Good summary of the H-1B situation by @sampeak.bsky.social

*purport* to fire. We shouldn't just accept a framing that gives him the authority to do this.

This comparsion in the NYTimes today is pretty stark. China is racing ahead to be a high-tech exporter of 21st century technologies, while the US is doubling down on being a petro-state exporting the technologies of the 19th century: www.nytimes.com/inte...

Yes! This is something that I wish hadn’t been memory-holed, because it shows how our commentary class works. Not only did pundits widely assert that gas prices control elections, it was treated as an absolute obvious certainty. And then, when it turned out wrong, the claim was instantly abandoned.

Lotta life changes happening www.politico.com/newsletters/...

The World Cup will be the biggest international event the U.S. has hosted since before 9/11. If the State Department doesn't get its act together, this could be a major national security crisis and a historic bureaucratic debacle. 🧵

The World Cup will be the biggest international event the U.S. has hosted since before 9/11. If the State Department doesn't get its act together, this could be a major national security crisis and a historic bureaucratic debacle. 🧵

The EB-5 visa requires applicants to "prove" that investments created at least 10 jobs. The process takes forever and U.S. officials have no way of knowing if jobs were actually created or saved. The Gold Card is a chance to start from scratch. x.com/paceimmigrat...

Trump's tariffs will raise prices for USA-made cars too, not just foreign imports. That's because: 1) a lot of inputs that go into US-made cars come from abroad (esp from Mexico/Canada) 2) When foreign competitors' prices go up, domestic producers often raise their prices too

To be clear: Trump did not merely say he was indifferent to higher car prices resulting from his auto tariffs ("couldn't care less"). He also said he *hopes* auto companies raise prices

NEW! The Trump administration appears to have sent a married father with NO CRIMINAL RECORD in any country to rot in a prison in El Salvador because of a PAPERWORK ERROR. This man doesn’t even have tattoos! But his paperwork has two different peoples’ ID numbers listed and the wrong last name!

Lutnick claims to have already sold 1,000 "gold cards" for $5 million per card. In case you missed it, there is no gold card. It doesn't exist. So he is just reporting that people are willing to give Trump $5 million for.... (wink wink) "nothing"

Summary of OECD forecast revisions for US economy this year: higher inflation and slower growth than OECD had predicted right before Trump took office.

Tidbit from Natasha Sarin: IRS's customer phone service is deteriorating, in part because employees are spending all day queued up to use shared agency computers so they can respond to DOGE’s requests for weekly emails on 5 bullet points detailing their work www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

New from @pamherd.bsky.social & I: Musk and Trump are modernizing the fraud trope, using it in new ways: *Targeting core programs in unprecedented ways *Undermining the government’s capacity to address fraud *Providing a veil of legitimacy for state capture 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/musks-frau...

! The Trump administration wants ICE to build four detention centers each with 10,000 bed capacity. Only the LA County Jail and Rikers are larger, and that's about the size of the Cook County and Harris County jails. That would cost tens of billions and require thousands of new personnel.

NEW from EIG’s Agglomerations: “No, we are not producing too many STEM graduates”, from Connor O'Brien and @benglasner.bsky.social lasner, who show that STEM majors earn a premium even in non-STEM jobs. Read more agglomerations.substack.com/p/no-we-are-...

I'm not liking the fearmongering over the birthright citizenship EO. People should at least provide context that it will be enjoined and struck down by the courts. There is plenty for people to be worried about, let's not add more shit.

Bernie's op-ed about H-1Bs is misleading. The website he cites to prove his point that Tesla pays low wages says that they offer a median salary of $145,000 and only 7% of offered salaries are less than $100,000. h1bdata.info/index.php?em...

Huh. “Operation Return to Sender” was previously the name of a national ICE operation, not a Border Patrol operation. Not sure what, if anything, to read into that.

Most Fed officials believe "upside risks" to inflation outlook have increased, in part because of expected changes to immigration/trade policy under Trump. www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypoli...

Bernie staffer: "H-1Bs are cheap labor replacing Americans." Me: Actually when you adjust for age, H-1Bs make significantly more than their American counterparts. And they're among the top 10% of income earners. Bernie staffer: The fact that they're young is part of the scam!

Jimmy Carter was one of America's most effective and underrated Presidents.

On @kaitlancollins.bsky.social show this evening, I talked about MAGAworld blowback to Musk’s praise for high-skilled immigration. One of America’s greatest economic advantages is our ability to attract global talent. Some additional comments/sources on this 🧵

I have a lot of respect for @mattyglesias.bsky.social and Noah Smith, but if even they're convinced of the narrative that Biden destroyed the border by "loosening immigration policy" then I'm not sure what point there is in educating the general public on what actually happened.

The most basic way to check whether immigrants "bring crime" is to ask whether the share of the population that is foreign-born correlates in any way with the crime rate (it doesn't). This is such a simple analytical method that it was used all the way back in 1912! www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2...

As I've been saying for months: GOP talking points on the border are woefully out of date. Crossings are way down And having a president with (ahem) good diplomatic relationships has been key to that decline. img.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Lol. One week after the Economist published this chart showing the dude can't stop tweeting in the middle of the night, Elon removes time stamps from tweets.

There are people in America who think all migration is caused by Joe Biden, George Soros, and Catholic Charities funding and flying people to random parts of America to permanently resettle. They don't want to ever fathom that people like having them there and even want to hire them.

I've posted several times about the working paper, but the publication on "AER: Insights" is a good occasion to do it again: immigrants to the US have been less likely to be incarcerated for over 50 years **even without controlling for demographic characteristics.** www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

Compare the vagueness of Compact's "defense" of Hegseth versus the detailed anecdotes mentioned by the accusers. Also, I'm not sure how reliable their testimony is considering they're trying to refute claims from anonymous sources. www.compactmag.com/article/smea...

China is consolidating the world's top AI talent. In 2019 China had 29% of the world's top AI reseachers. Now it has 47% and the U.S. has 18%. To reverse these trends, we need to expand skilled immigration ASAP. nap.nationalacademies.org/download/27787

In memoir, Trump AG Bill Barr wrote that he'd declared an appointment of Patel to deputy FBI director would happen “over my dead body” “Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency" abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory...

Encouraging news: fentanyl deaths have been declining for 11 straight months, and now stand 20% below their 2023 peak. Unclear why; a few theories offered by @jburnmurdoch.bsky.social here. www.ft.com/content/6b19...

"Working class material self-interest includes cheap energy" is perhaps the biggest thing contemporary progressives miss about economic policy.

Among the things I'm thankful for this year: The readers of The Bulwark, who helped make it possible for this translator to escape from hiding and reach the United States—where he is today celebrating #Thanksgiving with his family. www.thebulwark.com/p/the-bulwar...

The list of kid-appropriate Thanksgiving movies and TV shows isn't very long. Unless you're willing to define the category loosely...

The incoming administration wants to revive a pipeline to import crude oil from Canada but also wants to slap a 25% tariff on crude oil imported from Canada.

Border crossings have dropped because Mexico is spending an unsustainable amount of resources preventing migrants from reaching the U.S. and accepting deportations of Venezuelans. Slapping a 25% tariff in response to their cooperation would be perverse. www.reuters.com/world/us/ele...

Tfw you forget you’re the one who signed the USMCA (oops!) www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

Yes to citizenship and applying the same wages as H-2A. But let's make sure that farmworkers maintain a right not to be misled or threatened into joining a union.

Good luck America www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-new...

The only thing that makes Twitter better than Bluesky is the ideological diversity. Aside from that, Bluesky is very much like the old Twitter with few bots and spam. Conservatives should download it.

It’s pretty clear that we’re past the tipping point. Network effects are powerful. Threads misread the market. People didn’t want Insta w/ Words. They wanted a Twitter replacement.

Hey, Bluesky crowd, if you missed it - EIG is hiring a research director! Come work with me (and others) on some really cool problems at the heart of the research/policy space. I’m at APPAM if you want to chat about the job/place. 📉📈 www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/40...

Russ Vought has been nominated as Trump's budget chief. The Office of Management and Budget is incredibly important, and I have been tracking Vought for years, so here is a primer. 1. If you have heard the term "weaponization" of govt, you can than Vought. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/a-weaponiz...

Nancy Mace's signature accomplishment since getting elected to Congress is her influence on Capitol Hill bathroom policy. Her second most impactful accomplishment was renaming a post office.

<is narrowly voted in because people simply wanted cheaper groceries> "HEARD YOU LOUD AND CLEAR AMERICA HERE'S A WHALE DECAPITATING TAP WATER TRUTHER, A TV ANCHOR CRUSADE LARPER, AND A COKE ADDLED SEX TRAFFICKING PEDOPHILE"

Places that rely more on government transfers tended to vote for Trump, while less reliant places tended to vote for Harris. Wonder how much of this just reflects age (since Soc Sec/Medicare are among the transfer programs counted) agglomerations.substack.com/p/the-econom...