Category: Government
Pennsylvania Officials Let Unsent Mail Pile Up For A Month, But Promise Mail Voting Is Super Secure
While Gov. Shapiro attacked Trump during the government shutdown, his own administration was failing to deliver critical info on SNAP and other services through the mail.
DOGE program is successfully shrinking the federal workforce, new jobs report suggests
Following some significant delays due to the Democrat-imposed government shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has finally released its long-anticipated jobs report for November and October.
On Tuesday, the November jobs report, including partial data from October, was released, showing an unemployment rate at 4.6%, up 0.2 percentage points since September 2025 and up 0.4 percentage points since November of last year.
‘The report on December’s employment data, released in early January ahead of the next meeting, will likely be a much more meaningful indicator for the Fed when it comes to deciding the near-term trajectory.’
The labor market reportedly added 64,000 jobs after losing 105,000 jobs in October, according to available data.
Most of the jobs lost came from the federal government as part of DOGE’s buyout program, which went into effect at the end of September. Government employees who opted into the buyout were still listed as employed until their scheduled exit in October.
RELATED: Yuge win! New jobs report exceeds expectations, reversing Biden-era trends | Blaze Media
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
CNN explained that federal employment dropped precipitously in October, with 162,000 jobs lost, as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency’s work. DOGE’s “fork in the road” deferred resignation policy reportedly went into effect on September 30, though it was established earlier in the year.
The new report was originally scheduled to be released on December 5, but the release was delayed due to the 43-day government shutdown which affected data collection for both October and November.
Given the delays and fragmented data, experts have suggested that the November 2025 jobs report will not pull much weight in the Federal Reserve’s decision-making.
Kay Haigh, global co-head of fixed income and liquidity solutions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, told Fox News: “Chair [Jerome] Powell commented last week that the report would likely be affected by shutdown-related distortions, making it a less reliable gauge of the labor market’s health than usual. The report on December’s employment data, released in early January ahead of the next meeting, will likely be a much more meaningful indicator for the Fed when it comes to deciding the near-term trajectory.”
The jobs report for December is set to be published on January 9.
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Digital tyrants want your face, your ID … and your freedom
Thomas Sowell’s warning fits the digital age with brutal precision: There are no solutions, only trade-offs. When governments regulate technology, they seize your privacy first. Every “safety” mandate becomes an excuse to collect more personal data, and the result is always the same. Bureaucrats claim to protect you while making you more vulnerable.
Age-verification laws illustrate this perfectly. Discord’s recent breach — more than 70,000 stolen government ID photos taken from a third-party vendor — shows how quickly privacy collapses once platforms are forced to gather sensitive data.
Millions of citizens should not be forced to trade away privacy because policymakers refuse to acknowledge the risks.
To comply with the U.K.’s new Online Safety Act, Discord began collecting users’ documentation. That data became a target, and once breached, attackers reportedly demanded a multimillion-dollar ransom and threatened to publish the stolen IDs. Discord failed to monitor its vendor’s security practices, and thousands paid the price.
Age-verification mandates require digital platforms to confirm a user’s age before granting access to specific content or services. That means uploading government IDs or submitting to facial scans. The stated goal is child safety. The actual effect is compulsory data surrender. These laws normalize the idea that governments can force citizens to hand over sensitive information just to use the internet.
Centralized data collection creates a jackpot for cybercriminals. As the Discord breach proves, one compromise exposes thousands — or millions — of users. Criminals can sell this information, reuse it for identity theft, or weaponize it for blackmail. The problem isn’t a one-off failure. It is structural. Age verification mandates require platforms to create consolidated databases of personally identifying information, which become single points of catastrophic failure.
The libertarian Cato Institute captures the problem: “Requiring age verification creates a trove of attractive data for hackers that could put broader information about users, particularly young users, at risk.”
Governments may insist that the Discord breach was an outlier. It wasn’t. Breaches of sensitive information are predictable in systems designed to aggregate it. Even if the motives behind the U.K.’s age-verification regime were noble, undermining privacy to advance those aims is a trade-off free societies should reject. That is why the Online Safety Act triggered an outcry far beyond the U.K.
And, as usual, legislative mandates fail to achieve their stated goals. Days after the OSA took effect, VPN downloads surged as users — including children — bypassed verification systems. Laura Tyrylyte, Nord Security’s head of public relations, told Wired that “whenever a government announces an increase in surveillance, internet restrictions, or other types of constraints, people turn to privacy tools.” Predictably, age-verification laws encourage evasion instead of compliance.
RELATED: The UK wants to enforce its censorship laws in the US. The First Amendment begs to differ.
mikkelwilliam via iStock/Getty Images
The pattern is simple: Age-verification laws degrade privacy, heighten the risk of identity theft, and fail to keep minors off restricted platforms. They make the internet less safe for everyone.
Meanwhile, policymakers remain determined to spread these mandates in the name of protecting children. The U.K. pioneered the model. Many other governments followed. Twenty-five U.S. states have adopted similar laws. The list grows each month.
But governments cannot treat data breaches as acceptable collateral damage. Millions of citizens should not be forced to trade away privacy because policymakers refuse to acknowledge the risks. The result of this approach will be more surveillance, more breaches, more stolen personal data, and a steady erosion of civil liberties.
Privacy is the backbone of liberty in a digital world. Thomas Jefferson’s warning deserves repetition: “The natural progress of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield.”
Age-verification mandates accelerate that progress — and citizens pay the price.
Scamming Somalis Are The Love Children Of Dems’ Mass Welfare And Immigration Policies
If there was ever a perfect case study in just how destructive the Democrat Party’s top two policy priorities — mass welfare distribution and unchecked immigration from the Third World — are to America, it’s what continues to unfold in Minnesota. Federal prosecutors have uncovered hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars stolen over the past five years […]
Bad Presidents or Bad Government?
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Schumer’s Shutdown Is Empowering Trump To Drain The Swamp
The president’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce have gone into overdrive, and it is all thanks to Democrats in Congress.
United Nations Finally Recognizes Homeschooling — By Demanding Government Ruin It
Homeschooling embodies the basic American principles of self-governance, freedom, and the presumption that families know what is best for their children.
