Fighting back / ‘Full Flop’ / ‘Deadly consequences’

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Fighting back. The Illinois State Board of Education is standing up against Donald Trump’s Education Department demand that schools reject diversity, equity and inclusion programs (a.k.a. fairness).
■ Illinois and other states are suing over Trump’s order calling for dismantling the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services.
■ The leaders of Northwestern University’s legal clinic are suing Congress to block a demand for funders’ names.
■ Trump’s Justice Department is barring its staffers from joining American Bar Association events—after the ABA accused Trump of threatening the rule of law.
■ The Tribune: Chicago-based Jenner & Block is leading the legal industry’s counteroffensive against Trump’s punitive actions. (Gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters.)
■ A Trib editorial: “Jenner’s peers who haven’t already capitulated should follow the lead.”
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg suggests a way “to help our fracturing nation … another small step back to becoming the country we imagine ourselves to be.”

Unintelligent. Addressing an education conference in San Diego, Trump Education Secretary Linda McMahon repeatedly referred to AI—artificial intelligence—as “A1,” as in the steak sauce.
■ See for yourself on YouTube.
■ Wired says the Government Accountability Office is auditing Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”

‘Full Flop.’ That’s PolitiFact’s rating of Trump’s pledge that he wasn’t considering pausing his tariffs plan …
■ Trending on Twitter X yesterday: “He caved.”
■ Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect: Trump’s escalation of tariffs on China “might cause a recession by itself.”
■ Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer: “This is government by chaos.”
■ Columnist Eric Zorn: “Someone will have to tell me how this isn’t going to be wildly inflationary.”
■ You can’t blame companies for still being bewildered.
■ Columnist Mary Schmich’s latest TrumPoem begins: “The whole damn world can kiss my ass / In fact, that’s what they’re doing!” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman—who, in a separate post, celebrates the late Sun-Times Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin as the person who’s most influenced his career.)
■ Key moment in Trump’s turnaround: Sean Hannity’s Tuesday night show on Fox.
■ Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show: “Yeah, Trump was, like, ‘I just saved the economy from me. You’re welcome.’”
■ Among The Associated Press’ glossary of trade war terms to know: “Dead cat bounce.”

‘As the administrator of Cloud City I just had to make a deal with Vader, he got here first. Yeah I think he’s good for it, why?’ The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer compares Star Wars’ Lando Calrissian to the leadership at Columbia University, which bent the knee to Trump’s demands only to see all its research grants frozen.
■ Northwestern’s bracing for cuts that could wipe out almost all its federal research funding.
■ Expanding the list of schools so targeted across the country, the Trump administration’s canceled visas for students at Northwestern, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois Chicago.

Order from … nowhere? Chicago police are investigating how and why some cops were told to report “migrant arrests” to the federal government.
■ The Baltimore Banner: “Rejected at her door, ICE nabs a Maryland woman in her car after smashing her window.”
■ Judges have at least temporarily put the brakes on the deportation of Venezuelans jailed in New York and Texas.

‘Deadly consequences.’ A Sun-Times investigation into four—in retrospect, preventable—unprovoked killings and two nonfatal attacks in downtown Chicago since 2021 points to big gaps in care for severely mentally ill people who cycle through jail, prisons and hospitals.
■ Among those cases: A cheerful day on North Michigan Avenue that turned into a young flight attendant’s “nightmare.”
■ A Chicago police officer reportedly took her own life with a gun overnight in a North Side police station.

Measles dashboard. Illinois has launched an online “Measles Outbreak Simulator” showing the vaccination rate in the state’s public and private schools—to help spot the risk if a case breaks out among a school’s student body.
■ The state Senate’s unanimously sending the House a bill banning cell phones in classrooms.
■ Columnist and veteran Chicago reporter Matt Rodewald: State legislation that sounds like freedom for high school athletes “opens the door to for-profit control, growing inequity and dangerous consequences for public education.”

They hope you’ll visit for a spell. Today brings the opening of a Harry Potter store on Michigan Avenue.
■ Potter creator J.K. Rowling and Last Week Tonight host John Oliver are at war.
■ Saturday Night Live’s getting a U.K. version.
■ Variety reviews Black Mirror’s new season: “Maudlin lows and grisly highs.”

Clarifying yesterday’s most-tapped Chicago Public Square link. We’re told ABC7 has not made any editorial changes in light of the Trump administration’s renaming the Gulf of Mexico. A reference to that body of water in a Tuesday weather report was a mistaken ad-lib.



‘A different world’ / Aliens vs. predator / Northwestern squeezed

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‘A different world.’ Politico: With President Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs in effect since midnight, “the free trade system that America has embraced and nurtured since the mid-1930s has been officially torpedoed.”
■ China’s reciprocating against the reciprocation—raising its surcharge on U.S. goods to 84%, effective tomorrow.
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: Trump “appears unconcerned that other countries could work together against the U.S. and seems to assume they will have to do what he says.”
■ A Michigan State University supply chain management professor tells Wired: If you need an electronic gadget, “Buy it now.” (Cartoon: Marc Stopeck.)
■ The Sun-Times found grocery shoppers across Chicago yesterday already putting off nonessential purchases.
■ Axios: More Chicago homebuyers are backing out of deals.
■ Chicago news veteran Jennifer Schulze: Local news is offering “a reality check on Trump’s tariff carnage.”
■ The American Prospect: “The economy was already stalling out before Liberation Day. A trade war on the entire world will only make everything worse.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ Desi Lydic at The Daily Show: “It’s been one week since Donald Trump announced his bold plan to destroy the economy, and guess what? It’s working.”
■ Follow updating coverage of the story from The Associated Press here.

Aliens vs. predator. In the first such challenge since the Supreme Court cleared Donald Trump to deport migrants to a Salvadoran prison under the Alien Enemies Act, the American Civil Liberties Union is suing Trump on behalf of two migrants facing just that prospect.
■ Law Dork Chris Geidner: “The ACLU’s intention is for a full class to be protected if the litigation succeeds.”
■ Trump’s acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief says he wants a deportation process as efficient as Amazon: “Like Prime, but with human beings.”
■ The acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service and several other top officials of the agency are reportedly quitting to protest a deal to share immigrants’ tax data with ICE (New York Times gift link).
■ As Trump and Elon Musk cut government spending almost across the board, Popular Information marvels at his plans to increase the military budget by $107 billion.

‘Judge Writes Gulf Of Mexico On Trump's Face In Sharpie.’ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst celebrates an order that the White House restore full access to presidential events for the AP—which the president has excluded for its refusal to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
■ But CNN media monitor Brian Stelter sees no guarantee Trump will comply.
■ Chicago’s ABC7, for one, has deferred to Trump.
Clarification, 4:35 p.m.: We’re told the station hasn’t made any editorial changes. That reference was a mistaken ad-lib.

‘I hate to rain on the marching parade, but …’ Columnist Laura Washington cautions the resistance not to put too much faith in the impact of Saturday’s nationwide protests: “Trump and his MAGA crowd still have a firm grip on our collective throats.”
■ The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg turns his column over to a Duke University historian who explains the “very deep roots” of Trump’s “carnival of cruelty.”

Northwestern squeezed. Under investigation by the Trump administration for ostensibly having “failed to protect Jewish students and faculty members from unlawful discrimination,” Northwestern University’s out—at least temporarily—to the tune of $790 million in federal funding.
■ The American Press Institute surveys a time of high anxiety for student journalists.

Oops. After a Tribune inquiry, the Illinois Board of Elections has concluded that Senate President Don Harmon improperly accepted $4 million more in political contributions than allowed under campaign donation laws that he once championed.
■ The Senate’s considering approving a study of deploying artificial-intelligence-powered cameras to monitor speeders along Lake Shore Drive.
■ An ordinance advancing in the Chicago City Council would give police power to seize tow trucks whose predatory operators descend on crashes around town.

‘Cut any red tape faster than a Pete Townshend riff or an animatronic squirrel.’ A Trib editorial calls for quick action at City Hall to replace the city’s “twin symbols of blight,” the now-shuttered Rainforest and Hard Rock Cafes.
■ Block Club: Chicago cops are bracing for another “teen takeover” Friday night at Millennium Park.

A reader writes. “Unlike your (now former) subscriber who said Public Square is too depressing, I find it deepening my faith. Every other item or so, I utter a loud ‘Dear God!’”
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