DL Open Thread: Thursday, June 5, 2025
Judge James E. Boasberg Is My New Hero:
A federal judge in Washington ordered the Trump administration on Wednesday to take steps toward giving nearly 140 Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador in March under a rarely invoked wartime law the due process that they had been denied.
In a sweeping and at times outraged opinion, the judge, James E. Boasberg, compared the expelled men to characters in a Kafka novel. Judge Boasberg also asserted that they were likely to prevail in their claims that President Trump had treated them unfairly by deporting them without hearings to a brutal Salvadoran prison under the expansive powers of the wartime statute, known as the Alien Enemies Act.
“Perhaps the president lawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act,” Judge Boasberg wrote. “Perhaps, moreover, defendants are correct that plaintiffs are gang members. But — and this is the critical point — there is simply no way to know for sure, as the CECOT plaintiffs never had any opportunity to challenge the government’s say-so.”
Instead, Judge Boasberg continued, Trump officials “spirited away planeloads of people before any such challenge could be made. And now, significant evidence has come to light indicating that many of those currently entombed in CECOT have no connection to the gang and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations.”
“Absent this relief,” he wrote, “the government could snatch anyone off the street, turn him over to a foreign country and then effectively foreclose any corrective course of action.”
What Are Rethugs Who Are Terrified Of both Trump AND Musk Supposed To Do?:
Mr. Musk’s opposition to the bill has put House Republicans, who tend to fall in line behind whatever Mr. Trump demands, in the awkward position of straining to satisfy two authority figures in their lives who are now at odds. They cannot afford to break with either. Their voters want and expect them to support Mr. Trump no matter what.
But Mr. Musk’s explosion of anger against the bill — which could hurt his electric-car company Tesla and cause the federal deficit to surge — has raised an unpredictable new threat. Even if he does not spend a dime against Republican lawmakers, Mr. Musk could use his megaphone to target them, as he did on Wednesday when he encouraged his 220 million followers on X to “Call your Senator, Call your Congressman, Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL.”
Interviews with more than half a dozen House Republicans revealed a widespread wariness of crossing Mr. Musk. Many of them are quietly appalled at him for being “disrespectful” of the president — they see him as throwing a hissy fit because he did not get his way on his pet projects — but they are unwilling to criticize him publicly for fear of becoming a more pointed target of his ire. There is also an awareness that while Mr. Musk might pick 100 fights between now and the next election, Mr. Trump will remain the overwhelming force guiding their political lives.
ICE Is The Enemy. Their latest endeavor:
The Trump administration is seeking to issue a contract worth up to $25 million to DNA-test families being targeted for deportation by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The effort coincides with a dramatic increase in immigration arrests in the nation’s interior, with ICE apprehending people at court hearings as well as high school students and families with children who are US citizens — groups ICE has not historically pursued. On Wednesday, CNN reported that ICE has taken roughly 500 children from their homes and into government custody through so-called welfare checks since President Donald Trump returned to the White House.
Advocates say giving ICE’s Enforcement and Removals office, which oversees deportations, the ability to DNA-test families would pave the way for the administration to separate children from the adults who care for them. Last week, Senator Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat, wrote a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem outlining what he called “grave concerns” over recent incidents in which children were separated from their primary caregivers.
“By leaning heavily on who is actually blood related, there is a good chance that we will see caregivers” such as “godfathers and godmothers being taken away from children,” said Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
TACOCat Installs ‘Travel Ban’. Of course, exempting athletes coming for the World Cup next year. Fans, OTOH, are another story:
“I will ban refugee resettlement from terror-infested areas like the Gaza Strip, and we will seal our border and bring back the travel ban,” Trump said in September. “Remember the famous travel ban? We didn’t take people from certain areas of the world. We’re not taking them from infested countries.”
One More Hour Of Drinking? Not in love with this idea:
A Wilmington City Councilman is calling for an end of Delaware’s status as the first state regionally to reach “last call”.
Wilmington City Councilman Coby Owens, the youngest member of that panel, said the early bar curfew it is hurting the city attract young talent, when there are other options nearby. (I’d love to see the empirical evidence supporting that.)
“I don’t know why we have to go to Philly or D.C., or other places just to stay out an additional hour. The summertime is coming, we have all these businesses coming here in Wilmington, including restaurants, and we close down at 1 a.m., I think it’s unfortunate.” (Just dawned on me, drinking at home just might be a viable alternative.)
Owens introduced a resolution that aims to convince lawmakers in the Dover to give Wilmington an extra hour, specifically saying any city with a population of more than 50,000 can extend its hours to 2 a.m.
Coby Owens is doing some good things as a Councilman. This is not one of them.
What do you want to talk about?
So Coby first two big initiatives is allowing City Council members to meet in back rooms with no public, and to extend drinking hours in a city already with a high crime rate after midnight?
I like Coby but he’s off to a weird start as an elected.
Could you provide evidence or statistics on a “high crime rate after midnight.” Seems made up.
What isn’t made up is that you won’t get LESS drunk by staying out drinking for another hour.
The notion that people don’t live in Wilmington because the bars close at 1 a.m. cries for evidence, too.
I’m sorry, but if your judgement is so poor that the bar curfew is a significant factor in where you decide to live… well, I’m glad you picked somewhere else.
Letting Wilmington bars stay open while all the rest close would create inequality, favoring Wilmington establishments at the expense of those outside the city. That would draw immediate opposition from the larger number of businesses in the suburbs. In theory, it would also put booze-seekers on the roads to Wilmington at last call, another negative.
As the WDEL article notes, the last attempt in the GA to extend drinking hours statewide died in 2013, and Owens apparently couldn’t interest anyone to sponsor his notion now.
If anyone wanted longer hours I would guess it would be bar owners at the beach, where people on vacation are more likely to stay out late and can party in Ocean City until 2 a.m.
I’m completely with Coby here. As one of the (probably) few under-30 readers of this blog, I can assure folks that the absurdly early cutoff time is absolutely a con for young people to stay here or move here, and we bleed young people more than all but about 4 other states and rank 48th in America for nightlife, only behind West Virginia and Mississippi.
Sorry folks but if you want a future tax base of the state, being the biggest Fun Police state in the Northeast is not the way. Especially not in Wilmington where most people at bars aren’t driving anyway.
Though I find it pathetic that people would live elsewhere so they can party until 2 a.m. – some fine taxable incomes among the blackout drunk crew, I’m sure – I see no reason bars couldn’t stay open that late statewide. But there’s no way it would be adopted for Wilmington alone.
Most people at bars aren’t driving? Really? Every bar in Wilmo is suriving on walk-there traffic? And they’re walking home disappointed at 1 a.m. because they have to stop drinking? Yeah, I don’t think so.
I didn’t say that every single bar in the city survives just on foot traffic, stop strawmanning and come up with a rebuttal to my actual argument.
Yes, I drink in the city plenty more often than someone in Hockessin/Paris does, and foot traffic + Uber traffic + passengers are definitely over 50% of patrons *at most locations*.
Nothing good happens at a bar past 1am…..
Being the fun police is when you are a dry county or something. Letting people drink to 1am doesn’t seem like the fun police.
They already can drink until (almost) 2 a.m. Last call is 1 a.m. but bars can stay open until 2, and I’ve seen plenty of people order 3 drinks at last call and nurse them until the staff locked the doors. And I’ve known places that lock the doors with the drinkers still inside.
There’s one other state that has 365 day 1am closing times with no local exceptions, and it’s Utah.
When you’re equally the fun police as a state literally run by the Mormon Church to the extent allowable under the 1st Amendment, you are objectively the fun police.
You can call it the alcohol police, but it’s inaccurate to call it the fun police. It’s not fun for everyone.
In fact, alcohol is the biggest reason we have police. Alcohol abuse causes an estimated $250 billion annually in damage, and that’s an old figure.
I don’t know about most not driving but I live in Trolley and I would guess 50% are walkers and another 25% are ride share folks. I’m in recovery so I have no dog in this tussle, but I’m ok with it.
I find it hard to believe that Delaware’s night life is crummy because establishments have to stop serving alcohol a whole hour (gasp!) earlier than in PA. Especially when that doesn’t mean they have to close.
This isn’t the 70s or 80s or even 90s. Do any places even stay open that late? There aren’t any more clubs or good music scene’s where people gather. And I know for a fact that a minimal number of people are driving up to 202 to hit the bars right over the line (most of them are gone). Bars staying open in Wilmington will have a negligible impact overall.
I’m so glad that drinking alkeehawl is the biggest problem facing Wilmington right now and that Coby Owens is bravely charging ahead with his solution.
Gotta say, I’m glad he made this proposal.
It’ll give me another entry onto my ‘The Ridiculous’ list in my year-end review.
Hey, it’s good for laffs. We all gotta laugh, right?