‘Crimes against humanity.’ The International Criminal Court at The Hague has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister for their conduct of their campaign against Hamas in Gaza …
■ … and for the head of the Hamas armed wing responsible for the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that prompted Israel’s retaliation …
■ … even though he’s probably dead.
■ Meanwhile, the Biden administration has given Ukraine antipersonnel land mines to use against Russia—even though such weapons have long been condemned for their danger to innocents.
Offense Dept. The city attorney’s office of Monterey, California, has released a report detailing a woman’s complaint that Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, sexually assaulted her.
■ Hegseth’s lawyer has said Hegseth paid her last year to head off the threat of a lawsuit.
■ Politico: “Details reported overnight offer substantial contemporaneous support for that woman’s claim.”
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “We are witnessing the Golden Age of horrible, unqualified lunkheads being richly rewarded for doing literally nothing good. And let me tell you, I am here for it.”
■ Desi Lydic at The Daily Show: “There’s not gonna be a layer of competent workers at some point. It’s just celebrities all the way down.”
■ Public Notice’s Stephen Robinson: “Senate Republicans won't save us” from Trump’s “Legion of Doom” cabinet.
■ Traditional conservative Charlie Sykes: “Where does Al Franken go to get his apology?”
‘The truth we don’t want to face.’ Columnist Lyz Lenz counsels resisting “liberal conspiracy theories about the election”—and instead “examining some things about ourselves, our country and our neighbors and family that are deeply uncomfortable.”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: Y’know how Trump said he had nothing to do with the oppressive, regressive Project 2025 plan for America? Never mind.
Another nominee, another sex scandal. Trump’s would-be education secretary, Linda McMahon, has been named in a sex abuse lawsuit.
■ Public Information: Brace yourself for “the religious indoctrination of America’s public school students” …
■ … and, education columnist Jan Resseger says, for a rollback of schools’ civil rights protections.
■ Chalkbeat: More than half Chicago’s voters cast ballots in the city’s first school board election.
‘Absolutely insane.’ Pentagon officials tell The Intercept Trump’s plan to use the military for mass deportations is “unrealistic and unserious.”
■ Columnist Irv Leavitt: “We need more immigrants, even of marginally hinky legal status.”
Why they went. Puck’s Dylan Byers says MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski tell friends they’re afraid a Trump administration would revive “a decades-old, totally bullshit, birther-level conspiracy theory about the death of … a 28-year-old intern in Scarborough’s former Florida congressional office who died in 2001 from complications relating to a heart condition, and use it to apply legal pressure on Scarborough and otherwise make his life a living hell.”
■ Columnist Eric Zorn: “Until there are on-air signs of capitulation, I’ll withhold judgment.”
■ Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion proprietor Jeff Tiedrich sheds no tears for Morning Joe’s declining ratings: “Action, meet consequences.”
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter speculates that Comcast’s cable channel spinoff could be “just an elaborate way to shed MSNBC, given the possible political downsides of owning a progressive news network in a second Trump era.”
■ Columnist Dan Pfeiffer suggests Democrats consider breaking up with legacy media.
■ Correction: Yesterday’s Square misidentified the cable channel Dana Bash works for. It’s CNN.
■ Thanks to the several watchful readers who took the time to set things straight.
‘Nasty’ snow. That was in the offing for Chicago’s first snowfall of the season today.
■ Also: Ill winds.
■ For the record: Leaving your car running to warm up, unattended, breaks Illinois law.
■ Politico’s Shia Kapos asked readers to share tales of their most memorable Illinois snowstorms.
He’s out. For the third time in six years, voters have rejected a Cook County judge’s bid for retention: First-termer Shannon O’Malley, who faced a number of challenges.
■ A Sun-Times editorial sees big problems in the courts’ handling of domestic violence cases …
■ … exemplified by a judge’s release of a man later accused of killing his wife.
■ Actor Jussie Smollett’s conviction on charges of faking a 2019 hate crime has been tossed by the Illinois Supreme Court (link added).
■ A Crystal Lake guy’s the latest Illinoisan to plead guilty in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.
‘Another extreme action that would put the safety of women seeking reproductive care in jeopardy.’ That’s Gov. Pritzker’s spokesman responding to anti-abortion groups and employers suing the state over its law requiring health insurers here to cover abortions and abortion medications at no cost to patients.
■ Columnist Jill Filipovic: “Anti-abortion groups plan to sue women for abortions.”
■ Wonkette hails Pritzker’s new group, Governors Safeguarding Democracy: “Blue states gearing up to resist Trump with all the HELL NOs they have.”
Chicago’s ‘shoplifting hub.’ A new University of Missouri study identifies a small North Side retail shopping area as a hotspot for the crime.
■ The Triibe says getting rid of Chicago cops affiliated with the racist, far-right Oath Keepers isn’t as simple as some had hoped.
Spirit of generosity. A week before Spirit Airlines filed for bankruptcy, its CEO got a $3.8 million bonus.
■ The Lever: Trump’s choice to head the Transportation Department is a gift to airlines.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Continuing our rollcall of those whose financial support has kept Chicago Public Square coming: Gary Strokosch, John Morath, Cynde Seegers, Jean Davis, Charles Pratt, Matthew Brenner, Jeff Hanneman, Mark Nystuen, Len Jaster, David Drew, Kurt Wehrmeister, Susy Schultz, Mark Zegan, Kevin Iverson, Mark Ruda, Garry, Jeffrey Nelson, Shel Lustig, the Skubish family, Mollie Kramer, Ken Davis, Mary Sebahar, Cynthia Martin, Bob Ely, Kent Bridgeman, Ron Brown, Charles C. Allen II, Rupa Datta, Barb Powers, Peter Chien, Ilene Siemer, Mary Godlewski, Donna Peel, Fritz Holznagel, Holly Wallace, Darryl Roberts, William Lindsey Cochran, Larry Baldacci, Kristina Zaremba, Peggy Fogelman, Gil Arias, Bruce Pfaff, Randy Young, Tim Bannon, Julia Winn, Reed Pence, John McClelland, In memoriam: Marianne Matthews, Stephanie Springsteen, Bridget Hatch, Stephanie Blatt, Molly McDonough, Lucy Smith, Eric Hochstein, Collin Canright, Amy Lee Goodman, Lilia Chacon, Carolyn Roberta Berg, James Madigan, Beth Bales Olson, Betsy Blew-Ochoa, Carol Morency, Ellen Cutter, Tony Judge, Ronald Melody, Randall Kulat, Martin Berg, Sandy and Jeremy Lipschultz, Laura Braden Temple, Sam Hochberg, Jerry Role, Mark Wukas, Michael Soriano, Sandra Slater, Julie Martin, Denise Mattson, Leslie Sutphen, Bill Herbert, Deborah Montgomery, Jerry Wolin, Josh Mogerman, Griz Alger, Joyce Cook, Edward Witt, John Robinson, Cathy Sullivan, Mike Schultz, Jennifer Packheiser, Emily Blum, Deb Humiston, Liz Meisterling, Susann Slinic, David Green, Paul Clark, Paul Teodo, Victoria Engelhardt, Teresa Savino, Tom O’Malley, Multipath Data, Rosemary Caruk, David Protess, Christine Hauri, Harla Hutchinson, Jeff Weissglass, Catherine Tokarski, Judith Alexander, Ann Tanner, Mario Greco, Kathy Wyman and Doug Waco, M. Braun, John Aerni, Daniel Parker, John Gehron, Cat Reis, Jordan Wilkerson, Laurie and Bill Bunkers, William Bork, Mary Gannon Pittman, Rosalind Rouse, Mike Janowski, Scott Tindale, Christa Velbel, Jon Randolph, Shelley Krause, Ed Nickow, Cassandra West, Deborah J. Wess, Steve Nidetz, Thom Clark, Andrew Stancioff, Katherine and Michael Raleigh, Annemarie Kill, James Gardner, Ken Paulson, Clifford Johnson, Janet Holden, Lynne Taylor, Jen Purrenhage, Jan Menaker Brock, Claire Barliant, Robert A. Shipley, Sarah Wolf, Paul M. Moretta, Julia Gray, John Gilardi, David Layden, Bill Paige and Taylor Kuether.
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