DL Open Thread: Thursday, October 9, 2025

While Trump tries To stake his claim to the Nobel Peace Prize (Spoiler Alert–he’s not getting it), the Big Story remains that Our Demented President Wages War On American Cities.

Months ago, Donald Trump claimed that Los Angeles “would be burning” if not for the federal troops he was sending there. On Sunday, in a similarly pathetic attempt to justify his demand to send in the National Guard, he told reporters that Portland was “burning to the ground.” On Monday, he declared that Chicago was “like a war zone.” Is this city burning? There is a definite answer to the question. In all these cities, the answer is no. No American city is currently on fire, and if Chicago is a war zone, it’s because it’s being invaded by the president.

There is no clever plan behind Trump’s lies. The administration does not even bother to lie well. Trump need only count on others who will help him distribute distrust. In the case of Portland, rather than state facts it could easily verify, Axios called Trump’s lie “a claim local officials reject,” while Reuters has referred to “Democratic mayors and governors, who say Trump’s claims of lawlessness and violence do not reflect reality”—as if the existence of a mass conflagration or armed conflict were merely a matter of opinion, with two sides deserving equal consideration.

Over the last week, ICE and Border Patrol have considerably escalated the violence. Hundreds of agents stormed an apartment building on Chicago’s South Side. DHS said that in addition to ICE and Border Patrol, the FBI and ATF also took part in the raid. “My building is shaking,” one witness told ABC7 Chicago. “Then I look out the window, it’s a Blackhawk helicopter.” Another witness, who captured the raid and its aftermath live on her phone, told local independent media South Side Weekly and the Invisible Institute that she spotted vans parked in an adjacent school parking lot. Inside, she saw “Black U.S. citizens, women, and children” who had been “grabbed from their beds” and then “zip-tied and brought down to the waiting vans” without having been allowed to dress. “They are snatching up anybody,” she said—immigrants and citizens alike. (DHS even admitted they took four children who were United States citizens away from their parents.) One resident said that agents had tried to break down his door but were stopped by his double locks. When he headed to work hours later, his neighbors had disappeared.

Please read that last bolded paragraph–at least twice, or, until the gravity of what is taking place sinks in.  This is Fascism, and the mainstream press has utterly failed to chronicle the ongoing attempts of the lawless who are in charge of enforcing the law to turn the US into a fascist state.

Finally, Some (Few) D’s Take On Trump’s Dementia. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker:

“This is a man who’s suffering dementia,” Pritzker told the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday as he slammed the president for sending the National Guard into “blue” cities.

“This is a man who has something stuck in his head. He can’t get it out of his head. He doesn’t read. He doesn’t know anything that’s up to date. It’s just something in the recesses of his brain that is effectuating to have him call out these cities,” he said. “And then, unfortunately, he has the power of the military, the power of the federal government to do his bidding, and that’s what he’s doing.”

“It appears that Donald Trump not only has dementia set in, but he’s copying tactics of Vladimir Putin,” he said, according to CBS News. “Sending troops into cities, thinking that that’s some sort of proving ground for war, or that indeed there’s some sort of internal war going on in the United States is just, frankly, inane and I’m concerned for his health.”

He said the 25th Amendment ― which authorizes the removal of a president due to disability ― “ought to be invoked.”

BINGO! Every single true Democrat should be calling for the invocation of the 25th Amendment and should support any and all legal attempts to stop his actions by raising the issue of his fitness to serve as President.

Sen. Ruben Gallego:

Eric Garcia, Washington bureau chief for the Independent, said Gallego was asked about Trump’s claim that his administration is negotiating “right now” with Democrats amid an ongoing shutdown of the federal government:

“The President clearly has some kind of dementia, so I think there’s a he’s probably talking to himself, or think he’s talking to a Democrat, but I sincerely doubt that that’s actually he’s actually physically talking to a Democrat.“

While there are a few others,  I’m convinced it’s time for a frontal assault on Trump’s fitness to serve.  It’s also about time what passes for the press covers this and begins asking questions.  After all, he is clearly unfit to serve.  Make the case, whydon’tcha?

BTW, there’s clearly some nasty shit about Trump in the Epstein Files, and The Rethugs know it.  Bondi clams up.  Mike Johnson refuses to swear in Arizona Rep.-Elect.

Meyer And ChristianaCare Sing ‘Kumbaya’.  Hmmm, why do I think that, once again, Delaware’s health care consumers (all of us) have been snookered?

Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer and the state’s largest nongovernmental employer, ChristianaCare Health System, have reached an agreement in a lawsuit the regional hospital system filed last year.

“Every Delawarean deserves access to world-class, affordable healthcare, and together we are working to make that a reality,” Gov. Matt Meyer said in a statement. “This agreement keeps healthcare dollars with patients, not in the courtroom.”

But the proposed settlement hinges on state lawmakers passing changes to last year’s law, which ChristianaCare calls a “state takeover” of hospital boards. (ChristianaCare puppet Sen. Ray Seigfried had better recuse himself from those deliberations.)

The agreement announced Wednesday would strip the newly created Diamond State Hospital Cost Review Board of its authority to approve and modify hospital budgets. Those changes would require new legislation and the governor’s signature.

Majority Leader Bryan Townsend was the Senate sponsor of the bill creating the review board. He said he offered to pass legislation next year striking the board’s budget authority from the law during talks with the hospitals in June. But he said they opposed the suggestion, even though they support it in the lawsuit.

“It’s important to bear in mind they had said to the judge, ‘We want you to overturn the law because of this budget control mechanism.’ The judge said, ‘Hmm, you might have something here,’” Townsend said of negotiations earlier this year. “I say ‘Let’s strike it in legislative language,’ the hospitals say, ‘No, no, no, we don’t support that,’ which was quite a ridiculous position for them to take.”

This could be a case where the clearly-personal animus between Meyer and Townsend could be a ‘good’ thing.

What do you want to talk about?