DL Open Thread: Monday, May 4, 2026
Melanie Ross Levin Owes Us An Apology. Kids, here’s what the State Rep wrote on her Facebook:
What is it like being a Democratic Jewish legislator? It means dealing with antisemitism on a regular basis from the left. And EVERYONE who has done this to me in Delaware is associated with the Delaware Working Families Party. See comments in the post below.
I’m forced to stop there. Why? Because there WERE no comments supporting her false accusation in the post below. NONE.
So, what exactly were you trying to do here, Representative, other than attack a successful political movement that has targeted, among others, some of your Delaware Way buddies?
I’m a member of the Working Families Party, as are several other Jews, I serve on my local Democratic committee, and yes, I’m a Jew. I criticized your taking part in a photo op paid for by the Israeli government. Perhaps you were referring to that. Let me make the point now that I made then: Being anti-genocide is not synonymous with being anti-semitic. Ideally, the two terms would be polar opposites of each other. My youngest daughter belongs to this movement:
We’re here to make a home for Jews who find themselves at odds with the State of Israel, and to educate allies on how to be in solidarity with Palestine while in a strong community with their Jewish friends.
Are they anti-semites too?
You made a smear of the Working Families Party. Didn’t try to substantiate it. You owe them an apology. And all of us an explanation as to what antisemitism you’ve allegedly been the victim of.
Really, Must We? Doesn’t Wilmington City Council have more important issues to address?
The political fight over the Wilmington City Council’s partisan makeup is escalating, and could end up in court.
City Council President Earnest “Trippi” Congo last week proposed a resolution that would remove his colleague, Councilman James Spadola, from his seat.
Congo’s current proposal to declare Spadola’s council seat vacant states that the intent of the city’s charter is to ensure representation for minority parties. The resolution also states that Spadola was elected over other candidates because of his party affiliation, and claimed that his choice to become a Democrat has “disenfranchise[d] approximately 15% of non-majority voters.”
Oh, Jesus. Ya wanna make a political martyr out of Spadola? If you do, you’re an idiot.
The Death Loop If Ever There Was One. Insanity is the President of these here United States repeating the word ‘Winning’ over and over again on an hour-long loop:
Remember, kids, THE WHITE HOUSE put this out, along with the phrase, ‘Can’t stop, won’t stop’. Why didn’t Abe Lincoln think of this?
Is George Bush-Stink Sinking Cornyn? A strange dynamic in, where else, Texas:
In their primary runoff for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, John Cornyn can say that Ken Paxton is divorcing his wife, that he’s alleged to have had multiple mistresses, that his own senior staff has accused him of corruption. All that is damning and true. But Paxton can make one charge that is more powerful than anything Cornyn can pin on Ken, and which may well push the attorney general over the line on May 26: John Cornyn was in office twenty years ago. There’s really no getting around that. It’s on his Wikipedia page.
The problem with the senior senator, as one representative online poster put it this week, is that he’s “a corporate hack who was an instrumental member of the Bush/Rove machine” and “the last vestige of those hacks other than [Greg] Abbott.” The problem for Cornyn is that the sentiment above wasn’t shared by a bleeding-heart Austin liberal with a long memory of the Bush years and a Coexist bumper-sticker, but by someone who identifies as a Texas conservative.
The expectation might be that the Texas GOP has golden statues to Bush in every place it meets. It does not. A substantial portion of Republicans in the state are out to seek and destroy any last trace of the party left over from the Bush era—between 1994 and 2004 or so. When it was reported on April 15 that Bush had donated $5,000 to Cornyn’s campaign, the signal fires went up through the right-wing movement. (Even though it was a minor sum from a private citizen in a very expensive race—pro-Cornyn organizations, along with his campaign, spent $17 million in the first quarter of 2026.) “[The] old guard is all over Texas trying to claw back control and push out America First candidates,” wrote Kambree Nelson, a pro-Paxton influencer. “Bring it.” Another MAGA influencer posted a picture of an aged Bush and wrote that “voting for this RINO twice and defending him for 10 years after he left office was the worst political decision I’ve ever made.”
Guess it’s fair to say that ‘compassionate conservatism’, whatever it was purported to be, is anathema to the Texas GOP right about now.
‘Electro-Democracies’ Vs. ‘Petro-Dictatorships’? I can only hope:
Looking out to sea from the grey sandy beaches of Santa Marta, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, it is never hard to spot evidence of the country’s thriving fossil fuel export trade. Oil tankers ride at anchor on the horizon, and sometimes, locals say, lumps of coal wash up on the shore, blown off the collier ships that carry cargoes from the nearby mines.
It was here, on Wednesday evening, that the Colombian government took a bold step to shift its economy—and that of the rest of the world—away from dependence on coal, gas and oil and into a new era of clean energy. With the first-ever conference on “transitioning away from fossil fuels,” the host joined nearly 60 countries determined to loosen the grip of petrostates on the world’s future.
“This is the beginning of a new global climate democracy,” Irene Vélez Torres, Colombia’s environment minister and chair of the talks, said in closing remarks that celebrated a “new method” of bringing together high-ambition governments, parliamentarians and civil society groups to accelerate the decarbonisation of their economies.
The global economy faces a triple whammy: rising energy costs, rising food costs that follow, and the spectre of rampant inflation that will raise interest rates and add to the cost of servicing debt. Both rich and poor nations are feeling the impact, but the poor, with their higher levels of debt and lower reserves, are suffering more.
Repeated oil shocks blighted the 1970s, and the current crisis is not only greater than those but more impactful than all previous crises combined, according to Fatih Birol, the world’s leading energy economist and chief of the International Energy Agency, the gold standard in energy research. “This is bigger than all the biggest crises combined, and therefore huge,” he said in an exclusive Guardian interview. “I still cannot understand that the world was so blindsided, that the global economy can be held hostage to a 50km strait.”
What is different today from previous oil shocks is the ready availability of a viable alternative: cheap, reliable and plentiful renewable energy from the wind and sun, with modern battery technology to smooth over any intermittency; while electric vehicles and heat pumps can shunt transport and heating off fossil fuels and onto far more efficient electricity.
It is an irony not lost on Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, that it is the oil industry’s dominance of global economies that has finally woken governments to the dangers. “The fossil fuel cost crisis now has its foot on the throat of the global economy,” he said. “Those who have fought to keep the world hooked on fossil fuels are inadvertently supercharging the global renewables boom.”
We’ll see. Rootin’ for ’em.
What do you want to talk about?
It’s a shame to use antisemitism as a cudgel like this because it really is a problem in Delaware politics, just not exclusively on the left. I’ve been referred to as “that Jew” running WFP by at least one sitting legislator (I’m not Jewish). Rep. Ross Levin’s political mentor, Val Longhurst, outright referred to Meyer’s election campaign in 2024 as a Jewish conspiracy to someone she thought would be on her side (and was not).
Not sure it’s worth having the argument though, as I’ve seen many people assume that WFP is synonymous with whoever is being most annoying in their Facebook comments section. It’s much easier than reckoning with why politics is changing so quickly in Delaware.
A lot of ill-informed/bad faith Islamophobic actors portray Madinah as the “face” of WFP. The implication, of course, is that anyone who is Muslim is inherently anti-Semitic.
Still surprised that Tigani family story hasn’t gotten legs on here.
Uh, what?
Care to be more specific?
This was posted in the comments a couple of days ago.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/04/mpt-steward-health-arrest-harassment-bruce-tigani-jr-abe/
Whoa.
This is why we have an Open Thread. Quite a story.
I posted about Jewish American Heritage month on my official page. Look through those comments. You need to click on “all comments”. The comment in question is still up. The person who posted even acknowledged that it was problematic.
Clue us in. I saw the Jewish American Heritage month post. No support of your charge against WFP.
You claimed, and I quote, ‘And EVERYONE who has done this to me in Delaware is associated with the Delaware Working Families Party.’
So. Was it one person? Was that the ‘everyone’ you referenced?
Why did you even write this?
If Representative Levin is feeling down, maybe we can do a GoFundMe to get her another vacation to Israel? It’s clear she’s got nothing else going on.
You’re a State Representative and you’re complaining about web comments? If stray remarks bother you so much, resign. No one is forcing you to insert yourself into the spotlight, and in your spare time you can take more selfies in fascist Israel.
As a Jewish person, I can unequivocally say that Israel has done more to stir up anti-semitism than any other political force in my lifetime. What you’re doing is disgusting.
All these garbage legislators just want the smear WFP because they’re scared. Stay scared.
Look, no one likes getting abuse online, but like JR said, grow up. Everyone knows WFP isn’t antisemitic. When you say that you sound ridiculous