Illinois’ ‘Supreme’ win / ‘What a waste’ / Storm warnings warning / Quiz!

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Chicago Public Square’s taking a break. We’ll meet back here again for a full edition March 12, but watch for a fresh news quiz next Friday.

■ Meanwhile, catch a continual stream of breaking news and commentary on the Square Bluesky page (no Bluesky account required).

Illinois’ ‘Supreme’ win. A state law limiting demonstrations near abortion clinics has survived a First Amendment challenge before the Supreme Court.
■ Abortion, Every Day columnist Jessica Valenti: Montana Republicans’ bill to criminalize women for “trafficking” their own fetuses—traveling to other states to obtain an abortion—“signals more attacks to come.”

Unprotected. Iowa’s become the first state to strip gender identity protections from its civil rights code.
■ Columnist Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: Iowa Republicans.
■ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg, shopping for a (grand)baby shower: “Gender is complicated, except to our government and Party City.”

‘Internet, you know what to do.’ An “End DEI” website mounted by the Trump Department of Education invites the public to report the teaching of “divisive ideologies and indoctrination” and “illegal discriminatory practices at institutions of learning” …
■ Illinois is now the first state to offer public university and community college students free and comprehensive test prep for things like the law school entrance exam.

‘What a waste.’ In an open letter to the EPA’s new boss, former Chicago regional EPA administrator Debra Shore condemns the summary dismissal of “public servants … striving daily to ensure that all Americans have clean air to breathe, safe water to drink, and places to live and work that are not laced with toxic chemicals.”
■ The Wall Street Journal (gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters) details the first minutes of Elon Musk’s assault on the federal workforce.
■ A federal judge says the central human resources office for the federal government broke the law when it ordered other agencies to terminate thousands of “probationary” employees—but he says he doesn’t have authority to order those workers reinstated.
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Mass firings and the Trump tariff threats are having a ‘chilling’ effect on the economy.”
■ The Washington Post (gift link): A federal worker who voted for Trump hoped his presidency “would change her life, but not like this.”
■ Stephen Colbert has little sympathy for such Trump voters: “They ordered the turd soup and then said, ‘Waiter, there’s turds in my soup.’ Then they came back four years later and asked, ‘Y’all still have that turd soup?’”

Welcome back, Polio, HIV and malaria. The New York Times (gift link): The Trump administration’s cut off funding for programs to fight those afflictions around the world.
■ Journalist Dan Rather at Steady: As bird flu jumps to humans, Trump pauses funding for a vaccine.

‘Measles vaccines are the new cool thing in Texas.’ Inside Medicine: The outbreak seems to have created some new true believers in science.
■ The New Republic: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s taken a sledgehammer to development of two major vaccines.

Blackout on. A call for 24 hours of spending abstinence to protest billionaires’ malign influence on government and politics was under way today.
■ Chicago faith leaders are down with the program.
■ CNN profiles the guy who birthed the idea.
■ Law professor Joyce Vance: “You may not be able to change what’s happening all by yourself, but with all of our voices combined, a groundswell of outrage … progress is possible. The one thing that’s certain is that if we just shrug our shoulders, Trump continues to grow the kleptocracy.”
■ American Civil Liberties Union guidance to protesters: Know your rights …
■ … including: “When you are lawfully present in any public space, you have the right to photograph anything in plain view, including federal buildings and the police.”

‘Worse than you think.’ Wired on the “Department of Government Efficiency” takeover under Trump: “What’s happening to the U.S. government right now is bad. What comes next is worse.”
■ Environmental nonprofit The Nature Conservancy reportedly agreed to rename the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America” after a threat that it’d lose its federal funding if it didn’t.
■ President Trump was poised today to declare English the United States’ official language.

Storm warnings warning. The Trump administration’s firing hundreds of weather forecasters and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration workers …
■ One of the agency’s policy analysts tells The New York Times: “This is not a move toward efficiency; it's a move toward putting Americans in danger every day.”

New parks boss. Mayor Johnson’s decided to put a City Council member in charge of the Chicago Park District …
■ Not a bad day to visit a park: Chicago was in line for near-record temperatures.

‘Just fill in the blanks.’ Past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel throws down that gauntlet for this week’s super-sized, 12-question news quiz …
■ … on which your Square columnist scored a not-awful 10/12 right.

Need a driver’s license? Beginning tomorrow, bracing for a rush of people seeking Real IDs before a May deadline, Illinois Secretary of State offices will be open Saturdays.
■ Carmakers hoping for top safety ratings in Europe need to make more physical controls for things like turn signals and wipers—leaving drivers free to keep their eyes on the road and not on touchscreens.

‘Suspicious enough.’ Police say the deaths of actor Gene Hackman, his wife and dog at their New Mexico home merit further investigation.
■ Tribune critic Michael Phillips recalls Hackman’s early years in Illinois—including a short time studying journalism at the University of Illinois (gift link).
■ The Sun-Times’ Richard Roeper reflects on Hackman’s “myriad memorable roles.”
■ Screenwriter W. Peter Iliff recounts “the day Gene Hackman almost punched me.”

‘Will anyone outside the White House West Wing and the haunts of billionaires read the Post’s new editorial pages without throwing up?’ American Prospect columnist Harold Meyerson (no relation): “The primary goal of the Post’s new editorial policy is to protect the owner’s wealth.”
■ On Tyranny author Timothy Snyder offers the Post a column that begins—and ends—this way: “I am writing today in support and defense of personal liberties and free markets. I am writing today in support and defense of personal liberties and free markets. I am writing today in support and defense of personal liberties and free markets …”

A reader writes. “Dropped my subscription to The Washington Post today. And bumped up my subscription to Chicago Public Square. Keep up the great work.”
■ If you’re inclined to do the same, let’s try this again, since yesterday’s links were … a little overripe:
Chicago Public Square’s worth about 40¢ an issue.
No, make that 60¢.
I’ll recommend Square to a friend. (Always free!)

Blackout Friday / ‘They are coming for the judges’ / Chicago serial killings

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Blackout Friday. Protesting corporate greed and knee-bending to the Trump regime, activists are plotting a 24-hour economic boycott tomorrow—encouraging consumers not to spend anything anywhere, online or in person …

■ … and, in Chicago, immigrant advocates’ “full week of civil disobedience” in May.

‘It is really terrifying.’ In what may be the first such incident since Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown geared up in January, federal immigration agents yesterday detained an adult—a person with two kids in the car—as students were arriving at a Chicago school.

‘Once Social Security checks stop showing up, millions of Americans will finally understand the scope.’ Handbasket columnist Marisa Kabas: “The full force of this administration’s destruction is about to hit.”
■ Social Security’s acting commissioner’s ordered managers to present a plan for cutting staff by half.
■ Economist Paul Krugman: Republicans are prepped to gut Medicaid.
■ Bluesky briefly took down—and then, after she protested, restored—Kabas’ post of that artificial-intelligence-generated protest video showing Trump sucking on Elon Musk’s two left feet.

‘This outbreak isn’t over.’ Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina offers five takeaways on the first U.S. measles death in a decade …
■ Health and Human Services brainworm host Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: “We have measles outbreaks every year.”
■ With no explanation, the Food and Drug Administration’s canceled a meeting to identify next year’s flu strain.
■ Indivisible Chicago plans a downtown protest Friday—this time to “Stand up for Science.”

‘They are coming for the judges. And not just the judges.’ Law professor and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance fears the rising drumbeat of court criticism from Trump, Musk and their sycophants.
■ In a move that Law & Chaos columnist Lyz Dye says “cuts the legs out from under every trial judge,” the Supreme Court’s chief justice has at least temporarily cleared the Trump administration not to free foreign aid funding a federal judge ordered released almost two weeks ago.
■ Under federal guard, the Associated Press reports, U.S. Agency for International Development workers fired or placed on leave under Trump’s dismantling of the agency today “began paying mournful final visits to their abruptly closed Washington headquarters … under the administration’s 15-minute windows to clear out their offices.”

‘The Post’s opinion section will now be a propaganda sheet, comforting the comfortable and smooching the behind of President Donald Trump.’ Columnist Eric Zorn condemns Washington Post and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos’ edict that the paper’s opinion section will henceforth be “writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.”
■ Veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher*: “Let me translate two things this libertarian light nincompoop is saying: Personal liberties means doing whatever the fuck I want. Free markets means doing whatever the fuck I want.”
■ Pod Save America cohost Dan Pfeiffer: Bezos is making a damning case against corporate media ownership.
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones sees it as “more dirt” on the Post’s reputation.
■ Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz: “Friends who work at large outlets have told me that their editors are asking them to focus more on the stories of men.”
■ Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton: “The scale of the hypocrisy on display here is eye-watering.”
■ ProPublica cofounder Dick Tofel offers suggestions for what we all can do to protect a free press.
■ Status proprietor Oliver Darcy’s winning headline: “Post traumatic stress.”
■ Puck’s Dylan Byers (gift link, funded by Chicago Public Square supporters): Rachel Maddow’s criticism of MSNBC’s layoffs ironically misses the point that “she gets paid $25 million a year to effectively work one day a week … roughly equivalent to the combined salary of about—go figure—125 production staffers.”

‘A slap in the face to Americans.’ A Sun-Times editorial says Trump’s attempt to control the White House media pool is a clear attempt to drown free speech.
■ CNN: Trump’s first cabinet meeting of this go-round was loaded with false claims.
■ Desi Lydic at The Daily Show: “Today was a big day for Donald Trump. He had a meeting with every member of his cabinet, and he even invited the president [Musk].”

Musk vs. Jon Stewart. Mr. DOGE says he’ll appear on The Daily Show …
■ Rolling Stone: Musk’s anonymous “data expert”—a woman who’s shown up on reactionary TV shows wearing sunglasses and a hoodie to conceal her identity—worked until this week for an artificial-intelligence-powered lending company that has for years tangled with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
■ Former Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger: “Trump and Musk plan to save the rich by starving the poor.”

Chicago serial killings. Police have charged a man with six murders on the Southwest Side across several months in 2020.
■ The suspect, who was 17 at the time, reportedly knew none of the victims.

‘I’ve seen carcasses pile up for weeks.’ A doctoral student is pressing the Chicago Transit Authority to do something about pigeons getting trapped and dying on L platforms: “It’s a public health risk. Decomposing birds attract rats and spread bacteria.”
■ Chicago’s adding 50 new speed cameras around town to balance Mayor Johnson’s budget.
■ With Johnson casting the tie-breaking vote, the City Council’s approved a plan to borrow $830 million for infrastructure work.
■ Eric Zorn again: “Johnson needs to stop comforting himself looking at election results from nearly two years ago and start asking why he has lost the support and confidence of the public.”

‘This is disgusting.’ That’s MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, reacting to word that—under orders from Trump—the U.S. Marine Band canceled a performance with high school musicians of color.
■ Add Paramount—parent of CBS, Nickelodeon and others—to the list of companies rolling back policies designed to encourage diversity.

‘Commercial aviation is actually the safest mode of transportation ever devised that involves hurtling high above the earth at 500 miles per hour in a crowded metal tube.’ But Pulitzer winner Dave Barry** nevertheless says “the flying public is rightly concerned about airline safety.”

* Here she is, interviewed by your Square columnist back in 1998, about the “War for the Web.”
** Let us not forget that Barry once suggested your Square columnist be fired.

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