Surprise Israeli airstrikes / ‘The perfect Trump lickspittle’ / ‘Outright theft’ / Snap!

Surprise Israeli airstrikes. Updating coverage: More than 400 Palestinians are dead in an assault that ended a monthlong ceasefire and threatens to reignite the war.

■ Donald Trump’s Justice Department and the FBI have set up a task force to investigate Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel—and, notably, to target Americans who may have supported Hamas.

‘The president of the United States considers me an enemy and has promised retribution.’ Democracy Docket founder and Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias says that, since Jan. 20, he gets asked almost daily, “Are you worried?”—and, although he says the answer’s yes, “I will continue to fight.”

■ Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern at Slate: “We’ve officially entered the next phase of Trump’s dictatorship era.”

■ In what critics are flagging as a security risk, First Bro Elon Musk’s Starlink internet Wi-Fi service has been installed across the White House campus.

‘We did not authorize or condone the White House’s use of our song in any way.’ The band Semisonic’s unhappy the White House used its song “Closing Time” as the soundtrack for a social media post showing a shackled deportee.

■ A new lawsuit accuses the feds of arresting 22 people in the Midwest illegally since Trump returned to office.

■ Law professor and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance warns, “Deportations: It’s not where it starts, it’s where it ends.”

■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke has a new slogan for the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office: “Come to America! You might win a free trip to El Salvador!”

■ France called—and it wants its Statue of Liberty back.

‘The perfect Trump lickspittle.’ Wonkette’s Gary Legum considers White House border czar Tom Homan “so dumb that a syphilitic howler monkey could mate him in three moves in a chess match.”

■ As the Tribune rolls out its endorsements in suburban elections, it’s backing a challenger to Orland Park’s mayor, who attended a December holiday bash featuring Homan.

■ Orland faces separate lawsuits filed by former cops complaining of civil rights violations.

■ Ready to vote? The Chicago Public Square Voter Guide Guide’s here for you.

If Illinois were more like California … A new Northwestern University study concludes that adopting California-style limits on truck pollution could save 500 Chicago-area lives a year.

■ The New York Times (gift link): More than 1,000 scientists could be laid off under a Trump plan to dismantle the EPA’s scientific research arm. (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)

‘Your approval is only seven points ahead of where it turns red and goes into low-power mode.’ Daily Show host Jon Stewart rips into Democrats for their submission on Republican spending plans.

■ Public Notice: Democrats’ concession was months in the making.

About those abortion pills … Popular Information: Trump promised to protect access to them, but, um, that was then.

■ Abortion, Every Day author Jessica Valenti: “Stop believing Republicans … especially when it comes to abortion rights.”

■ Stat: The Trump administration’s canceled funding for a landmark diabetes study.

■ The Onion: “Texas Implements Mandatory 6-Month Quarantine For Anyone Who Has Watched Will And Grace.”

‘Outright theft.’ In a front-page editorial, the Tribune—along with other Alden Global Capital-owned newspapers across the country—slams OpenAI and Google for trying to “steal the content created with the sweat equity of America’s human journalists” to train artificial intelligence products.

■ Axios: “AI firms argue that using public data to ‘teach’ AI models is a fair use … similar to the use case search engines make in cataloging online information.”

■ Author and tech watchdog Cory Doctorow: “AI can’t do your job, but an AI salesman (Elon Musk) can convince your boss (the USA) to fire you and replace you (a federal worker) with a chatbot that can’t do your job.”

■ 404 Media: “AI slop is a brute force attack on the algorithms that control reality.”

■ The Freedom of the Press Foundation: Wired is dropping paywalls for Freedom of Information Act-based reporting. Others should, too.

Petitions, anyone?

■ Consumer Reports is urging the Federal Trade Commission to outlaw the creation of an AI fake of your voice without your consent.

■ The nonprofit Free Press Action is petitioning the Federal Communications Commission, now under the leadership of Project 2025 coauthor Brendan Carr, to abandon a “campaign of intimidation and censorship.”

Snap! Tedium’s Ernie Smith explores the Illinois origin of things you probably encounter every day: “The plastic buckles where you use two fingers to press in, and the two pieces of plastic disconnect from one another.”

■ Here’s the patent filing. (Image: PxHere.)

The day things changed. Axios Chicago reviews how the COVID-19 pandemic affected life in Illinois.

■ Five years ago today, one suburb became the first Illinois community to impose a “shelter-in-place” order.

■ The American Prospect: “Private equity vultures descend on care facilities for the disabled.”

‘Your leftist claptrap has been balm for my aching soul. It’s 476 in America, and your news judgment helps me through my day.’ That’s unsolicited praise from a Chicago Public Square supporter.

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Ready to vote? / Social Security ‘sabotage’ / DOGE dangers

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.”

■ Block Club: “New Chicago prosecutor empowers police to file more charges without review.”

‘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.

■ Consider tax software reviews from CNET and PCMag.

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 Onion: “Oversized Leprechaun Hat Left At Home On St. Patrick’s Day To Avoid Damaging It.”

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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