DL Open Thread: Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Is This Lawsuit Really Necessary? Can someone please explain to me why Matt Meyer simply won’t, or can’t, submit his nominees to the State Senate for the Diamond State Port Board and just be done with it? If the State Senate was determined to approve BHL’s nominations, they would already have done it. As far as I’m concerned, the ball is in Matt’s court. Submit your nominations and get back to the business of building a working relationship with the Delaware General Assembly. The Senate has been the engine of progressive change in Delaware since 2020. Why pick a fight over this?
Dem(s) Fight(s) Back. Today, tomorrow, and every day, this is what you do:
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced Monday he will place a blanket hold on all of President Trump’s nominees to the State Department until the president backs off his effort to shut down USAID, the nation’s chief foreign assistance agency.
“Until and unless this brazenly authoritarian action is reversed and USAID is functional again, I will be placing a blanket hold on all of the Trump administration’s State Department nominees. This is self-inflicted chaos of epic proportions that will have dangerous consequences all around the world,” Schatz said in a statement.
Trump adviser Elon Musk has made a strong push to close USAID, which he called on X a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.”
Trump has given Musk free reign to destroy the bureaucracy and anything Musk and/or Trump despise. People despise Musk. Dems must make Trump and Musk own it. Every single day. Is it really that difficult?
This from Mother Jones:
On the heels of a New York Times report published Sunday that was based on interviews with more than 50 Democratic leaders and alleged that the party was struggling to land on a coherent message, Monday’s news conference seemed remarkably unified in its focus around the dangers of Musk as shadow president and Trump’s isolationist, “America First” ethos. And given that a Quinnipiac University poll released last week showed that most registered voters—53 percent—disapprove of Musk’s role in the Trump administration, and a January Associated Press-National Opinion Research Center poll found that a majority of Americans don’t want Trump relying on billionaires or family members for policy advice, congressional Democrats may be onto something in making Musk a top target.
Like I said, every single day.
How Musk Is Destroying, Um, Everything In His Path:
As the head of an improvised team within the Trump administration with completely ambiguous power (the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, in reference to a meme about a Shiba Inu), Musk has managed quite a lot in the two weeks since Inauguration Day. He has barged into at least one government building and made plans to end leases or sell some of them (three leases have been terminated so far, according to Stephen Ehikian, the General Services Administration’s acting administrator).
He has called in employees from Tesla and the Boring Company to oversee broad workforce cuts, including at the Office of Personnel Management (one of Musk’s appointed advisers, according to Wired, is just 21 years old, while another graduated from high school last year). During this time, OPM staffers, presumably affiliated with DOGE, reportedly set up an “on-premise” email server that may be vulnerable to hacking and able to collect data on government employees—one that a lawsuit brought by two federal workers argues violates the E-Government Act of 2002 (there has not yet been a response to the complaint).
Musk’s people have also reportedly gained access to the Treasury’s payments system—used to disburse more than $5 trillion to Americans each year (a national-security risk, according to Senator Ron Wyden, a democrat from Oregon)—as well as computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of civil servants. (They subsequently locked some senior employees out of those systems, according to Reuters.) Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is called “flooding the zone.” Taken in aggregate, these actions are overwhelming. But Musk’s political project with DOGE is actually quite straightforward: The world’s richest man appears to be indiscriminately dismantling the government with an eye toward consolidating power and punishing his political enemies.
Isn’t that also Trump’s goal?
Delaware Budget Hearings Begin Today. For now, they will use the budget that outgoing Gov, Carney submitted. Gov. Meyer’s proposal will be released in March, presumably along with a State Of The State address:
The budget-writing body will begin their work with orientation and a statewide financial overview before breaking for lunch. Then, the committee will get underway with budget hearings by the Office of Management and Budget, Department of Human Resources and the Department of Finance.
Joint Finance Committee members typically use the governor’s recommended budget as a guideline in their work, though the committee can adjust when crafting the budget based upon agencies’ needs and outstanding legislation in the General Assembly that requires a fiscal note.
On Jan. 6, departing Gov. John Carney released the final recommended budget of his tenure, totaling $6.5 billion; nearly $400 million more than the current budget for fiscal year 2025.
After being sworn in to office Jan. 21, Gov. Matt Meyer told media members that his recommended budget would be released in March.
This week’s budget hearings will also include the Department of Technology and Information, Department of Safety and Homeland Security and Delaware State Housing Authority on Wednesday, and Delaware Technical Community College, Delaware State University and University of Delaware on Thursday.
Following a month of hearing state agencies’ budget requests, the Joint Finance Committee will begin marking up the fiscal year 2026 budget on May 27.
Yes, you can watch the proceedings live here. If you do, and if something newsworthy happens, please let us know.
What do you want to talk about?
Here’s a roundup of some reaction from Delaware officials:
https://www.wdel.com/news/delawares-leaders-say-they-will-continue-to-push-back-against-federal-funding-freezes/article_2b359dc6-e294-11ef-bd69-67c649befc12.html
At least AG Jennings was in a position to quickly freeze the freeze by joining the multi-state lawsuit.
This is actually not a bad idea, except for the part about being led by Chris Coons. A small but determined “gang” of Senators could put a stop to most of Trump’s crap.
The state senate is acting like babies. How is the ball in Matt’s court when they are the one who started this tiff. They look foolish and are trying to tell Matt “yes we lost with bhl but are still in charge” No you aren’t, elections have consequences.
Because they have asked him, more than once, to submit his names. Why hasn’t he?
Here’s an easy solution: Put the new Secretary of State on the board instead of Bullock. Replace the loudmouthed guy from the Laborers who’s been talking shit about Meyer with another labor guy.
The Senate is not hell-bent on voting for BHL’s nominees, which they could have done already. No, the Senate, particularly Townsend, is not blameless.
But this is easily resolved.
Sokola and Townsend were defending the guy who literally called Matt Meyer a “pos” at a BHL rally. So yea it’s a bad look for the state senate. And yes bullock. God that guy needs to retire and they licked his balls as well.
To be fair, the whole thing is why people hate Dover.
Were they ‘defending the guy’? I didn’t see that.
This is easy. Submit the names, mend fences, move ahead with the business of the state where the State Senate is well-positioned to advance Matt’s agenda.
Or, risk alienating each other at the expense of passing a pretty progressive agenda.
BTW, stick with one alias. In fairness, I suspect you might have just typed it wrong.
Reminds me of a sign:
“Welcome to the Ool. You’ll notice there’s no ‘P’ in it. Let’s keep it that way.”
In fairness, it’s basically dogs at a fire hydrant.
Coons, per usual, is on a fool’s errand. Bipartisanship is not the answer.
Making Rethugs butt-hurt is the answer. Make them own it and the political fallout is the answer. They’re all so afraid of Trump. Make them afraid of the voters.
Exactly right.
Coons likes playing good cop. The problem is nobody plays bad cop.
I remember years ago complaining to Carper’s staff that he never took to the floor to speak against global warming. His staff replied that he preferred to work across the isle in the background. Of course, that dog didn’t hunt and neither will Coon’s efforts. Let’s play hardball.
100%. This moment does not call for olive branches to the other side and a staunch belief that reason will prevail. The GOP has been making Coons and his ilk look like fools since 2009; they long ago lost interest in building political consensus to accomplish policy goals. A Blue State like Delaware sending Coons to the Senate for another term is like bringing a knife to a gunfight. The time for the Accidental Senator to begin planning his retirement is quickly approaching. God knows he has plenty of inherited money to enjoy it.
What dems need to do is somehow create a riff between trump and musk and have trump turn on musk the way he does with everyone. musk will then turn his ira on x and all the bots against trump. how to do this? i have no idea so its up to the dems to come up with it. oh wait, never mind
Dog Bites Man: Both RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, both wildly unsuited for the offices for which they have been nominated, have cleared committee.
Making common cause with Rethugs is something only a Chris Coons could envision.
He’s up in 2026, just in case you didn’t know.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/14546070f4ed2cbc8a7929100daf29a9e1b61aee35070d9507fd980cb5469f88.jpg
“This shit isn’t a triumphant Reich installing their master plan, its psychotic crackheads ripping the copper wiring out of the walls to try and find the Woke Machine that makes women not want to fuck them.”
Wow and spot on!