Former metro editor at Chicago Tribune and Sunday editor at Chicago Sun-Times. Co-author of 10 books, mostly on history. Writer of the Stop the Presses newsletter at www.stopthepresses.news. Subscribe! It's free.
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Breaking news: It's a beautiful weekend in Chicago. So for this weekend, the city has safely hosted: 🚴‍♀️ Bike the Drive where hundreds pedal down a temporarily closed Lake Shore Drive 🏠The ARC music festival (Chicago is the home of house music) ⚾A White Sox game 🍒Farmers markets & food fests 1/
Every protest, big or small, makes a difference. Please keep going.
Shitty answer, though. Cowardly.
Attention Chicago: We will NOT be meeting at Federal Plaza. We now will be meeting at Ida B Wells and Michigan. Time and date depends on the arrival time of the troops: IF TROOPS ARRIVE BEFORE 3PM, PROTEST SAME DAY AT 5PM. IF TROOPS ARRIVE AFTER 3PM, PROTEST NEXT DAY AT 5PM.
Why not Al Capone?
I’m back there in the 687th row, 3rd from the right.
We’re marching through Fulton Market headed west. Probably would be done before you could get here. But not sure.
Blocks and blocks of Chicagoans marching against Trump’s fascism.
In 7 months, Trump has taken the world's most powerful nation and turned it into a train wreck, inviting both our allies and our adversaries to reshape the world based on our irrelevance.
I have questions.
“Few if any analysts see Mr. Trump as a Stalin …” I do, New York Times. I do. But I don’t call him *Mr.* Trump.
Get ready #chicago Save and share this image. It will be helpful when the #iceraids begin
Another dispatch from the “hellhole” of Chicago.
The Trump regime wants us to forget that the Kent State massacre happened — that pitting the National Guard against American citizens is a recipe for disaster.
Must be Gruden’s favorite golf outfit since he wore it last week at Trump’s club in Virginia.
Trump got less than 30% of the vote in Cook County, which includes a lot of suburbs. He got only about 40% in west suburban DuPage County, which used to be rock-ribbed Republican.
Join us for a rally and march starting at 11 a.m. on Monday (Labor Day) at Chicago's Haymarket Memorial to protest Trump's planned military occupation to crush our dissent and force our compliance with cruelty. We will resist.
Too bad Trump wasn't sitting in front of you.
As Trump preps military occupations of Democratic-run cities, his history as a sex predator is relevant. Trump has a lot of experience forcing himself on people.
JB Pritzker uses the word "invasion" to describe what Trump has planned for my city, Chicago. And that's exactly what it would be – an autocratic government trying to crush our dissent because we oppose his corruption, cruelty and incompetence. It's what dictators do.
Pritzker: "National Guard troops, any kind of troops, on the streets of American city don't belong unless there is an insurrection, unless there is truly an emergency. There is not."
And dictatorships aren't competent. That's a myth. They don't care about helping everyday people. They care about money and power.
And it will be shitty for MAGA too, but they won't notice.
Our news media are so broken. There's a way to challenge someone in an interview without looking like you're the press secretary for the other side. ABC's Martha Raddatz badly misses the mark. "Why fight with the president?" she asks.
When MAGA gets done banishing trans people to the ends of the Earth, the right wing will definitely retain its newly formed, super-sincere interest in the purity of girls' sports, right? Right?
“I love this city fiercely. It has given me every good thing in my life. It has given me my children. It has given me my friends who are now my family. It has given me purpose.“ thetriibe.com/2025/08/trum...
Rep. Barry Moore, an Alabama Republican, slipped out of a town hall without saying goodbye or making concluding remarks after his constituents voiced their annoyance with him. Later he said: “We left like any other event.” So he always sneaks out when voters demand answers?
Crony capitalists think that, for sure. I won’t say that describes all capitalists.
I suspect some corporate bosses are OK with Trump building a dictatorship because it will be easier to know who to bribe.
Trump is widely loathed here in Chicago. We will resist.
The Guardian is finally saying it: It’s all about the racism. No “both sides.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
I wouldn't paint all Democrats with a brush from 1987. Some recognize the crisis we face and fight hard. Some don't. I'm supporting the fighters. We don't have any practical alternative to Democrats if we are to stave off MAGA fascism.
Before my time. It was a one-paragraph item as part of a collection of national briefs written from wire service reports.
Examining the past, as history writers do, and trying to understand how we got here. For a piece I'm writing, I'm researching the willingness of media and politicians over decades to boost liars and charlatans like Trump.
Chicago Tribune, 1987: House Speaker Jim Wright and fellow Democrat Beryl Anthony invite New York real estate magnate Donald Trump to host the annual Democratic congressional dinner because “he projects the image they would like the Democratic Party to have.”
"A lot of people are saying maybe we'd like a dictator,” says Trump. And indeed some victims of right-wing brainwashing think dictators can “get things done.” What they don’t understand is that dictatorships are often incompetent. A thread. 1/ 🧵🧵🧵
The Republican Party simply does not believe in representative democracy anymore. It’s turned its back on a bedrock principle of our country in favor of grabbing power by theft.
Good thought.
Did Goering, Goebbels and Himmler have such a good time during the Nazis’ 12-year reign that it was worth what came afterward, with their names enduring as symbols of degradation and evil? Asking for Marco Rubio.
The experts are being forced out of the federal government, leaving Trump’s kooks, crooks and hacks to ruin our country.
Stop quibbling with allies. Fight the fascists instead.
If there are 2028 elections.
As the U.S. becomes a fascist dictatorship isolating itself from the world, the United Nations needs to start looking for a new home.
Joni Ernst, who cast key vote on Hegseth, vandalizes U.S. military and walks away.
Both.
George Will in 2011. He's always been awful.
No notes
Interesting observation. Thanks.
When qualifications are irrelevant and the only value is loyalty to a dictator, corruption flourishes. That's lucrative for a few, but it undermines the system for everyone else. Where there is no justice, just obvious corruption, a functional society is impossible. The trains don't run on time. 6/
In a kleptocracy like Trump is building, merit means nothing. Look at what’s happening at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts have fled. Hacks and kooks are in charge. People will die because of Trump’s power grab. 5/
Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, an economic dislocation pushed by ideologues who ignored experts, was a huge disaster. An estimated 20 million Chinese died of starvation in 1959-1962. Trump chooses unqualified loyalists over experts to run his regime, and the disaster gets worse every day. 4/
In dictatorships, paranoia becomes policy. Joseph Stalin devastated the Soviet military through purges. After 13 of 15 army commanders were ousted, his military was so weakened that the Soviets nearly lost to Germany in WWII. Trump is currently purging and weakening the U.S. military. 3/
There’s an old saying that “Mussolini made the trains run on time.” But he didn’t. That false claim stuck because the Italian dictator and his supporters said it a lot. Mussolini ended up with his dead body hung upside down from a metal girder above a service station. Not a success story. /2
"A lot of people are saying maybe we'd like a dictator,” says Trump. And indeed some victims of right-wing brainwashing think dictators can “get things done.” What they don’t understand is that dictatorships are often incompetent. A thread. 1/ 🧵🧵🧵
Let's remember to keep talking about the Trump-Epstein scandal next week when Congress returns from its Epstein recess. They want us to forget and move on. Let's not. Release the Epstein files – all of them.
Republicans have decided that their political careers are so important that the gruesome deaths of children are a small price to pay.
The mainstream media won't tell you that Trump is building a police state because their owners think there's money to be made after Trump builds his police state.
“The return of racist symbols” is No. 6 on my list of 12 "tripwires of tyranny" that indicate whether we're living in a dictatorship.
If I were charged with a federal crime, I’d hire Pam Bondi’s brother as my lawyer. Because I don’t think this is a coincidence.
After 4 pm ET they do.
That is naive. Journalists draw conclusions all the time based on the preponderance of the facts. Is it just an “opinion” that Stalin was a dictator?
Yep. “Critics See Risks,” but the New York Times hasn’t come to a conclusion yet.
I attached the story.
I opted for the dead-worm-in-the-brain taco instead.
Did anyone really think a guy who dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park and made it look like a bicycle accident would be a superb guardian of the public health?
When Trump publicly claims “the right to do anything I want to do” and the news media *still* won’t say his goal is a dictatorship, that’s both cowardice and complicity. And a shameful dereliction of duty.
Please don't put Republicans and Democrats in the same box. I have criticized Democrats for failing to meet the moment and fight effectively for democracy. But that doesn't make them as bad as Republican politicians, who are pure evil.
A Republican doctor's version of the Hippocratic Oath: 'First, do no harm to my re-election chances'.
Republican politicians think their re-election is more important than anything else. That's why they support Trump's obviously illegal, corrupt and cruel policies. They have made a deal with the devil. They are card-carrying members of the traitor party.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician, voted to confirm anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. as health secretary because Cassidy thinks his re-election is more important than whether children die of measles or are crippled by polio.
Republican senators should have listened to Caroline Kennedy, not her "predator" cousin, RFK Jr.
That was probably a factor.
It's appropriate that the Republican color is red because the entire party has blood on its hands.
Every Republican senator voted to confirm RFK Jr. as health secretary except for Mitch McConnell, who is retiring and thus was under no re-election pressure. The entire Republican Party has embraced anti-vax policies. It is pro-polio, pro-measles, pro-Covid. It's a death cult.
IL Gov. JB Pritzker: "Do not come to Chicago." Trump: "Not that I don’t have — I would — the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States."
The Chicago protests in recent years have been quite peaceful and positive.
These clowns would open a probe into Merriam-Webster if they didn’t like the definition of “snowflake”.
Yes, but "three locations -- O Street" isn't all over the country.
The fascists say Wikipedia is biased. I disagree, and in any case it's constantly self-correcting. Even if it was biased, that wouldn't be a problem. The 1st Amendment hasn't been canceled yet, so Wiki has a right to bias. If you don't like it, don't use it. This is really about thought control. /2
Two of the slimiest members of Congress, James Comer and Nancy Mace, are harassing Wikipedia, which is a rare oasis of useful facts in an information ecosystem that's increasingly polluted by right-wing lies and oligarch-owned AI. Republicans see an informed public as a threat to their power. 1/🧵
What city?
Then those owners are lousy Americans. And their employees need to insist on telling the truth or they need to quit.
If major media haven't reached the obvious conclusion that Trump is building a dictatorship, they're lousy journalists. If they've reached that conclusion but are purposely keeping it from the public, they're lousy Americans.
Trump has indeed found a "solution" to the immigration issue: Make this country such a dumpster fire that no one wants to come here. It's like fixing a restaurant's overcrowding problem by poisoning all the diners.
If the GOP-led Congress won’t do anything to stop Trump’s dictator moves, it should stay home. In Hitler’s reign, rubber-stamp legislators met only 20 times in 12 years. They sang the national anthem at those rare sessions, and were known derisively as “the most expensive singing club in Germany.”
This is obscene thehill.com/policy/defen...
I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do. Just shut up. Stop peddling bullshit. You should be fired.
Chicagoans will rally and march on Labor Day starting at 11 a.m. at the Haymarket Memorial to protest Trump's threat of a military occupation of the city. It's time to speak out. Join us.
Trump's use of red state National Guards in DC is really about viciously turning Americans against each other, about stoking hate and violence *among Americans.* JB Pritzker's response is so good because it lays *this* bare. Me and @brianbeutler.bsky.social on this: newrepublic.com/article/1997...
They're competent enough to control the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court.
We're witnessing the creation of the second Confederacy, and this time the president is on their side.
The sabotage of American medical science by Trump and RFK Jr. is the equivalent of mass murder.
I’ve criticized Cassidy plenty and will keep doing so. He decided that his political career was more important than the lives of Americans. It was a calculated decision by a physician to cause deaths.
I gave some action points at the end of a recent Stop the Presses newsletter.
I’m not. I hope you’re not.
The sabotage of American medical science by Trump and RFK Jr. is the equivalent of mass murder.
New Quinnipiac poll just dropped. Few highlights for me: - New low for Trump at 37% approval (lol) - 49% strongly disapprove - Only 20% approval with Indies (YIKKEESS) - 50% say economy is "getting worse" Overall, just an awful poll for the GOP. Early voting starts in NJ & VA in just a few weeks.
Rather than wait until it "felt" like we were in a dictatorship, I decided on Inauguration Day to list 12 "tripwires of tyranny" and track whether we'd passed them. Seven months into the Trump regime, here's my update.
News: Violent crime hits 30-year low in D.C. Republicans: Send in the military. News: Schoolchildren murdered yet again. Republicans: Keep doing all the nothing we’re doing now.
In this video, @markjacob.bsky.social and I discuss a WaPo story about Trump’s “dream role” as a big-city mayor. Seriously. Not a parody, utter journalistic malpractice as Trump exploits our military to occupy DC and advance his dictatorial police state. www.americaamerica.news/p/journalist...