‘Blatantly unconstitutional.’ In a win for Illinois and three other states, a Ronald Reagan-appointed federal judge has blocked President Trump’s Day One denial of automatic citizenship to those born in the U.S.A.
■ In his words, “I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one.”
■ Read the judge’s ruling.
■ Columnist and law prof Joyce Vance: “Go, Judge!”
■ As Trump stokes fears of a “migrant crime wave,” a leading scholar tells WBEZ that “sanctuary city” policies like Chicago’s in fact encourage immigrants to cooperate with cops.
■ The CTA’s launched a “Know Your Rights” campaign to remind riders what to do if federal agents confront them.
■ Here’s the flyer.
■ Pledging a fight to protect Chicago’s immigrants from Trump’s threats, Mayor Johnson tells the Tribune he hasn’t had any direct contact with the White House this week.
■ The Trib looks back to the mass deportation of Mexicans from Chicago in 1954. (Gift link, thanks to those who support Chicago Public Square.)
‘Empty words on paper.’ Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and his counterparts in 10 other states reject a Justice Department threat to prosecute state and local officials who “impede” deportation efforts.
■ Raoul’s telling local law enforcement that they “generally are prohibited from assisting with any immigration enforcement operation.”
■ Trump’s crypto coin raises ethical red flags: Foreigners looking to win his favor can do so easily.
Environmental justice in jeopardy. Trump’s order ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs casts a shadow over programs to help impoverished communities hit hard by pollution.
■ Ronny Chieng at The Daily Show, on the Trump tip line for government workers violating his DEI ban: “Don’t you even think about doing DEI in secret, all right? Don’t be meeting up in back alleys like, ‘Yo, you got any lesbian resumés for me today?’”
■ The federal government is Chicago’s biggest employer, so Trump’s return-to-the-office order could be good news for downtown businesses …
■ … but Axios notes it also smells like a way to pull off layoffs without technically firing people.
■ A standout among major corporations in retreat, Costco’s shareholders have rejected a proposal to back down from its DEI practices.
Pardoned. Trump’s undoing the convictions of nearly two dozen people who’d shut down abortion clinics.
■ The anti-abortion March for Life’s back in D.C. today.
■ The New York Times: Instagram and Facebook have been blocking and hiding posts from abortion pill providers. (Another gift link; you’re welcome.)
■ A Mississippi state senator’s introduced the “Contraception Begins at Erection Act” to outlaw male masturbation “without the intent to fertilize an embryo” …
■ … but he’s a Democrat who says he’s satirizing Republicans.
■ Mother Jones: Meet the regretful 71-year-old woman rejecting Trump’s pardon for the 2021 insurrection because “I don’t want to be a part of their continued rewrite of history. I broke the law.”
‘Trump wants you to die.’ Columnist Paul Krugman’s prediction: “Health agencies … will have been emasculated and politicized, prohibited from releasing information and research whose implications the Trump administration doesn’t like, banned from making policy recommendations that are inconvenient for Trump or at odds with the prejudices of the MAGA base.”
■ Your Local Epidemiologist reviews “a week of chaos in public health.”
■ Retreating under political pressure, the Trump administration’s exempting the Veterans Administration from a hiring freeze.
■ Norovirus is on the rise—dramatically—in Illinois.
■ A south suburban family-owned family chicken farm virtually wiped out by bird flu is seeking rebuilding help in a GoFundMe campaign.
■ The AP’s letting Trump kind of have his way on that—while conceding that the president actually can change Denali back to Mount McKinley.
‘Everything will be revealed.’ That was Trump’s promise as he authorized declassification of government documents about the assassinations of President Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
■ Here’s Trump’s order.
■ King’s family members say they’d like to review those records before they go public.
■ At the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, Lincoln Memorial and more over the weekend, veteran Chicago photographer Rich Cahan snapped photos of dozens of people who went to D.C. to cheer on Trump’s inauguration.
‘Exhausted yet?’ The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser reviews Week One of Trump’s “late-night devilry, executive overreach, and … early infighting.”
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “Elderly Golfer blithers incoherently in speech to the World Economic Forum.”
■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst mocks White House reporters relieved “to be done with those stinky Bidens and their White House comms team and have the Trump Nazis back.”
■ Critic Bill Carter: Late-night hosts aren’t retreating from confrontations with Trump, but “the battle lines have changed.”
■ Ars Technica: “Trump’s FCC chair gets to work on punishing TV news stations accused of bias.”
Mall pass. Once-bustling Northbrook Court’s lost one of its few remaining stores.
■ Elsewhere north of Chicago, the Trib reports that the “troubled” Housing Authority of Cook County spent more than $60,000 at Six Flags.
An AI ‘tar pit.’ 404 Media says a pseudonymous coder has released an “infinite maze” to trap artificial intelligence-training web crawlers infinitely, randomly generating web pages to waste their time and computing power—and to protect website owners’ content from being scraped without compensation.
■ Politico: Some Trump aides are “furious” with Elon Musk for trashing the president’s AI initiative.
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “Musk follows one-arm salute with some Nazi jokes. What a time to be alive.”
‘One of the things that makes us a great nation is that we allow outraged persons to voice their displeasure about the very country that permits them to do so.’ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg calls out Chicago’s lone Jewish City Council member for her condemnation of a Cultural Center puppet display spoofing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
■ Streetsblog Chicago’s John Greenfield: Biking in Chicago during the dead of winter is easier than you might think.
■ Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: “Everyone except Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde.”
Want the quiz early? For Square’s eighth-anniversary month, readers who contribute $80 to support production of this service get, among other perks, free day-before access to the quiz.
■ Also: A free Square T-shirt—normally a perk for those who pitch in $250.
■ Make it $100 and get a hoodie.
■ Reader Rosemary Caruk made this edition better.