Chicago Police Chief Gives Ominous Warning on DNC Protests

During a briefing on Tuesday about security plans ahead of this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Police Superintendent Larry Snelling told reporters, “Protesting peacefully doesn’t always mean you’re protected by the First Amendment.” His comment quickly sparked confusion and concerns of police repression for anticipated large-scale protests outside the DNC.

The comment came in a larger conversation where Snelling also hinted at changes to Chicago police’s mass arrest policy. “Mass arrest is a last resort,” Snelling said. “But we know the realities of these types of situations, especially when the number of people we’re expecting to converge upon Chicago is inevitable that there is a possibility for vandalism. There is a possibility for violence, and we are prepared to deal with that.”

Per WQAD, more than 50 groups have indicated plans to protest the DNC, and Chicago police have denied permit requests for protests near the venue. Groups whose permits were denied reportedly plan to sue and have vowed to march regardless.

Fox 32, which first reported the statements, followed up to note Snelling was speaking to acts of civil disobedience. Snelling’s comments, initially shared without context, continued: “First Amendment protection is only there if you’re not committing a crime. You can be acting out peacefully and still breaking the law. If you sit in a roadway, or you’re blocking a venue or private property, and you refuse to leave, those are crimes.”

The First Amendment grants “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” However, police departments across the country have exploited local laws to violently repress recent mass protests against genocide. In New York City, for example, the NYPD has frequently restricted pro-Palestine protests to sidewalks, making violent arrests on protesters who spill out into the street or for using megaphones without a permit.

Donald Trump can’t seem to stop talking about E. Jean Carroll, financial consequences be damned.

Speaking with Newsmax’s Greg Kelly on Tuesday, Trump continued to claim his innocence, despite being found liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s, and then defaming her two separate times.

“Other than the fact that she had a picture taken many, many years ago, I’ve never met this woman. I don’t know this woman. And I’m supposed to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a fictional story,” Trump told Kelly.

Trump owes Carroll a total of $88.3 million for sexually abusing and defaming her, and his repeated insistence that he’s never met Carroll could well invite further legal action from her. Trump took the opportunity during the Tuesday interview to complain about the judges in his various other legal cases, mentioning by name Carroll defamation suit Judge Lewis Kaplan, and Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over the civil fraud case related to the Trump Organization’s overvaluation of property.

Trump has also repeatedly publicly criticized Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the hush-money case in which the former president was convicted on 34 counts of business fraud.

“This is a cabal,” Trump said.

Merchan levied a gag order on Trump and has threatened to jail him for violating it. After his conviction, Trump’s lawyers requested that Merchan lift the order. If his comments on Carroll, who he’s already twice been found guilty of defaming, are any indication, they know, even in the face of fines and jail time, Trump just can’t help himself.

Israel paid for a foreign influence campaign to disseminate pro-Israel propaganda and disinformation to U.S. lawmakers, The New York Times confirmed on Wednesday. The campaign had been flagged and reported on for months across numerous social media platforms, but it was unclear the extent to which the Israeli government was involved in the operation. Turns out, the Israeli government directly commissioned the whole thing—and it was targeting Black Democratic lawmakers in particular.

The influence operation—which seeks to sow criticism of pro-Palestine and campus protests and to bolster support for Israel’s attacks on Gaza—began in October, according to the Times. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, identified the operation last week. Meta described the campaign as “likely AI-generated” with ChatGPT posts from accounts posing as Jewish students, Black Americans, and “concerned citizens,” according to Reuters, and a focus on audiences in the United States and Canada.

The Times reports the campaign is still active on X (formerly Twitter), where fake accounts posing as real Americans spammed pro-Israel propaganda in reply to predominantly Black U.S. lawmakers. The campaign targeted Ritchie Torres, a Democratic representative from New York well known for routinely espousing pro-Israel propaganda, as well as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Both, coincidentally, are two of AIPAC’s largest donation recipients: Both Torres’s and Jeffries’s largest donor is AIPAC, while Jeffries is AIPAC’s top recipient.

Israeli-based newspaper Haaretz also reported numerous examples of the fake accounts and included one reply from a ChatGPT-fueled fake account posing as a Black woman in response to U.S. Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove, who represents California.

“Israel’s role in this is reckless and probably ineffective,” Achiya Schatz, the executive director of Israeli disinformation watchdog FakeReporter, told The New York Times. That Israel “ran an operation that interferes in U.S. politics is extremely irresponsible.”

According to sources involved in the campaign who provided documented evidence to The New York Times, the campaign was commissioned by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs—a government body largely focused on pushing pro-Israel and pro-Netanyahu talking points to U.S. Jews and advocating for a highly controversial proposed definition of antisemitism. The ministry paid $2 million for the campaign, tapping Israeli political marketing firm Stoic.

The exposure of the government agency behind the influence campaign is almost entirely too convenient: In January, a Tel Aviv University report called to shutter the ministry and fold its initiatives into the offices of the prime minister and the foreign ministry, consolidating power around far-right figureheads Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz.

Judge Aileen Cannon has agreed to Donald Trump’s request for a hearing on whether Jack Smith’s appointment as special counsel in his classified documents case is legal, and she’s allowing parties not involved in the case to take part.

On Tuesday, Cannon granted motions from Trump’s legal team for parties not involved in his classified documents case to participate in an expanded hearing on the legality of Smith’s appointment.

These parties include conservative lawyers Josh Blackman from the Landmark Legal Foundation and Gene Schaerr from Citizens United. The other side will include Matthew Seligman, a legal scholar who thinks that Trump’s motion is “meritless.” None of these parties are otherwise involved in the case. Oral arguments on Smith’s appointment will begin June 21.

It’s an odd long-shot strategy in the case that probably would have been shot down by any other judge, but the Trump-appointed Cannon has made several questionable decisions in the classified documents case that favor the convicted felon and Republican presidential nominee.

Cannon has also agreed to hear Trump’s arguments that the FBI plotted to assassinate him—a completely made-up conspiracy theory. Last week, she blocked a gag order request from special counsel Jack Smith because it was “wholly lacking in substance and professional courtesy.” Last month, she effectively delayed Trump’s case indefinitely to resolve pretrial motions. Even one of Trump’s former lawyers, Ty Cobb, thinks that Cannon is doing a terrible job with the case.

The frequently delayed case has not reflected well on Cannon, a former federal prosecutor and University of Michigan law school graduate. One hearing with a Trump co-defendant devolved into a shouting match, and Cannon seems to misunderstand basic legal proceedings and principles in court, forcing legal counsel to explain them to her as the trial proceeds. Whether her actions are due to ignorance or a deliberate attempt to help Trump, he has made no secret of his appreciation.

Conservatives, those supposed defenders of law and order, are struggling to spin Donald Trump’s felony conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. As a result, they’re resorting to a well-practiced reflex: gutter racism.

Donald Trump Jr., the 46-year-old self-proclaimed “Meme Wars General” and executive vice president of the Trump Organization, on Monday posted an image of George Floyd on his Instagram.

“Democrats: ‘I don’t know how you can support a felon,’” he wrote on the photo.

“The mental gymnastics here are staggering!!!” Trump Jr. captioned the image. He also posted a version of the photo to his Instagram story.

Trump Jr.’s post, which at the time of writing has been liked more than 240,000 times, seems indicative of a broader conservative talking point in the making. When asked earlier this week about Trump being a convicted felon, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene responded, “Yeah, so was George Floyd, and everybody—and you all too, the media—worship George Floyd. Democrats worship George Floyd. There were riots burning down the f—ng country over George Floyd.”

It’s unclear whether the disingenuous attempt to compare Floyd, an unarmed Black man murdered by police officers in 2020, to Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is a coordinated strategic effort by conservatives, but it tracks with the right-wing embrace of racist conspiracy about Floyd’s death and celebration of vigilante violence during the 2020 protests. Conservative abuse of Floyd’s image is by now a yearslong phenomenon. But that doesn’t make Trump Jr.’s post any less shameless or disgusting.