Housing help / ‘It’s called war’ / Quizzes

Housing help. A bipartisan bill aimed at making U.S. housing more affordable stands to become the law at midnight—without President Trump’s signature …

■ … as he continues to insist Congress pass his plan to overhaul federal election law.

Millionaires, rejoice. Mayor Johnson’s push for an advisory referendum on an Illinois tax for the wealthy has flopped in the City Council.

■ A Tribune editorial calls for the city to consider other referenda.

‘He did not deserve to die.’ That’s the son of a man ICE shot and killed in Houston …

■ …. someone that a U.S. representative says wasn’t even their target.

■ The New Republic: Those who witnessed the shooting are reportedly now under pressure to deport themselves.

■ Chicagoans have filed a raft of new lawsuits against Border Patrol for “completely unprovoked, completely unnecessary” assaults during last year’s “Operation Midway Blitz.”

■ In yet another wrongful conviction settlement, Chicago’s agreed poised to pay $9 million to a Spanish-speaking man who spent 17 years in prison after he was beaten into signing a confession for a murder he didn’t commit.

■ Chicago’s embattled U.S. attorney, Andrew Boutros, yesterday got a scolding from a federal judge for violating court orders.

■ A lawyer representing the former Olympian accused of vandalizing Washington’s scum-encrusted reflecting pool: “If Mr. Hearn can be charged with a felony … every American is at risk.”

Not in a hurry. Disgraced Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner’s taking his time formally withdrawing from the race.

■ Trump’s removed the remaining members of the bipartisan federal commission created to help states run fair elections …

■ … because they resisted his pressure to require that voters document their citizenship before registering.

■ Axios Chicago: Illinois Democrats see the Republican administration and the postal service menacing voting by mail in November’s elections.

■ Journalist and filmmaker Steven Beschloss is upbeat: “This nightmare will end. … As Trump becomes more reckless and impaired, a growing number of judges and aggrieved legal professionals are fighting back.”

Gun control groups’ win. An Illinois law to ban assault weapons—a response to the 2022 massacre at Highland Park’s Fourth of July parade—has survived a federal appeals court challenge …

■ … although the U.S. Supreme Court may have the final word.

‘It’s called war.’ Press Watch columnist Dan Froomkin calls out U.S. news outlets for not acknowledging that we’re back where we were before the ceasefire-that-wasn’t in Iran.

■ Author and columnist Brent Molnar analyzes a presidential social media rant that he says the institutional media have ignored but that amounts to a command for his base to “assassinate Democrats.”

‘Trained on stolen journalism.’ The Trib and other papers are joining a lawsuit accusing ChatGPT maker OpenAI of building its tech on a foundation of millions of news articles to which it had no rights.

■ A University of Wisconsin education professor studying AI’s effect on elementary schools says that, to gauge what kids really know, teachers may need to spend more time seeing students writing with paper and pencil in class.

‘It’s stupid.’ That’s Pulitzer winner Dave Barry on a new Florida law requiring that kids learn cursive.

■ Columnist Heather Delaney Reese: Florida’s renaming of Palm Beach International Airport “The President Donald J. Trump International Airport” will cost taxpayers millions—and creates a new profit machine for Trump.

‘You got robbed on FB.’ Tech columnist Kim Komando: People last year lost more money to scams that started on Facebook than on any other platform.

■ She recommends adjusting settings to increase your online defenses.

Missed it by that much. Your Chicago Public Square columnist got just one of eight questions wrong on this week’s news quiz from past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel. Your turn.

■ Then try your hand at Justin Kaufmann’s celebrity quiz for Axios: Which celebrities are from Chicago? (Your Square columnist’s score: 7/10.)

Obama Center-bound? WBEZ reports that most of the sculptures, murals and mosaics around the campus are free and open to the public.

■ Recommended listening as you stroll: A 2019 Square interview with Obama’s first biographer.

Roll on, Squarians. Thanks to a few more readers whose support helps cover the cost of publishing and distributing this news briefing: James P. O’Brien, Nannette Doetsch, Patricia Solano, Marlen Garcia, Ken Saydak, Alison Thomas, Mike Nowak, Ryan Arnold, Joan Berman, Jeff Hanneman, Joyce Porter, Paul Pasulka, Patricia Winn, Carolyn Grisko, Art McNamara, Kathleen Hogan, Karen O’Leary, Becky Brofman, Molly Allscheid, Timothy Cunningham, Jack Hafferkamp, Stephanie Springsteen, Holly Wallace, Arlene Thurow, Mary Godlewski, Meredith Schacht, Meg Ross, Heather O’Reilly, Adam Broad, Mary Paxson, Judy Hoffman, Stephanie Textor, Vicki Seglin, Shelley Krause, Michael Kelly, Jean and John Meister, Lizzie Schiffman Tufano, Dave Walker, Dan Haley, Ronald B. Schwartz, Logan Aimone, Frank Heitzman, Anita Butler, Matthew Pestine, L.A. Zierer, Susan Gzesh, Edie Steiner, Martin Gallas, Judith Galleazzi, Bruce Pfaff, Anne Frederick, Leslie Hodes, Martha Swisher, Mike Fainman, Lawrence Weiland, Michael Collins, Kelly Martin, Janet Grimes, Kathy Downing, John Aerni, Eleanor Sharpe, JoAnn Villasenor, Tim Woods, Maureen Kennedy and Neil Parker.

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■ Mike Braden made this edition better.

Didja feel it? / Platner out / ‘The End of Reading’

Didja feel it? Yeah, that was an earthquake centered in Lake Michigan yesterday afternoon rattling the Chicago region.

■ That could explain why your Chicago Public Square columnist’s monitor stand suddenly began wobbling.

■ If you felt it, the U.S. Geological Survey wants to hear from you.

■ The BBC last November: “Climate-induced earthquakes are brewing beneath our biggest cities.”

■ Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman: Brutal heat waves in the U.S. and Europe “represent the leading edge of serious damage—social, human, and economic—from a warming planet.”

‘A stage for one man’s unraveling.’ Columnist Heather Delaney Reese itemizes the “lies … coming from the man who controls our nuclear arsenal, commands our military, and is actively waging a war without consideration for his allies or permission from Congress” as President Trump joined the NATO summit yesterday.

■ The Iran war ceasefire that never really was is truly over.

■ Tom Nichols at The Atlantic (gift link): “Iran, not Trump, is in control of this war.”

■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich mocks: “This is the guy who quite famously said he could have negotiated an end to the Civil War. How? By calling Jefferson Davis a stupid poopy-head?”

■ Trump’s flight home in an old Air Force One is raising new questions about that Qatari-bribed-gifted jet that took him to Turkey.

■ In what the AP describes as “a blistering speech,” potential presidential candidate and ex-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel—a Jew and longtime defender of Israel—told a Tel Aviv University audience that Israel’s present leadership has made that nation a “territorial pariah.”

Platner out. Credibly accused of sexual assault, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner’s withdrawing from the race in Maine.

■ Politico, which broke the story that broke his campaign: “It ended just the way it started—with an angry, gravel-voiced social media video.”

■ The party plans a nominating convention to replace him …

■ … but The American Prospect concludes that “the politician who can generate the same kind of excitement that the charismatic Platner did doesn’t exist in Maine.”

■ The Onion: “Platner Clarifies He Covered Penis With Tattoo After Learning About Its Troubling History.”

■ Columnist Eric Zorn on ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s absurd assertion that Republicans quickly abandon “bad” candidates: “I will not be lectured about propriety by any member of the Party of Trump” …

■ … who’s under a federal judge’s order to pay E. Jean Carroll $5.8 million for sexual abuse and defamation—now.

■ Law professor Joyce Vance: “Carroll is going to outlast Trump’s delay game.”

■ Add The Washington Post to the roster of media organizations that have whomped Trump in court.

‘The irony … gets this court extremely upset.’ Noting that “a ton of people … who, you know, tried to execute threats and harm to people who were law enforcement and government officials at the House of Representatives at the Capitol … all got pardoned,” a federal judge in Chicago nevertheless sentenced a suburban man to more than three years’ imprisonment for threatening Trump and others.

■ An ex-Wisconsin judge who helped a Mexican defendant dodge courthouse arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents has been fined $5,000—but won’t do prison time.

■ Block Club: “ICE arrests are on the rise again in Chicago. Here’s what immigrants need to know.”

Fewer options for sick kids. Add the inpatient pediatrics unit at St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet to the roster of such Chicago-area facilities getting shuttered.

■ Education columnist Jan Resseger: Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” has already begun damaging children’s well-being—and “it will only get worse.”

Spreading ‘myths about antidepressants.’ Popular Information: Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a financial connection to a Scientology-linked law firm suing antidepressant manufacturers.

■ Project Democracy’s If you can keep it newsletter: “The federal government is now a superspreader of election lies.”

Compare and contrast. Wonkette’s Robyn Pennacchia: “The New York Times Would Like You To Meet This Totally Harmless Tradwife/Heritage Foundation Hack.”

■ Then flash back to this newly restored 1992 interview with Ms. Magazine’s then-editor-in-chief.

‘The End of Reading Is Here.’ That’s the title of an Atlantic piece (gift link) that begins, “Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history.”

■ Former Tribune columnist and editor Charlie Madigan: “I miss all that printing, but I still have more information than ever. … Pretending the old days were full of diligent folks who just couldn’t stop reading is simply wrong.”

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