3 quizzes!

Chicago Public Square will return in force Tuesday. Until then, get your continual fix of news and commentary via Square on Bluesky …

■ … where some of the more than two dozen links posted just since yesterday might give you an edge in this week’s news quiz—of which quizmaster and past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel says: “Come for the kelp and sea monkeys, stay for the musicals, DNA and mysteries of text messaging.”

■ Your Square columnist’s score this week: 6/8 correct.

Bonus quizzes.

■ City Cast Chicago challenges: “Have you been following the news in Chicago this week? Prove it!” (A perfect 5/5 for your Square columnist.)

■ A fresh Axios quiz tests your knowledge of Chicago’s rich and famous. (9/10 here.)

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

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).

■ Here’s the state superintendent’s letter.

■ 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 …

■ … which he did yesterday—except for China.

■ 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.