#6 Manufacturing Is Coming Back to Small Town America
Coming up later in this episode — I’m going to take you to a place the national media declared dead. Towns that were written off. Factories that were supposed to be gone forever. People who were told to pack up and move on and instead said no. That story is at the end and I promise it’s worth the wait.
But first I’ve got two things to say that are going to make some people very uncomfortable. Good. That’s the job.
Let me start with a number. Thirty-five. That is how many days the Department of Homeland Security has been shut down because the people we elected to run this country cannot get their act together long enough to fund it.
Thirty-five days. And I want you to sit with what that actually means before I get into the political part because the political part is going to make you angry and I want you to have the human part in your chest first.
TSA officer. Let’s call him Mike because there are a lot of Mikes working airport security in this country right now and any one of them could be this story. Mike shows up every single day. Twelve hour shift. He is standing between you and the person who wants to blow up the airplane you are getting on with your family. He has been doing it for six years. He is good at it. He takes it seriously. He believes in what he does.
Mike has not received a full paycheck since February fourteenth. Valentine’s Day. That is the day the shutdown started and that is the last day Mike’s bank account looked anything like normal. His mortgage was due March first. He paid it — barely. April first is coming. He does not know how he is going to cover it. His car note is past due. His wife is working extra shifts. His kids do not fully understand what is happening but they understand something is wrong because kids always do.
Mike is not on strike. Mike is not calling in sick in protest. Mike is showing up. Every single day. Because he took an oath and he means it and because if he does not show up the checkpoint does not have enough people and the line backs up and some of you miss your flights. So Mike goes to work. And Mike does not get paid. And the people who created this situation are in Washington D.C. pointing fingers at each other.
Three hundred and sixty-six TSA officers have quit since February fourteenth. Not transferred. Not retired. Quit. They walked away from a federal career because they could not afford to keep working for free. The ones who are left are calling out sick at rates above ten percent at some checkpoints. Not because they are actually sick. Because they cannot afford the gas to get there. Because they are working a second job at night to cover their bills and they are too exhausted to stand on their feet for twelve hours. Because a human being can only take so much before something breaks.
The lines at Atlanta. At Houston. At New York. At Newark. Forty-five minutes. Ninety minutes. Some days longer. You are standing in that line because the people your tax dollars pay to manage this country cannot pass a budget. You missed your connection because Senator So-and-So needed a bargaining chip. Your grandmother missed her flight to see her grandkids because somebody in Washington decided the Department of Homeland Security was a good place to play politics.
Now let me tell you what this is actually about because the people responsible for it are going to tell you something different and I want you to have the straight version.
Democrats shut this down. That is not an opinion. That is the record. Senate Democrats refused to pass DHS funding until the administration agreed to put guardrails on ICE and Border Patrol. Judicial warrants. De-masking requirements. Changes to how immigration enforcement operates. Those are their demands. The administration has not fully agreed. So DHS goes unfunded. And Mike does not get paid.
Here is the part that ought to make your blood boil. ICE does not care about this shutdown. ICE and Border Patrol have their own funding — locked in last year through the One Big Beautiful Bill. They are operating just fine. The shutdown that was supposedly about immigration enforcement is not touching immigration enforcement at all. What it is touching is TSA. And FEMA. And the Coast Guard. Agencies that have nothing to do with deportations or border crossings or any of the things the Democrats said they were fighting about.
So let me say that again clearly. The shutdown was supposed to be about ICE. ICE is not affected. The people getting hurt are the TSA officers trying to pay their mortgages, the FEMA workers who are supposed to respond when your town floods, and the Coast Guard members patrolling your coastline. Those are the hostages. And the people holding them hostage are standing in front of cameras acting like they are fighting for principle.
That is not principle. That is cowardice dressed up in talking points. And the people doing it know exactly who is paying the price. It is not them. It never is.
And now I want to talk about the one guy who actually did something about it. Because in the middle of all this posturing and finger-pointing and political theater a man reached into his own pocket and said enough.
Elon Musk posted on X Saturday morning. And what he said was simple and direct and I respect the hell out of it. He said — I would like to offer to pay the salaries of TSA personnel during this funding impasse that is negatively affecting the lives of so many Americans at airports throughout the country.
That is it. No press conference. No political calculation. No media strategy. A man looked at what was happening to sixty thousand federal workers and said I am going to try to do something about it.
Now there are legal questions about whether a private individual can directly fund federal workers. Federal law is complicated on that point. So it may turn out that Musk cannot actually write the check even if he wants to. But here is what matters to me and I think it ought to matter to you. He tried. When the people whose actual job it is to fix this decided that scoring political points mattered more than the TSA officer who cannot make rent — a private citizen stood up and said that is not acceptable.
Love him or hate him — and I know people feel strongly both ways — that is what leadership looks like. Not a press release. Not a subcommittee hearing. Not a carefully worded statement about your deep concern for federal workers. Action. Or at least the attempt at action. Which is more than Congress managed in thirty-five days.
The World Cup is coming to America this summer. Hundreds of thousands of international visitors. Millions of domestic travelers. Airports that are already running ninety-minute security lines with a staff that has been working without pay for over a month. You want to think about what those lines look like in June?
USA 250 celebrations are right behind that. The biggest national commemoration in a generation. The President has made clear this is a signature moment for this country. And we are going to welcome the world to America through airports staffed by people who have been working for free for months and are quitting at a rate that will not stop until somebody passes a bill.
And what if a hurricane hits? What if a major disaster strikes and FEMA is running on fumes because the Democrats decided that was an acceptable casualty in their budget standoff?
Pass the bill. That is my position and I am not going to be diplomatic about it. Pass the bill. Fund DHS. Stop using federal workers as leverage in a political fight they did not start and cannot end. Those are real people with real families and real bills due on the first of the month just like yours. They showed up. They kept their end of the deal. The least the people we elected can do is show up and do the same.
The TSA officer is still at his post. The question is whether Washington deserves him.
Coming up next — 33,000 American veterans are sleeping outside tonight. Meanwhile the federal government is spending 650 million dollars housing people who crossed the border illegally. I am going to give you the numbers straight. No spin. Just the math. And then I’m going to let you decide what that says about us as a country.
Two men. I need you to stay with me on this one.
First man. Two tours in Afghanistan. Marine Corps. Combat infantryman. He was eighteen years old when he raised his right hand. He went where this country told him to go. He did things that most Americans will never have to do and will never fully understand. He came home. He struggled with what he saw and what he did over there — things I am not going to describe because I know some of you are listening with your kids and some things should be allowed to stay private. He eventually lost his housing. He applied for VA assistance. He got put on a waiting list. That was fourteen months ago. He is still on that waiting list. Tonight he is sleeping in a shelter.
Second man. He crossed the southern border illegally. Within 72 hours of being processed by immigration authorities he was placed in a federally contracted shelter. Three meals a day. Case management services. Legal assistance paid for by American taxpayers. He is still there.
I am not telling you this to make you hate the second man. I do not know his story. What I am telling you is that the system that put both of those men where they are right now has its priorities completely backwards. And I want to spend some time talking about how that happened and what it is going to take to fix it.
On any given night in the United States more than 33,000 veterans are homeless. Thirty-three thousand people who raised their right hand, swore an oath, put on a uniform, and went wherever this country told them to go. Some of them were barely old enough to drink when they did it. They went to places most Americans cannot find on a map. They did things most Americans cannot imagine. And they came home changed in ways that are very difficult to explain to people who were not there.
And the system that sent them failed them.
VA backlogs that stretch for months. Mental health resources that are underfunded and understaffed. Housing assistance programs with waiting lists so long that by the time a veteran’s number comes up his situation has gotten dramatically worse. The bureaucracy that wraps itself around the most basic human needs and makes everything harder than it has to be. Veterans who applied for disability benefits a decade ago and died waiting for a decision. That is not a hypothetical. That is documented. That has happened to real people with real names and real families.
That is a national disgrace. It has been a national disgrace for a long time. And it does not get fixed with a press release and a photo opportunity at a VA hospital.
Now I want to give you the numbers because this is not about feelings. This is about money and choices and priorities.
The federal government spent approximately 650 million dollars in fiscal year 2024 on migrant shelter and support services. That is a documented number. Contracted shelters. Case workers. Transportation. Legal aid. Food. The whole infrastructure built to process and support people who entered this country illegally while their cases work through an immigration system so backed up that some of them will be here for years before anything is resolved.
Six hundred and fifty million dollars.
The entire VA homelessness program — every single dollar that Congress appropriated specifically to house and support homeless veterans — was funded at about 400 million dollars that same year.
Sit with that. Take a moment. Because I want that number to land the way it deserves to land.
We spent 250 million more dollars housing people who came here illegally than we spent housing the people who bled for this country.
Now before I go any further I am going to say something clearly so nobody can twist it. This is not about hating immigrants. I am not making that argument and I will not make that argument. America has always been a nation of immigrants. Legal immigration is one of the things that made this country great and I believe that sincerely. People who come here the right way, who go through the process, who work and build and contribute and become Americans — that story is part of what makes this place extraordinary. I am not walking away from that.
What I am talking about is obligation versus choice. The United States made a promise to the people who served in its military. That promise is a contract. In some cases it was written in blood. We said — if you serve we will take care of you. That is not optional. That is not a budget line item to be negotiated down when other priorities come along. That is a promise this country made.
We have not kept that promise. We are not keeping it right now tonight.
Why does this happen? I want to answer that honestly because I think it matters. It is not usually malicious. It is bureaucratic. It is the natural result of a system that grows in the direction of wherever the political pressure is loudest. And for the last several years the political pressure — the media coverage, the advocacy organizations, the lawsuits, the protests — has been loudest on the immigration side. So the system grew in that direction. More contractors. More beds. More services. More money. That is how bureaucracies work. They follow the noise.
The veterans do not march in the streets. They do not hold press conferences. Most of them are too proud to ask for help in the first place. They were trained to handle things. They were trained not to show weakness. That pride is something I respect deeply. It is also something the system exploits whether it means to or not. Because if you do not make noise the bureaucracy does not hear you.
I also want to talk about who benefits from the current arrangement because that is always the right question. The contracting industry that runs the migrant shelter system makes billions of dollars. NGOs that receive federal grants to provide legal and social services have built massive operations on that money. Politicians who want to appear compassionate on immigration have a ready-made photo opportunity. The incentives to keep the system exactly as it is are powerful and they are real.
Who gets hurt? The veteran on the waiting list. The family of the service member who came home broken and could not get the mental health care he needed fast enough. The American taxpayer who looks at the federal budget and cannot make the math make sense. And ultimately the idea that this country keeps its word. Because if we do not keep it to the people who bled for us we have to ask ourselves what our word is actually worth.
Here is what needs to happen. I am not going to be diplomatic about it because I do not think this deserves diplomatic language.
Fund the VA housing program to actually meet the need. Not a partial appropriation. Not a talking point in a budget negotiation. Enough money to eliminate the waiting list entirely. If you can find 650 million dollars for migrant shelters you can find 400 million more for the people who served. You can find it. You choose not to. That is a choice. Own it.
Fix the bureaucracy. The VA system has structural problems that go beyond money. Paperwork that takes months. Appeals processes that take years. The whole machinery of making things as difficult as possible for people who already went through enough. That does not get fixed with a press release or a ribbon cutting at a new facility. It gets fixed with the same kind of sustained attention and political will that we apparently have no problem finding when the issue is someone who came here illegally.
A man sleeping on a steam grate in January because the country he served could not find him a bed — that is not a political talking point. That is a human being in front of you. And if you can look at him and then look at the federal budget and tell me the math makes sense I want to hear that explanation. I have been waiting a long time for someone to give it to me.
Our people first. That is not a radical position. That is the minimum. That is the least we owe.
Remember what I told you at the top. Something is happening out there that the news is not covering. Something that might actually remind you what this country is made of when you leave it alone and stop declaring it dead. Here it is.
The national media told you small town America was dead. The economists confirmed it. The pundits explained it. The think tanks wrote papers about it. For twenty years the message from all the smart people in all the important places was the same — those towns made the wrong choices, those people need to adapt, those jobs are not coming back, and the sooner everybody accepts that and moves on the better.
The implication was always there even when they did not say it out loud. You are over. Accept it.
Those communities did not accept it. They stayed. They kept the lights on in the VFW hall and the church and the diner and the high school football stadium even when there was not much else to celebrate. They held on. Year after year. And now something is happening that the people who wrote the obituary did not see coming.
Manufacturing employment in the United States has been growing for three consecutive years. Not just recovering from the pandemic dip — actually growing above pre-pandemic levels in key sectors. Semiconductors. Batteries. Precision machining. Defense components. Steel. The CHIPS Act money started landing. The reshoring trend that accelerated during the supply chain chaos of 2021 and 2022 kept going. Companies that spent a decade chasing cheap labor in Asia discovered that cheap labor gets expensive very fast when your supply chain is on the other side of the planet and a pandemic or a war or a port strike can shut it down overnight.
And they started coming back. And here is the important part — they did not come back to the big cities. They came back to the small towns. Because the small towns have something the big cities do not have anymore. Land. Infrastructure that can be rebuilt. Workers who actually want to work with their hands. Communities where the cost of living is low enough that a 22-dollar-an-hour manufacturing job is not a stepping stone to something better. It is a real living right now.
Since 2021 the United States has seen over 800 billion dollars in announced manufacturing investment. Factories being built. Factories being expanded. Factories being reopened. And a significant percentage of those investments are not landing in New York or Los Angeles or Chicago. They are landing in places you have never heard of. Places that are now hiring.
Let me tell you about a specific place. There is a town in Ohio I want to talk about. I am not going to name it because I do not want it to become a media circus. Forty years ago it had a steel mill that employed most of the county. The mill closed in 1987. The next three decades were not kind. Population dropped by a third. Median income fell. Downtown hollowed out. The tax base shrank until the schools could not afford new textbooks and the fire department was running equipment that should have been retired a decade earlier. And then the opioid epidemic hit. And when you take away a man’s work and his purpose and his sense of what he is worth to the people around him something fills that void. Rarely something good.
Three years ago a precision components manufacturer chose that town for a new facility. Three hundred and forty people employed. Starting wage nineteen dollars an hour. Top skilled workers making twenty-eight. The facility trains its own workforce through partnerships with the local community college. Apprenticeships that start in high school. Kids who grew up watching their parents struggle are being offered careers before they graduate. Not temporary jobs. Not gig work. Careers.
You will not see that story on CNN. Three hundred and forty jobs in a small Ohio town does not move a national news needle. But it moves the needle in that town. It moves it enormously. Because it is not just three hundred and forty paychecks. It is three hundred and forty families who can see a future again. It is a community that can start to believe in itself again. That matters in ways that do not show up in economic statistics.
There are hundreds of stories like this one. Maybe thousands. Scattered across the industrial Midwest and the rural South and the hollowed-out corners of states that stopped making the national news a long time ago. You will not hear about most of them because they do not fit the narrative. The narrative says those places are over. The people who write the narrative do not like being wrong.
Now I am going to say something to the critics because I know what they are going to say. They are going to say these jobs do not pay what the old jobs paid. And some of that is true. The old union manufacturing jobs that paid a man enough to buy a house and raise a family and retire with a pension — those are not coming back wholesale. The economics of manufacturing changed. Automation changed them. Global competition changed them. I am not going to stand here and tell you otherwise.
But here is what I will say. A twenty-two dollar an hour job in a town where the mortgage is eight hundred dollars a month is a dignified life. Not a rich life. Not a life where you take your family to Europe on vacation every summer. But a life where you know your kids are eating, your house is paid, your bills are covered, and you are doing something real and meaningful with your hands every day. For twenty years we told those communities that was not enough. That they should want something more. That they should leave and go find something better somewhere else.
They said no. And they were right. And the people who told them to leave were wrong.
There is something else happening in these towns that does not show up in the economic data. Something harder to measure but just as real. The young people are starting to come back. Not all of them. Not most of them yet. But some. The ones who left for college and discovered that the city they moved to was expensive and anonymous and did not feel like home. The ones who started families and realized they wanted their kids growing up somewhere with a backyard and a school where the teachers know their names. The ones who looked at a twenty-eight hundred dollar a month apartment in a city they could barely afford and thought — wait. My parents’ house back home costs less than that per year.
When the jobs show up the people have a reason to come back. That is the dynamic. You cannot bring people home to a place with nothing to come home to. But when the work returns some of the people follow. And when the people follow the town starts to breathe again.
I am not telling you small town America is fixed. It is not. The opioid crisis did not end. The school funding gaps did not close overnight. The roads are still rough in a lot of these places and the hospitals are still running on thin margins. There is real work left to do and I am not interested in painting a picture that is not accurate.
What I am telling you is that the obituary was premature. These communities are not dead. They are damaged and they are fighting and some of them are genuinely turning a corner. And that matters not just economically. Psychologically. Spiritually. There is something that happens to a community when a factory comes back. When the parking lot that was empty for twenty years has cars in it again at six in the morning. When the lights are on in a building that went dark before some of these kids were born. When a high school senior can see a future that does not require leaving behind everyone and everything she has ever known.
That is the America I believe in. Not the one screaming on social media. Not the one that was told it was over and should just accept it. The one that stayed. The one that kept going when there was not much reason to keep going. The one that never stopped believing it had something worth saving.
It did. It does. And it is coming back. The obituary was wrong.
Alright y’all. There’s your three.
A DHS shutdown now in its thirty-fifth day — because the Democrats who caused it decided ICE was worth more as a bargaining chip than the sixty thousand TSA officers who cannot make rent. ICE is already funded. Always was. The hostages are the workers. And while Washington pointed fingers, one man reached into his own pocket and tried to write the check. That is the contrast. Remember it.
33,000 veterans sleeping outside tonight while the federal government spends 250 million more dollars on people who came here illegally than it spends on the people who bled for this country. The math does not work. The priorities are wrong. And somebody needed to say it plainly without a press release attached.
And a country that was told it was over — that quietly, stubbornly, without asking anyone’s permission, decided it wasn’t. Empty parking lots that are full again at six in the morning. Young people coming back to the places that raised them. Work that means something. That story is real. It is happening right now. You just have to know where to look.
That is Everyone Knows. The hard truth, the stuff nobody else will say, and the thing that keeps you going.
I'm Brian Bullock of Starborne Studios. Find me on X at EveryoneKnws1. If this hit you, share it with somebody who needs to hear it. Subscribe. Leave a review. Come find us at brianbullockwriter.com. We're building something here and you're welcome to be part of it.
Because Everyone Knows — your silence is your consent.