DL Open Thread: Friday, November 7, 2025
That’s A Wrap: Sandwich Guy Acquitted. I’m linking to this article b/c it made me laugh:
Throughout the trial, the prosecution and defense characterize the sandwich throw as either ferocious (the prosecution) or frivolous (the defense). They employ language to match, staging a high-tension courtroom drama: “He takes the sandwich in his hand, he cocks it back,” a lawyer for the government describes, as if the grinder were a gun. Similarly, in a court filing, the prosecution says the sandwich was thrown at “point-blank range.” Later, the lawyer inquires about the “impact” felt by the alleged victim, Customs and Border Patrol Officer Gregory Lairmore.
“I could feel it through my ballistic vest,” the agent testifies. “The sandwich…exploded all over my uniform. I could smell the onions and the mustard.” As Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz might have testified, “The horror! The horror!”
The defense, in contrast, treats l’affaire de sandwich more as farce. An attorney plays for the jury the final portion of an Instagram video depicting the incident. The now notorious late-night snack lies discarded on the ground, accompanied by a caption, “This sandwich is going up in history.” She asks the victim to identify the sandwich; he says he can’t make a positive verification, because he didn’t go back to collect it. She points out that the paper wrapping is still largely on, the contents essentially intact.
“You don’t see there’s mustard on it?” No. “You can’t tell there’s ketchup on it?” No. “You can’t tell there’s mayonnaise on it?” No. Lettuce? Tomato? “In fact, the sandwich hasn’t exploded at all?”
Attorney for the defense Sabrina Shroff emphasizes the joke of it all when she asks in closing: “Would a man genuinely injured, genuinely offended, by having a sandwich thrown at him proudly, happily, joyfully” carry around mementos of the event? The government, prosecuting this case “in some purported effort to keep law enforcement safe and free from food fights,” is trying to turn a “gag-gift worthy moment into a federal criminal offense.”
Sandwich Guy, on lunch break, sits in the cafeteria eating soup.
The entire article is like this, Absurdism at its best.
The Trillion Dollar Man. Gee, what harm could $1 trillion possibly cause in the hands of a man who is demonstrably batshit crazy? Rhetorical question. An example:
At the meeting, Musk claimed that Optimus robots “will eliminate poverty,” “give everyone amazing medical care,” and will be “bigger than cell phones, bigger than anything.” He also said the robots could be used for “containment of future crime” by following criminals around and stopping them from “doing crime.”
There’s currently no Optimus robot on the market, and Musk didn’t provide a target date for reaching those goals.
Ho-kay. Will Matt Meyer or Bryan Townsend publicly share the ‘thank-you’ cards that Musk sends them? Rhetorical question. Musk won’t send them ‘thank-you’ cards. He’s used them, discarded them, and moved on.
Remember this little prediction from yesterday?:
White House deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs James Blair announced to Politico on Wednesday that Trump would now pivot to focusing on affordability issues across the country.
“The president is very keyed into what’s going on, and he recognizes, like anybody, that it takes time to do an economic turnaround, but all the fundamentals are there, and I think you’ll see him be very, very focused on prices and cost of living,” Blair said during an interview Wednesday.
I predicted that there was no way that Trump could/would actually ‘pivot to affordability’. A prediction, BTW, that anybody with a semi-operative brain could have made. Well…, from Taiyler Mitchell at HuffPo:
Trump wrongly declared Thursday that grocery costs are down, so he, the president, doesn’t want to talk about affordability.
“Our groceries are way down. Everything is way down, and the press doesn’t report it. The press reports whatever the con people say. You know, I call the Democrats con men and women. They make up numbers,” Trump, who is known to lie consistently, said, as he repeated bogus numbers and claims in characteristically erroneous and inconsiderate rambles at the White House.
Trump then falsely stated that Thanksgiving prices are down 25%, a claim he also made on Wednesday, based on Walmart’s Thanksgiving meal prices, while ignoring the reduction in product contents and quality. Likewise, he also ignored an October Consumer Price Index Summary that claimed average grocery prices rose 3% compared to the same month last year.
“So I don’t want to hear about the affordability,” Trump said as the ongoing government shutdown prevents many federal workers from being paid. “We had the worst inflation in the history of our country. Now we have virtually no inflation at all. It’s now at a very low number and a very normal number. So the affordability is much better with the Republicans.”
Yeah, I’m sure Rethugs look forward to running on that platform.
Trump Pardons Another Rethug Criminal:
Donald Trump has pardoned the former Tennessee state House speaker and a onetime aide of public corruption charges after the White House said the Biden administration justice department “significantly over-prosecuted” both for a minor issue.
Glen Casada, a former Republican state representative, was sentenced in September to three years in prison, and his former chief of staff, Cade Cothren, was also convicted and received a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence. The case centered on their actions after both had been driven from their leadership roles and were accused of running a scheme to win taxpayer-funded mail business from lawmakers.
The moves continued a pattern of Trump, a Republican, using his second presidency to bestow unlikely pardons on political allies, prominent public figures and others convicted of defrauding the public.
What A Mess–Proposed Redistricting Of Wilmington Students Could Collapse Of Its Own Weight:
Delaware education advocates expect to vote later this year on a plan to redistrict schools in New Castle County, but politics could threaten to upend a process years in making.
The Redding Consortium for Educational Equity is a state group created in 2019 tasked with redrawing lines for the school districts currently serving the city of Wilmington and northern New Castle County.
Wilmington is currently carved into four school districts: Christina, Brandywine, Colonial and Red Clay.
The advisory group is considering a few plans, pitting competing opinions from Gov. Matt Meyer and Mayor John Carney, Meyer’s predecessor, against each other on the best politically viable path forward. The consortium is not expected to vote to recommend a plan to state lawmakers until December.
Some Redding Consortium members, community activists and parents are at odds over the best plan. Some voiced concern that a single-county district would dilute Wilmington voices. Others said they were concerned that English language learners wouldn’t get as many resources with the Metropolitan Wilmington School District or Brandywine/Red Clay concept. Brandywine community members have expressed opposition to the two-district plan, arguing it would place a bigger tax burden on suburban residents.
One of our regular commenters is far more qualified than I (me?) to make sense of this. Hope they chime in.
State Supreme Court To Decide SB 21’s Fate:
Twenty years ago, the Delaware News Journal sought to demystify one of the state’s storied institutions with an article titled, “The ‘That’s Not Fair’ Court.”
The article described how judges in the Delaware Court of Chancery relied more on their sense of fairness than on written laws when deciding complex cases, including those involving the biggest companies in the world.
Now, the question of how far that sense of fairness – or in legal terms, equity – can go sits at the center of the most consequential fight in Delaware corporate law in years. And it is one that the state’s Supreme Court is likely to settle in the coming weeks.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court’s five justices heard arguments about the constitutionality of a new law, commonly called Senate Bill 21 or SB 21 after its enabling legislation, that sits at the center of that controversy.
Passed last spring amid escalating assaults on Delaware’s corporate brand sparked by Elon Musk, SB 21 limited the ability of Chancery Court judges to determine fairness around certain claims of self-dealing within companies.
Such lawsuits regularly occur in the Court of Chancery because Delaware is the legal home to more than 2 million companies, including a who’s who of Fortune 500 brands. One high-profile example involved a multibillion-dollar pay package that Tesla approved for Musk, its CEO, in 2018.
Advocates of SB 21 called the bill a course correction that would re-align the state’s business courts with its rulings from a decade ago.
But critics derided it as a “billionaires bill.” Some also said the law amounted to a removal of the Chancery Court’s constitutionally granted authority to say what is fair in a business dispute.
I close with a moment of self-indulgence (‘But, Steve, everything you write is self-indulgent.’). Uh, true, but I just wanted to give a huge shout-out to the folks at Spotlight Delaware. They held a Members’ Mixer last night at Wilmington Brew Works North. Got to meet Editor-In-Chief Jacob Owens, Alison Taylor Levine, and several of the great reporters who ply their craft there. I’m more convinced than ever that we need Spotlight Delaware and WHYY to fill the gap left by what once was the News-Journal. I plan to up my monthly pledge once the Washington Post releases me from the enforced contract that somehow prohibited me from cancelling my subscription until January. I encourage you to read them and to contribute to them. Also, a shout-out to my former Trader Joe’s pal Ryan Rice, who makes the cider for the Brew Works. Man, that Apple Pie Spiced Cider went down real easy!
What do you want to talk about?
Today’s installment of cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Trump regime seeks emergency stay of court order requiring full funding of November SNAP benefits.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-administration-seeks-emergency-stay-145341486.html
Brandywine resident here: I’m fine with the two district plan—we can handle more city kids (or with the consolidation of all 4 districts), but I totally oppose having a metro Wilmington district of just Red Clay and Brandywine. We should not have to be handicapped by super-wealthy private school communities in Hockessin/Greenville when trying to pass referenda, *and* have to clean up the charter oversaturation mess that Red Clay has created for themselves, without getting the extra resources of Christina and Colonial to do it, when our schools, especially at the HS level, are the best of the 4 districts *because* we have not caved to the charter school lobby even once.
Also agree on the language aspect—we have many fewer ESL kids than the other 3 districts and getting those programs up and running to the needed capacity would take time—time that could be leaving kids behind in the meanwhile.
I kept hearing how much of a hassle it is to cancel Post subscription. I cancelled mine today (after a week of horrible editorials i couldn’t take it anymore) and the site said basically “ok your subscription will end on 11/25”. Am I being lied to or was it in fact just that easy for me?
Good question. Did you just start the subscription, or had you had it for awhile?
We tried to cancel probably around April (we were getting rid of other subscriptions we either didn’t know we still had, or some we decided we didn’t need.)
They were like ‘Sorry, you bought it, now you own it for a year’.
Haven’t canceled mine yet, but I suggest you try again. Might get a reply like, “that’s OK, we don’t want readers like you anymore.”
It’s almost year’s end. Gonna invest the savings into Spotlight Delaware and WHYY–just like I did when I canceled my News-Journal subscription.
I have been a reader for years. I pay monthly. I’ll be interested to see if it really ends or if they’re just “stringing me along” as dear leader would say.
Thanks for the tip, Spotlight Delaware is now must reading, daily!