He’s baaaaaa-aaaack. Block Club: Border Patrol boss Gregory Bovino and about 200 of his lackeys have returned to the Chicago area—today targeting Cicero.
■ WBEZ and the Sun-Times trace his roots—including a father who was imprisoned after a drunk-driving accident that killed a 20-year-old woman.
DePressing. DePaul University’s laying off 114 staffers …
■ … citing in part the Trump administration’s moves to cut the number of foreign students studying on American campuses.
■ The American Prospect: Republicans are forcing eight million student loan borrowers into repayment.
Prosecutors’ puzzle. Updating coverage: Police say Nick Reiner is “responsible” for the deaths of his parents, filmmaker Rob Reiner and producer Michele Reiner …
■ … but the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office had yet to decide whether and how to charge him.
■ In a revealing and heartbreaking account, Hollywood Reporter tech and politics editor Steven Zeitchik recalls sitting down with Rob, Michele and Nick: “Strip away the larger-than-life persona of the father and the son’s addiction struggles (and maybe not even that) and it becomes any other tense family dinner where baggage and demons hover.”
■ A number of accounts indicate that Nick and Rob got into an argument at a party Conan O’Brien hosted Saturday night.
■ WBEZ shares excerpts from Rob’s onstage interview in September at the Music Box Theatre with journalist Mark Bazer.
■ Popular Information: Rob “leaves behind a rich political legacy.”
■ That includes the movie that inspired the series The West Wing: The American President, which historian Heather Cox Richardson celebrates for its “meditation on what it means to be the president of the United States.”
■ Michele inspired the happy ending to Rob’s movie When Harry Met Sally…
■ Columnist Eric Zorn calls it “a new low, but probably not rock bottom.”
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “We are a sick country with a person like Trump at the helm. Reiner knew that. … Now, more people, even those who’ve devoted themselves to the president, are seeing it as well.”
■ Rocker Jack White addressed the president directly: “You disgusting, vile, egomaniac, loser child.”
■ Trump niece Mary Trump: “You are a depraved, deviant, damaged little man who cannot bear the thought that there are people in this world who are talented, valued and loved—three things you are not.”
■ Jimmy Kimmel: “Rob Reiner … would want us to keep pointing out the loathsome atrocities that continue to ooze out of this sick and irresponsible man’s mouth. And so we’re going to do that over and over again until the rest of us wake up.”
■ Late-night chronicler Bill Carter: “Hosts who went on the air last night … made four different choices in how they would deal with topical news this disturbing.”
■ Columnist Elaine Soloway, 87, is petitioning God: “Hold off on any age/illness demise until Trump is out of office.”
‘A weekend of hellish violence.’ A Tribune editorial (gift link) ponders the mayhem “that seemed to explode across the planet just as the season of peace and goodwill was getting underway.”
■ Australian police are linking the Bondi Beach massacre—which (clarifying yesterday’s Chicago Public Square) took at least 15 lives—was “inspired by Islamic State” …
■ … and Jewish leaders in the U.S. are urging increased security measures for public events celebrating Hanukkah.
■ The (at Square’s deadline) unresolved hunt for a Brown University killer who took the lives of an aspiring neurosurgeon and a leading student Republican has sparked a campus petition for increased security.
■ The Onion (again and again and again and again): “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
‘I could have gone either way.’ Pritzker says his decision to sign Illinois’ new “right-to-die” law was a close one.
■ Here’s what’s in that law.
All opposed, say ‘AI.’ Add the Tribune to the list of media organizations going to court complaining that an artificial intelligence company’s been stealing its work.
■ Illinois lawmakers are vowing not to back down in the face of a Trump executive order shielding tech companies from state laws.
Year of the Lies. That’s what PolitiFact has dubbed 2025.
■ Editor & Publisher reviews a year of fear for U.S. news media.
■ The BBC’s the latest media company to face a Trump lawsuit—this one to the tune of $10 billion.
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter: “Until this year, it was unheard of for a sitting American president to sue a news outlet.”
■ Columnist Julie Roginsky: “Trump is a psychopath. And the media is complicit.”
■ Mark Jacob at Stop the Presses: “What if a member of the public—not me, but someone—created a GoFundMe account that would pay big bucks to the first reporter to tell Trump to his face that he should f– off?”
