Chicago at a crossroads

America’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, is already taking his job more seriously than his predecessor ever did.

Unlike Kamala Harris, Homan does not need to be goaded into doing the job assigned to him by the president. Homan, the former director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is already hitting the trail, telling prospective illegal immigrants to turn the caravans around and warning America’s bluest cities that a new sheriff is coming to town.

During a swing through Chicago, Homan told the Windy City’s residents that “your mayor sucks and your governor sucks.” Both Chicago mayor Brandon…

America’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, is already taking his job more seriously than his predecessor ever did.

Unlike Kamala Harris, Homan does not need to be goaded into doing the job assigned to him by the president. Homan, the former director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is already hitting the trail, telling prospective illegal immigrants to turn the caravans around and warning America’s bluest cities that a new sheriff is coming to town.

During a swing through Chicago, Homan told the Windy City’s residents that “your mayor sucks and your governor sucks.” Both Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker have suggested that they plan to resist President-elect Donald Trump’s broadly popular immigration plans.

If Johnson and Pritzker had their way, the city’s illegal immigration crisis would simply be moved somewhere else. In advance of the city hosting this summer’s Democratic National Convention, they tried to shift the illegal immigrant shelters near the convention center to the city’s South Side, as The Spectator previously reported.

“Out of sight, out of mind” doesn’t cut it for the incoming Trump administration. Homan wants Chicago to be ground zero for Trump’s deportation agenda, he said recently. Homan invited both Democrats to work with him on mass deportation of illegal immigrant criminals, but warned Johnson in particular that “if he doesn’t want to help, get the hell out of the way.”

Johnson, for his part, doesn’t seem eager to assist. The left-wing firebrand mayor, whose favorability at times hovers in the low single digits did, however, roll out a budget featuring hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax increases, further incentivizing Chicagoans to look for greener pastures elsewhere.

Illinois Republican lawmakers estimate that the state spent $638 million on the illegal immigration crisis statewide last year; Chicago alone is estimated to have spent almost $300 million since the first bus of illegal immigrants arrived in 2022. Johnson’s entire tax increase package would barely offset those costs.

-Matthew Foldi

On our radar

PELOSI INJURED Former speaker Nancy Pelosi was hospitalized with an unspecified injury after a fall in Luxembourg. Pelosi was traveling with a congressional delegation when she fell down the stairs at a palace, the New York Times reports.

COMER BACKS AOC House Oversight chairman James Comer backed progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to serve as the ranking member of the committee after her colleague, Representative Jamie Raskin, left to run for the top Democratic role on the Judiciary committee. Comer said AOC is “a good, well-spoken person.”

IN FOR A PENNY Vice President-elect J.D. Vance invited acquitted New Yorker and former Marine Daniel Penny to be his guest at this weekend’s Army-Navy football game. Vance said Penny, who was charged with manslaughter after restraining an erratic man on the subway, is a “good guy” whose life was nearly ruined for having a “backbone.”

China rejects Trump invite

Chinese president Xi Jinping has declined an invitation to attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next month, CBS reports. Instead, China will follow standard diplomatic procedure and have their ambassador to the US represent Beijing at the oath-taking.

The news comes after incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the invitation Thursday.

“This is an example of President Trump creating an open dialogue with leaders of countries that are not just allies but our adversaries and our competitors, too,” Leavitt said on Fox and Friends.

The move to invite Xi was historic in itself. A Chinese head of state has not previously attended an American presidential inauguration. Yet like Trump demonstrated in his first term, he is a fan of harsh threats and grand gestures, even for perceived enemies.

The invitation is only made more interesting when contextualized with Trump’s tariff-gushing (“the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff’”), and his decision to bring in ardent China hawks to his cabinet, nominating Senator Marco Rubio, who China has banned from entering their country, for the nation’s top diplomatic role.

While Xi’s apparent refusal to attend is already being portrayed as a major snub, the move’s signal is noteworthy. Inviting a top adversary to an event that honors you was risky from the start. Still, Trump wants the world to know that he wants to get along, that he is willing to negotiate from day one.

–Juan P. Villasmil

Biden’s pardon spree

President Joe Biden is marking his final days in office with a series of unpopular pardons, starting last week with his son, Hunter, who was convicted on federal gun charges and pleaded guilty to tax evasion. On Thursday, Biden pardoned an additional thirty-nine people and granted commutations to 1,499 people.

The commutations mostly went to non-violent individuals who started serving home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic, but its the pardons that have Biden catching the most heat. Officials in Dixon, Illinois are furious that Biden handed a pardon to Rita Crundwell, the former city comptroller that stole $53 million from taxpayers. Biden also commuted the sentence of a judge who received $2.1 million in kickbacks to sentence minors to for-profit prisons. Last month, Biden was slammed for commuting the sentences of Chinese spies, including one who was in possession of 47,000 child pornography images, as part of a prisoner swap with Beijing.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also did not deny reports that Biden might issue pre-emptive pardons for individuals Democrats believe might be targeted by Trump’s DoJ, including Anthony Fauci and Adam Schiff.

–Amber Duke