With all the news from Washington last week regarding the partial government shutdown and everything the left is doing to prevent the president from securing the border, little attention was paid to Friday’s incredible jobs report. 

According to the Labor Department, the economy created 312,000 new jobs in December. The unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 3.9% because 400,000 people re-entered the jobs market last month. In this case, the slightly higher unemployment rate is really not a bad thing. We want more people to want to work. 

When that many people were dropping out of the jobs market during the Obama years, the media made excuses, saying it had nothing to do with Obama’s policies, that it was just demographics, that people were getting older and it was the “new normal." 

Demographics may be partly responsible, but Obama’s big government policies definitely discouraged small business hiring and investment, and discouraged many people from even looking for work. Now that businesses are hiring again, and paying more (wages also increased 3.2%), people are rushing back to work.

Hopefully, the Federal Reserve will not crush the dreams of millions by making investment more expensive with higher interest rates.

There is even more good news. Trump’s recovery is reaching into areas that have been left behind in recent years. 

For example, we have been told over and over that manufacturing jobs are never coming back to the United States. Well, we created 284,000 new manufacturing jobs in 2018.

And for the first time since 2000, no county in Kentucky has an unemployment rate above 10%. Obama’s policies seriously hurt the state. But thanks to Trump’s recovery, the economic suffering in my home state has been greatly alleviated.

Trump’s economy has been a boon to minority workers as well, pushing the unemployment among Hispanics to a record low.

Day 17

Yesterday was Day 17 of the partial government shutdown. Vice President Mike Pence led the negotiations over the weekend, but he was talking with Democrat aides. There was no principle leader — not Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer — sitting across the table talking to the vice president.

As the talks drag on, the president’s frustration is growing. Sunday, Trump told reporters:

"We’re looking at a national emergency because we have a national emergency. Just read the papers. We have a crisis at the border … it is national security, it’s a national emergency… I may declare a national emergency dependent on what’s going to happen over the next few days.”

President Trump is right. Even the liberal media now acknowledge that there is a crisis on the southern border. The Washington Post reported this weekend:

“Record numbers of migrant families are streaming into the United States, overwhelming border agents and leaving holding cells dangerously overcrowded with children, many of whom are falling sick.”

The Post notes that “2,000 unauthorized migrants … are being taken into federal custody each day.” And those are only the ones we catch.

My friends, I want you to know that the president is not backing down!

On Friday, President Trump sent a letter to every member of Congress explaining the urgent need for border security. It included information from the presentation that Democrats refused to listen to during last week’s meeting in the White House Situation Room. (Read the president’s letter here.) 

President Trump warned members of Congress:

“A nation that fails to control its borders cannot fulfill its most basic obligations to its citizens—physical safety, economic security, essential public services, and the uniform protection of our laws…

"We are no longer in a status quo situation at the Southern Border but in a crisis situation. Status quo funding is not enough.”

The president closed his letter by urging members of Congress to “rise above the partisan discord … and to put the national interest first." 

Yesterday President Trump announced that he will address the nation tonight and travel to the border later this week in an attempt to break the partisan discord. Unfortunately, much of the left has embraced the open borders agenda.

That’s not hyperbole on my part, and it has little to do with Donald Trump. Members of Antifa routinely chant, "No border, no wall, no USA at all!” Many left-wing members of Congress even want to abolish ICE. 

Left-wing judges seem to be on board, and polling suggests that many young Americans don’t think the U.S.A. is a particularly good country. Sadly, as we have told you, the left wants to fundamentally transform America, if not redefine it out of existence.

Meddling In Elections

The Washington Post had a front-page story yesterday that should have every Senate Republican demanding the appointment of a second special counsel to investigate meddling in our elections. 

It seems there was an orchestrated “false flag” effort in the 2017 Alabama Senate election to smear Judge Roy Moore with “tactics inspired by Russian disinformation teams." 

It boils down to this: Left-wing groups planted "evidence” that made it look as if Russian agents were helping Judge Moore in his Senate campaign.

The effort known as “Project Birmingham” was led by Mikey Dickerson, the man hired to fix Obamacare’s disastrous website. The goal of the project was to “influence the outcome of the AL Senate race” by suppressing the conservative vote in part by smearing Moore and by promoting write-in candidates.

An outfit known as New Knowledge was also part of Project Birmingham. Curiously, the Post reports that New Knowledge “co-authored a report last month on Russian disinformation for the Senate Intelligence Committee.”

According to documents obtained by the Post, Project Birmingham “planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” which was later falsely tied “to the Moore campaign digital director, making it appear as if he had purchased the accounts." 

The implications of this scheme are tremendous. 

The left and its allies have charged that Trump won in 2016 because he colluded with the Russians. After two years of investigations, there is zero evidence of that. 

Now we are learning that some of these same leftists planted information that Judge Moore was getting help from the Russians. We now know that it was not true, and it cost him the election.

Where is the special prosecutor investigating this?