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?