From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Melissa O’Rourke

California’s population is growing again, but not because Americans are moving in, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In 2024, nearly 240,000 Californians packed up and left the state, WSJ reported. The state’s population still rose by 0.6% overall because more than 361,000 immigrants arrived to take their place.

The exodus from the state is not a new phenomenon, as around 344,000 Californians left in 2023, while 292,000 international migrants arrived, the outlet reported.

About 56% of Californians have considered leaving the state due to the exorbitant cost of living, a 2024 Emerson College poll found. California’s median home price topped $900,000 in 2024 — well over double the national average — while utility and gas prices remain among the country’s highest.

The state’s population decreased for the first time in history in 2020, when over 477,000 Californians left, leading to the state losing a congressional seat. The population continued to decline until 2023, buoyed by an influx of international immigrants.

The H-1B visa program, which allows businesses to employ skilled foreign workers with bachelor’s degrees, brought nearly 79,000 workers to the state in 2024, WSJ reported. However, applications for the program fell by 25% compared to a year ago due to higher fees and expectations that the Trump administration could impose more restrictive immigration policies.

The H-1B visa program has sparked fierce debate among Republicans in recent months. While big names such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have defended the program, opponents have argued it allows companies to undercut American workers by importing cheaper labor from abroad.

In addition to California, many states rely on immigration to drive population growth. In 38 states and Washington, D.C., immigration outpaced domestic migration last year, and in 16 states, it was the only reason populations grew, WSJ reported.

California has the highest share of foreign-born residents in the nation, with more than 25% of its population born outside the U.S., according to the Public Policy Institute of California. As of 2022, about 17% of California’s immigrant population was in the country illegally, according to the Pew Research Center.

At the same time, the Golden State faces mounting challenges, including a $45 billion budget deficit, while programs like Medi-Cal — covering hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants — are projected to cost taxpayers $8.4 billion in the 2024–2025 fiscal year.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Hailey Gomez

During a podcast Friday, Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder Tucker Carlson and independent journalist Glenn Greenwald couldn’t stop laughing over CNN’s sudden realization of former President Joe Biden’s mental decline.

CNN’s Jake Tapper along with Axios’ Alex Thompson released their book, “Original Sin,” on May 20, which details Biden’s cognitive slide over the last four years — a concern Republicans had raised even before the 2020 election. While appearing on “The Tucker Carlson Show,” Carlson joked that Greenwald had been “scooped” by CNN on Biden’s mental fitness.

“So you are, I think, the dean of alternative media. You’ve been doing this longer than anybody that I know personally. So it must be a little weird to get scooped by CNN on Joe Biden’s dementia, like you had no idea,” Carlson said. “None of us knew.”

“None of us knew,” Greenwald teased. ” There was that debate, and we were all shocked, but we were told he had a cold. So I was like, ‘OK, he’s on some cold medication. Who hasn’t been there before? It makes you a little dragged, a little groggy, a little just like dragged.’ But no, now Jake Tapper has uncovered the truth. It turns out Joe Biden was in cognitive decline.”

Sources told Tapper and Thompson that Biden’s mental fitness had declined rapidly during his time as president, with his mental state becoming so severe at one point that aides discussed putting him in a wheelchair.

WATCH:

Tapper has faced pushback from both Democrats and Republicans over the timing of his book and the revelations it includes. The CNN host has long defended the former president.

Carlson went on to joke with Greenwald about how he believed Tapper gathered the material for the book.

“Just a hardcore shoe leather investigative reporting,” Greenwald joked. “He’s working his sources, calling all the people in Washington, digging up FOIA documents.”

“It’s one of those things where you kind of can’t believe what you’re witnessing because Jake Tapper is pretending to have uncovered a scandal that he himself led the way in the media, or one of the leaders in the media, in covering up,” Greenwald added. “To the point where if somebody would go on his show and say ‘Joe Biden is obviously in cognitive decline.’ He would say ‘How dare you bully kids who stutter?’”

Greenwald went on to reference how Tapper had accused President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, of “mocking” the former president over his stutter during a 2020 interview.

Despite Lara Trump pointing to what she believed were signs of Biden’s problems, Tapper dismissed her remarks at the time, saying she had “no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline.”

In addition to Lara Trump, Tapper also dismissed former Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips during a 2024 interview after Phillips expressed his “concerns” about Biden running for a second term.

“Obviously, he wanted Biden to win desperately and would not tolerate anyone going on the show and saying that Biden was in cognitive decline,” Greenwald said. “Now he’s making millions of dollars off a book.”

Following the media coverage of Tapper’s and Thompson’s book, Biden appeared to tell reporters on Friday he could “beat the hell out of” the two journalists.