The news keeps coming. Which is why you should be following Chicago Public Square on Bluesky. (It’s free.) Among items posted there over the weekend:
■ Law professor Joyce Vance: The Trump administration’s arrest of a Milwaukee judge is “one more marker of the country’s constitutional distress” …
■ … and a thing that Public Notice columnist Lisa Needham sees as “a 5-alarm escalation: What would you say if you saw it in another country?”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent three U.S. citizens aged 2, 4 and 7 from Louisiana, including one with Stage 4 cancer, to Honduras when they deported their mothers.”
■ Law Dork Chris Geidner: “A.G. Bondi reverses Garland policy against subpoenaing journalists.”
■ Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion columnist Jeff Tiedrich: “Shh! Don’t wake the elderly golfer. Funerals make him sleepy.”
■ Satirist Andy Borowitz: “Man Who Fell Asleep at Pope’s Funeral was Already Going to Hell, Says God.”
■ Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich: “I urge you not to dwell solely on the loss. We have much to do” …
■ … including considering the prospect of a national civic uprising.
■ A Wall Street Journal gift link, courtesy of Square supporters: “Elite universities form private collective to resist Trump administration” …
■ … which The Free Press says is separately threatening Wikipedia’s tax-exempt status.
■ The Associated Press: “Kennedy Center’s events scheduled for LGBTQ+ pride celebration canceled, organizers say.”
■ Another Journal gift link: “Meta’s ‘digital companions’ will talk sex with users—even children.”
■ Wonkette’s Gary Legum: “George Santos goin’ down to prison, lawd, lawd.”
■ And now, the news of today:
‘It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’ Quoting Winston Churchill two days before 100th day of Trump’s second term, Contrarian editor-in-chief Jennifer Rubin concludes he’s worse off than he was 100 days ago.
■ The AP reviews what Trump’s done—and not—so far.
‘A brazenly corrupt scheme to profit from the presidency.’ Popular Information says Trump’s “invited virtually anyone, including foreign governments, government contractors and people under federal criminal investigation, to compete to see who can personally enrich Trump the most.”
■ Semafor’s Ben Smith raises the curtain on “a giant and raucous Signal group that forms part of the sprawling network of influential private chats that … have fueled a new alliance of tech and the U.S. right” …
■ … revolving mainly around venture capitalist and University of Illinois graduate Marc Andreessen.
■ Journalist Tom Scocca is more blunt: “Smith lifts up a corner of the plush comforter under which our would-be overlords have been huffing each other’s farts for the past few years as they collectively dream their way back to the cutting-edge ideas of the late 19th century.”
■ Heather Cox Richardson eyes warily the opening of an exclusive new D.C. club backed by Donald Trump Jr. and a Trump megadonor.
■ Axios: Trump’s Cabinet officials, advisers and friends have developed “a playbook to scuttle ideas they consider dumb, dangerous or undoable.”
You, too, protesters. ICE says prosecutors are coming for bystanders who challenged a raid on a Charlottesville courthouse.
■ In one of the biggest such raids so far, ICE took more than 100 immigrants into custody early yesterday in Colorado Springs.
■ PolitiFact: “Falsehoods propelled Trump’s immigration crackdown.”
■ The Sun-Times has assembled a guide to resources for immigrants and asylum-seekers in Chicago.
■ Speaking of immigrants: Trump says Columbus Day will again be just … you know … Columbus Day.
A big boost. Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton’s bid for the U.S. Senate seat held by retiring Dick Durbin now has Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s backing.
■ In New Hampshire—historically a key state in presidential primary campaigns—Gov. Pritzker yesterday slammed “do-nothing” Democrats failing to stand up to Trump, instead choosing “to blame our losses on our defense of Black people, of trans kids, of immigrants, instead of their own lack of guts.”
■ Even though, in the six years since Pritzker took office, the Tribune reports (gift link), “members of the Illinois General Assembly have run afoul of the law at a staggering pace … strengthening the state’s ethical safeguards doesn’t appear to be anywhere near the top of the agenda in Springfield.”
Illinois State University shooting. The campus issued an emergency alert last night after one person—not a student—was shot near the student center.
■ As summer nears, the Chicago City Council’s wrestling with the question of how to address raucous “teen takeovers.”
‘They’re taking my Chicago Public Library card away?!?’ Neil Steinberg protests a crackdown on nonresidents exploiting the library’s digital assets.
■ The Tribune: Trump’s gutted funding for programs that have let libraries share resources their local branches lack.
■ Chicagoans are sounding the alarm about the administration’s cuts for the Head Start early childhood day care and preschool program …
■ … just one of the initiatives that HBO’s John Oliver sees as a sign that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is someone “clearly in way over his worm-riddled head.”
60 Minutes fires back. Days after the resignation in protest of the show’s executive producer, correspondent Scott Pelley told viewers that parent company Paramount—seeking Trump administration approval of a merger—“began to supervise our content in new ways.”
■ Radio veteran Perry Michael Simon cautions talk radio hosts—even those of the MAGA mindset: “Broadcasting from the White House is always a bad idea.”
■ Pulitzer-winning columnist Dave Barry recounts a visit to New York City: “I will never be able to pass a drug test again, because I was breathing an atmosphere consisting of 15 percent oxygen and 85 percent marijuana fumes.”
If you’re a few days behind on Jeopardy!, don’t read this article … about a 20-year-old contestant from the University of Chicago.
