IL Gov. JB Pritzker Speaks For Many Of We The People

Kinda thinkin’ of moving to Chicago. I still have some relatives around there; not to live with, but that I know people who know me.

Video is embedded on the page, for those who prefer to watch/listen.

Full text of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s speech at news conference on reported Trump military plan for Chicago

By CBS Chicago Team Updated on: August 26, 2025 / 9:16 AM CDT / CBS Chicago

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker spoke at a news conference Monday afternoon, addressing reports President Trump is planning to send the military to Chicago. Here is the full text of his remarks.

I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in this city, and as a state, and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.

Over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning, for quite a while now, to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country’s founders warned against, and it’s the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances.

What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American.

No one from the White House or the executive branch has reached out to me or to the mayor. No one has reached out to our staffs. No effort has been made to coordinate or to ask for our assistance in identifying any actions that might be helpful to us. Local law enforcement has not been contacted. We have made no requests for federal intervention. None.

We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did: We read a story in The Washington Post.

If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor, or the police?

Let me answer that question: This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals.

This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities and end elections.

There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no inter- insurrection. There is no insurrection. Like every major American city in both blue and red states, we deal with crime in Chicago. Indeed, the violent crime rate is worse in red states and red cities.

Here in Chicago, our civilian police force and elected leaders work every day to combat crime and to improve public safety, and it’s working.

Not one person here today will claim we have solved all crime in Chicago, nor can that be said of any major American metro area. But calling the military into a U.S. city to invade our streets and neighborhoods and disrupt the lives of everyday people is an extraordinary action, and it should require extraordinary justification.

Look around you right now. Does this look like an emergency? Look at this. Go talk to the people of Chicago who are enjoying a gorgeous afternoon in this city. Ask the families buying ice cream on the Riverwalk. Go see the students who are at the beach after school. Talk to the workers that I just met taking the water taxi to get here. Find a family who’s enjoying today sitting on their front porch and ask if they want their neighborhoods turned into a war zone by a wannabe dictator. Ask if they’d like to pass through a checkpoint with unidentified officers in masks while taking their kids to school.

Crime is a reality we all face in this country. Public safety has been among our highest priorities since taking office. We have hired more police and given them more funding.

We banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stocks, and high-capacity magazines. We invested historic amounts into community violence intervention programs. We listened to our local communities, to the people who live and work in the places that are most affected by crime and asked them what they needed to help make their neighborhoods safer.

Those strategies have been working. Crime is dropping in Chicago. Murders are down 32% compared to last year and nearly cut in half since 2021.

Shootings are down 37% since last year, and 57% from four years ago. Robberies are down 34% year over year. Burglaries down 21%. Motor vehicle thefts down 26%.

So in case there was any doubt as to the motivation behind Trump’s military occupations, take note: 13 of the top 20 cities in homicide rate have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago.

Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois.

Memphis, Tennessee; Hattiesburg, Mississippi have higher crime rates than Chicago, and yet Donald Trump is sending troops here and not there? Ask yourself why.

If Donald Trump was actually serious about fighting crime in cities like Chicago, he, along with his congressional Republicans, would not be cutting over $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants nationally, including cutting $158 million in funding to Illinois for violence prevention programs that deploy trained outreach workers to deescalate conflict on our streets. Cutting $71 million in law enforcement grants to Illinois, direct money for police departments through programs like Project Safe Neighborhoods, the state and local Antiterrorism Training Program, and the Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative, cutting $137 million in child protection measures in Illinois that protect our kids against abuse and neglect.

Trump is defunding the police.

To the members of the press who are assembled here today, and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is.

This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see, where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president’s actions.

Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidence, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.

Look at the people assembled before you today, behind me. This is a full cross-section of Chicago’s leaders from the business world, the faith community, law enforcement, education, community organizations, and more. We sometimes disagree on how to effectively solve the many challenges that our state and our city face on a daily basis. But today, we are standing here united, in public, in front of the cameras, unafraid to tell the president that his proposed actions will make our jobs harder and the lives of our residents worse.

Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, “Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?” Instead, I say, “Mr. President, do not come to Chicago.”

You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.

Most alarming, you seem to lack any appropriate concern as our commander-in-chief for the members of the military that you would so callously deploy as pawns in your ever-more-alarming grabs for power.

As a governor, I’ve had to make the decision in the past to call up members of the National Guard into active service, and I think it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on how seriously I take that responsibility, and on the many things that I consider before asking these brave men and women to leave their homes and their communities to serve in any capacity for us.

As I’ve said many times in the past, members of the National Guard are not trained to serve as law enforcement. They are trained for the battlefield, and they’re good at it. They’re not trained to arrest people and read them their Miranda rights. They did not sign up for the National Guard to fight crime. And when we call them into service, we are reaching into local communities and taking people who have jobs and families away from their neighborhoods and the people who rely upon them.

It is insulting to their integrity and to the extraordinary sacrifices that they make to serve in the Guard to use them as a political prop, where they could be put in situations where they will be at odds with their local communities, the ones that they seek to serve.

I know Donald Trump doesn’t care about the well-being of the members of our military, but I do and so do all the people standing here.

So let me speak to all Illinoisans and to all Chicagoans right now. Hopefully the president will reconsider this dangerous and misguided encroachment upon our state and our city’s sovereignty. Hopefully rational voices, if there are any left inside the White House or the Pentagon, will prevail in the coming days. If not, we are going to face an unprecedented and difficult time ahead.

But I know you Chicago, and I know you are up to it. When you protest, do it peacefully. Be sure to continue Chicago’s long tradition of nonviolent resistance. Remember that the members of the military and the National Guard who will be asked to walk these streets are, for the most part, here unwillingly. And remember that they can be court martialed and their lives ruined if they resist deployment. Look to the members of the faith community standing behind me today for guidance on how to mobilize.

To my fellow governors across the nation who would consider pulling your National Guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the wishes of its elected representatives and its people, you would be failing your constituents and your country. Cooperation and coordination between our states is vital to the fabric of our nation and it benefits us all. Any action undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to the ego of a dictator will be responded to.

The State of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever at our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights.

Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous: we are watching and we are taking names.

This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now, and eventually the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf.

You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.

As Dr. King once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Humbly I would add, it doesn’t bend on its own. History tells us we often have to apply force needed to make sure that the arc gets where it needs to go. This is one of those times.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye; This Is At Least Of Interest–

To me, it seems damned important. We the people have all become owners/stockholders of Intel. What I get for avoiding the Friday evening news dump; it is in today’s newsletter.

Trump turns $11.1B in US government funds into a 10% stake in downtrodden Intel

By MICHELLE L. PRICE and MICHAEL LIEDTKE Updated 5:55 PM CDT, August 22, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday announced the U.S. government has secured a 10% stake in struggling Silicon Valley pioneer Intel in a deal that was completed just a couple weeks after he was depicting the company’s CEO as a conflicted leader unfit for the job.

“The United States of America now fully owns and controls 10% of INTEL, a Great American Company that has an even more incredible future,” Trump wrote in a post.

The U.S. government is getting the stake through the conversion of $11.1 billion in previously issued funds and pledges. All told, the government is getting 433.3 million shares of non-voting stock priced at $20.47 apiece — a discount from Friday’s closing price at $24.80. That spread means the U.S. government already has a gain of $1.9 billion, on paper.

The remarkable turn of events makes the U.S. government one of Intel’s largest shareholders at a time that the Santa Clara, California, company is in the process of jettisoning more than 20,000 workers as part of its latest attempt to bounce back from years of missteps taken under a variety of CEOs.

Intel’s current CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, has only been on the job for slightly more than five months, an d earlier this month, it looked like he might be on shaky ground already after some lawmakers raised national security concerns about his past investments in Chinese companies while he was a venture capitalist. Trump latched on to those concerns in an August 7 post demanding that Tan resign.

The first video shows how the israeli lobby is buying the US government and teh second shows how being Jewish means more than stopping child sexual abuse. This is politics in the US now.

Fannie Lou Hamer, Rhodesia’s Olympics Team, Karen Silkwood, & More, In Peace & Justice History for 8/22

Say It Loud-Say It With Me!

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august22

A Couple From Clay Jones

Trump-Approved African American History by Clay Jones

Donald Trump wants to make the nation as stupid and racist as he is Read on Substack

On Tuesday, Donald Trump posted on ShitSocial, “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen, and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made.”

That doesn’t sound good. What he’s doing to the universities and the government in his efforts to eliminate “woke” is destroying our institutions, historical culture, and progress in anti-discrimination.

Trump is a champion of discrimination. These edicts he’s sending out daily sound like crap you’d hear from a dictator. Our history is being rewritten by the dumbest kid in the classroom. Even his social media posts prove he’s a moron. Typically, bigots are morons.

Trump is choosing Kennedy Center honorees and trying to influence what universities teach. He’s choosing what information is documented and archived by our military. They’re removing anything that honors gay, Black, Latino, and female. They had a hissy fit over the name “Enola Gay.” They even removed Harvey Milk’s name from a ship.

Trump’s ordering the Smithsonian to get rid of anything that’s “woke.” Naturally, they’re getting rid of whatever they believe is woke because wokeness is a good thing.

(snip-MORE, and it’s very good)

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Heavenly Trump by Clay Jones

Trump’s worried he won’t get into Heaven Read on Substack

I’m not on the talking point that Trump is dying, but he can’t be healthy. We’ve seen photos of Trump with food from McDonald’s, KFC, and even a taco bowl, but when’s the last time you saw a pic of him with a salad? You would think he’d at least do a photo-op with one. I don’t like to wish death on anyone. I think it’s kinda tacky, even for a piece of crap like Trump, and I’m afraid it might bounce back onto me.

A couple of days ago, Trump called into Fox News, because he’s the kind of guy with lots of time on his hands (it’s not like he has an important job or anything), and said his motivation for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, other than a Nobel Peace Prize, is to win a spot in Heaven. There’s a LOT to pack in here.

Trump called and said, “I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” he explained. “I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.” (snip-MORE, also great)

PS: Suppose South Park is making Trump nervous, with all the Satan in his bed stuff? Also, repealing the OBBB will help him a lot more than meddling in other countries’s business. -A)

Nat Turner, Prague Spring, Benigno Aquino, & More, In Peace & Justice History for 8/21

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august21

And From Lit Hub, “This Week In Literary History”

(It’s a newsletter I receive, and I don’t have a link for what I’ve copied and am pasting, but there are links within the piece. Enjoy.)

AUGUST 17 — AUGUST 23

Angela Davis debuts on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.
In 1969, the legendary author and activist Angela Davis was a newly minted assistant philosophy processor at UCLA. But she was also an avowed Communist, and as a result, then-Governor Ronald Regan tried to have her fired before she’d begun any actual teaching. No luck: Davis’s dismissal didn’t hold up in court, and her first class had to be moved to a bigger classroom to accommodate the 2,000 students who had signed up for it—but she would finally be fired again nine months later, for “inflammatory rhetoric” in public speeches. Davis was an outspoken supporter of the Black Panthers and was fervently against the Vietnam War, but arguably her most scandalous activist activities at the time were in defense of the Soledad Brothers, three Black inmates imprisoned in Soledad, CA, who were accused of killing a white guard. In 1970, guns registered to Davis were used in an attack on the nearby Marin County Civic Center; the perpetrators hoped to take hostages to bargain for the inmates’ release, but instead left four casualties. Davis, despite not being at the scene, was charged with murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy charges. She couldn’t be found, and so on August 18, 1970, by order of J. Edgar Hoover, Davis became the third woman ever to be included on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Eight weeks later, Davis was finally arrested in a New York motel; the trial that followed catapulted her to international fame—and turned her into a revolutionary icon—as her supporters, who viewed her as a political prisoner, chanted “Free Angela!” across the globe.In 1972, after 16 months in prison, she was acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury. “It took a worldwide movement of people to acquit Miss Davis,” noted one of her attorneys, Howard Moore Jr., but it shouldn’t have. “Justice should be the routine of the system,” he added.

MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM
Angela Davis on Black Lives Matter, Palestine, and the Future of Radicalism

Angela Davis on International Solidarity and the Impacts of Black Radicalism

Angela Davis on Protest, 1968, andHer Old Teacher, Herbert Marcuse

THIS IS WHY THEY BAN IT:
“Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation. ”
–Angela Davis

Clay Jones, Open Windows

Eat Mor Bulshirt by Clay Jones

Trump takes advice from Putin Read on Substack

Taking advice about how to run free, fair, and democratic elections from Vladimir Putin would be like taking advice from Donald Trump on how to make a steak.

“What you want to do is purchase the most beautiful cut of meat possible, preferably from Walmart, but with a “Trump Steak” sticker on it. Then, you’re gonna put that steak on the stove and cook it for about 45 minutes until it’s nice and charred. Then you will want to bury it in ketchup to the point that you can’t even see the steak. Then, have someone else cut it for you, but make sure it’s in tiny pieces so you don’t have to chew so hard. You gotta eat your ketchup steak in tiny bites if you’re like me, and your dentures keep popping out.”

I read that when he had meetings with his campaign people during the 2016 race, he’d serve hot dogs. The anonymous source said that Trump eats like an 8-year-old. He will serve his guests a scoop of ice cream while he gets two, so they know who the big boy is. I bet that bastard puts ketchup on his hot dogs, that sonofabitch.

Trump is taking Putin’s side again. Not just in the war that Putin started against Ukraine, but in the war he started against American democracy. On Monday morning, Trump posted on ShitSocial that he’s getting rid of mail-in voting and voting machines. Disclaimer: I haven’t read his entire post because…damn. (snip-MORE. Seriously, go see it, it’s worth the click!)

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The wannabe Dictator by Ann Telnaes

It’s a Trump show Read on Substack

Trump sees himself as an emperor summoning his kingdoms to flatter him and bring gifts.

First Enslaved Africans Arrive in VA, & The Equal Opportunity Act Is Signed, In Peace & Justice History for 8/20

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august20

Talking Points Memo Reports:

A good place to pick up important info quickly; all linked/cited for sourcing.

Ed Martin Confirms Ed Martin’s Witch Hunt Against Elected Democrats by TPM

INSIDE: Pam Bondi … Adam Schiff … Letitia James Read on Substack

A Classic Example of Political Corruption

Ed Martin had no prior experience as a prosecutor when he became acting D.C. U.S. attorney earlier this year. And it shows.

Since his nomination to the permanent position was aborted because of lack of Senate GOP support, Martin has been triple-hatting at Main Justice as (i) U.S. pardon attorney; (ii) the chief of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “Weaponization Working Group” — the unintentionally revealing name of the outfit that’s charged with politicizing the Justice Department; and (iii) most recently as Bondi’s “special attorney” overseeing the politically motivated mortgage fraud investigations of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

It was in that third role that Martin was apparently serving when he went on Fox News and admitted that he’s using the pretext of the clearly bogus mortgage fraud probes to conduct an open-ended witch hunt into Schiff and James. “We’re also gonna look at everything else they’ve been doing,” Martin said on air:

https://embed.bsky.app/embed/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/app.bsky.feed.post/3lwm6otyddp2f?id=6254561201210245

Most legal experts think the mortgage fraud claims don’t amount to anything on the facts or on the law. But don’t underestimate the potency of ongoing criminal investigations hanging over anyone, especially elected officials, particularly when the investigations are used as justification for a wide-ranging probe of unspecified other wrongdoing.

Even if charges never come, this is a classic example of political corruption — and of authoritarian capture of the independence of federal prosecutors. Martin has embarked on a fishing expedition and he’ll keep it going for as long as it’s useful to the White House.

Speaking of Letitia James …

New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $500 million civil fraud judgment against Donald Trump has been held up on appeal for nearly a year, apparently because of deep divisions and three dueling written opinions on the five-justice appeals court panel, the WSJ reports.

Thread of the Day

With a new series of edicts, FBI Director Kash Patel is further degrading the bureau and converting into something akin to a national police department (which is NOT what the FBI has historically been):

WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES – 2025/08/17: Activist Nadine Seiler holds a sign that reads “What Trump order won’t you obey” stands in front of a National Guard vehicle as protesters gather at Columbus Circle following President Donald Trump’s announcement to place the D.C. Metropolitan Police under federal control. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)

A Recipe for Disaster

Red states are jumping on the bandwagon to send their national guards to the nation’s capital and show plurality Black D.C. who’s boss. West Virginia, Ohio, and South Carolina (still smarting from the last time it tried to overthrow D.C.) are first in line to engage in performative strong-arming of Democratic cities.

But the most alarming news to come out over a generally alarming weekend is that the national guardsmen may be armed, a reversal of an earlier decision that deployed the D.C. National Guard on the streets without weaponry on their persons or in the vehicles.

The ingredients could be in place for a cocktail of violence: federal agents and national guardsmen with little to no training in street policing being sent with guns into a peaceful urban area (that many of them are not even from) and expected to stir up trouble. It puts everyone — D.C. residents, local police, guardsmen, and federal agents — in an impossible situation.

One glimmer of good news was that the Trump administration was hauled into court Friday over its attempt to take over the D.C. police department and, under pressure from a federal judge, backed off its maximalist position.

ICYMI

Religion Dispatches: Latest ICE Recruitment Materials Include Overt Neo-Nazi Reference and Nazi-Nazi Script

Sign of the Times: The New Fascism Comes With Merch

The Florida GOP scrubbed its online store of a new line of merchandise touting the state’s new “Deportation Depot” after Home Depot complained it was an unapproved use of its branding.

Texas Dems Expected Back This Week

With California Democrats proceeding with their own mid-decade redistricting, Texas Democrats are expected to return to the state today, giving Republicans a quorum in the legislature to push through their redistricting plan. Texas Democrats succeeded in blocking the redistricting push in the first special session of the legislature. But when it ended, Friday Gov. Greg Abbott (R) immediately called a second special session, setting the stage for passing a new, more GOP friendly congressional district map to help national Republicans hold their House majority in next year’s midterms.

Quote of the Day

“Trump has completely ceded narrative control to Putin. What Ukraine is just basically getting as a concession is for the Russians to stop fighting. And this is Putin’s way all the way through the 25 years of his presidency, which is: ‘I’m going to beat you up and my concession is that I stopped beating you up.’”–former Trump I National Security Council official Fiona Hill

D’oh!

Guests at a hotel in Anchorage found sensitive documents from the Trump-Putin summit on a public printer, NPR reports.

Trump’s D.C. Circuit Appointees Strike Again: CFPB Edition

D.C. Circuit Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, Trump appointees who have had out-sized influence in the first months of the Trump II presidency, cleared the way Friday for the Trump administration to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee dissented.

“The notion that courts are powerless to prevent the President from abolishing the agencies of the federal government that he was elected to lead cannot be reconciled with either the constitutional separation of powers or our nation’s commitment to a government of laws,” Pillard wrote.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

TPM’s Layla A. Jones: The Trump Administration Is Laying the Groundwork for a Full Takeover of Federal Data

Judge Blocks FTC Probe of Media Matters

U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of D.C. sided with Media Matters in blocking a politically motived Federal Trade Commission investigation of the liberal watchdog group.

“This case presents a straightforward First Amendment violation,” Sooknanan ruled.

Media Matters has been struggling financially under the weight of bogus right-wing investigations into whether its reporting on antisemitic content on X/Twitter amounted to anticompetitive conduct. It also faces related serial lawsuits by Elon Musk.

“It should alarm all Americans when the government retaliates against individuals or organizations for engaging in constitutionally protected public debate,” Sooknanan wrote. “And that alarm should ring even louder when the Government retaliates against those engaged in newsgathering and reporting.”

A Rare Example of Organized Left-Wing Violence?

The purported attack at an ICE detention center in Texas last month caught my eye as an possible example of organized left-wing violence, a relative rarity since the 1970s. When I say “organized,” I don’t necessarily mean well-organized. The ragtag group’s alleged attack seemed especially hapless, even according to the official law enforcement account of the incident. Adding to the weirdness, the alleged perpetrators — among them two transgender women activists — appeared to be from in and around Dallas, which wouldn’t be my first choice for hotbeds of anti-fascism.

The WaPo’s Robert Klemko has dug a bit more into the “secretive network of Dallas anti-fascists” who “initially united around trans and queer identity issues.” He did a jailhouse interview with the group’s alleged ringleader, a former Marine Corps reservist of mixed Japanese and Korean descent who trained “very young, naive leftists,” as one witness put it, in close-quarters combat and large-scale gunfights at his mother’s taekwondo studio in suburban Dallas.