‘He’s losing it.’ Gov. Pritzker says President Trump’s back-and-forth on immigration enforcement in Chicago suggests “some dementia” …
■ … and yet, on yesterday’s official Mexican Independence Day, Trump Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem yesterday led a dramatic blitz—with helicopters and smoke bombs—to arrest … um … six Elgin roommates …
■ … reportedly including two U.S. citizens apparently nabbed by mistake.
■ ICE agents involved in the fatal shooting of a man in Franklin Park Friday weren’t wearing bodycams, prompting Pritzker to complain, “The federal government is not policing itself.”
■ Illinois elected officials are encouraging people in the U.S. illegally to stay home as much as possible.
■ Block Club: Little Village residents are blowing actual whistles to warn neighbors about immigration actions.
■ The Marshall Project shares a mother of three’s first-person account: ICE is locking more immigrants in solitary confinement under Trump.
■ If the feds interfere with those protesting legally, Mayor Johnson’s signed an order directing Chicago cops to work with the protesters.
■ After an hour-long session with no topics off-limits and nothing off the record, a Tribune editorial praises Police Supt. Larry Snelling: “Johnson’s best decision as mayor.” (Paywall-free gift link, possible because readers voluntarily underwrite the cost of producing Chicago Public Square.)
■ Two Cook County commissioners have introduced a resolution requiring county agencies to notify the board of any interactions with immigration officials.
Pip pip, cheerio. As Trump arrived for a state visit to the United Kingdom, protesters projected images of him and convicted and dead sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein onto the walls of Windsor Castle …
■ … leading to the arrest of four.
■ The Daily Beast: “Trump, 79, Battles Jet Lag With Late Night Rage-Post Spree.”
■ Jeff Tiedrich at Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion: “Elderly Psychopath Blows Up Another Boat.”
They hate to see it. Poynter: Even conservatives are pushing back at Attorney General Pam Bondi’s assertion that the First Amendment doesn’t protect “hate speech.”
■ Bondi’s walked some of that back.
■ Columnist and former Illinois U.S. Rep. Marie Newman: “Gaslighting … is why fascists are frequently successful in taking over democracies.”
■ Trib columnist Laura Washington: Trump and MAGA’s “war against Black women is heating up.”
‘It was me.’ Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein publishes leaked texts from the man accused of shooting and killing reactionary influencer Charlie Kirk.
■ Prosecution documents say the suspect acknowledged in messages to his romantic partner that he was the shooter.
■ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg swung by a Sunday vigil for Kirk in Northbrook.
■ Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz recalls the day in 2019 she sat down with Kirk, “looking for answers. It didn’t go as I had planned.”
■ The Forward explains comparisons between Kirk and Horst Wessel, “the young Nazi activist whose 1930 murder turned him into a martyr for Adolf Hitler’s movement.”
■ A federal judge has rejected terrorism charges against the man accused of shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive on a Manhattan street last year.
Measles rising. A 4-year-old unvaccinated kid is suburban Cook County’s second case of the year.
■ Gov. Pritzker’s issued an order designed to make vaccines easy to get in Illinois—to allay confusion “concerning actions taken by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”
‘You have one human … trying to guide hundreds of lives into a busy airport safely.’ A man whose wife and 16-year-old son died in a January crash at Reagan National Airport reacts to a Washington Post report (another gift link) that the disaster followed the FAA’s failure to act on warnings that the airport’s traffic had reached “dangerous levels.”
■ A growing number of airlines are now banning portable batteries that travelers use to power up electronic gadgets in flight.
CBS News’ ‘nepo baby owner.’ ProPublica founder Dick Tofel takes a critical look at the new corporate boss of a storied journalism organization—David Ellison, who’s “never worked a day in the news business.”
■ The Verge: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s created a super political action committee that in essence can spend unlimited cash in California’s elections.
■ A.V. Club: “With California facing some major elections—a vote about redrawing districts this fall, and a governor race next year—that influence may be felt quite quickly.”
■ Contending that “billionaires and Big Oil caused the climate crisis,” activists are planning “Make Billionaires Pay” protests in New York and across the country this weekend to mark the start of Climate Week.
Ben & ?????’s. Complaining that the brand’s independence has been stifled by its corporate parent, Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield is quitting after 47 years.
■ Partner Ben Cohen shared Greenfield’s letter on Twitter X.
He’s back. Tribune alumnus Charlie Madigan—who in August announced the end of his newsletter* because he “was tired of saying President Trump is outrageous”—is reversing course: “I am not stopping as long as he is president.”
■ Popular Information: Trump’s $15 billion suit against The New York Times is just the latest example of powerful people exploiting the legal system to silence journalists.
■ Columnist Gene Weingarten: Trump’s demanding more than the paper’s worth, “because what it wrote hurt his feelings.”
■ LateNighter: That suit namechecks Saturday Night Live.
■ Squeezed by Republicans’ elimination of federal funding for public media, NPR’s moving to cut its budget by $5 million.
‘Speaking of Emmys, Donald Trump doesn’t have one.’ Back after his triumphant showing Sunday night, Stephen Colbert took a jab at the president.
■ Critic Bill Carter: “The Emmys have a John Oliver problem.”
A Square public service announcement
The Chicago Architecture Center has announced the lineup of more than 200 of the city’s architectural treasures that’ll be open to the public—free!—for its annual Open House Chicago celebration Oct. 18-19.
* Successor to his first blog, The Rambling Gleaner, which your Square columnist was honored to help midwife more than 20 years ago—one 2004 post on which led with this memorable callout to disheartened Democrats: “Give it up, you wussies!”