DL Open Thread: Thursday, May 21, 2026
Anyone Missing From This Picture?:
All that is left of the Mother African Union Church building in Wilmington is a stone facade and overhead beams following a devastating fire on Sunday. SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
The Justice Department announced charges on Wednesday against Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former president of Cuba, accusing him of murder and a conspiracy to kill American citizens stemming from the fatal downing 30 years ago of two planes over waters off the coast of his country.
The indictment, issued in Federal District Court in Miami, was an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration’s multifaceted pressure campaign against Cuba’s Communist government at a moment when President Trump has been seeking to topple it.
The charges brought to bear on Mr. Castro, the brother of Fidel Castro, the vast powers of the U.S. criminal justice system, saddling him with a possible maximum penalty of life in prison. They also raised the possibility that the United States could be paving the way for its military to remove him from the country through a means similar to how U.S. Special Operations forces used an indictment against Nicolás Maduro, the former leader of Venezuela, to swoop into Caracas in a brazen operation in January and capture him.
Worth a brow furrow, Chris?
Trump Claims He Can Build His Arch Without Congressional Approval:
The administration has also begun the process of seeking approvals from a pair of federal arts and building commissions that Trump has stacked with his allies, with another hearing slated for Thursday morning.
But under federal law, certain parts of the city — including Memorial Circle, which is managed by the National Park Service — are considered protected land, and monuments built there require congressional authorization.
White House and agency officials have repeatedly declined to answer whether they will seek authorization for Trump’s arch from the current Congress. Two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the administration’s plans, said there are no active plans to do so.
Whether he can or can’t go ahead is almost beside the point–it’s the utter insanity from this man that confronts us every day, that’s the point.
Krugman: Why There Is No Incentive For Trump To Stop His Crime Spree:
Now, massive corruption on the part of Trump and his minions isn’t new. But the shamelessness of this latest episode of looting takes it to a new level. Until now, we’ve seen a combination of crony capitalism and insider trading. Plutocrats and corporations have been enriching Trump through back channels, especially crypto, in return for government contracts and policy favors, while Trump himself and people close to Trump have been making hugely profitable market bets thanks to advance knowledge of government policies.
But now Trump has eliminated the middlemen, effectively telling his officials to pay money directly to him or anyone else he favors.
Granted, we already knew that Trump was, by orders of magnitude, the most corrupt president in U.S. history. But now Trump is the most explicitly corrupt leader in today’s world. After all, Vladimir Putin has obviously stolen billions, but never this brazenly. Even Third World dictators normally try to mask their corruption.
Don’t say that this taxpayer-financed slush fund won’t have political consequences.
On the contrary, the polling and focus-group analyses I’ve seen say that voters are very angry about corruption. Trump’s theft of taxpayer money, while people are losing healthcare coverage and food aid while suffering from Trump-induced higher prices, is perfect fodder for the Democrats in the upcoming elections.
So we should ask ourselves why the Trumpists have abandoned all restraint. There have been many corrupt politicians in U.S. history – although they were pikers in comparison to Trump. Yet they at least attempted to hide their corruption, or at least keep it discreet and deniable, in order to avoid a voter backlash.
One answer is that even if MAGA loses big in November, Democrats can’t count on wave elections every cycle, and the field is now strongly tilted against them. As Morris writes.
While the situation for Democrats is not necessarily dire for 2026, the situation for democracy in 2028 and beyond certainly is.
So you can think of the $1.8 billion slush fund as a promise to MAGA-world that there is a payoff to be had if they just stick with him for the next two and a half years.
Beyond that, we are, in effect, watching what happens when a quasi-authoritarian regime’s corruption and criminality pass the point of no return.
At this point Trump and his MAGA minions have stolen so much, committed so many crimes — not just theft but taking America to war illegally, abusing ICE detainees, and much more — that if and when they lose power many of them will face personal ruin at best, years of jail time at worst. This would happen even if they stopped committing more crimes.
So there’s no incentive for them to end their criminality, or to end the attempts to bribe others to go along. Either they succeed in destroying America as we know it, or they won’t. And until that’s resolved, they may as well engage in even more corruption and criminal acts.
Racism And Corruption Go Hand-In-Hand In Maricopa County, Arizona. Yes, once the fiefdom of Sheriff Joe Arpaio:
Since 2013, Maricopa County officials have approved $226 million in sheriff’s office spending related to a settlement aimed at rooting out racial profiling. Auditors found that more than 70% of it was misattributed or misappropriated.More than $7,000 in cable TV subscriptions.
An $11,000 golf cart.
$1.5 million in renovations to office space in a swanky Phoenix high-rise.
And another $1.7 million for Tasers.
Those were among more than $200 million in expenses that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office billed to a class-action settlement aimed at rooting out racial profiling in the department.
A federal judge in 2013 found the department under then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio had violated the constitutional rights of Latino drivers, and the court has required sweeping reforms. These include documenting all traffic stops to detect patterns of racial bias, employing additional investigators to probe reports of deputy misconduct and appointing a monitor to oversee the settlement.
Since Sheriff Jerry Sheridan took office last year, he and Republicans on the county’s Board of Supervisors have cited the cost of complying with these orders to call for an end to the settlement of the case known as Melendres v. Arpaio — even as reviews of the department’s traffic stops continue to show racial disparities affecting Latino residents. The lingering disparities amplified Latino leaders and community members’ concerns as the second Trump administration has boosted local law enforcement’s involvement in its mass deportation campaign.
Maricopa County, home to more than half of Arizona’s population, has approved $353 million in spending related to the settlement since 2013. But an audit of the sheriff’s office spending ordered by the court and a review of the public ledger by Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica show millions of dollars went to expenses that had little or nothing to do with the settlement. (The audit focused on $226 million that the sheriff’s office charged to the settlement over a 10-year period; it didn’t examine legal and monitoring costs or the two most recent department budgets.)
The auditors, who were hired by the monitor, found that nearly 72% of the sheriff’s office spending was misattributed or misappropriated. For example, the full cost of some services and salaries was assigned to the settlement when those jobs were completely unrelated or only partially related to court orders. Only $63 million was appropriately charged to the settlement, they said.
Once again, award-worthy reporting from ProPublica and its partner.
What do you want to talk about?
The mayor and a consortium of downtown developers were spotted walking through the wreckage, taking measurements and discussing the next Bardea concept that could best anchor Wilmington’s next luxury apartment complex “the parsonage at Franklin commons”
Where’s that ‘Like’ button?
i bet mike purzycki is upset he’s dead or he could have had the city pay to refurbish it as his man cave/boys hangout (carney’s not invited)
Carney stayed away after he was told Meyer would be there.