Fox ♥️ Roku. The parent of Fox News plans to buy the Roku streaming TV platform …
■ … putting The Roku Channel and viewing data from more than 100 million streaming households under the same umbrella with Fox’s news, entertainment and sports operations.
■ The deal stands to make Fox the third-largest player in U.S. TV by share of viewing …
■ … putting it in position to leapfrog its streaming war rivals.
■ The companies say Roku will remain an open, “partner-friendly” platform …
■ … but remember when one of them pledged “fair and balanced” news (2017 link)?
■ Government regulators will have to sign off on the deal …
■ … as they have yet to do on Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
‘Once unfathomable.’ That’s how the AP describes yesterday’s cage fight on the White House lawn in honor of Donald Trump’s 80th birthday.
■ The Hollywood Reporter says “a stream of tech titans, media moguls and other power-players”—including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg—were there to suck up.
■ Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein says the Pentagon’s first TV recruitment ad since its “Department of War” rebranding—a spot that debuted during the UFC broadcast—bears a “hidden message.”
■ Trump also announced another agreement to end the Iran war …
■ … with timing that Last Week Tonight host John Oliver says suggests Trump “wanted a deal to coincide with his birthday.”
■ Stop the Presses columnist Mark Jacob: “He isn’t trying to change the world—he’s trying to fill his pockets.”
‘A reminder that we can win.’ But Law Dork Chris Geidner says the removal of Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center facade also illustrates that such victories will be messy, slow and “a little cringe.”
■ The center’s board, still controlled by Trump and his allies, is establishing a new endowment in Trump’s name.
■ Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten: “Erasing Trump … starts in 2029. It won’t be easy, but it could be fun.”
■ Secret memos cited in New York Times reporters’ forthcoming Trump tell-all book (gift link) reveal that, “frustrated by courts, Trump weighed suspending a constitutional right.”
■ Columnist and former Illinois U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger: “I cried on national TV. Trump never lets me forget it.”
11 tornadoes. That was the latest count from the National Weather Service inventorying Thursday night’s destructive weather across the Chicago region …
■ … as a flood warning lingered today.
■ Did the storms hit you? Illinois is collecting data on residential damage.
Every block. 4,000 miles. Brazil native Joabe Barbosa yesterday achieved his goal of running every street in Chicago.
■ Taking a deep dive into what’s driving Chicago’s “teen takeovers,” the Tribune hears from an adolescent psychiatrist: “A teenager … is like a Corvette engine in a Kia.”
‘This is why people hate liberals.’ Columnist Neil Steinberg mocks a sign posted over the urinals at Chicago’s new Obama Presidential Center: “This Fixture Is Flushed With Harvested Rainwater Not Safe For Drinking.”
■ USA Today D.C. bureau chief Susan Page—who in 2018 hosted an off-the-record “Girls Night Out” party for Trump appointees (2020 link): This week’s dedication of the center will mark “the first time the sitting president won’t be at center stage for the opening of a modern presidential library.”
■ Ahead of Friday’s opening, more streets in the area have been closed.
The robots are coming! A Chicago City Council member’s OK’d expansion to several more neighborhoods of a food-delivery pilot project …
■ … set to run just through May of next year without further council action.
‘Elon Musk egged on a race riot, then became a trillionaire.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link—now, corrected), reflecting on last week’s “horrific” conflict in Belfast, notes that Musk … fanned the flames by reposting UK far-right extremist leader Tommy Robinson’s call on Twitter X for white people “to hit the streets.”
■ Mother Jones: People living near xAI’s dirty data centers “are right pissed” about Musk’s financial coup.
■ The Times (another gift link) offers some rough calculations to help you figure out just how much of Musk’s SpaceX you’re about to own—whether you intended to or not.
R.I.P., Irv Leavitt. A reporter, columnist, friend and Chicago Public Square supporter whose work has made this publication better over the years has passed away.
■ Here he was in 2018, sending his daughter off to college: “I’m sitting here in the dark thinking about how to prepare you for life on your own. I want you to be happy, and I really don’t know how that works.”
■ Thanks today to Mike Braden.
