Chicago's Doom Loop
MORNING READ-IN: Stories on Trump's drive for peace in the Middle East; Trump's assault on U.S. cities; the FBI's dangerous gambit; a Democrat's dangerous rhetoric; and America's culture of flops.
The Morning Read-In at Convulsions is a daily curation and conversation around the day’s most compelling stories on politics, culture, communications, and life its own self. It’s a paid subscriber feature. Today’s MRI is repurposed in Convulsion’s free newsletter to give you a taste of what you’re missing.
Story #1
Without evidence or even the pretense of some, President Trump on Wednesday accused Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker of failing to protect ICE agents — and threatened them with jail time.
The mayor and governor are both Democrats, the latest in a long line of political rivals Trump has said should be jailed. In recent months, he has gone further than any past U.S. president, repeatedly and publicly ordering the Justice Department to prosecute political rivals — including former FBI director James B. Comey, who pleaded innocent Wednesday to charges he lied to Congress.
“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!” Trump demanded on his Truth Social network.
The presidential fiat comes amid an ICE crackdown in Chicago, which draws protests, which angers Trump, who uses the demonstrations as justification to send U.S. troops into city streets, which pits police against the public, which creates a powder keg of violence, which makes Chicago less safe, which validates Trump’s case to his supporters.
It’s an unvirtuous circle, or worse, a circle of doom with all the hallmarks of a banana republic.
Read more.
Story #2
David Sanger of the New York Times captures the news and the narcissism behind today’s top headline:
President Trump is at the brink of the biggest diplomatic accomplishment of his second term — a cessation of the brutal war between Israel and Hamas — and on Wednesday evening he made clear he was eager to fly to the Middle East to preside over a cease-fire and welcome hostages who have spent two long years in underground captivity.
For Mr. Trump, success in this venture is the ultimate test of his self-described goal as a deal maker and a peacemaker — and a pathway to the Nobel Peace Prize he has so openly coveted. By chance, the winner for 2025 is scheduled to be announced just hours before he may be departing to take his victory lap in Egypt and Israel.
Much could go wrong in coming days, and in the Middle East it often does.
Put a pin in that last paragraph.
Read more.
Story #3
Under Trump, these things are not the priority they once were for the FBI: cybercrimes, drug trafficking, counterintelligence, and terrorism.
We learned this from the FBI’s own data, released to a Democratic senator, showing nearly a quarter of the FBI’s roughly 13,000 agents across the country are currently assigned to immigration enforcement. That number climbs to 40 percent in the nation’s largest field offices.
In the past, The Washington Post reports, only a few FBI agents were assigned to work on immigration enforcement alongside Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But now the FBI is shifting vast amount of manpower from its traditional focuses to immigration enforcement, which is already benefiting from a massive increase in ICE spending.
“The total amount of FBI resources devoted to immigration is probably higher than even the 25 percent figure,” the Post says. “The FBI reassignment data … reflects the number of agents working on immigration at least 50 percent of their time. It does not account for scores of other agents who have been detailed to immigration enforcement a lesser portion of their time.”
Defund the war on terrorism. What could go wrong?
Read more.
Story #4
Imagine if a Republican candidate for attorney general in a purple state admitted today that just three years ago, he sent texts musing about killing a Democratic leader and discussed urinating on the future graves of other Democrats.
Democrats would demand the GOP candidate be stripped of the nomination and kicked off the ballot. I would, too.
Which is why I think Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee for attorney general in Virginia who actually said those horrific things, should get nowhere near the AG’s office.
But, of course, Democrats are standing behind their man like MAGA stands behind theirs. Because there is no more shame in American politics.
Cue the whataboutism …
Read more.
Story #5
The story of Arch Manning’s disappointing season (so far) is a story about high-profile failure and America’s love affair with flops.
In his Athletic piece on the 21-year-old Texas University quarterback, the scion of a family of NFL quarterbacks, Will Leitch finds deep context in the delta between hype and reality.
We, as a society, love flops. There is nothing like a flop, because a flop flatters us. It justifies our suspicions that most of the world is just hype, that it’s full of hot gas, and that only we, the skeptical, cock-eyed, world-weary observers, are the ones wise enough to see through it. Flops remind us that the people in charge of our culture often know a lot less than they think they do.
“There are flops in every aspect of American society. There are movie flops, infamous ones like “Ishtar,” “Heaven’s Gate” and “Battlefield Earth” to more recent vintages like “Dolittle,” “The Marvels” and glorious, glorious “Cats.” There are album flops (say, Katy Perry’s new album, though it sort of feels like a surprising percentage of people seem to be trying to will a Taylor Swift flop into existence), Broadway flops (“Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” most famously), TV show flops (“Cop Rock,” more recently “The Idol”) and even streaming platform flops (Quibi, Max). People even enjoy political flops; wherever you are on the ideological spectrum, the presidential campaigns of, say, Beto O’Rourke and Jeb (Jeb!) Bush are flops that remain well worth a chuckle.
Watch this space. The only thing we love more than a flop is a redemption story.
Read more.
That’s a wrap.
Enjoy your day. Love your people.
Go Tigers!
Fair points, Laura. But I think the real story isn’t why these texts surfaced when they did — it’s what was actually said. The content tells us far more about character and fitness for office than the timing ever could.
Go Blue Jays! Canada's sole MLB team operates from its largest city, but has a country united behind it, because these days, people's feelings about trump's pseudo-war using tariffs are running high. Sports and politics are inextricably linked. I cheer for the blue team in US politics.