A church on Nashville’s west side has sat for years with no purpose. CreatiVets, an organization for wounded veterans, saw the church’s potential, but it came with a hefty Nashville real estate price tag of $3.35 million. Thankfully, Gary Sinise saw the potential too. The actor best known for his role as Lt. Dan in Forrest Gump, donated $1 million to CreatiVets this spring to help buy the church for veterans to have a place to go to immerse themselves in songwriting, music, and other artistic avenues. “Quite often our veterans don’t want any help. But through art and theatre as well, acting out what they are going through can be very, very beneficial,” Sinise told the Associated Press. The Gary Sinise Foundation has given to CreatiVets the last two years but nothing compared to the million-dollar gift, according to CreatiVets Co-Founder and Executive Director Richard Casper. Casper, who started CreatiVets in 2013, called Sinise’s donation a catalyst for the non-profit’s mission. “It will accelerate the opening of our Nashville art and music center, expand access to life-saving songwriting and visual arts programs, and help us drive down the waitlist of veterans seeking creative healing,” he said. Two other donors who remained anonymous each gave $1 million toward the purchase of the church, which was finalized in July. Other influential people, including Grammy Award-winning artist Amy Grant, also donated toward the effort. Grant and Sinise toured the property in person in the spring and wanted to make CreatiVets’ vision a reality. Part of the CreatiVets’ new home will be a performance center dedicated to Sinise’s late son, Mac, who died in 2024 after a battle with cancer. Casper said Mac loved music and was very involved with helping veterans through his father’s foundation. The Academy Award-nominated actor started his foundation in 2011 to help military veterans, first responders, and their families. The foundation supports programs designed to entertain, educate, inspire, and build. Programs like CreatiVets. Casper said the funding so far for the new location has been a blessing. To restore the church that’s been left untouched since at least 2017, the non-profit needs at least $1.9 million for basic renovations. After that is completed, they’ll need additional support for office supplies. At CreatiVets’ current location in the 12 South area of Nashville, veterans can only use the space to its full potential after working hours because it shares space with another business. Casper has fought for the empty church as a new space for more than a year. His goal of providing a 24-hour oasis for veterans keeps him moving through any setback he faces. A new space is needed to play music and have access to other machinery, sometimes noisy, round-the-clock. The plan is to have the new CreatiVets music center open by next fall. If you want to donate to CreatiVets, you can visit their website here. The organization is hosting a fundraiser on Wednesday at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. You can buy tickets to “Stars and Scars to Scripts” featuring performances by Vince Gill, Charles Esten, Kalsey Kulyk, and Jay Demarcus here.

The Trump administration has escalated a military campaign in the Caribbean against alleged drug traffickers and could soon target Venezuelan military facilities in the counternarcotics attacks. The first strike took out 11 alleged drug traffickers reportedly bound for the United States, setting off an escalation of aggressive military hits on drug boats in the Caribbean. Since then, more than a dozen such strikes have taken place. Trump administration officials have defended the strikes, saying the drug traffickers are “operating under the control” of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. Some legal experts, however, have questioned Trump’s authority to carry out strikes without congressional approval. Trump has also faced questions from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, leading him to authorize new briefings for Congress, Axios recently reported. Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal adviser, told The Daily Wire that “the strikes are not legal” and lack justification. “The precedent that this administration seems to be invoking are strikes the U.S. has taken over the course of the last 20-plus years in the context of the U.S. war on terror against groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS,” he said. “But those precedents are really irrelevant and a red herring with respect to the strikes we’re seeing in the Caribbean and now the Pacific.” “For the first time, the U.S. government designated criminal entities, drug trafficking organizations as foreign terrorist organizations,” he explained. “But those assertions seem to be undermined by the U.S. Intelligence community.” The situation reached a boiling point earlier this month, with reports that the Trump administration could soon target Venezuelan military facilities believed to have a role in the drug trade. The White House and Trump, however, pushed back on claims of an imminent attack. The Treasury Department sanctioned Maduro in July, accusing him of leading Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles and supporting the Tren de Aragua prison gang and Sinaloa cartel. Trump designated Cartel de los Soles and Tren de Aragua as terrorist organizations after they “conducted kidnappings, extorted businesses, bribed public officials, authorized its members to attack and kill U.S. law enforcement, and assassinated a Venezuelan opposition figure.” In August, Trump doubled the bounty for Maduro’s capture to $50 million — the largest such reward in U.S. history — and offered $25 million apiece for his cartel lieutenants, including Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López. But the designation doesn’t afford Trump the authority to hit the alleged drug runners, Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, told The Daily Wire. “So the distinction between war and crime is what I think is at the heart of this,” Shapiro said. “Twenty-five years ago, for the first time, the president invoked the war powers against Al Qaeda, which is a non-state actor and here we also have apparently a non-state actor drug cartels. And so the issue isn’t the harm caused by the drug cartels … there’s a talking point that drug overdose deaths in a single year surpass totaled American deaths in most major wars. But that doesn’t change crime into war.” “Armed force, I think, is justified when enemy attack political reasons, whether it’s Al Qaeda or Hamas or someone else like that, but usually the military isn’t appropriate against criminals, and criminal gangs could be treated as military targets, if and when they act as arms of a hostile war government,” he said. Shapiro recognized that military force could be “appropriate” if there were evidence proving that the drug trafficking in the Caribbean “is the Venezuelan government’s attempt to destabilize or otherwise attack the United States.” “But if they’re just criminal gangs, looking to make a profit, then I don’t think it’s appropriate to use military force,” he added. Recognizing he holds a “minority” opinion on the issue for believing that Trump has the authority to act alone, Dr. Nicholas Creel, law professor at Georgia College and State University, told The Daily Wire that the president has the authority to act alone when “emergencies” occur. “I think it’s pretty clear that he does have the authority to do this,” said Creel. While Congress has the authority to declare war, the president has the power to respond to attacks without awaiting a vote or any possible delay. He said there’s roughly five out of 30 examples of “instances where we moved first and somebody died” where the president actually received congressional approval. “What a lot of people lose in this is if we do agree that the president has the authority to respond to attacks, who is it that gets to define an attack is? It has to be the president,” Creel said. “It necessarily cannot be Congress.” “That’s why we chose this word to give the president the authority to respond to these attacks so it has to be that decides what this attack is. And if you or I think this is not an attack, fine, but we’re not the president.” He continued: “Pretty much every president since FDR would have to have been said to have acted unconstitutionally in terms of the war powers, which seems a bit odd. If it’s that common a practice, is it really, I mean, just because people are doing it doesn’t mean it’s legal, but at the same time, if everybody is basically doing it? Is it really illegal?” Trump sent the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, along with her full strike group, to the region this week, marking the largest concentration of naval assets in the region in decades. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also deployed F-35B fighters and MQ-9 Reapers to Puerto Rico, which are capable of destroying clandestine drug labs and airstrips in Venezuelan territory. Trump recently confirmed that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert actions inside Venezuela. United States military aircraft have also recently buzzed the Venezuelan coast in recent weeks.

On today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor David Hanson and Jack Fowler call out Sen. Elizabeth Warren for insisting illegal immigrants aren’t getting federal health insurance.   The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.  Victor Davis Hanson: The other thing is, when you have 12 million people coming in illegally [as discovered] in the Yale study of 2019—I want everybody to listen to this because I get these people that write to me and say, “You’re just lying about illegal immigration. There was only about 6 or 7 million and [former President Joe] Biden only left in five. And if you say 12, most of them were legal.” No, we have at most a million legal people come in, and we have somewhere between 10 to 12 [million] illegal entries. We don’t know if the entry is equivalent to a person, but it was probably 8 to 10 million people. And the Yale study of 2019, six years ago, said all of the estimates are wrong, and there’s more likely 21 million people.  Let’s say average another 3 or 4 million, 25 plus, we probably have 35 million, and we know we have 53 million foreign-born. So, it wouldn’t be unusual to have 35 million of them here illegally. So, when [Sen.] Elizabeth Warren gets on TV and starts screaming that you’re lying, there’s no such thing that illegal aliens can get federal health insurance, she should just go to any emergency room in California.  And I’ve done that twice, as I said earlier, in the last two years and the first time there was not one person speaking English [out of] maybe 70. The second time I think there was a person speaking English, but they were from an English-speaking country or where English was a second language.  And when I started talking to the person, they were very surprised that I had a private Medicare Advantage. They don’t see that. Everybody either has no ID or they’re on Medi-Cal. And if you think that’s crazy, 40% of people who reside in California are on Medi-Cal.   Jack Fowler: Yeah.  Hanson: So, Ms. Warren, just because you write in that there will not be illegal aliens getting Obamacare, does not mean that when somebody comes in here, they don’t have an infected tooth or twisted ankle. And when they do have that, and they have a lot, they go to the emergency room and no one says, “No, you can’t come in. You don’t have means.” And then somebody pays for that. We don’t care about the program or the name of the payer, but it’s the federal government.  Fowler: Right.  Hanson: And when you have 10 million people coming in, it’s a huge cost. And that’s what the Republicans are trying to tell you.  Fowler: Layered onto that, Victor, is the explosion of disability, Social Security disability …  Hanson: You know, I get really upset about—  Fowler: … 35-year-old men who are bad-backed.  Hanson: No, it’s not just that. My son got a D because he has attention deficit disorder. So, he’s disabled and he needs to get [disability.] I mean, I think it’s great to have disability for people who have severe mental, you know what I mean, Downs, absolutely. But when you have people who are gaming the system …   Fowler: Yeah, of course.  Hanson: I had an aunt that had severe polio. She was shrunken. They said she had been a beautiful young girl about 9, and she got in the swimming pool, I think, in 1924 or something, polio, and then they took her to the Shriners and they did 19 operations to break all of her bones to straighten them and she ended up incapacitated. And they could not get disability in the ‘60s for her. And finally, my grandfather took her in. She was like 55, 60 years old. And he said, “Watch her write.” Her hands were like claws. I went with him and there was a gruff old guy. “I don’t know about this. I don’t know. Can you walk?” And then she wrote it and he goes, “I can’t understand it.” My grandfather says, “That’s the point. She can’t write a check.”  So, then he gave her [the disability], and she was so happy. I think she got $130 a month. And when she died, she said to me before she died, she goes, “I want to have an inheritance for all five of my nephews, I think I have about $6,000. Can you believe that? $6,000.”  What I’m getting at everybody, there was an ethos. A [John F. Kennedy], “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” And that permeated all these programs.  Fowler: Yeah.  Hanson: When you have people who have never had the American experience, and they don’t know anything about your culture, your language, and you decide to let in millions in one big fell swoop, then you better have a Marshall Plan for civic education. You better say, “We have at every Walmart, at every Home Depot, at every Target, we have a little booth where you sign up for English lessons and tutorials about the American experience,” but we don’t.  Instead, we give them filtered down DEI. You walk one inch into the United States, you have claims against the racist country. And that’s a disaster. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Victor Davis Hanson: No Illegals Getting Government-Funded Health Care, Sen. Warren? ‘Go to Any Emergency Room in California’  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The "popping sensation" he felt is why you shouldn't cover your nose and your mouth while you sneeze.

Overnight, a small group of Democrats proved that their party was in the driver’s seat of the longest U.S. government shutdown by crossing the aisle and voting with Republicans to reopen the government. The multimillionaires of ABC News’s The View were so bitter about federal workers getting paid and SNAP recipients getting food that they were raging and screaming into the cameras. The majority were angry over Democrats giving up their political leverage against Republicans following their electoral victories last week. One of them even shouted: “I want an opposition party!” At the top of the show, moderator Whoopi Goldberg tacitly admitted that it was Democrats who were holding out during the government shutdown, and whined that “eight senate Democrats threw in the towel by siding with the GOP to advance a vote that could lead to the government reopening.”   The View finally admits that it was Democrats who were holding up the vote to keep the government open, and now they're very upset that 8 Dems broke ranks and sided with Republicans to make sure people could put food on the table: WHOOPI: The biggest sticking point in the… pic.twitter.com/wv1TUaPw8r — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) November 10, 2025   Despite those eight Democrats proving that the left was the group digging their heels in and shutting down the government, co-host Sunny Hostin was desperate to keep the false narrative (that Republicans were responsible) going: Let's be clear. The Republicans run the House. The Republicans run the Senate. The Republicans run the White House. The Republicans run the Supreme Court, as far as I'm concerned. This was a choice by Republicans to cut snap benefits! This was a choice Republicans to cut ACA subsidies! This was a choice by the Republicans to gut the federal government and federal employment! Democrats had nothing to do with it. “I want an opposition party!” screamed Hostin, herself a multimillionaire. “I think the Democrats caved! I think the Democrats let down the American people!”   Desperate to cling to a narrative that was just shattered, Sunny Hostin is still insisting that Republicans were the ones who shut down the government and RAGES at Democrats for giving in: "This was a choice by Republicans to cut SNAP benefits! This was a choice by Republicans… pic.twitter.com/q3DtEjLOKd — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) November 10, 2025   Hostin, who didn’t need to worry about putting food on her table, started shouting “shame” at Democrats: You know, you do something like this. Shame on you the first time. You do it twice, three times, four time, shame on me. Shame on the Democrats for even believing that the Republicans will, you know, even vote on it! There's no guarantee in this new deal. That there's going to be a vote. There's no even commitment to have a vote. So, the bottom line is the Democrats went into a after a blue wave, the American people saying we do want to opposition. We – The working people want the Democratic Party to fight for them. And now they just caved and surrendered. “I think Chuck Schumer, his days are over! If he cannot keep his caucus together – If he cannot keep his caucus together, he needs to go, he needs to be replaced,” Hostin declared, proving herself to be the more outraged on the set.   Sara Haines notes that no one on the cast receives SNAP benefits or healthcare subsidies - but gets interrupted by Hostin, who asserts she has family members on SNAP. Sunny is a multimillionaire. Why isn't she helping her family members? pic.twitter.com/CtevYahrRD — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) November 10, 2025   Pretend independent Sara Haines tried to take the counter position that it was better to reopen the government because people where suffering and couldn’t feed their families, and that Democratic opposition wasn’t actually helping anyone. Hostin jumped down her throat (Click “expand”): HAINES: I disagree with you Sunny for this reason. What you rattled off. The Republicans run the executive branch, the legislative, the judicial according to you. They have all the power right now. The problem here is it's a privilege to say, ‘our food's not affected, our health insurance. [Crosstalk] HOSTIN: There are people in my family that receive SNAP benefits! HAINES: I’m not saying – I’m not meaning family. We’re all effected by – as we go out. I’m saying right here to say it's a privilege that they don't have healthcare and now they don't have food. The people are struggling so much, our food banks all week in our towns were at the food bank. We were delivering non-stop and kept getting notifications ‘they're empty again,’ ‘they’re empty again.’ Opposition? People can vote in a blue wave and say but opposition, when you have no power, is not helping us at all! They need food on the table. We need our flights back up in the air. The holidays are coming. People can’t afford Christmas. HOSTIN: The Republican Party should have done it! If Hostin really did have family members on SNAP, why wasn’t she using her millions to help her family out? In 2023, she took the side of subway menace Jordan Neely and claimed she would have given him all her money freely; and tired to say the other passengers had no humanity in them.   Ignorance or insidious misinformation? Hostin clashes with Haines and insists that Republicans could have opened the government without Democratic Party votes: HAINES: Opposition? People can vote in a blue wave and say but opposition, when you have no power, is not helping us at… pic.twitter.com/VSYfhmoxgn — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) November 10, 2025   Hostin and fake Republican Ana Navarro teamed up to use incendiary rhetoric against Trump and Republicans that could incite even more assassination attempts against those on the right, suggesting the right was okay with people dying without healthcare: NAVARRO: If people lose insurance, if people drop out of insurance, not only will it be the death of Obamacare, it will be the death of Americans! Because people will not go get screenings. People will get diagnosed with later stages of cancer and this will cost lives! And we must demand better starting with Donald Trump! [Crosstalk] HOSTIN: And we're not going to get better, because with Donald Trump the cruelty is the point! He does not care! It's a Republican choice!   Screaming at the top of her lungs, Hostin continues to RAGE at Democrats for thinking they were helping federal workers. She shouts that they should have just let the workers duke it out in court: "With Donald Trump, the cruelty is the point! He does not care! It's a Republican… pic.twitter.com/WvsJffOecS — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) November 10, 2025   Hostin would go one to monopolize more of their airtime by insisting that the solution for federal workers who were drawing on their savings was to pursue expensive and drawn out legal battles. Faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin clapped back by noting that SNAP recipients couldn’t put food on their tables: HOSTIN: So, the fact that the Democrats traded in their vote to get federal workers working again is ludicrous! Let the courts do their job! Go through courts and let the courts do their job! FARAH GRIFFIN: No, it’s to get SNAP benefits out! People can't eat. People can't afford the holidays. Goldberg ended the segment by touting how Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), who was one of the Democrats who voted with Republicans, would be on the show the next day and how it gave them the opportunity to attack him.   The View says they're excited to have Senator John Fetterman on the show tomorrow so they can attack him over voting to reopen the government. pic.twitter.com/QCH4OKw4l1 — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) November 10, 2025   The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: ABC’s The View November 10, 2025 11:02:29 a.m. Eastern WHOOPI GOLDBERG: So, let us tell you what's been going on. The biggest sticking point in the longest U.S. government shutdown has been Democrats demanding that Republicans negotiate to extend healthcare subsidies that are about to expire. But last night, eight senate Democrats threw in the towel by siding with the GOP to advance a vote that could lead to the government reopening and they tried to explain themselves to their unhappy colleagues. (…) 11:03:45 a.m. Eastern GOLDBERG: So, I mean, you know. 50-50 chance of negotiating healthcare subsidies. I just remember all of the people who are coming in and hoping that people would vote them in and say, ‘yes, you can be this person, you can be judge or you can be this.’ And they all said, ‘no, we're not going to mess with anything. We're going to leave everything as it was.’ I have no faith they're not going to negotiate and come back to the table. And, you know, I'm glad that folks may be – because again, we have seen, you say this is going to happen and then it doesn't happen. So, surprise me and show me that this is really that people are going to get their money. That people are going to get the money that they are entitled to. It's not a gift. They're entitled to this money during the shutdown, when there's a shutdown. You're entitle today that money. SUNNY HOSTIN: Yeah. There’s a contingency fund for that. GOLDBERG: This idea that they're giving in and giving this as a gift, it's not a gift. You know. I don't understand. So, is he right that Americans wanted Democrats to keep fighting. This would -- and you know, people will get rehired supposedly. Federal workers and reinstate SNAP benefits but a 50-50 chance of extending the subsidies, I don't believe it. (…) 11:06:46 a.m. Eastern HOSTIN: Let's be clear. The Republicans run the House. The Republicans run the Senate. The Republicans run the White House. The Republicans run the Supreme Court, as far as I'm concerned. This was a choice by Republicans to cut snap benefits! This was a choice Republicans to cut ACA subsidies! This was a choice by the Republicans to gut the federal government and federal employment! Democrats had nothing to do with it. I want an opposition party! I think the Democrats caved! I think the Democrats let down the American people! And like you, Whoopi, I have absolutely no faith that the Republican Party will come to the negotiating table in good faith. You know, you do something like this. Shame on you the first time. You do it twice, three times, four time, shame on me. Shame on the Democrats for even believing that the Republicans will, you know, even vote on it! There's no guarantee in this new deal. That there's going to be a vote. There's no even commitment to have a vote. So, the bottom line is the Democrats went into a after a blue wave, the American people saying we do want to opposition. We – The working people want the Democratic Party to fight for them. And now they just caved and surrendered. I think Chuck Schumer, his days are over! If he cannot keep his caucus together – If he cannot keep his caucus together, he needs to go, he needs to be replaced. SARA HAINES: I disagree with you Sunny for this reason. What you rattled off. The Republicans run the executive branch, the legislative, the judicial according to you. They have all the power right now. The problem here is it's a privilege to say, ‘our food's not affected, our health insurance. [Crosstalk] HOSTIN: There are people in my family that receive SNAP benefits! HAINES: I’m not saying – I’m not meaning family. We’re all effected by – as we go out. I’m saying right here to say it's a privilege that they don't have healthcare and now they don't have food. The people are struggling so much, our food banks all week in our towns were at the food bank. We were delivering non-stop and kept getting notifications ‘they're empty again,’ ‘they’re empty again.’ Opposition? People can vote in a blue wave and say but opposition, when you have no power, is not helping us at all! They need food on the table. We need our flights back up in the air. The holidays are coming. People can’t afford Christmas. HOSTIN: The Republican Party should have done it! (…) 11:11:12 a.m. Eastern ANA NAVARRO: …while he [Trump] refuses to fund SNAP benefits and you know what we are doing with this deal?! We are changing one group of suffering American, the federal workers and the SNAP benefits, for another one! Because people have no idea how much they're going to need to pay for health insurance! The premiums have gone out and they are up 100, 200, almost 300 percent in some cases. If people lose insurance, if people drop out of insurance, not only will it be the death of Obamacare, it will be the death of Americans! Because people will not go get screenings. People will get diagnosed with later stages of cancer and this will cost lives! And we must demand better starting with Donald Trump! [Crosstalk] HOSTIN: And we're not going to get better, because with Donald Trump the cruelty is the point! He does not care! It's a Republican choice! The last thing I'll say about the federal workers, there's a 2019 law that requires the federal government to pay federal workers! GOLDBERG: You must! It's the law! HOSTIN: It’s the law! So, the fact that the Democrats traded in their vote to get federal workers working again is ludicrous! Let the courts do their job! Go through courts and let the courts do their job! ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: No, it’s to get SNAP benefits out! People can't eat. People can't afford the holidays. (…)

Young men are inheriting a spiritually starving society, where they’re being sold a future of cheap pleasures, hollow heroes, and never-ending screen time.It’s a lot of noise, and it will rob the youth of all purpose.But Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck has some advice.“If there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy, seek those things. Don’t admire them. Don’t nod at them. Seek them. Hunt them. Chase them. Build your life around those things,” Glenn explains.“A man who will do that, a boy, a young man who will do that, will become different, noticeably different. He will stop letting the culture feed him garbage. He stops applauding the trivial. He stops laughing at the obscene or cheering for the cruel. He will become a curator of real, lasting beauty in an age that has forgotten what beauty even looks like.”“When other men are chasing down or holding up cynicism, this man holds up hope. When everyone around him is chasing dopamine, he chooses discipline. When others will blame their circumstance, he’ll take responsibility for his own action. When the world worships the shallow, he goes and searches for the deep.”“You become what you seek. If you seek trash, you become trash. You seek virtue, you become a man of virtue. You seek excellence, and your life will begin to shine, not loudly, but steadily like the steel glow of a blade being forged.”The world, Glenn says, already has a never-ending supply of “angry,” “addicted,” and “distracted” boys.What it needs now, he explains, are men.“Whole men. Clear-eyed men. Men whose souls are anchored to something higher than the algorithms trying to own them,” he says. “Build a life worthy of admiration. Forget about the applause. Fill your mind with words that make you wiser.”Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Imagine spending four years studying to become an engineer or computer scientist, believing a STEM degree would guarantee success, only to graduate jobless.That isn’t a hypothetical. It’s the reality facing thousands of young Americans. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, graduates in physics, computer engineering, and computer science now face some of the highest unemployment rates of any field.American workers have lost out on jobs given to visa holders and have been forced to work for lower wages, creating a race to the bottom for companies to treat workers as widgets.America’s flawed H-1B visa system is a major reason why. Established under the Immigration Act of 1990, the H-1B program was intended to let companies hire exceptional foreign specialists only when no qualified Americans were available.It no longer serves that purpose. Today the H-1B has become the nation’s largest temporary work visa program, with nearly 600,000 foreign workers and 50,000 participating companies. In 2022, the 30 biggest H-1B employers hired more than 34,000 new visa workers while cutting roughly 85,000 existing jobs.Companies claim they can’t find American STEM talent, yet the numbers tell a different story. In 2023, roughly 134,000 Americans and green card holders earned computer science degrees. That same year, the federal government issued work permits to 110,000 foreign guest workers in computer-related jobs.In some STEM fields, up to half of new American graduates can’t find work. Tens of thousands of qualified workers remain unemployed while their government floods the market with cheaper, compliant labor.How companies game the systemThe law requires H-1B workers to be paid the same as Americans, but reality tells another story. In 2019, 60% of H-1B positions paid below the median wage for comparable U.S. workers. The visa lottery treats low-paying jobs and high-paying jobs the same, incentivizing companies to pursue cheap labor.Even the statutory cap on H-1B visas doesn’t stop abuse. A loophole known as Optional Practical Training lets foreign students work in the United States for up to a year after graduation, or three years if they hold a STEM degree.OPT isn’t authorized by law. It has no cap, no wage floor, and no accountability. Worse, it acts as a corporate subsidy because employers don’t pay payroll taxes on any of the half million foreign workers now in the country under this program.Time for a real fixEven the architects of the H-1B system admit it’s broken. Former Connecticut Rep. Bruce Morrison, a Democrat who helped design the visa in 1990, told “60 Minutes” in 2017 that “the H-1B has been hijacked as the main highway to bring people from abroad and displace Americans.”To build on that effort, I’ve reintroduced the American Tech Workforce Act, which attacks the problem on three fronts.RELATED: Trump admin announces major H-1B visa abuse investigation, but critics want more Photo by Andrew Harnik / Contributor via Getty ImagesFirst, it raises the wage floor. Companies that truly need foreign specialists should pay them the same as top American workers, ending the incentive to undercut domestic wages.Second, it closes the OPT loophole. Foreign students shouldn’t have a back door to replace American graduates. The jobs belong to the people who earned them here.Finally, my bill would shut down staffing scams. Third-party agencies flood the H-1B lottery with low-quality applications to drive down wages. My bill blocks those schemes and creates a true marketplace where visas go to the highest bidders — boosting both fairness and economic value.According to the Institute for Progress, these reforms would strengthen the economy by $1.1 trillion over the next decade.Putting Americans firstThe current system rewards corporate exploitation and punishes American ambition. Workers lose jobs, wages stagnate, and graduates who followed every rule are told to wait in line behind foreign contractors. Discrimination based on national origin is already illegal, yet Washington’s visa policies effectively endorse it.President Trump’s executive order, combined with the American Tech Workforce Act, offers a rare opportunity to restore sanity to the system. We can defend innovation while defending American workers — the people who built this country and still drive its future.The next generation deserves more than broken promises and outsourced dreams. They deserve a fair shot to work, build, and thrive in the nation they call home.

HomePod minis have been marked unavailable by many retailers, which could mean Apple may unveil the HomePod mini 2 variant sometime in the future.