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Trump sides with Elon Musk as top lieutenant clashes with anti-immigration MAGA supporters over H-1B visa program for skilled workers
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Donald Trump has hailed the H-1B visa program for skilled workers as “great” claiming to have always been in favor of them.
Speaking to The New York Post, the president-elect sided with two of his top lieutenants, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, after they both defended the need for hiring workers from overseas in tech, engineering, and other sectors.
Ramaswamy, who will lead the outside commission known as the Department of Government Efficiency alongside Musk, blamed 1990s sitcoms for emphasizing the wrong values in U.S. workers.
“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he wrote in a post on X.
“There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent,” Musk wrote on Wednesday on X. “It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.”
The “number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” he later added.
Their statements triggered pushback from “America First” hardliners, including Steve Bannon. They want strict immigration control and a furious war of words erupted on social media.
Donald Trump’s incoming border czar says the administration’s plans for a mass deportation operation will include jailing immigrant families together in detention centers before they are removed from the country.
“We’re going to need to construct family facilities,” Tom Homan told The Washington Post in a recent interview. “How many beds we’re going to need will depend on what the data says.”
Alex Woodward reports.
Tom Homan says the administration will construct ‘family facilities’ for mass deportation plans, including removing citizen children with undocumented parents
While cable news networks CNN and MSNBC continue to see a massive post-election drop in their television ratings, a new Associated Press poll finds that most Americans are worn out since Donald Trump’s electoral victory and have tuned out from political news.
Conducted by the AP and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in early December, the survey found that roughly two-thirds of respondents said they “have recently felt the need to limit media consumption about politics and government because of overload.” Some participants explained why they felt fatigued and needed to step away.
Here’s Justin Barangoa:
According to a new AP poll, about two-thirds of Americans have grown exhausted following Donald Trump’s election and are now limiting their consumption of political media.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said her agency will need to start taking “extraordinary measures,” or special accounting maneuvers intended to prevent the nation from hitting the debt ceiling, as early as January 14, in a letter sent to congressional leaders Friday afternoon.
“Treasury expects to hit the statutory debt ceiling between January 14 and January 23,” Yellen wrote in a letter addressed to House and Senate leadership, at which point extraordinary measures would be used to prevent the government from breaching the nation’s debt ceiling — which has been suspended until Jan. 1, 2025.
The department has in the past deployed what are known as “extraordinary measures” or accounting maneuvers to keep the government operating. But once those measures run out the government risks defaulting on its debt unless lawmakers and the president agree to lift the limit on the U.S. government’s ability to borrow.
“I respectfully urge Congress to act to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” she said.
Continue reading…
Yellen said the treasure will need to take ‘extrodinary measures’ to prevent the nation from hitting the debt ceiling early next year
Donald Trump is claiming victory after a judge ruled that the Biden administration must turn over purchasing records accounting for $1.4 billion Congress allocated to build a wall on the Mexico border, a federal judge in Texas said Friday.
The records will help track materials that Texas alleges the federal government auctioned off in violation of a court order, Bloomberg Law reports.
Judge Drew Tipton of the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas, a Trump appointee, demanded the records at the end of a virtual hearing that Texas requested to determine if the federal government had unlawfully gotten rid of wall materials in anticipation of Trump’s reelection.
The president-elect wrote on Truth Social:
BREAKING: In a major, crucial WIN for America, and our National Security, a Federal Judge in Texas, based on papers we filed just a few days ago, has PROHIBITED the Biden Administration from selling any materials designated for the Border Wall, that has been wrecked by Biden and his cronies, and which I am going to rebuild in order to protect our Country from violent migrant crime, fentanyl smuggling, sex trafficking, terror attacks, and other heinous, Nation ending disasters. The Judge has also ordered an investigation into the illegal selling of the materials, which will expose just how corrupt and anti-American Radical Democrats are. I am honored to be joined in this vital case by the Great States of Texas and Missouri, and applaud Judge Drew Tipton for doing the right thing for our Country. We have to protect our Borders, and Save America. MAGA!
Another volley has been fired in the ongoing MAGA civil war that’s been playing out online between hardcore “America First” acolytes and Trump-backing Silicon Valley oligarchs over an immigrant worker visa program — and now Elon Musk is being accused of personally punishing his critics.
Laura Loomer and other far-right activists who have railed against the X (formerly Twitter) owner and his DOGE co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy for supporting H-1B visas and criticizing American work culture allege that Musk removed their X verification badges and ability to monetize their accounts in an act of retribution.
Justin Barangoa reports.
“[Musk] has removed my blue check mark on X because I dared to question his support for H1B visas, the replacement of American tech workers by Indian immigrants,” Laura Loomer tweeted Thursday.
An online spat between factions of Donald Trump‘s supporters over immigration and the tech industry has thrown internal divisions in his political movement into public display, previewing the fissures and contradictory views his coalition could bring to the White House.
The rift laid bare the tensions between the newest flank of Trump’s movement — wealthy members of the tech world including billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and their call for more highly skilled workers in their industry — and people in Trump’s Make America Great Again base who championed his hardline immigration policies.
Read on…
An online spat between factions of Donald Trump’s supporters over immigration and the tech industry has thrown internal divisions in the president-elect’s political movement into public display
President-elect Donald Trump’s continuing threats of massive tariffs are sparking global supply chain concerns as both American and European companies are frontloading orders and considering raising prices while Chinese factories look for buyers outside of the U.S.
Businesses across the world are pushing out orders ahead of Trump’s inauguration January 20, choosing not to wait to see which products or countries will be on the list of targets in Trump’s expected trade war.
The president-elect’s threat of universal tariffs has set off a scramble to get orders out that’s creating bottlenecks and higher costs.
Gustaf Kilander reports.
President-elect’s threat of universal tariffs has set off a scramble to get orders out that’s creating bottlenecks and higher costs
Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to block a federal law’s imminent ban on TikTok in the United States if the popular app’s Chinese parent company doesn’t sell it by next month’s deadline.
The nation’s highest court will hear arguments in the case on January 10.
Alex Woodward has the details.
The nation’s highest court will hear arguments over challenges to an imminent ban on January 10
In case you were wondering.
Peruvian shamans have predicted a bizarre alliance in 2025 between US President-elect Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin which would exclude China and potentially trigger a third World War. In an annual ritual on Friday, 27 December, the group also predicted natural disasters in Canada and Japan and advised wearing gold to prevent betrayals in the upcoming Year of the Snake. The shamans blew smoke and waved flowers on images of world leaders such as Mr Trump, Mr Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping during cleansing rituals atop San Cristobal Hill in Lima.
Elon Musk has declared that “hateful, unrepentant racists” should be removed from the Republican Party “root and stem” as the in-party feud over H-1B visas intensifies.
Conversations around H-1B visas have divided Donald Trump’s party, with his Department of Government Efficiency heads Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on one side and other allies like Laura Loomer on the other. The Space X founder escalated the feud on Friday night when he called for some “contemptible fools” in the GOP to be removed.
Musk made the statement in response to a post on X by Neera Tanden, President Joe Biden’s director of the U.S. Domestic Policy Council.
Kelly Rissman reports.
‘They will absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed,’ Tesla and SpaceX tycoon warns
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