Still married / Schrödinger’s SNAP / Not so bad

Chicago Public Square will take Tuesday off. We’ll meet again here Wednesday.

Still married. The Supreme Court’s rejected a call to reverse its landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage across the country.
■ It’s bad news for ex-Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who faces a world of legal pain for her refusal to issue such marriage licenses.

Pardonpalooza. President Trump’s pardoned his ex-personal lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and others accused of backing efforts to overturn the 2020 election …

■ … although those pardons are mainly symbolic, because none of ’em were charged with federal crimes, and Trump can’t pardon people for state offenses.

■ The unbylined What Did Donald Trump Do Today blog: Trump spent his social media time Sunday on an “increasingly crazy” “ObamaCare rant.”

■ Cartoonist Ann Telnaes offers her design for a commemorative Trump coin.

Transit’s ‘pivotal moment.’ Now that the Chicago region has won landmark legislation to overhaul mass transportation, Environmental Law & Policy Center CEO Howard Learner calls out big changes the new Northern Illinois Transit Authority should prioritize.

■ Meanwhile, the Chicago Public Library stands to lose half its budget for new books and other material.

‘Fear created by indiscriminate enforcement.’ In a full-page newspaper ad, business and civic leaders—Democrats and Republicans—condemn the Trump administration’s Chicago immigration blitz.

■ In apparent violation of a federal judge’s order, federal agents pepper-sprayed a 1-year-old girl in Cicero …

■ … and they crashed a Girl Scout food drive.

■ A Sun-Times reporter’s first-person account: “Deportation has taken away the father I once knew and given me back a person I no longer recognize.”

■ Block Club: “Border Patrol agents pose at The Bean for apparent photo op.”

■ The Guardian: “Border patrol chief reprimanded for lying claims shots were fired at immigration officers in Chicago.”

■ City Cast counts off three times Homeland Security lied to Chicago.

■ The pseudonymously bylined Closer to the Edge has an open letter for the chief: “You turned lying into a public-service function and bootlicking into a moral philosophy.”

■ Columnist Neil Steinberg: “The general timidity that can affect newspaper editors is being sandblasted away by children being snatched off the street.”

Schrödinger’s SNAP. A jumble of court rulings and shifty statements from Trump have left states uncertain whether they can or should provide Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits to the needy.

■ With signs of a Senate budget truce—and an end to the record government shutdown—in the making, Politico sees the rise of a Democratic civil war.

■ Lawyer/columnist Robert Hubbell: “Sens. Schumer and [Illinois’] Durbin should resign from their leadership positions … as they are obviously incapable of leading the Democratic caucus.”

■ Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer: “No one can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory like the Democrats.”

■ On the other hand, Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall says, counterintuitively, “the overall situation and outcome is basically fine” for Democrats.

Not so bad. Those warnings of up to a foot of snow for Chicago proved inaccurate—with totals more like 1-3 inches west of Lake Michigan …

■ … although some to the south and east got it worse. (Photo: Fulton Market, by Seth Anderson, in the open-to-all Chicago Public Square Flickr group.)

■ A handful of Illinois schools closed for the day.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. Under fire from Trump for the editing of his infamous Jan. 6, 2021, speech, a TV network—in this case, Britain’s BBC—is losing its most senior executives.

■ CNN’s Brian Stelter: The BBC could have avoided this mess with a teensy “‘white flash,’ an editing effect that shows one snippet of video is ending and another is beginning.”

■ Tom Jones at Poynter: This shows the high cost of editorial mistakes in a polarized era.

■ Newly Trumpified 60 Minutes last night embraced the bipartisan criticism of its Trump interview last week.

‘Carlson invited … Nick Fuentes onto his podcast to whitesupremacist it up for two and a half hours.’ Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion columnist Jeff Tiedrich updates what Fox News alumnus Tucker Carlson’s been up to.

■ Popular Information calls the roll of companies sponsoring Carlson while he mainstreams white supremacy.

■ Don’t expect lots of hard-hitting reporting on T-Mobile from CNN.

■ A former college professor regrets agreeing to a New York Times interview about New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani: “I’m a fucking idiot.”

‘I don’t think I’ll live to see a happy ending to the current situation.’ Tribune writer Ron Grossman’s closing his notebook after 50 years. (Gift link, courtesy of those who support Chicago Public Square.)

■ After 40 years with the station, WGN Radio news anchor and host Steve Bertrand signs off Thursday.

■ A federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan is quitting after 40 years “to advocate for the judges who cannot speak publicly for themselves.”

‘Shocks the conscience’ / Grounded / Quizzes!

‘Shocks the conscience.’ Finding “the government’s evidence to be simply not credible,” U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis has extended restrictions on immigration agents’ use of force in their assault on Chicago.

■ She’s also requiring that agents display visible ID and that most of them wear body cameras.

■ Before she brought the hammer down, the judge read Carl Sandburg’s poem “Chicago.” (You can read it in its entirety here.)

■ She let Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino have it: He “admitted that he lied about whether a rock hit him before he deployed tear gas in Little Village.”

■ The Tribune’s Armando Sanchez caught Bovino for a brief interview on video as he went grocery shopping: “We always enjoy the press.”

■ A minister hit with pepperballs at Broadview says Bovino “moved in unprovoked and body slammed people and then complained that they had attacked him, and the video evidence shows otherwise.”

■ An Oak Park trustee indicted on federal charges after protesting at Broadview is soliciting donations for his legal defense.
■ The Evanston Roundtable: The FBI’s trying to block release of records involving a Border Patrol agent’s alleged aiming of a pistol at onlookers after his vehicle was involved in a Halloween crash.

■ Chicago police are sitting on video of a Border Patrol agent’s shooting of a woman last month.

Where is Diana Galeano? A Chicago City Council member says the teacher arrested as kids attended Chicago’s Rayito del Sol daycare center is at Broadview.

■ The mom of one student there: “It’s something that is out of a terror movie. I could not sleep last night thinking about the safety of my children.”

■ Oak Park’s village board has unanimously passed an ordinance banning immigration agents from using village property.

‘The jury determined that the launching of the 12-inch deli sandwich from what the government described as ‘point-blank range’ was not an attempt to cause bodily injury.’ That sentence-no-journalism-class-could-have-prepared-a-reporter-to-write appears in The New York Times’ account (gift link) of a jury’s acquittal of a man accused of assaulting a federal agent.

■ Law prof Joyce Vance: “Not a single juror … believed the government proved its case.”

■ Lawyer/columnist Robert Hubbell: “Federal jury refuses to convict a ham sandwich.”

■ Lisa Needham at Public Notice says the case put on display “the softest Nazis you ever did see … such delicate flowers that if they are, say, lightly grazed by a sandwich, they are entitled to justice because of the horrific assault they have suffered.”

■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst mocks: “So now sandwich beatings are legal. Another flawless victory for US Attorney Boxwine.”

■ That trial was Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz’s runner-up for Dingus of the Week.

■ Seen on Bluesky: “This sets a dangerous legal precedent that I intend to profit from, as the inventor of the knifewich.”

‘You are the literal worst.’ Chicago-based USA Today columnist Rex Huppke boils down the message voters sent Donald Trump and the Republican Party Tuesday.

■ Politico: Now begins Trump’s lame duck era.

■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson says Republican gerrymandering plans could backfire in another blue-wave election “by moving Republican voters into Democratic-leaning districts, thus weakening formerly safe Republican districts” …

■ … but Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link) fears “Democracy’s big night on Tuesday all but ensures Trump will try to double down on dictatorship.”

Grounded. The federal shutdown has come to roost at the nation’s busiest airports, forcing airlines to cut 10% of their flights …

■ … including United in Chicago.

■ Columnist Neil Steinberg: “The government that should be working smoothly, like air traffic control, isn't, while efforts that shouldn't be done in the first place, like extrajudicial ICE kidnappings, hum along.”

‘The gerontocracy is dead.’ Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein has personal reasons to celebrate ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to retire.

■ PolitiFact sums up 17 years of fact-checking Pelosi—about three-quarters of the time rating her questionable statements Half True, Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire.

‘If you are an immigration official … and believe that the public might later criticize you … would you go out of the way to preserve those records that might expose wrongdoing?’ The Freedom of the Press Foundation is sounding an alarm about Homeland Security’s ditching of software that automatically captured federal workers’ text messages and instead relies on them to, believe it or not, just take screenshots.

■ 404 Media says AI is supercharging “the war on libraries, education and human knowledge.”

■ Seven lawsuits filed yesterday claim ChatGPT encouraged suicides and triggered mental breakdowns.

■ The weekend’s a good time to review University of Illinois Chicago journalism lecturer Mike Reilley’s overview of artificial technology and fact-check tech for Chicago Public Square readers.

‘Mamdani wins, Cheney dies and the biggest shopping day you never heard of.’ Those topics await you in Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel’s latest news quiz for The Conversation.

■ You’ll have little trouble topping your Chicago Public Square columnist’s anemic 5/8 score.

■ But you cannot beat that perfect 5/5 on City Cast’s Chicago-centric news quiz.

Jimmy Kimmel, M.I.A. Last night’s show was canceled—as of Chicago Public Square’s email deadline, without explanation.

■ Watch the Square Bluesky account for updates.

■ Substack columnist and Kimmel writer Bess Kalb says her paid subscriptions plummeted after she endorsed Zohran Mamdani for mayor of New York: “I wrote a progressive Jewish opinion and lost so much money it’s essentially deplatforming.”

■ The Wrap has video of a confrontation that led to the firings of four editorial staffers demanding answers about layoffs at Teen Vogue.

Top Workplaces. The Tribune’s out with its 2025 rankings of Chicago-area organizations. (Gift link, paid for by those who support Chicago Public Square.)

■ How the winners were picked.