Welcome! Brian Kemp is heading to the border to stand with Texas against Biden.
BORDER: Illegal border crossings fell from 4,000 per day to 200 after the National Guard took control from the feds.
NEW: The three dead Chiefs fans had three times the lethal amount of fentanyl in their system.
DATA: U.S. economy added 353,000 jobs in January - CNBC
LOL: Larry David apologizes for beating up Elmo. - Fox News
BIG MONEY: Two of Trump’s Super PACs spent $55.6 on his legal bills last year. - The Washington Post (paywall)
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Israel
The Israeli Defense Force is claiming it has largely defeated Hamas in Gaza’s populous southern city of Khan Younis. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant claims the IDF has killed 10,000 Hamas fighters and injured at least 10,000 more.
Details: While Israel has not declared full operational control in Khan Yunis, the new data signals that up to 75% of Hamas’s pre-October 7th fight force has been eliminated.
The Problem: Israeli intelligence suggests that Hamas leaders along with the remaining Israeli hostages may have been relocated to Rafah where Israel refuses to send troops because of its proximity to Egypt.
Yemen: The US military initiated new air strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen eliminating a drone ground control station that was preparing to launch attacks against cargo ships in the Red Sea.
What is going on at Politico?
The long-standing political news site known as Politico is doubling down on running unusually favorable stories for the Biden administration. Consider these recent headlines:
US intelligence officials estimate Tehran does not have full control of its proxy groups
Biden says he’ll shut down the border if deal gives him authority
🚨 Breaking: Jim Jordan just subpoenaed Fani Willis
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has subpoenaed District Attorney Fani Willis of Fulton County, Georgia, demanding documents from her office following allegations that Willis fired a whistleblower who tried to stop a top campaign aide from misusing federal funds.
The subpoena, obtained by NBC News, is part of a broader probe by Jordan, R-Ohio, and House Republicans into whether Willis used federal funds in conducting her more-than-two-year investigation into former President Donald Trump, who was indicted in Fulton County last year on charges that he attempted to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results. Trump has pleaded not guilty.
Full story at NBC.
The Two-Parent Privilege Is Real
Check out this review of Melissa S. Kearney’s book on the advantages of marriage at The Liberal Patriot.
In her new book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, economist Melissa S. Kearney takes an unflinching look at how the fragmentation of the ordinary American family is, in fact, both an overlooked dimension and driver of modern inequality. “It is not only that lacking two parents makes it harder for some kids to go to college and lead a comfortable life,” Kearney contends. “In the aggregate, it also undermines social mobility and perpetuates inequality across generations.”
Backed with abundant data, Kearney argues the collapse of marriage as a social institution among lower-income families has compounded the demographic consequences of stagnant wages and the loss of steady employment in many sectors and regions. This phenomenon, she writes, is inextricable from the education gap, the geographic narrowing of economic opportunities, and policy decisions that have reinforced the advantages of the already well-off.
MUST WATCH: Immigrant Crime In New York
Two CNN hosts were left speechless after a law enforcement analyst explained that illegal immigrants steal in New York and live in Florida because if they committed the crimes in Florida, they would go to jail.
"So what the detectives are telling me is, they have crews here that operate in New York, do all their stealing, then go to Florida to spend the money and come back. I’m like, ‘Why don’t they just stay and steal in Florida?’ They said, ‘Because there you go to jail,'" Miller said.
Bank losses revive fears over US commercial property market
Mounting losses from banks in the US, Asia and Europe have rekindled concerns about weakness in the US commercial property market, a sector that has been under pressure from lower occupancy levels and higher interest rates.
Regional US lender New York Community Bancorp on Wednesday revealed it had taken large losses on loans tied to commercial property, while Japan’s Aozora Bank and Deutsche Bank on Thursday warned about the risks from their exposure to US real estate.
The losses mark the latest fallout from the US commercial property market’s dual problems of fewer people working in offices since the pandemic and more expensive borrowing costs. “We expect evidence of distress to ramp up this year as loan extensions end,” said Kiran Raichura, deputy chief property economist at Capital Economics. “Many borrowers will be forced to either inject new capital, return assets to lenders or sell into a soft market.”
Full story at The Financial Times (paywall).
Trending news:
A U.N. Agency Is Accused of Links to Hamas. The Clues Were There All Along. - WSJ (paywall)
Iran manufactured the drone that killed 3 US soldiers in Jordan, US official says - Fox News
Chinese crime and geopolitics in 2024 - Brookings
A Houthi missile was just seconds from hitting a US warship. The Navy used its ‘last line of defense’ - CNN
Inflation has fallen. Why are groceries still so expensive? - MSN
A Brutal Crime Crackdown Is Emboldening Leaders Across Latin America - Bloomberg (paywall)
In U.S., Physical Health Plummets After the Pandemic - Gallup
EU agrees $54 billion in new aid for Ukraine as Hungary falls in line - Reuters
The Taylor Swift ‘Psyop’ - WSJ (paywall)
Market snapshot:
Before leftists label two parents as an element of white privilege, I'll summarize a story from my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. Most of the town's black families lived in an area called the Hill District. That part of town was home to two-parent families, with the men typically employed in the steel mills or ancillary businesses. Their kids went to, and stayed in, school. Statistics show that in the decade immediately following WW2, the divorce rate for Pittsburgh's blacks was LOWER than that for whites. Proportionally, there were more two-parent black households than white. And the Hill was home to many small, successful family businesses and a vibrant, tight-knit culture where even palefaces such as the members of my family, felt welcome.
All this came acropper in the mid-1950s, when Pittsburgh's business and banking elite, led by Richard King Mellon and David Lawrence (the town's mayor and also a PA governor), decided to "redevelop" the lower Hill. Block after block was levelled and cleared bare. Black families were promised equivalent housing in nearby areas. That housing was never built. Black families were scattered piecemeal into several other parts of the city, many into Cabrini Green-style stacked cement block housing.
The old neighborhood became the new home of the Civic Arena and its parking lots, the venue for light opera productions (and eventually the Pittsburgh Penguins' "Igloo"). But the developers and their tophattted patrons did well on the deal, as much of the initial work was funded with taxpayer dollars. I note that Pittsburgh's mayor (then as well as now) and most of the city council members were/are Democrats.
The other reason that the MSN article leaves out explaining higher grocery prices is the massive corporate consolidation that has happened as a result of the government shutdown of business during the pandemic. It killed small business. And so today there is less competition and these larger consolidated corporations can charge more.
Democrats love big business and hate small business because it is easer for big government to collude with fewer big businesses. Small business is like herding cats to control.