‘Illinois is the resistance.’ Politico’s Shia Kapos surveys what Chicago and statewide elected officials are doing to brace for the impact of President Trump’s many, many executive orders.
■ Illinois is joining a multistate legal challenge to Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship for U.S.-born kids of immigrants without legal status.
■ Gov. Pritzker says he’s heard U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s targeting up to 2,000 people in Chicago …
■ … as Trump abandons a more-than-a-decade-long ban on immigration arrests at sensitive locations like schools and churches.
■ Mayor Johnson with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC last night: Chicago’s “undocumented individuals will have … full protection” under the sanctuary city ordinance. (July 2019 cartoon: The late Keith J. Taylor.)
■ The Tribune: Fearful immigrants are stocking up on groceries, taking off work and staying home to avoid ICE.
■ Block Club: Little Village’s 26th Street is “a ghost town.”
■ Chicago’s schools—and especially kids from families without legal status—face tough times.
■ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg: “If Trump prevails, he will create a permanent underclass. It won’t be slavery, quite. But it will be in the ballpark.”
■ Trump’s fired the acting head of the U.S. immigration court system and three other top officials—leaving unclear just who’s in charge now.
■ Berkeley law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky: If courts don’t enforce the Constitution against Trump, “the checks and balances that have defined our government since its inception will give way to one-man authoritarian rule.”
■ Columnist Lyz Lenz: “The decades-long effort to install conservative judges was designed for this moment.”
DEI hard. Trump’s administration has directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be placed on paid leave by the end of the day and eventually be laid off.
■ He’s called those programs “radical and wasteful.”
■ Columnist and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance outlines the limits to Trump’s executive clout: “He can’t make other entities, or private businesses, universities, podcasters, individuals or anyone/thing else that isn’t an executive branch entity or actor comply with his dictates.”
■ Popular Information sees a “glaring difference” between Trump’s 2017 ethics statement and this go-round, which “does not include any restrictions on ‘foreign deals’” for The Trump Organization.
■ Trump’s would-be defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, faces fresh charges of abuse—from a former sister-in-law reporting—in her own words, “at significant personal sacrifice”—that he abused his second wife.
‘I would make sure that she has a serious security detail around the clock.’ Columnist and veteran Chicago and network TV journalist Jeff Kamen fears for the safety of a bishop who confronted Trump in an interfaith service at the National Cathedral.
■ Trump’s demanding an apology from her …
■ … or, as Evan Hurst puts it at Wonkette: “Trump DEMANDS Insolent Bishop Lady Apologize For Being So Christlike.”
■ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke: “If you find yourself siding with the felonious billionaire over the bishop … take a good, hard look in the mirror.”
■ Jimmy Kimmel: “Trump only likes mass when it’s followed by the word deportation.”
‘These are people who actually love our country.’ Defending pardons for the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol rioters, Trump suggests the racist and sexist Proud Boys and Oath Keepers could have a place in politics.
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: The pardons put “Republican leaders, who claim to defend law and order, on the back foot.”
■ The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal editorializes: “Law and order? Back the blue? What happened to that GOP?”
■ Stephen Colbert: “Soon the insurrectionists will be home, where they can spend time smearing poop on their families.”
■ Press Watch columnist Dan Froomkin: Traditional media’s coverage of Trump‘s second inauguration “was too obsequious to point out that he lied about almost everything.”
■ Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey sees regression in Trump’s dictum that new government buildings hew to “traditional … classical architectural heritage.”
‘C’mon, what’re the odds there’s going to be a pandemic requiring international cooperation?’ That’s The Daily Show’s Ronnie Chieng on Trump’s move to withdraw from the World Health Organization.
■ Trump’s rescinded President Biden’s executive order on artificial-intelligence safety.
Blame the climate. So says Allstate as it raises homeowner insurance rates in Illinois by 14.3% next month.
■ It’s been so cold in Chicago the CTA’s steel rails have been cracking.
■ But, hey, six of the city’s snowplows have new names.
■ As Chicagoans huddle from the cold, consumer watchdogs have launched an unprecedented million-dollar ad campaign pushing Illinois state regulators to rein in Peoples Gas’ plan to replace aging pipes delivering natural gas across Chicago.
■ People last night were playing ice hockey on the streets of New Orleans.
Rock out. Chicago’s River North Hard Rock Cafe is going away March 29.
■ Gov. Pritzker’s signed a bill phasing out the subminimum wage for disabled workers.
‘Broadcast TV is dying. Trump is threatening it anyway.’ Wired: The new administration’s policies stand to accelerate the medium’s slow fade.
■ Netflix is raising prices again—adding $2.50 to the standard monthly charge.
■ You can partly blame its foray into live sports programming.
■ Media watcher Simon Owens anticipates bursting of the sports media bubble.
■ Endangered species: The local TV weathercaster.
■ Whither award-winning ABC7 investigative reporter Chuck Goudie?
■ John Gruber at Daring Fireball: Trump’s executive-order “reprieve” for TikTok “carries no more legal weight than a Monopoly ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card. … Apple and Google are both sticking with the actual law.”
■ Point/Counterpoint from The Onion: “We Must Protect The First Amendment At All Costs vs. No Thanks, I’ll Just Take My Freedoms For Granted Until They Disappear.”
Squarewear awaits. For this, Chicago Public Square’s eighth anniversary month, a contribution of $80 to help cover the cost of its production will get you a Square T-shirt free.
■ Want a hoodie? Make it $100.
■ Harry Politis made this edition better.