Election ‘chaos’? / Fly to O’Hare? / ‘Kiss my ass’ / Square mailbag

■

Election ‘chaos’? That’s what Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson foresees arising from the court’s decision preliminarily clearing President Trump’s authority to restrict mail-in voting—a thing almost a third of the nation’s eligible population uses …
■ … including Trump himself.
■ Check your registration here.
■ Columnist Christopher Armitage makes the case for impeaching Justice Clarence Thomas.

‘Yabba-dabba do!’ Columnist Eric Zorn reflects on Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey’s invocation of the Flintstones when confronted with questions about the curriculum at the Christian school Bailey and his wife founded—which asserts that dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time.
■ It’s primary day in South Carolina, where the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s admittedly uninformed little sister is running for a full term to replace him.

Biggest. Ever. The Trump administration’s poised to launch the largest mass visa revocation in U.S. history—yanking sanctuary for up to 200,000 foreigners.
■ Block Club: McKinley Park neighbors on the Southwest Side celebrated yesterday after a tow truck driver refused to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who’d rammed their SUV into a car whose driver they then arrested.
■ A teacher on the scene told the Sun-Times: “Our schools are empty and underfunded, and to see them here with all this expensive equipment is frustrating. … Day by day they keep terrorizing our most marginalized people.”



Fly to O’Hare? Along comes a visionary plan to run an express train—15 minutes, one way—between Chicago’s Old Main Post Office and the airport’s Terminal 2.■ A Trib editorial loves the idea.
■ Here’s a promotional video.
■ Suck it, Elon Musk (flashback to an award-winning edition of the gone-but-not-forgotten Chicago Public Square newscast from 2018).

He’s baaaaack. Cleared by the church again—for the fifth time—of sexual abuse charges, Father Michael Pfleger has been reinstated at St. Sabina Church.
■ A statement from the archdiocese: “There is no reason to believe Father Pfleger is guilty.”

‘Kiss my ass.’ Dismissing Trump’s personal attacks in an escalating trade war with Canada, Ontario Premier Doug Ford called Trump a dictator …
■ … adding: “Your own people … don’t even like you.”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: Trump’s attack on Canada “might not make economic or political sense for the U.S., but it seems to make sense for a decaying president.”
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich (more on him at the end of this edition) says we’ve seen this movie before: Trump “blundered into an unwinnable trade war. … When he failed to achieve victory after the first day, he … started throwing everything at the wall, hoping that something would stick.”
■ A Tribune editorial calls Trump’s treatment of Canada “shameful.”
■ Columnist and former U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger: “Ontario’s threat to withhold electricity and critical minerals reveals the foolishness of attacking America’s closest ally.”
■ A leaked memo about an Oval Office meeting in February reveals that Trump was warned repeatedly that launching a war against Iran could prove disastrous.

‘Our newsroom has been decimated.’ Their ranks gutted by layoffs after its acquisition by the Tribune, Daily Herald editorial workers are moving to form a union (Crain’s gift link).
■ The Intercept: A Pentagon mouthpiece admits there’s a secret blacklist of journalists.
■ Press Watch proprietor Dan Froomkin calls out mainstream political media: “Normalizing Trump doesn’t just fail readers—it jeopardizes our future.”
■ Mark Jacob at Stop the Presses: “Trump wants the media to ‘low-key’ the war. Let’s not.”
■ Media monitor Simon Owens doesn’t get why the creative community sees the migration of TV and movie production out of Los Angeles as inherently bad—especially when the concentration of journalism jobs in New York City is “widely treated as a problem.”

‘If you’re sick, it’s most likely the common cold.’ Your Local Epidemiologist offers words of comfort for your Square columnist—and maybe for you, too.
■ Also: A guide to all those food recalls.
■ The Conversation: “Lactose intolerance is actually the human norm—but racism, the U.S. government and business interests have made it into a condition.”

Password nightmare. The Atlantic’s Will Oremus (gift link) shares a login horror story: “I lost the password to my password’s password.”
■ Jack Wallen at ZDNET: “I dumped Firefox, but these five features finally won me back.”

Square mailbag. A reader’s concern about links from this newsletter to the work of columnist Jeff Tiedrich triggered some responses:
■ Beth Riches: “I find him absolutely refreshing … one of the few people who is ready, willing and more than able to call this chaos exactly what it is: Stupid, destructive and insane. … I credit him (and a few other columnists and late-night comedians) with helping to maintain my sanity and well-being. Thanks, Jeff!”
■ Carmie Callobre: “Tiedrich is always welcome. Keep him. He makes me laugh, is of course ‘on the nose’ and says things in public a way I am not brave enough to do myself. Go Jeff!”
■ Mary Hancock: “Please continue. … I feel he absolutely expresses the rage that MANY of us feel about Donny Two Scoops and his minions.”
■ Barry Koehler: “He knows the exact right amount of shittery to include so it doesn’t sound like an urban dictionary or something vomiting in a blog.”
■ Sandy Kaczmarski: “I first discovered Jeff on Twitter when it was useful and love him. I am a paid subscriber … and find him saying what all of us are actually thinking.”
■ Judy: “A very talented writer who just LOATHES Trump. What’s not to like?”
■ No one (else) wrote to object to Tiedrich’s work.

‘Election emergency’? / Hell of an August / Sub fatigue

■

‘Election emergency’? Journalist Aaron Parnas says President Trump’s laying the groundwork for a declaration that would give his team unprecedented authority over who votes—and how.
■ Law professor Joyce Vance sees the administration escalating “its transparent efforts to manipulate the election this year in its favor.”
■ Time: What to know about new Postal Service rules for mail-in ballots.
■ Columnist and former Illinois Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Newman: Novelists saw what was coming.

Trump’s ‘deranged’ 1 a.m. posting spree. The Daily Beast (free link): “Fresh off a day at the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, with all eyes on him, his obsessive aide Natalie Harp and his lesser-spotted wife, Melania Trump,” the president “flooded his Truth Social account with … artificial intelligence slop.”
■ The Washington Post: Doctors are flagging Trump’s big weight gain.

‘They were keeping it from you on purpose.’ Columnist and former Illinois Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger says the D.C. press corps has long known about the disturbingly close relationship between Trump and Harp.
■ Poynter media writer Tom Jones: Reporters have new cause to focus on Harp.
■ Chicagoan and author Elaine Soloway spins a yarn: “Natalia Harpinsky Returns to the Soviet Union.”

‘The Moose That Roared.’ Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman says Trump’s destined to lose his trade war with Canada.
■ Traditional conservative turned Never-Trumper Charlie Sykes: “If you did not have a bitter, mutually destructive war with our friend and ally to the North on your bingo card, you are not alone.”
■ Ontario’s premier is threatening to cut off the electricity it sends the U.S.

‘Why the hell is Hakeem Jeffries meeting with Prince Jared of Trump?’ Wonkette’s Evan Hurst wonders whether the House Democratic leader “actually understands that we are fighting fascism.”
■  Adam Kinzinger begs someone to “make this make sense.”
■ The AP sees the meeting as “a signal that the White House is seeking ways to work with Democrats if they wrest majority control from Republicans in the midterm elections.”

Hell of an August. A Tribune editorial (free link) demands that Indiana political leaders and the NIPSCO electric utility begin an honest discussion about how gobsmackingly long the storm-triggered power outage has lasted …
■ … much of it documented in a Sun-Times series, “Powerless” …
■ … whose latest installment explains that “every day is a struggle for a family of seven.”

Killer cop dead. The former Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy serving a 20-year sentence for killing a Springfield-area woman in her home after threatening to shoot her “in the f______ face” has died in prison.
■ CWB Chicago: The Chicago cop with more misconduct complaints than any other active staffer has been jailed on domestic battery charges.
■ Triton College board chair Mark Stephens—son of one Rosemont mayor and brother of another—has been arrested on drug charges.

‘Terrifying.’ Add the American Civil Liberties Union to the roster of those alarmed by administration plans to arm—um, hand?—Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers with gloves capable of delivering electric shocks.
■ A story you might not have expected on the Fox News website: During her concert tour’s opening night in Chicago, country singer Kacey Musgraves encouraged fans to help kids whose parents have been deported.

‘I won … against The Washington Post.’ Columnist Karen Attiah says she was fired last year “for speaking the truth in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing” …
■ … but now a private arbitrator has ordered the Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper to rehire her (New York Times gift link).
■ Two of those responsible for her firing are already gone.
■ News watchdog and former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan: “Polls, pundits and horserace coverage are NOT what we need for the midterms. What if the media were to get obsessed about things that really matter?”

Sub fatigue. John Oliver’s target last night: The proliferation of unwanted and nigh-uncancellable subscriptions for everything from car software to printer ink—a problem that he says is fixable with a simple “Cancel” button, “so I’d argue that companies should give us that fucking button.”
■ Oliver also embarrassed Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy over Duffy’s “godawful” reality show—underwritten by companies Duffy’s department is supposed to regulate.
■ MS NOW: Even Republicans are getting mad about Trump’s budget director “going rogue on federal spending.”

‘Trump plans to silence CNN, Jon Stewart and John Oliver (the same way he silenced CBS News).’ Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich warns that “Trump buddy Larry Ellison … and his son David are a hair’s breadth away from being able to decide what many Americans learn about what Trump is doing to America.”
■ The Atlantic (gift link): “Trump comedians are tired.”
■ Stephen Colbert’s back—with a beard: “Give my best to TV. I miss it.”

‘I quite like most of your usual staple, but I find Jeff Tiedrich kind of shrill and on-the-nose.’ A Chicago Public Square reader—and former Tribune colleague—isn’t wild about Everyone is entitled to my own opinion proprietor Tiedrich’s plainspoken columns. But that reader goes on to concede, “Maybe it’s useful in shaping the newsletter to have someone who just says the thing, instead of being subtle about it?”
■ Other Square readers—including some related to this newsletter’s publisher—have raised the same concern, but consider:
■ “Shrill” though he may be, Tiedrich’s columns are often among Square’s most popular items—even when they’re not spotlighted; his column was Thursday’s most-clicked, even though it appeared in the middle of the issue’s seventh cluster.
■ Square’s not about clicks for clicks’ sake. If it were, every headline would look like the April 1, 2022, edition or frequently feature the headline “Someone you know is dead” (2005 link). But the fact that readers—repeatedly advised that Tiedrich is “typically unrestrained”—keep clicking suggests they find value in his “on-the-nose” ability to be “someone who just says the thing.” Especially in the age of Trump, that’s no trifle.
■ Not every item in Square will appeal to every reader; one of the virtues of this compressed news roundup is your ability to click what interests you and ignore the rest.
■ So feel free to ignore this end-of-issue link to Tiedrich’s latest: “No one gives a shit about your Grand Prix race, you out-of-touch fuck.”

Square up.

🟥 Subscribe free.
🟥 Search Square.

🟥 Square on Bluesky: