into law and how soon and so on and so forth. i do believe though that the president has so clearly laid down a marker in favor of this large expansion of the government and mind you president trump wasn t exactly a deficit cutter himself, that he will, you know, if indeed he runs for re-election, that will be one of the major sort of signature changes in his term that he will be held accountable for whether it, you know, works out or whether it doesn t. bret: economic changes unemployment rate 6.1%. pre-pandemic it was at 3.5%. you ve got the number of employed americans at 144 million. meaning the economy is still missing about 8.2 million jobs lost during the pandemic, jonah. it is recovering. it is starting to churn. yeah. look, i think that this is all in some ways an accident of
roughly 1 half of the number in early april. red and blue state governors are racing to introduce lotteries for the simple reason that they work. the 10 counties we re receiving the most increase are all rural counties and they have seen over 100 percent increase in vaccinations. corporations are also stepping up to offer a range of incentives to get the shot. cvs is offering cash giveaways. norwegian cruz lines free vacations. proctor and gamble super bowl tickets. united airlines free travel for a year, kroger free groceries for a year. krispy kreme a free doughnut. 62% of americans age 18 and over have had at least one shot. the biden administration s goal is to reach 70% vaccinated by the 4th of july. bret? bret: steve harrigan in atlanta. steve, thank you. up next, the panel on president biden s considerable foreign policy challenges from russia and china plus the domestic issue of immigration. first, beyond our borders
special visa program to relocate interpreters two years of faithful service. the taliban doesn t discriminate one year or two years. they will kill me for working with the american. army veteran who served two tours in iraq and afghanistan worked for three years to bring his afghan interpreter to the u.s. he is chairman of the nonprofit no one left behind. he shared this letter from an afghan interpreter who asked not to be identified talking about the danger he faces. taliban never asks if we work with the u.s. army less than two years or more than two years. we request your help to save our lives. this is a very bad situation. we are being left behind. dod has maybe two weeks before they don t have the manpower and equipment to do this. the taliban is going to attack the prisons, all their prisoners and wreak havoc. you don t even need a crystal ball. all u.s. forces are expected to leave afghanistan by early july. well ahead of the september 11th deadline set by president bide
different? bill: yeah, it was. activity all over the sector. it happens every day like clockwork to have 1300 apprehensions every single day border patrol say that s significantly higher than what they re used. to say keep in mind those are the only ones they caught that they know of. there are the got-aways where they don t know what those numbers. bret: bill melugin along the southern border. thank you. pressure is growing on president biden to find out if the coronavirus pandemic began with a lab leak in wuhan, china since lab have not emerged a year and a half later. the theories mocked during the trump administration are gaining more credibility by the day. congressional correspondent jacqui heinrich reports tonight from the white house. president biden touting progress fighting coronavirus in virginia today. there is light at the end of the tunnel. it s a freight train. as the white house punted questions on a new york times report saying intelligence officials invest
said that the president put her in charge of finding the root causes of the problem. first it was to deal with the border specifically and redefined for the media. she has visited a number of states, none of them happen to be border states. well, we will see what happens. i guess i don t agree with jonah in this sense typically in the summer when the temperature spikes the flow of migrants slows down. just looking at it in the narrow political sense i assume if the biden administration figures they can get to july without too much more blow back they will be fine. as for the root causes, the root causes are the same as they have been for the last 30-odd years which is that life in central america is substantially poorer and more violent than life in the united states. people want to leave central america and try their luck for a better life in the united states and we should finally rationally manage our laws to facilitate