Mayor 6.6 finally finds someone he thinks is worth prosecuting — unfortunately, it’s cops, not criminals
Chicago is broke.
Illinois is not far behind.
That alone ought to concentrate the mind.
This is a city staring down chronic budget deficits, looming pension obligations, shrinking population, declining commercial property values, and a credit profile that regularly sends shivers through the bond market. According to more than a few sober analysts, Chicago is not merely mismanaged — it is teetering on the edge of insolvency
Which makes the latest obsession of the Chicago City Council all the more surreal.
Instead of focusing on the fiscal emergency, instead of confronting the city’s persistent violent-crime crisis, instead of restoring order to streets, trains, and neighborhoods that have become unsafe for ordinary people, Chicago Democrats have decided to pick a fight with the federal government.
Not with criminals.
Not with gangs.
Not with repeat violent offenders.
With the federal government, its only hope for fiscal salvation.
Specifically, with federal immigration enforcement — and, by extension, with their own police department.
From foreign policy to local anarchy
This is not the first time City Hall has wandered off into ideological cosplay. For a while, Chicago aldermen seemed to believe it was their moral duty to conduct their own foreign policy — passing Gaza resolutions, staging symbolic votes on Middle East conflicts, and pretending that municipal government is a branch of the United Nations.
That phase appears to have ended—perhaps because reality intruded. The Trump administration, through a combination of pressure, leverage, and brute diplomacy, has imposed at least a rough and imperfect calm on Gaza. Whatever one thinks of the method, City Hall’s performative posturing suddenly looked beside the point.
So the council pivoted.
Now the enemy is not Hamas.
Not international instability.
Not crime.
Now the enemy is federal law enforcement — and any Chicago police officer insufficiently hostile to it.
The new priority: Policing the police
This week, aldermen advanced an ordinance that would empower the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) to investigate Chicago police officers accused of “cooperating” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Not misconduct.
Not brutality.
Not corruption.
Cooperation.
Under the proposal, if CPD officers are deemed to have assisted federal immigration agents in ways City Hall finds objectionable, they could face investigation and discipline — even if their actions were lawful, prudent, or necessary to maintain public safety.
This is what passes for “oversight” in modern Chicago: Punishing cops for refusing to sabotage other law enforcement agencies.
The justification, we are told, is an “administrative gap.” The reality is something far more dangerous — a deliberate effort to chill police behavior and deter officers from doing their jobs when federal authorities are involved.
Minneapolis: The model city?
What makes this especially alarming is that Chicago aldermen are now openly collaborating with officials from Minneapolis, a city that has become a case study in how not to govern.
Minneapolis is struggling with unrest, political radicalism, canceled sporting events, and a perception — earned or not — that its streets are increasingly ungovernable. Violent incidents, public disorder, and open hostility toward law enforcement have not made the city safer. They have made it fragile.
And yet that is the model now being discussed at City Hall.
Minneapolis officials were invited to advise Chicago on how to “resist” federal immigration enforcement. They warned of agents dressing in plain clothes, blending in, making surprise arrests — as if that were evidence of fascism rather than standard policing tactics used by detectives everywhere.
This is not governance.
It is paranoia institutionalized.
Mayor 6.6 and the collapse of authority
All of this is happening under the watchful eye of a mayor who commands roughly six percent approval — hence his well-earned nickname, Mayor 6%.
If Chicago had a strong executive — someone capable of imposing discipline, prioritizing basic governance, and telling the City Council “no” — this nonsense might be contained.
Instead, Brandon Johnson is leading the charge.
He has embraced the rhetoric, endorsed the investigations, and echoed language describing federal agents as “masked, terrorizing police forces.” He has even suggested that Chicago cannot trust the federal government to provide security for a future Democratic National Convention.
Let that sink in.
The mayor of America’s third-largest city is openly questioning whether the U.S. government can be trusted to secure a political convention — while violent offenders roam his own city with impunity.
Attacking the only adults in the room
The bitter irony is that one of the few remaining voices of sanity in City Hall appears to be the police superintendent — appointed, one suspects, by mistake.
Superintendent Larry Snelling has made clear CPD’s interactions with federal agents are focused on de-escalation and public safety. He has not encouraged ideological warfare between agencies. He has not demonized law enforcement colleagues. He has not turned policing into a political purity test.
This is the same superintendent who has called for curfews to curb the “wilding” that has turned parts of downtown into a no-go zone. The same superintendent who understands order is not optional in a functioning city.
Which is precisely why he is being undermined.
A city at war with reality
Chicago today resembles less a modern American city than a late-stage revolutionary regime — where ideological fervor replaces competence, and enemies are invented to distract from failure.
The police are the enemy.
The successful are the enemy.
The federal government is the enemy.
Common sense is the enemy.
Meanwhile, criminals are coddled.
Repeat offenders are released.
CTA riders are assaulted, robbed, and even burned alive.
People with dozens of prior arrests are returned to the streets to commit crime #73.
This is not compassion.
It is madness.
And it is unsustainable.
The Contrarian imperative
Chicago does not need moral grandstanding.
It does not need performative resistance.
It does not need a municipal cold war with the federal government.
It needs order.
It needs accountability.
It needs leadership.
Those of us who still believe in the city — who refuse to accept decline as destiny — must say so plainly: this path leads nowhere good. A city already in financial peril cannot afford ideological tantrums masquerading as policy.
Chicago Democrats have declared war on the federal government.
The real casualty may be Chicago itself — unless contrarians, realists, and adults reassert control and take the city back from those who are driving it into the ground.
