Chicago Next for National Guard?

Plus: Zohran can't benchpress, Powell speech doesn't exactly soothe markets, Waymo approved for NYC, and more...

Chicago, get ready: "The Pentagon has for weeks been planning a military deployment to Chicago as President Donald Trump says he wants to crack down on crime, homelessness and undocumented immigration, in a model that could later be used in other major cities, officials familiar with the matter said," reports The Washington Post. It looks like at least a few thousand National Guardsmen will be mobilized there as soon as next month. "The mission, if approved, would have parallels to the polarizing and legally contested operation that Trump ordered in Los Angeles in June, when he deployed 4,000 members of the California National Guard and 700 active-duty Marines despite the protests of state and local leaders. The use of thousands of active-duty troops in Chicago also has been discussed but is considered less likely at this time, said two officials who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue."

In D.C., more than 2,200 National Guardsman are still deployed, ostensibly to crack down on serious crime in the district, such as the recent spate of carjackings, one of which threatened the life of government worker Edward Coristine. But "the stream of defendants who shuffled through a federal courtroom on Thursday afternoon illustrated the new ways in which laws are being enforced in the nation's capital after the president's takeover of the city's police," reports The New York Times. "They were appearing before a magistrate judge on charges that would typically be handled at the local court level, if they were filed at all. One man had been arrested over an open container of alcohol. Another had been charged with threatening the president after delivering a drunken outburst following his arrest on vandalism." (The guy in question was mentally off his rocker, having just damaged lights outside of a restaurant, and just said a bunch of crazy things before starting to sing. Law enforcement paged the Secret Service claiming "he just made threats to kill the president.")

Getting lowlifes off the streets is a perfectly fine thing for law enforcement to do! But is this is an appropriate use of federal money and manpower? Are these authorities trained to do this type of low-level policing? And will the lawsuits that inevitably result be worth it? (Say, in the case of Torez Riley, who was arrested at Trader Joe's. Police say he had two handguns in his bag; multiple prosecutors inside the U.S. attorney's office say the search was in violation of Riley's Fourth Amendment rights.)

New developments in the Abrego Garcia case: Salvadoran national and Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration back in March, in violation of a judge's order (background here: "Innocent Father or MS-13 Gang Member?"). He has since been brought back, but detained on human smuggling charges. "He has pleaded not guilty and has asked the judge to dismiss the case, claiming that it is an attempt to punish him for challenging his deportation to El Salvador," per NPR. Now immigration authorities say they're trying to deport him to Uganda (?). But also Costa Rica: "On Friday night, the government informed Abrego that he has until 'first thing' Monday morning to accept a plea in exchange for deportation to Costa Rica, 'or else that offer will be off the table forever,' Abrego's attorneys wrote in a filing as part of their efforts to get the charges in Tennessee dropped over what they consider to be a 'vindictive' and 'selective' prosecution," reports NBC.

Abrego Garcia has an ICE check-in this morning, under the conditions of his parole release. He has reportedly been taken into custody yet again by ICE. He has options, but all of them seem bad: take the Costa Rica deal, take the Uganda deal, or have his lawyers fight the Uganda deal. (The government implies it will deport him to Uganda as soon as Wednesday.) Each choice involves leaving his family behind in Maryland.

"Why Uganda?" you might be wondering. "Last week, Uganda agreed to a deal with the United States to take deported migrants, as long as they don't have criminal records and aren't unaccompanied minors," reports NBC. But "Uganda's Foreign Affairs Ministry said Uganda prefers that migrants sent there be of African nationalities." (Racist!)

President Donald Trump has signaled that convicted criminals in need of deportation will be sent to South Sudan or Eswatini, though neither deal appears to be finalized—and people in Eswatini have already taken umbrage at convict deportations and the conditions these people are held in.

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Scenes from New York: Zohran needs to be benched.

For a Men's Day event in Brooklyn, mayoral candidates were asked to benchpress 135 lbs (the bar plus a standard 45-lb. plate on each side). Zohran Mamdani, who is 33, could not do it without substantial help from a spotter—and you can tell he wasn't really lifting from how taut (or not) the rest of his body is. He clearly had no idea what he's doing, and at one point during the lift his leg and foot come off the ground. Current Mayor Eric Adams, who is 64, clearly did know what he was doing, and was able to adeptly execute, calling his opponent "Mamscrawny."

64 vs. 33. A lifetime of hard work vs. a silver spoon. The results speak for themselves.

The weight of the job is too heavy for "Mamscrawny." The only thing he can lift is your taxes. pic.twitter.com/HR6fDPKn0B

— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) August 24, 2025

Kinda fitting for our Commie future mayor: no self-reliance whatsoever, forced to rely on other people's hard work and muscle.

I will clown on this later, but serious question: How does an otherwise fairly talented campaigner do this in public unless he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt he can do it well? He's offering himself up on a silver bench as the symbol of the Ds' man problem. pic.twitter.com/Rmc3gB0cTD

— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) August 24, 2025

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QUICK HITS

• At a conference on Friday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell "used his keynote speech to signal the Fed is headed for an interest-rate cut as soon as its next policy meeting in September. Yet there are clear divisions among policymakers over whether that's the right call," reports Bloomberg. "Policymakers are grappling with inflation that's still above their 2% goal—and rising—and a labor market that's showing signs of weakness. That unnerving reality, which pulls policy in opposite directions, is made worse by a high degree of uncertainty about how each of those factors will evolve over the coming months. 'We're getting some cross-currents and it's in a difficult environment,' Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said in an interview on the sidelines of the conference. 'I always say the hardest job the central bank has is to get the timing right at moments of transition.'"
• "Waymo is getting one step closer to rides in New York City," per CNBC. "The Alphabet autonomous vehicle subsidiary received its first permit from the New York Department of Transportation on Friday to start testing in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams announced Friday. The rollout is the city's first autonomous vehicle testing launch. Waymo will start testing up to eight vehicles in Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn through late September with the potential to extend the program." The kicker: "New York state law requires the company to have a driver behind the wheel to operate." Lol.
• Interesting:

Viktor Orban, lockdowner.
Nayib Bukele, lockdowner.
Adrian Vermeule, lockdowner.
Curtis Yarvin, lockdowner.

Notice a pattern among the people that Postliberals cite for their political inspiration?

— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) August 23, 2025

• "Trump may come off like a hopelessly needy egocentric (and easy diplomatic mark) with his incessant insistence that Putin's 2022 invasion never would have happened on his watch, but there's corollary analysis that's much more verifiable: Neither former President Joe Biden nor NATO's European members had realistic plans to stop or aggressively roll back the war. Getting to within shouting distance of a Putin-Zelenskyy summit meeting is an achievement in itself," writes Reason's Matt Welch. "If, against the odds, Trump and the Europeans agree on 'Article 5–like' security guarantees for Kyiv, that breakthrough would put Putin in the awkward position of potentially agreeing to conditions—Ukraine being knitted into the geopolitical fabric of Western Europe—that the war was ostensibly waged to prevent….Are Europeans, eight decades after World War II, finally ready to embrace a starring role in their own damned neighborhood?"
• This is legitimately insane:

What if this had been YOUR childhood?@HarrisPoll finds 8-12 yo kids:

45% have not walked in a different aisle than their parents at a store

61% have not made plans with friends without adults helping them

62% have not walked/biked somewhere (a store, park, school) without an…

— Lenore Skenazy (@FreeRangeKids) August 25, 2025