Americans want to help people in need, but when government does that, about 500 billion taxpayer dollars get stolen. It’s how the system is designed, says the United Council on Welfare Fraud’s Andrew McClenahan in this new video. “You’re measuring success by the amount of money you put out.” Because of that, government agencies rarely check whether their handouts go to the right people. Minnesota is just the latest example. Government officials didn’t uncover that fraud -- YouTuber Nick Shirley did. I say to McClenahan, “It’s weird that a kid did what government investigators couldn’t do.” “Articles back in 2018 talked about millions of dollars in suitcases being flown out of Minneapolis,” he replies. “But it took a 20-year-old with an iPhone to go in there and expose it on Twitter.” After Shirley publicized the fraud, the White House froze billions in welfare payments. Progressives didn’t like that. “What they are doing is creating confusion, chaos, trying to intimidate people,” complains Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). “There is no reason for them to fully stop funding these programs. The only reason they’re doing that is for PR purposes.” Minnesota’s Gov. Tim Walz was hardly better. “This is on my watch. I am accountable,” he said. But he did nothing about the fraud. During the pandemic, President Joe Biden said: “My message to those cheats out there is this: You can’t hide. We’re going to find you!” But they didn’t. Of the hundreds of billions stolen in 2024, the Department of Justice barely recovered $2.9 billion. Is there nothing we can do to stop fraud? “Sure, you can!” says McClenahan. “It takes less than a second to verify things with data connections these days.”      But government rarely uses modern data connections. Elon Musk, when he ran DOGE, complained that government records weren’t computerized. Many agencies doled money out without even saying what the money was for, or where it went! He calls government recordkeeping a “time warp.” “They’re relying on rules and regulations written for pen and paper,” says McClenahan. Poor recordkeeping makes fraud easier. Some people openly brag about it. During President Donald Trump’s first term, a rapper wrote a song about stealing benefits that Trump rushed out for pandemic relief: “I gotta shout-out to Donald Trump. I just might swipe me a lump sum.” That was in California. There’s lot of fraud there. The state gave phone subsidies to 94,000 accounts of dead people. “Everybody knows that the United States is the easiest game in town,” says McClenahan. Some stolen funds go to alleged terrorists. “We literally rang the dinner bell for the whole world, and they answered,” he says. “These are American programs,” I point out. “People in other countries aren’t eligible.” “But if you’re not checking to see where somebody lives, where they’re applying from, who they are, you’re not going to find them!” says McClenahan. In addition, many state politicians don’t try to find fraud. Handouts mostly come from the federal government, so local politicians reason: “People in other states pay, but my taxpayers collect! Why make a big effort to stop that?” Trump recently gave investigators more access to state data, so fraud could be better tracked. But some states don’t want to reveal that data. “They’re actively suing the government!” complains McClenahan. Whenever government gives handouts, it creates bad incentives. Before our government started welfare payments, Americans were steadily lifting themselves out of poverty. When welfare checks began, progress continued for several years but then stopped. Handouts have taught some people to stay dependent! What should be done? McClenahan says to verify eligibility first. That way you prevent fraud before money goes out. And no one should get benefits without trying to work. “You’ve got to be looking for a job, volunteering or at least getting job training. The best welfare program is a job.” Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of “Government Gone Wild: Exposing the Truth Behind the Headlines.”

While ABC World News Tonight noted “a strong new jobs report tonight, the U.S. adding 130,000 new jobs in February, more than double the number expected,” and NBC Nightly News announced "We have good news on the economy" (the CBS Evening News made no mention, while CNN didn’t know what to think), PBS stood out as the Debbie Downer of the lot Wednesday evening. Under the online heading: “Revised economic numbers inject uncertainty into jobs market,” the News Hour reached back into last year to make a negative point against the Trump economy. One would never suspect the existence of those sparkling new job figures from PBS's glum assessment, as the co-anchors greeted the good news with sour grapes. Co-anchor Amna Nawaz: The U.S. economy opened 2026 on better footing, with the latest jobs report showing employers added 130,000 jobs in January. And the unemployment rate edged down to 4.3 percent from 4.4 percent in December, a stronger-than-expected result for last month. Co-anchor Geoff Bennett: But the data also had newly revised figures that paint an even weaker picture of last year's performance. The U.S. economy added just 181,000 net jobs last year, about 400,000 fewer than initially reported, and far from the 1.4 million jobs added in 2024. This all comes as some corporations like Amazon and UPS are announcing tens of thousands of layoffs. To break down all these numbers. And what it all means for the U.S. economy, we're joined now by Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University. He's a former chief economist for the Department of Labor…..So we should say 130,000 jobs added is not a strong number. Not long ago, that number would have been reported as underwhelming. Why have the goalposts shifted? His guest slightly, politely dissented. Harry Holzer, Professor of Public Policy, Georgetown University: Well, because job growth all of last year was so weak. So compared to a lot of the weakness we saw in 2025, 130,000 is a pretty good number. So relative to that. But another misleading thing about that, and this has been true for a while, almost all of the job creation is limited to a few key sectors, like health care, social assistance, and, this month, construction and professional services. There were other sectors that actually had job loss. Bennett: And what are those? What sectors remain under pressure? Holzer: Last month, we saw declines in information technology, in financial services, and continuing declines in the federal government, federal government because of DOGE activities and other cutbacks. Federal government shed about 300,000 workers last year…. He says that like it’s a bad thing! Bennett: And the revisions to last year's numbers are also striking. Just 181,000 jobs were added in 2025. That's about 14 percent of the gains that we saw in 2024. What does that say about the underlying strength of the economy? Bennett got the response he surely wanted, with Holzer blaming Trump policies for any weakening. Holzer: ….There was so much uncertainty. The policy environment was so chaotic, tariffs and immigration cuts and things like that. I think employers face less consumer demand in the market, and they just had so much uncertainty about what was going to happen month to month that they cut way back…. Bennett vigorously talked the economy down. Bennett: You could argue we're not in a recession, but for a lot of workers and Americans generally, it might feel like one. Claudia Sahm, the former Fed economist, she noted that the 181,000 jobs you mentioned earlier in an economy of 158 million is basically nothing. And then you have the Fed Governor Chris Waller -- he's a Trump appointee -- he mentioned in his dissent that the recent payroll gains do not remotely look like a healthy labor market. Is this a cyclical cooling or is something more structural happening beneath the surface here? A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS News Hour 2/11/26 7:09:57 p.m. (ET) Amna Nawaz: The U.S. economy opened 2026 on better footing, with the latest jobs report showing employers added 130,000 jobs in January. And the unemployment rate edged down to 4.3 percent from 4.4 percent in December, a stronger-than-expected result for last month. Geoff Bennett: But the data also had newly revised figures that paint an even weaker picture of last year's performance. The U.S. economy added just 181,000 net jobs last year, about 400,000 fewer than initially reported, and far from the 1.4 million jobs added in 2024. This all comes as some corporations like Amazon and UPS are announcing tens of thousands of layoffs. To break down all these numbers. And what it all means for the U.S. economy, we're joined now by Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University. He's a former chief economist for the Department of Labor. Thanks for being here. We appreciate it. Harry Holzer, Professor of Public Policy, Georgetown University: Thank you. Nice to be here. Geoff Bennett: So we should say 130,000 jobs added is not a strong number. Not long ago, that number would have been reported as underwhelming. Why have the goalposts shifted? Harry Holzer: Well, because job growth all of last year was so weak. So compared to a lot of the weakness we saw in 2025, 130,000 is a pretty good number. So relative to that. But another misleading thing about that, and this has been true for a while, almost all of the job creation is limited to a few key sectors, like health care, social assistance, and, this month, construction and professional services. There were other sectors that actually had job loss. Geoff Bennett: And what are those? What sectors remain under pressure? Harry Holzer: Last month, we saw declines in information technology, in financial services, and continuing declines in the federal government, federal government because of DOGE activities and other cutbacks. Federal government shed about 300,000 workers last year. They dropped another 33,000 to 34,000 last month. Geoff Bennett: And the revisions to last year's numbers are also striking. Just 181,000 jobs were added in 2025. That's about 14 percent of the gains that we saw in 2024. What does that say about the underlying strength of the economy? Harry Holzer: Well, the economy weakened in 2025. There was so much uncertainty. The policy environment was so chaotic, tariffs and immigration cuts and things like that. I think employers face less consumer demand in the market, and they just had so much uncertainty about what was going to happen month to month that they cut way back. Of course, the other factor was less immigrant -- fewer immigrants coming into the market, and therefore fewer workers available for being hired. Geoff Bennett: And there's been a surge in corporate layoffs, as we mentioned. The global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas released a report that said layoffs were 118 percent higher compared with January of 2025. What kind of warning sign does that send? Or is this a normalization after pandemic era overexpansion? Harry Holzer: I think, for the tech sector, for companies like Amazon, some of it is normalization and that's been going on for a few years already. But some of it is they have invested very heavily in A.I. with the idea that they're going to -- that's going to save them on labor costs and they want to start seeing the returns on that investment. So they're announcing some cutbacks. More broadly, we're not seeing an enormous number of layoffs, but they are a bit higher, certainly relative to a year ago and even relative to last month. You see some uptick in layoffs. Most of the decline has been new hiring, rather than layoffs, but it's something to keep an eye on. Geoff Bennett: Yes. You could argue we're not in a recession, but for a lot of workers and Americans generally, it might feel like one. Claudia Sahm, the former Fed economist, she noted that the 181,000 jobs you mentioned earlier in an economy of 158 million is basically nothing. And then you have the Fed Governor Chris Waller -- he's a Trump appointee -- he mentioned in his dissent that the recent payroll gains do not remotely look like a healthy labor market. Is this a cyclical cooling or is something more structural happening beneath the surface here? Harry Holzer: We're not sure yet. And that's why from one month to the next, we keep watching the numbers closely. I think both of those comments are basically accurate, just very, very little new hiring going on, for the reasons that I have already said, because businesses face so much uncertainty. There was a drop-off in consumer demand. Normally, when new hiring drops that much, you see the unemployment rate go up by more than this small uptick to 4.3 percent. There again, the drop-off in immigration means the labor force is shrinking as well. Fewer new workers are entering the labor market to find jobs. So the good news there is that unemployment doesn't go up that much. The bad news is that it causes other problems for the labor market, less GDP growth, perhaps more inflation, things like that. Over the long term, our pool of scientific talent will drop if immigrants are scared to come here. So there's a pretty big downside for that as well. Geoff Bennett: Harry Holzer, thanks so much for sharing your insights. Harry Holzer: Thank you.

The New York Times just can’t seem to get a grip on the fact that its incessant fearmongering that economic catastrophe was nigh due to the Trump tariffs over the past year never materialized. Times reporters Ana Swanson and Sydney Ember once again tried to yank victory from the jaws of defeat in their February 12 anti-Trump screed, “Americans Are Paying the Bill for Tariffs, Despite Trump’s Claims.” They whipped out a new “study” by the New York Federal Reserve to take another jab at President Donald Trump, which isn’t surprising given the Fed’s current bad blood with the White House: “[H]as frequently claimed that foreign countries were paying for his tariffs, not Americans. But as economists predicted, that is largely turning out not to be the case.” Economists The Times plucked out of the ether in months past were also predicting a big “recession” at this point in the Trump administration, and yet U.S. economic growth is still projected to be hovering around 4 percent for Q4 2025 as of February 12. But who’s keeping track, right? Both Swanson and Ember parroted the Fed’s estimation that “90 percent of the economic burden of the president’s tariffs fell on U.S. companies and consumers.” But there’s a whole lot of nuance Swanson and Ember conveniently chose to leave out. First, as the Economic Policy Innovation Center summarized, the latest Congressional Budget Office “baseline projects that revenue will be at or above 17.5% of GDP from FY 2026 onward, which is higher than the 50-year (1975-2025) revenue average of 17.3% of GDP. This is due to CBO projecting a significant increase in customs duties from tariffs levied by President Trump in 2025.”  Economist and White House counselor Peter Navarro noted in a February 10 Letter to the Editor in The Wall Street Journal that “Paying a tariff and bearing its economic burden aren’t the same thing.” Specifically, as Navarro contextualized, “While the importer of record, such as a U.S. company, writes the check to Customs, which party carries the tariff’s true economic burden—its ‘incidence’—is determined through the adjustment process: via upfront price cuts by foreign exporters, margin compression, volume changes, sourcing shifts and currency movements.” As can be reasonably deduced, such an “adjustment process” by foreign exporters takes time to be reflected in the data, and yet The Times apparently determined it good practice to just focus on an eight month period within the Trump administration  This isn’t conjecture. Both Swanson and Ember buried this exact point in the second-to-last paragraph of their so-called news item: The researchers at the New York Fed found that foreign suppliers started to bear a greater proportion of the tariff costs by the end of the year, likely as U.S. companies began renegotiating their contracts. Still, in November, 86 percent of the tariff cost was still passing through to the United States. Navarro concluded that “[e]ven when prices don’t visibly fall, exporters still lower their effective prices through rebates, discounts, extended payment terms or by absorbing costs internally to remain competitive.” Swanson and Ember didn’t mention any of this.  Also not helping Swanson and Ember's case is the fact that the Bureau of Labor Statistics just released a report February 13 showing inflation easing to 2.4 percent, defying expectations and illustrating the muted effects of tariffs on prices once again. Fox Business Making Money host Charles Payne underscored that the data exposes how the media, like The Times, have been treating readers to a "nonstop stream of articles and research reports" this week "on the impact of tariffs. The plan was to permeate the air with negativity and set up a 'moment of [t]ruth' with a hot CPI report this morning. The scheme backfired again. CPI was better than expected and much better than the narrative laid out by the fearmongers." No kidding.  This week saw a nonstop stream of articles and research reports on the impact of tariffs. The plan was to permeate the air with negativity and set up a "moment of gruth" with a hot CPI report this morning. The scheme backfired again. CPI was better than expected and much… — Charles V Payne (@cvpayne) February 13, 2026 Economist Daniel Lacalle also skewered the argument that the U.S. is bearing over 90 percent of the tariff costs, based on another study by the Germany-based Kiel Institute making the typical media rounds: The key result behind the headline circulating in the media—that exporters absorb 4% and the U.S. absorbs 96% of tariffs—is based on a coefficient of approximately −0.039 with a standard error of 0.024, which is only significant at the 10% level, showing a very noisy estimate despite having 25.6 million observations, Carney explains. With that level of imprecision, the implicit confidence interval itself allows for exporter absorption between 0% and 9%, so presenting “4%” as a precise figure creates an illusion of accuracy that the data do not support. Specifically, if both import and export prices rise but import prices barely budged in the 12 months ending November 2025 (which Bureau of Labor Statistics data insinuate), Lacalle concluded that “the effect of the tariffs is being absorbed throughout the supply chain, particularly in locations with the greatest excess capacity.” This is supported by another concession Swanson and Ember chose to bury in the sixteenth paragraph: Still, the impact of tariffs has been smaller than many economists anticipated, in part because many companies feared that raising prices would drive away customers. Tariffs have lifted prices on some imported goods, but for the most part, prices have not ballooned. Oh, you don’t say! In fact — not that you would know it from Swanson and Ember’s piece — tariff revenues have spiked 304 percent, putting the year-to-date tally at $124 billion, according to CNBC. “The tariffs have helped put a dent in the pace of the budget deficit. The shortfall in January totaled roughly $95 billion, down about 26% from the year-ago period,” CNBC concluded. Is this to suggest that tariffs are painless writ large? Nope. But refusing to take ownership for failed Armageddon prophecies by doubling down on them is just another textbook example of the kind of hubris the American people have come to expect from the elitist media. 

CNN’s NewsNight, which shall heretofore be known as “The Abby Phillip Gaslishting and Interruption Power Hour”, may well have sunk to a new low, and that’s saying a lot. The show’s eponymous and Trump-deranged host, in an effort to diminish the work of the various agencies of the Department of Homeland Security, has now loosed missing children denialism unto the world. Watch the exchange between The New York Post’s very own Lydia Moynihan, where Phillip cuts Moynihan off and asserts that the many stories of missing children is an “idea” that “has never been true:” Guys, I found a new Abby Phillip gaslight: kids released into the interior to the custody of adults of indeterminate relation is not the same as "lost kids" and what is Tom Homan even talking about @LydiaMoynihan: And one thing that Tom Homan highlighted today is that in… pic.twitter.com/gHsPV9kImx — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 13, 2026 LYDIA MOYNIHAN: And one thing that Tom Homan highlighted today is that in Minnesota, they have found 3003- 364 children that the Biden administration lost, and instead 93% of the media coverage has been negative on ICE, according to the Media Research Center. ABBY PHILLIP: I know Tom Homan has been big on this lost children thing, but the idea that these children were lost or missing has never been true. There are- some of them were released into the custody of relatives or other caretakers, which is part of the process over many years. MOYNIHAN: They often were released to adults who weren't verified. PHILLIP: Listen. I'm not- all I'm saying is that his characterization of them as being lost has never been accurate. And it wasn't accurate when he started saying it a year ago, it's still not accurate today. There are a lot of different reasons why those children were released into the custody of adults in the interior of the United States. That is not the same thing as those children being lost. Phillip talks a big game about her role consisting of pushing conservatives out of their siloes, without an iota of self-reflection that perhaps she is the one who is siloed off from basic facts and truth. Such is the case with the missing unaccompanied minors, as many as 320,000 per some estimates- one of the great tragedies to emerge from the Biden border disaster. In many cases, these children were handed off to total strangers with little to no vetting from the Biden HHS. In some instances, these kids were trafficked into various forms of indentured servitude- including working in the meatpacking industry. There is ample record detailing what has happened to these children. This is not a figment of Tom Homan’s imagination, or anyone else’s, no matter how much Abby Phillip would like it to be.  

Not content to accuse the Trump administration of trying to destroy the country, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel escalated the alleged stakes on Thursday and accused Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin of working “to destroy the planet.” The context for Kimmel’s lamentation was the EPA’s decision to rescind the endangerment finding where it gave itself the power to regulate things such as carbon dioxide. Predictably, Kimmel wasn’t happy, “Last night, I mentioned that Trump was honored with the Undisputed Champion of Coal Award. And today, he became the greenhouse gashole of the year. Today's atrocity was repealing and rejecting a finding from 2009 by the EPA that says carbon dioxide is bad for our planet. And by doing this, it means that our government can no longer take action to fight climate change. Anyone can now pump anything out of their cars or whatever into the air for the benefit of those who sell fossil fuels. It is a great MAGA victory and also a source of intense pride for the man who made it happen, Lee Zeldin, Trump's head of the EPA.”   Jimmy Kimmel calls Trump "the greenhouse gashole of the year" for repealing the EPA's endangerment finding while also accusing Administrator Lee Zeldin of trying "to destroy the planet." pic.twitter.com/seoyvu8ocT — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) February 13, 2026   In a clip, Zeldin declared, “Today, the single largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States. Over $1.3 trillion. The elimination of the endangerment finding is signed, sealed, and delivered.” Trump then followed, “Thank you, Lee. That was long. But good. It was good. Maybe I should say great. It was great.” Kimmel then returned to retort, “Poor Lee. You know, you work so hard to try to destroy the planet for a guy, and that's the thanks you get.” The truth is that the decline in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions predates 2010, when the endangerment finding took effect, but it did drive up costs for consumers. While Kimmel wants to portray the move as a handout to fossil fuel companies, in the video of Trump and Zeldin there were a couple of posters touting the benefits of the move. One of them estimated that Americans will now save an average of $2,400 per vehicle. Here is a transcript for the February 12 show: ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live! 2/12/2026 11:45 PM ET JIMMY KIMMEL: Last night, I mentioned that Trump was honored with the Undisputed Champion of Coal Award. And today, he became the greenhouse gashole of the year. Today's atrocity was repealing and rejecting a finding from 2009 by the EPA that says carbon dioxide is bad for our planet. And by doing this, it means that our government can no longer take action to fight climate change. Anyone can now pump anything out of their cars or whatever into the air for the benefit of those who sell fossil fuels. It is a great MAGA victory and also a source of intense pride for the man who made it happen, Lee Zeldin, Trump's head of the EPA. LEE ZELDIN: Today, the single largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States. Over $1.3 trillion. The elimination of the endangerment finding is signed, sealed, and delivered. DONALD TRUMP: Thank you, Lee. That was long. But good. It was good. Maybe I should say great. It was great. KIMMEL: Poor Lee. You know, you work so hard to try to destroy the planet for a guy, and that's the thanks you get.