Welcome to Chicago 312: 3 Headlines. 1 Big Question. 2 Red Flags. Subscribe here.

Happy 2026! It’s already starting to feel just like 2025, but worse. Let’s get into it, because a lot has happened already and it’s mostly bad. 👍

3 Headlines:

1. CBP + ICE Are Everywhere, Again

Block Club Chicago: Yesterday DHS killed a mother in Minneapolis, claims she "weaponized her car," then called the neighborhood's response "domestic terrorism." It’s the same lie we saw in Chicago last fall, and it shows that in every single case—Franklin Park, Brighton Park, and now Minneapolis—the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used the same script. What happened in Minneapolis is horrific, and especially troubling for anyone who has seen how CBP responds to legal observers and anyone in their path right now. Killing this woman, less than a block from where George Floyd was murdered 5 years ago, is part of the encroaching Overton window of accepted violence this administration has tried to push throughout its illegal deployments into US cities.

In a similar vein — this Block Club write up is the definitive archive of Operation Midway Blitz — worth reading the whole thing, with contributions from many incredible reporters at Block Club. And with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) going into effect officially turned the U.S. interior into a high-tech dragnet with $75 billion for ICE, and a $5,000 "apprehension fee" that makes deportation a revenue-generating activity, Chicago is becoming the stress test for whether a "Sanctuary City" can hold out.

Why It Matters: In the vein of “the limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those they oppress,’ all of this escalation and horror connects back to what can be done by local government. One place to start: don’t collaborate.

And tonight, CCPSA (the community oversight body for CPD) is holding a public meeting about concerns that CPD is collaborating with federal authorities. More on that soon.

2. Chicago’s 2026 Budget: Asset Stripping for Fun and Profit

Tribune: The Council effectively killed Mayor Johnson’s $82M "Head Tax" (a fee on big corporations) and replaced it with a scavenger hunt for revenue. Moderate alders, backed by donors who spent millions to block a corporate tax, realized they had a veto-proof majority (30 votes). They rejected Johnson's "Protecting Chicago" framework as "anti-growth."

In response, Johnson let this budget pass to avoid a city shutdown, with executive orders on medical debt and police overtime. While the budget managed to protect "wins" like the Social Media Tax (SMART) for mental health and year-round youth employment, these are high-visibility crumbs compared to the $1.15 billion structural hole. By choosing video poker over corporate taxes, the City Council has sent a clear message: Chicago is "open for business," but if you're a resident with an unpaid ambulance bill or a neighbor near a new gambling terminal, you’re the one who pays. And if those bets don't pay off, Johnson is already "bracing" for mid-year layoffs of community safety workers.

Why it Matters: This is the first time in Chicago history the Council has passed their own spending plan over a Mayor’s active opposition — which gives the Council a new form of power. In essence, the moderate + conservative alders know they can get enough votes to tell the Mayor to kick rocks whenever they feel like.

Enter the first City Council v. Mayor showdown of the year with this new power dynamic….

3. Council Wars 2: Return of the SNAP Curfew

Block Club: Last June, the Council passed a "Snap Curfew" that would have allowed police to impose a curfew with just 30 minutes’ notice. Mayor Johnson vetoed it, calling it "unconstitutional" and "lazy governance," and the Council couldn't muster the 34 votes to override him.

So Hopkins rebranded. The new "Time and Place" ordinance ups the notice to 12 hours, trying to give the CPD Superintendent the power to declare a four-hour exclusion zone anywhere in the city.

Why It Matters: Letting the Police Superintendent unilaterally shut down any four-hour window of public life with 12 hours' notice would likely increase police overtime—a budget line that already hit $250.8 million in 2025 (151% over budget). And as the National Lawyer’s Guild has already pointed out, vesting the CPD with "legislative authority" to change city laws on the fly, usually leads to the city paying out millions in civil rights settlements—the exact kind of "one-time expense" the new budget borrows money to cover!

1 Big Question:

Operation Absolute Resolve snatched Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their compound in Caracas — some might call this, extremely illegal! Or a violation of international law and standards, even if we usually pretend those don’t apply to the US anyway!

Like Garbage Day said, “It feels silly to say this — after years of Trumpian madness — but there is seemingly no limit to how far they will go to feed the algorithm. No limit to their craven desire to dominate the attention economy.“

We are seeing the collapse of the liberal order into raw, hard-edge transactionalism. The ‘Donroe Doctrine’ officially ditches any pretense that the US cares about human rights or democracy abroad. The last 40 years of being the world’s police? Whatever, we’re a giant hedge fund with nukes now.

And Operation Absolute Resolve, like any good soft launch of a new doctrine, was designed to feed the algorithm: minutes after the strike was announced, a flood of hyper-realistic AI-generated media—likely a mix of state-sanctioned "proof of life" and AI slop was everywhere. By the time fact-checkers noticed that "jubilant Caracas crowds" were actually recycled footage, it had 14 million views on X alone. The administration used AI to create a "victory" narrative so loud that the legal and human costs became footnotes.

I wrote a lot last year about the ways that local right wing media plays into national stories, building out a narrative flywheel that feels almost impossible to take down.

And it’s important to flag that this is already showing up with ICE, especially in Chicago (including the countless times in the last year that DHS/CBP cut together the world’s worst trailers for human rights violations) — not to mention that, according to Axios, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is already using the "liberation" of Venezuela to justify ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

This is the culmination of the Right-Wing Media Machine finally syncing up with federal brute force: content shaping sovereignty. Any attempts to counter this in Chicago requires a counter flywheel, or things that are meaningful enough to bust through the engagement value of AI slop in the news cycle.

2 Red Flags: 

🚨Governor Running for President Decides Taxing Billionaires Is Very Uncool

Capitol News Illinois: Gov. JB Pritzker—who, reminder, is a billionaire—just told everyone that the graduated income tax is "not a priority" for 2026. To be fair, he spent $58 million of his own change in 2020 to try and pass this bill. But now, while looking at a $2.2 billion deficit, federal cuts from the Trump administration that are going to gut social services, including 1 billion in childcare funds frozen this week, it’s clear Pritzker doesn’t seem to think a “tax the rich” narrative is going to be a winner when it comes to his presidential aspirations.

Why It Matters: If Chicago groups want the "Fair Tax" or the "Millionaire Surcharge," we have to make it more politically expensive for him to ignore it than it is to fight for it.

🚨 Why a Small Town Won’t Stop Stoning its Residents to Death

This is the best thing I read in 2025 about the national media landscape, for better or worse.

Next time you’re in a meeting where people keep using the word ‘narrative’ and waving their hands around, say “we should make a Chotiner/Shirley Jackson crossover fanfiction.”

That’s it. Go Bears.

If you’re waiting for a non-312 email from me, thank you for your patience, I got hit with the superflu.

In the meantime, please send me any and all recommendations for non-peer reviewed remedies and/or your favorite archival AskHistorians posts.

BONUS update on the Congressional race in 09:

This piece from Matthew Eadie, details the immense amount of work that AIPAC is doing to secure the field for Laura Fine, their chosen candidate, including bullying Bruce Leon (to be clear, also a Zionist candidate) off the ballot.

To me, Bruce Leon is famous because a little over a year ago, while running for school board, Bruce Leon sent a series of texts to every person whose number he could get, inviting them to see him at Smoke by Crunch, apparently a real restaurant that any of us, including Bruce Leon, could go to at any time. This message lacked context around him also running for school board, which meant many of the people who he sent this message to were… troubled and confused, wondering when they met a Bruce and why he wanted to meet them at Smoke by Crunch. I can only imagine that Smoke by Crunch is where Bruce Leon plans to celebrate his refusal to concede to power.

To be clear, in that text message I am taking on the persona of AIPAC, because by my standards, Bruce Leon has tons of money, part of the reason he continues to run and so many moderate Dems in the city smile politely 🙂 

Stand strong against AIPAC, comrade.