At least three events connected to Mexican Independence Day have been canceled or postponed in Chicago, amid reports that Donald Trump plans to send troops and immigration agents as part of plans to launch mass deportations.
Organizers decided to cancel El Grito Chicago, an event that drew 24,000 people last year and was scheduled for 13-14 September.
“It was a painful decision, but holding El Grito Chicago at this time puts the safety of our community at stake – and that’s a risk we are unwilling to take,” the event’s website stated. “While we’re torn by this decision, when we brought this celebration back, our aim was to create a safe, affordable, family-friendly, community festival for all.”
The anxiety in the country’s third-largest city comes after Trump deployed national guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington DC. Illinois governor JB Pritzker said he was concerned about Ice agents targeting people at the Mexican Independence Day events.
Here’s the day’s Trump administration news at a glance.
Mexican festivals in Chicago canceled amid Trump plans to deploy troops
Donald Trump’s plan to deploy national guard troops and federal immigration agents to Chicago is already having an impact on the city’s Mexican community.
Organizers have canceled several local events tied to Mexican Independence Day, which occurs on 16 September.
Trump claims Chicago is ‘world’s most dangerous city’. The most violent ones are in red states
As Donald Trump threatens to deploy national guard units to cities ostensibly to quell violence, he repeatedly targets Democratic run-cities.
But an analysis of crime trends over the last four years shows two things. First, violent crime rates in America’s big cities have been falling over the last two years, and at an even greater rate over the last six months. The decrease in violence in America is unprecedented.
Second, crime in large cities in the aggregate is lower in states with Democratic leadership. But the president focuses his ire almost exclusively on large blue cities in blue states, sidestepping political conflict with red Republican governors.
Postal traffic into US plunges by more than 80% after Trump ends exemption
Postal traffic into the US plunged by more than 80% after the Trump administration ended a tariff exemption for low-cost imports, the United Nations postal agency said Saturday.
Rightwing conference reveals muddled lines between Trump and far right
A rightwing conference recently saw theocratic Christian nationalists, far-right publishers and members of men-only secret societies speaking alongside the Missouri senator Eric Schmitt, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at Donald Trump’s Department of Justice and other senior Republican figures.
The speaker list at the National Conservatism conference in Washington DC raises questions over what distinctions exist between the nationalist hard right in the US and members of the Trump administration and the Republican party.
Trump’s former surgeon general urges president to fire RFK Jr
The surgeon general from the first Trump administration on Saturday said that the US president should “absolutely” fire health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr over his “dangerous” policies on vaccines and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Trump administration begins new Ice operation in Massachusetts
The Trump administration has targeted Massachusetts as its next location to begin arresting and deporting immigrants, a Department of Homeland Security official confirmed to NBC News on Saturday.
What else happened today:
US supreme court rulings are “not just an opinion poll” of its nine judges’ beliefs, conservative Amy Coney Barrett has said, as she and her colleagues weigh a request to overturn the legalization of same-sex marriage.
US Open broadcasters have been asked not to air any booing of Donald Trump at Sunday’s men’s final.
The West Point Association of Graduates has reportedly canceled a ceremony to honor Tom Hanks just weeks before it was to take place.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on Friday 5 September.
