It seemed like a lifetime ago, but in truth it had been only 11 months since coaches Chris Collins and Chris Holtmann last hooked up at Welsh-Ryan Arena.
Collins’ Northwestern team walloped Holtmann’s Ohio State Buckeyes by 25 points on a cold, late-January night in Evanston en route to the Wildcats’ second straight NCAA Tournament appearance.
Holtmann, meanwhile, was on his way out the door — fired by Ohio State five games later with four years remaining on his contract. He wound up in a most unlikely location, at the Lincoln Park school whose basketball glory days were so long ago only Baby Boomers remember the particulars.
Saturday’s coaching reunion was a chance for Holtmann to show the Blue Demons’ early-season success was no mirage. But after spotting DePaul the first basket of the afternoon, the Wildcats ripped off a 20-0 run and cruised to an 84-64 nonconference win.
Eighteen DePaul turnovers, many leading to easy transition baskets, were the obvious difference in the game.
“We need to get better and we will,” Holtmann said. “Trust me, we will.”
Faith in DePaul basketball has been in short supply for quite a while, so forgive Blue Demons fans if they need to see improvement before taking the new coach’s word for it.
Nick Martinelli (23 points) and Brooks Barnhizer (21 points, 12 rebounds) led Northwestern, while Jacob Meyer paced DePaul with 18 points. Barnhizer was named the game’s MVP, an award late radio personality Les Grobstein helped champion when the rivalry between the local programs was a relatively big deal.
Collins said it was still a “big game” to his players and believes the four local schools — including Loyola and UIC — are as strong collectively as Chicago has seen in years.
NU and DePaul have been heading in opposite directions for the last decade, basically switching identities since Collins turned around the Wildcats program.
Northwestern, renowned for losing, made the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 2017, and after playing in the tournament the last two years Collins has significantly raised expectations for the onetime dregs of the conference. Not making it to March Madness in 2025 would now be considered a disappointing season by alumni.
DePaul, the onetime Cinderella-turned-national power in the late 1970s and early ’80s, last made the NCAA Tournament in 2004 and is coming off a 3-29 season, the worst in the school’s 102-year history. There’s nowhere for the Demons to go but up.
Ohio State gave Holtmann a $12.8 million buyout, which would be enough for most of us to lounge in Cabo for a while before even considering a return to work. Holtmann instead took the DePaul opening, a decision that befuddled anyone who has paid attention to the program’s plight over the last few decades. For Holtmann, it was simply a matter of staying occupied.
DePaul coach Chris Holtmann looks on in the second half against Northwestern on Dec. 21, 2024, at Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
“I’m kind of an (expletive) when I’m bored,” Holtmann explained to CBSsports.com.
“I don’t have enough hobbies. I just think I can be irritable. … For me, I don’t know how I’d be not having a team, not having a purpose for a year. And if there’s a couple opportunities, or an opportunity that kind of grabs my heart, then I need to take advantage of that.”
The transfer portal facilitated a roster cleansing, and Holtmann’s 8-2 start with a team filled with 3-point shooters brought cautious optimism to DePaul’s campus.
But DePaul still hasn’t won a game in Big East play in nearly two years, since a one-point win over Xavier on Jan. 18, 2023. And a 28-point loss at St. John’s on Tuesday
looked like more of the same.
The Blue Demons could’ve cashed it in after Saturday’s inauspicious start, in which they trailed 20-2 after six minutes and watched the Wildcats convert inside at will, going 9-for-9 from the field.
“Turnovers all night,” Holtmann said. “We just gave them bucket after bucket after bucket.”
Northwestern hit 12 of its first 13 attempts and built a 19-point lead, but DePaul clawed back and trailed only 37-27 at the half despite committing 14 turnovers.
The Demons still made Northwestern sweat a little, pulling within eight with a little more than three minutes left. But the Wildcats pulled away again and turned it into a rout, as Martinelli sank three straight jumpers and Barnhizer slammed one home. Holtmann called Barnhizer a future NBA player, and Collins agreed.
“Why wouldn’t you want someone like that on your team, at any level?” Collins said.
DePaul (8-4) has one more nonconference game next Saturday against Loyola-Maryland before returning to Big East play on Jan. 1 at Wintrust Arena, facing two-time defending national champion UConn. It’s unlikely the Blue Demons will break their 34-game Big East regular-season losing streak against the No. 11 Huskies.
But sooner or later it has to end. Just ask the Chicago White Sox. Who knows? DePaul might even end its conference streak before the Bears end their skid.
Holtmann said he’s looking for “growth” and doesn’t want anyone to to be “consumed” by the Big East streak.
“They want it so badly, I want it so badly for my AD,” Holtmann said. “But it’s really my job to focus on figuring out how to solve some of these issues we need to get better at and keeping our guys focused on getting better and growing. … We’re trying to establish something here in Year One in terms of competitiveness and how we’ve played. I think we’ve done that. Now we need to answer some of these challenges in front of us.”
Northwestern coach Chris Collins yells at a referee in the second half against DePaul on Dec. 21, 2024, at Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
NU, which lost a heartbreaker to Iowa in its Big Ten opener
on Josh Dix’ game-ending 3-pointer, then upset Illinois on Dec. 6, resumes conference play Jan. 2 at Penn State before back-to-back games at No. 16 Purdue and against No. 20 Michigan State at Welsh-Ryan.
“Let me enjoy my Christmas, Paul,” Collins replied when I reminded him of the tough start to the new year.
Collins added it’s a “unique team” that he’s still learning about. Getting everyone more involved will take time, but he likes what he has seen.
“I feel like we’re improving,” he said. “I felt it was a real step forward today. … You have to keep getting better. Our league is too good, coaches are too good.”
Northwestern should contend again with Barnhizer and Martinelli as the centerpieces, while DePaul might be able to be more competitive with better ballhandling.
Grobstein would’ve just been happy to see a couple of Chicago basketball programs making things interesting again.
Prosecutors urged a federal judge to reject a request from a defendant convicted for participation in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol to attend Trump’s inauguration.
Musk is the world’s richest man, owns one of its biggest communications platforms and is increasingly politically active. Washington is seeing how potent a blend that is.
I have long argued that the decentralized nature of the nominations means that American parties are not especially disciplined. By this, I mean that the capacity of party leadership to force conformity on votes in the legislature is limited by the fact that party leadership does not fully control membership in the party.
In more disciplined party systems the ability of leadership to stop members of the party from using its label at the next election is a way to force party members to either toe the line or lose their seat. In the US, candidates enter the party by their own choice by filing paperwork at the local level to compete in nominating elections, i.e., primaries. Win the primary and the Republican or Democratic label is yours and, often because of the noncompetitive nature of US general elections, it could mean capturing the seat as well.
As a result, returning to the House or Senate typically requires winning the primary. And usually, incumbents do quite well in such contests, if anything because they almost always have a substantial money and name-recognition advantage. There is always some fear of being “primaried” by being challenged by a well-known and/or well-funded opponent. But this is normally a very ad hoc threat.
This appears to be changing, at least for the GOP. There appears to be a growing centralization of this threat funded by Elon Musk.
I was already planning to write about this phenomenon as it pertains to the Hegseth nomination, but then last night I saw that Trump wanted to stop the spending bill in Congress and threatened to primary any Republican who voted for it (see, via the AP, Trump threatens Republicans who support funding measure will ‘be Primaried’
). This morning I woke up to hear that that the bill is now on hold.
Again, the notion that individual members of Congress might face a serious primary challenge is not new. And Trump threatening to endorse a challenger in such a scenario is also not new. What appears to be new is the notion of a coordinated/centralized threat of this nature to force party discipline on specific votes in the legislature via the deployment of Musk-funded PACs and siccing the right-win mob on individual members of Congress. The threat of Musk funding primary challenges has been in the air since the election, but this week there was already evidence it was becoming reality.
Specifically, I would note the case of Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA). Ernst appeared to be a likely holdout on the Hegseth SecDef vote. She had the moral high ground as the first female combat veteran elected to Congress and also was known as a champion who fought against sexual harassment/abuse in the military. She appeared poised to vote against Hegseth and then the Trump machine unleashed a media and advertising campaign against her and there was a clear threat of a primary challenge. Ernst is up for re-election in 2026.
Some prominent Trump activists, including Charlie Kirk and Stephen K. Bannon, the right-wing strategist, pushed to recruit Kari Lake, the former Republican candidate for governor of Arizona who grew up in Iowa, as a potential challenger to Ms. Ernst.
Setting aside the moral failing one could assert that is on display here by Ernst, this is Trump demonstrating a substantial amount of power, and it is a combination of his standing in the party, but also the power of Musk’s money. The inclusion of a billionaire willing to spend millions of dollars to get a single vote in the Senate is a game-changer in a way that solidifies Trump’s grip on the GOP.
It may be that the media blitz, and commensurate constituent pressure it likely generated, is more the issue than the primary threat at this stage, but the willingness to engage in such a media blitz over this one vote is a gauntlet being thrown. If Trump’s allies have the ability to coordinate a media campaign this quickly and easily over Hegseth (and demonstrate their willingness to spend) it is certainly enough to make the primary threat feel more concrete.
I have argued that the nomination of problematic and unqualified individuals to very important jobs was going to be a test of Trump’s power and a measurement of where the Senate GOP was. Ernst’s willingness to vote for Hegseth is a triumph for Trump and a failure of leadership and independence for the Senate GOP.
It may well be that the ability to coordinate these kinds of attacks will instill party discipline. A disturbing element of this is the simple fact that this discipline would not be because of a party unified around ideology or a governing philosophy linked to long-standing voter feedback. No, this would be a discipline driven by fear of Elon Musk’s bank account and his willingness to fund Trump’s whims.
This is not a healthy development for American politics and is yet another sign of the rising power of oligarchs in American politics.
One of the threats of Trump 2.0 was that he would empower fringe actors who could do a lot of damage. Well, Musk is both being empowered by Trump and is also empowering him.
On balance, I think that more disciplined parties are better for democratic competition because it creates a stronger, clearer signal as to what the party stands for. But what we are seeing here is the personalization of one of the parties via piles of cash.
Maybe all this is bluster, but if members of Congress capitulate, it is effective bluster. It will be interesting and telling to see if the primary threat continues to be dangled over the heads of congressional Republicans and how much it controls their behavior.
The longer-term question will be how much will billionaire influencers like Musk continue this kind of political role. I fear that we are seeing a significant shift toward direct oligarchic power in our elections which is not healthy in the least.
Under normal circumstances in a healthy political environment, the fact that an incoming president is poised to fire another FBI director without cause would be the basis for a major, presidency-defining controversy. Under our current circumstances, this is barely causing a ripple — and a GOP-led Senate is likely to confirm Trump’s radical and unqualified choice to lead the bureau.
He is the second director “driven out by Trump
.” The first was James Comey.
Patel, who would need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, has never worked at the FBI and only spent three years at the Justice Department earlier in his career in the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section. If confirmed, he has pledged to shut down the FBI’s headquarters building in Washington and drastically redefine the bureau’s role with intelligence-gathering.
Make no mistake, Trump is poised to assume office as an authoritarian who has molded himself after Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban. Wray just made that path a smoother one for Trump.
Most Trump nominees announced so far have been little- or un-qualified for the job they are supposed to assume. They’re wealthy, though.
Ambassador to China: David Perdue, multi-millionaire
Ambassador to France: Charles Kushner, father-in-law to Ivanka Trump and pardoned by Trump
Ambassador to Greece: Kimberly Guilfoyle, Fox News host
Ambassador to Turkey: Tom Barrack, billionaire
Ambassador to the United Kingdom: Warren Stephens, billionaire
Attorney general: Pam Bondi, former Florida attorney general
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator: Dr. Mehmet Oz, a celebrity heart surgeon and television personality
Counselor to the president: Alina Habba, personal lawyer
‘Crypto czar’: David Sacks, venture capitalist and multi-millionaire
Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Dave Weldon, Christian conservative and Florida physician infamous for his involvement in the Terri Schiavo case
Food and Drug Administration commissioner: Marty Makary, millionaire and ally of anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration chief: Jared Isaacman, billionaire
Secretary of Agriculture: Brooke Rollins, right-wing think tank president
Secretary of Commerce: Howard Lutnick, billionaire
Secretary of Defense: Pete Hegseth, FOX News personality, womanizer and alcoholic
Secretary of Health and Human Services: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., millionaire anti-vaxxer
Secretary of Homeland Security: Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota infamous for shooting her dog as a youth
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Scott Turner, former NFL player
Secretary of the Interior: Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota, multi-millionaire and venture capitalist
Secretary of Labor: Lori Chavez-DeRemer, one-term U.S. Representative
Secretary of Secretary: Linda McMahon, billionaire
Lara Trump, President-elect Trump’s daughter in law and former Republican National Committee (RNC) co-chair, removed her name from consideration to replace Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
“After an incredible amount of thought, contemplation, and encouragement from so many, I have decided to remove my name from consideration for the United States Senate,” Trump wrote in a Saturday post
on the social platform X.
“I could not have been more honored to serve as RNC co-chair during the most high-stakes election of our lifetime and I’m truly humbled by the unbelievable support shown to me by the people of our country, and here in the great state of Florida,” she later added.
The incoming president announced Rubio
as his Secretary of State choice in November. Earlier this month, Lara Trump stepped down as RNC co-chair to “heavily consider
” taking on the role in Congress’s upper chamber.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
(R) will choose Rubio’s replacement, if the senator is confirmed to lead the State Department. That replacement would serve until 2026, when a special election will be held to determine who will serve the remaining two years of Rubio’s term.
“In the meantime, I wish Governor DeSantis the best of luck with this appointment,” she said.
She also alluded to forthcoming announcement in January, urging followers to “stay tuned.”
Watching ABC submit to
Donald Trump over his defamation lawsuit against the network—giving him $15 million for his presidential library and another $1 million in legal fees to settle the case—did not feel great. But there’s more where that came from, and Trump is about to weaponize the government to settle his scores with the media.
Trump still has a lawsuit pending
against CBS, alleging that the network committed election interference by deceptively editing a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris to make her look better. He judge-shopped that case to the Northern District of Texas, where there’s only one judge,
Trump appointee Matthew Kacsmaryk, who routinely rules in favor
of conservatives.
But Trump may not need to pursue that case very diligently, given that he’s bringing in Brendan Carr
as head of the Federal Communications Commission. Carr is a current FCC commissioner, and he’s full MAGA. He’s made clear that he sees his job as going after Trump’s enemies. Given that the FCC controls broadcast licenses, he can keep CBS stations in the crosshairs.
The FCC doesn’t license networks like ABC, CBS, or NBC, but it does have authority
over broadcast stations owned by the networks. Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior counsel for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, explained
to Ars Technica that the administration can still use the FCC to “hassle the living daylights out of broadcasters or other media outlets in annoying ways,” single some broadcast stations out, and slow-walk applications or block mergers.
Trump doesn’t seem to understand this and thinks that the networks can just be wiped out. He has called for CBS
to lose its license over October’s “60 Minutes” interview, for NBC and CNN to lose their licenses for not airing
his victory speech after the Iowa primary in January, and for ABC to lose its license for “unfair
” fact-checking during his September debate with Harris.
Vice President Kamala Harris appears on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” with Maya Rudolph, on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024 in New York.
Though Carr, as a sitting FCC commissioner and former telecommunications lawyer, knows full well that the FCC can’t just yank a network off the air, he nonetheless started complaining about the networks even before getting tapped to run the agency. After Harris appeared on “Saturday Night Live” just before the election, Carr ran to Fox Business to threaten
NBC. His logic? That NBC violated the “equal time” rule by not giving Trump the same air time. Sure, except that NBC actually followed the equal time rule and gave Trump free airtime that weekend during a NASCAR race and “Sunday Night Football.” Somehow, according to Carr, this still warranted FCC investigation, with consequences that could include revoking NBC’s broadcast licenses.
Now that Carr has been offered the top job, he’s already said
that he’d not only consider Trump’s laughable complaint against CBS. He might use it as the basis to block a merger between Skydance and Paramount, which involves the transfer of CBS-owned local stations. Carr told Fox News that he was “pretty confident” that Trump’s complaint about “60 Minutes” “is something that is likely to arise in the context of the FCC’s review of that transaction.” So essentially if Carr finds the “60 Minutes” interview wanting, he will use it to mess with CBS on an entirely different thing.
Putting Carr atop the FCC doesn’t just allow Trump to attack broadcast networks. Carr has already shown he’s eager to be Trump’s all-purpose attack dog. Just a few days after the 2024 election, Carr wrote to
the heads of Alphabet (aka Google), Microsoft, Meta, and Apple, saying those companies played a significant role in “an unprecedented surge in censorship” by doing things like fact-checking. His threat to Big Tech was not at all subtle, saying that he was confident that once Trump and the new Congress take office, they will take action to restore First Amendment rights—and that such action could include a review of company activities and third-party organizations that Carr also thinks have violated the First Amendment.
Fun fact: The FCC doesn’t actually have jurisdiction
over social media platforms or other similar web services. But Carr, who authored the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC, is eager to extend the agency’s authority and wants to gut Section 230, which currently provides broad immunity to social networks for material published on their site. Under Carr, the FCC would get to decide
whether social media companies are moderating “in good faith.”
All you need to know about Carr’s ideology can be gleaned from the omission of one social media company from his threatening letter: X, the cesspool formerly known as Twitter. Carr loves X. It’s where he goes to post about dismantling the “censorship cartel
,” to threaten CBS some more
, and to insult
the Federal Aviation Association for having the temerity to examine the environmental impact of a proposal by X owner Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Carr is also very eager to give his pal Musk even more taxpayer dollars, complaining
that it was “regulatory lawfare against one of the left’s top targets” when the FCC revoked an $885 million grant to Musk’s Starlink when it couldn’t show it would reach enough rural homes.
So this is what the FCC will look like under Carr during the second Trump administration: a weapon to be used against any company Trump doesn’t like, whether the FCC has the authority or not.
As a bonus, it’s also likely that Carr’s FCC will shovel cash toward the world’s richest man, who happens to run a social media company that is hemorrhaging users
because people don’t want to hang out with white nationalists and Nazis.
Indeed, if you want a vision of the future Carr and Trump crave, it pretty much would look like X. Musk, ostensibly a “free speech warrior,” the dumb moniker Trump has applied to Carr
as well, has suspended accounts of journalists
who displease him and sued companies that reported on the rampant hate speech on the platform.
Musk and Trump have previously had to spend their own money to threaten journalists and suppress speech, but under Carr, the government will do it for them.
