Rampant homelessness is on the rise again in Los Angeles, and according to Mayor Karen Bass, it’s all President Donald Trump’s fault. Homeless numbers in the city increased 3.4 percent according to the most recent yearly count, several news outlets reported Friday, with 45,194 people without a stable residence in the city and roughly 72,000 countywide. This despite some $3 billion spent each year on homeless programs in the city and county to address the problem, the California Post reported. The 3.4 percent increase includes people living in shelters. When the number of people sleeping outside in tents, encampments or in vehicles, the increase climbs to 7.9 percent from last year. “The Trump Administration has driven up the cost of gas, groceries and rent, pushing more families to the edge, and slashed critical safety net funding,” Bass said in a statement Thursday, according to KTLA. She claimed the administration cut federal housing assistance by 50% last year, stripping the city of $70 million. Spencer Pratt, her unsuccessful primary opponent, built his campaign on cleaning up the encampments and addressing a problem he alleged had nothing to do with a housing shortage or the price of rents. “Los Angeles doesn’t have a homelessness problem,” Pratt said repeatedly during the campaign. “We have a DRUG problem. The DEA will tell you that over 90% of the homeless population in LA are hardcore illicit drug users.” Several news outlets have reported that the increase could impact Bass’ reelection bid... United States Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer on Thursday announced “tariffs on 60 economies for their failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor.” “President Trump recognizes that decades of moral suasion have not eradicated forced labor from global supply chains,” Greer said. “The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it’s well past time for our trading partners to do the same.” The punitive tariffs are at least ten percent on a range of goods from the listed countries, rising to 12 percent in some cases. Those affected include the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, and the European Union in addition to China, arguably the world’s worst offender at using slavery to export products at cut-rate prices. The USTR said the affected countries supply 99.4 percent of America’s imports. Sky News noted that the slavery tariffs will “effectively replace the 10% global duty that Donald Trump imposed in February, following a Supreme Court ruling that declared his previous levies illegal.” A subcontractor who worked on former President Barack Obama’s (D) presidential center in Chicago, Illinois, has reportedly shut down operations and laid off workers in the latest drama linked to the property. Adamson Plumbing Contractors owner Mike Owen said his company closed down, laid off 25 union workers, and had to abandon multiple other construction jobs due to the business being owed nearly $4 million, Fox News reported Thursday. Indeed, the center was reportedly also costing taxpayers more and more money as it put out a call for unpaid volunteers even though its chief executive would be paid a salary of $740,000, according to reports. Meanwhile, Obama had reportedly wanted to make the center so big it made an architect [Tod Williams] “uneasy,” per Breitbart News. The former president and his wife, Michelle, welcomed numerous celebrities and other famous people for the center’s grand opening in June “even as the Center has been engulfed in controversy for allegedly stiffing many black-owned building contractors for their construction fees,” according to Breitbart News. Declines in the number of English-learning students enrolled in Florida and Texas public schools during the 2025–26 school year were associated with an estimated $835 million to $890 million reduction in education funding across the two states, according to an American Accountability Foundation report obtained exclusively by Breitbart News. The July 23 memorandum, issued by Thomas Jones of the American Accountability Foundation and addressed to the Republican Governors Association, attributes the enrollment changes to the Trump administration’s immigration-enforcement policies following several years of increases under former President Joe Biden. "The data is clear — ending Biden’s open borders leads to a lower burden on education budgets,” AAF concluded. “Put more simply, supporting the President’s border-enforcement and deportation policies means more funding for your local schools — nearly one billion dollars in these two states alone, in a single year.” Survivors of communist regimes described imprisonment, religious persecution, economic devastation, political indoctrination, and the loss of basic freedoms during a House Republican roundtable held July 21, while warning Americans against repeating the policies and ideas they said harmed their home countries. The roundtable, titled “A Warning to America: Stories from Survivors of Communism,” featured witnesses who fled or endured communist systems in China, Cuba, Venezuela, and the Soviet Union. House Republican Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-MI) exclusively told Breitbart News, “Survivors of communism are warning America because they have seen this story before,” McClain said. “Different countries. Different decades. Same result: poverty, persecution, and the loss of freedom. We would be fools not to listen.” https://www.danieldimartino.com/__;!!BSgrhSFG!DJjYS71ioCs3uu49d1GZOdpYcAnStBOsDxwTVj1vehrq4Jr4T8WqEBMEhG_effRmiFFVtiirsrWPpzOWbMvx9K1zI7Y $" target="_blank" rel="noopener external">Daniel Di Martino, an economist, Manhattan Institute fellow, and survivor of communist Venezuela, said, “The only good thing about having lived under socialism is that you learn how bad it is, and so you don’t want to make those same mistakes.” After coming to the United States a decade ago, Di Martino said he encountered people who argued that what happened in Venezuela “was not due to socialism” but was instead “just another corrupt government.” “There are many corrupt countries,” Di Martino continued. “Not many countries have 8 million people flee from their country, a third of the population. Not many countries starve to death, even corrupt countries, because you have to take people’s freedom for that to happen.” He then pointed to other countries, asking, “Do you see people starving in the streets of Dubai, even during the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz? No. Do you see refugees flowing out of Saudi Arabia when oil prices go down? Do you even see countries that are sanctioned starve to death? No.” “So why is Venezuela? Why is Cuba? Why are all these socialist countries different?” Di Martino asked. “Because the common denominator is that they destroy free enterprise. You cannot start a business. You cannot feed your family, therefore you die and you flee. It’s that simple.” https://www.foxnews.com/politics/expert-fled-cuba-warns-vicious-cycle-lead-communists-double-digits-congress__;!!BSgrhSFG!DJjYS71ioCs3uu49d1GZOdpYcAnStBOsDxwTVj1vehrq4Jr4T8WqEBMEhG_effRmiFFVtiirsrWPpzOWbMvxd9YryYY $" target="_blank" rel="noopener external">Mike Gonzalez, a survivor of communist Cuba and a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, referred to Zohran Mamdani, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, saying they “didn’t come out of nowhere.” “Somebody told them that our society is rotten. Somebody told them that we live in a country that is structurally oppressive. Somebody told them we live in a country that’s systemically racist,” Gonzalez said. “And what do you do when you believe that things are structurally oppressive or systemically racist? You have no other choice but to change the structures of the system, and this is what this kind of rhetoric is intended to do.” “Our schools created Mamdani,” Gonzalez continued....
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass Blames Trump for Reported Increase in Homeless Numbers:
U.S. Tariffs 60 Trading Partners, Including Europe and China, for Slave Labor Product Imports:
Report — Obama Presidential Center Subcontractor Forced to Shut Down over $4M Nonpayment Dispute:
Exclusive: Study Estimates Trump Immigration Enforcement Lowered Florida, Texas Education Funding Burden by up to $890 Million:
Communism Survivor: If U.S. Wants to Go Back to Stone Age then ‘Keep Looking for People Like Mamdani’