Fulton County Courthouse in Lewistown, not far from one of our state’s more famous cemeteries. I had the great honor speaking with @brianmackey.com on @21st.show yesterday about some central Illinois gravesites. Link below!

At Broadview ICE facility, federal agents hurl tear gas and pepper spray at protesters blocking vans www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/19/t...

Stark dispatch from Washington by my friend @danvock.bsky.social:

it does feel like a rubicon being passed today but does anyone remember the arson at the house of the most prominent jewish elected leader in america like two months ago

Tuned into the White Sox game in the bottom of the 8th. Score was 2–2, and within a few minutes the Sox were up 7–2. Last night I tuned into the end of the NBA Finals, and Indiana went up for the first time in the entire game with 0.3 seconds to go. Any other sports teams I can help out tonight?

This is shocking. I directly worked on designing the integration and protections of CityKey. It was designed to provide an ID, be a transit card, library and discount card. It was to *never* create a digital record while being compatible with state and city laws. Subpoena-proof.

And finally (for now), SCOTUS will consider Bost v. Illinois whether federal candidates have standing to challenge state laws that count late-arriving ballots postmarked by Election Day. Not the merits (yet), just the standing question. www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24...

This is such a good example of "turn every page" journalism - nothing less fun/glam than clicking through every footnote. And it's roughly 10,000x more newsy than the thumbsucker RFK profiles reported with big travel budgets.

Update: Journalism has been purchased by a hedge fund which announced multiple amputations

Pope Leo spotted on the 2005 World Series broadcast

Great short essay on Pope Leo, the White Sox, and the Beatitudes, by @soxmachine.com: "While I'd known at some level that every pope is a person [...] it didn't resonate like seeing a picture of the person who is now pope wearing a White Sox jersey in the stands of U.S. Cellular Field."

Wrote about the pope being a White Sox fan. It's pretty crazy! soxmachine.com/2025/05/so-t...

Cardinal Robert Prevost (center, blue shirt) visited the flagship @AureliosPizza location in Homewood in August with friends and family. Who could've imagined what would happen less than a year later! wgntv.com/news/robert-...

"This is Hawk Harrelson with Ed Farmer and the Pope at US Cellular and this is the 2005 World Series..."

Please have your first draft of history here, via half the Tribune and captained by @stacystclair.bsky.social That was a fun day at work. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/05/08/r...

And here I thought Chicago media reached peak “area man” stories in the Obama era.

"It is now up to us to take the keys to freedom into our own hands."

Implement a 100% tariff and ruin a movie. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, Her Lover, Their Accountant, His Shipping Agent, Our Trade Representative, & an Unemployed Longshoreman (1989)

One heck of a fact-check story by @katierosman.bsky.social. Somehow manages to be heartwarming, heartbreaking, affirming and dispiriting — often in adjoining paragraphs. Be prepared for a rollercoaster.

Update from the Illinois State Police, 5:16 a.m.: “The driver and sole occupant of the vehicle was uninjured and transported to an area hospital for evaluation. ​Toxicology reports are pending. ​The cause of the crash remains under investigation, but this does not appear to be a targeted attack.“

“CHATHAM, Ill. (AP) — A car smashed through a building Monday afternoon, killing four young people and injuring several others during an after-school program in a small city outside of Springfield, Illinois, police said.”

Pritzker calls for mass protests and disruption - “Republicans cannot know a moment of peace,” he says, swaying their portraits will one day be put in museums “reserved for tyrants and traitors”

“I think what we’ll find in the end is there were multiple things that, had any one of them changed, it could have well changed the outcome of that evening.”

The decision of whether to run for re-election has not been easy. I truly love the job of being a United States Senator. But in my heart, I know it’s time to pass the torch. So, I am announcing today that I will not be seeking re-election at the end of my term.

This video shows the fire damage inside the Pennsylvania Governor’s mansion. Governor Shapiro’s reaction to the arson attack is on my timeline.

This Tufts student was grabbed off the street, cuffed and taken out of state solely because she co-wrote a completely respectful oped in the student paper. And Rubio’s State Dept now admits they have nothing more damning than that. Gift link wapo.st/4j8d5Uh

When I went to the University of Illinois, we heard countless times about how UIUC made him mad because of licensing issues with Netscape/Mosaic. I hope that’s not what started this…

“‘My understanding is that Trump promised mass deportations and the people you can find that are the easiest to identify are students,’ said Genevieve Lakier, a University of Chicago professor who specializes in freedom of speech and American constitutional law.“

From my Atlanta home, to yours: Happy Confederate Surrender Day to all who celebrate— and doubly to all those who don’t. Perish all compromises with tyranny!

No criminal record, no gang ties, no tattoos, applied for asylum, father of a 9-year-old, government's case full of errors, sent to mega-prison anyway amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

From 2009: "While lawyers and the Secret Service balked at Mr. Obama’s initial requests to allow him to keep his BlackBerry, they acquiesced as long as the president — and those corresponding with him — agreed to strict rules. And he had to agree to use a specially made device."

Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.

American war planning usually takes place in highly secure facilities. But the Trump administration planned its strikes on the Houthis using a group chat—and accidentally included The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. theatln.tc/IuULQFiY

"We mark their loss today, but there will be a paper tomorrow, and another on Sunday. Each day is an opportunity to get it right." — @neilsteinberg.bsky.social's elegy for departing colleagues, with a vow to press on.

This is exactly what I wrote about on Wednesday. (Gift link: wapo.st/4iMGl2s) Because these people are accused of actions opposing the regime (hurting his friend's market cap), they deserve the worst imaginable punishment — a punishment outsourced to a country that escapes U.S. laws and judiciary.

My view is that the American South never fully took to liberal democracy. And I think we have to reckon with that to face the moment we’re now in. I wrote about it for @thebulwark.bsky.social www.thebulwark.com/p/liberal-de...

John McWhorter offers a linguist’s analysis of the “English only” policy: “In our midteens — after the end of what linguists call the critical period — our ability to master a new language starts to atrophy. …”

"When we say that all people have inalienable rights, we really mean that people who enjoy the protection of a state have rights. Once a person is stripped of that protection, purged from a state, his rights seem to vanish along with his proof of citizenship." — by @mashagessen.bsky.social:

One of the many things that pisses me off about Bezos is that the Post is doing its own amazing work on this story and he picked THIS moment to undermine it.

“The federal employees wrote that they have spent thousands of dollars fleeing for their lives without knowing whether they will be reimbursed.”

Happy to have a chance to talk about this book. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/b...

Just to underscore the tension at DOJ at the moment, here's what one federal law enforcement official told me about the acting deputy attorney general: "I, along with other career FBI and DOJ personnel that I’ve spoken with, really have one message for him and that is, “go fuck yourself, traitor.'"

We're not going out like Rome, we're going out like Circuit City

Governor JB Pritzker jokingly (?) declared that Lake Michigan is being renamed Lake Illinois. The Newberry Library has a French map from 1718 that calls it “Lac des Illinois.”

USDOT is proposing to prioritize areas with high marriage & birth rates for funding. Our new analysis @urbaninstitute.bsky.social shows this approach would produce a massive redistribution of transportation funding to rich, car-dependent, high white population areas. www.urban.org/urban-wire/d...

Conservative budget wonks (Manhattan Instiutte, Tax Foundation) confirming that this is a consittutional crisis. Not liberal hysteria. Happening right now.

Musk seeks to “delete” the federal agency—created in the wake of the 2008 housing crisis—that had been working to “crack down on predatory lending, reduce the burden of medical debt and cut fees that customers pay when they fall behind on credit card bills.” www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

“Those who care about functional institutions must demand adherence to constitutional processes, not billionaire whims. Because if we don’t, we might find ourselves longing for the days when Musk was only breaking social networks instead of the basic machinery of democracy.”

"A private citizen with zero Constitutional authority is effectively seizing control of critical government functions. The Constitution explicitly requires Senate confirmation for anyone wielding significant federal power" www.techdirt.com/2025/01/31/e...

Did not think we'd already be hearing this debate on *checks calendar* day 12.