Brandon Johnson may be heading back to the Beltway for another strapping — this time for aiding and abetting a terrorist organization and presiding over a hostile, anti-Semitic environment
You have to be a man of many talents to achieve a six percent approval rating in a city with a tradition of some of the worst mayors in history. Yes, it’s not easy to establish your position at the bottom of that rogues’ gallery — indisputably the worst mayor since John Baptiste Du Sable decided to start peddling furs (a business the City Council just tried to ban) here in the city named after the smell of stinking onions.
Indeed, our mayor, the “honorable” Brandon Johnson, is a man of many talents and qualifications — heretofore unbeknownst to us.
For example, apparently, he’s a legal expert. According to the Chicago Tribune, Johnson has seen fit to opine on the arrest and possible deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s pro-Gaza encampments in New York.
"‘The fact that people are being detained for their political views, that is beyond dangerous and reprehensible,’ Johnson, the first big-city U.S. mayor to endorse a Gaza ceasefire, told reporters at a City Hall news conference. ‘People should not be held for their political views, right? That is not the hallmark of our democracy.’”
No doubt, the average tax-paying voter might wonder what business this is of the mayor of our city by the lake — one that is careening into bankruptcy. However, Chicago, despite being engulfed in a fiscal conflagration comparable to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, somehow has plenty of bandwidth for the most complex and controversial foreign affairs.
As the Tribune reminds us, “The progressive mayor cast a tie-breaker vote for a Gaza ceasefire resolution in City Council in early 2024 and described the conflict as ‘genocidal’ ahead of the Democratic National Convention that summer. He also endorsed activist-backed calls for a Palestinian to speak at the blockbuster event, but those demands never materialized.”
The hills of the Middle East might seem like strange ones for a Midwestern mayor to die on, but one must always factor in the alarmingly leftist politics that plague our city. Jumping into a fraught, complex foreign policy debate in a city as blue as the lake on a sunny day must have seemed like a basically risk-free maneuver for a Democratic mayor — even though, during the City Council vote, there was clear division and vociferous disagreement. But Johnson couldn’t resist the temptation to grandstand while he had some degree of national attention due to Chicago’s dubious honor of hosting the Democratic National Convention.
Educator. Lawyer. Diplomat. Statesman. Shouldn’t we be thanking our lucky stars to have such a polymath — such a Renaissance man — in charge of our civic destiny?
Well, the sad truth is that he is none of these. He’s a failed educator (nothing more than a union hack) in one of the worst school systems in the history of education. He has no legal qualifications whatsoever. And he’s a diplomatic ignoramus — along with the vast majority of his party.
Take the case of Mahmoud Khalil. He is not a citizen. He’s here on a green card, recently acquired under allegedly dubious circumstances. Prior to receiving it, he was here on a student visa (which affords substantially fewer civil rights) and was leading activities designed to aid and abet Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
“A green card comes with legal obligations, including the disavowal of terrorism. Under 8 USC 1182, an alien is ‘inadmissible’ if he or she ‘endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity’ or is a representative of … a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity.’”
Following his arrest by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has taken steps to support his detention and potential deportation. In recent court filings, DOJ attorneys have argued that Khalil’s activities could adversely affect U.S. foreign policy, citing a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows for deportation on such grounds. This provision is rarely invoked, highlighting the significance the DOJ places on this case.
Perhaps not surprisingly, we favor the opinions of these authoritative bodies over that of our amateur jailhouse lawyer, Mr. Johnson.
Speaking of the Trump Justice Department, the Trib reports that the DOJ has sent “a letter to Mayor Johnson about alleged antisemitism on campuses, the latest escalation of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on liberal cities and educational institutions."
"‘A Justice Department-led task force requested Johnson and the mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, and Boston discuss with federal officials their responses to antisemitism at their cities’ schools and colleges over the past two years,’ according to a news release. The statement says the mayors ‘may have failed to protect Jewish students from unlawful discrimination, in potential violation of federal law.’ ‘Too many elected officials chose not to stand up to a rising tide of antisemitism in our cities and campuses following the horrific events of October 7, 2023,’ said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. ‘Actions have consequences—inaction does, too.’”
Fortunately for Mayor BJ, the letter does not outline any specific consequences — yet — but clearly, he’s gotten himself back on the federal hot seat. They may have to buy him his own chair unless he’s got one in the gift room he’d like to ship down.
According to the Tribune:
“The Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, created via a Trump executive order, informed the Democratic leaders—who testified together in a congressional hearing on sanctuary policies for immigrants this month—that the task force is gathering information about unspecified incidents of antisemitism to determine whether federal intervention is warranted, according to the release. To that end, task force leader Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights… is requesting a meeting to ‘quickly and effectively identify ways … (to) return safety, civility, and sanity to our nation’s schools.’”
Safety. Civility. Sanity. In a city that has been unsafe, uncivil, and insane for ages, these are qualities that have been so lacking in our civic life that they almost sound like foreign words.
It is, of course, a rich irony to see the federal Office of Civil Rights investigating a mayor who invokes the race card at every conceivable opportunity. It has been clear for some time that policies such as diversity, equity, and inclusion are very selectively applied in progressive circles, and Chicago has been a case study of that. Our fellow Jewish citizens have been subjected to harassment, abuse, and even violence — not seen since Nazi Germany in the 1930s — as have Jews around the country and even the world. The antisemitism that has taken hold of the Democratic Party is vile and repugnant, especially for a party that claims to be the height of human rights advocacy. Terrell and Bondi are correct in accusing the city of negligence and dereliction of duty in failing to protect its Jewish citizens against obvious racial, religious, and ethnic prejudice.
You might think being in such hot water would dissuade the mayor from his amateur diplomacy, but nooooooo. As the Trib reports, “On Wednesday, the mayor condemned the Israel-Gaza war that began after the Hamas terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, sparking a rift between the left and moderate flanks of the Democratic Party — an undercurrent that ran through Chicago politics as well.
Last spring’s nationwide movement across college campuses over the Gaza war swept through Chicago and put Johnson to the test, as he tried to balance outrage from pro-Israel groups — who said encampments at the University of Chicago, DePaul University, and the School of the Art Institute were unsafe and antisemitic — with complaints from his leftist grassroots base that their cries for peace were being stifled.”
For a teacher, Johnson is a slow learner. His abysmal six percent approval rating hasn’t taught him a lesson, nor have his repeated trips to Trump’s woodshed. He seems uneducable. But one thing seems certain: The Trump administration and the voters of Chicago will continue to teach him lesson after lesson on how to be mayor — a subject he seems to have flunked.
