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

What To Know This Week — ICE just turned a suburban processing center into a fortress, City Hall is dusting off its annual “oh no the budget” routine, and Springfield is still pretending the transit fiscal cliff will solve itself. 

3 Headlines:

1. ICE Built a Prison in the Suburbs

Block Club: Less than two weeks after ICE agents killed Silverio Villegas González in Franklin Park during a traffic stop, and after days of protests, ICE threw up high fencing around its Broadview facility, stationed armed agents on the roof with pepper-ball guns, and turned Beach Street into a barricaded checkpoint.

Families are terrified to commute, send kids to school, or go to work because the raids are unpredictable.

Broadview is the frontline for Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz” — a ramped-up enforcement push that’s hitting both immigrants and U.S. citizens in Chicago’s suburbs. The Trump administration wants to normalize fortress-like ICE facilities in our neighborhoods, and the money being spent to militarize is money not going to Medicaid, schools, or SNAP. Chicago has networks of lawyers, and observers; Franklin Park, Melrose Park, and Broadview families are often alone against federal agents with military gear.

And in other horrible ICE news: the Sun-Times has obtained Franklin Park police bodycam footage that completely undercuts ICE’s official story of why they killed Silverio Villegas González.

The Northwest Side Rapid Response Network is now running dawn patrols. State Sen. Graciela Guzmán is pulling shifts in her car to protect neighbors. Congressional candidate (and friend of 312) Kat Abugazaleh was slammed to the ground by ICE agents at a protest this week. As she put it: “If they are willing to assault me on camera, imagine what they are doing to detainees behind boarded-up windows.”

And groups like ICIRR are urging people to get involved: there are daily protests in the morning and at 6 PM from here on out.

Why It Matters: ICE wants Chicago’s suburbs to feel isolated and hopeless. The counter-strategy is solidarity that’s noisy, visible, and relentless.

If you see ICE activity, call the hotline at (855) 435-7693 and follow northwestsiderrt.

2. Soon It Will Be Budget Season

WTTW: Chicago isn’t out of money — though the federal funding crisis that the city faces (like many other municipalities right now) is real. It’s always about who pays. 

We’re staring at a $982 million budget gap for 2025 — less than last year, sure, but still nearly a billion dollars in the hole. Chicago is a rich city in a rich state — so why are most of the 23 revenue ideas proposed by the city subcommittee regressive? Why are garbage fees, grocery taxes, and property hikes that land squarely on working people the only solution to our current funding issues?

Why It Matters: Chicago isn’t broke. Unless this city grows the guts to tax corporations and billionaires, budget season will just keep being a shell game where regular people cover for the rich.

3. In 2025, Fascists Hate the Trains

Sun-Times: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy — Trump’s hatchet man at DOT — just threatened to yank federal funding from CTA and Boston’s MBTA if they don’t “deter crime, stop fare evasion, and provide a clean environment” within two weeks. CTA is already staring down a 40% service cut in 2026 as COVID relief expires and Springfield failed to pass a funding bill in May. The Regional Transportation Authority just robbed Peter (Metra/Pace) to pay Paul (CTA) by shifting $74 million to delay the axe until next summer.

In other words: Duffy’s ultimatum is hitting an agency on the edge of collapse, in a region where tens of thousands of people will lose reliable transit if Springfield doesn’t act this fall.

Why It Matters: IMO, one of the interesting paradoxes of this stage of late stage capitalism is that 2025 American fascists, unlike their historic counterparts offer few material incentives as they decimate human rights and infrastructure. Yesterday’s fascists (mostly Mussolini) bragged they “made the trains run on time.” In 2025, they don’t even pretend that they’re offering a better world to — they just make cuts. Duffy’s ultimatum weaponizes “crime” to push CTA toward its fiscal cliff, punishes two noncompliant blue cities, and softens the ground for further privatization and defunding of muncipalities that still pay more than they get back from the federal government. Besides being such caricatures that their narrative flywheel outcamps The Boys, there’s very little to gain from this administration unless you’re close enough to cut deals with them directly.

1 Big Question: The Machine is Dead

Chicago Magazine: Dominic Pacyga’s new book Clout City tells the history of Chicago’s 20th century machine — a system of ward bosses, patronage jobs, and loyalty where power was about loyalty, control, and who got cut in.

There’s not still some cigar-smoke ward boss in Bridgeport pulling strings: this system peaked in the 1970s and collapsed as the city diversified, suburbanized, and privatized: Daley nepotism morphed into straight-up corporate deals.

We’re living in the vaccum: right now, it’s being filled by consultants, billionaire donors, and the right-wing narrative flywheel.

Without a durable, democratic structure, power gets bought outright.

The Question: If the old machine is truly dead, what do we build that redistributes power down instead of up — is it possible without just getting bought out?

2 Red Flags Stressing Me Out Today: 

1. Mamdani’s Progressive Revenue Roadmap

Politico: NYC mayoral frontrunner, milennial hero, former rapper, Zohran Mamdani is building his platform by borrowing proven revenue policies from other cities, mayors, and legislators. As quoted: raising corporate tax rates isn’t radical socialism; it’s just doing what New Jersey already does. He points to Michelle Wu’s fare-free bus routes in Boston, Philly’s Hub of Hope transit-based homeless outreach, and Denver’s STAR crisis-response teams as off-the-shelf ideas New York should scale.

It’s a simple but devastating contrast with Chicago’s current budget debate. While our city floats a “menu” of nickel-and-dime hikes (grocery taxes, garbage fees, higher property taxes in already-disinvested neighborhoods), Mamdani frames his agenda around who actually has money. There’s more here to learn, especially as his millionaire’s tax will need statewide support, similar to the Fair Tax constitutional referendum that got wrecked in Illinois because it personally offended Ken Griffin.

Why It Matters: Chicago leaders are entering budget season insisting their hands are tied. But other cities are showing that taxing wealth and corporate profits, piloting free transit, and expanding crisis care isn’t utopian — it’s policy already in effect. The political move here isn’t innovation; it’s courage. If New Jersey, Boston, Philly, and Denver can do it, what’s Chicago’s excuse?

2. JB Pritzker, It’s Time for Your Mon Mothma Era

The Hill: Gov. JB Pritzker hopped on X this week to welcome Jimmy Kimmel back to late-night TV after wildly intense public outcry re: presidential media censorship by quoting Andor: “Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that.”

The whole show is about elites taking personal risks and burning resources to fight fascism. I don’t think it’s bad for our billionaire governor to be quoting the show where power elites burn their entire fortune, reputation, family, and life to make the end to empire possible.

Why It Matters: Here is another Andor quote I can only hope JB Pritzker is also thinking about. We can all make our minds sunless places, I don’t think we need to gatekeep that. Here’s another place to move money that the Governor could support.

Chicago 312 exists because there’s a gap in local, progressive, Chicago-centered content. Help us reach the same number of people that the right wing flywheel does: