One of the proudest moments of my life was the first time I ever laced up my boots, put on my uniform and raised my right hand to swear my oath to the Constitution as a member of the Illinois Army National Guard.
I cherished every day that I got to wake up and call myself a United States soldier. And it is precisely because I love our military so deeply that I refuse to let a five-time draft-dodging coward abuse it for his own gain and to our country’s detriment.
At Quantico last week, President Donald Trump —the same man who insists on rebranding the Pentagon as the “Department of War”— told top military leaders that he wants to use American cities as “training grounds” for our troops.
TEXAS NATIONAL GUARD DEPLOYS 200 TROOPS TO ILLINOIS FOR FEDERAL PROTECTION MISSION AMID PROTESTS
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Let that sink in: the commander in chief wants members of the Department of War to “train” against the same citizens they swear an oath to protect. Last month, he announced Chicago would “find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” And this week, he’s making good on his threats: Trump has now forced hundreds of National Guardsmen into Chicago.
Members of the Texas National Guard assemble in Elwood, Illinois, at the Army Reserve Training Center in the southwest suburb of Chicago, on Oct. 7. 2025.
(Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
For months, Trump has fabricated claims of chaos and crime on American streets to justify false claims that there is a “need” to deploy troops into our cities against local officials’ wishes. First to Los Angeles, then Washington, D.C. — and he isn’t stopping there, he’s also attempting to deploy troops to Portland. Over the weekend, however, a federal judge that Trump appointed blocked his efforts to deploy troops there — twice — because, in his own handpicked appointee’s words, his claims about why they are needed were “untethered to facts.”
Another way to put that is that he’s lying.
In just the past week in Chicago, we’ve seen Trump’s agents detain innocent Americans, deny citizens their right to legal representation, zip-tie children, arrest elected officials, ransack apartment buildings and injure journalists. And in recent weeks, they’ve shot two people, leaving one — a father of two young children — dead, making dubious and unsubstantiated claims about why they felt the need to use lethal force.
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It’s obvious what Trump is doing. He’s targeting and punishing the cities who dare push back against him — the ones who are willing to call the president what he really is: a wannabe emperor with no clothes, no courage and certainly no moral compass.
And while he’s currently targeting blue cities with his lies, if these deployments are not stopped, there will be nothing to stop him — or any future president — from doing this to anyone, anywhere, for any made-up reason.
PRITZKER SUES TRUMP TO BLOCK NATIONAL GUARD ACTION IN ILLINOIS
Let’s be clear: Ordering our troops to intimidate the very Americans they sacrifice every day to protect does nothing to make our nation safer. Policing Americans in their own communities is not the National Guard’s job. They can’t make arrests, and they’re not adequately trained to carry out police duties in urban environments. These deployments are simply another unwarranted, unwanted and unjust move from Trump straight out of the Authoritarian 101 textbook, further jeopardizing civil rights while distracting our troops from executing their core mission of keeping our families safe from the actual adversaries who wish us harm.
President Donald Trump talks to the media after walking off Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on October 5, 2025, in Washington, D.C.(Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
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We know Trump’s actions aren’t about “law and order.” If this 34-time convicted felon actually cared about law and order, he wouldn’t flagrantly and seemingly gleefully refuse to coordinate with state and local officials. He wouldn’t be taking our troops away from their training missions just to do his personal bidding, forcing our heroes to stand on the side of the street picking up trash instead of using their time preparing to protect our nation in case of future conflict. He wouldn’t literally defund the police by freezing and slashing federal dollars that help hire, train and equip law enforcement.
But he did. All of those things, instead of supporting and expanding proven violence and crime prevention strategies that prevent retaliatory escalation.
PRITZKER SAYS TRUMP ORDERING 400 MEMBERS OF THE TEXAS NATIONAL GUARD TO ILLINOIS, OREGON AND OTHER LOCATIONS
Trump is wasting millions of taxpayer dollars to terrorize law-abiding citizens and legal visa holders who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights. And he’s diverting federal resources and agents away from operations that investigate drug cartels and gun traffickers, from missions that identify and disrupt terrorist plots and from actions that protect our families from cyber-attacks to do it.
Military personnel in uniform, with the Texas National Guard patch on, are seen at the U.S. Army Reserve Center on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025, in Elwood, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. (AP/Laura Bargfeld)
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I drove past some of the National Guardsmen who have been mobilized on the way to work today. I felt for them. Because when they raised their right hands and took their oaths, they didn’t do so to help a draft dodger dodge not just wars but his own personal scandals, too.
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They signed up to defend Americans’ right to free speech — not to intimidate Americans from that act of speaking out. They were willing to die to defend this country — not to defend one man’s ego.
Los Angeles did not ask for this. Washington, D.C., did not ask for this. Portland did not ask for this. Chicago did not ask for this. Our servicemembers do not deserve this. And it is because I respect our military so deeply that I refuse to stay silent as it is disrespected and abused by a man who was never brave enough to serve himself. I cannot and will not let him keep giving our troops the middle finger — taking them from their families and their missions, while eroding the hard-won trust and confidence they’ve earned from the American public over generations.
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These days, I may no longer be wearing my Army uniform, but it still hangs proudly in my Senate office. Now, I spend a lot of my time seated under the great, beautiful Capitol Dome rather than beneath my Black Hawk’s main rotors. But my core mission is still the same as when I was in the National Guard: to keep America as strong and safe as she should be.
If only Donald Trump cared about doing the same.
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Democrat Tammy Duckworth represents Illinois in the United States Senate.
BEECHER CITY, Ill. (WAND) – Farms were damaged in Effingham County Wednesday evening when a powerful storm swept through at around 8 p.m.
The McKay Farm in Beecher City was heavily damaged when the rapidly moving storm hit.
“Two buildings were totally destroyed,” Dan McKay told WAND News on Thursday. “We’ve got five grain bins and they’re all damaged.”
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The buildings collapsed onto farm equipment and a semi that were parked in the structures. A utility pole was snapped and ripped out of the ground.
In nearby Shumway, another farm was hit. A barn collapsed, with a grain bin being ripped apart and debris traveling several hundred feet through a nearby corn field. A house on the property was also damaged.
Gov. Mike Braun asked state regulators to reconsider their decision to greenlight a $71 million rate increase for AES Indiana, doubling down on his condemnation of a move that could leave Indianapolis residents with higher electrical bills for years.
Braun wrote in a June 18 news release that he had asked Indiana Utility Counselor Abby Gray, who heads the office representing ratepayers in proceedings before the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, to petition for a rehearing of the AES rate case.
Gray indicated in the release that her office would submit the petition shortly. No petition had been posted on the IURC’s online docket as of this story’s publication.
The rate increase, which was approved by the IURC on June 17, was substantially less than the $192 million increase that AES initially requested. It was also less than the amount proposed in a settlement last October between AES and major electricity consumers.
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But the Office of Utility Consumer Counselor, which Gray leads, came out strongly against any increase to AES’s base rates. In September, the OUCC called for a $21 million reduction instead.
As the Republican Party grapples with rising discontent over affordability, Braun has used opposition to rising utility rates to telegraph that he’s committed to keeping costs down for Indiana residents. He signed a law in February that allows the state to make rate-setting decisions that reward or penalize utilities based on metrics including affordability.
In March, he told reporters that he would take on Indiana’s five investor-owned utilities, describing himself as the “new sheriff in town.”
And after the IURC voted 3-1 to approve the AES rate increase, he wrote in a post to X that he was “deeply disappointed.”
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Braun wrote in the June 18 news release that he had appointed Gray, a longtime OUCC lawyer and judge, to her current post because he knew she “would help me fight for Hoosiers.”
According to AES’s estimates, the rate increase will cost households an additional $5 per month for every 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity they use, beginning in July. A second hike will take effect in January.
Tilly Robinson is a Pulliam fellow for the Indianapolis Star. She can be reached at tilly.robinson@indystar.com.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) — It’s been a week since the World Cup began in Kansas City, but some local businesses aren’t feeling the expected influx in traffic and are asking for support.
On Thursday, KC2026 provided numbers for the FIFA Fan Festival and the ConnectKC26 transportation system.
From June 11 to June 16, KC2026 said more than 63,000 people attended the FIFA Fan Festival.
There are mixed results for where everyone is from:
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52% from Kansas or Missouri
33% from the United States
15% from out of the country
As of 2 p.m. on June 17, ConnectKC26 has a total of 86,540 registered passes.
Breakdown of routes from KC2026:
Stadium Direct: 57,302
Regional Direct: 17,284
Airport Direct: 11,954
As for business traffic, it depends on where you look. Some businesses in the Country Club Plaza said they’ve seen an uptick, especially on the first match day.
“We just had a really fun time with all of the fans, and I think we did a good job preparing for it,” said KC Style Haus Owner, Deserae Minor.
But many businesses are sharing their disappointment online.
‘Ghost town’
Caitlin Benedict, who owns Bisou, a European-style coffee and pastry shop, took to Instagram after shopping at a Crossroads night market.
“We are all in this together, it sucks. It was dead. It’s been dead everywhere,” said Bisou Owner, Caitlin Benedict.
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After sharing her disappointment online, she saw an uptick in business on Thursday.
“It’s nice when the community can help out, and you can back up your own hometown at the same time,” said Janet Garciga, who drove in from Lee’s Summit to visit Bisou.
People sit outside on the patio in Bisou Kansas City, after its owner asked for more support during the World Cup.(KCTV5 News)
“I don’t want them to just come to Bisou, and I don’t want it to just be for a day. I want them to go everywhere else, and I want them to support everyone else, and consistently, especially for the next month and a half while FIFA is here,” said Benedict.
She heard from businesses experiencing the same issues in Mission, other spots downtown, Kansas City, Kansas, and Overland Park.
Flags wave outside of Buffalo State Pizza in Kansas City, Missouri during the World Cup.(KCTV5 News)
Down the road in the Crossroads, Buffalo State Pizza saw fans for the French match on Tuesday.
“But after that, I mean, we even close early on Tuesday because that was, it was dead,” said Buffalo State Pizza Owner, Phillippe Lechevin.
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Shopping bags and matchas aren’t filling up at Dear Society either.
“The 10 years that I’ve been here in Kansas City. I have seen a lot of these big events coming into town, and we’ve been told to prepare and get ready for these huge crowds. And to be honest, after the NFL draft and after so many things that I’ve seen in 10 years, I didn’t do anything different,” said Dear Society Owner, Chanel Jezek. “I kind of knew. I had a feeling like we weren’t going to be as busy as they were projecting because they’ve done this to us before.”
Dear Society in Kansas City, Missouri, is described as an experiential retail concept by the owner.(KCTV5 News)
Multiple factors = slow traffic
All three, Bisou, Buffalo State Pizza, and Dear Society, said there isn’t really someone to blame, but rather multiple factors that could be part of the issues.
A lot of eateries in town added a 20% automatic gratuity to bills, Bisou and Buffalo State Pizza decided not to take part, but worry that it is keeping locals away.
Visit KC projected 650,000 visitors throughout the entire tournament, and these businesses wonder if the possibility of large crowds and no parking is also keeping residents at home.
“I think we lost a lot of the regular ones. You know, the number was shown earlier back in February, you know, the 600,000 people. People who have the option to work from home, but maybe they didn’t want to deal with the traffic, since there’s no traffic. So hopefully they’re going to come back,” said Lechevin. “People may realize, actually, you know, it’s not as crazy as it is. I can still park in my regular spot and have lunch at my regular spot without being, you know, charged an extra amount.”
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Jezek said she’d love to see KC2026 and FIFA add more locally owned businesses on their website so fans know where to find them.
“We are not seeing an increase in traffic on the streets. We are not crowded like they were predicting. You can still come in. You can still support your local businesses, your favorite coffee shops, your favorite places to grab your gifts, or whatever. We’re here. We’re slow. And there are more places to park,” said Jezek.
Benedict said it is an honor to have the World Cup here, but wants to see more honesty and support from leaders.
“I feel like it’s good for our city. It’s recognition. But at the same time, I want leadership to step in and say, okay, we didn’t get as many travelers as we should have,” said Benedict.
These businesses are hopeful that fans, locals, and other owners all come out and support these small shops throughout the metro during the World Cup and beyond.
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“I would say just keep coming and supporting us and showing up,” said Jezek.
KCTV5 reached out to Visit KC, but did not have any numbers it could share at this time.
Mayor Quinton Lucas’ office shared the statement below after this story aired on Thursday:
“While the economic impact of a global event of this magnitude will naturally vary by business and by neighborhood, Mayor Lucas is encouraged by what he is hearing from Kansas City’s entertainment and hospitality sectors. Hotels, bars, and restaurants reported strong activity as Kansas City welcomed tens of thousands of guests for the opening match. As we look toward this weekend’s games and the remainder of the tournament, we’ll continue to highlight opportunities for our visitors and residents alike to join in the fun and celebration of this one in a generation moment.”
Businesses are hopeful that the longer the World Cup goes on, the more people will show up. KCTV5 plans to check in with these businesses throughout the tournament to see if traffic picks up.
