Vortex:“Neither snow nor rain,” but nobody said anything about a polar vortex. For the second day the US Postal Service has stopped delivering mail in six midwestern states because it’s so freakin’ cold. Offices and schools have closed. In Chicago they warmed train tracks with open gas flames.

  The polar vortex has chilled half the country. Thief River Falls, ND, -33; Duluth, -31; Traverse City, Mich. 1; Chicago, -19; St. Louis, 4; Burlington, Vt., -2; New York, 3; Boston, 5; Caribou, Maine,  2.

  The weather is expected to get even wilder. By the weekend temperatures in the Midwest are expected to be 60 to 70 degrees higher than they are today.

Getting Schooled: A day after US intelligence leaders publicly disagreed with President Trump on just about everything, the President was trashing them on Twitter. “The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!” he wrote.

  The intel people said the Iran nuclear deal that Trump rejects is actually working. But this is a President who knows more about everything than everybody. Last week he said he knows more about technology than anybody. So he tweeted, “Be careful of Iran. Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”

  Former CIA Director John Brennan tweeted to Trump, “Your refusal to accept the unanimous assessment of U.S. Intelligence on Iran, No. Korea, ISIS, Russia, & so much more shows the extent of your intellectual bankruptcy. All Americans, especially members of Congress, need to understand the danger you pose to our national security.”

Lucy with the Football:Electronics giant Foxconn, which makes Apple phones in China, announced that it has ditched plans to build a facility in Wisconsin that would have employed thousands of people. The state had offered Foxconn billions of dollars in incentives to build there, but the company now says it will pour its money into research and development.

 Back in 2017,  President Trump, the head of Foxconn, and then Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker performed a ceremonial groundbreaking, but it seems Foxconn was shoveling something other than dirt. They had previously announced a big manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania and never built it. 

Police Blotter:Chicago police say they have video of “persons of interest” in the reported attack on actor Jussie Smollett, who says  he was beaten and subjected to hateful slurs as he walked home to his apartment in downtown Chicago early Tuesday. Police released images that are little more than silhouettes of two men walking.

 The reported attack has been the subject of outrage by fellow actors, politicians, and public figures. The 36-year-old Smollett, who is openly gay and of mixed race, plays a gay musician on the television series “Empire.”

 Smollett says he was beaten by two masked men, called racist and homophobic names, then doused with a chemical substance that may have been bleach. He said a thin rope was tied around his neck. Smollett told police during his second interview that attackers told him he was in “MAGA country,” a reference to the President’s slogan, “Make American Great Again.”

The Russia Complexity:Federal prosecutors say confidential material from the Russia investigation was altered and released online as part of a disinformation campaign to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, according to a court filing Wednesday.

 The incident involves a company calledConcord Management and Consulting LLC, controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a rich businessman known as “Putin’s chef” for his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. His company is one of three entities and 13 people charged with conspiracy to spread disinformation on social media during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

What Goes Around:Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie writes in his new book “Let Me Finish” that it was a vengeful Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner who had him fired from the transition team and denied a position in the new government.

  Years earlier as a federal prosecutor, Christie sent Kushner’s father to prison.

  On the PBS  show “Firing Line,” host Margaret Hoover asked Christie if he would be able to forgive a prosecutor who sent his father to prison. “If my father is guilty, I would. Mr. Kushner pled guilty. He admitted the crimes,” Christie said. “And so what am I supposed to do as a prosecutor? I mean If a guy hires a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, and videotapes it, and then sends the videotape to his sister to attempt to intimidate her from testifying before a grand jury, do I really need any more justification than that?”

  Yeah, that’s all true about Jared Kushner’s father.

  Christie said, “I mean it’s one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was US attorney. And I was a US attorney in New Jersey, Margaret, so we had some loathsome and disgusting crime going on there.”

Higher Calling: Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said God called Donald Trump to be President. “I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president,” Sanders said during an interview with Christian Broadcast Network News.“And that’s why he’s there, and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.”

  There’s also a chance God called the wrong number.

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