‘F**k it: Release ’em all.’ Axios reports Donald Trump’s decision to issue a sweeping pardon for 1,500 Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists came as he tired of case-by-case reviews: He “wanted to pardon as many people as possible and get it over with.”
■ Ronny Chieng at The Daily Show: “You can’t expect someone to go through these cases one-by-one. I mean, the FBI did, and the prosecutors did, and the judges did, and the juries, and the paralegals, and the person who types on that weird little typewriter no one else knows how to use. But Trump is busy, OK?”
■ One of those Trump freed has been re-arrested on a gun charge.
■ Axios: Chicago police union leaders have been keeping mum about the pardons.
■ A Chicago officer who wore an extremist mask to a protest of racial injustice faces reprimand.
■ A reactionary activist whose son was imprisoned for helping to break into the Capitol is Trump’s pick to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
… but the judges don’t have to like it. Dismissing charges against two rioters, one federal judge whose overseen scores of such cases wrote grudgingly: “No ‘process of national reconciliation’ can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding.”
■ Another, ruling in the case of a Chicago-area rioter: “The historical record established by those proceedings must stand, unmoved by political winds, as a testament and as a warning.”
■ Talking Point Memo perceives “a collective primal scream” from Jan. 6 judges.
‘As long as the children are in school, we’re going to protect them.’ Chicago Public Schools chief Pedro Martinez pledges that staff won’t share information with immigration agents who enter schools looking for students or staffers—unless those agents have a court order.
■ Churches and hospitals are in the same boat.
■ The Trump Justice Department’s ordering prosecutors to launch criminal investigations of state and local officials accused of interfering with an immigration crackdown. (Here’s the memo.)
■ Trump’s also giving gun and drug agents power to deport.
■ Teen Vogue: How to start an “ICE Watch” program to protect immigrants in your neighborhood.
■ Columnist and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich: 10 ways to resist Trump II.
‘Adverse consequences.’ The administration’s emailed federal employees threatening those who don’t out colleagues whose work relates to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
■ It’s also demanding three Democrats resign today from a White House civil liberties watchdog agency—or be fired.
■ Popular Information: Trump’s repealing a 1965 executive order forbidding government contractors from discriminating in hiring or employment based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
■ The Justice Department’s freezing all ongoing civil rights cases—including investigations into state and local law enforcement agencies. (Washington Post gift link; you’re welcome.)
■ USA Today columnist Rex Huppke, reviewing the new Federal Trade Commission chair’s statement on DEI: “This reads like it was written by an unhinged lunatic who hasn’t left his mother’s basement in 10 years.”
■ Wonkette’s Marcie Jones: “White supremacy: It’s Job One!”
■ Columnist Edwin Eisendrath: “Trump is working to undermine every other source of authority or truth.”
‘I’ve had people wish me dead.’ The minister who on Tuesday pleaded with Trump to show mercy to migrants, the LGBTQ+ community and others talked with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about the repercussions.
■ Undertaking a line-by-line breakdown of Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order, The Nation’s Elie Mystal finds almost every sentence “wrong, misleading or flagrantly unconstitutional.”
■ The House is sending Trump what could be the first law he signs in his second administration: A bill requiring the detainment of unauthorized immigrants accused of theft and violent crimes.
■ As Trump orders thousands more troops to the southern border, Stop the Presses columnist Mark Jacob sees him pushing “a lie that immigrants seeking asylum pose a health risk to Americans.”
Planned Parenthood closures. Citing an “uncertain patient care landscape,” the organization’s shuttering four Illinois health centers—including one in Englewood.
■ The Onion: “Conservative Outraged Tampons Available In Men’s Grocery Stores.”
Bird flu’s here. It’s wiped out a whole flock of chickens at a family-run suburban farm.
■ The Trump administration’s imposed a “devastating” suspension on meetings, travel hiring and communications for employees of the National Institutes of Health.
■ Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina on Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization: “Even if the U.S. is well-equipped to handle its own health challenges, our safety depends on the rest of the world being equipped, too.”
News in retreat. Chicago Public Media, which oversees the Sun-Times and WBEZ, is offering voluntary buyouts—hoping at least 20 take the deal.
■ WBEZ’s news staff is exempt.
■ Letter from the CEO: “Our hope is that … we can avoid more significant cost-cutting measures down the road.”
■ The union, acknowledging the need to cut costs: “It’s harder to swallow knowing the exorbitant executive salaries and bonuses we’ve seen CPM shell out.”
■ Former Tribune columnist Eric Zorn: “This is, of course, a very bad sign.”
■ A Penn State media professor addresses public media: “Don’t spend 2025 trying to figure out how you can eke one more year out of the declining broadcast business model.”
■ CNN today is rolling out “significant layoffs” as it preps a new attempt at streaming.
■ A Milwaukee weather reporter is out of a job after she used Instagram to condemn Elon Musk’s Nazi(-like) salutes.
■ R.I.P., a veteran Tribune “political reporter with the instincts of a jaguar.”
Beware ‘the Appistocracy.’ That’s what investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein dubs six tech billionaires through whose products “the path to power increasingly runs.”
■ Columnist Dan Sinker: “Let’s talk about making physical media again: Music that can’t be taken away with a keystroke, movies that don’t involve a subscription, and news, writing, art and more that can be copied and printed and handed person-to-person.”
Hungry? Chicago’s landed 22 semifinalists for this year’s James Beard Awards.
■ Here’s the full national list.
Hey, it’s above 0º! That’s T-shirt weather in Chicago, right? As Chicago Public Square approaches its eighth anniversary, you get a Square shirt free with a contribution of $80 to help cover the cost of this newletter’s production.
■ Want a Square hoodie? Make it $100.