First they said they would, then he said they won’t / 216 / ‘Ditch the switch’

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First they said they would, then he said they won’t. Hours after Immigration and Customs Enforcement—shaken by more deaths in its crackdown fiasco—directed its officers to suspend vehicle stops, President Trump took to his social media account to insist that “we CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!”
■ Bill Kristol at The Bulwark sees no reason to expect “any kind of fundamental change to this thuggish and lawless agency.”
■ The City Council’s set to review Chicago’s efforts to curtail ICE agents’ abuses. (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ Borderless: With Trump administration immigration policies shifting almost daily, lawyers fighting back say they’re spending more time tracking policy than preparing cases—and running on empty.

‘In less than 18 months at the Department of Justice, you’ve shown you’re still President Trump’s personal attorney.’ Those were Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin’s opening remarks for two days of hearings on Trump’s attorney general pick, his sycophantic former personal lawyer Todd Blanche …
■ Popular Information’s No. 1 question for Blanche: What is he still hiding about Jeffrey Epstein?
■ Today’s hearing was underway at Chicago Public Square’s email deadline. You can see it—live, or later—here. (Cartoon: Jack Ohman, on fire.)
■ NewsGuard reports tracking its 380th false claim about U.S. elections.

‘I always thought Lindsey Graham was Lindsey Graham’s sister.’ Jimmy Kimmel substitute host and Chicago native Ike Barinholtz is confused by the swearing-in of Darlene Graham as successor to her brother, the late senator.
■ Washington Post analysis (gift link) seems to confirm that a photo of Sen. Mitch McConnell in the hospital was real—or at least that the newspaper shown in that photo was indeed Sunday’s Post.

‘The headlines should have been: Trump makes crackpot Iran announcement.’ Press Watch columnist Dan Froomkin’s disappointed by news coverage of the president’s latest turn in the war.
■ The AP: “The region could tip back into all-out war.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman, who had a really big day.)

‘That’s it! If JB didn’t lead a pure, wholesome life in high school then I am DONE with him!’ Columnist Eric Zorn mocks Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey’s trolling of Gov. Pritzker with a caption under Pritzker’s high school yearbook photo.
■ The Wall Street Journal reports that Illinois’ expat billionaire Ken Griffin, who’s glommed his name onto Chicago’s iconic Museum of Science and Industry, has poured $40 million into Republicans’ midterm campaign coffers (gift link).
■ WBEZ’s Curious City reminds you that the museum’s founder didn’t want his name on the place.

Ballot blows. Chalkbeat: Five candidates for Chicago’s forthcoming fully elected school board have been bounced.
■ The Chicago Teachers Union is backing 15 candidates.

216. That was the latest count yesterday for Illinois’ confirmed cases of the explosive-diarrhea ailment cyclosporiasis.
■ Michigan lettuce is one suspect.
■ Your Local Epidemiologist tackles 10 cyclosporiasis questions—beginning with “Can you just tell me what not to eat?”
■ Snopes confirms: Trump’s administration cut surveillance of cyclospora a year ago.
■ The Onion, in a Chicago-datelined post: “Guy Violently Coughing On Bus Better Just Have Throat Cancer.”

Country Thunder crimes. A Sun-Times investigation tracks a series of sexual assaults on young women at the country music festival that returns this weekend to the Illinois-Wisconsin border.
■ Rage Against the Machine founder Tom Morello’s mom is dead at 102.

Help’s here. Chicago-area residents who suffered losses in the storms of June 10, 11 and 17, now can apply for low-interest loans to set things right.
■ You can apply online here.
■ Chicago’s air quality this week sucks—and may get even worse.

‘Ditch the switch.’ The House has sent the Senate a bill that would make daylight saving time permanent, year-round, in the United States.
■ Columnist Neil Steinberg: Even in Chicago’s light-polluted suburbs—with the right tech—you can see the nighttime wonders of the cosmos.

‘Square is my first news source of every weekday. Keep up the good work. We certainly need it.’ Those generous words of support came yesterday from a reader whose contribution underwrites Square’s production and distribution—part of a cohort that also includes PEGGI MEYER, Jean Davidson Meister (again!), Mary Godlewski (again!), Maria Garvy (again!), Liz Fitzgerald, Tom Williamson, Lloyd Sachs, Annemarie Kill, Tom O’Malley, Meghan Strubel, Beth Marcou, Dave Kraft, Martin Yeager, Geraldine Delaney, Norm Hirsch, Paul Noble, Marianne Goss, Sara Burrows, Jill Anderson, Jay Kelly, Neal Kleemann, Larry Baldacci, Kevin Wallace, Linda Paul, Kathy O’Brien, Robert Feder, Steve Nidetz, Julie Vassilatos, Melanie Carter, Bill Paige, Joyce Winnecke, Zarine Weil, Bennett Hart, Ed Hansen, Cindy Homan, Susan Franer, Cate Cahan, Larry Dahlke, Suzy Le Clair, Craig Brown, Gil Arias, Sandra Black, Mary Bunker, Mollie Kramer, David Mendell, LJ in Arkansas, Sharon Kurth, Allan Hippensteel, Ronald A. Fox, Terry Locke, Kent Bridgeman, Tom Wethekam, Steve Adler, Michael Boyd and Mike Krauser.
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A Square public service announcement in honor of an old friend

ICE kills again / Lawyers behaving badly / The Odyssey’s Chicago roots

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ICE kills again. For at least the ninth time since Donald Trump’s administration launched its mass deportation campaign and the second time in a week (New York Times gift link), a federal immigration agent has shot and killed a person …
■ … this time a motorist in Maine, for reasons that Homeland Security says—without evidence—were driven by fears for “public safety.”
■ The Portland Press Herald’s account begins this way: “The little girl was still in Bluey pajamas …”
■ Talking Points Memo’s David Kurtz: The FBI’s assertion that it’s investigating doesn’t mean what Maine Sens. King and Collins seem to think it means.
■ Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg says the details “should make every parent in this country lose their minds.”
■ The Guardian: A new report concludes that misuse of crowd control weapons against ICE protesters led to blindings and traumatic brain injuries.
■ The Sun-Times: In the first sentencing arising from the feds’ “Midway Blitz” assault on Illinois last fall, prosecutors are seeking a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for a man who admitted firing a gun near Border Patrol agents.

Photo forensics. PolitiFact finds no evidence that a picture seemingly showing Sen. Mitch McConnell alive and alongside his wife is fake—or old …
■ … but that hasn’t kept online AI pranksters from having fun.
■ Chicago-born actor Ike Barinholtz, substitute hosting Jimmy Kimmel’s show this week, sent good wishes McConnell’s way: “I hope you get the quality health care you’ve fought so hard to deny everyone else.”
■ Gary Legum at Wonkette: “Lindsey Graham’s sister will keep seat warm for Nancy Mace or Trey Gowdy or Satan or whoever.”
■ The Conversation: Most Americans prefer to die at home, but the U.S. healthcare system often prevents that.

Lawyers behaving badly. In what Law Dork Chris Geidner declares an extraordinary ruling, a federal judge says Justice Department attorneys and private lawyers representing Trump had an improper shared interest in purporting to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS through creation of that “Anti-Weaponization” slush fund and immunity for Trump from tax prosecution.
■ The judge has referred one of the president’s lawyers for potential disciplinary action.
■ Law professor Joyce Vance: “In footnote 2 (you always read the footnotes in an opinion like this), the judge crystallizes her view of just how deep Trump’s hypocrisy goes.”
■ Columnist Heather Delaney Reese: “Over the course of a single Monday … the president of the United States constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed reality so many times that by the end of the day, no one, not his allies, not his enemies, not the press, not foreign governments, nobody could say with confidence what was real and what was fabrication.”

Another for his collection. The prankster artists at Secret Handshake did it again—covertly erecting a giant “participation trophy” for the president on the National Mall.
■ Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman: Trump’s war with Iran isn’t affecting oil prices as much as it might have—because of “another war that was supposed to yield a quick, easy victory but didn’t: Vladimir Putin’s attempt to conquer Ukraine.” (Image: Secret Handshake.)
■ Popular Information documents Trump’s repeated—and repeatedly false—assertions that the Strait of Hormuz is open for oil shipments.

Not Illinois. A dozen states are suing to block CBS parent Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery—including CNN.
■ The American Prospect’s David Dayen says the challenge focuses on the merger’s likelihood of lowering revenue for theater owners and cable distributors—and therefore higher prices for moviegoers and TV viewers.
■ Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer: Trump admitted on live TV—on CNN itself—that “the FCC’s approval of Paramount Skydance’s acquisition was part of a corrupt plan to make CNN more MAGA-friendly.”
■ Chicago TV news veteran Jennifer Schulze: “Bari Weiss is hiring more right-wing pundits than journalists at CBS News.”
■ The Atlantic’s David Graham (gift link): Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, set for confirmation hearings tomorrow, is showcasing a “willingness to intimidate reporters whose revelations have upset the president.”
■ Stop the Presses columnist Mark Jacob: “The NY Times and ABC News find that appeasement doesn’t work. … News outlets that minimize and normalize Republican authoritarianism will eventually find it at their doorstep.”
■ In a Twin Cities pilot project, Nieman Lab sees the Times moving toward an Axios-like model that media watcher Simon Owens speculates could lead to a Times presence in all 50 states.

The Odyssey’s Chicago roots. Interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show last night, filmmaker Christopher Nolan traced his obsession with the IMAX technology he used for his new film back to a show he saw as a kid at the Museum of Science and Industry …
■ … but A.V. Club traces Nolan’s inspiration back even further— to “the mythical stop-motion animation” that created “some of the most astounding special effects of the ’50s, ’60s, and beyond.”

‘The best … of the last 100 years.’ Political cartoonist Pat Oliphant is dead at 90.
■ One of those he inspired, Ann Telnaes, recalls the time he discouraged her: “You do know it’s a dying art, don’t you?”

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