DL Open Thread: Thursday, October 16, 2025

El Somnambulo

5 months ago

Looks Like Trump Is Waging A Covert War Against Venezuela. Will anybody, specifically D’s, utter even a simple bleat about this?:

The Trump administration has secretly authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials, stepping up a campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the country’s authoritarian leader.

The authorization is the latest step in the Trump administration’s intensifying pressure campaign against Venezuela. For weeks, the U.S. military has been targeting boats off the Venezuelan coast it says are transporting drugs, killing 27 people. American officials have been clear, privately, that the end goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power.

Mr. Trump acknowledged on Wednesday that he had authorized the covert action and said the United States was considering strikes on Venezuelan territory.

“We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” the president told reporters hours after The New York Times reported the secret authorization.

But the development comes as the U.S. military is planning its own possible escalation, drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including strikes inside Venezuela.

The scale of the military buildup in the region is substantial: There are currently 10,000 U.S. troops there, most of them at bases in Puerto Rico, but also a contingent of Marines on amphibious assault ships. In all, the Navy has eight surface warships and a submarine in the Caribbean.

He’s not doing this because Maduro is an authoritarian leader, he’s doing this because Maduro is not his kind of authoritarian leader. Oh, and because ‘oil’. I know, stating the obvious. Is Chris Coons ‘concerned’?

Trump Administration Royally Screws Up Medicare Enrollment:

Ahead of the open enrollment period for Medicare Advantage plans that began Wednesday, the Trump administration created a directory to help millions of seniors look up which doctors and medical providers accept which insurance.

But the portal frequently produces erroneous and conflicting information, The Washington Post found, setting off a scramble inside the federal government to fix it. Left unaddressed, the problems could confuse older adults as they sift through dozens of options, or force them to foot the bill for regular medical appointments, according to Medicare experts and patient advocates.

After The Post raised the problems to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Wednesday morning, officials were working quickly to address the errors and seek potential solutions, according to an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations. As of 8:30 p.m. Eastern time, some of the problems were still visible on the Medicare Advantage website, including duplicative addresses that provided different responses about whether a provider was covered by a health plan.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CMS, did not respond to questions about whether the agency had been aware of the problems before The Post’s inquiry and whether it had identified the cause. But the agency acknowledged errors that needed to be fixed.

Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesman, said that the agency is addressing “some user interface and data alignment issues to ensure the best possible experience” for users. He also said the new tool developed with a private vendor was intended as a stopgap until the agency could launch a more comprehensive national directory of health care providers as “the long-term solution to these broader data accuracy issues.”

Allow me to translate: “Blahblahblah.” Oh, and who is the ‘private vendor’? Asked and answered:

CMS said in August that it was using an outside vendor, SunFire Matrix, to supply data for a Medicare Advantage provider directory this year while the agency worked on its long-term national provider directory initiative. CMS also urged all organizations that participate in Medicare Advantageto quickly submit provider data to SunFire, warning that its records were incomplete.

SunFire referred questions to CMS. (Ah, yes, the circular ‘no comment’).

Signaling the potential for errors, federal officials in September said that anyone who selected a Medicare Advantage plan based on incorrect information about their preferred providers would have three months to select a new plan, according to a letter shared with organizations that participate in the insurance program.

Wow, I feel full of confidence. How about you?

Supreme Court To Gut Voting Rights Act. There’s not much left, soon there will be nothing:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed headed for another ruling that undercuts the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Once considered the jewel in the crown of the civil rights movement, the Voting Rights Act has been largely dismembered since 2013 by the increasingly conservative Supreme Court. The major exception was a decision just two years ago that upheld the section of the law aimed at ensuring that minority voters are not shut out of the process of drawing new congressional district lines.

But on Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote that decision, downplayed the importance of the ruling, suggesting he didn’t see it as controlling the outcome in Wednesday’s case.

At issue in the more than two hours of arguments before the court was the redistricting map drawn by the Louisiana legislature after the decennial census. Following years of litigation, the state, with a 30% Black population, first fought and then finally agreed to draw a second majority-Black district. Two of the state’s six House members are African American.

Normally, that would have been the end of the case, but a self-described group of “non-African-American voters” intervened after the new maps were drawn up to object to the legislature’s redistricting.

Supporting them in the Supreme Court Wednesday, Deputy Solicitor General Hashim Mooppan contended that the Black voters should not have gotten a second majority-minority district.

I think we all know how this will be decided.

Suxco Planning And Zoning Approves Massive Retail Project:

A controversial plan for an enormous shopping center in the Lewes-Rehoboth Beach area is one step closer to approval.

The Sussex County Planning & Zoning Commission on Wednesday recommended that the Sussex County Council approve the project’s rezoning request, which would clear the way for it to be built.

The county council does not have to follow the commission’s recommendations, but its endorsement is often a key consideration in the council’s rezoning decisions.

The shopping center, dubbed Atlantic Fields, would have a Costco, Target and Whole Foods, according to Baltimore-based developer Southside Investment Partners.

It would include 665,000 square feet of retail space, making it about half the size of Christiana Mall, and would be located about 5 miles from Delaware’s beaches and a mile off of Route 1.

Only one member of the commission voted against recommending approval.

Gregory Scott Collins, who represents the district where the project would be built, dissented, saying he is concerned the Delaware Department of Transportation will not be able to complete the road improvements necessary to address resident concerns.

Atlantic Fields would bring an additional estimated 13,000 cars to the roads on an average weekday, which residents say is too many for the already busy Route 24 corridor.

For me, it’s just one more reason to avoid Suxco altogether.

What do you want to talk about?