The Department of Homeland Security said it was moving forward with ramped-up immigration enforcement in Chicago this week in an effort dubbed Operation Midway Blitz, as Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says the city “received no notice of any enhanced immigration action” ahead of the announcement.

“This ICE operation will target the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois because they knew Governor Pritzker and his sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them to roam free on American Streets,” the department said in a statement Monday. 

Spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the operation “will target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago.”

The department did not specify how long the operation is expected to last, but a spokesperson with ICE said, in a statement: “ICE has always operated in Chicago, targeting enforcement around the dangerous criminal aliens that are drawn to this sanctuary city. … We will continue our law enforcement and public safety mission, undeterred, as we surge ICE resources in the city in coordination with our federal partners from across Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice.”

The department said the mission would be carried out “in honor of Katie Abraham,” who was killed in a drunk driving hit-and-run crash that happened in Urbana, about 130 miles south of Chicago, earlier this year. Her friend, 20-year-old Chloe Polzin, also died in the crash. The driver was 29-year-old Julio Cucul Bol, a citizen of Guatemala who authorities caught in Texas days after the crash, and believed to have been trying to flee to Mexico. He is now in custody in Illinois.

The victim’s father, Joe Abraham, spoke with CBS News Chicago, saying he hopes no other family has to go through what his family has.

“Hopefully, no other children will have to go through this Russian roulette that the state is playing,” he said. “(Cucul Bol) didn’t have a drivers license, he shouldn’t have been on the roads, he had been pulled over before. …  Say what you want about Donald Trump. He at least acknowledged me, looked me in the eye, said, ‘We’re going to clean things up.'” 

In a post on X, Gov. JB Pritzker accused the Trump administration of failing to communicate or coordinate their immigration enforcement effort with state and local leaders.

“Once again, this isn’t about fighting crime. That requires support and coordination — yet we’ve experienced nothing like that over the past several weeks. Instead of taking steps to work with us on public safety, the Trump administration’s focused on scaring Illinoisians,” he wrote.

Johnson said he and other city officials “remain opposed to any potential militarized immigration enforcement without due process because of ICE’s track record of detaining and deporting American citizens and violating the human rights of hundreds of detainees.”

“There are more than 500 documented incidents of human rights abuses at detention facilities since Trump took office, including deaths of detainees and alleged cases of sexual abuse of minors by federal immigration agents,” Johnson added. “Because of these incidents and more, we remain opposed to militarized immigration enforcement that runs afoul of the Constitution in our city.”

The mayor urged anyone concerned about the immigration crackdown in Chicago to visit a “know your rights” resource hub on the city’s website, at Chicago.gov/KYR.

The announcement of the immigration operation in Chicago comes after President Trump, in a post on Truth Social on Saturday, invoked imagery from the movie “Apocalypse Now” and wrote, “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning …’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused the Trump administration of ramping up its campaign “to arrest hardworking immigrants with no criminal convictions.”

“These actions don’t make us safer. They are a waste of money, stoke fear, and represent another failed attempt at a distraction,” Durbin said in a statement.

A new CBS News poll shows that 58% of Americans oppose the president sending the National Guard to other cities beyond Washington, D.C., while 42% support it. Those responses are heavily skewed by party, with a majority of Republicans in favor of the deployment of the National Guard and the majority of Democrats opposed.

Sara Machi

contributed to this report.

When the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) began science operations, one of its first tasks was to observe the earliest galaxies in the Universe. These observations revealed a huge population of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that astronomers nicknamed “Little Red Dots” (LRDs), owing to their small appearance and deep red hue. Based on redshift measurements, these AGNs are estimated to have existed just 0.6 to 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang (13.2 to 12.2 billion years ago). Studying these objects has already triggered some groundbreaking discoveries about the early Universe.

This includes new insights into how supermassive black holes (SMBHs) formed shortly after the Big Bang and how Dark Matter may have influenced the formation of early galaxies. Thanks to a new set of images taken with Webb’s Mid-Infrared Imager (MIRI), the JWST has now provided the first long-wavelength infrared light observations of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), which contains several LRDs. As an international team of researchers explained in a study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, these images provide new insights into how the earliest galaxies in the Universe formed over 13 billion years ago.

The study was conducted by researchers with the MIRI European Consortium, an international organization made up of thousands of astronomers from institutions like the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) and the MPI for Radioastronomy (MPIfR), the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), the Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), the Niels Bohr Institute (DARK), the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, the Institute of Particle Physics and Astrophysics, the UK Astronomy Technology Center, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), and the European Space Agency (ESA).

This image combines data from the JWST’s MIRI and NIRcam cameras to create a multicoloured view of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Credits: NASA/ESA/CSA/the JADES Collaboration/the MIDIS collaboration.

The research was conducted as part of the MIRI Deep Imaging Survey (MIDIS), an observation campaign that revisited the iconic Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDFD). This survey observed the HUDFD for nearly 100 hours, Webb’s longest observation of an extragalactic field with one filter to date. These observations revealed vital information on how and when stars in the earliest galaxies form, where previous observations only measured the light of newborn stars in these galaxies.

Göran Östlin, a Professor of Astronomy at Stockholm University and the lead author on the study, explained in an ESA press release:

In the images, we can see the most distant galaxies known to us. What is unique about our observations is that they are made in mid-wavelength infrared light and with an extremely long exposure time, close to 100 hours. This allows us to study extremely distant galaxies. They emitted their light more than 13 billion years ago, near the beginning of the Universe.

For their research, the team examined the MIRI data to obtain photometry and redshifts of about 2,500 light sources, the overwhelming majority of which were distant galaxies. This data could lead to estimates on the number of stars that formed shortly after the Big Bang, allowing astronomers to study how the first galaxies in the Universe evolved. It could also enable researchers to study galaxies that contain large amounts of interstellar dust (aka. “dusty galaxies”), which could contain the seeds of SMBHs and are only visible in infrared light.

These findings could help settle questions regarding how these galaxies and their central black holes grew to their observed sizes so soon after the Big Bang. When astronomers first viewed these galaxies, they found that the observations were in tension with what the most widely accepted cosmological models predicted. These models suggested that early galaxies and the seeds of SMBHs would not have had enough time to grow to their observed sizes. In this respect, Webb’s observations have triggered a revolutionary shift in what we think we know about the birth of galaxies and cosmic structures.

Jens Melinder, an astronomer at Stockholm University and a co-author on the paper, states that these latest findings will shed light on this and other cosmological mysteries:

MIRI allows us to see through the veil of dust and observe what lies behind. By observing this type of galaxy, we can understand how quickly the heavier elements that the dust is made from formed in the early Universe, and how supermassive black holes, surrounded by a ring of hot dust, evolved. We have contributed brand new data that will be used in the future by researchers studying galaxy evolution and the formation of the first galaxies. The HUDF is such an incredibly well-observed part of the night sky that there is great value in making our images available. We expect them to be used by many.

Further Reading: Stockholm University, Astronomy & Astrophysics

The coronavirus has muscled its way back into headlines in recent weeks amid a summer wave of the illness and growing difficulties in getting the vaccine, as well as efforts by the Trump administration that could make getting inoculated harder for some people.

The summer increase is decidedly smaller than what California and the U.S. saw during the pandemic years. Still, it has sidelined many who came down with COVID-19 and has some health officials concerned.

Here are five things to know:

1) We are not out of the woods yet.

According to data released Friday, there are now 14 states with “very high” levels of coronavirus detected in their wastewater — California, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Indiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Connecticut, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Hawaii and Alaska, as well as the District of Columbia.

The rate at which COVID-19 lab tests are confirming infection also continues to rise statewide and in the Los Angeles area. For the week that ended Aug. 30, California’s COVID test positivity rate was 12.83%, up from 7.05% for the week that ended Aug. 2. In L.A. County, the positive test rate was 14.83%, up from 9.33%.

Coronavirus levels in the sewage of Northern California’s most populous county, Santa Clara, were still considered “high” as of Friday.

2) But there may be signs we’re reaching the peak.

In Orange County, the COVID-19 positive test rate was 13.1%. That’s below the prior week’s rate of 18% but still higher than the rate for the week that ended Aug. 2, which was 10.8%.

In San Francisco, the test positivity rate was 8.1% for the week that ended Aug. 30. That’s down from the prior week’s figure of 8.7% but higher than the 5.8% reported for the week that ended Aug. 2.

In addition, wastewater data in L.A. County show that coronavirus levels declined slightly from the prior week.

3) Overall, the summer spike has been generally mild.

Despite a new variant, there hasn’t been much severe disease from COVID-19 this summer.

COVID hospital admissions in California have been increasing — with the latest rate of 3.93 admissions per 100,000 residents for the week ending Aug. 30, up from 2.38, from the week ending Aug. 2.

But they remain relatively low statewide and in L.A. County. The number of L.A. County residents seeking care for COVID-related illness, or who have been hospitalized, “is quite a bit lower than during summer surges in 2023 and 2024,” the county’s Department of Public Health said.

Overall, this summer hasn’t seen COVID activity to the extent of a year ago, when the state experienced its worst summer wave since 2022.

4) But the fall and winter are an open question.

A mild summer wave could create conditions for problems later in the year.

In July, the state Department of Public Health said that scientists anticipated California would see either a stronger summer COVID wave or a more significant winter wave.

5) There is still massive confusion over the future of COVID vaccines.

Under the leadership of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a vaccine skeptic — federal agencies have in effect made it more difficult to get vaccinated against COVID-19 this year. The Food and Drug Administration has “approved” COVID-19 vaccines only for those 65 and older, as well as younger people with underlying health conditions.

That means, across the country, people younger than 65 interested in getting the COVID-19 vaccine must now either consult with a healthcare provider or “attest” to a pharmacy that they have an underlying health condition. It’s a potential hurdle that can make getting the vaccine more difficult and, some health experts worry, prompt even more Americans to eschew getting vaccinated.

On Thursday, Hawaii joined California, Washington and Oregon in launching the West Coast Health Alliance: an interstate compact meant to provide science-based immunization guidance as an alternative to the CDC.

It was not immediately clear, however, whether the formation of the West Coast Health Alliance would make it easier for people to get COVID-19 vaccines at the nation’s largest pharmacy retailers, where many people get their shots.

Mainstream medical groups, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, are offering their own recommendations to advise individuals and families on what vaccines they should get.