DL Open Thread: Monday, November 9, 2026

Do Charles Guiteau’s Relatives Live In Wilmington? Could that explain why James Garfield’s statue was exiled to Ohio? Leaving the more obvious question–what was a Garfield statue doing in Delaware in the first place?:

A backlash has erupted over last month’s removal of a statue of President James A. Garfield from a small plaza in Wilmington, with several state lawmakers and transparency advocates demanding it be returned from its new location in small-town Ohio.

City Councilman Nathan Field has also called for a formal investigation into the move. (Uh, why?) Field met with Mayor John Carney’s office on Friday to discuss the statue and said he is working on a plan to return the monument to a new location in the city.

In response to the calls to bring back the statue, City Councilwoman Shané Darby — who led its relocation push as part of a revitalization effort for the Concord Avenue area it had occupied — said, “No, it’s gone. Not coming back.”

Last month, a contracting crew took down the statue from its perch along Concord Avenue and 23rd Street, where it had stood for 110 years. Mayor John Carney had authorized the removal.

City officials then shipped the monument on to Hiram, Ohio, where Garfield attended college and later served as principal for the school. 

On Memorial Day in 1895, a group of Wilmington civic leaders and Union veterans — called the Garfield Monument Association — first dedicated the statue at a location along Delaware Avenue, near downtown Wilmington.

By 1918, the city moved it north to Concord Avenue at a location that became known as the Garfield Triangle. In recent years, the statue sat mostly unnoticed in the small neighborhood plaza.  

In February, Darby led the push to relocate the statue as part of her larger plan to revitalize the area, according to a blog post she wrote on the matter.

“This was never simply about removing a statue. It was about addressing neighborhood concerns, investing in a neglected public space, and ensuring that residents have a voice in shaping their own community,” she wrote.

In the post, Darby asserted that Garfield had no “significant documented personal connection to Wilmington or Delaware,” while Hiram, Ohio, has a direct historical tie to the former president.

She’s right about that.  Now, Rutherford B. Hayes, I could understand.  He, at least, was born in Delaware.  Delaware, Ohio, but still…

My Kind Of Carnage:

Democrats flipped more than 500 state legislative seats and won control of at least a dozen legislative chambers, establishing new governing trifectas in Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Nevada. They captured legislative chambers in Texas, Georgia and North Carolina — states long dominated by Republican lawmakers. And they picked up even more legislative seats in deep blue strongholds like New York, California and Illinois.

The scale of the victory is historic. In New York, Democrats are on track for their biggest state Senate majority since 1846, when they were running against the Whigs. In Texas, they won the state House for the first time since 2002. Arizona will have its first Democratic trifecta since the 1960s. And Democrats flipped Georgia’s House, the first chamber Democrats have taken back in the Deep South in the modern era. Altogether, the party won more seats than in any year since the post-Watergate campaign of 1974.

The gains represent the most seismic change in state capitals since Republicans shellacked Democrats nationwide in 2010, picking up nearly 700 state legislative seats and flipping 20 chambers. They used that power in the ensuing years to entrench conservative policies and redraw legislative maps in their favor in wide swaths of the country.

Another Great Ad From Scott Colom.  ‘Where’s Cindy?’ indeed.

What To Watch For In The Congressional Lame-Duck Session:

• How many judges can Republicans confirm? This will be a top priority as members return today. Confirmations haven’t kept pace in Trump’s second term with the frenetic volume of his first. This will be one thing that Republicans can control before Democrats take over in January.
• Which other Cabinet officials and political appointees might Trump try to replace? Similarly, Republicans have a narrowing window to get new, radical members of the administration confirmed. Two resignations and one reported firing at the DOJ reflect this reality, and we might see more of it in the coming days.
• Will there be a shutdown over Iran funding? Government funding expires on Dec. 11, and, while its possible Congress will punt the question into the New Year, when Democrats can have a fuller confrontation with Trump, that conflict may come sooner, helped by a growing number of Republican opponents of the war.
• Will Hegseth be impeached? Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) plans to move his legislation forward today. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has also announced his support for it.

Trump Now Says His Deportation Policy Was ‘Too Tough’.   No consolation to the countless people who were thrown out of the country with no due process:

President Donald Trump has said his deportation policy was “too tough” and he’s open to making “a deal” that could keep some people here legally.

“I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs, that created one violation or breaking of the law and that was that they came into the country illegally,” he told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired Sunday.

‘I get hurt’.  ‘I get hurt’??  He destroys hundreds of thousands of lives, and he laments that he got hurt.

“I think it was too tough,” he said, after considering how his immigration policy hurt him in the midterm elections. “The deal would be we would work something out, and I think that’s something that’s actually doable.”

He added that some of the people who want “everybody taken out,” no matter their background or criminal history, work in his administration. Trump last week announced the appointment of Stephen Miller, a driving force behind the White House’s aggressive immigration policy, as his chief of staff. At the same time, he said he’s already received calls from some members of the Democratic Party who are interested in some kind of deal.

Five Leading Democratic Thinkers (yes, there are at least five) on what Democrats should do next.  I agree with all five.

What do you want to talk about?