The gunfire this time. Updating coverage: Police have identified the shooter who killed two people—a teacher and a teenage student—at a private Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, before reportedly killing herself, as a 15-year-old girl.
■ Police say a second grader was first to call 911 about the shooting.
■ Madison’s police chief: “It makes my heart skip a beat to think about that.”
■ An 8-year-old recalls eating a popsicle as she heard a teacher’s cries: “My leg! Help, help!”
‘Mommy, I’m shot.’ Those were the words of a three-year-old who was in bed with his mother and siblings when gunfire broke out near their home in Chicago Saturday afternoon.
■ Conceding she’s “not unduly hopeful that Trump will do the right thing here,” law prof Joyce Vance nevertheless sees a chance for him to “create a legacy for himself” by doing something about mass shootings.
■ Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow mocks news coverage of the murder of an insurance company CEO: “If we were so inclined, we could use this horrific incident as a springboard to examine multiple, seemingly intractable problems.”
■ The Onion, as ever: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
‘Firewall for freedom.’ Ahead of a second Donald Trump administration, the American Civil Liberties Union’s executive director says his organization’s activating local governments, state attorneys general, governors and mayors across the country to block the worst of government abuses.
■ Indeed, Notus reports, state Democrats are prepping for a fight.
■ The ACLU and your Chicago Public Square columnist go back a ways (2016 link to a tale from 1971).
■ Axios: Trump’s immigration policies could mess up life for Chicago’s international students.
ABC ‘deserves our contempt.’ Columnist Eric Zorn: Shame on the network “for surrendering to Trump’s flimsy lawsuit.”
■ Reporter Marisa Kabas: “Feck you, ABC News.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman, who separately shares his favorite cartoon no one saw last year.)
■ Law professor Harry Litman sees a grim future for “reporters who don’t have [George] Stephanopoulos’ prestige and means (that is, 99% of working reporters) and media companies that don’t have ABC’s resources (that is, 99% of media companies).”
■ New to Trump’s journalism hit list: The pollster who incorrectly predicted a Harris victory in Iowa …
■ … a threat that Wonkette’s Evan Hurst says looks like “just him checking to see if another one of the biggies will open wide and suck.”
■ Former Chicago TV news exec Jennifer Schulze celebrates “recent coverage that is meeting the moment.”
■ Message Box columnist Dan Pfeiffer: “America’s CEOs are cozying up to Trump” because “corporations are not our friends.”
■ Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich—who worked with Stephanopoulos under President Clinton: “No large American corporation wants to be actively litigating against a sitting president, especially one as vindictive as Trump.”
■ The Bulwark: America’s modern media tycoons are “increasingly antagonistic to the journalism they fund.”
■ Among the casualties in Columbia College Chicago’s layoffs and curriculum cuts for next year: Grad programs in cinema and television production.
‘Judge Merchan to Donny: … You’re not so special.’ That’s columnist Jeff Tiedrich’s take on a New York court’s refusal to let the president-elect off the hook on his felony conviction.
■ An FBI informant has pleaded guilty to lying about a phony bribery scam involving President Biden and his son Hunter.
Lie of the Year. PolitiFact bestows that, um, honor on Trump and Vice President-elect Vance for “They’re eating the pets.”
■ Readers agreed in a landslide vote.
■ Reviewing Trump’s unedited interview with Time for its Man of the Year edition, Public Notice’s Noah Berlatsky observes that “the president-elect’s rambling incoherence jumps off the screen.”
A budget, at last. After weeks of acrimony, the Chicago City Council has approved a property-tax-increase-free 2025 spending plan.
■ Politico’s Shia Kapos: The drama exposes “a weakness in the city’s charter, which gives more power to the mayor than the council.”
■ Mayor Johnson’s named a fresh batch of members for the Chicago Board of Education.
‘Chinese-Iranian Martian invaders.’ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke has his own ideas about who’s behind all those drone sightings in and around New Jersey.
■ The state’s governor reports “little to no evidence” of anything nefarious.
■ Seth Meyers: “Did anyone think we’d start selling drones at convenience stores in America and there wouldn’t come a day when people were screaming, ‘There’s too many goddamn drones!’”
■ A University of Maryland expert in unmanned aircraft systems explains how to tell drones from planes and helicopters.
■ At Willis Tower’s Sweetgreen restaurant, a robot is making salads to order.
Name that plow. For the third year in a row, Chicago’s inviting residents to dub the city’s snowplows.
■ Snow’s back in the forecast.
■ An environmental lawyer who fought for pollution victims is recalled as “a force for good.”
Four stars. Critic Richard Roeper says the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown is one of 2024’s best films.
■ Music critics Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis look ahead to the 1,000th episode of their show Sound Opinions.
■ Entering the public domain Jan. 1: Popeye, Tintin and novels by William Faulkner and Oak Park-born Ernest Hemingway.
Top Docs. Chicago magazine lists Cook County’s best physicians, as nominated by their peers …
■ … and shares what’s in their medicine cabinets.
‘It’s not about quality or even popularity but about who has the time and energy to rally supporters/followers/customers/friends.’ A Square reader (Dec. 19 update, since he’s outed himself: It’s Eric Zorn!) has a problem with the Reader’s Best of Chicago poll—for which Square is up in two categories.
■ But, you know, it’s fun. It’s also good publicity for the winners—many of them small local businesses for whom rallying customers is part of the mission—and it can even help the losers (February link).
■ So take a second or three to vote, won’tcha?