‘A new kind of chaos.’ That’s what CNN’s Stephen Collinson perceives in President-elect Donald Trump and plutocrat Elon Musk’s derailing of a spending plan designed to keep the government rolling until Trump takes office.
■ Wake Up to Politics proprietor Gabe Fleisher poses a riddle: “What does $277 million buy you in Donald Trump’s second term? The answer: Veto power over the federal budget.”
■ Ex-U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Reich: “If the government shuts down Saturday … Musk will be largely to blame.”
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “The Space Nazi would be just fine with a month-long shutdown—because he has no … clue what government does, or how it works.”
■ The Washington Post: It’s not looking good for House Speaker Mike Johnson.
‘Stand up to Trump or everything falls.’ Columnist Eric Zorn says the nation’s news media “need to … agree to fight to the end every lawsuit” that “schoolyard bully in chief” Trump files to undermine their First Amendment rights.
■ A Tribune editorial: “You won, Mr. Trump. There’s no call for litigation against the Des Moines Register.”
■ The New York Times says Disney/ABC’s decision to cave in that lawsuit over George Stephanopoulos’ remark that Trump had been found “liable for rape” was driven in part by fear that losing the case would set the stage for a Supreme Court decision overturning the landmark ruling that secured modern free-speech rights, New York Times v. Sullivan.
■ CNN’s Allison Morrow: If Disney boss Bob Iger can’t stomach a free speech fight against Trump, can anyone?
■ Status: MSNBC’s new overlord wants the channel “on better terms with Republicans.”
■ The Ankler’s Lachlan Cartwright recaps conversations with 20 network journalists and executives: “They are … scared by what next year will bring. ‘It’s pretty bleak,’ one long-serving cable network producer told me. ‘It’s past the point of hard alcohol.’”
■ Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect: “All we can do is redouble our vigilance, and hope that even the Roberts Court may be willing to eviscerate the administrative state but not the Constitution” …
■ … and yet, the First is at the heart of a case the Supreme Court says it’ll tackle next month: The constitutionality of a federal law that could ban TikTok in the U.S.
■ Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports, a Pennsylvania newspaper reporter has come under repeated abuse from local Republicans.
What worries you? Mother Jones asks readers, “How are you—or members of your community—being targeted by the next Trump administration? What are the personal stories of folks that you fear will happen when his policies are implemented? And how are people preparing to fight back?”
She had a mentor. Newly public court documents assert that the 15-year-old girl who killed a student and teacher at a Madison, Wisconsin, religious school had been in contact with a man who himself was allegedly planning to attack a government building.
■ Her father in August posted a photo of his daughter at a shooting range.
Back to New York. Updating coverage: Accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Luigi Mangione has agreed to extradition from Pennsylvania.
■ Columnist Paul Krugman, newly parted from The New York Times, writes on Substack: “Let’s not murder health company executives and lionize their killers. But let’s also not pretend that their industry serves society.”
The CTA’s back, baby. Just barely making good on a pledge to do so by yearend, the Chicago Transit Authority says its bus schedules will return to pre-pandemic levels during the final week of December …
■ … and it says it’s nailed down almost $2 billion in federal cash to extend the Red Line south to 130th Street.
■ The fate of Chicago schools CEO Pedro Martinez could be decided—oh, yeah, of course—on the Friday night before a holiday week.
■ A Sun-Times editorial: Mayor Johnson’s ouster of a City Hall expert on climate and pollution was a blunder.
‘Lies, damn lies, and shoplifting statistics.’ Popular Information perceives something fishy in the National Retail Federation’s decision, for the first time in 32 years, not to release its annual retail security survey—maybe because it “did not reinforce the industry’s preferred narrative that shoplifting is a growing problem”?
■ A Chicago woman has filed what could become a class-action lawsuit complaining that Amazon is providing slower delivery service to residents of some ZIP codes.
■ Almost 10,000 Amazon workers—including about 400 in Skokie—are on strike as of today.
■ Billionaire philanthropist—Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife—MacKenzie Scott has acknowledged another $2 billion donated this year …
■ … to organizations including more than two dozen in Illinois.
Lay off. Lay’s Classic Potato Chips sold in Oregon and Washington have been recalled because they may be contaminated with an “undeclared allergen”: Milk.
■ Dozens of Canada geese have died in Lombard after ingesting lead pellets—possibly bird shot from three shooting clubs in the vicinity.
No freedom from pollution. Debris from cranes’ demolition of the former Tribune Freedom Center printing plant has contaminated the Chicago River.
■ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg flashes back to a daunting 1999 ride in a crane.
Vote fair, vote Square. Just a few days left to cast your ballot for this publication (or, heck, even one of the competition) in the Reader’s Best of Chicago poll.
■ Eric Zorn has identified himself as the spoilsport Best of Chicago critic quoted at the end of Tuesday’s Square.
Quiz prognosiz. Coming tomorrow: 2024’s final regular edition of Square—and of The Conversation’s weekly news quiz.
■ Then, next week: A special year-end quiz. Want to sponsor that edition? Say the word.