DL Open Thread: Tuesday, June 30, 2026

We open this thread with a Call To Action.  We know, just like you know, that the new design of DL is, um, wan.  If you think you can un-wan it, we want your help.  You will get a Free Yearly Subscription to DL! (What’s that, we don’t charge? For all this great stuff?). Ho-kay, you’ll get the profound satisfaction of knowing that you did something good today.  Could even be tomorrow. Anyway, if you want to put your graphic arts skills to work for us, please drop us a message, and we’ll welcome your help.  Bots from Southeast Asia need not apply.

Yo, John–Just What Is A ‘Thorough, Independent and Transparent Investigative Process”?  Because it’s not an investigation conducted by the Wilmington PD:

The Mayor and Police Chief of Wilmington are asking for patience, as the investigations into last week’s fatal officer-involved shooting continue.

Mayor John Carney said Monday that incidents like this “raise difficult questions, evoke strong emotions, and understandably leave many residents seeking answers… but those answers must come through a thorough, independent and transparent investigative process.” Carney began his statement to express his deepest condolences to Skinner’s family, friends and loved ones.

“No matter the circumstances, the loss of a young life is a tragedy, and our hearts are with everyone who is grieving,” Carney said. Later, he added “I ask everyone for your cooperation and to allow the investigative process to move forward with patience and respect. I also ask residents and business owners who live near the shooting to share information and recorded video with law enforcement. This is essential to helping investigators as they review existing footage and recordings. We owe that to the family of the deceased, to all parties involved, and to every member of our community who deserves confidence that these investigations will be conducted fairly, professionally, and without bias.”

Also Friday, Councilwoman Shané Darby renewed her call for an independent external assessment of the Wilmington Police Department. She expressed concern about reliance on internal investigations. The Delaware Department of Justice is also reviewing the shooting. The officer has been placed on administrative leave as the investigation proceeds.

Amen.

Task Force: Give Delaware AI Companies Free Reign, Collect Fees:

A Delaware committee that has been studying the business uses of artificial intelligence proposed legislation earlier this month to temporarily ease state regulations on companies deploying the fast-growing technology.

The proposed legislation would create a testing ground for companies to use what are called AI agents to autonomously complete business tasks typically done by humans. The AI agents would oversee whole business operations under the umbrella of a new kind of entity, called an Artificial Intelligence Company, or AIC.

Supporters say the resulting regulatory “sandbox” would allow Delaware to test how autonomous AI businesses operate, and provide lawmakers with key data to develop rules governing their use within the state’s prominent corporate franchise.

The legislation is likely to be introduced in the General Assembly next year.

Its drafting this month emerged after tech companies plowed billions of dollars in recent years into the AI industry — much of it to build data centers across the country to power the technology.

The proposed legislation also comes just as Delaware seeks to retain its status as the preeminent legal home for companies, even in the wake of attacks on its brand from the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and others.

The principal drafter of the proposed legislation, John Mark Zeberkiewicz, said the measure could allow AI agents to engage in just about any business activity — from providing coding services to signing contracts, or even filing and defending lawsuits.

He also noted that it seeks to protect owners of new Artificial Intelligence Companies from facing legal liability from actions the AI might take.

“Anything that a company can do, the AIC can do as a company,” said Zeberkiewicz, a corporate attorney at Wilmington’s Richards Layton and Finger. (Oh, Jeezus.)

During a Delaware AI Commission meeting this month, Delaware Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez said the program would allow Delaware to be on the “cutting edge of technology,” if the testing goes well.

And, just like the state charges fees for LLC formations, Patibanda-Sanchez said Delaware would benefit from fees paid to form Artificial Intelligence Companies.

Currently, the collection of taxes and fees on the more than 2 million companies that maintain their legal home in Delaware contributes more than $2 billion to the state budget, or about a third of all revenue.  

“Should a new entity form be created out of it, that’s really a huge benefit to our state’s revenues,” Patibanda-Sanchez said during the June meeting. 

That, right there, is all ye need to know.  Except–and I know this reporter is new to Spotlight Delaware, it sure would have been nice to hear from someone with a skeptical view in the piece.

With A Normal President, Ukraine would have won the war by now.  Moscow seems defenseless to the ongoing Ukraine drone barrages:

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia faced a fresh round of pressure on Tuesday as Ukraine launched another attack on the Russian capital, continued to disrupt Russian fuel supplies and pressed its campaign to cut off Crimea, the peninsula Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, reported several waves of drones, starting Monday night, less than two weeks after Ukraine launched the biggest drone assault on the Russian capital since the start of the war. The mayor said on Telegram that Russian air defenses had shot down more than 60 drones on approach to Moscow, and that emergency services were working at crash sites. He did not mention any injuries.

Ukrainian authorities made no immediate public comment.

With drones saturating the front lines, Russia has struggled to make progress on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, where the Kremlin aims to take the rest of the Donetsk region. After a difficult May, Russian forces have begun inching forward again and increasingly bombs the remaining Ukrainian strongholds in the region.

Ukraine, however, has subjected Russia to increasingly large drone attacks, eroding Mr. Putin’s ability to isolate Russian society from the war. ​

In Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky said in an overnight address on Monday, before the strike on Moscow, that Ukraine’s drone attacks were “bringing the realty of the war back to Russia.”

Mr. Zelensky noted lines of cars at gas stations as attacks on Russian refineries, pumping stations and export ports whittled away at the oil industry.

“We are ensuring the results Ukraine needs so that the aggressor state cannot keep the war ‘somewhere over there,’” Mr. Zelensky said.

Y’know, the fact that the United States is ‘somewhere over there’ has been a large contributing factor to our military aggressiveness.   Perhaps the largest.

President Yawns About Housing Bill.  Because anything that doesn’t rig the elections is a bore to him:

President Trump continued to hem and haw on Monday about whether he would sign a popular piece of bipartisan legislation intended to lower housing costs for Americans nationwide.

“It’s a yawn,” Mr. Trump said of the bill that lawmakers in his party are desperate for him to pass on the eve of a tough midterm election.

Mr. Trump has been openly sabotaging the housing bill since Wednesday, when he abruptly pulled out of a much-anticipated signing ceremony that was set up for him on Capitol Hill. The president threw down an ultimatum instead: He would sign the bill only if Congress would first pass another bill, the SAVE America Act, which would impose stricter voter ID rules that would make it harder to vote.

The day after Mr. Trump pulled his own rug out from under himself at the signing ceremony, Speaker Mike Johnson said he still planned to send the housing bill to the president to sign.

The Aptly-Named Slaughter Decision Is A BFD:

The Supreme Court decision giving President Donald Trump unfettered authority to fire members of independent boards and commissions and stack them with political loyalists is a profound reshaping of our constitutional system by judicial fiat. The immediate impact on the competency and capability of our federal government is significant, and we now face the additional threat that the court will do further injury by overturning the power of Congress to maintain a nonpartisan and expert civil service.

In the landmark case of Trump v. Slaughter involving the Federal Trade Commission, the Supreme Court upended nearly a century of constitutional practice that allowed Congress to create boards and commissions largely insulated from undue partisan influence. The ruling represents a dramatic increase in presidential power, giving Trump and future presidents full control over institutions Congress specifically designed to provide objective oversight and independent judgment.

The boards and commissions affected by the Slaughter decision include entities that protect investors and ensure the safety of banks, oversee telecommunications and the public airwaves, settle labor-management disputes, ensure the safety of transportation systems, and protect the public from unsafe consumer products. In a separate case, the court exempted the Federal Reserve Board, which it said is protected by law and tradition from political interference.  (?)

The court’s decision codifies a practice that Trump unilaterally adopted during the past year and a half and represents a disturbing warning sign that even our government’s nonpartisan, merit-based civil service, which is structured to separate the career workforce from partisan politics, is at serious risk.

What do you want to talk about?