EXCLUSIVE: Trump Admin Teams Up With Two States To ‘Make America Skilled Again’
'Make America Skilled Again'
This Labor Day, Ask Why States Like California Restrict Freelance Work
Six Labor Days later, Assembly Bill 5 remains an adversarial law that handcuffs independent professionals' ability to work as they choose.The Trump effect: Americans — not foreigners — continue to gain jobs
Citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data accessed through the Federal Reserve Economic Data system, Snopes indicated that under former President Joe Biden, native-born Americans' share of job gains from January 2024 to June 2024 was 51.7%. While native-born Americans picked up roughly 1.09 million jobs, foreign-born individuals grabbed 1.02 million jobs.
Under President Donald Trump a year later, native-born Americans accounted for 100% of non-seasonally adjusted job gains from January to June.
The U.S. Department of Labor revealed on Friday that this trend continued into last month, stating, "Wages are up, investments are pouring into our nation, and native-born workers have accounted for ALL job gains since January!
'That's a result of our strong immigration policy.'
According to the latest jobs numbers from the BLS, the employment of American-born workers was up roughly 383,000 last month. Meanwhile, foreign-born worker numbers plunged by 467,000.
Bloomberg noted that the imported workforce — a mix of legal and illegal migrants — is down roughly 1.7 million jobs since March.
E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation's Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, noted that "despite [a] disappointing headline, this jobs report was best [July] ever for employment among native-born Americans, up 2 million Y/Y and annual growth 2.2 million faster than among foreign-born workers; native-born American employment is now 1.8 million above pre-pandemic level."
Blaze News has reached out to the White House for comment.
Stephen Miran, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told CNN that "since the president took office, he [has] created about 2.5 million jobs for Americans, whereas we've eliminated about a million jobs for foreign-born workers. That's a result of our strong immigration policy, of our strong border policy keeping America safe."
"Eventually the outflow of foreign workers in these data were bound to show up in the establishment surveys, as they finally did this morning," added Miran.
The jobs report indicated further that in July, 73,000 new jobs were added; the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.2%; the labor force participation rate was 62.2%; and the "federal government continued to lose jobs."
Following the release of the latest jobs report, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) stated, "Unlike during the Biden administration, when taxpayers were forced to pay for millions of new bureaucrats while watching their grocery and gas bills skyrocket, President Trump’s economy is freeing the private sector to create new jobs with more financial security for American families.
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Report: Medicaid Recipients The GOP Made Work Part-Time Watch TV And ‘Relax’ 6 Hours A Day
Reestablishing a culture of work via the reconciliation bill represents a hard-earned victory for common sense.Trump can’t let Reagan’s greatest mistake become his legacy
Charlie Kirk reported this week that President Trump faces growing pressure from GOP donors to cut a bipartisan deal offering amnesty to illegal aliens working in agriculture and hospitality. The donor class has long hated Trump and especially his supporters’ demand for real border security and immigration enforcement.
Big business pushing for cheap labor isn’t surprising. What’s alarming is Trump echoing their rhetoric.
What was effectively Ronald Reagan’s 1986 amnesty doomed California. It transformed a red stronghold into the Democrats’ electoral anchor. Trump can’t afford to make the same mistake.
Donald Trump says a lot of things. Anyone who gets emotionally exasperated at any single statement will start to look like a hysterical journalist. Salena Zito’s sage advice — “Take Trump seriously, not literally” — still applies. He might joke about annexing Canada, but those lines rarely lead to action.
At the same time, Trump takes public opinion seriously. He gauges crowd response and often walks back proposals that don't land. That makes it important to push back on bad ideas without losing perspective.
Trust the plan — but verify the plan regularly.
Kirk understands this. That’s why he’s mobilized opposition now to any amnesty deal, real or imagined. He wouldn’t act unless he sensed real movement inside the swamp. Corporate America has tolerated immigration enforcement as long as it targeted gang members and drug dealers. But when Immigration and Customs Enforcement started raiding farms and hotels, the donor class panicked.
Suddenly, Trump began repeating talking points from Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins about farmers and hotel owners losing their “best workers.” He promised to help them get the labor they need. His administration quietly issued guidance exempting farms and hotels from immigration raids.
The online backlash came fast — and fierce. The administration reversed course and rescinded the exemptions.
But Trump didn’t quite drop the issue. He kept talking about farmers’ need for labor. In the wake of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which delivered major funding for border security, Beltway insiders started floating a pivot: tack back to the center and strike a deal.
That whisper campaign likely prompted Kirk to sound the alarm.
Special carve-outs for illegal labor would betray MAGA’s core promise. Maybe 10 years ago, building a wall and deporting the worst offenders would have been enough. But after eight million illegal aliens surged across the border under Biden’s illegitimate regime, the situation changed. Democrats intentionally flooded the country to shift its demographics and tilt elections. If we don’t reverse that flood, they win.
RELATED: Where the left gets its rage against borders
After Kirk’s warning, Rollins re-emerged to promise that mass deportations would continue. The base cheered. But she added that future enforcement would be more “strategic” — a telling hedge. Trump followed up by insisting he opposed amnesty, then immediately floated a new “worker program” to help farmers. That language did not reassure.
The United States already has legal guest worker programs. Farms that ignore them and hire illegal aliens are breaking the law. They don’t deserve special treatment. They deserve prosecution.
The truth is, letting illegal aliens stay and rewarding them with American jobs is amnesty. Redefining the term won’t change that.
Conservatives have heard this pitch before. At this point, it’s almost comical. Every “immigration reform” ends the same way: Illegal aliens stay, and the floodgates reopen. It starts with the workers, then families follow. Chain migration becomes mass migration.
Trump was elected because he promised to break this cycle. He built his legacy on tough immigration policies — mass deportations, the wall, an America First agenda. To flirt with a Reagan-style amnesty now would be an incredible betrayal.
What was effectively Ronald Reagan’s 1986 amnesty doomed California. It transformed a red stronghold into the Democrats’ electoral anchor. Trump can’t afford to make the same mistake.
He must shut down this talk — shut down Rollins especially — and remember why voters chose him over the establishment in the first place. The donor class got Trump wrong in 2016. If he listens to its members now, they’ll take him — and the country — down with them.
Why tariffs beat treaties in a world that cheats
President Trump’s tariffs are set to snap back to the “reciprocal” rates on Wednesday — unless foreign countries can cut deals. So far, the only major players to reach agreements in principle are the United Kingdom and, ironically, China.
Others aren’t so lucky. The European Union, Japan, and India all risk facing a sharp increase in tariffs. Each claims to support free trade. India has even offered a so-called zero-for-zero deal. Vietnam offered similar terms.
Free trade is a myth. Tariffs are reality. The Trump administration should raise them proudly and without apology.
The Trump administration should be skeptical. These deals sound good in theory, but so does communism. In practice, “true” free trade — like true communism — has never existed. It’s impossible. The world’s legal systems, business norms, and levels of development differ too much.
Economists may still chase unicorns. But the Trump administration should focus on tilting the board in our favor — because someone else always will.
Free trade is a mirage
Start with the basics: Different countries are different. Their economies aren’t equal, their wages aren’t comparable, and their regulations certainly aren’t aligned.
Wages may be the most obvious example. In 2024, the median annual income for Americans was around $44,000. In India, the median annual income was just $2,400. That means American labor costs nearly 20 times more. And since labor accounts for roughly a third of all production costs, the math practically begs U.S. companies to offshore work to India.
RELATED: Trump’s tariffs take a flamethrower to the free trade lie
It’s China in 2001 all over again.
Back then, the average U.S. wage was about $30,000. China’s? Just $1,100. When China joined the World Trade Organization, American manufacturers fled en masse. Since 2001, more than 60,000 factories have disappeared — and with them, 5 million jobs.
The result: decimated towns, stagnant wages, and hollowed-out industrial capacity. And don’t blame robots or automation. This was policy-driven — an elite obsession with free trade that delivered real pain to working Americans.
We’ve run trade deficits every single year since 1974. The inflation-adjusted total? Roughly $25 trillion. And while U.S. workers produce more value than ever, their wages haven’t kept up. They’ve been undercut by cheap foreign labor for decades.
Equal partners? Think again
What if the other country is rich? Can free trade work between economic peers?
Not necessarily. Even when GDP levels match, hidden differences remain. Take regulation. America enforces labor standards, environmental protections, and workplace safety rules. All of those raise production costs — but for good reason. American-made goods reflect those costs in their price tags.
Meanwhile, competitors like China or Mexico cut corners. They dump waste, abuse workers, and sidestep accountability. The result? Cheaper products — on paper. But those costs don’t vanish. They just get pushed onto others: polluted oceans, exploited laborers, sicker consumers.
This is why the sticker price on a foreign good doesn’t reflect its true cost. The price is a lie. Cheapness is often just corner-cutting with a smile.
National strength means self-reliance
Rather than debating whether free trade is possible, we should ask whether it’s good for America.
Should we outsource core industries to foreign nations with no loyalty to us? Should we depend on countries like China for our pharmaceuticals, our electronics, or even our food?
The founders didn’t think so. The Tariff Act of 1789 wasn’t about boosting exports — it was about building an independent industrial base. A sovereign nation doesn’t beg for favors. It builds.
We aren’t just an economy. We are a people — a nation united by heritage, language, faith, and trust. That matters more than quarterly profits.
Free trade is a myth. Tariffs are reality. The Trump administration should raise them proudly — and make no apologies for putting America first.
Going Soft On Illegal Labor Is A Betrayal Of American Workers Like My Family
Competitors blew past my parents like they were standing still, mostly thanks to the stream of cheap, illegal labor my parents refused to tap into.Illegal labor isn’t farming’s future. It’s Big Ag’s crutch.
I’m a strong supporter of President Trump. I respect his drive to secure our borders, restore national sovereignty, and bring real vitality back to the American economy.
But the Department of Homeland Security’s latest move — limiting workplace enforcement and putting a stop to Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on agricultural employers — cuts against the very heart of the America First agenda. It protects the same corporate giants that are bleeding rural communities dry.
If DHS and USDA want to fix agriculture, they need to stop hiding behind the word ‘farmer’ when they’re really talking about corporate middlemen.
Let’s not kid ourselves: This policy isn’t about helping “farmers.” It’s a gift to foreign-owned industrial agriculture giants like JBS and other multinationals that built their business models on cheap labor, government handouts, and total control over every link in the supply chain.
These are the corporations responsible for wiping out independent family farms across the country.
The Biden administration let Big Ag off the hook. Is Trump really about to follow suit?
Hiring legally and thriving
You don’t need to hire illegal workers to run a successful farm or ranch. In fact, some of the best in the business don’t.
Look at White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia. Or Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. Or Meriwether Farms out in Wyoming. These aren’t fantasy models. They’re real, thriving operations built on legal labor, strong local roots, and, when needed, carefully managed visa programs.
They don’t rely on mass illegal labor. They don’t need to.
What they do is create real jobs. They pay honest wages. They bring life back to rural towns.
Will Harris is the biggest employer in Bluffton — not because he cuts corners on labor, but because he heals the land, strengthens his community, and delivers food independence.
This is what Trump’s golden age of American farming should look like: self-reliance, real prosperity, and pride in a job well done.
A free pass for Big Ag
With this new policy, DHS basically gave corporate amnesty to the likes of Tyson, Smithfield, JBS, Cargill — you name it. These are companies that depend on cheap, illegal labor to keep their bloated, centralized model afloat.
We’ve been down this road before. Remember Ronald Reagan’s 1986 amnesty? Legalization now, enforcement later — except “later” never came.
And now, we’re repeating the same mistake.
This policy protects a broken system built on:
- Top-down corporate control
- Massive consolidation
- Debt traps and labor abuse
- De facto open borders
- Slave-wage labor
- Legal loopholes for billion-dollar companies
What we’re left with is what journalist Christopher Leonard called “chickenization” — a corporate takeover of the food system that treats farmers like serfs and workers like machines.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s loyalty to these monopolies has already hollowed out towns, forced families off their land, and turned our food supply into a global pipeline where cartel-linked produce replaces homegrown independence.
This doesn’t serve America. It serves the bottom lines of a few mega-firms that like open borders and look the other way on enforcement.
And whether it admits it or not, this is how the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals get implemented — quietly, through broken farms, outsourced jobs, and illegal hires.
This isn’t just about agriculture. It’s about national security.
A nation that can’t feed itself without breaking its own laws isn’t sovereign. And one that lets multinationals run roughshod over the heartland while outsourcing production to places run by cartels is heading for trouble.
We can do better
If DHS and USDA want to fix agriculture, they need to stop hiding behind the word “farmer” when they’re really talking about corporate middlemen.
Trump has a chance to change course — one that truly puts Americans first. That means backing the producers who follow the law, hiring citizens or legal workers, and building food systems that support independence, not dependence.
Independent farmers and ranchers are ready to help. They’ve already shown what works: strong property rights, legal labor, fair water access, and a commitment to community.
This isn’t some policy wish list. It’s already happening.
And it’s winning.
Let’s not give our food, our land, or our future back to the monopolies that wrecked the past.
Trump’s Amnesty For Illegal Workers Punishes Employers Who Follow The Law
If the cost of maintaining a sovereign nation is paying, in the short term, slightly more for food grown and harvested by American hands, then it's a price worth paying.Rubio, Vance outline the 'work of a generation,' next steps for the American renewal: 'This is a 20-year project'
Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed ways forward for the country under the Trump administration and beyond at the American Compass New World Gala on June 3.
Although the two Republicans, who appear to be contenders in the 2028 presidential election, hit different beats, they were largely singing the same tune about prioritizing Americans, strengthening the country, and abandoning the failed globalist thinking that has undermined security, prosperity, and dignity in the United Sates.
Their outlooks on the future provided some indication of the staying power of President Donald Trump's vision as well as how it might evolve in the years to come.
Returning to reality
Rubio kicked off his speech by countering the progressive notion that human nature changes over time, stressing that "technologies change, the clothes we wear change, even languages change, governments change — a lot of things change, but the one thing that is unchanged is human nature."
Rubio suggested that this static nature accounts for why history often repeats itself and helps explain humans' unshakable "desire to belong," which naturally scales up to nationalism, despite nationhood being a relatively "new concept" in the grand scheme of things.
"If you put humans anywhere — a handful of people anywhere — one of the first things they start doing is trying to create things that they can join or be a part of," said Rubio. "The advent of the nation-state is a normal evolution of human behavior because people think it's important to belong to something, and being part of a nation is important. And I think that's really true, obviously, increasingly in how geopolitical decisions are made."
'We've undermined our position in the world.'
Despite man's immutable desire to belong and the naturalness of this desire's expression in nationalism, Rubio suggested that many in the West nevertheless entertained the fantasy that the dissolution of the Soviet Union meant the inevitable and imminent universalization of liberal democracy — that "the entire world is going to become just like us"; that "nationhood no longer mattered when it came to economics"; "that right now the world would no longer have borders"; and that it didn't matter where things were made.
Rubio noted that this idealistic outlook "became part of Republican orthodoxy for a long time," which accounts for why the GOP long proved indifferent to the outsourcing of labor and the offshoring of productive capacity.
The decades-long flirtation with liberal globalism "robbed a nation of its industrial capacity, of its ability to make things," thereby hurting the economy, hurting the country, robbing people of jobs, and eating away at the social fabric of the nation, suggested Rubio.
"What you find is because of all of those years of neglect, because of the loss of industrial capacity, we didn't just undermine our society, we didn't just undermine our domestic economy — we've undermined our position in the world," said the secretary of state, whose department recently signaled an interest in taking up the mantle of Western civilization.
'You can never be secure as a nation unless you're able to feed your people.'
Now that America and the rest of the world are facing a "crunch," the days of illusion are over, and geopolitics are adjusting accordingly.
Rubio indicated that the Trump administration is undertaking a reorientation of domestic and foreign approaches "to take into account for the fact that you can never be secure as a nation unless you're able to feed your people and unless you're able to make the things that your economy needs in order to function and ultimately to defend yourself."
Accordingly, Rubio suggested that the country moving forward needs to:
- make decisions with the nation-state in mind and engage the world "in a way that prioritizes our national interest above all else";
- guarantee America's access to the requisite "raw material and industrial capacity that is at the core both of the decisions that we're making and the areas that we're prioritizing"; and
- rectify trade imbalances with fully developed countries.
While this direction is possibly good news for the American people, it bodes poorly for stubborn champions of the globalist dream.
New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie, for instance, recently complained about the MAGA vision for the future.
The MAGA movement is waging war on the nation's economic future, rejecting two generations of integration and interdependency with the rest of the world in favor of American autarky, of effectively closing our borders to goods and people from around the world so that the United States might make itself into an impenetrable fortress — a garrison state with the power to dictate the terms of the global order, especially in its own hemisphere. In this new world, Americans will abandon service-sector work in favor of manufacturing and heavy industry.
After presenting the possibility of a powerful, indomitable, and reindustrialized America as a terrifying prospect, Bouie stumbled upon the truth of the project under way, stating, "The aim, whether stated explicitly or not, is to erase the future as Americans have understood it and as they might have anticipated it."
Kicking bad habits
Oren Cass, founder of American Compass, pressed Vance about the project of "reshoring and reindustrialization" that the Trump administration is pursuing.
Vance noted that at its core, the project is about addressing "stagnating living standards" affecting normal Americans "who just want to start a family, work in a decent job, earn a livable salary, and have dignified work."
'The complete disconnect between their views on foreign policy and economic policy made me realize, again, that we're governed by people who aren't up to the job.'
The vice president suggested that the offshoring of industry, an under-investment in technology, heavy industrial regulation, and high energy costs are among the factors that have made it difficult for "normal people who work hard and play by the rules to have a good life."
He also identified a "misalignment between the ... normal Americans and the talking heads in Washington" and an unworkable separation of the making of things from the innovating of things — a issue he raised in his March speech at the American Dynamism Summit — as problems warranting remedy.
RELATED: Vance: Trump’s growth plan ditches cheap labor for real jobs that will fuel American greatness
Blaze News previously noted that in his American Dynamism speech, Vance suggested that the Trump administration plans to help innovators wean off cheap foreign labor and begin on-shoring industry, partly by incentivizing manufacturing and investment inside the United States with tax cuts and other policy instruments; by erecting tariff walls around critical industries; by reducing regulations and the cost of energy; and also by enforcing immigration law and securing the border to drain the pool of cheap illegal alien labor.
In his conversation with Cass on Tuesday, Vance reiterated that America needs to effectively get innovators and labor back on the same page and in the same country and to ensure that educational institutions are equipped to supply them with talent.
Vance also criticized "pro-globalization" elements of the leadership class who are indifferent to "whether a given part of the supply chain existed here, or China, or Russia or somewhere else" yet frequently champion foreign entanglements fought with outsourced munitions and technologies.
"The complete disconnect between their views on foreign policy and economic policy made me realize, again, that we're governed by people who aren't up to the job," Vance told Cass, "until four months ago when the American people actually gave the country a government it deserved. And obviously we're in the very early days, but I think that we've done more in four months to solve these problems. But this is not a five- or a 10-year project. This is a 20-year project to actually get America back to common-sense economic policy."
When asked by NBC News' Kristen Welker last month whether he figured the MAGA movement could survive without him as its leader, President Donald Trump said, "Yes, I do. ... I think it's so strong. And I think we have tremendous people. I think we have a tremendous group of people. We talked about a number of them. You look at Marco, you look at JD Vance, who's fantastic."
Trump added that Vance is "a fantastic, brilliant guy" and "Marco is great."
A straw poll conducted at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February reportedly found that 61% of the over 1,000 attendees said they would support Vance as the future GOP standard-bearer.
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