‘This is sabotage’ / Miller time-out / Serial news-site killer

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Chicago Public Square will take Wednesday off. Back Thursday.

‘This is sabotage.’ With his first Pentagon news conference in five months, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth condemned his potential impeachment as “a farce.”
■ Overnight, President Trump said Hegseth “should be praised, not Impeached.”
■ Popular Information on the emerging MAGA civil war: “A recently departed Trump aide is accusing the White House of systemic corruption.”

Things Trump says. Remember how he seemed to accept the results of last week’s elections? Forget that.
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “Donny, you’ve had seven whole days to work yourself up into a thermonuclear lather, and this is the pathetic mewling you end up farting out?”
■ Heather Delaney Reese at Hope for America: “The president of the United States … stood inside the White House and admitted that he lied to the American people because he wanted attention.”
■ Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias: 60 Minutes had an hour with Trump and never asked about his election lies.
■ Paul Waldman at Public Notice: “Despite what Trump says, his movement was never that popular.”
■ Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Jack Ohman dons his columnist hat: “Is there now any doubt the president of the United States is completely insane?”
■ Stop the Presses columnist and former Tribune editor Mark Jacob suggests a new way for journalists to throw shade on Trump when they can’t prove he’s lying.

Miller time-out. With Stephen Miller’s ascendance to Trump’s chief of staff, his wife Katie is hanging up her “Conservative Mom Podcast.”
■ Wonkette’s Brooke Binkowski calls it a “terrible week for the dead-eyed, racist MAGA entertainment world!”
■ Former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan decries the media’s “sanitizing and soft-pedaling” of Miller’s racism.
■ Newly relevant 2002 video (2017 link) shows Stephen Miller’s cringeworthy speech during a student government election: “Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?”
■ Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes: Miller is “one of those dangerous evil people around Trump who will encourage him to burn it all down.”
■ Miller reportedly has plans to crack down on press freedom.
■ Seth Meyers on NBC’s Late Night: “Trump acknowledged that his hardline immigration policy was too extreme and said, ‘I think it was too tough.’ So you made Stephen Miller chief of staff? He’s currently standing outside Home Depot with a fishing net.”

‘You’re about to blow it again.’ In an open letter to his former colleagues, ex-Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger warns the party not to repeat the mistakes of the past in picking a new House leader.
■ Columnist Charlotte Clymer: “The blue tsunami was so ridiculously large that the earliest the Republican Party could realistically take back the Senate is 2030.”
■ The Washington Sun: For her first votes in the House since she double-crossed her party in the Michigan Senate election, Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens cowered in the cloakroom.

‘America’s most consequential institution.’ Adapting some of her new book for The Atlantic (gift link), Rachel Maddow mourns the Justice Department’s collapse.
■ Law prof Joyce Vance: Attorney General Todd Blanche “should be impeached as soon as possible if he won’t resign.”
■ The department’s extended a legal middle finger to a Chicago federal judge who set a Monday afternoon deadline for it to turn over records about its botched prosecution of the Broadview Six case …
■ … in which a defense lawyer has been named one of Chicago magazine’s Chicagoans of the Year.

‘A political hack and vindictive thug.’ Columnist Eric Zorn is stunned to see Illinois Secretary of State and Chicago mayoral candidate Alexi Giannoulias supporting the reelection of Chicago City Council member Jim Gardiner.

Serial news-site killer. Cubs owner Joe Ricketts, who founded and then killed Chicago’s DNAinfo after staffers moved to unionize, has done it again.
■ He writes to readers: “Belief in a mission does not by itself make a business sustainable.”
■ Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect on the death of Salon: “Quick-buck private equity ownership of independent media is a fatal proposition.”

Apple security update. Two weeks after its last software revision, Apple’s out with a security patch that TidBITS recommends all the company’s users adopt sooner than later.
■ Notes on the Crises: “A broken security upgrade at HUD has paralyzed the operations of housing authorities across the country.”

Google protest. A group of Chicago parents concerned about the company’s imposition of its AI tech on schools using its products plans a demonstration tomorrow outside its Chicago HQ.
■ Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect: “It is somehow appropriate, given how artificial intelligence has enabled the greatest explosion of scams and frauds in history, that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was reportedly entrapped by a good old-fashioned honeypot.”
■ Journalism professor Jeff Jarvis offers “a helpful glossary contrasting the AI boys’ language with ours.”

The Talarico bump. Texas Sen.-elect James Talarico’s Saturday Night Live cameo has become the show’s most-watched YouTube video of the season.
■ See it here.
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Thanks. Instead of nearing its 10th anniversary, this publication woulda been gone long ago had readers including Tom Revord, Amy Fazekas, Matthew Thompson, Cate Cahan, Martin Gallas, Helen Marshall, KT Sullivan, Joseph Pesz, Scott Baskin, Deborah Spector, Barbara Cimaglio, Maria Garvy, Susan S. Stevens, Jeff Hackett, Nancy and Barney Straus, Edie Steiner, Stephanie Blatt, Paul Kubina, Frank Maggio, Jim Haglund, Mark Hines, Tony Marturano, Stephen Brenner, Dominick Suzanne, Maureen King, Joe Hass, Cynthia Farenga, Tom Macek, Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin, Catherine Johns, Terri Colby, Lisa McNulty, Kathy O’Brien, Jonathan Yenkin, John Metz, Marianne Griebler, Sheila Flaherty, Carmie Callobre, Sarah Russe, Margaret Brennan, Peter Kuttner, Dave Tan, William Lindsey Cochran, Marie Dillon, Mike Gold, Judy Karlov, Phil Priest, Tim Powell, Rick Baert, Dave Walker, Art McNamara, Heather Kenny, Beth Kujawski, Rick Lunt, Janice Marsh, Julie Martin, Judith Freeman, Crissy Kawamoto, Ricky Briasco, Richard Milne, Sally Noble, Meg Ross, Holly Wallace, L ShoulterKarall, Mary Cronin, Judy Hoffman, Collin Canright, Jan Kieckhefer, Jack Ohman, Jeff Currie, Lucia Podraza, Dave Rogers, Joe Hallissey, Patricia Winn, Stephen J. O’Neil, Jennifer McGuire, Don Miner, Lynne Duffy, David Heisler, The Skubish Family, Marci May, Steve Newberger, Joan Richmond, Chris Rhodes, Ronald B. Schwartz, Charles Sudo, John Gilardi, Meg Tebo, Terri Reardon, Timothy Mennel, Angelika Kuehn, Scott Watson and Barbara Kalina not made clear over the years that they find value in it.
■ Join ’em by pitching in just $1, just once, and see your name atop tomorrow’s Thursday’s roll call of gratitude.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.

Whitewashed / ‘A disaster’ / ‘Hell yes’

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Whitewashed. Popular Information, surveying 105 articles in 36 mainstream U.S. publications, finds them sanitizing new White House chief of staff Stephen Miller’s racist worldview.
■ Columnist Andy Borowitz—who, departing from his usual satiric mode, assures you “the following is 100% factual (because I couldn’t make it up)”—spotlights things Miller doesn’t want you to know about himself.
■ Miles Taylor, a Trump administration whistleblower turned documentarian: “I worked with Stephen Miller every day. He’s going to fail. Catastrophically.”
■ Columnist Elaine Soloway wonders whether Miller’s Russian Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors knew hers.

‘A disaster.’ Last Week Tonight host John Oliver lays out a devastating case for ending the damage done by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and for “impeaching and removing this f*cking asshole as soon as possible.”
■ See Oliver’s show here.
■ Columnist and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich: “Stephen Miller knows Hegseth would be a convenient fall guy for the war.”

Ya think? Trump tells 60 Minutes last week’s vote suggests his deportation policies “might be too tough.”
■ But lest anyone think he’s going soft, he also said he couldn’t forgive his political enemies—even if that would get him into heaven—“because I do hate some of my enemies and I always will.”
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich is gobsmacked that Trump’s team OK’d the interview: “Dear Leader was so befuddled, and so compromised—both cognitively and ethically—that even a complete lightweight … was able to nail him to the wall on corruption.”
■ See the interview here.
■ In a new memoir, former President Joe Biden says Trump’s 2021 Capitol insurrection “should follow him to his grave.”
■ Over the weekend, Trump used his Truth Social platform to threaten Democrats with imprisonment …
■ … as his administration moved to shut down Planned Parenthood.
■ Law and Chaos columnist Liz Dye: Trump’s sycophantic Attorney General Todd Blanche “took to the Sunday shows to complain about Democratic lawmakers being so mean to the Trump administration.”
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter on a sea change for Joe Rogan’s podcast, once a platform for Trump’s reelection and now “a place for a whistleblower-style conversation alleging ‘corruption’ at the highest levels of the Trump administration.”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson sees “signs that the president is deeply concerned about anyone getting a window into how his administration has been operating.”

‘Golly, I like these politicians.’ On Facebook, former Tribune columnist Mary Schmich celebrates last week’s big election winners: “Good people saw a calling and an opportunity in the madness.”
■ Journalist and filmmaker Steven Beschloss: “Young voters … have overwhelmingly said … that the country is on the wrong track.”
■ Journalism professor Jeff Jarvis dives into the stats: “Who didn’t join this great pluralistic election? The uneducated.”
■ Columnist Mike Gold: “Trump will have a hard time …getting any part of his agenda through Congress. Should he actually attempt to get one of his Nazibots a permanent job in his cabinet after New Year’s Day, he will not have the votes.”
■ Law professor Joyce Vance: “Whatever else happens this week, it won’t be a great one for the Trump administration, and that’s enough for me.”
■ Columnist and cartoonist Jack Ohman cautions, “We all have to keep up the volume so this never, ever happens again.”
■ Science fiction author Cory Doctorow’s not upbeat: “America … cannot be relied upon to serve as the world’s hyperpower. Trump forever … destroyed its capacity to even try.”

AIiiiii! Artificial intelligence company Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang is under investigation for an affair with a woman who The New York Times reports was gathering intel for the government of China.

Truck off. Elon Musk says Tesla’s discontinuing its (ugly, ugly, ugly) steel-plated pickup …

‘Hell yes.’ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg: “You could be forgiven for overlooking that more than two-thirds of Chicago voters—68%—said ‘yes’ on the referendum question: ‘Should Chicago develop a permanent festival and outdoor event space?’”
■ Tribune critic and editorial page editor Chris Jones (free link): “Kicking Lollapalooza out of Grant Park would be madness.”
■ To no avail, hundreds of people gathered in the park yesterday for a (vain) stab at pushing The Bean “seven inches to the left.”

She won her job back—but won’t take it. Fired Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah—awarded by an independent arbitrator with reinstatement and full back pay after her dismissal apparently for refusing to genuflect before the memory of slain reactionary activist Charlie Kirk—is taking a hard pass, because she wouldn’t have “the guaranteed freedom and institutional support to do what I loved: use my voice, seek truth, and serve readers.”
■ WBEZ’s going with a team of three staffers—at least temporarily—to replace departing In the Loop host Sasha-Ann Simons.

’Tis the season. November’s an apt time to thank Chicago Public Square readers whose generous support over the years has kept this service coming for, gosh, close to a decade—beginning today with Ted Naron, Eric Hochstein, Athene C, Melissa Harris, Peter Ostrowski, Paula Weinbaum, Molly McDonough, Tom O’Connell, Karen Conti, Dave Hodgman, Carol Stukey, William O’Donnell, Lilia Chacon, Marlen Garcia, Melanie Minnix, Joel Hood and Sherry Skalko, Phil Huckelberry, Chris Koenig, Sherie Palmer, Katie Roberts, Larry Dahlke, Thomas Witt, Paul Herrick, Kay Luft, Stephanie Textor, Linda Biondi, Laurel Saltzman, Deborah Stone, Ken Saydak, Dave McGovern, Anne White, Charles C. Allen II, Pat Nash, Carol Lavoie Harper, Fritz Mills, Deb Abrahamson, Daniela Dolak, Jeryl Smith, Cindy Moriarity, Christa Velbel, Frank Heitzman, Thomas Vivian, Sandra Slater, Paulette Cary, Logan Aimone, Mike Quintero, Timothy Wilson, Mary Ellen Nelligan, Brian Rohr, Michael Johnson, Ken Hildreth, Aris Georgiadis, Jane Williams, Kevin Iverson, John D. Abel, Tony Recktenwald, Suzanne Vestuto, Valerie Stankus, Tim Colburn, Gary Kochanek, Timothy O’Neill, James P. O’Brien, Liz Meisterling, Janean Bowersmith, Yolanda Bada, Leigh Daeuble, Craig Gunderson, Julie Ross, Pamela Jameson, Jim Maguire, Ellen Mrazek, Leigh Behrens, Valerie Morrow, Theresa Rattenbury, Jim Kelly, Michael Cornfield, Susanne Riedell, Mary Sebahar, Jon Randolph, Ron Castan, Tracey Thomas, Gordon Meyer, Patrick Dahlstrom, Minna Houlihan, Victoria Engelhardt, Mary Lanus, David Painter, Angela Mullins, Christine Mackey, Sharon Kurth, and Sherry and Margaret—in memory of Jack Helbig.
■ Join their ranks today for as little as $1, just once, and see your name atop tomorrow’s roll call.
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Tick, tock, Electoral College / Ships and rats / Springfield revolt / Quizzes

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Tick, tock, Electoral College. This week’s blue wave could effectively end the most antidemocratic aspect of U.S. politics—allowing the election of presidents by a national popular vote.
■ Newly Democrat-controlled Congress and state governments could do it even without a constitutional amendment …
■ … via a “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,” onto which Illinois signed in 2008.
■ Mother Jones: “Electing the president by a national popular vote could reshape American politics, empower voters and protect our elections from interference.”
■ The New Republic: “Voters just changed the trajectory of the Supreme Court.”

‘This isn’t the Donald Trump we know.’ Columnist Neil Steinberg has a tough time believing “the biggest crybaby in public life since Nero is going to just shrug and go, ‘Oh, right, I lost. Good for you.’”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Trump appears to be acting, as President Abraham Lincoln once said of Major General William S. Rosecrans, ‘confused and stunned, like a duck hit on the head’” …
■ … witness his declaration that the Oval Office, as he’s decorated it, is a national monument.
■ Prairie Home Companion creator Garrison Keillor: “No president in our history has demonstrated this level of dementia.”
■ A federal judge has put a 14-day block on Trump’s plan for a memorial arch.
■ The Atlantic (gift link): “Democrats want to cut off funding for the president’s building projects—or tear them down later.”
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “Any competent leader, after being handed such a humiliating loss, would be meeting with staff, and going, ‘How do we fix this? How do we rebuild the trust of the people?’ But not Donny.”

‘You know what? We’d rather have a guy on a ventilator than the Republican candidate.’ That’s Jimmy Kimmel paraphrasing Iowa voters who elected a Democratic state representative who suspended his campaign two months ago because of health issues.
■ Wonkette’s Brooke Binkowski is updating “the more satisfying losses” in Tuesday’s election.
■ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link) says the biggest story this week is that “When fascism came to America, it was driven out by ballots, not bullets.”
■ Law professor Joyce Vance on the Senate race cliffhanger in Mississippi: The lawyers are swarming.
■ Folk-rock protest troubadour Jesse Welles has whipped up a new song about the midterms: “I saw Elon leaving Austin, fat and hunchbacked, strange and pale—a half a billion-dollar lesson that them Texans ain’t for sale …”
■ Former ABC 7 Chicago boss Emily Barr—now living in Maine, where she says viewers were “waterboarded to death by political advertising”—says this week’s election shows that “the richest man in the world could not buy the outcome he wanted.”
■ Declaring Musk her Dingus of the Week, columnist Lyz Lenz says he “needs to go to jail.”
■ Frank Landymore at Futurism: “Tech industry in denial that the midterms show everyone hates them.”
■ The American Prospect on CVS’ decision to split its retail and pharmacy business from its Aetna and Caremark pharmacy benefits program: “Corporations are pretending to reform themselves.”

What’s that thing about ships and rats? Conservative attorney Harmeet Dhillon, who transformed the Justice Department Civil Rights Division into an un-civil operation, has quit …
■ … and she’s not alone.
■ The Independent: Secretary of State Marco Rubio is planning to resign—to run for president.
■ Sycophantic Texas Sen. Ted Cruz criticizes Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war.
■ Columnist Heather Delaney Reese: Trump’s Secretary of “War,” Pete Hegseth, knows what’s coming …
■ … a thing he acknowledged in a self-serving video he released yesterday.
■ The Intercept: “Hegseth is in the crosshairs of lawmakers whom he has treated with contempt for two years.”
■ Hegseth leads The Washington Sun’s list of “would-be fallpeople.”

‘Buckle up, Fox News viewers.’ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke: “The libs are comin’ for ya.”
■ Chicago-born journalist Terry Moran—fired as ABC’s national correspondent after a tweet critical of Trump—has assignments for Democrats and Republicans.
■ Columnist and former Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Newman: “Democrats need to become the party that can ‘run and chew gum at the same time.’”
■ Gov. Pritzker, looking like a potential presidential candidate, has released what Contrarian Jen Rubin calls a “wonkish 75-page plan (apparently months in the making) ‘with ideas on everything from increasing the federal minimum wage to restoring SNAP and Medicaid cuts.’”

Springfield revolt. In the face of opposition from 26 House Democrats, Speaker Chris Welch says he won’t seek another term in that job.
■ That follows what the Tribune (gift link) calls “months of criticism over his handling of sexual harassment allegations.”
■ The Daily Herald (free link): Tuesday’s elections “devastated” suburban Republicans.

‘I’m calling bullshit.’ Press Watch columnist Dan Froomkin says the elite media’s coverage of Tuesday’s election has avoided almost “any mention whatsoever of No Kings—or the resistance, or the mass movement against Trump, or pro-democracy protests.”
■ Fast Company: “Pundits on X framed the 2024 election as a massive political realignment and Bluesky as a ‘copium’ den for progressives in a bubble. Boy, were they wrong.”
■ Media critic Simon Owens: “Media executives who spent the past two years cozying up to Trump could soon find themselves hauled before congressional committees.”
■ After 31 years, the online magazine Salon is gone.

Midterm madness! Buckle up for past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel’s latest news quiz—this week with questions about voting, presidential nonlibraries … and holiday shopping …
■ … on which your Chicago Public Square columnist scored only 6/8 correct.
■ As Chicago improv company iO celebrates its 45th anniversary, Axios’ Justin Kaufmann serves up a quiz about the city’s celebrated improvisers—with a 7/10 correct score here.

’Tis the season. Chicago’s WLIT-FM is back to playing Christmas music nonstop.
■ Looking for parking in Chicago this weekend? Lot workers’ strike could complicate that.

‘Please explain the difference between etc. and ect.’ Pulitzer-winning columnist Dave Barry again dons his “Mister Language Person” hat.

Thanks. Chris Koenig made this edition better.

Pritzker’s Texas payback / ‘Just quit’ / Square loses a reader

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Pritzker’s Texas payback. Credit Illinois’ governor with the defeat of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott—who dispatched thousands of immigrants to Chicago.
■ Every candidate Pritzker backed in Texas won Tuesday—as Democrats stunningly took the reins of power up and down that state’s ballot.
■ Wired (free link): “Voters set $400 million of Elon Musk’s money on fire.”
■ Stop the Presses columnist Mark Jacob: “Musk lost the election because Americans know he’s the enemy.”
■ Climate reporter Emily Atkin: Tuesday was “a very expensive night for Big Oil.”
■ Blake Montgomery at The Guardian: “Tech barons cozied up to Trump. What will they do in newly blue America?”
■ MS NOW’s Jacqueline Alemany: “Corporate America spent two years courting Trump. Now it’s lawyering up.”

‘The historic nature of this election cannot be overstated.’ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “It is a rejection of … the idea that some people are better than others and have the right to rule.”
■ Columnist Matt Yglesias sees the demise of bipartisan consensus on Israel: “It’s so over for AIPAC.”
■ Columnist and former Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger: Republicans’ rout has triggered an intraparty civil war.

Blue statehouses. Axios: For the first time in 16 years, Democrats are in line to control a majority of state legislative chambers …
■ Hayes Brown at MS NOW: Republicans’ gerrymanderpalooza blew up in their faces. (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ Wired (free link): Among Republicans, “the race is on to find someone besides Donald Trump to blame for … catastrophic losses.”
■ Financial Times D.C. bureau chief James Politi: Almost every county in the country has swung toward Democrats since 2024.
■ Helen Lewis at The Atlantic (gift link): “In the end, not even Jon Husted’s phenomenal ass was enough to save the Republicans.”

‘The blue tsunami left Trump afloat.’ But NBC and CNN alumnus Charles Jaco has a shopping list for what Democrats can do nevertheless.
■ American Prospect co-founder Robert Kuttner: “The repudiation of Trump could lead some Republicans to vote with Democrats to block administration priorities.”
■ Popular Information offers Democrats guidance in how to investigate Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner: “How is it legal for someone representing the United States in foreign policy negotiations to be on the payroll of foreign governments? It’s not.”
■ Esquire’s Charlie Pierce: “Lawyer up, MAGA. Your hell has only just begun.”

‘Now’s the time to seize power.’ Handbasket columnist Marisa Kabas was disappointed by House Minority Leader—and likely next Speaker—Hakeem Jeffries’ anodyne speech Tuesday night.
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “All we want are Democrats who’ll fight the fascists. … Enough with this weak-tea bullshit already.”
■ Political science professor Kristoffer Ealy: “Democrats won the Senate. Somebody tell Chuck Schumer he wasn’t the reason.”
■ The Atlantic’s David Graham: “Democrats will likely disappoint voters soon. We don’t need to guess what happens to politicians who campaign on affordability and don’t deliver” (gift link).

‘Just quit. Nobody wants you.’ Jimmy Kimmel was unrestrained—and unusually not all that funny—as he offered Trump unsolicited career advice in the election’s wake.
■ The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols (gift link): “Whether Trump has sincerely accepted the victory of the Democrats and intends to cooperate with them in governing the country is, in a sense, irrelevant: The more important reality is that he faces an electoral result too decisive to challenge.”
■ Jimmy Fallon: “There’s going to be so many Republicans leaving the Capitol it will look like a reverse Jan. 6.”

Back in Illinois … The election casts a shadow over the future for scandal-scarred Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch.
■ All the Cook County judges up for retention looked on track to stick around.
■ Juliana Stratton’s election will make Illinois the first state in the union with two women of color serving in the U.S. Senate.

Google’s ‘AI Trojan horse in America’s schools.’ Tech columnist Will Oremus says the company’s telling school districts now reliant on its ubiquitous low-cost laptops to choose: Let its Gemini AI into the classroom or give up students’ access to Google Search.
■ One parent tells Wired (free link): “Kids are already using these search-bar summaries to skip real effort, pulling instant math answers and letting AI write their essays.”
■ Columnist Eric Zorn: “It … seems odd to me that schools are trying to stem the tide of AI rather than teach children how to use it well and skeptically.”

Anchor’s away. ABC 7 Chicago is cutting ties with journalist Ravi Baichwal …
■ … after what the Tribune (free link) calls “a social media post describing an alleged altercation involving Baichwal at a River North restaurant in October.”

For the want of a word … Yesterday’s Chicago Public Square omitted male from the description of Christian Mitchell as “the state’s first male Black lieutenant governor.”
■ Thanks to the many (many!) readers who flagged that error, which was corrected on the Square website at 10:01 a.m. Wednesday.
■ Also fixed: Gift link added for the item “The Atlantic declares South Carolina’s Senate race ‘the unlikeliest Democratic win of all.’”
■ As every emailed edition notes up top, you can always “Read this in your browser, with updates and corrections.”

Square loses a reader. This note accompanied a cancellation yesterday: “I thought you were going to stop using AI cartoons, but there today, another one. There are so many talented cartoonists out there. Use actual art, not fake machine-generated cr*p.”
■ While this medium—and society’s attitudes about it—remain in flux, Square’s committed to identifying AI-generated work, but hasn’t ruled it out …
■ … especially when creative folk such as Jan Kodner deliver on an original concept that, under deadline, complements the news.
■ Here’s how we left this matter in June … ending with the pointed question, “What’s the last computer-animated movie you enjoyed?”

Thanks. Beth Kujawski made this edition better.

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Election decompression: Laugh it off. Kick back Sunday afternoon with three of Chicago’s funniest women—for a League of Women Voters post-election fundraiser at Oak Park’s Comedy Plex.

‘Donations keep us purring.’ Barb’s Precious Rescue is a no-kill, registered 501(c)3) nonprofit organization. Donations help save cats’ and kittens’ lives and find them forever homes. You can make a difference.

‘Our democracy worked’ / Night of firsts / Now the hard(er) part

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‘Our democracy worked.’ Author and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich assesses Democrats’ amazing showing in Tuesday’s elections: “The great sleeping giant of America has awakened, taken a hard look at what’s become of the nation, and roared a thunderous NO!”

■ Columnist Susan Berger: “Cruelty lost. Decency won.”
■ Documentarian and former Donald Trump Homeland Security appointee turned Trump critic Miles Taylor calls the vote “one of the great acts of defiance in American history.”
■ The New York Times: “Democrats Rout GOP … as Voters Deliver Stunning Rebuke to Trump.”
■ … handing Republicans what ex-Jezebel editor-in-chief Laura Bassett declares “the biggest shellacking a party has seen since Watergate.”
■ Wired (free link): Democrats swept Republicans “in nearly every race that matters.”
■ Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis calls yesterday “an extinction-level event” for his party.
■ Associated Press analysis: “Trump has defied political consequences for years. The midterms changed that.”
■ Former Politico editor Garrett Graff: “My flabbers are gasted. Voters gave America another chance.”
■ Mother Jones calls it “a blue-nami.”
■ Author, documentarian and Chicago native Jonathan Alter: “Trump can still do a lot of damage, but his cult is dead and we have our democracy.”
■ Chaotic Era columnist Kyle Tharp: “Across the South, Black voters fought back against MAGA’s attempts to strip away their voting rights, while the Latino and young voters who broke for Donald Trump two years ago swung back hard toward Democrats.”
■ Columnist and former Illinois U.S. Rep. Marie Newman: “The transphobic, antisemitic, racist and communist attacks did not work.”
■ Discourse Blog proprietor Jack Mirkinson: “We have spent the last two years … being told, over and over and over again, that fascism was what this country really wanted. … And now everyone who tried to make us believe that … has suffered an unprecedented, historic humiliation.”
■ Grudge Report columnist and Kimmel writer Bess Kalb: “Welcome to the Gay Sharia States of Woke America (she/they)!”

A night of firsts. Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, son of Egyptian immigrants, will become the nation’s first Muslim senator.
■ Wisconsin’s getting its first Black governor.
■ Kansas is getting its first Democratic senator in 94 years.
■ Senate candidate James Talarico becomes the first Democrat to win statewide office in Texas in more than 30 years …
■ … a victory enabled in part by the Trump-controlled FCC’s ultimately counterproductive attempt to keep him from getting a Colbert Bump.
■ Political science professor Kristoffer Ealy thanks Trump: “You gave us James Talarico in the United States Senate AND a Democratic governor in Texas.”
■ The Atlantic declares South Carolina’s Senate race “the unlikeliest Democratic win of all” (updated with gift link).
■ Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina: “More U.S. scientists and physicians ran for state and federal office this cycle than ever before. And many won.”

And, yeah, Illinois is blue all over. Gov. Pritzker’s the first of the state’s governors to win a third term since Jim Thompson in 1982 …
■ Juliana Stratton clobbered Don Tracy to become the state’s next senator.
■ Candidates backed by the Chicago Teachers Union were on track to take half the seats on the newly elected school board—but not the presidency.
■ Chicagoans backed referenda favoring gunshot detection tech, endorsing higher taxes on millionaires and creating a standalone festival ground.
■ Oak Park voters overwhelmingly OK’d an advisory referendum opposing laws that ban state investment in businesses that boycott Israel .
■ Dive into the numbers with updating tables from The Associated Press, the Sun-Times, Block Club and Chalkbeat Chicago.
■ Block Club: “These Chicago politicians just won reelection. Now they want your vote for mayor.”

Now the hard(er) part. The Sun-Times’ Tina Sfondeles: Illinois’ congressional delegation aims to unwind Trump policies “as quickly as possible.”
■ Jonathan Last at The Bulwark: Democratic control of the Senate means “impeachment of cabinet members is a live possibility” …
■ … as some Democrats advise Trump’s family to “lawyer up” …
■ … although he tells CBS he looks forward to working with them “for the good of our country” …
■ … but, of course, Trump lies. (Cartoon: Retired lawyer who is mad as hell and can’t draw Jan Kodner, who’s in “a complicated relationship with AI.”)
■ Columnist and former Tribune national correspondent Charlie Madigan: “Make a list of cabinet officials you would like to see defenestrated.”
■ Democratic political consultant Julie Roginsky: “First order of business: End the filibuster. Without it, Democrats can’t govern.”
■ Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson says he’s hanging up his leadership hat.
■ Gizmodo: Democrats’ congressional sweep gives them new clout to defend the environment from Trump’s numerous rollbacks.
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