Good morning, Chicago. ✶
🔎 Below: Twenty-five years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, Sun-Times journalists and contributors reflect.
🗞️ Plus: Few answers surface in the year since a federal immigration officer fatally shot a local man, how art and culture are thriving in Englewood and more news you need to know.
📝 Keeping score: The White Sox got shut out by the Pirates, 2-0.
☀️ Today’s weather: Sunny with a high near 80.
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⏱️: An 8-minute read
9/11 REFLECTIONS ✶
A reporter followed Chicago first responders to New York after 9/11. He saw devastation — and heroism
Reporting by Frank Main
After the attacks: Days after Sept. 11, 2001, Sun-Times reporter Frank Main followed Chicago police officers and firefighters who dropped everything and rushed to New York City to help. In his latest, Main reflects on that assignment, seeing Chicago firefighters work alongside New York’s first responders as they climbed onto the jagged, smoking mountain of rubble that had once been the World Trade Center.
Key quote: “Twenty-five years later, that is what stays with me most: the courage, the camaraderie and the selflessness,” Main writes.
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Illinois service members killed in combat after 9/11 memorialized
Reporting by Kaitlin Washburn
‘Portrait of a Soldier’: Hand-drawn portraits of more than 300 Illinoisans killed overseas during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are now temporarily on display in the lobby of the Daley Center. The “Portrait of a Soldier” commemoration started in 2004 when Cameron Schilling, a staffer for former Gov. Pat Quinn, began reaching out to Gold Star families and offering to draw their loved ones.
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Chicago-area consultant raised alarms about sloppy airport security before 9/11
Reporting by Robert Herguth
Security concerns: Since the 9/11 terror attacks, there has been considerable examination of how they could have been prevented. Among the concerns: how porous the front line security was at U.S. airports — along with weak security oversight by the federal government that allowed the airlines to handle screening with low-cost contractors and few prohibitions on what’s in purses, pockets and carry-ons.
Local flags: Had decision makers taken heed from a once-confidential security report by an Elmhurst consultant in the mid-1990s, as well as many other voices of concern and reform prior to 9/11, some experts wonder whether things could have ended differently. The report — compiled by the Conley Group at the behest of officials at O’Hare Airport, which was and is overseen by City Hall — slammed aviation security practices before 9/11.
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More on 9/11:
- Memories still fresh: The worst bloodshed on American soil since the Civil War unfolded on an ordinary Tuesday morning in September, the Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg writes, reflecting on the horrors of that day.
- Surveillance is ubiquitous: For the Sun-Times, contributor Saqib Bhatti looks back on his family’s experiences after 9/11, when his neighbor combed through his family’s trash and called the FBI on his father. At that time, busybody neighbors and the federal government targeted Muslim Americans, but big tech conglomerates do the spying now — and everyone’s at risk, Bhatti writes.
- Daley’s Meigs Field move: Before it was Northerly Island, in 2003, then-mayor Richard M. Daley abruptly closed and destroyed the Loop’s landing strip, calling it a post-9/11 security measure. That explanation was never quite credible, Robert Herguth reports.
- Defining moment: Twenty-five years later, the 9/11 attacks are still remembered as among the most important historic events in many Americans’ lives, according to a new poll.
AFTER THE BLITZ ✶
A year of silence follows ICE killing of father, despite calls for justice
Reporting by Alma Campos, Sophie Sherry and Jon Seidel
Unanswered questions: Little has been revealed since Silverio Villegas González was fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on Sept. 12, 2025 — four days after the Trump administration launched last fall’s Operation Midway Blitz. Since then, Villegas González’s supporters and loved ones have been left to grapple with painful, unanswered questions.
Who’s investigating? The FBI won’t discuss its investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security has said that federal prosecutors declined to charge the agent who fired the deadly shots. Now, the Illinois State Police has opened an investigation. After the shooting last fall, Franklin Park police failed to document the aftermath “and then wiped their hands of it and turned it over to the FBI,” the family attorney alleged.
Community response: Community members, immigrant rights organizers and faith leaders have spent the past year trying to keep Villegas González’s name alive and dispel misinformation about him. Advocate Marien Casillas Pabellón said it feels like Villegas González was killed twice: “They killed him that day during the traffic stop … and they killed him again with all the lies they told about him afterward.”
MORE NEWS YOU NEED 🗞️
- Archdiocese settles sex abuse claims: The Archdiocese of Chicago recently settled out of court with nine people who accused eight Chicago-area priests of sexually abusing them decades ago. The settlements total $5.4 million.
- ‘He showed a badge’: A New York woman sobbed at the end of a lengthy day on the witness stand Thursday, after she insisted she’d been “robbed and raped” by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer Luis Uribe during a visit to Schaumburg in 2022.
- Calls to restore lifeline: Illinois officials, including U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, are pushing the Trump administration to restore the “Press 3” option on the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, which previously provided specialized services for LGBTQ+ youth.
- NITA’s new leader: In its first public board meeting on Thursday, the Northern Illinois Transit Authority chose Jamie Rhee, the city’s former Aviation Department boss, to serve as NITA’s interim executive director.
- Board candidates’ anti-AI pledge: Roughly half of the 45 candidates running for the Chicago school board have signed a pledge to adopt a three-year ban on artificial intelligence use by Chicago Public Schools students and educators.
- Things to do. Sept. 11-16: The Printers Row Lit Fest, El Grito Chicago, the Ravenswood ArtWalk, the Evanston Folk Festival and the Chicago German-American Oktoberfest are among the highlights in the days ahead.
ON WBEZ 91.5 FM 📻
In the Loop with Sasha-Ann Simons, 9 a.m.
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Weekly recap: The Sun-Times’ Violet Miller, the Tribune’s Olivia Olander and City Cast Chicago’s Simone Alicea join the show to discuss this week’s top headlines.
Say More with Mary Dixon and Patrick Smith, 10 a.m.
- 25 years after 9/11: Callers weigh in with their reflections on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and aftermath.
FROM THE PRESS BOX 🏀🏈⚾
- Bulls to honor Stacey King: King, who was a part of the Bulls’ first three-peat before becoming a television presence for the franchise, died in June at the age of 59. Here’s how they plan to honor his legacy.
- Looking forward: As engineer and artist blend styles, Bears’ coach Ben Johnson said he gets “goosebumps” thinking about the future with QB Caleb Williams.
- Playoff projection: After getting swept by the Brewers, the Cubs are fighting for a playoff spot as wild-card standings tighten.
- After Engelbert’s exit: Following WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert’s retirement announcement, the Sky’s Natasha Cloud said she knows what she’d like to see from Engelbert’s successor.
- High school football: Mike Clark previews Week 4’s top games for the Sun-Times.
CHICAGO MINI CROSSWORD 🌭
Today’s clue: “One Last ‘Whoo-Hoo!’ for the Pullman!!”, e.g.
BRIGHT ONE 🔆
New Englewood sculpture park brings hope for ‘good things’
Reporting by Courtney Kueppers
On a recent weekday morning, there was a buzz of activity along Englewood’s 63rd Street between May Street and Racine Avenue. The corner brimmed with oversized drum sculptures and colorful murals.
It was all part of a new sculpture park, courtesy of the artist-driven Englewood Arts Collective. The group soft-launched the public art installation in August and will host activities here this weekend in alignment with the annual Englewood Music Festival.
Over the next three to five years, the collective plans to fill this once-vacant lot with art and give neighbors a place of beauty to gather.
The sculpture park is the latest initiative since the collective — made up of 10 artists — launched nearly a decade ago. Collective members say art has always had a home in Englewood. That includes the longstanding Englewood Jazz Festival, which will take place Sept. 17-19.
“Artistic acts like this and creative spaces like this can catalytically support other well-being initiatives,” said collective co-founder Janell Nelson. “Positive foot traffic to this corridor can help the economic outcomes of the other businesses in this corridor, and it’s been proven.”
Three free things to do in Englewood this month:
- Englewood Music Festival: Saturday at Kennedy King College, West 64th Street & South Halsted Street
- EAC Arts Village Sculpture Park: Ongoing at West 63rd Street, between May Street and Racine Avenue
- Englewood Jazz Festival: Sept. 17-19 at Hamilton Park, 513 W. 72nd St.
YOUR DAILY QUESTION ☕️
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Editor: Satchel Price