Monday, December 21, 2020

PHONEY MONEY-STALKING PREACHER FRANKLIN GRAHAM SAYS 'I TEND TO BELIEVE TRUMP'S CLAIM THAT ELECTION WAS RIGGED DESPITE THE FACT THE WHORE CHASER IS A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR'

DONALD TRUMP V. THE UNITED STATES

Inside the Struggle to Stop a President

By Michael S. Schmidt

448 pp. Random House. $30.

Franklin Graham: ‘I Tend to Believe’ Trump’s Claim Election ‘Rigged’

Evangelical leader Franklin Graham prepares to tape his prayer for the fourth day of the Republican National Convention from the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
2:18

Rev. Franklin Graham detailed in a Facebook post Saturday many of the ways in which the Democrats and media have “maligned” and “falsely accused” President Donald Trump.

The Christian leader, who is president of charity Samaritan’s Purse, and a supporter of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, summarized:

In 2016 Donald J. Trump told the American people that the government was spying on him. The media said that he was paranoid. The Obama administration and the Democrats said that this was an absolute lie and that Donald Trump was not fit to be president, only for us to find out later that the U.S. government did spy on Donald Trump, and what he had said was in fact true. Then we spent the next two years with the President under investigation for collusion with the Russians. The President said there was no collusion, but night after night, the media and the Democrats said there was collusion. After an investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, it turned out to be false—there was no collusion. President Trump was right again. Then the Democrats impeached him over a phone call.

“The President has been maligned, falsely accused, and attacked on every front since before the election in 2016,” Graham wrote. “When President Trump says that this election has been rigged or stolen, I tend to believe him. He has a track record of being right.”

Graham concluded by asking his followers for prayers for Trump, Joe Biden, and “our nation – that we will get through this, and for God’s will be done.”

Last week, Graham posted that he is “grateful to God” for the past four years during which Trump has been president.

“People have asked if I am disappointed about the election,” he wrote, and reflected he is “grateful to God that for the last four years He gave us a president who protected our religious liberties; grateful for a president who defended the lives of the unborn, standing publicly against abortion and the bloody smear it has made on our nation.”

“[G]rateful for a president who nominated conservative judges to the Supreme Court and to our federal courts,” he continued, “grateful for a president who built the strongest economy in 











70 years with the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years before the pandemic.”



Trump held White House meeting on martial law plan to overturn election

President Donald Trump and his top aides reviewed a series of proposals for overturning his defeat in the presidential election at a meeting Friday night in the White House. This included discussion of a proposal that he declare martial law and order the seizure of voting machines in key battleground states, according to numerous press accounts.

The New York Times first reported on the meeting, which involved Trump, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and two prominent advocates of an election coup, former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell and former Trump national security advisor Gen. Michael Flynn. Additional details were reported by CNN, ABC, NBC and other news outlets.

It was the first meeting at the White House for Flynn since Trump pardoned him on two counts of perjury for lying to the FBI during the investigation, in the early days of the Trump administration, that led to his firing as national security advisor. It was the first White House visit for Powell since she was dismissed by the Trump campaign after voicing a series of bizarre conspiracy theories in which Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (dead since 2013) was held responsible for manipulating the 2020 US presidential election.

Michael Flynn leaving federal court in Washington, DC, 2019. [Photo credit: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File]

Trump’s welcoming such discredited figures into the White House undoubtedly expresses mounting desperation, but also an utter refusal to concede the result of the election, won by Biden with a margin of more than seven million votes. While acting like a cornered rat, Trump, as president of the United States for another month, still possesses immense powers, particularly over the US military-intelligence apparatus.

General Flynn visited the White House one day after suggesting, in an interview on the rabidly pro-Trump Newsmax network, that Trump should declare martial law, order voting machines in six key states seized by federal authorities, and conduct a second election in those states under military supervision. This would, of course, mean armed soldiers insuring that the voters of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin got it “right” this time, i.e., that the electoral votes of these states, officially delivered to Democrat Joe Biden on December 14 as a result of each state’s balloting, were instead awarded to Trump.

According to the press accounts, Trump asked General Flynn about his proposal for martial law and a second election. Meadows and Cipollone, and other unidentified White House officials, reportedly opposed Flynn and said the president did not have the authority to take the proposed actions. Powell, who was Flynn’s lawyer in his perjury case before joining the effort of the Trump campaign to overturn the election results, was said to have denounced the White House officials for being insufficiently devoted to Trump’s interests.

The meeting was characterized as ending in a “screaming” match, without a clear decision as to what course Trump would take. At one point, Trump suggested he might appoint Powell as a special counsel to investigate the presidential election, a proposal that was opposed by White House officials and even by Trump’s principal election lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who is recovering from the coronavirus and participated in the meeting remotely.

Attorney General William Barr has resisted Trump’s demand to name a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, son of the president-elect, and presumably would oppose a similar appointment of Powell to investigate the election, but he is leaving the department under pressure from Trump, effective Wednesday, December 23. His interim successor, the current deputy attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, could well be asked to make such appointments after Barr’s departure.

On Sunday, as details of the meeting and the illegal and unconstitutional proposals that were discussed became more widely known, Trump went on his Twitter account to denounce the press reports as “Fake News.”

According to the Times account, one of measures discussed at the meeting was a proposal by Giuliani that Trump issue an executive order to seize control of voting machines in the contested states so they could be examined for “fraud.” Giuliani reportedly discussed this option with the acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kenneth Cuccinelli, last week, but Cuccinelli said the DHS did not have the authority to do so. An executive order would supposedly remedy that, but the president, as head of the federal government, does not have the power to take such action against the states, which actually administer elections under the US constitutional structure.

It is remarkable that Cuccinelli, a rabid anti-immigrant bigot and semi-fascist, who was a notorious law-and-order demagogue during his four years as state attorney general in Virginia, is now presented as a moderating force in the internal deliberations of the Trump administration.

In the only Sunday television interview program to take up the issue, CNN’s “State of the Union” began with host Jake Tapper declaring: “For anyone wondering just how much damage an outgoing president can do in the final month in office, we’re beginning to get something of an idea. On Friday in the Oval Office, the president reportedly discussed with disgraced pardoned former General Michael Flynn Flynn’s deranged proposal to have Trump declare martial law to force new elections in states that Biden won, so as to overturn the election results.

“Trump is also reportedly talking about giving the powers of a special counsel to attorney Sidney Powell, whose crackpot conspiracy theories about the election have been laughed out of courtroom after courtroom.”

Tapper asked a guest on the program, Republican Senator Mitt Romney, about the martial law plan, which Romney dismissed, saying, “It’s not going to happen. That’s going nowhere. And I understand the president is casting about, trying to find some way to have a different result than the one that was delivered by the American people.”

The only representative of the Biden transition to discuss the issue Sunday, Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s nominee for secretary of transportation, was far less categorical, merely stating that Biden would take office on Inauguration Day as scheduled, adding, “I just hope that, across the party and across the country, there’s an understanding about how important it is that we remain committed to democracy.”

Remarkably, there was no substantive discussion on any other Sunday television interview program about the White House discussions on martial law, nor did the Biden campaign issue any statement or comment on the issue of Trump’s continuing refusal to concede the election. Biden’s policy ever since November 3 has been to downplay Trump’s threats to overturn the election while reaching out to the military-intelligence apparatus and Wall Street to reassure them that the incoming Democratic administration will uphold their interests.

Trump continued to rail against the election results over the weekend on Twitter, declaring Saturday that it was “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election,” and calling for supporters to attend protests in Washington on January 6, 2021, when Congress officially counts the electoral votes cast by the 50 states and the District of Columbia. “Be there, will be wild,” he tweeted, reiterating claims that he won a landslide victory in the election, and adding, “Now Republican politicians have to fight so that their great victory is not stolen. Don’t be weak fools!”

A half-dozen Republican congressmen have said they will object to electoral votes being cast for Biden by states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia, and one senator, incoming Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville, said he would provide the support from at least one senator required to force a vote on the objection. The objection would still fail, both in the Democratic-controlled House and in the Senate, where more than a dozen Republicans have said they accept Biden’s victory.

Meanwhile, the syndicated television program Inside Edition reported that Trump “has reportedly told his staff he’s not leaving the White House, flat out refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election…”

During the summer, after he had clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, Biden told interviewers that his “greatest fear” about the election was that Trump would refuse to acknowledge the decision of the voters and would refuse to carry out a peaceful transfer of power. Since the election, however, Biden has remained virtually silent on the issue, entrusting the transition to the national security apparatus and avoiding any appeal to the American population, for fear of triggering a political upheaval the Democrats could not control.

One indication of the mood in Washington—where the prospects of a Trump coup are the subject of heated discussions on a daily basis—is a little noticed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) introduced by Democrat Chrissy Houlahan, a former Air Force officer, with Republican support. It would require that if the president invokes the Insurrection Act of 1807, as Trump threatened to do last June during the protests against the police murder of George Floyd, military and paramilitary units will be required to wear their names and insignia so they can be identified as they take to the streets.

Trump has threatened to veto the NDAA, although not over this amendment, which does almost nothing to restrain the possible use of the military against the American people.


Franklin Graham: ‘I Am Grateful to God’ for ‘the Last Four Years’

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 28: (AFP-OUT) Franklin Graham (R) talks with President Donald Trump during a ceremony as the late evangelist Billy Graham lies in repose at the U.S. Capitol, on February 28, 2018 in Washington, DC. Rev. Graham is being honored by Congress by lying in repose inside of …
Ron Sachs-Pool/Getty Images
1:32

Evangelist Rev. Franklin Graham said Monday that he is grateful for the last four years, and all that President Donald Trump has done for Americans who stand for life and freedom.

“People have asked if I am disappointed about the election,” he posted to Facebook, and reflected he is “grateful to God that for the last four years He gave us a president” who protected religious freedom and the lives of the unborn, as he also appointed Supreme Court justices and judges who will uphold the Constitution, and gave the nation a strong economy.

Graham, the president of international aid charity Samaritan’s Purse, continued that he is “grateful for a president who strengthened and supported our military; grateful for a president who stood against ‘the swamp’ and the corruption in Washington; grateful for a president who supported law and order and defended our police.”

“I’m grateful for a president and a vice president who recognized the importance of prayer and were not ashamed of the name of Jesus Christ,” he added.

“I’m thankful that the president stood against the secularists who wanted to take Christ out of Christmas and that he brought back the greeting “Merry Christmas!” the Christian leader continued.

“So as we come to the end of this election season, I look back with a grateful heart and thank God for all of these things,” he said. “President Trump will go down in history as one of the great presidents of our nation, bringing peace and prosperity to millions here in the U.S. and around the world.”


THIS FAMILY HAS NEVER EARNED AN HONEST DOLLAR IN THEIR PATHETIC LIVES!

Trump Is Surrounded by Criminals

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-fall-of-donald-trump-final-days.html

 

“The legal ring surrounding him is collectively producing a historic indictment of his endemic corruption and criminality.” JONATHAN CHAIT

Eric Trump claims family 'lost a fortune' in pushback of pay-for-play report

 

ADAM KELSEY

Responding to a story that reported that hundreds of corporations, special interest groups and foreign governments seeking benefits patronized Trump Organization properties in recent years, the president's son argued Sunday that the groups represent a small proportion of their business and that his father has not benefited monetarily from his office.

"We've lost a fortune. My father lost a fortune running for president. He doesn't care," Eric Trump, an executive vice president with the Trump Organization, said on ABC's "This Week." "He wanted to do what was right. The last thing I can tell you Donald Trump needs in the world is this job."

The comments come a day after a New York Times story reported that President Trump "transplanted favor-seeking in Washington to his family's hotels and resorts -- and earned millions as a gatekeeper to his own administration." The article, citing the president's tax records, reports that of the hundreds of individuals and entities seeking favor, "60 customers with interests at stake before the Trump administration brought his family business nearly $12 million during the first two years of his presidency."

"Almost all saw their interests advanced, in some fashion, by Mr. Trump or his government," the news story continued.

ABC News has not viewed the president's taxes and cannot confirm the Times' reporting.

On "This Week," Eric Trump echoed his father's rhetoric calling the story "fake news." He also implied without evidence that the report -- one of several in the past two weeks concerning the president's finances -- was timed to hurt his reelection campaign.

NEW: "My father has lost a fortune," Eric Trump tells @jonkarl when pressed on a NYT report that Pres. Trump turned "his own hotels and resorts into the Beltway's new back rooms, where public and private business mix and special interests reign." https://t.co/fsCP2um0H5 pic.twitter.com/MtZLiszs2K

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 11, 2020

Pressed by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl about the president's debt, which the Times reported as more than $400 million, Eric Trump characterized it as commonplace for someone with his level of wealth in the real estate industry. He also misleadingly claimed that all of the president's lenders are publicly known.

"It's in his financial disclosures," Eric Trump said, referring to the annual reports the president is required to issue under federal ethics regulations that do not list all of his creditors. President Trump has not voluntarily released his tax returns, as other past commanders-in-chief and candidates for the office have done. "You know exactly who the money's owed to … my father is worth billions of dollars, and on a proportion of his net worth, my father has very, very low leverage."

"If you own buildings, if you own real estate, you carry some debt. That's what developers do, that's what business owners do, they carry some debt," he continued. "We have a phenomenal company, but there's nothing new about that, and by the way, it's the same debt that he got elected on."

.@jonkarl: "Don't the American people have a right to know who (the president) is indebted to?"

"That's what developers do, that's what business owners do, they carry some debt, "Eric Trump says but President Trump still won't release his tax returns. https://t.co/fsCP2um0H5 pic.twitter.com/x3u8GcDpKy

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 11, 2020

In the interview, Eric Trump also responded to the president's refusal to participate in a virtual debate this coming week, as planned by the Commission on Presidential Debates following the president's COVID-19 diagnosis and subsequent hospitalization. The debate was canceled as a result and it is not immediately clear what format the next, and potentially final, scheduled debate will take in two weeks.

"My father wants to stand on stage with his opponent. That's how debates have been handled in America for the last 200 years, you've stood there and you've debated somebody," Eric Trump said, despite the fact that John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon debated on-camera from opposite coasts, appearing on television in a split-screen in 1960.

"My father doesn't want to do it over a glorified conference call," he continued.

Karl noted that several members of the Trump family, including Eric and his siblings, defied protocol by watching the first debate maskless. Second lady Karen Pence also appeared at this past week's vice presidential debate without a mask.

"Given the concerns now, will you commit that the Trump team will abide by those safety precautions that the commission put in place at the next debate?" Karl asked.

"I'm happy to wear a mask," Eric Trump said, going on to accuse Democratic nominee Joe Biden of backing out the debate -- another mischaracterization. It was the commission that announced the plan to hold the second event virtually, and the president who chose not to participate. The Trump campaign said the president would also be willing to attend two more debates if they were each postponed a week to allow for an in-person format, but the Biden campaign rejected the idea.

"My father wants to stand on the stage with his opponent," and "doesn't want to do it over a glorified conference call," Eric Trump tells @jonkarl when asked if the Trump campaign will decline to participate in Oct. 22 presidential debate if it's virtual. https://t.co/R7EgB0oaON pic.twitter.com/s7Vl6T9MY6

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 11, 2020

On Saturday, the president's physician, Dr. Sean Conley, issued a memo stating that the president "is no longer a transmission risk to others" and "the assortment of advanced diagnostic tests obtained reveal there is no longer evidence of actively replicating virus." It remains unclear whether Trump has tested negative.

The memo came hours after the president delivered an address resembling a campaign speech from the White House South Lawn. The administration called the event a "peaceful protest for law and order," which Eric Trump echoed on "This Week." The president heads to Florida Monday to restart official in-person campaign events with a rally in Sanford.

Eric Trump also noted on Sunday morning that attendees at Saturday's outdoor White House event were temperature-checked and wore masks -- the latter measure, Karl noted, a less common sight at Trump campaign rallies prior to the president's diagnosis.

As the president prepares to return to the campaign trail, Karl challenged Eric Trump about his father's rhetoric following the vice presidential debate in reference to Biden's running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.

"Vice President Pence, when he debated Kamala Harris, said it was a privilege to be on the stage with her, recognized her history-making pick as Biden's running mate. And then the next day your father said that she was a monster," Karl said, referencing comments the president made on Fox Business Thursday. "Why? How is Kamala Harris a monster? Why did he say that?"

"Well, you know, there are a lot of stances that she takes are just -- they're mind-boggling to me," Eric Trump responded.

"But political differences are one thing. A monster? You're calling the Democratic vice presidential nominee a monster. Your father did," Karl pressed.

"You know, you're also dealing with a person who is willing to lie every single day," Eric Trump claimed, going on to misrepresent Biden and Harris' position on law enforcement funding.

Eric Trump claims family 'lost a fortune' in pushback of


THE ORANGE BABOON HAS SURROUNDED HIMSELF WITH ENABLER SOCIOPATH LAWYERS FROM ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM BARR ALL THE WAY DOWN!

ALL LAWYERS ARE CONTEMPTUOUS OF THE LAW. FOR THEM, LAWS AND ETHICS ARE GAMED. THEY'RE TRAINED IN LAW SCHOOL TO GAME IT!

 

How Has Donald Trump Survived?

Donald F. McGahn II looks over at President Trump

By Gabriel Debenedetti

DONALD TRUMP V. THE UNITED STATES

Inside the Struggle to Stop a President

By Michael S. Schmidt

When a Republican-led Senate committee issued a nearly 1,000-page report in mid-August that detailed the prodigious extent of the contacts between Russian officials and members of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team, it felt a bit like a dispatch from a vaguely familiar reality — a prepandemic realm when we could mostly agree to focus on foreign interference in American democracy, and when the Trump presidency felt as if it were hanging in the balance while it awaited word from Robert S. Mueller III. This is the world that forged Michael S. Schmidt’s “Donald Trump v. the United States.” It vividly resurrects that actually-not-so-distant era by unspooling the occasionally staggering stories of two administration figures who were central to the investigative sagas that dominated the early Trump years, largely thanks to their attempts to constrain him.

The subjects are both all too familiar and, Schmidt implies, underappreciated in their significance in shaping Trump’s presidency. Schmidt recounts with unsparing intimacy James Comey’s arc from the 2016 election to his 2017 firing from the F.B.I. directorship, and he documents the relentlessly uncomfortable White House tenure of the former general counsel Donald F. McGahn II, who, he points out, “was in charge of Trump’s greatest political accomplishment, and he found himself caught up as the chief witness against Trump.” The result is a revelatory portrait of the events that led to the investigation of Trump for obstruction of justice, and his repeated attempts to control the Department of Justice. It is not about the alleged collusion with Moscow, and in fact Schmidt reports that Mueller’s investigators “never undertook a significant examination of Trump’s personal and business ties to Russia,” largely thanks to the deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein’s intervention.

Schmidt, a New York Times correspondent in Washington who was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018, including one for coverage of Trump’s Russian-inflected scandals, portrays an administration in which all aides may as well always have a resignation letter ready as a safeguard against an angry, flailing president detached from commonly accepted reality. This is a meticulously reported volume that clearly benefits from the author’s extraordinary access to many of the relevant characters, but also from his subjects’ tendency to record, in detail, their time around Trump.

Whereas recent years have been packed with high-impact reported books about Trump’s erratic behavior and his administration’s backbiting — Bob Woodward’s “Fear,” Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig’s “A Very Stable Genius” and Jonathan Karl’s “Front Row at the Trump Show” come to mind — “Donald Trump v. the United States” is more closely tailored to the efforts to rein Trump in. As such, it may be unlikely to become a go-to for general conclusions about Trump’s character. But it adds significantly to the public understanding of the Mueller investigation and Trump’s war against it.

The narrative is sometimes cinematic. It opens with Schmidt chasing down McGahn outside the White House’s front gates and eventually getting him to concede, “I damaged the office of the president; I damaged the office.” It’s a breathtakingly revealing admission from the White House’s chief lawyer and the architect of Trump’s effort to appoint as many conservative judges as possible. (Schmidt says, “I thought he was still understating the gravity of what he had done.”)

McGahn, a staunch libertarian, was frequently in over his head with the lawless president he nicknamed “King Kong,” and he struggled with his highly unusual extended contact with Mueller’s team. Still, despite getting close to resigning, McGahn stuck around far longer than his apparent misery and frequent attempts at principled stands would suggest, largely because of his judicial project’s success. It was only after Trump granted a woman clemency at Kim Kardashian’s request that McGahn knew he truly had to leave the White House. He could no longer abide the accumulation of Trump’s actions.

Then, in the annals of unsustainable relationships with Trump, there’s James Comey. His early interactions with the president, like the one-on-one dinner at which Trump requested Comey’s loyalty, have been described repeatedly. But in Schmidt’s granular telling, the relationship was especially agonizing because of a fundamental disconnect between the two men.

Comey was always deeply interested in maintaining his and his agency’s public credibility — especially after his wildly controversial intrusions into the 2016 campaign over Hillary Clinton’s emails. After he was fired by Trump, he text-messaged a friend: “I’m with my peeps (former peeps). They are broken up and I’m sitting with them like a wake. Trying to figure out how to get back home. May hitchhike.” It’s just one example of the clearly extensive access Schmidt had to Comey and his wife.

“Donald Trump v. the United States” is full of gritty details about what it’s like for a plugged-in journalist to report on Trump’s intrigue, ranging from the time Schmidt shepherded a valued source to and from the airport, to his learning, secondhand, about a Justice Department official soliciting dirt on Comey at a Cinco de Mayo party. At one point, Schmidt writes, he shattered his cellphone and didn’t fix it for a week because there was too much news; he ended up with pieces of glass in his hands.

More interesting, however, is the constant flow of shocking anecdotes: Schmidt writes that Mitch McConnell fell asleep during a classified briefing on Russia, for example, and he details the F.B.I.’s shambolic reaction to evidence of the hacking in 2016, including an unresolved disagreement over how to handle the material. Describing Trump’s unexpected November 2019 visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, he reports the White House wanted Mike Pence “on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized.” (The vice president never had to take this step.)

For all its revelations, this is not an inside look at Mueller’s investigation itself, and over half of Schmidt’s story goes by before Mueller is even appointed. At times, too, it wanders from the obstruction fights at its heart. Still, if the furor around the investigations into Trump’s last campaign feels like ancient history as the nation faces a pandemic, a civil rights reckoning and another election, “Donald Trump v. the United States” nevertheless offers one more startling dissection of the Trump presidency. Ultimately this book about “the struggle to stop a president” is, in many ways, a tale of how he survived.

Gabriel Debenedetti is the national correspondent for New York magazine.

DONALD TRUMP V. THE UNITED STATES

Inside the Struggle to Stop a President

By Michael S. Schmidt

448 pp. Random House. $30.

 

 

AMERICA GOES HUNGRY AS BIDEN AND GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT BILLIONAIRES PLAN FOR AMNESTY AND MORE FOREIGNERS IN OUR JOBS

 

Anonymous Donor Gives 123 Tons of Food to Needy Families in Kentucky

123 tons of food
Kentucky State Police
2:04

Numerous Kentucky families will not have to worry about putting food on their tables for quite a while thanks to an anonymous person’s generous gift.

“Santa Clause is known for delivering toys to children but in Daviess County he just dropped off 246,300 pounds (123 tons) of food for families struggling this holiday season,” the Kentucky State Police wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday:

The anonymous benefactor reached out to Trooper Corey King, asking for help in finding somewhere to donate the non-perishable items.

“This is usually the time of year when our troopers are involved in a statewide food drive called ‘Cram the Cruiser’,” King explained. “Due to the pandemic, we were not able to host the program like we have in years past. So when our ‘Secret Santa’ reached out I was excited to help.”

An organization called God’s Outreach will help distribute the food, according to WLWT.

“Families will receive a care package full of food and backpacks for children. Senior citizen centers will also receive the care packages,” the outlet reported.

“Here in Northwest Kentucky, the request for assistance has definitely increased while the number of donations has decreased,” said the organization’s president, David Mudd.

“This anonymous contribution to our community was a blessing by all means,” he added, and praised Trooper King for his willingness to facilitate the donation.

Facebook users called the amount of food “amazing” and expressed their deepest thanks to everyone involved for making sure local families have what they need.

“You guys are awesome!! May God bless you abundantly and keep you all safe during this holiday season and always!! Thank you so much!” one person wrote.

“God bless this Secret Santa!” another commented.

Trooper King encouraged residents to contact their local food banks because “if you have the opportunity to donate food – it will truly impact Kentucky families.”


Democrats Seek to Permanently Add Foreign Workers to U.S. Labor Market

Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, speaks to reporters outside the Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 14, 2019, after the Senate rejected President Donald Trump's emergency border declaration. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
3:19

A group of House Democrats is seeking to permanently add foreign workers to the United States labor market by opening American citizenship to those who would otherwise be asked to return to their native countries after their visa expires.

Led by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), the House Democrats have introduced legislation that ties increased labor protections for American workers — forced to compete against an annual inflow of foreign workers — to permanently adding H-2B foreign visa workers to the labor market.

The plan would provide tens of thousands of H-2B foreign visa workers, and their family members, a path to American citizenship after they have worked at least 18 months in the U.S. Likewise, H-2B foreign visa workers who have worked at least three years in the U.S. would be able to apply for green cards as well as their family members.

While awaiting green cards, the plan allows H-2B foreign visa workers and their family members to remain in the U.S. and apply for advanced parole so they cannot be deported unless they are eventually considered ineligible for green cards.

Such a plan would come as at least 24.5 million Americans are jobless or underemployed, but all want full-time jobs with good pay and competitive benefits.

The massive foreign worker-to-labor market pipeline is coupled with a series of increased reforms to ensure labor protections for Americans seeking blue-collar jobs and foreign workers applying for H-2B visas.

For instance, the plan would demand that U.S. businesses meet enhanced requirements to certify they are not discriminating against Americans and engage with labor unions to search for available and willing Americans.

The plan also increases the wage standards of the H-2B visa program. Whereas U.S. businesses currently use the program to undercut U.S. wages, the plan would mandate that prevailing wages are promised to H-2B foreign visa workers in their contracts and allocates the visas based on the highest offered wages.

The H-2B visa program has been widely used by businesses to drag down the wages of American workers in landscaping, conservation work, the meatpacking industry, the construction industry, and fishing jobs, a 2019 study from the Center for Immigration Studies finds.

When comparing the wages of H-2B foreign workers to the national wage average for each blue-collar industry, about 21 out of 25 of the industries offered lower wages to foreign workers than Americans.

In the construction industry, wage suppression is significant, with H-2B foreign workers being offered more than 20 percent less than their American counterparts. In the fishing industry, foreign workers were offered more than 30 percent less for their jobs than Americans in the field. In the meatpacking industry, foreign workers got 23 percent less pay than Americans.

Every year, the U.S. admits about 1.2 million legal immigrants on green cards to permanently resettle in the country. In addition, another 1.4 million foreign workers are admitted every year to take American jobs.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

CATO Shows Joe Biden How to Flood the Labor Market for Wall Street
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden meets workers as he tours the Fiat Chrysler plant in Detroit, Michigan on March 10, 2020. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
8:34

Joe Biden’s deputies can bypass Congress and use their bureaucratic powers to open the U.S. economy to millions of foreign graduates, blue-collar workers, and chain-migration families, says a legal guidebook posted by the Cato Institute.

“The new administration should go far beyond simply rescinding [President Donald] Trump’s changes and adopt reforms that make legal immigration easier … this compilation fills a gap in the administration’s regulatory agenda,” said an op-ed in TheHill.com by David Bier, a Cato employee.

The guidebook reflects the political shift of big business from the increasingly populist GOP towards the increasingly progressive Democratic Party. The new alliance promises to spike Wall Street with a wave of government-delivered consumers and workers, albeit with minimum wages set by the Democrats.

Bier helped write the December 18 guidebook, titled “Deregulating Legal Immigration: A Blueprint for Agency Action.”

The nation’s immigration law was loosened in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson, and the annual inflow doubled in 1990 to roughly one million by President George W. Bush. The one million is a huge number in comparison to the four million Americans who turn 18 each year. In fact, wages and salaries have grown very slowly since 1970, even as the stock market has exploded the wealth of Americans with money to invest.

But Cato’s advisers are disappointed by the annual inflow of one million immigrants and the resident population of roughly two million temporary foreign workers. So they are offering Biden’s agency officials numerous options for getting many more millions of taxpayer-aided migrants into U.S. jobs, shopping malls, and apartment rentals.

For example, the one million annual limit means that many would-be immigrants — including most chain-migration family members — are forced to wait years in line to migrate into the United States’ labor market, communities, and schools.

Cato responds by suggesting the federal agencies let them in as not-quite-immigrants:

What about the 3.5 million immigrants who are waiting abroad? [immigration lawyer Cyrus] Mehta [says] the administration should “parole” — the legal term for waiving restrictions on entry — the backlog of family and employment applicants waiting in other countries. This would allow them to reunite with family and start working for U.S. companies immediately under a well-known legal authority.

The resulting inflow of migrants would boost consumer sales, raise real estate prices, cut wages, and spike profits — all of which would be good news for investors, but not Americans.

That good for Cato’s donors and board members, who include current and former principals and partners at MQS ManagementCenterview Capital HoldingsE*Trade FinancialJP Weigand & Sons, Inc., and Susquehanna International Group, LLP.

Cato’s 99o form for 2019 lists several individual donations, including three $1 million donations, one $3.6 million donations, one $1.99 million donations, as well as donations of $700,000 and $900,000.

But a wide range of politicians, business leaders, and academics admit any infusion of new labor suppresses salaries for American white-collars and blue-collars. In 2019, median family household income jumped by 7.3 percent from March 2018 to March 2019 in President Donald Trump’s popular l0wer-immigration economy, even as salaries for college graduates fell by two percent from 2016 to 2019.

But amid the current large inflow of foreign college-graduate workers, the median or midpoint income of American college graduates fell by two percent from 2016 to 2019, according to a survey released in September by the Federal Reserve banking system.

Several of the Cato proposals sketch ways employers could import hundreds of thousands of compliant foreign graduates instead of hiring outspoken American professionals.

Greg Siskind, an immigration lawyer for healthcare employers, says that the agencies “should add nurses, physicians, and other health science professionals to the list of occupations eligible for a 24‐​month employment authorization extension under Optional Practical Training (OPT).”

The OPT program is now used by roughly 400,000 foreign graduates of U.S. colleges to get work permits lasting up to three years. There are no caps or barriers for foreigners to get OPT work permits, so Siskind’s plan would cut young American doctors, nurses, and therapists from starter jobs.

In fact, said Bier, the Department of Homeland Security “should issue OPT [work permit] extensions to every international student sponsored for a green card.” Again, there would are no limits to this workaround because companies already nominate many supposedly temporary foreign contract workers so they can stay and work until they get green cards, years or decades later. This green card workforce now consists of at least one million foreign graduates, including roughly 600,000 temporary workers working for many years while waiting for green cards.

Congress did not create the OPT program. It was invented by officials working for President George W. Bush. The entire program rests on a claim that Section 1324a of federal law allows the president’s Attorney General to award work permits to whomever he or she wishes and exempt the employers of those foreigners from Social Security taxes.

Many visa workers bring their wives or husbands to the United States, and they should get work permits too, says Cato. The United States Citizens and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency “has denied jobs to all other spouses and children of temporary workers not specifically authorized by Congress. It makes little sense to have foreigners residing in the United States under programs designed to enhance economic growth but who are banned from working. For that reason, USCIS should authorize all spouses and children of foreign workers to work.”

That practice would be great for companies because they could import two or more workers with one visa.

Migrants should be allowed to import millions of their own relatives if they are relabelled as refugees, says Cato:

The president should classify all beneficiaries of approved family‐​sponsored immigrant visa petitions as those of “special humanitarian concern” and allot refugee numbers equal to the number of qualifying applicants. The State Department should establish a fee to accept refugee applications directly at consulates from beneficiaries of approved family‐​sponsored immigrant visa petitions …

If they are approved, the refugees would be “resettled” by their relative, not through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, without government funds just as they would have been had they received immigrant visas.

Companies should also be allowed to import their own workers — as refugees — if Americans demand excessive wages, according to Cato:

U.S. sponsors—organizations as well as individuals—should be allowed to submit sponsorship applications directly to the State Department. They would be required to present evidence of the refugee’s status, provide a resettlement plan showing where the refugees will live for the first year after arrival, and pay a fee to cover the costs of resettlement for the first year.

Overall, open-ended legal migration is praised by business and progressives partly because migrants’ arrivals help transfer wealth from wage-earners to stockholders.

Migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.

Migration also allows investors and CEOs to skimp on labor-saving technology, sideline U.S. minorities, ignore disabled peopleexploit stoop labor in the fields, short-change labor in the cities, impose tight control and pay cuts on American professionals, corral technological innovation by minimizing the employment of American grads, undermine labor rights, and even get many progressive journalists to cheerlead for Wall Street’s priorities.

Mike Lee’s S.386 Giveaway Bill Exposes India vs. Asia Fights

migrants
AP File Photo/Jason DeCrow
8:07

Indian-origin lobbyists are rallying India’s many 

visa workers to pressure Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) to 

remove his China-related amendment from Sen. 

Mike Lee’s S.386 green card giveaway bill.

“Please act IMMEDIATELY and with utmost URGENCY. We need this email to go out in LARGE numbers & for there to be a LOT of calls,” said a Facebook message from Immigration Voice, a group which has organized a very aggressive series of street protests against GOP and Democratic legislators.

The message also included a veiled threat to restart the harassment of U.S. politicians who do not pressure Scott:

We will view this as a direct intent to permanently maintain an Indian Exclusion Act in the United States, and will act accordingly in our interactions with all of our local representatives. The time has come to end our suffering and pass our bill, not to give in to every cynical attempt to block our bill from passing.

The language inserted by Sen. Scott curbs the award of green cards to Chinese migrants who remain connected with China’s Communist Party.

However, the China bar is a relatively minor feature of the disagreement over the bill.

Lee’s Senate S.386 bill and the similar House’s HR.1044 legislation, pushed by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, )D-CA), would dramatically shift the nation’s employment-based immigration system in favor of Silicon Valley’s Indian workforces. Both bills would also dramatically raise the incentive for another wave of Indian graduates to take jobs from U.S. graduates in the United States. The labor inflow would also cut wages for many other American graduates in many careers.

Already, hundreds of thousands of foreign graduates get jobs each year in the United States via the uncapped Optional Practical Training (OPT) program. The OPT program offers foreigners a long, lower-wage path to the huge prize of green cards and citizenship, so creating a massive Green Card Workforce for employers.

The China bar has become the public focus of closed-door negotiations over the legislation, in part because no GOP or Democratic legislator wants to publicly defend the economic interests of U.S. graduates, many of whom have lost wages or jobs in the last year.

The politicians’ silence — and the media complicity help hide the tech sector’s lobbying campaign for the Lee bill.

President Donald Trump has not commented on the legislation, partly because some of his aides support it. But if the legislation is included in the year-end omnibus spending legislation, the Silicon Valley giveaway will end up being the only immigration law that Congress allowed him to sign, despite steep GOP losses among college graduates during the 2020 election.

The “Employment Based” portion of the nation’s immigration system provides green cards to roughly 140,000 employees (and spouses) of American companies each year. Overall, the legal immigration system brings in one million people each year, just as four million Americans leave school to look for decent jobs, homes, and families.

The closed-door, multi-cornered standoff is centered on Lee’s S.386 and Lofgren’s HR.1044 bills.

Lofgren usually champions the interest of immigration lawyers and Silicon Valley companies. But her ability to push her HR.1044 bill into the year-end legislation is complicated by Rep. Judy Chu, (D-Ca.), who champions the interest of Chinese-Americans. Chu opposes Scott’s China provision in Lee’s bill.

Lee’s bill includes the China provision because of a deal Lee made with Scott to get the bill through the Senate on December 2.

Scott opposed the Lee bill because it would largely bar Florida employers from getting green cards for their immigrant employees, who tend to come from Spanish-speaking countries south of the border or from the Caribbean.

In his deal with Lee, Scott also got Lee to agree to reserve some green cards for migrants who are not part of the one million-strong H-1B program that is widely used by Silicon Valley employers to exclude American graduates from good jobs.

Lee’s bill also includes some modest reforms of the H-1B program that were included under a prior deal with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Those Grassley reforms are inadequate to suppress the wide-scale jobs-for-sale corruption in the visa-worker sector, say reformers.

Grassley’s weak H-1B reforms are also opposed by Lofgren, according to a Hill source.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) supported Grassley’s H-1B reforms as part of his effort to expand immigration.

Major U.S. companies, including Microsoft and Google, lobbied to include the green card giveaway in the year-end legislation. If their campaign fails, advocates will have to start the entire process over again. The delay raises the modest chance that the establishment media will explain the fight.

So far, the media has remained passive throughout 2019 and 2020.

The push to include the Lee and Lofgren giveaways in the year-end legislation has also created a split among the ethnic groups and the employers’ lawyers who help import different groups of foreign workers.

For example, the Immigration Voice group says Scott’s bar on Chinese green cards is a mere symbolism and should be ignored by Chu and other legislators:

Although Immigration Voice did not ask for this provision, it is important to note that this provision is not a “Chinese Exclusion Act.” It is instead a bar of inadmissibility for green cards for people who are unwilling to un-affiliate themselves from the Chinese Communist Party or Military at the moment they are actually seeking to become immigrants to the United States and adopt American values. That is not a ban in any rational sense of the word. By contrast, the current law is, in 100% fact, an “Indian Exclusion Act.” This is because any Indian who applies for an employment-based green card will have to wait over 150 years for a green card, meaning they are 100% likely to die before ever receiving their green card.

Asian groups say the Lee and Lofgren bill will favor India’s mid-skill workers and exclude many high-skill graduates at U.S. universities.

Despite the Indian group’s claim of an “Indian Exclusion Act, at least 14,000 Indian workers and family members get green cards each year. Some get visas in a few years, but many run-of-the-mill Indians must work while waiting more than 10 years, in part, because coastal investors have jammed roughly mid-skill 400,000 Indian employees into the line for green cards. In general, industry executives hire cheap and compliant Indians because they try to exclude innovative American professionals who will likely quit to create rival products.

In October, the Immigration Voice group slammed Scott for supposedly helping China.

The Immigration Voice demand is backed up by another group of India’s lobbies, including roughly six rival groups from India’s ethnically distinct Telangana region.

Immigration lawyer Greg Siskind, however, says Scott’s curbs on Chinese green cards is a real issue:

Siskind specializes in importing medical professionals for the healthcare sector, as the sector tries to replicate Silicon Valley’s pipeline of foreign workers.

The Lee and Lofgren legislation is also opposed by lawyers who help import sports players, Spanish-speaking migrants, and other non-Indian migrants who would be forced to wait behind the vast population of Indian tech workers and their spouses.

The Lee and Lofgren bills are opposed by many other groups, including ethnic groups and high-skill postgraduate students at major U.S. research universities. If the giveaway bill passes, the industries and ethnic groups that lose out will likely unite to pressure the GOP to approve more green cards in 2021.

 

Mike Lee: GOP Doesn’t Want Coronavirus Relief Money to Be ‘Gigantic Bucket of Slush Funds’

1:37

Friday on FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) provided some insight on the ongoing coronavirus relief negotiations.

Lee said Congress expects to negotiate through the weekend and possibly into early next week to reach a deal. He added that Republicans are working to ensure the funds “don’t just become a gigantic bucket of slush funds” for the Joe Biden administration to have access to an endless amount of money.

“We are told that it will spill over in through the weekend,” Lee advised. “We are told that we need to expect to be here through the week, not just into it. We are buckling down to be here all weekend and perhaps into early next week.”

“Looks like you might be doubling the number of checks. I think that Senator Hawley and — believe it or not — Bernie Sanders are pushing to get a bigger stimulus check to people in this. Also, Senator Toomey is making sure that the faucet is shut off should Joe Biden become president, and they want to make sure that it just doesn’t become the fed just giving the … Biden administration an endless array of cash,” co-host Brian Kilmeade pointed out.

“Yes, and Senator Toomey has done fantastic work in this regard to make sure that these 13(3) funds don’t just become a gigantic bucket of slush funds to be used in whatever manner the Biden administration might want to use them for,” Lee replied. “I think he has done an outstanding job with that, and he needs to be congratulated.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent


WSJ: Joe Biden’s Deputies Alarmed by Growing Tide of Migrants… Joe says keep’em comin’! We don’t want to get into a situation whereby we’re forced to pay Americans (Legals) living wages!

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/joe-bidens-open-borders-mexican-hordes.html

WHO BENEFITS FROM JOE BIDEN AND THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS’ AGENDA OF OPEN BORDERS?

Start with the Mexican drug cartels which now operate in all major American cities. Their drug proceeds are laundered by some of the biggest banksters on Wall Street, all cronies of Joe Biden!

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/joe-biden-and-la-raza-mexican-drug.html

BIDEN’S GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT PARTY AGENDA OF WIDER OPEN BORDERS and no Legal need apply!

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/bidens-open-borders-for-hordes-of-cheap.html

As this won't be done all at once, Biden will do his best to try to hide the politically explosive consequences from public view. The new administration will likely fail to mask the fallout of Biden's immigration pledges, but he has the Top Men in the anti-borders brain trust working on the problem.

JOE BIDEN’S BILLIONAIRES FOR OPEN BORDERS OLIGARCHY.... Is old Joe finished performing his ‘populist’ gig?

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/tucker-carlson-biden-oligarchy-and.html

What matters, Joe Biden wants you to know is that this is a democracy, always has been, always will be and by electing Biden and the small secretive group of billionaires who choreograph his every move, this country has become even more democratic, small seat, democratic, of course. And that’s reassuring to hear honestly because some of us were starting to get other impressions, non-democratic ones.

Pretty much the same way retired hedge fund operator, Tom Styer gets to tell you what to think about the weather, or how 78-year-old Mike Bloomberg decides which guns you can buy, or how George Soros can choose your prosecutors or how Tim Cook of Apple runs our trade policy, or how Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook can keep America’s borders open just because he feels like it, but nobody says anything because his friend, fellow billionaire, Jeff Bezos owns Washington, D.C.’s hometown newspaper, and may soon buy CNN. TUCKER CARLSON

Never Trump Bill Kristol Offers to Help Joe Biden Win Amnesty

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Gage Skidmore/Flickr
4:46

Former Republican foreign-policy hawk and Never Trump die-hard Bill Kristol told Politico that he wants to help Democrats win a Capitol Hill battle over immigration.

“Never-Trump Republicans are a small but potentially important part of the overall Biden governing coalition,” Kristol said in December 17 article.

If Biden tries to pass an immigration bill, for instance, they could help by touting provisions popular with Republicans and moderates.

“It could be ads. It could be private meetings. It could be talking to business leaders or to … members of Congress,” he said. “Never-Trumpers can help the Biden administration govern successfully.”

President-elect Joe Biden has announced he wants an amnesty for the population of at least 11 million illegal aliens. Once amnestied, the vast majority of the illegal aliens will vote for big-government Democrats — and against Kristol’s goals of an aggressive foreign policy and high military spending.

Yet Kristol and his backers have a long history of supporting mass migration, supposedly to help boost the United States’ military clout.

In November 2018, Kristol posted a cheap labor plan for his New Center think tank: “Unauthorized immigrants living the U.S. should be brought out of the shadows.”

Kristol’s report also suggested that employers be allowed to freely import workers, just as President George W. Bush sought with his 2004 “Any Willing Worker” plan that would have washed away Americans’ ability to bargain for higher wages:

Immigrants can currently obtain only permanent and temporary visas, with employers often forced to fill long-term positions with temporary workers who are really de facto permanent residents. A new provisional visa would align with current economic needs by creating visas for immigrants of all skill levels who have offers of employment. The provisional visa program would increase these employees’ freedom by not tying them to their employers, and would enable them to eventually transition to lawful permanent residence. Provisional immigrants would be sponsored for threeyear visas, but could change their employer after one year. They could apply for a second three-year visa, and afterward, could adjust to lawful permanent residence.

In February 2017, Kristol, then the editor-at-large of the now-defunct Weekly Standard magazine, deemed Americans to be disposable and declared that population replacement would be best for national power:

Look, to be totally honest, if things are so bad as you say with the white working class, don’t you want to get new Americans in?  [I hope] this thing isn’t being videotaped or ever shown anywhere. Whatever tiny, pathetic future I have is going to totally collapse. You can make a case that America has been great because every — I think John Adams said this — basically if you are in free society, a capitalist society, after two or three generations of hard work everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled — whatever. Then, luckily, you have these waves of people coming in from Italy, Ireland, Russia, and now Mexico.

During the campaign, Biden promised an amnesty, more skilled white-collar workers for the Fortune 500, plus more refugees to fill out low-wage jobs at retail stores and meatpacking plants.

If implemented, these pro-corporate labor policies will prove extremely unpopular among voters, according to numerous polls.

In 2020, President Donald Trump increased his vote total by offering a better deal for the back row, non-elite Americans — including whites, Latinos, and blacks — partly by reducing the inflow of blue-collar migrants. Those policies helped raise household media income by seven percent in 2019.

Overall, open-ended legal migration is praised by business and progressives partly because migrants’ arrivals help transfer wealth from wage-earners to stockholders.

Migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.

Migration also allows investors and CEOs to skimp on labor-saving technology, sideline U.S. minorities, ignore disabled peopleexploit stoop labor in the fields, short-change labor in the cities, impose tight control and pay cuts on American professionals, corral technological innovation by minimizing the employment of American grads, undermine labor rights, and even get many progressive journalists to cheerlead for Wall Street’s priorities.

Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Jump Higher Again

ATLANTA, GA - DECEMBER 15: U.S. President-elect Joe Biden speaks during a drive-in rally for U.S. Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock at Pullman Yard on December 15, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia. Biden's stop in Georgia comes less than a month before the January 5 runoff election for …
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
5:07

New weekly jobless claims jumped to 885,000 in the week that ended December 12, the Department of Labor said Thursday.

The prior week’s initial claims number was revised up to 862,000 from the initial estimate of 853,000.

Economists had forecast a decline in claims to 806,000, according to Econoday.

Jobless claims can be volatile week to week so many economists prefer to look at the four-week average. This rose to 812,500 from 778,225.

Jobless claims—which are a proxy for layoffs—remain at extremely high levels. Prior to the pandemic, the highest level of claims was 695,000 hit in October of 1982. In March of 2009, at the depths of the financial crisis recession, jobless claims peaked at 665,000.

Even when the economy is creating a lot of demand for workers, many businesses will shed employees as they adjust to market conditions. But in a high-pressure labor market, those employees quickly find jobs and many never show up on the employment rolls. What appears to be happening now is that many workers who lose their jobs cannot quickly find replacement work and are forced to apply for benefits.

Claims hit a record 6.87 million for the week of March 27, more than ten times the previous record. Through spring and early summer, each subsequent week had seen claims decline. But in late July, the labor market appeared to stall and claims hovered around one million throughout August, a level so high it was never recorded before the pandemic struck. Claims moved down again in September and hade made slow, if steady, progress until the election.

New restrictions on businesses aimed at stemming the resurgence of coronavirus are likely contributing to layoffs now. Some states and cities have imposed new curfews and discouraged people from leaving home for non-essential reasons. Businesses faced with this suppressed demand will likely be forced to cut their payrolls to reflect lower sales.

The monthly jobs report released on the first Friday of December showed that hiring had slowed in November. Some sectors hardest hit by limits on capacity and social distancing, including restaurants, pared down their payrolls. Retailers expanded their payrolls by hundreds of thousands of workers to prepare for the holiday shopping season. But because they hired fewer workers than Department of Labor economists expected, this showed up as a contraction in the seasonally adjusted figures. Some of the traditional retail jobs also appear to have migrated into shipping and warehousing as shoppers moved online.

Continuing claims, those made after the first filing for benefits, get reported with a week’s lag from initial claims. For the week ended December 5, continuing claims fell 273,000 to 5,508,000. The four-week average of continuing claims was 5,726,250, a decrease of 215,500 from the previous week.

In addition to regular state unemployment benefits, the federal government this spring launched two new programs aimed at delivering benefits to workers who ordinarily would not qualify, including gig workers and the self-employed.  During the week ending November 28, 51 states reported 9,244,556 continued weekly claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits and 51 states reported 4,801,408 continued claims for Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits.

The total number of continued weeks claimed for benefits in all programs for the week ending November 28 was 20,646,779, an increase of 1,603,281 from the previous week. There were 1,782,260 weekly claims filed for benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2019.

The highest unemployment rates in the week ending November 28 were in California (7.0), New Mexico (6.7), Alaska (6.6), Hawaii (6.5), Nevada (6.1), Illinois (5.6), Puerto Rico (5.6), Pennsylvania (5.5), Massachusetts (5.4), and the Virgin Islands (5.4).

The biggest increases in initial claims were in California (+48,341), Illinois (+33,485), Texas (+22,729), Pennsylvania (+16,955), and New York (+16,814).