As I write this, multiple news outlets have reported that the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is preparing to deploy its Special Response Teams to five major U.S. cities, including Chicago, in the very near future. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s chief of staff Cristina Pacione-Zayas told reporters last week: “There will be tactical teams, mini-tanks, other tools they use in which they plan to do raids, as we saw in Los Angeles.”

For quite a while now, most folks in politics have assumed that Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias and Comptroller Susana Mendoza will probably run for mayor of Chicago in 2027. The incumbent Brandon Johnson is spectacularly unpopular, and a real hunger is developing in the city (again) for new leadership.

House Speaker Chris Welch took the extraordinary actions last week of permanently kicking Representative Fred Crespo (D-Hoffman Estates) out of the House Democratic caucus, stripping him of his legislative staff, removing him from his appropriations committee chair’s position, and booting him from the bicameral Legislative Audit Commission.

During a rip-roaring speech in New Hampshire last week, Governor JB Pritzker called for mass national protests and “disruption,” assailed “do-nothing” Democrats for their “simpering timidity,” and labeled President Donald Trump a “madman” who cannot be reasoned with. The Jewish Ukrainian-American governor said of Trump: “Stop tearing down the Constitution in the name of my ancestors. Do not claim that your authoritarian power-grabs are about anti-Semitism. When you destroy social justice, you are disparaging the very foundation of Judaism.”