DL Open Thread Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025

America’s ever-credulous mainstream media quickly broadcast a supposed Trump administration effort to deny back pay to furloughed federal workers, despite a law to the contrary that Trump himself signed in 2019 (whether he remembers doing it is another matter).

As the indispensable Josh Marshall points out, if reporters got off their asses instead of simply regurgitating Trump’s tweets, they’d find plenty of evidence that the threat rings hollow.

I noted a week ago that there’s another constraint most of the press seemed to ignore: self-interest and public opinion. The administration is already hiring back a substantial number of employees fired in the spring. They didn’t just start believing in public service. The firings were affecting both important MAGA coalition stakeholders as well as the President’s political standing generally. If the White House wanted to or felt it could fire more federal employees, it would.

The threat of widespread firings has continued to figure prominently in national press reporting. But, as I noted last week, down at the ground level, in departmental and agency HR offices, the machinery of firings isn’t actually moving. There’s a lot of evidence that this is and was a bluff the White House didn’t feel able to follow through on. This new line about withholding post-shutdown make-good salary makes that seem even more likely. If the first threat was real why hasn’t anything happened a week into the shutdown? Why are they moving on to a new threat that actually seems much less legally viable than the first one?

I’m not saying federal employees should light a cigar, kick back and feel like they’re living on easy street. It’s their livelihood and immediate well-being at stake. But in the larger political context it seems clear that a huge amount of the DC and national political conversation is simply ignoring what’s happening in real life and focusing only on White House statements. Are national reporters checking on whether RIFs are being prepared for this new round of firings? It seems like most are not. Are they asking why they’re moving on to a new threat while failing to follow through on the first one?

Looking at the actual situation unfolding — as opposed to Russ Vought’s and Donald Trump’s social media feeds — suggests the White House is in a much weaker position than people seem to think.

Why do “news” outlets keep doing this? For one thing, their workforce has been slashed as ad revenue migrated to social media, so it’s easier to fill space and air time this way. For another, it scares people, and that’s always been a primary motivator for people to consume the news. “If it bleeds, it leads” is true not because editors are bloodthirsty but because news consumers are fearful. The rage-driven pricks in the administration give them plenty of raw material to work with, and it doesn’t need much refining to fulfill its function.

Democrats aren’t the only ones fighting each other over Israel’s war on Gaza. MAGA World contains more than a few anti-Semites of the Jewish Space Laser variety, and some of them, particularly Candace Owens and Marjorie Taylor Greene, are pushing the theory that the Elders of Zion were behind the murder of Charlie Kirk. Their evidence, such as it is: Kirk complained about having “lost another huge Jewish donor,” something that would cost him “$2 million a year” because he invited Tucker Carlson, who opposes US support for Israel, to a Turning Point event. This puts them at odds with the MAGAt majority that backs Israel no matter what.

The Sussex County Council, acceding to a request from Gov. Matt Meyer, will consider loosening zoning restrictions on recreational cannabis dispensaries. If they do, it’ll be good news for consumers of the devil’s lettuce but bad news for the county’s black-market growers.

The current SuxCo Council has, at long last, recognized that the land cash-in by farmers and real estate interests threatens the quality of life that drew so many new residents in the first place, but they face entrenched hurdles to progress. For example, a Superior Court judge ruled that county planners overstepped their authority in imposing certain limits on a development near Selbyville. The Smokey Hollow cluster development plan was submitted in 2022, before the new restrictions were adopted, and so isn’t subject to them.

The floor’s yours.