ICEBlock blocked / ‘F*** them kids’ / Quizzes! / Weekly Dingus

ICEBlock blocked. Under pressure from President Trump’s Justice Department, Apple has yanked from its App Store applications people have been using to report the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

■ Joshua Aaron, creator of the most prominent of those, ICEBlock—which has been downloaded more than a million times—tells CNN: “This is protected speech under the First Amendment. … We are determined to fight this with everything we have.”

■ At the Department of Homeland Security’s request, the FAA’s established unprecedented drone restrictions over the whole Chicago area—a move the American Civil Liberties Union sees as an attempt to limit the public and media’s ability to learn what’s going on …

■ … and that the Freedom of the Press Foundation sees as DHS “taking their war on civilians—and especially on journalists—to the sky.”

■ Immigration advocates have launched their own database to track arrests and deportations in the area.

■ After firing dozens of existing immigration judges, the administration’s tapped National Guard and Army Reserve lawyers as temporary replacements.

‘F*** them kids.’ Fresh details are emerging in ICE agents’ early-Tuesday raid on a Chicago apartment building—where children were pulled out of bed …

■ … and dragged to U-Hauls.

■ At least four kids were reportedly U.S. citizens.

■ The Daily Beast: “ICE Barbie Ordered Midnight Raid From the Sky.”

■ Chalkbeat: Elected officials and union leaders are calling on the community to help protect immigrant kids and their families.

■ Block Club: Veterans are condemning ICE’s “mob tactics” at its Broadview detention center: “Our democracy is being crushed.”

■ The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland recounts “My travels through Chicago: Tear gas, resistance and Trump’s big immigration crackdown.”

‘It’s time she be held accountable.’ Gov. Pritzker says Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem “should no longer be able to step foot” in Illinois without taking journalists’ questions.

■ Press Watch columnist Dan Froomkin prescribes new rules for reporters covering Trump.

■ CBS News reportedly has a new editor-in-chief: Conservative editor and writer Bari Weiss.

Out-of-office politics. Some federal employees say their voicemail messages have been altered in the federal shutdown to blame Democrats.

■ In what The American Prospect dubs the “Look What You Made Me Do” phase of the shutdown, the Republican administration has cut federal funding for blue-state energy programs—as red states get to keep theirs.

■ Chicago’s out at least $2.1 billion in transit funding …

■ … including cash for the Red Line Extension and the Red and Purple Modernization projects.

■ Here’s Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s full list of Illinois programs affected.

■ Columnist Christopher Armitage suggests blue states fight back by refusing to send cash to Washington: “They’re … the ones bankrolling the entire federal system.”

■ Columnist Charlotte Clymer: “Remarkably, Democrats are winning the shutdown debate.”

■ Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich says air traffic controllers are key to ending the shutdown.

Cops gone wrong. The Sun-Times: Two officers accused of Paycheck Protection Program fraud and domestic violence are the sons of two former Chicago police superintendents.

■ The chief of Chicago’s police union is out—at least temporarily—at the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police board as investigations probe charges of financial misconduct.

Ethics cases, begone. Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin will pay a $30,000 fine to settle charges that she diverted taxpayer cash for personal and political things and improperly fired whistleblowers.

■ A Tribune editorial: Illinois school superintendents are cashing in as students fall behind.

‘Go 8 for 8 and award yourself a tiny gold chimp.’ With a nod to the late Jane Goodall, The Conversation’s quizmaster, past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel, lays down a fresh news quiz.

■ Your Chicago Public Square columnist racked up another disappointing 6/8—as the image above illustrates, flubbing Qs 1 and 6.

■ Up for more? Try Justin Kaufmann’s Axios quiz about Chicago-area shopping malls (8/10 right for Square) …

■ … or the latest from City Cast (4/5 correct here).

Weekly Dingus. Lyz Lenz’s pick: “Dunning-Kruger poster boy Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.”

■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst bestows the official “Hegseth Microdick” award on FBI Director Kash Patel.

‘From a fitness standpoint, it is best to just leave the newspapers on the ground, in their natural state.’ Embracing Trump’s physical fitness challenge, Pulitzer-winning columnist Dave Barry comes up short.

■ The Onion: “Trump Asks JD Vance To Research Whether President Allowed To Kill Vice President.”

Saturday Night Live’s back. LateNighter lists five things to watch as the show returns—with an overhauled cast and writing staff and a history-making return host.

■ Let the Tribune’s Chris Borrelli (gift link, possible because readers like you have pitched in to underwrite the cost of creating Square) introduce you to the photographers who for half a century have shot those SNL host photos that lead into the show’s commercial breaks.

■ Here’s a video montage of those shots from the show’s first 50 years.

■ Jon Stewart broke into Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue last night.

■ Onstage at Saudi Arabia’s comedy festival, Dave Chappelle complained, “It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.”

■ Comedian—and Columbia College Chicago alumnus—W. Kamau Bell: “$1.6 million wouldn’t be enough for me to go to Saudi Arabia and take the government’s money. And I could use that money. These kids won’t stop eating.”

■ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke explains why Taylor Swift’s new album, “which I have not listened to because I’m wokeness-intolerant, is deeply anti-American and something you should feel enraged about for at least the next 10 weeks.”

Feeling unmoist? September was one of Chicago’s driest months in 150 years.

Baseball news. The Cubs are headed to the National League Division Series.

Thanks. Chris Koenig made this edition better.

Chicago under assault / ‘Loop puncher’ nabbed? / Hackers’ delight

Chicago under assault. The Sun-Times details a massive middle-of-the-night federal immigration raid on a Chicago apartment building …

■ … including, in the words of The New York Times (gift link), “drones, helicopters, trucks and dozens of vehicles.”

■ The TRiiBE has a breakdown (link revised).

■ Block Club talks to residents returning home after the raid: “It looks like hell.”

‘We know full well there will be more trouble at Broadview.’ A Tribune editorial demands Illinois governments do more to protect protesters in Broadview …

■ … a facility that the Sun-Times and WBEZ report has become an immigrant detention center—with no beds, limited food … and toilets out in the open.

■ Guardian video samples Chicago’s resistance.

■ Columnist Christopher Armitage says local officials can fight back against federal violence through state criminal prosecution.

■ The Better Government Association is pressing the Illinois attorney general to investigate reports that some local police departments are violating a state law forbidding them from participating in immigration enforcement.

■ Cook County’s public defender and a coalition of other legal groups are petitioning the Cook County Circuit Court to forbid warrantless immigration arrests in or near courthouses.

‘If the American people don’t push back … the damage to our democracy could be enormous.’ Dan Froomkin at Heads Up News: Protesting against the militarization of blue cities is urgent—and helps protect the 2026 elections.

■ Actor and political activist Jane Fonda’s relaunching a free-speech organization her father established during the repressive McCarthy era of the 1950s.

■ Indivisible Chicago’s rallying forces for Oct. 18’s Hands Off Chicago / No Kings! protest. (Cartoon: Mark Stopeck.)

Big shutdown loophole. Time reports that the president’s taking wide latitude in deciding which federal workers are “essential.”

■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget boss, Russell Vought, “has weaponized the shutdown by continuing his illegal impoundments of congressionally approved funding … solely against states with Democratic senators”—including Illinois.

■ Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein reports that 91% of Homeland Security’s staff remains on the job.

■ The White House has fired most of the National Council on the Humanities.

■ Planning to fly? The AP says that if the government shutdown lasts long enough, it could ruin travel plans—with longer airport wait times, flight delays and even cancellations.

■ Former U.S. Labor Secretary (under Bill Clinton) Robert Reich: “I’ve been through government shutdowns. This one is radically different.”

■ Congress has left town, meaning the shutdown will last at least until tomorrow.

‘Is it a worrisome thing if your country’s secretary of defense is openly lusting for death and destruction?’ Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion proprietor Jeff Tiedrich reflects on that “terrifying and embarrassing” presentation to the nation’s generals from the president and his top military official.

■ Here’s a full transcript of their remarks.

■ Poynter’s Tom Jones: “The Pentagon’s bizarre leak crackdown makes it harder for the press to inform the public.”

■ Pulitzer-winning economist Paul Krugman sees cause for hope: “Stone-faced generals, Wall Street pushback and a government shutdown may save America’s quickly declining democracy.” (Cartoon: Mark Fiore.)

■ Columnist Eric Zorn on the president’s “trifecta of awful AI videos”: “Every time you think Trump has gone as low as he possibly can, the limbo bar drops.”

Colleges under Trump’s thumb? The Wall Street Journal reports (gift link, possible because readers like you underwrite the cost of producing Chicago Public Square) that the White House is pressing nine colleges that it thinks could be “good actors” to sign a sweeping agreement banning the use of race or sex in admissions, freezing tuition and capping international enrollment if they want access to preferential federal funding.

■ At Northwestern University—not one of those nine—a group of students are boycotting the school’s “antibias training video,” which they complain conflates antisemitism and criticism of Israel.

‘Loop puncher’ nabbed? A 37-year-old man’s in custody, accused of randomly attacking a 23-year-old woman on a Red Line platform Tuesday.

■ John Greenfield at Streetsblog Chicago: The CTA needs to be safer, but “Trump shouldn’t use that as an excuse” to send in the National Guard.

■ ProPublica: A Chicago cop who falsely blamed an ex-girlfriend for dozens of traffic tickets has pleaded guilty but will avoid prison.

■ Chicago’s coming off a record summer for tourism.

‘Another pretend solution for high drug prices.’ The American Prospect’s David Dayen says the president’s hypothetical “TrumpRx” website would “just refer people to the drug companies, which use direct-to-consumer pricing to distract from continued high profits.”

■ Lurie Children’s Hospital research finds kids at double the risk for long COVID if they’ve been infected twice.

■ The Onion: “RFK Jr. Advocates Using Beef Tallow In Home Birth Tubs.”

Hackers’ delight. As Microsoft prepares to drop support in two weeks for its Windows 10 software, The American Prospect reports, up to 400 million computers will wind up vulnerable to mischief-makers—or as part of a billion pounds of electronic waste.

■ Public Notice: Google’s joined “the presidential bribe club.”

■ ProPublica: “Elon Musk’s SpaceX took money directly from Chinese investors … raising new questions about foreign ownership interests in one of America’s most important military contractors.”

‘The world’s conscience for animals.’ Dr. Jane Goodall is dead at 91 …

■ … just days after visiting with schoolkids in Chicago, where she said she experienced a career-defining moment.

■ Here she is on WTTW in 2010 talking to Chicago’s Carol Marin.

Thanks. Chris Koenig made this edition better.