‘It is alarming’ / Hyde away / Kinda Trumpy

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[Republishing to correct a redundant subject line and the subhead on the item about Mayor Johnson. Also to add two breaking news items up top here:]

■ Ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s been convicted of bribery and wire fraud.
■ The Senate’s confirmed Tulsi Gabbard as the nation’s top spy chief.

‘It is alarming.’ The Associated Press protests that its reporter was blocked from a presidential executive order signing session because the AP hasn’t swallowed Donald Trump’s attempt to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
■ The White House Correspondents Association: “The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decision.”
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter: “It’s part of a much larger weaponization of language to advance the Trump administration’s agenda.”
■ Google, which—along with Apple and Microsoft—has caved to Trump’s geographical whims, is echoing his DEI crackdown by erasing Black History Month, Pride Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day and other cultural observances from its Calendar app.
■ Law prof Joyce Vance: “We are living through the quietest of coups.”

‘Most powerless image ever’ of a U.S. president. That’s how MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell perceived a joint news conference the president held with Elon Musk.
■ At that news conference, Musk admitted having made mistakes but insisted his Department of Government Efficiency has been transparent about its activity on its website—which has been literally a blank page. (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ ProPublica is doing some of that work.
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich celebrates: “Someone in the press actually committed a journalism and called Elon on his bullshit.”
■ Fresh detail in Trump’s plan to hollow out government: “Each agency [shall] hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart.”
■ Economist Paul Krugman on Trump’s tariffs: “Schrödinger’s trade war: Is it alive? Is it dead? Yes.”
■ Trump’s fired the USAID inspector general who sounded an alarm about those cuts.

‘I’ve got the help of Elon’s punks
They’re geniuses at theft!
They’ll break into your bank accounts—
Take that, folks on the left!’
Columnist, author and now podcaster Mary Schmich’s out with a fresh Trumpoem.
■ ProPublica: The fate of an organization that tried to regulate Musk’s SpaceX could now be in Musk’s hands.
■ Lyz Dye at Public Notice: “Trump burns down financial watchdog agency to spite Liz Warren. And if it lets Elon get his payments app started without federal regulation, even better!”
■ Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich: “The Trump-Musk regime is accusing federal civil servants of fraud, based on no evidence, while at the same time allowing corporations to pay off foreign officials … pardoning a former governor of Illinois who tried to sell [a] Senate seat, and stopping investigations into foreign influence-peddling in the United States.”
■ Columnist Richard Day: “U.S. attorneys stopped a political crime spree in Illinois. Trump just gave the go-ahead for it to restart.”
■ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch: What Musk wants “is worse than you think.”

‘Hegseth basically said Find me a guy named Bragg who served in the army and didn’t own slaves.’ The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper accuses Trump’s defense secretary of wimping out in re-renaming Fort Bragg—but not after the original Confederate guy.
■ The Washington Post (gift link; you’re welcome): Dozens of American students at a U.S. military installation in Germany walked out in protest as Hegseth visited.

History missing. News organizations are suing the Trump administration over the disappearance from the web of video evidence of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
■ The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s suing to halt the “ransacking of federal data.”
■ A federal judge has ordered government agencies to restore health-related webpages and datasets.
■ The American Prospect: “Aging members of Congress refuse to disclose details of their top secret hospital,” where they get “nearly unlimited medical care for about $54 a month.”
■ Inside Medicine’s keeping score: Which medical and health organizations are stepping up to fight the Trump administration’s dismantling of federal programs and which are sitting out.

Democrats ‘pissed.’ Axios reports that House Democrats are complaining about all the phone calls with which activist groups including MoveOn and Indivisible have been flooding representatives’ offices.
■ Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin wants an investigation into reports that FBI Director-designate Kash Patel has been “personally directing the ongoing purge” of the bureau’s agents …
■ … and may have lied about it before the Judiciary Committee on which Durbin is the ranking Democrat.
■ Dissatisfied with the speed of deportations, the Trump administration’s reportedly removed two top U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

‘Surely he’s not going to tell us all what to watch, how to live, what to see, how to think?’ The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol says Trump’s coup at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts bears “a whiff of the authoritarian, not to say the totalitarian, mindset.”
■ Cartoonist Jack Ohman’s on a tear this week.
■ Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s dismissal of paper straws: “Plastic straws wind up in the ocean, and they kill marine life—which I guess is another argument Trump, a well-known hater of sharks, doesn’t buy.”
■ Columnist and NPR alumnus Bob Garfield is kindasorta swearing off writing about “the fucking Trump world.”

Hyde away. In another sign that this ain’t your dad’s DuPage County anymore, the county board has voted to yank the late Republican U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde’s name from the county courthouse …
■ … because of his sponsorship of a law forbidding federal funding for abortions.
■ Ix-nay on a statue of Hyde, too.

Manual transmission. Hackers have leaked manuals for police departments across the country …
■ … including a bunch in Illinois.

Kinda Trumpy. That’s Politico Illinois Playbook columnist Shia Kapos’ take on Mayor Johnson’s move to “clean house” at City Hall.
■ He told churchgoers he wished he’d replaced more staffers when he took office: “If you ain’t with us, you just gotta go.”
■ Reporter Fran Spielman says speculation has focused on three holdovers from Lori Lightfoot’s administration.


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‘Constitutional crisis’ / Trump sucks / Google gulps

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‘Constitutional crisis.’ Surveying news coverage of Donald Trump’s rampage through government, CNN’s Brian Stelter finds those words showing up, well, almost everywhere.
■ Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic: “It’s not simply that the new administration has flouted a raft of federal statutes and prompted a flood of legal challenges. It’s that … Trump’s top advisers have cast doubt on whether rulings on those lawsuits would even constrain the president.”
■ Law professor Joyce Vance wrote yesterday: “We are on alert for a point where a court issues an order and Trump’s administration refuses to comply with it.”
■ And, um, well, er, ah … we may have already passed that point.
■ ProPublica: “The courts blocked Trump’s federal funding freeze. Agencies are withholding money anyway.”
■ The United States Agency for International Development’s inspector general—who one observer wryly jokes is “presumably operating from a remote base in the mountains”—has released a report on the human cost of Trump and Elon Musk’s dismantling of the agency.
■ David Lurie at Public Notice: “It’s disturbingly easy to envision a situation where Trump’s assault on the nation’s constitutional order rapidly changes from a cold to a hot war.”
■ Press Watch proprietor Dan Froomkin says journalists now need “to fully and intentionally go into crisis mode. That means constant, round-the-clock, top-of-the-homepage coverage until the crisis is resolved.”
■ American Prospect columnist David Dayen: “Will we be roused to action, in that ultimate moment when Trump is told what he cannot do, and he ignores it?”
■ The typically reserved American Bar Association has come out swinging against the new administration’s “wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ NBC News: A federal law enforcement official calls Trump’s assault on the FBI “a nightmare.”
■ Daily Show alumnus John Oliver—a U.S. citizen born in Britain—returned last night, welcoming America back to monarchy.

What we’re losing. The Sun-Times’ Stephanie Zimmermann surveys how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Trump and Musk have kneecapped, has helped Illinoisans.
■ American Freakshow columnist Nina Burleigh: “The world’s richest man has all your personal data and stores your money. What could possibly go wrong? We might never know since a very tiny man named Russell Vought has shut down the one agency that might protect us.”
■ Economist Paul Krugman: The sudden closure is “part of an effort to make predatory finance great again.”
■ Tech watchdog Cory Doctorow: Musk’s stealing a billion dollars from low-income Americans and sending it to TurboTax parent Intuit.*
■ Author Brian Tyler Cohen: If Musk were serious about cutting government waste, “he would start with the agency that serves as a poster child for financial mismanagement. The Pentagon” …
■ … but no, ProPublica says, Musk’s team has decimated the Education Department arm tracking school performance nationwide.

Illinois vs. Trump. Joining 21 other states, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul is suing to block Trump from cutting billions in federal aid to medical and public health institutions.
■ Joyce Vance sees “a smart litigation strategy” in the suit: “The only relief sought is for the states that have sued. … Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, which receives more than $400 million in funds, is out of luck unless Sen. Marsha Blackburn can talk Trump off the ledge.”
■ A nonprofit that has provided health care and food for Chicago’s needy is shutting down clinics and pantries.

Trump sucks. The president’s signed an order banning federal use of paper straws.
■ Trump critic Jon Stewart: “He is right on this one. Those straws are … objectively terrible.”

Google gulps. The former Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America in Google Maps …
■ … but just in the U.S.
■ USA Today columnist Rex Huppke expects Trump to rename the Super Bowl “the Trump America Bowl.”

‘A very fine person.’ That’s how Trump describes ex-Illinois Gov.—and former Celebrity Apprentice under Trump—Rod Blagojevich, for whose conviction on charges of political corruption the president has issued a full and unconditional pardon.
■ Blagojevich has been at large since Trump commuted his sentence five years ago.
■ Columnist Eric Zorn on the possibility Trump will appoint the ex-governor U.S. ambassador to Serbia: “If Trump pardoning Blago helps put 4,982 miles between us and that sleazebag, I’m all for it!”
■ Sen. Dick Durbin, a fellow Democrat: “America and Serbia deserve better.”
■ Good timing: Trump’s signed an order pausing enforcement of a ban on bribery of foreign governments.
■ Speaking of troubled politicians accused of bribery and getting breaks from Trump: A convenient change of heart seems to have accrued to the benefit of New York Mayor Eric Adams …
■ … a move that gobsmacks Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: “We can’t prosecute him because he’s a candidate for office? Wow.”

Get those guns. Gov. Pritzker’s signed a new law clarifying that local cops must at least temporarily take firearms away from a person when someone with an order of protection against that person seeks such removal in court.

Today’s dusting is just a taste. Wednesday could bring Chicago’s biggest snowfall of the season.

Egg limits. Struggling with supplies crimped by the bird flu, retailers are beginning to restrict how many eggs people can buy at a time.
■ Tedium’s Ernie Smith takes an eggs-tremely close look at the history of egg cartons.

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