Delaware
Delaware Democrats prepare for new Trump administration
From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!
Democrats in Delaware are seeking answers and preparing for President-elect Donald Trump to take office for another four years. Meanwhile, Republicans are hopeful the former president will enact the promises he made during his campaign.
Emotions ranged from joy to shock at Return Day, held just days after last week’s election. It’s a centuries-old First State tradition where every election cycle, candidates and Delawareans of all political affiliations come together to bury an actual hatchet to show there are no hard feelings — even after a divisive election.
Sussex County Republican Committee Vice Chair Tom Molnar had a booth set on the fairgrounds last week, with a cardboard copy of Trump people took pictures with and a large red hat with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan on it.
“This is the best week that we’ve had in a long time,” Molnar said. “Trump won, and we had a lot of Republicans win the election.”
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris lost the popular vote and the Electoral College to Trump. Republicans gained control of the U.S. Senate; the House is still undecided to date, but Republicans are inching towards victory there as well.
Former Rep. Debbie Harrington, who unsuccessfully sought the lieutenant governor position in the Democratic primary earlier this year, said she thinks some people were uncomfortable electing a Black woman as president.
“When you talk about the differences in the two of them, it just didn’t cross my mind that he had the ability to win,” she said. “I just didn’t believe that.”
Millville resident Sherrena Williams said she’s worried the rights of Black people will erode under the next Trump administration.
“I personally grew up during segregation, and I’m starting to have flashbacks,” Williams said. “When we look at the television and he gave his [acceptance] speech, nobody looked like us on that stage.”
While Harris carried Delaware, turnout and Trump’s ability to broaden his appeal contributed to his overall win.
Delaware’s turnout was down from 68% four years ago, when President Joe Biden was running to 65% this year, state Department of Elections data shows. That’s similar to results nationally, where overall turnout was 65%, two points lower than in 2020.
Trump also increased his share of votes in the First State this election cycle, garnering 214,184 in 2024 compared with 200,184 in 2020.
Former Rep. Ruth Briggs King, a Republican who lost a bid for lieutenant governor against Democrat Kyle Evans Gay, said she saw more Black and Latino voters support her than in prior races.
“They like direct speech, not a lot of legalese, not a lot of political jargon,” she said. “They want that real and sincere conversation. And I think that must have resonated with them.”
Williams said the Democratic Party is not doing enough to represent the Black community.
Trump gained support from more Black voters, particularly men, this year than in 2020, according to data from AP VoteCast.
“The Democratic Party has to step up and be more proactive in supporting Black people,” Williams said. “They like us, but they’re not putting forth policy to show that. So that’s very important, and I think that is why Black men voted for the Republican Party. They see the Democratic Party as being friendly towards us as a people, but not friendly towards us with their policies.”
Delaware voters elected Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Tom Carper, making her the state’s first woman and Black candidate elected to that chamber.
Delaware
Tesla wins right to move lawsuits from Delaware to Texas. Here’s why
How can car buyers look for value in the used electric vehicle market
For those in the market for a used electric vehicle, looking beyond Tesla vehicles might offer good value.
Tesla has won the right to move lawsuits filed against the company from Delaware to Texas, where it’s presently headquartered.
A judge in Delaware sided with Tesla, which was founded in California but is now based in Austin in a case involving stockholders who sued to challenge Tesla’s relocation plans in 2024.
Tesla had asked the court to dismiss the motion from its stockholders who were upset at its plans to convert from a Delaware corporation for legal purposes to a Texas-based organization. Tesla had previously designated Delaware as its exclusive forum for cases involving shareholders who sue a company in which they own stock in, but the company was seeking to change the designation to Texas.
The court said Delaware law requires it to only deny forum-selection decisions by corporations such as Tesla “to the limited extent necessary” to avoid a result that would be inequitable to the automaker or any other company that was based in the state.
The court said on the “on the present facts, it is not inequitable” to Telsa to uphold Delaware laws regarding court case jurisdictions.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
Why is Tesla being sued?
Tesla was sued by at least three of its stockholders in April 2024 after it announced plans to convert from a Delaware corporation to a Texas one.
Tesla stockholders voted to approve the move, but the people who filed the lawsuits argued that Delaware’s laws about the appropriate forum for shareholder cases should have been enforced over Texas’ laws because Tesla was still based in Delaware legally when they filed their lawsuits.
The lawsuits were combined by the court, and the court later ruled in favor of granting Tesla’s motion to dismiss the case.
What does Tesla being sued mean for car buyers?
Tesla has faced legal troubles and federal investigations for years. The company’s legal troubles could impact the availability of popular models like the Tesla Model Y and Model 3 if a court finds the company liable and requires a payment to victims that alters Tesla’s findings. Regulators could also declare Tesla’s parts or software defective and order recalls or force the company to stop selling specific models.
Tesla has been sued over its Autopilot and Full Self Driving software, and the company has also faced class action lawsuits and product liability cases for accidents in which people were injured or even killed.
Tesla is also the subject of five open federal investigations, including one the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced in December 2025 looking into potential issues with passengers having difficulty exiting Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles following crashes.
Delaware
Federal judge says Delaware labor officials must give data to ICE
What to know about jury duty in Delaware
Here are some tips and information about what to do when you receive a jury summons in the mail in Delaware.
A federal judge in Wilmington has ordered the Delaware Department of Labor to hand over confidential state employer data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators.
On April 13, U.S. District Judge Colm Connolly ordered Delaware labor officials to comply with a federal immigration subpoena they had “ignored,” writing that the state lacked legal grounds to resist it and that its political arguments were “wholly inappropriate.”
The subpoena seeks wage reports and employee rosters containing confidential employee information for 15 businesses and sought by ICE investigators as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
Attorneys representing the state’s Department of Labor justified their noncompliance by arguing that local and federal regulators give state officials the authority to refuse federal investigators’ requests. They warned that allowing ICE to access employer data would discourage reporting and weaken the unemployment insurance program.
Local federal attorneys representing ICE argued the department is legally required to hand over the data targeting businesses that tip-line reports put under suspicion of employing undocumented individuals. In court filings, they said the state’s refusal to comply amounts to a legally unsound disagreement with federal immigration policy.
The arguments: Federal judge questions Delaware’s attempt to sidestep ICE subpoena
The contested subpoena was the last in a series that went unanswered by state labor officials during the first quarter of 2025. The subpoenas themselves are not legally confidential. However, Connolly, the presiding judge, sealed the final subpoena – the one at issue in the case – after federal officials sued the state to force compliance.
The state has produced redacted copies of some of the initial subpoenas to Delaware Online/The News Journal via a Freedom of Information Act request. Those early subpoenas targeted a Perdue facility in Seaford as well as a fencing company and a Mexican restaurant in northern New Castle County.
The final subpoena seeks data on the employees of 15 state businesses for the final two quarters of 2024 and is the subject of the current court wrangling. Connolly also denied the state’s argument that the document be unsealed so the businesses could exercise a right to fight the subpoena in court.
Breaking down the ruling
In assessing whether to enforce the subpoena, Connolly said the threshold question was whether it served a legitimate purpose, sought relevant information, and was not “unduly broad or burdensome.”
Connolly wrote that the investigation pertained to businesses suspected of employing undocumented people, which is in the scope of the agency that issued the subpoena, that the information sought is relevant to that inquiry and that it would not be “unduly burdensome” for the state to copy the 30 records sought by the subpoenas.
Connolly, who is the court’s chief judge and was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2018, also shot holes in what he described as the state’s “novel theory” that production of such records would endanger the state’s unemployment insurance program.
“I am neither willing nor able to adopt DDOL’s cynical view of the State’s employers,” Connolly wrote.
Editor’s note: The judge’s ruling can be read at the end of this article.
Having decided that, he turned to the question of whether the Department of Labor had proved the enforcement of the subpoenas would “undermine the integrity of the judicial process.”
The state argued that enforcement of the subpoena would step on confidentiality regulations in the state’s statue and that the subpoena flows from an “improper purpose” described as an “intense agenda of immigration enforcement.”
Prior coverage: Delaware to fight ICE, Trump administration demands for local businesses’ employee lists
Connolly ruled that the regulations do not override the subpoena power. He wrote that the state’s argument painting the subpoena as improper because of the current intensity around immigration enforcement is a “political argument, not a legal one.”
“This Court is not the proper ‘forum in which to air [DDOL’s] generalized grievances about the conduct of government,’ Connolly wrote. “It would be wholly inappropriate for me to consider this line of argument, and I decline to do so.”
Trump’s deportation agenda and Delaware
The legal fight is part of the front in Trump’s ever-expanding deportation agenda, which has seen the federal government seek new ways to leverage states’ and other datasets in its immigration roundups.
Trump, with the help of Congress, ballooned Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding nearly six-fold from $12 billion in the previous fiscal year to $75 billion in his budget legislation last year.
Recent: ICE detained a toddler in Delaware as arrests topped 500
The agenda has included workplace and neighborhood raids by masked ICE agents, arrests at jobs and courthouses, incidents resulting in deaths, fast‑tracked deportations and allegations of racial profiling and inhumane detention practices lacking due process.
In Delaware, ICE has more quietly doubled its number of detainments through October of last year compared with the year prior, rounding up more people in street arrests along with four children.
This is a breaking story and updates will follow.
Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com.
Delaware
ATVs and dirt bikes roar down Delaware Ave., lawmakers search for solutions
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — It’s just like clockwork. As the temperatures rise, ATVs and dirt bikes shift into gear in Buffalo.
New video shows a horde of ATVs and dirt bikes on Delaware Avenue Sunday afternoon. Some are seen driving on the incoming traffic lane, and one even pops a wheelie.
Fillmore District Councilman Mitch Nowakowski represents this area.
“This only leads to more chaos and disruption, and ultimately leads to potential fatalities for both those that are operating and those that are in the vehicles,” Nowakowski said. “And it’s wrong.”
These all-terrain vehicles have proven to be a persistent problem for drivers over the years in Buffalo. Nowakowski says once the snow melts, he starts hearing complaints about these vehicles from residents.
“It’s making our city’s streets unsafer and the velocity and the volume in which they congregate and the manner in which they drive not only jeopardizes their life, it jeopardizes the life of everyone around them,” Nowakowski said.
The councilman wrote a letter on Monday to Family Court Judge Brenda Freedman, requesting a meeting to discuss strengthening a collective response to reckless driving involving young people.
“Councilwoman Everhart and I want to sit down with the judge, explain what’s happening in our districts, where we see car thefts, we see the Kia boys, which I’ve even been a victim of,” Nowakowski said. “We see the violence on the 33 of drag racing where somebody has lost their life. And we want to know what programs are in place. But then, where’s the accountability once somebody is in your courtroom for a second, third or fourth time?”
Nowakowski said police using better equipment and technology has helped curtail all-terrain vehicles on city streets.
“If it comes from them being able to see it through a drone or people calling in. We’ve seen a curb in that,” Nowakowski said.
Those who see illegal activity or a public nuisance can contact Buffalo Police or the city’s 311 Call & Resolution Center.
Latest Local News
Patrick Ryan is an award-winning reporter who has been part of the News 4 team since 2020. See more of his work here and follow him on Twitter.
-
Ohio21 hours ago‘Little Rascals’ star Bug Hall arrested in Ohio
-
Georgia1 week agoGeorgia House Special Runoff Election 2026 Live Results
-
Arkansas5 days agoArkansas TV meteorologist Melinda Mayo retires after nearly four decades on air
-
Pennsylvania1 week agoParents charged after toddler injured by wolf at Pennsylvania zoo
-
Milwaukee, WI1 week agoPotawatomi Casino Hotel evacuated after fire breaks out in rooftop HVAC system
-
Austin, TX1 week agoABC Kite Fest Returns to Austin for Annual Celebration – Austin Today
-
Culture1 week agoCan You Name These Novels Based on Their Characters?
-
Pittsburg, PA1 week agoPrimanti Bros. closes Monroeville and North Versailles locations
