Who’s on first? Updating coverage: The AP’s tracking Donald Trump’s picks for key posts in his second administration.
■ The Bulwark on Trump’s selections to lead “the biggest mass deportation in history”: “It could get bad quick.”
■ The lineup reportedly includes white supremacist-friendly Tom Homan as “border czar” …
■ … and dog-killing South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to head Homeland Security.
■ Reuters: Expect a Trump order making it easier to arrest migrants with no criminal record.
‘This fascist nightmare brought to you by Rupert Murdoch.’ Stop the Presses columnist Mark Jacob: “Now is the time for us to demand better TV news, loudly, and to reward courage when we see it.”
■ Media columnist Oliver Darcy: “The legacy news media is failing to adequately convey to audiences just how radical some of Donald Trump’s administration picks are.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ Stephen Colbert on Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles: “She was the mastermind who put Trump in a garbage man costume and had him dance to Ave Maria and it worked and I don’t know what anything means anymore.”
The House in the balance. Updating coverage: With more than a dozen races undecided, Republicans were four seats away from securing a majority.
■ Democrat Ruben Gallego has snagged Arizona’s Senate seat.
Thou shalt not enforce. Louisiana’s law requiring school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments has been blocked by a federal judge appointed by President Obama.
■ Law Dork Chris Geidner: These are the last weeks for Senate Democrats to put Democratic nominees on the federal judicial bench until at least 2029 …
■ … and Illinois’ Dick Durbin, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, says the party’s loss of majority status has him reconsidering whether to seek reelection in 2026.
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson sees confusion and division within the Republican Party.
Cliffhanger. A New York judge has put off a decision on what to do with Trump’s hush-money conviction.
■ Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow offers “another in an occasional series of parables involving cliffs.”
■ The Onion: “Expert Explains Why, Essentially, You’re Fucked.”
Wills and won’ts. With Trump headed back to the White House, longtime Chicago political organizer* Marj Halperin shares a list of things she’ll be doing and not doing.
■ Columnist and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich shares his readers’ answers to the question “If this were Germany in 1933, what actions would you take?”
■ Journalist Erin Reed suggests guidance for transgender people prepping for Trump’s return.
■ Columnist Marisa Kabas: “It’s time to lose our heads.”
■ Warning “Don’t read this if it’s going to upset you,” columnist Umar Haque foresees a dark era he’s dubbed “The Rupture.”
■ Jon Stewart at The Daily Show flashes back to 1984, when Republican Ronald Reagan swept every state but Minnesota: “Everyone thought, that’s the end of the Democrats. But eight years later, there was a Democrat back in office. We don’t know what’s going to happen in four years at all.”
The hate’s coming from inside the county! After Nick Fuentes, whom the New York Daily News describes as “a race-baiting Nazi sympathizer” (see also the Tom Homan item linked above), mocked women concerned about reproductive rights by tweeting “Your body, my choice. Forever,” the Berwyn address of a home that seems to belong to him went public.
■ Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice praises Illinois Gov. Pritzker for his leadership among Democratic governors.
■ Seven downstate Illinois counties last week voted to consider seceding and forming a new state.
Who makes the call? Coming to the Illinois General Assembly: A debate over whether terminally ill patients should get help choosing the day and the hour of their departure from this mortal coil.
■ A Tribune editorial: Drugstore chains’ financial woes threaten the public’s health.
Privacy? Hah. 404 Media reports that, if you’ve agreed to let a phone app track your location, you gave the government permission to track you, too.
Tines up. After 19 years, the Pitchfork Music Festival’s calling it quits in Chicago.
■ Rest in peace, First Lady of the Children’s Folk Song, Ella Jenkins—dead at 100.
Sorry about the porno link, kids. Mattel says it regrets a packaging goof on its Wicked-themed dolls—sending buyers to an adult website.
■ After Midnight host Taylor Tomlinson: “They put a porn site on the Barbie box. Proof that men cannot multitask.”
■ New to the National Toy Hall of Fame: Transformer and My Little Pony.
Game on. The New York Times Tech Guild has ended its strike …
■ … and cleared its supporters to reengage with Times features such as Wordle.
‘No longer reading political news.’ Chicago Public Square lost a reader over the weekend.
■ Meanwhile in Florida, Robert Gold, proprietor of the Square-like newsletter Key West Voices, writes today: “I plucked no headlines this week, and barely had the stomach to even read them. I don’t expect my appetite to improve anytime soon. So … I’ve arrived at the decision to put KWV on hiatus.”
■ Chicago-based USA Today columnist Rex Huppke’s OK with that: “Now is a time to let liberal politicians squawk and scare and conservative politicians prance and preen and give yourself permission to mute it all.”
■ In the closing words of a column titled “As if you needed more proof that Republicans are cruel racists,” Jeff Tiedrich writes, “Practice self-care. Do what you need to do to keep sane. If that means disengaging with my daily posts for a while, I get it.”
■ Media Guild of the West president Matt Pearce: “The work of obtaining facts has a major economic disadvantage against the production of bullshit, and it’s only getting worse.”
■ Thanks to all whose support for journalism keeps this service coming.
* And former WXRT News colleague to your Square columnist.