DL Open Thread: Monday, Feb. 9, 2026

Anecdotal Becoming The Empirical, Ctd.  There’s only one reason, and it’s not the quality of D candidates, and it’s not that people love the Democratic Party:

Democrats successfully defended a conservative seat in rural Louisiana on Saturday night, as Chasity Martinez defeated Republican Brad Daigle by a dominant 62-38 margin—a massive 37-point overperformance compared to the 2024 presidential result.

Republicans had hoped to score their first legislative pickup of any kind during Donald Trump’s second term, and they had good reason to think they might succeed in the 60th House District.

Voters in the district, which includes part of Assumption and Iberville parishes (Louisiana’s equivalent of counties), had long backed state and local Democrats but had moved decidedly toward Republicans on the federal level in recent years.

According to calculations by The Downballot, Donald Trump carried the 60th by a 56-43 margin in 2024, giving the GOP a real opening. Daigle, an insurance agent, further argued that the district would be better served by electing a member who would join the Republican supermajority in the legislature.

From a 56-43 R margin to a 62-38 D margin.  People all over America are choosing what passes for democracy over Der Furor’s brand of authoritarianism.  Some more Rethugs headed for the exit last week.  Look for more this week.  Gonna be a (one hopes) figurative bloodbath, and the R’s know it.  BTW, don’t tell anybody, but the Senate is in play.

The Conspiracy Theorists Had It Right–Sort-of.  So many powerful people with Epstein ties:

From tech titans to Wall Street power brokers and foreign dignitaries, a who’s who of powerful men make appearances in the huge trove of documents released by the Justice Department in connection with its investigations of Jeffrey Epstein.

All have denied having anything to do with his sexual abuse of girls and young women. Yet some of them maintained friendships with Epstein, or developed them anew, even after news stories made him widely known as an alleged abuser of young girls.

BTW, looks like the first Epstein pal associated with Trump might have to walk the plank:

Two congressional lawmakers on Sunday called on Howard Lutnick to resign amid revelations that the Commerce secretary had more extensive business and personal dealings with deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein than were previously disclosed.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., urged Lutnick to step down after The New York Times reported the Trump ally interacted “regularly” with Epstein, according to files released by the Department of Justice relating to the notorious sex offender. Massie was the lead Republican on the Epstein Files Transparency Act that compelled the release of the Epstein files.

“He should just resign,” Massie said on CNN’s “Inside Politics Sunday.” “Howard Lutnick clearly went to the island if we believe what’s in these files; he was in business with Jeffrey Epstein, and this was many years after Jeffrey Epstein was convicted.”

He added: “He’s got a lot to answer for, but really, he should make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign.”

The Inhumanity Of ICE–As Told By The Children Of The Dilley Detention Center:

Fourteen-year-old Ariana Velasquez had been held at the immigrant detention center in Dilley, Texas, with her mother for some 45 days when I managed to get inside to meet her. The staff brought everyone in the visiting room a boxed lunch from the cafeteria: a cup of yellowish stew and a hamburger patty in a plain bun. Ariana’s long black curls hung loosely around her face and she was wearing a government-issued gray sweatsuit. At first, she sat looking blankly down at the table. She poked at her food with a plastic fork and let her mother do most of the talking.

She perked up when I asked about home: Hicksville, New York. She and her mother had moved there from Honduras when she was 7. Her mother, Stephanie Valladares, had applied for asylum, married a neighbor from back home who was already living in the U.S., and had two more kids. Ariana took care of them after school. She was a freshman at Hicksville High, and being detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center meant that she was falling behind in her classes. She told me how much she missed her favorite sign language teacher, but most of all she missed her siblings.

I had previously met them in Hicksville: Gianna, a toddler who everyone calls Gigi, and Jacob, a kindergartener with wide brown eyes. I told Ariana that they missed her too. Jacob had shown me a security camera that their mom had installed in the kitchen so she could peek in on them from her job, sometimes saying “Hello” through the speaker. I told Ariana that Jacob tried talking to the camera, hoping his mom would answer.

Stephanie burst into tears. So did Ariana. After my visit, Ariana wrote me a letter.

“My younger siblings haven’t been able to see their mom in more than a month,” she wrote. “They are very young and you need both of your parents when you are growing up.” Then, referring to Dilley, she added, “Since I got to this Center all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression.”

Since early December, I’ve spoken, in person and via phone and video calls, to more than two dozen detainees, half of them kids detained at Dilley — all of whose parents gave me their’ consent. I asked parents whether their children would be open to writing to me about their experiences. More than three dozen kids responded; some just drew pictures, others wrote in perfect cursive. Some letters were full of age-appropriate misspellings.

When I asked the kids to tell me about the things they missed most from their lives outside Dilley, they almost always talked about their teachers and friends at school. Then they’d get to things like missing a beloved dog, McDonald’s Happy Meals, their favorite stuffed animal or a pair of new UGGs that had been waiting for them under the Christmas tree.

They told me they feared what might happen to them if they returned to their home countries and what might happen to them if they remained here. Thirteen-year-old Gustavo Santiago said he didn’t want to go back to Tamaulipas, Mexico. “I have friends, school, and family here in the United States,” he said of his home in San Antonio, Texas. “To this day, I don’t know what we did wrong to be detained.” He ended with a plea, “I feel like I’ll never get out of here. I just ask that you don’t forget about us.”

What do you want to talk about?