Dec. 19, 2025

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

 

 

Trump Has Shut Down The Border Completely As Foreign-Born Nationals Have Decreased 2.03 Million

By Robert Romano

President Donald Trump has completely secured the southern border, with just 108,361 border encounters since he took office on January 20, the latest data through November from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows.

That compares to more than 10 million such border encounters the entire time former President Joe Biden was in office from 2021 to 2024, averaging more than 2.5 million a year. 

What a difference a president can make. 

Biden, who insisted the border could only be secured by an act of Congress, instead was shown up by Trump, who showed that no, it takes a Commander-in-Chief who is willing to put the U.S. military on the border to protect the country. 

Deployed since January, combined with continued construction of the southern border wall, there is finally a deterrent against the unbridled illegal immigration that Biden allowed — and invited. 

That’s a decrease of around 95 percent of southwest border encounters from its 2024 level of 2.1 million, stopping any net gains in the foreign-born population, which, as a result, has declined by 2.03 million since January to 48.6 million, according to the latest data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s the largest decrease seen since President Trump was last in office.

Only part of the equation are formal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removals, according to the Department of Homeland Security. “Since January 20, DHS has arrested more than 595,000 illegal aliens,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin on Dec. 10, adding, “DHS has deported more than 605,000 illegal aliens and another 1.9 million have self-deported.”

So, that’s a total decrease of 2.5 million illegal aliens, offset partially by the normal legal immigration and temporary tourism, showing the net decrease of more than 2 million. 

In other words, just by cutting off the flow of new illegal aliens, and creating an opportunity for those already here to leave, many are choosing to just go. 

Now, one data point worth noting is the Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts a statistical population adjustment of the overall population every January. Sometimes it goes up, and sometimes it goes down. It’s the same adjustment that factors into employment and unemployment statistics.

For example, from Dec. 2024 to Jan. 2025, there was an increase of 3 million in the overall population, of which 1.6 million was attributed to the foreign-born population. If that happened again, it would appear to offset the removals to date, but that’s not the way to look at it. It would just mean the population had been underestimated in the preceding adjustment. Whereas, if it decreased, that would mean the preceding adjustment had overestimated the population. Whichever way that goes, don’t read too much into it.

The numbers to focus on the arrivals and the departures reported by the Department of Homeland Security. And on that count, President Trump has kept his word to secure the border and see the removal of illegal aliens who should have never been here in the first place.

Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government Foundation. 

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/12/trump-has-shut-down-the-border-completely-as-foreign-born-nationals-have-decreased-2-03-million/

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Cartoon: Babe Truth

By A.F. Branco

Click here for a higher level resolution version.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/12/cartoon-babe-truth/ 

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One Huge Advantage Conservatives Have As Trust In Mainstream Media Collapses — Messaging In Digital Spaces  

By Manzanita Miller  

A complete collapse in public trust in mainstream news media is changing how political parties reach voters, and according to a left-leaning tech group’s warning to the Democratic Party, it is conservatives who are adapting in the digital age, not the left.   

Trust in the mainstream media has been plummeting for the past half a century, but it took a precipitous decline after the last two presidential election cycles, the pandemic, and the way the media apparatus has repeatedly overstepped the bounds of journalism to undermine the Trump Administration. 

In 2020, a dubious 40 percent of Americans held a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the mainstream media according to Gallup, but that number has plummeted to a mere 28 percent. The latest NPR News/Marist poll reveals that by nearly a three-to-one margin, the American people do not trust the mainstream media — 74 percent to 25 percent. Only six percent of adults have a great deal of confidence in the media. The largest share — 39 percent — have not very  much confidence in the media and the remaining 45 percent have no confidence at all, according to the survey.       

With so few Americans trusting mainstream news as their source for current events and cultural and political information, political campaigns, super PACs and advocacy groups are being forced to adapt to reach potential voters where they spend time — in digital spaces like podcasts, YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram, Truth Social and TikTok. Interestingly, it is conservatives who are adapting to the world of digital voter connection at a significantly faster rate than liberals, at least according to Democrat tech group.  

A new report on digital advertising between the years of 2020 and 2025 from Tech for Campaigns, a progressive group that focuses on voter turnout for Democrats, warns leftists about the advantage conservatives have carved out in digital spaces. 

The report warns Democrats about the substantial lead conservatives and independents have over liberals in the podcasting space alone, a digital realm that has exploded over the past five years and is rapidly eclipsing mainstream news as a source of current events, cultural discourse, and political news.  

Conservative and independent voices like Joe Rogan, Candance Owens, Megyn Kelly and Dan Bonjino, not to mention tens of thousands of smaller niche podcasters, are filling the void traditional media has left. Tech for Campaigns notes that as of December 2024, conservative podcasts had nearly three times the audience that liberal podcasts did. That only accelerated as President Donald Trump resumed office. By April 2025, conservative voices dominated four of the top 10 podcasts in the United States among all podcasts, not exclusively political podcasts.  
  The report found that commercial advertising — such as TV ads on commercial networks — still make up the bulk of political advertising, despite voter trust in the mainstream media hitting rock-bottom in 2025. According to Tech for Campaigns, just 36 percent of political budgets were reserved for digital advertising in the 2024 election, compared to 78 percent for commercial budgets. That is a big issue, because the political world is behind the private sector when it comes to adopting digital advertising and reaching voters on social platforms now that trust in traditional news has collapsed.      

However, one side of the aisle has carved out a significant advantage in digital spaces even in off-year elections. The Tech for Campaigns report warns Democrats that Republicans are ahead of the game when it comes to maintaining a digital presence and strong digital connection with potential voters even in off-year cycles.  

The report notes that between the years of 2020 and 2025, conservative advocacy groups barely slowed down their digital messaging to potential voters, cutting their spending on Meta, the parent of Instagram and Facebook, by only three percent in non-election years. Left-wing groups cut their spending by 75 percent in off years according to the report, focusing most of their spending on election years. Democrats’ last-minute approach to reserving digital advertising spending for election years is a losing strategy long-term, the report warns. 

According to the report, “the Right, especially Trump, recognized that persuasion is no longer about last-minute convincing, but about shaping beliefs continuously—building trust, shifting opinions, and staying visible through frequent engagement– just like commercial brand building.”  

The next few election cycles are going to be shaped by a multitude of factors, including whether leaders in Washington are able to adequately control inflation and bring down the persistent rate of unemployment that skyrocketed under Joe Biden. There are serious questions about whether the right can hold onto the coalition of middle-class voters that elected President Trump in 2024, including record numbers of Hispanics, young people, and independent voters. Republicans are in a challenging position in 2026, facing sour economic sentiment and sitting as the party in power in Washington, a position that typically suffers in a mid-term cycle. 

However, looking at the long-term prognosis for the conservative, America-First movement that seeks to reverse the disastrous results of decades of progressive policies like open borders, the mass importation of third-world labor, and the callous offshoring of U.S. jobs, there is hope. The mainstream news that had an iron-clad lock on the American people for the past century — a century that coincided with an erosion of American values and independence — has been largely destroyed. Digital media and the decentralization of news, culture, and commentary have certainly yielded some negatives, including predatory algorithms, undisclosed censorship aimed at favoring the mainstream narrative, and ideological pits where individuals consume only content they agree with. But on the aggregate, the collapse of top-down media, which functioned as a propaganda machine to produce disastrous results in the West, is one of the largest steps toward independence this century. 

The rise of decentralized news and independent journalism has broken the United States out of years of propaganda designed to push a narrative that has stripped the country of its independence and self-sufficiency. The digital landscape favors those who expose what hasn’t worked and why, and offer alternatives, and right now that is conservative and independent voices.  

Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/12/one-huge-advantage-conservatives-have-as-trust-in-mainstream-media-collapses-messaging-in-digital-spaces/ 

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Conservative Voices On ALG Whitepaper: Union Bosses Don’t Equal MAGA

Dec. 18, 2025, Fairfax, Va.—A chorus of conservative content creators are sharing a new whitepaper from Americans for Limited Government (ALG) that shows the stark disconnect between labor union bosses and the workers they claim to represent.   In fact, unions, like the Teamsters and others, are promoting a narrow agenda that ignores the real concerns of workers.

The report shows that while President Donald Trump captured the vote of millions of working-class Americans with the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, leaders of the nation’s biggest labor unions have actively worked against the president and his MAGA agenda.

What conservative voices are saying about the new findings from ALG:

Dave Bondy on TikTok: “I have been looking at a new report from Americans for Limited Government about how union leadership is using member dues. The group says a significant amount of that money is being directed towards political activity that many everyday workers, just like many of you watching this, may not even realize they are funding.”

April Silverman on Instagram: “Look, most people don’t know this, but union bosses are using worker’s money to attack the very candidate most of their members support, and it needs to be said plainly... Some unions are even bankrolling lawfare against [President Trump].”

Ruohan Ding on TikTok: “A devastating report by Americans for Limited Government details how the leaders of the nation’s biggest workers unions, whose members include a large number of Trump supporters, have been channeling vast amounts of union funds collected by mandatory members fees to support Democrats in orchestrating these political efforts aimed at taking down Trump.”

Ivory Hecker on Facebook: “Union workers used to be solidly Democrat, but in the past decade, Trump has successfully shifted a ton of these union workers over to the Republican party. Now, there is a huge disconnect between the workers themselves, who have no choice but to pay dues, and the bosses in charge of those unions who are using their dues against Trump.”

Jeffrey McGlothin on Instagram: “Remember in 2024 when union workers overwhelming supported Donald Trump, but the unions themselves wouldn’t make an endorsement? ... Americans for Limited Government were able to uncover that over 90% of political contributions from unions go to people that oppose Donald Trump. Weird, I thought unions were supposed to support the workers?”

Brett Moore on Facebook: “Union leaders are funneling money into fights that are again lowering taxes, energy independence, and strong American jobs. That’s not representation. That’s straight up abuse. Millions of union members supported President Trump because of his policies that helped working Americans. But now the same union bosses are using your dues to silence your voice and undermine the very agenda you voted for.”

To view online: https://getliberty.org/2025/12/conservative-voices-on-alg-whitepaper-union-bosses-dont-equal-maga/