‘I was disappeared for 5 hours where no person knew where I was.’ Longtime Chicago social justice activist and founder of the cultural center HotHouse Marguerite Horberg shares to Facebook how she—“an older white woman that’s never been arrested” …
■ … was detained at the Miami airport yesterday, in clear evidence that “we are living in a police state.”
■ Her update this morning: “I’m home. Both of my phones with all the attendant private and personal information we casually retain on these devices is in their hands until they decide to return them (or not).”
■ She adds: “The best response I can ask of you is to support our upcoming Concerts for Cuba.”
■ Axios Chicago: Your need for a Real ID is now really real.
■ An advocate for Social Security and Medicare recipients: Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” now “have access to the personal information of every Social Security beneficiary.”
■ Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility is calling on Trump’s EPA chief to disclose all the databases and information accessed by Musk’s minions.
■ Is Musk’s meddling legal? Lawfare senior editor Scott Anderson: Maybe, some of it.
■ Not a bad time to consider locking down your credit records.
■ ProPublica: Gun lobbyists and the consultancy Cambridge Analytica weaponized gun owners’ private details for political gain.
‘Even worse than it initially appeared.’ Popular Information says the Trump administration’s “offer” to induce millions of federal workers to quit voluntarily—a proposition accepted by about 20,000 so far—contains fine print rendering the deal effectively meaningless: “If the government violates its terms, federal employees are powerless to do anything about it.”
■ The American Prospect’s Harold Meyerson (no relation): When the National Labor Relations Board (which employs someone who is a relation) began to restore worker rights, “the world’s richest men moved to shut down the NLRB altogether.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ The American Prospect: The Veterans Administration could be the next government agency to go dark.
‘Get ready for the Trump Gaza Golf Motel.’ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich mocks Donald Trump’s suggestion that the U.S. “take over” the Gaza Strip …
■ … turning it into “the Riviera of the Middle East”—a notion that the AP reports allies and adversaries alike are rejecting …
■ … as Palestinians flash back to their mass expulsion in 1948 from what’s now Israel.
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke perceives “a U.S. president proposing some mild ethnic cleansing to create seaside resorts.”
■ Columnist and NPR alumnus Bob Garfield: “Club Med Gaza was not on my bingo card.”
■ Satirist Andy Borowitz: “Palestinians Propose Taking Ownership of Mar-a-Lago.”
‘It will create a shit-ton of extra work for editors.’ An editor-in-chief with a respected medical journal talks to Inside Medicine columnist Dr. Jeremy Faust about the emerging resistance to Trump’s scientific censorship.
■ Bloomberg: What Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised to squeak his nomination as Health and Human Services secretary out of committee.
■ Pulitzer-winning columnist Gene Weingarten shares his reply to a New Year’s greeting from his health insurer: “Thank you! Please be aware that at this time I am not intending to assassinate you.”
■ A new study concludes more than a million American kids may have experienced long COVID.
‘Please tell me the hill that you will die on, so that I can transport you there immediately.’ That’s Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch, responding to former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s suggestion to Politico that Democrats not get too caught up in the fight to save the U.S. Agency for International Development: “Not the hill I’m going to die on.”
■ LateNighter: For a joke-free eight minutes Tuesday night, Stephen Colbert and former USAID chief Samantha Power discussed the organization’s history.
■ Critic Bill Carter reviews late-night shows’ challenges balancing entertainment and activism under Trump 2.0.
■ Jimmy Kimmel’s opening words last night parallel the challenges of assembling this daily news briefing: “I’m not sure how to even start this show anymore.”
‘White supremacist.’ Politico’s Shia Kapos explains how those words triggered commotion at a Chicago City Council committee meeting yesterday.
■ Caught hoarding a cache of gifts without full disclosure, Mayor Johnson’s team says all the deets will be posted publicly online—with video and IDs for the givers.
■ The mayor has yet to commit to following Gov. Pritzker’s lead and refusing to forbid the hiring of Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol rioters.
Reason to be cheerful. A D.C. judge has stripped the racist Proud Boys of their trademark, awarding it to a Black church they vandalized …
■ … meaning, as Wonkette explains, “if the Proud Boys want to sell any merchandise with their own branding on it, they have to ask the church for permission.”
Ice storm cometh. Brace yourself for rain, sleet, ice, snow and treacherous roads by the end of the day.
■ Expect a lousy evening commute.
■ The worst may not arrive until after a planned protest downtown demanding Illinois senators … do more.
■ Not the protesting type? The website 5calls.org makes it easy to make your views known to lawmakers.
‘The machines are … learning fast. And that, my friends, is both exhilarating and terrifying.’ As he did a year ago, Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg tests artificial intelligence’s ability to write a column in his style.
■ Google’s removed the ethical guardrails from its AI products, eliminating a promise to not use AI tech for weapons development and surveillance.
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■ Thanks, Walter Fyk, Terri Lonier, Amy Savin Parker and Rich Cahan, for making this edition better.