Chicago’s Disastrous Budget

There’s one silver lining in the budget Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson has put forward for 2026: it will make it harder for him to win a second term.

Central to his proposals are new taxes on businesses, “showing that the mayor is indifferent to Chicago’s greatest need—attracting more businesses to increase economic growth,” John O. McGinnis writes.

Johnson blames President Trump for the budget being more than $1 billion out of whack, but federal grants make up only a portion of it. The bigger issue is Chicago’s higher-than-necessary wages and pensions. “The city could save hundreds of millions of dollars over time by reforming wasteful employee benefits and adopting procurement practices that ensure the city gets value for its money,” McGinnis observes. “Johnson has dismissed these ideas.”

Read more about the budget and what it will mean for Johnson and Chicago’s future.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently announced funding for homelessness programs that comply with the Sex Offender Registry and Notification Act. The move is motivated by a growing concern among policymakers about the connection between sex offenders and homelessness.

“Sex offenders make up a much larger subpopulation of the homeless than many other categories of homeless people, such as veterans, families, and victims of domestic violence,” Devon Kurtz writes. “In fact, sex offenders are a larger proportion of the unsheltered homeless than all those groups combined.”

Read his take on the new policies.

Child Abuse Pediatricians (CAPs) are essential for preventing and responding to child abuse. Unfortunately, the case of Maya Kowalski has played a pivotal role in turning the public against them. Kowalski was removed from parental custody after a pediatrician determined that her parents were medically abusing her, but the media portrayed the story as child-welfare authorities railroading innocent parents.

Naomi Schaefer Riley observes that “a sustained campaign of intimidation is now underway against many of these CAPs.” She notes that only about 400 CAPs are working in the U.S., and many are retiring or leaving. “Fewer CAPs means that doctors with less experience and knowledge of the signs of abuse will be diagnosing these cases,” she writes.

Read more about the ramifications.

It has become fashionable to blame America’s high incarceration rates on social injustice. The crime problem would be solved, the thinking goes, if policymakers would just provide economic opportunity.

But violent crime is highly concentrated, overwhelmingly caused by a small group of repeat offenders. As James Q. Wilson argued half a century ago in his book Thinking About Crime, the solution is to prevent the violent few from striking again. “Now, after years of criminal-justice reforms and anti-policing measures,” Tal Fortgang writes, “crime has returned as a kitchen-table concern, but Wilson’s insights have faded from memory. We are not only far from reaffirming his conclusions; we have lost the habit of asking his questions.”

Read more about Wilson and the case for an incapacitation-first approach to crime.

Earlier this week, Sam Kirchner, one of the cofounders of StopAI—a group seeking to ban the development of artificial intelligence—was reported missing after allegedly assaulting another group member and making violent statements. Days later, police responded to a man making threats near OpenAI’s San Francisco offices.

It’s not yet known whether the man whom the police confronted was the missing StopAI cofounder. But Kirchner’s alleged statements and the incident in San Francisco highlight the increasingly contentious fight over the future of the technology—and the radicalism of some of its opponents. Manhattan Institute fellow Sanjana Friedman ponders the significance of Kirchner’s flight and the threat against OpenAI.

“Nice guys finish last, and it is obvious we’ve been too nice. States have become little countries. The USA must operate as one unit; it does not.”

Photo credit: Daniel Boczarski / Stringer / Getty Images Entertainment via Getty Images