Places, everyone / Crimewatchers’ delight / ‘Their last act of patriotism’

[Republishing this edition to, among other things, add a missing link to the Dabrowski item below and to reflect Block Club’s correction on the Bovino sighting.]

Places, everyone. Less than a month away from Illinoisans’ first day to vote in the 2026 primaries, the political jockeying’s heating up:

■ Count departing U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky among those backing Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss for her seat. (Here’s her video endorsement.)

■ Catherine “Cat” Sharp—one of six people charged in connection with protests outside the Broadview ICE facility—is dropping out of her campaign for a Cook County Board seat, instead to “focus on winning the legal battle against the Trump administration.”

■ Republican gubernatorial candidate Ted Dabrowski—ex-president of a conservative advocacy group—delivered what the Tribune’s Rick Pearson (gift link, underwritten by Chicago Public Square supporters) found to be a news conference “filled with contradictions.”

■ U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley says he’ll run for mayor of Chicago next year.

■ Traditional conservative and ex-husband to Trump acolyte Kellyanne Conway—he cried with joy at Trump’s 2016 election—George Conway has moved to Manhattan from the D.C. area to run for Congress … as a Democrat.

■ Planning to vote by mail? A Postal Service rule change will require you to get that ballot moving sooner.

CORRECTION: Block Club has updated its report. Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino’s NOT back in town.

■ He’s in legal hot water in Tennessee.

‘The Fossil Fuel Empire Strikes Back.’ The American Prospect’s Harold Meyerson (no relation) on the Trump administration takeover of Venezuela: “Not all our foreign adventures have been crudely about material gain. But this one sure is.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)

■ Updating coverage: U.S. forces have seized two oil tankers linked to Venezuela.

■ The AP: A woman running from U.S. bombs in Venezuela captured the night’s fear and chaos.

■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst sees reason for hope in previous performance: “The people who did the newest Trump Terribleness are the same … pathetic loser conservative white boys who did the last Trump Terribleness, and did the new thing just as stupidly and incompetently as the last thing, and before long everybody starts laughing at them again” …

■ … a thing The Daily Show got right to last night.

■ Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion proprietor Jeff Tiedrich reviews another Trump speech yesterday: “The president’s brain has left the station. I’m not sure it’s ever coming back.”

Child care cash frozen. Citing what it calls fraud in Minnesota, the Trump administration’s cutting off $10 billion in social service funding for Illinois, Minnesota, New York, California and Colorado …

■ … a call a Tribune editorial (gift link) condemns: “As any sentient being whose reading list goes beyond Truth Social well knows, the actual common denominator here is that all five of these states are controlled by Democrats.”

Crimewatchers’ delight. Chicago’s inspector general has published an interactive map that lets you explore city data on what crimes are being reported where—and in what quantity.

■ Click on your neighborhood here.

Dig deeper. The cost of a shared ride’s going up in some Chicago ’hoods.

■ Axios: The feds are threatening to cut Chicago-area funding for mass transit this year.

Still 99% secret. Popular Information: The Justice Department concedes it’s released just 1% of its millions of files related to convicted (and dead) sex offender and Trump buddy Jeffrey Epstein.

■ Fact-check whiz Glenn Kessler explains how you can use AI to investigate Epstein.

■ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link) sees a cover-up in the administration’s attempts to “delay, deny, distract, divert attention” from the Epstein files …

■ … but Bunch shies away from using the word enshittification, coined by author Cory Doctorow—who explained its origins in a 2024 Square podcast.

■ Platformer’s Casey Newton explains how he exposed a hoax: An AI-generated report about industry plans to enshittify the food delivery biz.

■ The Inquirer’s Sabrina Vourvoulias: “Between Grok, Trump and RFK Jr., it’s a dangerous time to be a child in America.”

‘Their last act of patriotism.’ Lyz Dye at Public Notice hails the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s decision to dissolve rather than be subsumed by Republicans.

■ National Public Radio: “The end of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting … does not mark the end of our mission.”

‘A source of embarrassment and growing alarm.’ Oliver Darcy at Status says Tony Dokoupil’s debut as CBS Evening News anchor has been … not good. (Paywall: Email address required.)

■ Dokoupil closed last night’s show with a cringey “salute” to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

■ Democracy Docket: “Anyone looking to see how compromised legacy media is by the Trump administration need look no further than … CBS News.”

■ Media watcher and email newsletterer Simon Owens quotes The Wall Street Journal: “If 2024 was the year of the podcast, 2025 was the year of the newsletter.”

Reading Chicago Public Square for free? Thank those whose financial support keeps it coming. You can join their ranks—and get a few modest perks—by pitching in as little as $1, just once.

■ Angela Mullins made this edition better.

World disorder / Scars for kids / Grok shock

World disorder. The Associated Press says the U.S. attack on Venezuela puts a global tradition of international rules and laws at risk of crumbling before a doctrine of “might makes right.”

■ CNN surveys “the many ways” lawyers for arrested Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro could derail the U.S. court case against him.

■ The anonymously bylined What Did Trump Do Today: “The U.S. justified his ouster as a narcotics crackdown even as the consequences unfolded not in courtrooms, but in energy markets.”

■ The Dow Jones Industrial Average set a record yesterday, with oil stocks up sharply.

■ Axios’ Monica Eng lays out the stakes for Chicago’s Venezuelans.

■ The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner allows that Trump could pull this off.

■ The Onion: “Trump Claims He Will Marry Maduro’s Wife Until Suitable Replacement Found.”

Democrats’ shaky political ground. Flashbacks to 2020: Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer criticized Trump for not getting rid of Maduro …

■ … and 2019: Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy and Obama-era deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes wrote in The Washington Post (gift link), “The Trump administration is right to put restoring Venezuelan democracy at the center of our approach to this crisis. A return to a stable democracy is in the interest of the Venezuelan people, the United States and the hemisphere.”

■ The Onion: “Congress: ‘If You Wanted An Expensive Foreign War, All You Had To Do Was Ask.’”

Next: Greenland? Top Trump aide Stephen Miller says Greenland rightly belongs to the U.S.

■ A close Venezuelan ally, Cuba, is on edge.

‘Maybe it’s JD Vance time.’ USA Today Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke: “A 79-year-old man with near-constant and not-well-explained bruises on his hands … has now led America into what appears to be an occupation of Venezuela, with no clear sense of why it happened or how it will end. Does that worry you? It should.”

■ Jimmy Kimmel doubts Trump’s ability to run two countries at once: “Is running the United States not enough? I mean, if you’re looking for a challenge, try a sit-up.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)

■ LateNighter reviews how hosts last night caught up with events over the last two weeks.

■ Stephen Colbert’s studio clearance sale has raised more than $175,000 for charity.

Scars for kids. In an unprecedented move that medical experts have denounced, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has cut the number of vaccines it recommends for every child.

■ Your Local Epidemiologist: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “bypassed every scientific and clinical process we have.”

■ Illinois’ public health director pledges that it’ll have “no bearing” on vaccine recommendations in this state.

■ Illinois flu activity’s running “very high” …

■ … and has taken the life of at least one child as hospitalizations rise “dramatically.”

■ Cook County’s health director warns that a lack of action by Congress this week on extension of credits for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act will force people to delay medical care until they’re confronting crises.

‘I’m not backing down.’ Sen. Mark Kelly told The Daily Show last night that he’s “going to do everything in my power” to fight the Trump administration’s decision to cut his retirement pay for his counsel that U.S. military members defy illegal orders.

■ The Atlantic’s David Graham calls it “a pernicious form of political bullying.”

■ Columnist and self-identified “queer Army vet” Charlotte Clymer reviews Kelly’s career: “Good lord, has this man done a lot.”

‘Democracy hung in the balance.’ The AP looks back five years to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol …

■ …. a day that historian Heather Cox Richardson says echoed 1861, when “insurrectionists who had tried to overthrow the government  … to establish minority rule tried to break the U.S.”

■ Law professor Joyce Vance: The nation can’t afford to forget what happened.

■ A plaque created to honor law enforcers who protected Congress that day ain’t to be found at the Republican-controlled Capitol—even though the law requires it.

■ The New York Times (gift link): “For many Jan. 6 rioters, a pardon from Trump wasn’t enough.”

■ Popular Information salutes 10 corporations that, five years later, still aren’t funding election deniers.

■ Columnist Neil Steinberg is kindasorta—for Neil Steinberg, anyway—optimistic: “The second Trump term is worse than the first, and we have not yet reached the bottom. But we will. We will … eventually. And then bounce back up, rise again.”

R.I.P., CPB. Its federal funding wiped out by Republicans in Congress, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board has voted to dissolve the organization after 59 years.

■ CNN’s Brian Stelter sees it as “a concrete example of a Project 2025 proposal turning into reality.”

■ Journalism watchdog Margaret Sullivan: “Should the news media ‘love America’? … Not the way CBS News seems to have in mind.”

■ Mark Jacob at Stop the Presses questions in-the-know reporters’ decision not to reveal the Venezuela assault beforehand: “Is it still in the public interest for journalists to keep secrets about Trump’s anti-democratic use of the military?”

Grok shock. The Washington Post reports (gift link): “X [Twitter] users tell Grok to undress women and girls in photos. It’s saying yes. … Owner Elon Musk responded with a laughing emoji.”

Thanks. Chicago Public Square keeps coming because readers keep supporting it—for as little as $1, just once.

■ Ed Sackley made this edition better.