Chicago’s Uprising Against ICE, and 80,000 Stolen Phones

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From the New York Times, it's the headlines.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

Today is Wednesday, October 15th.

Here's what we're covering.

In Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.

He's a citizen!

He's a citizen!

A crackdown by federal immigration agents has been intensifying.

What started with a slow uptick in arrests has escalated rapidly, with agents, sometimes in masks, pulling up to people on sidewalks and detaining them.

And the encounters are increasingly turning into open confrontations.

I've seen a lot of very aggressive tactics from federal agents who have fired tear gas and pepper balls at not just protesters, but at people on city streets who have formed crowds when they see people being arrested.

Julie Bosman is the Chicago bureau chief for The Times.

She says just yesterday, ICE agents used tear gas on a crowd, apparently without warning.

The scene was so chaotic that even police officers nearby were exposed, with one officer seen rinsing out his eyes with a garden hose.

In response to these aggressive tactics from federal agents, I think that regular Chicagoans are really pushing back.

They crowd around when agents are making arrests.

They organize on Facebook.

They try to warn other people.

I've heard a lot of, you know, honking horns when agents are spotted on the street.

People blowing whistles when they see immigration agents.

So things just feel very tense and getting more tense here in Chicago.

Julie says that the residents who have been pushing pushing back and even organizing patrols of their own say they're trying to protect their neighbors and that they feel the city didn't need a surge of federal law enforcement.

One city council member said, quote, Chicagoans are just trying to live their life.

We're not going to tolerate unconstitutional authoritarianism.

Federal authorities originally told local officials that they expected the operation in Chicago to last for 45 days, as they said they needed to find and arrest undocumented immigrants.

There now appears to be no set end date.

In the past few weeks, the Trump administration also deployed hundreds of National Guard troops to the Chicago area, saying they were needed to protect federal agents.

The effort was recently blocked temporarily by a federal judge who accused the Trump administration of misrepresenting the facts on the ground to justify the deployment.

Now, three other quick updates on the Trump administration.

Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government.

And because of this, many of our operations are impacted.

And most of our TSA employees are working without pay.

As the government shutdown hits the two-week mark, the president and his team are turning up the political pressure on Democrats.

Christy Noam, the Secretary of Homeland Security, recently asked airports across the country to play a video on TV screens near security checkpoints that blames the shutdown on Democrats.

A number of airports, however, have refused to show the video, saying it's overly partisan and potentially even a violation of the Hatch Act, a law intended to limit political activities by federal employees.

Meanwhile, honestly, can I put it in plain words for you?

Trump is ramping up his efforts to fire federal workers and slash government programs, claiming the shutdown's given him a, quote, unprecedented opportunity for that.

So we are closing up Democrat programs that we think that we disagree with, and they're never going to open again.

In the past two weeks, the administration has frozen or canceled nearly $28 billion for more than 200 projects, primarily in Democratic-led cities and states, everything from subway upgrades in New York to renewable energy projects in California and Washington State.

At the same time, the White House has used creative accounting to keep funding flowing to politically sensitive areas that could have otherwise triggered blowback, like military salaries and food assistance for low-income families.

Also, he's MAGA all the way.

Trump hosted the president of Argentina, Javier Malay, yesterday, as the administration says it's moving forward with a controversial $20 billion bailout of the country, which has been in financial crisis.

Trump has described Malay as his favorite president, saying, I love him because he loves Trump.

The White House has said the bailout is needed to stabilize Argentina's economy, though Trump also said the money was contingent on Millay's party winning upcoming elections.

Critics of the plan, however, including many Democratic lawmakers, say the financial lifeline is effectively a gift to hedge funds and wealthy Americans who've invested heavily in Argentina, including friends of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett.

And last update.

Today we're here to honor and remember a fearless warrior for liberty, beloved leader who galvanized the next generation like nobody I've ever seen before.

In the Rose Garden yesterday, Trump posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was assassinated last month.

Trump called Kirk, the founder of the right-wing political group Turning Point USA, a martyr for truth and for freedom.

Trump and other Republicans have credited Kirk with helping them win office by mobilizing young voters.

The president has said he also plans to award the Medal of Freedom to Ben Carson, the former housing secretary, and Rudy Giuliani.

A new report has found that a lot of popular protein supplements, think of the powders and drinks that have popped up everywhere these days, contain levels of lead that could pose health concerns.

Consumer reports tested 23 different products and found that over two-thirds of them had more lead per serving than the standard set by the state of California, which has a strict guideline on lead consumption.

At least a few products had more than 10 times that amount.

According to the report, there's no reason to panic.

There's no risk of immediate harm from the products, but extended use may be unsafe.

Lead is highly toxic and can accumulate in the body over time.

Children are at especially high risk for developing developmental delays or even seizures from lead exposure.

Health experts not involved with the testing called the results troubling.

One said he was quote appalled that companies weren't checking their supply chains well enough to avoid these levels of lead contamination.

In the U.S., supplements, like protein powder, are not regulated in the same way that food and drugs are.

With that light oversight in mind, one one doctor told The Times consumers should weigh whether the risk of supplements is worth it since there are other ways to get protein.

And finally.

It's a major problem, criminals riding up on e-bikes and literally nicking devices out of people's hands.

I've just put my phone against my chest.

I'm thinking, thinking, no, not me, not at 9 a.m.

Like, I'm just there.

In recent years, London has earned a reputation as one of the phone theft capitals of the world.

A mobile phone is snatched every 50 minutes in this part of London alone.

Social media is flooded with warnings about staying alert.

Guys, my phone nearly got stolen today.

No, it's actually not funny.

Along with surveillance footage of theft after theft on busy streets in broad daylight, the culprits zipping away.

Some experts say part of what's made it so common in Britain is the fact that police budgets were slashed in the last decade, to the point that police in London said they would stop investigating minor crimes when there was a low chance of catching anyone.

Now, though, after 80,000 phones were stolen in the last year alone, police in London are trying to tackle the problem.

And some of what they've uncovered points to an industrial-level criminal operation.

They say there's three tiers to it.

The thieves at the bottom wearing balaclavas on e-bikes.

They then sell the stolen phones to shopkeepers and other middlemen.

And at the top of the network are exporters.

Police say they found that a lot of the stolen phones are being shipped overseas and have identified a group they say was responsible for sending almost 40,000 phones to China, where they can be resold for a large profit.

When police arrested two men who they say were ringleaders for sending a lot of the phones overseas, they found several phones in their car wrapped in foil, an attempt to try and block the signals from people trying to use the find my iPhone feature before the thieves could get them out of the country.

Police later said that the men had gone to Costco at one point and bought over a mile and a half of tinfoil.

Those are the headlines.

Today on the daily, President Trump's border czar Tom Homan was recorded last year accepting $50,000 in cash in an undercover FBI investigation, according to people familiar with the case.

The investigation was then closed under under Trump, and administration officials have been sidestepping questions about it.

My colleague Devlyn Barrett walks through what happened.

You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

We'll be back tomorrow.

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