Chicago Public Square

‘Brazen … presidential corruption.’ With a searing 29-page lawsuit, two law enforcement officers who fought off Jan. 6, 2021, rioters at the Capitol aim to block President Trump’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization” slush fund to pay off insurrectionists.

■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson breaks down the suit’s claims.

■ The Washington Post (gift link): Trumpsters are already lining up to get their share of the booty.

■ An Amherst law professor writes for The Conversation: “When a president settles his own lawsuit to create a fund for allies, fundamental questions about justice arise.”

■ Republican support for the scheme is looking shaky.

■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich rips into acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s defense of the fund: “He works for a psychopath, and he wants to keep his job, so he has to look straight into the camera and humiliate himself on live television.”

■ The Chicago City Council’s approved a ban on police officers’ involvement with extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

■ The Postal Service is considering reversing a century-old ban on the mailing of handguns.

Ballroom balk. In a rare display of spine, the Senate’s Republican leadership was poised to derail the president’s push for $1 billion in funding for his East Wing rebuild.

■ Salty Politics columnist Julie Roginsky: The slush fund and the ballroom/fortress project “are the same story.”

Your tax dollars at work. The City Council’s OK’d a $54.7 million incentive for a project to redevelop all that empty parking-lot land around the United Center.

■ In a repudiation of Mayor Johnson, the council’s delaying for at least two years an increase in the subminimum $12.62/hour wage for tipped restaurant workers.

■ Home-shopping around Chicago? Thousands of listings have dropped off Zillow and Trulia searches.

High-tech hijacks. Would-be Twitter successor Bluesky—backed by Clemson University researchers—says Russia’s been co-opting real users’ accounts to post propaganda (New York Times gift link).

■ An alliance of award-winning Chicago broadcasters, podcasters and voice actors—including NBC 5 alumni Carol Marin and Phil Rogers—is suing tech companies, complaining their voices have been used without their permission to train AI agents.

■ The Federal Trade Commission’s sent warning letters to websites that let users “nudify” photos of clothed individuals.

■ Tech columnist Kim Komando warns: “Stuff you discuss with your AI chatbot can become evidence in a lawsuit. … You typed it. The company stores it. A lawyer may ask for it. And boom, there goes your little chatbot confidante.”

No escape. The watchdog group Environment Illinois tested water samples from 31 sites along Illinois waterways and found microplastic pollution in all of them.

■ The Environmental Protection Agency’s sending Illinois $300 million to track and replace lead pipes delivering drinking water across the state.

■ Remember when McDonald’s pledged to cut pollution from its supply chain? Thanks in part to Trump’s Iran war, not so fast.

■ Popular Information: By at least one gauge, the war’s cost U.S. residents an extra $43.6 billion on fuel so far.

‘You’re the first guy in America who’s lost his show because we got a president who can’t take a joke.’ Appearing on Stephen Colbert’s penultimate episode of CBS’ Late Night, Bruce Springsteen told Colbert that Trump and his enablers “got no idea what the freedoms of this beautiful country are supposed to be about” …

■ … and then he played his anti-ICE protest song “Streets of Minneapolis.”

■ Columnist Andy Borowitz predicts “Trump will lose his war on laughter.”

■ Variety: Sounding “national security alarms,” Senate Democrats are imploring the FCC to conduct a “rigorous” review of the foreign cash involved in CBS parent Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros.

■ Jimmy Kimmel on ABC: After Colbert’s finale tonight, never watch CBS again.

■ As of this morning, what will happen on that show remained a secret.

■ Author and Chicago-born journalist Jonathan Alter, whose wife worked with Colbert at The Colbert Report and The Late Show, says “the people who have worked with him on both shows deserve more credit.”

■ The Tribune’s Paul Sullivan flashes back to a chat with Colbert at Wrigley Field during the Cubs’ 2016 championship run …

■ … when Colbert broadcast a bit you can revisit here.

‘Chicago’s biggest waste of kilowatts.’ Columnist Eric Zorn (himself a contributor to rival WGN Radio), noting WLS-AM’s dismissal of program director (and WGN alumnus) Stephanie Tichenor: WLS “has become an increasingly irrelevant outlet for syndicated right-wing talk”—with just one local show daily.

■ Poynter’s Tom Jones says Fox ~~News~~ founder Rupert Murdoch son James’ takeover of Vox Media—including New York magazine, The Cut, Vulture and Curbed—feels “somewhat promising for journalism.”

■ Columnist Stuart Brotman for Editor & Publisher: “At a time when free expression is under fire from multiple directions … the federal judiciary is having its finest First Amendment hour.”

■ Columnist and ProPublica cofounder Dick Tofel: While “The Washington Post has had its editorial voice rendered at once only semi-coherent and totally ineffective,” we owe The New York Times “for keeping the journalistic faith.”

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