UNEXPECTEDLY: Mayor Lori Lightfoot planning to remove Christopher Columbus statue from Chicago’s Grant Park.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot is planning to remove the controversial statue of Christopher Columbus from Chicago’s Grant Park as soon as Thursday night, in part to avoid another high-profile confrontation between police and protesters like the one that happened last week, sources told the Tribune.

As I asked on Sunday, “I wonder how long it will be before Mayor Lightfoot orders the statue crated and then removed under the onus of ‘public safety concerns,’ the language used by Philadelphia’s mayor to remove his town’s Columbus statue in June.”

The answer is: not very long at all.