DL Open Thread: Friday, August 15, 2025
Trump’s obsession with changing the subject from Everything Epstein to Anything But renders today’s meeting with Putin particularly fraught with danger. Anchorage Armageddon, if you will. Michael Wolff’s take:
President Donald Trump is desperately seeking a ‘big thing’ to distract from Jeffrey Epstein–and is willing to sacrifice Ukraine to achieve it, his biographer Michael Wolff has revealed.
In the debut episode of the new Daily Beast podcast, Trump’s Head, the best-selling author told co-host Joanna Coles that the president is making ‘relentless’ calls to aides and allies to demand something to get past the unending questions over his links to the dead pedophile and his surviving lover turned sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
Sorry, no link, I don’t subscribe to the Daily Beast, that’s all I could scrounge. And, I don’t know what Trump plans. However, who better to rescue him from the Epstein drama than the man who holds some serious Kompromat over Trump’s head? Like I said, today is fraught with danger. Perhaps at an historical level. Goodbye, Alaska? Hello, Greenland? Ridiculous, yes, but we’re talking our Fascist Leader here.
Their ‘Crime’? Being Homeless:
The federal authorities were attempting to clear homeless encampments in northwestern Washington on Thursday night as part of President Trump’s sprawling takeover of the city’s law enforcement apparatus, after city officials and advocates had spent much of the day urging unhoused people to go to shelters or risk arrest.
A federal operation that had been expected to start at 6:30 p.m. seemed to get underway only after dark. At around 9 p.m., federal agents from the F.B.I. and the U.S. Secret Service arrived at Washington Circle in the Foggy Bottom area to remove a few tents where homeless people had long stayed, according to Wes Heppler of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. They retreated after a woman presented a city notice saying she had until Monday to leave.
Somewhere, John Carney nods his head in approval.
ICEstapo Intimidates Elected Californians:
More than a dozen Border Patrol agents turned up in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday at a rally and news conference that Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding on congressional redistricting.
The governor’s event had nothing to do with immigration, and local elected officials expressed outrage that the federal agents decided to stand there in a brazen show of force outside a museum where Mr. Newsom and other leaders were speaking.
As the governor was preparing to speak inside the Japanese American National Museum in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles, the agents assembled outside, many of them masked and armed, and some wearing tactical helmets and carrying rifles.
“This is just completely unacceptable,” Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles told reporters. “This is a Customs and Border Patrol that has gone amok. This absolutely has to stop. There was no danger here.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a post on social media that Ms. Bass “must be misinformed.”
“Our law enforcement operations are about enforcing the law — not about Gavin Newsom,” Ms. McLaughlin said.
Is it Fascism yet? Which reminds me:
BTW, the judge threw out the felony charge against the Hoagie Hurler, ruling the charge ‘excessive’. As was the price the hurler paid at Subway.
The top Democrat on a House committee is demanding that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins account for discrepancies between her public statements about wildland firefighter staffing and a ProPublica report showing there were thousands of vacancies in the Forest Service’s firefighting workforce as peak wildfire season approached.
In June, the Forest Service claimed it had reached 99% of its hiring goal for its wildland firefighting workforce. But ProPublica’s reporting indicated that the agency was selectively counting firefighters, presenting an optimistic assessment to the public. As many as 27% of jobs were vacant as of July 17, according to data obtained by ProPublica.
Rep. Robert Garcia, a Democrat from California and the ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, made the request to Rollins in a letter sent Thursday morning. “The Trump Administration’s staffing decisions are exacerbating an already dire situation: The Forest Service’s firefighting capacity has been dangerously hampered by Department of Government Efficiency and Trump Administration layoffs, deferred resignations, and other early retirements and resignations just as climate change is extending the fire season,” he wrote.
The Forest Service’s assertions about its readiness are contradicted not only by its own staff — a wildland firefighter in California quoted in the ProPublica report called the 99% figure “grossly inaccurate” — but by its own statistics. In July, ProPublica reported that, according to agency data, its fire and aviation management program contained more than 4,500 active vacancies, including for such crucial primary firefighting positions as hotshots, dispatchers and engine captains. At the time, a spokesperson for the Agriculture Department disputed that the Forest Service had that many vacancies within its fire and aviation management program but did not provide data showing otherwise. A spokesperson for the Forest Service later claimed that ProPublica’s figures were inaccurate, telling the High Country News, “Their numbers likely come from outdated org charts and unfunded positions.” However, ProPublica excluded all unfunded positions from its analysis, and its data came from active agency organizational charts.
I’m sure that the Heritage Foundation has yet another propagandist at the ready to ‘fix’ the numbers. Problem solved.
Delaware Will Finally Have An Inspector General. Big props to the Governor for sharing the bill-signing with former State Rep. John Kowalko, who was the driving force behind the bill for over a decade
It took 18 years, but Delaware now has an Office of the Inspector General.
Gov. Matt Meyer signed a bill establishing the new office into law Thursday, with current bill sponsor state Sen. Laura Sturgeon, D-Brandywine Hundred, past bill sponsor former state Rep. John Kowalko, D-Newark South, and other elected officials and advocates.
The bill amends current law to create an independent inspector general position tasked with finding instances of fraud, waste and abuse within state government and the General Assembly. The inspector general has to hire a staff, which would be required to be certified in investigation, auditing or evaluation within three years. The office would have subpoena power to compel document production and issue public reports exposing corruption and wrongdoing.
Delaware got an “F” for government accountability and ethics a decade ago from the Center for Public Integrity. Since then, little has been done to improve the system until now. The inspector general office has been championed for years by the Delaware Coalition for Open Government, known as DELCOG.
“It’s a crucial step as we continue to build trust between members of the public and our state government,” Meyer said.
A selection panel will give the governor three names to choose from to appoint the inspector general, who would have to be confirmed by the Senate. The person will serve in the role for five-year terms.
Were it up to me, I’d look at some of the first-rate investigative journalists currently plying their trade here. Do you have any names to float?
What do you want to talk about?
Old heads like me will almost certainly enjoy today’s podcast from the Rev’s Highlands Bunker.
Karl Stomberg discusses the history of the Delaware Way (coming soon to a book near you!), and Bill Martin goes into the Wayback Machine to highlight articles from as far back as 40 years ago on reassessment.
I enjoyed it. You might too:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/e359-dover-man-w-136476276?utm_campaign=patron_engagement&utm_source=post_link&post_id=136476276&utm_id=5475fcdd-ef3e-44a8-ba8b-0e644fc6928d&utm_medium=email
I agree a good listen from the Bunker today.
Had a chance encounter with one of my local reps (who will remain nameless) at a business event in wilmington this past week. They mentioned how terrible the situation was regarding Trump and ICE and I agreed. I then asked them if they would be willing to support any actions that could be retaliatory towards the administration/ its supporters. I noted that they were able to get SB21 passed so quickly, maybe they could get some similar revisions to the corporate code that would help to de-bank or otherwise cause harm to maga-aligned individuals or businesses. They seemed shocked and said ‘we don’t do things like that’ and abruptly ended the conversation. I’ll be honest, until our elected are willing to punch back as hard as the rethugs are punching, we are cooked. There is no high road/low road when the destination is fascism. We can and should weaponize our state’s financial systems to attack the right wing.
The only journalists that might meet your criteria for the IG position are Baker, Barrish and Wilson. But the key here will be their supervisory ability (something longtime reporters aren’t given the opportunity to develop) and the quality of the staff members they hire.
So, IMHO, the aforementioned reporters are more valuable to the public in their current roles, and, given the resilience of the dying but still not dead Delaware Way, I wonder how many competent auditors would be willing to give up their well-paying private sector jobs to become mid-level civil servants tasked with taking down the sleazeballs at higher levels of state government.
There’s also no dearth of Federal whistleblowers who are now on the market thanks to DOGE and Trump.
mediawatch – I know Barrish, surely the best reporter still working in Delaware. I know of Baker. But “Wilson” has me stumped. I’ll probably slap my forehead and say “of course!” when I find out. Obviously, I don’t follow local politics the way you guys do. But I am interested in what’s left of Delaware journalism, as, of course, are you.
mediawatch – I did a little belated research. Xerxes! I’ve seen the name. It’s a good one.
“…tasked with finding instances of fraud, waste and abuse within state government and the General Assembly…” But not the courts?
Mike Castle only passed away because Christine O’Donnell’s curse finally worked.