Saturday’s Final Word – HotAir

It’s another Saturday night and I ain’t got no tabbies





Ed: I’ve been calling it McCarthyism for at least five years. Too bad it took the NYT that long to catch up — and not in its news reporting, but only from a columnist that hardly represents the editorial tenor of the newspaper. (Jamie Kirchick is always worth reading, FWIW.) This isn’t even a truth-telling development, but rather a CYA exercise.  

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AxiosThe number of people in immigration detention has soared by more than 50% since President Trump took office — and that doesn’t include thousands more detainees who aren’t in the administration’s official count, an Axios review finds.

Why it matters: A record 60,000 immigrants are now officially in long-term detention, according to the latest government data, a historic jump from the 39,000 or so who were behind bars at the end of the Biden administration.

The catch: The Department of Homeland Security’s tally doesn’t include detainees in new facilities such as those in Florida’s now-infamous “Alligator Alcatraz,” spaces designated as short-term “holding rooms,” and military bases.

The numbers continue to balloon as Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown escalates in cities nationwide and DHS inks more deals to detain immigrants ahead of trying to deport them.

Ed: Remember when the media and Democrats (pardon the redundancy) claimed that Trump wasn’t doing any better than Biden on ICE arrests and deportations? Good times, good times. 

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Ed: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Why would anyone risk going through checkpoints as absconders with expired or bad identification? It’s not like ICE went after them specifically — local law enforcement referred them to ICE. 

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AP: Immigration officials said they intend to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda, after he declined an offer to be sent to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to human smuggling charges, according to a Saturday court filing.

The Costa Rica offer came late Thursday, after it was clear that the Salvadoran national would likely be released from a Tennessee jail the following day. Abrego Garcia declined to extend his stay in jail and was released on Friday to await trial in Maryland with his family. Later that day, the Department of Homeland Security notified his attorneys that he would be deported to Uganda and should report to immigration authorities on Monday.

Ed: He’s a convicted felon connected to human trafficking in the US. He has no legal standing to be in this country. Costa Rica sounds better than Uganda, but maybe Abrego Garcia can link up with human traffickers in Africa to continue his career. 

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Ed: Well, I don’t buy them because I’m a Type II diabetic that can’t eat them, but point well taken. 

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ABC NewsTwo U.S. hospitals are the latest to announce they will be ending some, or all, of their pediatric gender-affirming care services at the end of the month.





Kaiser Permanente, a health care company that manages 40 hospitals across several states — including California, Oregon and Virginia — said it is pausing gender-related surgeries for patients under age 18 on Aug. 29. It noted that other gender-related care will continue.

Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. said it will also stop prescribing gender-affirming medications on Aug. 30. It follows a move the hospital made in late January to pause all puberty-blockers and hormone prescriptions for minors.

Ed: ABC goes on to warn that “some patients might be harmed” by ending pediatric sex-change therapies. All of the science indicates that pediatric sex-change therapies do active harm to all who receive it, especially surgical therapies and puberty blockers. Too bad ABC doesn’t seem interested in reporting that news. 

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People like Charlie Kirk have even directly asked him why he won’t stop investors buying up California homes and he will never answer the question.

Ed: There’s not much that Newsom can do about that, not even in overregulated California. Private sales are private, in other words, and ‘investors’ (flippers) have the same access to the market as any other buyer. Sellers like these buyers since they are usually offer cash purchases with no contingencies. By the way, the median house price in Long Beach is $841K according to Zillow, so a buyer who intends to live in that space has about $170,000 for repairs and renovation before becoming upside-down on the property; flippers would have to spend less to make the financials work, of course. 





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Ed: Now THIS you can blame on Newsom, along with the California Democrat establishment. It’s hilarious that Newsom wants to shift the blame to Trump, but hardly surprising. 

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Dallas News: The Texas Senate approved a redistricting of the state’s congressional districts in a party-line vote early Saturday morning, sending the proposal to Gov. Greg Abbott for his signature.

Senators had been expecting a filibuster from Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, but her plans were short circuited when Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick informed her colleagues that Alvarado had sent a campaign fund-raising email that mentioned the planned filibuster.

Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, used a procedural tactic to immediately call for a vote on the redistricting plan after Patrick had gathered all the senators at the dais, where he told them about Alvarado’s email. The final vote was 18-11.

Ed: The whole fleabagging exercise is just a fundraising stunt. However, Alvarado apparently didn’t check to make sure that fundraising off a planned future filibuster didn’t violate the rules. Ooopsie! The failure is all the more inexplicable since Alvarado pulled the same kind of stunt four years ago for a 15-hour filibuster of an election reform bill that nonetheless passed anyway. 

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Ed: As we say in radio, you gotta commit to the bit! She even bought a full-length dress to conceal her, er, preparations. I bet the procedural vote really p***ed her off … 

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WaPo Opinion: I think about my own reaction to Trump’s announcement — that initial moment of sympathy before the alarm bells started ringing. As the weeks have passed, that measured distance has only confirmed what I suspected after those first hours of reflection. Was I being intellectually honest, or was I falling prey to the same authoritarian appeal that has tempted so many others? The answer, I suspect, is both. There’s something seductive about the promise of swift, decisive action when institutions seem to be failing. This is why the gift of the strongman can be so appealing, even in a democracy such as ours. But history contains sobering lessons about this seduction: Emergency powers, once granted, are rarely relinquished quickly or easily.

Perhaps what’s most troubling isn’t just Trump’s authoritarian impulses, but our own democratic institutions’ inability to address the underlying problems that make his solutions seem attractive in the first place. If D.C.’s elected officials had been more effective at tackling crime and homelessness, would Trump’s intervention have been as appealing? Our failure to govern well creates the conditions for someone else to govern badly.

Ed: Shadi Hamid nearly grasps the point, but loses it by claiming that law enforcement is somehow illegitimately “authoritarian.” Trump didn’t declare martial law; he deployed the National Guard to enforce existing law after Democrat progressives refused to do so. That’s their “failure to govern well”; they’re not governing at all! Also, DC is under federal jurisdiction anyway, so it’s entirely legitimate for federal agencies to fill the gap. Now, if Trump tries that with Chicago, that will be a different question — but Hamid’s point about governing incompetently certainly applies there as well. 





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Ed: Saturday night’s all right for open threading too …


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