‘All feared dead.’ Updating coverage: At least 28 bodies had been recovered from the icy Potomac River after an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter collided while landing at Washington’s Reagan National Airport last night …
■ This may have been the first account of the crash.
■ The Lever: “Months before Wednesday night’s fatal midair collision … lawmakers brushed off safety warnings … and passed an industry-backed measure designed to add additional flight traffic at the same D.C. airport.”
■ Daily Beast: The Federal Aviation Administration’s leader quit 10 days ago, after Elon Musk demanded his resignation—leaving the FAA with no Senate-confirmed leader as it faces one of the biggest crises in its history.
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich doesn’t hold back: “Imbecile guts air safety, then demands to know why a plane crashed.”
‘A class war against everyday families.’ That’s how one Democratic senator characterizes what ProPublica says is a Republican plan to fund tax breaks for the wealthy by cutting benefits for the poor and working class.
■ Trump’s retracting his widespread freeze on federal grants and loans …
■ … but farmers, activists, organizations and businesses still have reason to be wary.
■ HuffPost: A confidential document reveals that Trump wants a court challenge over his fund-freezes.
■ The New York Times’ Charlie Savage perceives much the same thinking in Trump’s mass firings: Legal challenges “set up tests that could expand his power.”
■ Wonkette: “The U.S. has moved to end its prosecution … in the case of U.S. v. Can Trump Keep America’s Nuclear Secrets in His Roach Motel Shitter?”
■ Facebook parent Meta’s also bending a legal knee to Trump, agreeing to pay $25 million to settle his suit filed over its suspension of his accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
■ NPR: The criminal records of Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump include rape and domestic violence.
■ Columnist Eric Zorn: Trump really could serve a third term.
Not ‘a buyout.’ Popular Information says the media—including Chicago Public Square—have been mischaracterizing Trump’s offer to federal employees.
■ Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility calls the offer “an illusion”—and, in what it calls “a cruel twist of fate,” the government’s diversity-equity-inclusion and environmental justice workers, who’ve been put on involuntary administrative leave, have no access to work email and therefore can’t take the deal even if they want to.
■ A Tribune editorial is skeptical of Trump’s promise the cash will be there.
■ A Sun-Times editorial: Buyouts are “a back-door way” of replacing career civil servants with political loyalists.
All up in your classroom. In what Education Week calls Trump’s “broadest attempt yet to directly influence what schools teach,” he’s ordering development of plans to eliminate federal funding for schools that he says indoctrinate kids based on “gender ideology” and “discriminatory equity ideology.”
■ Here’s the order.
■ Seth Meyers: “If you’re ever wondering if a plan is evil, the word ‘seize’ is a dead giveaway.”
■ Chalkbeat: Chicago’s launched a long-awaited “accountability dashboard” for its public schools.
■ See how your school’s doing here.
■ In keeping with Trump’s aversion to diversity, the Defense Department’s intelligence agency has called off observances of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Pride Month, Holocaust Days of Remembrance and more.
‘A political demolition derby featuring protesters screaming that he was a liar and a killer.’ In a gripping, byline-free account, the “Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail” Facebook page recaps yesterday’s Senate confirmation hearing for Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Robert F. Kennedy—“a man stepping onto an ice rink wearing banana peels for shoes.”
■ NBC News: “Kennedy's statements … bore little resemblance to the years of documented stances he took on vaccines.”
■ Columnist and self-described parent in the autism community S.E. Cupp: “When it comes to autism and vaccines, it’s absolutely imperative: Keep Kennedy away from our kids.”
Among the arrested. Although U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has released little information about its sweeps across the nation, one of those detained was a Chicago man released from prison earlier this month after serving time for a drunk driving incident that left a woman dead …
■ … and the Sun-Times has identified a few others—including one accused of selling a “ghost gun.”
■ A Chicago immigration activist tells The Guardian: “My kids don’t deserve to see their mother hiding. And I’m not going to do it.”
■ Trump says he’ll send tens of thousands of the “worst criminal aliens” to a detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba …
■ … a thing enabled by the bipartisan Laken Riley Act, broadening the federal government’s power to deport immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally and who have been accused of crimes.
■ In a move a legal expert says would violate the First Amendment, Trump’s vowing to deport college students who joined pro-Palestinian protests.
Suddenly viral. A declassified World War II-era U.S. government guide to “simple sabotage” against fascism has over the last week surged to become the 5th-most-accessed book on the open-source Project Gutenberg.
■ 404 Media: Although “the book includes various suggestions for causing physical violence and destruction … it also includes many suggestions for how to just generally be annoying within a bureaucracy.”
■ Rolling Stone: “Trump’s first 10 days back in power were uniquely depraved. Don’t get numb to it.”
■ Politico recounts a tense call between Democratic governors—including Illinois’ JB Pritzker—and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, urging Schumer to do more about Trump.
Clinical regression. Advocate Health Care’s closing its clinics in all Illinois Walgreens stores.
■ With the bankruptcy of the nation’s main distributor of comic books, the industry’s bracing for trouble.
In jurors’ hands. After a corruption trial that has lasted more than three months, the fate of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan is up to a jury of eight women and four men.
■ Convicted ex-Chicago City Council dean Ed Burke is hoping Trump or his minions will take pity on a fellow convicted felon.
‘Would be possible to have one Trump-free day a week on Chicago Public Square?’ Reader Debbie Becker wrote yesterday with a request: “He loves to muddy the waters, and, boy, is he doing a good job of it. You know if you skip him one day, he'll be back the next.”
■ Square’s reply: “It would be lovely to take our eyes off that man for a while, but he’s central to this publication’s mission—and has been from the start.” (January 2017 link.)
■ Those tired of Trump might wanna stick to Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show.
■ Or maybe you’re more like reader John Teets: “Square helps me get through each damn day, letting me know that others out there are taking notes, taking names and shouting loud.”
■ Your support keeps Square doing what it does: Through Friday—the end of this publication’s eighth year—those who contribute $80 get a free T-shirt.
■ Make it $100 and you get a Square hoodie—a perk normally reserved for pledges of $250 or more.
Thanks. Mike Barson made this edition better.