DL Open Thread: Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Some Breaking Delaware News To Start: Betsy Maron will not run for reelection as State Democratic Party Chair. This comes one day after Evelyn Waters Brady blew us away during her presentation to the 7th RD Democratic Committee. While there are some fissures on our committee, and while some might still have voted for Betsy Maron, Brady can only be described as dynamic. She impressed everybody. While I don’t know if anybody will now step up to challenge her, I feel pretty confident that our committee, at least, is sold. Thanks to both Misti and Jonathan Tate for breaking the news in the comments last night! Keep the scoops coming.
The Courts Strike Back. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. Threats On Law Firms. Climate And Infrastructure Funding (this ruling from a Trump-appointed judge).
The two planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members who were deported to El Salvador last week included eight female detainees who were later returned to the U.S., according to sworn declarations filed Monday.
In a separate sworn declaration, a Nicaraguan migrant said he was also returned to the U.S. after being on one of the planes that landed in El Salvador.
“I overheard a Salvadoran official tell an ICE officer that the Salvadoran government would not detain someone from another Central American country because of the conflict it would cause,” the Nicaraguan man said in the declaration.
“I also heard him say that they would not receive the females because the prison was not for females and females were not mentioned in the agreement,” he said.
You notice that Trump never says ‘only the best people’; any more? Here are two examples of why:
Ed Martin. The guy who Trump has perversely nominated to be US Attorney for Washington D. C.:
Martin is now interim U.S. attorney for D.C. and Trump’s pick to serve full time in the role. But as a conservative activist and former Missouri Republican official, he appeared more than 150 times on RT and Sputnik — networks funded and directed by the Russian government — as a guest commentator from August 2016 to April 2024, according to a search of their websites and the Internet Archive’s database of television broadcasts.
Martin did not disclose the appearances last month on a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire, which asks nominees to list all media interviews. Analysis oftelevision archives suggests he went on RT and Sputnik more often than on any major cablenetwork during that span.
No doubt just an inadvertent oversight.
Gary Shapley. Who better to run the IRS?:
President Donald Trump is set to name Gary Shapley, the former IRS criminal investigator who alleged that the Justice Department slow-walked the investigation of Hunter Biden, as acting commissioner of the IRS, three people briefed on the matter told CNN.
Shapley provided whistleblower testimony to Congress, as Republicans claimed partisan bias by Justice officials had hindered the investigation of the son of President Joe Biden.
Shapley would become the fourth person to lead the beleaguered IRS this year, as Trump’s pick for full-time commissioner – former Missouri Rep. Billy Long – awaits confirmation in the GOP-led Senate.
The Biden-appointed and Senate-confirmed commissioner Danny Werfel resigned on Trump’s inauguration day, even though still had years left on his statutory term. Werfel was succeeded by a Doug O’Donnell, a career official with decades of experience, who abruptly retired at the end of February after policy clashes with Trump appointees. After O’Donnell came Melanie Krause, another career official, who decided to resign last week after the Trump allies pushed through a controversial deal to share taxpayer data with immigration agencies.
As rumors swirled this week about Shapley’s potential appointment to temporarily lead the tax-collection agency, some former IRS officials reacted with dismay.
“Glad I’m not there anymore,” one recently departed senior IRS official said. “It is going to be a sh*tshow.”
I close with this tidbit from Sarah Mueller’s piece on the Senate’s rejection of two of Matt Meyer’s nominees to the Port board:
But Senate leadership told the Meyer administration they would not move forward with Jen Cohan, president of Associated Builders and Contractors of Delaware and former state transportation secretary, and former port Executive Director Eugene Bailey.
Lockman said that while they believe Cohan and Bailey have been good public servants, they are unsuited for the board. Lockman said there was a question about Cohan’s support of labor.
“There’s some concern that she is currently the leader of an organization that’s not typically aligned as a pro-union organization, and really that’s where our caucus concern stood,” she said.
Lockman also said that lawmakers were looking for some fresh faces on the board, which would preclude Bailey. Senators did agree to consider Hall-Long’s choice of former port board chairman and former Secretary of State Jeffrey Bullock, who served on the board for many years.
That’s right. The person most responsible (along with Delaware’s Worst Governor Ever, John Carney) for totally screwing up pretty much everything related to the Port was perfectly fine with the Senate. Jeff Bullock=Fresh Face. The Delaware Way at its worst.
What do you want to talk about?
So Delaware Democrats are determined to piss away $300 million in public money to keep a failing port running for the benefit of a couple of unions whose jobs are disappearing to automation – but only if their chosen union drones are given positions of power.
And then people wonder why voters turn to other party.
The impotence of the leader of those unions was amply demonstrated in the last election.
Elections have consequences.
I thought the port was going to be privatized and all this money was going to roll in and it would save the taxpayers tons!
That was what Carney and Bullock sold everybody on.
“Glad I’m not there anymore,” one recently departed senior IRS official said. “It is going to be a sh*tshow.”
News flash – it’s already a sh*tshow. If they are implying it’s going to get significantly worse, I’m honestly not sure that’s possible.
Why do the senate dems still whore themselves out to a gangster like Jimmy M
They literally do nothing in campaigns anymore but deliver food to their friends on Election Day. Ugh
That is a DAMN GOOD QUESTION.
From Spotlight Delaware story on the state’s inability to launch a recreational weed industry:
Hey, shit-for-brains: You know what’s “absolutely wrong,” and it says so in the law? Taking a loaded gun on an airplane, asswipe. Yeah, the offense you were guilty of, that you brushed away as an “honest mistake.” It carries a fine of up to $15,000. You paid nothing by pleading it down to a slap on the wrist.
So, with all due respect, which is none at all, your idea of what’s “absolutely wrong” is no better than Trump’s.