The New Kingswood Community Center:
Welcome to the newest jewel in the monumental transformation of Riverside, an ongoing $500 million-plus reclamation project that was detailed in WHYY’s “Resurrecting Riverside” documentary, which debuted in October 2024.
Aging, dilapidated, low-slung brick apartments are being razed and replaced with 800 homes in the new Imani Village. A multistory apartment building for older residents will hold the new senior center and a medical center serving them. There’s The Warehouse, a center for teen education and recreation. The state’s only STEM Hub for science, technology, engineering and mathematics adjoins the growing Eastside Charter School.
And in November, the towering new 81,000-square-foot steel, brick and glass Kingswood will open. The structure is nearly five times larger than the current one-story brick building that has been the heart of Riverside for 80 years.
“If Kingswood was the heart before, it’s the whole body now,” said Ray Fitzgerald, executive director of the Wilmington Housing Authority. “It’s just building on everything that was done before. It’s just doing it bigger and better and bringing more resources and more support for the community.”
Wow. Thrilled to see that community finally getting the attention it deserves.
Much Ado About Nothing-aka-How A Candidate Who Isn’t Doing Shit Gets Some Press:
With less than a month until Delaware’s primary election, two Democrats vying to represent Wilmington’s Hilltop neighborhood in the legislature are feuding after one called the police on the other for placing his campaign sign in her front yard.
The candidate, Branden Fletcher-Dominguez, said he did not know that his political opponent, LaDonna Graham, lived at the Hilltop townhouse when he placed the sign. Instead, the property owner had asked him for a yard sign there, he said.
Fletcher-Dominguez shared with Spotlight Delaware a text message thread showing the property owner, Sultan Taskin, asking him to drop the sign off.
The bottom of the thread shows a final message from Fletcher-Dominguez that appears to say, “I hope the tenant won’t move it.”
Graham says Fletcher-Dominguez knew she was living in the home when he placed the campaign sign there, because she had seen him campaigning in the neighborhood before.
“I’ve seen him canvas. I’ve sat on my porch. I’ve seen him canvas across the street,” Graham said.
Kids, if you want to win a primary, you don’t sit on your porch and watch your opponent campaign.
This bleeping LaDonna Graham is a piece of work:
And what began as an initial grievance over a campaign sign has since involved multiple police interactions and competing accounts from Graham, Fletcher-Dominguez and the property’s owner.
While some details are disputed, what is known is that on Aug. 1, Graham filed a police report against Fletcher-Dominguez, alleging trespassing after he placed his campaign sign at her residence the day before.
She followed up with officers a few days after the police report. It was then, she said, that police officers told her that a no-contact order would be put into place.
Graham again called the police a week later, she said, after Fletcher-Dominguez went back to her home to retrieve the sign from her porch. That same day, Fletcher-Dominguez said police stopped him while he was canvassing in the area and asked him whether a no-contact order existed that would prevent him from interacting with Graham.
He told them no such order existed. Police then ran his information and let him go, he said.
Staff at the New Castle County Court told Spotlight Delaware on Thursday that no records are on file showing a no-contact order in place between the two individuals.
Days after he was initially approached by officers, Fletcher-Dominguez said police came to his house to ask whether he had been on Broom Street, where Graham lives.
“And I was like, ‘Yes, I’m everywhere. I knock doors everywhere. I’m a community organizer. I knock on doors. Like why is this continuing to be an issue?’” he recounted.
Wilmington Police officials confirmed that officers were called to Graham’s neighborhood on Aug. 1 in reference to a complaint regarding a male subject placing a campaign sign on a residential property without the occupant’s permission.
Police officers ultimately “determined that he had secured permission from the property owner to place the sign there,” David Karas, the chief administrative officer for WPD, told Spotlight Delaware on Wednesday.
Karas said officers determined no further police action was necessary at the time.
In other words, Branden did absolutely nothing wrong, but this lazy-ass ‘candidate’ decided she wanted some unearned press.
Democrats and other Donald Trump critics reacted incredulously to a New York Times report on Sunday that House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries met with Jared Kushner, the president’s influential son-in-law, to discuss possible areas of collaboration.
The reported meeting comes months ahead of the November midterm elections in which Democrats are favored to retake the US House, a development that would make Jeffries speaker. If they are in the majority, Democrats are expected to use their oversight power to aggressively investigate the Trump administration, including self-enrichment by the president and his family.
There are longstanding conflict-of-interest concerns about the way Kushner has continued to make money from foreign nations as he works on foreign affairs, including conflicts in Ukraine, Iran and Gaza.
Asked about the reported meeting, Jeffries said in a statement: “Throughout this Congress, Republicans have adopted a my-way-or-the-highway approach to governing that has failed the American people. To stop the madness, we have repeatedly made clear that an extremist approach will not work and will be met with forceful opposition.
“The American people want bold change and that’s what House Democrats will deliver. In every conversation that we have with the Trump administration, we will continue to make it explicitly clear that the affordability crisis is not a hoax and nothing short of transformational policy change is acceptable. We are fighting for an affordable America. The question is whether Republicans will join us.”
Perhaps it’s just me, but what Jeffries said strikes me as gibberish signifying nothing. OK, I’ll ask: “Hakim, why the fuck are you meeting with Jared Kushner?” This insider shit is why you don’t deserve to be Speaker.
A sailor onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on Saturday said his father was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Joshua Aviles has spent roughly nine months deployed at sea due to the Iran war amid reported shortages of clean water, food and supplies.
“I’ve been deployed for over nine months, out at sea in the Middle East aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, fighting for a country that has given me everything,” Aviles wrote in a post on Facebook.
“I just got a call that my dad was taken by ICE. If you know my dad, you know he is a hardworking, humble man who is always willing to help anyone if he can. My dad has his driver’s license, Social Security card, and work permit,” he added.
Aviles said his father was waiting to get his green card approved at the time he was detained.
NBC News confirmed on Sunday the detention with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The Hill reached out to ICE to confirm the arrest but did not immediately receive a response.
“We are simply enforcing the laws passed by Congress. This Administration does not pick and choose which laws to enforce,” a DHS spokesperson told NBC, adding that “work authorization or a pending application do NOT confer legal status in the United States.”
That, BTW, is a lie.
“This is heartbreaking for me. I don’t know how I can mentally continue working 12+ hour days knowing that my dad is somewhere, possibly being treated like a criminal,” Aviles wrote in the Facebook post.
“My dad’s only “crime” was coming to this country to give my siblings and me a better life,” he added.
Abolish ICE.
“We Recognized That Sometimes [the United States’] Signature Was Written In Pencil.” Canada’s PM tells Trump where to stick his tariff ultimatum:
On Friday night, Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada did something that few other world leaders before him have dared to do.
After days of intense trade negotiations with the United States, with less than an hour to go on a midnight deadline for a new round of tariffs from the Trump administration, Mr. Carney instructed his negotiators to walk away.
Then, he announced that once 50 percent tariffs came into effect on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods, he would order retaliatory tariffs on the United States “dollar for dollar.”
Then on Saturday, in a lengthy televised address to Canadians, Mr. Carney brought fighting words to Canada’s act of defiance.
“Last spring, I warned that America is trying to break us so that they can own us. And I promised: ‘That will never, ever happen.’ We are keeping that promise,” Mr. Carney said somberly, before reporters in Ottawa.
“Canada is becoming stronger and less dependent on America. We are already giving ourselves more than they can take away. And we are just getting started,” he added.
By walking away, Mr. Carney chose a road that no major U.S. ally has taken: With his country’s economy on the line, he stood up to President Trump and refused to accept the administration’s offer of a new trade relationship with tariffs permanently baked in. Britain, the European Union and other major U.S. trading partners have agreed to smaller deals that have been volatile and often left them worse off.
‘Oh, Canada’.
What do you want to talk about?
