Vance Takes on Microsoft & The Battle for Alaska | 10.9.26

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Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Kalshi products are not available in all jurisdictions. Prices, values and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see kalshi.com/regulatory. VP Vance cracks down on U.S. companies hiring foreign workers over Americans. This time focusing on big tech. For every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants. I'm daily wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, October 9th. This is Morning Wire. As President Trump criss crosses the country to try to stave off a blue wave back in the capital, he's facing some palace intrigue in DC Discord. And Democrats pin their hopes on deep red Alaska. As the White House campaigns in the northern most state, we talk to our reporter who is on the ground there. It's messy and it's confusing, and there's a lot of people worried that Alaskans are just going to just throw in the towel and not vote. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Mornings have a pretty reliable way of telling you how well you slept. If you're already exhausted before that first cup of coffee suddenly getting better sleep, moves pretty high on the priority list. That's why we love bowling branch. Their signature sheets are made from breathable organic cotton and they're incredibly soft. In fact, 94% of bowling branch customers say that their sheets get softer after every wash. If you're ready for a little fall reset, this is a great time to do it. Bowling branch has sheets, pillows, waffle blankets and comfortors, even bath towels, and plenty of colors including beautiful new seasonal shades. So you can freshen up the bedroom or the bathroom without completely redecorating your house. 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The day started with VP Vance hosting a news conference for his fraud task force where he was joined by the heads of the Department of Labor and FTC as well as Attorney General Todd Blanche. Vance was pretty direct. He said no company in the US is abusing the visa system more than Microsoft and he announced the Labor Department would be cutting the company off from the program that it's used to sponsor foreign workers for green cards. Here he is making that case. Microsoft laid off last year 6,000, 6,000 American workers. At the same time, the company benefited from 6,300 H1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards. Now, that is a scandalous system that we've allowed in this country for far too long. But thanks to the work of this task force and thanks to the empowerment of the President of the United States, we're going to stop. But then, as you mentioned, a few hours later, President Trump stands up in a room full of big tech executives at his science, a new golden age summit. And then he awarded Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Here he is making that announcement. For more than three decades, Satya Nadella has been a key figure in the transformation of Microsoft, revolutionizing the company and empowering businesses, students, and consumers from all over the world with some of the most capable software ever built or ever even conceived. I definitely some tension there. And now, Vance did use the word fraud in his accusations against Microsoft. What exactly are they claiming there? And then is this actually a ban on new foreign workers? So it's not technically a ban, but it does close the door on a program that Vance says Microsoft has been exploiting to boost its profits at the expense of American workers. That program is the permanent labor certification program or PURM. And it's used by hundreds of American companies to sponsor foreign workers for a green card to get approved. An employer has to spend a certain amount of time advertising the open job to American workers and then show the government that no qualified American was available for that open job. Now, this is where Vance says that the fraud is actually happening. He says Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers last year while simultaneously obtaining 6,300 H1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards through this PURM program. And importantly, he said the company is paying these foreign employees tens of thousands of dollars less than Americans doing the same work. Now, Microsoft has obviously denied this and says that H1B visa holders are only 1% of its workforce and are paid the exact same as American workers. But more broadly, this is a common accusation from a lot of folks on the right. They say that companies don't actually make any effort to advertise these jobs to Americans. We've seen examples of big tech companies putting one tiny ad in the back pages of a newspaper saying, "Hey, come apply." And they can say, "No one applied. We have to hire foreign workers." Right. Now, does this ban only apply to Microsoft or is it applied to other companies? Yes, it's actually more broad. So the labor department also announced the same PURM freeze for Adobe and then six other companies dedicated to outsourcing IT to foreign firms, cheaply, particularly in India. These companies alone have sent in more than 3 million visa applications since 2009 and received more than 230,000 H1B approvals. Vance points out that the wage gap for workers brought in through these outsourcers is about $48,000 below the comfortable American wage for that same position. He'd also announced a separate investigation into nine universities, including Harvard, Yale, and MIT, for what he calls a similar version of visa fraud that, again, he says, disadvantaged American applicants. Now, Vance and the Trump administration more broadly had previously tried a more sweeping approach to stopping visa fraud and posing $100,000 fee on new H1B petitions. But that was struck down by a California judge and is currently being appealed. So in the meantime, Vance said that he's more than willing to do this targeted approach to stopping visa fraud with other companies. And he said, again, he's more than willing to extend these freezes indefinitely. So he's playing hardball. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Absolutely. Getting a flood of holiday orders is a great problem to have. Until you actually have to ship all of them, shipstation is built for exactly that moment. It keeps orders from all of your stores together and can compare rates across major carriers in real time so you're not manually figuring out shipping for every package. More than a million businesses have used shipstation to handle their busiest seasons. 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Yeah, you know, it's pretty much business as usual with just 25 days left until the midterms, the presidents out there hitting the campaign trail, as you said, and you know, just continuing to to deliver, you know, work for the American people, wage a war on Iran, things like that, except the White House has been hit with an absolute barrage of palace intrigue stories this week. And it's giving, if not the president, then certainly the press secretary list comms office a lot to deal with. So the first thing, probably the most significant one is that Chris Lissivita and James Blair. So two people who were central to engineering president Trump's 2024 victory. They're both close allies of Susie Wiles. They're now consultants. Blair runs president Trump's pack. And Lissivita is an outside consultant from the White House, neither of them have government jobs. That's important to stress because the big story this week was that in the middle of the midterm cycle, they were off in Bosnia and Herzegovina, advising members of a Russian aligned government in one of these very small Eastern European republics on, it's not entirely clear what, elections, governance. This is a thing that happens a lot in Washington with very high-powered political consultants. They'll get hired by governments of sovereign nations to advise them on public relations or things like that. And it's never entirely clear what they're doing. So this was brought to light. The president apparently did not know about any of this until the New York Times reached out for comment. The president is trying to play it a little bit cool, saying on truth social and to reporters that James and Chris are private citizens. They don't have government jobs. They're allowed to have other clients. I'm just one of the clients. Of course, if there is a conflict, if I found out there was a conflict in what they were doing in the work they do for me, I would fire them. But behind the scenes, it sounds like the White House is furious about this. They're mad that two of the president's top advisors would leave the country in the mid, during this part of the midterm cycle, mad that they would open him up to allegations of corruption or pro-Russian sympathies. And just mad that in other, you know, they basically seem to have taken their eyes off the ball. So say a lot of these inside anonymous sources in Mago-World. So that's one. And as if that wasn't enough, not to be done by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal had a big story this week about Kimberly Gilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.'s ex-partner, current U.S. ambassador to Greece, was apparently according to this report, hitting up a Trump donor named Eric Dieters for money. She was asking him for $100,000 to pay off her MX bill before her Senate confirmation hearing. She was specifically asking for him to pay it in such a way that it wouldn't be traceable. And then when he started asking for the favors and influence that she had promised him allegedly, he started writing her memos saying that she had not delivered on her end of the bargain at one point she sent back to him. Please stop putting this on paper. You can literally cost me my ambassador ship. - Oh my goodness. - Yeah, a lot of gossip in Washington's. - Speaking of the Wall Street Journal, it's also come out with this exposé on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that's generated some buzz. How significant is this piece? And is it something the administration is actually paying attention to? - Not significant at all. And I can't imagine that they are John. So this is maybe mildly embarrassing for Scott Bessent. If I could sum the whole thing up in one line, the headline would be that Scott Bessent manages his government staff the way he would have managed his staff working in a hedge fund. Right? So the thing that's getting headlines and the thing that critics really want to jump on is that apparently they're trying to paint him as some sort of horrible boss. But the only two things that you get in the story is that one time he snapped at a group of aides for not walking fast enough to keep up with him. At another point, he threw a loose leaf briefing book binder out of wall when it wasn't organized up to his level. His, the way that he wanted it to be organized. Now, I have never done that on the record. I've never done that. And you know, in a town where we have Amy Klobuchar throwing staplers at people and all sorts of other tyrannical and abusive bosses, Scott Bessent barely even cracks the top 10. Of course, people are trying to say this is showing that Trump is rubbing off on him. It's this volatile style blah, blah, blah. I think this is all a bit overblown. I think, as I said, this is Scott Bessent, a man who worked for years in Wall Street, a very cutthroat industry where managing directors and hedge fund managers are notoriously horrible to their employees. She's bringing a little bit of that to Washington. The more interesting thing is the story really shows there's been a lot of turnover in Bessent's office at the senior level. Now, whether or not that turnover is directly related to Bessent's management style, whether or not it's just a very closed inner circle, or whether or not it's another thing, or several other things. We don't know when the report doesn't really make clear, but definitely way less of an issue for Bessent and the administration than some of the other things we've heard this week. All right, well Tim, never a dull week in the White House. Thanks so much for reporting. Any time, guys. While much of the national midterm debate has centered on key Senate races in Texas and Michigan, the reliably Republican state of Alaska has also become a focal point for Trump and the GOP as they fight to keep it red. Joining us now with more is Mary Margaret Olehan, White House correspondent for Daily Wire. Great to have you on. Great to be here. So you just returned from Alaska. We have some questions about your wardrobe while you're there. You have some original reporting for our site on that. The title of your piece is Inside the Republican Fight to hold Alaska. And a lot of people I think that haven't focused on Alaska this particular election might be surprised by this. The fact that there is a fight to hold it. Let's just start there. How did we get to the point that Alaska is in play for Democrats? So this is an interesting conundrum here because obviously President Donald Trump won Alaska by 13 points in the 2024 presidential election. And in that same election, Mary Peltola lost her congressional seat to a Republican. And now just two years later, she's running for this Senate seat and she looks competitive to win it. And I ask a lot of people about why this is. I think one reason is that and the Vice President told me this. Alaska's never really something that you can determine. This will go red. This will go blue because a lot of these voters, as I learned, are either nonpartisan or undeclared. That's literally how they're registered. So they're not going to tell you the Republican. They're not going to necessarily tell you their Democrat. They might not even say they're independent. What they'll say is they're nonpartisan or undeclared. And so what that means is that there's a huge swing vote there. And I'm told it a lot of the time that swing vote goes red, but you can't predict it, of course. And that means that these candidates have to fight really, really hard to get people to hear them. And they have to go to the places where the people are because they're a little checked out. They might not be interested in voting. They're annoyed by the ads. And so if you can get to those people and if you can speak to them and make them hear your message, then you might have success. And so for Dan Sullivan, that message is, look, I understand. You're concerned about affordability. You're concerned about gas prices. You're concerned about fuel and food. But what we're doing and what he says he's been doing with the Trump administration is working really hard to ease those concerns for Alaskans through a lot of different measures, including this Alaskan pipeline. Now Mary Peltola will tell them, no, Dan Sullivan isn't good enough. You deserve to have me fighting for you. And one thing she has really strongly in her favor is that she is going to, she is an Alaskan native. So she does have those roots. And that is very important to the people of Alaska. But then again, you know, you have someone like Dan Sullivan. His wife also has Alaskan roots. So at the end of the day, it looks like it's really going to come down to whoever can get to the voters and speak their message to them. And that might be what matters at the end. - So it sounds like Alaskan voters are very pragmatic. Speaking of pragmatic, just wondering, what's the weather like in Alaskan? What have you been wearing for the cold? - Well, when he got on here for two in the DMV area in Washington, it wasn't that cold. I wasn't wearing a coat, but I did bring a big, thick, black coat to wear when we got off in Anchorage. And some of the locals were teasing me because I was a little overdressed. But it was chilly. It was in the 40s. And there were a couple times when I almost put my gloves on. But the locals will tell you it gets much colder than that. It gets down into many degrees below zero. And they filled me in on how they eat. Polar bearer up there and whales and all the bears they've seen recently. So just a beautiful, beautiful state. And it's also worth noting that President Donald Trump is heading up to Alaska next week as well. I believe on Monday and he'll be making a similar message to voters as well. - But it just shows how much of a priority Alaskan has become for the White House. Mary Margaret, thank you so much for joining us. - Thanks for having me. - Thanks for waking up with us. The reporting that fuels this show is only possible because you tune in every day and because of our daily wire subscribers. - To enjoy the show, add free and join our mission become a member at dailywire.com. We'll be back this evening with more news you need to know. (upbeat music) - Well, polls tell you what voters said at one moment. But Calche gives you another way to follow a race. A live market that moves as traders respond to new information. 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