it is only fair that states should be given the power and resources to represent and serve everyone within their borders.

Critics contend the government’s powers come from “We the people” – citizens or eligible voters – a government established before tens of millions of migrants resided in the country illegally. They also say the practice dilutes the representation of American citizens while incentivizing localities to promote illegal immigration.

Trump’s first term hints at what is to come if his administration vigorously pursues a citizen-centric census policy. In July 2020, when the president issued a memorandum to exclude illegal migrants from the census, blue states and immigration groups challenged it in court almost immediately.

Those challenges rose all the way to the Supreme Court. But it did not rule on the merits – whether all residents must be counted and if the president has the authority to exclude nonresidents – setting the stage for a battle over immigration and presidential power.

The Meaning of the 14^th Amendment

The census issue hinges on the Constitution’s language, which calls for apportioning House seats among the states “according to their respective Numbers.” Those “Numbers” originally included “free Persons” and “three-fifths of all other Persons” – namely slaves, a result of the states’ compromise. The framers excluded “Indians not taxed” – Native Americans who were members of sovereign tribal nations, not citizens – from the count.

After the Civil War, Congress passed the 14^th Amendment to recognize the rights of the formerly enslaved. It states that congressional representation “shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State,” again excluding Indians not taxed. Under the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, this population would be granted citizenship.

Congress tasked the secretary of commerce with carrying out the census “in such form and content as he may determine.” The president receives that data, is responsible for carrying out the apportionment calculations, and transmits the information to Congress.

Echoing arguments against birthright citizenship, critics on the right say that the 14^th Amendment aimed to address the status of former slaves, not masses of illegal migrants. They assert that including this population in the census artificially skews political power, effectively disenfranchises citizens, and incentivizes states to adopt sanctuary policies protecting people here illegally.

“…[R]espect for the law and protection of the integrity of the democratic process warrant the exclusion of illegal aliens from the apportionment base, to the extent feasible and to the maximum extent of the President’s discretion under the law,” President Trump wrote in the 2020 memorandum.

The first Trump administration argued that the “persons in each State” that the 14^th Amendment refers to had long been interpreted to mean “inhabitants.” Inhabitants, it asserted, do not include “every individual physically present within a State’s boundaries at the time of the census,” noting that past administrations had excluded temporary aliens and foreign diplomatic personnel for apportionment.

The administration also argued that the Constitution and relevant law authorize the executive branch to determine who is to be counted as an inhabitant in the census. The president, therefore, had discretion to omit “persons with debatable ties to a State,” like “aliens living within a jurisdiction without the sovereign’s permission to settle there.”

The administration pointed to Franklin v. Massachusetts to support its claims. There, the Supreme Court held that the President George H.W. Bush administration could include Defense Department employees deployed overseas in the census. Then, the Court found that the president’s duties in the census process are not solely “ceremonial or ministerial,” and that federal law “does not curtail the President’s authority to direct the [Commerce] Secretary in making policy judgments that result in ‘the decennial census.’”

In testimony at the Democrat-led July 2020 House Oversight Committee hearing on the Trump memorandum, Republicans tabbed the head of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, John Eastman, to defend it. The conservative legal scholar, much-maligned by the left for the counsel he provided President Trump regarding challenging the 2020 election, recently told RealClearInvestigations that the Declaration of Independence’s “consent principle” – the concept that government derives its power from the American people – “compels that only citizens be counted for purposes of reapportionment,” and that the principle “is actually codified in the Constitution by excluding ‘Indians not taxed.’” In Eastman’s view, that language signifies that the founders sought to omit “those who are not part of our political community, from the apportionment for representation.”

“President Trump would be on solid ground, therefore, were he to direct that the census either not count illegal aliens at all, or at the very least record citizenship status so that a proper apportionment of citizens could be conducted,” Eastman said.

The plaintiffs challenging the Trump administration contended that the 14^th Amendment’s “persons” includes all residents irrespective of their immigration status; that the president lacked the discretion to deem otherwise; and that the process the administration had put in place to exclude illegal aliens was legally deficient. The president had issued a July 2019 directive in advance of his memo instructing the Census Bureau to collect citizenship data from various federal agencies, which would have been used to exclude illegal aliens from the apportionment count, raising additional legal questions.

Testifying opposite Eastman at the committee hearing, former Census Bureau directors warned that the president’s memo would spook potential respondents and suggested the memo would minimally create the appearance of politicizing the census.

Trump’s action reflected an “illegal desire of only counting citizens,” said Vincent Barabba, former Census Bureau director under the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations. “[H]is real objective…is to make sure less people will be counted in states with large minority populations which did not support President Trump or the positions he has taken.”

When litigation over the Trump census policy reached the Supreme Court, it punted. In December 2020, the justices held by a 6-3 margin in Trump v. New York that the plaintiffs lacked standing, and that the case was not ripe for adjudication – with Justices Steven Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissenting.

Upon taking office, President Biden issued a first-day executive order revoking both of Trump’s policies. Excluding people based on their immigration status “conflict[s] with the principle of equal representation enshrined in our Constitution, census statutes, and historical tradition,” Biden wrote. “Reapportionment shall be based on the total number of persons residing in the several States, without regard for immigration status.”

States Provide a Backup Plan

The first Trump administration lost a related case at the Supreme Court. In 2018, the administration reinstated a question on the decennial survey about the citizenship status of respondents – a move that likewise came under furious legal challenge.

The Commerce Department stated that it reinstated the question at the behest of the Justice Department, which was seeking superior data on voting-age citizens necessary to enforce the Voting Rights Act. Critics sued the administration, saying that including the question, which administrations had dropped after 1960, would chill immigrant respondents, leading to an unconstitutional undercount.

In June 2019, the justices found that while reinstating such a question was legal, the process by which the president sought to do so was invalid, since the Commerce Department’s rationale for including it was “contrived” and “pretextual” – in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

If the second Trump administration fails to win court approval of its expected effort to exclude illegal migrants, this time around, it will have backup.

Three days before Trump’s second inauguration, Louisiana, Kansas, Ohio, and West Virginia sued the Commerce Department, arguing that its prevailing practice of counting foreigners including illegal aliens at their place of “‘usual residence…’ robb[ed] the people of the Plaintiff States of their rightful share of political representation, while systematically redistributing political power to states with high numbers of illegal aliens and nonimmigrant aliens.”

They want the federal court, among other things, to vacate this “Residence Rule” to the extent it requires the Census Bureau to “include illegal aliens and nonimmigrant aliens in the apportionment base.” And they want to require the Census Bureau to include questions on the survey about citizenship, including one to determine whether non-citizen respondents are lawful permanent residents.

In March, the federal court stayed the case at the Trump administration’s request. The administration said it needed time “to determine its approach to the Residence Rule.” The White House and states plan to provide a joint status update on July 1.

The Justice and Commerce Departments did not respond to RCI’s requests for comment.

Republicans Seek a Legislative Fix

In the interim, Congress has acted. During the last session, Republican members introduced the Equal Representation Act, requiring the census to include a citizenship question and exclude all non-citizens from the census count for apportionment.

Democrats panned the bill, with the then-ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Jamie Raskin, writing in a minority report that “The plain reading of the [constitutional] text is clear as day, and the original purposes have been carefully articulated and never rebutted. For those who like to follow precedent, every apportionment since 1790 has included every single person residing in the United States, not just those lucky enough to have been given the right to vote.”

In 2016, the Supreme Court held that a state or locality may draw legislative districts based on total population, irrespective of the fact that some districts may have significantly larger voter-eligible populations than others.

Writing for the majority, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that “we need not and do not resolve whether…States may draw districts to equalize voter-eligible population rather than total population.”

Fifty years prior, the Court held that Hawaii could use a registered-voter population base for its apportionment of state legislative seats due to the “large concentrations of military and other transients” in key population center Oahu.

In May 2024, the House passed the Equal Representation Act on a largely party-line vote, but it failed to advance in the Senate.

The current House reintroduced the bill by North Carolina Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards. He told RealClearInvestigations that “Americans deserve fair and equal representation, something that will not be possible until we eliminate the influence of noncitizens in our elections.”

The bill must first move through the Oversight Committee, chaired by Kentucky GOP Rep. James Comer. He told RCI that “American citizens’ representation in Congress should not be determined by individuals who are not citizens of the United States.”

Comer said his committee plans to move the bill again during this congressional session.

The states suing the Commerce Department are adamant that their view should prevail irrespective of legislative action.

Christopher Hajec, Director of Litigation at the Immigration Reform Law Institute – a legal nonprofit opposed to “unchecked mass migration” that is representing Kansas in the pending states’ suit – told RCI that “Whatever Congress does or does not do, our position is that the Constitution implies that illegal aliens should not be counted in the census for apportionment.”

President Donald Trump on Sunday pushed a “temporary pass” for immigrant farmworkers in America, while he blasted “lunatics” in Biden administration for bringing prisoners from other countries into America, calling it “a sin that we can never forget.”

“This to me was the worst part of Biden,” Trump said in an exclusive interview on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo on the Fox News Channel. “The worst thing he did was the whole thing on immigration.”

“They would empty their prisons into the United States,” Trump said. “Not just South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, parts of Europe, rough parts of Europe.

“Their prisons were emptied into the United States and the people, you saw the people.
They run into the country. To me, that’s a sin that we can never forget. We can never forget what Biden and that group of lunatics that work for him have done to our country.”

“If I didn’t get elected, I’m telling you, we wouldn’t have had a country left.”

Trump on the open border that the Biden administration oversaw:

“That’s a SIN that we can NEVER forget. We can never forget what Biden and that group of LUNATICS who worked for him have done to our country.”

I say it was TREASON and should be handled as such! pic.twitter.com/WU01XdbPlb

— Gunther Eagleman (@GuntherEagleman) June 29, 2025

Trump also says he’s working on a temporary pass for immigrants working on American farms.

“We’re gonna work it so that some kind of a temporary pass where people pay taxes, where the farmer can have a little control, as opposed to you walk in and take everybody away. But no, I want, the criminals are going out of this country.”

“I cherish our farmers, and when we go into a farm and when we take away people that have been working there for 15 and 20 years, who are good, who possibly came in incorrectly, and what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna do something for farmers where we can let the farmers sort of be in charge.

“The farmer knows. He’s not gonna hire a murderer. But when you go into a farm and he’s had somebody working for him foe nine years doing this kind of work, which is hard work to do, and a lot of people aren’t gonna do it, and you end up destroying a farmer because you took all the people away.”

“It’s a problem. You know, I’m on both sides of the thing. I’m the strongest immigration guy that there’s ever been, but I’m also the strongest farmer guy that there’s ever been. And that also includes also hotels and places where people work, a certain group of people work.”

Trump on undocumented immigrants: “We’re working on it right now. We’re gonna work it so that — some kind of a temporary pass where people pay taxes, where the farmer can have a little control as opposed to you walk in and take everybody away. But the criminals are going out of… pic.twitter.com/lkddH4zUo8

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 29, 2025

Is the news we hear every day actually broadcasting messages from God? The answer is an absolute yes! Find out how!

Regarding this week’s victory of socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s Democratic primary in the race for mayor, Trump called him a “radical left lunatic.”

“He’s a communist. I think it’s very bad for New York. I don’t know that he’s gonna get in. It’s inconceivable. But he’s a communist and he’s a pure communist. I think he admits it,” Trump explained.

President Trump on Zohran Mamdani potentially becoming NYC Mayor

“I can tell you this — whoever is mayor of New York is going to have to behave themselves, or the federal government is coming down very tough on them financially.”

“I’M the President” pic.twitter.com/jMnlZiI3iQ

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) June 29, 2025

“I can’t imagine it, but let’s say this. If he does get in, I’m gonna be president, and he’s gonna have to do the right thing or they’re not getting any money. He’s got to do the right thing.”

Trump avoided saying whom he’d like to see as NYC mayor, but added: “I can tell you this. Who’s ever mayor of New York is gonna have to behave themselves or the federal government is coming down very tough on them financially.”

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