The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) has released the March employment report [DATA HERE] reflecting gains of 186,000 private sector jobs, with another 8,000 federal government jobs eliminated.  Net gain 178,000 jobs.

Forecasters had anticipated around 63,000 net jobs gained: the actual result triples expectations.

[BLS Report – Table B]

This is a challenging time to use data to estimate overall employment strength, mainly due to the repatriation efforts underway that are removing illegal alien workers from the labor force.

As deportation efforts continue against the black-market workforce, in combination with targeting efforts toward fraudulent ‘mismatched’ social security records used to gain unlawful -albeit visible- market employment, it becomes challenging to quantify net realized job gains.

The overall goal is to remove the illegal alien workers, reestablish organic job market pressures to increase wages and pull American workers from the sidelines back into the labor market.  Removing illegal workers drives up real wages, that should (re)incentivize the labor market.   As these efforts continue, we are seeing wide variances, upward and downward swings, depending on the collection timing.

One of the positive aspects during this employment cycle is the reduction in the overall federal labor force.  Overall, in the past year, President Trump has removed 271,000 federal jobs more than reversing all of the govt jobs added during Joe Biden’s term in office.  This trend should continue.

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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

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In a two-week period right after the 2024 election, the most energy expended by the transition team putting a cabinet together was toward Main Justice or the Dept of Justice.  As a consequence, those around Lutnick and Wiles spent an incredible amount of time thinking about the Attorney General pick.

Following an insider discussion, I spoke with several people about positions and appointments, focused on pointing out that the transition’s priorities were misplaced. The AG needed to be someone with exceptional moral character, capable of gathering information and presenting it for public consumption, with the option of supporting criminal referrals if necessary.

The Attorney General wasn’t going to be the tip of the spear in any operation to confront the Deep State, because if Main Justice wanted to confront Lawfare they needed to confront the Intelligence Community first.  The IC controls all of the activity within the Dept of Justice.

Read that again for emphasis.  For the issues of greatest importance, the Intelligence Community controls all of the activity within Main Justice.  The IC is in control of the source material.  The IC is above the DOJ.  If you don’t strategize a confrontation with the IC first, it doesn’t matter what you do with the Dept of Justice.

The best example I could reference at the time was the Mar-a-Lago documents case and Judge Aileen Cannon.  In that example the Executive branch was targeting Trump through the DOJ/FBI, and representing the Judicial branch Judge Cannon was the firewall ensuring the appropriate administration of justice.

Trump’s defense, through Cannon, pushed back against the DOJ (Jack Smith) while Smith leveraged all his Lawfare tools back against Cannon.  You might remember the “classified document” issue went to the 11th CCA.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the government position that any documents defined as “classified” by the executive branch that claimed, “national security,” should not be disclosed to the defendant, Trump.  The 11th CCA said when it comes to matters of national security, the judicial branch must defer to the determinations of the executive.

Basically, if the intelligence community decides certain information is tied to national security and labels it as classified for the DOJ, that decision can’t be challenged. The U.S. Supreme Court has backed this view. As a result, when it comes to national security issues, the judicial branch has to defer to the executive, giving the IC significant control over the DOJ.

If you drag former CIA Director John Brennan into court and Brennan’s lawyers argue ‘national security’ as a defense against indictment, inquiry or questioning, it’s not the DOJ (Attorney General) who matters – it’s the ‘national security’ determination of the Intelligence Community (Tulsi Gabbard) who controls the outcome.

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The Daily Mail has written a rather explosive story saying Attorney General Pam Bondi was fired because she leaked or gave a heads up to Eric Swalwell about the FBI re-reviewing the investigative files about him [STORY HERE].

Without discussing the motive or background, the story itself just doesn’t make sense.

What most people probably don’t know is that former FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Counterintelligence Division, Joseph Pientka III, currently works for Congressman Swalwell [CITATION].

FBI Agent Peter Strzok’s former partner, Joe Pientka, works for Eric Swalwell.  Now, remember Joe Pientka’s very high security job inside the FBI Counterintelligence office? [REMINDER]

Because of his former role, Joe Pientka has deep ties to senior agents inside the current FBI, the type of agents who would know the inside details of any Swalwell investigative activity.

[SIDENOTE: Following the ridiculous Russiagate, and after the hand-off to Robert Mueller, Joe Pientka was transferred to the FBI San Francisco field office; hence, the regional alignment with Swalwell [CITATION].  Sometime in mid 2019, Joseph Pientka was promoted by FBI Director Christopher Wray and transferred to the San Francisco FBI Field Office where he showed up on their web page. END SIDENOTE]

Bondi wouldn’t need to tip off Swalwell. Pientka, currently working for Swalwell, would already know the ins/outs of every detail therein. [It’s a red herring]

FBI Director Kash Patel couldn’t start to review (or re-review) Swalwell activity without triggering one of those inside contacts aligned with Pientka.

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Attorney General Pam Bondi has been relieved of her duties as United States Attorney General.

[SOURCE]

Readers of CTH will likely not see this as a surprise. {Go Deep}

Pam Bondi was the second sequential cabinet level removal prediction we made after she was announced.  {GO DEEP} The first person we predicted to be removed was National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.

Susie Wiles should be embarrassed {GO DEEP}.

I will share more later….

(more…)

In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

(more…)

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

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Tonight at 9:00pm Eastern, President Donald J Trump is scheduled to deliver a national address on the subject of the current military operations against Iran.  The Livestream Links are below:

UPDATE: VIDEO ADDED

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They stopped their oil and gas exploration.  They chose to chase ‘net zero’ academic pontifications.  They closed their refining operations. They took apart their coal-fired electricity plants.  They disassembled their nuclear power capabilities. Then, the absolute cherry on the proverbial cake, they voted to stop purchasing oil and gas from Russia.

The EU is now in the Find Out stage of their FAFO positioning.

Gasoline prices have skyrocketed. The last shipments of jet fuel have arrived. Major airline carriers are cancelling flights due to lack of fuel.  Faster than the EU can organize meetings to discuss their position, EU destined LNG shipments have diverted to southeast Asia and India as the ASEAN nations bid higher purchase prices for the vessels literally on the water.

Folks, it’s quite an article written by EU Politico as they outline how each of the leaders from the nation states are now discussing how vulnerable they are to the changed oil/gas environment with the mid east conflict ongoing.  The entire energy sector in Europe is now in crisis mode with leaders predicting it will get much worse within days, not weeks.

EU Politico – “Germany’s Friedrich Merz warns the economic fallout from the war in Iran is on track to rival that of the Covid pandemic or the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[…] With the war in Iran threatening to choke off energy flows for the foreseeable future, Europe is facing a supply shock that promises to cripple manufacturing, ground airlines, hike up the price of food, spike borrowing costs and send inflation spiraling back to crisis levels.

As the last tankers carrying fossil fuels from the Persian Gulf pull into European ports, the scale of what is about to hit seems to be dawning on the continent’s leaders.

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