DL Open Thread: Monday, June 16, 2025
Trump To VA–‘You Don’t Have To Treat Vets You Don’t Like’. I can’t make this stuff up:
Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump.
The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers.
Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment. But individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law.
Language requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated.
Doctors and other medical staff can also be barred from working at VA hospitals based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity, documents reviewed by the Guardian show. The changes also affect chiropractors, certified nurse practitioners, optometrists, podiatrists, licensed clinical social workers and speech therapists.
In making the changes, VA officials cite the president’s 30 January executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”. The primary purpose of the executive order was to strip most government protections from transgender people. The VA has since ceased providing most gender-affirming care and forbidden a long list of words, including “gender affirming” and “transgender”, from clinical settings.
Sorry You Missed The Parade? Looks like the MAGAts were put through a special kind of hell:
I just got back from the Trump parade and I have to say it was legitimately the worst executed mass attendance event I’ve ever seen
One overarching thought: how do you spend $80 million and fumble the basics?
Many more thoughts –
Just take your time and scroll through this chronological progression (and regression) of this event. You. Will. Enjoy. It. Unless you were there.
OTOH: Pictures From The Resistance.
Within weeks of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, pundits began saying that his return to office opened new doors for Vladimir Putin, offering Moscow opportunities it hadn’t seen in years. The deference the new administration afforded the Kremlin appeared to be rivaled only by its hostility toward its own national-security establishment.
Whatever the intent, Washington has robbed the Kremlin of its north star: opposition to the United States. After years of routinely threatening to drown the Eastern Seaboard, Moscow can no longer afford the luxury of calling America its enemy No. 1. Thanks to Trump, the Kremlin now has to portray Washington as a rational negotiating partner—even as American-made missiles continue to rain down on Russian troops. The title of Russia’s civilizational enemy has been reassigned to the European Union. The Russian propaganda machine has some flexibility, but being locked in an existential struggle with the Netherlands is far less flattering to the imperial mindset than going up against the world’s leading superpower.
Lewes’ New Mayor Sounds Like A Real Problem-Solver. I was impressed by this interview:
In her former home of Hillsboro, Virginia, Marasco served as vice mayor for 14 years.
Hillsboro faced what Marasco says is now Lewes’ top issue: traffic. The small town’s main street had such a high volume of traffic that it was “non-crossable,” Marasco said.
“From that I learned, really, about the benefit of traffic calming and that single-lane roundabouts … are very safe, and they do slow the traffic,” she said. “I don’t think you can stop the flow of traffic, but I think you can calm it and make it safer, and that’s where my focus will be.”
That’s just one example. I like the way she’s thinking on a local level.
Delaware City Residents Demand More Accountability From The Oil Refinery And DNREC.
Though DNREC said an investigation will likely lead to a violation, residents have questioned whether state environmental regulators have done enough to make the refinery accountable for its actions.
The refinery has a history of violations, including for sulfur dioxide releases, which residents argue have not compelled the facility to make improvements. The refinery has received more than 50 violations in the past 10 years, most recently, for carbon monoxide emissions.
Environmental groups have criticized DNREC, accusing them of not enforcing violations. In 2019, the Delaware City Refinery had piled up years of unpaid fines and ultimately paid DNREC $950,000 to resolve the backlog.
“The industry is being left to set their own timetable, to take whatever time they need, to not suffer any economic consequences,” said Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, a public health scientist and technical advisor for the advocacy group Environmental Justice Health Alliance, adding that regulators “don’t have any pressure put on them, that I can tell, to get this fixed. And the result is that communities are potentially choked with the pollution.”
However, a spokesperson for the refinery said that since PBF acquired the facility from Valero Energy in 2010, there has been about an 83% reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions since 2022 compared to the last three years that Valero owned and operated it.
Can we parse that sentence, just for a minute? Is that, or is that not, gobbledygook? As I read it, what that sentence really says is that sulfur dioxide emissions are 83% less now than they were in (tries to do math) something like 2008 to 2010. Uh, howzabout that time period of 2010 to 2022, during which according to that sentence, PBF already owned the refinery? A golden era for environmentalism at Delaware’s worst polluting plant? 15 years of the sweetest air Delaware has to offer? Not to mention (OK, I’ll mention it) we’re relying on a ‘spokesperson for the refinery’? Unreliable narrator, anyone?
The good news? Stuff’s being done:
Democratic state Rep. Larry Lambert, who represents Claymont, has introduced legislation that aims to hold chronic polluters accountable. HB 210 would increase pollution fines — one of which had not been raised since 1973 — by as much as $30,000.
The legislation also aims to give DNREC more power to enforce violations, allowing the agency to appeal decisions by the Environmental Appeals Board relating to chronic violator status.
“We want to make sure that all Delawareans have access to pollution-free air, pollution- free water and pollution-free soil, but we can’t get there without accountability,” Lambert said.
Bobby Byrd and his, wait for it, ilk, are licking their not-insubstantial chops in anticipation of how many weakening amendments they can add to this bill. You know, ‘clarifying’ amendments. For once, for once, it’s incumbent on legislators to reject this Delaware Way crap.
What do you want to talk about?
