‘We definitely need something.’ As President Trump threatens to send National Guard units onto Chicago’s streets, the Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg—doing “that truthy-facty thing” journalists do—found a Chicagoan who matches Trump’s assertion that “African American ladies, beautiful ladies” have been begging him to do it …
■ … but no shortage of others call it “terrible.”
■ Mayor Johnson says the plan—if Trump actually does it—would be “the most flagrant violation of our constitution in the 21st century” …
■ … and it seems likely to happen, because The Washington Post reports (gift link, underwritten by Chicago Public Square readers like you) the move’s been in development for weeks—and could happen as soon as September.
■ The AP details how Immigration and Customs Enforcement is using a budget increased tenfold to train a scaled-up workforce.
■ Gov. Pritzker planned a 3 p.m. news conference with Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul to assert there’s no emergency justifying a deployment.
■ New Republic editor Michael Tomasky addresses Pritzker: “Since the mayor of Chicago is kind of a joke … most eyes will be focused on you.”
■ Trump’s troops in Washington are now carrying firearms.
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Trump is using loopholes in the nation’s laws … to use the military against American citizens.”
‘Soft secession.’ Columnist Chris Armitage says blue states—including Illinois under Pritzker—are finally learning to do what red states have done for decades: “Building parallel systems, withholding cooperation and creating facts on the ground that render federal authority meaningless within their borders.”
■ Sen. Bernie Sanders in Chicago yesterday: “A handful of incredibly wealthy people … have enormous powers and control … and we are gathered here today to say that is going to change.”
■ Among things for sale outside Sanders’ rally: Buttons bearing the slogan “Non-Felon for President.”
■ Wired’s editorial director on technology reporters’ increasingly vital role in covering government: “The tech industry and political leaders are the nexus of power in this country and around the world; that fact is of great consequence to every single person living in the kingdom they’re collectively ruling.” (Behind Status’ regressive registration wall, but you can get in just by entering an email address—even a fake one.)
‘Behind every worker, there’s a family that depends on them.’ The American Prospect and Workday Magazine spotlight a Chicago Teamsters local on strike—demanding that bosses turn away immigration authorities without a signed judicial warrant.
■ Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose arrest and wrongful deportation to an El Salvadorian hellhole epitomized the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, surrendered today in Baltimore—and now faces the prospect of imprisonment … in Uganda.
This means ‘lawfare.’ That’s a University of Michigan public policy professor’s take on the Trump administration’s targeting of his political opponents with claims of mortgage fraud.
■ Contending that Trump’s “just looking for a pretext to fire someone who isn’t a loyalist—and who happens, surprise, to be a black woman”—economist Paul Krugman concludes that “nobody is safe from weaponized government.”
■ Politico: The Trump housing official leading probes into the president’s critics was a Northwestern University broadcast journalism student.
■ Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice: Although George W. Bush-era diplomat John Bolton is “an incorrigible warmonger and one of the architects of the horrific and unnecessary Iraq War … we do … need to extend him solidarity at a moment when he is under fascist attack” by the Trump administration.
■ The Bulwark: “The thread that ties John Bolton and Kilmar Abrego Garcia is clear: We have a president who wants to operate outside the law.”
■ Law prof Joyce Vance: “The revenge presidency is in full swing.”
Your government was (sometimes) nice while it lasted. The American Prospect: An “avowedly far-right” federal appeals court has ruled that the National Labor Relations Board*—the agency protecting workers’ rights to bargain with their employers—is unconstitutional.
■ Now in Trump’s thrall, Environmental Protection Agency management is allegedly engaging in union-busting.
■ House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries compares Trump’s review of the Smithsonian museums to the acts of “a racial arsonist.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ As Trump’s team scrubs federal websites of scientific and historic material, the Internet Archive’s secured status as a “Federal Depository Library,” archiving government documents.
Not even close. A decade after Chicago committed to eliminating traffic deaths by 2026, the Sun-Times finds the number’s barely budged—and the annual toll of crashes and injuries has in fact risen.
■ Here’s the city’s own tally.
Saturday Night Live shakeup. Impresario Lorne Michaels has teased that several current cast members won’t be back when the show returns Oct. 4.
■ Columnist Gene Weingarten compares SNL extras’ “flat refusal to acknowledge that things are nuts” to journalism that “sane-washes this regime—pretending not to notice the sheer daily madness.”
■ Former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan echoes those asking why “Times reporters on multiple occasions … saw suspicious and unethical exchanges of cash at political events and waited to report it until now.”
■ The death of the editor of the Austin neighborhood’s Voice newspaper—in a June fire ruled a homicide—casts a deep shadow over the publication’s survival.
Chicago Public Square is free—but it’s not cheap. This service keeps coming—no subscription charges, no paywall, no frustrating “Pay now to unlock the rest” nags—because generous readers have voluntarily stepped forward to underwrite the cost of its production.
■ Pitching in as little as $1, just once, adds your name to the roster of The Legion of Public Squarians—alongside J.J. Tindall (again!), Thomas Gradel, Marianne Griebler, John Aerni, Stan Zoller, Griz Alger, Janice Wolf, Mark Suppelsa, Nancy Hess, Marcie Dosemagen, Bob Saigh, Jerry D. Mason, Julia Knier, Michael Soriano, Alan Dikty, David Painter, Kathy Manofsky, Christine Mackey, LJ in Arkansas, Nancy Burns, Susan Yessne, Diane Scott, Adam Broad, Jeff Currie, Terri Colby, Bennett Hart, Philip Prale, Lil Levant, Alisa dePedro, Tracey Thomas, Christine Koenig, Liz Strause, Paul Kubina, Kermit Carlson, Mike Pillatsch, Ann Spittle, Nancy and Barney Straus, Rob Renfro, Eric Townsend, Karen Hand, Elan Long, Terry Locke, Jo Patton, Daniel Forden, Michael Carniello, Jayson Hansen, Bob Izral, Frances Brady, Jerry Role, Jeanne Loshbough, Janet Grimes, Tim Brandhorst, Timothy Jackson, Dominick Suzanne, Peter Kuttner, Len Jaster, Tim Spencer, Mary Novak, John Culver, Christine Hauri, Christa Velbel, Tom Shepherd, Scottie Kersta-Wilson, Rosalind Rouse, Patty Wallenberg, Barbara Kalina, Cindy Homan, Mary Lanus, Dave Hodgman, Kevin Wallace, Laurie Huget, Mary Sebahar and Julie Vassilatos …
■ … and puts your name atop tomorrow’s roll call in this space.
* Whose employees include your Square columnist’s son.