Why It Matters That Ray Lopez Loves Fox News

One quick update from City Council yesterday: the tipped wage veto override failed 30-19 — workers keep their raises through 2028, Johnson goes 3-for-3 on vetoes, and the Illinois Restaurant Association is officially moving its fight to Springfield where a bill that would cut tipped wages to $9/hour is waiting in committee.

Also, for some reason, the Restaurant Association paid a bunch of people to stand around during public comment, so, that was weird.

On to the rest of the week:

Ray Lopez Being Ray Lopez, National Right Wing Flywheel Style

Block Club Chicago: Manny Ramos spent months documenting how Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th Ward), a frequent topic of the 312, became conservative media's favorite Chicago Democrat. The short version: while federal agents were rounding up 4,500 people across Chicago last fall — tamale vendors, flea market workers, a family at Millennium Park's Crown Fountain, people with no criminal record — Lopez was doing Fox & Friends, Fox Business, and a podcast hosted by a man who was at January 6th. He called Chicago "a hellhole." He blamed his colleagues. He did not blame the federal government doing the deporting. This is also what he loves to do on X.

On October 4, Border Patrol shot Brighton Park resident Marimar Martinez five times after his car collided with hers as she honked to warn neighbors. DHS called her a "domestic terrorist" who'd rammed federal agents. Lopez retweeted it: "Peaceful protests — with semi-automatic weapons." Criminal charges were filed against Martinez. Lopez went on AM 560 and said protesters were "trying to kill [ICE agents] and activate those cartel-driven bounties on our border agents." By February, prosecutors had dropped all charges. Lopez said nothing.

When Block Club asked him about it, he said: "If you want to talk about truth, then you have to talk about all truth and not just the ones you're cherry picking."

Why It Matters: Fox doesn't book Lopez because his nuance interests them. They book him because "even Chicago Democrats agree" is a narrative the deportation machine needs and can't make on its own. The Block Club piece traces exactly how you get from a Southwest Side Democrat with undocumented great-grandparents and a husband who immigrated from Mexico to meeting Tom Homan at events and calling it networking — not overnight, but step by step, with an audience that paid him more each time he moved closer.

2. Festus, Missouri Fired Its Whole City Council Over a Data Center. Joliet Handed One a Dying Aquifer and Called It a Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity.

Politico/E&E News: Voters in Festus, Missouri (pop. 12,000) last week ousted all four incumbents running for reelection — one week after the council approved a $6 billion data center on 360 acres for a company that still hasn't been publicly named. A lawsuit alleging illegal rezoning and secret meetings followed. A petition to remove the remaining members and the mayor is circulating. Same day, voters in Port Washington, Wisconsin passed the first-in-the-nation ballot initiative restricting future data center tax incentives.

Illinois, for comparison: the Joliet City Council voted 8-1 in March to approve the largest data center in the state — 795 acres, 24 buildings, roughly the size of Central Park — after seven-plus hours of public opposition from people like longtime resident Felix Ortiz, who told the council it would be "handing a giant straw to a private entity during a regional water crisis." The project from Dallas-based Hillwood Investment Properties sits on an aquifer that's been depleted for 150 years. Joliet is mid-construction on a $1.44 billion pipeline to bring Lake Michigan water to its 300,000 residents. That pipeline, as a spokesperson for State Sen. Villivalam noted, "was not intended to cool the largest data center in Illinois." The city administrator called the project "unlike anything the city has ever seen," which is technically accurate.

Why It Matters: There’s lots more moving in Springfield: the POWER Act would require statewide water use disclosure and open up the secret community benefit agreements. 70% public support. Negotiations in Springfield are ramping up. The Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition is running the pressure campaign on the POWER Act if you want to help.

3. A Robot Named Nasir Smashed a Bus Shelter and Apologized

Block Club Chicago: In late March a Serve Robotics robot destroyed a bus shelter on Grand Avenue in West Town. Days later a Coco robot hit a separate one in Old Town. Both companies paid for repairs. This week Serve ran an apology ad at the shelter their robot demolished, featuring a cartoon robot named Nasir: "I took 'breaking into the market' too literally. I'm really sorry about the bus stop … and the dramatic entrance."

The crash explanation, in case you’re curious, was that all three sensor systems missed the glass simultaneously. The fix: software update and "treating bus shelters with additional caution." 👍

The program has been on Chicago sidewalks since 2022. City Council has until May 2027 to decide whether to extend it.

Why It Matters: The ad is doing work to make all of this feel charming. It isn't resolved. "Additional caution" is not a regulatory framework. Chicago has a 311 category for robot complaints. Don’t buy fake apologies from politicians OR robots.

Your alder needs to hear from you if you want a hearing before 2027. Find yours here.

1 Big Question: The Clip Economy Is Why Ray Lopez Has National Reach

OpenAI reportedly paid $200 million last week for a tech podcast called TBPN that averages 7,000 viewers per episode. Not a typo. Ed Elson broke down why in his media newsletter this week: TBPN's clips average 257,000 views — 37 times the live audience. The company bakes ads into the clips themselves. $5 million in revenue last year, tracking toward $30 million this year. OpenAI didn't buy a podcast. They bought a clip machine.

Elson calls this the clip economy, and the pattern is everywhere once you see it: Nick Fuentes, 20,000 live viewers, 500,000+ per clip. Hasan Piker built his entire political footprint the same way. Now there are clipping agencies. One streamer spends $1 million a month on clippers.

The reason I liked this particular piece is because it points out a simple kind of math that I wish more people understood when we attempt to talk about narrative abstractly: we are beyond just “pivoting to video” with the new algorithm: now, clips are what sell, and what most people see.

Here's why this matters for Chicago: Ray Lopez has one ward and a fraction of a council seat. There’s NO reason for him to have national reach, expect that Fox has clipping infrastructure, a need for someone to say the most specific worst things about Chicago and crime out loud, and and Lopez provides. The deportation media machine needed a clip of a Southwest Side Latino Democrat saying the raids were justified, so they turned to Lopez, who generated that clip time and time again. That's the clip economy working exactly as designed, for exactly the people who built it.

Now think about what Chicago's progressive organizing infrastructure generates that's clippable. We know the moments exist. What mostly doesn't exist, on the left side of Chicago politics, is the infrastructure to find them, cut them, distribute them, and get them into the group chats where attention actually lives in 2026. (If you’re curious, I tried to do this as a side project a few months ago. There was just enough response that it felt clear that there’s a need for this, but with more capacity — hoping to write about it over the next few months).

We know that the Illinois Policy Institute already has this, and it will clip every hearing, every testimony, every moment it can use. The organizations doing the most important work — ICIRR, Raise the Floor, CTJC — don’t have the same time or space.

But the clip economy doesn't ONLY require $200 million to participate in, or a willingness to pander to Fox News soundbite mandates. It requires understanding that the unit of political communication has changed.

Small orgs with real moments can compete at that. But we have to build for it — or keep watching the other side do it and wondering why our narrative is going wrong.

2 Red Flags:

🚨 Iran's Military Understands Social Media Platform Mechanics Better Than Most Progressive Orgs.

Clemson University / New York Magazine: Sixty-two accounts linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard spent months on X, Instagram, and Bluesky posing as Latina women from Texas and California, Scottish independence supporters, Irish nationalists — consistent posting, community-specific content, real grievances through fabricated identities — before pivoting simultaneously to pro-Tehran war propaganda when the war started. The NY Mag piece has the behind-the-scenes account.

🚨 CPD Put in Writing That It Uses Traffic Stops as Pretext. Snelling Says That's Fine. 732 Per Day Go Undocumented.

WTTW: In 2025, CPD failed to document 267,000 traffic stops — 732 per day — making it impossible to audit whether drivers' rights were protected. That's 27% more undocumented than 2024. Last April, Supt. Snelling released a draft policy that did something CPD had never formally done: acknowledged in writing that officers pull people over on a pretext — broken taillight, expired registration — to search for evidence of unrelated crimes. Black drivers were 44% of every one stopped in a city that is 29% Black. The policy didn't ban this: it said officers should "strike a balance." And the consent decree machinery moves slowly enough that the 732 daily undocumented stops keep happening while everyone deliberates.

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Speaking of video clips: I’m really excited about the quick video training the lllinois Signal Collective did for organizers from ICIRR, AAMP, COFI, and Equity and Transformation this Friday in the lead up to advocating in Springfield yesterday.

I’m also excited about State Senator Graciela Guzman’s amazing Mean Girls themed ‘tax the rich’ video series.