DL Open Thread: Saturday, April 4, 2026
NCC Marcus Henry On NCC’s Budget Deficit. Read and/or listen:
Henry says the county’s $42 million deficit stems from issues like using one-time federal relief funds to cover recurring operating expenses, while using reserves to fund permanent costs.
Henry offers one example of how that played out.
“There was an increase back in 2024 where the police salary compensation that was paid for out of tax stabilization reserve funds, which is not something you typically do to pay for operational expenses. So that was like $8.5-9 million that came on to the operational budget, when I took office, along with all the other increases that we’ve seen,” said Henry.
Other issues include Former County Exec and current Gov. Matt Meyer’s 2024 one time five percent property tax credit which cost the county $6 million and $2.5 million to pay for issues, appeals, and litigation costs associated with the reassessment process.
Henry is proposing a series of moves to close the budget gap including the 17.2% property tax increase and defunding 56 vacant non-essential jobs.
Those vacant jobs not being filled creates a savings of $5.7 million for the county.
While he proposed defunding vacant jobs, one thing Henry did not think about is layoffs or salary cuts.
Delaware Launches ‘Know Your Rights’ Campaign To Combat ICE. Here’s what you need to know. Have you ever wondered (I have) what Carney would have done if he were still Governor?
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has proposed boosting defense spending to $1.5 trillion in his 2027 budget released Friday, the largest such request in decades, reflecting his emphasis on U.S. military investments over domestic programs.
The sizable increase for the Pentagon, some 44%, had been telegraphed by the Republican president even before the U.S.-led war against Iran. The president’s plan would also reduce spending on non-defense programs by 10%.
“President Trump promised to reinvest in America’s national security infrastructure, to make sure our nation is safe in a dangerous world,” wrote Budget Director Russell Vought.
“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care,” Trump said at a private White House event Wednesday.
“It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare — all these individual things,” he said. “They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal.”
This, of course, is his request. Will Rethugs reject it outright? They should, they might, but they’re Rethugs.
You Just Know That Trump and Hegseth Are Praying That The Pilot Is Dead. Last thing they want is him showing up on Iranian TV:
The downing of a U.S. fighter jet over Iranian territory and the intense search for one of its crew members has raised concerns that the airman could be captured and provide Iran with a potent asset that it could use for leverage against the United States.
The rescue operation for the missing airman was in its second day on Saturday, with not only American troops conducting an all-out search but the Iranian military also trying to find the crew member, according to three Iranian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.
In one indication of Iran’s eagerness to find the airman, an anchor for a local affiliate of Iran’s state broadcaster read a statement on Friday on television calling on residents to capture the “enemy’s pilot or pilots” and turn them over alive to security forces for a reward.
The possibility that Iran could capture the airman raises the specter of a replay of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, a traumatizing event in American history that laid the foundation for nearly five decades of hostile U.S.-Iranian relations.
In fairness, the pilot is a ‘loser’, just like John McCain.
I’ve chosen not to go down the MAGA rabbit holes. However, this article spells out the who, what, where, and why of the forces splitting MAGA apart. Even weirder than you might have thought. You will enjoy it, so, please check it out:
Often political movements end up as circular firing squads, especially when there’s a competition for leadership. The same can be true for cults. With Trump’s misnamed Make America Great Again cult movement, the firing squad is shaped more like a Möbius strip. In the past year or so, MAGA World has been racked with a series of cross-cutting feuds, with incoming and outgoing fire ricocheting across the Trumpian landscape in all directions, causing chaos and confusion, as multiple conspiracy theories clash and vitriolic accusations pile up. An outsider cannot keep track of the infighting without a program or a wire diagram that would make Carrie Mathison proud.
You may have caught particular episodes in this sweeping saga. One of the main ones occurred when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and commentator Tucker Carlson got into a dust-up last year over Israel, with Carlson, an America First anti-interventionist, decrying Cruz for being a pro-Israel warmonger and Cruz slamming Carlson for hosting on his show Nick Fuentes, the antisemitic white nationalist and Hitler fanboy. Cruz accused Carlson of being “complicit in…evil” for platforming Fuentes. This tiff led to a civil war inside the influential Heritage Foundation between those who backed Carlson (including its president) and those who found his association with Fuentes despicable.
This row reflected a deepening fault line among Trump followers between isolationists and hawks, with Israel as the fulcrum and antisemitism (actual or false charges of) imbuing the debate.
With this baseline split, it was no surprise that the Iran war has led to more MAGA-on-MAGA catfighting. Fox News loudmouths Sean Hannity, Brian Kilmeade, and Mark Levin, along with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, have been cheerleaders for Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war against Tehran, with Carlson and Megyn Kelly blaming Israel for dragging Trump and the United States into this conflict.
Kelly complained the war was sold to the American public by “Israel firsters, like Mark Levin.” He retorted by calling Kelly an “emotionally unhinged, lewd and petulant wreck.” Then it got nasty. Kelly asserted that Levin had a small penis. He said she was a slut. I’m not making this up.
Adjacent to this fight over Israel and the Iran war, much of the internecine warfare within MAGA has been driven by an absurd conflict between commentator Candace Owens and Erika Kirk, the widow of Turning Point USA chieftain Charlie Kirk. Owens used to be a hotshot at The Daily Wire, a conservative media operation co-founded by Shapiro. But she and Shapiro had a bitter falling out two years ago, as Owens blended her criticism of Israel with explicit antisemitism. She departed and started her own podcast, where she built a massive audience of millions promoting extremism and conspiracy theories.
After Charlie Kirk was shot in September, Owens, who once worked at TPUSA, devoted hours of her show to promoting the conspiracy theory that he had been betrayed by close colleagues and killed by Egypt and France. Or maybe Israel. Or maybe the US government. She suggested that Kirk was about to leave the pro-Israel cause, and this led to his execution by one or more of these nefarious powers. And it gets more bizarre: Owens insisted she had proof that Egyptian military planes had been tracking Erika Kirk for years. I will spare you more of the bonkers details; there are plenty of them. (Another one of Owens’ prominent conspiracy theories is that French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife is really a man, and she alleged Macron had ordered her assassination for outing this secret.)
There’s plenty more. Don’t tell me you don’t want to read the rest of it.
What do you want to talk about?
I didn’t know that Candace Owens was such a fun, down-to-earth girl.