WGN Television has laid off eight veteran members of its news staff. Crain’s Chicago Business reports:

Eight reporters and anchors were laid off Monday at WGN-Ch. 9, the latest round of cuts at the Chicago television station owned by Dallas-based Nexstar Media Group, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Among those let go was weekend morning anchor Sean Lewis, a nearly 20-year veteran of the station. Lewis said he was informed of his dismissal Monday afternoon after filing what became his final report for the noon broadcast.

The layoffs follow additional reductions in recent months, including six newswriters and three technical directors last month and four floor directors in October, according to newsroom sources cited by the Tribune.

Nexstar declined to comment on specific personnel matters but said in a statement it is “taking steps necessary to compete effectively in this period of unprecedented change.”

I’m sad to see this move. It’s another step in the decline of local news coverage.

As I’ve mentioned before my wife and I frequently watch WGN’s evening news coverage. That was particularly true during the nightly “Dolton follies” which I posted on. WGN’s regular reporting on the political and governmental problems in Dolton was instrumental in mobilizing that town to reform itself. That’s something that only local news coverage will do.

Some of our favorite WGN personalities have been laid off. I’d like to know more about this story but we’re even less likely to learn more about it now than we were a week ago.

As of today, February 24, 2026, the war between Russia and Ukraine enters its fifth year. Whatever the actual casualties their numbers have been horrific on both sides with tremendous harm to civilians and infrastructure.

As of this writing neither side has achieved its stated objectives in the war as gauged by President Putin’s and President Zelensky’s public statements and show little likelihood of doing so. In particular I see little material way of Ukraine accomplishing its goals.

All of that notwithstanding I believe that the United States should continue to provide military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Russia should not have invaded Ukraine—it is a violation of treaties to which Russia is a signatory. I also support continuing and tightening economic sanctions against Russia. Our policies with respect to Eastern Europe have often been misguided, even perverse but that is a digression. The matter at hand is the ongoing war. The objective is not total Ukrainian victory but the preservation of Ukrainian sovereignty under conditions that do not risk global catastrophe.

War is not a zero-sum game. Everyone loses. The “winner” just loses less than the “loser”. We will continue to lose as long as this war continues.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post Mexican journalist León Krauze exhorts Mexico’s president to continue the fight in which she has engaged against criminal cartels in Mexico:

On Sunday, Claudia Sheinbaum’s government recorded a significant success in its fight against organized crime. In an operation led by its armed forces, Mexican authorities killed Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes — “El Mencho” — the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), the most powerful criminal organization to emerge in Mexico in decades.

and

Oseguera’s death also marks a definitive break with years of permissiveness under the previous administration led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. López Obrador’s “hugs, not bullets” strategy allowed criminal organizations such as the CJNG to expand their dominance. Oseguera’s killing suggests that the constant pressure exerted by the Trump administration has pushed the Mexican government to change course. Indeed, early reporting suggests U.S. intelligence helped make the operation a success.

warning that what she has already accomplished is just the first step in what is likely to be a long and bloody campaign:

Sheinbaum may have embarked on this more aggressive path only reluctantly, but she must now stay the course. It will probably be a complicated and bloody ride.

Although the U. S.’s provision of intelligence was prudent and the U. S. will benefit materially from a reduction in cartel activity in Mexico (and the U. S.!), we should take care to maintain a low profile in this “ride”. Not everything is about us and making it about us runs the risk of adding political risk to the material risks already involved, potentially derailing the campaign. Mexicans have a historically well-founded wariness of U. S. intervention in Mexican affairs.

Potentially, participation can have various escalating levels: quiet intelligence aid, taking credit, and actual operational participation. We should limit kinetic participation to activities on our side of the border. Doing otherwise invites nationalist backlash.

Mexico is a large, proud country, prosperous by world standards despite having many poor people in it. They don’t need us to fight their wars for them or want us to take credit for doing it. Take the win graciously.

I recognized that I was likely to concur with Dr. Ashish K. Jha’s assessment of physicians’ use of LLM AI before I read his Washington Post op-ed:

The public is rightly wary about this new technology in health care. Its misuse can have serious consequences for patients, for example, by inappropriately denying care, hallucinating incorrect information or overlooking pertinent patient information. Clear guardrails and direct patient contact with medical professionals is crucial.

Still, for time-pressed doctors, a tool that both confirms judgments and broadens diagnostic thinking can be invaluable. When used properly, it can help combat the tunnel vision that often takes hold in busy clinics and hospitals.

The balance of his op-ed is devoted to his realization that AI makes him a better doctor as a consequence of his “experiment” with it. He goes on to describe three clinical cases in which he used AI and the benefits derived from it as well as its use in pedagogy. He concludes by recommending that future physicians be trained in using AI tools efficiently and effectively.

Not only do I concur with Dr. Jha’s conclusion, I would go one step farther. I think that professionals have an ethical obligation to use AI tools prudently, judiciously, and effectively for precisely the reasons Dr. Jha outlines: they make them better.

By definition a professional is a service provider who works for the public good and adheres to a code of ethics. Modern professional codes of ethics should require professionals to use AI. The AMA has published guidance for the ethical use of AI by physicians. It allows physicians to use AI and discusses issues like oversight, transparency, disclosure, and privacy and security but it does not quite go far enough—it treats AI as an option.

Given the choice, a professional should actively seek to be better than he or she already is. AI is a tool that can do just that. For physicians these tools can reduce error, broaden differential diagnosis, and mitigate cognitive bias. For those professionals it’s in the same class as evidence-based medicine, imaging, and sterile technique.

There is something about financial columnist Matthew Lynn’s op-ed in the Washington Post that really struck me the wrong way. I think he’s missing something fundamental. Here’s the kernel of his piece, “China tried to buy the world. It failed.”:

China’s geopolitical ambitions have suffered a whole series of setbacks. The courts in Panama have ruled against Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison owning the ports at either side of the crucial canal through which at least 40 percent of U.S. shipping flows. Following the arrest of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro its investment in the Latin American state looks far less valuable. Iran? You wouldn’t describe any investment in the country as rock-solid right now. Italy scaled down its agreements with China in 2023. The more than $23 billion it has pumped into Argentina probably won’t secure any special favors from President Javier Milei: He hates Marxists almost as much as he loves chainsaws. The list goes on and on. China has spent an estimated $1.5 trillion on its Belt and Road strategy, a huge sum of money for what is still basically a developing economy.

Let me try to investigate the problems I had with it.

I think Mr. Lynn misunderstands China. Labelling it “basically a developing economy” is misleading. It is the country with the 2nd largest GDP and an enormously large middle-income developing economy within the same geographic borders. That economic power enables China to do things no other developing country can.

Selective examples don’t prove a strategy failed. The Chinese Communist Party does not operate like a corporation with a board demanding return on equity. It allocates capital as a political instrument. Judging Belt and Road solely by commercial profitability misses the point.

The sheer size of that developed economy allows it to make mistakes impossible to other countries. The analogy is to wasteful infrastructure or other building projects. They do it because they can. Because the CCP’s objective function is political rather than strictly financial, it can absorb losses that would bankrupt a private actor. That does not mean every investment succeeds. It does mean that “unprofitable” is not the same thing as “failed.”

In his most recent column in the Washington Post Jason Willick reacts to the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the tariffs that President Trump had imposed. His column essentially notes the striking consistency among the progressive wing of the Court’s members—they remain aligned with the position of the Democratic Party leadership consistently:

The tariffs case just decided by the Supreme Court contained a dilemma for the court’s Democratic-appointed justices. The case concerned whether a broadly worded emergency law passed in 1977 authorizing the president to “regulate” the “importation” of goods allowed Donald Trump to impose tariffs. The court said no, for very good reasons.

But four times during the Biden administration, the Supreme Court confronted similar laws apparently conferring broad fiscal or regulatory powers to the executive. And each time, the court’s Democratic-appointed justices said the Biden administration did have the power it claimed, while the court’s Republican-appointed majority disagreed. The conservative justices reasoned that Congress wouldn’t give away major powers without saying so specifically, a principle known as the major questions doctrine.

Two minds with but a single thought. George Will devoted his column to the “major questions doctrine”, too:

Under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the court’s major contribution to constitutional law has been developing the major questions doctrine. The court’s tariff decision turned on the MQD, but demonstrated its insufficiency.

He goes on to urge the Court to rule more broadly on the MQD, ruling that Congress may not delegate its Constitutional powers to the executive branch.

In the spirit of Mr. Will’s column I hasten to point out that the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled on cases not specifically within its Constitutional reponsibilities overruling common law and previous precedent. Will the Court also rule against that implicit delegation of Congress’s powers? And who would have the standing to bring such a case?

The following is a list of some of the Supreme Court’s decisions over the last 50 years that meet that description. It is far from exhaustive. The issue I’m raising is not whether the decisions are right or wrong. It is whether they are in the Court’s scope or not.

Nor is this merely a matter of textual silence. In cases such as Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas, and Obergefell v. Hodges, the Court did not simply interpret ambiguous language; it displaced long-standing state criminal and domestic-relations law—core areas of the police power historically reserved to the states—based on open-ended constitutional formulations. If the major questions doctrine demands unmistakable clarity before Congress may shift its powers to the executive, structural consistency would seem to demand comparable clarity before the judiciary nationalizes matters the Tenth Amendment leaves to the states.

I don’t care to relitigate those cases here either pro or con; that is beyond the scope of this post and largely beside the point. The point is should the Supreme Court be making these decisions or should the Congress? Courts interpret law; they do not originate policy settlements in areas traditionally governed by the political branches unless the constitutional text unmistakably requires it.

I asked the same question of the four generative AI services (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok) I asked yesterday, “What is today’s biggest geopolitical news story?” and today I received three different answers. The question was asked of each service within seconds of each other. All were queried using default settings, without follow-up prompts.

ChatGPT

Flagged U. S.-EU trade and tariff turmoil fomented by President Trump’s off-again-on-again tariffs.

Claude

Still reports the imminent 3 year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the biggest geopolitical story. Interestingly, Claude repeated the same error it made yesterday today.

Gemini

Declared escalating tension between the U. S. and Iran the biggest story.

Grok

Also reported tensions between the U. S. and Iran as the biggest story.

In fairness each service reported all of the stories as important—only the relative priorities were different.

The divergence doesn’t reflect factual difference so much as differing implicit models of geopolitical significance. I suspect that reflects differences in how they were trained rather than algorithmic structural difference which is itself interesting. I’ll continue to follow-up on it.

On a lark I asked ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok this question: “What is today’s most important geopolitical story?”

ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok answered that U. S.-Iran nuclear talks (and escalating tensions) were today’s most important geopolitical story.

Claude answered that the Russia-Ukraine peace process was the most important geopolitical story today.

Just for fun I may repeat this on a daily basis.

Following the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling a number of prominent Democrats including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker are calling for refunds of the amount collected in the tariffs decreed by President Trump to consumers. I don’t think the Trump Administration should do so or the Supreme Court or Congress should determine that it should for three reasons.

The first reason is practical. There’s not actually any reliable way to calculate how much consumers paid in the now-known-to-be-illegal tariffs. Some of what some consumers paid in retail sales consisted of those tariffs. Some of the tariffs were paid by producers and not passed on to consumers. Some of the increases in prices were just that: increases in prices. Some of the tariffs were borne by importers and not passed on to retailers. If it could be determined what consumers purchased and if it could be determined how much of that was due to tariffs, then it might be doable. Simply refunding the amount collected by the federal government in tariffs might be politically attractive but it wouldn’t achieve the putative goal—refunding to consumers what they paid in tariffs.

The collected tariff revenue does not represent the economic burden borne by consumers. Refunding the collected amount would not match the distributed harm, because the harm was uneven, partially absorbed upstream, and partially embedded in price structures that no longer exist.

The second reason is justice. It wouldn’t be just to “refund” amounts to consumers that they didn’t actually pay. Critics seem to be conflating restitution to injured parties with disgorgement of unlawfully collected funds. They aren’t the same thing. Once the price system has adjusted, you cannot unwind it cleanly. Attempts to do so create new distortions.

The third reason is monetary. In a structurally deficit-financed federal system, large-scale refunds are overwhelmingly likely to be debt-financed. Debt-financed transfers increase aggregate demand without increasing output and therefore place upward pressure on prices.

You cannot unwind a tariff by writing checks after the price system has adjusted. You are not reversing a distortion; you are layering a new one on top of the existing structure. Consequently, my conclusion is that the amount shouldn’t be “refunded” at all. Although disgorgement of unlawfully collected government revenue is a well-established legal remedy and the government simply shouldn’t keep money it had no legal authority to collect, there is an alternative that would address the practical, moral, and monetary considerations identified above: use the money strictly to reduce the size of the deficit.