“The numbers, Mason! What do they mean?” shout the interrogators in “Call of Duty: Black Ops.” When Xbox announced another round of layoffs last week, the numbers meant something simple: more Americans out of work. Xbox’s parent company, Microsoft, is undermining President Donald Trump’s America First and Worker First agenda by firing its American employees while bringing in foreign workers on H-1B visas.
Microsoft’s behavior is not new. The company runs the same playbook every time: Fire Americans. Hire foreigners. Pay less, and drag down American wages across the industry in the process.
Earlier this summer, Microsoft fired nearly 5,000 employees after receiving approval to hire more than 2,000 H-1B workers. In 2025, it laid off 15,000 people while sponsoring 8,000 H-1B applications.
This has consequences. Ask the developers at Arkane Austin in Texas or The Initiative in Los Angeles. Microsoft shut down both of those American studios. Gamers, meanwhile, are paying more for less. Microsoft has raised Game Pass and console prices even as it cuts the Americans who make the games.
Remarkably, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, the executive responsible for many of these layoffs, now co-leads the Federal Reserve’s task force on Productivity and Jobs. That task force is charged with assessing how artificial intelligence affects American employment.
Trump has rightly made American workers a priority of his second term. Without strong partners in the private sector, however, that job becomes much more difficult.
In September, the president signed an executive order directing federal agencies to give greater scrutiny to H-1B applications, especially those from companies that engage in layoffs. He also renewed the $100,000 fee for H-1B applications from overseas. That fee is tied up in court, but it is a critical first step in protecting American jobs and wages. Corporations should not be rewarded for firing Americans and suppressing wages by replacing them with foreign labor.
The early results are clear: As of September, only about 700 applicants have paid the fee, and earlier this year, external applications dropped by 87% according to a Department of Homeland Security court filing. These victories follow a string of actions from the administration. A Department of Labor rule would raise the prevailing wage for H-1B visa holders, and DHS has proposed a rule to apply a $100,000 fee more broadly across H-1B applications.
If Microsoft were serious about its obligations to American workers, it would apologize and rehire them. More importantly, it would work with the president to support American jobs, raise wages, and invest in its employees by matching Trump Account pledges, something it has yet to do.
The company says the layoffs are part of a broader restructuring and streamlining effort. That claim falls flat when the layoffs come alongside continued foreign hiring. And if the restructuring is really about AI, Americans should know that the executive making these cuts is the same one advising the Fed on how AI affects their jobs.
American business titans used to be rooted in supporting the American way of life. Now Microsoft is a “global” corporation that feels no obligation or loyalty to the nation that made it great.
Advocates for expanding “skilled” immigration say the H-1B program brings the “best and brightest” to America. The program’s record says otherwise. H-1B fraud is rampant. One university in India alone sold over 35,000 fake degrees while issuing only 5,000 real ones. That makes the president’s efforts to restore integrity to the immigration process all the more important.
Microsoft isn’t only failing American workers. Its handling of government contracts is harming taxpayers and national security. Every Xbox 360 gamer remembers the Red Ring of Death, the sign of a system failing from the inside. Microsoft’s government work looks much the same.
A Homeland Security review faulted the company’s “inadequate” security culture and a “cascade of security failures” that allowed China to access U.S. government emails in 2023. Faulty Microsoft software endangered the Artemis II mission when astronauts lost email communication, a glitch Microsoft knew about at the time.
American voters decisively elected President Trump in 2024 to put American workers first and hold globalist corporations like Microsoft accountable. The president continues to deliver on that noble mandate. But he needs support in Congress, in the courts, and in the buying decisions of every patriotic American household.
So, the numbers, Mason. What do they mean? Twenty thousand jobs cut, ten thousand foreign visas sponsored, and a corporate giant betting nobody’s keeping score.
Gamers are keeping score. American workers are keeping score. Enforcing America First standards against Microsoft—against any company that treats American workers as expendable—is how Washington shows it’s keeping score too.
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
