The ‘big delete.’ Popular Information: The National Security Agency was planning today to wipe out federal government websites and internal network content containing any of 27 banned words, including privilege, bias and inclusion.
■ Public Notice: Donald Trump and his lawyers are embracing the logic of dictatorship.
Metal mettle. Trump’s ordered the Treasury to stop minting pennies—each of which costs almost four cents to create.
■ Two-time Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten: “Now he’s just fucking with us.”
■ A Northeastern University economics professor says it makes cents sense.
■ Developing coverage: Trump was also planning to slap steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports …
■ … a thing that Politico sees as “especially rough news for Canada” …
■ … whose annexation by the U.S.—in a Fox News’ Super Bowl interview that Poynter media watcher Tom Jones found loaded with mediocre questions and rambling answers—Trump again championed.
■ American Crisis columnist Margaret Sullivan slams mainstream media coverage of Trump: “The tone … is far too restrained for our current emergency.”
‘The sudden stop of humanitarian aid … is beyond ruthless.’ Sun-Times D.C. bureau chief Lynn Sweet says Trump’s dismantling of the government is “cruel and chaotic.”
Protect consumers? Hah. The Trump team has ordered the shutdown of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, created after the economic meltdown of 2008.
■ Musk Watch: Elon Musk’s infiltration of the agency gives him access to confidential information about his competitors.
■ Middlebury political science professor Allison Stanger: “Musk’s hostile takeover could end government as we know it.”
■ Melissa Ryan at Ctrl-Alt-Right-Delete: “It’s not just politics anymore—Musk’s coup is about your daily life.”
‘Everyone is scared.’ The Tribune reports the prospect of Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests has Chicago’s restaurant industry on edge.
■ The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch: “The cruelty was the point when 104 undocumented migrants from India were placed in leg shackles and handcuffs and loaded onto a U.S. Air Force C-17 … for a grueling 40-hour deportation flight.”
‘What if the Trump regime ignores the Supreme Court?’ Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich* raises this democracy’s “final, perilous question.”
■ The AP: “There’s no shortage of issues that could find a path to the nation’s highest court.”
■ Rebutting Trump’s assertion that the Second Amendment “is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans,” historian Heather Cox Richardson argues, “In fact, it is the right to vote for the lawmakers who make up our government that is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.”
■ Columnist Garrett Graff, “terrified about the darkness of the hour,” nevertheless looks ahead in hope: “Heroes come in many forms across American history. And our time is filled with them now if we … pay attention.”
■ Law professor Joyce Vance’s counsel to Democrats: “It may literally come down to linking arms and fighting back.”
■ Civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill rounds up “easy tools to help you reach out to your representatives.”
‘If you can’t directly advocate against people you despise … you can kneecap the government that supports them.’ Observing Black History Month, columnist Neil Steinberg draws a line from Donald Trump back to President Ronald Reagan, “an unashamed racist.”
■ Check your knowledge of Chicago’s Black history with a City Cast quiz. (Your Chicago Public Square columnist scored 4/5.)
‘A night of pearl-clutching.’ The Daily Beast says Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance didn’t sit well with “many prominent conservatives.”
■ Wired shares “the wild true story” behind how he pulled it off.
■ The Onion: “Fox Bleeps Out Entire Kendrick Lamar Performance.”
‘The Hyde Amendment is very offensive to women.’ The DuPage County Board chair is pushing a resolution to strip the late Rep. Henry Hyde’s name from the county’s Judicial Office Facility—because of his sponsorship of a law forbidding the government from funding abortions.
■ Here’s the resolution’s full text.
Coming soon: Springtime for Hitler. Trump’s firing Kennedy Center for Performing Arts board members and naming himself chair, in charge of programming.
■ Satirist Andy Borowitz: “Trump Names Himself Principal Ballerina of Kennedy Center Ballet.”
‘A monument … of hope.’ Chicago’s getting a memorial honoring those lost to the COVID-19 pandemic—and those who fought back.
■ Chicago Public Square, Feb. 7, 2020: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is sending labs around the country—including an Illinois state facility in Chicago—kits capable of detecting the coronavirus in as little as four hours.”
8 inches? Nearing the end of a remarkably snow-free winter, two storm systems threaten to blanket the Chicago area with that much snow before the week’s out.
■ Single-digit temps will follow.
A Square ad …
… spotlighting a book by Square supporter No. 1.
Your support keeps this service coming. A contribution of as little as $1, just once—you pick the amount—helps cover the cost of creating and publishing Square.
* Whose former department Square misidentified not once, but twice last week.
