‘Absolute terror.’ A lawyer and rapid-response immigration lawyer team member describes the ICE arrest early yesterday of a teacher at a North Side daycare center as parents and kids watched.
■ It was caught on video.
■ Politico: It happened just days after passage of a new Illinois law forbidding ICE arrests in and around daycare facilities.
■ The Washington Post (gift link): It’s one of the first instances during the second Trump administration in which immigration officers entered school grounds to make an arrest.
■ Hundreds of angry neighbors rallied outside that center last night.
■ Columnist Eric Zorn: “If they’ve run out of undocumented felons in the Chicago area to round up and are reduced to snatching up daycare workers, then they should get the fuck outta town and find another city to terrorize.”
■ The Onion deadpans: “Child Care Worker Proves No Match For Full Force Of U.S. Military.”
■ The Onion deadpans: “Child Care Worker Proves No Match For Full Force Of U.S. Military.”
■ The Daily Northwestern’s assembled a guide to your rights in the face of the federal incursion …
■ … including tips for effectively recording immigration enforcement.
■ Columnist Christopher Armitage suggests that state attorneys general are “the secret weapon to defeating Trump and Republicans”—and he recommends citizens in Illinois and elsewhere demand investigations into federal crimes committed in their states.
‘People shouldn’t be sleeping next to overflowing toilets.’ U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman has laid down the law for ICE—ordering it to end overcrowded and filthy conditions at its Broadview processing facility, with 15 directives that include free bottled water on detainees’ request.
■ Read his full temporary restraining order here.
■ Sen. Duckworth’s demanding an end to “secret detentions” of citizen protesters.
■ The pope’s asking Homeland Security to allow communion to be administered at Broadview.
The feds’ ‘propaganda.’ The Sun-Times analyzes how Trump administration media strategy aims to portray Chicago as a city at war.
■ Federal Judge Sara Ellis was set to rule at Chicago Public Square’s email publication deadline on whether to extend her temporary restraining order on ICE brutality against reporters and protesters …
■ … after a day in which she grilled Justice Department lawyers about the behavior of, in the words of Wonkette’s Marcie Jones, “Border Patrol Commander / diminutive Nazi cosplayer Gregory Kent Bovino.”
■ Among evidence presented yesterday: Video in which Bovino tells agents, “Everybody fucking gets it if they touch you.”
■ Watch the Square account on Bluesky for updates.
Reasons to be cheerful. Popular Information spotlights six election results that didn’t make the headlines—including the ouster of a Pennsylvania sheriff who collaborated with ICE and progressives’ control of a Texas school board that censored books.
■ Lawyer/columnist Robert Hubbell: “Republicans went down in flames on Tuesday because they refused to acknowledge that ‘We aren’t in 2024 anymore.’”
■ Heads Up News proprietor Dan Froomkin: “The resistance is ascendant.”
■ But, PolitiFact notes, Donald Trump’s not done pressuring states and Congress to change how next year’s elections will go.
■ Ex-Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hanging it up.
Higher tollway fees, sales taxes ahead. The Sun-Times breaks down what Illinois’ new transit spending bill means for you.
Flying? Not so fast. Chicago and Midway airports are among those targeted for thousands of flight cuts beginning tomorrow—as the government staggers through this record shutdown.
■ The Washington Post (gift link): “A 10 percent cut at … O’Hare … could mean 121 fewer flights—or more than 14,500 fewer seats—a day.”
■ A Chicago Aviation Department general manager faces federal fraud charges, accused of grifting a quarter-million dollars from a snow removal company hired at O’Hare.
‘A hack move.’ Eric Zorn isn’t buying U.S. Rep. “Chuy” Garcia’s explanation for the timing of his decision not to seek reelection—giving his chief of staff a virtually unchallenged path to succession.
■ A Chicago City Council member nevertheless is considering a write-in campaign.
■ State Sen. Willie Preston—running for Congress from the South Side—is under scrutiny for his profane pro-Trump social media posts.
Yay, Trib. The official Homeland Security Twitter X account condemned the Trib for its reporting on inhumane conditions in Broadview.
■ Zorn celebrates new bargain rates for Trib digital subscribers.
A chattier Google Maps. The most popular navigation app is getting an AI upgrade that will, among other things, use landmarks instead of distance to advise drivers when to turn or exit.
■ Columnist and science fiction author Cory Doctorow revisits “the 40-year economic mistake that let Google conquer (and enshittify) the world.” (Note: He lays much of the blame on “Chicago School economists.”)
■ Hear him talk about his creation of the word enshittify in a Chicago Public Square podcast.