America the Beautiful. In an unrestrained and seemingly interminable news conference recapping the first year of his second term, President Trump pulled back the curtain on his enthusiasm for the militarization of U.S. cities: “A town looks better when you have military people.”
■ PolitiFact found plenty wrong with Trump’s statements over the course of those 104 minutes.
■ Gov. Pritzker and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul had their own take on the last year: “365 days of chaos, 365 days of attacks upon civil rights, on the rule of law and on the Constitution itself.”
■ On MS NOW last night, Pritzker hinted at Democratic states’ preparation for possible Republican interference with midterm elections: Imagine the usual precautions regarding election misdeeds “on steroids.”
■ Harold Meyerson (no relation) at The American Prospect: It’s “25th Amendment time for Mad King Donald.”
■ Stephen Colbert: “He didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize, so now he’s going to ruin peace—same way he didn’t get an Emmy for his reality show, so he ruined reality.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ Jimmy Kimmel: “This man is crashing the plane because the stewardess didn’t bring him a bag of peanuts.”
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg: “Obama was abashed, almost horrified, when nine months into his first term he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He said he didn't deserve it. He was right.”
■ LateNighter’s Jed Rosenzweig on late-night hosts’ return after a holiday break: “The anniversary wasn’t a moment for reflection so much as a stress test: If the last four days felt unmanageable, what did that say about the past 12 months?”
■ Oak Park and River Forest High School kids walked out yesterday to protest Trump’s one-year mark.
Not that his word is his bond. At the World Economic Forum in Switzerland today, Trump said he won’t use force to acquire control of Greenland.
■ Columnist Charlotte Clymer: “Canada Announces Divorce from America.”
■ HuffPost’s S.V. Date: “Europe’s strategy of treating Trump like a royal toddler didn’t work.”
■ Salty Politics proprietor Julie Roginsky: “We are already in World War III.”
■ A Johns Hopkins international affairs professor writes for The New York Times (gift link): “Europe has a bazooka. Time to use it.”
■ Plainspoken columnist Jeff Tiedrich invites you to “watch a Danish pol tell Dear Leader to fuck off.”
‘We just don’t need ICE violating the Constitution.’ Chicago congressman and mayoral candidate Mike Quigley pledges to oppose new funding for immigration enforcement without reforms in policy governing tear gas, masks and more.
■ Public Notice: “The Department of Homeland Security deliberately confuses reasonable suspicion and probable cause in hopes that no one will notice that ICE and CBP are making illegal arrests as standard operating procedure.”
■ Borderless: “Despite fears, Chicago’s rapid responders vow to continue facing down federal immigration officers.”
■ Popular Information: ICE detainees are dying at an alarming rate.
■ Columnist and former U.S. Rep. Marie Newman: Big Tech and Telecom are enabling ICE, but “we can hit back.”
‘There will be arrests.’ Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem vows consequences for those who disrupted a St. Paul church service to protest a pastor’s job with ICE.
■ A Tribune editorial (gift link): “If you find yourself storming a church filled with people who are peacefully practicing their religion, you are not in the right.”
■ Wonkette spotlights “two conservative trolls grifting off Minneapolis chaos.”
■ Chicagoans have sent thousands of whistles to the Twin Cities.
Chicago milestones. The Trib reports that, despite Sunday’s cold, the city matched a rare January mark: Seven homicides in a single day.
■ O’Hare’s reclaimed its title of the nation’s busiest airfield.
Amazon’s big suburban play. The company’s won Orland Park approval for a massive retail center where people can shop inside or order stuff to be brought to their vehicles.
■ Next week brings the premiere of Melania, the Amazon-produced tribute to the First Lady, who columnist Nina Burleigh notes chose as director “a serial abuser whose picture is in the Epstein files shirtless and literally hugging the late sex trafficker Jean-Luc Brunel.”
■ Bloomberg: In 2025, the Trump family made $1.4 billion off crypto—which now accounts for about a fifth of the family’s fortune.
‘Who runs CBS now? Trump.’ Columnist and Chicago TV news veteran Jennifer Schulze says “the new owners of CBS and their handpicked propagandist are all-in on a MAGA makeover.”
■ Tom Jones at Poynter: “Trump’s war on the press has become relentless.”
■ Stop the Presses columnist Mark Jacob says it’s time for journalists to stop being nice to people trying to destroy the country: “Fascists are at war with journalism. Why aren’t journalists at war with fascism?”
■ For sale, maybe: The Daily Herald newspaper.
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■ Mike Braden made this edition better.
A Square public service announcement
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