What F’nHappened This Week? September 4, 2026

What F’nHappened This Week? Chicago Politics, Playoff Races, Ye’s Homecoming and a World Still Renaming Things

Chicago spent the week doing what Chicago does best: throwing several enormous events at the same time, arguing about names, watching its sports teams create hope and pain in nearly equal amounts, and waiting for government offices to explain what exactly they have been doing.

F’nAround spent it the usual way.

We went places. We ate things. We watched people voluntarily drink Malört in historic numbers. We revisited a cannabis story that somehow became more interesting after a jury rendered its verdict. We followed regulatory records from Illinois to Kentucky. We watched the United States and Canada turn a lake into a cartographic custody dispute. And we learned that some men now believe soap is interfering with their dating lives.

That is a lot of ground to cover and this edition begins where many of our readers found us: Chicago politics.

So let’s F’nAround and find out what happened.

Chicago Is Already $882 Million Short for 2027

Before getting to the casino fight, start with the number explaining why every new source of city revenue has become a political battlefield.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration projects Chicago will enter the 2027 fiscal year with an $882.4 million budget gap. Johnson emphasized that the figure is more than 23% smaller than the $1.15 billion hole officials confronted one year earlier. That is an improvement. It is also still an $882.4 million problem arriving just as the mayor and all 50 alderpeople prepare to face voters.

Johnson declined to rule out a property-tax increase but said he would again pursue “progressive” revenue directed at large corporations and wealthier residents. He also said he wants to avoid layoffs and service reductions. His budget proposal is due by mid-October, and he is expected to formally announce his reelection campaign on September 13.

The longer-term forecast is worse. Chicago projects a $943 million gap in 2028 and more than $1 billion in 2029. The city faces a pension bill exceeding $2.94 billion in 2027 and owes approximately $36.4 billion across its four employee pension systems. It also expects to reserve $401 million for lawsuit costs $226 million more than in 2026 driven largely by police-misconduct litigation. WTTW’s budget breakdown provides the forecast, pension and litigation figures.

The Budget Accountability Coalition accuses the administration of slow-walking revenue measures. Johnson says alderpeople aligned themselves with corporations and worsened the city’s finances. Everyone agrees the structure is broken. They disagree over who broke it, who should pay to repair it and whether voters should receive the invoice before or after February.

An $882 million gap may be smaller than expected. Chicagoans are still allowed to notice that “smaller catastrophe” is doing a great deal of work in that sentence.

The Mayoral Race Is Already an Ethics Race

Chicago’s next municipal election is scheduled for February 23, 2027, and the field is growing before Mayor Johnson has even formally announced the reelection bid expected on September 13.

Declared candidates include Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, nonprofit leader and National Guard veteran Toni Brooks, former cardiologist Lisa Nee and longtime lobbyist John Kelly. Willie Wilson has entered his fourth campaign for mayor, while other announced and potential contenders continue gathering signatures in a race that will force candidates to explain how they intend to close an $882 million budget gap without cutting services, laying off workers or sending every homeowner into cardiac arrest.

Giannoulias is running for reelection as secretary of state in November while simultaneously pursuing the mayor’s office with trade-union support. Kelly built his career lobbying City Hall for clients including Bally’s, the White Sox and the United Center. Those relationships may be marketed as experience, but they will also generate obvious questions about whose calls get answered once the former clients become parties across the negotiating table. WTTW is maintaining a running record of the expanding 2027 field.

Kelly already faces a more immediate question. The Chicago Board of Ethics is investigating campaign videos recorded during unauthorized visits to Chicago Fire Department stations. After deleting three earlier videos, Kelly posted another showing him entering a fire station with pizza and salad, after telling the audience the cameras would be turned off inside. The campaign blurred the station’s name and appended Kelly’s campaign logo.

Chicago’s ethics ordinance prohibits candidates from intentionally using city property or resources for political activity. The maximum penalty is $20,000 per violation. CFD says it did not authorize any of Kelly’s visits and will not authorize firehouse visits for candidates. Kelly has acknowledged that he “may have violated some ethics rule,” placing air quotes around “ethics,” while defending the visits as support for first responders. The Ethics Board has not announced a finding. WTTW documented the new visit and continuing investigation.

Turning off the camera after entering city property does not necessarily turn off the ethics ordinance. Apparently this required clarification.

Johnson Has His Own Campaign-Advertising Questions

A group of alderpeople is seeking an Ethics and Government Oversight Committee hearing over promotional videos produced by World Business Chicago featuring Mayor Johnson. Critics say the polished spots resemble reelection advertisements even though World Business Chicago receives substantial city and state grant funding.

The organization says promoting Chicago’s economy and highlighting investment are central to its mission. Johnson has defended World Business Chicago as the city’s economic-development arm. The concern is not that the mayor appeared in a video about Chicago. It is whether publicly supported economic-development material crossed into campaign promotion and what happened after Johnson’s campaign account reposted it.

The hearing is expected in October. No ethics violation has been established. ABC7 reported the aldermanic request and World Business Chicago’s response.

So one mayoral candidate is being questioned about campaigning inside fire stations. The incumbent is being questioned about campaign-style videos made by a publicly supported development organization. The election is still months away, but the ethics portion has apparently begun early.

Trump and Pritzker Fought Over Chicago Again

A violent weekend in Chicago produced another round of demands from President Trump for federal intervention and another rejection from Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Johnson.

Trump said Chicago would “die” without federal help. Pritzker and Johnson maintain that National Guard or military deployment over state and local objections is neither the appropriate nor constitutional response, while saying traditional federal assistance from agencies such as the FBI and ATF is welcome.

The immediate violence should not be reduced to a political prop, and citywide trends should not be used to make individual victims disappear. Both things can be true: a particular weekend can be horrific while longer-term crime trends require their own honest comparison. The policy question is what form of federal assistance actually reduces violence rather than merely producing the largest headline.

Chicago Politics: Bally’s, Video Gambling and a Very Expensive Game of Chicken

Chicago’s permanent casino project has become a $1.7 billion argument over who gets to gamble, where the machines go and which side has enough leverage to make the other blink.

Bally’s slowed work on major non-gaming portions of its River West development including the hotel, concert venue and restaurants while objecting to Chicago’s decision to permit video gaming terminals in bars and restaurants. Bally’s argues that widespread VGTs violate the spirit or terms of its Host Community Agreement and could undermine the economics of the destination casino Chicago selected it to build.

City Council members have answered that Bally’s is using construction workers and promised amenities as leverage in a policy dispute. Twenty-eight alderpeople signed a letter demanding that work resume. Ald. Ray Lopez accused the company of trying to use workers as leverage against a city searching for new revenue while neighborhood bars and restaurants are struggling.

The city’s 2026 budget counted on approximately $6.8 million from video gambling. Months into the year, that projected revenue had not materialized because state approval does not automatically place a machine in a Chicago bar: businesses also need the required city licensing before the terminals can be plugged in.

That leaves everyone holding a different piece of the same strange puzzle. The City Council approved VGTs over Mayor Brandon Johnson’s objections. The Illinois Gaming Board began approving applicants. Chicago had not completed the local rollout. Bally’s nevertheless slowed construction over the potential competition before those machines had generated a dollar inside the city.

Bally’s warned that VGT expansion could jeopardize an annual $4 million community-benefits payment and affect the roughly 1,500 union tradespeople connected to construction. Supporters of VGTs counter that neighborhood establishments deserve access to a regulated revenue source already available elsewhere in Illinois. Meanwhile, Bally’s has faced an approximately $800 million funding gap, revisions to its hotel plan and new questions about liquidity. WTTW detailed the construction slowdown and the missing VGT revenue, while the Chicago Sun-Times reported the aldermanic demand that construction resume.

The Illinois Gaming Board also gave Bally’s permission to keep operating its temporary Medinah Temple casino for another year, from September 2026 into September 2027. Bally’s says the permanent casino remains headed toward an early-2027 opening.

So Chicago approved a casino to raise money, approved neighborhood gambling to raise more money, has not collected the neighborhood gambling money it budgeted, and is now fighting with the casino over money both sides say they may lose.

That is not a roulette wheel. That is Chicago budgeting.

Chicago Politics Also Found F’nAround

This week, F’nAround received an invitation connected to an upcoming midterm political convention.

That is worth pausing over. We did not build this platform by repeating party talking points or choosing a political team. We built it by showing up, asking the awkward question, documenting the answer and keeping the receipts when the answer changed. Being invited into political spaces does not change that role. It expands where we can perform it. For now, the invitation itself says something: the strange little operation that can cover glitter, pizza, cannabis regulators and government oversight in the same week is increasingly being recognized as media.

Apparently if you are F’nAround long enough it gets you invited inside.

Chicago Sports Entered a Very Crowded September

For once, Chicago entered September with multiple teams playing meaningful games.

The Cubs beat Milwaukee 2–1 Thursday behind Kevin Gausman and a 413-foot Pete Crow-Armstrong home run. The White Sox lost 6–2 to Houston, their fourth defeat in five games, but remained in the broader postseason conversation at 73–67. MLB’s Cubs page carries Thursday’s result and highlights, while Reuters reported Houston’s series-clinching win over the Sox.

The Bears are approaching the regular season with something Chicago football has not consistently carried in years: expectations. The Blackhawks are nearing camp with Patrick Kane back in the room. The Sky are closing a season that will shape the franchise’s offseason decisions.

Chicago sports fans are being asked to monitor playoff baseball, prepare emotionally for the Bears and remember hockey is coming all while Ye, ARC and North Coast compete for every remaining parking space.

This city does not believe in easing into fall.

Chicago Culture: Ye, Festivals, Malört and Everything Else

Ye Came Home to Chicago

Ye returned to Chicago this week for two nights at Soldier Field on September 3 and 4, with doors opening at 6 p.m. and the performances scheduled for 8 p.m. The dates matter because this is more than another tour stop. This is an artist returning to the city embedded throughout his music, clothing, mythology and contradictions.

Before Kanye West became Ye, before the global fashion deals, stadium listening events, presidential campaign, public collapses and reinventions, there was Chicago. He was raised on the South Side, attended Chicago State University before leaving to pursue music, produced for local and national artists, and built an early identity from the city’s gospel, soul and hip-hop traditions.

Albums including The College Dropout, Late Registration and Graduation turned that Chicago foundation into global culture. GOOD Music became its own ecosystem. Yeezy became one of the most influential celebrity-fashion brands ever created. His Sunday Service period pulled gospel and spectacle into arenas. Through every transformation, Chicago remained part of the language.

That makes two nights at Soldier Field feel less like an ordinary booking and more like another complicated homecoming. The first concert took place Thursday night; the second is scheduled for Friday. We are not turning the first night into a review without firsthand reporting or verified details. For now, the confirmed story is the scale: Ye is back in his hometown, inside one of its largest venues, for consecutive nights. Soldier Field lists both Chicago performances for September 3–4.

Five years is a long time in music. It is several lifetimes in Kanye years.

ARC and North Coast Have Not Happened Yet

Chicago’s electronic-music weekend begins today, and two major festivals are again splitting the city’s attention.

ARC Music Festival runs September 4–7 at Union Park. It has expanded to four days and is bringing house and techno back to a city that helped invent the culture. This year’s lineup includes Anyma, Sara Landry, Chris Stussy, MAU P, Mochakk, Nico Moreno and dozens more, with ARC After Dark events extending the festival into clubs across Chicago. The festival describes the weekend simply: “House Comes Home.” This year, it stays an extra day. ARC’s official site confirms the four-day Union Park schedule.

North Coast Music Festival runs September 4–6 at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, with more than 75 performers across six stages. Friday’s lineup includes FISHER, Levity b2b Tape B, Porter Robinson’s DJ set, Dabin, Alignment, TroyBoi and special guest Chris Lorenzo. The weekend also features Illenium, GRiZ, Ganja White Night and a long list spanning house, bass, dubstep and electronic music’s increasingly blurry borders. SeatGeek Stadium confirms the dates, venue and six-stage format.

These are previews, not reviews. Nobody has danced through a festival that has not started yet, no matter how persuasive Instagram makes the recap look in advance.

F’nAround Was Accepted to Cover Tacos & Tequila

Our press acceptance also arrived for the Tacos & Tequila Festival at Northwestern Medicine Field in Geneva on Saturday, September 26.

The throwback hip-hop and R&B lineup includes Rick Ross, Ginuwine, Xzibit, Chamillionaire, Yung Joc, Frankie J, Mims and DJ Ashton Martin. The event combines live music with taco vendors, tequila, margaritas and the sort of early-2000s nostalgia that makes an entire crowd suddenly remember lyrics it has not consciously considered in twenty years. The Kane County Cougars list the date, venue and performer lineup.

F’nAround will be there as credentialed press to cover the performers, food, drinks, vendors and whatever happens when tacos, tequila and “Ridin’” occupy the same baseball stadium.

September’s calendar was apparently not crowded enough.

Chicago Set a Malört World Record Because Of Course It Did

Last weekend, Recess in the West Loop hosted an attempt to set the Guinness World Record for the largest simultaneous group shot of Jeppson’s Malört. Which does not exist and Guinness World Records would not recognize anyway.

Thousands of tickets were sold, more than a thousand people packed the venue, satellite bars joined through a livestream, and Chicago collectively did something most people struggle to do individually: swallow Malört on purpose.

The event, “Bad Decisions for a Good Cause,” benefited Ravenswood Community Services and its food and grocery programs. Governor J.B. Pritzker appeared and poured shots. Chad the Bird and Josh Zagoren were there. We met attendees loudly celebrating their love for Chicago’s most aggressively Chicago liquor, including two women who gave us the story of their first Malört experience.

We filed the coverage under Fests because we loved the event. Sometimes journalism requires public records, sworn testimony and thousands of pages. Sometimes it requires watching an enormous room make the same face at once.

Both count as data.

Taste of Greektown Brought the Fire to Halsted Street

Taste of Greektown returned for its 36th year from August 28 through August 30, filling Halsted Street between Adams and Van Buren with Greek restaurants, live music, traditional dancing, shopping and the repeated ceremonial ignition of cheese.

The participating neighborhood businesses included 9 Muses Bar & Grill, Athena Restaurant, Ithaki Estiatorio, Mr. Greek Gyros, Spectrum Bar & Grill and Zeus Restaurant, many representing Greek American family legacies spanning 25 to 40 years. Moka & Co and Spavia Day Spa also participated. Admission was free, with a suggested donation supporting the Greektown Chamber of Commerce. Greektown Chicago provides the official dates, location and participating businesses.

F’nAround approached this assignment with the appropriate level of cultural seriousness: we looked for the saganaki.

For anyone unfamiliar with it, saganaki is cheese presented with fire, shouting and enough confidence to make every nearby table turn around. It is one of the few dishes that arrives with its own special effect. We usually pair it with a swordfish kebab and rice pilaf, giving us fire, fish and carbohydrates the traditional foundations of responsible festival journalism.

Taste of Greektown works because the food is not detached from the neighborhood producing it. The restaurants are the event. The families, music and dancing are not generic decorations placed around temporary booths; they come from a district that has carried Greek culture in Chicago for generations.

Our verdict: Opa.

The F’nAround Food Desk Stayed Busy

Mike also picked up Stunod’s Pizza as the week began, and this one landed differently. He loved it. Bella begged for it, making Stunod’s the first review to pass the Bella test that emphatically. Frank and Austin earned their shoutout, the Italian ice delivered, and the pay-by-the-scoop setup gave everyone a reason to return. The Taylor Street opening cannot arrive quickly enough.

We Learned Black Coffee Has Been Rebranded

At some point this week, we learned that drinking black coffee is now being called “raw-dogging coffee.”

Joe has consumed a pot containing roughly five cups of espresso nearly every morning without cream or sugar for years. Apparently that was not a caffeine dependency. It was a lifestyle trend waiting for somebody younger to give it a more alarming name.

Black coffee did not change. The internet simply looked at one of the oldest beverages on Earth and decided it needed to sound like something you should not say during a staff meeting.

So yes, Joe has been raw-dogging coffee every morning.

We apologize to everyone who had to read that sentence.

Cake Topper

Gen Z has apparently rebranded the lower-back tattoo formerly known as the “tramp stamp” as a “cake topper,” and honestly, we appreciate the cleverness. It is the same tattoo in the same location, but the new name replaces decades of judgment with something cute, celebratory and strangely accurate. Stephen Lynch may need to update his “Tattoo” song because an entire generation just took the punchline and gave it better branding.

Spider-Man Helped Put Movie Theaters Back in Business

The biggest movie story of the week is not a trailer or a casting rumor. It is the number beside Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

As of Friday, the Tom Holland sequel had earned approximately $898.1 million in North America and $2.34 billion worldwide after opening July 31. Its $360.1 million domestic opening was the largest ever recorded, and the film is now within web-slinging distance of becoming only the second movie to cross $900 million at the domestic box office. Its fifth weekend added $22.2 million, the tenth-biggest fifth weekend in box-office history. The Numbers maintains the current domestic and worldwide totals, while Rotten Tomatoes put its fifth-weekend performance in historical context.

Spider-Man did not rescue the summer alone. Movies released from May through August generated an estimated $4.6 billion in the United States and Canada, up 26% from summer 2025 and the industry’s best summer since the pandemic. The Odyssey, Toy Story 5, Michael, The Devil Wears Prada 2 and a new wave of horror releases helped pull younger viewers and women back into theaters. Reuters reported the $4.6 billion summer total and the audience trends behind it.

For anybody staying home during Chicago’s festival traffic, the weekend streaming slate includes season two of The Gentlemen on Netflix, season two of Chad Powers on Hulu and the Ryan Reynolds Kenneth Branagh Cold War action comedy Mayday on Apple TV. The Gentlemen also gives this roundup the rare opportunity to connect the movie desk and cannabis desk without forcing the transition: its central criminal enterprise is still weed. Decider’s weekend guide lists the major September 4 streaming arrivals.

Apparently the most successful summer-movie strategy was superheroes, practical spectacle, horror and reminding audiences that leaving the house can still be fun as long as the parking does not cost as much as the ticket.

More Chicago Stories From This Week

The Shedd Aquarium’s beluga story became considerably sadder. After the recent death of Peekachu, Shedd announced that two more whales died Wednesday: Rain, a 20 year old female recently transferred from Marineland, and Beethoven, a 34 year old longtime Shedd resident. Shedd said it was too early to determine whether the deaths were related; necropsies, blood tests and other examinations were underway. Ten whales had been accepted from the shuttered Canadian park as part of an international rescue effort. WTTW reported the deaths and the unanswered health questions.

The federal government lifted its unexplained stop-work order on the billion-dollar Brandon Road invasive-carp barrier near Joliet, allowing construction to resume. The project is designed as a layered gauntlet of bubbles, sound and electric currents intended to prevent invasive carp from reaching Lake Michigan. The pause drew even more concern after juvenile silver carp were detected farther up the Illinois River than at any point since monitoring began in 2010. The Great Lakes fishing industry is estimated at $5.1 billion and recreational boating at $16 billion. WTTW reported that Michigan received confirmation of the restart while Illinois said it had not been notified.

At Ford City, a proposed $200 million redevelopment would replace the shuttered mall with four industrial buildings, a CTA bus terminal, new streets and sidewalks, 904 car spaces, 160 truck spaces and 216 loading positions. Ald. Derrick Curtis argues the project would restore jobs and taxable value. The Southside Flourish Movement wants a 108-day delay for independent traffic, air, noise and infrastructure reviews and favors a mixed-use alternative tied to Midway tourism. The Plan Commission has approved the industrial proposal, but it still needs the Zoning Committee and full City Council. WTTW outlined both proposals and the neighborhood objections.

Chicago and Illinois Cannabis: The Local Accountability File

Illinois’ SB 3222 immediately prohibited sales of intoxicating hemp products to people under 21 and created a much larger regulatory restructuring. The new Illinois Hemp Act is scheduled to take effect November 12, replacing the Industrial Hemp Act and sharply restricting where intoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoid products can be sold. Products below the new non-intoxicating threshold may remain outside the licensed cannabis system; much of the intoxicating market is pushed toward that system. Illinois announced the legislation in June, and WTTW summarized the November implementation.

The same law also authorized curbside pickup and drive-through service for licensed dispensaries. Village Dispensary in Godfrey launched one of Illinois’ first cannabis drive-through lanes on August 27 after IDFPR approved its operating plan. Customers must preorder and prepay, employees still verify identification, and purchases remain subject to the state tracking system and possession limits. It is a useful counterpoint to the enforcement debate: while Illinois narrows the intoxicating-hemp market, it is making the licensed cannabis market more convenient. The Telegraph reported the opening and operating requirements.

First Hemp, Now Kratom

Our larger industry story this week examined why gray markets are often allowed to grow into billion-dollar industries before governments suddenly discover an urgent need to regulate them.

The products are different, but the pattern around kratom increasingly resembles what happened with cannabis and hemp: entrepreneurs establish a market, consumers normalize the product, money arrives, lawmakers discover risk, and the fight shifts from whether the product should exist to who will be licensed to control it.

The most important distinction is between traditional kratom and concentrated 7-OH products. Treating every product as interchangeable produces bad law and conveniently favors whoever can afford the compliance structure that follows.

That distinction became even more important after the Drug Enforcement Administration moved to temporarily place concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine above a specified threshold and related synthetic substances into Schedule I. DEA’s action targets elevated or synthesized 7-OH products; the agency expressly says it does not apply to ordinary botanical kratom containing naturally occurring 7-OH below the specified threshold. DEA’s announcement draws that boundary directly.

On August 25, DEA temporarily scheduled three synthetic kratom-related substances mitragynine pseudoindoxyl, MGM-15 and MGM-16 in Schedule I. That is not the same thing as declaring the entire kratom plant illegal. Collapsing botanical leaf, concentrated 7-OH and newly synthesized analogues into one word may make headlines simpler. It makes public understanding and legislation worse.

The state response is already fragmenting. Connecticut treats kratom components, including 7-OH, as Schedule I substances; police there recently announced the seizure of $20,000 in 7-OH products. Rensselaer County, New York, is considering its own sales ban while other New York counties have adopted restrictions and the state has imposed age and labeling rules. The result is the familiar American patchwork: one plant, multiple compounds, federal intervention and a different answer whenever someone crosses a county or state line.

Our question was not simply whether kratom should be regulated. It was who studies it, who patents it, who invests before the rules change, and who receives permission to manufacture, possess and sell it afterward.

We are going to watch.

The crackdown on Wisconsin Green 

Wisconsin’s THC crackdown is showing what happens when unclear hemp rules collide with aggressive enforcement. Police raided six Hemp 1848 locations in Rock and Green counties and arrested owner Jerry McCoy, who now faces 13 felony counts and potentially 130 years in prison for allegedly selling marijuana-level THC products labeled as legal hemp. At the same time, Wisconsin’s vape directory prohibits retailers from selling hemp vaping devices that have not received state certification, contributing to store closures and reported sales declines as high as 80%. The allegations against McCoy remain unproven, but raids, seizures and the threat of decades in prison demonstrate why businesses need rules that clearly distinguish noncompliant marijuana products, intoxicating hemp and ordinary legal hemp before enforcement arrives. Ganjapreneur reported the raids and charges⁠, while Wisconsin’s Department of Revenue maintains the applicable vape directory⁠.

Flock and their voyeur maneuvers

Flock Safety’s license-plate cameras are facing a growing backlash as the same network promoted for solving crimes produces new examples of alleged misuse. Illinois officers have been accused of conducting unauthorized searches to track former romantic partners and colleagues, with criminal charges and internal investigations now pending in several communities. Florida has ordered the cameras removed from state highways within 30 days, Texas paused additional funding, and other cities have suspended or terminated their programs. Flock says its approximately 120,000 cameras across 49 states help police identify vehicles connected to crimes, but a surveillance network is only as trustworthy as its access controls, audits and consequences—and “we caught the employee afterward” is not the same protection as preventing the search. WTTW examined the Illinois cases⁠, and Reuters reported the widening national backlash⁠.

Is this a Michigan Trap house?

In Michigan, Trap Stars Outlet is continuing to operate despite New Buffalo Township’s unanimous August 17 vote revoking the dispensary’s special-land-use permit. Township officials based the decision on alleged regulatory and operating violations, while Michigan’s Cannabis Regulatory Agency has a separate pending complaint that could result in fines, restrictions, suspension, revocation or refusal to renew the state license; those state allegations have not yet been proven. Trap Stars appealed the township decision, and a public hearing is scheduled for September 8 at 10:30 a.m. The dispute now presents a useful jurisdictional question: what happens when a municipality says a cannabis business has lost permission to operate, the business refuses to close, and the state licensing process remains unresolved? ABC57 reported the continuing operation and scheduled appeal⁠, while Michigan’s CRA provides the pending state complaint⁠.

This Aged Well Apparently Too Well for Reddit

An old press release involving Juan Finch Jr. and nuEra Cannabis resurfaced this week. Years ago, Juan publicly made allegations about nuEra and Illinois’ cannabis social-equity licensing process. nuEra later sued over statements tied to that dispute.

Then a jury returned its verdict.

Juan prevailed against the defamation-related counterclaims. Joe prevailed unanimously on the breach-of-oral-contract claim. That made the original post worth revisiting with the simplest possible observation: this aged wonderfully.

It was reposted to r/ILTrees and then the link was banned. That opened a different story involving moderator and podcaster Cole Preston, known as The Cole Memo, who interviewed Juan more than two years ago, indicated that he could contact people at nuEra, and never released the interview. We cannot prove why the new Reddit post link was removed or who made the decision. We can document the sequence, the relationships and the outcome.

The internet may forget. We rarely do.

Structural Gravity Kept Accumulating

The week also brought the public version of years of F’nAround asking one question: why?

What began as a business dispute with nuEra expanded into regulators, FOIA requests, records about the regulators, oversight bodies responsible for watching those regulators, litigation, delays, referrals, contradictions and thousands of pages that created more questions than answers.

That accumulation became Structural Gravity Theory: the idea that unresolved institutional obligations do not disappear. They remain in the system. Each missed deadline, unanswered referral, contradictory statement and pending review adds pressure. Once those obligations begin crossing agencies, courts, oversight bodies and public scrutiny, delay itself becomes measurable evidence.

The original cannabis case became the point of origin. The unanimous jury verdict became an independent evidentiary event. The remaining administrative responses—or lack of them—continue adding data.

IDFPR Needed More Time

On August 22, F’nAround submitted a new request to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation seeking communications and referrals to the Illinois Attorney General concerning nuEra, NuMed, Prairie, Sway, IESO, Robert Fitzsimmons II and III, and Laura Jaramillo Bernal.

The request covers ownership disclosure, the breach dispute and jury verdict, alleged money laundering, reported death threats, market-manipulation issues connected to Finch’s litigation, and potential referrals to other authorities.

IDFPR responded with an extension.

An extension is not a finding, and it does not establish wrongdoing. It does establish that the request remains open and that the agency has not yet produced its final response. That distinction matters. We will not write that records exist before IDFPR says they exist. We also will not pretend an unresolved statutory obligation vanished because an agency moved the response date.

IDFPR’s extension says the agency will update the request by September 8. That date now belongs on the timeline too.

The clock is part of the record.

Kwame Raoul’s PAC Is Still Slow-Rolling the Files

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s Public Access Counselor remains part of the same accountability problem.

PAC matter 87381 dates to August 28, 2025. IDFPR was ordered to respond within seven business days. The underlying questions have since intersected with changing agency explanations, additional FOIA requests, litigation developments and a unanimous jury verdict.

Yet the PAC files remain unresolved.

“Under review” is a procedural status. It is not an answer. When review continues indefinitely, the office responsible for enforcing transparency begins reproducing the same delay it is supposed to examine.

The watchmen are still watching the watchmen or at least telling us the file remains somewhere in the building.

Kentucky Is Still Pending Too

Kentucky’s Office of Medical Cannabis said on August 21 that it had no records of communications with the Kentucky Office of Inspector General regarding Armory Kentucky LLC’s ownership, acquisition, transfer, control or any related investigation or referral.

At the same time, the office acknowledged correspondence and internal preliminary notes, analyses and recommendations touching potential ownership and vertical-integration compliance. F’nAround sought clarification before publishing conclusions.

We are still waiting.

Again, waiting is not proof of misconduct. It is a documented institutional condition. Kentucky either clarifies the apparent line between “no communications with OIG” and the acknowledged internal compliance material, or it does not. Both outcomes become part of the timeline.

That is the question. We are not adding facts the record does not contain.

National Politics, Cannabis and the Internet

At the federal level, the broad restriction on intoxicating hemp products that had been scheduled to take effect November 12 has been delayed. After the Senate voted 61–32 for a postponement and the House approved the same funding measure, President Trump signed it on September 4. The reprieve pushes the federal recriminalization deadline to at least December 11 while lawmakers debate a regulatory alternative covering age limits, manufacturing, labeling, sales and taxation. It is not a permanent settlement. It is Congress purchasing several more weeks to decide what the settlement should be. Marijuana Moment reported the signed delay and the regulatory proposals now competing with prohibition.

Virginia remains another example of legalization without a settled commercial structure. Negotiations this summer produced a proposed adult-use retail framework targeting July 1, 2027, with a two-ounce purchase and possession limit and an eventual excise-tax increase, but the legislative history has remained politically contested. Nationwide, 24 states and the District of Columbia allow nonmedical adult cannabis use, yet the rules governing retail access, home cultivation, hemp cannabinoids, employment and taxation continue varying dramatically.

Different states. Different products. Familiar question: who gets to participate after lawmakers finish drawing the lines?

Gas Prices Rose, Diesel Set a Record and Freedom Fuel Got Awkward

American drivers entered September paying a national average of approximately $4.15 for regular gasoline, according to AAA up from about $4.09 one week earlier and $3.20 one year earlier. Diesel reached a record national average of $5.85 per gallon, compared with roughly $3.71 a year ago. AAA’s September 4 figures show the full regular, premium and diesel comparison.

That diesel number matters even to people who never touch a diesel pump. Trucks move groceries, packages and building materials. Farms and construction equipment run on diesel. When that fuel rises, the cost does not remain politely contained at the gas station. It travels through the rest of the economy.

The Iran war and disruption around the Strait of Hormuz continue putting pressure on crude oil and refined-fuel markets. Which brings us to Freedom Fuel, a chain that drew national attention and praise from President Trumpfor selling unusually cheap gasoline.

There may have been a reason it was so cheap.

Mansfield Oil Company alleges in a federal lawsuit that distributor KRSM and businessman Syed Kazmi obtained roughly 1.1 million gallons of gasoline from a Pennsylvania terminal between late May and early July without paying invoices totaling nearly $4 million. The gasoline was allegedly supplied to Freedom Fuel locations. KRSM disputes the invoices and denies the characterization of the transaction. Those remain allegations in active litigation, not proven findings. The Washington Post traced the fuel and the lawsuit, while Fox Business reported KRSM’s dispute.

Freedom Fuel branded itself with patriotic imagery rather than a cartoon beaver. That may have been the first strategic mistake. If they had used a beaver, Buc-ee’s trademark lawyers would probably have investigated the entire operation before the first suspiciously affordable gallon reached a customer.

Nobody monitors a beaver’s territory like Buc-ee’s.

JD Vance Had His Will Smith Moment

Vice President JD Vance turned a Michigan political rally into the 2022 Oscars this week while responding to Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s criticism involving second lady Usha Vance.

“Whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife’s name the hell outta your mouth, because she’s way outta your league,” Vance said. Mediaite reported the complete line and its unmistakable Will Smith parallel.

There was no slap. There was, however, absolutely no mystery about the reference.

The exchange also showed where national politics now lives: somewhere between a campaign speech, professional wrestling and a meme everyone recognizes before the sentence is finished.

The Great Lake Renaming War Expanded

Our renaming article began because the F’nAround team compared digital maps and noticed that Google had changed the name while Apple had not.

Then Apple followed.

After President Donald Trump ordered Lake Ontario renamed “Lake America” for official U.S. government use, Google Maps began showing Lake America to users in the United States. Canadian users continued seeing Lake Ontario, while many users elsewhere saw both names. Apple Maps subsequently adopted Lake America for U.S. users as well. MapQuest declined to follow the change and then reported a surge in downloads. The Associated Press reported the split among mapping platforms.

That makes the map depend partly on where the person holding the phone is standing.

Canada still calls it Lake Ontario. The United States can change the terminology used by its own federal government. It cannot unilaterally compel another sovereign country to rename a shared body of water. Technology companies, however, now act as the layer that translates political orders into everyday perceived geography.

The border did not move. The pixels did.

And Now Men Think Showering Is the Problem

Finally, the internet produced “pheromone-maxxing,” a trend in which some Gen Z men skip showers, deodorant and occasionally clean clothes before dates because they believe their natural odor will increase attraction.

The scientific evidence for a reliable human sex pheromone remains inconclusive. The evidence that arriving at dinner smelling like a CTA platform in August may damage the evening is more observational, but compelling.

Men have apparently decided the problem with modern dating was not the apps, the economy, communication or their personalities.

It was soap.

Global Politics, Memory and War

Stalin Understood That Names Are Power

Renaming places is not unique to Trump, the United States or this particular trade dispute. Governments have always used maps and monuments to declare what history should mean now.

Tsaritsyn became Stalingrad in 1925 as Joseph Stalin consolidated power and cultivated a personality cult. It became Volgograd in 1961 during de-Stalinization, when the Soviet government tried to distance itself from the terror and repression associated with his rule. In 2025, Vladimir Putin renamed Volgograd’s airport Stalingrad International Airport, formally restoring the name to a major piece of infrastructure while stopping short of renaming the entire city.

Russia has also restored Stalin imagery elsewhere. A Stalin monument returned to Moscow’s Taganskaya metro station in 2025, replacing a tribute removed during the earlier effort to dismantle his cult of personality. In 2026, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia accused Russia of erasing the memory of Stalin’s crimes after a Siberian memorial to victims of Soviet repression was dismantled. Reuters documented that dispute.

The point is not that every renaming campaign is morally equivalent. It is that names are rarely neutral once governments decide they are worth changing. A name can honor liberation, restore an Indigenous identity, promote nationalism, revive an authoritarian symbol or erase the people who lost power.

Before, during and after wars, governments rename the map because controlling language helps control memory.

The Iran War Passed Six Months and Did Not End in Four Weeks

The United States–Iran war reached the six-month mark with no clear path to resolution.

The United States and Israel began strikes on Iran on February 28. Iran did not surrender. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains severely disrupted. Reuters reported that the USS Gerald R. Ford completed more than a year deployed the Navy’s longest warship deployment since Vietnam while the USS Abraham Lincoln spent 200 consecutive days at sea before carrier rotations continued stretching American naval resources. Reuters’ six-month assessment describes the conflict as a costly stalemate.

This week brought renewed exchanges. The United States struck Iran again; Iran said it attacked U.S. assets in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Iraq. President Trump described Iran’s response as a “love tap” while saying the United States was prepared to strike again. Reuters reported the renewed exchange on September 2.

Observed commercial traffic through Hormuz remains far below ordinary prewar levels, creating continuing pressure on oil, shipping and insurance markets. A war initially described in short-term language has become a long-duration commitment with global economic consequences.

Calendars remain undefeated.

Russia and Ukraine: Talking About Talks While Attacks Continue

Russia intensified its attacks on Kyiv this week. A September 3 strike injured ten people, including a child and six medical personnel, and damaged a high-rise residential building. A World Health Organization warehouse holding humanitarian medical supplies in the Kyiv region was struck overnight into Friday; no WHO personnel were reported injured, but access remained restricted while damage was assessed. Reuters reported the Kyiv attack and the strike on the WHO warehouse.

At the same time, Vladimir Putin said there was a chance for an agreement, while Volodymyr Zelenskyy said U.S. negotiators were expected to visit both Moscow and Kyiv. The diplomatic language is moving. So are the drones.

That is the defining contradiction of the current phase: officials discuss the possibility of talks while civilians continue experiencing the war in real time.

What We Are Watching Next

ARC and North Coast begin today. Ye performs his second Soldier Field show tonight. IDFPR’s extended response remains due. Kwame Raoul’s PAC still owes the public a resolution. Kentucky still owes clarification. The Iran war continues beyond the timetable once used to describe it. Russia and Ukraine are discussing talks beneath active air-raid warnings. Illinois and federal hemp deadlines are moving closer.

Some stories resolve with a verdict. Some resolve with a response. Some resolve when somebody finally produces the records.

And some just keep accumulating gravity.

We’ll keep watching.