In the Free State of Florida, we’ve got a lock on hokey,
So if Donald Trump wants something done, we say okey-dokey.
“Alligator Alcatraz” was really neat-o
And then we built the “Deportation Depot,”
But we saved the best playful name for last with “Panhandle Pokey.”
Pensito IllustrationOperating in a legal gray area that deserves its own Catch-22,
Alligator Alcatraz has found some loopholes to latch onto.
Florida built it, but can’t enforce immigration;
Feds run it, but shirk environmental regulation.
Meanwhile, prisoners live in cages sans the legal process they’re due.
Alligator Alcatraz (ABC News)
In advertising, a catchy name makes all the difference, and so it is with Alligator Alcatraz, Florida’s newest and cruelest immigration detention center located on the edge of the Everglades.
A new poll by the Florida Communications and Research Hub found very high name recognition for the migrant center that opened in July, with 89% of respondents saying they were aware of the facility and 45% saying they had heard “a lot” about it.
But about 43% of respondents held a negative view of the center — 35% strongly negative. That compares to 34% who like the project and just 18% who strongly favor it.
Unsurprisingly, Republicans are more likely to approve of the detention center, with about 56% of GOP respondents having a positive view and 32% expressing strong support. About one in five GOP voters holds an unfavorable view.
Also unsurprisingly, 74% of Democrats view the center unfavorably, with 65% strongly disliking it.
About 47% of voters unaffiliated with either party view it unfavorably, compared to 32% who approve.
Predictably, Republicans and Democrats say they have heard different coverage of the facility. About 22% of Republicans say most of what they have heard about Alligator Alcatraz was positive, while 46% said the coverage was mixed. But 65% of Democrats and 43% of unaffiliated voters say the coverage they remember has been mostly negative.
Blue Rose Research surveyed more than 3,200 voters in web panels July 25-27. Pollsters report a 1.7% margin of error in the results.
Pensito IllustrationTrump likes Florida — his adopted state’s got pizzazz —
And Ron DeSantis and James Uthmeier are his kind of lads.
The boys built an ICE camp for Trump
In the heart of a dismal, dangerous swamp,
So it’s just hot, nasty and cruel enough, Trump’s Alligator Alcatraz.
China used to buy half our soybeans to make stuff like tofu,
But Trump’s tariffs ended that, now what’s a soybean farmer to do?
Ask millionaire Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent,
Who owns $25 million in soybean land for rent,
He told ABC News: “I’m actually a soybean farmer. So, I have felt this pain, too.”
“Remember when we learned that our wealthiest and most powerful people were connected to a guy who ran a literal child sex trafficking ring? And then that guy died mysteriously in a jail? And now we just don’t talk about it.”
“Tuesday’s results back up my oft-stated argument that the November 2024 election was a highly focused repudiation of President Biden, the Biden-Harris Administration, and, by extension, Vice President Kamala Harris, not the top-to-bottom repudiation of the Democratic Party that many have made it out to be.”
“Sharia law seeks to destroy and supplant the pillars of our republican form of government and is incompatible with the Western tradition. The use of taxpayer-funded school vouchers to promote Sharia law likely contravenes Florida law and undermines our national security.”
— Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, introducing an Islamic law scare into the public discourse via an X post magnifying claims that state universal school choice dollars were paying for instruction in Sharia in Tampa charter schools, reported Florida Phoenix.
Companies said they laid off 153,074 employees last month, the most since 2003, according to a report the consulting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas published yesterday. That’s nearly triple the number of jobs cut in September, and it puts the total for the year through October at almost 1.1 million jobs lost—44% more than in all of 2024. Most of October’s redundancies came from just two industries. Warehouses were the biggest job cutters last month with 48,000 layoffs, followed by 33,000 in tech. Amazon, UPS, Paramount, and Target were just some corporate names that announced layoffs last month.
“Most of the publicly identified donors to President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom have high-stakes business before the administration, ranging from billions in government contracts to federal investigations into their companies,” the Washington Post reports. “More than half of the companies that donated are facing or have recently faced federal enforcement actions tied to alleged wrongdoing that includes engaging in unfair labor practices, deceiving consumers and harming the environment.”
“President Donald Trump littered his new ’60 Minutes’ interview with a wide-ranging assortment of false claims, the vast majority of them previously debunked,” CNN reports. “We counted at least 18 inaccurate assertions.”
“Millions of low-income Americans are losing access to food aid as the nation’s largest anti-hunger program goes dark for the first time,” Politico reports. “Congress failed to reopen the government before funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ran out Saturday. A federal judge, in an eleventh-hour decision, directed the Trump administration to use emergency funds to pay for food aid in November — but even that wasn’t enough to prevent the immediate lapse of benefits, which officials say could take weeks to resume.”