ON THIN ICE

Donald Trump’s authoritarian attack on Chicago is prompting pushback in court — and even from other Republicans.

• President Donald Trump’s brazen assault on Chicago is the stuff of authoritarian nightmares. The White House claims that the nation’s third-largest city is overrun by crime — despite statistics showing otherwise — and the commander-in-chief is ramping up pressure. Immigration agents have already terrorized citizens with military-style tactics, including a Black Hawk helicopter raid on an apartment building. Trump has threatened to unleash his so-called “Department of WAR” on the liberal stronghold.

• But U.S. District Judge April Perry ordered Trump and his troops to cool their boots, and slammed the president’s team for creating the problem they’re now supposedly trying to solve. Last night, Perry temporarily blocked the deployment of National Guard troops from Texas to the Windy City, saying Trump’s order violates the Constitution and will “only add fuel to the fire that the defendants themselves have started.”

• Perry also accused the Department of Homeland Security of lying about crime in the city, which raises “significant doubt on DHS’s credibility on what is going on in the streets of Chicago.”

• In a separate ruling, another federal judge temporarily blocked federal agents from using riot control weapons against journalists in the city, who are doing their jobs covering immigration operations. In recent days, journalists have been hit with tear gas and less lethal “pepper balls.”

• “We have to rely upon the courts to protect us from a president just saying things and then doing it, even though it’s unconstitutionally illegal,” Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) told Crooked’s Jon Favreau on Pod Save America. “There are limits on the power of states to overcome what the federal government is attempting to do … There are things we didn’t imagine that are happening, so we have to think it through constantly.”

Judges aren’t the only ones fed up with Trump’s authoritarian antics.

• Other Republicans are also shaking their heads in dismay. Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-OK), chair of the National Governors Association, is pointing out the hypocrisy his own party is bringing to this controversy.

• “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration,” Stitt told the New York Times, calling out his neighbor, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX), for sending his state’s National Guard to Chicago. “As a federalist believer, one governor against another governor, I don’t think that’s the right way to approach this.”

• Gov. Phil Scott (R-VT) has also criticized Trump for the deployments. “From what I’m seeing, I just think it’s unnecessary. It further divides and threatens people,” Scott said yesterday. Other Republicans like Sens. Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski, along with former Govs. John Kasich of Ohio and Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, have likewise expressed disapproval.

• Stitt and the others are reading the room: The majority of Americans disapprove of using armed troops to fight crime, especially when there’s no external threat, according to multiple polls released this week. If you ask residents, the real threat seems to be coming from the federal government’s own masked agents.

Will criticism from Republican politicians stop Trump? Not likely. But those court orders will be harder to ignore.

WHAT ELSE?

The White House is fuming over Donald Trump’s failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize today. “The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace,” White House spokesperson Steven Cheung tweeted following news that Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the prize instead. Ironically, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former national security adviser Mike Waltz signed Machado’s nomination letter for the prize… awkward!

Israel’s military said that the ceasefire is now officially in effect, and that its troops are pulling back in accordance with the peace deal. That means Hamas has three days to release all of the remaining 48 hostages under its control.

An explosion at a Tennessee military munitions factory today left 19 people missing and feared dead, authorities said. The cause of the explosion is not yet known. “There’s nothing to describe. It’s gone,” the local sheriff said of the factory.

The Trump administration began firing federal workers today, according to Russ Vought, the White House budget chief and rumored Sith Lord. With the shutdown in its tenth day, House Republicans blocked a Democrat-led bill to pay active-duty troops during the shutdown. This will go over well with voters, surely!

But wait, there’s more! Republican lawmakers rejected a push by Democrats to block Trump from using that superluxury Qatari jet he was gifted as Air Force One. Remember: Retrofitting this hunk of metal to be the president’s personal private jet is expected to cost upwards of ONE BILLION DOLLARS. What a good way to spend taxpayer money!

Oh, did I mention that the Pentagon is letting Qatar build an Air Force facility in Idaho, to train alongside U.S. forces? Sure looks like a nice little present in exchange for that fancy-pants jet…

Senior DHS official Paul Ingrassia was accused of sexual harassment, stemming from an incident this summer in which he allegedly canceled a lower-ranking female member’s hotel room and told her she’d be staying with him. Ingrassia’s attorney denied the allegations, but this will likely complicate his nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel. Only the finest people!

Billionaire tech weirdo Peter Thiel privately warned that Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and AI critics are “legionnaires of the Antichrist.” During an off-record tech bro event in San Francisco last month, he argued that people who want limits on technology will usher in the destruction of the U.S. and spark global totalitarian rule. Fun fact: This is the guy who many credit with boosting Donald Trump and JD Vance’s political careers.

Light at the End of the Email…

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) signed a bill today that aims to build more dense housing near major transit stops in big cities, as part of an effort to lower the cost of living. “Housing near transit means shorter commutes, lower costs, and more time with family. When we invest in housing, we’re investing in people — their chance to build a future, raise a family, and be part of a community,” Newsom said in a statement. It’s nice to see some action on this issue!!

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology publicly rebuked the Trump administration’s offer to receive preferential federal funding if it signs a deal to comply with the Education Department’s radical policies on hiring, campus policies and admissions. “In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said in a statement. “In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences.” *mic drop*

The Senate unanimously endorsed the repeal of the war powers resolution that authorized the 2003 invasion of Iraq, officially closing that dark chapter of American history. “That’s the way the war ends, not with a bang but a whimper,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said after the vote. “America is forever changed by those wars, and the Middle East is too.”

A Texas woman stumbled across a massive piece of NASA equipment that fell some 20 miles out of the sky into her neighbor’s wheatfield. It was an instrument with telescopes used to collect info about stars, galaxies and black holes, which was launched a day earlier. That or, y’know, an alien spaceship crash landed. Who can really be sure these days?

A librarian in Wyoming, who was fired after fighting to keep books related to race and LGBTQ people on the shelves, received a $700,000 settlement in the lawsuit she brought against the county and local officials. “I wanted to take a stand on it and try to put up a barrier from it happening to other librarians,” she said afterwards. “I thought, ‘If I don’t do this thing, it’s just going to keep happening.’”

An Ohio police officer was caught on camera struggling to detain an escapee — an inflatable orange pumpkin that kept blowing away. Eventually, multiple officers caught the Halloween decoration and squished it into the back of a cruiser. “Some departments would have squashed this story,” a nearby police department wrote on Facebook. “Glad to see you guys rolled it out.”

An anonymous thief returned Claire, a beloved 50-pound green fiberglass dinosaur, to a Southern California neighborhood’s gas station after abducting her late last month. “I’m sorry for stealing Claire!” wrote the suspect, taping the message to her neck. “Please do not press charges! Thanks.”

Meet Bob the Cat!

“He is an approximately 8-year-old rescue who fights for control of the bed and my lap. He usually wins. He also appeared on MSNBC’s ‘Way Too Early’ in 2021 for getting me up at 4 a.m. when he first moved in, but the video file was too large to send via email.”

I’ll let y’all know when I track down that video…

— Mark