Christian Willauer Calls Out Reassessment Inequities:
Wilmington City Councilwoman Christian Willauer said she’s heard from scores of residents saying their properties were overassessed during the recent canvassing, and she’s calling for New Castle County to take action.
Willauer sent a letter to the New Castle County Board of Assessment and Office of Finance, calling for them to re-evaluate the Tilton, West Center City, and Hilltop neighborhoods.
Her issue was that 61-71% of the properties in those Wilmington neighborhoods were valued 10% above recent sale prices, while just 9-23% of properties in the Greenville areas of Hoopes Reservoir and the Wegmans grocery store were similarly over-assessed.
This is not cherry-picked data. I highly recommend that readers go back to this Spotlight Delaware series on reassessment. Especially this piece:
Visitors to Hilltop, the largely working-class community west of Interstate 95 in Wilmington, will immediately find signs of an immigrant diaspora and the people who call it home.
There are Jamaican jerk and Haitian creole spots, Dominican cafes, Puerto Rican bakeries, and Mexican restaurants. The heart of the community is William Judy Johnson Memorial Park, which is named after the Hall of Fame Negro League baseball player.
More than 90% of residents in the multicultural community are Black or Hispanic.
For all of its vibrancy, however, Hilltop is still very much a community that struggles with poverty. The median household income for the more than 7,000 residents in the area is less than $50,000 a year – or nearly half the statewide average.
And, according to the recent once-in-a-generation reassessment of property in New Castle County, the community is also the place where property saw the largest percentage increase in median value.
The median tax bill in Hilltop nearly tripled, adding more than $800 in new taxes to homeowners. Meanwhile, the median tax bill for the Centreville area – where the median home value is just under $1 million – actually dropped nearly $250.
That is simply wrong, and Councilperson Willauer is right. Address these inequities or answer to them in court.
Are Trusts And LLC’s ‘People’? The case is before the Delaware Supreme Court–who just might punt it to the General Assembly:
A pending legal challenge to whether artificial entities like family trusts and limited liability companies (LLCs) can vote in Fenwick Island’s municipal elections now awaits a ruling from the full Delaware Supreme Court.
During arguments heard on Wednesday morning in Dover, one Delaware Supreme Court justice questioned whether some property owners in the coastal resort town might actually be the ones disenfranchised by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Delaware’s attempts to disallow artificial entities from casting ballots in local elections.
But ACLU attorney Andrew Bernstein argued in court Wednesday that artificial entities like corporations, LLCs and family trusts do not have the same natural rights — such as the right to vote — that human residents do.
By allowing entities a vote in Fenwick’s local annual elections, the total number of votes increases. In turn, that larger voting pool decreases the impact of a regular person’s vote, the ACLU argued.
“Here, Fenwick Island … changed the denominator,” he said.
Fenwick Island Mayor Natalie Magdeburger said revoking the ability of artificial entities to vote would work in the opposite way by not allowing people who own property through family trusts, for example, to vote for local rules or representatives. The majority of artificial entities currently eligible to vote in Fenwick are properties held in trusts, Magdeburger explained, not traditional corporations.
The case focuses on a 2008 amendment to Fenwick’s charter, which was approved by the Delaware General Assembly and co-sponsored by state Sen. Gerald Hocker (R-Ocean View).
The issue does not relate to state or federal elections.
Fenwick’s charter allows for artificial entities like LLCs and trusts to cast ballots in municipal elections through a representative power of attorney. Ballots are limited to one vote per person, or one vote per entity. For example, one Fenwick resident cannot vote on behalf of themselves and then again on behalf of their family trust that owns another vacation house.
It is one of five municipalities in the state that offer such extended voting rights.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers raising similar concerns about entities voting in local elections have already taken matters into their own hands.
The first leg of a state constitutional amendment — which requires a two-thirds supermajority approval of two consecutive terms of the Delaware General Assembly — that would ban artificial entities from voting in any Delaware elections has already passed.
“There’s no election between now and June 30,” said Chief Justice C.J. Seitz, questioning the urgency of ACLU’s pending appeal. “Why shouldn’t we stay this case?”
I think that that’s exactly what they will do.
A (Temporary?) Triumph For The Free Press:
A federal judge on Thursday said that President Trump’s order barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House was likely unconstitutional and ordered the administration to restore access to the three news outlets.
Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court in Washington granted a 14-day restraining order and told the White House to “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” the press credentials held by employees of the three outlets.
The news organizations were likely to succeed in their claim that the White House had violated their constitutional due process rights by revoking their press credentials without advance notice or an opportunity to respond, Judge Kelly wrote in the order issued in the early hours of Thursday.
He also rejected, for now, the administration’s argument that revoking the outlets’ press credentials was necessary to protect national security.
So far, the White House is not honoring the order:
A POLITICO reporter was denied access to the White House Thursday and his press credentials confiscated after a judge ordered the Trump administration overnight to immediately restore access for news organizations that President Donald Trump banned from the complex last week.
CNN’s Betsy Klein on Thursday said she and some other journalists from the network were still barred from entering the White House this morning following a judge’s ruling blocking the president’s ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico.
“We went to a U.S. Secret service checkpoint just across the street from here around 6:10 this morning, and I gave them my driver’s license, as well as my press ID,” Klein recalled on “CNN News Central.” “They put it through the system and said that I was not approved for entry.”
Klein asked to speak to a supervisor but was prompted to get in touch with the press office. The reporter said she also showed agents a copy of the judge’s ruling but was still barred from entering White House grounds.
Those Wascally AI Bots. “We are AI Maniacs.” Hey, they’re just having fun:
OpenAI’s artificial intelligence went rogue this year in at least four additional incidents, hacking and trying to break into government and university websites without being instructed to do so, according to researchers and government officials.
The attacks took place in May and June, before OpenAI’s technology breached the A.I. start-up Hugging Face in July and set off a global debate about A.I. safety.
Unlike the Hugging Face attack and other incidents in which A.I. systems were told to complete cybersecurity tests that effectively invited the models to demonstrate their hacking skills, the new incidents occurred when A.I. systems were directed to perform relatively mundane data collection, researchers said. When OpenAI’s systems struggled to gather data from websites, they resorted to hacking techniques to get the information.
‘It’s A Ballroom–AND A Death Trap!’:
The architect for President Donald Trump’s much-derided White House ballroom warned him that the project was in violation of safety standards and that could lead to significant harm in an emergency, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
Citing multiple sources with knowledge of the inner workings of the construction project, the Post reported that Trump’s designs for the ballroom did not have proper fire-containment measures, nor did it have the right amount of emergency exits. Trump reportedly dismissed architect James McCrery II’s warnings, and in reference to building safety codes, the president reportedly said, “I am the code.”
The Post also published plans for the project clearly showing detailed scribbling from Trump, revealing his intense personal involvement in the planning while he has presided over a faltering national economy and the war in Iran.
Following his clashes with McCrery, Trump dumped McCrery’s firm last December.
The ballroom project involved Trump destroying the entire East Wing of the White House, which is owned by American taxpayers, not him. And Trump originally touted it as an improvement that would be made without costing the public. But that isn’t true. In addition to the project’s garish design and safety concerns, the public is expected to cover hundreds of millions of dollars in costs.
A Kentucky MAGA-related conservative political event, dubbed Freedom Fest, has been canceled due to low ticket sales. The fest was to feature an appearance by Kid Rock. Republican Ed Gallrein, Representative James Comer, and Fox News contributor Joe Concha were also on the lineup. (Hard to believe that he couldn’t sell tickets with such a powerhouse lineup.)
The event was canceled by organizer Eric Deters, 63, who reportedly said, “I am never ever, ever, ever, ever doing this event again,” in a since-deleted social media video per Newsweek.
Once branded by Deters as “best MAGA event,” Freedom Fest apparently drew in thousands of attendees in previous years. The organizer would host the event at Morning View Farm in northern Kentucky, bringing in conservative speakers, live music, food, family entertainment, and fireworks.
However, in a heated clip shared on Facebook, Deters is said to have blamed the 2026 cancellation on practically nonexistent VIP ticket sales. He expected roughly 100 of his affluent acquaintances and business contacts to help support Freedom Fest this year by purchasing $1,000 VIP tickets. He learned, though, that only 6 had been sold.
“When I put together Patriot State Freedom Fest, I put it together with the game plan and the idea that I could pay for it with the VIP sales of $1,000 from these hundred people that I interact with on a regular basis that have money,” Deters said. Things all changed on Sept. 20, just days before the event was scheduled to go on.
“It’s Monday morning. I got my guy who’s setting up the ticket sales,” Deter explained. “I said, ‘How many have bought a ticket?’ And he said, ‘You can’t make this up. Are you ready for the drum roll? Only six people had bought a VIP ticket.’”
The Freedom Fest founder made it clear who he holds responsible for the event’s cancellation: those who promised to buy VIP tickets and then bailed.
“Out of all these people that have money that I interact with, who I do favors for all day long. They ask me for something, I never say no. I never said no to these people,” he said.
Deter then assured his new frenemies that their ties are now severed. “None of these people will ever, ever, ever get a favor from me again, ever. Not only will they never get a favor from me again, they do not have Bulldog immunity,” he said.
No, I do not know what Bulldog immunity is. Still, ya gotta admit–
Sad.
What do you want to talk about?
