DL Open Thread: Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Rep. Spiegelman Tries To Justify Free Trips By Introducing Legislation To ‘Clarify’ What Is Already The Law.  Hey, as long as it brings more public scrutiny to these junkets, I’m all for the introduction of the bill, if not its passage:

The revelation by WHYY News last month that several Delaware lawmakers have failed to disclose free trips to Taiwan as gifts has led one legislator to propose a bill requiring travel worth more than $500 to be reported to the public.

Delaware law requires that all 62 state lawmakers and about 300 other state officials, including judges, must file an annual financial report. The report must include any gifts worth at least $250, as well as creditors, investments, sources of income and business interests. WHYY News has obtained all the reports filed for 2025.

State law defines a gift as “a payment, subscription, advance, forbearance, rendering or deposit of money, services or anything of value unless consideration of equal or greater value is received.“

But now state Rep. Jeffrey Spiegelman — who didn’t disclose two previous trips to Taiwan but did report his free 2025 trip to Israel — says he’s trying to clarify the law to eliminate any confusion around what officials must include on the forms filed with the Delaware Public Integrity Commission. Spiegelman said the recent reporting by WHYY News about disclosing the trips spurred him to act.

The weeklong trips to Taiwan, which Spiegelman took in 2019 and 2023 with a handful of legislative colleagues, have been paid for by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States. Part of Taiwan’s government, the agency has taken about five Delaware lawmakers a year since around 2010.

None of the state senators or House members have ever disclosed the trips to Taiwan, however, according to financial reports reviewed by WHYY News and interviews with lawmakers.

Some lawmakers suggested that the commission had advised them that the trips didn’t need to be reported, and that colleagues reinforced such guidance, but none could provide a document that said disclosure as a gift wasn’t necessary. Spiegelman and others who have gone to Taiwan, about 8,000 miles from Delaware, said they don’t know how much the trips cost.

The weeklong trip to Israel, where Spiegelman was joined by fellow GOP Rep. Bryan Shupe and three Democrats — Rep. Melania Ross Levin and Sens. Trey Paradee and Darius Brown — cost $6,500 and was paid for by the Consulate General of Israel in New York, according to 2025 financial reports.

Commission Chair Ron Chaney said last month that lawmakers must disclose trips “paid for by third parties as gifts on their financial disclosure reports,” in compliance with the financial reporting law. “Legislators with questions about how to report a specific trip, or who believe they were told something different in the past, are encouraged to contact the [Delaware Public Integrity Commission] directly.”

To put my skeptical spin on it, the law already requires legislators to report these trips as gifts.  But the people who wrote the law apparently don’t know this, so they allegedly go to the Public Integrity Commission and ask, ‘Do we really have to report these trips?’  They then claim, without substantiation, that the PIC said that they didn’t.

Got it.

How Fucking Stupid Are Stock Traders?  Every day, our Insane Clown President makes yet another proclamation over the state of the Iran war, and they react like lemmings:

Oil prices fell sharply on Wednesday after President Trump announced that the United States was pausing a days-old U.S. operation to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz and claimed there had been “great progress” toward a deal with Iran.

Markets had been uneasy after a sharp increase in oil prices on Monday, when Mr. Trump announced the naval operation in the crucial oil and gas shipping route, prompting Iran to escalate its threats and putting further pressure on the already fragile truce.

This happens every day although (a) nothing he says is the truth, and (b) he says something diametrically opposite the following day.

Trump Delivers Insane Speeches To Nonplussed Audiences:

Small Business Summit:

President Donald Trump derailed his own speech Monday to insist how mentally healthy he is, following new poll data showing that a record high of Americans think he’s lost his mind.

“I feel the same as I felt 50 years ago, I don’t know,” Trump told the audience at a small-business summit at the White House.

“I’ll say, ‘I’m not feeling well’—well, someday, I might say that to you, and you’ll be the first to know. Actually I won’t have to say it, because you’ll be able to see it, just like you did in the last administration,” Trump said.

Trump continued ranting about his pitch to require candidates for office to take cognitive tests. “No president has ever taken one except me, and I’ve taken three of them. And I’ve aced each one,” he said.

Trump went on to describe the test, which sounds a lot like the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a 10-minute assessment designed to identify signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s. It is not a test for intelligence.

“You know the first question is very easy. They always show the first question, it’s: You have a lion, a bear, an alligator, and a—what’s another good—a squirrel, OK? Which is the squirrel?” Trump said, claiming the questions got increasingly complex.

He then veered into a tirade against California Governor Gavin Newsom before resuming his point. “I think everyone in this room is brilliant, but nobody’s gonna get all 30 questions correct. Nobody. ’Cause when you get to those last questions they’re pretty hard, you got to be pretty sharp.

“One doctor said, ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone get all questions right.’ That’s a doctor, who does this stuff for a living. And I did it three times. So, I don’t know. I think I’m done with those days, I’m tired of taking those tests,” Trump said.

Trump segued again, insisting on the importance of picking an intelligent leader during times of war. He went on to claim that his military campaign in Iran only lasted six weeks, though the Strait of Hormuz has been closed for more than two months; that the Vietnam War lasted 19 years, even though the U.S. was only really involved for eight; and that the war in Iraq was 10 or 12 years long, when, again, it was really only eight.

Remember, kids, he was addressing a small business summit.

Speaking of kids:

President Trump thinks that an event where he is surrounded by children is the best time to discuss the Iran war and then doze off.

On Tuesday, at a signing ceremony in the Oval Office to restore the Presidential Fitness Award (Was Ronald McDonald there?), Trump went off on a tangent on the war while thanking some members of his Cabinet, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, whom he praised for a press conference earlier in the day.

“That was really great, and you’re doing very well,” Trump said from his seat at the Resolute Desk, turning to Hegseth. Then he abruptly changed the subject to Iran.

“They don’t like playing games with us. They don’t like it at all, you’ll see that. As time goes by, you’re gonna see it. I think you’ve already seen it; we’ve basically wiped out their military in about two weeks,” Trump added, with kids and senior officials on either side of him. Later, Trump went further, describing Iran’s leaders as “sick people” and “lunatics” that he would not allow to have a nuclear weapon.

Then Trump thanked Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but as Kennedy spoke about how “grateful” he was for Trump’s decision to restore the fitness test, the president fell asleep.

I, um, see no need to state the obvious.

Not Obvious To The Trumpbots In Indiana, Though:

President Donald Trump flexed his grip on the GOP base in Indiana on Tuesday, vanquishing a majority of the Republican state senators who had dared cross him on redistricting.

It was a show of force in the year’s first major test of Trump’s power over the GOP. Trump-aligned groups dumped millions against the eight GOP lawmakers who blocked his effort to gerrymander the state. And on Tuesday night, at least five lost reelection.

This is a good sign.  Trump is radioactive.  Won’t see Indiana flip any time soon, but fealty to Trump is a flat-out loser in a whole lot of other contests.  Steve Bannon, of all people said it best:

“That’s $13.5 million we didn’t have [available] to spend on Virginia,” said Steve Bannon, the War Room host who broadcasted his show into an Indiana hotel ballroom last September to whip support for a redraw. “That same cash backing the MAGA grassroots in voter engagement and canvassing saves four seats — stopping Spanberger cold in her tracks.”

Sad.

What do you want to talk about?