‘Constitutional crisis’ / Trump sucks / Google gulps

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‘Constitutional crisis.’ Surveying news coverage of Donald Trump’s rampage through government, CNN’s Brian Stelter finds those words showing up, well, almost everywhere.
■ Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic: “It’s not simply that the new administration has flouted a raft of federal statutes and prompted a flood of legal challenges. It’s that … Trump’s top advisers have cast doubt on whether rulings on those lawsuits would even constrain the president.”
■ Law professor Joyce Vance wrote yesterday: “We are on alert for a point where a court issues an order and Trump’s administration refuses to comply with it.”
■ And, um, well, er, ah … we may have already passed that point.
■ ProPublica: “The courts blocked Trump’s federal funding freeze. Agencies are withholding money anyway.”
■ The United States Agency for International Development’s inspector general—who one observer wryly jokes is “presumably operating from a remote base in the mountains”—has released a report on the human cost of Trump and Elon Musk’s dismantling of the agency.
■ David Lurie at Public Notice: “It’s disturbingly easy to envision a situation where Trump’s assault on the nation’s constitutional order rapidly changes from a cold to a hot war.”
■ Press Watch proprietor Dan Froomkin says journalists now need “to fully and intentionally go into crisis mode. That means constant, round-the-clock, top-of-the-homepage coverage until the crisis is resolved.”
■ American Prospect columnist David Dayen: “Will we be roused to action, in that ultimate moment when Trump is told what he cannot do, and he ignores it?”
■ The typically reserved American Bar Association has come out swinging against the new administration’s “wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ NBC News: A federal law enforcement official calls Trump’s assault on the FBI “a nightmare.”
■ Daily Show alumnus John Oliver—a U.S. citizen born in Britain—returned last night, welcoming America back to monarchy.

What we’re losing. The Sun-Times’ Stephanie Zimmermann surveys how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Trump and Musk have kneecapped, has helped Illinoisans.
■ American Freakshow columnist Nina Burleigh: “The world’s richest man has all your personal data and stores your money. What could possibly go wrong? We might never know since a very tiny man named Russell Vought has shut down the one agency that might protect us.”
■ Economist Paul Krugman: The sudden closure is “part of an effort to make predatory finance great again.”
■ Tech watchdog Cory Doctorow: Musk’s stealing a billion dollars from low-income Americans and sending it to TurboTax parent Intuit.*
■ Author Brian Tyler Cohen: If Musk were serious about cutting government waste, “he would start with the agency that serves as a poster child for financial mismanagement. The Pentagon” …
■ … but no, ProPublica says, Musk’s team has decimated the Education Department arm tracking school performance nationwide.

Illinois vs. Trump. Joining 21 other states, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul is suing to block Trump from cutting billions in federal aid to medical and public health institutions.
■ Joyce Vance sees “a smart litigation strategy” in the suit: “The only relief sought is for the states that have sued. … Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, which receives more than $400 million in funds, is out of luck unless Sen. Marsha Blackburn can talk Trump off the ledge.”
■ A nonprofit that has provided health care and food for Chicago’s needy is shutting down clinics and pantries.

Trump sucks. The president’s signed an order banning federal use of paper straws.
■ Trump critic Jon Stewart: “He is right on this one. Those straws are … objectively terrible.”

Google gulps. The former Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America in Google Maps …
■ … but just in the U.S.
■ USA Today columnist Rex Huppke expects Trump to rename the Super Bowl “the Trump America Bowl.”

‘A very fine person.’ That’s how Trump describes ex-Illinois Gov.—and former Celebrity Apprentice under Trump—Rod Blagojevich, for whose conviction on charges of political corruption the president has issued a full and unconditional pardon.
■ Blagojevich has been at large since Trump commuted his sentence five years ago.
■ Columnist Eric Zorn on the possibility Trump will appoint the ex-governor U.S. ambassador to Serbia: “If Trump pardoning Blago helps put 4,982 miles between us and that sleazebag, I’m all for it!”
■ Sen. Dick Durbin, a fellow Democrat: “America and Serbia deserve better.”
■ Good timing: Trump’s signed an order pausing enforcement of a ban on bribery of foreign governments.
■ Speaking of troubled politicians accused of bribery and getting breaks from Trump: A convenient change of heart seems to have accrued to the benefit of New York Mayor Eric Adams …
■ … a move that gobsmacks Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: “We can’t prosecute him because he’s a candidate for office? Wow.”

Get those guns. Gov. Pritzker’s signed a new law clarifying that local cops must at least temporarily take firearms away from a person when someone with an order of protection against that person seeks such removal in court.

Today’s dusting is just a taste. Wednesday could bring Chicago’s biggest snowfall of the season.

Egg limits. Struggling with supplies crimped by the bird flu, retailers are beginning to limit how many eggs people can buy at a time.
■ Tedium’s Ernie Smith takes an eggs-tremely close look at the history of egg cartons.

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The ‘big delete’ / ‘Everyone is scared’ / 8 inches?

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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 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.

Coming soon: Springtime for Hitler. Trump’s firing Kennedy Center for Performing Arts board members and naming himself chair, in charge of programming.

■ 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.

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