Cagle World

On Halloween night, parents now must decide between the traditional activity — taking the youngsters trick-or-treating — or a newer option: watching the World Series,

The fall classic once ended in mid-September, but could extend into November this year. World Series viewing is only practical for West Coast kids, thanks to late start times geared towards an East Coast audience.

Fans know that if MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred could have his way, the league would play regular season games on Christmas Eve in Auckland, New Zealand. Picture Manfred’s fantasy: robots calling the plays at all four corners and players’ uniforms adorned from collar to cleat with advertisements — walking billboards.

Until Manfred realizes his dream, he’ll content himself with adding new teams to the existing leagues. With expansion and the diluted talent pool anticipated before the end of the decade, there could be a major reshuffling of existing leagues to address concerns over brutal travel schedules. Candidates for new franchises include Nashville, Salt Lake City, a possible return to Montreal, or the long shot: Mexico City. Manfred will need to mandate domed stadiums before awarding new franchises. Post-season weather delays are inevitable as games are played later and later in autumn.

Disgruntled fans yearning for true baseball should turn back the pages to relive the greatest Halloween baseball ever played. On October 31, 1924, three Hall of Famers — Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, and Sam “Wahoo” Crawford — played an exhibition game for the ages. Ruth won his only batting crown that year, hitting .378. He led the league with 46 home runs and drove in 121 runs. Highlighted by the Bambino’s cloud-busting 550-foot home run, with a second four-bagger added for good measure, Ruth and the game live on in legend in tiny Brea, California.

Johnson, the “Big Train,” was a local hero. His family moved from Humboldt, Kansas — Johnson’s birthplace — to Olinda, California, just east of Brea, a small oil boomtown. As a frolicking teenager, Johnson rode his black mare “Tar,” worked the rough-and-tumble oil fields, and began pitching for the Union Oil Wells, a company team where he forged his future as a MLB 417-game winner.

Just a few weeks after Johnson’s Senators won the 1924 World Series against the New York Giants, the 36-year-old “Big Train” faced off against Ruth, who toed the slab and pitched a complete-game victory. The game, part of the Johnson-Ruth barnstorming tour, was played in brilliant Southern California sunshine.

In honor of the big day, schools were closed, shops shuttered, Boy Scouts directed traffic, and fans from nearby towns rushed to see baseball played by the best. Though the evidence is lost to time, rumors persist the Hall of Fame duo led the town’s first-ever Halloween parade.

The Brea Bowl erected two thousand seats to accommodate the town’s 1,500 residents, but 15,000 showed up. Those without seats settled for gathering around primitive radio crystal sets. An Anaheim Bulletin headline — “All roads lead to Brea for Monster Athletic Contest” — summed up the pregame excitement. The Los Angeles Times dubbed it “the greatest deluxe sandlot game Southern California has ever seen.” After all, the Dodgers’ move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and the Giants’ shift from New York to San Francisco were more than three decades away.

But Johnson, just days after his triumphant seventh-game World Series win, disappointed his hometown rooters with his substandard pitching performance. With only a day’s rest from an exhibition in Oakland and hampered by semi-pro catcher “Bus” Callan’s limited experience, Johnson was shelled — eight runs on eight hits, including four home runs. Later in his life, Callan revealed a secret about Ruth and his homers. Early in the game, Johnson told his catcher that the fans wanted to see Ruth do what he does best — hit the ball out of sight. During Ruth’s first two at-bats, Johnson grooved fat pitches that, to the fans’ glee, the Sultan of Swat blasted.

After the game, Johnson and Ruth visited Hollywood, with Douglas Fairbanks giving the two a set tour of his latest movie, “The Thief of Bagdad.” The Brea exhibition was the last game of the barnstorming season, beating the November 1 deadline set by baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Ruth operated at full throttle on his swing west, playing to an estimated 125,000 fans in 15 cities. “He made 22 scheduled speeches, headed four parades, judged a boxing match, drove a golf ball 353 yards, visited eighteen hospitals and orphan asylums,” Marshall Smelser wrote in his 1975 biography, “The Life That Ruth Built.”

–

Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

The political truism that citizens get the government they deserve is on full display in Chicago.

Interpreted, the truism means voters choose their leaders, and if conditions do not turn out as hoped, they should have been more cautious before casting their ballots.

Before Chicago elected Brandon Johnson, Windy City residents felt relief that, after four tumultuous years, the deeply unpopular Lori Lightfoot would be out of office. Lightfoot faced searing criticism about rising crime rates and her inept handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The incumbent was so disliked that she lost her 2023 re-nomination bid.

No one could possibly have imagined that her replacement, Johnson, would be less effective and less popular, currently polling at about 6% favorability, while being actively and unabashedly pro-crime.

Last month, Johnson shocked residents with his alarming statement: “The fact of the matter is, we are driving violence down in this city, and we’re using every single resource that’s available to us. Jails and incarceration and law enforcement is a sickness that has not led to safe communities.”

Johnson lied. Chicago violence is not down. Over a three-day span earlier this month in Chicago, the grim results included 29 gunshot casualties and four murders, according to the city’s police department. The victims included a 16-year-old with a gunshot wound from a drive-by shooting, a 62-year-old man and 23-year-old woman both shot in the legs while sitting in a garage, and a 33-year-old man shot twice in the chest by an unidentified male after an argument. The victim died from his injuries.

The ominous weekend statistics come as crime spikes higher and Johnson goes further off the rails. Through 2024, 573 Chicagoans were gun violence victims. In 2025, 339 people have been victims of homicides, mostly young, black, and male.

But the list of Johnson’s failures is as long as his arm. They include axing ShotSpotter, the gunshot detection system that uses acoustic sensor microphones placed in designated areas to identify and locate gunfire and notify police within 60 seconds (doing it so ineptly it cost the city millions of dollars) There’s also Johnson’s symbolic vote that called for an immediate Gaza cease-fire, a feeble public relations effort that as mayor of a Midwestern American city is far outside his responsibility. He also creating a $4.1 million “slave reparations” task force into the Land of Lincoln.

Johnson’s latest fiasco has confounded not only Chicago but the legal community nationwide. Recently, Johnson signed a ridiculous executive order creating “ICE-Free Zones” to ban federal agents from using city-owned property and the property of unwilling private owners as staging areas for immigration enforcement. The federal government has its own jurisdictional authority and can enter city and private property in pursuit of lawful operations. In terms of “staging” operations, the Constitution, not Johnson, protects citizens from having their property seized or used for quartering troops.

Most importantly, the City of Chicago cannot arrest federal officers who are conducting legitimate operations, a point that Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling noted when he said officers will not arrest federal law enforcement just “because someone deems what they are doing is illegal.” Legalities are unimportant to Johnson, who said, “We’re going to see people in court. As far as other authority that allows us to be able to enforce this ordinance, we’re exploring.”

The federal government has the right to enforce immigration laws and to deport illegal aliens, a crystal-clear legal fact. Congress passed such laws, and if politicians like Johnson and Governor J.B. Pritzker oppose them, they can seek to rescind deportation laws through Congress — democracy as it is truly defined.

Johnson should take a break from his chest-pounding bravado to speak with Chicago’s black residents. Most expressed outrage that Johnson stood idly by as Antifa and other local thugs attacked federal officials. As black residents applauded ICE officers as they went about their jobs removing criminals from the city, officials responded, “We work for you,” a statement neither the delusional Johnson nor Pritzker can honestly make.

–

Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Even President Donald Trump’s millions of critics cannot deny one central aspect of his character that has kept him at the forefront of U.S. presidential politics for more than a decade: Trump takes all questions, even from the most hostile reporters who have written bias stories about him. When Trump finishes his reply, everyone in the room knows exactly where he stands.

Most politicians, as they climb the political ladder, encourage questions but then do their best to dodge actually answering them. Trump breaks this mold.

Trump’s candid speaking style enabled him to secure the 2016 GOP presidential nomination against overwhelming odds. The 13½-month primary campaign began on March 23, 2015, when Texas Senator Ted Cruz entered the race, and ended on May 4, 2016, when John Kasich, former Ohio governor and nine-term U.S. Representative, conceded to Trump’s inevitable victory.

Throughout the campaign, Trump proved nimbler on his feet than his 17 opponents, all of whom had more direct political experience than the newcomer. His rivals included Cruz, Kasich, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, and former three-term New York Governor George Pataki. The New York Times described the presidential field as “tough and talented.”

After defeating his Republican opponents and his Democratic nemesis Hillary Clinton in debates hosted by NBC, CBS, and Fox News never-Trumper Chris Wallace, Trump won the presidency. His electoral successes shared a common denominator: straight talk that audiences might disagree with but would always leave them knowing exactly where he stood.

This background sets the stage for Trump’s approach to international forums like the United Nations General Assembly, where member nations may have anticipated his direct style when he spoke to them recently but were likely unprepared for the bluntness of his remarks. Trump addressed two of what he considered the world’s most pressing challenges: climate change, which he condemned as a fraudulent, budget-draining “con job,” and illegal immigration, which he referred to as “migration.”

Speaking from his position of strength — having implemented strict border policies that shut down the southwest border — the president urged assembled nations to stop “ruining” their countries with unchecked that facilitate illegal immigration. Trump criticized the UN, London mayor Sadiq Khan, European countries facilitating “uncontrolled migration,” Russian President Vladimir Putin, countries recognizing Palestinian statehood, former President Joe Biden, renewable energy initiatives, and what he called the “climate change hoax—the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He promoted an anti-globalist agenda throughout his remarks.

“Europe is in serious trouble,” Trump declared. “They have been invaded by a force of illegal aliens like nobody’s ever seen before. Illegal aliens are pouring into Europe, and nobody’s doing anything to change it or get them out. It’s not sustainable. Because they choose to be politically correct, they’re doing absolutely nothing about it.”

Trump hammered the UN for “creating new problems for us to solve,” referencing its refugee agency UNHCR, which receives billions in U.S. taxpayer funding and provides cash debit cards to illegal aliens along migration routes, further enabling a mass immigration crisis that American citizens neither want nor can afford.

Citing statistics from the Council of Europe, Trump stated: “In 2024, almost 50% of inmates in German prisons were foreign nationals or migrants. In Austria, the number was 53%. In Greece, it was 54%. And in Switzerland—beautiful Switzerland—72% of prison inmates are from outside of Switzerland.”

Trump specifically criticized London’s Mayor Khan, calling him “terrible” and claiming that London “has been so changed” that “now they want to go to Sharia law, but you’re in a different country—you can’t do that.” He argued that both immigration policies and “suicidal energy ideas” would “be the death of Western Europe if something is not done immediately.”

Trump emphasized the importance of national sovereignty: “What makes the world so beautiful is that each country is unique, but to stay this way, every sovereign nation must have the right to control their own borders. You have the right to control your borders, as we do now, and to limit the numbers of migrants entering their countries—paid for by the people of that nation who built that particular country with their blood, sweat, tears, and money. Now they’re being ruined.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage offered perhaps the most insightful commentary, suggesting that with Trump, people should “never take what he says literally, ever, on anything, but always take everything he says seriously. Farage continued, “He makes a comment and you might disagree with the tone, you might disagree with the context, you might disagree with the number that he puts out, but you find that what he says has a point.”

–

Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Mark Blomberg, baseball’s first designated hitter, grew up in Atlanta where hearing anti-Semitic slurs was a way of his young live.

Blomberg’s childhood dream of playing for the New York Yankees and in front of the Bronx’s large Jewish population came true when the Yankees made Blomberg its’ first free agent choice in 1967. Said Blomberg, “To be able to play in front of eight million Jews! Can’t beat it. I lit everyone’s candles for every bar mitzvah in the city.”

No fault of Blomberg’s the designated hitter ruined baseball’s reputation as the thinking man’s game. It relegated one of baseball’s biggest appeals – second guessing the manager and his roster moves, the old Hot Stove League pastime – to the dustbin.

The idea of a designated hitter was first raised by Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack in 1906. Mack saw its value, not necessarily as an option to generate offense but to save wear and tear on his pitcher’s legs. Owners rebuffed Mack’s concept as too radical. Prominent pitchers also rejected the idea of giving up hitting. In a 1918 article in Baseball Magazine, Babe Ruth said “the pitcher who can’t get in there in the pinch and win his own game with a healthy wallop, isn’t more than half earning his salary in my way of thinking.”

American League owners foolishly added the designated hitter in 1973, causing some silliness in the baseball world. During the World Series, games played in the American League used to use a designated hitter, while games in the National League did not. The annual All-Star Game also juggled designated hitters depending on which league hosted the game. Commissioner Rob Manfred, who never met a rule change he didn’t embrace, ended all that and announced a universal designated hitter rule would begin with the 2022 season. The rule was ratified as part of a new collective bargaining agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Association.

By 1973, Blomberg had a new role as Yankees’ designated hitter. Unsure exactly what that involved, Manager Ralph Houk explained to him, “You get up to bat, you take your four swings, you drive in runs, you come back to the bench, and you keep loose in the runway. You’re basically pinch-hitting for the pitcher four times in the same game.”

Injuries cut Blomberg’s Yankees’ time short. While his stats are not up to Hall of Fame standards, his first designated hitter bat and the uniform he wore that historic day are on display.

In retirement, Blomberg stays close to baseball. He runs the Ron Blomberg Baseball camp and is one of the most popular instructors at the Yankees fantasy camp. He does some high school and college scouting for the Yankees from his suburban Atlanta home. In 2007, Blomberg managed the Bet Shemesh Blue Sox of the first ever Israel Baseball League. In 2008, Blomberg and author Dan Schlossberg wrote his autobiography, Designated Hebrew.

Blomberg, 77, is in high demand as a motivational speaker, telling his story of perseverance and his successes. “Boomer,” as his Yankee teammates called him, works with the Israel Cancer Research fund where he serves as honorary chairman. He resides in Roswell, Georgia where, by all accounts, he’s a great guy and generous to all.

–

Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

The immigration enforcement action at Georgia’s Hyundai Motor plant earlier this month demonstrates how many things go wrong when the federal government ignores its own immigration laws for nearly 40 years.

Law enforcement officers arrested approximately 475 illegal aliens, roughly 300 of them South Koreans, on September 4 at an electric vehicle battery factory under construction near Savannah, Georgia. The venture is a joint project between Hyundai and fellow South Korean firm LG Energy Solution. At $7.6 billion, the undertaking represents the largest manufacturing project in Georgia’s history.

Steven Schrank, Homeland Security Investigations special agent in charge for Alabama and Georgia, said the raid marks the most significant single-site enforcement operation in the agency’s history, even though numerous other agencies —including Georgia State Patrol, the FBI, DEA, and ATF — were also involved.

During his press conference, Schrank explained multiple sources had contacted his office to report illegal immigrants were working inside the factory. A weeks-long investigation led to a judicial warrant allowing federal agents to proceed. Several immigration violations resulted in the arrests: illegal border crossings, unauthorized employment by visa waiver program participants, visa overstays, and the use of subcontractors to deflect hiring responsibility.

Solutions to most of these immigration violations are either already codified in law or have been proposed to Congress, where they died quietly.

Illegal Entry has been commonplace under both Republican and Democratic administrations since President Ronald Reagan’s Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Although illegal immigration’s harmful effects on schools, hospitals, population growth, and crime became more visible and consequential over the years, one administration after another turned a blind eye to significant illegal immigration until President Joe Biden opened the gates to millions.

During the four decades between Reagan and Biden, Congress consistently promised amnesty for illegal aliens. Amnesty serves as a pull factor that encourages more illegal immigration. After Reagan signed his 1986 legislation into law, the illegal alien population dropped to nearly zero since most unlawfully present immigrants chose to become lawful permanent residents. Ten years later, when President Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act, analysts estimated the illegal population had soared to approximately 11 million.

The Visa Waiver Program the Koreans exploited allows citizens from pre-approved countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business for up to 90 days without a visa. As the Hyundai raid demonstrated, the program represents another immigration vulnerability. Qatar is the latest country added to the program, bringing the total number of eligible nations to 41. The State Department cannot determine whether Qatar is friend, foe, or both. Regardless, Qatar’s citizens can enter and blend into the general population irrespective of their intentions.

Visa overstays occurred when Korean workers improperly used B-1 or B-2 visas. The B-1 allows paid employment only under extremely limited circumstances, while the B-2 temporarily admits holders to the U.S. for tourism, family visits, or medical emergencies. Violating these visa conditions means the Koreans committed visa fraud.

Hyundai introduced a new wrinkle into the illegal hiring process — subcontractors who worked for other subcontractors.

The subcontracting process circumvents laws that prohibit hiring illegal aliens. Hyundai and other employers dependent on cheap labor direct job applicants to subcontracting staffing agencies, then hire them through these intermediary agencies. Employers believe they are shielded from immigration law because they have master service agreements stating that verifying immigration status is not their responsibility.

Using subcontractors is commonplace in industries like manufacturing and trucking that depend on undocumented labor. Both employers and subcontractors, each trying to avoid criminal responsibility, play a “don’t blame me” game.

However, E-Verify serves as a stronger deterrent to undocumented immigrant employment than any other program. This Internet-based system compares information entered by employers from employees’ Form I-9 documents to records available to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration, confirming employment eligibility. Available since 1996, E-Verify would have quickly determined the 450 Koreans employed at Hyundai were not legally authorized to work in the U.S. Assuming Hyundai had acted responsibly and legally, the Koreans would never have been hired.

Yet E-Verify’s effectiveness aside, Congress has refused to legislatively mandate the program, thus leaving American workers to suffer the consequences. Even more inexcusable, despite its benefits, the House has never brought E-Verify to the floor for a full vote.

Notwithstanding his fervent America First advocacy, President Trump has never championed E-Verify. Had he done so, thousands of U.S. jobs at Hyundai would have gone to Americans instead of illegally present Koreans.

–

Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Even the most devoted MAGA supporters occasionally wish that President Trump talked less.

If Trump spoke less, he might be able to steer clear of the missteps his loquaciousness makes inevitable. White House stenographers, skilled at documenting the permanent record, cannot keep up. Since Trump’s inauguration, when he spoke 22,000 words, his verbal output has been consistently overwhelming. In just one week during his second term, the president clocked over 7 hours and 44 minutes of speaking — 81,235 words.

As an example of how President Trump’s chattiness gets him in trouble, consider his recent off-handed statement during an Oval Office meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung. President Trump thoughtlessly said the United States would allow 600,000 Chinese students to enter the country to study at American colleges and universities — a figure that represents more than twice the current Chinese student enrollment, which stood at about 277,000 last year. Most of the Chinese students will study science, technology, engineering, and math — the vital STEM fields.

Trump made his statement in response to reporters’ questions about U.S.-China relations amid ongoing trade negotiations. He emphasized the importance of maintaining a positive relationship with Beijing, stating: “I hear so many stories that we’re not going to allow their students… We’re going to allow their students to come in. It’s very important, 600,000 students. It’s very important. But we’re going to get along with China.”

The president linked his call for expanded visas for Chinese students to broader economic ties, noting the U.S. is “taking a lot of money in from China because of the tariffs and the different things” and describing the relationship as “much better economically than it was before with Biden.”

Predictably, a few days later, the White House attempted to walk back the president’s comments, saying his remarks simply reflected “a continuation of existing policy.” The MAGA faithful were unimpressed and, pointing to American university applicants’ displacement, intellectual property theft, and national security concerns, they pushed for a dramatic cut — perhaps to zero — in Chinese student enrollment.

If only 700 U.S. students are studying in China, allowing more than a quarter of a million admissions from the nation’s avowed number one enemy is self-defeating.

More important are the national security concerns. Republican and Democratic administrations have consistently ignored the obvious threat Chinese students represent. In early May, Stanford University discovered a Chinese Communist Party agent disguised as a student who was engaged in espionage. A Stanford Review investigative journalist concluded China is orchestrating a widespread intelligence-gathering campaign at Stanford that has enabled spies to infiltrate Palo Alto.

Also consider that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s only daughter, Xi Mingze, a 2014 Harvard graduate who enrolled under an assumed name, is believed to still be living in the U.S., possibly in Cambridge. No one knows who the unvetted Xi Mingze knew at Harvard, what secrets she may have uncovered — remember U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s tawdry liaison with Fang-Fang — or what confidential information she may have shared with her powerful father.

The dangerous truth is on national security, China is a serious and powerful country, while the U.S. is frivolous and unconcerned about self-preservation.

Asked about Trump’s talkativeness, some shrug their shoulders — “Trump being Trump,” they say. But a significant percentage of the president’s base insist his comments about increasing Chinese students prove how little he understands about immigration, and especially how limited his knowledge is about legal immigration’s complexity.

Dozens of employment-based visas, like the H-1B, H-2B, the L, and the F-1 student visa, should be dramatically reduced. President Trump can rely on deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to guide him. But when left to ramble on about immigration with a disturbing lack of discipline, he’s likely to put his foot in his mouth.

All Trump truly knows about immigration is that taking a tough stance against the illegal variety helps get him elected.

–

Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

The wonder is how someone who has reached such high elected office could be so clueless about the political game’s fundamentals.

Gavin Newsom — twice-elected San Francisco mayor, twice-elected Lieutenant Governor, and twice-elected governor, plus winner of a 2011 recall election — hasn’t the foggiest idea about basic political strategy. His $30 million net worth helped, as did his far-left agenda and well-placed connections, including those to the Pelosi family.

But Newsom, consumed by Trump Derangement Syndrome, remains oblivious to national politics’ first rule: tack to the middle. Reaching the middle ground may be less important in this era of progressive extremism, but nevertheless, the center remains a good launching pad for presidential campaigns.

At his recent speech at Los Angeles’ Japanese American Museum, Newsom — surrounded by radicals including Mayor Karen Bass and U.S. Senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla — opened with a paean to diversity, declaring Los Angeles the world’s “most diverse city, in the most diverse country, in the most diverse state.”

His speech may have resonated a decade ago, but the governor appears unaware that California and the nation have moved rightward in recent elections. Newsom’s more serious misjudgment is that he missed an opportunity to reach Independents and undecided voters. Instead, they came away with the valid impression that Newsom is as extreme as they thought… or worse.

The Primary Challenge

Newsom’s first objective is winning the primary, a formidable challenge requiring immediate groundwork. Prevailing in the primary will be tough. Las Vegas bookmakers, who are rarely wrong, have pegged Newsom with only a modest lead over Pete Buttigieg for the 2028 nomination. While that’s three years away, it’s not so far in the future that Newsom can squander valuable time.

If Newsom expects to reach the Oval Office, he must court middle-of-the-road voters. However, he’ll have to defend against hard facts about California’s current state.

California’s Economic Reality

Newsom brags that California has the nation’s largest economy and, having just surpassed Japan, ranks as the world’s fourth largest at $4.1 trillion, behind only the U.S., China, and Germany. But California’s impressive multi-trillion-dollar economy masks significant flaws.

Economic Stagnation: The Legislative Analyst’s Office wrote in its report on California’s financial health: “California’s economy has been in an extended slowdown for the better part of two years, characterized by a soft labor market and weak consumer spending. While this slowdown has been gradual and the severity milder than a recession, recent economic data paints a picture of a sluggish economy. Outside of government and health care, the state has added no jobs in a year and a half.”

Minimal Labor Force Growth: Since February 2020, the state’s labor force has grown by just 126,100 workers — a mere 0.6% increase. The state’s 5.5% unemployment rate is higher than all but Nevada and has remained stuck at an elevated position for several years. Beacon Economics noted in a recent analysis: “This slower growth is being driven largely by the state’s chronic housing shortage and the retirement of aging workers.”

High Cost of Living: California suffers from high housing prices, gas, and electricity costs that drive people away, making it difficult for many to afford living there. Electricity rates rank among the nation’s highest and are growing faster than in other states due to wildfires and climate change initiatives. According to a USC analysis, California gas prices could rise 75% by the end of 2026 when they will reach $8.

Business Exodus: High taxes and regulations have driven businesses to relocate, with notable examples including Elon Musk’s X and SpaceX and Hilton Hotels. Since 2019, over 200 companies — including Chevron, Hewlett-Packard, Palantir, and Charles Schwab — have left California, pushed out by increasing business burdens, high tax rates, and crippling regulations.

Quality of Life Issues: Traffic, pollution, and long commutes negatively impact daily life and diminish overall quality of life throughout the state.

Housing Crisis: Strict zoning laws and limited supply have created a severe housing shortage that continues to worsen.

Policy Conflicts: Some residents feel the state’s liberal policies don’t align with their values. Recent controversies include lawsuits against California doctors and hospitals for allegedly rushing a 12-year-old into gender transition, Newsom’s plans to use taxpayer dollars to impede U.S. deportation efforts including paying for legal services for illegal and criminal immigrants, and new initiatives to block voter identification requirements.

Nowhere in this dismal record exists a platform from which Newsom could successfully begin a presidential campaign. That won’t stop him from forging ahead, however. With luck, once his presidential dreams are dashed, Newsom’s fate will mirror Kamala Harris’s — out of sight and out of mind.

–

Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

President Donald Trump has a second golden opportunity to end a visa program that has displaced millions of qualified Americans.

During his first presidency, Trump — who campaigned on a “Hire American” platform — let the opportunity to cut 85,000 H-1B visa foreign nationals from the labor market and replace them with U.S. tech workers slip through his hands. In 2017, President Trump’s first year in the White House, the H-1B visa represented a grave threat to U.S. tech workers and recent college graduates seeking entry-level, white-collar technology jobs.

Today, the tech job market is more dire.

In 2024, 384 tech companies — including Cisco Systems, Intel, mMicrosoft, Meta, and Amazon — laid off 124,000 workers. That’s on top of the 428,449 tech workers who lost their jobs in 2022 and 2023. In the current year to date, 100,000 jobs were cut. Meanwhile, H-1B petitions hit the fiscal year cap within six months, and foreign nationals received 82% of all new tech jobs.

Offshoring has reached record highs, with entire shadow economies emerging worldwide to replace American tech jobs which led to office closures across the nation. U.S.-headquartered multinational enterprises that employ workers both abroad and domestically have grown their offshore workforce faster in recent years than their onshore workforce. Among these companies, the number of offshore workers grew by 32% since 2019, while those employed onshore grew by 16.7% — a net 15.3% increase in offshore employment.

President Trump has done outstanding work securing the Southwest border. Within six months, border apprehensions dropped to zero — an all-time monthly low. Now is the time for the president to turn his attention to ending the dozens of temporary non-immigrant visas that include work authorization. He should start by curtailing the H-1B, an idea that first came to him in June 2020. More than five years ago, President Trump signed an executive order that directed the secretaries of Labor and Homeland Security to take appropriate actions within 45 days to protect any adverse effects on wages and working conditions caused by H-1B visa holders including doing work at 3rd party sites.

Nothing productive came of that order, perhaps because by November President Trump would be a lame duck. At a recent White House AI summit, however, President Trump hinted that he’s again leaning in the right direction. For too long, the president said, much of America’s tech industry has pursued “radical globalism” that left millions of Americans feeling “distrustful and betrayed.” Many of our largest tech companies, the president continued, “have reaped the blessings of American freedom while building their factories in China, hiring in India, and shifting profits to Ireland. All the while dismissing [via H-1B hires] and even censoring their fellow citizens right here at home. Under President Trump, those days are over.”

Congress has also taken notice of the negative impact the H-1B visa has in academia. Representatives Tom Tiffany (R-Wisc.) and Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) introduced the Colleges for the American People Act, or CAP Act, which would end the long-standing H-1B visa cap exemption for U.S. colleges and universities. If enacted, all prospective foreign hires seeking to enter on a U.S. visa — including administrators and professors — would be required to compete under the existing visa cap. Wisconsin Right Now found that the University of Wisconsin System employs nearly 500 foreign workers on H-1B visas, earning salaries totaling almost $43 million annually — income that could have gone to qualified U.S. citizens.

Guest worker visa programs have operated on autopilot for so long that both Republican and Democratic administrations have either forgotten about or stopped caring about its collective and devastating effect on the domestic labor market. In 2024, an estimated 740,000 H-1B holders and an additional 100,000 H-4B visas designated for H-1B holders’ spouses were issued. Another j500,000 work-authorized foreign nationals with temporary, unnecessary visas compete with Americans for employment in a shrinking labor market.

For President Trump to fulfill his America First agenda, he must slash legal visas that allow temporary workers easy access to blue and white-collar jobs yet rarely require them to return home. He should take aim at the biggest offender—the H-1B visa, which President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall called “one of the best con jobs ever done on the American public and political systems.”

Ample evidence from left-leaning and conservative think tanks supports Marshall’s brutally honest assessment of the H-1B visa.

–

Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

For stumping political candidates, vowing to build affordable housing remains one of their biggest rallying cries.

Presidential candidate Kamala Harris promised three million new housing units over four years, along with tax incentives and $25,000 down payment assistance for first-time buyers. Harris also proposed a whopping $40 billion innovation fund that would empower local governments to fund and support community solutions for housing construction.

When she made her campaign promise, Harris had been hearing about affordable housing from her Democratic peers for more than 20 years. In 2002, then-California Governor Gray Davis signed a package of bills designed to address the state’s housing crisis. Davis promised that the package would provide “new, affordable housing being built all across the state. More families will have the American dream of home ownership within their grasp.”

Two decades later, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a 56-bill package that he said would “incentivize and reduce barriers to housing and support the development of more affordable homes.” As of April, Newsom’s vision for the California home market remained deeply flawed, with a median sale price of $910,000 for houses on that date.

Governors Janet Mills of Maine, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, and Maura Healey of Massachusetts have all bemoaned home shortages and signed multi-million-dollar bills they hope will solve the problem of high housing demand and limited supply. Healey signed the Affordable Homes Act, which authorized $5.2 billion to be spent on housing over the next five years and established 50 policy initiatives to counter rising prices.

Fifty policy initiatives may be overkill — too many cooks spoil the broth. As Edward Pinto, senior fellow and co-director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Center, noted, it’s “much, much harder” for the government to pass “supply-side proposals” compared with efforts that generate demand by making home-buying easier for consumers. Pinto concluded that Harris’s plan was worse than doing nothing.

Then-candidate and former President Donald Trump also discussed ways to increase housing supply as part of his presidential campaign proposals. “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction,” Trump said in an August 15 press conference. “We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”

Since President Trump’s election, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced plans to identify federal lands where affordable housing could be built. Turner and Burgum will launch the Joint Task Force on Federal Land for Housing to find underutilized lands for residential development and to streamline the process of transferring lands for housing use.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, they promoted the plans as a way to increase housing supply and lower costs for Americans. They wrote:

“Working together, our agencies can take inventory of underused federal properties, transfer or lease them to states or localities to address housing needs, and support the infrastructure required to make development viable—all while ensuring affordability remains at the core of the mission.”

The Interior Department oversees more than 500 million acres of federal land, and the department contends that much of it is suitable for residential use. However, implementation would likely take decades, if it happens at all. Most of the developable land is in western states like California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Oregon, Idaho, and Colorado, said Bureau of Land Management Director Jon Raby. The lands vary widely, ranging from deserts and grasslands to mountains and forests.

Most of the federal government’s land — whether west or east — lacks the required water and sewage infrastructure to support new communities. Environmental groups are concerned that development will adversely affect wildlife habitat. As Raby noted, “People love their public lands. Every acre is important to somebody.”

Nowhere in HUD or DOI’s planning is a commitment to scrutinize sustainability. The constant factor in affordable housing is population growth. With more than one million legal immigrants admitted annually and chain migration — which allows each immigrant to petition for an average of three non-nuclear family members who can eventually petition their own families — housing developments, even those built in remote areas, will eventually be overwhelmed.

Reducing the number of people competing for existing affordable housing would automatically create more of this elusive commodity.

–

Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

For an organization the FBI once probed for possible violations involving human traffickers and document forgers, the Los Angeles Dodgers have adopted high-and-mighty airs.

Since no legal avenue exists to travel from communist Cuba to the United States, the Department of Justice wondered how, in 2012, the Dodgers managed to get outfielder Yasiel Puig to Los Angeles.

In 2018, Sports Illustrated obtained a large dossier of information originally provided to the FBI. The dossier included videotapes, photographs, confidential legal briefs, receipts, copies of player visas and passport documents, internal emails, and private communications among franchise executives. The evidence pointed to how smugglers access underground pipelines to ferry prospects from Cuba to Haiti or Mexico — waystations to MLB riches.

The Dodgers, with their extensive scouting operations throughout the Caribbean, were prominently featured in the FBI dossier, which described efforts to circumvent federal and MLB laws. Puig, for example, paid Florida businessman Gilberto Suarez $2.5 million from his $42 million Dodgers bonus to help him travel from Mexico, where he had been holed up in a cheap seedy motel, to Los Angeles. The DOJ found evidence of shredded documents and large-scale forgeries. The criminal activity reached its peak when Cuban Jose Abreu testified under oath before a grand jury that, prior to his arrival in Miami from another smuggler’s route through Haiti, he ate his fake passport and washed it down with a Heineken.

“I knew I could not arrive in the U.S. with a false passport,” Abreu said before signing his $68 million contract with the Chicago White Sox.

The recent dust-up outside Dodger Stadium consisted of a relatively small group of malcontents, unemployed agitators, and immigration activists. The gathering was responding to an NBC News report that quoted Eunisses Hernandez, a Los Angeles City Council member, who alleged she received calls stating that “federal agents were staging here at the entrance of Dodger Stadium. We got pictures of dozens of vehicles and dozens of agents.”

The Department of Homeland Security immediately responded to deny that ICE had plans to take removal action in or around Dodger Stadium. Despite that, the Dodgers boasted that they blocked ICE from entering their grounds.

Prohibiting federal law enforcement from entering and conducting lawful business constitutes a federal crime; “The current policy allows ICE agents to enter public areas without permission.” Independent journalist Ali Bradley provided the backstory, reporting: “CBP teams went to Hollywood Home Depot to make apprehensions. They did, and we’re going to transfer the illegal aliens to transport vans off Sunset Boulevard, but when things escalated outside of Home Depot, they went to an open parking lot at Dodger Stadium to make the consolidated transfer. Agents say no one came over and told them to leave.”

In his book “Baseball Cop: The Dark Side of America’s National Pastime,” Eduardo Dominguez, a decorated Boston police officer, a FBI agent and then a MLB Department of Investigations task force member, documented his ongoing efforts to alert MLB executives to the trafficking crimes that brought Cuban players to their teams. Aiding and abetting and human trafficking are federal crimes, and cases could potentially be made against major league teams that sign Cuban players. MLB ignored Dominguez’s warnings and attempted to suppress his well-received book’s publication. MLB desperately sought to prevent public access to the book and hired law firm Clare Locke to threaten Dominguez and his publisher with defamation lawsuits if the book were published.

Later fired, Dominguez said that he could not understand how MLB was so dismissive of a federal investigation’s findings.

The Dodgers are more than just a baseball team — they are a politically progressive, DEI-focused multibillion dollar business that acts in what it perceives as its best interests, including misrepresenting what occurred with ICE. MLB operates as a collective $79 billion industry, with the Dodgers representing a $6.9 billion segment of that market.

In a word salad announcement, the Dodgers pledged $1 million — an infinitesimal fraction of the team’s value — to assist illegal immigrant families who claim to be adversely affected by ICE operations. The Dodgers and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred maintain in-house legal counsel and have immediate phone call access to the nation’s most experienced outside attorneys. They should rely on that legal expertise to assess the validity of DHS immigration removal operations when they occur.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers’ fan base should recognize the reality of their team’s transformation. The Dodgers are no longer the romanticized “Boys of Summer” – they are multimillion-dollar athletes employed by billionaire corporate executives who show criminal disregard for federal immigration laws.

–

Copyright 2025 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].