DL Open Thread: Monday, September 8, 2025

Trump’s Gone Stark-Raving Mad.  25th Amendment, Anyone?  Which American City Will He Attack Next?:

On Saturday, Trump posted online that Chicago was “about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” (Last week Trump signed an order renaming the Defense Department, though Congress would have to officially change its title.)

The social media post featured references to the 1979 Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now as well as an image of Trump made up to look like a character from the movie, Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore.

In response to the post, Illinois’ Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, wrote on X that Trump was “threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal.” Pritzker added: “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, also a Democrat, said Trump’s threats were “beneath the honor of our nation, but the reality is that he wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution.”

Trump has also threatened to send troops to Baltimore and New Orleans in recent days, cities where crime is also down. Chicago, Baltimore and New Orleans are all heavily Democratic.

Meanwhile, Dems Have Their Priorities In Order:

Populism is more electorally effective than the new “Abundance” agenda, a progressive think tank and Democratic operatives are arguing in a preview of the party’s messaging divisions ahead of next year’s midterms.

A memo obtained first by POLITICO cautioned Democrats about relying solely on the emergent school of thought, which criticizes overly bureaucratic regulations for slowing progress on housing production needed to drive down costs and infrastructure projects. It was penned by Kamala Harris campaign veterans Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, and strategist Brian Fallon, along with the liberal economic group Groundwork Action.

“While there are elements of the Abundance agenda that have appeal, and the choice on which messages to deliver is not zero-sum, a populist economic approach better solves for Democrats’ challenges with working-class voters,” the memo read. “If candidates are asking which focus deserves topmost billing in Democrats’ campaign messaging, the answer is clear: though some voters believe excessive bureaucracy can be a problem, it ranks far behind other concerns and tackling it does not strike voters as a direct response to the problem of affordability.”

Perhaps it’s just me, but isn’t running against a Fascist state controlled by billionaire oligarchs more, what’s the word I’m looking for, relevant?  BTW, I know we have a lot of wordsmiths who read this blog.   I need something stronger, much stronger, than ‘feckless’.

National Guard Morphed Into–Mall Cops.  I have a lot of admiration for these weekend warriors who make the sacrifices in order to serve their country.  Trump doesn’t:

President Donald Trump has deployed more than 2,200 of these National Guard members to DC to execute his “historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” as he described it during an August 11 news conference. “This is liberation day in DC, and we’re going to take our capital back.”

Nonetheless, armored vehicles rolled in the next day and lined up in front of the Washington Monument. The initial optics of an occupied city were terrifying, the fever dream of a budding authoritarian. Several weeks later, however, the military “liberation” of DC looks a lot different from the war on crime that Trump had promised to bring to our city.

National Guard members here aren’t actually doing much. Groups of bored soldiers seem to wander aimlessly around the city like tourists, taking selfies at national monuments and enjoying our varied dining offerings. On Tuesday, when I was walking my dog, I ran into a few Guard members patrolling my local coffee shop. The regulars were chatting them up, while expressing polite outrage at the militarization of this quiet, historic, gayborhood.

However, Trump’s mobilization of the Guard is taking a real toll–on those being mobilized and their employers :

The number of Americans missing work for National Guard deployments or other military or civic duty is at a 19-year high, adding disruption to a labor market that’s already under strain.

Between January and August, workers reported 90,000 instances of people missing at least a week of work because of military deployments, jury duty or other civil service, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is more than double the number of similar absences in the same eight-month period last year, and the highest level since 2006, when President George W. Bush deployed the National Guard to Iraq, Afghanistan and the Southwest U.S. border in large numbers.

The absences are due at least in part to a growing military presence in American cities. Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has sent thousands of National Guard service members — civilians, many with full-time jobs — to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. He has suggested expansions of those efforts to at least seven more cities, including Chicago, New York, Baltimore and New Orleans, and called for the creation of a new military unit that can quickly mobilize anywhere in the country.

“Uncertainty over whether you or your employees might be called to National Guard duty and how long that deployment might last is just adding to the chaos” for families and businesses, said Michael Makowsky, an economist at Clemson University whose work focuses on law enforcement. “Anything that makes it harder to make a plan is generally bad for the economy.”

Trump At US Open:

President Donald Trump’s arrival at the U.S. Open men’s singles final appeared to cause delayed entry for spectators, resulting in long lines of frustrated fans and empty seats in the sprawling Arthur Ashe Stadium.

The final between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz kicked off at 2:30 p.m. ET, which was half an hour later than its originally scheduled time due to “security measures in place” and to “ensure that fans have additional time to get to their seats,” the U.S. Open wrote on X.

The absence of the usually packed crowd was noticeable.

One announcer noted on air: “So many still waiting in security lines to get in, a lot of them were caught off guard … not told to prepare for this.” Another announcer added, “That’s a bummer. These two are going at it,” referring to the two top-ranked players.

Leah Gomberg, 57, said she waited for about four hours, including in unexpected traffic and security lines, to get in.

She described seeing 30 TSA-level security scanners at the entry to Arthur Ashe stadium, which she described as unusual at the U.S. Open. Gomberg said she waited an hour and 20 minutes to just to reach the scanners.

“There’s like thousands and thousands of people and it’s already one set through. We’ve all paid a lot of money to get into our seats and we can’t,” she told NBC News before gaining entry at 3:50 p.m.

“Everybody is pissed off and there was a lot of booing in the beginning. People from all over the world are standing here because they came to the U.S. Open to see tennis,” Gomberg continued. “Now it’s half-empty in there, although all the famous people are there, and of course Mr. Trump is in there, but not the people who paid a lot of money for their tickets.”

Speaking of which, far be it from me to raise unwarranted speculation (he lied), but what kind of pill was Trump ingesting here:

Should Wilmington Declare A Moratorium On Corner Stores?  Featuring the most typical John Carney response you could imagine:

The Wilmington City Council will consider an ordinance that would temporarily ban the opening of new convenience stores and liquor stores in the city until an assessment can be done to determine their health and safety impacts on surrounding communities.

The proposal follows years of concerns expressed by community members who say too many corner stores sell unhealthy foods, attract crime, or don’t listen to community input.

“We do need stores, but not if they’re going to condone illegal activities in front of their stores,”  said Joyce Woodlen, a Hilltop resident and local hair boutique owner.

Late last month, City Councilwoman Shané Darby proposed the ordinance, telling Spotlight Delaware, “we want stores that are meaningful in our community.”

But, on Friday, a spokeswoman for Mayor John Carney’s office said the proposal may not be feasible, asserting that the city’s land use department does not have the capacity to complete a study that assesses the impacts of corner stores.

“A project of that scope would need a dedicated budget line item to support external consulting, and we don’t know what a contract of that nature would cost,” the spokeswoman, Caroline Klinger, said in an emailed statement to Spotlight Delaware. 

Oh, no! Not a dedicated budget line!  Not to mention, but I’ll mention it, Carney was Carper’s Budget Director.  It shouldn’t be all that tough for an Ivy League bean-counter to come up with a projected cost. Amirite?

In response, Darby on Friday said that she is still moving forward with her proposal. She called the city’s response a “classic line,” and claimed that Carney finds money for initiatives that are a priority to his administration. 

Of course he does.  He is One Vast Suck.

What do you want to talk about?