Emmett Till Day / Justice’s ‘worst day’ / Quiz!

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Emmett Till Day. Gov. Pritzker’s declared July 25—Saturday—a Day of Remembrance for the 14-year-old Chicagoan abducted, tortured and killed in Mississippi in 1955 …
■ … and for his mother, whose insistence on an open casket for his mutilated body fueled the Civil Rights Movement.
■ Acknowledging a dramatic disparity between traffic stops for Black drivers and those for others—and in the aftermath of a cop’s killing of a man pulled over after failing to signal a lane change—Oak Park’s moving to limit pull-overs for minor offenses.

‘It took just one traffic stop in Donald Trump’s America to turn everything upside down.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link): “The U.S.’s reputation as a safe haven for the world’s dissidents takes another hit with Pennsylvania’s arrest of a Chinese human rights lawyer”—who was delivering packages for Amazon at the time.

Hey, we’re ‘newly linked’! The Washington Post: Illinois is among four states added to the cyclosporiasis outbreak associated with shredded iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico.
■ Pulitzer-winning columnist Dave Barry: “Explosive diarrhea is no laughing matter. I speak from personal experience.”

‘Unsavory.’ That’s the word a former Illinois representative who worked to impeach former Gov. Rod Blagojevich uses to describe Blago’s new moneymaking scheme: Lobbying President Trump to pardon other corrupt convicts.
■ Coming by the end of the month: Release of the Legislative Ethics Commission’s report detailing just what disgraced ex-Rep. Harry Benton did.

‘What in the hallowed name of Memory-Hole Jesus is this?’ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich is flabbergasted: “The Pentagon just un-personned four war dead” …
■ … because their deaths occurred during Trump’s Iran war April ceasefire that wasn’t.
■ The Wall Street Journal: Trump threw an expletive-laden Oval Office tantrum over his inability to end the war.
■ Charlie Pierce at Esquire: “This nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia could go down as the worst idea Trump has ever had.”

Justice’s ‘worst day.’ Law Dork Chris Geidner says Thursday made clear “how bad things have gotten” in Trump’s Department of Justice.
■ Lawyer and columnist Robert Hubbell notes “the DOJ’s 17th loss (against zero wins) in legal cases in which the Trump administration is demanding that states turn over voter databases.”
■ The AP: “Government withdraws subpoenas of three reporters for The New York Times after admitting legal errors.”
■ Got nothin’ else goin’ on tonight? Watch Trump address the rescheduled—gunfire-disrupted—White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.
■ Late-night hosts had fun with the president’s inability to remember Pee-wee Herman’s name.

Social Security’s ‘reckoning.’ The Atlantic (gift link): “Senators elected this November will be in office when America’s most popular federal program is on track to run out of money.”
■ Social Security recipients won’t get a check in August—because they’re getting two in July.
■ The Washington Post: “As the cost of aging soars, families’ wealth is evaporating.”
■ A Boston University business professor ponders the prospect that the U.S. could follow Germany and Australia’s lead and get rid of paper checks.

On the Fritz again. Past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel’s back from a break with a nine-question news quiz.
■ Get more than 7/9 correct to lord it over your Chicago Public Square columnist.

‘This is like if Microsoft’s Clippy grew a mustache and stole data from Google Docs.’ Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: OpenAI.
■ Among The Associated Press’ updated list of approved newsroom uses for AI: Suggesting headlines and grammar help.
■ Science fiction author and tech watchdog Cory Doctorow: “Take away the accompanying, galactic-scale stock-swindle, and we’d call AI’s applications ‘plug-ins’ and we’d use them and abuse them in the same way that we’ve used every other technology.”
■ Cartoonist Jack Ohman: “Because I am a Person from the 1900s … I decided to try Chat GPT GLP-1, or something like that”—and he concludes, “it works … kinda.”

You’re reading this now … because people including David Henkhaus, Barbara Cimaglio, Judith Gaietto-Grace (again!), Christine Cooper (again!), Bill Weldon, Leslie Sutphen, Mary Mearna, Jerry Wolin (in memoriam), Bob Back, Mike Quintero, Eric Davis, Bob Kaige, Tony Scott, Martin Fischer, Peggy Kell, Angelika Kuehn, Sandy Rebitzer, Scott Watson, Alan Hoffstadter and Mark Wukas have over the last almost-decade pitched in to cover the cost of Square’s production and distribution.
■ Contribute as little as $1, just once, through the weekend and see your name listed first in Monday’s edition.
■ Contribute a bit more to get early access to The Conversation’s weekly news quiz.

‘De-Trumpification’ / Explosive diarrhea redux / 30 years

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‘De-Trumpification.’ Washington Post and Intercept veteran Dan Froomkin looks ahead to “what a resistance governing agenda would look like—first in Congress, if Democrats win one or both chambers in November, and then across all three branches, if Trumpism is rejected by the voters in 2028.”
■ The New Republic’s Alex Shephard declares former Wisconsin Democratic Party chief Ben Wikler’s This Is The Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy his Book of the Week.
■ Speaking of which: The U.S. House today narrowly OK’d a largely symbolic resolution to end the war in Iran.

America’s ‘greatest threat’? Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein says it’s the Pentagon’s budget …
■ … which the House is sending the Senate—attached to a provision that would officially rename Defense the Department of War.
■ Defense Secretary Hegseth’s plan to treat troops for low testosterone is getting the stink eye from a federal judge.

Not so fast. President Trump’s added a new condition to a deal that would give Saudi Arabia clearance to launch a civilian nuclear program: A requirement that the kingdom normalize relations with Israel.
■ Popular Information: Mainstream media have largely ignored the deal’s big dividends for presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.

‘Disgusting and disrespectful to all Americans.’ Columnist Heather Delaney Reese recounts Trump’s “master class in distraction” at a Georgia high school yesterday.
■ Everyone is entitled to my own opinion proprietor Jeff Tiedrich: “Five-time draft dodger once again dishonors war dead.”
■ Former AP D.C. bureau chief Ron Fournier is gobsmacked by plans for Friday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner re-do with Trump: “Seriously, White House reporters: WTF? Why are you having dinner with this man?”
■ Media critic Tom Jones at Poynter: “Friday night’s dinner has a chance to blow up in the WHCA’s face. And … this time it will be the WHCA’s fault.”

‘Chuy Garcia pissed away all the goodwill I ever had for him.’ Columnist Eric Zorn recommends Illinois change the law to prevent a repeat of “the sleazy way” Chicago’s U.S. representative “greased the way for his chief of staff … to inherit his seat.”
■ Politico: Retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who during the primary withdrew her support from a candidate who’d taken cash from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is now backing another candidate who’s accepted close to $4 million from an AIPAC-aligned group.

Explosive diarrhea redux. Pediatrician, immunologist and columnist Zachary Rubin: The FDA’s reported a separate cyclospora outbreak involving at least 72 people, for which a food source remains unidentified.
■ The New York Times (gift link) visits a Mexican town once known for lettuce and now known for cyclospora: “They’re always going to blame us.”

‘A history of alleged child sexual abuse.’ The Sun-Times reports: “A controversial ‘fraternity’ of priests whose leaders were recently excommunicated by Pope Leo XIV—and that maintains a quiet presence in the Chicago area with a church in west suburban Oak Park and a priory on the Northwest Side—… shares an unfortunate characteristic with … more mainstream Catholic religious orders.”
■ CNN, earlier this month: “Priests and members of a breakaway Catholic group that ordained four new bishops in defiance of Pope Leo XIV’s wishes are in schism.”

‘AI platforms … are biased in favor of their own profitability.’ Lawyer and ProPublica cofounder Dick Tofel details troubling experiences using AI to illustrate his column.
■ Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich: “Much of the United States economy is now based on … expectations that AI will pay off very big. … But it’s becoming a house of cards.”
■ Touring a data center “innovation lab,” energy reporter Amy Harder says she “was immediately hit with what I can only describe as ‘demented white noise.’”

30 years. The Daily Show marked its 30th anniversary last night with a supercut of highlights touching on almost every major national story across those decades.
■ The show’s getting a spinoff: A serialized political soap opera—in vertical format.
■ ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel thanks CBS for his best ratings month ever—because it canceled Stephen Colbert’s show.

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