From the right: ‘Missing Immigrant Kids’? Fake News
In their “continuing coordinated effort to criticize all things Trump,” charges The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland, media have “dragged illegal aliens out of the shadows — and into the sight of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.” That’s because of their sensational misinterpretation of Senate testimony that federal officials (after a cursory check) had been unable “to determine with certainty” the whereabouts of 1,475 unaccompanied children. This became a narrative that “the Trump Administration lost nearly 1,500 minors and they were at risk of being victims of traffickers.” But, as one activist wrote, “They aren’t missing! They are almost certainly living with family members who almost certainly don’t want to interact with the government and we shouldn’t ask them to.”
Budget wonk: Post-Bridgegate, PA Fiefdoms Are Back
More than four years after Bridgegate, the Port Authority remains “badly governed and in need of reform,” asserts the Citizens Budget Commission’s Carol Kellerman at Crain’s New York. In the wake of the scandal, she’d recommended creating a CEO position and having the board chairman rotate every two years between appointees from New York and New Jersey. Both legislatures approved the idea, but Gov. Chris Christie vetoed it. Now, under Gov. Phil Murphy, Trenton has “advanced a Port Authority reform bill that does not include the rotating chairmanship and CEO.” Which means “the arrangement that has long impeded effective, nonpolitical decision-making by the authority remains in effect.” And that’s how Murphy says he wants it to be. But, she insists, “governance reform must be enshrined in law” to “end the dysfunctional and politicized division of responsibilities.”
Historian: The Carnivores of Civil Liberties
After their landslide loss in 1972, recalls Victor Davis Hanson at National Review, Democrats were “resuscitated by the Watergate scandal,” which also “birthed (or perhaps rebirthed) modern investigative journalism” into abuses of power and attacks on civil liberties. But “all those legacies are now eroding,” he says. Democrats, journalists and liberalism itself have “either downplayed or excused Watergate-like abuses of power” by the Obama administration. Why? The media and liberal establishments considered Donald Trump “an existential danger to themselves and the nation at large,” as Nixon’s people did George McGovern. They were also convinced Hillary Clinton would be elected, so there would be no repercussions. Also, unlike 1972 they “held the reins of power” and “chose to exercise it in a fashion similar to Nixon’s team.”
Conservative: The Right Foolishly Embraced Roseanne
Conservatives “have a pop-culture inferiority complex,” given all those “A-list celebrities who will endorse liberals’ entire agenda,” admits The Week’s Edward Morrissey. So along came Roseanne, whose new show’s character was “a full-MAGA supporter of President Trump” and she quickly became “an icon for the populist right,” despite her “long history of attacking much of what the right believes.” And it worked — until her epic Twitter meltdown. Her firing by ABC set off “a torrent of criticism” from Trump supporters, but that’s “a mistake,” because she’s “no conservative.” Just a few years ago, he noted, she was a 9/11 truther and “stumping for Occupy Wall Street.” ABC should have known better than to embrace her, and so should conservatives.
Health beat: Battling Over Medicaid Work Requirements
Adam Freedman at City Journal notes that Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin — relying on new flexibility from Washington — announced new work requirements for his state’s Medicaid recipients. Liberal activists sued to block it. “The stakes in this legal battle are high,” because “the rising cost of Medicaid is creating fiscal emergencies” across the US. Unless states are empowered to rein in costs, “it will strike a mortal blow to the system of cooperative federalism on which federal aid programs are based.” Besides, the impact of new rules “is likely to be modest”: Most Medicaid recipients already work. And such programs are “time-limited, state-by-state experiments. If work requirements prove to be harmful or ineffective, states will soon lose interest.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann