DL Open Thread: Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Any illusion that the Supreme Court was gonna pull us back from the creation of a Fascist State was crushed yesterday.  Oh, sure, permitting ICE Agents to move through US cities with impunity was ‘temporary’, but that’s only because the final adjudication has yet to reach the Court.  6-3 on that ruling, BTW:

The Supreme Court has lifted restrictions that barred the Trump administration from carrying out immigration-related raids in the Los Angeles area based on broad criteria such as speaking Spanish or gathering at locations day laborers often congregate.

The justices, who apparently divided 6-3 along ideological lines, put on hold a federal district judge’s order that reined in what critics called “roving” raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That judge had found the tactics were likely unconstitutional because agents were detaining people without probable cause at car washes, bus stops and Home Depot parking lots based on stereotypes.

The high court’s majority offered no explanation for its decision to grant the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to block the district judge’s order. However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately in support of the decision, saying it was reasonable to briefly question people who meet multiple “common sense” criteria for possible illegal presence — including employment in day labor or construction, and limited English proficiency.

You’re smart.  I’ll spare you the Hitlerian analogies.

Jesus Touched Lepers, So…:

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been weighing whether to appoint new members to the committee that recommends which vaccines Americans should receive, according to two former federal health officials, most of whom appear to have been highly critical of coronavirus vaccines.

Two of the potential nominees havecalled for mRNA coronavirus vaccines to be taken off the market. Another said physicians “blindly believed” in the vaccines, while another has criticized the shots in testimony tothe Ohio legislature.  Here is the testimony from said Ohioan:

“Our Lord has given us a mission to share the gospel. If we live in fear of death, that weakens our testimony,” she wrote. “Remember, the Lord Jesus did not fear lepers, and leprosy was (and continues to be) a highly contagious infectious disease.”

Who better qualified to serve on a national vaccine panel?

Submitted without comment:

Josh Marshall Argues (In Vain?) About Why Senate Dems Need To Go Macro Over Shutdown:

(I)f you’re going to have a confrontation, you need to make that stand on the issue where your issue advantage is the greatest. And that’s on the health care subsidies. And at least on the first part of that I absolutely agree. Tariffs are actually pretty salient too. But let’s set that aside for a moment. Because there’s an unspoken part of this equation that makes all the difference.

And a confrontation isn’t just good in the abstract or the way to have some kind of blue-state catharsis. Without a big confrontation, it’s just a Senate sausage-making deal like every other continuing resolution negotiation. No one who’s not very plugged into politics and thoroughly committed in their politics will even know it happened. Most of the people who are going to be hit by those subsidy hits don’t even know about it yet. And if Democrats “win” this it will be as though it never happened at all. To think up-for-grabs voters who rely on Obamacare subsidies will hear about that lo-fi negotiation and think, “Wow, I’m stoked the Democrats got my subsidies renewed for six months so I don’t have to worry about this until after the midterms!” is comical and absurd. Democrats will get no credit for that because no one will know it happened. So that whole plan is one that does nothing for Obamacare recipients or for Democrats electorally or to help the country try to fight off an authoritarian takeover.

If the decision is that you make this fight over health care coverage, you’ve got to up the ante substantially. That means bringing back the Obamacare subsidies on a permanent basis and the Medicaid budgets that were cut as well. They’re both really really important. That is a real difference between the two parties — not one that amounts to a cryptic point of agreement. And it’s one that is likely to trigger a confrontation on a scale that might get most of the country to focus on the fight and to understand what it’s about. The “salience” of the issue doesn’t matter if no one knows you were fighting for it.

I’ve already made my argument for why you want to get in the authoritarian takeover issues too. But the truth is that government of, by and for Trump’s coterie of billionaires is as much a pocketbook issue as an ideological one. But if you want to draw the line on bringing back everyone’s health care, you need to do it like this, by pushing for everything. A lo-fi bit of horse trading to bring back the subsidies for six months only to cut them again after Democrats have no chance to do anything about it is bad on every front. And it’s very clear that that is the Schumer strategy. Avoid a confrontation, grab some short-term relief for Obamacare recipients and hope 2026 takes care of itself.

Chris? LBR?  Are you willing to fight for something you (purportedly) believe in?  Or is concern-trolling and shoulder-shrugging all you’re willing to do? Your billionaire oligarchs will once again thank you. Which reminds me–Chris, are you running again?  If so, why?  Who the fuck needs you in DC?

Delaware Data Centers To Pay Higher Rates For Electricity.  We don’t yet know how much more, but I consider this progress:

The Delaware Public Service Commission, the state body charged with regulating utility services, voted Wednesday to stop “large-load consumers,” such as energy-hungry data centers, from connecting to the electric grid until the commission can create a new “tariff,” or electricity rate, for them.

This decision follows turbulence in Delaware’s energy markets that emerged last winter with spiking residential electricity bills. At the time, Delmarva Power attributed the bill increases to surges in electricity demand.

Six months later, Starwood Digital Ventures, a developer backed by private-equity, submitted plans to New Castle County to build a data center near Delaware City that would consume an additional 1.2 gigawatts per hour from the grid – or enough energy to power nearly 1 million homes, according to estimates from experts in the field.

Beyond demand, electricity rates also include the price of the infrastructure needed to bring electricity to the consumer, like power lines and transformers.

The cost of that infrastructure is typically spread among all consumers, because in the past, those infrastructure upgrades benefitted everyone, said Eliza Martin, legal fellow at Harvard University’s Electricity Law Initiative, an independent policy organization based at Harvard Law School.

But now, utility companies may need to pay for infrastructure that is only used to power hyperscale data centers, Martin said. 

Martin co-authored a paper that revealed different ways that utility companies “are forcing ratepayers to fund discounted rates for data centers.”

At Wednesday’s meeting, Delaware Public Service Commission Attorney Kate Workman cited a Synapse Energy Economics study, commissioned by the Sierra Club, that found that data centers will cause residential bills to increase by 10% in the near term and 4% in the long term. 

“[That] is a huge increase when consumers are already struggling to afford the increased cost of power,” Workman said.

Props to reporter Olivia Marble for making this story understandable to folks like me.

What do you want to talk about?