Suburban Guard. The Sun-Times reports that email from the commanding officer of Naval Station Great Lakes to his leadership team says the federal agents and possibly the National Guard troops that President Trump’s considering sending to the Chicago area would operate out of that base beginning next month.
■ Trump, in a televised three-hour cabinet meeting yesterday, defended his “right to do anything I want to do” (New York Times gift link).
■ A Pew study concludes that Illinois ranks sixth among states hosting the majority of the nation's 14 million unauthorized immigrants.
■ Law enforcement experts and violence prevention leaders tell the Tribune (gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters) that sending the Guard into Chicago could prove “a recipe for disaster.”
■ Two Chicago women—one of whom shouted at federal agents “I hope your kid dies a … miserable death”—face federal assault charges after disrupting an “immigrant enforcement action” Sunday morning on the West Side.
■ Local union leaders and Mayor Johnson have announced plans for a Labor Day rally to protest Trump’s Chicago deployment.
■ The AP: “Emboldened Democrats are starting to push back on Trump’s immigration plans.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
‘Like a crooked alderman on steroids.’ Columnist—and former Chicago City Council member himself—Edwin Eisendrath says Chicagoans know Trump’s type.
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “With Trump underwater on all his key issues and his job approval rating dismal, the administration appears to be trying to create support for Trump by insisting that the U.S. is mired in crime and he alone can solve the problem.”
■ Two-time Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten on the president’s health issues: “The president is likely not ill and enfeebled with one foot in the grave. … It is merely that he is old and ugly and flabby and benignly rotting all over.”
■ Trump biographer Michael Wolff to The Daily Beast: The White House staff wants everyone to stop talking about Trump’s health.
Criticize the Republican administration? Lose your (federal) job. At least some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency employees who spoke out in a public letter this week condemning “the Trump administration’s dismantling cuts and devastating attacks on FEMA programs and missions” have been put on leave.
■ Trump’s tightening his grip on Washington, stripping Amtrak of control of Union Station.
Iowa’s ‘hell of a night.’ Columnist Charlotte Clymer says a special state Senate election gave a landslide victory to a Democrat, flipping a seat that’s been in Republican hands for 22 years …
■ … breaking Republicans’ stranglehold supermajority in the chamber.
■ Traditional conservative Charlie Sykes introduces you to a Gen Z activist on “a campaign to counter the influence of right-wingers like Charlie Kirk and Nick Fuentes on college campuses.”
■ Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion columnist Jeff Tiedrich celebrates Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s return to the political stage, with “a rousing speech that, unfortunately, not enough people heard—because, as usual, Agolf Shitler’s Fascistpalooza sucked all the air out of the universe.”
Welcome, climate refugees. Borderless: Illinois state lawmakers and environmental activists have drafted legislation to prepare the state for migration—on the theory that the Midwest will become a haven for people fleeing climate disasters elsewhere.
■ Mayor Johnson’s issued a disaster declaration for Chicagoans hit by this month’s flooding—but that declaration doesn’t come with cash.
■ Now, West Side leaders want federal flood relief.
Chicago’s parking policy reform. Bloomberg’s giving national attention to the city’s elimination of residential parking requirements for developments near public transit.
■ Streetsblog Chicago offers a cost-benefit analysis of averting the Chicago area’s “transit fiscal cliff” by fully funding public transportation.
■ Not too late to register for Sunday’s annual Bike the Drive bicycling takeover of DuSable Lake Shore Drive.
Cross words. The New York Times’ decision to put its Mini Crossword game behind a paywall has sparked outrage—and no shortage of foul language—across social media.
■ The Chicago Reader has a new owner: Noisy Creek—which the Reader says “has no intention of interfering with our editorial vision.”
■ The Reader’s new sibling, Seattle’s The Stranger: “Welcome to the family!”
No knocking necessary. To crack down on student vaping and other offenses, Oak Park and River Forest High School has removed external doors to restrooms …
■ … but not individual stalls.
‘NFL podcast host announces engagement to recent guest.’ That’s Awful Announcing’s headline on Taylor Swift’s decision to make it official with Travis Kelce.
■ Men Yell at Me columnist and author Lyz Lenz, who got the news “24 hours after getting dumped by a guy who was uncomfortable with my career,” says Swift and Kelce are selling “a fantasy world where a woman can be successful and her partner won’t be mad about it.”
■ The Lever: ICE is using Swift’s aviation regulation loophole—designed to obscure celebrities’ private-jet moves—to hide deportation flights …
■ … which reportedly are now taking off in record numbers.
■ The Onion: “Swift Hints New Album Could Be About Her.”
‘Just reading the links in your Public Square emails is depressing, and you have to read the whole damn articles.’ That mix of sympathy and admiration from a reader yesterday confirmed one of the missions underpinning this publication’s origin: We read the news so you don’t have to.
■ That would not have happened (almost) daily since 2017 if not for the financial support from readers such as Mary Godlewski, Jan Menaker Brock (again!), Tom Wethekam (again!), Rick Hutt (again!), Jean and John Meister, Lawrence Weiland, Victoria Engelhardt, Susan Parks, Meredith Schacht, Jan Kieckhefer, Jonathan Yenkin, Carol Hendrick, Crissy Kawamoto, Yolanda Bada, Martin Berg, Myrel Cooke, Ron Brown, Maureen and Jerry Peifer and Kaiser, Mark Zegan, Mary T. Davison, Kelly Martin, Neal Kleemann, David Weindling, Jenny Wittner, Harlene Ellin, Helen Kossler, Ron Castan, Michael Conway, Katherine and Michael Raleigh, Liz Meisterling, John Evans, Skip Yates, Ronald A. Fox, Maria Mooshil, Darold Barnum, John McClelland, Jill Brickman, Art Golab, Allen Matthews, Tom Marker, Tim Colburn, Robin Marohn, Shel Lustig, Ken Hildreth, Rhona Taylor, Beth Mrkvicka, Leslie Hodes, Don Moseley, Tim Woods, Stephanie Zimmermann, Jim Haglund, Ellen Cutter, Dave Kraft, Bob Back and Mike Dessimoz.
■ Join their ranks in The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians for as little as $1, just once, and see your name atop tomorrow’s roll call.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.