After Trump, what? / ‘Not safe for patients’ / Time marches on

Chicago Public Square will take a few days off. Friday will bring you a news quiz as usual, and we’ll be back in force here Tuesday.
Between now and then, get your fix of news and commentary around the clock by checking in with Square on Bluesky.

After Trump, what? Journalist Dan Froomkin has a 10-point plan for fixing all the president’s broken.
American Prospect co-founder Paul Starr has a “Premature Guide to Post-Trump Reform.”
Columnist Eric Zorn asks: When, exactly, was “America great”?
Timely reading: Daring Fireball notes that ebook editions of Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny are available for just $2.

‘Falsehoods are now winning.’ Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler has filed his farewell column. (A gift link, underwritten by Chicago Public Square supporters.)
Economist Paul Krugman: “The media can’t handle the absence of truth.”
ProPublica cofounder Dick Tofel offers practical steps for journalists to get tougher on politicians’ “provable knowing falsity.”
Froomkin again: “The country’s top journalists have gotten too used to just quoting the crazy things Donald Trump says and leaving it at that.”
Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion proprietor Jeff Tiedrich: “The narcoleptic old fart factory fell fast asleep in public. Again.

‘We’ll smash the fucking window out and drag him out.’ ProPublica documents nearly 50 incidents of immigration officers shattering car windows to speed up arrests.
In a case that The Guardian says illustrates how ill-prepared the Trump administration is to meet the needs of immigration detainees with disabilities, a man detained by ICE in Georgia was placed in solitary confinement after he complained about flooding in his cell—a potential danger for his electronic prosthetic legs.
PolitiFact: Florida Gov. DeSantis said “‘everybody’ at Alligator Alcatraz has a deportation order. Lawyers say he’s wrong.”
A federal judge who’s declared the detention camp “a black hole” is demanding to know “who’s running the show.”

Canada aye. Prime Minister Mark Carney says the Canadian government in September will officially recognize the existence of a Palestinian state.
In a first, a majority of Democrats in the Senate have voted to stop arming Israel—although they were still vastly outnumbered by Republicans and other Democrats.
In what France, among others, calls an “unprecedented” move, Arab nations have allied to call on Hamas to disarm and surrender power.
Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein declares Pope Leo’s comments to Israeli President Netanyahu “the most pointed I’ve ever seen from an influential global leader.”

‘I’m glad Trump is gutting the EPA. My family’s tire-burning business is on fire!’ USA Today’s Rex Huppke sends mocking gratitude the president’s way: “Thank you for not caring about the cancer cluster in the town downwind of our business.”
Columnist Elaine Soloway, 86, recounts her trip to the emergency room for heat exhaustion in Chicago’s recent scalding weather …
 … and thanks the young neighbors she’d earlier this month described as callous.

‘Not safe for patients.’ Records obtained by the Sun-Times show the medical director for struggling Weiss Memorial Hospital’s emergency room told state investigators he has “serious concerns” about the department’s abilities.
Trump’s chief scientific officer at the Food and Drug Administration is out after just three months.

Start your engines. After 28 years in the House, Chicago Rep. Danny Davis was set today to announce his retirement—sparking a crowded race to replace him.
Ex-VP Kamala Harris says she won’t run for California governor.
Columnist Ron Fournier fears that means “she wants to run for president in 2028, which would be a big mistake.”
Her new book, 107 Days, revisits that brief run for the White House.

‘Staggering.’ The Chicago Transit Authority’s acting president warns of “drastic service cuts” if state government doesn’t come up with more cash.
Block Club: A bold Park District plan to enlarge Grant Park could move part of DuSable Lake Shore Drive underground.
A 2-year-old is dead after a car crashed into a Portillo’s restaurant in Oswego yesterday.

‘It’s like a whole weight lifted off.’ Two cousins who, at 42 years, became Illinois’ longest-serving wrongfully convicted people have finally received an official declaration of innocence. (A Tribune gift link.)
The Trib also reports that the Chicago Police Department’s second-in-command has seemingly been stripped of almost all duty—after a 2022 incident in which her personal vehicle, driven by her niece, was involved in a narcotics arrest.
The nonprofit, pro-gun-control Violence Policy Center ranks Illinois second in the nation for “black homicide victimization.”

As Obi-Wan Kenobi said: ‘If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.’ His show canceled by corporate overlords in thrall to Donald Trump, Stephen Colbert just set a new ratings record.
Colbert’s Paramount/CBS sibling, South Park, scored its biggest season premiere ever with its brutal satire of Trump.

Time marches on. Eric Zorn rounds up some tech-outdated phrases—including “flat-screen TVs” and “411.”
Your Square columnist has resolved to eschew “smartphone” and “mobile phone” (2012 link).

Climate derange / ‘Pants on Fire’ / Wildcuts

Climate derange. Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency chief is proposing to rescind a scientific declaration that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases fuel global warming and endanger humanity.
 Economist Paul Krugman on what looked like European Union concessions to Trump—including a “sort-of” pledge to invest in U.S. oil and gas: “Europe played Trump for a fool. Specifically, a fossil fool.”
 The American Prospect: A rule requiring employers to protect workers from extreme heat is in limbo under Trump.
 Next for Chicago’s forecast: Heavy downpours and flash flood risks …
 … as Southwest Siders push for emergency recovery help after flooding Friday and again Monday.
 A term this summer’s hot weather should add to your vocabulary: “Wet-bulb” temperatures.

Shaken, but not too stirred. Updating coverage: An earthquake in Russia sent tsunami waves into Japan, Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast.

Your election privacy on the line. The Trump administration’s asking Illinois to surrender its vast voter registration records—including sensitive data about individual voters.

‘Claiming a 17-year-old girl who fell into the hands of sex traffickers was stolen from you is the kind of thinking that makes sex trafficking possible.’ That’s USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist, Rex Huppke, on Trump’s complaint—“without a hint of empathy or compassion”—that now-dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein “stole” a teenage spa worker from Mar-a-Lago.
 Closer to the Edge: Trump’s words “should have shattered headlines and ignited congressional investigations.”
 Popular Information: The president’s callous account raises at least four thorny new questions for him.
 Seth Meyers on Late Night: “Vice President JD Vance said that President Trump has been ‘incredibly transparent about that stuff.’ And I agree. We can absolutely see right through him.”
 Columnist Neil Steinberg: “If you are discovering the president is a liar and a perv, well, welcome to the party. But pardon me if I don’t share your excitement, because you’re discovering the painfully obvious.”
 Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz says Epstein’s imprisoned accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, “is swinging on the monkey bars of power, privilege and patriarchy.”

‘An employee may engage another in polite discussion of why his faith is correct.’ The Trump administration has cleared federal workers to proselytize their colleagues.
 Stephen Colbert: “Of course, converting people to your religion is always very chill. That’s why all those people died in the Spanish Gentle Suggestion.”
 Desi Lydic on The Daily Show: “If you’re going to approach me at work and ask, ‘Have you heard the good news?’ it better mean there are donuts in the break room. Otherwise, keep it moving, Zachariah.”

‘Pants on Fire.’
That’s PolitiFact’s rating of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that “there is no starvation in Gaza.”
 An Army veteran who worked for the American and Israeli-backed nonprofit that has been given almost full control over food distribution to starving civilians, and that has reportedly been shooting and killing some of those very civilians: “I witnessed war crimes.”
 The Feed on social media platforms’ repressive policies: “If you post the word Gaza, you’re shadowbanned, demonetized or dropped from brand deals.”

‘The DOGE Boys and the barely-crypto Nazi punk overlords have, at baseline, slowed this down to the point where they’re making money on the deal by not sending it to a qualified American (me).’ Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Jack Ohman is having trouble collecting on his Social Security.
 The pool of future Social Security contributors is shrinking: The U.S. fertility rate hit an all-time low last year.
 The Wall Street Journal (gift link): The administration’s backing down from an effort to pause health research funding.

Wildcuts. Squeezed by Trump administration spending freezes, Northwestern University’s eliminating 425 positions.
 Bloomberg introduces you to a young man who “could have been an artist, or a builder, or someone dedicated to seeing a great historical mystery through. Instead he wound up at the Department of Government Efficiency, slashing, dismantling, undoing.”

Got a car insurance story? The Sun-Times reports Illinois’ secretary of state—pushing for reform—wants your tales of how non-driving factors like age, credit score and ZIP code have affected insurance rates.
 Block Club: Milwaukee Avenue through Wicker Park will go car-free once a month.
 Chicago’s Northwest Side has a newly improved bike-and-pedestrian route.

The Trump-CBS deal ‘is even worse than you thought.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters) envisions how the network’s news division will function—or not—in a year.
 ABC News alumnus Terry Moran: Trump’s cronies have moved in at CBS.
 Now in the Trump-compliant Federal Communications Commission’s sights: Comcast/NBCUniversal.

It’s corrections week. Embarrassingly enough, an item in yesterday’s Square about fact-checking … um … got a fact wrong. Snopes, not PolitiFact, confirmed as True that video showing Trump cheating at golf in Scotland.

Square No. 2,000’s coming. Sometime in the next few weeks—we haven’t done the final projection—this service will deliver its bimillennial edition.
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 Mike Braden made this edition better.

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