Afternoon Briefing: How the latest tariffs could affect your wallet
Good afternoon, Chicago.
Mayor Brandon Johnson promised to go to court to protect hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money for Chicago schools if President Donald Trump follows through on a threat to revoke the funds from districts that promote diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
'We're gonna sue,' Johnson told reporters at an unrelated public housing event. 'We're not going to be intimidated by these threats. It's just that simple. So whatever it is that this tyrant is trying to do to this city, we're going to fight back.'
Here's what else is happening today. And remember, for the latest breaking news in Chicago, visit chicagotribune.com/latest-headlines and sign up to get our alerts on all your devices.
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A dying Venezuelan man was reunited with his brother this morning in an emotional reunion outside a restaurant near the ICE processing center in west suburban Broadview after federal authorities released him so he could donate his kidney to save his brother's life. Read more here.
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5 in custody after fatal shooting in Oak Park
Jim Dodge, incoming Orland Park mayor, lays out short-term priorities, mending relations with police
Which impacts will be felt by consumers and workers first? And what can households do in the face of so much uncertainty? Here's what you need to know. Read more here.
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President Donald Trump says things are 'going very well' after worst stock market drop in years over tariffs
New Mega Millions game starts Tuesday with more prizes, higher ticket cost
Warren's Jaxson Davis and Young's Destiny Jackson are the 2025 Mr. and Ms. Basketball of Illinois winners, as voted by statewide coaches and media. And both made a little history in the process. Read more here.
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Kevin Huerter is finding a new rhythm — and a few dunks — in new role with the Chicago Bulls
For her sophomore CSO stand, Karina Canellakis paired the main event of Sergei Rachmaninov's 'Symphonic Dances' with two relative curios: Jean Sibelius' 'Oceanides,' which the orchestra has only performed once before in 1916, and Antonín Dvořák's 'The Wild Dove,' one of the composer's oft-overlooked tone poems. Read more here.
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More than a month after House Republicans surprised Washington by advancing their framework for Trump's $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and $2 trillion in spending cuts, Senate Republicans voted yesterday to start working on their version. Read more here.
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Washington Post
24 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Yemen's al-Qaida branch leader threatens Trump, Musk and others
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The leader of al-Qaida's Yemen branch has threatened both U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip in his first video message since taking over the group last year. The half-hour video message by Saad bin Atef al-Awlaki, which spread online early Saturday via supporters of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, also included calls for lone-wolf militants to assassinate leaders in Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf Arab states over the war, which has decimated Gaza. The video of al-Awlaki's speech showed images of Trump and Musk, as well as U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of State Pete Hegseth. It also included images of logos of Musk's businesses, including the electric carmaker Tesla. 'There are no red lines after what happened and is happening to our people in Gaza,' al-Awlaki said. 'Reciprocity is legitimate.' Though believed to be weakened in recent years due to infighting and suspected U.S. drone strikes killing its leaders, the group known by the acronym AQAP had been considered the most dangerous branch of al-Qaida still operating after the 2011 killing by U.S. Navy SEALs of founder Osama bin Laden , who masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In 2022, a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan killed bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahri , who also helped plot 9/11. The Sept. 11 attacks then began decades of war by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq, and fomented the rise of the Islamic State group. Al-Awlaki already has a $6 million U.S. bounty on his head, as Washington says al-Awlaki 'has publicly called for attacks against the United States and its allies.' He replaced AQAP leader Khalid al-Batarfi, whose death was announced by the group in 2024. AQAP seizing onto the Israel-Hamas war follows the efforts of Yemen's Houthi rebels to do the same. The Iranian-backed group has launched missile attacks on Israel and targeted commercial vessels moving through the Red Sea corridor, as well as American warships. The U.S. Navy has described their campaign against the Houthis as the most intense combat it has faced since World War II. The Trump administration also launched its own intense campaign of strikes on the Houthis, which only ended before the president's recent trip to the Middle East . The Houthis' international profile rose as the group remains mired in Yemen's long-stalemated war. Al-Awlaki may be betting on the same for his group, which U.N. experts have estimated has between 3,000 and 4,000 active fighters and passive members. The group raises money by robbing banks and money exchange shops, as well as smuggling weapons, counterfeiting currencies and ransom operations, according to the U.N. The Shiite Zaydi Houthis have previously denied working with AQAP, a Sunni extremist group. However, AQAP targeting of the Houthis has dropped in recent years, while the militants keep attacking Saudi-led coalition forces who have battled the Houthis. 'As the Houthis gain popularity as leaders of the 'Arab and Muslim world's resistance' against Israel, al-Awlaki seeks to challenge their dominance by presenting himself as equally concerned about the situation in Gaza,' said Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen expert of the Basha Report risk advisory firm. 'For a national security and foreign policy community increasingly disengaged from Yemen, this video is a clear reminder: Yemen still matters.'
Boston Globe
39 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
It's a really bad time to be an expert in Washington
At the Pentagon, 14 advisory boards have been dismantled, with curt, thank-you-for-your-service notes sent to Democrats and Republicans alike. Some of the boards dealt with obscure matters. But others focused on vital issues, like rethinking the U.S. nuclear arsenal as China's nuclear buildup, Russian President Vladimir Putin's episodic nuclear threats and Trump's ambitious demand for a 'Golden Dome' missile defense system have changed the nature of nuclear strategy. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Also gone: the board of experts who were trying to learn lessons from China's astoundingly successful hack into the country's telecommunications networks -- where, by all accounts, the hackers remain to this day. Then came historians at the State Department and the climate specialists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which employed experts in weather, oceans, climate and biodiversity. Advertisement The National Weather Service lost so many people that the agency had to hire some back. No such luck for researchers relying on the National Science Foundation, where projects are disappearing every month. Advertisement No one killed off the expert advisory board at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as it deliberated whether healthy children should receive the COVID vaccine. They did not have to. While it weighed the pros and cons, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his colleagues announced that they had already made their decision. When the history of these tumultuous past four months is written, it will doubtless focus on the moments when teams from the Department of Government Efficiency shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, when the president issued tariff threats to much of the world and when he went to war with Harvard. Less noticed, perhaps, may be the devastation of the expert class, which once dominated the city, moving between think tanks and government offices, generating alternative views in its best moments, engaging in groupthink at its worst. Today, the experts are swelling the ranks of Washington's suddenly unemployed. To the MAGA faithful, each one of these disbanded groups is a victory for a trimmer government that follows the president's wishes. To them, the National Security Council was the heart of the so-called deep state, whose members testified against Trump during his first impeachment inquiry. The raft of advisory committees mostly slowed down decision-making, they argued, when they were not undercutting policies they did not like. Worse yet, they were the source of leaks. So if an advisory committee of experts was not needed to help James K. Polk, the 11th president, figure out how to spread the United States to the West Coast, why do we need them to figure out the strategy for adding Greenland and Canada? (The expansionist Polk has been restored to a place of pride in the Oval Office -- his portrait now hangs just below and to the right of Thomas Jefferson's.) Advertisement Part of Trump's problem with experts is their portrayal as neutral arbiters, more interested in the data than presidential spin. That is what has led to the White House this week trying to discredit the Congressional Budget Office, which concluded that, yes, the new tax bill could really add $2.4 trillion to the national debt, no matter the spin. Lacking the authority to fire the budget experts there, the White House turned to casting them as politically biased. And while every new president replaces board members and demands some fealty to the new leader's ideology, what has happened in the past four months seems to some in the federal government more like China's cultural revolution, where the only good ideas are the ones that flow from the leader, and both research reports and intelligence findings should support the president's desires. And when they are not, trouble follows. Just ask the National Intelligence Council, a small subset of intelligence experts -- many drawn from academia -- what happened when it came to the conclusion that the Venezuelan government was not controlling a criminal gang, an argument that Trump had used to justify deportations. The experts were told to 'do some rewriting' so the material could not be used against the president and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence. After the intelligence findings were left unchanged, the board's leadership resisted and was removed. The whole institution is being moved into Gabbard's organization, where its independent judgments can be better controlled. Advertisement At the Environmental Protection Agency, self-protective action has replaced scientific inquiry. 'We've taken the words 'climate' and 'green energy' off every project document,' one scientist still in the government's employ said recently, refusing to speak on the record for obvious reasons. Veterans of Trump's first term say these changes are a manifestation of the president's bitter memories. 'I think somebody convinced President Trump, based on his experience in his first administration, that his own staff would be the biggest obstructionists,' H.R. McMaster, Trump's second national security adviser, said at a conference on artificial intelligence and national security Wednesday. (Trump's current national security adviser, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is one of around a half dozen across both terms.) While McMaster, now at Stanford, said he did not object to shrinking the National Security Council staff, he worried that also lost would be the capacity to run 'a deliberative process, which I think would be kind of nice on some of these issues, like tariffs, to clarify what you are trying to achieve.' 'Deliberative process' appears to be exactly what Trump is trying to avoid. And if that means eviscerating the expert class, so be it. It helps explain why the Department of Government Efficiency was given license to wipe out USAID. McMaster is hardly alone in concluding that some of the aid agency's programs had 'drifted.' Many Democrats say they agree, though almost never on the record. But McMaster gave voice to the question raised all over Washington when he asked, 'Should you just crush the entire organization or recognize there is a mission for that organization to advance American interests?' It was crushed, with foreign service officers, child health experts and others locked out of the offices. And that has led to both professional and personal angst. Advertisement 'If you work in the field of maternal and child health, you are in trouble,' said Jessica Harrison Fullerton, a managing director at the Global Development Incubator, a nonprofit that is trying to fill some of the gaps USAID's dismantlement left. 'Not only are you devastated by the impacts on the people you have been serving, but your expertise is now being questioned and your ability to use that expertise is limited because the jobs are gone.' In fact, what many of Washington's experts discovered was that crushing the organizations -- and putting their experts out on the street -- was the point of the exercise. It helped create a frisson of fear, and reinforced the message of who was in control. It has also led to warnings from more traditional Republicans that Trump's demand for loyalty over analysis is creating a trap for himself. 'Groupthink and a blinkered mindset are dangers for any administration,' said Richard Fontaine, the CEO of the Center for a New American Security, which, in the days of bipartisanship, described itself as a bipartisan think tank. 'Pulling from multiple sources in and outside of government to develop solid options for foreign policy decision makers is the way to go.' Well, maybe in the Washington of a previous era. Within a 200-yard radius of USAID, DOGE teams moved into the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan foreign policy think tank that had significant private funding and money from Congress. They shuttered it, from its Cold War archives to the Kennan Institute, one of the country's leading collections of scholars about Russia. At a moment when superpower conflict is back, it was the kind of place that presented alternative views. Advertisement DOGE was unimpressed. Like their USAID colleagues in another part of the Ronald Reagan Building, they were soon stuffing their notes into cartons and discovering their computer access had been shut down. (The Wilson Center also sponsored book writers, including some from The New York Times.) The war on expertise has raised some fundamental questions that may not be answerable until after the Trump administration is over. Will the experts stick around -- after hiding out in the private sector or changing professions -- only to reoccupy the 'swamp'? And more immediately, what damage is being done in what may be the country's defining challenge: the competition with China over artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, electric vehicles, quantum computing? That is what many in the intelligence agencies worry about, not least because Europe is already openly recruiting disillusioned American scientists, and China's intelligence services are looking for the angry and abandoned. Graham Allison, a Harvard professor who writes often on the U.S.-China technological and military competitions, told an audience at the AI Summit on Wednesday that America is not acting like it understands that 'China has emerged as a full-spectrum competitor.' 'Our secret sauce,' he said, has been the American ability to 'recruit the most talented people in the world. Einstein didn't come from America.' 'The idea that we would be taking action that would undermine that makes no sense to any strategic thinker,' he said. Of course, those strategic thinkers rank among the suspect class of Washington experts. This article originally appeared in
Politico
44 minutes ago
- Politico
Men in DC are getting their jawlines done
Washington is looking a little different lately — and not just politically. Even the faces of powerful men are beginning to change, as surgeons and dermatologists get more and more male clients looking to enhance their jawlines. 'The surgeons and dermatologists who treat the D.C. power class will never share their patients' secrets,' writes Joanna Weiss in this week's Friday Read. 'Some doctors strategically time surgeries during congressional recess, and many go out of their way to make sure their clients aren't even seen entering the office, using a spy-movie-like web of hidden entries and secret back doors. But they will also tell you that, among the political power set, jaws are currently hot.' In a government led by a TV-obsessed commander-in-chief, appearances are more important in politics than ever. And lately, it's the pursuit of a Chad-like chin that's driving men under the knife. After all, looking weak could be a vulnerability. 'Across the internet and the gossip-journalism universe, it's not hard to find speculation about the mandibles of everyone from the Trump sons to Elon Musk,' Weiss writes. 'And if you're watching TV and wondering if some D.C. figure has a jawline that's newly strong and square … well, you might be right.' Read the story. 'Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.' Can you guess who said this about the president? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.** Trump vs. Pride … Dupont Circle is the traditional heart of Washington's local gay community, but you won't see rainbow flags waving through the park for Pride this weekend, as the Trump administration has fenced it off. 'The Park Service claims this is to prevent damage by revelers,' writes Capital City columnist Michael Schaffer. 'But plenty of outraged locals see a more sinister motivation.' Wait, why is everyone talking about a breakup? If you somehow missed the spectacular scrap between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, study up on these talking points so your friends won't think you're living under a rock. (From Associate Editor Dylon Jones) — Make yourself sound like an expert analyst with a word of warning for Trump: 'Seventy-six percent of Republicans view Musk favorably — more than House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and just about everyone else. He could become a real chaos agent who rocks Trump's midterm plans.' — As a political expert, you can speak to the bigger-picture divisions behind this feud: 'This is just the personification of the tech right vs. MAGA populist divide. This was inevitable ever since the H-1B visa debate picked up within the GOP coalition.' — Make sure to bring up Musk's main MAGA antagonist, Steve Bannon. 'Did you see that Bannon quote Rachel Bade got in POLITICO Magazine? 'MAGA's done with him.' He's even suggesting Trump consider deporting him.' — Bring in a dispatch from the podcast circuit for your liberal friends who never tune in: 'JD Vance told Theo Von that he hopes Musk comes back over to their side, but 'maybe that's not possible now because he's gone so nuclear.'' Is MAGA Losing the Tech Right? … Elon Musk's dramatic breakup with President Donald Trump isn't just a sign of two strong personalities that had become allies inevitably clashing. It's also a sign of two strong ideologies that had become allies inevitably clashing. There's the tech right Musk embodies, which supports H-1B visas that promote highly skilled immigration, and there's the MAGA populist right, led by Steve Bannon, that staunchly opposes immigration writ large. They had seemed to have struck an uneasy truce. 'But the renewal of hostilities between Trump and Musk this week shows that the underlying ideological disagreement between the two factions was never really resolved,' writes Ian Ward. Butterworth's Doesn't Care About the Bromance Blow-Up … The Musk vs. Trump earthquake was a tectonic event on the internet, but it hardly registered on the Richter scale over at Butterworth's, the fashionable MAGA bistro on Capitol Hill. 'As the denizens of Butterworth's saw things, the kerfuffle was simply the temper tantrum of a disgruntled administration official who'd run afoul of a popular president,' writes Ben Jacobs. 'And Trump's counter attacks dismissing the world's richest man as 'going CRAZY'? Now that was gospel.' Andrew Yang Has a Pitch for Elon Musk … Andrew Yang has been pushing his independent Forward Party for years. But the recent falling out between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump has given him a new opportunity to bring the world's richest man into the fold — or, at least, to try. 'Elon has built world-class companies from nothing more than an idea multiple times, and in this instance, you have the vast majority of Americans who are hungry for a new approach,' Yang tells Assistant Editor Catherine Kim. 'I'm happy to spell it out for Elon or anyone else who wants to head down this road: A third party can succeed very quickly.' From the drafting table of editorial cartoonist Matt Wuerker. Who Dissed? answer: That would be his erstwhile ally, Elon Musk, who dropped the allegation in a since-deleted post on X. politicoweekend@
