DL Open Thread: Monday, August 25, 2025

So. You Think A Second Civil War Hasn’t Started Yet?  Troops coming to a city near you, fortified with soldiers from the Confederacy:

President Trump has escalated his threat to deploy National Guard troops to major cities to address crime as the federal crackdown in Washington, D.C., enters its third week.

Trump expanded his federal policing push over the weekend by suggesting he would turn next to Baltimore and Chicago, cities like D.C. that are overwhelmingly blue and represented by Democratic mayors.

But unlike D.C., where the federal government has some authority to exert over policing, other cities retain more local control. Trump issued an emergency order Aug. 11 to federalize crime fighting in Washington for 30 days under a law unique to D.C. Trump also controls the D.C. National Guard, while governors typically command other states’ Guards.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), both touted by Democrats as potential 2028 presidential contenders, have rebuffed Trump’s threat to send troops and pull federal funding for their state’s largest cities.

Trump threatened to send the National Guard to Baltimore to “quickly clean up the crime,” squaring off with Moore, who invited Trump by letter last week to join him for a public safety walk through Charm City.

“As President, I would much prefer that he clean up this crime disaster before I go there for a walk,” Trump wrote. He suggested he could rescind federal funding for the Francis Scott Key Bridge’s nearly $2 billion reconstruction in Baltimore while separately swiping at Moore’s Bronze Star, received last year.

“After only one week, there is NO CRIME AND NO MURDER IN DC!” the president wrote, labeling Moore a “failing, because of Crime, Governor.”

You get the picture.  Unlike the moribund national Democratic Party, which, no doubt has their ‘best and brightest’ poring through polling data.  Uh, the United States is under unprecedented attack from within, that needs to be your message 24/7/365.  Either that, or rebrand the Party The Third Way Party and let, say, WFP run the show.  Because the ‘leaders’ of the Democratic Party make Neville Chamberlain seem like a swashbuckler.

While ‘some’ find Gavin Newsom’s Trump-inspired tweets funny, there’s no substitute for the real thing:

I just watched Sloppy Chris Christie be interviewed on a ratings challenged “News” Show, “This Week With George Slopadopolus,” on ABC Fake News (By the way, what the “hell” happened to Jonathan Karl’s hair? He looks absolutely terrible! It’s amazing what bad ratings, on a failed television show that was forced to pay me $16,000,000, can do to one’s appearance!). Can anyone believe anything that Sloppy Chris says? Do you remember the way he lied about the dangerous and deadly closure of the George Washington Bridge in order to stay out of prison, at the same time sacrificing people who worked for him, including a young mother, who spent years trying to fight off the vicious charges against her. Chris refused to take responsibility for these criminal acts. For the sake of JUSTICE, perhaps we should start looking at that very serious situation again? NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT

Perhaps worse than anything else Trump has done, he’s killed satire (except for South Park).

Delaware Plans For Medicaid Cuts.  Hampered, of course, by the lack of detail offered by the Trump Administration:

“When the bomb goes off, not only do 10 to 20 million Americans lose coverage, but the collateral damage, as you all know, extends far beyond — it extends to everyone else,” Congresswoman Sarah McBride said to various Delaware state and healthcare leaders. “We know that when patients lose coverage, they don’t never get care, they just get care later, when it’s more expensive, and often in the emergency rooms of the hospitals. And of course, someone has to pay for that care when it happens — that is a cost that all of us end up dealing with.”

The most substantial change to the Medicaid program that is expected to cut federal spend by close to $330 billion per year alone is the implementation of work requirements.

This means that individuals will need to prove “qualifying activities,” like work or community service, for at least 80 hours per month to qualify for or maintain Medicaid coverage.

There are some exemptions, like for parents with children ages 13 and under and for individuals who are “medically frail,” but Delaware Medicaid Director Andrew Wilson says that term has yet to be defined.

“The biggest way that Delaware is going lose money is by Medicaid losing enrollment, and Medicaid members will lose enrollment only if we don’t make necessary infrastructure investments to help them stay on,” Wilson explained. “And so the governor’s goal is to bring that number to zero and try to lose nobody off the rolls because a work requirement is essentially a paperwork requirement at the end of the day because the vast majority of people on Medicaid are working.”

Wilson says the state is still waiting on guidance from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for how these new requirements must be implemented in order to get a picture of what’s at stake for the First State.

What do you want to talk about?