Trump’s trial. The president could face the music in the U.S. Senate next Wednesday …
■ … now that he’s been impeached by the House a historic second time …
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “This is an indictment … of the Republican Party that let him off the hook a year ago.” (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ A Sun-Times editorial: “The sooner Trump stands trial in the Senate, the better.”
■ The Associated Press explains how Trump can be barred from holding office again—even if he’s not impeached convicted.
■ The Conversation: Impeachment isn’t pointless—if it sends a message to future presidents.
Kinda Late Dept. Not long after that vote, Trump released a video deploring violence “in our movement.”
■ He reportedly was talked down from showing up on the House floor to defend himself.
■ Lawyer and professor Seth Abramson dissects the Trump speech that launched the Capitol insurrection and was central to his impeachment.
Capital caution. Washington, D.C., is on alert as Joe Biden’s inauguration nears.
■ Dan Sinker’s Impeachment.FYI 2: Wednesday marked “the first time since the Civil War that troops quartered in the Capitol.”
■ Neil Steinberg answers reader mail about his Wednesday column—one of the most-clicked items in yesterday’s Chicago Public Square—wherein he asked rhetorically, “Why wasn’t the Capitol mob carrying guns?”
‘No one took us seriously.’ ProPublica says Black cops warned for years about racist officers on the U.S. Capitol Police force.
■ Add two Virginia police officers to the roster of those charged in the insurrection …
■ … fueling new concern about white supremacist infiltration of the nation’s police forces.
■ Chicago’s Second City Cop blog has disappeared from public view after its anonymous author minimized the riot.
■ Prosecutors want new restraints on babyfaced Kenosha murder suspect—and Illinois teenager—Kyle Rittenhouse, who they say was drinking beer at a Wisconsin bar as a racist crowd celebrated his presence.
So now he can tell his children he was charged with committing a federal crime. A Chicago man arrested Wednesday, accused of unlawfully entering the Capitol during the riot, allegedly posted to Instagram beforehand: “I refuse to tell my children that I sat back and did nothing.”
■ The feds say he told the agents who arrested him, “Wow you are pretty good.”
‘Murder the media.’ Those words were carved into a Capitol door during last week’s invasion.
■ Chicago news bosses are encouraging reporters not to take any chances.
■ Media writer Tom Jones: “Kudos to all the news networks,” especially NBC and Savannah Guthrie for an interview with Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who voted for impeachment.
Corporate America’s Trump desertion. Bloomberg credits much of the movement to a lone newsletter author.
■ Macaulay Culkin is down with calls to edit Trump’s cameo out of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
■ Trump’s former personal doc—remember his description, “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency”?—is dead.
Seniors’ moment. Although Chicago doesn’t expect to distribute COVID-19 vaccines widely to those 65 and over until next month at the earliest, some could get the shots next week.
■ Axios: “The pandemic is raging. Its deadliest and most dangerous days are happening right now. And it keeps getting worse.”
■ The Chicago Teachers Union says one elementary school is in “chaos”—with eight staffers infected by or exposed to the coronavirus.
■ Bloomberg: How to tell if your office air quality’s safe for return.
Illinois milestone. Rep. Emanuel “Chris” Welch of Hillside is the state’s first Black speaker of the House …
■ … replacing scandal-scarred Michael Madigan and thereby depriving Republicans, in the words of Politico’s Shia Kapos, of their “most precious asset” for the 2022 campaign.
■ Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown: “Welch … could provide a clear upgrade.”
■ Landmark reforms that passed the General Assembly yesterday could end the classist cash-bail system, require that all cops wear body cameras and send $150 million to address health-care inequities in the state’s neediest communities.
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