Programming note: This coming Thursday, January 30th, we’ll be virtually screening a fascinating new documentary that follows American leftists who traveled to Syria to fight on behalf of Kurdish radicals there. The film captures the full moral and practical complications of a conflict that eventually put the Kurds on the same side as U.S. forces facing off against ISIS. What does it mean to be an anti-imperialist fighting alongside the U.S.? Before you answer, I highly recommend watching. The screening is free, but participating in the Q&A afterwards will be restricted to paid subscribers and donors. RSVP here. (We previously interviewed one of the leading characters, Guy Steward, on Counter Points, who’ll also be joining for the post-film discussion.) RSVP HERE FOR THE VIRTUAL SCREENING The battle over the H1B visa program, waged by hardline anti-immigrant warrior Stephen Miller on one side and tech moguls like Elon Musk on the other, has become increasingly heated inside the White House, Pablo Manriquez and I report in a story you’ll find below. It’s a major opportunity for Democrats to drive a wedge into Trump world while also standing against exploitation of workers, but so far, save for Sen. Bernie Sanders, they’ve been largely mute on the topic. Instead, Republicans are driving wedge after wedge into the Democratic coalition. (Scroll down for the unfolding battle over war with Iran.) The Laken Riley Act, the first legislative push against immigrants, which we covered previously, has now become Trump’s first bill signed into law. Along the way, nearly all the Democrats facing close elections voted to give Trump increased authorities to detain migrants without trial. Next, Republicans in the Senate plan to divide Democrats by putting forward a bill to sanction staff at the International Criminal Court for daring to even attempt to hold Israeli officials responsible for war crimes. Swing state Democrats are publicly saying they don’t know how they’ll vote. Following that, Republicans plan to hit Democrats with a bill on transgender athletes. (Three years ago, I obtained a polling memo from a transgender rights organization that found overwhelming public opposition to the Democratic position, and Republicans have spent every year since then killing them over it. Because Democrats never had the courage to grapple with their position in an effort to find a solution broadly acceptable to the public, they’ve now entirely ceded the issue to Republicans while losing power in the process. Everyone lost.) The spectacle of Trump’s mass deportation project, designed to stoke fear in immigrant communities here in the United States and among those considering making the journey, is now in full swing. The outstanding question remains whether it will stay mostly spectacle, aimed at producing viral images of migrants being hauled away, or whether the round-up will truly reach into the hundreds of thousands or millions—far beyond the current capacity of immigration officials to manage. ICE boasted yesterday of 538 arrests on January 23 and “373 detainers lodged.” Among those culled from the haul was an American veteran in New Jersey whose papers were demanded by ICE; agents told him they didn’t believe the documents were authentic, drawing a rebuke by the Newark mayor. ICE responded by dubiously defending its claimed authority to ask random people for papers and detain those they find suspicious. Look for more such cases as the dragnet increasingly sweeps up Americans and immigrants here legally. Meanwhile there’s a massive whisper campaign underway by neoconservatives in Washington panicked at Trump’s elevation of a string of foreign policy advisers who have spoken out against war with Iran. The first whack to the wounded war-hawk wing came when Mike Pompeo was blocked from a position in the White House, followed yesterday by the stripping of his security detail. That followed similar snubs to John Bolton and Iran hawk Brian Hook. Hook’s firing was a comical display of Trumpian humiliation. Trump, on Truth Social, said that his
What’s so amusing about Trump’s description of Hook as a member of the “previous Administration,” and his being lumped in with Democrats and a hated figure like Milley, is that Hook was named by Trump in November to chair the State Department transition. Anti-war Republicans vowed at the time to make sure he never got a job himself in the second Trump administration and sources tell me that Trump fired him after learning about his long record of criticizing Trump and his bellicose war rhetoric. Now he’s out, and is privately leading the rearguard fight against Trump’s nominees. Much of that fight is leaking out into the pages of the magazine Jewish Insider. If you followed the effort by AIPAC to shape Democratic primaries in 2022 and 2024 by blocking critics of Israel, you already know that JI was the place to go to learn where AIPAC would be spending money. Articles warned that pro-Israel groups were “alarmed” at the rise of this or that candidate, often for entirely innocuous statements—or sometimes for just being related to somebody they didn’t like. The same playbook is being rolled out against Trump’s nominees. In an article headlined, “Rumored for a Trump posting, Elbridge Colby’s dovish views on Iran stand out,” JI warned that Colby “has notably opposed direct military action against Iran.” He got the posting anyway, and is now one of the top officials at the Pentagon. This week, Trump rolled out more than a dozen more top appointments, without a single neocon in the list, raising the alarm in JI again. (Read our profile of Colby.) JI panicked about Michael DiMino, who previously worked for the CIA and the Pentagon, and was named to be deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. “Last year, [DiMino] dismissed Iran’s second ballistic missile attack on Israel as a ‘fairly moderate’ response and urged against bombing the Houthis in Yemen, instead calling for U.S. pressure on Israel to tamp down regional conflict,” JI warned. The paper also expressed concern that Dan Caldwell, another conservative veteran skeptical of war with Iran, seemed to be playing a role in getting like-minded people into the Pentagon: “A leading opponent of traditional Republican foreign policy who advocates for a vastly reduced U.S. presence in the Middle East has been quietly involved in the transition process at the Defense Department, according to four people familiar with the matter, underscoring a distinct ideological shift in the Pentagon as President Donald Trump builds his new administration.” The fight over Trump’s nominees is directly connected to the potential strength of the “ceasefire” in Gaza. Trump is expected to tap his Mideast envoy and real estate buddy Steve Witkoff, who browbeat Netanyahu into agreeing to the ceasefire, to negotiate with Iran. In order to get Saudi-Israel normalization and a nuclear deal with Iran, Trump needs the genocide in Gaza to end, which connects the three issues, and is why Israel is deeply hostile to Witkoff’s expanding portfolio. Trump created confusion about Witkoff’s growing role in comments to the press that JI eagerly but inaccurately reported as a rebuke of Witkoff. Meanwhile, 11 Americans on a medical mission are being blocked by Israel from leaving northern Gaza despite having completed their scheduled mission. “This is not just about us–it’s about accountability,” Shehzad Batliwala, an ophthalmologist based in Dallas, told me. “The principle at stake is whether the Israeli military can arbitrarily detain U.S. citizens engaged in humanitarian work without even as much as giving a legitimate reason.” A senior Trump official has raised the issue with the Israeli government, according to a source involved, and confirmed by a Trump official to Drop Site. The team is on a mission with Rahma Worldwide, Dr. Batliwala said. “Many of us have critical responsibilities back home, including U.S. patients awaiting urgent care. For example, I have over 40 cataract surgeries scheduled next week.” A request for comment sent to the Israeli military by Drop Site has yet to be returned. Hostage exchange update: Israel is now claiming that the list of names Hamas has released for this weekend’s exchange amounts to a violation of the agreement. Yet Israel has been violating it consistently by continuing to kill Palestinians Finally, we reported earlier today that celebrity rabbi Schmuley Boteach may have accidentally landed his son in legal jeopardy by broadcasting potential evidence of war crimes while serving in the Israeli military. Read the story here and please share with your network. Below is my story with Manriquez. And if you’re not already subscribed to Drop Site, here’s the button. If you are, please consider upgrading to support us. MAGA Fractures Over H1B Visa Debate as Trump Signals Support for Skilled Migrants“And I’m not just talking about engineers. I’m talking about people at all levels. We want competent people coming into our country,” said Trump on Wednesday. By Pablo Manriquez and Ryan Grim WASHINGTON — A new fault line within the MAGA movement is deepening as the debate over H1B visas pits Elon Musk and Stephen Miller—two of President Donald Trump’s closest advisors—against each other. On his first day back in the White House, Trump followed through on his campaign promises by signing sweeping executive orders to reverse Joe Biden’s migrant relief policies, expand immigration enforcement, and drastically cut legal immigration. Yet, one program remained untouched: the H1B visa, a staple of America’s high-skilled labor force. "We need smart people coming into our country. We need a lot of people coming in. We're going to have jobs like we've never had before,” Trump said last month at Mar-a-Lago, leaving some of his staunchest MAGA supporters stunned. “It’s a firefight,” said a source close to Stephen Miller, who lamented the enormous resources the tech industry spends on Washington lobbying. “Tech is terrible at lobbying but they hire every firm in town,” said the source. “All the firms are on retainer for tech. They’re all conflicted out.” “It’s very simple: shut the fucking program down today, deport all of them, and give every single fucking job to American citizens,” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist and Stephen Miller confidante, told me in an interview on Wednesday. The H1B visa program, created in 1990, allows U.S. companies to sponsor foreign workers in specialized fields, ranging from IT and engineering to medicine and finance. The program caps annual visas at 65,000, with an additional 20,000 reserved for advanced degree holders from U.S. universities. While it offers a pathway to citizenship, critics like Miller and Bannon argue the program undermines American workers. On Wednesday, Trump doubled down during a press conference in the Roosevelt Room, saying, “I like both sides of the argument, but I also like very competent people coming into our country — even if that involves training and helping other people that may not have the qualifications that they have. And I’m not just talking about engineers. I’m talking about people at all levels. We want competent people coming into our country.” Laura Loomer vs. Elon MuskThe battle underscores the historically unprecedented role being played by Elon Musk, who is at once a senior administration official, the head of three companies that rely heavily on H1B labor, and the boss of X, where the public debate within the MAGA coalition is playing out. Musk has used the latter position to muzzle his opponents on the issue. When Trump ally Laura Loomer and other hardline immigration opponents attacked Musk over his support for the H1B program, Musk responded by demonetizing and suppressing their accounts. Musk’s power over the X accounts of MAGA activists and operatives–and his willingness to use it in a vindictive way—gives him a major leg up in the debate. Since the suppression, Loomer’s account, for instance, has become largely invisible. Loomer was among the first to pounce on the wild story of a recent shootout in Vermont, which left a German national and a Border Patrol agent dead, and an American woman hospitalized. The German is reported to have entered the United States on an H1B visa, a revelation Loomer has worked to elevate, along with a claim that his legal status had expired. Yet with her and her allies suppressed on X, an anecdote that otherwise would have broken through has remained on the fringes. (Vermont’s Republican Gov. Phil Scott has raised questions as to the true immigration status of the late shooter.) Loomer told Drop Site she’s been frustrated to see allies of Trump buckle to Musk’s censorship. “Trump’s camp is silent over his supporters being silenced over criticism of H1B,” she said. Rifts in DOGEThe fracture first became visible after Trump’s creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a platform for his allies to modernize government operations. He appointed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the agency, alongside Katie Miller, a former Department of Homeland Security aide and the wife of Stephen Miller. Two days after Katie’s appointment, far-right provocateur Laura Loomer attacked Sriram Krishnan, Trump’s White House AI advisor, comments he had made in support of the H1B visa program. Musk and Ramaswamy swiftly came to Krishnan’s defense. "The reason I’m in America, along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies, is because of H1B,” Musk posted on X (formerly Twitter). Ramaswamy followed, writing, “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.” Fractured AlliancesThe clash over H1B visas has divided Trump’s inner circle. While Musk and Ramaswamy advocate for reform to address the green card backlog affecting hundreds of thousands of migrants, Stephen Miller and his allies are pushing for a moratorium on the program. Meanwhile, Trump’s more conciliatory tone has alienated hardliners but resonated with CEOs. The six Big Tech leaders with front row seats at Trump’s inauguration Tuesday in the Capitol rotunda have all been vocal proponents of H1B reforms, including relief policies to help H1B migrants gain permanent residency. On Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham from South Carolina told me, “I think it [H1B] needs to be reformed. We need more legal immigration.” Similarly, Sen. John Kennedy, R-LA, said he supports measures to curb H1B abuse but views the program as fundamentally “sound.” In the House, Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna of California and Pramila Jayapal of Washington, once an H1B recipient herself, are working on proposals to address the backlog and expand access to skilled migrant workers. “If you’re really nationalist and you want to put America first, then you should support this program,” said Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-MI, a former visa recipient who now represents Detroit. “All this does is keep America’s edge on innovation, discovery, and technology, and grows our GDP.” As long as Musk is willing to stand by the program and the migrant workforce it provides, H1B reform will continue to create cleavages in MAGA. Musk established himself as a serious campaign financier in the 2024 election cycle, spending at least $277 million to help elect Trump. The billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, and X, has virtually limitless resources to make life difficult for lawmakers who oppose his will in the House and Senate. Musk tweeted last month that he would “go to war” for the H1B program. So far, it's a fight Musk appears to be winning. Become a Drop Site News Paid SubscriberDrop Site News is a reader-supported publication. To support our work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber today. A paid subscription gets you:✔️ Subscriber-only AMAs, chats, and invites to events, both virtual and IRL ✔️ Post comments and join the community ✔️ The knowledge you are supporting independent media making the lives of the powerful miserable © 2025 Drop Site News, Inc. |