Ready to vote? Today brings the opening of permanent polling places for those wishing to cast their ballots early in April 1’s consolidated suburban elections.
■ Chicago Public Square’s here with a guide to the guides that can help you vote smart.
‘Pink slime’ pact. Local Government Information Services—one of hundreds of partisan news outlets across the country masquerading as news sites (2019 link)—has settled a lawsuit with Illinois over its publication of hundreds of thousands of voters’ personal information …
■ … but it’s getting off easy.
Social Security ‘sabotage.’ Popular Information has come into possession of an internal memo detailing changes that would “debilitate the agency, cause significant processing delays and prevent many Americans from applying for or receiving benefits.”
■ A man born on a U.S. Army base in Germany, where his father was stationed, says his Social Security benefits were cut off without warning or explanation.
‘The tipping point where the administration flagrantly ignores a federal court’s order, and we begin to see the ensuing constitutional crisis.’ Law professor Joyce Vance says this could be that week.
■ Live updates from the AP on the Trump administration’s transfer of hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge said not to.
■ Law & Chaos sums it up: “Trump says court orders don’t count in an airplane. Also … GANGS!”
■ On Tyranny author Timothy Snyder: “If we accept that the executive branch can simply deport anyone they call a ‘foreign alien terrorist,’ then none of us has any rights.”
■ Journalist Matt Pearce: “Repressive local policing … has gone fully and unrelentingly federal; what once could have happened anywhere can now happen everywhere, all at once.”
‘Most of us bought the car before Elon went rogue.’ Tesla owners tell the Sun-Times they’re caught in the middle of backlash against—and vandalism of—their cars to protest CEO Elon Musk’s federal flimflam …
■ … a phenomenon that inspired a cartoon from Mattie Lubchansky.
■ The American Prospect’s Harold Meyerson (no relation) marvels at Trump’s about-face—pitching “Teslers” after courting autoworkers’ votes by opposing EVs.
‘Do one thing.’ That’s journalist Dan Sinker’s strategy for dealing with “full-on doom living” in the age of Trump: “It doesn’t have to be big, it just has to be something.”
■ Speaking of which: Students at U.S. military bases around the world walked out today to protest the restriction of access to learning materials about immigration and psychology.
■ Musk Watch spotlights “schools trying to teach America’s kids to think like Elon Musk.”
■ Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat: “Republicans may feel empowered right now, but there will be a reckoning as Americans come to understand the scale of Republican sabotage of the country.”
‘Kennedy’s war on vaccines has started.’ KFF Health News says the newly Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-controlled National Institutes of Health has urged scientists to strip all their grant applications of references to mRNA vaccine technology—y’know, the science that helped save 3 million lives in the COVID pandemic.
■ Square five years ago: “Every Illinois K-12 school is shuttered as of today.”
DOGE dangers. Wired: Layoffs at the Agriculture Department could fuel the spread of invasive species and the rise of grocery prices.
■ Trump’s back-to-the-office order kicked in for the Food and Drug Administration today—with overwhelmed security lines.
■ ProPublica: Trump’s halt of a cleanup of chemical weapons deployed by the U.S. during the Vietnam war puts hundreds of thousands at risk of poisoning.
‘Useful idiots.’ Stop the Presses columnist Mark Jacob condemns Sen. Chuck Schumer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel as “useless Democrats … enabling Republican authoritarianism without seemingly realizing it.”
■ Schumer defends himself in a New York Times interview (gift link).
‘Media owners have shamed themselves.’ Civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill sees them “whitewashing their teams, surrendering the independence and diversity of their editorial pages and taking a knee before Trump.”
■ Author and investigative journalist Russ Baker: “Univision … is perfectly happy, in the finest capitalist tradition, to sell their own ethnic comrades down the river.”
■ Columnist and media critic Margaret Sullivan rips into “two New York Times headlines that drove me nuts.”
■ In what Poynter’s Tom Jones sees as “a blow to … press freedom worldwide,” Trump’s moved to shutter the Voice of America and other U.S.-funded news organizations …
■ … triggering cheers from China.
■ For the first time in its history, Washington journalists’ Gridiron Club skipped a toast to the sitting president—instead saluting the First Amendment.
Ready to tackle taxes? City Cast Chicago has some tips.
Irish poets who visited Chicago. Columnist Neil Steinberg marks St. Patrick’s Day by recalling, among others, the time W.B. Yeats went shopping on Michigan Avenue.
■ The Tribune: “Decades before Irish were Chicago political royalty, they lived in a ramshackle slum called Kilgubbin.”
The news doesn’t stop—and neither does Chicago Public Square. If you checked in with Square on Bluesky over the weekend, you’d have caught at least some of more than 35 breaking news and perspective links.
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