‘A stunning landslide.’ Scandal-scarred Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard went down to defeat in yesterday’s primary …
■ … drawing the curtain on a term in office that earned her widespread comparison to the principal on the TV show Abbott Elementary. (January 2024 link.)
■ Updating Cook County election results here.
‘Uh, how’d that happen?’ That’s a puzzled Southwest Airlines pilot yesterday, moments after averting a disastrous collision with a business jet at Midway Airport.
■ Here’s video.
■ California Sen. Adam Schiff: “The near miss on a tarmac in Chicago is small part of a much, much bigger problem.”
■ A Metra train struck and killed a person in Downers Grove yesterday—the second fatal accident at that crossing in less than 24 hours.
Give him your rich, your foreign, your upper classes willing to bend knee. President Trump says he’s launching a program offering a path to citizenship for people who pay $5 million for what he calls a “gold card.”
■ Trump’s words: “They’ll be wealthy and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money.”
■ Historian and On Tyranny author Tim Snyder sees “the ennoblement of oligarchy” as central to Trump and Elon Musk’s dismantling of the federal government.
What, no yellow star? The Wall Street Journal: “Trump proposes fines, prison time for migrants who don’t join registry.”
■ Homeland Security: Everyone here illegally must register, giving fingerprints and an address.
■ Wonkette: Texas’ attorney general wants genetic testing for 220,000 athletes.
‘Republican rip-off.’ That’s Democrats’ take on a budget advancing in the House—with $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and $2 trillion in spending cuts.
■ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke: “Trump no longer needs MAGA voters, so he’s gutting Medicaid and laying off veterans.”
■ Politico: Gov. Pritzker’s trying to pry $2 billion in federal funding cut by the Trump administration.
■ Capitol News Illinois: Pritzker’s deliberately positioning himself at the forefront of Trump opposition.
Departures dog DOGE. Close to two dozen civil service workers— engineers, data scientists, designers and product managers—have quit Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” …
■ … asserting in a letter, “We will not use our skills as technologists to … jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data or dismantle critical public services.”
■ Trump’s press secretary: “Don’t let the door kick you on the way out.”
■ Wired: DOGE’s working on software to automate government workers’ dismissal.
■ Jimmy Kimmel says Musk’s bollixed-up demand that federal employees justify their employment has left them “as confused as Elon’s kids were when they realized their father named them after a phone number.”
■ The American Prospect: “Bird flu is rampaging among chickens and cattle, while Trump and Musk gut the agencies responsible for stopping it.”
■ Greg Sargent at The New Republic: Musk’s assault on the U.S. Agency for International Development is putting starving kids at risk.
‘Trump wants (white) generals who’ll follow his unlawful orders.’ But Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch says racism isn’t even the worst part of the Pentagon coup. (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ The Bulwark: “It IS happening here. Trump’s autocratic project isn’t some threat on the horizon.”
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich: Trump’s overnight posting of an AI-generated video envisioning “an ethnically-cleansed Gaza … checks every fucking crazypants box imaginable.”
Truth in transcription? Apple says it’ll stomp an iPhone bug that briefly suggests the word Trump when someone dictates the word “racist” …
■ … a thing caught in video posted online.
■ An Apple alumnus tells The New York Times, “this smells like a serious prank.”
■ Apple’s shareholders have rejected a plan to end its diversity programs.
■ Wired: As bosses summon remote employees back for in-person work, warehouse-style tracking tech is coming for office workers.
Things to do.
■ Indivisible Chicago’s convening a rally downtown Thursday to support the endangered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau …
■ … whose shutdown, American Prospect editor David Dayen says, “is entirely about payment apps: Elon Musk and other Big Tech CEOs want to manage your money without any regulatory protections.”
■ The Chicago Headline Club’s hosting its annual open-to-the-public FOIA Fest next month, teaching how to get access to government records—“particularly as Chicago governmental bodies are less cooperative and as the Trump Administration, which has proven to be hostile towards the press, begins its second term.”
■ Columnist Andy Borowitz shares a list of things “keeping me sane during Elon Musk’s flaming Cybertruck of a presidency.”
‘A stunning move that should trouble all Americans.’ Poynter’s Tom Jones sounds an alarm about the Trump administration’s announcement that it, and not the White House Correspondents’ Association, will assemble the press pools covering the president at times when the full press corps can’t be accommodated.
■ Esquire’s Charlie Pierce sees MSNBC’s layoffs as “an orgy of bad faith and bad ideas.”
■ Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos’ plan to overhaul the Post’s opinion section—to focus on “personal liberties, free markets”—prompted an editor’s resignation.
■ The Wall Street Journal on CNN refugee Oliver Darcy’s startup email newsletter about the media biz: “It has quickly become a must-read for the power brokers of publishing and entertainment.”
■ Media watcher Simon Owens on a wave of news-org alumni building their own businesses: “CNN has 3,500 employees, so if they managed to create anywhere near the same amount of value as Darcy, then that would result in $3.5 billion in subscription revenue.”
■ Five years ago, Owens was kind enough to spotlight Chicago Public Square as a pioneer in this space.