DL Open Thread: Wednesday, October 29, 2025

Gee, who was it who said, ‘Tell the lie often enough, it becomes the truth’?

Trump’s Attack On Chicago, As Amplified By Trump’s Fascist Goons:

The Trump administration wants everyone to see what it’s doing in Chicago. The city is bearing the brunt of mass deportations. Over the past several weeks, federal agents have staged aggressive, high-profile operations. They’ve prompted protests, violence and potential violations of court orders over the use of tear gas.

TPM obtained the audio of several 911 calls placed that day. In one call, a federal agent describes being rammed and run off the road by an unknown assailant. In another, a woman sobs as she describes seeing federal law enforcement officers force a man out of his car and point rifles at him as he lies down in the street.

It’s an example of the tactics that the Trump administration has unleashed on Chicago and several other cities, which often resemble more the occupation of a hostile power than routine immigration enforcement. On Oct. 4, one incident ended in a shooting: a CBP officer allegedly shot Miramar Martinez, an activist who was tailing the CBP car, several times before she drove away. Federal prosecutors charged Martinez with using a vehicle to assault, resist, or impede federal agents; a press release DHS issued about the event falsely stated that she “boxed” the CBP car in with nine other vehicles. (When TPM asked DHS for comment for this story, an agency spokesperson replied by forwarding TPM the press release from the day which contained information that has subsequently been contradicted in government court filings.)

You can insert that ‘tell the lie often enough’ quote right here.

Netanyahu Goes On Yet Another Killing Spree.  Who could have possibly imagined?:

Israeli strikes killed at least 100 people across Gaza overnight, local health officials said in what appeared to be the deadliest day since a cease-fire was agreed between Israel and Hamas three weeks ago.

The strikes began late Tuesday after the Israeli government accused Hamas of violating the truce by failing to return the bodies of dead hostages and attacking Israeli forces in Rafah, southern Gaza. The Israeli military said one of its soldiers, Master Sgt. Yona Efraim, was killed in the Rafah attack.

Munir al-Bursh, director-general of Gaza’s health ministry, whose data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, said 35 children were among those killed. He said hospitals in the enclave “are still facing a severe shortage of resources and a significant lack of medicines.”

Hey, they were ‘Hamas kids’. They deserved it.  Right, Bibi?  What does Delaware’s chief Israeli propagandist Rep. Melanie Ross Levin have to say about this?

Trump, Texas, And Tylenol.  Quacks go after phony spreader of autism in court:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Johnson and Johnson, accusing the pharmaceutical company of failing to warn consumers about the risk of taking Tylenol while pregnant.

This lawsuit, the first of its kind from a state government, comes a month after President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced updated guidance discouraging pregnant women from taking acetaminophen, citing it as a possible cause of autism. The announcement set off a wave of controversy in the health care community, and confusion among pregnant women unsure how they should manage fever and pain during pregnancy.

The science around Tylenol and autism is uncertain. While some studies suggest a correlation between taking Tylenol while pregnant and having a child with autism, others have repudiated those findings. Major medical associations rejected Kennedy and Trump’s claims as overly generalized and potentially harmful.

Here is the first paragraph of the lawsuit.  I’m no lawyer, but, to me, it’s grounds to outright dismiss the suit:

For decades, Defendants JOHNSON & JOHNSON, KENVUE, INC., and KENVUE BRANDS LLC (f/k/a JOHNSON & JOHNSON CONSUMER INC.) knew that acetaminophen—Tylenol’s active ingredient—is dangerous to unborn children and young children. Yet they hid this danger and deceptively marketed Tylenol as the only safe painkiller for pregnant women, violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act, Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 17.41 et seq. (“DTPA”).

I’m sure a generous contribution to the Epstein Ballroom could make this all go away.

Josh Marshall: Supreme Court Reform Only Way To Save Democracy:

There is no future for civic democracy in this country without reforming the Supreme Court. Putting that more specifically, the only way to recover from Donald Trump’s rapid lunge into an authoritarian American future is a future point at which Democrats regain control of the federal government — a trifecta — and institute a series of laws which cut off the channels Trump has exploited to get us to this point.

That doesn’t solve the problem of Trumpism. The core issue is that very large minority of Americans who support his style of autocratic government. But that cuts off many of the paths Trump has used to build a presidential autocracy under the thinnest cover of law. You need, among other things, a federal law to place strict limits on partisan and racial gerrymandering. It’s only one example out of many – you need laws re-instituting true independent agencies, drastically limiting the use of military forces on US territory, barring president’s from claiming budgeting authority, et al.

The simple truth is that none of the laws that are essential for reinforcing the federal system against Trumpist attack would survive the scrutiny of the current Republican court majority as soon as there is another Republican president. Most would be overruled much sooner because they would, like an anti-gerrymandering law, place limits on Republican states.

You cannot consider the last three to four years and doubt any of this. And what follows from that is that no plan to recover from or even seriously battle with Trumpism can have any chance of success unless reforming the Supreme Court is the first order of business. The dire corruption of the Republican majority governs everything.

Flaming incrementalists like, um, Chris Coons would never consider something this bold or necessary. Just thought I’d point that out.

Top News-Journal Headline: “UD’s ‘pee wall’ is now known to millions nationwide”.  Man, I’m missing a lot.  Should I resubscribe?

Cris Barrish’s Article On The Balk Controversy.  Included not for the reasons you might think, but for this:

And over the weekend, after Spotlight Delaware published its expose, the state Republican Party waded into the controversy, issuing a statement that members were “appalled by revelations” that Balk “is a convicted sex offender with a long history of crimes against minors and that members of the Democrat Party continue to stand by him in a position of leadership.”

The GOP’s letter excoriated Sussex Democrats for “defending him, citing ‘second chances’ and political performance as justification for keeping him in charge. This is beyond unacceptable. It is deeply troubling that any political organization in Delaware would tolerate, much less support, someone with such a record of predation against children.”

The Sussex County Republican Committee also chimed in, saying their Democratic colleagues had decided to “put political gain over public safety” and calling the Dems’ position a “moral failure.”

‘Put political gain over public safety’.  That reminds me of something–THIS:

A Delaware state lawmaker who was drunk in November when he pulled out onto a highway, causing a car to smash into his pickup truck and roll over several times, has pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and vehicular assault.

Tuesday’s resolution of the criminal case against state Rep. Kevin Hensley marked his second conviction for a crime involving drinking and driving. The first occurred in 2009, when Hensley was convicted of alcohol-related reckless driving, court records show.

Hensley, a real estate broker, is a Republican who has represented the Odessa-Port Penn area of southern New Castle County since 2014.

Court records show that he exited the Valero gas station off the Route 1 highway in Milford, and drove right into the path of a southbound Ford Fusion that struck his Toyota Tacoma pickup from behind. The smaller vehicle rolled over several times and came to a rest in the front yard of a home several hundred yards down the road.

The Ford’s driver was taken to the hospital, and Hensley told a state trooper who arrived that he did not see the car before the accident. The trooper smelled alcohol on Hensley, who “admitted to having two drinks approximately 30-45 minutes prior to driving,” court records show.

Then Hensley blew into the trooper’s portable breath tester, which recorded a blood alcohol level of 0.142%. He was taken into custody and a blood test recorded his level at 0.16% — twice Delaware’s legal limit of 0.08%.

Not only did the accident victim die weeks later, allegedly due to an unrelated malady, but Hensley had his daughter, who is universally beloved by everybody in Dover, in the car with him at the time of the accident as he was driving at TWICE the legal limit. A detail, I might add, that rarely, if ever, gets mentioned in reports on the incident.  Oh, the Republican response?:

Joseph Fulgham, the spokesman for the 14 Republicans in the 41-member Delaware House, did not respond to a request for comment about Hensley’s plea deal.

In other words, save me from your phony fucking outrage, ya hypocrites.

What do you want to talk about?