Widespread reports say at least 39 were killed in the Friday US airstrikes on Iran-linked targets across Western Iraq and Eastern Syria, which used over 125 bombs and precision munitions, according to a Pentagon statement.

There are reportedly civilians among the dead. The Baghdad government on Saturday said that 16 Iraqis, among them civilians, were killed – while on the other side of the border the Syrian Defense Ministry confirmed that both militants and civilians were killed but without providing a figure. The Syrian military said that “many civilian and military martyrs” died. The anti-Assad monitoring group, UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that the Syria strikes killed 23 militia fighters. 

The official readout by US Central Command (CENTCOM) described that “The facilities that were struck included command and control operations centers, intelligence centers, rockets, and missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicle storages, and logistics and munition supply chain facilities of militia groups and their IRGC sponsors who facilitated attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces.”

The strikes lasted for over 30 minutes, having begun at 4pm Eastern Time, and additionally utilized B-1B bombers which flew over 6,000 miles after departing from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas, among other aerial assets. This was supposedly for the element of “surprise” – despite the White House taking nearly a week to respond.

On Saturday it has come to light that the Pentagon let Iraqi government officials know shortly before the strikes began. The Biden administration has come under fire especially from hawkish GOP Congress members over telegraphing the operation to the point that IRGC officers could vacate bases and military assets. According to new reporting in NBC:

Iraq did receive prior warning of American airstrikes, contrary to the claims of Iraqi government officials, a senior administration official told NBC News today.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani earlier described the White House’s assertion that Iraq had been notified of the United States’ intention to conduct airstrikes as “lies,” as the foreign ministry called in the top U.S. diplomat in Iraq to protest what they called the “blatant aggression” against Iraqi sovereignty.

But according to one administration official, the Iraqi government was given short-notice warning that the U.S. would strike. “It wasn’t a huge heads up,” they said, “but it is not accurate to say they weren’t informed.”

An official speaking to NBC further said that list of targets were tied directly Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a retaliatory response to the killing of three American soldiers on the Jordan-Syria border Sunday. Importantly, according to Al Jazeera, “Even though Washington said all its intended targets were supported by the Quds Force command of the IRGC, no Iranian personnel are believed to have been killed.”

President Biden has said, “The United States does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world.” He added: “But let all those who might seek to do us harm know this: If you harm an American, we will respond.” Iran and Iraq are now warning that US action is stoking instability. According to FT:

The Iraqi government said on Saturday that 16 people, including civilians, were killed in the US attacks, warning that they would “put security in Iraq and the region on the brink of the abyss”. 

But as journalist and geopolitical commentator Aaron Maté points out it was Washington which has kept Americans in harm’s way to begin with, by refusing to finally and fully exit Iraq as the government and its people have urged, and by maintaining the oil and gas occupation of eastern Syria. Maté concludes that essentially Biden has sacrificed American troops and Mideast security for US-Israeli hegemony:

What remains undoubtedly clear is that Biden has put US troops in harm’s way and provoked a wider regional escalation due to his devotion not only to Israel’s mass murder campaign in Gaza, but broader regional US hegemony. And because the bipartisan US establishment is in lockstep behind that agenda, the only question at hand is what “level” of aggression to commit.

The US government is well aware that it has alternatives to enforcing the Israeli genocide of Gaza and the American military presence across the region.

According to the Times’ Baker, US officials “have said for months that they did not believe Iran wanted a direct war with the United States.” Instead, these officials acknowledge, “Iran has used its proxy forces to keep up the pressure on the United States and Israel as Israel continues to pound Hamas in Gaza.” By “pound Hamas,” Baker means Gaza’s civilian population, the main victims of the US-supplied armaments that regularly pound Gaza.

In Yemen, Biden understands that his strikes are failing to deter the Ansar Allah movement’s (aka the Houthis’) blockade of Red Sea ships in protest of the Gaza genocide. Days after the US strikes began, Biden was asked if the bombings are working. “Well, when you say, ‘working’ — are they stopping the Houthis? No,” Biden said. “Are they gonna continue? Yes.”

This means that likely this large-scale tit-for-tat will continue and could easily spiral toward direct US-Iran war, which would also draw in Israel, and perhaps Russia would have something to say as well, given its military presence in Syria.

* * *

Below: the Biden administration’s strikes have received mixed – but mostly positive – reaction from the generals. Here are a few initial reactions courtesy of Peter Tchir’s Academy Securities…

“President Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” President Biden and Secretary of Defense Austin certainly did not speak softly in the run-up to today’s U.S. attacks in Iraq and Syria. We must now wait to see how much of its “big stick” the U.S. Central Command uses in the coming days. It took five days for the U.S. to conduct the retaliatory strikes, and the timing may be tied to today’s dignified transfer of our three U.S. service members. The strikes were focused on Iranian-backed Shia militia groups, and the timing certainly gave those groups (and any IRGC support personnel) time to evacuate the target areas. Iran continues supplying the weapons to the proxies that are used in these attacks against U.S. forces. If the administration is concerned with escalating to a hot war with Iran and does not want to attack Iran itself, they should at least put a strangle-hold on Iranian oil sales. President Biden must make this painful enough to Iran to get them to back their proxy forces off.” – General Robert Walsh

“These strikes included a significant number of targets and weapons used by the United States. Interesting that the B-1 was used because flying directly from the U.S. provides an additional layer of surprise. Hopefully this sends a message to Iran and the IRGC that it is not in their best interest to continue supporting attacks against U.S. forces. Hard to tell at this point what IRGC leadership personnel were targeted.” – General David Deptula

“The strikes were well coordinated against a set of targets focused on the IRGC Quds Force, the major trainer and supplier to the other proxies. The targets hit all facets of command and control, supply points, launch locations, and missile/UAV storage locations. We will see an analysis of battle damage and follow-up strikes to ensure that we achieved the desired effects. This included our full complement of capabilities such as aircraft launching from the U.S. directly to targets in the AOR. As expected, this was an increase in scale and scope, and a strike against the Iranian IRGC Quds Force, not just the proxies they support. This is more than just a single targeting effort; I am sure that there will be more in the next few days.” – General Frank Kearney

Authored by John Seiler via The Epoch Times,

On Jan. 1, illegal immigrants in California received free medical care.

That was thanks to Assembly Bill 133, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in July 2021.

Cost: $4 billion more a year, as an estimated 764,000 illegal immigrants are added to the already stuffed rolls of the 14.6 million Californians on Medi-Cal, the state’s version of the Medicare program.

At the signing almost three years ago, Mr. Newsom exclaimed, “We’re investing California’s historic surplus to accomplish transformative changes we’ve long dreamed of—including this historic Medi-Cal expansion to ensure thousands of older undocumented Californians, many of whom have been serving on the front lines of the pandemic, can access critical health care services.”

Oops! That was when the state enjoyed a nearly $100 billion budget surplus. Now it’s suffering a deficit of $38 billion, according to Mr. Newsom’s Jan. 10 budget proposal. Or $58 billion, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Jan. 13 analysis of that proposal.

Next up: Senate Bill 277, by state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles). It would give unemployment benefits to illegal aliens. According to the analysis by the Assembly Appropriations Committee, “This bill establishes, until January 1, 2027, upon appropriation by the Legislature, the Excluded Workers Program (EWP) administered by the Employment Development Department (EDD) to provide income assistance to workers ineligible for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits.”

And here are the new costs:

• $270.7 million to set up the program. The taxpayer dollars would go “primarily to develop a new information technology (IT) system. EDD’s UI program is a federal-state partnership, with the current IT system largely funded through federal grants. However, federal rules would preclude EDD from using existing systems to administer the EWP, thus requiring EDD to establish a new, separate IT system exclusively for the EWP.”

• Annual costs to run the IT system “ranging from $39.3 million to $53.8 million.”

• “Ongoing costs of benefit amounts, ranging from $330 million to $2 billion, paid to EWP claimants.”

Here’s the problem, though. Health care involves an actual, physical patient needing to be patched up or given medications, or preventive medicine. So there’s a limit. But giving unemployment benefits to illegal aliens would make the EDD system even more ripe for fraud than it already is. Many illegal immigrants pay into the system now. But how do we know they’re actually doing the work claimed? What if they’re laid off officially, collect EDD benefits, but then are hired back unofficially for the same jobs? By definition, “illegal” involves at least some measure of illegality.

Employment Development Department paperwork in Irvine, Calif., on April 2, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

EDD Fraud

Then there’s the EDD’s long-existing fraud problems. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, as of Jan. 24, the EDD still owes the federal government $20 billion borrowed to pay for the massive fraud committed on its system during the unemployment crisis in 2020 from COVID-19.

And last October, CalMatters reported on the cost for each California employee: “The current debt has triggered a $21 increase per employee that employers must pay in payroll taxes starting this year. Employers’ rates will keep rising an additional $21 per employee each year until the state pays off the debt to the federal government, for a total of $945 per employee through 2031, according to projections by the Legislative Analyst’s Office based on the average state unemployment insurance tax rate.”

The “employer” payment, by the way, over the long term actually is paid, through reduced wages, by those employees at the company.

In explaining the bill last June, Ms. Durazo’s website shamelessly pulled the “race card”: “SB 227 would address a longstanding racist exclusion that has had a devastating economic impact on immigrant communities, California’s industries, and the wellbeing of our state particularly during times of disaster, such as wildfires and historic winter storms. Millions of undocumented immigrant workers work in jobs that help California prosper; they are unable to access unemployment benefits when they experience job loss.”

Actually, if SB 227 impacts the state budget for $2 billion—or maybe a lot more if the EDD’s fraud risk crops up again—everyone, of all races, creeds, and colors, will be hurt by either cuts to other state programs, or tax increases. Moreover, also included should be benefits that illegal immigrants get already, beginning with the aforementioned Medi-Cal care, plus free education for their children in public schools.

Illegal immigrants who passed through a gap in the U.S. border wall await processing by Border Patrol agents in Jacumba, Calif., on Dec. 7, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Tough to Make SB 227 Law

Last year, numerous rallies were held across the state for SB 227. CBS News Bay Area reported on April 13, “A group of workers from the Bay Area and across California gathered at the State Capitol on Thursday, urging lawmakers to pass a bill to make unemployment benefits available to undocumented immigrants. …

“After almost an hour and a half, the bus reached Sacramento. More than 100 undocumented workers from all over the state were already gathered.”

The bill was not passed last year, but continued to 2024. “Probably the earliest action that could take place on that would be June,” Jennifer Richard, Ms. Durazo’s chief of staff, told me. “But the most important part would be seeing if there was some kind of funding in the budget. And right now that’s not looking so good because of the budget shortfall that we’re facing.”

There’s the rub: The $38 billion or $58 billion budget deficit. Even if SB 227 passes the Legislature, it likely would face a veto by Gov. Newsom. Indeed, in 2022 he vetoed a similar bill, Assembly Bill 2847, due to budget concerns.

As I wrote in The Epoch Times on Jan. 19, “California Gov. Newsom’s 2024 Presidential Hopes Fade,” he’s looking to 2028. He’s term-limited as governor, so he doesn’t have to care about getting reelected here.

But he has to get that budget deficit under control, or it will be a heavy albatross hanging around his neck once he leaves office in January 2027 and takes aim at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

A key question mark for the U.S. and global economy is around when the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in 2024 and by how much.

After a rapid set of rate hikes throughout 2022, the U.S. Federal Reserve now faces the challenge of timing its easing of monetary policy to ensure a soft landing for the economy.

Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte created this visualization (from their 2024 Global Forecast Series) using data from the Federal Reserve to chart past interest rate cut cycles and visualizes forecasts by top banks and institutions on when they expect the first rate cut of 2024 and the number of cuts they expect by end of year.

Looking Back at Past Interest Rate Cuts Cycles

While interest rate cycles are an economic balancing act which must be carefully managed, rate hikes and cuts of the past have typically been steep and swift.

Looking back at past interest rate cuts for historical context, we can see how quickly these easing cycles played out, especially those in the 1970s and 1980s.

Rate cuts typically begin once the Federal Reserve has confirmation that the economy has slowed down and inflationary pressures have subsided. Nearly every interest rate cutting cycle has seen the economy enter a recession right before or after rate cuts have started.

“There is always a delay between when central banks raise interest rates and when the economy feels the effects.”

– Simon Rabinovitch, The Economist

While the recessions occur around the time rates are cut, they’re usually a delayed effect from the tighter financial conditions caused by rate hikes, with cuts bringing looser and more accommodative financial conditions for the economy down the line.

Institutional Forecasts for Interest Rate Cuts in 2024

After some of the most rapid rate hikes in history kicked off this latest interest rate cycle in 2022, market participants and banks are leaning towards similarly rapid set of rate cuts in 2024.

Most institutions, including J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, and Morgan Stanley, are expecting the Fed’s first rate cut to occur at the mid-point of the year in June. There is a group of outliers which includes UBS, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs, that are expecting the first rate cut as early as March.

When it comes to the total amount of interest rate cuts we’ll see in 2024, the majority of institutions are forecasting around 100 to 125 basis points (bps) in rate cuts, which would bring the Federal Funds Rate to around 4-4.25%.

Rate Cuts or Not, is a Recession Inevitable?

While nearly every interest rate cycle of the past has experienced a recession around the time of rate cuts, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is optimistic that this time may be different.

“I have always felt, since the beginning, that there was a possibility, because of the unusual situation, that the economy could cool off in a way that enabled inflation to come down without the kind of large job losses that have often been associated with high inflation and tightening cycles.

So far, that’s what we’re seeing.”

– Jerome Powell, Chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve

With FOMC members themselves projecting more conservative rate cuts in 2024 with a forecasted median year-end rate of 4.6%, time will tell whether more conservative or agressive rate cuts this year will manage to keep the economy out of a recession.

*  *  *

This visual is from Visual Capitalist’s 2024 Global Forecast Series Report:

Get full access to the series, which compiles insights from 700+ expert predictions for what will happen in 2024, by becoming a VC+ member today.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

The Federal Reserve guards its independence with indefatigable ferocity.

It is so intent on keeping it that it will practically do anything for the politicians that might otherwise take it away.

It’s been like this for one hundred years and more.

The irony should be obvious.

If you have to acquiesce to your masters to retain your decision-making autonomy, you do not really have it at all. And the Fed never has had it. It has actually two masters: the largest and most powerful banks and the largest and most powerful forces within government. Most of the time these days, those are the same people.

The Fed is there to serve them while imposing costs on the rest of us.

Everyone associated with the Biden administration has been propagandizing for months and years about the glorious results of Bidenomics. All corporate media echos this gibberish even though most people know it is completely untrue. The data is fake. When it is not fake it is not relevant. When it is relevant, the underlying reality is terrible.

You can see it in the savings rates alone. It is going down, now at 3.7 percent (historical rates have been closer to 10 percent). This is true even though for the first time in more than a generation there is finally a positive return on savings!

Without savings, you don’t get sustainable investment. Without that, prosperity dies a gradual death.

How could personal savings be going down? The answer is unbearably obvious. People do not have discretionary income to save. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck, despite record numbers of multiple jobholders. The most reliable data we have reports real income as down.

What buoyancy there is in American economic life is due to growing debt and government spending which means more debt. It simply cannot last. It’s a ticking time bomb. The substance of a genuinely prosperous society is being eaten out before our very eyes. You know this in your heart.

In the last four years, the Fed has stolen 20 cents on the dollar of your purchasing power. They sent you money in the mail and then took it away with the hidden tax called inflation. Then they raised rates to curb the inflation just when American households had run out of money to save.

Who ended up with the trillions in newly printed dollars? The banks. Great reset businesses like wind turbine companies. Online learning platforms. New billionaires were minted at your expense and you are left holding pockets of change. Now the IRS wants those.

But here’s the thing.

The Fed has said it is prepared to lower rates this year. Not now but later. Perhaps closer to the election so the credit-addicted financial markets can get another injection of narcotic to make it float as high as possible. The idea here is to create the illusion of prosperity in service to the deep state that absolutely prefers that Donald Trump not get a second term.

The idea of rate-cutting, in theory, is to dig the economy out of recession or prevent one. It does not work for the long term but that’s the theory. This is what’s called countercyclical policy. It’s a discredited disaster but the Fed does it anyway.

As a rule, a long history of failure does nothing to dissuade the Fed from repeating the same.

But if the economy is all peachy keen and everything is just hunky dory, why would the Fed need to be talking about cutting rates? What possible purpose could it solve?

You can observe the mainstream financial press warming the public up now for this eventuality. They are answering the obvious question the following way. The Fed is just being cautious and deploying earned slack in their interest rate management in service of the American people.

I’m sure you believe this!

There is absolutely no basis whatsoever for cutting rates now. They have barely been positive in real terms for a few months of the last quarter century. The policy of zero interest gave rise to bloated companies, absurd financialization, DEI, ESG, and an entire overclass of wildly high-paid credentialed elites who do nothing but the devil’s work.

So good riddance. But rates are now barely positive according to all official inflation and rate data. Indeed they need to be vastly higher if they are going to be anything approaching free-market reality.

(Data: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), St. Louis Fed; Chart: Jeffrey A. Tucker)

Right now we have an economy running on fakery. The Fed’s plan to cut more later this year is a political strategy and nothing more. It will do long-term damage. It will further the credit/debt addiction and it will install a regime that is currently working to convert the United States into a prize for the great reset, ruled by the World Health Organization and throwing aside its pro-freedom patrimony for a ghastly and malicious hellscape.

Meanwhile, the path could reignite inflation, just as it did after 1976. But, heck, the Biden junta will be running things and the goal will have been achieved.

I’m not being partisan here. I’m only suggesting that having a giant money-printer down the street from the White House might not be the best path for guaranteeing democratic fairness or sound money. The mix of politics and monetary policy is utterly toxic. And if this year proceeds like it appears to be mapped, we are about to find out just how nefarious this mix is.

And, hey, if this Fed caper doesn’t work, they always have Taylor Swift and her Pfizer-salesman boyfriend.

They have laid very clever plans but what the Fed and the White House cannot control is the massive loss of trust among the public, and they cannot quell the growing public anger about immigration disasters and declining American prosperity and freedom. The illusion works until it suddenly does not work anymore.

Former talk show host Phil McGraw (“Dr. Phil”) made an appearance on the southern border in Texas on Friday and blasted President Biden and Vice President Harris for sparking a “humanitarian crisis unlike anything we’ve seen before.”

“Texas law enforcement has seized over 454 million lethal doses of fentanyl during this mission. Governor Abbott has said that the federal government has broken the pact between the United States federal government and the states,” McGraw said in a video posted on X, adding, “Governor Abbott says President Biden has refused to enforce those laws and has even violated them.”

McGraw continued: “The result is a humanitarian crisis, unlike anything we’ve seen before, smashing records for illegal immigration by wasting taxpayer dollars to tear open Texas border security infrastructure.” 

Plain and simple. This is being done on purpose.!! #JohnKirby #BorderCrisis #BorderInvasion pic.twitter.com/NHBwWdlQe0

— UNCLE LOUIE (@Dknarfstudios) January 27, 2024

He pointed out, “Governor Abbott says President Biden has enticed tens of thousands of illegal immigrants away from 28 legal entry points along the Texas border and into the dangerous, deadly waters of the Rio Grande.”

McGraw spoke about the worsening border invasion of millions of illegals, as well as the legal fight between Texas and the Biden administration. 

McGraw also pointed to border invasion statistics:

“According to the Department of Homeland Security, since President Biden took office more than 6 million illegal immigrants have crossed [the] Texas southern border in just three years.

“That’s more than the population of 33 different states in this country. And what about our Vice President Kamala Harris? Did you know she’s our country’s immigration czar? Guess how many times she’s been to the border? Once.”

NEW: Dr. Phil is at the Southern Border blasting Kamala Harris and speaking out against the Biden Border Crisis calling it a “humanitarian crisis unlike anything we’ve seen before.”

You know it’s bad when Dr. Phil is involved.

The move from Dr. Phil came after he announced that… pic.twitter.com/qBZhqZCGTn

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 2, 2024

For those wondering, Biden already has enough executive authority to halt the border invasion but has failed to do so. 

Perhaps the dark agenda of open southern borders, pushed hard by Democrats and facilitated by a shadowy network of taxpayer-funded NGOs, was outlined by Elon Musk on X: 

Biden’s strategy is very simple:

1. Get as many illegals in the country as possible.

2. Legalize them to create a permanent majority – a one-party state.

That is why they are encouraging so much illegal immigration. Simple, yet effective. pic.twitter.com/B9M5ypUOQB

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2024

“And THIS is why the democrats fought Trump so hard when he was trying to seal the southern border. This has been the plan all along,” X user Nick Sortor said. 

And THIS is why the democrats fought Trump so hard when he was trying to seal the southern border.

This has been the plan all along.

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) February 3, 2024

Meanwhile, this past week in New York City: 

One of these people is in our county illegally, beat up cops, and was released without bail.

The other is a former Marine who protected riders on a subway from a violent psycho, is facing criminal charges, and was released on a $100,000 bail.

Democrats’ soft-on-violent crime… pic.twitter.com/LRePREGtrD

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 1, 2024

And this… 

🚨 155 House Democrats voted today against deporting criminal migrants who commit social security fraud.

They’d rather protect illegal aliens than our seniors.

RT if you think that’s insane!

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) February 1, 2024

The long game by Democrats? 

There’s more going on with respect to the upcoming 2030 census

Who is counted matters for Congressional districts and electoral college votes in 2032.

Adding several million people to states losing population like New York will erase GOP gains.https://t.co/PRWqB2Abq5 pic.twitter.com/ApAog5XIoZ

— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) February 3, 2024

In the coming months, the Biden admin will likely take pretend action on the border to address faltering polling data. 

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The first month of the Washington Legislature’s 2024 session is ending with a slew of Democrat-backed gun control proposals, including a new measure to tax people who have the “privilege” of using ammunition.

House Bill 2238, sponsored by Democratic state Reps. My-Linh Thai and Liz Berry, would create an 11 percent tax on the retail sale of ammunition across the state in addition to all existing federal, state, and local sale and use taxes, with the exception of sales to governments for the purposes of supplying law enforcement agencies.

Instead of recognizing the purchase of ammunition as an integral part of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, the language of the bill classifies it as a “privilege.”

“A use tax is levied on every person in this state for the privilege of using ammunition as a consumer at the rate of 11 percent of the selling price,” the bill reads.

The stated reason behind the proposal is to help reduce “gun violence,” or deaths involving guns—most of which are suicides.

“Gun violence remains a persistent health and safety threat for people across our state,” the bill’s authors wrote, admitting that nearly seven out of every 10 gun deaths in Washington are suicides..

“Data from the Washington office of firearm safety and violence prevention show that, in 2021, 69 percent of all firearm-related deaths were suicides,” they wrote.

Revenue from the proposed tax would go to funding suicide prevention programs, as well as programs aimed to reduce “firearm-related domestic violence.”

Ms. Berry, a gun control advocate who previously worked for former Rep. Gabby Giffords as her legislative director when the Democrat congresswoman was shot in the head in Tucson in 2011, also co-sponsored at least five other measures targeting guns.

Those proposals include House Bill 1902, which would apply requirements similar to those for a licensed concealed handgun carrier to all potential gun buyers in Washington. In addition to live-fire training, it would make fingerprinting a mandatory prerequisite to all Washington residents who wish to obtain a gun permit.

“This measure significantly combats straw purchasing and empowers law enforcement to establish an optimal safety framework in our state,” Ms. Berry said.

Another Democrat-backed measure, House Bill 2118, would add extra requirements for firearms dealers to retain their licenses. The bill would require that a dealer to be at least 21 years old and be subjected to annual background checks in order to sell guns. Additionally, firearms dealers would have to install alarm and surveillance systems at their place of business, review and respond to trace requests within 24 hours, report weapon loss or theft to the authority within 24 hours, and file annual reports to the state attorney general’s office.

House Bill 2054 also seeks to place restrictions on firearms dealers. The bill would prohibit them from selling or transferring more than one firearm to an individual within a 30-day window. Washington currently has no cap on the number of firearms a dealer can sell or transfer at a given time.

House Bill 1903, meanwhile, would put more legal obligations on gun owners. Under the proposed measure, victims of firearm theft must report the missing weapon within 24 hours after they become aware of the loss of the weapon. They would have to to include in their report detailed information about the weapon, including caliber, make, model, serial number, and manufacturer.

Current Washington law only requires that a gun theft to be reported to law enforcement within five days of when the owner of the gun knew it was stolen. Failure to report the lost or stolen firearm could lead to a charge of community endangerment. Under House Bill 1903, however, those who fail to report a missing firearm could be found guilty under a civil infraction, and could face a fine up to $1,000.

Also among the measures are House Bill 2021, which would essentially authorize Washington State Patrol officers to destroy privately owned guns in the custody of government entities. Under current law, the State Patrol is not authorized to destroy forfeited firearms, but they are allowed to sell or trade the ones that are in their possession.

“These bills will save lives,” Ms. Berry wrote on Facebook on Jan. 16, before she attended a public hearing on the five measures before the House Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee at the state Capitol in Olympia.

On the surface, it was an blockbuster jobs report, certainly one which nobody expected. Starting at the top, the BLS reported that in January the US unexpectedly added 353K “jobs” – the most since January 2023 (when the print was 482K compared to 131K) , double the consensus forecast of 185K and more than the highest Wall Street estimate (300K from Natixis). In fact, this was a 4-sigma beat to estimate, unheard of in the past year.

The headline data was stellar across the board, starting with the unemployment rate which once again failed to rise – denying expectations from “Sahm’s Rule” that a recession may have already started – all the way to average hourly earnings, which unexpectedly spiked from 4.1% (pre-revision) to 4.5%, the highest since last September, and a slap in the face to the Fed’s disinflation narrative…

… or it would be if one didn’t think of checking how the average rose: well, it turns out that, since average hourly earnings is a fraction, it did not rise due to a jump in actual wages but – since it is earnings over a period of time – “rose” because the BLS decided to sharply slash the number of estimated hours that everyone was working, from 34.3 to just 34.1, which may not sound like a lot until one realizes that the last time the workweek was this low was when the economy was shut down during covid.  Excluding the covid lockdowns, one would have to go back to 2010 to find a workweek that was this anemic.

And speaking of revisions, we had a lot of those: in January, the BLS conducted its annual “annual re-benchmarking and update of seasonal adjustment factors.” Long story short, what was until December a decline in jobs has now been miraculously transformed into gains, as shown in the chart below.

For those asking, the revisions were unambiguously designed to give the impression that the labor market is slowing much less than it is. Consider this: before the revision, the average monthly job gain in 2021 was largely unchanged (606K pre-revision vs 604K post), and while the average monthly gain in 2022 was revised lower (from 399K to 377K), this was purposefully goalseeked to make 2023 appear stronger, and indeed the average monthly increase in 2023 has been revised from 225K to 255K.

Which would be great, if only it wasn’t almost entirely due to the BLS’s latest choice of seasonal adjustments, which have gone from merely laughable to full clownshow, as the following comparison between the revised BLS Payrolls number and the ADP payrolls show: the trend is clear: the Biden admin numbers are now clearly rising even as the impartial ADP (which directly logs employment numbers at the company level and is actually far more accurate), shows an accelerating slowdown.

And speaking of seasonal adjustments, the January print was all seasonals, because while the seasonally adjusted payrolls was up 353K, the unadjusted was down 2.635 million, a 3 million jobs delta.

In other words, just a 10% error rate in the seasonal adjustment (roughly where it falls) would wipe out the entire gain and make January increase a decline. Then again, this is the case with every January jobs report, because as shown below, the actual change in jobs in the first month of the year is down anywhere between 2.5 million and 3 million!

But it’s more than just the Biden admin hanging its “success” on seasonal adjustments: when one digs deeper inside the jobs report, all sorts of ugly things emerge… such as the latest divergence between the Establishment (payrolls) and much more accurate Household (actual employment) survey. To wit, while in January the BLS claims 353K payrolls were added, the Household survey found that the number of actually employed workers dropped again, this time by 31K (from 161.183K to 161.152K).

This means that while the Payrolls series hits new all time highs every month since December 2020 (when according to the BLS the US had its last month of payrolls losses), the level of Employment has barely budged in the past year. Worse, as shown in the chart below, such a gaping divergence has opened between the two series in the past 4 years, that the number of Employed workers would need to soar by 9 million (!) to catch up to what Payrolls claims is the employment situation.

There’s more: shifting from a quantitative to a qualitative assessment, reveals just how ugly the composition of “new jobs” has been. Consider this: the BLS reports that in January 2024, the US had 133.1 million full-time jobs and 27.9 million part-time jobs. Well, that’s great… until you look back one year and find that in February 2023 the US had 133.2 million full-time jobs, or more than it does one year later! And yes, all the job growth since then has been in part-time jobs, which have increased by 870K since February 2023 (from 27.020 million to 27.890 million).

Here is a summary of the labor composition in the past year: all the jobs have been part-time jobs!

But wait there’s even more, because just as we enter the peak of election season and political talking points will be thrown around left and right, especially in the context of the immigration crisis created intentionally by the Biden administration which is hoping to import millions of new Democratic voters (maybe the US can hold the presidential election in Honduras or Guatemala, after all it is their citizens that will be illegally casting the key votes in November), what we find is that in January, the number of native-born worker tumbled again, sliding by a massive 560K to just 129.807 million. Add to this the December data, and we get a near-record 1.9 million plunge in native-born workers in just the past 2 months!

Said otherwise, not only has all job creation in the past 4 years has been exclusively for foreign-born workers, but there has been zero job-creation for native born workers since July 2018!

This is a huge issue – especially at a time of an illegal alien flood at the border – and is about to become a huge political scandal, because once the inevitable recession finally hits, there will be millions of furious unemployed Americans demanding a more accurate explanation for what happened – i.e., the illegal immigration floodgates that were opened by the Biden admin.

Which is also why the Biden admin will do everything in his power to insure there is no official recession before November… and is why after the election is over, all economic hell will finally break loose. Until then, however, expect the jobs numbers to get more and more ridiculous.

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

In “The Wizard of Oz”, at one point Dorothy tells her dog that she has “a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore”.  She had been dropped in a strange new world that was crazier than anything she had ever imagined.  Needless to say, many of us feel the exact same way.  We’re not in the America that we grew up in anymore.  Instead, we now live in a country that appears to be a cross between a really bad science fiction movie and a freak show.  Sadly, the pace of change has now reached an exponential rate, and things will get even more insane during the years that are ahead of us. 

The following are 8 signs that demonstrate how truly bizarre our society is becoming…

#1 Facial recognition technology is now being implemented on a widespread basis.  For example, the official TSA website is openly admitting that the TSA is starting to use facial scanning technology at airports nationwide…

TSA introduced facial recognition technology into the screening process at select airports. The facial recognition technology represents a significant security enhancement and improves traveler convenience. A traveler may voluntarily agree to use their face to verify their identity during the screening process by presenting their physical identification or passport. The facial recognition technology TSA uses helps ensure the person standing at the checkpoint is the same person pictured on the identification document (ID) credential. Photos are not stored or saved after a positive ID match has been made, except in a limited testing environment for evaluation of the effectiveness of the technology.

The agency is using second-generation Credential Authentication Technology (CAT-2) scanners as travelers enter the screening process. This technology assists Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) in verifying the authenticity of a traveler’s ID credential, as well as their flight status and vetting status. TSOs must direct all passengers to the proper lane, either TSA PreCheck® screening, standard screening, or enhanced screening. The CAT-2 units are currently deployed at nearly 30 airports nationwide, and will expand to the more than 400 federalized airports over the coming years.

#2 The elite want to make national borders meaningless, and that is quickly becoming the case.  So many people from foreign countries have moved into the Twin Cities area in Minnesota that authorities are being forced to put up signs explaining that peeing, pooping and rape are not allowed while riding public transportation…

Peeing and pooping while riding on Metro Transit vehicles falls under the “illegal” category, according to the signs. “Transit property is not a public restroom,” the new rules read. They also explain to riders that sexual assault is illegal. “Sexual contact without consent is forbidden,” the rules state.

#3 Do you remember Michael Cassidy?  He was the guy that beheaded the statue of Satan at the Iowa Capitol, and now he is being charged with a hate crime…

Michael Cassidy has been charged with a hate crime for beheading a statue of Satan at the Iowa Capitol. Cassidy drove up to Iowa after the Satanic display was erected in the state capitol and took it down. He will be arraigned on February 15.

Polk County prosecutors charged Cassidy with felony third-degree criminal mischief, saying that he acted “in violation of individual rights” under Iowa’s hate crime statue, the Des Moines Register reports.

#4 In Montana, one family just had their 14-year-old daughter permanently taken away from them because they wouldn’t allow her to transition to a different gender…

A Montana mom and dad who lost custody of their daughter after they refused to transition her gender have told DailyMail.com the ordeal ‘has torn their family apart.’

Krista Kolstad revealed the family’s nightmare began when they received a call that their 14-year-old daughter Jennifer told friends at school that she wanted to commit suicide in August 2023.

Later that night, Child Protective Services (CPS) went to the Kolstad’s home in Glasgow to inspect the house and interview Jennifer, later determining that she needed to transition to get better.

Republican Governor Greg Gianforte was confronted about this case, and he is actually defending the decision.

#5 Sticking with Montana, it is being reported that a “bioagent superlab” in the state is doing experiments with “Ebola, Lassa fever, Nipah, and even the plague”…

DISTRESSING new images show animals being infected with deadly pathogens at a US lab with ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Photos and footage obtained by watchdog White Coat Waste show scientists at the Rocky Mountain Lab sedating monkeys and pigs – and carrying out experiments with deadly viruses.

White Coat Waste has described the lab as a “bioagent superlab” that infects animals with highly contagious and deadly diseases – such as Ebola, Lassa fever, Nipah, and even the plague.

#6 During a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Ted Cruz asked Mark Zuckerberg why Instagram users are given the option to “see results anyway” when attempting to pull up images of child sexual abuse…

He then held a blown-up screenshot of an Instagram prompt that asks users if they want to ‘get resources’ or ‘see results anyway’ when browsing harmful images.

The warning read ‘these results may contain images of child sexual abuse’, with an explanation underneath.

‘You gave users two choices: “Get resources or see results anyway”,’ Cruz said, speaking directly to the Meta founder.

‘Mr. Zuckerberg, what the hell were you thinking?’, barely pausing long enough for the Meta founder to respond.

#7 We have been warned for a long time that a cashless society is coming, but now we have reached a point where thousands of businesses all over the United States have already gone cashless…

Aaron Bateman pulled out a few $20 bills to pay for a taco lunch in the nation’s capital. To his surprise, his money was no good in the city where money is printed.

Surfside, a popular 24-hour Mexican eatery, doesn’t take cash. No cash means no register for robbers to empty out, no bills for workers to slip into their pockets and no change counting holding up lines.

The global cashless movement has reached Washington, where a growing number of fast-casual and other establishments are saying no to greenbacks in favor of plastic and mobile payments. Sweetgreen, the national salad chain, went cashless in most of its locations last year. Other cashless spots include a frozen yogurt shop downtown, a posh wine bar and a beer store.

#8 Would you allow someone to put a computer chip in your head?  Well, it is really starting to happen.  This week, we learned that the very first “brain chip” has been implanted in a human subject…

Elon Musk announced that his company Neuralink implanted a brain chip in a human in a preliminary clinical study. If research studies continue to look promising, devices like these could one day be a “game changer” for people with limited motor function, experts told ABC News.

Neuralink says its goal is to help people living with debilitating conditions, including paralysis, communicate and control external devices with their thoughts.

The patient who received the implant is “recovering well,” Musk said in a post on X Tuesday.

What do all of these eight things have in common?

Each one of them shows that the agenda of the elite is rapidly advancing.

We are living in a society that they are designing for their twisted purposes and that represents their twisted values.

The good news is that we live at a time when all of their plans and programs will soon come crashing down.

The elite will not succeed in creating the world that they so desperately desire, and evil will not triumph in the end.

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Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

by Maartje Wijffelaars, Senior Economist at Rabobank

As widely expected, the Bank of England kept its Bank rate unchanged yesterday, at 5.25%. Just like the US Fed did on Wednesday and the ECB last week. The main difference was, however, that in the UK the votes were not unanimous: two members voted in favour of a hike, one for a cut, and six to keep the rate unchanged. The MPC reiterated that it remains prepared to adjust monetary policy as warranted by economic data to return inflation to the 2% target sustainably, but dropped the warning that more hikes may be needed to get there. So despite the votes in favour of a hike, the BoE adopted a more dovish tone.

Looking ahead, our UK strategist Stefan Koopman expects the BoE to keep its policy rate on hold until September, after which it will start a gradual cutting cycle. This is later than the market is pricing for. It also means we expect the BoE to start cutting in the same month as the ECB (September), yet later than the Fed (June). Together with current market pricing and the UK economy performing better recently than the Eurozone, this informs our view that there is scope for EUR/GBP to edge lower to the 0.84 level on a 6-month view.

Indeed, January’s PMI surveys suggest that activity in the Eurozone contracted at the start of the year (composite PMI at 47.9), while the UK economy started on a relatively good footing (PMI composite at 52.5). So while we still foresee significant structural economic weakness for the UK, in the short term it could well outperform the currency block. This is largely due to weakness in Germany (composite PMI at 47.1), while French surveys (composite PMI at 44.2) also paint a gloomy picture. Germany was also the weakest performer among large member states last year, with its economy falling 0.3% q/q in 23Q4.

For the Eurozone overall, 2023’s ending was like a party without cake. It managed to avert a forecasted contraction, and hence a recession, yet stagnation is as good as it got, against the backdrop of a significant increase in interest rates since mid-2022.

Going forward, recent survey data suggests that the downturn is bottoming out, but weakness certainly persists. Although we believe that consumer spending growth should start to recover over the course of 2024, there is more uncertainty when it comes to investment activity. In a publication published earlier this week we zoom in on investments, looking at recent developments and the outlook. In short, we expect investment growth to recover moderately over the coming quarters, even though past rate hikes are still working their way through the economy and self-financing capacity of firms has reduced. Drivers are a significant drop in capital market rates over the past months, untapped potential in the Recovery and Resilience Facility, and last but certainly not least, strategic motivations.

Somewhat stronger economic figures than expected – especially in Southern Europe – combined with January’s inflation figures, support our view that the ECB will wait a bit longer to start cutting than the market currently expects.

Inflation continued on its downward path in January, but published figures underscore our view that the last mile is the longest. Headline inflation dropped from 2.9% y/y in December to 2.8% y/y in January, which is higher than consensus of 2.7% and our own estimate of 2.6%. Core inflation dropped from 3.4% y/y in December to 3.3% y/y in January, slightly higher than the consensus of 3.2% y/y but in line with our in-house projection.

While we foresee a further decline over the coming months, we think that the tight labour market and indications that wage growth is likely to stay elevated this year, make further progress towards target rather slow. We forecast inflation of 2.7% in 2024 and 2.7% in 2025.

The main risk to our outlook comes from the trade disruptions in the Red Sea, a theme discussed more than often in this Global Daily. The Red Sea trade disruptions has caused shipping prices for containers from China to Europe to quintuple. Manufacturers are also already signalling that the disruptions are causing delivery delays and that the higher costs are beginning to feed through here and there. For the time being, however, there is still little evidence that trade disruptions in the Red Sea will result in a significant inflationary shock. Freight rates account for less than 1% of the final cost of manufacturing output, demand is weak, and while energy prices have increased over the past weeks, they are still below autumn’s peak – let alone the peaks witnessed in 2022.

Yet, the experience of 2021-22 shows that this is not a sufficient condition for stability! To the contrary, if trade disruptions spread, the inflationary effects may be greater if companies face a shortage of inputs. Moreover, while overall logistics account for a limited share in final output costs, price increases and disruptions to flows of certain goods can have a much larger impact on inflation than they would have on average. Take diesel for example. Due to relatively much weaker availability of fuel tankers than container vessels, problematic disruptions to the inflow of diesel could well come faster than to the import of consumer goods or inputs thereof. This is especially given the already historically low diesel inventories and weak refinery capacity on the continent – contrary to still adequately perceived stocks of inputs and finished goods. Moreover, the fact that diesel is required for logistics, from trucks to tractors, disruptions in the flow of diesel could be especially problematic and cause non-linear effects.

Given the uncertain second and third order effects, it is difficult to predict how large the inflationary effects will be. A new bout of inflation, as we saw in 2021-22, however, would require a shortage of inputs to be accompanied by a sharp rise in energy prices, whilst demand would have to remain relatively strong for companies to increase their prices. For now we expect the crisis in the Red Sea to slow or delay disinflation rather than fuel a strong increase in inflation. But it will also largely come down to how long it will take to solve the crisis. This is by no means straightforward. And clearly, the repercussions would be much worse if disruptions would spread to the Strait of Hormuz. Importantly, it means the task of the ECB hasn’t become any easier.

In other news, yesterday the EU27 finally agreed on a new four-year EUR 50bn support package for Ukraine. This was despite farmers fed up with EU rules tried their best to block the entry of the council building. The new support package had previously been vetoed by Hungary’s Orbán, in an attempt to unlock EUR 30bn funds held up by Brussels. In December, Orbán managed to obtain EUR 10bn previously frozen EU support money, but he wanted all. It had already become clear that Brussels was done with Orbán. Earlier this week the idea of a plan to destroy the Hungarian economy if it didn’t lift its veto was conveniently leaked to the FT – the leak already led to financial market turmoil and a backlash at home. Now it’s unclear what exactly did the trick, but according to Politico, a small group of leaders managed to convince Orbán in a backdoor meeting to agree. This is much welcome for now. But the saga, again, shows that the EU should reform its governance, such that a single country cannot hold the entire Union hostage.

Authored by Robert Kogon via DailySceptic.org,

Barely two weeks after a leading member of a party in Germany’s governing coalition compared supporters of the opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to “flies on a pile of shit“, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has now compared them to “rats”.

The AfD was the only party represented in the German Bundestag to oppose Covid-measures, including mass vaccination, and it is persistently polling around 20%, and as high as 24%, in the latest public opinion surveys. President Steinmeier’s Social Democratic party (SPD) is polling around 15%.

Alluding to the AfD at a meeting with business and trade-union leaders at the presidential palace, Schloss Bellevue, in Berlin on Monday, President Steinmeier said:

When our democracy is attacked… the democratic centre, the great majority of our society, must take a stand and make clear that we are committed to our democracy, we defend this Germany, and we will not allow this country to be ruined by extremist rat-catchers.

The “attack on democracy” refers to an alleged “secret meeting” in Potsdam last November at which the “deportation” or “expulsion” of migrants was supposedly discussed. The meeting – in fact a kind of symposium with invited speakers at a hotel – was attended by three representatives of the AfD, but also by two members of the Christian Democratic party of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Attendees have denied that any such “deportation” plans were discussed, and in a speech to the German Bundestag on Wednesday, AfD party Chair Alice Weidel described related reports in the German media as “an unprecedent campaign of defamation”.

Steinmeier’s word-choice echoes that of a commentary which was published by Germany’s ARD public television in November 2022 on the occasion of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. The commentary warned that by restoring free speech on the platform, as Musk promised, “racist and conspiratorial rats” would be allowed to “crawl out of their holes”, and it concluded that “Twitter can only remain relevant if precisely these rats… are beaten back into their holes”.

The commentary provoked numerous outraged responses in the German-language Twittersphere, including many which pointed to the use of similar “rat” imagery to describe Jews in Nazi propaganda. (For an example, see my contemporaneous report here.)

The controversy was so great that ARD removed the reference to “rats” and explicitly apologised for having used such “dehumanising” language.

Just over a year later, there is no indication that the German President has any plans to apologise for having described roughly one-fifth to one-quarter of the German electorate in similar terms.

*  *  *

Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on X.