THE OCCUPATION: The Pentagon is making plans to send troops to Chicago, which President Trump has long claimed is a crime-ridden city, The Washington Post reported over the weekend.

  The President said New York could be next.

  Trump also threatened to send troops to Baltimore as he exchanged social media barbs with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore. “Baltimore is ranked the 4th WORST CITY IN THE NATION IN CRIME & MURDER,” Trump said in a post in which he also suggested he might claw back the money for rebuilding Baltimore’s collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge.

  The Chicago plan might involve sending as many as 3,000 members of the National Guard to the country’s third-largest city.

  It would be the third city where Trump sent troops, starting with Los Angeles where he deployed 4,000 members of the California National Guard and 700 active-duty Marines. 

  The force of National Guardsmen in Washington has grown to 2,200 and they are now carrying weapons. The NY Times reports that the Justice Department is making a literal federal case out of the most minor infractions. One man was brought to court for having an open container of alcohol.

THE REGIME:

— President Trump went to verbal war with ABC and NBC News in posts on his Truth Social. Here’s one: “Despite a very high popularity and, according to many, among the greatest 8 months in Presidential History, ABC & NBC FAKE NEWS, two of the worst and most biased networks in history, give me 97% BAD STORIES. IF THAT IS THE CASE, THEY ARE SIMPLY AN ARM OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND SHOULD, ACCORDING TO MANY, HAVE THEIR LICENSES REVOKED BY THE FCC. I would be totally in favor of that because they are so biased and untruthful, an actual threat to our Democracy!!! MAGA

— The Trump administration ordered an end to construction of a nearly-completed wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island.

  A letter to the Danish developers  said the government was halting work in order to “address concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United States.” What those concerns are, they didn’t say.

  President Trump wants to end development of renewable energy in favor of oil, natural gas, and what he calls “clean coal.” There’s no such thing. Trump is particularly critical of electricity generated by wind. He has said that if the wind stops blowing your television will go off.

— The University of California is negotiating with the Trump administration to restore half a billion dollars in funding while attempting to avoid a $1 billion fine the government would impose for what they claim is antisemitism on campus. 

THE WAR ROOM:  Israeli strikes hit Nasser hospital in Gaza today, killing at least 15 people, including four journalists. Among the dead were journalists working for al Jazeera and Reuters.

  Gaza’s health ministry said the journalists were killed on the fourth floor of the hospital in a “double tap” strike.

  Al Jazeera says 274 journalists have been killed during the Gaza war. 

ICE, ICE, BABY: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the immigrant wrongfully deported to an El Salvador prison in March and then returned in June, is being threatened with deportation to Uganda if he does not plead guilty to smuggling immigrants into the US. 

  Abrego Garcia, a citizen of El Salvador, was freed from custody on Friday.

  ICE and the Justice Department have been using deportation to a third party country as a kind of extra-judicial punishment. Its purpose is cruelty and to strike fear in illegal immigrants, encouraging them to go home.

  The Justice Department says they will send Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica if he pleads and serves his sentence. His lawyers accuse the Trump administration of trying to coerce a guilty plea with the threat of sending Abrego Garcia to a dangerous country where he has no connections and doesn’t speak the language. 

  They also accuse the Justice Department of having vindictively filed an indictment against Abrego Garcia for fighting his deportment.

THE OBIT PAGE: Champion jockey Ron Turcotte, who rode the great horse Secretariat to the near-impossible Triple Crown in 1973, died at his home in Drummond, New Brunswick. He was 84.

  That year he reached the finish line first in the Kentucky derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes. Only 13 horses have won  the Triple Crown in more than a century. Turcotte and Secretariat became the first Triple Crown winners since Citation in 1948.

  Turcotte’s riding career ended when he was paralyzed in an accident in 1978. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. 

  Before his triumph with Secretariat, Turcotte had already ridden Tom Rolfe to victory in the Preakness Stakes in 1965 and in 1972 won the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes aboard Riva Ridge. 

— Jerry Adler, a longtime behind-the-scenes Broadway manager who came to notoriety late in life as an actor playing Herman “Hesh” Rabkin, an associate the DiMeo crime family in the HBO series “The Sopranos,” died at age 96.

THE SPIN RACK:  Thousands of homes in Northern California wine country and central Oregon are under evacuation orders as fire crews battle wildfires.  The Pickett Fire has burned 10 square miles of Napa County. The Oregon fire is 29 square miles. — Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano spewed lava again for the 31^st time since December. The volcano has been shooting up spectacular fountains of lava. 

BELOW THE FOLD:  Disgraced, ejected, and imprisoned former Queens Rep. George Santos is writing a diary published by a Long Island newspaper in which he complains about life in federal prison. “I went from standing at the pinnacle of power and prestige, attending galas, navigating multimillion-dollar fundraisers in glittering Manhattan apartments and Long Island mansions, to the rock bottom of federal confinement,” he wrote.

  The once nattily-dress Santos, 47, is particularly miffed about his orange polyester jumpsuit and “sandpaper” soap in the shower.

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