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.
