Baltimore&#8217;s public school district is going on a hiring spree while student enrollment plummets and test scores remain in the basement.
Baltimore City Public Schools inflated its number of employees by nearly 19% over the six years between 2018 and last year, according to Maryland State Department of Education data <a href="https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/employee-hiring-surges-in-baltimore-schools-as-student-enrollment-plummets" target="_blank" rel="noopener">analyzed</a> by Fox 45&#8217;s Project Baltimore, an investigative initiative on the city&#8217;s floundering schools.
The school district hired 1,714 more staffers while the number of students plummeted by 4,781 or 6%, the data show.
It wasn&#8217;t mostly teachers the district hired, either.
Over those six years, the district hired 992 more teachers, about a 15% increase, but it also hired 721 non-teaching staff such as administrators, a 28% increase, the analysis found.
Last school year, the Baltimore City school district had 10,874 employees for 75,811 students, about 6.9 students per staffer.
&#8220;This pattern reveals that the government school system has become more of a jobs program for adults than an education initiative for kids,&#8221; school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis told The Daily Wire.
DeAngelis noted that 40% of Baltimore high schools had zero students <a href="https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/at-13-baltimore-city-high-schools-zero-students-tested-proficient-on-2023-state-math-exam" target="_blank" rel="noopener">score</a> proficient on the 2023 state math exam.
Meanwhile, Baltimore&#8217;s public school superintendent <a href="https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-city-schools-ceo-total-compensation-hits-479000-sonja-santelises-jackie-wlliams-josh-civin-christopher-doherty-lynette-washington-naep" target="_blank" rel="noopener">makes</a> $479,672 a year, more than the president of the United States, DeAngelis pointed out.
&#8220;These failure factories don&#8217;t give a damn about the kids,&#8221; DeAngelis said. &#8220;These overpaid administrators are leeches that extract funding away from the classroom and the kids they&#8217;re supposed to serve. Baltimore needs real accountability from the bottom-up with school choice. Families must be able to vote with their feet to schools that work best for their kids. Only then will the school system cater to the needs of children and their families as opposed to the other way around.&#8221;
School choice critics often complain that failing inner city public schools are under-funded and simply need more resources to help low-income children thrive academically.
However, Baltimore spends far more per pupil than other large city school districts whose students perform better.
Baltimore City spends $18,272 tax dollars per student, according to last year&#8217;s census, Fox 45 <a href="https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/employee-hiring-surges-in-baltimore-schools-as-student-enrollment-plummets" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
Meanwhile, Albuquerque, New Mexico&#8217;s, school district spends $12,964 per pupil and the Austin, Texas, district spends $12,492. Both outperform Baltimore students in every category, such as 4th and 8th grade math and reading, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, called the &#8220;Nation’s Report Card.&#8221;
&#8220;City Schools has made targeted investments in hiring qualified staff — from classroom teachers and counselors to literacy coaches and early childhood educators,&#8221; the district <a href="https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/employee-hiring-surges-in-baltimore-schools-as-student-enrollment-plummets" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a statement. &#8220;We know that students thrive when they are supported by caring adults, and when schools are fully staffed and resourced. There is more work to do, but make no mistake — progress is happening, and our students deserve recognition for it.&#8221;

US-NEWS-BALTIMORE-SCHOOL-BUS-SAFETY-BZ

Baltimore Schools Hiring Like Crazy As Enrollment Plummets, Scores Stay Dismal

Baltimore

Education

Money

Public Schools

U.S.

On Wednesday, President Trump declared that it was “Liberation Day.” He said this is our economic Declaration of Independence now.
The markets were rocked after the announcement and there’s a reason why, which I will explain.
The president seems to believe that international trade is a zero-sum game. His giant tariff policy is predicated on a few false notions about the American economy. One is that the American economy has been a giant failure for the last 40 years. That is simply not true. This is a myth that is propagated by both parties.
I know, it&#8217;s a fun myth. It&#8217;s something people like to believe, that yesterday was economically better than today.
But then you look at all the stuff around you, the phone in your pocket, the computer, the fact that you can literally order any product at any time from anywhere on earth and it arrives at your doorstep in two days at a price you can afford, and you think to yourself: Would I rather live in 1980 when the only person with a cell phone was Gordon Gekko on a beach holding a shoe box to his head, when central air conditioning was kind of a rarity? When the cars, if you were lucky, had electric windows? Was that better? Were things better simply on an economic level?
Forget about everything else. You can make a case about the descent on the spiritual level. You can make a case about the dissolution of the family. I agree with many of those cases. But we&#8217;re not talking about the life of the spirit within. We&#8217;re talking about economics, which is the distribution of goods and services.
America has done well for decades and has not stopped. A myth that all politicians like to tell is that America has not done well, that America has been hollowed out by deindustrialization and we are not actually manufacturing anymore in this country.
That is not true. In 1997, the United States was producing $1.4 trillion in real manufacturing value added. In 2025, we are producing $2.4 trillion. That is an arithmetic increase.
So, if we are manufacturing more, why aren&#8217;t there more manufacturing jobs? The answer is technology. We manufacture more because we have better robots and they are doing much of the work that people seem to have a very warm and fuzzy feeling about, but then never want to do themselves.
I notice a lot of people say, “Why can&#8217;t I have a factory job just like in 1955 at Ford? Working in a non-air conditioned factory riveting all day?” It’s unlikely that’s your ideal job.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2172-member-exclusive?row=2&amp;elementPosition=4&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
We&#8217;ve been told the lie that the American middle class has been hollowed out by international trade.
But here is what actually happened to the American middle-class over the course of the last several decades. The American middle-class stayed approximately the same or shrank a little bit. Why did it shrink? Not because people became lower middle-class or poor, but because a huge number of Americans went into the upper middle-class. The number one change in the status of American families in terms of income from just before 1980 to about 2015 was a 16% increase in the upper middle-class.
In other words, people got richer. And by the way, everyone got richer, including the poor, because the stuff you can get as a poor person in America in 2025 is way better than the stuff you could get as a poor person in America in 1980. That&#8217;s just a reality.
How about wages? We keep hearing that wages are stagnant and have been stagnant since 1979. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, there was a steep increase in wages between 1980 and 2025. 
I know this cuts against the conventional political wisdom, which says that the American economy sucks and it&#8217;s because everybody is cheating us. 
One of the things President Trump is predicating his tariff war upon is the idea that trade deficits are inherently bad. A trade deficit is where, in terms of value, we import more stuff than we export. As I have pointed out before, you have a trade deficit with literally every business you do business with unless they&#8217;re buying your product.
So, for example, I have a trade deficit with my local grocery store, a huge trade deficit. They have received pretty much nothing from me. But I have bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of groceries over the years from my local grocery. They’re not taking advantage of me; I&#8217;m getting value for my dollar in the form of food and supplies.
As the great economist Thomas Sowell points out, “If the goods and services available to the American people are greater as a result of international trade, then Americans are wealthier, not poorer, regardless of whether there is a deficit or a surplus in the international balance of trade.”
In fact, I can name a period in American history where there was a fairly large surplus in America&#8217;s balance of trade: the entire Great Depression.
As it turns out, trade deficits have pretty much nothing to do with the health of an economy. They don&#8217;t tell you very much.
19th century French economist Frédéric Bastiat once wrote on this topic, essentially saying, “Look, if you&#8217;re so worried about trade imbalances, then actually what you should do is you should sink ships filled with your own exports before they ever get to the other side.” So if we&#8217;re exporting oranges to Europe and they&#8217;re going to send us apples in return, the best way to ensure that no trade imbalance takes place is we should send our oranges out of the country and sink the ship before it ever gets to Europe so they can&#8217;t send us apples back. Then we’ll have a large export on our ledger and no imports. Great idea. The economy will be stronger.
So, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of trade deficits. This is not about balance of payments, which is a different thing. Balance of payments is about the flow of gold. We&#8217;re no longer in a gold standard, but it&#8217;s about currencies.
Trade deficits are a different thing.
In reality, I think the Trump administration is likely to try and leverage headlines out of various foreign nations suggesting they&#8217;re going to invest in America to the tune of some billions of dollars before lowering the tariff rates again.
I do have faith that President Trump actually responds to headlines and to the news. He lives in the world of reality and won’t simply ignore that the markets hate all of this.
Yesterday, The White House quietly put out a fact sheet that read:
<blockquote>These tariffs will remain in effect until such a time as President Trump determines that the threat posed by the trade deficit and underlying nonreciprocal treatment is satisfied, resolved, or mitigated. Today’s IEEPA Order also contains modification authority, allowing President Trump to increase the tariff if trading partners retaliate or decrease the tariffs if trading partners take significant steps to remedy non-reciprocal trade arrangements and align with the United States on economic and national security matters.</blockquote>
Now, other countries could say they will invest in the American economy and President Trump gets a huge win. That could happen. I&#8217;m hoping that&#8217;s what Trump is planning on doing.
Is President Trump going to send out surrogates, like the Treasury Secretary, to walk some of this back and to try to point out where an off-ramp is? Or is he just going to keep doubling down on the theory that it&#8217;s short-term pain for long-term gain? If so, he&#8217;s going to have to explain how short-term the pain is and what exactly the long-term gain is, because that has not even been spelled out at this point. Is the idea that other countries are going to reshore to the United States to take advantage of our markets in some way, but we will leave tariffs on stuff that they export to us? They could also form trade blocs themselves and then go make time with the Chinese.
There are real-world implications for this sort of stuff. Trade wars are not good and not easy to win, particularly if you don&#8217;t actually have a plan. You actually have to have a plan.
So, I want somebody to make the case as to why this is actually excellent policy, why this is going to be salutary for the United States, why this is going to benefit the people of the United States en masse. And if you&#8217;re going to call for sacrifice from the American people, the question is, what is the thing on the other side of that sacrifice that is better and good?
What I&#8217;ve heard so far is a lot of casting of various aspersions at foreign countries for engaging in trade with us, regardless of whether they are good or bad, because we&#8217;re treating Canada the same way we&#8217;re treating China.
This is why I think the markets are confused. Investors are confused. Confusion and fear are going to breed sell-off. Less investment, less job growth.
It&#8217;s all avoidable. We need to hear an actual narrative, not a bunch of talking points that are generated from a cork board filled with statistics made up by some sort of AI.

President Trump Holds “Make America Wealthy Again Event” In White House Rose Garden

Liberation Day. What’s The Plan?

Ben Shapiro

China

Economics

Economy

European Union

Foreign Policy

Opinion

President Trump

Tariffs

Trade War

Planned Parenthood shouldn’t receive one cent of Americans’ taxpayer dollars. That’s the central truth at the heart of a landmark case the U.S. Supreme Court will hear on April 2, <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/medina-v-planned-parenthood-south-atlantic/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic</a>. The incredibly flawed and corrupt abortion industry is a sham of women’s true health care.
I know. I used to work in an abortion facility.
Before my eyes were opened to the truth of life in the womb and the unspeakable harms abortion inflicts on both child and mother, I was a medical assistant at an abortion facility in Illinois. The doctors would perform between 40-60 abortions a day, six days a week. We had between five to eight minutes to get a woman on the table for her procedure and then move her quickly to the next room so doctors could perform the next abortion.
It was a fast-moving train of patient to patient to patient. If you didn’t have the girl ready when the doctor came in, you were slowing him down. He’d write you up, and that would go into your employment file. It was very important to move quickly so the doctors could perform as many abortions as possible, up to 10 additional each day.
One former Planned Parenthood nurse recently remarked on the fast pace of abortion facilities. She shared her own experience in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/15/us/planned-parenthood-clinics.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York Times article</a>: “Employees sometimes administered expired pain medication or the wrong medications as they scrambled to move people in and out.” She added, “It was not uncommon for patients to be taken to the wrong room and prepped for the wrong procedure.”
All of that is deeply disturbing, but unfortunately, it doesn’t surprise me. The focus of the industry that loudly touts “women’s health care” is on one thing: Money. And abortion is big money. In fact, it is the most significant driving factor in the abortion industry.
Between 2018 and 2023, Planned Parenthood (the largest abortion provider in the U.S.) <a href="https://www.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/ce/f6/cef6efdb-919a-4211-bb5c-ce0d61fda7f5/2024-ppfa-annualreport-c3-digital.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">received</a> $3.2 billion in direct public funding. Each year, it receives hundreds of millions more from private donors. Since 2022, it has experienced a fundraising boom, amassing over $2.5 billion in net assets.
But its supporters are being deceived into believing big abortion equals comprehensive care for women. Planned Parenthood takes donors’ money and spends it on political activism, not people, and certainly not women’s health care.
The aforementioned New York Times article reported that, over the last five years, “the national office has distributed more than $899 million to affiliates to help them deliver care, but none of it went directly to medical services.” Much of the money went instead to pro-abortion politicking, legal costs, and marketing.
Between 2022 and 2023, women’s preventative-care visits <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/more-abortions-more-taxpayer-dollars-and-fewer-health-services/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fell by 31%</a>, and the number of patients seen annually <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/15/us/planned-parenthood-clinics.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">has fallen 60% since the 1990s</a>. <a href="https://lozierinstitute.org/fact-sheet-planned-parenthoods-2022-23-annual-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cancer screening and prevention services</a> have dropped by 71% since 2010, including declines of 72% for breast exams and 74% for pap tests.
Americans should never be forced to fund any activist organization, much less one with such an abysmal and deceptive track record, especially when the <a href="https://www.kofc.org/en/news-room/polls/americans-support-legal-limits-on-abortion.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">majority of Americans</a> reject taxpayer funding for abortion.
The state of South Carolina agreed. It rightly determined that Planned Parenthood doesn’t qualify as a health care provider that should receive Medicaid dollars. In response, Planned Parenthood sued the state, and now the nation’s highest court is weighing this <a href="https://adflegal.org/campaign/medina/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">critical case</a>.
States should be free to direct their funding to providers offering genuine, comprehensive health care by excluding organizations like Planned Parenthood—whose primary business is abortion—from public funding. There are roughly 200 publicly funded health care clinics in South Carolina that provide a broad range of high-quality services, including family-planning services. Consider also the numerous pregnancy centers offering valuable, free services to women in need.
It’s been my great honor to have seen firsthand these service-oriented organizations at work in their communities.
For nearly four decades, I’ve worked at Mosaic Health, a pregnancy center with two locations in Illinois. We’ve served more than 25,000 clients by offering no-cost pregnancy testing and ultrasounds, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, post-abortion counseling, adoption referrals, parenting classes, and a wide array of practical resources for new parents, from diapers to clothes to bottles.
Yet the state of Illinois works diligently to force us to close our doors. Current state law specifically targets pregnancy centers like Mosaic because of our fundamentally held belief that abortion offers no benefits, especially to the unborn baby. Because the U.S. Supreme Court <a href="https://adflegal.org/press-release/us-supreme-court-govt-cant-force-americans-express-messages-they-disagree/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped">held</a> that forcing people to promote abortion is unconstitutional, we’ve partnered with Alliance Defending Freedom and other Illinois pregnancy centers to <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/national-institute-family-and-life-advocates-v-treto/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped">challenge</a> this unconstitutional law. I, along with many others across our state, pray the district court will see the law’s injustice and uphold our freedom as a pregnancy center to operate according to our deeply held beliefs.
But I’m also looking to the U.S. Supreme Court as they weigh the Medina case, hoping they will agree with the ADF attorneys representing South Carolina and find that states should be free to spend their funds on true, comprehensive, life-affirming health care for women and children.
* * *
Kathy Lesnoff is the president and CEO of Mosaic Health in Illinois.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Conservatives Gather For Annual CPAC Conference In Washington DC

Money, Not Women’s Health, Drives The Abortion Industry

Abortion

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

Federal Government

Funding

Planned Parenthood

Supreme Court

DoorDash, the largest food delivery company in the United States, has announced they’re partnering with the &#8220;buy now, pay later&#8221; service provider Klarna. This has led to mixed reactions from social media users mocking the idea of using a payment plan for a meal.
Klarna has been showing up as an option at multiple retailers and is rumored to be on its way to an initial public offering, per <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/klarna-lands-buy-now-pay-later-deal-doordash-notching-new-win-ipo-rcna197265">NBC News</a>. The service provider said in a press release that DoorDash customers will be able to pay in full at checkout, split payments into four interest-free installments, or defer to later dates that match their paydays.
“Our partnership with DoorDash marks an important milestone in Klarna’s expansion into everyday spending categories,” David Sykes, Klarna’s chief commercial officer, said in the release.
Klarna was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Sweden. The company had a 24% increase in revenue last year and brought in $2.8 billion, the outlet noted.
The announcement post has since gone viral on X, earning more than 36 million views &#8212; and almost as many snarky comments.
“DoorDash and Klarna have signed a deal where customers can choose to pay for food deliveries in interest-free installments or deferred options aligned with payday schedules,” the post reads.
“I can’t wait to pay for my taco bowl over the next 52 weeks,” one commenter on X <a href="https://x.com/RorschachStocks/status/1902771877262586291">replied</a>.
“Imagine being in debt over a chicken parm,” another person <a href="https://x.com/actatumonline/status/1902758510917525702">joked</a>.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
 <a href="https://t.co/Cqw9AwAM0k">pic.twitter.com/Cqw9AwAM0k</a>
&mdash; [Object object] (@StevenJBurns) <a href="https://twitter.com/StevenJBurns/status/1902784344374251580?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“I have so many questions. What happens if I don&#8217;t pay back the burrito loan? Does it go on my credit score? Will they come after me for $11 in collections? Can I negotiate that debt down? Can I build my credit score this way? Someone please tell me,” another person <a href="https://x.com/bdmarotta/status/1902845023990808843">wrote</a>.
“Buying Panda Express on layaway is one of the darkest things I’ve ever heard omg,” another <a href="https://x.com/ShehanJeyarajah/status/1902877860064374938">echoed</a>.
Other jokesters just posted memes of personal finance expert Dave Ramsey looking annoyed, or of cast members of “The Sopranos” lurking on a front porch looking to collect missed payments.

DoorDash

Jokes Abound As DoorDash Offers ‘Pay Later’ Feature

Jokes Abound As DoorDash Offers 'Pay Later' Feature

Business

finance

Food

On Tuesday, we saw a massive stock market dump. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged almost 900 points.
The stock market has been in a bit of a freefall over the course of the last couple of weeks, and I have been predicting this for a while. 
It turns out that when you mess with the market mechanisms, people don&#8217;t like it. Investors tend to take the money out of the market and wait for things to be a little calmer, a little steadier. If you think of the free markets essentially as an ocean, sometimes it&#8217;s pretty choppy out there. Right now, it&#8217;s choppy.
If this administration is blamed for the choppy waters, that will be quite bad — not just for this administration, but also for everything it represents in the public mind.
Today, Emerson released a new poll <a href="https://emersoncollegepolling.com/national-poll-at-50-days-trumps-honeymoon-fades-as-economy-becomes-key-vulnerability/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">showing</a> President Trump’s handling of the economy underwater by 11 points. His job approval rating remains at 47-45, which is largely due to the widespread and correct perception that he totally changed the game on immigration. We are experiencing the lowest levels of illegal immigration ever recorded in the United States, as far as I&#8217;m aware.
But when it comes to the economy, which is what most people base their vote upon, if President Trump is blamed for an economic downturn, the effects could be disastrous, not just obviously for the Trump administration, but for the many things that are important for the United States, including free markets more generally.
“But worries about a trade war, signs of flagging growth and splinters in the artificial-intelligence trade have taken some of the shine off that optimism,” The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/us-stocks-underperform-trade-war-9c68599d" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> yesterday. “President Trump over the weekend refused to rule out a recession this year, setting off a fresh wave of declines in U.S. stocks. The S&amp;P 500 fell 2.7%, while tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 4%. Bank stocks slid, along with shares of smaller companies perceived to be sensitive to the economy. Bonds rallied.”
When people are uncertain what to do, they start buying bonds because they feel like they&#8217;re at least going to get paid off at a certain point.
“While the U.S.’s strength is in question, other countries are ramping up efforts to revive their economies,” the Journal continued. “China has unleashed more stimulus to meet its economic growth target. Germany announced a spending splurge on its military and infrastructure.”
If you just borrow to spend, which is what the United States has been doing for a very long time, you end up with an artificially inflated economy. This has happened previously in the United States, but it&#8217;s far more true for Germany and China than for the U.S.
However, there is something else happening, something deeper. And that is a widespread perception that the Trump team is trying to reshape the global order in a way that will not be good for the American or the global economy. It is a widespread perception that is beginning to percolate into the markets.
I’ve been talking to many of the market makers. I&#8217;m having conversations with business people who have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the markets. And they are all very, very wary of the signals that are being put out.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2155-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
When it comes to today’s economy, signals matter an awful lot. As I have explained before, if you&#8217;re a small business person, what do you want to make sure that you&#8217;re going to invest in your business?
You want a growing economy. You want to make sure the government doesn’t come and take your money or overregulate you; you want to know the conditions of tomorrow are going to be very similar to the conditions of today.
That&#8217;s how you engage in predictive decision-making. It&#8217;s how you decide whether to hire that extra employee. It&#8217;s how you decide whether to invest in more capital equipment. It&#8217;s how you decide whether to expand your holdings or contractor holdings in particular areas.
Predictability matters. Now, President Trump is not a predictable president. He has never been a predictable president. But the one area where he was always quite predictable was economics. President Trump liked tariffs. But what did he like more? He liked results.
What that meant was that during the first administration, when he talked about tariffs a lot, the total amount of tariffs put on the American economy effectually ended up totaling around $30 billion total. It was not a huge amount, and much of it was designed to leverage places like Mexico into signing a new version of the USMCA.
I think one of the reasons people in the markets are particularly perturbed by Trump&#8217;s attacks on Canada is the difference in cause. It&#8217;s one thing to say we&#8217;re going after Mexico to get them to close the border; that&#8217;s a piece of leverage. All right. Fine.
Similarly, it&#8217;s a second thing to say we&#8217;re going to put tariffs on China because China is stealing our intellectual property and building up their military at incredibly rapid rates. Completely agree. Fine.
But Canada. What did Canada do? The very notion that Canada is not a major trading partner with the United States is untrue. Canada is our number one trading partner. Canada has extraordinarily low-average tariff rates with the United States under a deal negotiated during President Trump&#8217;s first term, the USMCA.
Thus, the aim at Canada appears to the global markets to be a move away from America&#8217;s involvement in the world in total.
As I&#8217;ve addressed before, that doesn&#8217;t mean we need to be involved everywhere, either militarily or economically. However, the reality that America is the global hegemon is one of the reasons that the American economy continues to be the behemoth that it is. When you withdraw from what is a de facto financial empire, when you withdraw from providing global security and freedom of the seas, and when you appear to be attempting to draw inward, the rest of the world is less interested in investing in you, in buying your debt, and in funding your giant government expenditures.
The rest of the world is less interested in doing business with you if it&#8217;s harder to do business with you. And this has a detrimental effect on the economy, not just outside the United States, but also inside the United States. It turns out that autarchy — the notion that we should produce and consume everything in the United States — is a romantic idea, but it has ended with impoverishment of the population and generally been followed by expansionism everywhere it has been tried over the course of the last few centuries. That was true in Germany. It was true in China. It was true in Russia. It&#8217;s true virtually everywhere it&#8217;s been tried.
So, if the markets think that&#8217;s what you&#8217;re doing, even if you&#8217;re not, that&#8217;s not going to be good for the markets.
President Trump is saying he is implementing short-term pain for long-term gain. He has <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/03/sunday-shows-the-golden-age-of-america-is-here/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>, “What we&#8217;re doing is we&#8217;re building a tremendous foundation for the future.”
That’s fine, but he also needs to explain if that is the case, what is the tremendous foundation that is going to lead to future growth? How do we get from point A to point B in a way that doesn&#8217;t blow up?
More than half of Americans are heavily invested in the stock market, so this is not a “rich people problem.” This is an “everybody” problem.
I understand the notion that trade deficits, where we buy more from people than they buy from us, somehow reflects American weakness. But the reality is that there are many poor countries with trade surpluses, and there are many rich countries with trade deficits.
Trade deficits are not necessarily what they appear to be. The reality is that if we spend more money abroad than people spend here, those dollars come back, often in the form of governments either holding our dollars as the global reserve currency or other governments buying American bonds, which funds our growing national debt, which is out of control.
The reality is — as I have said and will continue to say — we are not solving our national debt problem unless we take a look at the very things no one on either side wants to take a look at: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security — means-tested welfare programs. Those are the massive drivers of the American national debt.
But the way the markets are increasingly reading President Trump’s actions on a global scale is that he wants to reshore everything and to withdraw from the world.
And that is not going to have beneficial effects for the American consumer, the American producer, and the American economy at large.

Traders Search For Havens As US Stock Selloff Rattles Nerves

Stock Market Plunges. What Happens Next?

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Stock Market

Wall Street

On Monday, a House Republican unveiled a bill that would place a picture of President Donald Trump on a revamped $100 bill.
The legislation would mandate that the Secretary of Treasury unveil a preliminary design of the $100 note featuring Trump by December 31, 2026, and require all $100 bills issued after December 31, 2028, to display him on the front, according to a <a href="https://gill.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-gill-introduces-golden-age-act-honoring-president-trump-100-bill" target="_blank" rel="noopener">press release</a>.
Currently, $100 bills <a href="https://www.uscurrency.gov/denominations/100" target="_blank" rel="noopener">feature</a> the face of Founder Father Benjamin Franklin on the front and Independence Hall on the back side.
The bill is called the &#8220;Golden Age Act of 2025,&#8221; a nod to Trump&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-promises-golden-age-of-america-in-inauguration-speech" target="_blank" rel="noopener">promise</a> for renewed American strength and prosperity during his inauguration speech. Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX), who introduced the legislation, released a statement that made reference to Trump surviving an assassination attempt during a speech in Pennsylvania while on the campaign trail over the summer.
&#8220;President Trump could be enjoying his golden years golfing and spending time with his family. Instead, he took a bullet for this country and is now working overtime to secure our border, fix our uneven trade relationship with the rest of the world, make America energy independent again, and put America first by ending useless foreign aid,&#8221; Gill said.
He added, &#8220;There has been no one who has done more to bring America into the golden age than President Trump. Featuring him on the $100 bill is a small way to honor all he will accomplish these next four years.&#8221;
Gill&#8217;s press release lists Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) as a co-sponsor. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) <a href="https://x.com/laurenboebert/status/1896626195762151821" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> that she wanted to be added as co-sponsor in response to a post on X from Gill that showed a mock-up of a $100 bill showing Trump&#8217;s official White House portrait being used.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🚨 I’m introducing the GOLDEN AGE ACT to put President Donald J. Trump on the $100 bill. 
Let’s make history. 🔥 <a href="https://t.co/iYXkmJm0Bg">pic.twitter.com/iYXkmJm0Bg</a>
&mdash; Congressman Brandon Gill (@RepBrandonGill) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepBrandonGill/status/1896621137653911676?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 3, 2025</a></blockquote>
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On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) responded to Gill&#8217;s post with sarcasm, announcing that he was introducing legislation that would place Trump&#8217;s face on a $10,000 bill.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🚨🚨(twice the siren, so you know it’s better)
I’m introducing the GOLDEN AGE ACT 2.0 to put President Donald J. Trump on the $10,000 bill. Let’s bring back the $10,000 bill and make history. 🔥🔥🔥(triple fire) <a href="https://t.co/6ZyVbKqKZJ">https://t.co/6ZyVbKqKZJ</a>
&mdash; Jared Moskowitz (@JaredEMoskowitz) <a href="https://twitter.com/JaredEMoskowitz/status/1896638547639312609?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 3, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Last year, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gop-legislation-would-put-trumps-face-on-500-bills" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> the Treasury Reserve Unveiling Memorable Portrait (TRUMP) Act — legislation that would require the Treasury secretary to print $500 Federal Reserve notes with Trump&#8217;s face. However, that bill <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/8620/all-actions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">did not</a> get a vote.
GOP lawmakers have made other proposals to honor Trump. For instance, The Daily Wire exclusively <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-house-republicans-unveil-new-bill-to-rename-dulles-airport-after-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> in January that freshman Rep. Addison McDowell (R-NC) had unveiled a bill that would rename Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia as the Donald J. Trump International Airport.

President Donald Trump

Republican ‘Golden Age’ Proposal Would Place Trump On $100 Bill

Congress

Donald Trump

U.S. House of Representatives

President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a> said on Sunday that he told the Treasury Department to stop minting pennies to cut down on costly government waste.  
Trump made the <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113977224933701762" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announcement</a> on Truth Social, noting that pennies cost more than double the amount to mint than they are worth. 
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let&#8217;s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it&#8217;s a penny at a time,” Trump posted Sunday night. 
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) program, run by Elon Musk, first flagged the cost of minting a penny last month. 
“The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost US taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023,” DOGE <a href="https://x.com/DOGE/status/1881928086305870127" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a> on X. “The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced. Penny (or 3 cents!) for your thoughts.”
The cost of producing all coins increased across the board in the last fiscal year, <a href="https://www.usmint.gov/content/dam/usmint/reports/2024-annual-report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to the 2024 annual report from the U.S. Mint. 
“The penny’s unit cost increased 20.2 percent, the nickel’s unit cost increased by 19.4 percent, the dime’s unit cost increased by 8.7 percent, and the quarter-dollar’s unit cost increased by 26.2 percent,” the U.S. Mint reported. “The unit cost for pennies (3.69 cents) and nickels (13.78 cents) remained above face value for the 19th consecutive fiscal year.”
If Trump were to move to get rid of the penny entirely, he would likely need Congressional approval. 
&#8220;The process of discontinuing the penny in the U.S. is a little unclear. It would likely require an act of Congress, but the Secretary of the Treasury might be able to simply stop the minting of new pennies,&#8221; said economics professor Robert K. Triest, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-penny-treasury-mint-192e3b9ad9891d50e7014997653051ba">according</a> to The Associated Press. 
Led by Musk, DOGE has pushed to cut spending across the federal government. For example, the Trump administration slashed the size and scope of the U.S. Agency for International Development after Musk pointed out ideologically driven spending programs. DOGE is currently looking at both the Department of Education and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/musks-says-fema-spent-60m-housing-illegal-immigrants-in-luxury-hotels-last-week?topStoryPosition=undefined" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FEMA</a>.

President Trump Orders Department Of Treasury To Stop Minting New Pennies

‘So Wasteful’: Trump Tells Treasury Department To ‘Stop Producing New Pennies’

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Elon Musk

Executive

General

Politics

spending

Treasury Department

Trump Administration

There may be one more big gift this holiday season for a lucky winner (or several) as the Mega Millions <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/lottery">jackpot</a> reaches a record-high payout of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/money">$1.15 billion</a>. The next drawing is on Friday, December 27.
Mega Millions tickets cost $2 a piece, per the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/jackpot-mega-millions-lottery-3b010e2633d3231cca0d6b9d34ebe5b7">Associated Press</a>. The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350, and the odds of winning any Mega Millions prize are 1 in 24, the outlet noted. Tickets are available in 45 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/united-states">states</a>, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The last Mega Millions jackpot win was back on September 10 when someone <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/lottery/2024/12/25/did-anyone-win-mega-millions/77205381007/">won $810 million</a> in Texas. The total jackpot has been growing ever since and has become one of the largest of all time. The Christmas Eve jackpot was worth $1 billion or an estimated $448.8 million lump-sum payment after taxes, per <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/lottery/2024/12/25/did-anyone-win-mega-millions/77205381007/">USA Today</a>.
No one won the jackpot on Christmas Eve, but four people from CA, MO, PA, and WY won $1 million in the Match 5 lottery that night.
As of now, the largest U.S. jackpots won are as follows:
<ol>
<li> $2.04 billion, Powerball, Nov. 7, 2022 (one ticket, from California)</li>
<li> $1.765 billion, Powerball, Oct. 11, 2023 (one ticket, from California)</li>
<li> $1.602 billion, Mega Millions, Aug. 8, 2023 (one ticket, from Florida)</li>
<li> $1.586 billion, Powerball, Jan. 13, 2016 (three tickets, from California, Florida, Tennessee)</li>
<li> $1.537 billion, Mega Millions, Oct. 23, 2018 (one ticket, from South Carolina)</li>
<li> $1.348 billion, Mega Millions, Jan. 13, 2023 (one ticket, from Maine)</li>
<li> $1.337 billion, Mega Millions, July 29, 2022 (one ticket, from Illinois)</li>
<li> $1.326 billion, Powerball, April 7, 2024 (one ticket, Oregon)</li>
<li> $1.13 billion, Mega Millions, March 26, 2024 (one ticket, from New Jersey)</li>
<li> $1.08 billion, Powerball, July 19, 2023 (one ticket, from California)</li>
</ol>
&nbsp;

Mega Millions

Mega Millions Jackpot Soars Past $1 Billion For Friday’s Drawing

Mega Millions Jackpot Soars Past $1 Billion For Friday's Drawing

Lottery

United States

President-elect <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a> threatened to impose a 100% tariff on several countries that have emerging markets if they try to move away from trading using the U.S. dollar.
&#8220;The idea that the BRICS Countries are trying to move away from the Dollar while we stand by and watch is OVER,&#8221; Trump said in a post on social media. &#8220;We require a commitment from these Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy.&#8221;
&#8220;They can go find another &#8216;sucker!'&#8221; he added. &#8220;There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, and any Country that tries should wave goodbye to America.&#8221;
BRICS primarily consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, but it expanded last year to include Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Egypt, and Ethiopia.
The countries have wanted to move away from using the U.S. dollar for trade to reduce U.S. influence around the world, but infighting between them has prevented that from happening.
There are also &#8220;major differences in the way the countries run their economies and financial institutions&#8221; that complicate any plans for them to create their own currency, NBC News <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-threatens-100-tariff-brics-countries-abandon-us-dollar-rcna182300" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
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The statement from Trump comes after he threatened Canada, Mexico, and China with tariffs if they did not work to stem the flow of illegal aliens and drugs coming into the U.S.
Bloomberg News <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-30/trump-demands-commitment-from-brics-nations-on-using-us-dollar" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that Trump and his economic advisers have sought ways to punish any country that tries to move away from the U.S. dollar, including &#8220;export controls, currency manipulation charges and levies on trade.&#8221;
Trump <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/11/cnbc-transcript-former-president-of-the-united-states-donald-trump-speaks-with-cnbcs-squawk-box-today-.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> CNBC in March that he will &#8220;not allow countries to go off the dollar because when we lose that standard, that will be like losing a revolutionary war, that will be a hit to our country just like losing a war and we can’t let that happen and too many countries now are fighting to get off the dollar.&#8221;

UFC 309: Ruffy v Llontop

Trump Threatens Several Nations With Massive Tariffs If They Move Away From U.S. Dollar

Russia

World

We are about to see a market explosion in the Western world — if capitalism is re-embraced.
It looks as though this is about to happen. The reality is that in the United States, as in most Western countries, the debt levels are reaching the unsustainable — or have already surpassed the unsustainable. The amount of national debt currently carried by the United States is verging on $37 trillion. That means the interest we pay on the national debt will soon — if it has not already — exceed the defense budget every single year into the foreseeable future.
Most of that debt is driven by welfare programs, means-tested welfare programs, badly structured welfare programs, and entitlement programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. All of those programs are the systemic drivers of debt in the Western world.
There are only two possible solutions to this problem, and both have to be applied at once.
First: serious restructuring and cuts to spending programs in the United States. 
Second: unleashing the power of the market to increase the size of the economy, because increasing the size of the pie means larger tax revenue intake and being able to afford more, on a governmental level.
The reason I call attention to this is because what we were set for under Joe Biden and his possible successors was a period of sustained economic stagnation in the United States — before inflation set in. Biden and his team put out a prospectus on what American GDP growth would look like over the course of the next decade, and they essentially forecasted it would come in at lower than 2% from here until as far as the eye can see. That is not enough growth to sustain the sort of spending programs the United States has been undertaking for decades.
At this point, something serious needs to change.
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A look back through history shows that, quite often, ideological precursors to shifts in the United States happen elsewhere. Possibly the most famous economic example occurred in the 1970s when Chile was run by a dictator named Augusto Pinochet.
Pinochet called in several supply-side economists from the so-called Chicago School of Economics called ”The Chicago Boys.” They were devotees of Milton Friedman, the libertarian economist, and advised Pinochet. Chile subsequently outsized rates of growth after private property rights were reestablished, tax rates were lowered, and a system of law was put in place that eventually led to the downfall of Pinochet himself and the rise of the democratic state in Chile.
Milton Friedman was later asked about what happened in Chile. He <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhujtDulmlg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said:</a>
<blockquote>The real miracle in Chile was not that those economic reforms worked so well. Chile is, by all odds, the best success story in Latin America today. The real miracle is not that those economic arrangements worked so well, because that&#8217;s what Adam Smith said. The real miracle is that a military junta was willing to let them do it. See, as I said to begin with, the principles of the military [are] from the top down; the principle of a market is from the bottom up. Now, it&#8217;s a real miracle that a military group was willing to let a bottom-up approach take over. … But I will say that that process led to a situation in which you were able to get [an] election which ended the military junta, and you now have a democratic government. You cannot cite any similar example from the world of entirely socialist states.</blockquote>
So what exactly happened in Chile? There were effectively three main pillars to what the Chicago boys did there. Economic liberalization, meaning fewer trade barriers; an easing of regulation; and an easier capacity to make economic arrangements. Privatization of state-owned companies, gigantic ownership of state-owned companies, was then devolved upon private citizens. And finally, stabilization of inflation took place, which meant a stop to spending money and printing money in order to keep up with inflation.
The same thing is currently happening in Argentina. Javier Milei has undertaken one of the greatest economic reform efforts in modern history — and it is absolutely working. He has brought inflation rates down from the insane to the manageable, and he has done this over the course of just a few months.
The Washington Post has reported on his efforts, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/11/25/trump-javier-milei/">writing</a>:
<blockquote>Inflation is tumbling, just as he promised, from a peak of almost 300 percent; a long-running budget deficit has turned into a surplus; government bonds, once seen as almost certain to sink back into default, are rallying; and the long-moribund economy is finally starting to rebound,” Bloomberg News reported this month. “Not bad for an outsider with an agenda so radical that people were speculating openly a year ago on how many months he’d last before having to surrender power.</blockquote>
Milei himself has <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2024/11/20/argentina-the-making-of-an-economic-miracle">said</a>, “What lies ahead in 2025 is more of what we’ve already done: strict fiscal balance, no money growth and deregulation. Argentina has suffered from an overdose of deficits, money-printing and useless regulations. All that needs to go.”
People on the Left are very upset because when this type of action is taken — if you throw people off the welfare dole, for example, because there&#8217;s too much spending on welfare or if you stabilize the currency — what that means quite often is that poverty rates in the very near-term increase. But then, they begin to decline radically, which is exactly what happened with Chile.
Milei remains incredibly popular in Argentina.
The success in Chile was the precursor to the economic revolution that spread across the Western world. The Chilean success was seen as a model by the Reagan administration; it&#8217;s why they pursued tax-cutting. It&#8217;s why they pursued deregulation and privatization of state-owned industries. The same occurred in Margaret Thatcher&#8217;s Britain.
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The lessons that Milei is pushing in Argentina are being applied to the rest of the Western world. That doesn&#8217;t mean President-elect Trump wouldn&#8217;t have pursued it in the absence of Milei. It does mean, however, a wave of economies are beginning to recognize the stagnating pseudo-socialistic policies that are pushed by so many members of the Left actually end in economic ruin for nations. That is now being disowned.
That’s why the business market is reacting so positively to President Trump&#8217;s election. We are witnessing a working model that has been applied in Argentina, where it was in crisis mode, succeeding. That means crisis efforts have to be undertaken here as well.
If those efforts are applied even on a medium scale in the United States, we are about to see a boom unlocked in the United States, unlike any in modern American history.

Javier Milei Leads Event To Launch ‘La Libertad Avanza’

The Axis Of Capitalism

Javier Milei

Milton Friedman

National Debt

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/whoopi-goldberg">Whoopi Goldberg</a> said she’s only working as a panelist on “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/the-view">The View</a>” because she needs the money.
The 68-year-old host was discussing a recent social media post from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in which she asked her followers why they voted for President-elect Donald Trump. AOC said some of the responses mentioned how Trump cared about “the working class.”
Panelist Ana Navarro reacted to this, saying the next Democratic presidential candidate should make an effort to connect more with voters.
“I appreciate that people are having a hard time. Me too, I work for a living,” Goldberg said. “If I had all the money in the world, I would not be here. OK? So, I’m a working person, and my kid has to feed her family, and my great-granddaughter has to be fed by her family.”
&#8220;I know it&#8217;s hard out there,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;I love what [Ocasio-Cortez] did. Yay. We talk to people all the time who say, &#8216;This is what&#8217;s bothering me.&#8217; But, the thing that&#8217;s bothering everybody should not be the thing that puts 85 percent of other people in danger. I think that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re saying.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Whoopi: &quot;I appreciate that people are having a hard time. Me too. I work for a living. If I had all the money in the world, I would not be here.&quot;
She has an estimated net worth of $60 million dollars.<a href="https://t.co/leiouVc4jl">pic.twitter.com/leiouVc4jl</a>
&mdash; MRC NewsBusters (@newsbusters) <a href="https://twitter.com/newsbusters/status/1856400348002349397?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 12, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
According to CelebrityNetWorth, Goldberg has a <a href="https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/actors/whoopi-goldberg-net-worth/">net worth</a> of $60 million and an annual salary of $8 million.
During the same episode, the actress said she supports the idea of cutting off Trump voters from family gatherings for the holidays.
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/?_gl=1*jtghwp*_gcl_au*ODQ1NjYzNTg2LjE3Mjg5MDk3OTE.*_ga*MTc2NzM0NDQ2NS4xNzI4OTA5Nzkx*_ga_CZKR9ZYKJP*MTczMDEyMDgwOS40OS4xLjE3MzAxMjA4MzkuMzAuMC4w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+</a>
“I appreciate the voters, but I will say, somebody who tells me that my child is wrong because of how he or she feels, that tells me that they shouldn’t be allowed to be who they are with my permission, I have to question it,” Goldberg said, as The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/a-moral-issue-abc-hosts-promote-excluding-trump-voting-family-from-holiday-gatherings">reported</a>.
“I don’t want to put my kid in that position. I don’t want to put my gay child in a position where she has to sit with someone who doesn’t understand her and feels like it’s okay to just blurt all of that out. That’s just me.”

Whoopi Goldberg

Whoopi Goldberg Says She’s A ‘Working Person,’ Would Leave ‘The View’ If She Had More Money

Whoopi Goldberg Says She's A 'Working Person,' Would Leave 'The View' If She Had More Money

Celebrities

Entertainment

Television

The View

A large body of information shows that the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/labor-unions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">International Longshoremen’s Association</a> (ILA) union, whose leader rejected 50% raises and threatened to “cripple” the United States unless greater demands were met, has pervasive and enduring ties to the Mafia.
Just a few years ago, the union responded to anti-mob investigations by the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor by successfully lobbying New Jersey politicians to neuter the oversight body, despite uncertainty of whether that was even legal.
The Waterfront Commission was formed in the 1950s to police mob activity at shipping ports, and in recent years, the International Longshoremen’s Union argued it should be abolished because it slowed down hiring and was no longer necessary. But a Daily Wire review of the Commission’s <a href="https://www.wcnyh.gov/">recent annual reports</a> shows that the hiring holdup was because it found that nearly 1 in 5 of the union’s proposed hires were connected to the Mafia, and 1 in 3 had other ethical barriers to employment.
The union often steers what they call “special packages” to mobsters, giving them pay of up to $500,000 for largely no-show work. These “special packages” have only grown in recent years, according to Commission reports. In 2020, 18 port workers made salaries more than $450,000, 41 made salaries of $400,000 to $450,000, and 82 made $350,000 to $400,000.
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“Today, every terminal within the Port still has special compensation packages given to certain ILA longshore workers, the majority of whom are white males connected to organized crime figures or union leadership. Based on the industry’s reported figures, the Commission has again identified over 590 individuals who collectively received over $147.6 million dollars last year in outsized salaries, or for hours they never worked,” the Commission found.
Two decades ago, current ILA boss Harold Daggett was acquitted of racketeering in a trial related to mafia ties in which co-defendant, alleged Genovese capo Larry Ricci, disappeared during the trial and was found dead in the trunk of a car.
Last month, Daggett said if his demands were not met, including a ban on automation and raises of 60% to 80%, &#8220;I will <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dem-donor-union-boss-with-alleged-mob-ties-fights-biden-over-dock-worker-strike" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cripple</a> you, and you have no idea what that means.&#8221; Shipping companies on Thursday folded to many of the union’s demands after President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris sided with the union, putting a quick <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dock-workers-end-strike-with-tentative-agreement-for-higher-wages" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“tentative”</a> end to a strike — at least until after the election.
General Foreman Paul Moe, Sr. was convicted in 2017 of wire fraud for collecting nearly $500,000 in pay while showing up as little as eight hours a week. But instead of disavowing him, others in the union seemed to go to great lengths to continue sending money to his family.
“Just one week after Moe’s conviction, the NYSA-ILA Employee Benefit Funds contacted his wife – a high school graduate who had not been employed for 47 years – and gave her a newly-created $70,000 a year job which had never been advertised and for which she had never applied. The very same week that Moe was arrested, the industry submitted his grandson to be a longshoreman. Incredibly, citing contrived dire labor shortages – the industry actually enlisted the unwitting assistance of the New Jersey Governor’s office in efforts to get Moe’s grandson through the hiring system,” the Commission found.
Longshoreman Peter Boragi made more than $350,000 a year, purportedly working 25 hours a day in some days. The lucrative, union-blessed pay may have had to do with mob ties: Boragi submitted a character letter to the judge on behalf of Louis Romeo, a Colombo crime family associate, and visited him in prison. The Commission said that in one of its hearings, one of the defense’s own witnesses conceded that “the mob has exercised its control of the docks by determining who get work, who gets which position, and who gets overtime.”
In another case, Genovese family soldier and former longshoreman Stephen Depiro was sent to prison for forcing union workers to turn over Christmas bonuses to the Mafia. After that, the union kept referring relatives of Depiro for jobs. Checker Dock Boss Patrick Cicalese, who was paid a $487,000 a year “special package,” surrendered his employment after wiretaps picked up conversations between him and Depiro, as well as Depiro’s girlfriend.
The Commission’s 2019 report said the mafia problem was only getting worse, with an “increased number of mob-connected union referrals this year,” including “members of the Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese, Bonanno, and Bruno-Scarfo organized crime families.”
Gambino associate Anthony Pansini II pleaded guilty to exerting “control over the Brooklyn and Staten Island piers and, in particular, over International Longshoremen’s Association, AFL-CIO (ILA) Local 1814 in a conspiracy to control the awarding of union jobs.” The union might have claimed that Pansini was a bad apple who was victimizing the union without its knowledge—except that after Pansini was busted and the union nominally put him on a list of barred individuals, the Local President “sponsored Pansini’s son, Anthony D. Pansini III, to be a longshoreman. He was allowed to ‘jump the line,’ and was referred by the union for employment ahead of 40 other prequalified union candidates.”
One of the Commission&#8217;s main roles was to vet new hires proposed by the union before giving them the greenlight. Many of the interviewees seemed to adopt the Mafia ethic against &#8220;rats&#8221; in these interviews. For example, Pansini III claimed to be unaware of his father’s mob ties, as well as those of other associates, despite them being widely publicized. The union president who tried to get him on the payroll, meanwhile, claimed that he didn’t realize Pansini III was the son of his disgraced predecessor.
A former president of ILA Local 1235, Thomas Leonardis, was also a Genovese mafia family associate, and was convicted of collecting tribute payments to the mob from union members “based on actual and threatened force.” The Commission found that records showed that after that, Leonardis and another mobster were in contact, from prison, with longshoreman Nicholas Atria.
The now-defunct Commission’s papers are replete with specific documentation of the mob’s penetration of the waterfront and the ILA. For example, the union attempted to put on the waterfront’s payroll Michielangelo Palumbo, who was tied to alleged mobsters including “Frankie Jupiter” Martini, who convicted of RICO, and another convicted of conspiracy to commit arson.
One requested hire was a felon who struck a victim in the head with a baseball bat and whose uncle was a “made man.” Yet another lived at the home of, and shared a credit card with, a Colombo family soldier convicted of racketeering.
The Commission also sometimes removed longshoremen from the waterfront after they were hired because of mob ties. Longshoreman Vito Lavignani surrendered his job following charges of organized crime associations and stealing a police officer’s phone. Lavignani claimed that he didn’t know his associate “Tough Tony” Federici was a capo with the Genovese crime family, and that his associate “Mickey the Leach” Generoso was a mob underboss convicted of racketeering.
Another waterfront worker was Joseph Ferdico, who for seven years worked for Anthony Calabrese, a convicted racketeer and Bonanno soldier. In April 2019, a port warehouseman was suspended for possessing an improvised explosive device.
Access to international ports allows for drug and human trafficking. In February 2019, $77 million of cocaine was seized at the port. One man charged with promoting prostitution following a Waterfront Commission investigation “claimed to have ‘extradited’ women from Colombia to work in his brothels.”
Union “checkers” can have enormous salaries and potential for abuse. Checker John Riccobono was removed from the ports after the Commission found that he attended crew dinners where the Gambino crime family discussed business, and communicated with Gambino capo “Sonny” Juliano in prison.
Andrew Marano Jr.’s referral to work as a checker was blocked by the Commission after claiming he was “completely unaware” that his girlfriend’s father, “Charlie Tuna” Giustra, was in the mafia, despite having dinner with him the night before he went to prison.
In September 2019, former longshoremen were sentenced related to a loansharking and gambling scheme involving Genovese solder Vito Alberti. In 2020, longshoreman James Gunsherfksi Jr. was suspended after being arrested for assaulting a woman with a frying pan, and longshoreman Robert Florio was suspended after being arrested for allegedly possessing an illegal firearm with a filed-off serial number.
Efforts to discredit the Waterfront Commission’s work as unnecessary and overly restricted only seemed to make the opposite case: One of the people who sued claiming that the Commission’s background checks were slowing down hiring too much was the son of Pasquale “Pattty the Clubber” Falccetti, Sr., “a capo in the Genovese organized crime family who was convicted multiple times of extortion conspiracy and racketeering activities on the waterfront.”
Another who took to the courts to try to block the Commission’s actions was Frank Ferrera, a purported maintenance man with a $355,000 “special package” who denied knowing anyone in the mob, but who was associated with Falccetti, Genovese soldier “Little Carm” Della Cava, and Andrew Gigante, the son of former Genovese boss Vincent “The Chin” Gigante.
“Expert testimony during the trial revealed that Gigante had served as a messenger between his father and Falcetti regarding ILA matters,” the Commission said, with a judge noting “the uncontroverted power over waterfront labor and industry exercised by the Genovese crime family.”
In 2017, the Commission bounced the application of Anthony Battaglia, who wanted to be a “maintenance man.” Battaglia is the son of “Sally Hot Dogs” Battaglia, a former Local 1181 president who was sent to prison for taking bribes. The younger Battaglia also had his own history at the center of labor and the mob.
New Jersey withdrew from the bistate Waterfront Commission, leaving only a significantly weaker New York version, following lobbying by the ILA. The Democrat legislature passed a bill to do so, but Republican Gov. Chris Christie intially vetoed it, saying nothing in the law permitted one state to unilaterally withdraw. But on his last day in office, he signed it. The courts went back and forth on whether the withdraw was legal or not, until the Supreme Court said it was.
That meant the last public report documenting the ILA’s mob ties was in 2020. Daggett did not return a request for comment from The Daily Wire.

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