And so we come to the final regular 2025 edition of Chicago Public Square. Expect a two-part year-end news quiz from The Conversation on Friday and on Jan. 2. (Square supporters at the Advocate level or above will get early access on Christmas and New Year’s Days.)
■ Neither of those dispatches will count toward the run-up to the big 2,000th edition of Square, which’ll bring a surprise or three.
■ Through the holidays, as ever, the Square Bluesky account will bring you breaking news and commentary around the clock.
Thanks, Canada. That damning 60 Minutes report on the Trump administration deportations of immigrants to El Salvador—the one that Trump-friendly CBS News chief Bari Weiss tried to bury—appeared on Canada’s Global TV app …
■ … and, despite CBS’ efforts to stuff it back in the bottle, has been preserved on platforms including the Internet Archive …
■ 60 Minutes alumnus Dan Rather calls correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who went public with the report’s suppression, “the definition of courage.”
■ Columnist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich: “Alfonsi wins this week’s Joseph N. Welch Award for courage in the face of tyranny.”
■ Columnist Eric Zorn: “The book that someone is going to write about this era will be called Profiles in Cowardice, and CBS is going to deserve its own chapter.”
■ Culture critic Bob Lefsetz: “If Bari Weiss hadn’t tried to bury it, most people would have never seen it” …
■ … exemplifying what’s come to be known as “the Streisand effect.”
■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst gloats: “We guess nobody in the entire CBS News building explained to her how global distribution works, timeline-wise, in the magical world of TV, which she knows nothing about. If anybody liked or respected her or was glad she was there, they could have told her.”
■ In a transcript obtained by The Washington Post, the show’s executive producer told colleagues privately, “We defended our story, but she wanted changes, and I ultimately had to comply.”
■ The anonymously bylined What Did Donald Trump Do Today? newsletter sees the president “trading regulatory power for media control. … The merger battles surrounding CBS, CNN and Warner Bros. Discovery are no longer about markets or efficiency; they are loyalty tests.”
■ Journalist Jonathan Alter predicts: “Weiss will … learn the lesson that Bob Iger absorbed when ABC briefly bent the knee to Trump, who wanted to kill Jimmy Kimmel’s show. Trump’s intimidation boomeranged and made Kimmel bigger than ever.”
■ By one count, late-night hosts told 7,045 Trump jokes in 2025.
‘I’ve been particularly watching the great city of Chicago.’ MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow was giddy last night about the prospect that a winner of the city’s annual snowplow naming contest could be “Abolish ICE.”
■ The nominations round of this year’s contest runs through Jan. 10.
■ Chicago residents—or at least those who enter Chicago ZIP codes 😉—can vote here.
■ Illinois congressmembers who finally—after a six-month wait—got to tour the federal immigration detention center in Broadview report that it had no medical staff on-site and was short on showers and toilets with adequate privacy.
■ Block Club: “By this fall, ICE agents were arresting people at a higher rate in Illinois than almost anywhere else in the country.”
Fresh meat. The Post (gift link) says a second big batch of files on convicted and now dead sex offender and Trump confidant Jeffrey Epstein was released—and then un-released and then released again—yesterday …
■ … and lots of them mention Trump.
Trump’s ‘war on windmills.’ Vox dissects the administration’s decision to end leases for construction of five in-progress wind farms off the East Coast—citing “national security risks.”
■ The Lever: The Trump administration wants to strip workplace safety protections from “risky professions” in entertainment and sports.
‘MAGA has finally found a hill it is willing to die on: Refusing to say no to Adolph Hitler.’ Columnist Julie Roginsky: “The scene at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest this weekend looked like a holiday party where everyone pretends not to notice the guy praising the Third Reich because calling him out would ‘ruin the vibe.’”
■ Gary Legum at Wonkette: The conservative Heritage Foundation is in disarray over the “To be or not to be Nazis” question.
‘The tax part is huge.’ A lawyer with the Illinois Independent Craft Growers Association welcomes Trump’s proposal to relax marijuana regulations, but the Tribune explains (gift link) it probably won’t make much immediate difference for the state’s consumers.
■ Eric Zorn to the Chicago Police Board, which voted to fire a cop who tested positive for marijuana: “Grow up. … Marijuana is legal, and using it off the job … should be no different than drinking while off the job.”
■ Add the ACLU to those headed to the Supreme Court to challenge a federal law forbidding marijuana users from owning guns.
‘IBPOOPN.’ That’s just one of the more than 500 vanity license plate requests rejected this year by Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias’s office.
■ Giannoulias turned his roundup into a stand-up comedy routine for YouTube.
■ Axios Chicago signs off for 2025 with a review of the year’s top stories.
While you’re sittin’ around through the holidays … Maybe you can spare 30 seconds or so to cast a vote or two for Square in the Reader’s Best of Chicago poll, which closes New Year’s Eve?
■ Even though Trump’s declared tomorrow and the day after Christmas federal holidays, the postal service will be open for business as usual both days.
■ Happy/merry. Embrace those you love, celebrate what you can.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.