We’ll do a separate ‘Countdown To Filing Deadline’ thread in a bit. Since Friday, the entertainment value of this year’s Delaware primary season has increased exponentially. Consider that a tease.
Delaware’s grant-in-aid bill is not the only way the state financially supports the nonprofit sector. A second, lesser-known pot of money, called the Community Reinvestment Fund, also is sending dollars to those private organizations.
Last month, lawmakers approved $20 million for the Community Reinvestment Fund as part of the state’s capital budget legislation, known as the Bond Bill. While text of the bill did not reveal the individual awards from the fund, Spotlight Delaware has since obtained a list of those awardees.
It shows the dollars funding about 130 private organizations or entities of local governments across the state.
Those recipients include town revitalization projects, services for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and youth groups providing after-school activities.
Did I mention that this is a slush fund?:
The awards from the fund are determined “through the input of all members of the General Assembly,” Deputy Controller General Robert Scoglietti said in a statement to Spotlight Delaware.
Asked why the fund is necessary when the state already has a $100 million grant-in-aid program, Scoglietti said the Community Reinvestment Fund is designed for capital improvements while grant-in-aid “provides operational and programmatic grants to nonprofit community organizations, fire companies, and some local governments.”
Biggest among those was a $1 million appropriation for renovations at The Queen, a Wilmington music venue owned by a nonprofit.
Yep, a slush fund, alright.
Another Murder By ICE In Maine? Looking that way:
BIDDEFORD, Maine (AP) — An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot a motorist in Maine on Monday, the second time in a week that ICE has used deadly force and at least the ninth death since President Donald Trump began his immigration crackdown.
Immigrant rights groups identified the man who was killed in Biddeford as a 26-year-old native of Colombia. The Colombian Embassy said it was in contact with U.S. authorities about the Colombian national’s death and “is providing the necessary consular assistance to his family.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, said in a post on X that agents were surveilling an address for a person with a final order of removal from the country. When ICE tried to stop a vehicle driven by someone coming from that address, the “vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon,” the department said.
Roll that absurd explanation around in your grey matter for awhile.
King, an independent, said Mullin also told him the officers were in Biddeford to serve an arrest warrant but that it was not for the person who was shot. King said Mullin told him that earlier information that the man was the target of an enforcement action was incorrect.
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said Mullin told her the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Inspector General is investigating in cooperation with the FBI.
That’s it, Susan?
Judge Smacks Down Trump’s Self-Dealing–Refers Trump’s Acting AG For Sanctions:
A federal judge on Monday nullified an agreement the government reached with Donald Trump and his sons over the leak of his tax returns. The judge lambasted the government and president’s lawyers for using the judicial process to try to concoct a beneficial arrangement for the president.
The ruling from US district judge Kathleen Williams in the southern district of Florida blocks a widely criticized arrangement the government and the president’s attorneys reached earlier this year to resolve a $10bn lawsuit by Trump and his sons over the leak of the president’s tax returns. The government never responded to the lawsuit and then announced it was settling the suit by creating a $1.8bn slush fund to compensate victims of “government weaponization” and giving the president, his family, and related entities immunity from tax audits.
Amid bipartisan backlash, the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, announced the justice department was scrapping the fund, but the tax immunity provisions remained in place.
In her ruling on Monday, Williams, who was nominated to the bench by Barack Obama, said there had never been a genuine controversy in the case – a requirement for any lawsuit – since Trump controlled the treasury department. She also sanctioned Trump’s lawyers for their conduct before the court.
“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the president and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” she wrote.
“The court finds that this matter was brought for an improper purpose – to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact,” she added.
Her ruling blocks both Trump, his sons, and business, and the government from “using, offering, admitting, or citing” anything from the so-called settlement agreement in any kind of proceeding.
This would arguably be the greatest political scandal in history were Trump not involved in so many other self-dealing scandals.
Yo, Chris–Your Dining Companion Was A Piece Of Shit. Just providing you with a sense of perspective.
Some of the early tributes to Graham mourned him as the last of a dying breed: a genteel pursuer of compromise who never forgot his duty to put country above party. These tributes are works of fantasy. Whether he was screaming into a microphone to defend one Republican Supreme Court nominee against allegations of sexual assault or speed-running the confirmation of another Republican Supreme Court nominee a week before an election, the only constant in Lindsey Graham’s career was his sweaty, desperate need for relevance. His “values” were whatever allowed him to cling to it for a little longer. Everything else was negotiable.
Meet The New War, Same As The Old War:
President Donald Trump formally notified lawmakers this weekend that the nation is once again at war with Iran, giving his administration another 60-day clock to use the military in the region without congressional approval.
In a letter to Congress dated July 10, obtained by POLITICO, Trump stated that the strikes that began on July 7 represent “military action consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and United States’ interests both at home and abroad.”
Is this mic on? IT’S THE SAME FUCKING WAR. Congress will just shrug its collective shoulders and allow this to go on unchallenged for another 60 days? Rhetorical question. Answer is yes.
What do you want to talk about?
So the Queen is controlled by a nonprofit you say. Riddle me this who might it be that controls the nonprofit????? Free beer at Constitution Yards for the correct guess!