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.
