World disorder / Scars for kids / Grok shock

World disorder. The Associated Press says the U.S. attack on Venezuela puts a global tradition of international rules and laws at risk of crumbling before a doctrine of “might makes right.”

■ CNN surveys “the many ways” lawyers for arrested Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro could derail the U.S. court case against him.

■ The anonymously bylined What Did Trump Do Today: “The U.S. justified his ouster as a narcotics crackdown even as the consequences unfolded not in courtrooms, but in energy markets.”

■ The Dow Jones Industrial Average set a record yesterday, with oil stocks up sharply.

■ Axios’ Monica Eng lays out the stakes for Chicago’s Venezuelans.

■ The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner allows that Trump could pull this off.

■ The Onion: “Trump Claims He Will Marry Maduro’s Wife Until Suitable Replacement Found.”

Democrats’ shaky political ground. Flashbacks to 2020: Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer criticized Trump for not getting rid of Maduro …

■ … and 2019: Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy and Obama-era deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes wrote in The Washington Post (gift link), “The Trump administration is right to put restoring Venezuelan democracy at the center of our approach to this crisis. A return to a stable democracy is in the interest of the Venezuelan people, the United States and the hemisphere.”

■ The Onion: “Congress: ‘If You Wanted An Expensive Foreign War, All You Had To Do Was Ask.’”

Next: Greenland? Top Trump aide Stephen Miller says Greenland rightly belongs to the U.S.

■ A close Venezuelan ally, Cuba, is on edge.

‘Maybe it’s JD Vance time.’ USA Today Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke: “A 79-year-old man with near-constant and not-well-explained bruises on his hands … has now led America into what appears to be an occupation of Venezuela, with no clear sense of why it happened or how it will end. Does that worry you? It should.”

■ Jimmy Kimmel doubts Trump’s ability to run two countries at once: “Is running the United States not enough? I mean, if you’re looking for a challenge, try a sit-up.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)

■ LateNighter reviews how hosts last night caught up with events over the last two weeks.

■ Stephen Colbert’s studio clearance sale has raised more than $175,000 for charity.

Scars for kids. In an unprecedented move that medical experts have denounced, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has cut the number of vaccines it recommends for every child.

■ Your Local Epidemiologist: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “bypassed every scientific and clinical process we have.”

■ Illinois’ public health director pledges that it’ll have “no bearing” on vaccine recommendations in this state.

■ Illinois flu activity’s running “very high” …

■ … and has taken the life of at least one child as hospitalizations rise “dramatically.”

■ Cook County’s health director warns that a lack of action by Congress this week on extension of credits for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act will force people to delay medical care until they’re confronting crises.

‘I’m not backing down.’ Sen. Mark Kelly told The Daily Show last night that he’s “going to do everything in my power” to fight the Trump administration’s decision to cut his retirement pay for his counsel that U.S. military members defy illegal orders.

■ The Atlantic’s David Graham calls it “a pernicious form of political bullying.”

■ Columnist and self-identified “queer Army vet” Charlotte Clymer reviews Kelly’s career: “Good lord, has this man done a lot.”

‘Democracy hung in the balance.’ The AP looks back five years to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol …

■ …. a day that historian Heather Cox Richardson says echoed 1861, when “insurrectionists who had tried to overthrow the government  … to establish minority rule tried to break the U.S.”

■ Law professor Joyce Vance: The nation can’t afford to forget what happened.

■ A plaque created to honor law enforcers who protected Congress that day ain’t to be found at the Republican-controlled Capitol—even though the law requires it.

■ The New York Times (gift link): “For many Jan. 6 rioters, a pardon from Trump wasn’t enough.”

■ Popular Information salutes 10 corporations that, five years later, still aren’t funding election deniers.

■ Columnist Neil Steinberg is kindasorta—for Neil Steinberg, anyway—optimistic: “The second Trump term is worse than the first, and we have not yet reached the bottom. But we will. We will … eventually. And then bounce back up, rise again.”

R.I.P., CPB. Its federal funding wiped out by Republicans in Congress, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board has voted to dissolve the organization after 59 years.

■ CNN’s Brian Stelter sees it as “a concrete example of a Project 2025 proposal turning into reality.”

■ Journalism watchdog Margaret Sullivan: “Should the news media ‘love America’? … Not the way CBS News seems to have in mind.”

■ Mark Jacob at Stop the Presses questions in-the-know reporters’ decision not to reveal the Venezuela assault beforehand: “Is it still in the public interest for journalists to keep secrets about Trump’s anti-democratic use of the military?”

Grok shock. The Washington Post reports (gift link): “X [Twitter] users tell Grok to undress women and girls in photos. It’s saying yes. … Owner Elon Musk responded with a laughing emoji.”

Thanks. Chicago Public Square keeps coming because readers keep supporting it—for as little as $1, just once.

■ Ed Sackley made this edition better.

Can’t get there from here / Some call it war / ‘I want to thank our president’

Oh. Hi, 2026.

Can’t get there from here. As of today, Chicago’s oldest and busiest L station, the 1895-vintage State and Lake stop, is closed for at least three years …

■ … to make way for a more roomy and fully accessible platform.

■ Here’s what you can do in the meanwhile. (Dec. 11 photo illustration.)

■ Sign up here to get email updates on the project.

■ Hey, at least it’ll be warmer as you walk those extra blocks this week.

Some call it war. Following the U.S. assault on Venezuela that put President Nicolás Maduro in Donald Trump’s clutches, Trump’s now threatening intervention in at least six other nations.

■ Poynter media writer Tom Jones: “On the Sunday shows, the White House called it law enforcement. Democrats called it war.”

■ Writer and filmmaker Steven Beschloss on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s performance: “This is what happens when you are the obedient servant of a malignant narcissist, determined to please this felonious, failed businessman who’s easily bored by strategic planning and driven by whim, vengeance and a bottomless desire for money, power and attention.”

■ Wonkette: “Rubio looks like more of a soulless husk every day trying to keep up with the old man’s lies.”

■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “If the strikes were a law enforcement operation, officials will need to explain how officers managed to kill so many civilians, as well as members of security forces.”

■ Jeff Tiedrich at Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion: “Donny’s plan for Venezuela sounds like … what the mob does to a restaurant when it decides to take over.”

‘A global pariah.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link): “On the 250th anniversary of America’s founding as a grand experiment in democracy, we are now a rogue state.”

■ Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich: “Trump is … destroying the rules-based system of international law and diplomacy that the United States created in the wake of the horrors of World War II.”

■ Lawyer and columnist Robert Hubbell sees an unprecedented moment in U.S. history: “Will America become an aggressor nation that rules through force and intimidation to expand our ample supplies of oil and strategic minerals?”

■ Radio host and author Thom Hartman: “The Trump regime embraces the worldview that fueled Hitler.”

■ Among those who knew about the Venezuelan raid beforehand but didn’t say anything: The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The charges against Maduro. The AP explains how cocaine and corruption led to his indictment.

■ The Telegraph dubs him a “corrupt bus driver who squeezed the life out of Latin America’s richest nation.”

■ Updating coverage: Protesters representing an array of causes gathered outside the Manhattan courthouse where he was to face arraignment this morning.

■ Popular Information: His ouster is a financial windfall for the MAGA billionaire who owns Citgo.

■ The Conversation: The U.S. spent decades pressuring Venezuela’s leaders over its oil wealth.

■ Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein: “Even I, a bone-deep critic of the national security state, couldn’t help but admire it.”

■ In Trump’s Venezuelan assault, columnist Charlotte Clymer sees the philosophy of Nick Offerman’s character on Parks and Recreation: “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.”

For telling servicemembers not to follow illegal orders … Democratic U.S. Sen., retired Navy captain and former astronaut Mark Kelly faces a downgrade in retirement rank and pay—under censure imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

■ Here’s the video at the heart of the matter.

Your tax bucks at work. A Tribune analysis concludes (gift link) that Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz” on Chicago has cost at least $59 million—including $100,000 worth of less-than-lethal munitions over just two weeks.

■ Politico: In more than 1,600 cases, more than 300 federal judges have rejected Trump’s mandatory detention policy—“with no end in sight.”

■ Amid Trump’s continuing attacks over pandemic-era fraud charges against companies supposed to have been providing social services for migrants, Minnesota Gov.—and the Democrats’ last vice presidential candidate—Tim Walz says he won’t seek a third term.

‘A structural economic failure … hurting the country at all levels.’ A strategic communications consultant* and mother of two who finds herself and her husband simultaneously unemployed writes for the Sun-Times: “Upper-middle-class professionals who assumed the economy would always work for us are now saying the quiet part out loud: It isn’t.”

■ The New York Times (gift link): Economists see the Supreme Court increasingly favoring the rich.

‘I want to thank our president, Donald Jennifer Trump … for all the many ridiculous things you do each and every day.’ Jimmy Kimmel shared the credit Sunday as he accepted the Critics Choice Award for best talk show.

■ Here’s the full list of winners.

Ready for action? Existentialist Republic proprietor Christopher Armitage says you don’t have to wait until the next election: “States are sovereign governments with independent constitutional authority. We need to use ours. States can protect us if they choose to. We have to make sure they choose to.”

■ Columnist Mike Gold: “It will take less energy to put an end to MAGA fascism than it will to put up with them.”

Didja miss Chicago Public Square over the last couple of weeks? You know what keeps Square coming back after vacations: The financial support—even just $1, just once—of readers like (and maybe even already including) you.

■ Thanks, one and all.

■ Mike Braden made this edition better.

A Square public service announcement

* And friend to your Square columnist.