1)  Growth, Growth, Growth

Our UP co-founder, Larry Kudlow, has been predicting 5% GDP growth on his Fox Business show, much to the guffawing of the Trump haters.

Well, the latest Atlanta Fed GDPNow print suggests Larry was lowballing.  The 4th quarter GDP growth from the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank is up to 5.4%.  This follows 4.3% growth in Q3 and 3.8% in Q2.

What's especially remarkable is that the Schumer shutdown slowed down growth so we might have been at 6% growth otherwise.

The chart below shows how laughably pessimistic the blue chip economists were with the consensus below 1% back in early December.

2) America's Scarcest National Resource: Babies

We've warned on these pages that young people aren't being fruitful, and now the government demographers at CBO predict that starting in 2030, deaths will exceed births in the United States. This would mean immigration would be the only source of population growth. And even that won't be enough to prevent negative population growth by 2056:

The total population is projected to stop growing in 2056 and remain roughly the same size as in the previous year. Thereafter, the population is projected to shrink. Net immigration (the number of people who migrate to the United States minus the number who leave) is projected to become an increasingly important source of population growth in the coming years, as declining fertility rates cause the annual number of deaths to exceed the annual number of births starting in 2030. Without immigration, the population would begin to shrink in 2030.

There are only three ways to avoid this crisis: have more children, live and work longer, or increase the number of (legal, please!) immigrants and guest workers.

We favor all three.

3) Mamdani's Goon Squad

If you were hoping that New York's new mayor Zohran Mamdani's bark was worse than his bite, think again. He's already surrounded himself with ideological left-wing shock troops.

Sam Levine, a former top aide at the Federal Trade Commission under anti-business chair Lina Khan, will be the city's consumer and worker protection agency. Julie Su, a former acting Secretary of Labor under Joe Biden and a close Khan ally, will be the city's deputy mayor for "economic justice."  

Mamdani's new "chief tenant advocate," Cea Weaver, has urged the government to "seize private property" and blasted homeownership as a "weapon of white supremacy." She said she wants to "impoverish the white middle class." She says that "we are...  transitioning to treating private property as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity.”

Mamdani is sticking with her, for now. But even if she resigns, the mayor himself would still be there, and he is a true believer too. Mamdani is on video saying: "I get most of my knowledge on housing from Cea, so if you get it from me, it's just not coming from the source."

4) Even Jeopardy! Hates Trump

Ken Jennings, the former contestant promoted to host of television's Jeopardy following the death of Alex Trebek, made the papers on Wednesday after posting this on the left-wing X-clone Blue Sky:

5) Sign of the Times

Here’s what they are paying in Colorado today!

6) We Can't Wait for Trumpifornia

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