Knees bent / Out with a bong / Quiz / Dingus of the Week

Chicago Public Square will take Monday off. Through the long weekend, catch breaking news and commentary on the Square Bluesky account. (No Bluesky registration required.)


Knees bent. CNN’s moving to send veteran White House reporter Jim Acosta to “the Siberia of television news” …
 … a move that columnist Oliver Darcy, who broke the story, says would “work to curry favor with Donald Trump, who very much despises the CNN anchor.”
 Indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams was to meet with Trump this afternoon.
 Add Google’s CEO to the roster of tech bosses headed to Monday’s inauguration …
 … along with the CEO of embattled TikTok …
 … which the Supreme Court today unanimously confirmed will be banned in the U.S. beginning Sunday if its Chinese parent doesn’t sell it.
 Politico: Trump’s inauguration is devouring corporate cash, smashing records.
 Guardian columnist Rebecca Shaw: “I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down—I just didn’t expect them to be such losers.”
 Considering President Biden’s farewell-address warning about the oligarchy’s influence over U.S. politics, Seth Meyers played a 30-year montage of Sen. Bernie Sanders saying the same thing.

March in January. Echoing the Women’s March on Washington at the start of Trump’s first term, “People’s Marches” are scheduled for this weekend in D.C. and around the country …
 Trump Tower here will be one focal point.

‘Next time you all see me, Donald Trump will be president. And—you may not see me.’ Stephen Colbert notes that last night’s was his final show under Biden.
 On the way out the door at the Federal Communications Commission, chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel rejected several complaints and petitions that she says sought to “curtail freedom of the press and undermine the First Amendment.”
 Two left-leaning government watchdogs who applied to work with Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” got this reply: “We have no room in our administration for Democrats.”

Out with a bong. Biden’s set a record by commuting the sentences of almost 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses.
 Biden met this week with the mother of a suburban 6-year-old Palestinian American boy whose killing became a symbol for anti-Palestinian violence.
 At Antony Blinken’s final news conference as Biden’s secretary of state, two journalists critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East were forcibly removed.

‘Los Angeles has not become The Purge.’ Mother Jones documents “incredible generosity and selflessness” …
 … but the city’s schools are scrambling to find places to teach kids.
 California journalist Matt Pearce says people stopped using artificial intelligence tools during the wildfire outbreak: “AI had a trust problem when lives and homes were on the line.”

‘The worst-case scenario for us.’ Two married Chicagoans who arrived in the U.S. at age 3 fear they could be separated from their seven-month-old son, who holds U.S. citizenship because he was born here.
 The Washington Post explains how Trump’s team could implement “deportation at light speed.”
 404 Media: Meta’s speech policy changes regarding immigration are “laying the narrative groundwork” for mass deportations.
 Law professor Barbara McQuade: Meta’s abandonment of fact-checking empowers a president who traffics in lies.
 Evanston’s mayor to his fellow elected officials across the country: “Don’t think that you can avoid the worst consequences of the Trump presidency by keeping your head down and not making waves.”
 A coalition of pro-Trump Latino business leaders hopes to persuade the president-elect to preserve legal status for essential migrant workers and young adults brought to the U.S. as children.
 The Chicago Housing Authority’s under orders to pay out $24 million in connection with the lead poisoning of two kids.

‘Go 8 for 8 and inaugurate yourself.’ That’s past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel’s challenge with this week’s news quiz …
 … on which your Square columnist scored a lowly 5/8. ❌✅✅✅✅✅❌❌
 Axios’ Justin Kaufmann offers a quiz about Martin Luther King Jr.’s time in Chicago.

Voted yet? Just a reminder that you can cast one ballot a day through Feb. 14 for Illinois’ new state flag.
 Square endorses this one.

Some strings attached. WTTW suggests five picks from this year’s Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival.
 If you’re out and about, you could visit Chicago’s oldest known urinals.

Dingus of the Week. Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz’s pick is inaugural singer Carrie Underwood: “From here on out, she can claim any decline in sales or criticism is the result of ‘woke liberal cancel culture’ rather than her failure to produce much in the way of interesting music.”
 Underwood may need some extra underwear for the coldest inauguration in 40 years.
 Thanks, Siberia.

Because layering up’s always a good idea. Now’s an excellent time to augment your wardrobe with a Chicago Public Square T-shirt—which, for this publication’s eighth anniversary month, you can get free with a contribution of $80 to keep Square coming.
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