^{Hi, it’s H. You’re getting this email because at some point you decided you wanted to know more about Chicago politics and television. I don’t know why. Good luck to you.}

Welcome to The Chicago 312 — a new weekly roundup format:
3 Headlines. 1 Question. 2 Things Keeping Me Up at Night.

Whether you're in labor, organizing, policy, or comms — you need sharper context, better story framing, and real-time reads on power. That’s what this gives you.

You’ll still get the occasional deep dive email from me (like the Andor recaps, you nerds), but this format is meant to be a regular signal in the noise: faster context, clearer narrative breakdowns, fewer hours wasted rage-scrolling through bad takes.

Let me know what’s helpful, what’s missing, or what I should break down next.

3 Headlines:

🚨 The 35th Ward just got a new alderperson and the council had a full-blown identity crisis about it.

Anthony Quezada, a progressive, openly gay Latino organizer and former Carlos Rosa staffer, is officially in. That’s a win for organized left power in the city.
But this wasn’t just a vote on one appointment. It was a soft test of progressive coalition strength in the council—and a proxy war over committee control.

🧩 Reilly and Beale tried to seize the moment to claw their way back onto Budget.
🧩 Rumors swirled that Johnson’s staff wanted to yank committee chairs from Vasquez, Hadden, and Martin.
🧩 Hadden says the mayor didn’t have the votes—and she’s probably right.

So while the appointment passed 32–11, the council drama signals something deeper:
There’s still tension inside the progressive flank (if you’re reading this, you’re probably losing both sleep and hair over how obvious this is).

📚 Read this piece if you care about who actually holds power at City Hall—and what Chicago’s progressive movement needs to do next.

🚨 A junkyard has operated illegally in Englewood for a decade.

Across from a historic park, next to schools, on a city-owned lot, under not one but two aldermen and multiple city departments who all said they’d do something.

Guess what? Nothing changed.

Meanwhile, city officials and conservative "good governance" grifters want you to think the real scandal is...
🌀 a zoning appointment
🌀 aldermanic committee drama
🌀 or the mayor doing his job

But this is the scandal:
💥 Illegal, dangerous operations in majority-Black neighborhoods are ignored.
💥 North Side developers and absentee landlords rack up fines with impunity.
💥 Kids in Englewood live next to wreckage no white ward would tolerate.

This is what environmental racism actually looks like—decades of structural neglect dressed up as bureaucratic process.
📣 Remember this the next time someone says the problem is that Chicago has "too much local power."

📊 Is Brandon Johnson really less popular than measles?

No. Low bar, I know!

But a very overcooked poll said he was — and right-wing media ran with it.

👉 The poll was done by a failed GOP candidate
👉 Funded by Paul Vallas’s crew
👉 Boosted by Juan Rangel (yes, that one — defrauded investors, spent public funds at fancy restaurants, ran UNO into the ground)
👉 Designed to go viral on Fox and end up on Bill Maher, where Rahm Emanuel could say something weird about Beyoncé again

It worked.
That’s how disinformation cycles start.
That’s why people on the left are repeating Austin Berg talking points without realizing it.

This analysis by Taylor Moore is a week old — but I’m sharing it anyway because it’s good. Annnnnd while I’m admittedly quoted in it, I’d share anyway, because:

🧠 If you care about how narrative power works, read it.
📡 If you're tired of polls being treated like fact without examining who benefits, read it.
📩 And if you’re someone who’s been quietly thinking “wait… something about this feels off,” you’re right.

1 Question:

I wrote about Kat Abughazaleh at length the week before last. Since then, many people have DM me, or yell at me on social media, about their qualms about her campaign, many of them valid.

I remain deeply enthusiastic about a pro trans young person taking the seat and being willing to use, at scale, digital media tactics I have yet to see anyone else in Chicago use effectively, but I am very aware that this might not hit for people in the district. And I know that the Lori Lightfoot effect is real even for people with the best intentions.

At any rate: I have a conversation with Abughazaleh scheduled in the next couple of weeks.

Chicago, what should I ask her? Give me your crustiest takes and questions.

2 Things Troubling Me:

Tariffs, huh? Even if you don’t care at all about the complete gutting of the federal government, the decimation of civil rights, and the horrors of detaining people in offshore prison camps without habeas corpus… what about the money? Even Elon, fresh off his agonizing defeat, has an issue. The world is saying, in the long term, “we are done with the United States” — what does that mean for how we organize domestically and internationally?

Boston Dynamics makes robots for law enforcement agencies, the kind immortalized in a very creepy black and white Black Mirror episode. They heard the feedback that their law enforcement robots were too creepy, and added an adorable skin.