DL Open Thread: Tuesday, June 23, 2026

Wilmington’s Worst Mayor Ever (which is saying something) Proves It Again:

Wilmington City Council may consider overriding a veto from Mayor John Carney over an affordable housing trust.

Council passed an ordinance establishing the trust and an oversight board earlier this month. Carney called the efforts duplicative of Council’s Housing subcommittee in a written statement.

“Although I share Council’s commitment to expanding affordable housing opportunities, this ordinance does not create a functional or effective mechanism for doing so,” Carney wrote.

The trust would focus on constructing, purchasing and maintaining permanently affordable homes, prioritizing rental and homeownership units, along with homeless shelters and supportive housing units.

Carney said the board and trust overlap with already-established practices, including Council’s Housing subcommittee and Affordable Housing Fund, which will see $13 million go to developers to construct affordable housing in the city.

Ordinance sponsor Shané Darby argued in a statement the Housing Subcommittee will disband within a year, while her proposed board would be permanent.

“By passing the Affordable Housing Trust, City Council is addressing a real need in Wilmington— affordable housing,” Darby said. “Our current budget is a start to that, but we need a fund that creates long-term affordable units and that directly addresses homelessness. Mayor Carney’s veto just undid that. I believe that Council has a responsibility to override that decision.”

Carney also said the trust lacks a funding mechanism. Deputy Chief of Staff Daniel Walker added his office is always willing to work with Council to provide assistance as they develop new policies.

“It’s unfortunate that this one was put forth without a clearly thought out funding mechanism, and it does not address the urgency, which is putting more housing units into production that are affordable for Wilmington and people looking to relocate into Wilmington,” Walker said.

Councilmember Coby Owens said he thinks he would vote to override the mayor’s veto.

“You want to create a program, create a framework before you put the funding into it,” Owens said. “And that’s what this does, right? It gives us an opportunity to say, ‘okay, this is the framework that we agreed upon as a city.’ And then we can start having negotiations for the upcoming budget cycle.”

Carney treats City Council the way he treats Wilmington’s homeless–as an annoyance to be dismissed.  Yo, John, you can get rid of Shané Darby by helping to send her to Dover.  Just one more question for you, John:  Now that Mike Purzycki’s gone, who besides Bud Freel do you count on to tell you how to run the City?  Because you prove time and again that you don’t have a fucking clue.

Is The Tech Bubble Finally Bursting?:  I’ve been confused for quite awhile (insert joke here) as to why the stock market has continued to rise in spite of headwinds.  Have we reached the point that irrational exuberance has finally run out?:

Global stock markets shuddered on Tuesday, dragged down by tech companies.

The firms at the forefront of artificial intelligence and chip making have an outsized impact on market benchmarks, after a long — if sometimes volatile — rally pushed indexes to record highs. A sell-off in these shares that started in the United States on Monday reverberated around the world, shifting investors’ focus away from the war in Iran, oil prices, interest rates and other concerns that have influenced the market of late.

Some of the biggest U.S. tech companies, including Alphabet and Amazon, continued to fall in premarket trading on Tuesday, on top of losses the day before. The stock of SpaceX also continued to lag: After jumping in its first few days of trading, Elon Musk’s rocket-and-A.I. company has shed more than 20 percent of its value in the past three trading sessions, erasing more than $600 billion in market value. But it remains above its initial public offering price.

“If today’s price action points to A.I. exhaustion,” noted Geoffrey Yu, a strategist at BNY in London, “fears will grow concerning the global economy’s ability to generate a clear and diversified growth narrative amid tighter funding and fiscal constraints.”

The heady valuations for A.I. stocks has prompted many analysts to revisit the boom-and-bust cycle in tech stocks in the late 1990s. The death on Monday of Alan Greenspan, who coined the term “irrational exuberance” to describe the dot-com boom when he was chairman of the Federal Reserve back then, also revived memories of that time.

“Despite an acceleration in the investment boom, strong profit growth has mostly prevented 1990s-style imbalances from emerging,” Dominic Wilson and Vickie Chang of Goldman Sachs wrote in a recent research report. But outside of A.I.-related areas, the overall economy “looks much less robust than in the 1990s,” they noted. That amplifies the effects of macroeconomic shocks and makes markets especially vulnerable to “any challenges to the optimistic A.I. macro story,” the analysts added.

Federal Judge Defends Democracy–And Minnesota–Against DOJ Excesses:

A federal judge has blocked an attempt by the Trump administration to subpoena Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other state officials, calling it an effort to “harass and retaliate against them.”

In a ruling unsealed Monday, U.S. District Judge Patrick Schlitz found the “dominant purpose” of the subpoenas was to “coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration law and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so.”

The subpoenas were served in January as part of an investigation into whether Walz and other officials obstructed or impeded law enforcement during a sweeping immigration operation in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

The subpoenas, which seek records, were sent to the offices of Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her and officials in Ramsey and Hennepin counties.

The judge ruled that there appeared to be “extremely weak to nonexistent” connections between the information sought in the subpoenas and any possible criminal violation. The subpoenas seek materials “that largely if not entirely relate to constitutionally protected conduct,” the judge wrote, noting that Minnesota has the legal right not to devote its resources to enforcing federal immigration law.

The Justice Department “is not conducting a criminal investigation,” the judge wrote, “but is instead using the grand jury process for other (unlawful) purposes.”

The ‘activist judge’ who issued the ruling?  A Dubya appointee.

Senate Rethugs Opt For Self-Preservation Over Trump.  It was inevitable:

President Trump’s relationship with key Senate Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), is crumbling after repeated clashes over strategy on an array of issues. The two sides are splitting further apart as the midterm election nears and GOP lawmakers fear the potential loss of both chambers of Congress.

GOP senators say there has been a major loss of trust between the president and many members of their conference as the White House has repeatedly blindsided Thune and other Republican leaders.

Trump will have a chance to discuss his differences with Republican senators in person this Wednesday, when he is invited to speak to the Steering Committee on Capitol Hill. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the Steering Committee’s chair and a close ally of the president, extended the invitation.

The president undercut GOP leaders last week when he suddenly ordered Jay Clayton, his nominee to serve as director of national intelligence, to not show up at his Senate confirmation hearing. The reversal of the plan left Thune and other Republicans dumbfounded.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said Trump hurts Senate Republicans’ chances of keeping their majority every time he ambushes them with a surprise announcement or keeps them in the dark about a key development.

“When we’re five months out from a major election [when] we historically have headwinds, you’ve got to be pitch-perfect and you got to execute with precision. We can’t surprise the president and the administration cannot surprise us. Every time we do that between now and November, we’re diminishing our chances of holding our majorities,” Tillis said.