Kevin Hensley Hands Over His Car Keys:

Delaware Rep. Kevin Hensley (R-Middletown/Odessa) pleaded guilty Tuesday to driving drunk in a case that saw him crash his truck into a car on Route 1 near Milford, sending a smaller vehicle into a roll that lacerated that driver’s hands and face.

As a result of his plea, Hensley will lose his driver’s license for a year, be mandated to take a DUI course, serve probation and pay a $500 fine. The judge also sentenced him to a suspended 18-month sentence, meaning he will avoid jail time as long as he doesn’t commit another crime in the near future.  (Some might suggest that he commits a crime every time he pushes the Rethug agenda in Dover, but I would never stoop so low as to suggest that.)

I’m not a doctor, but I used to watch ‘House’, and this raised a question or two for me:

A news release announcing the plea said the victim of the crash died weeks later from “a separate medical issue.”

It was reportedly a stroke.  The car that Hensley struck rolled over three times.  How someone can determine that the stroke would have occurred even had the accident not taken place is beyond my pay grade.

The episode also included the requisite cop cover-up:

Spotlight Delaware previously reported on the reasons around why state law enforcement did not tell members of the public a government official was involved in a drunken driving crash.

According to a statement at the time, state police said its departmental policy is to not issue news releases for misdemeanor offenses, irrespective of whether the defendant holds a position of public trust.

Anyway, had Hensley not taken the plea, he faced up to two years in jail.  Which pays much less than two years in Dover.

Hensley faces a real strong D challenger next year.  Maybe that will scare him straight.  Hey, how about a nice musical interlude?:

Trump Vs. Harvard:

Harvard University stands to lose billions in federal funding,but the government’s actionsagainst one of the world’s top research institutions were applied with vague accusations and no proof of specific legal violations, documents show.

The Trump administration’s decision Monday to freeze $2.2 billion to Harvard after the school announced it would not yield to demands to change admissions, hiring and governance practices did not follow procedures set out in civil rights law, a Post review found.

The administration’s action skipped over requirements that say the government must identify and list violations, offer a hearing, notify Congress and then wait 30 days before applying penalties.

The actions against Harvard and several other elite colleges reflect the manner in which the administration is handing out other harsh penalties across the government, such as the growing number of undetailed student visa revocations, as well as how President Donald Trump is applying the Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants.

The Trump administration’s alleged disregard for federal procedure is part of the basis for separate lawsuits filed by the faculty unions at Harvard and Columbia University.

“These procedures exist because Congress recognized that allowing federal agencies to hold funding hostage, or to cancel it cavalierly, would give them dangerously broad power in a system in which institutions depend so heavily upon federal funding,” attorneys for the American Association of University Professors wrote in the Harvard faculty union lawsuit.

Clinton, Carville And Corporadems:  3 times zero=zero.

What do you want to talk about?

Some Breaking Delaware News To Start:  Betsy Maron will not run for reelection as State Democratic Party Chair.  This comes one day after Evelyn Waters Brady blew us away during her presentation to the 7th RD Democratic Committee.  While there are some fissures on our committee, and while some might still have voted for Betsy Maron, Brady can only be described as dynamic.  She impressed everybody.  While I don’t know if anybody will now step up to challenge her, I feel pretty confident that our committee, at least, is sold.  Thanks to both Misti and Jonathan Tate for breaking the news in the comments last night!  Keep the scoops coming.

The Courts Strike Back.  Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia.  Threats On Law Firms.  Climate And Infrastructure Funding (this ruling from a Trump-appointed judge).

Lest you think the Salvadoran Dictator is ‘powerless’ to ‘smuggle’ detainees back into the United States, he’s already done it:

The two planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members who were deported to El Salvador last week included eight female detainees who were later returned to the U.S., according to sworn declarations filed Monday.

In a separate sworn declaration, a Nicaraguan migrant said he was also returned to the U.S. after being on one of the planes that landed in El Salvador.

“I overheard a Salvadoran official tell an ICE officer that the Salvadoran government would not detain someone from another Central American country because of the conflict it would cause,” the Nicaraguan man said in the declaration.

“I also heard him say that they would not receive the females because the prison was not for females and females were not mentioned in the agreement,” he said.

You notice that Trump never says ‘only the best people’; any more?  Here are two examples of why:

Ed Martin. The guy who Trump has perversely nominated to be US Attorney for Washington D. C.:

Martin is now interim U.S. attorney for D.C. and Trump’s pick to serve full time in the role. But as a conservative activist and former Missouri Republican official, he appeared more than 150 times on RT and Sputnik — networks funded and directed by the Russian government — as a guest commentator from August 2016 to April 2024, according to a search of their websites and the Internet Archive’s database of television broadcasts.

Martin did not disclose the appearances last month on a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire, which asks nominees to list all media interviews. Analysis oftelevision archives suggests he went on RT and Sputnik more often than on any major cablenetwork during that span.

No doubt just an inadvertent oversight.

Gary Shapley.  Who better to run the IRS?:

President Donald Trump is set to name Gary Shapley, the former IRS criminal investigator who alleged that the Justice Department slow-walked the investigation of Hunter Biden, as acting commissioner of the IRS, three people briefed on the matter told CNN.

Shapley provided whistleblower testimony to Congress, as Republicans claimed partisan bias by Justice officials had hindered the investigation of the son of President Joe Biden.

Shapley would become the fourth person to lead the beleaguered IRS this year, as Trump’s pick for full-time commissioner – former Missouri Rep. Billy Long – awaits confirmation in the GOP-led Senate.

The Biden-appointed and Senate-confirmed commissioner Danny Werfel resigned on Trump’s inauguration day, even though still had years left on his statutory term. Werfel was succeeded by a Doug O’Donnell, a career official with decades of experience, who abruptly retired at the end of February after policy clashes with Trump appointees. After O’Donnell came Melanie Krause, another career official, who decided to resign last week after the Trump allies pushed through a controversial deal to share taxpayer data with immigration agencies.

As rumors swirled this week about Shapley’s potential appointment to temporarily lead the tax-collection agency, some former IRS officials reacted with dismay.

“Glad I’m not there anymore,” one recently departed senior IRS official said. “It is going to be a sh*tshow.”

I close with this tidbit from Sarah Mueller’s piece on the Senate’s rejection of two of Matt Meyer’s nominees to the Port board:

But Senate leadership told the Meyer administration they would not move forward with Jen Cohan, president of Associated Builders and Contractors of Delaware and former state transportation secretary, and former port Executive Director Eugene Bailey.

Lockman said that while they believe Cohan and Bailey have been good public servants, they are unsuited for the board. Lockman said there was a question about Cohan’s support of labor.

“There’s some concern that she is currently the leader of an organization that’s not typically aligned as a pro-union organization, and really that’s where our caucus concern stood,” she said.

Lockman also said that lawmakers were looking for some fresh faces on the board, which would preclude Bailey. Senators did agree to consider Hall-Long’s choice of former port board chairman and former Secretary of State Jeffrey Bullock, who served on the board for many years.

That’s right.  The person most responsible (along with Delaware’s Worst Governor Ever, John Carney) for totally screwing up pretty much everything related to the Port was perfectly fine with the Senate.  Jeff Bullock=Fresh Face.  The Delaware Way at its worst.

What do you want to talk about?

Trump To Supreme Court:  “Fuck You”:

It defies a Supreme Court ruling, flouts a lower court ruling, and undermines the basic principle that the government must provide due process before depriving someone of their freedom. Yet the man wrongly deported to a Salvadoran prison will remain there indefinitely, President Donald Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said during a Monday Oval Office meeting.

The pair of strongmen told reporters they would not seek the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen deported from the U.S. last month during a hastily executed operation that also removed more than 100 Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act.

Bukele and senior Trump officials indicated they felt no obligation to comply with court orders. Bukele suggested at one point he had received no U.S. request to release Abrego Garcia, saying that doing so would be to “smuggle” him into the country. Trump advisor Stephen Miller argued the courts had no authority to compel the government to act in matters of foreign relations.

In practical terms, that administration’s arguments asserted that the White House has the power to remove people to prisons in foreign countries, and then claim a mixture of powerlessness before foreign sovereignty and absolute authority over foreign affairs in refusing to secure those people’s release and return to the United States. Its position directly defies a court order and nudges us closer still to a constitutional crisis. The reality is that the Supreme Court has already sided with Abrego Garcia, upholding a lower court ruling that requires the administration to “facilitate” his “release from custody in El Salvador” and to ensure his case proceeds as if he had not been wrongly deported. A lower court judge continues to demand updates on efforts to comply.

Every day, Trump and his DOGE/ICE thugs are illegally ‘disappearing’ people.  Mohsen Mahdawi.  Mahmoud Khalil.  All those phony ‘gang’ members:

Nathali Sánchez last heard from her husband on March 14, when he called from a Texas detention center to say he was being deported back to Venezuela. Later that night, he texted her through a government messaging app for detainees.

“I love you,” he wrote, “soon we will be together forever.”

Her husband, Arturo Suárez Trejo, 33, a musician, had been in American custody for a month, calling every few days to assure his family that he was OK, his relatives said. Now, the couple believed they would reunite and he would finally meet his daughter, Nahiara, who had been born during his brief stint as a migrant in the United States.

But less than a day later, Mr. Suárez was shackled, loaded onto a plane and sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, according to an internal government list of detainees obtained by The New York Times. Around the time Mr. Suárez was texting his wife, the Trump administration was quietly invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a sweeping wartime power that allows the government to swiftly deport citizens of an invading nation.

Mr. Suárez and 237 others, the Trump administration argued after the order became public, were all members of a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua, which was “aligned with” the Venezuelan government and was “perpetrating” an invasion of the United States.

Yet most of the men do not have criminal records in the United States or elsewhere in the region, beyond immigration offenses, a New York Times investigation has found. And very few of them appear to have any clear, documented links to the Venezuelan gang.

As they were being expelled, the detainees repeatedly begged officials to explain why they were being deported, and where they were being taken, one of their lawyers told the courts. At no point, the lawyer said, did officers indicate that the men were being sent to El Salvador or that they were removed under the Alien Enemies Act.

The Alien Enemies Act gives the U.S. government broad powers to detain people during times of war, but Supreme Court rulings make clear that detainees have a right to challenge the government, and are entitled to a hearing, before their removal.

Last month, an appeals court judge criticized the lack of due process under the Trump administration. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemy Act,” said Judge Patricia Millett.

Trump now wants to send US citizens who disagree with him to El Salvador.  Uh, the fact that it’s ‘likely illegal’ hardly matters when Trump has now officially flipped off the courts.

Harvard Fights Back.  Good.  They probably have the legal firepower and the endowment to do it:

The demands, which came in a letter from officials at the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration, violate Harvard’s First Amendment rights, exceed the statutory limits of the government’s authority under federal civil rights law and threaten the private institution’s values, the university’s president, Alan Garber, wrote Monday in a letter to the campus community. “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” he wrote.

Harrison Fields, a spokesperson for the White House, said universities are not entitled to federal funding. “President Trump is working to Make Higher Education Great Again by ending unchecked anti-Semitism and ensuring federal taxpayer dollars do not fund Harvard’s support of dangerous racial discrimination or racially motivated violence. Harvard or any institution that wishes to violate Title VI is, by law, not eligible for federal funding.”

Go To The White House, Have Your Trophy Broken.  Sad:

You guys are smart.  Don’t think I need to say anything about metaphors here.

What do you want to talk about?

MAGAt Torches Pa. Governor’s Mansion With Governor And His Family In It.  No, he wasn’t a Palestinian sympathizer:

The man arrested on suspicion of setting fire to Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence appears to have posted several social media posts criticizing former president Joe Biden.

Cody Balmer, 38, of Harrisburg, will face charges of attempted murder, terrorism, aggravated arson and aggravated assault, authorities said.

In September 2021, Balmer appears to have posted a meme on Facebook about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. It shows Biden in a car with overlaid text reading: “Get in, loser. We’re leaving Afghanistan.” A second picture of Biden is captioned: “Drives off without you.”

In a post in March 2021, Balmer wrote that “five dollars was gas money when Trump was president.” He also wrote in a post that month that “Joe Biden owes me 2 grand” over a picture of himself.

This guy probably won’t be subject to the ‘sovereign domestic authority of El Salvador’.  Too bad.  So, far, he hasn’t been charged with a hate crime.  I mean, it’s not as if he keyed a Tesla or something.

M. Gessen To Universities: ‘Band Together’.  They also explain why they haven’t already done so.  Well worth reading:

Almost three months into the Trump administration’s war on universities, and a year and a half into the Republican Party’s organized campaign against the presidents of top colleges, it is clear that antisemitism and D.E.I. are mere pretexts for these attacks. Like much of what this administration does, the war on higher education is driven by anti-intellectualism and greed. Trump is building a mafia state, in which the don distributes both money and power. Universities are independent centers of intellectual and, to some extent, political power. He is trying to destroy that independence.

There is a way for universities to fight back. It requires more than refusing to bend to Trump’s will, and it requires more than forming a united front. They must abandon all the concerns — rankings, donors, campus amenities — that preoccupy and distract them, and focus on their core mission: the production and dissemination of knowledge. Intellectuals have adopted this strategy to fight against autocrats in other countries. It works.

Because Trump views everything as transactional and assumes everyone to be driven by profit, he has approached universities the same way he approached law firms and, arguably, countries: by deploying devastating financial threats against each one individually, to compel compliance and prevent coalitions. Trump could have started by imposing a tax on universities’ endowments, a move that almost certainly would enjoy broad popular support. That, however, would presumably affect every major university, which could prompt them to band together. Research grants, which are specific to each university, are an ideal instrument to divide and weaken them.

Most prominent American universities, most of the time, measure their success not so much by the degree to which their faculty and graduates contribute to the world as by the size of their endowment, the number of students seeking admission and their ascent in rankings by U.S. News & World Report and others, which assess the value of a university education in part by looking at graduates’ starting salaries. As for professors, while universities do compete for the best minds, they more frequently compete for the loudest names, in the hopes that these will attract the biggest bucks.

Gessen describes how Polish dissidents successfully countered autocratic attempts to control education, and cites Bard College as an example of how it can be done here.  Their conclusion:

So this is my radical proposal for universities: Act like universities, not like businesses. Spend your endowments. Accept more, not fewer students. Open up your campuses and expand your reach not by buying real estate but by bringing education to communities. Create a base. Become a movement.

Alternatively, you can try to negotiate with a mafia boss who wants to see you grovel. When these negotiations fail, as they inevitably will, it will be too late to ask for the public’s support.

Oops. Turns Out Nobody Is Collecting Those Trump Tariffs.  Who do they think they are–the IRS?:

Thanks to a technical glitch, Donald Trump’s tariffs haven’t even been collected at U.S. ports.

On Friday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that an entry code in the U.S. system for American ships to use to have their freight exempted from tariffs isn’t working, and “the issue is being reviewed.” As a result, no tariffs are being collected by the U.S. government for the time being.

U.S. shippers told the news outlet that they have not been charged higher tariff rates on their containers as recently as Thursday, despite Trump’s claims that tariffs are in effect and are being collected. This latest snafu is on top of the fact that many companies and industry groups are still unsure of when tariffs will be collected, especially since Trump keeps changing the rates erratically in social media posts and executive orders, and making new threats almost daily.

The Golf Grand Slam is comprised of the Masters, US Open, British Open, and the PGA Championship.  Rory McElroy had long since won all but the Masters.  He had come close on several occasions, but always seemed to let his nerves get the better of him.  Yesterday, he took a four-stroke lead and lost it, with some incomprehensibly-bad shots to go along with some shots for the ages. He wound up in a playoff with good friend Justin Rose. And then:

As sports and business have become one and the same, it’s so rare to see such a moment of pure catharsis.  12 years of him trying and failing to win the Masters, and the weight is finally lifted.  I loved that moment, hope you did too.

What do you want to talk about?

Gonna start with a story with no political implications, just because I found it fascinating:

Colts veteran offensive tackle Braden Smith missed the final five games of last season because of a personal matter.

Now, he’s detailing just how intense the situation was.

Smith, in an interview with the Indianapolis Star published Tuesday, said he has a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder that prompted him to spend 48 days in a treatment facility and to ultimately turn to a psychedelic drug that he believes helped save him.

“I was physically present, but I was nowhere to be found,” Smith told the newspaper. “I did not care about playing football. I didn’t care about hanging out with my family, with my wife, with my newborn son. “I was a month away from putting a bullet through my brain.”

Smith, 29, said he was eventually diagnosed with a condition known as religious scrupulosity. According to the International OCD Foundation, religious scrupulosity differs from the healthy practice of religion because it is driven by anxiety over engaging in actions that might offend God or be seen as blasphemous. This creates obsessive behavior — including constant prayer or repeated repentance — that can begin to dominate a person’s daily life.

“There was only one person that was ever perfect, and that was Jesus,” Smith, a second-round pick in 2018, told the Star. “When you’re trying to live up to that standard, actually live that out, it’ll drive you nuts.”

Psychedelics to the rescue:

He later turned his attention to a psychedelic called ibogaine, which is not legal in the United States but has shown some promise in treating mental health in scientific studies. Smith traveled to Mexico to undergo treatment with the substance. (I wish I could like to the Indy Star article, which is much more complete.  But, I read it once, then couldn’t access it again.)

“I don’t do compulsive prayers at all anymore,” he told the newspaper. “I don’t do the replacing the good with the bad. If I have a bad thought, it’s just, like, OK, that’s one of many thoughts. I’ll just move on with my day and don’t let it affect me. I used to spend like 3 to 5 hours a day in my head, doing compulsions. It was so exhausting.”

Let that be a lesson to us all.  Drugs, not prayers.

We Need AI Because–It’s Really Tasty On Steak?  Some things I can’t make up:

McMahon, 76, made the mix-up on April 8 while speaking at the ASU+GSV Summit, an event focusing on educational innovation.  The former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) initially referred to the acronym for artificial intelligence correctly, saying, “You know, AI development – I mean, how can we educate at the speed of light if we don’t have the best technology around to do that?”

Things got sticky as McMahon’s speech continued: “A school system that’s going to start making sure that first graders, or even pre-Ks, have A1 teaching in every year. That’s a wonderful thing!”

“Kids are sponges. They just absorb everything,” she added. “It wasn’t all that long ago that it was, ‘We’re going to have internet in our schools!’ Now let’s see A1 and how can that be helpful.”  (Couldn’t too much A1 in pre-K cause, oh, I don’t know, hyperactivity?)

A.1. Sauce capitalized on McMahon’s blunder by posting an Instagram post on their verified account saying, “You heard her. Every school should have access to A.1.”

People online have even joined in on poking fun at McMahon, with one X user saying, “Education Secretary Linda McMahon keeps referring to AI as A1 and talking about how it will help ‘students at all levels.’ But how can we get those kids to drink it? Linda added, ‘The smarter kids can move up to Thousand Island Dressing.'”

I realize that I’ve likely exceeded ‘fair use’ doctrine here.  But, if I have to go to prison, ensuring that A1 Steak Sauce remains in the limelight will have been worth it.

Idle Thought: DOGE ‘enforcers’ are the new Hitler Youth.

Idle Question: This is not a gotcha question, although it is posed to the defenders of Israeli policy on this board:  How do you feel about Trump using ‘anti-semitism’ as a cudgel to basically force Columbia University and other academic institutions to grovel before him?  It strikes me as utterly perverse when one considers that Trump equates Judaism with whatever Netanyahu wants to do.  It’s a serious question, not designed to accuse or embarrass you.   BTW, I’m not sure, but I don’t think there’s a single Jew in Trump’s cabinet.  It’s a cabinet almost exclusively comprised of ignorant white folks.

What do you want to talk about?

A White Aryan Nation?  That’s Us!  History being rewritten daily.  Most of it by Elon Musk.  For example:

DOGE Now Controls Federal Grants:

U.S. DOGE Service employees have inserted themselves into the government’s long-established process to alert the public about potential federal grants and allow organizations to apply for funds, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive situation.

The changes to the process — which will allow DOGE to review and approve proposed grant opportunities across the federal government — threaten to further delay or even halt billions of dollars that agencies usually make in federal awards, the people said. The moves come amid the Trump administration’s broader push to cut federal spending and crack down on grants that DOGE and other officials say conflict with White House priorities.

Supreme Court Gets One Right.  Sort-of:

The Supreme Court on Thursday instructed the government to take steps to return a Salvadoran migrant it had wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Always with a caveat:

“The order properly requires the government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,” the Supreme Court’s ruling said. “The intended scope of the term ‘effectuate’ in the district court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the district court’s authority.”

The case will now return to the trial court, and it is not clear whether and when Mr. Abrego Garcia will be returned to the United States.

The ruling appeared to be unanimous. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, issued a statement that was harshly critical of the government’s conduct and said she would have upheld every part of the trial judge’s order.

“To this day,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, “the government has cited no basis in law for Abrego Garcia’s warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador or his confinement in a Salvadoran prison. Nor could it.”

We now return you to Bizarro World, in progress since Imauguration Day.  Starting with–the future Trump University?:

The Trump administration is considering placing Columbia University under a consent decree, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, a dramatic escalation in the federal government’s crackdown on the Ivy League institution.

The university has already accepted a series of changes demanded by the administration as a precondition for restoring $400m in federal grants and contracts the government suspended last month over allegations that the school failed to protect students from antisemitism on campus.

A consent decree – a binding agreement approved by a federal judge – would be an extraordinary move by the Trump administration, which has threatened government funding as a way to force colleges and universities to comply with Donald Trump’s political objectives on a range of issues from campus protests to transgender women in sports and diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Please note that Columbia had already capitulated.  Illustrating once again why capitulating to Trump leads only to demands that they capitulate further.

More Bizarro World stuff.  How do you kill immigrants without even ‘killing’ them?  Here’s how:

Since taking office, the Trump administration has moved aggressively to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were allowed into the country under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Now, the administration is taking drastic steps to pressure some of those immigrants and others who had legal status to “self-deport” by effectively canceling the Social Security numbers they had lawfully obtained, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with six people familiar with the plans.

The goal is to cut those people off from using crucial financial services like bank accounts and credit cards, along with their access to government benefits.

The effort hinges on a surprising new tactic: repurposing Social Security’s “death master file,” which for years has been used to track dead people who should no longer receive benefits, to include the names of living people who the government believes should be treated as if they are dead. As a result of being added to the death database, they would be blacklisted from a coveted form of identity that allows them to make and more easily spend money.

Their “financial lives,” Leland Dudek, the Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner, wrote in an email to staff members, would be “terminated.”

The move is the latest in an extraordinary series of actions by the Trump administration, pushed by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to harness personal data long considered off limits to immigration authorities in order to advance President Trump’s vision for a mass migrant crackdown. This week, several top officials at the Internal Revenue Service moved to resign after the tax agency said it would help locate undocumented immigrants.

Meet The Politically-Connected Company Building Detention Camps.  No-bid contracts, revolving-door employees, they’ve got it all covered:

In June 2005, a former employee from the Federal Emergency Management Agency toured the grounds of the Bonnaroo music festival in rural Tennessee. He wasn’t there to see the headliners, which included Dave Matthews Band and the lead singer of the popular jam band Phish. He was there to meet the guys setting up the toilets for the throng of psychedelics-infused campers in attendance: Richard Stapleton, a construction industry veteran, and his business partner Robert Napior, a onetime convicted pot grower, who specialized in setting up music festivals.

The meeting, described in court documents, offered the pair’s fledgling company, Deployed Resources, a key introduction to players doing government contract work for the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that oversees not only the nation’s disaster responses but also its immigration system. Over the next two decades, Stapleton and Napior hired more than a dozen former agency insiders as they turned their small-time logistics business, which had helped support outdoor festivals like Lollapalooza, into a contracting giant by building camps for a completely different use: detaining immigrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Now, as the government races to carry out President Donald Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations, Deployed is shifting its business once more — from holding people who are trying to enter the country to detaining those the government is seeking to ship out.

In March, one of the company’s tent complexes in El Paso, Texas, was handed over to ICE, CBP and ICE spokespeople said. In an unusual move, the Trump administration tapped funds from the Department of Defense to pay Deployed for the facility, citing the president’s declaration of an emergency at the southern border, a DOD spokesperson said. The nearly $140 million contract wasn’t posted publicly and was given to Deployed as the “incumbent contractor,” the spokesperson said, without further explaining why ICE would use military funds. ICE said it started transferring detainees to the site — which currently has the capacity to house 1,000 adults — on March 10.

There’s lots more.  But let’s quote someone from the ACLU on what can/will likely happen:

The plans are “a recipe for disaster,” said Eunice Hyunhye Cho, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project.

“All of the problems that we see with ICE detention writ large, like the abuse of force, the sexual assault, medical neglect, the lack of food, lack of access to counsel, lack of due process rights, lack of access to telephones — the list goes on — all of those things are going to be vastly more complicated in a system where you are literally setting up people in tents that are surrounded by barbed wire and armed military personnel,” Cho said.

Amerika in 2025.  Try not to get used to it.

Gov. Meyer’s State Of The State Address.  I wasn’t there, didn’t listen.  Did you listen?  If so, what are your takeaways?:

The governor acknowledged the difficulty of crafting the state budget amid major policy shifts at the federal level, including funding freezes and cuts plus varying levels of tariffs.

“In building this year’s budget, our team is managing swings in revenue and expenses in the tens of millions of dollars — sometimes from one hour or day to the next, sometimes from one headline out of Washington to the next,” he said.

Here’s some news:

Meyer also touched on the Port of Wilmington, where a battle over nominees to the Diamond State Port Corporation Board has played out between the governor and Senate leadership. Meyer has submitted a slate of names who are scheduled to get a hearing next week.

One can only hope that the Senate votes on these nominees next week.

What do you want to talk about?

If you’re looking for wisdom on the latest Trump whiplash-inducing move, you’ll have to look elsewhere.  OK, I’ll share Josh Marshall’s take with you.

About Damn Time. Younger D’s Challenge Entrenched Incumbents:

A small but growing group of young Democrats are being propelled to act by outrage among rank-and-file voters, and especially among young people. Infuriated by the early months of President Trump’s second term, impatient with the status quo and frustrated with party leadership, they are mounting bids for office.

Some of these efforts look like long shots against well-funded and better-known incumbents. But they amount to a manifestation of the anger felt by voters toward the Democratic Party — after President Joseph R. Biden Jr., ignoring their concerns, waited until late in the game to abandon his attempt at re-election — and the sentiment that a younger generation might be better equipped to oppose Mr. Trump.

“They’re looking to build a Democratic Party that will fight instead of fold,” said Amanda Litman, the leader of Run for Something, a progressive group that pushes young Democrats to run for office. Young people, Ms. Litman said, were essentially saying: “It’s time to pass the torch. And if they’re not going to pass it, we’re going to take it.”

Time to point out that ‘long shots against well-funded and better-known incumbents’ brought us Marie Pinkney, Kamela Smith, Eric Morrison and Madinah Wilson-Anton, to name but a select few.  I am aware of one great prospective challenger who is being warned to wait their turn here in Delaware.  Don’t.  Not in a state where folding, not fighting, recently gave us the Musk/Zuckerberg gift from the El Foldos.

The War On Empathy. Spearheaded by Musk and, of course, the ‘Christian Right’:

Just over an hour into Elon Musk’s last appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, the billionaire brought up the latest existential threat to trouble him.

“We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on,” Musk said. “And it’s like, I believe in empathy. Like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for civilization as a whole and not commit to a civilizational suicide.”

“The fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy,” Musk continued to Rogan, couching his argument in the type of pseudoscientific language that’s catnip to both men’s followings on X. “The empathy exploit. They’re (immigrants from poorer, browner, and more Muslim countries) exploiting a bug in western civilization, which is the empathy response.”

The idea that empathy is actually bad has also been gaining traction among white evangelical Christians in the US, some of whom have begun to recast the pangs of empathy that might complicate their support for Donald Trump and his agenda as a “sin” or “toxin”. The debate has emerged among Catholics too, with JD Vance recently using the medieval Catholic concept of “ordo amoris” to justify the Trump administration’s policies on immigration and foreign aid. (Vance’s stance – that it’s righteous to privilege the needs of one’s family, community and nation over those of the rest of the world – earned a rebuke from the pope, but support from other influential Catholic thinkers.)

‘Influential Catholic thinkers’.  Why am I fixating on that phrase?  Anyway, a lengthy piece that is well worth your time.

Hey, that’s all I’ve got today.  I leave the rest to you.

What do you want to talk about?

It’s On!  Trump’s Tariffs Kick Off Global Trade War:

President Trump’s global trade war intensified on Wednesday as China announced additional levies on American goods, hitting back at the United States hours after Mr. Trump’s punishing new tariffs took effect. Stocks and bonds slumped again on the moves, which heightened fears of a global recession as the European Union prepared its own retaliation for U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs.

Mr. Trump’s latest tariffs hit nearly all U.S. trading partners with new levies and raised import taxes on Chinese goods to 104 percent. Beijing then announced additional tariffs on imports from the United States, for a total levy of 84 percent, to go into effect within hours…China also announced that it was putting export controls on 12 more American companies and had added six more American companies to its list of “unreliable entities” that are mostly barred from doing business in China or with Chinese companies.

Mr. Trump spooked India’s pharmaceutical industry, the country’s most successful exporters, when he said Tuesday that he would soon announce “a major tariff” on drugmakers. The companies had been exempted in the first round of levies, but Mr. Trump has argued that in the long term more medications should be made in the United States.

Is This All About Male Fragility?  Philip Bump makes a strong case–including charts:

Not that they pine for tariffs, specifically, but instead for some idealized version of the United States, one in which men went to real jobs making real things and women stayed home to take care of the kids in picket-fenced homes flying the American flag. Some of his supporters were alive during the post-World War II period in which this was supposedly (but not really) the norm. Others, the younger ones, feel a nostalgia for what they perceive that they missed. Young men in particular seem to have an acute sense that the world was once at the mercy of people like them — but that, for them, it very much is not.

This is at times offered quite explicitly. On the Fox News show “The Five” on Monday, co-host Jesse Watters (too young to have experienced that era) celebrated the idea that jobs centered on manufacturing were a central element of masculinity.

“When you sit behind a screen all day, it makes you a woman,” he insisted, deploying his familiar pretending-to-be-joking style. “Studies have shown this.” His colleagues laughed. “Studies have shown this! And if you’re out working, building robots … you are around other guys; you’re not around H.R. ladies and lawyers. That gives you estrogen.”

It’s worth pointing out that, even without Trump’s tariffs, the passage of 2021’s bipartisan infrastructure bill was already leading to a surge in spending on new manufacturing construction. In other words, there are ways to boost domestic production without the damage and volatility of heavily taxing imports.

What that bill lacked, though, was the emotional appeal of restructuring the economy to assuage male fragility. It was legislation that aimed, directly, to make America great again by repairing broken roads and bridges and by ensuring that the economy could weather the evolution in energy production that’s underway. But it didn’t include a budding autocrat’s pledge to douse U.S. paychecks in testosterone, so I guess it doesn’t really count.

A Pulitzer-worthy column, especially when you consider that everything, everything Trump has done has been aimed at allaying the grievances of bitter young white guys.  Read the whole thing.

Yet Another Bullshit Trump Executive Order.  From The Guardian:

Donald Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday that aims to block the enforcement of state laws passed to reduce the use of fossil fuels and combat the climate crisis.

The move is the latest in a string of efforts by Trump’s administration to pump up domestic energy output and push back against largely Democratic-led policies to curb carbon emissions. It came just hours after Trump, a Republican, issued orders to increase coal production.

The order directed the US attorney general to identify state laws that address climate change, ESG initiatives, environmental justice and carbon emissions, and to take action to block them.

“Many States have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security,” the order said.

Trump specifically cited laws in New York and Vermont that fine fossil fuel companies for their contribution to climate change, California’s cap-and-trade policy, and lawsuits by states that have sought to hold energy companies accountable for their role in global heating.

Here’s how corporations spent those corporate tax cuts that Trump gifted them:

Eleven top US consumer goods corporations spent more than three times more on share buybacks than they did on taxes, using their savings from the 2017 Donald Trump tax cuts to supercharge purchases that enriched investors instead of lowering prices on goods essential to daily life, according to a new report.

PepsiCo, Comcast, United Healthcare, personal care giant Kimberly Clark and the other companies have collectively recorded nearly $500bn in profits since the last cuts. They enacted $463bn in buybacks and paid just $140bn in federal taxes.

The figures are “startling”, said Liz Pancotti, a study co-author and director of policy with the Groundwork Collaborative, and highlight how the cuts incentivize buybacks.

“The companies are now throwing massive amounts of money at investors who are largely already wealthy people,” Pancotti added. “This is how you get the staggering wealth inequality in this country.”

Buybacks are a company’s purchase of its outstanding stock shares, which reduces the number of shares available on the market. That juices the stock’s value and investors’ wealth. By one estimate, publicly traded companies now collectively spend as much as 90% of their earnings on buybacks instead of reinvesting to keep prices down, or raising workers’ wages. (Something those resentful white male idiots can’t understand.)

Yes, Trump’s doing it again:

Undeterred, Trump is now proposing lowering the corporate rate to 17%, which could generate a $50bn annual windfall to the 100 largest US corporations.

‘Kill Your Lawn’.  My youngest daughter has a Masters  in sustainable landscape design.  She couldn’t agree more with this U of D professor:

If you’re a human living on this planet, you should get to know Doug Tallamy, the entomologist and University of Delaware professor whose groundbreaking 2006 book, “Bringing Nature Home,” supercharged the native plants movement.

Tallamy made a case that our native birds and insects evolved with native plants, so they recognize them as food. The loss of these native plants and habitats to development poses an existential threat not just to wildlife, but to us.

Since then, Tallamy co-founded Homegrown National Park, a grassroots movement whose mission is to “urgently inspire everyone to address the biodiversity crisis by adding native plants and removing invasive ones where we live, work, learn, pray, and play.”

Here’s what he suggests:

First, reduce the lawn. Every property has to support pollinators, every property has to manage the watershed in which it lies and every property has to sequester carbon (plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere). That’ll help combat climate change. And every property has to support the viable food webs of the animals associated with the property.

Lawn does none of those things.

If you have a lot of lawn, you get a lot of runoff, and you’re polluting your watershed with the fertilizers and the pesticides you put on the lawn. When you have a well-planted property, it keeps the water on site, cleans it, helps it soak into the ground and recharges your water table.

Choose plants that are going to support that food web, the ones that will share the most energy with other living things. That’s the problem with plants from other continents; our insects can’t eat them. So, there are no insects for the birds, and the food web stops.

In 84% of the counties where they occur, oaks are the No. 1 plant for passing along that energy. If you’re going to plant a tree, that is the best plant to choose.

Amen.

Should Wilmington City Council Be Allowed To Caucus?  Good question:

Late last week, the city council unanimously passed a resolution requesting that the Delaware General Assembly create an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act for meetings attended by council members of the same political party – referred to in the proposal as any  “caucus of the City Council.”

Every member of the city council is a Democrat, except for one.

City officials say the exemption would give council members the ability to freely discuss ideas and key issues related to business or proposed legislation. But opponents say the public should be able to access those communications.

If the resolution is approved by the General Assembly, regular council and committee meetings will continue to be held publicly, as they are now. However, council members would also be permitted to meet privately among themselves to discuss various city-related affairs.

I report (well, actually a reporter does). You decide.  What do you think?

What do you want to talk about?

Someone asked the names and positions of those on Gov. Meyer’s staff.  Here ya go.  Which reminds me–has the Senate officially received Meyer’s Port board nominations yet?  If so, when will they consider said nominations?  If not, what’s the hold-up?

Death By 1000 Cuts.  NEH Grants.  Automated Translation Weather Alerts.  They do stuff like this every day.  It adds up.  Revenge of the Stoopid White Guys.  Oh, almost forgot:

U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, who holds a senior position in NATO, has been fired as part of what appears to be an expanding national security purge of top officials by the Trump administration, three sources told Reuters on Monday.

Chatfield, the U.S. military representative to the NATO Military Committee, is one of only a handful of female Navy three-star officers and was the first woman to lead the Naval War College, a job she held until 2023.

The firing, which was first reported by Reuters, is the latest to rock the Pentagon after Thursday’s removal of General Timothy Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command.

For the Navy, it follows the firing of its top officer, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to become Chief of Naval Operations.

Over the weekend, as Elon Musk launched into a barrage of social media posts criticizing one of the lead White House advisers for President DonaldTrump’s aggressive tariff plan, Musk was going over that same official’s head — andmaking personal appeals to Trump.

Musk’s break with Trump over a signature administration priority marks the highest-profile disagreement between the president and one of his key advisers, who poured nearly $290 million into backing him and other Republicans in last year’s electionsand has been leading the U.S. DOGE Service’s cost-cutting efforts since January. Musk has also disagreed with other members of Trump’s coalition on issues such as H1-B visas for skilled immigrants and on DOGE’s approach to government spending.

On Saturday, Musk took aim at the administration official who has been key to developing the tariff plans, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, lighting into his credentials.

“A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing,” Musk wrote.

There was an attempt by State Rep. Frank Burns (D-Newark) to change the effective date to the day the new changes were signed into law as to not effect any ongoing books and records request, but that amendment ultimately failed.

During debate on the House Floor, Rep. Burns noted the amendment was largely drafted out of concern for the ongoing books and records requests made by Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — shareholders, as reported by CNBC, and worried that those probes could be hindered.

“I am aware of two actions against Meta where books and records discoveries were going on, and they can continue, but what they were looking into can now never be brought to bear under the SB 21 rules,” Rep Burns said during debate.

The bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Griffith (D-Fairfax) explained the date of Feb. 17 was “very carefully considered” and did not support the amendment along with the majority of her colleagues.

Take Your Medicine, America:

President Donald Trump said Sunday evening that he is not intentionally engineering the ongoing stock market sell-off, but said little to try and dissuade it.

“I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday night when asked about the markets.

Quick, somebody tell RFK Jr.

When You’ve Lost The Koch Bro and Leonard Leo…:

In a twist that wouldn’t be believed in the worst TV movie, the surviving Koch Brother and Supreme Court shadow boss Leonard Leo are moving to crush Trump and his tariffs.

It’s more than surprising that these men, long considered as candidates for the worst people on earth, would be riding to the rescue. We have no idea what the world will look like when Trump gets slapped down on his all-consuming major initiative, but we now know it is coming.

The U.S. Constitution gives control over tariffs to Congress. It doesn’t hint it, imply it, or suggest it. It just says it.

Trump has launched his tariff scheme through executive order and false bravado. Like a fourth grader trying to prove to the teacher he was right, Trump is making his arguments based on old and unrelated laws that do not give the president the opportunity to create tariffs.

So Koch and Leo have filed suit against the Trump tariffs, picking as a plaintiff a stationery shop that will be ruined if it has to pay tariffs on imported goods.

A Delaware judge last month heard arguments in a lawsuit brought by two Rehoboth Beach residents who claimed their city illegally struck a high-dollar contract last year with its newest city manager, Taylour Tedder.

The court hearing occurred one year after Rehoboth Beach residents first learned that city officials and Tedder had negotiated a pay package that included a $250,000 a-year salary and a forgivable $750,000 home loan.

During the court hearing on March 28, attorneys for the residents – Steven Linehan and Thomas Gaynor – claimed city officials violated the municipality’s foundational charter by hiring a manager who didn’t have sufficient experience for the job, including in engineering.

Rehoboth Beach’s charter says that a city manager must have an engineering degree, at least four years of experience managing another incorporated municipality, or four years of practical engineering experience.

“Right now, you have somebody that has essentially been quote, unquote, learning on the job for the last year. That person should have never been appointed,” said Ted Kittila, the plaintiffs’ attorney.

But Michelle Bounds, an attorney who represents the city and Tedder, argued that the city charter gives Rehoboth Beach commissioners broad authority to decide qualifications and compensation for the city manager.

Seems to me that the Rehoboth Beach officials must have learned their negotiating skills from the governor and legislators who grovelled at Elon Musk’s feet.

What do you want to talk about?

DOJ To Court:  ‘You’re Not The Boss Of Us’:

Government attorneys slammed a judge’s order to return a Salvadoran immigrant to the United States, arguing in a Saturday filing that the judge’s directive was “indefensible” and that the United States has “no authority” to make a sovereign nation release the man.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis directed the administration to arrange the return of Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran immigrant married to a U.S. citizen, by no later than 11:59 p.m. Monday. The Justice Department’s response asks the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to step in and immediately pause Xinis’s order.

“The United States does not have control over Abrego Garcia. Or the sovereign nation of El Salvador. Nevertheless, the court’s injunction commands that Defendants accomplish, somehow, Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States in give or take one business day. That order is indefensible,” Justice Department lawyers wrote. The appeal argues at length that the government has no power to return Abrego García because he is in the custody of the Salvadoran government, though the Trump administration says it is paying El Salvador about $6 million for the detention of deportees.

Just a reminder–we love submissions from our readers.  If you have something you just have to get off your chest, write it, submit it to the tip-line, and we’ll take it from there.  Those of you who have done so know that we respond promptly, and work with you to format your piece for publication.

Ho-kay, I notice that responses have been down the last few days, likely because our retirees are now looking for work to compensate for their sinking 401(k)’s.

Tell me, should I feel sorry for the farmers?:

Farmers have been Trump’s most loyal constituency and overwhelmingly backed him in the 2024 election. Now they could be one of the groups hardest hit by his trade war, potentially forcing a political reckoning in red states as small- and mid-sized farms struggle to stay afloat and big farms lose their export markets.

“If we have problems selling those goods in foreign markets, we see low prices. That’s what we saw in 2018, and that was just a trade war in China. With the announcement yesterday, not only are the tariffs larger than those in 2018 on China but they’re also affecting a lot of other markets, particularly for soybeans,” said Joe Glauber, a former USDA chief economist. “These are all big unknowns because we just haven’t seen anything like this.”

The Trump administration’s sweeping firings of thousands of USDA staff, including employees engaged in farmer-facing work like farm loan officers, and ongoing freezes of federal grant and cost-share programs have only added to the economic uncertainty.

I only speak for myself when I say: Fuck all you idiots who voted for all the trouble you’re now facing.

That goes double for these guys:

President Donald Trump has gone from mocking Canada as “the 51st state” and demoting its prime minister to “governor,” to threatening military invasion of Greenland, to siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin over Ukraine’s fight for freedom, to insane tariffs that are making a mockery of international order.

Trump even said he wants to sell allies nerfed versions of U.S. warplanes. 

“We’d like to tone them down about 10 percent, which probably makes sense because someday maybe they’re not our allies, right,” he said on March 21. 

Just imagine how that was received by U.S. allies. 

So it makes sense that Europe has decided it won’t depend on the United States as a military backstop for its security, committing nearly $900 billion to its massive military spending spree.

Yet the mere threat is a challenge to Europe’s sovereignty, particularly as the U.S. government has broadcasted that it no longer shares Europe’s values.

No one is interested in working with a United States that can turn on a dime depending on the whims of idiot voters in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, and the GOP is certainly not interested in preventing crazy despots from flying its banner.

Which leads to no weapons deals for the United States. And would you believe that Trump is pissed?

Yes, Trump (aka ‘Krasnov’) is hurting the very companies who have been core supporters.  Sad.  This makes for some good weekend reading.  I’ll forgive you if you skip the rest of this magnum opus and just read the linked article.  AKA the Steele Dossier.

Fringe Figures Wield Power.  Irresponsibly:

Laura Loomer had President Trump’s full attention.

Sitting directly across from the president in the Oval Office, Ms. Loomer, the far-right agitator and conspiracy theorist, held a stack of papers that detailed a litany of accusations about “disloyal” members of the National Security Council. The national security adviser, Michael Waltz, had arrived late and could only watch as Ms. Loomer ripped into his staff.

Fire them, Mr. Trump instructed Mr. Waltz, according to people with knowledge of the meeting on Wednesday. The president was furious and demanded to know why these people had been hired in the first place.

The events of Wednesday and Thursday, with more than a half-dozen national security officials fired on the advice of Ms. Loomer, unsettled even some veteran Trump officials. But the situation perfectly encapsulates Mr. Trump’s longtime penchant for soliciting information from dubious sources. The difference now, in Mr. Trump’s second term, is that he has fewer people around him who try to keep those voices away.

In a social media post on Friday, Ms. Loomer explained why two of the people who lost their jobs this week were on her list. Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, had been chosen by Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Ms. Loomer called a traitor. And General Haugh’s deputy, Wendy Noble, was close to James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence and fierce critic of Mr. Trump.

Laura Loomer.  RFK Jr.  Yes, the lunatics are running the asylum which, unfortunately, is the United States.

Speaking Of RFK, he wants to keep America fat:

Medicare and Medicaid will not cover blockbuster drugs such as Ozempic to treat obesity, the Trump administration announced on Friday.

The Biden administration in November proposed allowing the public insurance programs to expand coverage of the anti-obesity medications but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services now says that is “not appropriate at this time.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has criticized the class of weight loss drugs known as GLP-1s, arguing the obesity problem can be solved by improving Americans’ diets and encouraging exercise. Kennedy said in a Fox News interview in October that pharma companies are counting on selling the drugs to Americans because “we’re so stupid and so addicted to drugs.”

Uh, no, I won’t. There’s no topping that!  Is it true they’re not in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame?  AYFKM?

What do you want to talk about?