Cross-burning suspect ID’d. A University of Illinois Chicago senior says that symbol of hate in Grant Park a week ago was a protest of Donald Trump.
■ He tells NBC Chicago: “In no way possible was that a hate crime. … I apologize for that, but, no, the intent was not there.”
Real-life Idiocracy. Columnist Jeff Tiedrich says Trump’s White House birthday cage match felt like the 2006 satire made real: “Within the world of the movie, it took hundreds of years for the United States to devolve into a state of permanent, unending stupidity. In real life, it only took 10.”
Make that 17 tornadoes. The National Weather Service has updated its tally of last week’s Chicago-region storms …
■ … which triggered a record number of calls to the city’s 311 non-emergency hotline …
■ … and claimed the last living “witness tree” outside Abraham Lincoln’s former home in Springfield.
■ City Cast: The rough weather’s fueled in part by Midwest air that climate change has made increasingly humid.
■ Paul Waldman at Public Notice: “Trump is fighting the green energy revolution. He’ll lose.”
Gettin’ crowded. Add ex-Chicago City Council member George Cardenas to those running for mayor.
■ Mayor Johnson used last night’s James Beard Restaurant Award ceremony in Chicago to declare the city will “never bend, never bow” to authoritarian power.
■ The city’s one winner: Feld’s Jake Potashnick as Best Chef: Great Lakes.
‘Let’s say America does what Hungary has done, what the Knicks have done, and in literature, what Odysseus and Gandalf did.’ American Crisis columnist Margaret Sullivan ponders what comes after Trump—“the elements of an American comeback.”
■ Former U.S. attorney Harry Litman says the purging of “Trump taint” from the Kennedy Center offers “a workable template” for reversing “Trump’s lawless power grabs.”
‘Trump lost this war.’ A New York Times editorial (gift link) calls the “preliminary deal” ending the four-month conflict in Iran “a peace framework that the entire world understands is a defeat for him.”
■ Experts to the AP: Don’t count on quick relief from inflation …
■ … speaking of which: A Consumer Reports investigation concludes that Uber and Lyft are routinely using artificial intelligence to charge customers dramatically different prices—with differences on the order of 50%—for the same ride.
■ Even Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White is critical of one of his fighters’ insults to Michelle Obama …
■ … a thing that PolitiFact felt compelled to declare still Pants-on-Fire false.
■ LateNighter’s Bill Carter says the spectacle was a gift to TV hosts “mocking the takeover of the White House by half-naked men firing fists and feet at each other.”
■ FBI boss Kash Patel claims his agents arrested several people in connection with alleged—but unspecified—“planned attacks” on the event.
■ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst is skeptical: “Patel singlehandedly thwarted attack on Trump’s UFC bouncy house birthday party!”
School closings’ sad legacy. A new study finds a 10% rise in gun violence near the Chicago school buildings shuttered 13 years ago on Mayor Emanuel’s watch.
■ A Tribune editorial (gift link) on a reported double-digit drop in the number of school-age kids who read for fun almost every day: “The pandemic did not create this problem, but it appears to have made an existing one worse.”
■ The Onion’s satiric take: “The sooner children learn to stop taking any pleasure in life, the better.”
‘Fox will basically have dominion over the entire streaming ecosystem.’ Media watcher Simon Owens says the potential takeover of Roku would give the Murdoch family “access to enormous amounts of data relating to how consumers interact with all the largest streamers.”
■ The American Prospect’s David Dayen says it also would hand Fox “the ability to diminish rivals.”
■ Another industry watcher: “Fox will control more of what viewers watch, how they discover it and how it gets monetized.”
■ Left wanting by the federal funding cutoff, Northwest Indiana’s WLPR-FM, Lakeshore Public Radio, is abandoning an over-the-air public radio feed of its own—instead to simulcast Lafayette’s NPR station, WBAA-FM.
Correction, clarification. Yesterday’s Chicago Public Square promised—but did not deliver—a gift link to Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch reflecting on last week’s “horrific” conflict in Belfast, and Elon Musk’s role in fanning those flames. Here is that link.
■ Regarding Brazil native Joabe Barbosa’s running every street in Chicago, WGN Radio News alumna and ultrarunner Elizabeth Braun explains, “Barbosa is far from the first person to run every street in Chicago, as many news outlets have claimed.”
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