Thanks, Canada / ‘War on windmills’ / ‘IBPOOPN’

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And so we come to the final regular 2025 edition of Chicago Public Square. Expect a two-part year-end news quiz from The Conversation on Friday and on Jan. 2. (Square supporters at the Advocate level or above will get early access on Christmas and New Year’s Days.)
■ Neither of those dispatches will count toward the run-up to the big 2,000th edition of Square, which’ll bring a surprise or three.
■ Through the holidays, as ever, the Square Bluesky account will bring you breaking news and commentary around the clock.

Thanks, Canada. That damning 60 Minutes report on the Trump administration deportations of immigrants to El Salvador—the one that Trump-friendly CBS News chief Bari Weiss tried to bury—appeared on Canada’s Global TV app …
■ … and, despite CBS’ efforts to stuff it back in the bottle, has been preserved on platforms including the Internet Archive …
■ … or you can read a transcript here.
■ 60 Minutes alumnus Dan Rather calls correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who went public with the report’s suppression, “the definition of courage.”
■ Columnist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich: “Alfonsi wins this week’s Joseph N. Welch Award for courage in the face of tyranny.”
■ Columnist Eric Zorn: “The book that someone is going to write about this era will be called Profiles in Cowardice, and CBS is going to deserve its own chapter.”
■ Culture critic Bob Lefsetz: “If Bari Weiss hadn’t tried to bury it, most people would have never seen it” …
■ … exemplifying what’s come to be known as “the Streisand effect.”
■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst gloats: “We guess nobody in the entire CBS News building explained to her how global distribution works, timeline-wise, in the magical world of TV, which she knows nothing about. If anybody liked or respected her or was glad she was there, they could have told her.”
■ In a transcript obtained by The Washington Post, the show’s executive producer told colleagues privately, “We defended our story, but she wanted changes, and I ultimately had to comply.”
■ The anonymously bylined What Did Donald Trump Do Today? newsletter sees the president “trading regulatory power for media control. … The merger battles surrounding CBS, CNN and Warner Bros. Discovery are no longer about markets or efficiency; they are loyalty tests.”
■ Journalist Jonathan Alter predicts: “Weiss will … learn the lesson that Bob Iger absorbed when ABC briefly bent the knee to Trump, who wanted to kill Jimmy Kimmel’s show. Trump’s intimidation boomeranged and made Kimmel bigger than ever.”
■ By one count, late-night hosts told 7,045 Trump jokes in 2025.

‘I’ve been particularly watching the great city of Chicago.’ MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow was giddy last night about the prospect that a winner of the city’s annual snowplow naming contest could be “Abolish ICE.”
■ The nominations round of this year’s contest runs through Jan. 10.
■ Chicago residents—or at least those who enter Chicago ZIP codes 😉—can vote here.
■ Illinois congressmembers who finally—after a six-month wait—got to tour the federal immigration detention center in Broadview report that it had no medical staff on-site and was short on showers and toilets with adequate privacy.
■ Block Club: “By this fall, ICE agents were arresting people at a higher rate in Illinois than almost anywhere else in the country.”

Fresh meat. The Post (gift link) says a second big batch of files on convicted and now dead sex offender and Trump confidant Jeffrey Epstein was released—and then un-released and then released again—yesterday …

Trump’s ‘war on windmills.’ Vox dissects the administration’s decision to end leases for construction of five in-progress wind farms off the East Coast—citing “national security risks.”
■ One Democratic senator says the decision looks “more like … vindictive harassment … than anything legitimate.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)

‘MAGA has finally found a hill it is willing to die on: Refusing to say no to Adolph Hitler.’ Columnist Julie Roginsky: “The scene at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest this weekend looked like a holiday party where everyone pretends not to notice the guy praising the Third Reich because calling him out would ‘ruin the vibe.’”
■ Gary Legum at Wonkette: The conservative Heritage Foundation is in disarray over the “To be or not to be Nazis” question.

‘The tax part is huge.’ A lawyer with the Illinois Independent Craft Growers Association welcomes Trump’s proposal to relax marijuana regulations, but the Tribune explains (gift link) it probably won’t make much immediate difference for the state’s consumers.
■ Eric Zorn to the Chicago Police Board, which voted to fire a cop who tested positive for marijuana: “Grow up. … Marijuana is legal, and using it off the job … should be no different than drinking while off the job.”
■ Add the ACLU to those headed to the Supreme Court to challenge a federal law forbidding marijuana users from owning guns.

‘IBPOOPN.’ That’s just one of the more than 500 vanity license plate requests rejected this year by Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias’s office.
■ Giannoulias turned his roundup into a stand-up comedy routine for YouTube.
■ Axios Chicago signs off for 2025 with a review of the year’s top stories.

While you’re sittin’ around through the holidays … Maybe you can spare 30 seconds or so to cast a vote or two for Square in the Reader’s Best of Chicago poll, which closes New Year’s Eve?
■ Even though Trump’s declared tomorrow and the day after Christmas federal holidays, the postal service will be open for business as usual both days.
■ Happy/merry. Embrace those you love, celebrate what you can.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.

‘60 Minutes’ scandal / Circular firing squad / Crooks got cash

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As other daily email news briefings abandon you this week … Chicago Public Square’s still here. Let’s get to it:


60 Minutes scandal. In a decision that its own correspondent calls “political,” newly Donald Trump-compliant CBS News at the last minute yanked a story on Trump administration deportations of immigrants to El Salvador.
■ In a private note to colleagues obtained by The New York Times (gift link), the correspondent who reported the segment wrote: “Pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”
■ She compares it to one of the show’s most infamous embarrassments: The suppression in 1995 of an interview with a high-ranking tobacco industry whistleblower (2016 link).
■ The decision came from the news division’s new chief, Bari Weiss …
■ … who, among other things, wanted to add an interview with Trump consigliere Stephen Miller.
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter lays out evidence suggesting “Weiss was pressured by the Trump admin … to hold the story once it was publicized” …
■ … and he reports that 60 Minutes staffers are threatening to quit.
■ CBS overlord Paramount’s upping its effort to snatch Warner Bros. Discovery out of Netflix’s clutches.

Circular firing squad. In Turning Point USA’s first gathering since the assassination of its founder, Charlie Kirk, conservative leaders expended lots of energy insulting one another.
■ Columnist Robert Hubbell: Vice President Vance spewed the audience with “white supremacist language” and refused to “condemn antisemitic forces in MAGA.”
■ Columnist Steven Beschloss: “This deeply craven and ambitious man proves over and over that—with greater power—he will extend Trump’s demagoguery and divisive messages of hate.”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson eviscerates Vance’s assertion that “the only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been, and by the grace of God we always will be, a Christian nation.”
■ A Bridgeport neighborhood record store has received a death threat for selling “Black music, rap music, Spanish music.”

‘Flagrant violation of the deadline.’ Law professor Joyce Vance marvels at “the possibility Congress might actually … do something” about the Trump administration’s failure to comply with the Epstein Transparency Act’s requirement of the files’ full release last Friday.
■ Wonkette’s Marcie Jones: “What was released was heavily redacted, including a 119-page document that was blacked out entirely. Though the word ‘Trump’ still appears in the release more than 600 times, derp! And certain things were added, too.”

‘The house is on fire, and the mayor and City Council are fighting over an array of squirt guns.’ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg is unimpressed by dueling plans to resolve Chicago’s budget crisis: “Jacking up the tax on plastic bags just won’t do it.”
■ The Tribune: Cook County property tax troubles have triggered school district budget problems—and demands for reform.

Crooks got cash. The Sun-Times reports that former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and ex-Ald. Edward Burke—both convicted criminals—still have the option of dipping into their multimillion-dollar campaign funds for personal use if they choose.
■ The Times (gift link): “Trump has unabashedly adopted the trappings of royalty.”

Waymo trouble. A massive power outage that shut down traffic lights paralyzed a fleet of robotaxis.
■ The Times: Uber cleared violent felons to drive. Then passengers accused them of rape.

‘Welcome everyone by shouting Six-Seven! and waving your arms.’ DadWrites proprietor Michael Rosenbaum offers tips for avoiding embarrassment at your holiday dinner.
■ Author and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich makes a case for not greeting older people with “You look great!” (Which your Square columnist got a lot at a funeral a couple of weeks back.)
■ The Current warns you to beware holiday scams: AI-powered email hoaxes designed to exploit last-minute shoppers’ insecurities about gift deliveries delayed.
■ Block Club: Chicago’s in line for what could be one of its warmest Christmas Days ever.

‘I consider Public Square’s value … inestimable.’ Those lovely words last week accompanied a reader’s year-end contribution to help keep this service coming.
■ Yes, financial support is great—but so is something that won’t cost you a cent and that you can do in less than a minute: A vote or two for Square in the Reader’s Best of Chicago poll, which closes New Year’s Eve.

Thanks. Al Slater and Mike Braden made this edition better.

Square up.

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