DL Open Thread: Sunday, May 11, 2025
We start today with a Rorschach Test:
Thoughts? Comments?
Because Nothing In The Belichick/Hudson Saga Is Too Cringe-y For Me:
Inside the Holiday Inn Portland By The Bay, the contestants of both the Miss Maine USA and Miss Teen Maine USA pageants burst onto a stage and performed a dance routine. As it ended, the girls and women introduced themselves to the crowd. Last went the one who had been twirling and shimmying on the edge of the stage, only a few feet from Belichick.
“Jordon Hudson, 24, Hancock!” she shouted.
When it was her turn, after Miss Hampden, Hudson walked across the stage in a sparkly purple gown. “Woooo!” two women — who later identified themselves only as part of Hudson’s “Glam Team” — yelled from the crowd. The backdrop was a black curtain with holes punched in it, made to look like stars. Small, colored spotlights, the kind found at senior proms, rotated around the stage. Hudson received loud cheers — but not quite as loud as Miss Lewiston.
Loved the tone of that article–pure snark.
Nobody, But Nobody, Does Snark Better Than ShowerCap. Add him to your Sunday Must-Reads. A sample from today:
Wouldn’t want you to think that crack was directed at the trade war, though. No, that’s going swimmingly, at least for the billionaires with clearly designated bribe troughs. Elon Musk, for example, has stumbled into a lucrative side hustle, extorting Starlink contracts from developing economies desperate to get out from under the mad king’s tariff tantrum.
Of course, the real money’s in meme coins, as any grifting rapist’ll tell ya. Turns out, taking the global economy hostage is such a simple, effective get-rich-quick scheme, even a guy who bankrupted casinos can’t fuck it up.
As for the rest of you filthy takers, you have until Monday to select your five favorite pencils; the rest will be personally collected by Tom Homan, who will probably eat them right in front of you.
Friday Night News Dump: National Science Foundation Dismantled:
Science magazine this week reported the latest development in a growing pattern of political disruption to American science: the National Science Foundation is eliminating all 37 of its research divisions, restructuring its grant-making process, laying off staff and canceling over $1 billion in already-awarded grants. The changes follow the resignation of Director Sethuraman Panchanathan and coincide with a proposed 55% cut to the agency’s budget.
This is not reform. It is a dismantling.
The restructuring is widely seen as a response to political pressure from the executive branch, reflecting a broader effort to align federal science funding with emerging ideological priorities. In addition to diversity-related research, areas such as climate science, vaccination, HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 have all faced deep cuts. This shift has raised concerns within the scientific community about the potential narrowing of research scope and the implications for academic freedom and innovation. The economic consequences of restricting scientific inquiry on this scale could be far-reaching.
‘Homeland Security’ Threatens To Throw More Dems In Jail.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said arresting Democratic lawmakers, who were conducting an oversight visit at an immigration detention facility in New Jersey on Friday, “is definitely on the table.”
Among those who were arrested protesting the reopening of Delaney Hall, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Newark, was Mayor Ras Baraka. New Jersey’s interim U.S. Attorney and counselor to President Donald Trump Alina Habba said Baraka “ignored multiple warnings” from DHS officials.
The Mayor was released later that day and told CNN’s “The Source” “Not a single person, not an officer from ICE, not any of the security guards, nobody told me to leave that place.”
“Somebody from Homeland Security came in the end and began to escalate the situation, and we wound up being where we are today,” Baraka said.
Perhaps Baraka will someday get reparations. You know, like the family of Ashli Babbitt.
A Close-Up Of An ICE Arrest. Read it. Feel free to take action:
I’m driving five miles across the city to check out a tip that there’s an ICE rendition ongoing. I’ve got the scanner on the car stereo as I’m about to pull onto the street in question. It’s a quiet neighborhood, small houses on small lots, people walking dogs, the mailman waving, the lawnmowers running, and I hear the dispatcher: “We have an ICE officer over there who’s allegedly being surrounded.”
“On our way,” the officer responds.
As a local reporter for a decade now, I’ve learned that you can hear the cops at their most honest on the scanner. And as I’m hearing that “surrounded” comment I remember what the city’s police chief told the city council in January:
“We do not do civil detention arrests,” Police Chief Paul Saucier said at the time, reassuring them that they wouldn’t be party to the ICE assault Trump was about to unleash. The police, he said, “do not have the authority to affect a civil arrest.”
What he didn’t say is that if you try to stop the civil arrest, the police will stop you from stopping it.
This morning a few dozen of us here in Worcester, Massachusetts, got to see that unstated fine print in action firsthand. A woman was led by federal agents in cuffs away from her family, through a throng of community organizers trying to stop it, and into an unmarked car. The local police arrived to prevent the community from protecting their neighbor from an unlawful kidnapping. They succeeded, and in the process arrested two of the people who tried to stop it.
Buckson Seeks New Home For Statue Of Racist. Fittingly, one of the proposed sites is a plantation:
On Tuesday, Sen. Eric Buckson, R-Camden, introduced Senate Concurrent Resolution 65, calling on the state, the city of Dover and Kent County Levy Court to join with the city of Wilmington to bring a historic Caesar Rodney equestrian statue to the county in which he resided.
The relocation of the monument would have a deadline of July 4, 2026, the date of the country’s 250th anniversary, when semiquincentennial celebrations will be occurring nationwide.
“We’re coming up on the 250th (anniversary), and with Caesar Rodney, his famous ride and what he meant to the state, I think it would be a disservice if, in doing that celebration, he was locked away in a storage bin somewhere,” Sen. Buckson told the Daily State News. (Or a crypt.)
The statue was erected in Wilmington’s Rodney Square in 1923, but amid widespread protests against police brutality and systemic racism in 2020, it was removed and placed into storage. There have been no plans publicized to relocate it back into Rodney Square since.
“I would welcome a full discussion because I think that’s what we should have, a full discussion about how we best tell history in all of its imperfections,” he said. “I think that’s what this resolution does. We can look past the statue and have a broader, deeper conversation of how we tell history.” (Omit Black people from history, revere slave-owners. You know, like Trump is doing.)
Inspector General Bill Stalled? Well, depends on whether the Joint Finance Committee includes funding for it:
This year’s bill has Senate leadership of both parties as additional sponsors, but lacks the names of any of the House Democratic leadership. House Minority Leader Tim Dukes is on the bill.
An obstacle to its passage, leaders in both chambers say, is the price tag. To establish the office, it’s estimated to cost more than $590,000 in fiscal year 2026, $1.4 million in FY 2027 and $1.5 million in FY 2028.
Creating an inspector general’s office has been discussed as far back as 2007. Bills introduced in 2022 failed to garner the support of leadership in both chambers. The issue gained renewed interest after recent scandals, including WHYY News’s exclusive reporting in May 2024 that a former state employee stole about $181,000 in 2023 from Delaware’s unemployment trust fund. It’s unclear whether the state has been able to recover any of the money that was taken.
The trust fund in 2024 remains “unauditable” as it was in 2023, and the Department of Labor did not respond to WHYY’s News request last month for an update on system upgrades.
What do you want to talk about?
Am I reading that endorsement correctly? Meyer is pledging to raise $100K for the party only if his chosen candidate wins chair?
Isn’t the chair elected by the rank-and-file party members? So he’s essentially extorting them (albeit in reverse): “Elect my choice or I don’t help you raise a bucketload of cash.” What happens if they choose someone else? Does he decide the party is on its own and sit out the next four years?
Maybe he didn’t intend it that way, but that’s certainly how it reads.
Which is exactly why I made this a Rorschach Test.
Yes, I think you are reading it correctly.
How much did Carney raise for the party?
Here’s the thing: Evelyn Brady has done a lot of outreach. I think the vast majority of our local RD committee members were really impressed with her presentation.
HowEVER, the idea that, if she’s chosen the Party Chair (as of now, I intend to vote for her), Matt will raise money for the party, strikes me as, um, tawdry? Will he really NOT raise money for the Party if she’s not chosen?
I almost think he’s trying to get more of a rub FROM her than he’s giving TO her.
I voted for Matt (well, more against BHL), but some of the stuff he does is just politically clunky.
Very interesting, Matt is publicly saying what every kingmaker I have ever been around has actually done. I can respect the transparency. It’s a bold move. I support Ms Brady as well but I gave up my minor party position over a year ago. I can say this that her opponent is not a person I would support for any political position. I don’t know that I would have made this move but I find it to be a strong and confident show of support for the best choice for a leader who can a minimum put a chink in the Delaware Way armor.
What if the $100K comes from Phil Shawe?
I think any literal monetary incentive to vote for a particular person is abhorrent. This is a terrible look for both of them. And, it exposes their knowledge level. I believe the party asks Governors for $200k in on years and $100k in off years to advance the coordinated campaign. Is he truly going to give $0 if someone else wins? Losing legislative races in 2026 could be big risks to his priorities and we also have statewides up that he relies on. At best, this is a ploy for Brady to play the hero and push him to give the money either way. But at worst it’s the two of them saying they can win but you might not like how they do it. And we saw enough of that last election. As a delegate, I’d like them to explain this. It’s giving off Musk.
Forcing us all to bow to corporations, throwing his weight behind fighting rent stabilization, and now this. Meyer hasn’t taken long to show his true colors, eh?
For every complicated problem, Mencken observed, there is a solution that is neat, elegant and wrong.
So it is with rent control. It sounds good in theory, but it is one of the best-studied issues in economics, and the rare issue on which virtually everyone agrees: Over time, they reduce both the quality and quantity of rental units.
Agreed, straight-up rent control is a horrible idea. Rent stabilization with a lighter touch can be a less horrible idea depending on details. Some sort of waiting period for increases is probably not a bad idea.
But there are plenty of other pro-tenant ideas that should be considered. More accountability for absentee landlords comes to mind. Or putting teeth into enforcement of livability standards. Oh do we give tenants public representation in landlord disputes yet? I think that fell through, I wasn’t paying attention.
I’m so sick of this argument. The other pro-tenant ideas don’t help people afford their damn housing. When rents are spiraling upward as precipitously as they are, they need to be reigned in. The reason the condition of rental units suffers is simple: capitalism. Landlords (and I’m talking the bigger ones here, not the mom-and-pop types) don’t take a pay cut when they can’t jack up rental prices the way they want because they want to keep their cushy lifestyles rather than continuing the upkeep of their existing units and construction of new ones. Rent stabilization isn’t the problem; unfettered greed is.
Surely Wilmington is unique and rent control will work this time!
NYC has both rent control and rent stabilization. Rent control is mostly phased out. There are about 16K apartments under rent control, with tenants who moved in before 1971 (or their relatives/successors).
It turns out with rent control, nobody wants to invest in housing, and fewer apartments are available and they are in worse condition. Go figure!
I lived in a rent-stabilized apartment in NYC for a few years. When I was there I did the research and found the rent had previously increased beyond the allowable amount. So I applied to the city for enforcement, and won a rent reduction. So the greed was there, but there was also a path to redress.
I’m never said Wilmington is unique, so maybe keep your eye on the ball instead of inferring something that isn’t there. My point is that the system, like most of our systems, is broken for those of us who need it to work (it’s working just fine for the people it’s designed to work for). Rent needs to be stabilized. If the rampant increase of those experiencing homelessness isn’t an indicator of that need, I don’t know what is.
Yes, Alby, I clearly understand that capitalism is the problem. Thank you for the Captain Obvious appearance.
Re: making things less profitable, rent stabilization could absolutely be a tiered solution so that it affects the big guys more than the little fish. What about that is difficult to understand? This particular piece of legislation isn’t doing that, but it could be made to do that. The reason it would never work is because jerks like BPG and Capano fund too many people on council, so most won’t vote for it. So once again, greed is the problem.
Puck, since you don’t seem to be a progressive, telling those of us who are what to do is a bit confounding. I agree that moving money to different avenues would be extremely helpful, but the decrease in quality and quantity of housing due to rent stabilization is a matter of greed, NOT due to the stabilization itself. Not sure why you aren’t making that connection. The wealthy won’t change what they’re doing without being made to do it, and rent stabilization is just one step in that process.
The system you’re referring to is called capitalism.
The problem with any kind of rent stabilization is that it applies to every rental property, not just the ones that people have been priced out of. So most of the beneficiaries aren’t the poor, they’re whoever rents an apartment and then doesn’t move.
When you make it less profitable to be a landlord, fewer people will built apartments. In what way is this difficult to understand?
There isn’t a binary choice between rent control or homelessness. Rent control eventually decreases the availability and quality of housing.
It is normal for people to move to lower priced neighborhoods when prices go up in their neighborhood.
Some form of rent stabilization can avoid the worst impacts on the poorest, depending on details.
The thing is, all great cities got that way during some period of buildout paid for by the wealthy and for the benefit of the wealthy. A city that expands from the bottom up is a favela.
The goal for progressives should be not to block investment by the wealthy, but to bend it toward the public interest and to assure dignity for those displaced.
I had to double check this was posted by Evelyn when I saw this because it feels so wrong. This is Matt telling down-ballot Democrats that he does not care about them. They’re on their own if he doesn’t get his way. This is beyond disappointing and deeply concerns me.
So much pearl-clutching. Meyer is contending with an anti-Meyer Delaware Way faction that feels entitled to control of the party. I for one don’t want Meyer out there raising money for the likes of Cruce and Seigfried to expand the corporatist anti-progressive coalition. Maybe it was time to say it out loud.
It’s a one-party state, or will be until the Democrats fuck it up so badly that rational people start voting for Republicans out of desperation. How many seats in the General Assembly are actually toss-ups? A half-dozen maybe? How much money do they need for a general election for those six seats? The answer would be “close to nothing.”
I don’t know whose side Meyer is on, the progressives or the Republicans Lite. But it seems to me that a lot of y’all who care about this inside-party stuff are unaware that when there’s only one party it will eventually split in two. Nobody is going to sing Kumbaya, nor should they.
As puck asks, do you want party unity with Ray Siegfried and Bryan Townsend? I sure wouldn’t.
The Delaware Democratic Party is a dead letter regardless of who is elected its next chair. Its became abundantly clear it cannot execute the most basic functions of a Party: organizing, fundraising, and recruiting candidates.
If I were in Meyer’s shoes I’d tell the Party to buzz off then start building my own semi-permanent political organization to raise money to influence primaries and build a national brand. Why waste the political capital when you can simply build your own organization without the headache?
Meyer has shown absolutely no ability to put together a coherent political organization. He has run on two things: My opponent is bad (see: Gordon and BHL) and I’m a great manager (yet, so far, he has not shown that in the first 100+ days).
Honestly, he is in a dead-heat with Carney at this point. But at least Carney showed up to things, had conversations with legislators and had people ready to be confirmed on day 1.
He has no idea how a political party operates and he has a bunch of out-of-state lackeys that don’t know either. To be fair, the lackeys don’t know how to do policy, legislation or work well with others. So there’s that too.
I dunno. I think he has a pretty good sense as to how ‘a political party operates’, seeing as how said ‘operators’ doubled down on supporting BHL while doing nothing, and I mean NOTHING, to help elect legislative candidates.
I wonder how many party folks (rank-and-file as well as leaders) Matt asked for their vote for endorsement. The people that I have spoken to never heard from him on the subject. As someone that once ran for office, wouldn’t you agree that asking for someone’s vote is a key step here?
That aloofness has continued from what I’m hearing. And when he does engage, it’s with a side of weird energy. Do you know that he sets an egg timer for meetings with legislators and other electeds? It’s weird. It’s disrespectful. It’s probably why he can’t get things done in the legislature.
Sarah McBride is the most likely to create her own political organization, but she has been working within the party to ensure that she leaves her mark.
I also wouldn’t say that the party did nothing to elect legislative candidates. 2024’s coordinated campaign was, by all accounts, a mess. But they did GOTV across the board and specifically in flippable districts.
As a committee member, I can tell you that Matt, BHL and Collin O’Mara all sought the endorsement of our committee directly by speaking at our meetings.