DL Open Thread: Thursday, April 30, 2026

Dog Bites Man: Yet Another Leak At Croda Plant.

Federal and state regulators are investigating a leak of a cancer-causing chemical that occurred earlier this month at an industrial site near the base of the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

According to Delaware’s environmental notification system, “an unknown quantity of ethylene oxide was released” on April 14 because of a “leaking valve gasket” at Croda’s Atlas Point site, near New Castle.

Federal and state regulators are investigating a leak of a cancer-causing chemical that occurred earlier this month at an industrial site near the base of the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

According to Delaware’s environmental notification system, “an unknown quantity of ethylene oxide was released” on April 14 because of a “leaking valve gasket” at Croda’s Atlas Point site, near New Castle.

On Tuesday, a spokesperson from the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control confirmed the agency is investigating the April 14 leak. He said he could not comment further.

A spokesperson from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration also said in an email that its officials have also opened an investigation.

We’ll let one resident state the obvious:

Following the latest incident, New Castle-area resident and organizer Dora Williams expressed concerns about residents’ access to public information about hazardous chemical emissions.

“People don’t know anything about it,” she said of the April incident. “Can we really trust them to say what happened, or was it all watered-down language?”

You all know the answer.

Obstacles To A Delaware Medical School?:

Healthcare leaders said Wednesday that a proposed medical school in Delaware could strengthen the area’s health system but would not quickly resolve persistent issues around access to doctors, particularly in fast-growing and aging Sussex County.

Speaking at Spotlight Delaware’s Health Care Summit, the industry leaders said shortages in housing in the state have been an obstacle to increasing Delaware’s ranks of healthcare professionals.

To address the issue, Gov. Matt Meyer proposed using part of a $157 million federal grant awarded earlier this year to build the state’s first medical school. The governor has argued that a medical school would establish a pipeline of new doctors who could serve Delaware’s rural areas.

During a panel discussion about the challenges to launching a medical school, Delaware Health Care Commission Chair Dr. Neil Hockstein noted that the new federal grant cannot be used to fund new construction for housing. Still, he said the money can be used to repurpose existing spaces. 

“There are campuses throughout the state where there are opportunities to expand housing,” he said. 

Also during the discussion, Dr. Kathleen Matt, board member of the Delaware Institute of Medical Education and Research, said the state will need to be strategic about housing, so that medical students and residents “can live close to where they are going to be doing their training,” she said.

Evisceration Of The Voting Rights Act Aftermath–Reform…Congress:

Understandably, Callais has re-ignited calls (especially on the left) for Court reform—with expansion foremost among the specific proposals—the next time there’s a Democratic trifecta in Congress. And the defense of going right for the jugular is that the Supreme Court as currently composed would strike down anything else—so shifting the Court’s center of gravity is a necessary antecedent to any substantive policy goals Democrats might have, and not just to Court reform, itself.

As I elaborate upon below the fold, to me, this takes exactly the wrong lesson away from Callais. Like Shelby County v. Holderand Brnovich v. DNC before it, the Court’s three-step evisceration of the Voting Rights Act has been made possible not just by its personnel, but by the Court’s knowledge that there’s no universe in which Congress would meaningfully respond to its … contestable … intepretations of a statute Congress enacted, and then re-authorized, and then re-authorized again.

A world in which Congress is willing to hold the Court accountable is one in which it would not only override these kinds of patently ridiculous interpretations of statutes, but in which the specter of such legislative reaction might lead the Court away from such interpretations in the first place. And although the Court could still rest on (un-overrule-able) constitutional arguments to strike down Congress’s handiwork, that, too, assumes a Congress that wouldn’t simply respond by resorting to its array of other tools to push back against such an assertion of power by the justices.

Put another way, Callais itself and the reactions to it are both evidence, yet again, of what’s really wrong with the Court (the extent to which it has become completely unaccountable), and why the “right” way to fix it is to reform that, rather than hope that a Democratic president will appoint justices more committed than the justices in the Callais majority to the view that the Court is just one branch among three.

This is something we can accomplish as early as November.

War Of Choice Has Brought Us…:

Oil prices hit a fresh wartime high on Thursday, surging to a four-year high above $120 a barrel, before pulling back in volatile trading on concerns that the war in Iran could escalate, leading to a longer disruption of fuel supplies from the Middle East.

President Trump maintained his stance that the naval blockade of Iran’s ports would persist until Tehran gives up its nuclear program. His remarks to Axios on Wednesday suggested that the standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, the vital trading route for oil and natural gas supplies, was not nearing a resolution.

The average price of regular gasoline in the United States has followed oil higher, hitting $4.30 a gallon on Thursday, up 27 cents in a week, according to data from the AAA motor club.

He can’t blame this on Biden–although he probably will.

BREAKING: It’s Platner!  Maine’s Governor Janet Mills drops out of Senate primary:

Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced Thursday she is dropping out of her race to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the crucial state for Democrats, saying she had run out of money to compete.

Mills, a two-term governor and former prosecutor, had failed to excite Democrats in the state after launching her campaign last fall on a message of fighting Donald Trump. Mills, 78, was a top recruit of Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, but lost ground quickly to Graham Platner, an oyster farmer who had never held elected office before but who has been drawing large crowds around the state.

Now, Platner will all but certainly face Collins in the fall.

“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else – the fight – to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” Mills said in a statement. “That is why today I have made the incredibly difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the United States Senate.”