DL Open Thread: Friday, May 15, 2026

State Demands $876K From Police Athletic League Of Delaware.  Can we just substitute ‘Val Longhurst’ for ‘PAL’?:

The financial crisis facing the Police Athletic League of Delaware escalated in recent weeks after state officials demanded that the community center nonprofit repay nearly $900,000 in misspent pandemic relief money, New Castle County police chief Col. Jamie Leonard said Tuesday.

Speaking before the New Castle County Council, Leonard said the PAL — as the organization is known — does not have enough cash on hand to repay the money, which he said was awarded for capital projects in previous years, but instead was spent on day-to-day operating expenses.

Longhurst seeks to deflect blame:

In the months that followed, Longhurst did not comment publicly, even after reports surfaced that her former nonprofit faced a criminal investigation, and an audit that could force it to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars.

On Wednesday, she broke her silence in an interview with Spotlight Delaware that primarily consisted of her suggesting several questions that should be asked of the PAL’s board of directors, including about the quality of their past oversight, and about a former staffer who she said had the authority to make spending decisions. 

The same Board of Directors who hired the unqualified Longhurst in the first place?

Last year, Spotlight Delaware learned that the organization’s board of directors had not held meetings on a regular basis.

Longhurst did not directly answer the question of why money granted for capital projects may have been used for operating expenses during her tenure.

“All I can say is, you know, were procedures put in place?” she said. “The people who were supposed to oversee that. Were they?”

When pressed that those spending decisions would have been hers to make as executive director, Longhurst said, “Actually, they weren’t.”

Instead, she claimed that a former bookkeeper at the PAL “had full autonomy over all the finances.”

Raising the obvious question:  What the fuck did Val do for her six-figure salary?  She wasn’t supposed to oversee the people who she alleges acted improperly?  She knew about it, but there was nothing she could/would do?

So glad that Spotlight Delaware finally got Val to open her mouth.  Every time she does, she digs herself a deeper hole.

Trump’s Border Patrol Chief Resigns.  In his spare time, he was a ‘sex tourist’, something neither the NYTimes or Politico mentioned, even though he did:

Mike Banks, the border patrol chief who oversaw the most aggressive militarization of the US southern border in recent history, has resigned with immediate effect.

“It’s just time,” Banks told Fox News in an interview. “I feel like I got the ship back on course from the least secure, most disastrous, most chaotic border to the most secure border this country has ever seen.”

The resignation comes weeks after the Washington Examiner reported that six current and former border patrol employees had accused Banks of regularly paying for sex with prostitutes during trips to Colombia and Thailand over more than a decade, and bragging about it to colleagues.

The behavior was said to have been investigated twice by CBP officials, with one inquiry reportedly ending abruptly while the former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem was in office.

CBP described the matter as “closed” last month, with a spokesperson telling the Examiner the allegations “date back more than a decade and were reviewed years ago”.

The agency did not comment on the allegations when contacted by the Guardian on Thursday.

No confirmation on whether he told a deportee to Colombia, “I’ll be visiting in just a couple of months.  Wear something skimpy.”

Thomas And Alito Freak Out Over Mifepristone Ruling:

The Supreme Court will keep mifepristone available as usual, it ruled in a Thursday order, blocking a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that would reimpose in-person dispensing requirements and prevent the drug from being mailed.

The majority was unsigned. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas wrote separate dissents.

Thomas staked his dissent on the Comstock Act, a 19th century anti-obscenity law the anti-abortion movement has seized upon as it attempts to ban the mailing of mifepristone nationwide.

“Applicants are not entitled to a stay of an adverse court order based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise,” he wrote. “They cannot, in any legally relevant sense, be irreparably harmed by a court order that makes it more difficult for them to commit crimes.”

Alito’s dissent is more scattered, first lamenting that the “unreasoned” granting of the stay undermines the Court’s decision in Dobbs. 

Let’s not ignore the obvious:

The reprieve for mifepristone may only be temporary; the case will reach the Supreme Court on the merits, and the court’s six right-wing justices will have their second crack at restricting the abortion drug since Dobbs. 

What do you want to talk about?