Good morning, Chicago. On social media, I saw photos of Bears head coach Ben Johnson pulling his shirt off and letting out a primal yell, and I figured: The Monsters of the Midway must be doing well.

And indeed, they are. Chicago needs this, the editorial board observes in its first piece today. But what Chicago doesn’t need is for the city government to meddle with the crowd size at Christkindlmarket, the board argues in its other piece. Visitors are upset over the capacity limits, and vendors, who were given no notice, are losing sales. Some may never return. That’s the opposite of what the city’s downtown is crying out for, the board says.

I’d also like to draw your attention to our commentary offerings: Ald. Silvana Tabares sees promise in a joint city-county task force focused on preventing domestic violence. DePaul University professor Hilary G. Conklin, a former social studies teacher, sees young students learning the wrong lessons about government from ICE actions in our communities. And foreign affairs expert Daniel DePetris explains why President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza is circling the drain.

Plus, in our letters to the editor, two Chicagoans call for cooler heads to prevail as the Pretrial Fairness Act comes under scrutiny in the wake of the recent Blue Line attack. The old system of cash bail was failing our communities, and one act of violence doesn’t justify resuscitating it, they write.

Thank you for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow.

— Colleen Kujawa, opinion editor

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