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Welcome to Ben Meiselas on Breaking news. I'm Ben Meiselas and this is Breaking News. We've got a lot to discuss, starting with the really bad jobs report this morning. January layoffs surged to a 17 year high as US employers announced 108,435 layoffs in January. That's up 205% from December and the highest January total since 2009 during the Great Recession, right after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. There's a lot of comparisons to right now and 2009. It's not a good thing when all of these comparisons as it relates to people being laid off and people not getting the manufacturing jobs that they were promised and a lot of comparisons to 2009, economists are saying things like this sobering data from Challenger. That's the group that does these reports. And by the way, we have to rely on groups like Challenger because our own government is not doing reports that are up to the level that they once were. So sobering data from Challenger on the US labor market announced job cuts in January more than doubled year over year, hitting their highest level since the 2009 Great Recession. Most notably, these layoffs are occurring while the GDP continues to grow at approximately 4%, accelerating the decoupling of employment from economic growth. And that is another way of saying that the billionaires are getting richer doing deals with each other over AI while screwing over everybody else who not only are not feeling the impact, but are being significantly adversely harmed by this Trump economy. As Heather Long, an economist, writes, the US Hiring recession shows no sign of ending. Job openings fell to 6.5 million in December. That is the lowest level since September 2020 during COVID So these comparisons are Covid Great Recession. The hiring rate remains anemic, 3.3%. Firms aren't even thinking about hiring right now outside potentially of healthcare and AI. And we know the Trump regime is out there attacking healthcare and also having unregulated AI to screw over we the people. You know, I just did an interview with assembly member Boris over in New York State Assembly District 73. He's running for Congress in the 12th Congressional District there. That's that open primary, Nadler's previous seat. And Boris's main agenda is talking about the threats posed by AI. And for those who don't know his background, he worked in Palantir like five years. And he resigned, quit from Palantir in 2019, where he started to see the links between Palantir and Ice in 2019. 2019 is when he resigned there and so he's made his platform to call out the dangers of AI, but harness its powers, but call out the dangers of unregulated AI. And so a super PAC has devoted tens of millions of dollars to try to defeat him. And anyone who speaks out against AI, you know, are getting attacked by these right wing oligarchs right now. It should be noted as well. Remember, Donald Trump said that he was the. By the way, we're going to talk in this episode about Trump's Epstein cover up. Okay. And what we're learning more as well. We're going to talk about that deranged interview that Donald Trump gave with NBC where he talks about cognitive exams. And we're going to talk about the Senate hearings that have been taking place with Treasury Secretary Bessen. I just, I think it's important that we start episodes like this with areas that are not getting enough attention. Attention, because we've been talking about Epstein when it was not getting enough attention. Right. And that's what I pride ourselves in this network about. Because we were talking about, you know, Epstein files since this network was founded. We were doing deep dives. Melania's dark past, Trump's dark past videos. I was doing interviews with the survivors five years ago. We were talking about what was going on then. So know it's getting a lot of attention. I've done deep dive videos into the Epstein files. I've done the links between Putin and the Epstein files and Epstein's communications with Russia and whether Epstein was involved in a KGB kind of honey trap network right there. We've done deep dives. I did one this morning showing emails that seem to suggest that Donald Trump and Epstein were having communications through 2019, through Epstein's death, either directly or indirectly, that there was still at least back channels taking place. Go watch that video I did this morning on it, we did a whole video of Melania's name appearing in the Epstein files and described what happened there. And so we've been focused on another dark secrets of the Epstein files. So go back and watch those videos where we do deep dives, email by email, text message by text message. But I just think it's important where people aren't focused on the threats posed by AI, which we're seeing impacting job numbers right now, and data centers. And people are terrified about what's happening. And you have that taking place at the same time ICE and Border Patrol Gestapo continue to terrorize and torture people across this country. Citrus and Greg Bevino, who led Border Patrol, who was forced out of his position after border patrol thugs, SS Gestapo murdered Alex Pretty. And, you know, Bavino was out there like partying in Vegas and he was actually kicked out of the bar that he was at. No, no one wants this guy around. You know, this guy's terrorizing people. You, you don't get to enter polite society and hang out in Vegas, okay? When you terrorize and torture people. People hate Bavino right now from, from all political parties at this point. Talk more about that. But crypto, have you seen what's going on in the crypto market right now? Tanking Crypto has lost $2 trillion in value since October's 2025 peak. As a sell off deepens right there. And as the Kobayasi letter explains, it's absolutely insane. On October 6th, crypto markets hit a record high market cap of 4.3 trillion. Today, the crypto market is worth just 2.3 trillion and I think less now, losing $2 trillion worth of market cap in four months. In other words, 46% of crypto's entire value has been wiped out. Also, Donald Trump's company, World Liberty Financial, you know, the one that UAE funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into in what appeared to be a quid pro quo or uae, then got our most highly classified semiconductor chips. Do you remember? You remember that? Well, World Liberty Financial just sold $5 million worth of Bitcoin. One of the things that they were doing when bitcoin was at its highest price, they were hoarding bitcoin when bitcoin was like at $135,000 a Bitcoin or at its peak. So they bought high, sold panic, sold low right now. And the crashing crypto markets, by the way, this is everything Trump touches dies. Trump steps into this space, they focus on no regulation at all, where you can't even have an accounting of, of where this crypto is being mined and who's holding on to it and creating a very inefficient market that lacks transparency or any regulation at all. Same issues we're seeing with AI and it's all related here. And now we're seeing a massive crash. Like one of the worst market crashes imaginable. Like 48, like a 50% drop. That's great Depression stuff right there. Dipped into the 60s, 60,000 today. We'll talk about that. I want to also talk about Virginia on this episode, because in Virginia, the Democrats in both of their chambers finally got out and they've been working great. In Virginia, you've got the Senate Pro tempore, State Senator Lucas. And you've got their speaker, Speaker Scott, and they said they were going to do a 10 to 1 map in the Commonwealth of Virginia to add Democratic congressional seats. And they did their ten to one map. And so Donald Trump's gerrymandering scheme absolutely backfired. Absolutely backfired in his face. And that's the thing with Donald Trump, is that there's evil, malicious, but then also stupid. And it also shows you why when you stand up to this guy, you can win. And he's a loser. He's been a lifelong loser who has just conned people his entire life. So you got to give a hat tip to California Governor Gavin Newsom for immediately kicking into high gear doing Prop 50, right, saying, okay, Texas, you're going to try to rig the midterms with five Republican seats. Okay, well, in California, we'll do it the right way. We're not just going to have the legislature pass something. We're going to do a referendum, Prop 50, the people can vote on it. And we're doing it in response to Texas. Prop 50 overwhelmingly was approved by California voters who said, yes, this is what we need to do to fight back. And it set the tone for the rest of the nation. We're now with Virginia and other states. Democrats look like they're going to pick up seats. And not only that, in order for Republicans to try to create Republican seats in Texas, they had to dilute safe Republican seats or what or what they claimed were safe Republican seats or thought were safe Republican seats in order to bring voters over to the Democratic seats to try to wipe out Democratic seats. So let's just say a district that may be plus 17. Let's say in Texas, where there is a plus 2 Democratic district and a plus 17 Republican district, what they may try to do is dilute that 17 to, say, a plus 10 and then add those seven to the plus two Democrats. So now it's a plus five red district. So they believe it's a Republican pickup. Right. So they the 17 goes down to 10. The plus two blue or democrat now goes up to a plus five red republican in their minds because they're viewing it based on 20, 24 voter trends. See that math game right there? And now anything that's plus 15, plus 17 Democrats are winning in Texas and across the rest of this country right now. So now what actually could have happened is the Republicans in Texas creating multiple more Democratic seats, possibly by diluting what they thought were safe Republican seats. But the thing is, this is how Donald Trump is treating America in international policy as well. It's why China is outmaneuvering the us the eu, Canada, India, all these countries are outmaneuvering the US And US Is not from a position of strength negotiating, it's from an utter position of weakness. That's what we're seeing over and over again from Trump. Why don't I share, why don't we start off with some good news? And so let me show you Virginia State Senator and President pro tempore, the Senate pro tempore, Senator Luis Lucas. Here's what she and Speaker Scott said moments ago. Let's play it.