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New jobs numbers highlight a surprising economic picture. We have some interesting guidance from the French about climate change. And we're going to talk about how voters view the importance of literacy. All of that and so much more today on 10 Minute Drill. Everybody get up. Get up. The story of America is the story of an adventure. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. We are a nation under God, and I believe God intended for us to be free. First off, today, there were fireworks in a House hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi. You can let her filibuster all day long, but not on our watch, not on our time. No way. And I told you about that Attorney general before you started. You don't tell me. I did tell you because we saw what you did in the Senate. Not even a lawyer. Committee will be in order. But first today, a a great and surprising jobs report on farm payrolls for January coming in twice expectations at 130,000. 130k. That would be the juiciest going back to April of last year when it was 158. This comes just days after historic stock market gains. I'm going to say that nobody's going to rain on my parade and these numbers are what they are. And 50k. I made this hat two months ago. I always think it's fun to hear from Rick Santelli on the economy. Now, this also goes along with new, important good news about hourly earnings. Average hour hourly earnings point four, 1% that is actually higher than the expectation. This is a series of very positive economic news at a time when there's been a lot of doom and gloom reporting for Republicans ahead of the midterms. Now, one thing that President Trump is and his team have been hyper focused on is making sure that as people see positive economic news in their lives, they're attributing it to the things that he did in the first year of his term. That includes things like positive tax returns. They're projecting $1,000 increased returns in everyone's tax returns this year. So President Trump is going to be on the road a lot this year trying to make sure people are making that connection between anything positive and they're seeing or feeling. With the economy and his efforts, we are barreling towards a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security with a deadline on Friday and Chuck Schumer continuing to blame Republicans. We are three days away from a DHS shutdown and Republicans have not gotten serious about negotiating a solution that reigns in ice and stops the violence. Democrats will not support a continuing resolution to extend the status quo. So what Schumer's saying there is Republicans have not gotten serious about playing the game that we're playing now. ICE is not in question here. ICE is funded through 2029. So this is exclusively about funding for things like FEMA, TSA, the Coast Guard and our national cybersecurity protections. Those are the things that are going to be defunded by Democrats if they don't get their way with this Friday deadline and Schumer saying Republicans won't meet us to play our game and have a serious conversation about their deeply unserious shutdown. Right. Reminds me a little bit of when my 3 year old is frustrated that we don't have time to sit down and play a game of Go Fish. He's not very good at Go Fish because he's three and a lot of times we'll humor him, but in situations like this, we're a little bit more focused on important things. I want to be clear. When the government shuts down, cyber threats do not and our adversaries work 24. 7. Even a brief lapse can have lasting consequences. That was the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency highlighting the fact that that those threats do not stop even if that agency loses funding because Democrats are trying to play a little game there. But here's tsa. As the shutdown went on and on last time, what we did see was an increase in unscheduled absences, which means folks calling out because they could not afford to show up to work. The other big one to watch is fema. We have had a series of terrible winter storms. People need support and Democrats are going to defund female so that they can send a signal to their base that they're serious about ICE, even though at the end of this exercise ICE will still be funded through 2029. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington, D.C. to meet with President Trump to talk about Iran and a number of other issues. After a nearly three hour long meeting, President Trump posted this on Truth Social. I've just finished meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel and various of his representatives. It was a very good meeting. The tremendous relationship between our two countries continues. There was nothing definitive reached other than I insisted that negotiations with Iran continue to see whether or not a deal can be consummated. Now, President Trump has insisted on continuing negotiations, particularly around Iran's nuclear program. But as these negotiations go on, President Trump has continued to move more and more assets into that region. They just announced that Another second aircraft carrier will move into the vicinity around Iran to continue increased pressure on them as they carry out these negotiations. There's a lot of discussion about whether or not this will lead to some kind of attack or not. But the protesters who have been waiting for some kind of relief for the last several weeks after President Trump encouraged them to go out and protest and told them help was on the way, is ongoing. This weekend, the Munich Security Conference is taking place. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is attending on behalf of the Trump administration. There are a number of prominent themes already being previewed for this conference. One of the prominent ones, of course, is the need for Europe to continue to build up their own defenses. Now, they have discussed this in the context of not being able to rely on America for their security because of America's messaging around things like Ukraine. But the reality is America, President Trump and even other leaders, not so much President Biden, who was a little bit less engaged on hot topics of the day. But we've been talking about the need for Europe to invest more in their own defense for decades. And so it's a very positive thing that they're talking about investing more themselves, particularly as we see aggression building up from Russia, China and Iran. So that's one theme here. But another key theme that we expect American leaders to talk about is the American and European relationship, which has been historically important to the entire world, but in the last several years has had a number of contentious issues. And one of the ones that I think Secretary of State Rubio will focus on is the non trade barriers that Europe is using to needle America. Now, America and the European Union have come up with trade deals and a lot of tenets of a strong path forward in our trade relationship. And some of those have been undermined by the European Union with things like their digital service taxes and their Digital Markets act, all these different tools that they've used to try and extract money from America and American companies and fund their own socialized health care and all sorts of crazy European programs. Now, as we've tried to come up with a path forward on a trade relationship, those outstanding issues have been increasingly prominent. So I expect that to be a theme from this Munich Security Conference. There's a new poll from the Bipartisan Policy center conducted by our friends at Echelon Insights focused on the increased concern about literacy. Reading and literacy skills among top education priorities. In new poll, the Bipartisan Policy center found broad support for a greater focus on literacy. But most say it's not getting the attention it needs from State leaders. Now, part of the reason I think this is notable is we've talked a lot about the failure of the public education system in our country. The fact that when the Department of Education was shut down, it was very difficult for people to explain why they were so important. When you consider the fact that the more money that we had spent on public education at the federal level, the, the worst outcomes seem to be. And with teachers unions being one of the most active political forces and them getting more and more money, as we see performances go down, this intensity has increased. One of the most interesting findings from that poll, when asked how important it is for their governor to make literacy a top priority after the economy, 76%, students ability to read, 63% was among the top issues voters named, including healthcare, 66% and public safety, 64%. So again, literacy and basic performance in schools is a growing concern. And part of it is the fact that we've seen such a decrease in performance through a lot of the national test scoring that we've seen over the last several years. There are states that are doing incredibly innovative things on this front, but the education establishment that we see often tied to a lot of dark money entities, teachers unions that are leading the fight against ice, but not necessarily the fight to help our kids learn to read and do math, it is a huge problem. And so we hope there will be continued focus on this in the midterms and for years to come. For our you can't make it up segment, today we go to France. A new report tells us that France is encouraging people to eat less meat for the sake of the climate. The French government issued a long awaited report Wednesday urging people to limit meat consumption for their health and also to fight climate change. And not everyone in the country of steak frites is thrilled. Now, if you take out meat, does that mean that they're just left with things like snails, baguettes and cigarettes? I don't know. But if I were encouraging the French at a time when they're trying to increase their own defenses, increase their ability to defend themselves, I would not be taking meat out of the equation. And in their honor, I commit to eating a really good steak at some point this weekend. That is all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for joining us on 10 Minute Drill. Please like subscribe, leave a review, tell your friends and have a great day.
