Sign here, please / Travel reservations / Music missing

■

Sign here, please. As the free press faces unprecedented assault from the Trump administration, Chicago Public Square has joined the Press Freedom United campaign—a national community of journalists and concerned citizens sending an open letter to Congress and the White House demanding immediate action to uphold the First Amendment.

■ We invite you to sign by April 30 at noon for delivery May 1.
■ Not coincidentally, Poynter reports Trump’s ban on The Associated Press just got worse.
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter: “Every move is in the same direction, boosting outlets that cheerlead for Trump while booting outlets that impartially cover him.”

In other news:

Chicago man in El Salvadoran prison. His family spotted him in U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s stunt video—but has no idea how to reach him.
■ Fox News talking head Jesse Watters: “Everyone knows” wearing a Chicago Bulls hat “means you’re MS-13.”
■ ProPublica: “As Trump spends on border security, border residents’ basic needs go unmet.”

‘Corporations have bent the knee; law firms are submitting to Trump; Congress is ceding its authority, and corporate media is making excuses. … Our only weapon is immense public pressure, and no one can exert it but ourselves.’ Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer: “How to win the argument over Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s illegal rendition to a foreign gulag.”
■ A Tribune editorial: “Trump says he respects the Supreme Court. So return Abrego Garcia, Mr. President.”
■ Or, to quote USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist Rex Huppke: “Time to stand up and shout ‘Hell no!’ right freakin’ now.”

Travel reservations. Trump critic Mona Charen: “I’m planning a business trip to Europe. I don’t scare easy, but despite the fact that I’m an American citizen and have committed no crime, I am worried about what might happen when I attempt to come home. … Even citizens do not have the same Fourth Amendment rights at the border that they (theoretically) enjoy inside the country.”
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg shares the pain of Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias and his staff, implementing the “farcical” Real ID requirement—a “ticking time bomb of security theater, signed into law by President George W. Bush … to create reams of data that former staffers who are no longer at decimated federal bureaus won’t ever look at.”
■ Ready to travel? Here’s what the TSA says you need at checkpoints.

Paging the University of Illinois … A growing number of universities—including some in the Big Ten—are joining an “academic mutual defense pact” to fight the Trump administration’s attempt to chill free speech on college campuses.
■ Ronnie Chieng at The Daily Show: “We finally found a force more powerful than Trump’s hatred: Harvard’s love of sending rejection letters.”
■ A long-ago summer associate at the Kirkland & Ellis law firm says it and others have cut a deal with the devil.

He didn’t say ‘Donald Trump.’ But Politico’s Shia Kapos says ex-President Biden left no doubt about his subject last night in Chicago, where he delivered his first major public speech since leaving office.
■ Calling Trump’s threat to withhold federal funding to Chicago “terrorism,” Mayor Johnson said any face-to-face meeting with the president would happen in Johnson’s office.
■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst marvels at Vice President Vance’s “lonely late-night lying Nazi tweets.”

‘A jaw-dropping conflict of interest.’ Popular Information: Truth Social’s launched a scheme to profit from Trump’s tariff policies.
■ The Lever: Trump’s pick to head the Internal Revenue Service was just enriched by tax schemers.
■ Trump acolyte Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s … let’s say conveniently timed … stock purchases are under the microscope.
■ Newsweek: Trump’s plan to develop affordable housing on millions of unused acres of federal land could spark a housing revolution.

5 years, no answers. One veteran reporter tells Square he’s “never seen a murder story where everyone is so closed-mouthed” as they’ve been in the still-unsolved killings five years ago this month of beloved Oak Park attorneys and philanthropists Tom Johnson and Leslie Jones—stabbed to death in their home …

‘The first time may have been coincidence. The second time surely is not.’ Comic book historian Peter Sanderson explores the long and growing history of villains modeled on Donald Trump …
■ … including several versions of Lex Luthor (2018 link).

Music missing. Spotify today seemed to be out of commission.
■ The owner of a one-of-a-kind violin—one crafted by his brother—is offering a reward for its recovery after it was snatched from his hands Friday night on the CTA.
■ WBEZ’s analysis finds a nearly three-year upswing in Chicago robberies ended last summer.
■ Remember when then-Cook County state’s attorney candidate Eileen O’Neill Burke promised to recognize a union of assistant state’s attorneys? Ah, um, er …

Dress for French press. To union leaders’ dismay, Starbucks is imposing a new dress code for its workers.
■ The Portillo’s restaurant chain is testing breakfast at five locations.

Thanks. Walter Fyk and Mike Braden made this edition better.

A Square public service announcement
Don’t miss the 2025 Spring Music Festival at Frank Lloyd Wright’s stunning UNESCO World Heritage-designated Unity Temple in Oak Park. Saturday, April 26, at 7 p.m. Get your tickets here.

‘Home-growns are next’ / Then they came for the zoo / Tax day bites

■

Didja miss Chicago Public Square the last few days? Catch up by scrolling back through the Square Bluesky account. And now, the news for today:

‘Home-growns are next.’ President Trump’s joke-not-joke with El Salvador’s dictator-president Nayib Bukele is what Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer calls “the beginning of … a constitutional crisis.”
■ Columnist and lawyer Mitch Jackson: “Trump says he’s fine with sending U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to foreign prisons—and that should alarm every American.”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Rather than being appalled … Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Attorney General Pam Bondi … erupted in laughter.”
■ Bukele to Trump: “You have 350 million people to liberate, you know. But to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some. You know, that’s the way it works, right?”
■ And, no, Bukele—the self-styled “world’s coolest dictator” (February link)—says, he won’t be returning a Maryland man sent there last month.
■ Law professor Joyce Vance: “Let’s be clear. The United States Constitution does not permit the deportation of American citizens for committing a crime.”
■ The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol calls the whole scene “sickening.”
■ The Associated Press: The president’s call to ship U.S. citizens to El Salvador is likely illegal.
■ Time calls it “a striking example of Trump’s approach to his second term in office: When faced with challenges to his authority … he has reached for even more power.”
■ The Freedom of the Press Foundation warns: “If Trump can, in defiance of the Supreme Court, arbitrarily ‘disappear’ non-citizens in El Salvador, anyone else could be next—including journalists.”
■ Wonkette’s Gary Legum: “Our government is making these decisions based on the internet ramblings of anonymous vigilantes working for an organization that keeps its origins and employees secret.”

‘Whose turn is it now?’ Poynter’s Tom Jones recaps Trump’s more-than-daily attacks on journalists—just yesterday, including CNN’s Kaitlan Collins before she even asked a question at that news conference …
■ … from which, in defiance of a court order, Trump barred a reporter and photographer from the AP.
■ Before that: A terribly punctuated (as usual) social media attack on CBS and 60 Minutes …
■ … as the media mogul trying to take over CBS’ parent company has been spotted schmoozing with Trump …
■ … and as the White House preps a plan to cut taxpayer funding for public broadcasting—whining about a “lengthy history of anti-conservative bias.”
■ Reporters Without Borders is joining a legal coalition challenging Trump’s executive orders retaliating against law firms—an assault that it says is “making it much harder for the press to enlist legal counsel.”
■ The legal industry’s showing signs of a spine or two.

‘No government … should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.’ Harvard has told the president to take a flying leap with his demands the university clamp down on campus activism …
■ … and then Trump’s administration announced a freeze of $2.3 billion in federal funding for the school.
■ Ex-President Obama—a Harvard Law grad: “Let’s hope other institutions follow suit.”

‘His well-being is also due to a cruel, indifferent universe where hardworking people are diagnosed with terminal illnesses, but an objectively evil monster who only eats cheeseburgers and fried chicken lives forever. The world is chaos, there is no God, proven by his frequent victories in golf events!’ That’s Stephen Colbert, putting into context the results of Trump’s presidential physical …
■ … which prompted this cartoon from Jack Ohman.

‘I would demand that Nazism be fully addressed in any 20th century high school history textbook. That does not mean I want a Nazi flag flying in front of the school.’ Columnist Neil Steinberg shuts down readers who defend the Trump administration’s war on history by citing previous administrations’ removal of Confederate flags and Robert E. Lee statues.
■ A new contract for Chicago Teachers Union members has won union support—and now goes to the school board.

Then they came for the zoo. The Trump/Musk Department of Government Efficiency has targeted a Brookfield Zoo program for a federal funding cut—even though a zoo vice president protests, “It’s about bio-diversity and animal welfare.”
■ Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility: A top Interior Department lawyer who tried to keep payroll and personnel data out of DOGE’s hands faces dismissal.

Biden’s back. The former president returns to the national spotlight with a speech tonight in Chicago.
■ Columnist Brian Beutler says a memo circulating among Capitol Hill staffers outlines procedural steps Democratic representatives can take to “make life painful for Republicans as they prepare to slash taxes for the rich, take health care away from tens of millions of Americans, and abet Trump’s efforts to establish an American dictatorship.”

Terrorism, arson and attempted homicide. Those are some of the charges against a man accused of setting fire to Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s mansion early Sunday.
■ While the suspect’s politics remained under investigation, ABC News reports he “struggled in recent years with problems in his home life as well as issues stemming from covering his home mortgage.” (Photo: Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Media Services.)

Tax day bites. As today’s income tax filing deadline looms—with automatic extensions for those in states that suffered recent natural disasters (not Illinois)—some food franchises are softening the blow with cheap or freebie deals.
■ Napervillians planned a “No Taxes for Tyrants” rally this afternoon.
■ A new report says Illinoisans in the market for the tax breaks that come with going solar face “complex and cumbersome” state permitting requirements that can add months and increase costs for the simplest roof project.

Subscribe to Square.

It’s free.