As a farewell gift to her successor, outgoing Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has declared a state of emergency in Chicago due to the number of migrants. Greg Hinz reports at Crain’s Chicago Business:

With more and more refugees again arriving in Chicago, outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot today released what amounts to a loud and public appeal for help, declaring a state of emergency.

In a statement, the mayor’s office said, “The City of Chicago is in the midst of a national humanitarian crisis, and through a unified effort in accordance with its values as a welcoming city, Chicago is doing everything it can to respond to the urgency of this matter.”

and

The immediate legal impact of the measure was not immediately clear. Neither the White House nor Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office had any immediate response. But the move clearly ups the political stakes for both, as well as incoming Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson.

The declaration states that Lightfoot reserves the right to ask Pritzker for mobilization of the National Guard “to provide staffing and logistical support to address this emergency in the City of Chicago.”

During an afternoon press conference, her first since losing her re-election bid, Lightfoot said that she’s not now asking for the national guard and “commend(ed)” Pritzker for his help. But, she added, “There may be a point where we need additional resources in the form of the national guard…(running) spaces that can handle hundreds of people at a time.”

Lightfoot insisted the city has been planning for a surge for weeks, but, “Chicago simply does not now have the infrastructure or the resources to continue… the burden can’t rest on our city alone.”

The order, she said, will allow all of the city’s agencies to “do whatever is feasible and necessary.”

There’s no actual plan in place.

This is not a city or state problem. I’m sure that El Paso and McAllen are in equally serious shape.

It’s a federal problem and the federal government has been too slow in addressing it. Governors should be suing the federal government and the president.

For years I have been saying that Donald Trump was not a good guy. For some that was too much; for others not nearly enough. Now a jury in a civil trial has found Donald Trump liable for defamation and sexual abuse. James Fanelli and Corinne Ramey report at the Wall Street Journal:

A federal jury found Donald Trump liable to E. Jean Carroll for battery and defamation and ordered him to pay $5 million in damages, after a civil trial in which the columnist alleged the former president raped her in a Manhattan department store nearly 30 years ago.

The jury, following a two-week civil trial, didn’t find that Mr. Trump committed rape but found it more likely than not that he sexually abused Ms. Carroll in a dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman, sometime around 1996. Jurors also found that Mr. Trump defamed Ms. Carroll in comments he made denying her allegations, which she first made publicly in 2019.

Here’s my question: will this be enough to convince his supporters not to support his running for re-election in 2024? At Just Security Ryan Goodman and Norman L. Eisen remark:

The unanimous jury verdict that has turned Donald Trump from an alleged sexual assaulter into a proven one may create political shockwaves if recent history is any guide. As numerous empirical studies have shown, the American public has come to view sexual assault as a form of abusing power that can disqualify a perpetrator from holding public office. Trump may suffer significant political damage from this new majoritarian understanding.

In November 2017, 61% of voters – including 56% of men and a nontrivial margin of white men (50-43) and white women (55-37) – said then-President Trump should be impeached and removed from office if he were proven to have engaged in “sexual harassment,” according to a Quinnipiac poll. That overall support – the eye popping number of 61% – was higher than any poll tracking public support for impeachment and removal from office for the scandalous conduct in Trump’s first and second impeachments (see Five Thirty-Eight’s complete collection of surveys for the first and second impeachment). What’s more, Quinnipiac asked only about sexual harassment not sexual assault in the case of Trump. The latter, which is also the core crime in the E. Jean Carroll verdict, would have presumably produced even greater levels of support for removal from office.

The Quinnipiac poll was not alone.

A December 2017 Public Policy Polling survey found 53% of voters thought Trump should resign because of the “allegations” of sexual harassment against him, and another Quinnipiac poll in December 2017 found that 50% of voters already thought Trump should resign because he had “been accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault by multiple women.” (See appendix below for the exact wording and results of each of these surveys.)

concluding:

With #MeToo translated into the political arena, many Americans have shown they are not willing to support a candidate for elected office who has committed sexual assault – with the understanding that such a severe abuse of power is simply disqualifying for holding a position of public trust. Time will tell if the E. Jean Carroll sexual assault verdict has the effect that a large majority of Americans said they wanted in 2017, namely, to deny the presidency to Trump if the allegation that he had engaged in such abominable conduct was proven. It now has been.

If not what would?

Stephen Bryen questions whether Henry Kissinger is right about the value of negotiations in the war in Ukraine at this point:

Henry Kissinger says that conditions are right for negotiations on Ukraine by the end of the year. He bases his calculation on the fact that China has emerged as a broker, which puts the Russians on the spot to a degree.

This is the portion of Mr. Bryen’s essay to which I wanted to draw attention:

Russia believes it is at war with NATO and the United States, and while the war is being fought in Ukraine, it is supported out of bases in Europe and it is part of a US/NATO plan, in the Russian view, of fracturing Russia, splitting it into bite sized pieces for NATO to dominate. Adding Finland and maybe Sweden to the Alliance also increases Russian doubts about NATO and the United States and the collective threat Russia faces on its own. Thus while Western pundits are worried about Ukraine’s future, Russia is concerned with its own survival.

It is worth recalling that before Russia invaded Ukraine, it sent two messages, one to the US President and the other to the head of NATO. One letter —that sent to the US— was focused on the Ukraine problem; the other letter, to NATO called for a new security regime for Eastern Europe. Both letters were ignored and treated in a disdainful, hostile manner by both the US and NATO.

Under the circumstances it’s hard for me to see any meaningful negotiations taking place over the war in Ukraine for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, as I pointed out earlier this morning, unless we adjust our priorities, I don’t see how Ukraine can prevail.

The editors of Bloomberg are encouraged by the Biden Administration’s actions to protect our southern border:

Now, with Title 42 set to expire and migrants massing at the border, the administration is scrambling to respond. Among new measures announced last week, the government plans to open regional centers, initially in Guatemala and Colombia, where migrants will be urged to apply to determine their eligibility for entry into the US. The policy aims to deter people from crossing the border by processing claims before they get there — an approach the administration is also using with migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Haiti. Meanwhile, the administration plans to remove those who fail to demonstrate a credible asylum claim, impose a five-year ban on migrants whose initial entry is rejected, and increase criminal prosecution for subsequent border violations.

Taken together, the administration’s new measures are welcome — and long overdue. If adequately funded and enforced, they have the potential to ease burdens on border authorities, reduce overcrowding in detention facilities and undermine the business model for smugglers. While Biden’s embrace of harsher enforcement policies has infuriated some members of his own party, it reflects a political reality: This crisis is no longer just a border issue, as cities like New York and Chicago face strains on resources and services that border communities like El Paso have dealt with for years. The prospect of further chaos risks souring the public on immigration of all kinds and jeopardizing any chances for comprehensive reform.

I did want to comment on their concluding paragraph:

America needs more immigrants — but also a better system for controlling the border and enforcing the law. The expiration of Title 42 offers a window of opportunity to implement much-needed fixes. Both parties should seize it.

I think that’s legerdemain. We do need immigrants—just not the immigrants we’re getting and, particularly, not the immigrants who are streaming across our southern border and are the primary subject of the editorial. In particular we don’t need unaccompanied minors. By law they should not be deemed workers and each one of them adds considerably to our tax burden. We don’t need families with children for similar reason.

The additional reason to doubt the need for more people who cannot read, write, or speak English fluently and have less than a high school education is that the incomes of such people have been flat or declining for over a generation.

It is no longer 1883. We don’t just need “immigration reform”. We need immigration reform that encourages the workers we want to come here and discourages those who will be a burden to taxpayers and the needy who are already here.

Clifton Roscoe has a post at Glenn Loury’s place on what Mayor-Elect Brandon Johnson will need to do to “save Chicago”. It’s full of statistics. Here’s the conclusion:

Brandon Johnson will become Chicago’s mayor on May 15. He will have to strike a balance between the demands of several groups of stakeholders. Progressives will want him to address the various forms of inequality—income, wealth, life expectancy, food deserts, violent crime, poverty, etc.—that exist within Chicago. They’ll also want him to stay the course when it comes to reforming CPD and the criminal justice system. Others, including business leaders, will want Johnson to keep his promise not to raise taxes. They’ll also want him to boost public safety, to restore a sense of order in the city, and to reform the public schools. Public sector unions will expect Johnson to be responsive to their needs since their efforts helped elect him.

Mayor-Elect Johnson has to stop the population losses if he wants to put Chicago on a better path. This issue stymied his recent predecessors, Lightfoot, Emanuel, and Daley. It’s not clear that Johnson will embrace the kinds of policies needed to right the ship. To be fair, transformative change is difficult in Chicago, given its political environment. Much of Johnson’s base strongly supports the policies that created Chicago’s problems. There are also entrenched interests that support the status quo, since it works for them. Mayor-Elect Johnson may be facing “Mission Impossible.” Time will tell whether he’s up to the job. More than one term will be needed to turn Chicago around, even if he over-performs.

Does Mayor-Elect Johnson actually want to “turn Chicago around”? Or does he want to benefit his patrons? If experience is any gauge, he’s there to benefit his patrons. I don’t believe he can do both.

We are not presently producing enough weapons and ammunition to support the Ukrainians in their war against Russia. If we want them to be able to prevail in any sense including at this point just to survive, we must have more heavy industry and the energy production that goes along with it in this country. Simple as that.

If our relative priorities are to value a reduction in energy and industrial production in the United States over Ukraine, let’s just acknowledge that. Anything else is wishful thinking.

I am deeply distressed about the issues raised in James Joyner’s post, criticizing Pope Francis’s stance on the war in Ukraine:

The problem with all of this is that it requires Francis to not only reject the West but centuries of Just War doctrine created by his own church, going back to Augustine and Aquinas. Putin invaded a neighbor without just cause and has committed mass atrocities, thus violating every principle of both jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Treating the situation as though it were simply a diplomatic squabble that needs to end is, well, evil according to his own church’s longstanding teachings. That those teachings are at the core of international human rights law simply compounds the evil.

I don’t believe that the war in Ukraine is a just war being waged justly, particularly but not exclusively on the part of the Russians. I don’t trust the reports we’re receiving about the war from anybody.

Furthermore, I don’t believe there is such a thing as a good war. There are only wars that are better than the alternative.

I also have questions:

• How can we actually determine what’s going on?
• Is the Ukrainian government a just authority?
• What is a realistic way to conclude the war?

and, most importantly, if it is a war of good vs. evil with the Ukrainians good and the Russians evil, why don’t the government of the countries representing most of the people in the world see it that way?

More good news for Chicago. 17 of the 20 highest property tax bills outside of New York City are in Chicago, led by Sears Willis Tower. Mario Marroquin reports at Crain’s Chicago Business:

Office landlords in Chicago and New York are paying the largest property tax bills in the country, despite the woes afflicting the sector.

According to a new report from real estate research firms PropertyShark, based in New York, and Santa Barbara, Calif.-based CommercialEdge, which ranked the largest property tax bills for office buildings last year, 82 of the top 100 were paid by buildings in New York City. And one Chicago building cracks the top 10.

The Willis Tower at 233 S. Wacker Drive, which paid over $50 million in property taxes in 2022, is the only office property outside New York’s five boroughs to reach the top 10 list.

Excluding New York buildings, 17 of the 20 largest tax bills for office properties nationwide were paid in Chicago in 2022, according to the report. Other buildings in the top 50:

I wonder what its property tax would be without the property tax multiplier?

I agree with the point Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is making in his Wall Street Journal op-ed:

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is a lifeline for tens of millions of low-income Americans who rely on it for food. But like most government programs, SNAP is in dire need of reform.

Though SNAP is meant to supplement nutrition, more than 20% of all program spending goes to unhealthy food and drink. Taxpayers are projected to spend $240 billion on junk food, with more than $60 billion going exclusively to soda, over the next decade. Equally important are the health consequences for those relying on the program.

This subsidization of junk food is fueling American health crises. More than 40% of U.S. adults are obese, and roughly half have diabetes or prediabetes. These diseases can be debilitating. They are also extremely expensive, costing hundreds of billions of dollars in medical costs each year. That SNAP plays a role in their spread is immoral, irresponsible and reprehensible.

Both Democrats and Republicans should support this and have expressed support for this idea. However, in our present oppositional world I’m concerned that even something as commonsensical as this will be condemned as racist, anti-poor, etc.

I also suspect it will receive substantial pushback from the corporations who are profiting from the present subsidies. It has been estimated that as much as 40% of Coca Cola’s revenues are derived from SNAP (the program that replaced food stamps). I haven’t been able to discover how much of Hostess’s and Little Debby’s revenues come from SNAP but I’m sure it’s substantial.

That brings up a point too infrequently mentioned. The vast wasteland that is the American diet isn’t just a matter of availability but preference as well. The reason that junk food is such an enormous industry is because people like it.