DL Open Thread: Saturday, March 15, 2025
The Schumer Sell-Out: For those who didn’t see the list of turncoats yesterday, here ya go:
“Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (Illinois), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada), Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire), John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), Kirsten Gillibrand (New York), Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), Gary Peters (Michigan) and Brian Schatz (Hawaii) joined Schumer and (Maine Independent Angus) King in voting for the bill.”
Lest You Held Out Hopes For the Department Of Justice:
President Donald Trump pledged to “expose” his enemies during a norm-breaking political speech Friday at the Justice Department in which he aired a litany of grievances about the criminal cases he faced and vowed retribution for what he described as the “lies and abuses that have occurred within these walls.”
The speech was meant to rally support for Trump administration policies on violent crime, drugs and illegal immigration. But it also functioned as a triumphant forum for the president to boast about having emerged legally and politically unscathed from two federal prosecutions that one year ago had threatened to torpedo his presidential prospects but were dismissed after his election win last fall.
The speech marked the latest manifestation of Trump’s unparalleled takeover of the department and came amid a brazen campaign of retribution already undertaken under his watch, including the firing of prosecutors who investigated him during the Biden administration and the scrutiny of thousands of FBI agents who investigated the president’s supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice. But I stand before you today to declare that those days are over, and they are never going to come back and never coming back,” Trump said to cheers from a crowd that included local law enforcement officials, political allies and FBI Director Kash Patel. “So now, as the chief law enforcement officer in our country, I will insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred.”
Too Anti-Vax For RFK, Jr.? More likely too anti-vax for the Senate, but ya gotta take good news when it occurs:
Republican lawmakers may not have considered avowed anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be too radical to run a federal health agency—but it turns out that Dr. Dave Weldon is.
On Thursday, the White House reportedly withdrew the nomination of the 71-year-old physician and former GOP representative from Florida to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just hours before his initial committee confirmation hearing was set to take place, according to Axios, which was the first to report the news, and a statement from Weldon. As I reported back in December, Weldon, who spent more than a decade representing Florida in the House of Representatives before returning to practice as a physician, has a staunch anti-vaccine record. This is what may have reportedly posed a barrier to his confirmation in light of the measles outbreak across several states, especially Texas and New Mexico, that has led to more than 250 cases and killed two people, including an unvaccinated child (though the cause of one of the deaths is under investigation, according to the CDC).
The physician and ex–Florida congressman’s track record includes introducing legislation that would have stripped the CDC of its authority to conduct research on vaccine safety and instead given it to an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. Weldon has also promoted the unfounded theory that vaccines lead to childhood autism—a false claim boosted infamously in the past by Trump’s pick for HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Anybody seen those dust storms and brush fires sweeping across the Texas panhandle? Drill, baby, drill.
‘Then They Went After The Universities’:
The day before Khalil’s detention the Trump administration pulled $400m in federal funding for Columbia, ostensibly because of its failure to curb antisemitism, even though the university cracked down on protests against the war in Gaza and the Biden administration’s support for it, including facilitating the arrest of students and banning groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine.
The US education department has warned 60 other colleges and universities that it is scrutinising their responses to allegations of antisemitism on campus and that they may face “enforcement actions”, widely taken to mean more funding cuts.
That action was followed by another announcement that it would investigate 45 universities for “race-exclusionary practices in their graduate programs”.
Including, apparently, that hotbed of left-wing radicalism, the University of Delaware.
Gov. Meyer Nominates His Port Board Slate:
Meyer has tapped former Port of Wilmington and DSPC Executive Director Gene Bailey, former New Castle County Board of Adjustment Chair and corporate counsel to the DuPont Company David Burt, Associated Builders and Contractors of Delaware President and former Delaware Department of Transportation Secretary Jen Cohan, Business Agent for the International Longshoreman’s Association Local 1883 Ronald “Kimoko” Harris and former Delaware Board of Pilot Commissioners Chair Robert “Jerry” Medd.
I’m especially pleased to see that fellow 7th Democratic RD member Ronald ‘Kimoko’ Harris has been nominated. He’s been a strong advocate on behalf of the workers at the Port. Also liked Meyer’s reasoning for not renominating Jeff Bullock to the Board:
“I’m not really interested in people serving in the same role for decades and decades. I believe, even with respect to my own service, that you get in, you serve for a period of time, and then you move on,” Meyer explained. “I think it’s important that we cycle people in and out, especially something like the Port, where you’re talking about probably close to a billion dollars — certainly hundreds of millions of dollars of public funding at stake — you want a lot of different perspectives on this. And that means that people who care a lot about it rotate on and then rotate off, and that’s the way it should be.”
What do you want to talk about?
It isn’t just how weak Schumer is, its how weak he is compared to the random normal person who runs for school board to oust a Moms for Liberty freak.
It’s the cowardice when they are risking very little compared to everyone they claim to be fighting for.
Especially since he was ‘against it before he was for it’. Laid no groundwork for D’s to make the case against the bill.
Trump was right. He said all politicians are weak and scared and he can bully them I to anything and it proves it over and over. A career for losers
Who the fuck caves for literally nothing? Republican bill, which is historically vague and gives away much congressional authority, written with zero input from Democrats and presented to Chuck Schumer as a take it or leave it. And. He. Took. It. He got nothing. Republicans just shoved their partisan bill down the throats of 10 Democratic Senators. It’s beyond belief. It is the time for fighters. But there is never a time for what the democratic senate leadership just allowed to happen. Historical capitulation.
God I hate Democrats. The Democratic Party is just a loser hole. Dem leadership seems to LOVE getting itself into “Heads we lose, tails you win” situations with Republicans. They sit back and allow Republicans to own every fucking narrative, every fucking day. Its pitiful.